Welcome, friends, Romans and countrymen (and ladies) who have done their share of ear lending (or eyes in this case), to another edition of The Rager. Last week, I diverged from the usual Rager format and took a look into just who was the best Heel in the WWE. I really hope everybody enjoyed that and feel free to give it a look, if you haven’t done so yet. I may, in a future Rager, do the same with Babyfaces but TODAY we return to your regularly scheduled Rager.
Opening Rage
I’ll be completely honest, I never watched an episode of Superstars until I started doing the Pulse Wrestling Recap about a month ago. To prepare for this, I watched a bunch of the previous episodes and I grew to like the show. Why? Because I got to see wrestlers actually wrestle (thats right, WWE, you’re a wrestling company, get over it) and not only that but you got to see guys who were usually getting their hind quarters handed to them on the top 2 shows.
I submit the case of Chris Masters. here’s a guy who has showed some improvement since his return a while ago but where has he shown that improvement? Getting beasted by insert name here rising Superstars? No. Showing off his dancing pecks? Dear good God almighty, no. WWE Superstars? Absolutely. Without this show, a lot of these lower card guys will only get face time being jobbers and I understand thats how things were done back-in-the-day but I’m not so sure that would work nowadays.
In my opinion, I believe WWE needs to keep a show such as this around and they need to find a network that understands that they won’t get a big audience. The perfect solution? Get rid of NXT, let Tough Enough handle the reality show crowd and broadcast a Superstars-equivalent show online. Yes? Yes.
Secondary Rage
I know I’m late on this, but has Kane turned face? This just seems odd and out of place. Don’t get me wrong, I giggled a little when I heard Kane’s need for Big Show’s completeness. Follow that awkwardness to Kane opting for Santino’s celebration tactics and it sure seems like the turn is complete. This might be a good thing for The Big Red Machine, seeing as how his recent storyline with Undertaker and especially Edge had us all rolling our eyes in woeful discontent. What I loved in that whole process? Kane’s promos leading up to his feud with the Undertaker, it showed that he still has some character and personality…even if it was just raging his head off in the ring. Maybe turning that personality into a face might be a good transition for Kane. Who knows? I’m down.
Thirdly Rage
Let us now, dearest, sticky, Rageans, move to the CM Punk, the Pseudo Nexus and Randy Orton. Last week in my breakdown of Heels, I sang the praises of CM Punk for his antics and ring ability but warned that if he kept going with his awesomeness, he’d turn into an Orton-like anti-hero face and I believe we all saw a glimpse of that on Raw. Sure, it was mainly due to being in his hometown of Chicago and pandering a bit towards that.
But moving on, as I watched their segment open Raw and when Punk mentioned that he didn’t care that the other members of Nexus all received a punt to the head, I took a moment and thought about where Nexus came from and what its turned into. When you think about it, its not Nexus anymore, its a new Straight Edge Society with a twist and i’m not sure that its working even before its current dismantled state. Don’t get me wrong, CM Punk is ontop of his game right now but I feel like its getting harder for the fans to look at the Nexus in the same way it originally did. I pondered this thought a little further and I came up with an idea that could explain this. Please note that this is just all speculative and my mind is simply being imaginative. Think back on Nexus’ original attack almost a year ago: they attacked John Cena but they also attack Cena’s opponent that night. Cena’s opponent that night was, of course, CM Punk. I feel like that alone could start an amazing feud between Cena and Punk and there’s two ways they could go about it.
First, they could go the easy route and Punk could explain that he was the original orchestrator behind the Nexus (it would make sense because he had access to the NXT rookies through his protege Darren Young) and used them to try to destroy John Cena. OR (I like this idea so much better) seeing as how the Nexus is pretty much in shambles right now, Punk could exclaim that it was all part of his plan. He could say that he joined Nexus after he saw Cena fail to dismantle the group and Punk was able to from the inside because “he’s better” than Cena. This could lead to a great feud with Cena and possible help WWE embrace Punk’s forthcoming anti-hero face-ness as mentioned earlier. But what do I know?
Rage Episode IV: A New Hope
This may be presuming too much or being too hopeful…whatever it is, I do hope we witness the long-awaited heel turn of John Cena following the AA executed on The Rock. I don’t really have much else to say on the matter other than I thought it was a decent promo but it reverted back to putting Miz in the backseat once again. Sure, Miz and Alex Riley attacked but it didn’t do much good and the WWE Champion just got thrown around the ring like he was nothing. The promo pretty much said that we will see Rock in action of some sort at Wrestlemania because if they peaked this story on the Raw before then thats would be a huge screw up on their part. Give the people what they wanna see, Rock can handle it.
King Rage V
Finally, lets take one final look at the HHH/Undertaker shenanigans. Before Raw, I was fully prepared to complain about the promos leading up to Wrestlemania. It felt like they were all lacking any sort of specialness to them. Sure the initial stare-down was chilling but all the promos following that were just one of them talking about how epic it was gonna be. Why did these promos seem lame? because I was comparing them to Shawn Michaels’ promos, mainly the rare Smackdown appearance where he filled the arena with white smoke and dressing in the white hat and jacket. It was quite possibly my favorite promo of all time.
Low and behold, WWE must’ve felt my displeasure and gave this feud a big HBK shot in the arm. He was spot-on with what he was saying and then getting shot down by both HHH and Undertaker was brilliant. The promo had a disfunctional family vibe to it. It was like two divorced parents yelling at each other and arguing about their kid, not caring that their kid was in the room and could hear every word.
Much like The Rock’s promo, this pretty much says Michaels’ will have some sort of role in this match and I’m really curious about what HHH wanted Shawn to say at the end and I’m wondering if it has anything to do with what HHH wanted to say on Shawn’s farewell Raw before getting attacked by Sheamus. Again, speculation.
Well thanks for letting me get these Rages out. As always feel free to comment and discuss any of these issues as well as anything you may be raging about yourself.
Have a great week!
A cucumber should be well sliced, and dressed with pepper and vinegar, and then thrown out, as good for nothing.
