And your host for this event, hailing from a dark corner in the North East of England, someone more blunt than a sledgehammer to the bollocks, a guy with the grumpiness of a man three times his age and the only person able to get more hot and bothered than the bastard child of Ric Flair and James E. Cornette, Danny Damage.

The Raw Rant, 21st May 2012

Welcome one and all. Following a relatively enjoyable, yet predictable Over the Limit, Monday Night Raw kicks off with a recap of the Cena/Laurinaitis match. By recap of course, I mean we’re given a series of still images to look at.

Don’t worry though, John Cena explains in detail what the stills are all about, just in case you didn’t see it live or didn’t figure out The Big Show turn was coming. Johnny Laurinaitis speeds out on a mobility scooter and announces Cena vs. Big Show at No Way Out. Big Show comes out and plays the “I don’t owe you shit” card to the crowd, tells Cena he’s getting KO’d at No Way and leaves David Otunga to challenge Cena right now. I always preferred Show as an angry Heel, it made a lot more sense to me due to his obvious size and the fact that he shouts (and spits) most of his lines.

John Cena forces David Otunga to tap-out with the Lazy-man’s STF. Darren Young, Titus O’Neil, Tyler Reks and Curt Hawkins appear and beat Cena down until Sheamus shows up and makes the save. Laurinaitis sets up Cena and Sheamus teaming up in a two-on-three tag-team lumberjack match later on.

Ricardo Rodriguez is interrupted by Santino Marella who mocks his voice in general, his accent and his ability to roll the letter R. Ricardo is hit with the Cobra and Santino introduces Alberto del Rio, in “English”.

Randy Orton beats Alberto del Rio via DQ. Chris Jericho knocks Randy Orton around with a triplet of Codebreakers. The pre-match banter was actually more entertaining than the match itself to be honest.

A serious Daniel Bryan heads to the ring, without the Yes! chants on the way in. He complains about the pin first/tap first call from Over the Limit which causes CM Punk to join him. Punk thanks Bryan for the match and hopes he enjoys what he’s arranged for him tonight, a match against Kane.

Daniel Bryan scores a DQ victory against Kane after CM Punk sets up a similar scenario to the Punk/Kane steel chair shot from the last Smackdown, but instead leads Kane to strike Bryan with the chair first. CM Punk talking over Michael Cole is always a treat and it looks like they’ve started a nice little feud here between Punk and Bryan. I was hoping for more than just that one match at Over the Limit. CM Punk finishes off the mirror image beat down by giving Daniel Bryan a little bit of the Anaconda Vice after checking how he is once Kane has finished choke-slamming him.

Paul Heyman/Triple H recap from last week. Lawler and Cole talk about the fact that it’s going to be an actual legal case against Triple H. Something tells me we’re in for some very shoddy backstage segment trying to look like it’s in a court house in the near future. Either that or they’ll go all out and hire the biggest place they can find and make it look really bad. Whichever it is, I’m expecting there to be a lot of Paul Heyman screaming his balls off about the law.

The Canadian Rage, Christian Cage pins Jinder Mahal after hitting the Frog Splash. It’s amusing how Christian just came back as a face after being in Team Johnny at Wrestlemania, was it really that long ago?

Beth Phoenix defeats Kelly Kelly with the Glam Slam. Beth was looking strong in this one, however, a more efficient way to make her look good would be to get her to squash someone that can actually work, not Kelly Kelly. I know a lot of people enjoy the visual, but Tarty Tarty is just piss-poor in the ring. If you want to have her on the arm and in the corner of one of the guys to get people to look that way, that’s fine by me, but fucking hell, come on now. She’s scared to death of running at the ropes, reluctant to take any kind of face fall/drop/plant, she couldn’t sell food to hungry people and she strikes about as hard as being hit by Razor Ramon’s toothpick. Like I said, I don’t mind a bit of Binty Binty on the outside of the ring, but please find someone willing to land on her face to take up my time in the future, they do exist, I’ve seen them before.

