By Jon Mezzera, Torch Specialist

RAW HITS

ShoMiz - Hart Dynasty: I am enjoying the budding feud between the Unified Tag Team Champions ShoMiz and The Hart Dynasty. The Miz's promo was pretty good to start things off. I liked how he asked the crowd to name a better tag team than ShoMiz and then acted like he was actually trying to hear their suggestions. Bret Hart's appearance worked well to bridge the gap between his era with The Hart Foundation and The British Bulldogs and today's generation with The Hart Dynasty. I loved Miz's line about putting Bret in a Sharpshooter faster than he could put a pair of shades on an ugly kid. David Hart Smith's promo was ok. He just isn't that good. The stipulation was interesting. I thought for sure Smith would defeat Miz, so the screw job ending was a nice surprise. I am curious to see more of this next week.

Sheamus vs. Kingston: After being squashed by Sheamus last week, it was nice to see Kofi Kingston trying to get some retribution this week. Sheamus gave a good pre-match promo on Triple H. I liked how Kingston came out at then end to pay Sheamus back for the lead pipe beating last week (I'll take Sheamus in the ring with the lead pipe - WWE Clue seems inevitable to me now). I was also very glad to see a competitive match. It was only 5 minutes, but in those 5 minutes Kingston got in a good amount of offense. He also seemed to bring more of a brawling style to this match than we are used to seeing from him which fit in perfectly with the storyline. He got the win via disqualification after nearly pinning Sheamus. The post-match beat down was very effective. I want to see more from Kingston, but at least this was better than last week even if he got beat up both times.

Orton vs. Batista: This was a good use of two big stars in a main event without hurting your drawing power for a future PPV match (hopefully). Randy Orton and Batista have wrestled each other enough in the past that this didn't feel like WWE giving away a special match for free. Yes, they have both switched sides, but they still wrestle basically the same style as they did before, so other than the fact that the crowd will now be cheering for Orton instead of Batista, I don't see much different for an Orton vs. Batista feud. That was a bit of a tangent to just say that this was a good match that I don't want to see again in the near future. It worked well for a Raw main event to set up Jack Swagger and then John Cena to do run-ins. It was a good match and it did a nice job of continuing to build towards Extreme Rules, especially how Cena counted to 10 after applying the STF to Batista.

RAW MISSES

2 Minute Diva Title Match: WWE did an ok job of building to this match with Eve winning a tag match over Maryse a few weeks ago, then becoming the #1 contender in a battle royal last week. The match was fine while it lasted and I wasn't surprised with the length and I am tired of making these complaints. Yet, I have to keep doing so. A 2 minute Title match of any sort is a joke (unless it is meant to be a squash like Ultimate Warrior vs. Honkey Tonk Man - sorry for the 1988 reference). Both Eve and Maryse have some skill in the ring (although there are plenty of other Divas with more) and Maryse has done a very good job with her heel character. I enjoyed her on guest commentary last week. I loved how she laughed at Eve for missing the moonsault. It has been awhile since I've been to a house show, so I don't know if the Divas are getting more time in the ring than they do on tv, but at some point you have to let them have longer matches to improve. Why bother having a Title when it means so little that you only give the Championship match 2 minutes?

Baywatch Babes Match: I really am tired of writing about these bad humor segments with the guest hosts and the bad multi-Diva tag matches which last about 2 minutes. Here they did both at the same time! I give WWE credit for going all out with the "Baywatch" theme with the music, the bathing suits and the slow motion. However, one of my main complaints about the Divas on Raw is that they are presented as a group, not as individual women wrestlers. That was never more the case than here where they were all wearing matching bathing suits. Santino Marella is funny, but not here. I am so tired of Hornswoggle. His gimmick does nothing for me. This was not entertaining. It was a waste of time and I don't feel like wasting any more of my time writing about it.

Guest Host Concept: I will admit that David Hasselhoff did a fine job as guest host. He seemed to actually know what and whom he was talking about in making matches. The "Knight Rider" theme is one of the all time best tv theme songs, and it was great to see KITT. Obviously, the English crowd loved him. However, this whole ordeal has run its course. I said in my Smackdown Hits & Misses that I suspected Edge vs. Chris Jericho would not involve the World Title at Extreme Rules and that Randy Orton would get the Title shot instead. I was right. However, it begs the question as to how a Raw guest host can book the Smackdown brand's World Champion (Jack Swagger did officially switch brands last week) to defend the Title against a Raw wrestler in Randy Orton? I found it interesting to hear Carlito complain about the guest hosts. The problem is that he is a heel and I agree with him. I don't think that is what WWE was going for. It really has run its course and needs to go away. I have no desire to see the cast of MacGruber next week as it is one of the lamest SNL recurring sketches ever and not worthy of having a movie made from it.

Jon Mezzera is PWTorch.com's WWE Hits & Misses Specialist, providing his point of view for Raw, Smackdown, NXT, and Superstars 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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