The now regular pre-read numbers:
1. The last two editions of The Best and Worst of WWE Raw have clocked in at around 140 comments each, and I can’t tell you how thankful I am to you for that. I love reading your comments, even the negative ones, and the more you comment the more dynamic and engaging this whole process becomes. In fact, I’m proposing a contest: If we can get this shared around to enough jerky forums and Facebook feeds to get to 200 comments (legitimate comments, not +1 or john cena gay, or john cena gay +1) I’ll start handing out prizes. Because I like you, and you’re doing me a favor.
2. I’m officially giving up my quest to get @KaitlynWWE to notice me, so I’m moving on to @WWEKaitlyn, who I’m pretty sure is a fat guy trolling fan sites. I bet that guy would think I’m great.
3. I’m thinking about parlaying this into some kind of wrestling podcast. Is that a terrible idea? I feel like wrestling podcasts are either droll, lispy lists of dirt sheet rumors or wrestlers making inside jokes with their friends. I don’t lisp and I barely have any friends. I think it would work. Thoughts?
Anyway, enjoy the column. I got it up before four o’clock!
Best: The Punk and Triple H Dynamic, While It’s Happening
CM Punk is the one guy who was able to turn “the Internet, people like me there” into a sustainable pro wrestling career. He’s gotten popular recently for saying things that are commonplace online, but rarely voiced on television. Triple H is the living, bloated embodiment of Internet wrestling hatred. He happened to be politicking and effortlessly trouncing everybody during that post-Attitude Era boom period when peoples’ judgmental passing glances needed someone to blame for the wrestling getting bad. He deserves a lot of it, and is burdened by the rest. Nobody has been paired up this perfectly since Vince McMahon’s ready-to-burst, power-strutting boss and Stone Cold Steve Austin’s abusive alcoholic in Magic Shoes. So when they talk, even when they aren’t really saying anything, I listen. More importantly, I want to listen.
And also importantly, they’re addressing some of the things I talked about in last week’s Best and Worst. Punk is saying he came back to Right The Wrongs and facilitate change, but Triple H knows (and we know, if we’re paying attention) that Punk is full of sh** and is an attention whore who came back because WWE is the biggest social platform in wrestling. That’s good. Punk got a few really great moments in spite of the exposition, like messing with H’s tie or his hilarious Jim Halpert look at the hard camera, and that’s enough to keep a portion of the crowd towing his line, cheering him (as part of his Cult of Personality) but allowing the Cena kids to have reasonable, logical talking points when they’re yelling NUH UH CM PUNK SUCKS to the fat, lisping guy behind them.
Think of it like the Sex Bob-Omb vs. Kyle and Ken Katayanagi battle from Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World. They’re taking pages and pages of dialogue and boiling it down to a stylized monster fight and we can either watch it with a smile on our face or dismissively scoff and wank to our nudged friends about how we don’t appreciate Edgar Wright’s vision. In this analogy, Triple H’s yeti is corporate power and Punk’s dragons are Insider Terminology. Also, this analogy ends with a yeti Pedigree’ing the f**k out of some dragons, and the Katayanagis going back to wrestling Matthew Patel on Superstars.
Best: Triple H Doesn’t Like Your Faaaaaaaaaat Asses
If you read show recaps (and I usually don’t, as I have a tendency to subconsciously appropriate things I’ve read, like the Vickahs guy from Good Will Hunting), but one of the sticking points for people seems to be Triple H’s use of “skinny fat ass” as an insult. Approaching the statement constructively, we find three possible solutions:
1. H messed up and didn’t say what he meant. Not likely, but this is the one most people are going with.
2. H was saying CM Punk was both skinny and flabby, or “fat”. Like Mr. Kennedy. Skinny arms, flabby belly. In Triple H’s mind I think the only thing worse than having a normal human’s build is having regularly-colored Caucasian skin. This is the most likely solution, as H is that guy who doesn’t give a sh** how good you are at pro wrestling’s building blocks, he just cares how you look. Because he’s bi a lot of things, but not bilingual.
3. It was an homage to one of the greatest promos of all time.
There is a 141 2/3 chance this is what Triple H was doing.
