The highlight of RAW was finally, the WWE Women’s Championship returns to Mickie James. The fact they let her take in her moment and celebrate her fourth championship win! It’s about time Mickie has a chance to run with the ball, and they did the match in a believable fashion with the Glamazon dominating and Mickie being the underdog. It was a little anticlimatic because I knew a change was going to end up happening because how often does Lilian really announce the championships matches like that on RAWs? Congratulations to Mickie, who more than deserves this chance. Let’s hope it means the return of psychic Mickie, because until then, she’s another incarnation of Trish Stratus right now. There’s nothing wrong with that, but Mickie as I have said before, is at her best as herself.
The other major news of the night is concerning Chris Jericho interjecting himself as a heel ref in the upcoming match between Batista and Shawn Michaels at Blacklash. It’s interesting that it’s Michaels, Jericho and Batista that spice up RAW lately. Michaels character is coming across as very strong, and Batista is getting the natural heel rub and now Jericho has something to do that’s worth talking about in the WWE. I would actually love to see Shawn throw back at him the “save us” jargon as much as Jericho is bringing up Michaels past.
Another strong aspect of the show is the surprising buildup of the tag team division lately with Cade having that Lex Luger and Paul Orndoroff heel turn look in his eye coming up against his losing partner, Murdoch. Then, somehow, Carlito gets a win for once, and with his partner, “no mic time” Santino, have a chance against the boring team of Bob Holly and Cody Rhodes. Meanwhile, Rockers 2008 aka London and Kendrick, are still in it but not necessarily to win it. They need some more friction too. How will Cryme Tyme, who need to be tag team wrestlers and not singles wrestlers, factor in? They are so incredibly over as faces that it’s undeniable. I’m nervous about building up too much hope because WWE has yet to show real consistency in years with the division, but maybe that’s about to change.
The JBL versus Triple H ‘first time ever’ should have been better than what it was and it was no surprise to me that it wasn’t going to have any sort of clean ending. The biggest surprise was the absence of Cena from the show! Since I’m a lifetime member of Team Regal, I am excited to see him over like Hulk Hogan in his home country but there’s something extremely wrong in the amount of time Orton took to recover to hit his RKO. I under RKO is like the Diamond Cutter and you never know when it’s coming, but, psychology in Orton’s matches after Regal has stretched him and bumped him around are completely lost. Finally, how random was it to see “Hacksaw” Jim Duggan, all American in ENGLAND versus Paul Birchhill who beat him in about a minute’s time? What was the point of that? Matches like this, which were somehow passable on WWF Superstars, just don’t work now.
Thanks for reading, for all your support and for all the feedback, feel free to contact me anytime at Bam@4sternstaging.com.
