Dusty’s Blog: Post Monday Night Raw Autopsy

If you didn't like this week's Monday Night Raw, this picture should hopefully put things into perspective for you.

This one will be short and sweet since I’m feeling under the weather today. Kevin wanted me to do this because he’s busy with something or another else. We’re choking down Summer Slam, so they better make this count.

Triple H comes out to start the show. How long do you get to be the new COO of the company before you’re just the COO of the company? He said there were lots of changes going on in the company, what with them going from having no champion to now having two. He said they’re going to resolve that issue at Summer Slam with a match between John Cena and CM Punk to determine who the undisputed champion will be. Punk got a big pop again at the mention. Hunter said a match of that magnitude is going to need a special guest referee of equal magnitude to keep the law and order. So, of course, it’s going to be him. Stevie Wonder could have seen that coming. Ray Charles could have seen that coming. A visually impaired person who needs the assistance of eyewear in order to see things properly could have seen that coming.

In any event, Hunter then got down to the business of laying out the format of the rest of the show. We’ve got a contract signing between Punk and Cena (I’m sure that will go just swimmingly), as well as individual matches for the both of them against other dudes. Hunter said Cena’s match is first, and actually it is going to be right then and there. I love how they do that on wrestling shows, the faux surprise “let’s have a match right now!” thing. What were they going to do otherwise with that time? Just show an empty ring? Have Triple H talk longer? Before they went to break, Cena got in Hunter’s face to question the guest referee stipulation. Hunter told him no one is bigger than him, basically laying down the law there. Interesting.

Back from break, and Cena is taking on Jack Swagger. WWE forgot to fire Swagger on Black Friday a while back, and they’re going to punish him for it by making him job on television. Or something like that. I’m not reviewing the matches this week in any sort of meaningful way, if you want to know the truth of it. Besides, Swagger is not good, so it would just be a bunch of sentences saying stuff like “Swagger did something poorly” and “Swagger sold something poorly.” I just saved you some time. Cena hit the Attitude Adjustment for the victory. It was your basic John Cena match that he had every week while I was doing Smackdown reviews back in the day. I guess Swagger and Carlito are interchangeable.

Later in the show is going to be Rey Mysterio vs. The Miz. Isn’t Rey hurt? Isn’t Miz not much better off? What’s going on here? They show clips of Bret Hart vs. Curt Hennig from Summer Slam 1991, which is one of my favorite matches of all time, ostensibly to get people excited about this year’s Summer Slam. Done and doner.

Ricardo Rodriguez interrupts Scott Stanford (the broski of the forever) to introduce Alberto Del Rio. Del Rio is going to be taking on Punk tonight, and he vows to finish what he tried to start at the Money in the Bank pay-per-view. So apparently Punk is a babyface now, in that he is a babyface when he is facing heels and a heel when he is facing babyfaces. Who doesn’t think Punk is this generation’s Randy Savage, the best thing to happen to wrestling in the last 10 years? If so, harm yourself immediately.

Also tonight is going to be John Morrison vs. R-Truth. They’re just chock-full of matches that should be on pay-per-view tonight. Truth does some backstage dealie with Josh Mathews. He goes on a rant about spiders, and says he’s going to squish the biggest spider of them all in his match against Morrison tonight. I don’t doubt this, Morrison hasn’t won a match since coming back.

I took my dog out today around 1 or 2 in the afternoon. Guess what I saw. The neighbors to the front of me? The neighbors to the side of me? Moving their lawn. It was raining out and they were just starting to mow their lawns. They were going out of their way to mow their lawns in the rain on a Monday. It didn’t rain a drop all weekend. This is the most baffling neighborhood ever, I don’t think it’s even close.

Rey Rey comes out for his match, but Miz jumps him before the bell and lays him out. A veritable plethora, a veritable gaggle of referees, come out to restore order. As the flock of refgulls helped Rey to the back, Miz in-ring talked about how he doesn’t even know who he is going to face at Summer Slam. He said the focus of the company shouldn’t be on Cena and Punk, it should be on him. He said if he has to brutalize Rey in such a manner to get noticed around there, he has no problem doing it. He demanded to be declared the winner of the match via forfeit. A ref came out and told Justin Roberts to take a dump into the microphone that Triple H ordered Kofi Kingston to be the replacement opponent for Miz.

