Hunter Hearst Soprano

10.3.11 Raw-Down Points of Interest

Random

Randy Orton is second only to the Undertaker for taking too much time to get to the ring.  Seriously.  Even Cena-haters gotta love the fact that it takes him all but 10 seconds to rush into the ring.

Not so Random

If the “tension” in the locker room is going to be the big story on Raw, SHOW me the “tension”, don’t have Cole keep repeating it ad-nauseum, then show it to me.  We can all agree that the announcing works best in concert with vignettes sprinkled masterfully throughout the show.   Better yet, have a vignette with the announcers getting into some “tension” on the way to the booth and go from there.  The fans will appreciate that more than the spoken word of Michael Cole. 

Drew Macandtire.

What are you doing? Where are you going? The Dave Matthews Band needs to do this guy’s ring entrance music.  I heard boring looked him up in the dictionary.   Damn it, the man’s a friggin’ Highlander, for real!  Do something with him, WWE!  You can’t let a guy hang his hat on a feud with Matt Hardy!  So, sad.

I’ll give this one to you for free: Frustrated and not able to get “over” (Do this over a period of 2-3 months, having vignettes that show corporate leaning towards letting him go), Drew snaps and starts copying gimmicks of super-over stars from the past, i.e. Sean Michaels, Stone Cold, but with a slicker edge, in the tone of making fun of the fans for putting people like that over.   With this, you are tapping into his, “I’m the next big thing” type talk he’s been touting ever since he came into the company.  Finally, have him land into a Rowdy Roddy Piper crazy “real” Scotsman vibe.  Let him make it his own like you allowed Sheamus to be “Irish”.

A Voice for the Voiceless…

Who would have thought that the best thing going in the WWE right now is a feud between two wrestlers—none of which is a true “face”—with horrible mic skills? 

I find it very odd that the “Hall of Pain” is already a classic and, well, so is the Viper.

If a world strongest slam happens in the forest, does anyone hear it?

Am I alone in the desire to hear the back story for the decision to push Mark Henry?  I would love to get the inside scoop sometime.  Guess I’ll have to wait for the “New Nation” DVD to come out in 10 years…

Too funny to pass up

Jim Ross on JOMO being in the ring with Mark Henry: “…To be in the ring with a beast.”

I am sure that after dealing with Melina in real life being in the ring with Mark Henry is a breeze.

ACE-initas

I’m sorry, but they haven’t given Laurinitas enough of a personality to make me care either way about him.  And, I have to say, that this is such a grand omission that it must have been done on purpose.   Sure he had anti-roster exec “cred” because of his dealings with CM Punk and the mass firings leading up to it, but they missed out on making him more of a focal point, one EQUAL to HHH.  Booking HHH with heavy TV time weakened any opposition that Laurinatus might have had, tipping the scales way over to the non-Laurinatus side. This is why this storyline doesn’t seem to “flow”.  How am I to accept that Laurinatis is the “big bad”?  Behind the scenes really doesn’t work in this situation because of this imbalance.

Help: Play up the fact that he was a “failed” wrestler that never got over (whether true or not), have the roster contribute to this ridicule and then, slowly, but surely start to build up his chaos abilities.  Yes,, of course I realize HHH is gonna look strong because he is always over, but that only proves my point that the WWE missed the chance to make Laurinitas, at the very least, a formidable opponent worthy of bringing HHH down. 

Unless of course the WWE wanted this unequal footing for Laurinitus to make us fans even more incensed when it occurred…but this seems more like a move from a by-gone era where the fans were a bit less analytical and social-media didn’t exist.  Your fans are smarter now than ever before, they know more about your business and the world, they demand robust characters and detailed plots if they are going to lend their time to your company, so take heed or weeks worth of TV time will be all for naught.

Random

Jack Swagger REALLY towers over the other B-level heels…can someone please work on his diction and get him past his All-American-American gimmick?  We all know he has the skill-sets, in ring, to be an “A” level talent, he just needs an “edge”.  Please find it for him or help him find it.

Aleatorio

In Alberto Del Rio’s speech last night, I can guarantee that it was the first time in the history of “Spanglish” that the word “Hooligans” was used.  Unless, of course, it’s all the rage at Mexican Aristocrat Scrabble parties.

Heel’s gonna be Heeling

What good comes out in having all of the heels in the WWE to be at the forefront of ousting HHH?  I ask because of the absence of real A-LEVEL faces at these “functions”.  All it seems to do is group them together as whiney, little punks, while only some of them work properly as such.  I understand that HHH is a mighty enemy for the B-listers to face alone, but that only means you need to re-think the angle.  Let those whiney “B’ level guys get in the ears of the other “B” level brawn, which then spreads its way into an A-level heel or multiple A-level heels.  A win-win for everyone.

Killer Kelly Kelly

Seriously, even going apeshit crazy, she is still cute as a button!

The return of Super Santino, or “Burying Jinder”

When did Santino start looking like Chavo?

Brodus Clay-mation

Are you serious?  Not me, I can’t take anyone in King Kong Bundy tights seriously.  Let’s go more Vader (Van not Darth) than Bundy (unless we are talking serial killers).