Worst: Two, Whenever Triple H Is Not On-screen, All The Other Characters Should Be Asking ‘Where’s Triple H?’
… or, “The Punk and Triple H Dynamic, Afterward”.
What Triple H said about Punk’s physique is true, Punk is skinny and doesn’t have a lot of muscle mass, so even if I don’t agree with his weird lookist, borderline sexual harassment bullsh** I can see he has a point. What I don’t like — and I feel like I’m going to type this into four paragraphs every week for the rest of my goddamned life — is Triple H’s refusal to EVER look vulnerable. Part of being a cool good guy is sometimes losing, so the viewers can get invested in your big moments and believe there’s a chance you could lose again. That’s a fundamental part of drama, and the reason Jackie Chan always gets beaten up by some random dudes at least once in a movie. If Jackie just just indestructible and broomstick-and-ladders everybody to death, we don’t care about him. He’s just Tony Jaa, and he’s cool and all, but we’re done with him in one movie. If you get beaten up, people can identify with you and you get to make movies until you’re 80 and starring in Disney’s Chinaman Babysitter, or whatever that thing was called.
H is in his Chinaman Babysitter phase, but he’s still unstoppably headbutting dudes at the end of Drunken Master II. There is not one single reason why Triple H needed a post promo interview to explain how he wasn’t upset by Punk referencing his wife. Not one. The crowd didn’t suddenly go “oh no, Triple H is a wimp now, we have to boo him”. CM Punk didn’t pull a Rhino and say he was going to f**k Stephanie’s rancid wounds, he just said H is whipped. And then H immediately goes backstage to find Josh and explains that he isn’t. He couldn’t even let Punk get out of the ring before he was making Scott Hall “ooh I’m scared” fingers. The next sentence has nothing to do with the last 15 years of Internet: What the Hell is this guy’s problem? H, how are you helping anybody by doing this? Either show some complex vulnerability OCCASIONALLY or just murder everybody with sledgehammers and sell your Affliction skeleton shirts. Doing that middling thing in the middle makes you look like somebody’s Cool Dad and makes everyone you interact with look worthless. If Punk had said YOU GOTTA AXE YER WIFE and left and you just stood there glaring at him, you might’ve made me wonder what you were gonna do next.
Worst: The Anonymous GM Died On The Way Back To His Home Planet
“May I have your attention please. I’ve just received an e-mail from the anonymous Raw General Manager. And I quote … goodbye cruel world? Huh, that’s weird.”
Worst: That Wasn’t A Battle Royal, That Was A Battle Peasant
I think I made the same face as Kelly Kelly as I watched this. At the risk of Best and Worst devolving into a series of lists (and be aware, I am lazy enough to make that happen), here are five things that were terribly wrong with the battle royal. One, they went to a commercial break and came back with the only people you’d pick to win still going at it, meaning they probably could’ve just done a Beth Phoenix/Eve Torres/Bellas four person “over the top rope challenge” or whatever and accomplished the same thing. Honestly, wouldn’t it improve their real sports presentation if they had, I don’t know, A.J. win? Sometimes the Mariners beat the Yankees, you know? Especially in a game where one base hit ends the game. Two, Eve Torres. Three, why do Divas turn into Delirious in battle royals? The bell rings and they just go BAH BAH BAH BAH BAH and turn and jump over the top rope. Melina literally spent more time walking to and away from the ring than she spent in it. She gets paid like 150 f**king thousand dollars a year. Four, if you’re going to tease me with Chickbusters on Raw, at least let me see them walking to the ring and pointing happily at people.
Five … uh, well, I should probably give this one its own thing.
