Hello and welcome to yet another edition of A RAW Opinion, I’m Joe and I will be taking you through another episode of WWE Raw, we are just under two weeks away from WWE WrestleMania, the grand daddy of ‘em all. Tonights show seems to be stacked, Triple H, Shawn Michaels and The Undertaker are all in the house tonight. Announced last week, tonight we have John Cena taking on Mark Henry.
We start the show off with WWE Champion, CM Punk, he gets inside the ring and they show the video from last week where Jericho was talking about CM Punks father being an alcoholic. Punk said Jericho isn’t there tonight and It’s a good thing, because he pissed Punk off last week when he said that about his father. Punk said he doesn’t care that Jericho said it, or how Jericho said it, but the fact that it isn’t Jerichos story to tell. He says if there is a monster inside of him, then at WrestleMania he’s going to let it out on Jericho. Punk says that Jericho didn’t tell the people the end of that story, the fact that his father overcame it and beat his demons and he’s proud of his father. GREAT stuff, I loved this segment so much, it was absolutely powerful. It came off like gold, CM Punk proved without a doubt why he is The Best In The World. Jericho came on the big screen, he says he’s sorry for bringing it up and he’ll never bring it up again, he then starts talking about CM Punks sister and calls her a drug addict, he tells Punk that he is destined to drink. CM Punk answered back but it was bleeped out so you can’t tell what he said unless you’re there live. I’m almost certain Punk said Jericho was “full of shit” and that he’s going to “beat it out of him at WrestleMania”
First match tonight is Kane one on one against The Big Show. Cody Rhodes came out, they play a video making fun of Big Show again. Cody distracted Big Show, allowing Kane to choke slam Big Show off the top rope for the pin. Cody attacked him after the match hitting the Beautiful Disaster, he then handcuffed Big Show to the ropes, Cody put on boxing gloves and started beating on Big Show. After the match was pretty dumb I thought, but at least WWE is trying to build interest in this match, I still don’t care about it though.
Up next David Otunga heads to the ring with John Laurinaitis, his opponent is Santino Marella, who is being accompanied by Teddy Long. They start with a pose down, it kind of looks to me like Santino has abs drawn on himself. Laurinaitis distracted Santino, Santino took his phone and stomped on it, turned around and Otunga hit him with his spine buster for the pin, after the match Teddy slapped Laurinaitis.
Dwayne Johnson is up next, doesn’t say if he’s their live or not though. Dwayne is via satellite. He’s wearing sunglasses at night… He says he’s going to drive to the arena to send Cena a message, great, so Dwayne will end the show as well. I’m not going to lie, I wasn’t too impressed with it, nor did I listen to him word for word. But a majority of his promo was kissing ass to the Philly crowd.
YES! YES! YES! WWE World Heavyweight Champion, Daniel Bryan! And now I change that to NO! NO! NO! His opponent, Zack Ryder. Daniel Bryan countered the Rough Ryder into a LaBell Lock for the win, Zack got a couple of offensive moves in during this short match.
John Cena VS Mark Henry up next. John Cena comes out to huge boos. Cena beats Mark Henry with the Attitude Adjustment, after the match Dwayne comes out, Rock Bottoms Mark Henry, and leaves. Stupid, especially how Michael Cole almost came in his pants saying it was a game of “one upsmanship” Sorry but can you explain to me how a Rock Bottom is more impressive then an Attitude Adjustment?
Video package talking about Kelly Kelly and Maria Menounos taking on Beth Phoenix and Eve at WrestleMania, I could care less.
The Miz is in the ring talking about how he isn’t booked in WrestleMania 28, he issued an open challenge tonight to show John Laurinaitis he deserves to be on Team Johnny. Sheamus came out from the back to answer the challenge. Sheamus wins in a longer match then I expected, Miz can’t buy himself a win, that’s what he gets for not being able to meet Vinces expectations for Survivor Series.
Randy Orton up next to talk about his match with Kane at WrestleMania. They have an old school early 1990’s type interview stage set up by the entrance which was pretty cool to see. I’m not a fan of Orton, I think he’s boring on the microphone, he shows no emotion in his voice.
