Raw Is Boring

I tried to watch last weeks Raw. I really did. Maybe it was the long day at work. Of the suphedrine I downed trying to fight off all this pollen. But I fell asleep within the first hour. I don't know what that says about the product, but it can't be good. Honestly, outside of Dave Vs. Cena, I couldn't tell you one feud going on right now. Punk and Rey. But that's Smackdown.

I Missed Raw

...intentionally this week. It seemed to me that the builds were already finished. This weeks Raw had the air of putting on a show because they had to legally. Also, I'm planning on taking a respite from wrestling for a couple months after WM. I don't write about wrestling that much anyway, but I do read Meltzer and Alvarez daily and listen to all the shows. I'm kinda burnt out.

Batista is Raw

I watched Raw when it aired Monday and have to say I came away feeling it was good show, with some excellent builds. I'm torn on the main event promo. It seemed like it was going well, and I kept expecting Bret to reveal he wasn't hurt after he accepted the match. He never did. I haven't the foggiest when he will. Brian Alvarez has a theory: In order to make sure Vince does not back out, Bret will wait till minutes before the match to take off the fake cast. Makes sense.
I felt Batista stole the show. He's pretty much had me sold since he started wearing those super douche-y shirts. The Shawn/Undertaker story arch continues to progress swimmingly. Shawn has really found a great character to play, very Captain Ahab.
The Legacy stuff left much to be desired and I have no idea who Orton is facing at WM at this point. If they're having a handicap match on Raw then what do you do for the blow off? They blew their chance to break them up when people cared. Now it seems the crowd is reacting because they're supposed to react, not because it's a big shock, or they're emotionally invested in the group. Plus they were a heel faction, we are supposed to WANT them to break up. The angle has this whole heel vs. heel feeling to it. And that's all the time I'm spending on Legacy, forget them.

Raw is Fire!

Vince McMahon inviting Bret back to Raw in the most disingenuous way possible was hilarious to watch. I don't know how Vince kept from smiling when he said he would hire a hydraulic lift to get Bret into the ring. A really great segment that will hopefully make up for the cartoonish turn this angle took last time.
The Batista and Cena angle was good. Apparently Sheamus was concussed the night before and could not be a part of Raw, so they had to throw this idea together, which worked. Dave is really getting some great heat from the crowd.
There was also the Shawn Michaels video. Bryan Alvarez claimed that you could show this video to anyone who had not been a fan for years and they would get the angle and be into it. He said this was the best video the WWE had produced in years. So I tested the theory out with a friend of mine who has not watched wrestling in probably 10-15 years...No buys.
His first observation was "why would I care about two 50-year-olds?" I didn't point out that both were only 45. Then I got to thinking. The two main events at WM are between wrestlers whose combined ages are 90 and two more (Vince 65/Bret 52) who combine for 117. Wow.
Anyway, he wasn't too thrilled about the idea of watching any of them wrestle each other. It makes me wonder if that is a general feeling out there. WM buys depend a lot on casual fans...and maybe you reach a point where they just feel 'this is stretching my imagination too far' when it comes to nostalgia acts, at least as far as main eventing goes. Those of us who follow wrestling know that Taker/Shawn can still go out and put on a great match, but does the casual fan think that? Eh, I'm probably over analyzing this, why do I care about WM buyrates anyway?

The One Where Bret Gets Run Over

I'm just going to link to WO here since I'll pull information from them for this entry. I watched Raw last night for the first time in a couple weeks. Of course it is a totally lackluster show after 3 weeks of good shows. All the good shows I missed. Just bad timing I guess. Brett Hart came out in the first hour to give what turned out to be a farewell speech. He claimed since he could not get his match with Vince there was no reason for him to hang around and he was going to give his last goodbyes.
Now Dave Meltzer says the promo was weak, probably because Bret didn't' believe in it since the next part was ridiculous. I didn't think it was a bad promo, it was just unbelievable. No one of course bought the idea that Bret is done with this angle and, while the live crowd went along with it, the feeling where I watched it was this promo was a miss. Little did we know how much worse it would get.
As we're watching Bret get into the Limo, you could see the random car driven by a random blond getting ready to back up which totally telegraphed the rest of the sequence. This random woman backed into the limo door which trapped Bret's leg and he had to be carried away in an ambulance. Me and my friends both though that the ambulance driver would be revealed to be Vince in a call-back to the Austin angle. But no, they missed a great opportunity for a memorable moment.
To sum up my feelings on the angle, I'm going to quote writer Todd Martin of Figure Four Daily:
This is exactly the sort of scenario we all feared WWE would do with Bret and Vince: substitute the real life issue between the two for some contrived, WWE scripted bulls**t. After weeks of quality build I had completely let down my guard and assumed WWE was going to follow through this angle well, and then they pull this s**t.

Case Closed.

Todd Martin's Blog

Well it was good while it lasted...

Oh wait, no it wasn't. I'm actually had pressed to come up with news people could care about less. Maybe news of a world wide Gallagher tour.

Come on Michael Cole

So I'm watching Randy Orton Vs. John Cena from Breaking Point in '09. It's an 'I quit' match which is more of an action fight scene than a wrestling match, but very entertaining none the less. Honestly at this point these two had faced each other so many times they had to wrestle a different type of match and they delivered. But the point of all this is after Cena gets Orton to say "I quit", Michael Cole announces "It's over! Randy Orton has reached his (dramatic pause) BREAKING POINT!!!!"
I'm not one of those fans who just hates Cole no matter what, but dude, that was hella lame.