Worst: Michael Cole Heat
You remember that “how is this helping anybody” talking point from the last page? Yeah, I’m going to be writing that on every page because Michael Cole went Full Wrestlemania again, just as I thought he would when he stood on the table and ended up dressing like Triple H last week. Cole crossed the line from “guy you want to see get his” to mentally unbearable by not only failing to be an engaging heel color commentator but by failing to commentate whatsoever. I can understand doing the “Kelly you’re a whore, nobody cares about your division” thing early in the battle royal, but by the time Eve was getting eliminated and Beth Phoenix was making her power run Cole was just yelling over everyone about how cool it would be to do commentary with his hypothetical twin Mickey Cole. This kind of thing might’ve worked on NXT when we had to put up with Maxine and were living in the shadow of Isis The Amazon, but this is your flagship television show. Bobby Heenan hated Hulk Hogan, and you do you want to know why that worked? Because he didn’t indiscriminately hate everything that was happening. Jesse Ventura thought Tito Santana’s name was Chico and made fun of him for picking lettuce, but he didn’t drift off into fantasy manual labor booking where Chico’s lettuce count was off and he gets fired for being unsatisfactory and then Jesse gets put in charge of the lettuce facility and improves production tenfold. Nobody WANTS TO HEAR THAT AHHH
I’ve heard his stupid “I’ve got a job what’ve YOU EVER DONE” radio rant, so I want to phrase it in a way he might understand, should he ever read this: Michael Cole, you can do basically the same thing you’re doing and contribute positively to the storytelling. Just remember, you are not the story. You are a part of it. You can be Donkey, but you can’t be Shrek AND Donkey AND President Vaginafart or whatever the bad guy’s name was.
Best: Beth Phoenix, Destroyer Of Destroyers Of Divas
This week’s Very Best Of Raw goes to the return of Beth Phoenix as a thing. This attractive, physically dominant, talented professional wrestling worker has been standing in the background of your Jenna Morasca-quality Champagne Bashes for seemingly YEARS, doing nothing. Beth powering out the Bella Twins Andre the Giant-style and forgoing the usual rub and tug of the Divas to snatch Kelly by the wig and throw her to her f**king doom was great, and unless the next two weeks feature vignettes of Kelly Kelly traveling to Japan to learn forearms and GAEA Girl dropkicks this will be the end of K2’s storied championship run.
It’ll be interesting to see if they play up Kelly’s congenital insensitivity to pain. There was a moment I’m going to pretend was important where Beth throws Kelly into the guardrail and does her speech and Kelly’s lying there unconscious, but when Beth walks around the ring to leave they jump back and Kelly’s just lying there with her eyes open, seemingly fine, nodding her head at somebody. My theory: Kelly was not hurt by the attack, and simply “played dead” to get Beth to stop hitting her and leave. It worked, and now at Summerslam Kelly’s going to kick out of the Glam Slam at one and break Beth’s jaw with a cartwheel back elbow. It sounds like I’m joking, but that would honestly be pretty f**king outstanding. I’ll give it five stars if they do the hilarious joshi thing where somebody goes up the ramp and then runs down screaming to do something they could’ve done just as effectively standing still.
Kelly also gets a supplementary worst for her pink lip gloss, but I guess that’s a personal preference. I don’t think someone who fights for a living should look that much like Bridget Marquardt.
Best: Miz And R-Truth
I want to see Miz and Truth tagging all the time. There, I said it. Far too often wrestlers arbitrarily team up with other good guys or bad guys regardless of previous relationships (“hey randy orton you once handcuffed me to the ring post and beat my heart in with a stick, but tonight we gotta face TED DIBIASE AND CODY RHODES so CAN I COUNT ON YOU HERE TONIGHT”, etc.), but Miz and Truth managed to establish their dynamic in the backstage segment without compromising either’s character. Truth is still a pretty nice guy if you don’t openly insult him, and Miz is the kind of guy who’d rather insinuate an insult than result to the YOU’RE WORTHLESS stuff that took a year to build and made Alex Riley punch him in the face. So Miz wants Truth to leave, but he won’t be forceful enough about it to make Truth’s eyes bug out. That translated into a cohesive tag team that made sense and could get a clean win over Rey Mysterio and John Morrison.
That’s the key — they got a clean win. It wasn’t even that underhanded, for once. I got so used to Miz only winning when Alex Riley jumped in and simultaneously bumped eight refs that wins in the championship tournament seemed shocking, and hell, even when he was being pushed Truth didn’t get to pin people clean with his finisher. But there they are, winning, exchanging YEAH WE DID IT MOTHERF**KERS hand slaps and chest bumps. This is good. Also good is a lengthy (for Raw … well, for THIS Raw) tag team match with crisp wrestling and a hot crowd who are SO HAPPY that John Morrison twisted his body over the top rope and slapped somebody with his fingertips on the way down.
