By Shane McKinley, Torch specialist

What did a good majority of fans feel about Raw? Raw should have been thrown into a tire fire. And that's being kind.

Meaningful feuds? Hell nah. Penis references, cross-dressers, leprechauns, and crappy crowd-pleasing moves are all Raw needs.

The biggest moment of the night was when WWE trotted out its prize horse, Triple H, to save us from evil Randy Orton. Haven't fans already been through this before? What else can be explored in this feud? Luckily I had my "Triple H Puke Bucket" nearby. My dear friend. Sure got a lot of action during the start of the year. Now I better keep it close by.

Yep, Raw was pretty bad. The thing I want to talk about is the Edge-Vickie bit.

We can get where WWE was headed for in this bit. They had to quickly rush Vickie out of her GM spot. They also felt the compelling need to have Vickie and Edge break up. The first time these two lovebirds considered divorce, it was quite a tizzy. Now it's meh.

I think the only thing missing out of this bit was Edge telling Vickie that she was one of God's mistakes.

WWE really missed the mark here. What's the evilest thing Vickie has done lately? Making her Hog Pen match a handicap match? Oh, so evil.

"We put smile on fans's faces." I think what many people felt was actual sympathy for Vickie, so the bit was weird.

PWTORCH.com reader Alex Roberts in the Torch Raw Reax wrote the following: "The Vickie Guerrero segment was either an incredibly poor taste and mean-spirited send-off for Vickie Guerrero or a completely pointless waste of everyone's time." I think the "she-beast" quip was what set this whole thing off.

This could have been their baby!

WWE will defend it by saying that the bashing of Vickie fit into the "WWE Universe." Meaning little kids hate Vickie and having Edge say hurtful things to Vickie only reinforces his heel persona. And plus Vickie is a stinky butt face. Boo!

Sometime wrestling fans make mountains out of molehills. We scream at the top of our lungs about how totally putrid a wrestling bit is. When we over-hype something, we are doing this to either get attention, throw dirt on the wrestling company itself, or because it's our shtick (case in point: a typical absurdity article).

The Vickie bashing wasn't the worst thing in the world. (Example? North Korea sentencing two American TV journalists to 12 years of hard labor for an undefined "grave crime," North Korea test firing rockets, North Korea's dictatorship in general. You hear me North Korea? Knock it off. That showed them.) But it certainly was a pathetic move on WWE's part. Vickie's no longer Raw G.M. Somebody is coming in to shake things up and to save Raw from going into the ratings stinkpot.

Possibly Raw needs Ric Flair as G.M. You can see where they are going with it. "Hell, people will keep watching two hours of inane drivel as long as they get a chance to see the 16-time world champion work his magic on the mic! Whoo!"

Remember when Ric Flair was "retired" from the WWE? Remember that magical feeling you wanted to capture and carry with you during the "Ric Flair" sendoff? Screw you for believing in the magic. Get over it.

Look, I know that I as a fan don't control what Ric Flair does. Fight a bear? Go on right ahead. I don't have ownership of the Ric Flair sendoff. I don't have any say if Ric Flair does come back. It's the WWE product and they can do whatever the damn hell they please.

But you got to understand that the Ric Flair sendoff was perhaps one of the most beautiful things I have ever seen in watching wrestling. And I got that feeling that this special feeling was truly unique...and these moments are few in and far between in wrestling. As wrestling fans we sift through a big friggin mountain of muck to get to these great moments (e.g. Taker vs. HBK at WM 25). I knew that Ric Flair was going to be wrestling in gyms and other wrestling organizations. But, man, I did believe that he was done with WWE, considering the sendoff. I believed that. Turns out that was yet another big fat wrestling lie.




Ric Flair possibly coming back as G.M. is like putting a band aid on a sinking ship. For me, it's going to take a hell of a lot more than Flair being G.M. to even start considering Raw as not the worst wrestling show during the week. Thing is that if they had their act together they wouldn't even need Ric Flair or had to "fire" Vickie as G.M. But Raw's in a free-fall. So there you have it.

I've got a feeling that's all WWE is concerned about. Hey, Ric Flair as G.M.! Great! Does that mean you're still asking me to see through another Oddities match?

Which brings me to this thought: Raw has been dramatically shaped towards kids. There's no blood, no swearing, no adult storylines...in fact, really not much of anything. WWE can appeal to investors saying, "Look! Our content is harmless! Just look at our competition! They're so trashy! You're hounding on us! Look at them!"

But to me this whole "PG" side of WWE is somewhat rubbish.

Extreme Rules may have not been WWE's night of extreme. The night WWE did go extreme was that one Raw right before WrestleMania. The one where Flair bled heavily in the opening minutes. The one where Orton beat up and kissed the wife right in front of her cuffed husband. Certainly this made a lot of parents mad. And who can blame them? WWE had trained their Raw fans to know what to expect. To be as violent and adult-oriented as a "Friends" re-run.

And that one night, they threw it out the window in order to drum up more PPV buys (which, in the end, can be argued for its effectiveness, as not a whole lot of people bought WrestleMania 25).

Remember those "Don't Try It At Home Ads" on WWE programming? Hell, they even had Matt Striker and Mr. Nosebleed talk about kids not trying to punt each other in the head.

Nowhere on Raw did I find one of these commercials. Same with the "Cena's No 'Roids" commercial. As far as I can tell, WWE only pretends like they care until whatever group that is bothering them fades away. Got to have more time to have Hornswoggle dominate over Jamie Noble. That's the entertainment bizness, baby.

I mean, all I keep seeing is that damn Cena-Vince Gillette commercial, which makes me think I am living in the wrestling version of Hades and there are little imps poking me with red-hot pitchforks.

WWE can talk about how its product is geared for children (I'm not including TNA in this "would you have your children watch wrestling?" discussion, as they typically show buckets of blood in the opening video package) but I wonder if it is truly is.

I have already talked about this before, but I wouldn't allow my six-year-old nephew to watch wrestling. Not even WWE wrestling. "But there's no blood! There's no swearing!" That doesn't matter. I don't want him to imitate what the wrestlers are doing to his little brother while his parents are not watching. I don't want him to feel that responding back with your fists is always the first course of action when dealing with a problem.

I wouldn't want him to watch that Vickie bashing, even if Edge is the heel and Vickie is the heel G.M. Doesn't matter.

Raw was a good showcase of how people who are not wrestling fans find rasslin' to be a stupid scam designed for ripping off poor fools. Let's face it, the typical perception of a wrestling fan resembles...Cody Deaner.

While it is true that fans have experienced the greatness of professional wrestling (which at times surpasses any entertainment found out there), too many times wrestling is nothing more than a childish time sink.

Anyways, that's all. If Raw is not your bag anymore, check out TNT's "Raising The Bar" on Monday Nights at 10:00 p.m. EST. My Mark-Paul Gosselaar man-crush knows no boundaries. And yes, I will gleefully plug during an article. Oh, I'm sorry. Calm your anger down with a nut-grabbing shot of a Stacker 2 Energy Drink! Tame the tiger! Feel the burn!

(credit to farm4.static.flickr.com, img246.imageshack.us, and the wrestlingguild.com for pics)

Email is mckinley.torch@gmail.com

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