For Your Consideration…The RAW Judicial Review for 2/28/11

For Your Consideration…The RAW Judicial Review for 2/28/11

Welcome back to the longest running action-adventure, passive aggressive, finally live column on the worldest of wide webs, For Your Consideration. I’m your relieved to be back host Andrew Wheeler, and what more can I say? It’s the Road to Wrestlemania, so we know that Vince & Creative (not to be mistaken for the incredibly hilarious WWE_Creative on Twitter) are actually going to give a shit about their show. Or at the very least, they’re going to do their standard phoned in show but plug in segments with Triple H, The Rock and Taker.

Alright, since I’m running short on time before the big show starts (but have I mentioned how happy I am after a two-week absence to be back LIVE?), I just want to get out some plugs. So remember you can follow me on Twitter (http://www.twitter.com/awheeler316), friend me on Facebook and post in the comment section down below. And with that out of the way…

The RAW Judicial Review for 2/28/11

“Wrestlemania.”

We open on the thawing out fans in Buffalo, but sadly no pyro or ballyhoo. Instead, here comes Triple H. He’s got his leather jacket, his steam bath, but sadly he isn’t wearing his sunglasses at night. Hunter’s angrily chewing his gum as we cut to Jerry “Ed Hardy” Lawler and Josh “Mini-Orton” Matthews, and I’m willing to endure a Triple H promo in exchange for no Cole at the start of the show.

Hunter spits his water, and something that always confused me is that he’s chewing gum when he comes to the ring, yet he’s able to spit the water without losing the gum. You know once in a while he’s screwed up and some poor shmuck got some Trident in the eye. And I’ll bet ten bucks that guy tried to sell it on eBay.

There are shots of guys with the creative “H” signs, as well as one dude who is banging his head along to the music with his “Time to play the game” sign. He screams “plant”. “I thought you guys were called fruits.”

Hunter stands in the ring and basks in the rapidly diminishing cheers, only for a “Triple H” cheer to rise back up. Hunter says it’s good to see them too, which we know is a lie since I’ve seen folks from Buffalo.

Triple H says that he’s done everything there is to do, including the boss’s daughter, but he’s never beaten Taker at Mania. He reminds us that he’s won every title, created DX, created Evolution (even name-drops Ric Flair) and beaten every wrestler on the planet. In 16 years, he’s seen them all come (but enough about the Divas…hey-o) and go, but he’s never seen The Undertaker leave. Really? He’s never seen Taker leave? Has he not paid attention during the last, oh, eight or nine years?

Hunter takes umbrage to the fact that Taker was called the Last Outlaw, mainly because he’s pissed he himself missed out on yet another nickname. Taker’s streak is what keeps him going, but when he looks in the locker-room, he knows that Triple H is the only challenge he has. So in about ten seconds Hunter buried every single star in the company. Well, at least he held down a lot of guys at once as opposed to burying each one individually.

Triple H calls Wrestlemania 27 the biggest event in history, so take that World War II. He promises that the last two outlaws (notice how he just stole Taker’s catchphrase?) will enter, and only one will be left. Much like Ray Stevens, the only thing Undertaker has left is the streak, and when it dies, he dies. Even though he’s undead. Oh, and if Hunter can’t end the streak, HE’LL die trying. Which I guess means Stephanie would assume complete control of the company, ushering in an era where streets run with blood and demons rape the TV-PG fans.

This gets interrupted by Sheamus, who thankfully left his giant felt cape in the back. Lawler calls this disrespectful, though I think waiting for someone to finish his promo is the appropriate amount of respect. Sheamus comes in the ring so Hunter just kicks him square in the nuts. Hunter launches him over the top rope and then slams him into the barricade before pounding him into oblivion.

Sheamus gets bounced off the ring post and clotheslined over another barricade. Hunter tosses him onto the announce table as Lawler says he hopes Undertaker is watching. Of course Taker’s watching, he’s supposed to care about the product. I bet his mystery cabin had satellite. Hunter Pedigree’s Sheamus through the table, making him look like an even bigger fool than Mark Henry did last week.

So for those of you keeping score at home, in the war between Triple H and Undertaker, Sheamus was the loser. Though to be fair, he was more or less collateral damage.

Jerry asks what they should do with Sheamus’s carcass as we find out we’ll hear about Shawn Michaels. Would it have killed them to use a graphic of him where he isn’t looking in two directions at once like a haunted house painting?

Oh, and we’ll hear from The Rock.

Commercial.

We’re back and we get to relive Sheamus jobbing to Hunter without even needing a match. On the plus side, it was a pretty cool looking Pedigree.

