In Defense of Jerry Lawler Pinning The Miz Clean Monday

Photo Credit: WWE.com

RAW's main event was a good match with a promising premise. A whole bunch of feuds were coalesced into one, big six-man tag match. The WWE Champion, The Miz, was involved on one team, along with Sheamus and Alex Riley. If the heel team was to lose, you'd think that Riley was the one to take the fall. Booking 101 would dictate that, right? Well, no, the Miz was the one who took the fall, to a sexagenarian announcer. Normally, this is where I'd be blowing a gasket. However, Jerry Lawler getting to pin the WWE Champion isn't as bad as it seems on the surface. Here are the reasons why:

One, Jerry Lawler isn't your normal sexagenarian announcer. The guy can still go, and he does on a regular basis. He's a credible wrestler and a guy who's extremely over with any crowd he wrestles in front of. Fans want to see him win, so why not give him a win when the time is right? Could he have gotten a pin on Riley? Yeah, he could have, but the win over Miz was what the crowd wanted. The crowd really wanted to see Lawler win the TLC match for the WWE Championship, but at the same time, that's not a smart booking decision, which leads me to my next point.

Lawler's win over Miz was as tainted as Miz's TLC win over Lawler about a month ago. Let's not pretend that Lawler's win over Miz in that tag match was as clean as it possibly could have been. It was off picking the scraps from what Randy Orton had set up. Yes, Orton was in the match, but he wasn't the legal man, and his attack was technically illegal. It was about as screwy a clean finish as you could get, and really, Miz is not hurt in all this.

Three, and this is important, Miz is over enough that losing to Lawler doesn't hurt him. He's one of few guys who's a heat factory unto himself, and Lawler matches him for his face overness. I could understand if it were a NXT rookie or some other heatless wonder, but Lawler? I don't think people see an old guy when they see Lawler, they see a legend whose sheen hasn't been rubbed off by overexposure.

Look, would I have booked Lawler to get the pin on Miz in that match? Probably not, but at the same time, the match was booked in a way where Miz gets protected even in a loss. I've posted before about how a Champion shouldn't lose, but at the same time, it's a tag match, the booking made sense, and if it's the resolution to Miz's and Lawler's heat with each other, it's a good and satisfying one. If Miz keeps getting fed to Lawler, then I that's where I start to have a problem. However, I'm sure the WWE knows that having Lawler go over its Champion repeatedly when trying to build a feud between Miz and either Orton or John Morrison (or both). If they don't, then they're no different than TNA, and the evidence seems to prove otherwise. Even though they are flawed when it comes to building angles at times, something that I've even as recently as yesterday called them out on, they deserve SOME benefit of the doubt. This is one of those cases.

Remember you can contact TH and ask him questions about wrestling, life or anything else. Please refer to this post for contact information. He always takes questions!