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Welcome to the Raw Deal for the commercial free edition of Raw. It’s going to be a lot shorter than my usual because I had a dental emergency this past weekend. I’m loaded up on pain meds (I am not Straight Edge) and sitting at a computer for a long period of time isn’t the best medicine. I’ll be back on the weekend for a preview of The (No Longer Great American) Bash as well as some more extended thoughts on what’s gone down of late. Before I start, big thanks to Rajah.com forum member Alcohol for the nice banner at the top.

From Green Bay, Wisconsin here’s the Raw Deal…

Here’s Donald…
This wasn’t nearly as unintentionally funny as I hoped. I think I heard him say that Vince McMahon didn’t give us title matches even though last week’s Raw had three “major” title matches with Orton winning the belt. Oops, there I go remembering things from a week ago. My bad. Anyway, Trump says that everybody in the arena gets a ticket refund because they’re sorry for how stupid the Trump angle is. He meant to say that. Trust me.

Cena talks to Miz finally. I thought it was okay for the most part with Cena’s lines seeming more “real” than some of the forced dialogue that he has to give especially in backstage segments. With better writing, Cena would be the best talker in the company. He’s hurt by the inept writing more than anybody. I’m not crazy about Miz basically looking like a douche during the segment by saying nothing to respond to Cena. I understand Miz is the chickenshit heel, which is a role he’s fine in, but there can be a point where he’s too much of a wimp for the fans to ever believe in him in the ring.

Wow, that outdoor segment with Vince and the limo was terrible. This was brutal. I’d rather see a Flomax commercial.

Jeff Hardy, Mysterio and Khali d. Edge, Jericho and Ziggler (*1/4)
This was fine, but not nearly as good as the great matches we see on Smackdown weekly. I guess it promoted Hardy vs. Punk and Jericho vs. Mysterio although you’d think they’d get more TV time. Where is Edge’s PPV match, by the way? He should always have PPV matches just like Khali should never have PPV matches.

More backstage comedy with Vince McHilarious. The best part of this was Trump looking directly into the camera on more than one occasion. That’s awesome. I wish he was around more just to do things like that. Maybe he thought his lines were on a cue card behind the camera. Santina’s fired now too. The joke went on too long.

Cody Rhodes d. Primo Colon (1/2*)
Bad match. The problem with Legacy in ring is they should be wrestling every single week and on every PPV, but since they don’t the crowd is dead for their match. This was awful and did nothing to get anybody excited about the tag title match on PPV even though it has the potential to be good.

There’s even more comedy with Vince. Goldust does genuinely make me laugh more than most people in wrestling. His office is the toilet and there’s Festus taking a shit while reading the Wall Street Journal. I’m sure it sounded funnier when they were thinking it up. If somebody rings a bell while Festus is reading a paper, does that mean he reads it faster? Come on Vince, you could’ve sold the smell of the shit better than that. What’s wrong with you?

Last Man Standing for the WWE Title: Randy Orton wrestles to a draw with Triple H (***1/4)
A fine TV match that was similar to the quality of PPV matches they seem to have. They have yet to truly have a great, match of the year contending match and I don’t know if they ever will. They got 20 minutes, they told the story of a really violent match and even the ending satisfied me because they did such a good job of selling the physicality of the match. They couldn’t give away the finish because they’re doing this match again on Sunday. That’s part of the problem too. How can we be sympathetic to HHH as a challenger when he ALWAYS gets the title shots? It’s hard to expect fans to have interest in a feud like this. This is an example of a match that is hurt by the no blood policy employed by WWE in its current state. The story could be told so much better with the violence ramped up. Oh well, gotta cater to the kiddies I guess since the teenagers and men in their 20s are into UFC these days.

Miz hit on Maryse again. She wants results. They’re a couple in real life and I’m sure this will lead to an on-air pairing, which will probably be a good thing for both of them. They each have the natural heel charisma with little chance of turning babyface by working together.

