May as well have a thread for Raw.

Tonights show was pretty bad. I'm a big fan of Jeremy Piven and I thought he did okay, but "Dr. Ken" was fucking horrible. I like him in the movies he's in too, but seriously? Don't know what went through his head when he decided to act like an extremely annoying 5 year old all show, but it was bad.

As for Miz, unless he violated the Wellness Policy, I'm assuming he's headed to Smackdown (or maybe ECW). Whatever it is, I hate to say it because Raw needs more upper level guys even if it's not "top" main eventers, but he needs to get the fuck off that show now and reinvent himself or something (not the character, just "start fresh"). Not sure what he did to the writers or to Vince but he's booked to look absolutely terrible week after week. First time Cena beats him, fine, I can live with that one. Miz should have gotten more offense, but okay. Second time, okay, at least Miz got some more offense in. Then they just ignore it for a month, then they have them wrestle again last week, Miz looks pretty bad getting crushed quickly. Now they have Cena face him with every lumberjack against Cena (including the World Heavyweight Champion as one of the lumberjacks) and he still kicked the shit out of Miz and crushed him. Miz is officially buried, dead, and done on Raw, hopefully he'll head to Smackdown and be booked better. My biggest concern is that he'll stay on Raw and have to "beg for his job back" doing increasingly humiliating things that really won't be that funny to anyone except whatever writer hates him, and will just serve to bury him even more.

The guest host thing is somewhat interesting, otherwise I'm not sure I'd bother watching without it. The guys I like are getting either buried or shoved into the midcard (although I don't want them to rush Swagger too quickly, so I suppose I can live with that) in favor of the same old shit. HBK's return will be neat but, while it was a neat little segment and will probably be something cool for about a week, we JUST DID the DX thing not that long ago. Either Shawn comes back and joins HHH as DX again (which we just saw a couple years ago) or Shawn comes back and one of them turns on the other (OH PLEASE NO, I can live happily never seeing another HBK/HHH match...both guys are fine but it's been done to death). Kinda would have preferred him coming back seperate from HHH, although I wouldn't mind HBK/Orton.

I did like the HHH/Legacy stuff though. Nice to see them win clean even if it was a handicap match.

By the way, yet another reason I dislike Cena...really sick of him being used as the new kissup guy for every new guest GM. Every week Cena will inevitably cut a promo about how the guest GMs new movie is the greatest movie in movie history, or how ZZ Top is the greatest band ever, or how he can't wait to see if Shaq's dick measures up to the rest of him. Okay, I know these guys are here to promote shows, or movies, or tours, or whatever. Let the guest GM mention it and let Cole and Lawler hype it occasionally, maybe a brief mention in a promo, but can we cut the weekly Cena dick sucking fest? You wonder why a lot of people have trouble with the guy? He has ZERO EDGE. I don't even care if he turns heel at this point, I'd settle for giving him some kind of edge again instead of turning him into the biggest kiss ass ever. Dude, I like Jeremy Piven, but something tells me that hundreds of years from now, nobody's going to be talking about how the most classic movie of all time, The Goods, opened in 2009 and changed the face of history forever. Shut the fuck up and get Piven's, ZZ Tops, Shaqs, and Seth Greens collective dicks out of your mouth.

So Brian Kendrick is let go, and now the Miz is off the show too?

LOL, what are they friggin' doing? Honestly.. there is no direction right now. Can anyone actually think of a decent feud on Raw right now? I'm not sure what the hell they're doing with Cena/Orton.. it's just a pissing match between the two.

It's AMAZING what Raw has become.

Lets recap what we'll see next week.

Guest host comes out (OMGZ SLAUGHTER!!!1), does his whole thing, talks for 3 minutes. Orton will eventually come out which will lead to a match with Cena, or some type of 2 against 1... you get the point.

Random divas match where nothing gets accomplished.

