RAW Is Snore

Talk about dropping the ball.

Last week, RAW seemed fresh, vibrant and ready to sprint towards the summer months with a cast of new additions, a steadily improving WWE Champion and no Triple H to anchor the program down. Talk about a 180 turn. Last night's RAW was boring, plodding and ultimately forgettable.

First thing's first... while it popped the crowd, there was no reason to have a segment that prominently featured Jillian Hall at all. If anything, that singing competition should have been saved for a commercial break, an Easter egg for the live crowd so to speak.

Second, they totally ruined a chance to add more fuel to the fire on the Miz/Cena angle. In fact, they followed my proposed angle almost to the letter... except they didn't have Miz capitalize after Show destroyed Cena. Speaking of that... the beatdown was too slow and boring. I appreciate the WWE trying to add a little gravitas to the program, but it just doesn't work.

Third, what the fuck was going on with William Regal? Was he a face or a heel? Why would you have a heel challenger to MVP talk trash about another one of the heels on the program (The Miz)? For the last two or three months, the WWE has been teasing heel on heel programs, first with Edge and Show, then this past Friday on Smackdown with Edge and Jericho, and now Miz and Regal. While a heel/heel program would be more interesting, I have a feeling the crowd would shit on it or try to turn one of them face. The result of the match, with Regal causing MVP to be counted out, was just fine, and that could be a very interesting program if given the time to shine, but Regal dissing Miz was a WTF moment for me. Very surreal.

Finally... there's the main event business. I had no interest in seeing Shane McMahon again go all Superman on all three members of Legacy, so I went to bed. From all reports, I didn't miss much, since like I expected, Shane McMahon went all Superman on Legacy. A1 poster KoppoKick made an excellent point... do you realize what would happen if they gave someone like MVP the Shane push? He'd be insanely over with the crowd even more than he already is. Instead of him in the thick of challenging Orton, we get him wrestling Dolph Ziggler with one of the cackling buzzards from The View in his corner.

And don't get me started on Vickie Guerrero. She's gone from an entertaining heel accompaniment to Edge to a shrill, annoying WTF-machine. She's become the epitome of the modern authority figure... she has to have all eyes on her and she has to be the one to drive the action, not the wrestlers. Would it have been too much to make a six-man tag match as the main event, which would have given both MVP and Batista... who's only the guy challenging for the WWE Championship at the next PPV a bit more exposure. I mean, I'm the last person to clamor for more Big Dave on my screen, since I find him absolutely useless, but the fact is he's Orton's next challenger, not fucking Shane McMahon. He should have been in the main event, not being DQed because he ignored a ref's count.

All in all, it was a frustrating Monday night to be a wrestling fan. Hopefully this was a hiccup rather than the norm for the WWE's flagship, and more importantly, I hope this doesn't become the norm for Smackdown and ECW, which right now look extremely promising for the near future.