Glazer And Curran Tag Team Raw Spoilers

Columns, Features

Because Aaron just doesn’t get enough exposure here, I decided to throw the kid a bone and team up to talk smack about tonight’s Raw spoilers, because actually watching something on TV is so 20th Century. It’s all pretty stream of consciousness. Oh, and one of us makes reference to Randy Orton’s bowel movements, if you need a teaser.

Brad Curran: Dibiase booked Cody Rhodes against Mark Henry and Ted Jr. against Randy to start the show. So, Million Dollar Man as a face. I expected him to give his kid a match against Orton when they announced him as guest GM last week. Although maybe Kofi would have made more sense, since Ted vs. Randy is non-title from what I can tell. So, do we can mock or praise the booking?

Pulse Glazer: Doing it non-title is flat out stupid for Ted Sr. It does nothing for Jr. but sow dissent with his boss. Care to make sense of this? How does the match actually go? I assume Henry just crushes Cody?

Curran: Randy wins with an RKO and, yeah, Henry beats Cody. The only reason I can justify Sr. booking Jr. against his boss it that he doesn’t like that his kid is Orton’s Virgil. And, given the ending of the show (Legacy bails on Orton, so Triple H and Cena hit their finishers on him), they are playing up dissension in Legacy. My main sticking point is Dibiase as a face in WWE.

Glazer: It makes zero sense to have dissension in Legacy since they’ve done nothing yet. It means nothing!

Curran (Ignoring Glazer’s salient point to answer a topic the voices in his head have been talking about for a week): I’m actually okay with a Henry face push, as long as he isn’t getting PPV title shots or anything. (I will come to regret this when Mark spends the rest of the Summer touring America in his Henry Express bus, campaigning for a title shot.)

Glazer: If he’s over, run with it. If the crowd turns on it, and they will, pull the plug fast. I’m mostly scared of this lasting years.

Curran: Carlito and Primo lost to Jericho and Edge again. Post match, Carlito turned on him. Because really, who needs another good tag team when WWE has teams like… uhh… yeah. Also, I’m really looking forward to Carlito wrestling a less charismatic version of himself.

Glazer: Oh come on, nothing with Primo is good. That dude is a terrible botch a second.

Curran: I like him okay as a face in peril. And I don’t think he’s that bad.

Glazer: I hate him a lot botching every lucha move he tries

Curran: I like him in that very specific role of taking a beating and making a hot tag. He and Carlito were a fun little team, too. I don’t get what having them feud does for any of them, unless they’re going to try another Carlito heel push.

Glazer: They pretty clearly are. There don’t seem to be a lot of heels that matter on Raw. You have Orton and… and… and… Swagger maybe?

Curran: Those have a great track record. Carlito heel pushes.

Glazer: Who else can they use? They want Swagger higher on the card, so who fights the Kofis and Sydals in meaningless tag matches?

Curran: Kendrick, Chavo, Noble. Wait, you mean people they care about?

Glazer: So, Carlito

Curran: Of course, Carlito’s pushes petering out tend to be at least partially his fault. Hopefully he can remain motivated, because I do like him, and if nothing else, would like one of these singles runs to work just to break the monotony. That said, MVP probably ought to turn again. Soon-ish, at least.

Glazer: MVP is absolute garbage as a face… which is controversial for now, but will be said by everyone in a couple of months when he fails to make any splash yet again. (If you concentrate really hard, you can see Glazer giving himself a high five. It sort of looks like this, but without a gorilla and a shark.)

Curran: And speaking of Kofi and Bourne, which you did moments ago, they fought. Evan won. Big Show squished them both like little bugs after.

Glazer: Big Show in the mid-card has never been good news; he’s the big, fat line they draw between the top and bottom of the card.

Curran: Well, what would you rather see, and this is a serious question: Show feuding with Kofi and probably putting him over, since what does he need with the U.S. Title?
Or heel Show vs. face Henry? Or Show vs. HHH?

Glazer: Show HHH would be perfect. Totally ignorable.

Curran: They had a pretty solid match on Smackdown last year when I was doing 10 thoughts on it.

Glazer: Ignorable, I say! “shakes fist” (I like to think Glazer does shake his fist every time Triple H does anything, like a Scooby Doo villain or something.)

