Raw 05/11

[AndyUK]

The show was a hell of a lot of fun live, the crowd were fantastic but yeah, they are a bit directionless at the minute. They basically wasted a whole RAW building up Team Foley/Team Punk and Cena/Ziggler for Survivor Series only for them to change their minds this week, even if I do definitely prefer the changes. I suppose they realised that the Survivor Series Elimination match wasn't really a PPV selling main event.

 

Guessing that the only reason that Ziggler is captain now so that they can reference the segment Foley/Ziggler were in a few months ago and try and pretend there is some sort of buildup.

 

The Maddox/Vince/Vickie segment was fun and it was brilliant to see Vince live, I didn't think I'd get that chance now and there was a lot of solid wrestling. The main event told a good, simple story with Ryback coming in to clean house and pin the champion after Cena was dominated by Punk/Ziggler. Despite what some said at the time, HIAC hasn't really halted his momentum at all.

[The Total Package]

I also went last night, have to say I enjoyed it as well.

 

My fav match was probably the 6 man tag with Rey and the rest. I was surprised to see Vince there, like Baz I did not expect him there at all, so when his music hit I jumped out my seat, which pretty much everyone else did, great to see Vince.

 

I dont have Twitter, but that's nice that JR,Cole and Wade etc are saying good things about Brum, the crowd was certainly a hot one, died a few times, I think that DB match, the way it ended, was probably what killed it a little.

 

I dont know the last time they came to Birmingham, but I'm sure they left with a positive feeling about the place, so yeah they might want to comeback sooner next time.

[windoesnot]

 

Cheers for linking this, making Preston Proud!

[air_raid]

[Daniel Bryan vs. Cody Rhodes]

[Time: 01:57]

[Eve & Aksana vs. Layla & Kaitlyn]

[Time: 05:03]

 

Good to see they've got their priorities right.

[Statto]

Well, turns out I was wrong about Heath Slater last week - there was still another finisher left in the WWE stock finisher bowl for him to go through.

[JLM]

Opening tag was fun, and I thought the finishing sequence was very slick. Cesaro still gets zero reaction. I like him too, he just doesn't have anything interesting to do and his gimmick is extremely generic. Doesn't look great for him.

 

I appreciated WWE taking care to pronounce Birmingham correctly. Nice touch.

 

Who the shit gives a shitting shit about this shitty AJ/Cena shit? Ugh.

 

The huuuuge reaction for Wade Barrett's brief appearance in the segment with Uncle Paul (who should be on television all the time in all capacities) held my interest in watching the rest of the show. Tremendous noise from the folks in Birmingham, loved it.

 

Daniel Bryan vs Cody Rhodes was about as much fun as you could squeeze into such a short segment. The crowd definitely helped as well, but I enjoyed the frantic pace of it and the disaster kick off the apron was great. Bryan remains ridiculously over. Still a big fan of Sandow too, and I like his t-shirt aside from the slogan on the back. Having something rubbish in an ugly font on the back is the most wrestling t-shirty of things.

 

Maddox's promo was boring. Vince was mildly amusing, though I thought it was a very odd and anti-climactic way to announce that main event.

 

Miz vs Sheamus was inoffensive, but Miz is so dull to me. I can't stand his incredibly contrived promo style and I don't find his matches even slightly engaging.

 

Fandangoo promo was pretty hilarious. Could be great, could be the worst kind of wrestlecrap. I'd be content with either.

 

Divas tag went for about five minutes but felt like five days.

 

Del Rio vs Kofi was another OK thing that was on the screen. Middle hour dragged like a motherfucker. Good thing they followed it up with Primo and Epiciofghrejdjiasifhkhas;sdgf....zzzz.....zzzzz..Oh good here comes the Funkasaufdfjhljdsjldsgj.dgjgjrsodjsdogjerjjjzzz....zzzzz...zzzzz...

 

Thankfully the big reaction for Wade Barrett livened me up a bit. Well done Birmingham. I am enjoying Wade Barrett deliver clubberings since his return. I think the fact that he was away for a while helps because he doesn't feel as horrendously stale as almost everybody else, but I think he had a really good brawl with Sheamus the other week and I'm looking forward to him having something interesting to do.

 

I must admit I am dreading Lawler's return to the commentary desk. Obviously it's fantastic news that he's OK and I'm glad he's made such a speedy recovery, but I'd rather have anybody else on commentary than the King these days.

 

I love Heath Slater so much. 3MB for tag champs babaaay.