We’re on live as Sheamus is being helped to the back by three zebras. The GMail goes off and Jerry Lawler goes to the laptop. And I paraphrase…Sheamus was just brutally attacked, but that’s not his problem. Sheamus was scheduled to have a match, and he still has to wrestle against…Evan Bourne.

Sheamus v. Evan Bourne

Evan Bourne lets us know that two is his favorite number as he slides into the ring. I wonder if they’ll bother to remind us that Bourne was taken out of action by CM Punk?

Bourne dropkicks Sheamus down but Sheamus muscles back. Evan connects with Token Offense before going to the top rope and connects with AirBourne for the pin. Jesus, who the hell did Sheamus piss off?

As Evan celebrates, Michael Cole is introduced. The fans boo the shit out of him, and I love that the WWE is doing this. We never get to see Cole’s entrance, and we get to hear the heat he legitimately generates. Like him or hate him, he gets a reaction from the fans, and having him not do commentary only helps everyone’s enjoyment of the show as we fade to…

Commercial.

We’re back with a recap of Cole and Lawler’s confrontation last week.

Cole is in the ring in a stylish brown suit that I think was made from remnants of my grandparents’ old couch. Jerry leaves the spontaneously regenerated announce table and steps back to the ring. Michael Cole reminds us that if Jerry or Michael touch each other, they’ll be fired. If Jerry strikes Cole, Jerry’s fired.

Jerry gets in the ring anyway, showing that laws, be the GMail made or statutorily made, mean nothing to him. Michael Cole says that no one has more guts than him. No ands, ifs or buts, Michael Cole’s got guts. His answer to the challenge is “no”.

Oh wait, there’s an unless. First, he’ll face Lawler if his trainer’s in his corner and second, he gets to choose a guest referee. Jerry calls him a Cole Sore before listing off a bunch of people Cole could have as his trainer despite none of them being real people. Michael Cole does a shimmy around the ring before introducing his trainer…

Kurt SwAngle. Cole pokes Lawler, which should mean that Michael Cole is fired. Cole asks “What do you think, Lawler?” so many times that I’m convinced he’s autistic. SwAngle takes down Jerry and goes for the Angle Lock, but Jerry’s not doing a great job of selling it. Cole screeches in his ear and this thing is starting to generate X-Pac heat. The air out of the arena is gone.

Randy Orton is walking in the back and he’s on his way to a…

Commercial.

Did you know the WWE Facebook page gets 25,000 new fans a day? Did you care?

Next week Steve Austin returns to RAW. Welcome back, 1999.

Michael Cole is spraying down the headset because he doesn’t know what’s crawling in Lawler. That’s a pretty smart idea since rats did once spread the Black Plague. Cole calms himself down before realizing that Matthews is in his seat. Michael Cole is like Regis, he’s outta control. Sadly he’s not like Regis, who is at least planning on retiring.

I hear voices, which means here comes Randy Orton and his healthy orange glow and not that I need meds. Randy calls punting Punk in the head the biggest mistake of his career. His mistake was that he should have kicked him harder, and not the fact that he let Manu into his stable. Orton promises to make Punk a cripple, something he says about eight different ways.

This brings out CM Punk, who is flanked by PuNexus, doing the one thing they can do best…stand there. Punk calls Randy arrogant but predictable. He’s glad Orton showed up, because that was his plan all along. Punk said Randy can put him in a rehab facility, because he’s going to put him in the ground. That’s assault, brutha.

The GMail goes off and Josh Matthews takes the reigns. And I paraphrase…there’s only one way for Punk and Orton to settle things, and that’s in a match at Wrestlemania. Randy Orton will face the members of PuNexus. If they win, they can be in his corner. If he wins, the PuNexus member is banned from Wrestlemania. And if they get involved, PuNexus will be like the PTA and be disbanded.

Randy Orton v. Slightly Perfect

SP heads down to the ring, showing he can remove his shirt and walk at the same time. That’s not impressive. Let’s see what he can do with gum.

The two of them lock up in the center of the ring and SP backs him into a corner. Orton reverses and fires back with punches and then hits his clothesline. Randy tries to drop a knee but SP moves out of the way. Orton clotheslines SP over the top rope in a pretty botched spot, sending SP to the outside where he hits the…

Commercial.

We’re back and Orton is firing away on SP. Slightly Perfect reverses and drops Randy for two. So the stipulation here is that PuNexus will not be allowed to cheat in a future wrestling match. Does that make sense to anyone else? I guess we knew we’d see Orton face every member of PuNexus anyway, so they threw this nonsense in there.