Worst: Again, How Is Michael Cole Helping
Here’s a quick rundown of how Michael Cole feels about the wrestlers in this match:
R-Truth: Goofball, because he’s crazy.
John Morrison: Goofball, because he does parkour.
Rey Mysterio: A loser for only holding the WWE Championship for an hour and a half, probably a goofball.
The Miz: GO MIZ COME ON MIZ YEAH MIZ YEAH
So Truth gets buried on commentary for having a character, Morrison gets buried for having a hook, Mysterio gets buried FOR WINNING THE WWE CHAMPIONSHIP and The Miz gets inadvertently buried because Cole won’t stop screaming about him, causing us to never want to see or hear him again. This is both teams in a tag team match. Even if Cole wants to do the “THESE MEN ARE NERDS, KING” thing, shouldn’t he pick a side, or at least not openly criticize R-Truth while he’s on The Miz’s team? If Michael Cole had been a part of the Invasion of Normandy he would’ve stood up on the boat, declared the Germans goofballs, then turned around and berated Allied troops because love of country is something nerds do.
Best: John Morrison Got Got
Don’t get me wrong, John Morrison should be buried, preferably with dirt.
In all seriousness, I think tag team wrestling is where Morrison needs to stay. His wacky Tekken offense works well when he’s been standing on the apron for a while and can run in and pull it off because he’s fired up and everyone else is tired (and possibly unable to think or move). I liked him a lot as part of MNM and loved him with Miz, and only started to turn on him when he wrestled by himself and started being stupid as sh** and saying things like “hippopotamus breath”. I’m going to give him another “Best” for his stomping on the ring steps, because it worked really well and got the crowd clapping in perfect unison. Keep in mind that Indianapolis is the crowd that spent the first 20 minutes of the show chanting “Pee Em Sunkspee Em Spunk”, so this is a notable accomplishment.
Worst Worst Worst: Triple H Telling Josh He Needs To Shave
I am not going to devote two sentences to this horsesh*t, so I need to work both “this is the kind of crap a sad restaurant manager pulls on employees to make himself feel important” and “how stupid is it to condescend on somebody for not shaving thoroughly when you have a full beard and spent two years passing off muttonchops as a mustache because you’re a mark for musicians” into one.
Best: Sheamus Vs. Mark Henry
My girlfriend (who has taken pictures like this, in case you were wondering how I got a girlfriend) is studying hard to pass a CLEP test for French, so she spent most of the night flipping through dictionaries and color-coding things in notebooks and I missed out on her funny running commentary. She didn’t care about the Triple H and CM Punk stuff, she didn’t look up for Zack Ryder or Beth Phoenix, but the one thing she stopped, listened to and repeated was the “OIL FOIT ‘IM” from Sheamus in the Smackdown video package commercial we were lucky enough to see TWICE.
I am not exaggerating when I say I am done caring about this CM Punk stuff and am extremely, extremely excited to see if Sheamus can take out Super Mark Henry. Henry was been on the roll of his career lately and has risen above the grime and apathy of his past lives to become the most bad ass mother walking. Sheamus is the guy who should be the toughest guy in wrestling, and is just so weird looking and affable you can’t help but like him. Turn Mark Henry up to 11, turn Sheamus up to 11 (or maybe like an 8, because Sheamus at 11 could be permanently blinding) and run them at each other like trains. This is the most basic, effective, wonderful kind of pro wrestling, and if you don’t mark a little for I’M COMIN’ FOR YA, FELLA I don’t want to be your friend. It’s the irresistible force meeting the immovable object! The blackest guy in the company against the whitest! WHO WILL SURVIVE
Worst: What Is Alex Riley’s Deal
I can’t claim to have figured it out, but I think Alex Riley’s new gimmick is “I did a thing, so I think you should do something similar”. He once worked for the Miz and helped him cheat a lot, but he doesn’t do that anymore, so X person who cheats, you need to get rid of Y thing with which you’re cheating. Why do people keep trying to get Ziggler to drop Vickie Guerrero? She’s annoying, sure, but she doesn’t really do a lot to help him win. She’s not sneaking in behind the referee’s back and blasting Kofi Kingston with a tennis racket. Ziggler is proud of his accomplishments and confident in his job performance. Alex Riley arrived uninvited to insult him, criticize his friend and challenge him to an unsanctioned fight. Which one of these guys is the bad guy?
