By Shane McKinley, PWTorch Specialist

RAW: September 08, 2008

The Mike Adalme Crossword Must Be Impossible

Raw started off with Jericho showing off his bruises and that indeed wrestlers do indeed shave their armpit hair. This was a nice way to show off the brutality of the match. Mike Adalme then comes out to hype up Raw next week. It is sound to hype up Raw for next week (especially due to Monday Night Football) but still as a fan I do not like it when they do this in the first ten minutes of the show. I have just began to watch your show and already I am told that better things will happen next week. And long-time wrestling fans know that you can have interference in a steel cage match by having somebody pop up from under the ring, distract somebody outside the cage, or any other zany actions those zany wrestlers do. Mike Adalme actually did a pretty good job in his opening bit. Not reading totally off the clipboard! All right! But as the night progressed the more they put in Mike Adalme, the more I was convinced that he spends Raw drinking heavily with his stumbling of words. I think WWE can make big business in introducing "The Mike Adalme Crossword". It would be much tougher than the New York Times crossword with words like "main vent" and other Adalme originals.

But let us not be too hard on the guy. He is learning on the job. He has been on the job since January. Wrestlers, announcers and refs have not gotten as much leeway as Mike Adalme has. He has been consistently bad and depending on him on doing a solid segment every week is like wishing that the Oakland Raiders will get into the playoffs. It is odd, because he is not the heel GM like Vickie, nor the face GM like Teddy Long. He is the tweener who makes decisions based solely on to keep his job afloat. They keep giving love to Adalme but I think they would be better suited to lower the amount of airtime he gets. Unless they think he is actually getting over.

JoMizzy Are The Best Tag Team In WWE

Did Michael Cole just describe Evan Bourne and Rey Mysterio as swashbuckling? Arggh, me mateys! Thar she blows! I really like what John Morrison and The Miz do in the ring. You could tell that the Raw audience is hungry for new talent, as Raw put the focus on young stars tonight. I liked the double team move by Rey and Evan, and Evan lands a damn near perfect hurricana outside. The only thing odd about the match is that the announcers were forced to hype up ECW. Cole: "How about that towel waving Ricky Ortiz who's undefeated?". A million Raw viewers who do not watch a second of ECW had no idea who he was talking about. If I am supposed to be jacked up about funky Ortiz and his cheap towel then something is really wrong here. This match was very entertaining and it was hard to believe that this was a Raw tag team match. Everybody looked good here, even Kane with his evil movie heel laugh at the end. Evan Bourne looked especially big here.

Randy Orton Likes To Slap Other Men

Odd thing about tonight is that WWE's shirts are now WWE Authentic Wear. They look like NFL shirts. And where is the love for the fake WWE shirts people create? Sometimes those things are better than the real thing. Randy Orton comes out with his new shirt, which features a gas mask. Which means that Randy Orton is stinky. They still have not changed Orton's music, which is assaulting people's ears. Who has the worst music? Orton or Jeff Jarrett? I did like that Manu with his ponytail looks tougher, and he looked quick in the ring in his match. I do not know what Manu's finisher is, but it looks like a good way for Manu to jam his fingers or break his hand, since the opponent's body is coming directly down on one of Manu's hands. Could call it the "Bonecrusher" or "Whiplash" or whatever else those guys can think up. Oddly enough I like to hear what people are going to call a finishing move. Recently we have had "Twisted Sister" by Paul Burchill, "The Hellvator" by Matt Morgan, and "WMD" by Bashir. Hmmm.

Crowd Chanting CHL and Mr. Regal Were Actually Good

At least somebody knows that Raw has been stale lately. I was chuckling during CHL's bit mocking JBL. It is a cool way for the wrestling business to poke fun at itself (after all, wrestler's characters are usually over-the-top). Charlie Haas getting some love from JBL and Batista? Say what? Like the fact that William Regal and Jamie Noble are building something, even if it involves the ridiculous part of "Regal stealing Noble's girlfriend Layla". Less Layla and more of these two guys going at it.

Models Pretending To Wrestle and How When Santino Wins, Everybody Loses

I guess Candice Michelle is too good to sit on a steel chair like Layla did later on the show. She has to sit in a director's chair. I watched the match between Beth Phoneix and Mickie James. It was just not very good. There is one moment where Beth tries to land a double fist and Mickie blocks it like they were in a movie fight. Like actors who were training to do a fight in a movie. Actual wrestling contests? You will not find them here. What you will get is people trying to do "unique" moves all the while not convincing me that they actually are fighting. Cole tells viewers that at No Mercy it might be Candice vs. Beth. There is nothing wrong with models, but these type of matches are pointless and go nowhere. Not even registering on the radar nowadays, other than the standard reasons.

This is not so good. I enjoy Santino on the mic. A lot of fans do. But I do not understand why some people can stomach his matches of late. What I do not enjoy is him being Intercontinental champion. Last week D'lo Brown missed a frog splash and got pinned. I thought that this was kind of absurd, but it could be digested (after all, Santino did land some offense). What happened tonight was pure vile. You thought D'Lo Brown looked bad? Snitsky looks to be downright horrible. If you did not see it, here is what happened. Santino is getting his ass kicked and lands no offense whatsoever. Then Snitsky crushes little Snitsky by running into the turnbuckle pad. A simple move. Maybe more surprising than painful. Then Santino, who weighs 227 pounds and looks to be around 6 feet tall, pins Snitsky, who weighs 307 pounds and looks to be around 7 feet tall. Santino did not hook the tights, use the ropes, or suddenly turned into Super Santino. He simply just used all of his weight to pin Snitsky. I heard that later Snitsky was turned on by the kissing of Santino and Beth. Ugh. This is not helping Santino and it sure is not helping wrestlers who have to wrestle him. They look incredibly weak. I do not want to see a comedic IC champion winning absurdly slim victories over jobbers every week.

What it going to be next week? A wrestler trips and Santino gets the pin? Santino breathes on them and they fall down? The Fingerpoke Of Doom again?  Somebody must think this is a great idea or there is a great payoff there somewhere, but this is just plain embarrassing and ridiculous. The more weeks Santino wins like this the more WWE look like idiots. This is TNA bad.

RAW'S FINAL VERDICT: A Little Absurd

Jericho is great in his role. Awesome tag team match with Bourne-Mysterio and JoMizzy. Regal and Noble I am interested for next Raw. The Orton Club is looking to build up to be a big factor, even if the announcers are spreading propaganda that Dibase-Rhodes are a feared force. What credible tag team have they beaten? CHL showed that Raw has not gotten completely stale. "Main Vent" was not much. The horrible things about tonight were the women's division, Santino, and Adalme. All of these have gone past the point of believability and are now just embarrassing to watch.

My email is mckinley.torch@gmail.com.

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