Welcome everyone to another 10 Thoughts on Monday Night Raw! Before I begin, I want to stress the importance of following me on twitter, because it’s an awesome thing to do. Check it at twitter.com/itswilltime.
Now, on with the thoughts!
1. We all knew that something bad was going to happen when Raw opened with Santino and Kozlov coming to the ring, that segment is reserved for main event talent. Sure enough within a minute we had CM Punk’s Nexus (with awesome new shirts) take out the tag champs and begin their initiations.
2. I like that WWE is making an effort to get Alberto Del Rio over on both brands. If he is a future main event star, it is important to make sure that Raw and Smackdown viewers know who he is and hate him. I’m also happy anytime I see R-Truth made to look stupid and lose.
3. I will be fair though, the entire portion of the post match that involved music, or Ricardo Rodriguez singing was bad. It was really bad.
4. Did that Jerry Lawler and Michael Cole segment go on just a little too long to anyone else? I actually don’t hate where this is going, especially if it ends in a Wrestlemania match for The King, but this could have been trimmed down.
5. I would always rather see Daniel Bryan get to wrestle a real match rather than a filler tag match. I know he won’t have the four star performance we would like to see every week, but this tag match was a waste.
6. Maybe I’ll be in the minority, but I actually liked Punk making Otunga go and take a beat down from Big Show. It did make him look like an imposing force and it was an eerie image to see Otunga stand there while show took him out.
6. WWE did a great job with the Miz vs Morrison video package from last week. It was great to hear the announcers put the match over as brutal and a big time performance from Morrison. As I thought of a big time performance, we saw the nice little match between John Morrison and Sheamus. These two work very well together and Morrsion needs wins to capitalize on the last few weeks.
7. The Shawn Michaels video package gave me chills. What would follow had me on my feet in my living room. I wish we would have gotten a real promo from HBK, but I loved seeing him tune up Sweet Chin Music one more time on Raw. This was a big time moment and should be on a best of 2011 DVD.
8. The Punk initiation segment was a little silly. No one bout that he would jump it took quite a while to get though. The John Cena interview was well done, with Cena finally in serious mode. One benefit of PG WWE is that when one does get angry enough to use a word like ass, it matters and has an effect.
9. I don’t know if I like the commentary team focussing on how the WWE Champion does not want to fight a semi retired commentator. Jerry Lawler has been built up well, but he is still just an announcer and not a championship competitor like The Miz.
10. The main event felt a little anticlimactic following the HBK and Cena segments, but The Miz definitely belongs at the close of the show. The match built up Miz vs Orton well, which was the ultimate purpose.
That’s all for me folks! Stay tuned for my long awaited Goldust book review this week and more.