Sheamus & John Cena vs. Dolph Ziggler, Jack Swagger and Tensai ends in a no contest after Laurinaitis’ hand picked lumberjacks storm the ring and lay waste to Sheamus and Cena. The faces flood from the locker room and even the score, allowing Cena to chase down The Big Show, only to be blind-sided with a WMD from an off camera Big Show, Guessing he was hiding behind the camera man!

Afterthoughts

Feuds old and new begin to burn on the first show leading up to No Way Out. Jericho’s next stop on his “Bring me back as a veteran so I can put people over left, right and centre” tour appears to Randy Orton. Not that he needs the push or anything, he’s just happy to find more people willing to take an RKO from the top.

I’m not 100% sure what they’re doing with No Way Out, if it’ll be the same premise as TNA’s Lockdown (PPV full of Steel Cage matches) or if they’re only going to book the main event in a steel cage.

I’d like to see the second leg of Punk/Dragon in a cage, but I’m pretty confident they could produce a contrast of exciting fights for the best part of the rest of the year, regardless of pre-set stipulations/match gimmicks. Their match was easily match of the night on Sunday, with plenty of their stuff unused.

Other assumptions for No Way Out are Sheamus vs. Alberto del Rio, Christian/Cody Rhodes, Layla vs. Beth Phoenix and Kofi/Truth vs. Swagger/Ziggler or possibly Primo/Epico, should they choose to cash in their rematch soon.

Lastly, it’s funny to see Tensai/Albert/A-Train demoted in title once again. He started off as Prince Albert, came back as a Lord and now he’s simply Tensai. Did he bring shame and dishonour to his name by shaving his back all those years ago?

Digest and discuss! Thanks for reading, take care and I’ll see you next week…right now!

Hello and thanks for showing up to reflect on the latest episode of Monday Night Raw.

And your host for this event, hailing from a dark corner in the North East of England, someone more blunt than a sledgehammer to the bollocks, a guy with the grumpiness of a man three times his age and the only person able to get more hot and bothered than the bastard child of Ric Flair and James E. Cornette, Danny Damage.

The Raw Rant, 28th May 2012

Hello there everyone and welcome to a Memorial Day special edition of Raw. No mention of allied losses at any point, which was nice. Let’s move on.

We get a recap of the Cena/Show/Ace saga which takes up about ten minutes of my time, thanks for that.

The Big Show comes out to repeat his reasons for turning heel. He gets to pick his own opponent tonight, another great bonus on his iron-clad contract.

Alberto del Rio (w/Ricardo Rodriguez) forces Santino Marella to submit with the cross-arm breaker. Ricardo gets in Santino’s face after the match. I guess putting the WHC No. 1 contender over the US Champion makes sense push-wise, for the No. 1 contender at least. Santino’s going to get cheered regardless, so I suppose no harm, no foul.

Big Show sends a message to the locker room and throws Alex Riley into a wall backstage. This would have looked a hell of a lot better if Riley had slapped a blood pack against the base of his nose after the impact, looking like it’d busted open a bit, opposed to him just holding his face after a guy twice his size crushed his face into a brick wall.

Kofi Kingston & R-Truth (w/Little Jimmy) send Dolph Ziggler and Jack Swagger (w/Vicki) to the back of the line for a tag-title shot. Ziggler kicks off at Swagger and Vicki before leaving the arena. Solid work throughout from both teams, a good group of guys that can do well solo or as part of a team. It will be nice to see if Ziggler branches off and gets back into more singles matches (and feuds) in the near future.

The Big Show face-hugs Santino backstage until Brodus Clay gets all up in his business and demands to be picked as Big Show’s opponent later. Big show accepts.

Laurinaitis, David Otunga and Eve head out to plug the WWE ’13 game, on pre-order now. Johnny thinks he’s on the front cover, but CM Punk comes out to show everyone the real cover. Personally, I wouldn’t mind a reversible cover with the Johnny Ace smug-shot just in case I was feeling that way out.