Alex Riley needs to stop what he’s doing, find his old letterman jacket with the big R on the front and revert back to the “I’m a bully, like in high school” act.
Best: Are We Okay Admitting That Vickie Is Not Fat Now
Are we? Because sure, Vickie’s not Maryse, but she’s right in the middle on the scale of Diva hotness. We’ve spent five years calling Vickie a sh*tty fat hog and not one second noticing how much Alicia Fox looks like Sam Cassell.
Best: The ALLLLLLLLLTimate Warrior
This week’s Lugz Presents The SummerSlam Boot of 1988 proved that great wrestling and great wrestling moments don’t always need to be bloody Broadways. Honky Tonk Man announced the he need somebody to Rassel and didn’t care who it was, Warrior sprint-huffed his way to the ring and threw bombs for 30 seconds until Honky died. The crowd went absolutely batnuts, and in half a minute a roided-up invalid in neon tassels punching a fat Elvis impersonator did more and meant more to history than ten years of Davey Richards Fighting Spirit.
Worst: Michael And David Have Issues
WWE Tag Team Champions David “A-List” Otunga and Michael “Beulah” McGillicutty are probably the saddest tag team in WWE history.
1. They were part of the Nexus until Wade Barrett left for Smackdown and everybody forgot about them.
2. They were part of the New Nexus until CM Punk got popular and everybody forgot about them.
3. They are tag team champions in a division of two, with the other team being Santino Marella +1. Imagine if you were the Pittsburgh Pirates, and the only team you had to beat to win the NL Central was the Houston Astros.
4. They were using CM Punk’s entrance theme, and didn’t have one of their own.
5. When they finally got a theme of their own, it was a hand-me-down from Justin Gabriel.
6. Their Titantron graphics say “MICHAEL” and “DAVID” down the sides.
7. They have been wrestling together since May and have not once shown charisma or an ability to wrestle anything more complex or entertaining than WWE’s one-and-three-quarters-star placeholder thing.
8. They are the most boring people in the world.
9. Their tights don’t even match
I feel like I could keep going, but you get the idea. I want Triple H to confront them backstage and be all “okay guys, hand them over” and Otunga goes “come onnnn” and Triple H goes “hand them over” and Otunga goes “come onnn” and then forlornly hands over the tag titles because even he realizes they are f**king pathetically terrible.
Best: We Want Ryder
People were chanting “We Want Ryder” a few weeks ago during the rise of CM Punk, and last week with tensions still high the crowd chanted “Let’s Go Ryder”. This week Punk came back down to Earth, with a non-partisan crowd who sorta like him, but aren’t going to cheer him over anybody important. Ryder, on the other hand, remains. As he was standing on the apron, being bombarded by Michael Cole’s commentary about how he’s a nerd with no life who just goes on the Internet and does WEBSITE (right after hyping WWE’s Twitters … and then both checking his Twitter to find tweets from J.R. AND yelling at J.R. for using the same Twitter he just used… argh), and the people want to see him. Hot acts are going to come and go, but this guy did the most important thing people forget to do — he build a fan base, on his own, and even if he’s not doing anything spectacular there are now thousands and thousands of people who want to see him on television, follow him online and buy his merch. It’s amazing how far those little gestures can go, and they go so much farther than an “I’m gonna kick your butt because I love THESE FANS” thing.
Worst: Mr. Cobro
Santino Marella has been doing The Cobra so much that his arm has morphed into an actual cobra.
I … urgh, how do I explain this without sounding like a dick.
I’m going to sound like a hypocrite because of how much I love watching Kota Ibushi get infinite Canadian Destroyers from a blow-up doll and think Kikutaro dressed as Jumbo Tsuruta is the funniest thing ever, but Jesus, his arm is an actual cobra. He has a big sock that looks like a snake that he puts on his arm. I think the problem I have with it is that the Cobra build-up is one of the most bulletproof ways to get a crowd cheering. You never see Santino setting up the Cobra to silence. I’m a jaded realist who jacks off about wrestlers selling on offense and even I like to do it at home from time to time and make my girlfriend roll her eyes (and dump me, but not before I poke her as hard as I can in the face with my pinched fingers). I just … for some reason I don’t want there to be a sock. It’s not even a f**king cobra, it’s a boa constrictor, or some kind of skinny ass alligator. I don’t have a reason better than “it is stupid”, and that’s not the best reason. I don’t want Santino to be a mythological beast.
