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, June 25th 2012

We are all welcomed with a reminder of the AJ vs. 3 guys saga that’s been going on for a little while, she’s then seen in front of a mirror, practicing breaking up with them all. After that, we’re introduced to the GM for the week, Vicki Guerrero. She makes a triple threat elimination match on the spot.

–Triple Threat Elimination
Daniel Bryan wins vs. CM Punk vs. Kane. AJ skips about a bit to distract Kane for the GTS which opened Bryan to hit a head kick and a pin! I think this is making up for Punk’s win the other week with the elbow from the top. Punk was coming off a bit too strong against Bryan, making him look less of a threat to his belt.

Alberto del Rio chats up Vicki Guerrero with a brilliant assist from Ricardo Rodriguez playing the sad-sack. Ziggler breaks it up and Vicki makes a #1 Contender’s Match between them for later.

The Big Show pins Brodus Clay. Big Show works the injured leg of Clay and falls onto him during Clay’s slam attempt, 1980’s style. No mention of Clay’s undefeated streak before or during the match suggested that Show was crushing him. Considering I got bored of Brodus Clay a few months ago, I feel this was quite a poor way to end someone’s streak, even when done silently.

Quite a big chunk of time taken up with non-wrestling (sort of):
– Cena hits Make a Wish #300, see last week: tried, but can’t hate the guy.
– Brodus Clay KO’d by The Big Show while being carried out during the break.
– HHH/Heyman recap, Brock Lesnar will respond next week on Raw.
– Kane breaks up with AJ backstage, she tries to cry, then laughs.

And we’re back.

Santino Marella is victorious against Jack Swagger. The Cobra gets the win once again in what is the longest Santino match I’ve seen all year. Well, maybe not THE longest, but he took more than a two minute beating before the hip-toss, head butt, cobra ending.

John Cena comes out to the ring and makes Star Wars jokes until Chris Jericho shows up and tells him to shut the hell up and to get to his point. Cena announces he’s putting himself in the MITB ladder match to stop The Big Show and to win the title, Jericho follows suit. Vicki Guerrero cuts them off to reinforce her authority for the week and then book that same match at MITB, plus Kane. She also adds that Cena vs. Jericho will be the main event for the evening.

–Past Raw Main Eventer Special
Sycho Sid beats Heath Slater with the Powerbomb. This was much more entertaining than last week. Sid was one of my favourite heels as a kid, he still has that mean, nut-case look in his eyes that Randy Orton has been working on for years.

–Object On A Pole Match (at least it’s a contract this time)
Dolph Ziggler vs. Alberto del Rio ends in a no-contest. Sheamus pops out during the match to inform them he’s spoken to the GM and given the green light for a triple threat match on Smackdown instead.

CM Punk tries to break up with AJ backstage, but she hears something different and toddles off on her way to the win Diva’s Battle Royal for him.

–Diva’s Battle Royal (w/some kind of swim-suit stipulation)
AJ wins and Vicki Guerrero reminds us why we should be cautious around horny, middle-aged women on/near a beach. AJ with a YES! chant after the match. I think this was trying to plug Summerslam actually.

John Cena scores a DQ victory over Chris Jericho. Y2J has the Walls of Jericho locked in, Big Show appears and hits Cena with a leg drop. Jericho backs off and lets Show beat on Cena until the camera fades out.

Afterthoughts.

Good news everyone! The Big Show is still pulling off his unstoppable giant persona pretty well, even after the loss at No Way Out. It’s a shame they had to end Clay’s streak in the manner that they did, they could have had him flatten someone else and combine that with him attacking Cena and warning off Y2J and still have the same effect to his path of destruction.

The first two matches announced for Money in the Bank look to be enjoyable. CM Punk faces Daniel Bryan for the WWE Championship and the Ex-champion only MITB match contains Kane, John Cena, The Big Show and Chris Jericho. Speaking of Y2J, the was no mention of his suspension on Raw, instead we were told he’s been on tour with Fozzy, good stuff.

I wish they’d stop with all the brand division in their storytelling, saying Clay on Smackdown, Big Show on Raw. All superstars appear on both shows on a weekly basis. I actually prefer the smaller, tighter-knit group that they have on the roster at the moment, in comparison to times they’d employed more than 50% of the recently unemployed ECW and WCW rosters. So I feel there isn’t really much point in the brand division while we’ve got (had for months) the same GM for both shows. Obviously, this annoyance may become void if we get two new GMs that stick to their brand in the near future, but it’s off my chest now.

Early in the show, the fans were asked to tweet about who they felt AJ should align herself with. There were four choices which were CM Punk, Daniel Bryan, Kane, or all three men. It was announced later that CM Punk won with Kane coming second, more people wanted to see her hook up with all of them than with just Daniel Bryan. The amusing thing to me is that the person to point out the obvious “none of the above” fourth option instead of the Fatal 4-Way *cough* “we’re PG” *cough*, was Jerry “The Sex Pest” Lawler.

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

Danny Damage
@BluntDamage

BONUS! All the 5 MINUTE videos I’ve missed since my little holiday.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iB1uue_B_9k&feature=plcp
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-0Yv26TJzPo&feature=plcp
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mOFFVTfbB1s&feature=plcp