By Shane McKinley, Torch specialist

"Now when you work it out I'm worse than you
Yeah when you work it out I want it too
Now when you work out where to draw the line
Your guess is as good as mine"
-"God Put A Smile On Your Face" by Coldplay

-It was odd that the most momentous thing coming out of WWE's Elimination Chamber PPV was not Batista and Jericho becoming World Champions, but the Undertaker getting nearly set ablaze during his entrance. Don't steal the pyro guy's soul, Undertaker. He just probably wanted to speed things up.

-Welcome to Raw, ladies and gentlemen. We've got a mechanical bull by ringside and some fallout from the Elimination Chamber PPV. And no damn Hornswoggle, because we're pumping up WrestleMania. We'll leave Hornswoggle to pump up WWE Wild Card.

And they better. I don't know about the rest of y'all, but as a member of the 18-35 demographic, WWE's PPV lineup after Mania looks shaky. So lemme me get this straight, Stamford suits...

(1) You're in love with gimmick PPVs that often have weak buildup of feuds and characters
(2) You jacked up the price during the Great Recession
(3) You changed PPV names like "Satan's Damnation" and "Bloody Sexy Zombie Massacre" to "Duck-Duck-Goose" and "Who Stole The Cookie From The Cookie Jar?"

Right now, there doesn't seem to be good reasons for me to check out WWE PPVs after WrestleMania. It will be interesting to see if they bother to address these concerns, or they go on and hype up that wrestlers will be fighting in a bouncy house. (Just think of how Michael Cole would hype up that bad boy: "Hellish hydrogen that could blow up the world at any minute! We've gone too far, damnit!")

-Chris Jericho is here and he's a bit Y2J-cocky. Can't blame him, since the fine Canadian heroes lost to those putrid Americans. It makes my pure Canadian blood boil.

Jericho's the best in the world, Edge spears him, and we've got our WrestleMania main event: a Canadian couple fighting over custody of the World Championship. Dontcha miss it.

-The Focus Group Friends (Kofi, Bourne, and Yoshi) are facing off against Legacy. Story here is that Orton beats up his former male models buddies, Ted and Cody. A triple threat fashion show at Mania would be so vogue.

-Awesome HBK video package. It recaps the sorrow HBK has felt and the trial he must face. At WrestleMania, HBK will fight...the little girl he super kicked during that DX "comedy" skit. Payback is hell.

I wouldn't be surprised if there is a storyline bit of HBK at one point "protecting" Undertaker from getting beat up by a heel because HBK wants Taker "at the top of his game." I don't think we're going to get last years' buildup (HBK playing mind games with Taker and punking him out at several points). They can delve deep into both these guys's tremendous careers and how much this match means.

Also, I had fun putting this lyric to Undertaker's music: "Oh the pyro guy is going to die."

-Hi, I'm Christian. I'm back on Raw. And a goofy mechanical bull got more attention than me. If you don't know, now you know. That bull's gonna get his.

When those divas started to ride that mechanical bull, I started to get "weird" feelings. When the knucklehead Big Show tried to verbally smack down an inanimate object, those feelings whimpered, shriveled up, and died.

-WWE Tag team division: champions defeat chumps week after week. Five months down the road, we'll do the breakup. Repeat. The tag team of MVP and Mark Henry couldn't win a game of tic-tac-toe.

-The evil Vince McMahon says that Bret Hart will appear next week. Hmm...I guess WWE doesn't sweat the March 8 Impact.

-Know how much pull Triple H has? The hardcore crowd was nervous that Vince's son-in-law was going to "Triple H" his way into a WWE championship match with Sheamus at WrestleMania. There was no friggin way this possibility could ever be a reality; due to the lack of buildup for Sheamus.

-One of the main complaints leveled against WWE is that it's too "predictable." In my book, I'll take "well-executed storylines" over "predictability" and "expired moldy milk" over "Intercontinental champion Drew McIntyre."

-Cena and Batista provide a great dichotomy: Batista is this scumbag heel who's only in it for the fame, money, and preppy t-shirts, while Cena is about glory, honor, and clichés. Would WWE would go so far as for Batista to visually "devalue" the belt in order to pump up his heel character? Probably not. Hell, WWE had a pointless Divas tournament for that worthless glittery belt that nobody watched. Like you, I thought that Maryse was already Divas champion before the whole thing started.

The great thing about Batista right now is that he's not having the dirtiest player in the game try to pump him up as heel. He's doing the small heel mannerisms that go over great, and this is compounded by months of heel buildup. One of the things I'm learning is that WWE doesn't do quick heel turns, they do slow heel burns.

One of the things about the top heels in WWE right now is that they all have their own unique shtick. C.M. Punk is great as an over-the-top maniacal preacher, Chris Jericho provides a strong "I'm better than everyone else," and Batista has become interesting again with him doing his best Axl Rose impression (you don't know if he's going to walk out of a gig).

-That's it for me. Catch y'all at WWE NXT, which is getting a lot of Vince love. What concoction will he unleash to the world?

(credit to blurtit.com, seattletimes.nwsource.com, bouncy-house-jumper-rentals.com, sheamusfacts.com, 1.bp.blogspot.com, gothamist.com for pics)

Email is mckinley.torch@gmail.com. Follow me on facebook - facebook.com/ShaneMcKinley88.

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