WWE Monday Night Raw 11/28/2011 - The Good, The Bad And The Ugly

I used to absolutely dread "Rowdy" Roddy Piper's seasonal returns to the WWE ring. Like some kind of psychotic, wackily-accented cicada, Piper would crawl out of the earth and buzz about spastically making unearthly noises before eventually mating with the female of this species...and that's kind of where the metaphor breaks down. But suffice to say, it usually isn't much fun watching the former "Hot Rod" mug for the audience.

But instead of the overweight, near-incoherent, cancer-ridden mess that fans normally cringe at awkwardly, Piper looked shockingly great and nothing like the near-self-parody he played on It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia a few seasons back. Yes, he's skinny, but he's a 57-year-old lymphoma survivor, so give the man a break, would you? Even his promo work seemed better than what we're used to, but more on that next...

I spent the entire first fifteen minutes of Raw hoping that the segment would end with John Cena beating up a fake Scotsman. I honestly don't expect WWE to turn Cena heel while they're still making so much money off him, but if they were going to do it, could you possibly think of a better way than beating up "Hot Rod?" Still, even though the only recipient of physical abuse was Cena himself, I really dug the segment.

It's another example of WWE finding its way in the still-evolving landscape of hyper-knowledgeable niche fanbases. Just as CM Punk has been able to leverage mixed feelings about his character into growing popularity (and Kevin Nash has failed to do the same), Cena looks to be embracing more and more of the realities surrounding his gimmick. No, not everyone likes him, and he plays directly to young fans, but why can't he be a face to those kids and a heel to everyone else? WWE isn't exactly there yet, but I love where this could possibly be heading.

 

For the last couple weeks, I've groused pretty heavily about how WWE has treated the Miz - a guy who main evented WrestleMania last year, mind you. There's still a lot of work to be done, but this week saw the promotion take the first step toward rehabilitating the wrestler as an actual threat, as he beat the everloving bejeezus out of John Morrison.

This match was a perfect storm of good wrestling planning, and a great example of how WWE can get it right. The match played off a number of older storylines, including Miz and Morrison's defunct tag team, as well as Morrison's team and eventual feud with R-Truth. It also established Miz early on as a despicable cheater, as he walloped Morrison's leg with a pipe before the match even began, and went even further to characterize him as a ruthless, near-psychotic monster. Additionally, feeding Morrison (who according to the dirt sheets, is moving closer and closer to the end of his WWE run) to Miz was a great way to write him off television. However...

John Morrison has been a bland, midcard flippity-flopper for so long that it's easy to forget how absolutely great that guy can be. Back in his ECW days, feuding with CM Punk over the ECW Title, Morrison was consistently part of some of the best matches on free WWE television. And he was just as awesome as a tag team competitor, regularly carrying the Miz through matches and taking part in some pretty fantastic bouts as part of MNM.

But for whatever reason, whether because of the rumored backstage Melina-based politics that the Dirt Sheets tend to take as gospel truth, the more-confirmed dust-up with Trish Stratus at WrestleMania last year or something else entirely, WWE has failed to give Morrison much of anything to do lately. The guy has entertaining matches, is talented as hell, and is pretty good on the microphone as long as you haven't totally defanged him (a problem that's plagued him throughout his current face run). It looks more and more like he'll be leaving the promotion, and that's a damn shame in my book.