Monday Night Raw -- August 18, 2008

Another Monday Night Raw...Lance Cade returns from nowhere, for no reason, only to once again recede into the ether of obscurity.

Hey, did John Morrison write that? I swear, if that appears in one of his promos, I will sue. (No offense to Morrison, he's come a long way since his Exhibition Match on Raw.)

Anyway, theme of the week: "Original" Does Not Equal "Good"

To start the show, we have the only segment that is not an Adamle Original. It's Chris Jericho taunting Shawn Michaels.

Jericho is awesome. He says basically blames Shawn Michaels for putting his wife in the ring because he wanted to give his announcement in egotistical style, in the middle of the ring, with thousands of fans adoring him and begging him to stay.

He blames the fans for feeding into Michaels' ego, too. He says Michaels has tarnished and trashed his career forever. He says Michaels deserves that.

BTW to give you an idea of just how over this feud is, the fans are chanting HBK even though he's nowhere to be found...

Where Is Good?

Next, Paul Burchill jobs to Batista.

Wait, wait, a top superstar, off the heels of a victory over the number one face at a big PPV, squashes the only genuine mid-card heel -- a guy who's supposed to be in the middle of a push?

What does that accomplish? After beating John Cena cleanly, does Batista really need to go over on some mid-carder?

Can't you give this TV time to somebody else? Like, for example, maybe Carlito Colon's younger, better, harder working brother, Primo Colon?

Nope. Backstage, Adamle announces Primo's arrival, asks him how he feels, and then before the kid can respond, lights away to catch a just-arriving John Cena.

No respect. Is that a dig on Carlito?

And, why is Cena arriving twenty minutes after the show starts? What kind of work ethic is that?

Anyway, Cena brushes off Adamle, then runs into Batista coming back from his match with Burchill. Cena's like, "the best man won last night. But that was last night."

Was that a blow-off? Or a tease?

The Return of 1986

Remember WWF Superstars of Wrestling TV show from the 80's?

Basically, all the top guys squashed jobbers, and WWE ran an occasional "Piper's Pit." Check out an example of one of those shows, with more cliches than a Michael Cole commentary.

That's a lot like this show. Fine for 1:30p on Saturday, not fine for primetime Monday night.

Proof:

We get a divas match that wouldn't even be a dark match on a TNA broadcast.

Then, JBL demolishes Jamie Noble with three straight clotheslines...brutal squash, but an odd ending, as JBL goes for a cover on a limp, lifeless Noble, and after a one count, the ref calls the match a no-constest.

Huh? Why not just let JBL get the pin?

I suspect the script called for a no-contest, so we can see that JBL is actually worth something in the ring (fyi -- he's not). But the ref messed it up.

Dumbass.

"Original" Does Not Equal "Good"

Next, after a commercial break, Mike Adamle tells us Stephanie and Shane McMahon created a new type of match for Unforgiven. It's called a Championship Scramble.

Basically, it's a 20 minutes match where the title can exchange hands at ay time, but the last person with the title is considered the champion.

New? Original? What? Isn't this the Hardcore Title concept?

Hmmm...

ANYWHO, after a break, Cena has a handicap match against the tag champs. But before the match can start, Cryme Tyme steals the tag belts. Then, Cena demolishes the champs single-handedly.

I think the writers are trying to re-establish Cena's credibility and set up a feud with Priceless v. Cryme Tyme, but it really just makes the tag champs look like nuncompoops.

Original, perhaps. Good? Ummm...

And what's with Michael Cole saying Cena was working a "ground and pound" offense? When's the last time Cena used a takedown? What, has he been training with Tito Ortiz??? Are we gonna see Cena employ a triangle waist-lock so he can throw some elbow smashes?

Silly.

Save Us CM Punk

After a promo recapping the Shawn Michaels incident at SummerSlam, we go to CM Punk backstage. He says he thinks what Jericho did to Shawn Michael's wife was despicable. He says in Chicago, they deal with peolple like Jericho (and not in a nice way).

Did I mention he got a HUGE pop from his hometown crowd?

Senseless in Chicago

Then we have Santino take on another hometown boy, D-Lo Brown, with Kofi Kingston on commentary.