Vickie Guerrero introduces the two newest members of Team Johnny, Dolph Ziggler and Jack Swagger. Up next we have Ziggler and Swagger going against R Truth and Kofi Kingston. I am NOT a fan of Jack Swaggers new “Dennis The Menace” Hairdo. Vickie shoved Truths foot off the rope allowing Ziggler and Swagger to get the win, after the match Vickie and Aksana had themselves an old fashioned ECW style “CATFIIIIIIIIGHT!!!!” (In my best Joey Styles voice)
Up next, Triple H, The Undertaker and Shawn Michaels will be in the same ring at the same time. Shawn Michaels comes to the ring first, he talks about how he holds the streak in the palm of his hand. He says “the end of an era” is just code for the end of the streak, and talks about how he was in the same boat a couple of years ago. Undertaker cuts him off and walks to the ring. Undertaker starts talking about how he‘s already told Shawn this match needs to remain pure, Triple H immediately cuts him off and comes down to the ring. HHH says that as much as Shawns ego wants it to be about him, it isn’t. HHH and Taker go back and forth as Shawn just stands there watching them, Taker asked if HHH remembered when Taker told him Shawn was better then him, he said he is, Shawn stood there with a slight grin on his face, HHH and Shawn got face to face as the show ended. Pretty dull segment to end the show I thought.
My overall opinion, I enjoyed it for the most part, I loved watching the Jericho/Punk segment, that is going to be a great fight between the two, Jericho making things way more personal talking about Punks sister.
I give tonights show a 3/5, I thought it lacked tonight, Dwayne showing up live only to Rock Bottom Mark Henry was pretty stupid, his video segment wasn’t that great tonight either, surprised Cena got no mic time to talk about the match at WrestleMania.
Hopefully next week I’ll have a banner for the column, when I get a chance during the week I’ll be working on that.
I hope you enjoyed reading the column, thanks for reading, let me know what you thought about the show tonight and the column as well. The column is just my opinion, I could be wrong, but I doubt it 😉
Ringsidehustle.com 
I did not see that old school interview set up tonight coming! I hope they bring it back permanently.
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I do too, I enjoyed that a lot, I liked it back then and I like it still. Gives a nice blast from the past feel, which in terms of a few areas, isn’t a bad thing.
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What impressed me about The Rock Bottom on Henry is just how high he got Henry. It seems like there isn’t much of a grip.
Loved the little grin on HBK. And the whole “HBK is better than HHH” is perfect for the three involved. Most would assume that HBK will favor HHH, but if HBK starts to think he is better than HHH, it puts doubt into whether HBK will call it down the middle or screw HHH just to make sure HHH isn’t able to defeat Taker so HHH can rub that in HBK’s face and say he’s better than Shawn.
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The week’s show wasn’t bad, just lackluster. We had some development with the Punk/Jericho story, and that was it. There were some short matches, some promos we’ve already heard, and nothing really new regarding Cena/Rock and HHH/Taker/HBK.
Line of the night goes to Taker, though.
“Remember when I said Shawn was better than you?…. He is.” Hilarious!
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I enjoyed this weeks show. It’s good to see the show ending with not just ROCK or CENA. Good to see focus on Taker/HHH/HBK. Loved Punk’s promo and Y2J not being there was good, it’s an excuse for them not to fight until WM.
J – Your twitter question has got in my head and thought about it all day long. It’s really after baffling me. I said HHH but now not so sure.
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Michaels is better. There, now your brain can relax. 😛
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If HBK wasn’t out for a 4 year absence lord knows how things could of turned out. Would he still of been that big star he is today? It’s so hard to tell and then to compare that 😦
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He would probably be dead.
Here’s how I’ve decided Shawn is better compared to whoever:
Besides for the fact that he is just that good, for half of his career (give or take) he was strung out on drugs, on a nighty basis. Yet, he still stole the show, and put on remarkable performances. Broke his back, still competed for some months, took a four year hiatus, and came back as good as ever.
So, that answers that whole “but he took four years off” question of yours.
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I understand and respect that fully, but what’s to say HHH would of been able to do that? HHH for me has helped more guys, like Batista, Orton etc..
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HBK helped HHH…. Thus also helping Batista and Orton.
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He helped. Triple H IMO has put over many wrestlers, but HBK can have a great match with anyone unlike HBK can.
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But the question should be which is better. HBK’s smile or HHH’s nose?
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I liked that the show didn’t end with Rock/Cena, but I didn’t like the end like that, it was kind of lackluster, I wish they would have ended with Jericho/Punk, THAT is goin to be a war at Mania.
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If they ended RAW like this last Monday and ended RAW with Y2J/Punk this week it would of been better.