Although it would be pretty funny for him to strike Eve with it and create the concept of Original Sin in WWE.
Worst: Catch Edge On An All-New Episode Of “G Vs. E” “Pacific Blue” “Haven”
I can’t even watch SyFy when wrestling is on, I’m not tuning in to watch Dawson’s Supernatural Creek.
Stock Best: Alberto Del Rio’s Face
Alberto Del Rio is in a weird holding pattern where he’s having okay-to-mostly-good matches with guys on Raw every week and keeps winning, but doesn’t seem to be DOING anything. I’ve gone over it before, but he won a number one contenders match, but didn’t get his title shot. He won Money in the Bank at Money in the Bank Brand Pay-Per-View, but he hasn’t cashed it in. He competed in a WWE Championship tournament while already being number one contender AND having Money in the Bank. He should’ve cashed it in immediately when the title was announced as vacant and been awarded it by default. Now he’s armbreakering Kofi Kingston, but if somebody wrestles Kofi Kingston does it ever actually MEAN something?
Regardless, Del Rio is the bomb and he stuck his tongue out when he won, which is right behind his double-handed face-fanning victory dance on my list of favorite Del Rio mannerisms. On a personal note, Destiny looked up from her Easy French Reader during this segment to point out how much I love “weird announcers”, especially “weird announcers who announce in a foreign language”. Okay, so I’m a fan of Ricardo Rodriguez and CHIKARA’s Jakob Hammermeier. That’s only two. Wait, Hugo Savinovich. But that’s still only three.
Worst: The Two Available Opponents Rule Strikes Again
As Del Rio was walking to the ring my brain went “he wrestled Kofi Kingston last week, so he’s wrestling Evan Bourne tonight”. Sure enough, Evan Bourne’s My Little Pony self comes bouncing out, throwing up peace signs and smiling like he’s in ICE Ribbon. If any important people are reading this, please consider adding 5-10 additional expendable wrestlers to your Raw roster. I refuse to believe Alberto Del Rio vs. Davey Vega or some babyface persona of Robert Evans in a wig like Roger from “American Dad” would be any worse than Alberto Del Rio vs. Evan Bourne.
In fact, both of those options sound better. And while we’re on the subject, whose dad do I have to f**k to get an Alberto Del Rio vs. Giant Tiger match on Raw?
Best: Top Rope Enzuigiri
Props to Evan Bourne for being the only person to know how to sell what would happen if you were crouched on a feet-sized pillow and a 260 pound guy kicked you in the side of the head. You go flying off and die, you don’t sit there and make a confused face until he climbs up to attack you more. Maybe they keep pairing up Del Rio with Kofi and Bourne so he’s got guys going to the top rope all the time. I’d hate to see a “you can’t powerbomb Kidman” situation where Del Rio is wrestling Orton and Randy decides to head up top for his patented “Nothing” only to get Alberto’d in the dome.
Also, a quick lesson about the word “enzuigiri”. Enzui means “brain” (or a part of the brain, really) and giri means “to chop”, so “enzuigiri” means (more or less) to “hit the brain” and describes any attack to the back of the head. Add that to your online dictionaries. It’s not an “enzigiri” or an “enziguiri” or an “enzuiguiri”. The more you know.
Wait, and while I’m on the subject of improperly used wrestling terms, a wrestling company is not a “federation” or a “fed”. A “federation” is a union of partially self-governing states or regions, and the reason the WWF was the World Wrestling Federation is because it was a union of different wrestling territories operating under a sovereign state, so to speak. The NWA was an “Alliance”, but was technically a federation. Ring of Honor isn’t a “fed”, neither is CHIKARA, or Anarchy Championship Wrestling or PWG. They are promotions. Or companies, whatever. Organizations. Even WWE in 2011 isn’t a federation, unless you want to count Smackdown and Raw as separate things. So, promotions, not feds.
