Bob-O's Random Ramblings: RAW 3/21/11

[Bob-O]

Finally finished watching Raw! Decent show, but not one I'd expect so close to Wrestlemania, I liked last week's a lot more. I already caught the ratings report for this show, and I think it's appropriate. Most of the Wrestlemania card is lacking effort, and the things they are putting some effort into are personally putting me off because they're trying too hard. I'm looking at you, Michael Cole. You too, Undertaker/Triple H. Reguardless, my real-time comments on the show are below. Enjoy!

--Last week Michael Cole was the lead in for the second hour of Raw. Tonight he starts the show with quite possibly the worst parody I've ever seen. Ed Fererra he isn't. I mean, that wasn't even so bad it was good - it was just bad. What was the point of that, anyway? Cole enters his box doing a really good impression of Andy Kaufman. "Lawl-ler"

--Triple H out now, he says the whole world is talking about his match with The Undertaker. Huh? I've heard a lot of people talking about Snookie, but not a whole lot about this bout. I'm still confused about the stipulation. Yes, the streak is on the line, sure whatever, but is it career vs career or not? Nobody has come out and said. Triple H clears this up tonight: one of them will die at Wrestlemania. He intends on murdering Mark Calaway in Atlanta. That explains the No DQ stip, keeps things nice and legal. How exactly do you "die trying"?

--Triple H makes an example out of Teddy D Jr. We've been watching Maryse do this for months, I'm not impressed.

--What the hell happened to Evan Bourne? He's right back where was a year ago. Through his injury time off, I had visions of WWE using his return heat to catapult him into the main event scene like was rumored. Matches like this are why they keep guys like Yoshi Tatsu around. I absolutely LOVED every part of the Bryan/Lobsterhead exchange. Dragon is NOT bad at all on the mic, I felt like a broken record reiterating this during his run on NXT. He's a natural! With a little more practice with WWE's format I think he can be anything WWE wants him to be. I marked out when Sheamus threw him the title and nailed the Brogue Kick, that was awesome!

--Randy Orton's bus is 20 minutes late and he shows up wearing a wet suit. I'm not sure what was going on in that bus, but I think the wet suit is a good indicator as to why it's running 20 minutes behind schedule. Orton says he likes the privacy - haha, funny how that just worked out. I also couldn't help but notice Orton mentioned his family, and they showed this family for some reason last week. If I could tell the future I'd be working for the carnival, but my gut is telling me that they're going to have Punk try to top last year's "Happy Birthday" segment. I hope I'm right, and I hope he does...

--Wow, it looks like Michael Cole hates Eve Torres as much as I do! Two weeks in a row now he's read my mind and begged for this to end. I don't know what it is about Eve that bothers me, she just does. I think it may have started with her short lived partnership with R-Truth. Or maybe it's because she's not Nattie. I think we're seeing this Eve Torres title reign because WWE wasn't ready for a Diva to be over as much as Nattie Neidhart was becoming. "Woah woah woah, I don't think so. You're dad just stole a car (or whatever, I forget), back in your cage, move over Melina."

--The Unified Tag Team Champions grace us with a rare Raw appearance! You know you're a member of The Revolution when Smackdown guys show up on Raw and you think to yourself, "Uh oh, BRM is gonna be pissed!" which was all I could think when Big Show and Kane came out. So, are they going to come up with anything new to do with The Corre, or is this it? Nexus, New Nexus, Corre... it's getting rather predictable. Pair that up with the more predictable Big Show and you've got... I don't know what to call that. Somewhere between boring and annoying.

-- John Cena's house looks an awful lot like the waiting room at my dentist's office. Maybe he lives there, he's got pretty nice teeth sans the underbite. Cena can sell Miz's attack all he wants, he's being a hypocrite right now. I smell a swerve... nobody's living room is that ugly.

-- Michael Cole introduces us to Jack Swagger. Thanks Mike, but I think we've already met. We should try to get Cole on the boards here, if for nothing else his hilarious caption ability. Those were pretty good! They can't expect me to take this segment seriously after showing Lawler's face pressed up against the glass like that. Lawler, once again, is written off the second half of the show. It's like deja-vu!

