Raw Rant 08/06/12

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Added by August 8, 2012


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, hiding out in a BBC video storage vault, a man more blunt than a sledgehammer to the bollocks, it’s Danny Damage.

The Raw Rant, August 6th 2012

Awesome, we’re shown highlights of the Cena/Big Show match from last week. I’m still not enjoying the new Raw theme song, I remember when most WWE music had balls.

AJ the GM skips down to the ring. Makes Orton vs. Big Show and Daniel Bryan vs. John Cena for later. Before she can say anything else, CM Punk heads out and apologises for losing his cool last week. He tries to get around her but fails to get the triple threat match cancelled and John Cena comes out for a chat. Apparently, Cena earned all his respect and CM Punk needs to learn this. The Big Show joins them but AJ tells everyone to shut up, for Show and Cena to get ready for their matches and for CM Punk to stay in the ring, as he has a match next. AJ’s giving the WWE universe the vote now, offering CM Punk vs Rey Mysterio, Kane or The Miz……….Mysterio won the vote.

Raw Active Match
CM Punk defeats Rey Mysterio cleanly with the GTS. I point out that it was clean as I’m happy they’re not following the usual heel turn transformation where someone is incapable of winning because they’re better than their opponent. I suspected dirty, underhanded wins while he’s feuding with Cena. Nice one.

Alberto del Rio and Ricardo Rodriguez arrive and park wherever they want.

Wade Barrett promo. I’m looking forward to his return, he’s taken way to long to heal up.

ADR chats up AJ and tells her about him not competing, she agrees and he mentions being concerned that she would do something crazy. She takes offence to this and puts him in a match, next.

Alberto del Rio makes Christian tap out to the Cross Armbreaker. After the match, Sheamus pops up on the Titantron and agrees that he should up his class, starting with a new motor. Ricardo left the keys in the ignition of Alberto’s car when he went back to get his bags and Sheamus decides to go for a cruise, much to Alberto’s displeasure.

The Big Show and Randy Orton are both counted out. Big Show hit a spear outside as the count reached ten. He tosses Randy back in and sets up the WMD but Orton ducks it and hits him with an RKO. Looked like he was setting up the punt afterward.

Ryback continues his winning streak vs Tyler Reks and Curt Hawkins. Meat hook and Shell Shocked for the win. Nothing else of interest to report.

Primo & Epico get a win over The Prime Time Players with a Backstabber, thanks to R-Truth and Kofi Kingston blocking TPTP’s flee attempt and causing the distraction. When Primo and Epico’s music hits, Kofi tries to replace Rosa’s dancing with some moves of his own, but it doesn’t do anything for me, sorry dude.

Josh Matthews interviews Damien Sandow backstage. Sandow states that he’s obligated to rid the WWE of all foolishness and he’s going to dispose of Brodus Clay for our benefit, you’re welcome.

Brodus Clay vs. Damien Sandow doesn’t even get started. Sandow jumps Clay on the ramp and wrecks his leg. He informs Clay that he brought it upon himself and leaves. Hopefully this is Clay out for a little bit to drop his daft gimmick and return mad and mean and something similar to how he was portrayed before The Funkasaurus was born.

AJ and Daniel Bryan converse backstage, Bryan tries to get in on the triple threat match at Summerslam but AJ says he’s still got severe anger management issues and already has an opponent for the PPV, Kane. They do their yes/no bit again and DB almost pops a vein.

Kelly Kelly pins Eve Torres. Awful match. A few of my friends will be happy they’ve had an eyeful of some blonde with a single, plastic facial expression though, enough said.

Shawn Michaels has some shit to say in the ring. Before he has chance to get into the HHH vs. Lesnar match, Paul E. Heyman and Brock Lesnar come and keep him company in the ring. Thankfully, Heyman holds the microphone for the majority of the time and Lesnar grabs it to do a brief “BROCK SMASH” line and passes it back. Heyman’s face palm when Brock decides to speak tickled me somewhat. Brock gets in HBK’s face and Triple H comes out to square up to Brock, Lesnar backs off and says he’ll see HHH at Summerslam and HBK, sooner.

Sheamus touts his adventures in Alberto’s car while enjoying the local scenery.

Alex Riley upsets Dolph Ziggler thanks to a distraction from Chris Jericho. Y2J was stood on the commentary table, filming Ziggler with his phone, Ziggler took his eyes off Riley and got rolled up. Jericho back to being very entertaining since the switch back to being a baby face, still not cut that hair yet either. Grow, grow, grow!

Kane buries The Miz with a Chokeslam. Not a bad quickie match for the two guys who weren’t voted to face CM Punk earlier in the night. A much better use of time than allowing Brodus Clay to make it all the way to the ring. Good call.

Matt Striker asks Daniel Bryan on his thoughts, Bryan reiterates that he wants the WWE universe to stop with their “Yes!” chants, they’re not allowed to use it.

Sheamus returns Alberto’s messed up car to the car park, covered in food, grass and all kinds of shit. He leaves the keys with someone and bails.

Daniel Bryan comes down to the ring for his match, deafened by the fans in the arena with “Yes!” chants. He gives his “No!” chant the best he can but there’s just too many of them.

Backstage, Alberto discovers the state that Sheamus has left his car in, he blames Ricardo, tells him to clean it and storms off. Back in the ring, Daniel Bryan is still shouting at everyone.

John Cena saves the day and beats Daniel Bryan, the evil villain for all the kiddies in the land, hooray. Ahem. After the match, CM Punk runs out and gets in Cena’s face. Cena shoves Punk out of the way when he sees the Big Show approaching, he grabs him for the FU and is pushed over again by CM Punk. Punk grabs a headset and tells us that this is how Raw should always end, with the champion stood tall with their belt. He goes back in the ring to deliver another head kick to The Big Show, it sucks to be Punk though as The Big Show catches his leg and drops him with a WMD, Cena gets one too once he gets to his feet. Raw goes off the air with The Big Show posing with the title.

Afterthoughts.

CM Punk and The Big Show aren’t being out shined by John Cena in the run up to their triple threat match. Everything’s looking rather even at the moment as they’re all having a turn to get one over on each other. Because of this, I really enjoyed the ending sequence of Raw.

My initial fears of three hours of Raw being three hours of promos have been muted for the time being. I’m feeling there’s a nice balance of talking and action on offer. Well, the ratio is a hell of a lot better than I imagined, so hats off.

Summerslam is building pretty well. Both main title matches already announced, HHH vs. Brock Lesnar too, Daniel Bryan vs. Kane is well received from me because it’s not vs. Charlie fooking Sheen. I still wouldn’t be surprised if he showed up for a run in or something.

Speaking of, Daniel Bryan’s development interests me greatly. Like I said last week, I’d be very happy for him to continue the angle where he’s losing his mind and for it to go even deeper. I’m not saying to go all Snitsky and have him develop a foot fetish or something to that effect, but I’d still like to push to have him in a straight jacket, strapped to a set of wheels and released into the ring as some crazy fuck-nugget who’s only ambition is to rip off your arms and make you tap out while not knowing whether to scream “YES!” or “NO!” for the duration. I also noticed that his ring attire has gradually been changing into what he wore at Money in the Bank, which kind of came out of nowhere.

Jericho was the one given a chance to shine at the commentator’s table this week, he badgered Michael Cole into temporary silence, said he found the Ziggler T-shirt in the bin, that he just liked the summer colours and him costing Ziggler the match fuelled their feud in an amusing way.

AJ Lee was back to her old tricks, annoying me that is. Don’t get me wrong, she’s not at her worst, but I think she wasn’t as irritating last week because her character had a change of pace. It’s getting old rather quickly though, Lord Regal would still have been the superior choice for GM.

Digest and discuss! You can follow me on Twitter for additional nuggets of wisdom. Thanks for reading, take care and I’ll see you next week.

Danny Damage
@BluntDamage (twitter)

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