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, 18th June 2012

Monday Night Raw is kicked off with The Commissioner of the WWE (for this week only), Mick Foley cheap popping and making a tag match with CM Punk & Sheamus vs. Daniel Bryan & Kane, next. Before that though, our former executive vice president of talent relations and the general manager of both Raw and Smackdown, Mr. John Laurinaitis shows up to imitate Foley and mention tonight’s main event is a match he booked before he was fired, featuring himself, David Otunga and The Big Show vs. John Cena.

CM Punk & Sheamus defeat Daniel Bryan & Kane. AJ showed up and skipped around the ring wearing a Kane outfit and mask, causing Kane to cheese it after her. Left in the ring was a GTS plus Brogue Kick combination on The American Dragon, good night Danielson.

Dolph Ziggler pins Jack Swagger after hitting the Zigzag in a match to become the excusive man for Liza Minnel-, uh, sorry, for Vicki Guerrero. Good match, Ziggler played the baby face seeing as the crowd are well behind him, Swagger does a good job keeping him grounded and close to tapping for a lot of it.

We get a flashback of Triple H’s challenge to Brock Lesnar for Summerslam. Lesnar’s music plays but thankfully we get Paul E. Heyman out to do some talking. Heyman says no to dropping Brock’s lawsuit, dropping his lawsuit and to the fight at Summerslam, HHH appears to stop Paul E. from leaving the ring and they goad each other, Heyman wins this exchange by getting Trips to punch him after mentioning the Mrs.

Alberto del Rio (w/Ricardo Rodriguez) makes Santino Marella tap very quickly with the Cross Arm-breaker. Double R waits for Santino to get up after the match and hits him with a flying arm-bar. US title is worth more or less than a Cena wristband?

Cyndi Lauper makes her “return” and eventually smashes a framed golden record over Heath Slater’s head, oh yeah, Roddy Piper was there too. Michael Cole shows a little honesty in admitting that was possibly one of the worst segments on Raw ever. Thanks Cole, if you’ve managed to summarise my thoughts into one line, I guess I can move on.

Primo & Epico (w/Rosa) score a count-out victory over Darren Young & Titus O’Neil, The Prime Time Players (w/AW). TPTP decide they don’t need the match as they won the match last night. The tag division seems to be heating up a little, nice to see newer faces in the mix as of late. I was getting bored of all the tag matches on Raw and Smackdown being put together to build two or three singles feuds.

John Cena beats John Laurinaitis with a triple FU followed by the STFU. Big Show decided to leave before the match, Otunga got fed up with Johnny half way through, leaving Cena to kick Johnny Ace out the door. Wow, that’s more than the “shitty, boring match” than I initially decided to write.

Afterthoughts.

Bump of the night goes to Dolph Ziggler for the kiss from Vicki Guerrero.

Trying to hold Raw up on it’s own two feet this week in the countdown for the 1000th episode by no mention of Money in the Bank. Sadly, this falls on its arse when part of the warm-up to the milestone show consists of Cyndi Lauper stumbling, Roddy Piper staggering and Layla freezing in a smile reserved for awkward situations.

John Cena bored me for some time this week, once again. I’m rather fed up of being stuck on the anti-Cena bandwagon to be honest and I’ve tried numerous times to get off. The problem is, I don’t enjoy a single moment of his promos, matches or anything else involving him but I’m constantly reminded of the fact that he puts the time in, (can be) awesome on the mic., does more than most for a lot of people (kids mainly) and that he brings in a lot of attention and money that can be used for things other than making more John Cena T-shirts. This causes my inability to genuinely hate the guy, but on the other hand, I can be annoyed and extremely bored of him, so I’m sitting on the wagon for a little while yet.

Triple H and Paul E. Heyman building up for Summerslam before MITB was good watching. HHH is always good for a bit of banter and Paul E. shined as expected. I’m sort of looking forward to this match. As long as Brock tones down the UFC move-set a little and goes back to something similar to what he had before he left, with additional strikes and holds, I’d be more than happy to watch him fight Triple H. I understand he’s progressed in his career and life and he’s not what he used to be, but regardless of what people say, I still enjoyed his matches and still feel that I still could. The recent Cena match is my case and point really, the style doesn’t really work when you’ve got someone who doesn’t fight for real all day every day working with someone who does fight for real on a regular basis. I’m not saying anything either way about either styles, I just feel Brock’s got too used to one over the other and it showed at Extreme Rules.

Brace yourselves……

Michael Cole levelled up this week, he’s only level six or something now, but I am noticing a bit of an improvement with him sticking to a side (mostly when it’s just him and Lawler that is). Early on he was reiterating that he fact that at the end of No Way Out, he said he never thought Johnny was any good anyway. Most of my boredom-induced thoughts during the NWO cage match was whether Cole (outcome dependant) would turn on Ace the moment he gets fired or if he’d stick it out to the end and just forget it ever happened once Ace was off TV and never mentioned again. Thankfully, he impressed me.

In case anyone wonders about my thought on the PPV:

No Way Out (In a nutshell)

– Ziggler was continually impressive and got the crowd warmed up nicely.
– Josh Matthews gives Johnny Ace a “You’re so shit at this” stare backstage.
– Tuxedo Match got a boring chant after two minutes, then the crowd started.
– Christian/Cody was great, nice match to solidify Christian as IC Champ.
– Awesome 4-way tag team match, good to see fresh faces on a PPV card.
– The sloppiest Diva’s match I’ve seen for a while, that includes TNA also.
– Sin Cara/Hunico was watch-able. Hunico was allowed a few minutes of offence.
– Great triple threat match, didn’t enjoy the finish.
– Ryberg smash! Roar!
– Cage Match snooze-fest, Cena wins and they all live happily ever after, the end.

Oh yeah, Y2J returns next week!

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

Danny Damage
@BluntDamage

Bonus!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Zro11FR_zM&feature=plcp