By Shane McKinley, PWTorch Specialist

"Yes I can't be the person who wins the lottery. I get to be one of the lucky people to have eaten tainted peanut butter."
-Tommy Dreamer

It's a tough time for the WWE right now. Huge heap of firings? Check. I too felt like Dreamer as I battled a nasty flu over the weekend. I did manage to check out Smackdown. Swagger and Victoria getting treated like chumps. I felt sick again.

Raw starts off with a video package replaying the generous Mr. McMahon giving away free money. What a nice thing he did. Making people bark like a dog for money. Awww.

So we have an "Over The Top Rope Challenge" / "Royal Rumble Preview" / "Look new viewers, we've got popular superstars!" There isn't any good reason why psychotic Orton and puny Santino would be in the same ring. This match was designed for new viewers. Pretty much the first half hour of Raw was forgettable.

Priceless has some new music: "Priceless! We're models and we're moody! Yeah!" A quick Legacy push and there we go.

Kelly vs. Beth. The match started, I sneezed, and the match was over. The match was pretty much every WWE women's match in a condensed form: match starts, Cole does a WWE mag plug, Kelly (or Maria or Bella) does a pointless back flip, Lawler exclaims, "Look at that agility," and then the match ends. The ring introductions are longer than the matches.

Legacy talks about the rumor that Orton has been fired while I ponder how much glue those Raw writers have sniffed. Nearly half a hour into the show and Raw might as well been showing sea monkeys.

Rosa Mendes loves Beth sooooooo much. Reminds me a bit like the Mickie James "crazy follower" storyline with Trish. If WWE is looking to bring in Rosa as a wrestler, I'm hoping that she, you know, can actually wrestle.

Ah, here's Steph. Steph slaps Orton hard. WWE sure loves slapping people.

We have a fiery Regal and a determined C.M. Punk. Viewers wouldn't want to relieve those Punk-Regal bad finishes again, but this payoff worked well. Punk gets a decent amount of time to celebrate his victory in his hometown (credit to midwestwrestling.com for pic).

Cole laid down a nice synopsis of the JBL-HBK storyline. The interaction between Cena, JBL, and HBK made this storyline all came to a head. The choice HBK has to make is a great PPV hook, considering that Cena vs. JBL is often monkey-butt ugly. They filled all of the gaps for their characters and did a great job of strengthening this storyline.

Now, the continuing saga of "HBK is broke, Trips does a fat joke"...

Trips: You got to make a decision! What channel will you choose to watch the Obama inauguration?

HBK: I can't! I can't! I'm conflicted! I'm going to take forever to choose!

Trips: Wow. Now let's turn the conversation back to me. I'm getting more attention than that shrimp Jeff in his championship reign. I'm doing some stellar stuff with Vickie. Fat jokes, playing with dolls, wrestling 20 matches in a row where I'm always the focal point, doing my sneer - it's killer!

HBK: About the fat jokes...weren't you a little pudgy as a kid? Didn't the other children use to call you "Triple XL"?

Trips: Shaddup! You're going bald!

I also thought that the announcers did a better job tonight. It seemed like Cole didn't drop so many of his catchphrases nor Lawler drop so many of his cheesy lines. When Lawler mentioned that the HBK bit reminded him of the country song "Anything Goes When Everything's Gone," I felt that the Raw announcers were actually worth paying attention tonight: "But anything goes when everything's gone / You ain't around to give a damn whether I do right or wrong / So bring it on, anything goes when everything's gone."

The quiet psychotic Mike Knox beats up poor Mysterio after the match. I wondered why Knox didn't punch out the ref, but apparently Orton is the number one psycho on Raw. I wonder if Mysterio knew when he was traded to Raw that he was going to be the "counselor" to talent like Kofi Kingston, Evan Bourne, and Mike Knox.

In the '90s, it was "Nobody, nobody does PPV like the World Wrestling Federation." Now it's "You should have bought the PPV, regardless of our own effort in building up the PPV."

