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RAW HITS

Glamarella: Another good week for Santino Marella and Beth Phoenix. In addition to the always amusing Honk-A-Meter, Santino introduced his Brain Barometer. His line about Batista only having twelve brain cells and how he was about to knock out ten of them was hilarious. Of course, he got squashed easily by Batista, but that is to be expected. Their backstage encounter later in the show was good as well. WWE hinted at breaking up the team, which would be a mistake, but I still enjoyed the segment as it made me laugh. I particularly liked Santino's line about a Moolah-O-Meter.

HBK Partner Mystery: WWE did a good job throughout Raw of hyping the mystery of who would be Shawn Michaels' partner in the Main Event against Chris Jericho and Lance Cade. Michaels gave a solid promo at the start of the show which ended with him saying that he was just hoping to find someone who liked him to be his partner. That started off a night in which the announcers speculated about who that partner could be. They never named names, allowing the fans at home plenty of room to think for themselves which was nice. That should have kept fans hooked to want to stick around until the end of the show to find out the answer.

JTG vs. The Miz: This match was probably too short to amount to actually being Hit worthy, but I did want to highlight it for a few reasons. For one, while it was short, it was good while it lasted. Also, we usually see JTG selling in the ring for a hot tag to Shad in typical Cryme Tyme matches. It was nice to see JTG actually getting in more offense in this short singles match than he is allowed to get in in longer tag matches. And, he looked good in doing some unique offensive moves. Finally, WWE is doing a good job of taking something from the internet, and making it into a good t.v. feud. That works to drive more traffic to their website while at the same time providing for entertaining moments like this on Raw.

Four-Man Tag: Yes, I know that this type of match is officially an "eight-man tag" but I don't care. That is a stupid name. Each team is a four-man tag team, so the match should be called a four-man tag match. When you play pick up basketball, you say "three-on-three" not "a six-man game." I'm trying to start a movement, but it probably won't be very successful. Now that I have that aside finished, let me talk about the match itself. It got off to a fun start with the high flying offense of CM Punk, Kofi Kingston, Rey Mysterio and Evan Bourne. That was a nice way to start the match, although I question cutting to a commercial so early in a match. After the commercial, the match settled into a more typical tag match with the heels isolating Bourne and then Punk. It wasn't great, but it had solid action leading to the hot tag to Kingston. It was nice to see him getting to show some of his high energy offense after not being featured much on Raw lately. The crowd is still clearly behind him and WWE needs to keep him in the spot light. The end of the match was very impressive as Kane caught Kingston in mid air and turned it into a chokeslam.

Ladder Match Hype: The hype for No Mercy's Main Event started very early in the show with Shawn Michaels talking about the match and what he is going to do to Jericho at the PPV. Jericho gave a great promo with the help of Lance Cade before the Main Event. I greatly enjoyed his demonstration as to what he is going to do to Michaels with a ladder at No Mercy. It was very effective, as was his talk about not needing luck and his visual of walking under the ladder. After the match, Michaels got in one last shot with his own ladder demonstration as he did a flying splash on Cade off the top of the ladder to end the show. In addition to the nice hype for that match, WWE did a good job with a lot of hype for the upcoming events this week. No Mercy was well hyped with the two physical confrontations between Batista and John Bradshaw Layfield, Kane's talk to Team Priceless about obliterating Rey Mysterio and the subsequent match stipulation from Mike Ademle. Michael Cole and Jerry Lawler even went to a board of up coming events for the week, making them all seem important in this special week of WWE television.

RAW MISSES

Grisham Still on Raw: I will keep this short. As long as Todd Grisham is doing play-by-play on ECW, he should not be doing backstage interviews (or anything else for that matter) on Raw. Get Josh Mathews to do these interviews.

Mask on the Line: Not that we haven't seen this coming, but the whole gimmick where Mysterio has to unmask if he loses to Kane at the PPV is lame. Mask stipulations like this are almost always lame. WWE has done a fine job of building to it with Kane's rant about Mysterio and his mask in recent weeks, but that doesn't make it a good thing as it is still too rushed. WWE has never really gone out of its way to explain the importance of Mysterio's mask and his Mexican heritage. So why should we care? The announcement from Ademle was immediately interrupted by Randy Orton, so it didn't seem important. If we are being asked to spend money to see a match with an added stipulation, then that stipulation should feel like a bigger deal than this. Therefore, this is a two-part Miss. The first is for doing the unmasking gimmick at all, and the second is for rushing into it without letting it develop or taking the time to make it feel like a big deal.

Partner Reveal: Triple H was the most obvious and predictable mystery partner for the Heart Break Kid, but he was also the most disappointing. This is nothing against Triple H or Degeneration X. I just wanted something less predictable. I don't know who it could have been other than Triple H (Kevin Nash jumping from TNA?), but I was hoping it would be someone else. I know Michael Cole claimed that it had been nearly a year since DX wrestled together, but it seems like it had been much more recent than that. Maybe it is just because they have had so many reunions and so many "for one night only" type deals that it doesn't mean as much any more. The match itself was solid, but Triple H really seemed to upstage Michaels and Jericho. Perhaps that would have been the case with any big partner reveal. But, it still felt like a let down in the end.

Jon Mezzera is PWTorch.com's Hits & Misses Specialist, providing his point of view for Raw, Smackdown, ECW, and TNA Impact each week. Email him at jmezz-torch@sbcglobal.net.

For another view from the original Hitlist author, compare Jason Powell's views to mine by visiting prowrestling.NET's "Hitlist" section here.

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