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Jericho and Punks stuff should of started wayyyyyy earlier, should do some stuff on SD 🙂
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You can tell WrestleMania isn’t too far away….barely any wrestling and mostly yapping. I guess that’s expected. I would have loved to see a little more between Punk/Jericho seem as that is the WWE Title feud going in to Mania.
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Shawn Michaels played his part perfectely, just that little smirk was all that was needed. After the Mania match, in my opinion the HBK/HHH sistuation may just be the start. HBK to retire his buddy next year? Maybe.
You can tell by the live crowd’s reaction that they are geting bored of Rock’s taped promos outside the arena, the silence deafening, only when he said he would be in the buildaing later did the crowd cheer up. Why couldn’t The Rock cut the promo from inside the arena? Did he have to stand ny that statue, couldnt he just relate to it? Either way it was nice to see them not close the show and Rock get physical even if it was just a Rock Bottom.
CM Punk cut another great promo tonight, he always seems to deliver on the goods when he’s either angry about something or full of adrenaline after a match. Chris brought it by stooping low like the the villanous heel should. This just gets more and more intriguing each week.
Kane recalled shaking Ortons hand after a match which is moment he now despises, yet forgets practically crying when his old bestest bud the Big Show was run over by Del Rio’s car… Hmmm, thats probably what physcotic rage and demon finding does to you.
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Well, it is important to grow as a persron. lol
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Shawns little grin at the end was great, that was the best part of the entire segment I thought, I don’t see Shawn wrestling again, he’s one guy I believe when he says he’s done. I’m sure he sees all the backlash Flair has gotten from a lot of fans (And possibly wrestlers) for coming out of retirement. In retrospect, I can’t watch that Shawn/Flair match anymore with the same kind of excitement I had then because it means nothing now.
I’m so over ol’ Dwayne, he couldn’t do that segment in the building because he needed it behind him so he could talk about different places in Philly for 10 minutes. I hate how he’s gotten lately, he doesn’t really speak much on his match anymore, he more or less just rambles on about Twitter, history of the towns they’re in and just kissing up to the fans.
What can you say that hasn’t already been said about Jericho and Punk? Lol, That is going to be a war, I’m getting more excited for that then Rock/Cena now just because of how personal it’s gotten.
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Watch, Rock and Cena will act like they’re gonna fight, then stop and admit it was all a trick and become the new Two-Man Power Trip.
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Anybody else wished he had brought back the Electrolarynx? We’d prbably have less extended monologues from him…
I liked it better when he didnt talk
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Lol Kanes little voice box still shows more tone then Randy Orton.
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That’s not really fair to Orton. He’s gotta pay attention to the voices in his head in case one of them says something important.
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Great recap dude, i’ve just watched the show and thought it was solid for the most part.
I completely agree with everything you said! The Rock giving Henry the Rock Bottom and Cole’s fangirl moment was just so stupid, I tweeted about it lol. Cena is far more impressive going into the Mania match and I for one, am Cenation despite The Rock being my favourite growing up. I too was surprised at Cena not getting mic time and agree with you when you say that the Jericho/Punk segment was complete gold.
I also agree with your opinion of the Taker/HHH/HBK segment. It lacked a spark, it didnt get the chance to build and there were a few too many long silences. Not impressed with the build up to this match.
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It really did strike me today that as stacked as the upper card is, the lower card really is pointless, isn’t it?
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Not really. Cody/Show is for a title. Kane/Orton is your standard grudge match. Team John L./Team Teddy is for control of both shows.
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I agree with Simon in a sense that we kind of can see how things area already going to turn out with those matches, or the turn out is pointless. Cody/Show, I’d say Cody retaining makes the most sense. Kane/Orton is kind of a who cares, thrown together match for me. I see Orton winning. The divas tag match, well it’s really pointless who wins. Obviously the celeb. As for the big tag match, that’s the only interesting bout to me. I see Johnny winning regardless.
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I’m beginning to wonder why Laurinitas was even brought up as on screen character. Admittedly when he was first stuck in the mix with Cena and Punk, along with his mini fued with Trips he had his use. But now he just seems to have fallen into the mix.
Brought in as Vince’s number 2, a man who held high authority was then relieved of such power when Trips took over as COO. Since been relegated to Raw GM with a possibilty to even lose that at WM (although unlikely)
I just wonder why they bring in an office guy yet seem to have no long term storyline for him. (Were we ever to learn who he was texting?)
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