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Shane McKinley of Danville, Calif. (7.0): Best Match: Jehrico vs. Batista. Worst Match: Strecher Match announcement. Jeff Hardy seems intent on proving he belongs back. He's not phoning it in. It took awhile, but I'm actually interested in the women's division now. Worst bit of the night was William Regal saying to HBK that he will be in a strecher match. Zero crowd reaction. Stretcher matches have as much credibilty as "object/weapon on a pole" match. I'm not exactly thrilled of that prospect. The Chris Jericho vs. Batistia match was PPV-like quality. I disagree with the notion that matches like that always need to be hyped weeks in advance. There was one part during the match (after Jericho's new catchphrase "ask him!") that Jericho had Batistia in a leglock and was actually trying to bit Batistia in the leg! Through his selling, Y2J was the MVP of the night. Great stuff. Both of them benefited from the match. Liked the look on Batistia's face after the match. The Roddy Piper bit was funny. You saw babyface Mr. Kennedy working, so it will be interestesting to see where they take his character from here. Main event was hot. Some might boo the whole notion of "One Night Stand." I think long gone are the days of 20 chairshots to the head (for a good reason) or blood all across the ring (at least in the WWE). I guess I was brought up on ECW and the hardcore legend known as Mick Foley, so I don't put much stock into WWE's One Night Stand. Unless they plan to do something interesting with Edge and Undertaker (A Buried Alive Match?) I will wait to it gets reviewed before I decide to order it. The problem wasn't Regal. I actually enjoyed that angle. The problem with Raw's ratings was the heavy reliance on building a tag team division that seemingly goes nowhere, showcasing the women's division but having nothing to it, and trying to push Burchill. So in the end the whole "King of the Ring" Regal angle did push Kennedy as a babyface, but the main reason why the ratings were so bad was because the effort of putting out a great show was just not there. I also disagree with the notion that every big match will "happen on the next Raw." I felt that Impact last week relied on that too much. Highest rated cable television show? What? What?

Leonard Tripodi of Kenilworth, N.J. (7.0): Best: Kennedy-Regal promo and match. Worst: Beth-Maria. This was just another decent show to follow what was a somewhat forgettable Judgment Day PPV. The problem here is that WWE is throwing yet another PPV at us in less than two weeks. They are seemingly rushing things along and making the fans dig deep for the second time in one month. They need to either do away with One Night Stand, or just have it in mid-June like they used to. Most of us don't relate ONS to ECW anymore since it's been watered down, so it won't be missed anyway. As far as tonight, I'm gonna try to keep this short, which is tough for me nowadays; Kennedy is starting to look like a top tier star and I'm enjoying it. His promo with Regal and Vince was compelling, mainly due to Regal getting tons of heel heat, Kennedy getting a nice babyface reaction, and Vince appearing when it actually means something. Not only did I anticipate Vince's appearance, but I even enjoyed his over-exaggerated strut and short, but effective promo. Great stuff there! The wrestling part of the show was still a little light, but you have to figure they didn't want to overdue it following a PPV, so they kept the matches short and relatively entertaining. Batista-Michaels is going to be a strong selling point for ONS and they can practically build the PPV around that if they choose to do so. I really like what they are doing with the women's division lately. Having Melina do commentary and then attack Beth on the ramp afterwards was a nice surprise and puts Melina back in the mix with some actual face heat. The backstage segment with Mickie-Katie Lea was awkward, but they could have a hell of a women's title match if the feud is properly built and the program is given time to develop. The main event was much of the same, with the heels going over after losing at the PPV. I still can't get into JBL's character, but he does play the heel role to perfection. I do like how they have scaled back Cena's recent superman push. He seems to have even more fire and intensity when he is on the chase or seeking revenge. And Triple H getting laid out by Orton again makes him look a little vulnerable, even though it doesn't appear he's going to drop the strap anytime soon. WWE is beginning to change things up a bit, which is cool, since things were getting stale after Mania. But they need to spread out these PPV's and either go back to one per month, or just eliminate ONS altogether.

Kevin L. of Vancouver, B.C. (5.0): (I only caught the last hour so I can't comment on the matches.) Instead of watching WWE, I've been following most of its programming via the PW Torch reports over the past years supplemented with YouTube clips. However, I recently got an HD Tuner, so I decided to check out WWE in HD. The first segment I saw was Santino's Pit which just didn't know when to end. Santino's a funny guy, but the part about Santino collecting child porn reminded me of when Vince admitted to having sex with Pat Patterson, Big Dick Johnson, and Moolah... just tasteless, unrealistic, and unneccessary. I was really looking forward to William Regal winning the heavyweight gold by year's end because of his KOTR win, so I was disappointed that it seems his win seemed to only to be used to get Kennedy over who I still think is a better heel. I was even more disappointed when it was implied that Teddy Long would be the new GM. I can't stand the character, he's the most face-biased GM ever, rewarding the faces and punishing the heels for no reason. Why can't we have more tweener GMs? Another thing I noticed was what a face Jerry Lawler had become. Isn't the color commentator traditionally a heel? 15 years ago, Lawler would be going, "Kennedy is an idiot! Regal's a real champion!" now he's going "Bye Bye Regal! Good riddance!" He doesn't add anything to the table anymore, and neither do any of the color commentators now. Bring back the heels! Eh, maybe I'm just too old for this now, Raw seems to be pandering to a much younger audience. Watching old Attitude clips reminds me of the stuff I miss when they were doing things closer to my age group. The good news? WWE in HD rocks, as well as Kennedy's spin kick. Not sure if that's enough to make me tune in next week, though.

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