3/23 WWE Raw Reax

A.A. Norman of Tulsa, Okla. (6.0) Best: Cena and Santino promos. Worst: Flair beat down. I found the Ric Flair beat down utterly disturbing and I can't believe WWE would allow a person Flair's age to blade himself to the point of needing 11 staples to the head. I was hopeful that it was just Kool-Aid or ketchup, but reading your site this morning it seems that it was all very real. Since this was the opening segment of the show, it was hard to get past that ugly segment, even with the very humorous segments with Cena and Santino later on. The show ending with Orton and Triple H battling with the sledgehammer was just more of the same piled higher and deeper. When a show starts and ends on such violent moments, it really takes away from what happened in between. Really, this show had great matches - Hardy's return to Raw and Santino rolling around the mat with his arms tied. But, I just couldn't get past the image of a 60-year-old man covered in blood.

Alex Roberts in the U.K. (6.5): Best Match: Eight-Man Tag. Worst Match: Edge vs. Show. After recent missteps, WWE refocused their WrestleMania build this week and on the whole it worked well with two incredibly intense segments to open and close the show. The Flair-Jericho confrontation had an awkward start with Jericho's walk through the backstage area, but the beat down that followed was excellent although I'm not sure why the WWE didn't have Lawler step up and defend Flair during it rather than an hour after it. The closing segment finally managed to get what had become an increasingly ludicrous Triple H-Orton feud back on track. Intense, brutal, and a little disturbing. This was an astonishingly well-executed angle and Orton once again managed to re-establish himself as the killer heel. The sky would be the limit for him if his booking was more consistent. Credit must also be given to Stephanie for taking that bump. Elsewhere Raw was hit and miss. The Money in the Bank build has been effective in putting over the all-action aspect of the match, but it would be nice if the WWE gave these guys some mic time to promote themselves over as winners. Maybe that will happen tonight on ECW. Santino demanding to be part of the Miss WrestleMania Battle Royal was a much improved way to promote the match, and his match against Mickie James was an excellently performed comedy match. I really enjoyed it. And Rey Mysterio and JBL actually interacted this week rather than exchanging messages through the announcers, which was progress in their feud. Elsewhere the World Title feud continues to rumble along without actually accomplishing anything. I don't hate it; WWE just hasn't been able to sustain my interest in it. Can anyone explain why two Smackdown wrestlers were facing each other on Raw? Is there even a roster split anymore? One final note on the Michaels-Undertaker angle: it took a massive misstep this week. That Michaels video promo did not work and was the clearest sign yet that the WWE is regressing 15 years with their booking because it was right out of cartoon era WWF. It wasn't bad enough to kill off my interest in the angle, but it was a poorly thought through and executed concept.

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