So Miz takes on Kofi. The match goes on for a certain length of time and each wrestler does a certain number of things. I always vowed I would do a show review without doing any actual match reviews whatsoever and this brings me one step closer to that goal. They went to commercial break in the middle of the match, a thing that will always drive me to crazy until I die my early, lonely death. Miz ended up getting the duke in the match. How elderly of a phrase is “get the duke”? Let me blow the elderly dust off my keyboard here before I finish this review. Good performance all the way through by Miz here (who also made an appearance the previous night at the Teen Choice Awards, so he’s all over the place lately, and is probably the second best thing going right now after Punk, so good for him).

They showed Punk backstage with his title belt. Mathews asked him what he thought about Triple H naming himself the referee in his match against Cena at Summer Slam. Punk said he wasn’t surprised since Hunter has a bigger ego than even Vince. He said his match against Cena should be able to sell itself, but Hunter couldn’t help sticking his ample nose into the middle of things. He warned Hunter to stay out of the way and let the match speak for itself. He said before he can take care of Cena, though, he has to get down to the business of kicking Del Rio’s teeth down his throat tonight.

Have I mentioned lately that Eva Green is super hot? Because it’s true.

Ricardo introduced Del Rio, and even got in a shot at the local San Jose Sharks hockey team in the process. I am in love with him and plan to have his babies. Some random song played and Punk came out before they cut to break. This is deffo a more appropriate time to go to commercial than in the middle of the match. Punk won the match with the Go To Sleep. This was basically the Punk version of the standard Cena television match. Twas fine, not bad not great. I worry about Del Rio jobbing like this, but since he has the Money in the Briefcase haliburton, they probably figure he can afford some losses before he inevitably wins the title. (Does he end up back on Smackdown with the title, facing Daniel Bryan for the title at WrestleMania? Because I think that might be what they do here, since the Raw main events are locked up for the foreseeable future.)

Does anyone else think Brett Favre is going to come back and play for the Washington Redskins this year? He always takes the preseason off anyway, and he would seem to have a clear shot at the starting job since all they have is John Beck and Rex Grossman. Coincidentally, I went to high school with a guy named John Beck, and he would wear a sports jersey nearly every single day. Now that his namesake is the starting quarterback for the Redskins, I wonder if John Beck wears a John Beck jersey. I wonder in that way where I couldn’t possibly care to find out.

They showed clips of Beth Phoenix winning the women’s battle royal last week to earn a title shot against Kelly Kelly at Summer Slam. This set up Phoenix vs. Eve. Phoenix won the match. It was a match. They hyped up Truth vs. Morrison for later in the show. Cole screamed about how Truth is going to squash that spider. I wish to God they would find a way to use Cole that didn’t involve him announcing every week. Him in short doses would be great. He should be managing a couple midcard heels, where he can do backstage interview bits screaming stuff like that. I’m going to beat that horse until the glue comes out my nose.

They showed a bunch of clips from the Teen Choice Awards, including Miz and Cena co-presenting an award together. Lots of footage of Taylor Swift in there, since she is the Illuminati’s new chosen one ever since the Kanye incident. Cena made fun of his jean shorts. Seriously, it’s about ten years past the time when a person can wear those and be a “good guy.”

Dolph Ziggler came out with Vickie Guerrero for his match. He’s going to be taking on Alex Riley. I kinda really like both of these guys now, so this should be good. Riley tells off Vickie to start things. “That’s nice. Real classy.” – Michael Cole. I don’t think the actual match portion of this segment lasted much longer than a minute before Vickie slapped Riley for the disqualification. Vickie got bumped and then went ballistic. She and Ziggler argued back and forth. It would appear that they are splitting the two up, which I hope means bigger and better things for Ziggler in the future.

Truth came out for his match against Morrison before they went to break. I kind of like that he has no entrance music. Is that the first time they’ve done that since Bob Backlund? Paging Dan Kuester. I’m sure he’ll know. The referee had to hold Morrison back from Truth before the bell rang as Morrison did a good job showing intensity there. Truth ended up winning the match, so I win the biggest prize ever for predicting this. Seriously, Morrison has not won a single match, against anyone on any show, since coming back. I don’t know if he’s being punished in some way, if he’s getting residual backlash from the Melina firing, or what’s going on here, but it’s strange. Fans seem to take to him, suggesting he might deserve better. Maybe they’re building to something, who knows.