--I know people are all worked up about Snookie getting booked in a Wrestlemania match while guys like Kofi Kingston are thus far on the sideline, but I'm oddly OK with this. Don't get me wrong, I hate Jersey Shore as much as any other apple pie eating, Dallas Cowboy hating, coffee drinking American, but her involvement has turned as many heads as The Rock's. Different heads. Heads that no amount of Miz appearances or Rock appearances or Cena appearances could flinch, heads that aren't sure if Kofi Kingston even speaks english - I'm pretty sure that's a good thing. I want to see her limbs get torn off by Awesome Kong, but hey, I WANT TO SEE SNOOKIE AT WRESTLEMANIA! It's a true statement. Mission accomplished, WWE.

--The GM changes the rules to Morrison vs Ziggler in the middle of it. If the rules are that boys fight boys and girls fight girls, why is Vickie allowed to pin Morrison? And, why is Vickie allowed to pin him CLEAN!? I'll have to watch this again, but I'll bet the ref whispered something like "Sorry, John" before his hand hit the mat the third time. And, why is Cole still sitting in his box if Lawler's not around?

--Great video package hyping the Trips/'Taker match. Jimmy Snuka was in it! That's right, Jimmy Snuka was on Raw tonight. All these guys seem pretty at ease with the Murder Stipulation this match is carrying. I can understand Arn Anderson being alright with this after that whole Sid Vicious thing. He showed up for work the next day. "Arn? You didn't have to come in today..." "Huh? Why?" "Didn't Sid try to kill you with a pair of scissors yesterday?" "Hahahahah, yeah. That guy..."

--Wrestlemania Rewind? Orton vs Mysterio? WTF? It's face vs face, it's Smackdown vs Raw, and it's basically unannounced! I hope nobody at WWE HQ is wondering why the Road To Wrestlemania this year is only grabbing ratings in the low 3's. "Hello Randall"... I love it. At first I thought Punk was going to go all "Kofi Kingston" on Orton's bus, but he's after the wifey-poo instead. Oh nope! Bait and switch! Orton's wife pokes her head out the door and all it takes is Psycho Punk to tell her to shut up and she slowly closes the door? I'm not buying this. The woman is married to Randy Orton, she just road multiple hours on a tour bus while her husband wore a wet suit screaming at the driver to drive that thing into every river they crossed, all so she could stay on the bus and not attend Raw. She's been in bed with Satan himself, and gave him pointers. Anyone else notice her trying not to look at the camera when she was calling for "someone, ANYONE to help them"? STUPID! STUPID!

--Alex Riley's been rehired by Miz, for some reason. I like the pairing, but why book the stipulation if you didn't know where you were going with it? I'm loving the whole "turn WWE upside down" thing. I don't think it was necessarily something to close Raw with, but it does put the idea in people's heads that he's got a chance at leaving 'Mania with the title. I mean, he's got a custom belt! CENA'S THERE! I KNEW IT! It wasn't hard to figure out, he worked the house shows over the weekend. Why would he go home? Cena stands tall to close the show... deja vu...

--Thanks for reading! I'll see you in the threads!
Bob-O

[Rabid619]

You know you're a member of The Revolution when Smackdown guys show up on Raw and you think to yourself, "Uh oh, BRM is gonna be pissed!"

Dude!!! You should add that here.

Great review!! :ymhug:

[Lynas]

Good article as always Bob-O.... Proving you're still a "winner"

[Big Red Machine]

--The GM changes the rules to Morrison vs Ziggler in the middle of it. If the rules are that boys fight boys and girls fight girls, why is Vickie allowed to pin Morrison? And, why is Vickie allowed to pin him CLEAN!? I'll have to watch this again, but I'll bet the ref whispered something like "Sorry, John" before his hand hit the mat the third time.

It was intergender, not mixed. And no pin is ever clean when you are the 4 in a 4-on-2 handicap match. Also, while Vickie might have gotten the pin, it was Dloph who put Morrison down. This doesn't hurt Morrison at all.

[Bob-O]

Dude!!! You should add that here.

Done!

It was intergender, not mixed.

The ref was enforcing same gender in the ring, until Vickie pinned Morrison. I believe the announcers even mentioned the same gender thing, right after the first tag.

[Big Red Machine]

Dude!!! You should add that here.

Done!

It was intergender, not mixed.

The ref was enforcing same gender in the ring, until Vickie pinned Morrison. I believe the announcers even mentioned the same gender thing, right after the first tag.

I don't remember that. I do remember them saying that it was intergender, rather than mixed, in the middle of the match.
Although I, too, kept thinking it was mixed, and wondered why Ziggler didn't just tag a woman in every time Trish made the tag, and effectively reduce the match to 3-on-1.