Actually not a terrible match. D-Lo gets the advantage and hits a clothesline, clothesline, slam, and jumping leg drop.

Then he goes to the top rope for the D-Lo splash. Beth Phoenix walks into the ring and stands between him and Santino's prone body. D-Lo comes off the top rope, gets in Beth's face, and tells her to "get to steppin."

Beth is not impressed, and responds by slapping D-Lo. D-Lo is tre' pissed off, I guess he thought that was a lamentable breach of etiquette and very rude.

Ref calls for DQ, and D-Lo takes his anger out on Santino. Santino falls to the outside and needs to be carried to the back by Beth.

All the while, Kofi is just calm as can be, smiling like he didn't just lose his first championship last night and he doesn't want to get it back.

You might think it's senseless to have such a blithe, carefree attitude to have about a championship title, but when you consider it's just the meaningless Intercontinental Title, you can understand why it doesn't matter so much.

Speaking of senseless, Kane goes on with this "I killed Rey Mysterio" thing. Ok, so we know he didn't actually kill Rey, just his character, but what does that mean? Does Rey come back without the mask? Is Rey's contract dispute over and he's finished with WWE, never to be seen again?

When/if Rey comes back, will he get a new super-mask? Maybe a fanny-pack and angel wings? This whole angle is bizarre. But now I see the point:

To set up a Kane-Batista feud.

As Kane's giving his promo, Batista runs in and take him out, hard.

Because there was no buildup, you might be confused about why Batista should care about Mysterio. Well, they are very close friends (kayfabe). Batista is out for revenge on Kane.

But the writers didn't care to tell us that part of the story.

Finally -- "Good" Arrives

Ok, now we get our main event, Jericho v. CM Punk. I admit, I can't be objective here, Punk and Jericho are two of my favorite wrestlers. Just watch the match, it's about as good a 10 minute match as I've seen on RAW recently, it's more entertaining to watch than read.

AND the show ends on time -- 10:59p exactly. What happened to the overrun?

Raw ReWrite

Here's my rewrite. Championship Scramble.

Way to bury the champ. The only way I could maybe get behind this gimmick is if CM Punk finishes the match with his title. Maybe.

But, it also creates an odd situation. Jericho just beat CM Punk, but won't be part of the scramble. John Cena has no beef with any of the other participants except JBL, and JBL hasn't beaten anybody of significance in weeks (I think Cena actually was the last person he beat -- and he's lost to Punk three times since then). Kane hasn't done anything in months.

I say screw the match, use it some other time. Make it a number-one contender match for some future event. I'm tired of all the gimmicks with the major titles.

This week's RAW would've been a natural time to put Batista over. He just had a huge victory, he's been chomping at the bit for a title shot, he's got bad blood with Kane...

Here's my rewrite:

Ditch the whole "special" McMahon announcement, first of all. Just have Batista go to Adamle, say he beat Cena clean at SummerSlam, he deserves a title shot.

Adamle says, "well, big guy, I know you'd like that, and I know you had a great night last night, but there are alot of things going on and I haven't worked out the main event for Unforgiven yet. You're definitely on the list, just give me one week to sort things out."

Batista gets really pissed and tells him off. He says he's beaten the best in the business, and the only reason Punk still has that strap is because Kane interfered with his match -- and the world knows it.

Adamle says, "well, maybe you should take that up with Kane."

Batista silently stares at Adamle, who stand motionless in response. Batista says "this is ridiculous" and storms off.

Then we have another reason for Batista to want to attack Kane. They should have a match at Unforgiven. They can hash out the whole Rey Mysterio thing as they build to the match. Batista goes over on Kane.

Meanwhile, CM Punk and Jericho start a feud, with Jericho going over.

This sets up Batista and Jericho to take us into the end of the year. After Unforgiven, Batista goes back to Adamle and says "last month, you wouldn't give me the title shot. You told me you needed to "think" about it. This year, I've beaten Shawn Michaels in a stretcher match. I've beaten Kane. I've beaten the best in this business. GIVE ME MY TITLE SHOT. NOW!"

And finally, he gets it.

(Subplot -- both Jericho and Batista beat with Shawn Michaels this year, maybe plant the seed of HBK coming back to interfere in the match)

Just thinking...