Worst: Kofi Kingston Heard Someone Shouting, Crying
That’s why Kofi is always running out to help people. He’s like pro wrestling’s version of the Superfriends. Whenever Evan Bourne gets beaten up after a match it pops up on his big screen backstage.
Best: Addressing Plot Holes
We’re through the looking glass, people.
The final segment on Raw had its flaws (its major, major flaws, but we’ll get to that in a minute) but I want to say how happy I am that WWE writers (or performers, whoever is responsible) are at least taking plot holes and inconsistencies into consideration. Sure, we still don’t know how CM Punk got a Titantron video with JFK clips in it on the fly, but at least now we know how and why CM Punk returned and why he waited until the end of the night to confront John Cena over the WWE Title. It’s what I said last week — he didn’t care so much that WWE was making a fake title, he cared that CENA had gotten another spot in the lead. That’s important. Also important are the logistics of why a WWE Championship Tournament took place, and that sorta hinges on Punk not showing back up with the title until the last minute. See, this works out sometimes, you just have to look for it and write possible solutions on the Internet for a popular sports blog and hope enough people regurgitate it that Joey Styles or the WWE Internet Police get sent a copy and go “oh, okay, yeah that’s a good idea”.
Additional plot hole referencing: It was the Big Bossman who raised the briefcase in that McMahons/Steve Austin ladder match. Don’t make me explain it to you again.
Best: Vince McMahon’s Surrogate
John Laurinaitis showed up as an official on-screen player-character for the first time last night and his voice sounded weird. That prompted two hilarious responses from the Internet;
1. The nickname “John Laryngitis”, which is hilarious, and
2. A comparison to every role ever played by comedian Bob Einstein, including “Curb Your Enthusiasm’s” Marty Funkhouser and Super Dave Osborne.
My personal favorite is Larry Middleman from “Arrested Development”, if only for the idea that Vince McMahon is backstage in bed telling him what to say over an earpiece. It would be pretty great to see Laurinaitis telling Trish Stratus to get down on her hand and knees and bark like a dog dammit in his raspy monotone. Or even better, Laurinaitis interviews a wrestler who can vomit on command and gives a calm “he’s gonna puke. He’s gonna. He’s gonna. He’s gonna puke, he’s gonna puke. He’s gonna puke.” Also, in Not A Joke, they should probably just reveal this guy as Raw’s general manager. I mean, right?
Worst: Oh, So That Was Your Big Idea
Oh, so it took Triple H all show and 40 segments to announce that John Cena would be facing CM Punk in a champion vs. champion match at Summerslam? That’s weird, because that’s what f**king everybody on Earth thought he was going to say. The way they were building it up I thought they were gonna break out the Six Pack Challenge or the Championship Scramble Match again. But nope, the terrible, momentum-killing rematch we assumed was looming. Good job, H, you’re adjusting to the job well. Next week you should put John Cena in a handicap match against somebody, that’s how you know you’ve really made it as a WWE authority figure.
Worst: I Thought Cena Never Backed Down
He backed down pretty quickly when Triple H told him he couldn’t call him Hunter because he’s his boss. Maybe his next shirt should read “BACKS DOWN WHEN SOCIALLY NECESSARY” and have a Tom Goes To Mayor’d-out picture of him standing there sulking like a chump on the front. And it could be bright yellow.
Worst: The Lamest Thing Ever
I don’t have an epic capper for this week. I don’t have a great punchline ready and I’m not going to deconstruct why something happened. All I can say is that watching CM Punk and John Cena hold up their titles and duel with entrance themes like they’re action figures with microchips on their feet is one of the dumbest and most second-hand embarrassing things ever. NOW ENTERING THE TITANTRON, BOOSH BOOSH BOOSH.
Here’s what the segment accomplished:
1. Nothing
2. It made me really hate those first few lines of Cult of Personality
I still don’t think things are ruined and don’t think anyone was “rushed” into doing anything, but what spent two months being a cutting edge, must-see angle has turned into what Bobby Lashley might do. I think I speak for everyone when I say nobody cares about or wants to see what Bobby Lashley is doing.
