The Tuesday Communique 07.2.13: A Little Bit Different

WWE Monday Night RAW from Sioux City, IA (I think) || TV Review

Lack of time this week has me doing the RAW report differently. I apologize for not having a more complete and expansive review, but here are some running thoughts as I watch live…

All-Star Money In the Bank Talk!
– Hulk Hogan and The Rock got boos when Bryan mentioned their names! HAHA! Fantastic.
– Crowd chants “You tapped out” at Orton, who calls DB “Dan”. Heh, that sounds weird.
– Christian still apparently wants “one… more… match”. That’s a great callback. I miss that character. Christian with the great rhyme “I might not be the biggest, strongest, scariest or hairiest”. Nice.
– Punk comes out and tries to put everyone over, but Bryan’s tired of it, asking if Punk was going to talk nice about everybody and then say he’s better than they are. Punk responded, without hesitation and with no fanfare “Yes”. Hah! And nobody acknowledged it, which made it even better. He says he can make Punk tap, which hopefully is a challenge for tonight.
– They start to skirmish and Kane takes an RKO from Orton. Everybody bails after that.

The Usos & Christian v. The Shield
– The faces beat the heels on SmackDown to give The Shield their second loss. Unceremonious, really, but I guess after losing once it’s not a big deal to lose again.
– Holy SHIT what a superkick from Uso 1 to Dean Ambrose!
– Ambrose gets the rollup pin on Christian to get his win back from SmackDown.
– Not as good as the epic matches they had previously been having, but this was a damn fine TV match.
– Check out this Ambrose promo from WWE.com. I can’t fathom why this is buried on the website instead of on TV.

Dolph Ziggler v. Jinder Mahal
– I was excited for a Ziggler match… and then Jinder.
– WOW, Zigger MURDERED Ricardo with that guitar shot on SmackDown. Was he trying to add to the concussion train?
– Crowd chants for JBL and Jerry. That was random. No love for Cole.
– Ziggler wins and then sidesteps and ducks and dodges the beatdown attempt from 3MB. That was actually pretty cool.

– Triple H tells Vickie to let Vince and Stephanie talk as much as they want, and then do none of what they tell her to do and only listen to him. Good. Do that and let’s end this angle.

– They show a great video package to build up Mark Henry.

Randy Orton v. Kane
– Daniel Bryan is the guest referee. Not much happens until Bryan pulls Orton off the ropes to interrupt the 10-punch. Orton shoved Bryan, and DB hilariously decided to disqualify him and award the match with Kane. Being so easily coerced to restart tha match was even better, though.
– Bryan stops Orton from hitting the RKO and then quick counts him down after a big boot from Kane. Crowd actually calls for Bryan’s head here, and are disappointed when Kane doesn’t chokeslam him. They are delighted with the RKO moments later.
– Match was okay, but it was all about Bryan trying to cull favor with Kane to help him at MITB and failing miserably. Doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, as Bryan should be riding high after last week’s win over Orton.

Fandango v. Sheamus
– Well I guess the Fandango push is over.
– Hey, maybe not! He’s getting some offense!
– Mostly chinlocks, but it’s something!
– Fandango walks away and gets counted out. Jobbers don’t get to walk away from Sheamus matches, so I guess he’s okay.

Ryback v. The Miz
– Super boring beatdown from Ryback on Miz while Jericho half-entertainingly jaunts on commentary.
– Miz comes back and works the leg, so Ryback… waives off the match? Okay then. Jericho hits a Codebreaker afterward.
– I don’t get it.

– Mark Henry cuts a promo about how he deserves to be WWE Champion. Just like last week he gets a massive “WHAT?” treatment from the crowd. Oh well. Promo was fine. I have to be honest — the angle that got Henry the title match was unbelievably great, but I don’t really have any interest in a Henry/Cena feud. Just get Daniel Bryan out there already.

– Vince complains that they’re giving away the WWE Champ v. World Champ match away for free on TV with no buildup. That has to be a joke, right? He realizes the irony of him complaining that they’re doing this match after having done the same time and time again over the past few years? I’m sure he gets that, right?

CM Punk & Curtis Axel v. Prime Time Players
– Axel refuses to tag Punk and ends up getting his ass kicked for a while.
– Punk finally gets in and cleans house, but Axel tags himself in and steals the win. Punk lets him, pretty much because he saw it coming and seems to be thinking “aw, fuck it, whatever”.
– Hey, Axel gets a win on RAW!
– The slow burn nature of this angle actually was pretty decent this week. I guess if they can’t have Punk dominating the show, it might as well be a lot of Daniel Bryan instead, though.

Kaitlyn v. Alicia Fox
– Alicia has a great bridging northern lights suplex (on Canada Day!) and Kaitlyn has a great spear. That’s all.
– AJ comes out and shows a picture of Kaitlyn’s head on a fat chick’s body. Yeah, that was wonderful.

– Stephanie acts like a bitch and upsets Vickie. Can’t Vickie just listen to Triple H and just let her talk and then ignore it? This segment was BRUTAL, and I am despising Stephanie on TV. She’s not even hateable… she just… ugh.