They showed Triple H and Johnny Ace going over the contract details before going to break. Back from break, they announce that next week Rey Mysterio will cash in his rematch clause against whoever wins the match at Summer Slam between Cena and Punk. How much healthier will he be in one week’s time? Shouldn’t they hold off on this for a while? Lots of little headscratchers on this here show.

Cole interviewed Christian via satellite, who was upset that all the focus was on Cena and Punk, and no one was paying any attention to him and the Smackdown Title. He said he and Randy Orton will both be in action on Friday Night Smackdown. He invited Triple H to be on the show, because he has an announcement to make that Hunter will want to be there to hear.

They transition from that to Hunter and Johnny Yesman in the ring for the contract signing. I’m sure this is just going to be a matter of Cena signing the contract, then Punk signing the contract, with no mishaps whatsoever, because that’s how contract signings always go in professional wrestling. Seriously, I challenge them to do that someday. Just to prove to me that they can do it. If the match is big enough to warrant a contract signing, then you don’t need to do anything *at* the contract signing, guys. I promise you. The match is already built-up. Really, I swear to you, I’m not pulling your chain here. Just have them sign the paper and move on. Begging you.

While I’m in the process of asking questions, I must say, sing seamer, who got the keys to my Beamer.

In any event, both men come out and put their belts on the table. Punk was awesome here, saying that everyone already knows this match is official, so they must just be out there to be entertaining. Punk said he should just flip the table over and fight Cena right now. That’s what I’m talkin’ ’bout! Punk threw to the Rock interview where he ran down Cena and his attire. Cena does indeed dress ridiculously for someone we are supposed to take seriously and respect. Punk called Cena a phony. He said the only problem is that the Rock doesn’t realize he’s just as big of a phony as Cena is. Punk said he might as well just sign the contract now, but Cena cut him off. I guess because they still have a few minutes left in the show and haven’t done stuff yet.

Cena ranted on Rock for a while and then turned his attention to Punk. He said he knows he’ll never win over a large portion of the fans. He’ll never improve his workrate or let his heel persona shine through to win them over. He said while he was originally offended about being called the Yankees by Punk, he says he now takes it as a compliment because they are both hated and love and very good. Cena basically said he’s not going to worry about trying to win over everyone, he’s just going to focus on the people who do like him and try not to let them down. He said while Punk is busy throwing stones and trying to be the voice for the voiceless, he should look in the mirror to see the biggest phony of them all.

Hunter called Punk gutless for holding out and holding WWE hostage like that. Punk turned the tables by asking Johnny Hiredthewrongoneleggedwrestler if he fired all those guys on Black Friday face-to-face. Did he fire Chris Masters face-to-face? Harry Smith? Vlad Kozlov? He then turned his attention back to Cena, saying he couldn’t hack it as a bodybuilder so he became a sports entertainer. He mentioned ice cream bars again, which only serves to make me want one. Punk pointed out that Cena won his first belt in Los Angeles seven years ago at WrestleMania. However, this time, he’ll leave Los Angeles after Summer Slam without a belt. Punk said Cena will be free to star in the next Marine movie or have a big showdown with the Rock, but he’ll have to do those things without a belt.

Punk signed the contract as the fans chanted his name. Cena combed through the contract and then said he wonders if Punk ever considered the possibility that he might lose at Summer Slam. Because if he does lose at Summer Slam, he’s going to end up being a one hit wonder who talks a good game but can’t back it up in the end. Cena signed the contract and then Punk said he’d rather be considered a one hit wonder than a phony. Cena said if they were indeed out there to entertain the people, this talking thing is wearing a little thin. He disposed of the table as Punk got up as well. Punk tried to throw a kick, but it hit Ace instead when he tried to step in between the two competitors. Hunter then tried to step in between the two, and Cena knocked him down. Katie bar the door! Hunter got all up in Cena’s face and Punk wondered from ringside if the fix was in for Summer Slam.

Overall, a good show that did some of the right things to build up the pay-per-view. So much for being short and sweet. I am a regular old Chatty Cathy here.

2 Responses to “Dusty’s Blog: Post Monday Night Raw Autopsy”

  1. stuntgranny 2011-08-09 at 9:42 am #

    For a short time, Vladimir Kozlov had no theme music, which I believe was the first time since Backlund. Then came R-Truth and made a lack of theme music awesome once agizzle. -E

  2. Derrick 2011-08-09 at 11:07 pm #

    I hate spiders !!!

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