Curran: Well, there’s that too. But it’s not an awful pairing for those of us that don’t shake our fists at things. Of course, I thought Cena vs. Show wouldn’t be totally crap given that they’d had watchable matches in the past, so the joke was on me there! Well, really on WWE, because I haven’t been able to afford any of the PPVs they had singles matches on.

Glazer: Not worth losing money over.

Curran: Oh, I skimmed past this, but this is important: Ted Jr. yelled at his dad and slapped him after his match with Randy (so important we ignored it for the rest of the conversation! And now is the obligatory point in every internet wrestling conversation where Smackdown is praised).

Curran: I wish they’d go back to seperated brand PPVs, so I could buy a Smackdown show every other month. Of course, Smackdown gives away some really good stuff free. Like Punk vs. Morrison. So I don’t miss PPVs too much right now.

Glazer: Like everyone vs. Morrison. I just caught Morrison vs. Bourne from that ECW… what a match!

Curran: Wow. Sounds like someone’s living in the past. Modernize, man, modernize! (Never let it be said I’ll miss a chance to awkwardly cram a Simpsons reference in to any conversation). But yeah, it was.

Glazer: I don’t have Tivo sadly.

Curran: That is sad. I weep for you.

Glazer: I know, but the intarweb has replays of everything. I just get to it months late

Curran: Yeah, I was going to say “There’s this great site called youtube…” Or Hulu, too, really.

(And then Glazer laughs at me for not knowing how to torrent. For like an hour. And then I make fun of him for taking months to watch a free TV MOTYC candidate. And then we move on to the Women’s match.)

Curran: Mickie and Gail Kim defeated Maryse and Alicia Fox. Mickie pinned Maryse. Gail kind of wished she was still in TNA while selling for Maryse. Well, I assume so.

Glazer: I don’t comment on wrestling I don’t care about. Bet it wasn’t a free TV MOTYC. (If Glazer were to show any interest in a Diva match, the indie contingent on this site would skin and eat him. That’s real.)

Curran: I’m hoping that Gail being on Raw means she’ll have a match with Beth Phoenix on PPV, because I want to see if they have the same chemistry she and Kong had. (And now I try to pick up Glazer’s slack by talking about the Divas more than any self respecting smark should). I like Gail a lot as a worker and hope she didn’t come back to WWE just to be a jobber to the fitness models. I like Maryse, too, but for different reasons. Mickie’s probably the most solid female performer WWE has, all around. Alicia Fox… well, her hair is magical!

Curran: So, moving on to Cena vs. Triple H 3. This needs an epic tagline. Any thoughts? (I came up with one, post IM. This match has gone from headlining Wrestlemania, to headlining Night Of Champions, to headlining Raw. What’s next in that sequence? Headlining Superstars? Curtain jerking a revived AWA brand in 2010?)

Glazer: Nothing that isn’t sarcastic. It’s amazing the heat Cena gets, yet still draws, meanwhile Triple H hasn’t drawn a dime in over five years.

Curran: Oh, no, I should have said “epic”. Because I wanted saracasm. (And now I ignore the actual match again and just bitch up a storm) Okay, this “draws” shit drives me up a fucking wall. How do you measure that? And I mean that seriously. Do you have metrics, or are you just slagging off the Hs?

Glazer: Okay- Triple H has been gone from Raw a lot. It never effects ratings when he’s gone. Nor do they go up for more than a week or two when he returns. Raw ratings fell to an all time low when Cena was gone and they went right back to normal when he returned. Same basic thing for buyrates.

Curran: So, it’s draws ratings and not butts in seats now? Okay. Most people don’t actually define that when they say “_” doesn’t draw.

Glazer: Draws is ratings and buyrates.

Curran: The problem is, I see the “__” has never drawn a dime bit on the internet a lot.
And it’s not people using any numbers like you did. It’s just “I don’t like this guy. Ergo, he does not draw.”

Glazer: Hey, news flash- a lot of wrestling fans repeat shit they hear without bothering to check if its true. (If I knew how to use Photoshop, I would actually make an image of an old timey newspaper with that as the headline.)

Curran: Or, it’s people saying so and so didn’t draw while assessing their wrestling skills.
Which is stone fucking stupid.

Glazer: Usually writing has more to do with drawing than characters, but since Hunter writes himself..

Curran: I kind of wish a guy being a draw would be eliminated from the discussion of their ability entirely. But moving on…Without me telling you the result of the match, can you guess it?