Antonio Cesaro v. Cody Rhodes
– I’m sorry, but putting Cesaro with Colter and Swagger isn’t going to make him “not boring”, seeing as the crowd simply doesn’t care about that tandem. It’s an interesting concept, but just like the Muhammad Hassan experiment they’re going lowest common denominator with it instead of coming up with a different way to do a character like this that isn’t stereotypical.

– I wanna unzip the dress that new Diva is wearing. If this is supposed to make anybody want to watch the E! show, I have no idea what the thought process was. Plus, what was the point of all of the cuts? Was it a poor attempt at making it look like a three-camera shoot TV show? If so… wow. That was embarassingly poorly done.

Champion v. Champion, Non-title: John Cena v. Alberto Del Rio
– This was a very good TV match, but I didn’t really care. Instead of showing meaningless (albeit nice) videos of some champions past, why not have Del Rio and Cena cut backstage promos about their title being more important than the other? Having the two current champions, the guys actually in the match, talk about how important it is would have been 100 times more impactful and meaningful than showing video clips of a bunch of guys that a good chunk of the viewing audience has never heard of.

Overall RAW Thoughts: The show was flat. After a few weeks of really hitting a good stride (even if the shows were still too long for their own good), we now have had, in my opinion, two weeks in a row of the same old, same old that has been plaguing the show for months upon months upon months. It’s just… there. A bunch of decent segments spread thin over the course of three hours with almost none of them having any impact on anything else that happens throughout the night. That makes for boring, flat television. This show didn’t even have a great match to fall back on. The main event was good and the Shield six-man was very good as well, but not enough to say “hey, at least we had those awesome matches tonight!” As I continue to say; it’s not actively bad, it’s just not actively good. It just exists.

– One of the biggest stories from the past week is that Jay and Mark Briscoe are done with Ring of Honor. It’s not yet fully known what they’re looking to do next, as the most exposition on the matter from any news source has been “off to greener pastures”. In a wrestling sense, that could technically mean WWE or TNA with the greener pastures being more money and national television. It seems to me like they may be going on a hiatus again, except this time it’s for their families rather than to play football like it was 8 years ago when they left ROH for a good chunk of time. Good for them. Jay’s indiscretions aside, they do have young children and a large family that they want to be with. They’re still both under 30, so there’s no reason why they can’t take a break, rest, get recharged, watch their children grow a bit and then come back completely fresh. Sucks that it doesn’t look like Jay is going to actually drop the title to somebody, though. I do like the idea of a tournament if they go that way, however, even if it does kind of shaft Michael Elgin, who won the number one contendership a few months back. Maybe he gets a buy to the final? That wouldn’t be very face-ish. Oh well.

– Remember the Wrestling Revolution Project? I’ve been waiting on an update for-freakin-ever, and it’s here. They’re going to release it on DVD/other media some point in the near future. It seems that Jeff Katz, the project’s creator, ran into a lot of problems personal and otherwise, and it halted the finishing of the production and any deals he may have been moving forward with. To make up for how long it has taken and his lack of updates, Katz has decided to both honor all of the prizes that came with donations and refund every donation that was given. That’s pretty amazing. I was really excited to see this project, and I hope it turns out as good as it has the potential to be.

– TNA has started cost-cutting measures, including not flying in a lot of talents to TV. They’re only doing TV every other week. Are Mister and Missus Carter finally ready to stop bankrolling Dixie’s silly wrasslin’ project?

– WWE is releasing a Goldberg DVD soon. I’ll Netflix the documentary for sure. In other news, Goldberg is Big E Langston’s favourite wrestler.

– Shawn Michaels said in an interview that Vince McMahon “doesn’t see money” in a certain WWE superstar. Everybody on the internet assumed it was Daniel Bryan, but HBK took to Twitter to dispell those rumors. He then said that the guy is 6’3” and 250 pounds, which was a very poorly planned attempt to make people stop talking about it. Instead, everyone is trying to figure out who meets that height and weight standard and overanalyzing like crazy. Shawn’s whole point was that Vince didn’t see money in him, and he became one of the biggest stars in the history of professional wrestling. It doesn’t matter who this guy is, just that Vince can be proven wrong.

– Police are re-opening the case of the murder of Jimmy Snuka’s girlfriend. Uh-oh. Could you imagine if Vince ends up getting popped for helping cover up a murder?

– A car crashed into a restaurant that RVD was eating at over the weekend. Early police reports are attributing it to hallucinations.

– Ring of Honor is doing away with live iPPVs and will instead post their events the day after on VOD. As long as it comes with a price reduction, I’m all for it. They’ve been having big problems with the live streams, and I think that after only having one or two seamless streams (if that), they need to throw in the towel for a while until they can be sure that they have something as close to 100% reliable as possible. I only ordered a couple of them live anyway (didn’t have any problems, either) so I’m not bothered by having to wait an extra day if I am really clamoring to see a show. My suggestion, if they want to make the VOD seem significant and more important, since the event itself happened live a day prior, should come with a bunch of backstage extra stuff and possibly even a Google Hangout type thing, or a live chat with some of the wrestlers. Something to make the big events feel more important, even if they can’t be seen live.

Combat Zone Wrestling

– Nicholas A. Marsico