Commercials

Promotions

Commercials

Host shown backstage, Orton wonders what the hell he's doing, threatens to punt him

Promotions

Swagger vs. MVP (one of the few good things on the show)

Commercials

HHH comes out vs. Legacy.. teases HBK for DX reunion 1 billion

Big Show shown in the back with Jericho (Again, one of the better thing on Raw)... gets teases about his weight, talks about Shaq.. teases a Shaq match

Promotion

Commercial

Chavo gets humiliated by Hornswoggle

commercial

Cena owns Orton, Slaughter puts on the camel clutch.. show ends with again, nothing actually progressing.




And they have the balls to release Kendrick and the Miz?! Woo hoo! Lets push Chris Masters who doesn't have an ounce of charisma or wrestling ability in his roided up body.

Raw is a third rate dog and pony show at this point. Shaq was entertaining last week, very, very entertaining. And I enjoyed Piven tonight to an extent, he's a great mic man. But this show was extremely weak. Raw is now wrapped around the hype of the guest host.. the actual wrestling and storylines have taken a complete back seat. I mean, what is Orton actually doing now? And yes, Cena's act after 2 years of this is old now.. TV PG is pure crap and the guy that's taken the biggest hit is Cena. The best promo he had was a couple months ago with Edge where it really reminded everyone of how cool he is when he has that "edge" to him. Now, everything is butterflies and smiley faces. He's the face of this new TV PG movement. Ya know... when I was 7 years old I remember loving the taking the vitamins and drinking your milk thing with Hogan, I dug it. And it was the early 90's, certainly a different time in wrestling, there were Clowns, Warlocks, etc walking around.. one big circus. But it's hard to push this type of stuff now in this day and age. The majority of people just don't want to see a leprechaun completely make a fool out of Chavo Guerrero.

Hopefully the Miz goes to Smackdown. It's the best the WWE has got right now and it's not even close. I know I keep saying this, but watch what the WWE has done with Punk and Hardy. Raw has nothing that can even come close to the 'raw' emotion and character progression that has occurred in that feud.

I will agree that Raw has its problems right now. But I disagree with you guys on some things. First lets get to Raw's problems...

-The little guy and Chavo need to stop fighting every single week. Its just played out at this point.

-Unless they plan on bringing Shaq in to fight Show at Summerslam (and I doubt the nba would ever allow that) then they need to get off this whole Shaq Show stuff. They're teasing everyone with a match that will never happen. Not only that but whats the sense in building up Show if he currently is feuding with nobody and Summerslam is on the way. They should have him feud with Mark Henry and get off this whole Shaq stuff. It was cool when it happened, but its over.

-The Orton thing tonight was horribly set up. Very stupid idea. Made Piven look like shit.

-I don't see this as a problem cause I'm not really a Miz fan. Don't find him interesting. But I'll agree that they completely killed him tonight. Both with the promo Cena cut on him and the way the match ended. I could tell from the start they were building this guy up just so Cena would have someone to beat up on while he wasn't doing much else. But the promo Cena cut on Miz shows just how good of a sports entertainer Cena is...You could give him NOTHING to work with and he'll still on occasion make it mildly interesting. Miz should have to call him "Sir" after that promo.

Cena vs Orton does need a better storyline. They could do soo much more with this.

Heres what I disagree on.....

I don't see the problem with Cena promoting the hosts things going on. He's the most recognizable and most popular guy on the show. Its just a promotional tool and not meant to be interesting. Yes, some people do have problems with Cena, and he has his haters. But in spite of that he's still by FAR the most popular guy in the company and its not even close.

Tonights Raw was weak, but overall I don't think the shows been bad. The guest host thing gives the show an unpredictablity to it. Other than ZZ Top I've been pleased with the choices so far.

Most fans don't care about Kendrick cause he's small and lacks personality. He wasn't a good fit for Raw. Miz is also a bad fit for Raw. Theres too many big guys on Raw and Miz looks like a pebble standing next to them, and doesn't exactly have a theatening personality. Would anyone seriously buy Miz beating Cena???