For me, the shows leading up to the PPV is WWE or TNA's chance to prove to me that the PPV is worth my money. If I feel that the effort is lacking, the card is very weak, and the buildup to the PPV is downright horrible, then I will not buy the PPV. While it is true that previous PPV efforts do factor into my decision to buy a PPV (for example, I don't trust TNA PPVs because often their card is highly susceptible to change), it's still a matter of what WWE or TNA show me during the buildup to the PPV.

They replayed the Jeff-pyro thing. Instead of WWE dramatic music and showing shots of children with Hardy armbands crying, they played Buckcherry's "Lit Up." Somewhat in bad taste.

I once had a dream where the Miz, along with John Morrison, offered me to become a wrestler. It was weird. Miz is Republican? I think JoMizzy has won every "Oh Snap!" battle with Cryme Tyme. JoMizzy vs. Cryme Tyme is serviceable enough (who else is JoMizzy going to fight), but the main knock on Cryme Tyme is that they are viewed as "soft" and "wannabes."

Double Double E replays last's year Rumble video package, but spruced up with new content. I still felt it was a waste of time watching what I already saw last year.

Order the PPV right now! Oh, if there was only a "Buy WWE PPV!" button on all of our remotes. I'm surprised WWE didn't take the time of doing a video package of a WWE mark going through the process of ordering the PPV. "I'm going to buy all of them for the entire year!" (credit to scienceblogs.com for pic).

Cody doesn't want to take advice from the four-time Women's champion Mickie. Why not move Mickie over to Smackdown? Or even ECW? Unless she's comfortable in just doing backstage segments on Raw.

Bit odd to hear Goldust's normal voice.

Lawler: "Vince is coming out!" Knowing this, I'm not sure why WWE expected fans to pay attention to Melina vs. Jillian. They were trying to squeeze in too many bits.

Sign from the crowd: "I bought my seat from Gov Rod." Ha ha.

What was with the random camera shots during the final segment? And the lights going out during the battle royale?

Ah, Jericho. Using words like "axiomatic." I kind of get a kick out of it, since years ago nearly every interaction between Jericho and Steph involved stuff like "trash eating ho bag" and "two dollar slut." I'm glad WWE has gotten away from using crass phrases like those, but I wouldn't be surprised in the future if they went back to appealing to the "frat boy" demographic.

Great unscripted moment with the crowd chanting "on your knees." Jericho and Steph played to the crowd and also played the crowd itself to their advantage. Love that "I'm sorry if anyone was offended" bit.

Vince: "Warms your cockles." According to one website I looked at, the idiom is "warms the cockles of your heart."

I think the downturn of this whole segment was when Vince was lashing out against Orton. Vince brought up Cowboy Bob Orton: "He was a mediocre wrassler. Then I put him in the spotlight, and lo and behold he got into the WWE Hall of Fame." Uh-huh. And the whole "I created the universe" bit.

I think that's what we're going to see from the Swagger championship reign. WWE knows that they need to push young talent as credible, but once they reach a certain point, it is really up to the individual itself to make their own way. Perhaps Swagger losing on Smackdown was WWE's way of keeping Swagger in check. Some talents get a long rope to prove themselves to fans (Kozlov comes quickly to mind), but here's hoping that Swagger does exceed in his ECW championship reign.

The business deals with massive egos. Perhaps WWE has learned from the examples like Brock Lesnar, Bobby Lashley, and many others.

To quote James Caldwell, Orton lands "the Punt of Doom" on Vince. You would have expected that Orton would laugh an evil heel laugh. Instead, he sold it like he made the biggest mistake of his life (credit to farm2.static.flickr.com for pic).

Frankly I'm a bit sick of Vince being blown up or being carried out in a stretcher. Ridiculous.

POSITIVES

-- Interactions with Steph-Orton, Steph-Jericho
-- Punk vs. Regal was a great payoff match
-- Cena-HBK-JBL promo
-- JoMizzy-Cryme Tyme promo
-- Announcers weren't as cheesy tonight

NEGATIVES

-- Battle Royale match
-- Beth vs. Kelly
-- JoMizzy-Cryme Tyme match
-- Pretty much the same Rumble video package, desperate WWE wants you to buy PPV
-- Melina vs. Jillian

RAW'S FINAL VERDICT: A Little Absurd

Email is mckinley.torch@gmail.com.

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