Instant Reaction - WWE Raw 7/9
By Benjamin Tucker, PWTorch TV specialist

Overal Score - 2.5

Last night at Destination X, TNA had one of the most exciting and emotional title changes in the company's history, creating a permanent main event star in the process. Tonight, WWE produced one of the worst shows of 2012. Nearly everything outside of the WWE Title segments were awful upon awful, and even the segments with A.J. weren't quite as good as prior ones. While the opening segment ended up being okay, A.J. seemed flustered at first, taking a long time to say what she wanted to. When Punk and Bryan were in the ring, the segment dramatically improved, and it created a nice hook for the show, but it was still not the best start. Then, the main event tag match was barely anything (more on that later), but at least A.J. regained some confidence by the end, once again failing to choose one man over another. Her work has been great, overall, and it's added a great layer to the tired Punk vs. Bryan match.

But, after a decent opening segment, things went downhill fast. Jack Swagger lost to Sheamus in less than a minute, only to set up a dull backstage promo from Alberto Del Rio that's very similar to his past promos (as usual). Half of the Smackdown Money in the Bank competitors were thrown together into an almost equally short match with no ring introductions and an overbooked finish where no one other than Tensai even looked marginally good. Brodus Clay was featured in a decent, but relatively pointless, squash, and Michael Cole and Jerry Lawler had really fake bickering that led to a "fan vote" that would decide if they would wrestle or not. I know that these polls are rigged, but are they even trying? 75 percent is a pretty solid number. Not 76 percent? 74 percent? Not to mention the match was terrible and over-booked, a major feat for something that lasted about a minute.

John Cena's Money in the Bank promo was solid enough, but the tag match that followed was just brutal, and I thought it was a terrible way to sell the pay-per-view. When you think about Money in the Bank, memories come up of Shelton Benjamin doing crazy stunts, Kofi Kingston doing a leg drop off a giant ladder, and Jeff Hardy sacrificing his body. This match, a preview of Sunday, was slow, plodding, and wasn't exciting in the least. And, to top it all off, it had the lamest excuse for a DQ ending ever. Show was disqualified for breaking up a pin? Since when does that happen?

The Sin Cara match was an okay squash, and seeing Bob Backlund come back was fun. At the same time, it was immediately followed up by the Cole vs. Lawler match, which led to the comedic U.S. champion Santino to discover that Hornswoggle was the Anonymous Raw GM. I know I should just be happy with them revealing it after all of this time, but it makes less sense than not showing who it was. Why would Hornswoggle act like a heel, protect Michael Cole from Jerry Lawler, favor the Nexus, hate Bret Hart, etc.? Sure, I know it was meant to not be taken seriously, but this was just the icing on the cake when it came to this Raw. It was slow, plodding, unfunny, and other than the WWE Title segments, produced nearly zero entertaining content. Plus, it made a mockery out of one of the central figures of Raw from 2010-2011. Raw was bland, tired, and stale. Thursdays keep looking better and better...

Any questions or comments? Feel free to message me on Twitter at BTuckertorch.

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