It's not that Cena promotes the hosts. That's fine although they should shake it up a little. But there's a difference between "Hey, he's got this movie coming out" and Cena coming out and saying "IN HUNDREDS OF YEARS WE WILL ALL BE TALKING ABOUT THE PINNACLE OF MOVIES, THE GOODS". It makes him sound like the biggest fucking kiss ass in the world, and he more or less has done it with every guest host except Seth Green I guess. It's one thing to do it with Shaq, but come on. I love Jeremy Piven, but The Goods appears to be a relatively generic comedy. I may check it out, I like Ed Helms too, but seriously, I don't think even Piven was gonna come out and try to say that August 14th would live on for all of eternity as the day the greatest movie ever came out.

I'm sorry, he comes off as a major kiss ass. There's promoting and then there's a dick sucking fest. Jericho promoted Seth Green when he mentioned his tour thing while trying to bash him. HHH promoted Green by sucking up to him a little, but since HHH was actually IN that episode of Robot Chicken, it was way more forgivable. He was more promoting himself and it really fit his character. Cena's just sucking the cock of every boss who walks into the arena. Hell he was still sucking Donald Trumps dick weeks after Trump sold Raw back. I'm not blaming John Cena the person in this, since I'm sure they're telling him to go out and do it, but it's shitty for his character. He's too cookie cutter good guy now.

Also up to now I've enjoyed the Guest host thing for the most part (ZZ Top was meh and Dr. Ken made me want to shoot myself in the face with a shotgun, but otherwise it's been entertaining) but they need to be careful. Get more former wrestlers, guys who are clearly wrestling fans (Seth Green, for example) or guys like Shaq who you can actually do stuff with cause he's so damn big. The fans are going to shit all over the other ones, like they started to do last night, and when they really get pissed and start shitting on the future guest host who mentions "That Survivor show the Dubya Dubya Eff has comin up" Cena's gonna look a whole lot worse when he just got done explaining why guest host "random flavor of the week singer" has the single greatest album in music history and someday you'll be talking about them along with Elvis, The Beatles, and Michael Jackson.

As far as Miz goes, sure, why not? This is wrestling. Flair wasn't bigger than most of his opponents and he didn't have a terribly threatening personality, but because he was billed as a wrestling genius and the dirtiest guy around, did anyone call bullshit when he beat those guys? Course not. It's all about how you're booked. Miz isn't huge but come on, it's not like he looks like Seth Green out there. Book him as in Cena's head or something, have him take advantage of Cena losing it due to Miz's mindgames, and there ya go. Have him cheat to win or get outside help of course, I'm certainly not suggesting Miz beat him clean, but come on. The first two times I let go, I didn't think they helped Miz but at least he got SOME offense. This week and last week he was absolutely crushed and buried. And I really don't get why. Is he a future main eventer, probably not, but he's a good talker, a decent wrestler, and he's got a character that people love to hate. He's got upper mid carder written all over him. He's not gonna main event Wrestlemania, but he could be part of a multi man main event or maybe a World Title match on a lesser card. Now I'm hoping he goes to Smackdown or ECW so maybe he can get something like that, because the alternative is probably him begging for his job back and then losing to Hornswaggle for a few weeks.

I thought Cena was just being sarcastic when he said that about "The Goods". Trying to be funny. Thats how I took it.

I have an idea for a guest host thread so I'll save my thoughts for that.

Miz isn't Ric Flair though. And wrestling is different. There are so many monsters in WWE now especially on Raw that the little guys are gonna get lost in the shuffle. With the Miz he had a nice few months on the mic dissing the top babyface, but I wonder what else he's got after that. You can't have him lose due to Miz mindgames cause Miz doesn't come off as being very smart. All the shit he said about Cena isn't anything more than everything thats said about Cena on the internet everyday. I didn't think he shed any new light on how people who didn't like Cena felt about him. I agree that he could be an upper mid card guy. But Raw isn't the place for him to do that.

The one thing that I don't like about Cena is they're trying their best to make him funny, but he's just not. He's an awesome talker, but a Rock/Austin/Angle/Jericho he is not. He's just not a funny guy... either that, or the writing is making him terribly corny and cliche. He was funny when he rapped, but when talking he's very bland and just not interesting anymore.

