WWE RAW RANT

by Cameron Burge

May 16, 2011

I found the most interesting wrestling news of late to be that Donald Trump is not running for President. He will however always cherish that one time he made it rain money, presumably with the same magic powers that let Taker summon lightning.

I usually take off this day due to it being the closest Raw to my birthday, or at least that’s what I tell everyone. The real reason is that I’m afraid that one of this May 19th’s Kane will come for me in my sleep and make me watch See No Evil again. We are six days from Over The Limit, and nobody cares because we just had a PPV and we have to see a Michael Cole contract signing tonight. Also, that last chick on Tough Enough: Super Woman isn’t a fucking thing unless you want to be the alternate universe evil version of Wonder Woman. Read a comic book!

Raw 05.16.11

I have yet to see anyone have their balls out on Raw. This theme song is a lie. CM Punk appears a lot in the opening video for someone who has been buried so deep he’s picking RVD’s painted jumpsuits out of his teeth. John Cena opens things up to a pretty mixed reaction. Cena gets interrupted before he can even start by Alex Riley. Riley tells him to save and sums up Cena promos. Riley tells him to just watch a video of Miz kicking his ass over and over. So we do. Spoilers: Cena gets his ass kicked by the Miz over and over in it. Miz arrives afterward to be announced by Riley while he strikes dignified poses. He gets interrupted by the crowd at one point before continuing. Hey, remember all those PG shows that use the word “testicles?” No? Well, John Cena is setting new standards, folks.

Cena says he chose this match because…pause for chants…because he sees fear in Miz’s eyes. Cena says his new catchphrase will be “I’m the Miz and I quit.” This is followed by the GM as Michael Cole gets more heat than everyone in the ring combined. The GM allows Miz to name a match for Cena tonight so long as he promises to keeping Riley and himself out of it. Miz says he hasn’t decided yet what that will be, but he guarantees it to be awesome. I heard Miz’s theme song in a you tube video the other day. It was weird for someone to just use it outside of anything connected to wrestling.

Random Commercial Thought: Did you just equate vampires to gay people? Because that’s pretty accurate now.

Cole declares himself a top trash talker or something. Kofi Kingston is here to show off his neat little prop. Maybe they will make a toy of it some day.

US Champion Kofi Kingston vs. CM Punk (Non-Title Match)

I guess he’s got to do something. Punk gets some big chants at the beginning of the match for a brief moment. Kofi leaps over him a couple of time and hit’s a spinning reverse elbow before dropkicking Punk to the floor. Punk has to tell Nexus to back off when they start to come in and eats a baseball slide from Kingston for two. Punk is the worst leader ever. He’s begun to make Che Gueverra look good. Punk gets in a cheap shot and starts hammering on Kofi. He beats him down with elbows to the chest for a two count and works a headlock. Hilariously, Cole says Nexus has been successful by following Punk if by Successful you mean never having any matches and losing to Randy Orton.

Punk grounds Kofi and climbs up top where he eats a flying kick from Kingston to send him tumbling to the ground. Kofi climbs up top instead now and delivers a big cross body for two. Kofi fires up a leaping clothesline and the boom drop. Kingston signals Trouble in Paradise, but Punk ducks and scoops for the GTS, but Kingston rolls through into a two count. Kingston looks to be going for his leaping mounted punches, but Punk ducks him and he lands awkwardly falling back out of the corner for the GTS.

Winner: Punk

Holy shit, he won a match. Punk says he promises he’s going to do things his way from now on and won’t stop until Nexus is the most dominant force ever. Yeah, that’s not happening. Miz is shown in the back talking to Dolph and Vickie to tease him as Cena’s opponent. When you break it down, is there anyone outside of Chuck Norris who would stand a chance against him at this point?

Random Commercial Thought: Is that a cover of “I’m Alive?” Holy shit, it’s the early 2000s again.

Back to the show for a replay of Kharma last week. Kelly Kelly comes out to take up space again. I can’t believe it, but they just started pimping Money in the Bank before Over the Limit has even happened.