SP locks in a resthold until Orton reverses with a belly-to-back suplex. Orton looks either out of it or just bored. This couldn’t be more of a foregone conclusion if they tried. Randy hits the Vintage Slam and the inverted backbreaker. Cole and Matthews debate just how Zone-ish Orton’s zone is as he goes for the Second-Rope DDT.

Randy drops to the mat and starts humping the ground and hits the RKO for the pin.

CM Punk appears at the apron, looking on like he’s Moriarty. After Orton’s music stops, he positions himself to kick SP in the head. Punk says he doesn’t want to do this and no one wants to see him do this. CM Punk tells him not to punt him in the skull, so of course he takes SP’s head off. I didn’t even know McGillicutty needed to lose weight.

Randy bails before PuNexus can make the save, and the blatant way that Punk is doing this it’s almost like it’s all part of his plan.

Mistico/Sin Cara is now part of the WWE, according to the little video package.

The Miz and Mizfit are in the back in snazzy suits, walking towards a…

Commercial.

We’re back as we relive the bizarre ending from last week’s RAW, where we got three week’s worth of storylines in ten minutes. How very TNA of them.

Awesome, here comes The Miz. Miz points out that The Rock is responding to John Cena tonight but isn’t responding to The Miz. He isn’t because Rocky knows Miz is right. So basically The Miz is just re-doing his one-sided feud that he had with John Cena, only this time with The Rock. Eh, if you’re gonna steal, it isn’t a bad one to steal from.

The Miz calls himself the biggest star in the WWE. He is the reason that the people in Buffalo are there tonight, and not because the arena promises free heat. For some reason, Miz’s eyes are all bloodshot. Miz, if you’re going to emulate a champion, don’t let it be RVD.

Miz points out that he won the tag titles and John Cena lost them because Miz controls what happens in the WWE. Cena should be worried about The Miz because he’s going to beat John Cena and then beat The Rock. He thought it sounded so nice that he said it twice. The Miz again calls himself the greatest superstar of all time.

The Mizfit demands we all get on our feet and try to walk a straight line while touching our fingers to our noses. This brings out…John Cena. John does his “golly gee there’s a lot of folks here” aw shucks pan around the arena before he heads into the ring.

John says he has some berry important news. Cena can’t listen to another word that The Miz is saying. We shouldn’t have to put up with it, but sadly I’m watching this live and can’t fast-forward. Cena pulls out a doctor’s note, which means he’s stealing Epstein’s gimmick. Apparently The Miz has OCD with being Must See before inferring that he has a small penis. Cena tries to make Miz sound crazy, but it’s just coming off as childish and stale.

Mizfit tries to insult Cena and he exposes how terrible he is on a microphone. Cena buries him and infers that he’s gay…again. John Cena demands The Miz fires Mizfit.

The Miz says that unlike Cena, who is busy hocking merchandise, he’s busy being champion. Cena continues to call them gay. He demands a match with Mizfit, and if Cena wins, Mizfit is fired. What’s it gonna be Miz, yes or no? When did this turn into a Meatloaf song?

Miz accepts on the condition that if Mizfit wins, John Cena must publicly admit that Miz is the greatest superstar of all time, because he’s Mike Mizanin and he is full of awe. So let me get this straight, he’s wagering a man’s career versus being called awesome.

Cole reassumes the GMail duties. And I paraphrase…tonight’s match will take place inside a steel cage. Good thing they just happened to have one in the building. The only way to win is to escape the cage.

Commercial.

Shawn Michaels speaks out tonight. Seems a little early to go for this. Eve is ringside to do commentary on a Divas Battle Royal. Ugh, really?

Diva Battle Royal

Alicia Fox and Snukette get dumped out of the ring quickly and this thing is at least going quickly. Maryse dumps Melina and Natalya, leaving Gail Kim, Maryse and one of the Bella Twins. Maryse gets dumped after going for a DDT, leaving Gail Kim and Random Bella. Gail dumps the Bella but the other Bella comes into the ring and eliminates Gail Kim.

Eve runs in to stop the shenanigans, but gets double-teamed by the Bella Twins (it doesn’t look as fun as it sounds).

Commercial.

We relive John Cena’s promo from last week.

We are live via satellite with The Rock. Rock is wearing Cena’s gear and he does some rapping before ripping off the hat and chain. Finally, The Rock has come back to his living room. He talks about how women want to fuck him and makes men want to join him in beating people up. The Rock on pretape is more exciting than an hour and a half of live programming.

The Rock says he spoke from his heart and took umbrage with John Cena rapping to him. He reiterates this point four or five more times, saying that there was no other way for a goof like Cena to respond.