Again, with Raw.. they've clearly put the guest hosts ahead of everything else. Sure, I guess it's interesting to see Piven on TV hosting Raw.. but at the end of the day, we yearn for good wrestling, and good feuds. Something Raw has little to none of right now. There's no progression, there are no storylines leading into Summerslam. The most interesting thing right now IMO is Show/Jericho... other than that, you can turn the channel and know you're not missing much. If you watch ECW or Smackdown and watch the 5 minute recap, you'll pretty much get the gist of what the show was like, and actually save yourself the boredom.

And the whole "big guys YAY, small guys lost in the shuffle" thing is exactly what's wrong with Raw. It's the reason why it's going to remain the same thing for the foreseeable future. Same moveset, same bodies, same everything. It's BORING.

the only good thing about Raw right now IMO is the fact that the showstopper is probably about to return.

I wish he still had the edge as well, but he really did rip Miz a new asshole on Monday.

I don't mind it, cause they have to make the guest host the focal point or else no one interesting would agree to show up. You can't say...btw...we want you on Raw this week, but we're not going to feature you. That don't work. How could you say Show and Jericho is the most interesting thing when they aren't currently feuding with anyone (other than Shaq who won't be back) on Raw. The Shaq stuff was great, but thats over now. I don't mind them featuring gust hosts cause its something different. We haven't seen a new celeb on every week before. I love good wrestling storylines as much as the next person but we've already seen everything already. Its hard to make interesting storylines cause everythings been done. I do agree that the writing should be ALOT better, but its one of the reasons wrestling ain't what it used to be. We've seen everything.

Ok.. was I the only one that popped for Macaulay Culkin on Raw last night? LOL That might've been the most random, yet awesome thing I've ever seen. Who could've possibly thought we'd ever see him in WWE programming?

Also.. Freddie Prinz Jr IMO was the best celebrity host Raw has had thus far. I know he was with the WWE writing team for a short amount of time, and you can see he has a certain knack on the mic. He was very, very comfortable out there, and took the Orton back breaker like a champ. Also, Santino is the greatest comedy act ever. Fuck Doink, the Bushwackers, Gillberg..... Santino is the best, bar none.

Really enjoyed seeing Legacy attack DX like that, and completely dominate them. Really gives them legitimacy going into Summerslam.

Great to see the Miz vs. Bourne. Also great to see Miz win a match, and it seems he's going after Kofi for the US Title. That could possibly be very entertaining.

Cena... Orton.... who gives a shit. No interest at all.

Yeah I thought he did a great job. He seemed VERY comfortable on the mic and he obviously knew his shit. See, while there have been other entertaining guest hosts, I think he's the first one I could buy as a week to week permanent host on Raw (not that he will, just saying).

Overall I thought it was a pretty good Raw. Nothing jumped out at me as amazing but it was all pretty solid. But yeah, I'm with you, no interest in Orton/Cena. This is where the guest host thing is a problem; prior to this week (presumably because Freddie doesn't have a big movie or whatever coming out, just a spot on 24, and also because he wrote for them and understands the business more) the focus was on the guest host and not the Cena/Orton angle. It really wasn't there much today either, just one short promo from Cena and the end of the last match, but this time it had nothing to do with the guest host and everything to do with the fact that after putting so much effort into promoting "The Goods" or "Making fun of Canada", they really didn't build up much of anything for the PPV, except Legacy VS DX, which was still a bit rushed.

Nice to see Legacy beat the shit out of DX and interrupt the DX return. Yeah, they're probably gonna get crushed on Sunday, but at least they were allowed to look good tonight. They've actually been allowed to look shockingly good against HHH this whole angle.

And yeah, I cracked up about Culkin too. Just completely random.

Also, am I the only one that really digs Evan Bournes new entrance? I LOVE the music, and I like how the camera gets really low, and then the rock music comes on... I don't know.. I just think it's one of the cooler entrances in the WWE right now.