Truth for sale, AWESOMEly cheap

Is anyone else buying this Miz/R-Truth angle like the WWE wants?  It has the feel of a watered-down-Daniel-Bryan-suspended-meets-TNA-writing feel to it.  Remember that angle?  Not only were fans rabid for his return, but they were seeking him out online and at shows,  and, for a time, he was more popular that anyone they were showing on TV in the Nexus.  It still amazes me to this day how they fumbled his return and made him into a joke instead of an under-sized shaved headed bad-ass who can put on a match for the fans.  SOONER OR LATER THE WWE WILL REALIZE THAT THE SPORT OF MMA CAN BE USED TO HELP OUT THOSE THEY FEEL ARE “UNDER-SIZED”.  Submissions don’t have height requirements and neither do well-executed strategies.  I get a sense that the WWE wants to be apart from the MMA craze, yet are glad to supply them with athletes as well as use—some of these same athletes—promotionally.  Embrace the times, WWE.  It makes perfect sense that an “older” Undertaker would resort to MMA-style submissions because IT WILL SAVE WEAR AND TEAR ON HIS BODY, FURTHERMORE, IT MAKES SENSE THAT A SMALLER WRESTLER COULD DO THE SAME IN ORDER TO BEAT A BIGGER WRESTLER.

Back to Miz and R-Truth. This needed to have a stronger foundation with the fans. Let them be fired for a couple of weeks and wrestle elsewhere. How cool would it be to read that they tore up some crappy indy shows or wrestled for titles in Japan.  Meet us halfway, help us to help us “buy-in” more than not just a pseudo-firing with a lawsuit a week later?  My head is spinning from this poor planning.  Let them be a force at the indy level as a tag team, or in Japan for a while.  FORCE me to buy into them as a group before they have such a sway in the WWE.

Random

Vickie Guerrero has some guns!  Looks good on her, now she needs to get a new hair-do and be allowed to grow into the elder (in a good way) stateswoman for the WWE, a true representation of strong female empowerment.  Think about this, she has been through it all, in and out of the ring and not only survived, but succeeded.  Hopefully, they are saving this for when her daughter makes it to the “show” and we can have some real heart-wrenching scenes where the daughter begs the mom to change and be the real WWE role-model she needs.  YOU WANT A DIVA’S division WWE?  Make us care about them, rather than drool over them in magazines. (Too much soy milk in my diet)

A waste of time

I’m sorry but a 12-man tag-match is not only boring, but serves as a semicolon where the WWE wanted an exclamation point.  It could only serve as a precursor for the “vote of confidence” segment, yet, when the time came, the WINNERS or A-level face superstars were nowhere to be found.  How weak is that? 

When matches like this occur, as well as the aftermath, we, the fans, see the great levels of disparity between the A’s and B’s.  We realize that the A’s are not present and thus separate anything on screen to B level status, this, in turn, is confirmed by YOU, the WWE.   Now, the affect is this: Why am I going to pay for a PPV when all I get is B- level talent, confirmed by you?

The only answer I have for something like this is Vince’s creation of WWE Superstars, and not wrestlers.  Maybe, we, the public are slamming our heads because we want to fit the WWE into wrestling, but are not watching wrestling.  Maybe, we are watching a new form of entertainment and drama with wrestling as the context, something solely created in the head of Vince, something we need to learn to accept.  By accepting this concept wholly, we must rid ourselves of our old notions about wrestling.  Somehow, I must forget about the 4 Horsemen and the NWO of my youth, and start thinking in terms of flaccid storylines that a segment of my fellow Raw fans eat up because it’s the only thing in town.  The truth is, the WWE makes money off what they offer, yet a majority of online fans are tired of the same old thing, but do nothing about it.  Vote with your time, vote with your money, vote with your voice, but don’t not vote just because you can’t give something up.  I love parts of the WWE, but after a poor Raw, I feel like it’s a bad habit that I should consider giving up.  Anyone else feel that way?

Degeneration COO

I don’t have much to say about this except for the following:

It is a POWERFUL thing to have the entire roster together on screen like that.  The only time I recall this ever happening is when another wrestler has died.  This creates such a powerful emotional moment that to cheapen it with a half-ass, not fully invested storyline really pisses me off.  And to use someone like JR, with huge cred with the fans, to sell a point, is pretty low.  JR’s leaving and the non-impact it had on me was so infuriating that I felt bad for him.   Don’t resort to cheap tricks like this WWE, you are much better than that.

On another note, we discussed the HHH as COO timeline last week and decided that it was too early to pull off this kind of Raw.  Let’s be honest, it fell flat despite HHH’s awesome mic spots.  

It would have been cool if the feed just “cut-off” as the production team decided it was too dangerous to continue (even though they hadn’t been invaded yet).

One last point

If the WWE is going to run with this HHH as unfit COO storyline, IT IS TIME FOR THE RISE OF THE FACTIONS!!!!  I can’t think of a better time for the WWE to allow for the creation of new teams of wrestlers, governing themselves as well as a WWE they feel cannot protect them.  Heck, I would love to see a storyline where the Refs hire a faction to protect them.  This would completely make sense and allow the fans to buy in on those wrestlers you want to get more exposure.  Nexus should get back together with Daniel Bryan as the lead.  New Nation.  Zack Ryder and a J.O.B. type squad.  SES brought back in for protetction of CM PUNK (with less “were better than you” mic spots).  And the best part? You set up for a sweet old-school survivor series, with the fate of who runs Raw and Smackdown, as a faction, on the line!!  Bring it on WWE!!!