When was the last time that two guys went out on consecutive telecasts and had a stellar match each time? I couldn't tell you even now because I didn't watch Bragging Rights, but if Daniel Bryan and Dolph Ziggler had half as good a match tonight as they did last night, then last night's match was probably epic win defined. Seriously, Bryan has done his best to up the in-ring game of the WWE since getting there, having standout matches with Miz, Sheamus and now Ziggler, and it's been a wild ride. I could see those two wrestle every night for the next 100.
Speaking of matches that might have happened 100 times already, Randy Orton and John Cena again headlined RAW, which elicited a groan from me. However, the crowd was into it, so I give the wrestlers for getting the crowd involved and Green Bay for being a generally good crowd all night. The main event angle, with Cena either crowning Wade Barrett as Champion and being freed or counting a pin for Orton and getting fired, is pretty interesting, but I would have liked to have seen it stretched out a little more. Like I said last night, it seems like they blew through three PPV cycles worth of story material so quickly, which on the surface seems okay, but when you look and see the six week span containing three PPVs instead of the normal 12-13 week one, the effects of compression are taking their toll on the story. There was enough material to last until the Rumble. Instead, load gets blown at Survivor Series. Sigh.
Speaking of missteps with the Nexus, I would have preferred them going to Freebird Rules with the title, or finding some other way to build up Starscream heat between David Otunga and Barrett than shitting on the Tag Titles again. Honestly, it's unacceptable that you treat any title like this, even if it is par for the course for the WWE nowadays. People want to care about title straps, no matter what the TV writers in the front office want to delude McMahon into thinking.
Regardless of those missteps, I thought RAW was strong tonight. Anchored by an outstanding undercard match and a solid main event, it also had some strong promo work from Miz, a surprising-to-some (but not me) rebuttal from Eve Torres and some great commentary work from CM Punk during the Bryan/Ziggler match. There was also the whole Sheamus/Santino thing, which I didn't hate but didn't love either. If this doesn't end with Sheamus killifying Santino and seguing into a feud with John Morrison, I'm going postal, although I fear commenter reader will already be breaking plates in his house thanks to his delicious hatred of JoMo.
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