Glazer: Which match? Cena vs. Hs? I’d guess some kind of shmozz to set up a 3-way.

Curran: Congratulations! You have been watching wrestling for many years!

Glazer: sadly

Curran: Legacy runs in, double DQ, Ted Sr. books a three way. Because if Trump can pilfer ECW, an actual ex-wrestler can sign matches for PPVs with one week of power.

Glazer: They needed both Hunter and Cena on PPV.

Curran: And this is the closest thing they can do to freshen up the Orton/Hs rivalry and achieve that, short of Cena getting a partner and challenging for the tag belts. Of course, even this combination of them isn’t fresh, because this was the WWE Championship match at ‘Mania last year. And they just did a four with Big Show last month.

Glazer: Wrestling fans can’t remember that far back.

Curran: Well, WWE books on that premise, at least.

Glazer: It’s never really true. I know some very casual fans that get frustrated at that stuff all the time.

Curran: You and I are probably not the best example of who they’re booking for. Since the part of my brain that should house actual useful information is just Raw results for the last ten years.

Curran: I know, but I have friends who are. They get bored at ROH shows if matches go long (if they bothered going), never miss Raw, get all the PPVs…

Curran: That sounds like me… Well, at least last year, when I was buying PPVs. But I did like that one ROH PPV I got with McGuiness vs. Danielson! Was that a long match?

Glazer: 20 minutes or so. Not terribly long and definately well paced.

Curran: Yeah, that kept my interest the whole time. And Aries vs. Jacobs, but they were trying to murder each other. Hard to make that boring. Orton could.

Glazer: A lot of WWE guys could

Curran: Yeah, but unlike a lot of developmental guys, no one had to teach Randy that. He was born with it. Vince looked at him once in OVW and thought “This guy can take the air out of any arena with a chinlock. I will push him even if he shits in a Diva’s gym bag and lights it on fire with RVD’s rolling papers.”

Glazer: I’m too busy laughing to reply.

And now, it’s time for fantasy booking! So, if you hate that, here’s your heads up.

Curran: So, if I were booking, and couldn’t just have Evan Bourne beat Orton, I’d have Cena win the WWE Title at NOC and let Orton and Triple H blow off this interminable 5 year feud in Hell in a Cell at Summerslam. Really, Triple H shouldn’t even be back right now. He was not gone nearly long enough for me to miss him.

Glazer: I’m fine with that. Who does Cena face then?

Curran: That’s a tough one.

Glazer: Exactly.

Curran: Since Hell in a Cell will headline, do what they did last year with Hs and Khali. Throw a placeholder challenger out there. Maybe Ted Dibiase. Let him win the shot. He can talk about reclaiming the belt for Legacy. Like Orton did with Evolution. Since they’re playing up the disension.

Glazer: Maybe Cena Swagger

Curran: That was my second choice. And a better one, since they had a good Raw match on the Draft Show. Let Swagger take him to the limit again.

Glazer: Agreed there

Curran: Whoever it is, let them have a competitive match, and not just a squash, like with Miz. Swagger seems like the best choice if they go that way (although a U.S. Title feud with Kofi or Bourne could also be good, I just realised). Batista being hurt probably screws up whatever their plans are (I like to think they don’t just write everything down a cocktail napkin 10 minutes before the show). Really, though, that’s what they get for booking around Batista.

Glazer: Cena gave Miz stuff on Raw. Maybe Miz vs. Cena vs. Swagger at Summerslam?

Curran: Yeah, no. Maybe Miz as Swagger’s unwanted manager.

Glazer: That’d be cute.

Curran: He’d be a good manager, Miz would.

Glazer: He’s a fine worker, but I could deal with a heel group built around him being a dick.

Curran: He’s improved a ton and is solid, but is absolutely gold on the microphone. Of course, you could have said the same thing about Cena in 2003/2004.

Glazer: Which Lawler actually pointed out. Impressed? I thought he was too senile for that.

Curran: I swear that was Cole. Either one is so lame that it is impressive either way (although maybe we should be more impressed with whoever fed them the line). But yeah, a Miz Megadouches stable would be fun.

Miz, Kendrick, MVP, and Swagger run roughshod over the WWE through the power of sheer obnoxious arrogance! Until HHH gets annoyed and squashes them all. So, that would be three weeks or so.

So, yeah, this may be a recurring feature, if there aren’t too many objections and we actually feel like doing it. So, no commitments whatsoever.