As I was editing this last week, I saw Scott post his Raw Rant to the TV Shows section and decided it would be somewhat silly to knock him out of the top slot. It also didn’t help that my Raw viewing got all screwed up because of it being on the wrong station.
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1) Does Orton write for the Internet? He ran down Raw like a Pulse columnist. Was running down the entire roster a face turn? In other news, my hope for the Orton/Batista/Rhodes/Dibiase stable is rekindled… heavily.
2) Can someone explain to me why Punk would engage anyone in the championship scramble match? Wouldn’t his strategy be to stay away from everyone, let everyone else fight it out, and just break-up pinfalls? Why would he even stay in the ring? This whole match format is stupid. Not only that, but they’re doing it for all three brands? And they have the balls to compare it to actual GOOD ideas like Hell in the Cell, the Rumble, and other things? Look guys, it’s a really stupid idea. Someone in the meeting thought it was a stupid idea. Give that man a raise and listen to him more.
3) Anyone who doesn’t like the GM system is dumb. Adamle: “I’m not as dapper as this guy.” Teddy Long: “Holla.” Bwahahaha.
4) I guess if you’re going with this match type, a five-man Battle Royal is as good a way as any to pimp it. No surprise that Mark Henry would ECW version. They need to push the idea that being fat and huge is an advantage in a battle royal sometimes… even though it never is.
5) Jillian Hall fails the table test miserably. She actively takes things off the table. She’s not hot, the “I can’t sing gimmick” is over, and she’s not a particularly good wrestler. Can they please replace her with some other pretty face and let her go to TNA where I mostly won’t see her.
6) OMG… the Honk-a-Meter is the greatest thing I’ve ever seen in this lifetime. Is it bad that I desperately want them to let him ride this out for like 62 weeks and have him beat up the Honky Tonk Man? I will now be reporting the Honk-a-Meter status each week in this space. It’s now at 2.
6) Reason #6,342,589 I love Vince McMahon: he decides to send wrestlers to the Republican National Convention. One of his choices is a female wrestler who has well-circulated hardcore porn photos. Vince is the greatest human-being alive.
7) Here are your four possible endings to the Scrambles: 1) No pinfalls by anyone, champ retains. 2) Pinfall occurs early on in the match and it stays valid until the last 30 seconds when the original champ gets it back. 3) Two guys work out an “Outlaws Rule” deal… most probably Rey Mysterio heel-turn, teaming up with Kane to screw Punk. 4) Triple H stacks everyone up in 2-man piles and pins them. You may assign these as you deem appropriate. Number 4 can be used in any or all of them.
8) Glad to see Rey back and healthy. Also happy to see he dropped those silly contact lenses. I guess only one guy per feud is allowed to have oddly colored contacts. I will give this to the Scramble match — lots of different things to carry the company through the Royal Rumble can come from it.
9) I’m somewhat surprised that Jericho signed the contract for the match at Unforgiven. I half-expected/half-hoped that he would refuse to sign it for some reason and thus extend this feud for at least another month. Or, at the very most, Jericho goaded Shawn into hitting him and thus using Adamle’s own decree to call off the match on Sunday.
10) Shawn Michaels dove out of the ring to get Jericho and literally almost killed himself. He hit his forehead on the floor and drove his head backward as his weight came down. I can’t believe he didn’t seriously injure himself.
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Good Raw that did a great job promoting the matches this weekend. The Raw Scramble has a fairly decent number of sub-plots (Batista/Kane, Kane/Rey, Punk/Batista/Orton, JBL/Punk) all of which got equal time to promote themselves. The ECW Scramble isn’t as tightly defined, but I’ll give them the benefit of tomorrow to flesh that out. Jericho/Michaels is writing itself. The Orton/Rhodes/Dibiase vs. Crime Time angle is fleshing itself out nicely, too.
I enjoyed it. Good stuff.
