WWE Raw rant 10/12/2012

I've decided to shorten my Raw rants from this week on as the three hour shows, as well as making notes on everything throughout, is sucking the life out of me! I also decided that I would try to watch the show and try not to jot everything down, every minute! I need to start to enjoy Raw again as the three hours is really becoming a chore - it's been said before, and it'll continue to be said by everyone, that the three hours unneeded - matches have become longer and in some ways this is a good thing. On the other hand, some of these matches result in a non-finish or run-in and this makes that 10-15 minutes given to a match seem for nothing  if you're going to screw a match then do it after 3 minutes! Everything else feels like way too much filler.

From now on I'm going to focus on the main parts and anything else that REALLY stood out - as I did a few weeks ago. For some reason, in the last few weeks since then I've commented (or felt like I have) on everything that's gone on. I mean, my time shouldn't be taken by The Great Khali and Hornswoggle for even a minute?!

The show kicked off with Dolph Ziggler atop of a ladder, with the MITB briefcase hanging from the ceiling. This was another good promo from the man that is a World Title run away from being a main event mainstay. He rightly pointed out how many opportunities Cena's had and how many he's squandered - and now Vince is dangling ANOTHER carrot (briefcase) for Cena to get ANOTHER chance at gold. Sheamus and Show came out to continue their non-contact crap to end this segment.

I feel as though Cena is part of this situation as they want to keep him occupied whilst the Punk/Rock match at Royal Rumble is around the corner. I've also read several articles that have predicted that Rock vs Cena at Wrestlemania could be a unification match - I really don't think this will happen and I really hope it doesn't either. Rocky doesn't deserve that type of match - he's going to be about on-and-off for three months before leaving again and that magnitude of match should be reserved for the guys that are about 365 days of the year. Also, DO NOT give that briefcase to Cena - he messed up the WWE Title contract so why does he get a crack at the other one?

This week saw the return of 'crazy' AJ. In the last few weeks, AJ has been fairly sane compared with earlier this year when she was involved with Daniel Bryan and CM Punk. After being given a 'main event' level match with Vickie later in the night, she seemed to regain her ultra-unstable tendencies - going in the men's locker room and embarrassing Cena, and later, going psycho when she lost to Vickie. Towards the end of the show she wanted to accompany Cena to the ring but was told to stay back as it could be dangerous. I don't think this sat well with her.

As I said at the start of the last paragraph; I felt that she returned the craziness this week - and with my (as others have) prediction that she might ruin Cena's chances in the ladder match with Ziggler, this is fitting for her to act this way, and this extreme, again.

The fatal four way tag team match (elimination match, apparently) featured the return of Cody Rhodes. This return wasn't hyped at all. He was teaming up with usual tag partner Damien Sandow to face The Usos, The Prime Time Players and Primo/Epico. The winner of this would then go on to face Rey and Sin Cara at TLC to determine the number one contenders. Why are they automatically in that match? Did I miss something?

It's good that now Cody is back the tag team division can resume. The champions have been involved with The Shield seeing as Punk is out for a few weeks and with Cody out, the tag division went a bit quiet. Now it's back; we have a mustache'd Cody, Team Rhodes Scholars can now finally get the gold, and the Usos gave a great showing in this match - eliminating both Primo/Epico and the Prime Time Players. It was pretty easy to see Cody/Damien winning this match and probably going on to beat Rey/Sin Cara (again) at TLC.

Later on MizTV, Cody and Damien were promoted further. Miz tried his hardest to get one over on them but was put in his place by Sandow mocking him. Babyface Miz has a lot of work to do - repeating 'really?' over and over and over again is going to get REALLY boring, REALLY quickly.

Raw finished with a good old fashioned mass-brawl involving all the main event guys from the TLC matches - with the exception of Sheamus and Show not being able to touch each other. The Shield kicked this off by attacking Cena for the first time - leading many to jump on the theory that they are working for Ziggler - hmmm not sure about that one; he was probably the only top level face they hadn't gone for.

This brought out Bryan/Kane/Sheamus to add numbers to the faces. The only thing left after this was the 'Austin' style run-in by the popular monster face - in this case the role of Austin was played by Ryback. Kind of like the watered down, PG era version of an Austin, breaking glass entrance!

Last note of this last segment/match on Raw was Lawler's comment to Ziggler with regards to the upcoming ladder/MITB match at TLC: I could've sworn Lawler said that the briefcase 'was' Ziggler's. Is that a Michael Cole-esque, Wrestlemania 15 cock-ups letting us know that he'll lose the contract to Cena on Sunday??

Other notes from Raw;

• They combined the IC and US title storylines again this week. Fair enough having Cesaro, Barrett and Kofi (just) but Truth needs to go away. Cesaro with more momentum this week - star in the making!
• Zack Ryder continues to job to Del Rio - he managed to last over 5 minutes this time around though. With more Cena plugging on Twitter, Ryder will soon have another crappy mid-card title run...
• Get Khali and Hornswoggle off my TV/laptop!!!
• Vince had his hand up Vickie's arse again this week - getting her to take the fall for his decisions. Let her do her job or get rid of her!
• The Best in the World (and Raw) made an appearance to reinforce that he's the reason we tune into Raw each week - even with a dodgy knee, Punk MUST be on Raw every week - we need him. I think he's still suffering from the effects of his surgery though as he seems to think he's been champ for 388 days? Last week was 379 so this week must be 386! I suppose even Punk's allowed a mistake every now and then...