No Chance – 3 more hours. Where’s my twist ending? (CM Punk, Evan Bourne)

Columns, Top Story

In the past two weeks we’ve had two “special” three hour Raw episodes, and in between them, another three hour PPV. Add on an episode of Smackdown, and that’s eleven hours of WWE in eight days (more if you’re one of those that watches Superstars or * gag * NXT every week.) And with six of those hours happening within 24 hours of each other, needless to say, we’ve had quite a bit of wrestling coming our way recently.

For me, getting through all of that, was the thought that at the end of the “power to the people” episode of Raw, we were going to get some plot point, some unexpected event that would kick start the journey to SummerSlam, more or less, this year’s version of the Nexus invasion. And now that it’s all over, what was the big event that would guarantee my tuning into Raw next week? Nothing. A big fat complete nothing. The final shot of the night was Super-Cena and Randy (who is getting dangerously close to Super himself) standing on ring posts, holding their championship belts high. I tell you, if Raw ever ended up having to go off air with all storylines finished and no need to ever return to the WWE universe, that would be the shot to use. One that says all is right, faces have the belts and heels have been vanquished, never again to darken our doors. No one will ever again provide a credible threat to us or our championships.

There is always a slump after WrestleMania. That is to be expected and, to a degree, forgiven. With every storyline coming to a head at WrestleMania, it can take some time to build up a new and interesting storyline. But this slump has just kept going. Cena seems to be beating one heal a month without any real extended feud getting to build. More and more stories and rivalries seem to be falling lower and lower on the list of what WWE cares about. Instead of story dictating what matches we watch, we get matches decided, “because Stone Cold said so” and by texting. Next week looks like it’s going to continue this trend by having all the matches decided by a giant wheel.

But enough of that, lets get to some specific recent events.

I suppose that because a belt changed hands last night we should address that for a moment. WWE likes to say that they always keep a close look at Internet sites so they can keep a finger on the pulse of their audience and always give them the product that they want. While an alarming lack of Ryder on Raw is enough to prove this false in my eyes, lets pretend for a moment that this is true. Lets say that Vince, or some other high ranking WWE official was browsing the web when they discovered that the entire internet, was more or less aware of some striking similarities in the character development of John Cena and Kelly Kelly. In fact it seems that at this point, Kelly Kelly is being viewed as a female version of Cena. WWE, when I say that, I mean that Kelly Kelly needs to develop her own character, and that you need to be wary of modeling her character after the worst traits of Cena. What I do not mean is “Throw a belt on her too.” But apparently you misunderstood me. So now, each of the Belts is safely attached to the face that is a flagship for their division. And while the tag team belt do currently belong to heels, the fact that I just had to look up that fact to remember it shows you how shows you how ineffectively the WWE is currently utilizing the tag team belts.

A story popped up on wwe.com that told of some voting errors taking place during the show on Monday. The matches sited as affected were Dolph and Kofi (don’t really care about that one) and Evan Bourne vs. Mason (which I care much more about) As a big fan of Evan Bourne, I feared that his recent four month absence could mark the end of his career since he wasn’t on a level where fans would necessarily demand his return. So I’ve enjoyed this mini-push he’s had of late, even with it containing its fair share of jobbing for Swagger. But who wouldn’t want to see an Evan Bourne vs. Sin Cara match? So when Sin Cara was replaced by Ryan, I, like R-Truth, couldn’t help but suspect some sort of conspiracy. However, the WWE article concluded with saying that Bourne and Sin Cara would meet in the ring next week on Raw. Don’t know how they would know that if a giant wheel is supposed to be picking all of the matches next week, but I’m happy I’m going to get the match I was robbed of this week.

But lets get to the big story of this past Raw and the closest thing that can come to the unexpected event that I was hoping for. After becoming the number one contender, Punk vowed to win the belt, and then leave the WWE, taking the title with him. My good buddy Chris over at The Rager, has already expressed his thoughts on these turn of events and I encourage you to take a look at what he has to say. (As well as the rest of his article) Part of me agrees with Chris. After all, the positive thoughts that I have are saying WWE wouldn’t give Punk a title shot the day before he was leaving the company. But then again those thoughts are countered by negative ones reminding me that the gave Batista a title shot the day before he left the company. Let me just say that Chris, I really want you to be right. But just in case you aren’t I’m going to treasure every moment we have left with Punk from now until Money in the Bank.

Unrelated side thought:  Whilst watching the Raw intro theme this week, I couldn’t help but notice how prominently Triple H was displayed throughout the song. Never mind the fact that we haven’t seen him since WerstleMania, and he had been out almost a year before that, and the guy is probably in the twilight part of his in ring career. I have to wonder if WWE still really thinks the guy is enough of a draw, despite him never appearing live on the show. Perhaps its not so much WWE wanting to keep Triple H in the song, but Triple H himself, pulling strings to keep himself in. That being said, what are the odds with, Shawn Michaels showing up next week, what are the odds that Triple H may make an appearance as well?

 

Joel Leonard reviews the latest movies each week for Inside Pulse. You can follow him @joelgleo on Twitter though he's not promising to ever tweet anything from there. Joel also co-hosts the Classy Ring Attire podcast and writes the No Chance column on Inside Pulse as well.