By Shane McKinley, Torch specialist

WWE Raw

-Hey, look, a Raw without a guest host! And it was a pretty darn good three-hour Raw.

-The Hart Dynasty becoming the tag team champs is nice, but their future is hazy. Either (a) Ted DiBiase, Jr. finds himself a partner and starts a feud with the Harts, (b) HD turns on Bret, go heel, and start a feud with Mo' Truth, or (c) fall into oblivion wrestling every full moon.

-The story of the WWE Draft is that two big names (Edge, Jericho) as well as two over guys (Morrison, R-Truth) deserted the Smackdown ship while Smackdown got some mid-card dudes (Kofi "Remember when I was on fire?" Kingston, Hand clappin' Christian, and the big ol' reliable but standard Big Show). Who's Jack Swagger gonna face at the PPV? I'm guessing there's going to be some five-man doohickey for Smackdown's World Title. Although, a face Big Show vs. Jack Swagger for the gold at the next PPV wouldn't be the worst thing in the world.

-The comedy on Raw was not embarrassing. Teddy Long was dancin' because he got the Big Show, John Cena was clowning around (hey, for Cena humor, that wasn't so bad), and R-Truth didn't want to become a Virgil to Ted DiBiase. No schlocky, lame Raw guest host humor.

-It's going to take time before Jack Swagger is comfortable conducting promos in front of a camera. They don't quite feel realistic yet.

-The Straight Edge Society might have two new members soon. Or just one. Who knows. Here's hoping Evan Bourne gets traded to Smackdown because I'm tired of him swimming in circles in the Raw waters.

-As far as dumb battle royal matches go, that Team Raw vs. Team Smackdown match was respectable. From Mysterio-DiBiase's "tightrope battle" to the winning team getting a whopping three picks, it wasn't a gawd-awful battle royal affair.

Poor WWE. They're still pumping up NXT. I was laughing when Chris Jericho cried his way through a promo, saying that NXT Rookie Heath Slater cost him his PPV match. Then, I was crying to myself when WWE thought having Heath speak was a good idea.

-Dolph Ziggler reminds me of the James Bond villain Necros in "The Living Daylights." Necros killed people by choking them out with his walkman headphones. Dolph Ziggler likes to choke people out by piggyback riding them until they lose consciousness. Anyways, Necros lost to Hornswoggle and has the prospect of perhaps being a feud with Jerry Lawler to jumpstart his career. And, hey, maybe even a PPV victory is possible.

-It's going to be a mighty hard sell to buy into Cena vs. Batista the third time around, considering that Dave already lost twice and reports are stated that he's leaving the company soon. It will be interesting to see how WWE addresses that question.

-The biggest thing that came out of Raw was Edge embracing his dark side again (thank goodness) and the start of a sublime Edge vs. Orton feud.

TNA Impact

-I am glad that the first half-hour of TNA was blessedly simple. TNA focused on two main things: RVD as World champion and The Beautiful People, although the opening bit featured promos that almost required you to be high to understand it. Lot of "huhs?" in that segment. Whenever somebody rambles on, I'm expecting Hulk Hogan to belt out "Yeaahh!" after they finish. "Hey I finished faxing those forms you wanted, Hulky." YEAHHHHHHHHH.

RVD as World Champion is one cool stoner. You can see why TNA was eager to put the belt on RVD: pro-weed RVD is not a character you will find in WWE. (Well, MVP is pro-weed, but they sure won't let him cut promos about it.) By comparison, A.J. Styles's drug of choice is Ovaltine and fruit rollups.

-I'm liking Angelina Love vs. Tara, but I still don't get why TNA felt the need to go down that convoluted route of Love winning Tara's title in that lockbox, then losing that title to one of the Beautiful People. Whatevs. These girls hate each other and that's all that I care about.

-I have a bad feeling that Hulk Hogan is going to give Ric Flair's high school ring to RVD to set up A.J. Styles's hatred of RVD. Re-read that sentence. Enough with this HOF ring non-sense.

-Mr. Anderson vs. The Pope...man, that's cool. Very fresh feud right there. By comparison, Team 3D still fighting The Band? Come on, TNA, the joke's over.

-Moore and Neal would be a cool tag team. In WWE, they don't allow Mohawks because Mohawks are not PG and it would upset the Mohawk people.

-Eric Bischoff and that secretary who takes great diction (stop, you're killing me, TNA) brag about TNA's new championship ranking system. And you, the fans, get to vote. Oh boy! I get to vote! I'm going to vote Jeff Hardy! I'm logging onto tnawrestling.com right now. Okay, here I
go...

http://polldaddy.com/poll/3111102/.

Yeahhhhhh. That poll page looks so half-assed, doesn't it? But it took Ted, the TNA intern, so long to log onto polldaddy.com to create it. It's the thoughts that counts, though. Personally, the only thing I care about with the new ranking system is that at least it gives the impression that TNA cares about what viewers think and we don't get random challengers to the title. So far, Desmond Wolfe is leading the charge with Jeff Hardy breathing down his neck.

-That's it for me. Going to be mighty busy myself in the next few weeks, so I don't know when another Absurdity report is coming down the pipe. Thanks for reading and have a great week.

Email is mckinley.torch@gmail.com

[Torch art credit Cory & Grant Gould (c) PWTorch.com]

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