 

Enjoyed the main event. I always thought Batista looked at his absolute best when he came in off a hot tag and just got to destroy people for thirty seconds, and for someone with Ryback's limitations it's obviously the perfect way to make him look fantastic. What a beast. Fun ending to a show that seemed to go on for ten years.

[Cobra1000]

Did they say King is definitely coming back to the booth then next week or is he just turning up to say hello?

 

Im happy for Johnny Curtis too, he seems like a guy that might bounce around a gimmick or two until he finds one that fits so i hope this thing goes well for him cause he's a talented and charismatic lad and he was awesome in the glory days of NXT.

 

Wasnt a bad show really. At least they admitted a mistake in making Team Foley vs Team Punk the main event of Survivor Series and decided to change it instead of bombing forward with it regardless. Ryback vs Cena vs Punk might be good. They really dont have any plans other than "get Punk to the Rumble to face Rock"

 

Kofi vs Del Rio had a surprising end. I thought once you became IC Champion you had to lose consistently but its nice to see Kofi doing well. I'd like to see him feud with his buddy Punk once Punk loses the belt. A match at 'mania where Kofi goes over might do him the world of good.

 

Cant really remember much else. 3MB are awesome. The Edge DDT is far better than the one he used last week.

[Smegma Cake]

Well, turns out I was wrong about Heath Slater last week - there was still another finisher left in the WWE stock finisher bowl for him to go through.

 

This one might be a keeper, they gave it a name. Can't remember what it was called, but they officially named it.

[extacy of farts]

Well, turns out I was wrong about Heath Slater last week - there was still another finisher left in the WWE stock finisher bowl for him to go through.

 

This one might be a keeper, they gave it a name. Can't remember what it was called, but they officially named it.

 

Thought they called it 'The Smash Hit' or something like that.

[Up Chuck]

The "Smash Hit". I'm so glad they nixed the Overdrive, it's the shittest fucking move. I can't understand how anyone ever came up with it.

 

Gotta echo Daz on this one. It was just 3 hours of couldn't-be-arsed. It felt, more than anything, like one of the old UK PPVs, and it might've worked as that with all of the backstage segments cut.

 

The Vickie segment just showed that they haven't at all bothered learning how to hide a performer's weaknesses. Vickie was awful here, and Vince was at his memorised-script worst. They've managed to use Vickie relatively well most of the time, but they need to learn that having her in a role with more talking is a terrible, terrible idea. And the AJ/Cena storyline is just impossible to care about. I'm going to kindly assume that none of the writers watched the Claire Lynch stuff bomb in TNA, because if they did, booking this is just cruel. The big similarity, for me, is that they obviously don't have a clue what they want to do with Cena right now, just like TNA didn't with Styles. What's the point of feuding him with Vickie and Dolph, then putting him in a title match when Dolph's briefcase is for the other title?

 

Putting Cesaro in with some other guys is a nice way to freshen him up, but he's still not going anywhere. It's a shame. He showed one of his big skills here though, which is being a really great base for smaller guys' high-flying stuff. Hopefully they can find something interesting to do with him eventually. I guess they have to start giving a fuck about the top guys before giving a fuck about the rest of the show, though.

 

As for the main event switch, I get that the point is to show Vickie up as an incompetent figurehead, but AJ was crazy, Laurinaitis was self-serving and full of shit, Triple H couldn't keep out of the ring, Vince let Punk hold the company to ransom and walk out, so we've had essentially the same premise for a year and a fucking half. Just give the job to Foley. I'm sick of Foley, but not as sick as I am of "There's a new GM! Oh shit, they're not very good at it". In fact, go back to the fucking guest hosts. And furthermore, it's such a slapdash way to build up to one of the bigger PPVs. I know it's not as significant as it was, but they're not even trying to make it an interesting show. It's been among the worst build of the year so far.

 

So yeah, fuck this show. I hated it more than I realised.

[AshC]

The laptop was the best... followed by Mike Adamle.

[GPW Kristian Zane]

I'm disappointed with the changes to the Survivor Series card. I was looking forward to Team Punk vs Team Foley because it was something different and there was a lot they could have done to build it up to make it interesting. Instead we get Punk's 4th defense in a triple threat within 12 months. No champion has ever had to defend the belt in a triple threat during one reign, its just lazy booking. The WWE title does not have to be defended every ppv, the writers should be capable of selling a ppv without needing to be predictable. They've managed it in previous years without a problem and they have Show/Sheamus already on the card anyway.

 

Ziggler vs Cena would have been decent. I mean I saw it live at the MEN Arena on Saturday and it was a very good match and wrestling Cena on a major ppv would have helped Dolph a lot, now he's just making up the numbers in a 10 man tag because the writers couldn't be bothered.