BRM Reviews the 1/7/2013 Raw (GREAT!)

[Big Red Machine]

OPENING SEGMENT- more fun than a Cena segment has been in a very long time. The whole thing with Big E accepting the match on behalf of Dolph was weird. I thought that Big E. was going to take Cena on himself, which would have been great. If they wanted to have Dolph be forced into the match, why not have Dolph refuse, then have Vickie come out and make the match official? Is dissension between Dolph and Big E. really necessary right now?

JOHN CENA vs. DOLPH ZIGGLER (w/AJ Lee & Big E. Langston)- 7.5/10
GREAT match, but I really hate the booking here. This doesn’t gain Cena anything, and it just hurts Dolph. Why not have Big E’s interference result in Dolph winning? It would make Langston look good, give the heel a dirty win, and give Cena something to be pissed off about.

WWE DIVAS TITLE MATCH: Eve Torres(c) vs. Kaitlyn- 4/10, but a good segment, too. I REALLY want to see Kaitlyn take the title from Eve.
WHOA! Did Eve just steal Madison’s Rayne’s Queen of England wave?

SANTINO, RICKY STEAMBOAT, & WADE BARRETT BACKSTAGE- decent segment setting up a match for tonight.

RANDY ORTON & 3MB SEGMENT- Randy was good, 3MB was annoying. Apparently 3MB have entered themselves into the Royal Rumble. This is exactly why it makes no sense to have people just say that they are entering the rumble. If you don’t have qualifiers, then people who haven’t won matches in months can just get in without earning it. Also, apparently Randy has booking power.

TEAM HELL NO vs. TEAM RHODES SCHOLARS- 5.5/10

RANDY ORTON vs. HEATH SLATER (w/Drew McIntyre & Jinder Mahal)- 4/10
They actually gave this enough time so that Heath didn’t look like a total jobber.

WADE BARRETT vs. SANTINO MARELLA (w/Ricky “The Dragon” Steamboat)- 1.75/10
Wade backing down from Steamboat after the match didn’t make much sense.

SHEAMUS & 3MB- they are setting Orton and Sheamus on parallel paths. Could be interesting.

ANTONIO CESARO vs. THE GREAT KHALI (w/Natalya & Hornswoggle)- 3/10
Khali got his stuff in, then Claudio looked awesome!

PAUL HEYMAN & BRAD MADDOX BACKSTAGE- why is Brad Maddox allowed to run around backstage?

SHEAMUS vs. JINDER MAHAL (w/Drew McIntyre & Heath Slater)- 3.5/10
But still fun. Like the Orton match, this was a good segment, even though that isn’t reflected in the match rating.

TLC MATCH FOR THE WWE TITLE: CM Punk(c) (w/Paul Heyman) vs. Ryback- 7.5/10
This “Shield screws Ryback out of the WWE Title” crap is getting old. Oh, and Shield isn’t Taker, so someone had to turn the lights out for them (Maddox?). I’m still confused as to how both Amrbose and Rollins climbed the same side of the ladder at the same time in the dark, but Ryback can’t even feel his way to pulling down a title he had his hands on (and seeing it can’t be that important because managed to pull it down without looking at it to end this match).

CM PUNK CUTS A PROMO TO TELL US THAT HE IS ABOUT TO GO OUT TO THE RING AND CUT A PROMO- um… okay

TEAM HELL NO BACKSTAGE- having them fight is fine. Having them fight and yell about absolutely everything is annoying.

THE BIG SHOW vs. KOFI KINGSTON- no rating. GREAT segment. This is the sort of thing that makes Big Show’s WMD look dangerous. All it is a big punch, and he can hit it at any point during the match and it is just as lethal. Even just a few seconds in.

CM PUNK PROMO- pretty good, but this kind of felt like it was going all over the place at times.

THE ROCK PROMO- was good in the beginning, but he also said some stuff that wasn’t true (the crowd didn’t turn on Punk when he won the title). The whole “Popeye on crack” comment made no sense at all. How does Punk look like Popeye?
Punk’s little response to Rock at the end was great, as was Rock’s response to it. I like the Rock Bottom to Punk a lot because I think that Punk needs to be the angry one in this feud.

Overall, a GREAT show from the WWE. The matches seemed to get more time than usual, and unlike every other three hour Raw, I had no trouble at all sitting through this one. Even Cole and Lawler were good once the Cena vs. Ziggler match was over.

STUPID ANNOUNCER QUOTES:
1. Cole says that he finds the fact that AJ called Dolph “Ziggy” to be “interesting.”
THAT is what you find interesting, Cole? That explains a hell of a lot.

2. Cole reads a tweet from a fan. What is this piece of insight that was so brilliant that Cole felt the need to share it with us? “Dolph Ziggler has spaghetti hair.”
So are we just going to read every tweet that sounds like it was posted by a five year old, or is this one just special?

3. Not to be outdone, Lawler not only finds the above tweet hilarious, but feels the need to add in “It does sort of look like that. With some marinara sauce.”
Oh dear G-d, we’re not even twenty minutes into the show. I hope they are just getting all of their stupid for the year out now, because if this is going to be par for the course for 2013, I might well go insane.
By the way, my new year’s resolution is to try to use this here clip from one of my favorite movies of all time wherever it is applicable, so I figured I might as well break it in here:
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