…And there goes Donald
Wow, that was fast. He’s not going to name a GM, he’s going to have celebrity GMs. I wish this happened so we could see the likes of Mr. T and Pete Rose be GM. That would be awesome. The unintentional comedy would have been off the charts. Anyway, Vince came out to yell at Trump for giving free tickets and no commercials because it’s costing him money…even though Trump bought Raw. In six months Vince would be bankrupt if he did this. I have too much pain to go into detail about how silly and absurd this is, so I’ll just assume that you, my intelligent wrestling fan reader, knows how silly it is. Then Vince, the worst businessman ever, buys back Raw for double the price that Trump paid because Trump was threatening to sell it. What’s he going to do next, start a new football league? Oops. Vince fired him…from what? Who knows? Then Trump slapped him like a eight year old girl might slap another girl for stealing her Hannah Montana purse. And security broke it up. Security won’t break up the Legacy group breaking Batista’s arm in a 3 on 1 beating for five minutes, but they will break up Vince vs. Trump. I guess it’s nice to be rich.

I’ve already got emails asking me what I think about this. Basically my opinion is they thought this angle would create interest, it didn’t and they’re backing out of it before it went too far. They gave away $235,000 in ticket sales because they probably didn’t want the fans to shit on the Trump angle like they feared it might. Personally I would have preferred it to end by the set falling on Trump or a car exploding with Trump in it. Now that’s entertainment.

Hey Vince, give me $40 and you can have ECW back for double what I paid for it. Leave Tiffany with me, though. She’s blonde and appears to be clueless. Two things I love.

More Vince backstage. He’s serious now. No more jokes. Uh oh. And he’s a face against Orton only, I guess. Wow, something made sense on this show by having Vince hate Orton since he beat up his entire family. Impressive! Orton vs. HHH at The Bash is now three stages of hell with a regular fall, falls count anywhere and a Stretcher match for the obvious third fall. Nobody likes stretcher matches. This feud isn’t ending there, in my opinion. I’m sensing a Hell in a Cell at Summerslam even though there’s absolutely no need for more of this.

Mickie James and Bellas d. Maryse, Beth Phoenix and Rosa (1/2*)
This was pretty bad. Just do Mickie vs. Maryse already. I think the Bellas and Rosa all are beautiful women, but none of them should be wrestling on live TV especially when there are better workers in the same match. Stop making every woman wrestle. Use them as managers. They have value in that role whereas in this one they’re only hurting the product.

Big Show d. John Cena (*1/4)
I’m tired of this match. I laughed at them showing the replay from Extreme Rules saying that Cena only applied the STF because he used the rope to help. Never mind that Show’s foot fell off the rope or that placing his foot straight up in the air does not hurt nearly as much as putting his foot on an angle like it would be in the STF. Oh, and of course Cena applied the regular STF here. Miz interrupted, cost Cena the match and I guess that’s going to get Cena pissed off heading into the match on Sunday. How dare Miz cost him a meaningless match against a guy Cena has beaten 359 times. Fine job of making Miz come off as the chickehshit heel that he is, though. He’s not going to win on Sunday, but I think he’ll come close.

Hey, more HHH vs. Orton. Hunter said Orton’s going to hell on Sunday. That’s better than saying, “I’m going to put you on a stretcher and push you past a yellow line” in terms of selling a PPV match. Too bad they already had the PPV match on this TV show.

Three Stars of the Show
1. Santina – She had a good run.
2. Donald Trump – He had a good run.
3. Vince McMahon – His segments were so bad that they were good.

They should have had somebody wear a Brett Favre Vikings jersey. Whoever wore that would have been the number one star for sure. Plus, it would have woke up a quiet crowd.

Final Thoughts
Feels like I’ve been here before. The in ring action is generally fine throughout WWE and when given time we know it can be really good, but this Trump angle was terrible. Pulling the plug on it after only a week is their admission that they know it. Kudos to Vince for realizing it was bad, but it came at the expense of hurting a two hour show that was supposed to be used to promote the PPV on Sunday. By the way, not having the fresh faces of Raw like Kofi Kingston and MVP not on a two hour show like this is a prime example of what’s wrong with WWE. Other than a pretty good Orton vs. HHH last man standing match that we’ve seen plenty of times before, this wasn’t a very good show. That saved it from being truly awful. As it is, it’s just regularly awful.

Rating: 3 (out of 10)
Last week: 7.5

I appreciate any feedback you guys can give so please send me your thoughts at [email protected] about anything related to WWE past or present. Please, keep sending them in. I will post some in the column next week. If you add me on facebook you’ll see the links to my columns as well because I post them there just as soon as I post them on this website. It’s an account that I use only for my wrestling columns rather than a personal one.

I’ll be back at the end of the week for a preview of The Bash. I might toss in a mini Smackdown review just for the hell of it too.

Smell ya later,
John Canton. – [email protected]
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