Kelly Kelly vs. Diva’s Champion Brie Bella w/ Nikki Bella (Non-Title Match)

Kelly gets in some early offense, but takes a hit in the corner a cheap shot from Nikki on the outside while Brie distracts the ref. Brie works a rest hold because she forgot to learn how to wrestler and proceeds to miss the world’s slowest leg drop. Kelly uses her technical prowess to slap her on the ass and deliver her screaming head scissor before spring boarding into a senton in the corner and a bulldog for two. Brie hits her in the gut but gets tripped into the shittiest pin attempt I’ve ever seen. It absolutely sucked and it actually wins the match. Garbage.

Winner: Kelly

The Bellas annihilate her after the match with the X-factor. Kharma stalks to the ring and goes after Kelly, but one of the Bellas attacks her from behind. Kharma just chucks her aside and catches the other Bella off the top rope. Bella 1 bails on her ass while she gets destroyed. Kelly is crying in the corner again before Kharma drags her up and plays with her hair. Is this going to turn into a rape scene? She flicks her on the forehead before leaving and laughing. Rape is always funny by the way. Especially with a clown. Miz is campaigning to Big Show in the back. Perhaps he is trying to remind him of that time Big Show won all their tag matches for him. I bet that will work.

Random Commercial Thought: Dungeons and Dragons is satan’s game. That’s why it’s fun.

Back to the show where Rey Mysterio shows up, but for some reason the announcer team remains eerily silent for quite a while before suddenly just breaking in like they forgot they were on the air. We get a replay of R-Truth nailing the downward spiral on Rey last week. Cole oddly says the GM is in on a conspiracy to fuck over Truth, which is weird considering he’s supposed to supp-oh right Cole’s retarded and sucks cocks, disregard that. Rey is going to talk. Crap. I stopped paying attention, but I’m pretty sure he challenged R-Truth to a match somewhere in there.

Random Commercial Thought: Contrary to popular belief, I am in fact a neuroscientist.

Back to the show. Truth still hasn’t responded, so I assume Rey spent the commercial break doing a Mexican hat dance for everyone’s amusement. WWE reminds us they like to blow unnecessarily large amounts of money by wheeling out Del Rio in another fancy car. He says something in Spanish and I’m beginning to feel like this face off is like the billboards in the low rent district: written in a language I can’t understand. They keep arguing in Spanglish with one another. Apparently being in Texas means you can speak as much Spanish as you want and everyone will understand him, because they keep cheering. Rey accepts a match to shut Del Rio up.

Rey Mysterio vs. Alberto Del Rio

Rey gets over powered before hitting a quick head scissor to turn the tide. Del Rio puts Rey up top and delivers a flying arm break over his knees from the top as we go to commercial with Rey getting dropkicked to the floor.

Random Commercial Thought: Christian, just give it up. He’s never going to lose a match again.

Back To the show where Del Rio is getting kicked in the jaw. Rey hits his body scissor to bulldog, but gets run down by a clothesline for two. Rey is favoring the arm as Rio was working it over during the break. Rey gets run down by a sharp kick for another two count and Rio starts to work the arm over the ropes. Rio wrenches the arm breaks it down, stomping Rey into the ground for yet another two. It’s nice to see some actually psychological WRESTLING still in this company. Why can’t Regal and Rio have a match? Rey flips out of some arm wrenches and suddenly gets flattened in mid rebound for another two. Rio tries to rip Rey’s mask off as 619 chants build. Rey eats a sliding dropkick for another two before Rio ground him with a hammerlock.

Rey escapes and starts to battle back before ducking and pulling the rope down to send Rio charging himself right through the ropes and onto his face. However, before Rey can do anything, we have Truth interrupting from the stands on a microphone. He says Rey is a thief in stealing his spot from the #1 Contender’s match. He keeps telling everyone to get him and call the cops so Rey turns around into a clothesline from Rio. He manages to duck is and springboard off the ropes into a cross body for two. Rey gets tossed to the apron, but manages to fly off into a senton and a head scissors sets up the 619. Rio is about to eat it, but Rodriguez grabs his legs and takes the kick for the DQ.

