Hey everyone. There’s a lot to talk about today, so let’s get to it… Before I begin, Happy Veteran’s Day everyone!
WWE presented Monday Night RAW this past Monday night on SpikeTV. It was definitely a solid show with some good wrestling on the card. The main idea behind everything done on the program was to promote the upcoming Survivor Series PPV. Where that is concerned, WWE did a great job in my opinion. They pushed all feuds, and managed to concentrate on all the programs for the event. Overall, they did a good job. I don’t have the RAW rating as I’m typing this, so you’re going to have to get that from the Headlines board, later on.
Triple H made his return on RAW, and it didn’t take him long before he could bury someone, and confront Goldberg all in one night. The cheap burial of Lita occurred at the beginning of the show, but H, being the man that he is, put Goldberg over at the end of the program. It was a good move to set up their match at Survivor Series, since Goldberg had taken care of the other Evolution member, in Batista, earlier in the program as well. As far as Lita goes, she was confronted by Eric Bischoff later in the night as well, and I just can’t help but wonder if it was Women Abuse night on RAW. Lillian Garcia’s spot with Christian later on, or Jericho’s yelling backstage certainly pushed that point.
Elsewhere on the program, Kane and Shane proved that they are very civilized people, as they had dinner, but didn’t see a movie. No cookies and milk, but some meal that looked a lot like chicken. At any rate, while I wasn’t a huge supporter of the “peaceful” environment, I didn’t mind their segment. Everyone out there knows how I feel about this feud anyway, so no matter what they do, I kind of shrug away. I do think, however, that we’ll see the end of this feud at the Survivor Series event.
There was plenty of wrestling on RAW, and it was all solid. I absolutely loved all the matches on the show, even if Mark Henry wrestled. That tells you something. Just think about the matches we saw in one night — Randy Orton vs. Shawn Michaels; Booker T vs. Chris Jericho; Rob Van Dam vs. Christian; Goldberg vs. Batista. Damn, all these matches can very well be PPV bouts, and in fact, some of them have been! WWE really did pull the big guns last night wrestling wise.
Speaking of the matches, I thought the finishes were done well, and it all worked out for them to set up the Team Austin/Team Bischoff match at Survivor Series. They’ve spent a lot of time on this feud, but I think that’s a good thing. All the strong “mid-carders” on RAW are stuck in this match after all, and I think it’s only fair and good for them to do that. The two backstage segments (the first one between the two teams, and the second one with Austin and Bischoff alone) were also done well.
I didn’t quite get what the purpose of the Lita/Terri tag team was, but I guess it was to show some skin. I swear, WWE wanted to show some sort of anti-female theme last night. Beats me why.
I’m still very interested in the Trish/Jericho storyline. It’s gone very well so far, and that’s only because the two of them are very good at acting it out and seem to feel comfortable as they go along with it. It’s also interesting because we don’t know where it’s going. They’ve done a good job of portraying Jericho as a completely different guy around Trish, but they’ve also kept the reality factor as they’ve had him be his old self at times, who quickly realizes what he’s doing isn’t making him look good. The one thing about the entertainment part of WWE TV is that it can be tremendous if it’s done right. They just need to do it right more often!
Any ideas as to what’s up with the note Booker T received on RAW?! I found it interesting, but the problem with WWE and storylines like these is that they start out very promising and end bad. Let’s what they’ll do here, but I must say, it seems interesting and I’m looking forward to further development next week on RAW.
I thought it was very tasteless and a pure shame of WWE not to do a tribute to Crash Holly (Mike Lockwood). I know that at the time of his leave from WWE, the company and Lockwood weren’t on good terms, but I still thought it was classless of them not to do that. On the other hand, the theme of last night’s show was Survivor Series, and maybe the company felt it’ll be more appropriate to focus on the product, and honor Lockwood next week. There’s tons of possible reasons for that. At any rate, I just felt they could have, and should have, done the tribute this week. They didn’t, but I hope they’ll do it next week. We shall see.
Now to some news…
I’d like to send out my condolences to Ric Flair and his family. Flair wasn’t at RAW last night due to the sudden death of his mother. He has also been replaced from today’s appearance on ESPN by Brock Lesnar.
Speaking of Brock Lesnar, I don’t know if you were interested in knowing this or not, but it seems that the youngest WWE Champion ever is dating Sable.
In somewhat of a bad tidbit, Kurt Angle has been working through some neck pains. In fact, it got to the point where Angle was hurting so much that got an MRI done on him, with the results to come out soon. He’s said to be “okay” and will continue to work through it, but because of the injury and his past with neck problems, WWE has been using him more in tag team matches and “Survivor” type bouts. I hope Kurt is doing fine.
If you didn’t catch the Heat spoilers online, Steven Richards worked a Sunday Night Heat match against Rico, which he pretty much worked in as a face from what I’m guessing. He paid tribute to his friend Mike Lockwood by climbing each ring corner like Crash would do and by coming out to the ring to Crash’s theme song. WWE management paid close attention to how Richards would perform after re-aggravating his shoulder injury last week, and especially after having to go through emotional pain after the loss of his close friend Mike Lockwood. Management was impressed with Richards.
Several online sources have reported that Bill Kidman is currently suffering from a knee injury and will need several weeks of rehab to get everything straightened out. Man, he can’t catch a break. We wish him the best.
The second quarter earning conference call by Linda McMahon will be held next Tuesday. Yay. Get your questions ready, everyone!
This concludes the Veteran’s Day edition of News & Analysis. Thanks for checking it out, and I hope you have a great week!
Thanks for reading. See ya.
Eddie
