Tuesday, September 21, 2010

09/20/10 RAW REVIEW: COMMENTARY VS. WRESTLING

This is the only way I can describe how it felt to watch tonight's RAW: It's as if I was watching the show, paying attention to a match, and Michael Cole entered my home and starting poking me and tugging at my arms but I couldn't tell him to fuck off because he was actually on the TV screen and not in my home. Make any sense? I'll try and explain.

MONDAY NIGHT RAW - 09/20/10
LIKE: MIZ & A-RI'S ROUGHING UP OF DANIEL BRYAN
DISLIKE: MICHAEL COLE DERAILING THE SHOW
Photo - WWE.com

LIKED
- DH Smith's Drew McIntyre impression.

- The good and bad of what's going on with John Morrison. Holy hell. Okay, there is some bipolar shit going on with whoever is behind the recent focus on his Parkour stuff. First, it's awesome that they're showcasing it since it totally adds an entire new dimension to Morrison. So they show the replay from last week where Morrison applied his Parkour training to his match with Sheamus, and then they show him warming up backstage. BUT THEN, they do that weird Tim & Eric Awesome Show extreme zoom-in on his face for some reason right after he flips his hair back. It's not an accident, because they did it last week too. So they saw it then and were like, "hey, looks great, PRINT IT!" and now they're doing it again. It's clearly a choice and an idea someone came up with, zooming in on his face like there should be a slidewhistle sound accompanying it. It's so weird. Phew. But the focus here should really be on the crazy shit Morrison has pulled out two weeks in a row now. Even if he punches weird, he is doing some bonkers stuff I've never seen before, so that makes up for it.

- Zack Ryder/Edge budding bromance. I like these two together. Ryder can be funny without making me smack myself in the forehead, because it makes sense, and he's not banging chalk brushes at a nun while being taught by Teddy Long how to speak.

- Also, back to Morrison. He looks way cooler and way less lame when he doesn't do his Melina posedown during the slo-mo fireworks. Tonight he just took off his coat and glasses and walked on. If they turn him into some kind of real life superhero (not like Cena) then I'm all for it, no matter how hokey that sounded to me right after I typed it.

- Michael Cole may as well have been reaching across the table to jerk Miz off when he showed up. That was hilarious, no matter how much it truly annoyed me deep down to my core.

- Bryan Danielson using the Ride of the Valkyries as his theme music. That is awesome. So are all of the comments that are already up on this song's YouTube video (including the one guy pointing out that this is in fact also Sara Del Rey's theme music).

- Edge vs. Daniel Bryan and the beatdown that followed. This entire segment made the show worth watching. Edge and Danielson may have had a pretty good match, although it was hard to tell what with all of the super distracting bickering going on at the commentary booth. Alex Riley (now signed to a "personal services" contract, lofl) and Miz beating down Danielson was great. It pissed me off and made me want to see Bryan make Miz tap out again. That, along with Edge's infuriated rant towards the omnipresent general manager, made this the segment of the night. And I can't stress how awesome of a pairing Miz and Riley are. They look like two spoiled rich kid buddies fell out of a teen movie.

- Chris Jericho playing internet private detective.

- John Cena adding a dropkick to his moveset being news! Not only that, but he delivered one last night to someone and totally whiffed on it.

- The final segment. Cena actually seemed to bring it in this promo, same for Wade Barrett. The booking of the main event had the crowd hot as Michael Cole's taint after shaking The Miz's hand. But I'm going to touch on Cena in a second here...

DISLIKED
- John Cena is a strange character. Going into a match, all he cares about is the WWE Title, the WWE Universe, the WWE, etc. It's the most important and most serious and most preacher-voice-worthy thing ever. He's our hero and will only settle for victory. Then the next night, after he loses, he jokes and plays it off and doesn't really care. He smiles and passes his loss off as nothing. How long can this go on before people are like "why should I believe that you care about something when you show time and time again that you don't?" Maybe I'm nitpicking, but the video package for Night of Champions had about twelve quotes from Cena saying THIS IS ALL I GOT!!! and then he lost but it doesn't matter.

- Randy Orton needs to remain a badass. He's walking a fine line right now where I can sense some pointing and smiling on the horizon. Thankfully, he still talked about RKOing grandmothers, so he's not there yet. I wonder if Sheamus' grandmother would take the RKO by jumping into it headfirst like Sheamus does.

- Also, I still don't understand the Sheamus character. Does he believe what he says? Is he scared of people or not? He says he's not, but runs away all the time. He says he ended Triple H's career with his bare hands, but he used a pipe. He says one thing, does another. But no one questions him. The announcers, wrestlers, whoever, they just keep trying to convince us that he's dominant and dangerous and whatever other thing they want us to believe.


- R-Truth's new song is SO BAD. What's Up worked because it was at least catchy on some basic level. This song is so goddamned bad. Doesn't everyone realize that rap and rock NEVER WORK?! STOP IT. JUST STOP. FUCK. They really should've tried to get someone good to help him write the song. This song is literally less catchy and relevant than "Gettin' Rowdy" and I'm not saying that to be funny at all, it's actually how I feel. Having Eve do her aggressive dance moves does not help. Nor does it distract anyone from how terrible this is.


- After writing that rant, Ted DiBiase's new theme came on. ...


- And finally, Michael Cole. He was in fine form tonight. Normally, I can totally dig Michael Cole's heeling out at times, but it has to make sense. His attempt at burying the Hart Dynasty in the most forced sounding way (right when he introduced them) was ridiculous and awkward. The rest of the commentary on that match was so distracting and frustrating and didn't put anyone over. Not even the heels in the match - he was just giggling about Cody's legs. So the commentary didn't help the match, it didn't help the guys on guest commentary, nothing. It was just five minutes of chaos on the ears while you tried to watch what seemed like it could've been a fun match.


Cole zapping back and forth between heel Cole and company shill Cole is completely jarring to watch. The heel stuff made way more sense when it was just on Bryan Danielson - Michael Cole is a company shill and is offended that Danielson has been getting so much praise for what he's done on the indies, and yet he's done nothing in the WWE. Therefore, Cole hates on him. Makes sense. Michael Cole raking the Harts over the coals (pun not intended) makes no sense.


Even Cole himself doesn't know what he believes. At one point he talked about how much he loved it when Jericho calls people (a.k.a. John Morrison, a guy he was just putting over in that same match) a "stupid man." King quickly pointed out, "why would you like that?" And Cole admitted himself that he'd been called that by Jericho and he didn't know his name for about 10 years or so. Is he schizophrenic? A masochist? WHAT ARE YOU


If this somehow leads to Michael Cole leaving commentary in favour of being a manager, then colour me ELATED. He could join up with Miz and A-Ri and instantly keep them from turning full-blown face. Not only that, but when the time was right to turn Miz, they would have an easy way - beat the living shit out of Michael Cole. But I get the feeling this isn't happening.


They need to sort this out because my brain already hurts enough when I watch this show.

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