The One Where Brock Comes Back

So as reported by ESPN and CNN and Wrestling Observer, Brock Lesnar has "miraculously" recovered from diverticulitis. Great news for him and UFC. Lesnar has shown himself to be one of the biggest draws the sport has seen and his absence not only affected PPV buys but also the title picture. As Carwin and Mir head into a match to determine the interim champion, I'm sure it will be in the back of everybody's head that the real champion is sitting on the sideline. The goal is to have Lesnar back at the UFC 14 show.

TNA apparently lectured fans on how to behave at their shows. According to Dave Meltzer, Steve Small, Director Of Production, came out before the taping and talked to the fans. "It was surreal...He tried to explain that they are not fans, but as far as the television production, they are cast members." The gist of it was they don't want fans swearing on camera or giving the finger, which yeah, that makes sense. It won't happen, but it makes sense.

"They never said they would kick people out for booing babyfaces, but it was said that they have a message and stories to get across to the nearly two million viewers and told the crowd it was their job to go along with the stories and not to do things that will throw off the wrestlers."

Calling going along with the story lines the fans "job" seems pretty unbelievable in an industry where the promoters constantly cheat fans out of promised main events. Even a company like ROH that is carried by the hardcore fan has pulled the wool over fans eyes. I can remember paying to see Samoa Joe and Danielson in what was supposed to be a street fight for the title, only to have it changed to a non-title match right beforehand. Does TNA expect fans to just "go along" with that? I do get that fans in the arena do not pay to see the shows. It's debatable whether that makes a difference though. People have expectations of how they can behave at sporting events. If you're going to argue wrestling is more of a play, then I can see why fans would be expected to comport themselves a certain way. However, that does fly in face of years of tradition.

The idea is there's a middle ground of being a part of the show, without ruining it. One of the things that makes TNA unique from the WWE is the fact that audience is such a part of the show. If they start to try and dictate how fans react, they run the risk of killing that aspect of their program. Seems like a big risk just to make sure people go along with story lines that have a habit of being...confusing at best.
Case Closed!

I remember when young Randall got married...

And everyone said that it was going to settle Orton down and mature him. Well it lasted for a while at least.

Raw is Bret

So I guess after mentioning it I should react to Bret Hart's appearance on Raw. First and foremost, crowd seemed into it to me. I dislike judging crowd reaction from T.V. Too many things can effect how you see and hear the crowd to make a good determination. (Pumped in sound, editing both sound and video) But the crowd was responding well and stayed with the segments. The Bret and Shawn opener was obviously disappointing. Them just shaking hands, I guess, was a way to focus on Vince vs. Brett according to wrestlingobserver.com. Also it made it look like Bret really was trying to patch things up and move on. That makes Vince's sucker kick a little more dastardly.
The whole night left me wanting more, which is the point. They have 3 months till WM, so no need to rush anything. Also the recap of Bret's career was really well done.
On a slightly different angle, having two wrestling shows to switch between on a Monday night must have brought back a lot of memories for wrestling fans, it'll be interesting to see how strong the ratings are and if Monday's can hold two wrestling shows at a time again. If they're going to start, now would be the time with Monday Night Football being over.

The one where Bret Hart comes back

So next Monday Bret Hart will be the GM of raw beginning what Dave Meltzer at wrestlingobserver.com says will be a feud to Wrestlemania (Wrestlemania of course being a rip off of the title of my blog). Bret's return is the reason I'll be watching Raw this Monday for the first time in 2 months, maybe more. When I got into wrestling Bret was my favorite, even when they did the whole boyhood dream angle leading to the iron man match and I was supposed to root for Shawn I stuck behind The Hitman.
Now the question is how will it all turn out? Will the angle be engaging? Will Bret be able to work with today's crowds? Do people still care? Will this be the proper pay off for a 8+ year build?
I remember when they had one of the Raw anniversary shows or 500 show celebration or whichever one of the hundreds of self congratulatory editions of raw they've had and the WWE advertised a bunch of people including Bret Hart. Of course they screwed us. It was the end of the show, Vince McMahon was laid out in the ring by a Stunner I believe, we hadn't seen the promised Bret Hart yet outside of some clips, and the crowd was frothing chanting "we want Bret" over and over. Then....Cena came out. In hindsight you can argue for them not blowing off the angle in a one shot deal on free T.V., but then why advertise it just to screw over fans who for some reason trusted they would deliver? Now to say I trusted them isn't true, I mean it's Wrestling, bait and switch is the name of the game, but a part of me was pining to see Vince get put in the sharpshooter there. When they didn't deliver, I stopped watching again. Why bring this up? Because again I'm stuck trusting that they will deliver the angle I want of Vince Vs. Bret and not change the whole thing week to week so that he ends up facing a newly rehired Bogeyman. And laugh at that idea, but it can happen, it's pro wrestling.
Here's the thing, the payoff for the angle is Vince in a Sharpshooter at Wrestlemania, preferably with blood running down his face like Austin. It's really simple. Just get us there. That's all the writers have to do, get us to that moment. And god help them if they try to switch things up to swerve us, it'll kill the interest of anyone who is tuning back in to see this.
Also, I'm indifferent to the 10-year-olds who don't remember this or "won't care what's happening" according to Meltzer. This angle isn't for them.
Regarding the whole kids won't get it thing, you have Bret Hart, Vince, and even Shawn in a smaller capacity, involved...you can get the angle over. I really have no doubt Bret will show up on Raw and get people into the angle. Granted, he wasn't God (read: The Rock) on the mic, but he was better than people gave him credit for, which he proved during the Hart Foundation run.
So I guess I'm stucking trusting that the WWE can execute this storyline exellantly. HA! That just came to me, look at that! We can only hope the WWE writers are half as clever.
Case Closed!