By Jon Mezzera, Torch Specialist

RAW HITS

Miz & Morrison: The right team definitely won Tag Team of the Year. The Miz and John Morrison have had a very good year, and they showed why they are deserving of a major push. They were great in their acceptance speech. Their brief battle over the Slammy statue was fun, as was their crazy list of people that they thanked, including Chuck Norris. Any Chuck Norris reference is a Hit in my book. By the way, you know that there is no evolution, just animals that Chuck Norris allows to live. What else can I say about this duo? They have constantly produced on the mic. Morrison has had some very good matches, and Miz continues to improve and impress in the ring as well.

Morrison vs. Punk: Speaking of Morrison's good in ring work, his semifinals match with CM Punk was a good match. These two definitely work well together. I recall in their early days wrestling on ECW that some of those matches were a little rough, but no longer. They put on a very good match with plenty of good wrestling action. That was a crazy top rope huracanrana that Punk did on Morrison. They played around a little with their normal spots, particularly when Punk nailed the running knee on the outside instead of in the corner. They also had some very nice near falls in the end.

Legacy: This is a good name for Randy Orton's new team with Cody Rhodes and Manu. It fits right in with the fact that they are all (at least) second generation superstars. Orton's promo when he unofficially announced the name was good. He made some good points about not being one of the wrestlers nominated for Superstar of the Year. He also did a nice job of bringing up Evolution, and challenging Batista and Triple H to a match instead of the previously announced match of Triple H vs. Batista. It was a good promo, and I like the name.

Glamarella: Here they are again. It was inevitable that despite deserving the award, Santino Marella and Beth Phoenix would lose which would give them something to complain about. And it was awesome. Santino's summation of Edge and Vickie Guerrero's relationship somewhat resembled what I wrote about them in my Smackdown Hits & Misses last week. His line about injuring his scroticamous (I think) region was hilarious. Phoenix's yells of encouragement to Santino during his matches are becoming very entertaining themselves, and that was the case as she encouraged him against Finlay. The match itself wasn't good (more later), but the hilarity soon picked up again with Phoenix winning Diva of the Year and dumping Santino on the ground. This was followed by Beth's fight with Melina, and her accidental attack of Santino's scroticamous region. Santino's selling of that injury was equally hilarious.

Batista & Triple H vs. Legacy: This was a nice first match for Legacy against Triple H & Batista. This was not a great match, but a good 10 minute tag match. It was good to see Legacy get in plenty of offense. It makes sense given the handicap situation, but with Triple H involved, that doesn't necessarily mean anything. The end of the match was what really put it into the Hit column. It started with Orton's blind tag and attempt to hit the RKO on Batista, who countered by throwing Orton into a Triple H clothesline. It looked like that was going to lead to the victory for the former Evolution members, but instead, Rhodes was able to save Orton from a Batista Bomb attempt, and Orton perfectly transitioned into an RKO for the win.

Ziggler Wins: I said last week, that after losing his debut match with Batista despite his strong showing, Dolph Ziggler had to win this week. And he did. WWE listened to me, which was nice. He had a solid match with R-Truth. Truth is getting some good reactions from the crowds, and Ziggler is getting some heat as well. The ending sequence on the outside leading to Ziggler's cool enziguri spot and count out victory was well done. I'm glad he got the win, and I look forward to seeing his development.

Overall Show: This was a good 3 Hour Raw. It didn't feel like there was a lot of extraneous content that could have easily been cut to shorten the show down to the normal 2 hours. That isn't to say that I liked everything, but not much felt forced, as opposed to how most of these 3 hour shows are. Even the matches that I didn't give Hits to were all pretty good. Other than the main event, they all had clean endings. There was good (but not great) hype for Armageddon. The Slammy Awards were fun for the most part, with a few exceptions. The talking segments worked well. Even John Cena's interview with Todd Grisham was solid. Top to bottom, it was a good show.

RAW MISSES

Hornswoggle Pins Santino: The only thing that took away from the great bits of Glamarella this week was the fact that Santino was pinned by Hornswoggle. Actually, that wasn't the problem. If Hornswoggle had pinned Santino after Finlay had done the damage, that would have been o.k. But, Hornswoggle did the damage with a weak looking DDT, and a tadpole splashed that barely hit. I know Santino is a comedy act, but so are Finlay and Hornswoggle. It is totally unbelievable that a professional wrestler would lose in that situation. If he is tough enough to get to WWE, then he should be able to kick out at that point.

Damn Moment: I mentioned above that there weren't very many moments on this show that felt forced in order to pad the 3 hours. This was the biggest exception. This sucked. I am a big fan of Ron Simmons, and I understand that something totally idiotic has to happen in order for him to give his "Damn!" line. But, now that he is only on every once in a while, as opposed to when he was on every week, the Damn moments are getting more and more ridiculous. That was the case here. I would have been fine if he had said "Damn!" to Mickie James kissing The Great Khali. Jillian Hall, Kung Fu Naki, The Fink, Sgt. Slaughter and Hacksaw Jim Duggan were not needed. It just made the segment go on longer than necessary, and raised the question as to why they were all there in the first place. It was pretty stupid.

Very End of the Show: Raw had a good ending going. It started with Chris Jericho's good promo accepting the Superstar of the Year award and then being chased away by John Cena. This led to Cena vs. Edge which was 8 minutes of pretty good wrestling action, leading to the predictable non-finish as Jericho tried to attack Cena. After they fought off into the crowd, Triple H attacked Edge and Jeff Hardy attacked Triple H. The three fought to end the show. All of it was very well done, but what happened to Cena and Jericho? They are in the Raw half of the main event at the PPV on Sunday. They should have been fighting to end the show. WWE still has Smackdown to hype the triple threat match. This was (presumably) the final chance to hype Cena vs. Jericho, and they dropped the ball a bit. It was still a good ending, but it should have been better. All it would have taken was a quick cutaway from the ring area to the back stage area showing the two of them beating the hell out of each other to close the show. That would have made the good ending a great ending.

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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