So that was an interesting RAW tonight to say the least. There were good moments, yeah, but I can't help but feel that there's been another missed opportunity to shake things up. Y'know Vince McMahon in character can talk about "shaking things up" all he wants, but is Dave Batista coming out and continuing to wage war against the English language really shaking things up in meaningful way? Or forcing Teddy Long to insert a makeshift tag team into the Unified Tag Championship match? Or effectively raiding ECW of its roster to position RAW as the only brand that matters? No. It really isn't. They were all just carrots for people to be amused with for a few seconds.
They had a real chance to create a few new stars. They had a built-in excuse for Triple H to lose clean to MVP and give him a rub that he sorely needs after really fading into the background and then not being on the PPV last night in exchange for being at an awards show with his View-ty Call, which, by the way, did so much for MVP's mainstream cred, seeing as no one there even knew he was a wrestler. So instead of MVP going over the hobbled Trips, we had Trips effectively no-sell the 80% of the match that MVP was in control working the leg and win clean with only one of his finishers.
Then, there's Miz/Cena. That was the match they should have had last night, but didn't. Okay, better late than never, but why not advance Miz to make up for coming not so close last night? Again, it doesn't have to be clean.
But let's get to the positives, because there were at least two. One was in the Miz/Cena match. Miz was in control for a prolonged amount of time, and really, more people will tune in to watch RAW than they will order a PPV, especially a low-tier one like The Bash. They didn't have to see that Miz got totally bitched out last night... if Lawler says that Miz held his own, they go by it, and soon, the lie becomes reality. Again, heat is elastic. Maybe it was better that they held off until now for that match, but again, what would it have hurt to give the live crowd and PPV audience the same kind of match?
The second was Mark Henry. Now I may be one of the few Henry marks (see what I did there?) on the planet, but when he's motivated, he can do the monster thing pretty well. I don't think he works as well as a face, but the crowd reacted to him tonight. I thought it was well done, and again, something that worked in context of how Orton was after the grueling match last night and then the working over he took from both Evan Bourne and Jack Swagger.
Again though, unless I have reason to believe that something more than just a cheap temporary pop will come from any of this, my pessimism over RAW is the prevailing feeling. This isn't the Smackdown booking crew. It seems like this booking crew is lazy and very much inept at keeping a prolonged feud going. I hope I'm wrong, but at this point, they need to do a lot in order to earn back my faith.
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