My fav report I think ill forward it here every week, also with Trish being the host and her and John Cena thing on air leads me to believe even more than ever that there is no way in Holy Hell Orton wins this week
Welcome to the Raw Deal. I'll do the usual rundown of Raw (it will be shorter than my norm) and I was going to write a Breaking Point preview, but I don't have the time for it, so I'll include it in Saturday's Talking Smack column. Last week in the Raw Deal after the end of a good show I asked the following question: Is Raw finally headed in the right direction or is this an aberration? Let's see if we got our answer.
Live from Chicago here's the Raw Deal…
I have always been a huge Price is Right fan. I remember watching it all the time in the summer. Then during the school year when I was sick or skipping class I always made sure I watched it. I don't think I've seen it with Drew Carey more than five times. It's definitely the game show I would most want to be on although maybe Wheel of Fortune because you've got a 1 in 3 chance of winning there and if you're not a moron it'd be easier to make big money. Then again you're guaranteed to win something on a show like Millionaire or Deal or No Deal, so either one of those would be fine too.
The Price is Raw
We start with Bob Barker as the host coming out to the Price is Right theme. Awesome. I loved everything about this. The skinny microphone, the area for the contestants, the cheesy announcing with Howard Finkel and did you hear that ovation Bob good? That was awesome. Having Santino as a contestant ruled complete with him slipping. I was a fan of Jillian jumping up and down. She's tremendous until she talks. Getting IRS out there was good, cheesy fun and Jericho played his role perfect. I was amazed at the nametag sticking on his bare chest. There were a lot of good lines here like when Bob said he liked Jillian's singing, then mentioned he was tone deaf and Santino calling him "Roberto" was awesome. I loved the Jericho/Barker interaction. "Oh, he speaks!" The part about Jericho bidding one dollar because he said "one half of the tag champs" was corny, but again I thought it was fun. All this led to Jericho having a match. This took about ten minutes. I enjoyed it. Lots of mark out moments for me as a Price is Right fan.
MVP d. Chris Jericho (**1/4)
Much like last week, they were given a fair amount of time at about 10 minutes, but it just didn't work as well as last week. I don't know what it was. The timing seemed to be off a bit and some of MVPs offense didn't look that great. It did get better in the final two or three minutes as they hit some good nearfalls. The finish with MVP winning works with me. It's similar to Jericho losing to JTG on a rollup counter last month before that PPV match. It was fine. Good to see two weeks in a row with MVP matches. I wonder what happens next week after they lose at the PPV and he's on his own again.
They aired a lot of local ads for Raw in Toronto next week. They almost always sold out in the past. Not anymore. I'm tempted to go, but at this point I'm not sure. All depends if I can get free tickets. I think by Sunday I'll be able to score free ones.
More Barker time with a very awkward conversation with Kelly Kelly, who is old enough to be his great granddaughter. Yes, he's that old. Anyway, DX came in and did their usual dick jokes that aren't as obvious anymore because it's PG. They had this really lame wheel. They pushed a button and the names of their opponents came up. "I've got two words for you: Spin it," said Bob. Okay, that one was really cheesy. The first opponent was Chris Masters, who Triple H buried by talking about his bad hair plugs. Do you think HHH will let somebody make fun of him? Of course not. Then the second partner was Orton. Oh great, HHH and Orton in the same match. Haven't seen that in two weeks.
Evan Bourne d. Chavo Guerrero (3/4*)
If Chavo won he would get a Corvette. The highlight of this was that Hornswoggle wasn't in a match. He did appear, of course, to spray Chavo in the face with a water gun to allow Bourne to roll him up for the pin. In other words, Bourne couldn't beat Chavo on his own. He only won because of Horny. Way to put over your actual wrestlers, Vince. What's Chavo's record on Raw in 2009? He's the new Horowitz.
Before his match, Cody Rhodes cut a promo saying that even though he had a good dad, he didn't help him as much as Randy Orton has helped him. I actually liked the speech. It shows that Cody's loyal to Randy no matter what happens, which will be key in the storyline when Ted turns face in two or three months prior to The Marine 2 coming out.
John Cena d. Cody Rhodes via DQ (**)
They threw to commercial about 30 seconds in, then they got a good amount of time to finish it up. I thought for sure Cena was going over clean. Then when Orton came in for the DQ I was actually happy because I don't think it would do much good to have Cody lose clean here considering Legacy has barely won much of anything for two months. It was nice to see them actually go for submissions. I wasn't a fan of Cena busting out the shoulderblocks after Cody was working on his shoulder, though. That's not good selling. Still, the actual match was fine for what it was, so no real complaints here.
Next Monday Batista is back for a "career altering announcement." I have no idea what it is although I'm guessing that he will come out, act as if he's about to retire and then somebody will say or do something to change his mind. Probably Orton. Survivor Series is in his hometown of Washington and he's due back around that time.
More Price is Right with White Sox catcher AJ Pierzynski as the fourth competitor joining Santino, IRS and Jillian. Some in the crowd booed him because they were Cubs fans, then he taunted them with his World Series ring. That was funny. The next item was a WrestleMania travel package, which makes no sense for a wrestler to win. I'm not even going to break into the lack of logic there. Just roll with it. I liked Barker calling saying Santino's name as if he said "Santinyo." Santino won, then celebrated and got a chance to win a hot tub, which had the Bella Twins in it. Hey, finally found a use for the twins! He wins it if he wins a bodyslam challenge.