The Rock’s pissed off about Cena calling him a liar because Rock said he loved the business. Rocky was insulted and apparently Cena insulted his family. The Rock says his love of the WWE is endless. He grew up in the WWE. He was born into the WWE.

The Rock shows his WWE Title collection and says how proud he is to have the belts. The Rock knew that if he made it in Hollywood that it meant that he opened the door for the WWE locker-room. He paved the way for Cena to become a star. Now John Cena will pay. Maybe he’ll go eat some hay. He just may.

Apparently The Rock brings “it”, which means whatever “it” is, “it” can get through TSA security. The Rock promises to kick his monkey ass. He’s hosting Wrestlemania, but he’ll also be addressing Cena sooner than he thinks. The Rock snaps his fingers and the lights go out. When did he get that power?

When he does his millions and millions shtick, the lights flash on and off. The Rock is back to scratch a major itch, which makes me think he spent some time with Lita. He calls John Cena a Yabba Dabba Bitch, which I believe was Halle Berry’s character in “The Flintstones”.

And just like that, The Rock reestablished himself as the most over guy in the company despite not being a wrestler. Then again, it’s still better than Triple H’s promo where he buried the entire company.

Commercial.

We’re back and we get to see the cabin again. At least when the door opened, it wasn’t the TNA Champion. How the hell could anyone in TNA thing that was a good idea?

Did you know a fuckton of people watched Smackdown last week? Well, now you do.

Shawn Michaels is on now in a pretape from his house talking about the Hunter/Taker match. Shawn hopes that Undertaker gets his because he’s bitter about being retired by Taker. Shawn has wrestled both guys and has a history with them. We get a montage of Taker Mania wins, and I pop when I hear Gorilla Monsoon’s voice.

The Triple H video part is basically just Hunter destroying Shawn, Orton and Flair. Shawn thinks that Hunter can be the one to beat him because Triple H has no compassion. He’s an emotionless monster, which explains why he wore that barbarian costume with a straight face.

We come out of that package and here comes Daniel Bryan. Ugh, would it have killed the WWE to have Bryan come out during a segment when it was Lawler and Matthews?

Daniel Bryan gets jumped by The Miz, who bounces him from barricade to barricade. Miz puts the boots to him and hits the SCF on the entrance ramp. The audience is absolutely dead at this point. Miz did that because he can. Welcome to The Miz Show. He demands that the cage be lowered and the match start, right after this…

Commercial.

The Miz explains that he did what he did to show that he can. I’m glad the WWE finally realized that they have to make The Miz strong, but that might not have been the best way to do it. The fans legitimately wanted to see Daniel Bryan wrestle, especially on this talk-heavy episode of RAW.

Steel Cage: Job versus Declaration of Awesomeness: John Cena v. Mizfit

Cena fires away on Mizfit to start and then fires off a chop. He bounces Mizfit from corner to corner. John Cena hiptosses Mizfit and walks to the door but The Miz closes the door on him. Miz slams the door in Cena’s face and then goes back to commentary.

Mizfit grates Cena’s face against the cage while The Miz takes a picture of it on his phone. Cena fires back and bounces Mizfit’s head off the cage. Mizfit gets slipped Miz’s cell phone, which is used as a foreign object. That’s a big move, especially considering the roaming charges.

The Mizfit crawls out the door but Cena grabs his ankle. Miz tries to yank him out and it’s tug of raw. Cena wins and drags Mizfit into the ring to lock in the STFU. Mizfit taps like Gregory Hines until Cena releases the hold.

John climbs the cage but Miz stands at the bottom of the cage swinging a chair. Cena tries to go out another side and it’s like watching an Atari video game. Mizfit gets Cena on his shoulders and connects with an electric chair drop as we go to…

Commercial.

Wow, a commercial after 11? That’s a rarity.

We’re back and Mizfit takes down Cena with a dropkick. Mizfit goes for another dropkick but Cena just holds onto the ropes. Cena busts out the Five Moves of Mediocrity and I’m baffled at why Cole is being so critical of The Miz all of a sudden. It seems so disjointed.

Mizfit and Cena battle up the cage and Mizfit makes it to the top of the cage but shows he hasn’t perfected the art of the slow climb. Cena knocks Mizfit into the ring and hits an FU before using Miz’s cell phone. John tries to muscle out of the cage while Miz holds the door shut but Cena busts free. Miz locks in the SCF (which Cena just LET him do) and drops him.

Miz poses at the top of the ramp with the title as Cena is left lying.

This has been for your consideration.