Winner: Rey

So, what is the point of the R-Truth bit if it didn’t factor into this match at all. Del Rio hits a top rope….leg drop? Butt drop? After the bell. Truth comes to the ring as Rey is staggering up and delivers a hard beat down. Truth lets him stagger up and finishes things with the downward spiral. Truth grabs a microphone. What happened to the one he had? He asks Rey what he’s doing challenging him and says he’s the one who makes the challenges. He makes a match between them at Over the Limit and starts beating on him some more. We then see Miz talking to CM Punk and Mason Ryan’s underwear.

Random Commercial Thought: What’s also 99 cents and melty? 99 pennies and a soldering iron.

Back to the show. Michael Cole is in the ring with a desk, Jack Swagger and a contract. Goodnight everybody! It’s a Kiss My Foot match. Hey, remember when he had Bret Hart’s foot in his mouth? Pepperidge Farm remembers. King gets Cole to piss off Swagger by disrespecting his World title run. Swagger abandons him. Cole then tries to talk his way out of things with King which goes nowhere. King then abuses him ore with his tie. He says he’s going to stick his foot in Cole’s mouth and close it, which I’m pretty sure would actually result in severed toes, but who am I to question Jerry Lawler. Kane is next up in the Miz campaign but he and Show ditch him for their match. I believe Miz is realizing what the rest of us already have. No one wants to get destroyed by Cena in a shitty match.

Random Commercial Thought: Woman are just waking water balloons. It all makes sense now.

Punk and Mason apparently have a title match against Kane and Big Show at Over the Limit. I guess they might as well feud with both versions of Nexus.

World Tag Team Champions Kane & Big Show vs. Mike McStupidName & David Otunga w/ Punk & Ryan (Non-Title Match)

Mike and Otunga have a match?! Kane annihilates Mike with big punches. He picks up two and tags out to Big Show who slaps him on the chest. For such a big guy he slaps people more than any female wrestler. Mike tries to charge out of a corner and gets caught for a suplex, but Mike slips free and clips Show’s knee. Mike dives to a tag to Otunga who kicks the leg out. Otunga decides the running kick thing is working and proceeds to the do the spot two more time and then repeat it on Show’s face. Otunga picks up two after stomping on the knee for a bit before tagging out to Mike.

Mike works the leg over with holds and hits. King and Cole are bickering. It’s getting annoying. Mike and Otunga trade quick tags and leg holds, until Mike is kicked over the chest by Show to escape a hold. Otunga is back in now though and he continues to work the knee. I love how Show is the face in peril here. Show finally kicks him off and catches Otunga by the throat, but his knee can’t support him and he collapses back down until Otunga is crushed by a back suplex. I’ve always thought Show is the most underappreciated big man in wrestling. The tags are made and Kane crushes Mike with clotheslines and a side slam. Kane climbs up top for the flying clothesline and signals a choke slam. Otunga runs in and eats a big boot. Ryan slips into the ring to distract but gets speared by Big Show on the outside. Kane goes for the choke slam on Mike, but Punk kicks him in the back of the head from outside and Kane is taken down by some weird running move I couldn’t see because the camera man was out of position.

Winners: Nexus

Miz and Truth are chatting in the back now. It should turn out to be someone random, like Melina.

Random Commercial Thought: A cell phone-based wrestler seems like a good idea right about now. It’s the drugs speaking.

We return to a rundown of the card for the PPV when Show and Kane get interviewed about their match with Punk. It’s, um….kind of bad. I love Big Show’s “every guy” reaction to Kane’s “evil” speech. Cena is shown palling around with Zack Ryder who is in his ring gear for some reason as we go to commercial. I suddenly want to see a Cena/Ryder match.

Random Commercial Thought: San Francisco Noir could have been fabulous!

Back to the show where we get a replay of Riley getting beat down followed by the Miz arriving to declare the main event. Cena arrives and is jumped by Jack Swagger from nowhere.

