WWE Monday Night Raw 3/5/2012 - The Good, The Bad And The Ugly

There are a few wrestlers I really enjoy following on Monday nights. The best is probably Lance Storm, who doesn’t hold anything back, and generally has the best insight of pretty much anyone on not only wrestling itself, but booking and storylines as well. Equally interesting, however, is the Twitter feed of Sean Waltman/1-2-3 Kid/6-Pac/Syxx/X-Pac/That guy you watched bang Chyna/etc. Normally he’s a pretty positive guy who gives honest gut reactions to things he sees on the screen, but this week saw him unleash on the night’s second pretape promo, from one Mr. John Cena.

As Cena sat in an empty arena, rambling about Boston and second place and legacies and championships and zzzzzzz, Waltman let loose the following barrage: “This is already starting off on the wrong foot,” “Where’s the clicker?”, “Sorry.”, “They should have never aired this.”, and the coup de grce, “Come on. WTF was that? Who produced that & who’s the yes man/men who said it was good enough to air?” It’s funny, but also absolutely correct. That Cena pre-tape was totally useless and mind-numbingly dull. Even a few extra minutes of Zack Ryder calling a woman he wasn’t actually ever dating a “hoeski” would have been better.

Sometimes I feel like there’s not much point in declaring the Shitterson Match of the Night, especially when it’s so obvious what I’m going to choose. How could anyone with half a brain not love a match that features Chris Jericho, CM Punk and Daniel Bryan? He’s not exactly on the same level as those guys, but even the fourth man in the tag team match, Sheamus, is pretty f’ing great. Yes, I enjoyed all the hip-tosses, arm-drags, reversals and fast-paced action that you guys did too, but what I want to talk about here is the actual finish.

Initially, as much as I liked watching the match, I thought it was a little odd that it was even booked, seeing as it pitted the faces from two WrestleMania main events against their opponents, almost a full four weeks before the big event. Without some kind of wacky finish or run in, there didn’t seem to be a good way to keep everyone protected, and it seemed to me too early to have anyone pull out a definitive win. I’ll admit when I’m wrong though, because the match turned out to have a finish that was both shocking and shockingly effective: Jericho won clean.

Sure, there were some crazy back-and-forth shenanigans that led up to the final spot, but when Jericho reversed Punk’s roll-up, there was nothing shady going on there – just a heel outwrestling a face, something that rarely ever happens on WWE. Already, that’s a pretty shocking and impressive development: WWE just showed you that your WWE Champion isn’t as good as the guy he’s facing in a few weeks. But what’s really great about it is that Punk is still over as a credible threat, and that the loss didn’t harm his stock one iota. The fact that he stayed looking strong is a testament to not only Punk himself, but everyone involved with the match, especially Jericho, who is always effective at making his opponents look good, but tonight was especially fantastic.

For those folks who hadn’t quite had their fill of the Rock shouting catchphrases at them and/or talking about his penis whilst standing in front of Boston landmarks, WWE brought us, you guessed it, another Rock pretape. Personally, I feel like Rock’s second pretape, while better than the first, had either too much, or too little dong-talk, as I’d have preferred a completely dong-free or wholly dong-centric promo – but maybe that’s just me. Still, I fail to see the value of all these pretapes, as they did nothing but bore and desensitize audiences to the actual confrontation between Rock and Cena that came at the end of the show. I understand that they wanted to get a bunch of Rock on television while they had him this week, but there has to have been a better way to do it than this.

The Miz is a talented dude. He’s not the best guy on the WWE roster, but he knows how to get good heat, and there should be a place for someone with his skillset. Let me amend that: There should be a place for him besides just showing up every week as the announcers point out that while he was in the main event of last year’s WrestleMania, he can’t even get a spot on this year’s card. Worse than damage to a wrestler I think WWE could actually still make some money with, however, is what this does to WWE’s credibility.

The fact that a guy who retained the WWE Title against John Cena at the biggest pay-per-view of 2011 could in a year’s time become little more than a jobber, and a pawn in an Intercontinental Title storyline, does nothing but highlight the general capriciousness and inconsistency of WWE’s booking. The promotion doesn’t need to fully protect every guy who ever wore a World Title, but some attention should be paid to ensure that you don’t consistently devalue the titles and WrestleMania itself.

That said, I still really dig Cody Rhodes’ Embarassing Big Show WrestleMania moments, especially since this week’s seemed to imply that Big Show was going to eat that kid he was holding at the WWE restaurant. Someone in the writer’s room was asleep at the wheel not to have Rhodes joke about that.