Daniel Bryan pins CM Punk after tossing him face first into an exposed turnbuckle. It takes Lawler and Cole around five minutes to notice AJ is wearing a CM Punk T-shirt, a bit hard to believe on Lawler’s behalf at least, considering ‘CM Punk’ is written on her tits. Kane lays waste to Bryan after the match and then he turns his attention to Punk. AJ slides a chair to him and Punk hits Kane with a barrage of chair shots before he gets some himself. A convincing skirmish between CM Punk and Kane here, man vs. monster. Instead of the Randy Orton’s super RKO of doom and destruction keeping Kane flat on his back for several minutes, Kane takes a beating with a chair and wisely backs off, knowing he’s at a great disadvantage. The idea that an RKO apparently has more impact than however many chair-shots CM Punk hit Kane with is so stupid that even my cats are annoyed.

Christian wins against The Miz by hitting the Frog Splash. Cody Rhodes works well on commentary during the match, building a rivalry with Captain Charisma.

Otunga gets a grilling from Mr. Laurinaitis backstage, so he tells Johnny that he’ll beat Sheamus later on to make up for both his and Eve’s failure.

Sadly, The Miz is still in the ring, whining as fucking always until Randy Orton appears and hits him with an RKO. Why hasn’t The Miz left and gone to host shit stuff on MTV yet, it’s what he’s good for. I’m grateful for Orton for shutting him up of course, but I’m not really looking forward to a match/feud from these two. There’s going to be a lot of piss breaks for me at No Way Out if there is.

Dolph Ziggler is backstage asking Vicki to get him out of the tag-team business. Vicki’s acting is about as sweet as her voice during this segment, at least WWE’s backstage segments aren’t as over produced and plastic as the ones Hulk Hogan’s currently pushing.

Cena tells us all what he thinks of memorial day. Yawn.

Sheamus beats David Otunga with the Brogue Kick. Another yawn.

A No Contest is our main event this week. Big Show lures Brodus outside the ring and Spears him before the match starts. He destroys Clay outside the ring for about ten minutes while some woman in the crowd shouts abuse at him over everyone else. Kofi Kingston and R-Truth try to stop Big Show but they get stomped on too. For some reason, instead of putting someone through the announce table, Big Show hits it with an axe kick and pounds The Funkasaurus with one of the side panels. Roar! I’m a monster now! etc.

Afterthoughts.

Anyone that read any of my comments leading up to Over the Limit will know that I’m already enjoying the Punk/Dragon action, so progression there is always welcome. Sheamus vs. Alberto del Rio should be worth a watch too I reckon, but I have been bored severely by both of them in the past, so watch this space.

Considering I’m not looking forward to the Cena/Show match in the slightest, it’s nice to see The Big Show as a bad-ass heel again. I prefer Big Show this way, I probably always will. A regular sized guy joking around and trying to find the funnier and/or gimmick-heavier side of fighting folk to earn a wage is seen one way, but when the individual is as huge as The Big Show, it becomes a bit too tacky for my liking. Choke slamming The Rock through the announce table because he got eliminated from the Royal Rumble was enjoyable, swinging Rey Mysterio Jr. into a ring post (while on a stretcher) was VERY enjoyable.

If Miz vs. Orton ends up on the card then that’ll be another match I’m not going anywhere near the edge of my seat for. The Miz tries too hard on the stick when he’s not really that great with it and ends up sounding like a poor man’s The Rock, Orton struts around and hits whoever he wants, whenever he wants with his finisher, no remorse and has a snake based nickname, like a poor man’s Stone Cold Steve Austin. Sadly, Miz and Orton are about as entertaining as Teddy Long wearing weekly outfits in comparison to The Rock and Austin. Let the feud of the underwear models commence!

I know there are safety measures in place now and I’m all in favour because of the effects they can have, but the thing about not allowing head-shots with chairs is that it looks like the most unnatural thing you would do with a steel chair being used as a weapon. Like picking up a pair of scissors to cut some paper and instead of using them the proper way, you just repeatedly stab the paper down the middle until you’ve made a vertical cut. I get that you would occasionally target a specific area of the body to damage with the chair, but taking ten shots around the limbs and body to drop someone seems a bit daft. It’s just really obvious that the head is being avoided and there are ways around it, see Triple H’s ‘hand over the head of the sledgehammer’ head shots.

Digest and discuss! Thanks for reading, take care and I’ll see you next week.

Danny Damage
@BluntDamage