Out came Big Show. He slammed Santino pretty easily. The unintentional comedy of the night came here with Barker wondering who won. I guess he didn't see. It took the ref raising Big Show's hand about 20 seconds after the actual finish for Bob to realize what happened. It was hilarious…at least to me. Barker had wanted more bodyslams, so out came Mark Henry against Big Show in the challenge. What they did last week was better than this week, but the crowd ate it up when Henry slammed him. I would have preferred to see Henry & MVP in an actual tag match considering they've only tagged once before, but this is WWE where not teams exist, so I guess this is what they had to do.
Josh Matthews sat down with Bob as he told stories. Old people love telling stories.
Next week Trish Stratus is hosting Raw. HELL YES! Easily my favorite woman ever and also one of my favorite people ever in wrestling. She's not just hot. She's a genuinely good person who I'll always have a lot of respect. Now, while I am excited to see her it should be noted that she's really thin due to all the yoga she does. What I liked about her before was that she wasn't the super thin model type. She had the curves that I loved. I do like the brown hair, though. It'll be good to see her back.
A cheesy segment was next with Barker hitting a karate chop on Chavo. This was more ridiculous than Vince knocking out Carlito a couple weeks ago. Apparently old guys that are double the age of the guys they are fighting against have superhuman strength. I can't wait to knock out dudes when I'm 84. If I make 84. This was the end of Bob for the night. Kudos to him. I'm surprised he was able to stay awake for that long.
Degeneration X d. Randy Orton & Chris Masters (**1/4)
The DX intro was their typical long routine. I do laugh my ass off at HBK running around the ring with the microphone before he gets tired and gives it to Hunter. That's a funny gag even though we've seen it a lot. The Siegfried & Roy reference? Not so good. I'm sure all the children in the audience got the gay references. Moving along to the match, they didn't do a whole lot of submission attempts, other than Masters' Masterpiece, which of course wasn't going to win the match. Including him in the match gave away the finish immediately. That tells me that they're really protective of the guys in Legacy because they didn't want Dibiase tapping out here. That's smart booking. Ending the match with Michaels getting Masters to tap with the figure four leglock while HHH had Orton in the Sharpshooter (WTF?) was the satisfying ending the fans wanted. I wonder if Michaels will go for a Sharpshooter in Montreal. I guess that's why they'll probably work backstage to avoid the boos and chants that he might get in Montreal.
Post match, DX fought with Legacy in the backstage area with the highlight being Legacy stealing a dude's car ("Hey that's my car!") to get away. Isn't that a crime especially on camera? Where are the fake cops that are actually wrestlers that don't know how to act? Then the camera shifted back to ringside where Orton spoke about how Legacy and he would win on Sunday. That brought out Cena. They brawled a bit, Orton hit him with his awesome DDT off the middle ropes spot that I love and then finished him off with the RKO on the seated chair. It was a cool visual although it was done better two years ago (thanks to somebody sending me a youtube clip of it, to be honest). Still, a good ending to the show with Orton standing strong for the second week in a row. He's not winning on Sunday, though.
Three Stars of the Show
1. Chris Jericho – Loved the way he interacted with Barker and put MVP over clean.
2. Bob Barker – He was terrific. Threatening Jericho was a highlight.
3. Santino – Man, this guy really makes me laugh when they don't overdo it with him (like the brutal Santina character).
Rating: 6 (out of 10)
Last week: 7
It wasn't a bad show at all although I could see some people hating it too. Raw fans are very polarizing. It's either really good or really shitty. I think I'm one of those people that thinks of it as being average most of time while rarely being very good like Smackdown is. The last Smackdown was awesome. The last Raw, the best one I reviewed in a long time, was very good. There's a difference. Raw doesn’t have the show stealing matches that you will remember for more than a day. They have a lot more promos (none of them were that bad this week) and way more comedy (it was above average for the most part.
Bob Barker was a lot of fun. He is probably my second favorite of the guest hosts (that's not a former WWE employee) behind Shaq, who will have a hard time being topped for me. I have no idea if he watched WWE before or if he could name more than five wrestlers off the top of his head. It didn't matter. He made it work because he's Bob F'N Barker and the people love him.
I'm disappointed that there was no Mickie James on the show as well as no sign of Kofi Kingston or any mention of the US title. It's stupid to leave Kofi off PPVs. He's a good worker that the crowd genuinely likes, so leaving him off is detrimental to the show. It's been multiple PPVs now. The guy deserves better. I would have been fine with Kofi vs. Miz for the US title, or Kofi vs. Swagger. It's not like the PPV is loaded with matches.
The biggest slight on the show was the lack of promotion for the Breaking Point PPV on Sunday. I doubt it's going to generate that many buys. I think Cena/Orton has been built up alright. However, for a two month feud it's nowhere near the genuine heat that Punk/Hardy had. The DX/Legacy stuff seems like a cheap way to get Legacy a cheap victory. I don't even know if they're winning, but they probably should. Fans are not going to react to the submissions because they've barely been used. It was going to have a low amount of buys to begin with. The lack of a better build isn't going to help any.
http://viewmorepics.myspace.com/ind...ture&friendID=440474273&albumId=287954&page=1 ..... no seriously this is the girl so they say :shifty:
