Hello everyone and welcome to the last Monday Night Raw before Over the Limit this Sunday. Your Raw and Smackdown General Manager, Mr. John Laurinaitis bumps into Triple H backstage who says he has something to say in the ring.

Triple H enters the ring and talks shit about Brock Lesnar for a while, Paul E. Heyman joins him and serves him a lawsuit from Brock. HHH grabs hold of Heyman and leaves after calming himself down, but Paul E. takes great pride in informing HHH that he’ll be adding an additional charge of assault and battery against him now. Some solid microphone work from Heyman as always and HHH still has the bad-ass death-glare down to a fine art, even with the suit and Stone Cold style brace, but for his arm.

CM Punk & Santino Marella defeat Cody Rhodes & Daniel Bryan. Punk hits Cody with the Go to Sleep after Bryan calls it a day and leaves the ring, staring down Punk after the bell. REALLY looking forward to this one at Over the Limit. I’ve got my fingers crossed for a MOTY contender and hoping I won’t be robbed like at Wrestlemania. Okay, I wasn’t expecting anything mind-boggling between Bryan and Sheamus, just not what we got.

Beth Phoenix defeats Alicia Fox. Beth hits the Glam Slam after a short time, Layla looks on and makes the save from the post-match beat down, yawn. No real build for this match so it still seems a little chucked together at the last minute.

Video package of Cena’s Make a Wish work after asking us to Like him on Facebook. Anyone else feel their heart strings a-tugging?

Raw fact #9999: Monday Night Raw got better ratings last week than NBA, MBL and NHL TV shows. It’s nice to see one promotion shout about their Neilsen Ratings when another (*cough* TNA Impact *cough*) just completely ignore/do their best to hide theirs.

Kane defeats The Big Show with a VERY sloppy chokeslam, not the worst ever (that’d be Undertaker vs. Hogan), but still, a pretty shitty effort. Laurinaitis makes Big Show get on his knees and beg for his job, Show complies and gets fired anyway. Bow down to the evil GM! Mwuahahahahahaaaa!

Jerry Lawler puts his serious face and voice on to say how The Big Show didn’t deserve that, Michael Cole simply stares down silently as if he’s not sure what he’s meant to say. I have an idea Cole. You’re the heel, right? You need to go along with the things the “bad people” do and say. How about “Well, that’s what happens when you cross the boss”? I’m pretty sure you can manage that. I’m positive that I’ve heard you say something to that effect in the last few weeks. You can’t pick and choose when to be the heel, no matter how big of a prick your boss is being. Pick a side and stick to it, stop fucking jumping back and forth every time you think your character “isn’t that much of a heel” or when you need a quick morality pick-me-up because you’ve developed another layer of jowl that we can all hear EVERY time you say dub-b-b-b-ble-yoo-dub-b-b-b-ble-yoo-eee!

Funkasaurus, Kofi Kingston & R-Truth defeat Dolph Ziggler, Jack Swagger & The Miz. Brodus hits The Splash on The Miz after Kofi sets him up with the Trouble in Paradise. For anyone interested, Vickie Guerrero was dressed as the red Hungry-Hungry Hippo this week.

AJ is backstage wishing CM Punk luck in his match on Sunday, possibly leading to something, or not. Actually, unless she wipes the 24/7 mopey look from her face, I’d prefer if Daniel Bryan kept running solo. I don’t really feel there’s any need to get her involved and the “pretty face at ringside” doesn’t really work when she looks like she’s constantly giving someone the sad eyes.

Chris Jericho defeats Randy Orton by DQ. Y2J pisses off Sheamus the guest commentator, who drags Jericho out of the ring, causing the referee to call for the bell. Most of the focus of the Smackdown main event for Over the Limit seems to be on Sheamus and Orton clashing, I’d personally like Jericho to sneak in and steal the belt, but I’m not holding my breath.

Mr. Laurinaitis comes out to reveal his ground-breaking announcement before John Cena interrupts him and calls him a loser for 10 minutes. Things backfire for Laurinaitis in the end as the board of directors send him a message (by Hoeski-mail) and they have decided against all suggested stipulations that Johnny made regarding his match at Over the Limit. It’ll now be a straight 1-on-1 match, anyone interfering will be fired and if Laurinaitis loses, he’ll be getting fired also. Johnny = gutted.

Afterthoughts

A valiant effort from Raw this week. A much more colourful and animated John Cena compared to last week. However, the Ace Ventura impression did start to grate on me after the 23rd or 24th time.

The Big Show’s sacking went on for a bit too long I think. I know they’re still pushing Laurinaitis as ‘Cock-head of the decade’, but a heavily padded out segment of a 7-foot man on his knees, crying, got old pretty quick.

The matches on the Over the Limit card have been worked on quite well, except the Divas. The tag title match feels a bit last minute too, but knowing that all the guys involved have great chemistry together anyway, means I’m expecting something fun from them at least. The fatal four way should be entertaining too and I might just break out the popcorn for the Punk/Dragon main event. Here’s the card for this Sunday.

WWE Championship
CM Punk vs. Daniel Bryan

World Heavyweight Championship
Sheamus vs. Chris Jericho vs. Randy Orton vs. Alberto del Rio

John Cena vs. John Laurinaitis

World Tag Team Championship
Kofi Kingston & R-Truth vs. Dolph Ziggler & Jack Swagger

WWE Divas Championship
Layla vs. Beth Phoenix

Zack Ryder vs. Kane
(WWE.com/Facebook/Youtube Pre-show)

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

Danny Damage
@BluntDamage