Whenever a guy gets new tights, a shirt, and legit music you know he's in for a decent push sometime or another. I think they have big things lined up for Bourne... or at least I hope so. The US title picture is looking completely awesome right now.

Tell me which you'd rather watch

WWE Title competitors (realistic): Orton, Cena, HHH, Michaels, Henry (really the only guy who's even hinted at going at Orton other than HHH/Cena the past few months... I'm not counting Batista)

US Title competitors: Kingston, Bourne, Miz, MVP, Swagger

I mean I don't know about you, but the US Title scene is sweet. It contains very good young talent who have never or hardly ever faced each other before. They're all fresh, and are all different from each other. That's the one thing about Raw that I consistently like a lot. I mean, I would absolutely love a Bourne vs. Kingston match. It sounds like we're going to be getting Kingston vs. Miz though which is great as well.

Also.. once again, Cena falling flat in his backstage interview with the jokes. As soon as he brought up the dog pooping in his living room, I literally went back to the Yankee game.

I used to really dig Cena a lot, but he's so watered down. It really sucks. Every single interview/segment is the same.

x2

He makes the most of it though. Considering the shit he has to work with he pulls it off pretty well.

Freddie did good, I don't care for him. If he wasn't tapping Sarah Michelle Geller nobody would even know who he was. He seemed comfortable, but Shaq was a better host.

They made them look good against HHH to make up for the ass pounding their going to take on Sunday.

I was thinking when the paint can came flying out that they took a page out of Home Alone 2. I was shocked to shit when he actually came out. I think thats the first time I've seen him SINCE Home Alone 2.

I don't hear the Raw haters complaining tonight. Awesome show.

I don't think there are any Raw haters, just people who find the type of show Raw is now kind of lame. I've come to accept that Raw is now more of a Saturday Night Live gimmick show, but I personally enjoy Smackdown better. And now with Undertaker back, I think that show continues to be the best the WWE has to offer.

The past couple of weeks have been fun. I've been entertained for the most part, especially last week. May favorite part of Raw right now is easily Jericho/Big Show. I didn't know what to expect with them, but I want them to remain a tag team for a while, I think they have something really good there. Perfect combination.

Yeah, sorry, Raw's been mediocre more often than not lately. Last week was very good, and tonight was solid (nothing amazing but good). I wouldn't call it awesome, but it was good and they did a good job building the storylines instead of having the guest host dominate the whole show.

Don't know how not loving Raw overall makes anyone a "raw hater".

By the way, did I hear it wrong, or did Lawler specifically say Kingston would be in action at the end of the Miz/Santino match?

I haven't watched in the longest time, but I remember Raw used to be top notch. What the hell happened? I know you guys are religious viewers, maybe you could fill me in. From 2002-2007, that shit was really fun to watch. I only tune in every now and then these days.

They've gotten sloppy with their booking/writing, and they've neglected to push new stars.

On Smackdown, CM Punk has reached a new level with his heel gimmick, John Morrison has been pushed as a main eventer, Dolph Ziggler is the reincarnated Mr. Perfect and is putting on great matches with Mysterio. Cryme Tyme has been pushed as a top face team while the Hart Dynasty is being pushed as the 2nd best heel team (after Show/Jericho). And get this, their two top stars have been out for months (Edge/Taker). They've developed new stars. Everything is now new and fresh. Add Undertaker to the mix now, and there you go, you have yourself the flagship show in the WWE right now, and it's a runaway.

Raw, other than HHH/Legacy/Cena has developed NO ONE. MVP has been relegated to 3 minute matches with another promising star Jack Swagger. Neither get any mic time so it's impossible for fans to get behind MVP or hate Swagger, they've never on their TV screens. Of course instead of going with a Swagger/MVP segment, we'll have Hornswoggle vs. Chavo Guerrero for the billionth time, which serves absolutely no purpose. Chavo must of run over Vince's dog or something.

I thought Raw was awesome heading into Wrestlemania, but it's been on a steady decline since the initial HHH/Orton feud this year.