John Cena vs. Jack Swagger (No Holds Barred Match)

Swagger drags Cena down the ramp and beats Cena down. He stomps into Cena in the corner back in the ring. I’m pretty sure he could have continued it outside the ring according to the rules, you know. Cena sells the punches like he’s made of bricks. Swagger goes for an ankle lock, but Cena decides that was enough selling and leaps up into an assault on Swagger. Swagger manages to shut him down with a reverse elbow out of the corner and delivers some elbow drops and a leg drop. Swagger beats on Cena in the corner and whips him from corner to corner. I’d forgotten Swagger an actually be good in the ring when he wants to be and has a decent opponent. Cena/Sucks chants get big. Swagger slingshot body splashes out of the corner for a two count as we go to commercial.

Random Commercial Thought: Why don’t they ever cancel more reality shows?

Back to the show where we see that during the break Cena was sent into the ring post when Swagger escapes an FU outside. Swagger is working a rest hold before booting Cena to the floor. Cena is sent into the exposed railing that is just steel without the pads on it. Apparently they were pulled off during the break. Gosh, sure would have liked to have seen that, as well as Swagger beating on Cena with the GM’s computer. Swagger grabs himself a chair and starts beating Cena in the back with it, but this of course only gets a two count because Cena is fucking invincible. Hit him with the chair again. Like, a bunch of times. Swagger takes his time with the chair and places it on Cena to do his slingshot body splash onto it. This actually hits, but of course, two count.

Swagger props the chair into the corner and Cena suddenly stops Selling to beat the holy shit out of him and go into his offense, but Swagger counters the shoulder tackle into a suplex for two. Swagger locks on the ankle lock. Cena just stands up and rolls out of it with ease. Swagger tries to spear Cena, but Cena dodges to the side, leaving him to slam his own face right into the chair and knock himself out. Both guys crawl up and Cena goes into his typical offense again. This looks even goofier when you do the sequence twice in one match. Swagger eats the shuffle and Cena finishes it with the FU and the STF.

Winner: Cena

Miz applauds this before saying that was impressive. It was? He does that all the time. That’s like saying it’s impressive when a bomb blows something up. They tend to do that. Miz says there are many ways to make a human being say they quit. He proceeds to list them off. He moves around the arena showing things he could murder Cena with at ringside to make him quit. He breaks one of the cameras in the process. Hope nobody needed that one. He then has Riley retrieve some random weapons from under the ring. Why was there a huge black pipe under there? Is someone doing plumbing down there to flush Evan Bourne’s career down? He says there’s a million ways to win that Cena hasn’t even thought about yet and he is the most ruthless person Cena has ever faced. He says he’s found a way to win that Cena has never even seen before. Maybe he just recorded Cena saying “I Quit” in a promo and will play it back with ventriloquism to the ref. Miz says he won’t use the pipe on Sunday but he’ll use it right now. Alex Riley flanks and Miz proceeds to wreck Cena with the pipe. I always thought “get the pipe down” was a sexual euphemism. For some reason, multiple pipe shots do NOTHING to Cena and he takes it away and beats them from the ring. Cena says Miz will lose again as the show goes off the air.

Highlight of the Night:Punk and Kofi put on a decent match, but Rey and Del Rio had the best showing. The wrestling overall was average, which is a step up from late.

Lowlight of the Night:Contract signing just dragged and was annoying as ever. Cole is bad enough and so are contract signings, please do not put the two together in the future.

WWE "Creative" Award: Kiss my foot match? Is this the PG kiss my ass?

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Cameron Burge is TWF's resident "Mr. Monday Night", penning the "Best Damn Raw Rant, Period" appearing every..umm, Monday night. That's right. Also known as "The REAL Inferno" (not to be confused with all those impostors out there) Cameron was hand picked by Michael Melchor himself to assume any and all RAW responsibilities. A selfless man, Cameron has also dedicated most of his organs to science. (which makes his current day to day life quite uncomfortable.) Read his Raw Reports or die.