By James Caldwell, PWTorch columnist

- I currently have the opening chords of Taylor Wilde's theme song stuck in my head. It's been all day. You know how the same lines play on repeat without ever going to the next portion of the song? Yeah, it's bothering me. Officially. But, I'll have more on the TNA Knockouts momentarily.

- WWE Raw from last night was quite a busy show, but I thought it was a pretty good show. At first, I thought (a) we weren't going to get any wrestling and (b) they weren't even going to try to sell the Armageddon PPV on Sunday.

Turns out it might have been the best episode of Raw in terms of wrestling quality I can remember in months and they did a fine job of selling the PPV.

Granted, the economy sucks, they just gave away three hours of equitable content on free TV, and UFC has a ginormous (slipped in a Big Daddy V reference there) PPV card coming up at the end of the year, so I don't know what they could have done to convince spending of disposable income for people who weren't already sold on the event.

As for the MVP and 0-10 scores from the show, let's check some Torch reader feedback from last night's big Slammy show. First off, though, cue up the WWE Fan Nation official video preview of Edge vs. Hunter vs. Hardy. It's head...to head...to...um...head.



In the 0-10 show rating poll, Torch readers were very high on this show, with 34 percent of the vote going to an "8" score. I picked eight myself to influence the voting, I'm sure, but the percentage of scores in the "thumbs up" range (from 6-to-10) was 69 percent as of last check.

In the MVP voting, I had no checked the tally before I started writing this sentence, so I'm blind-tagging to Chris Jericho as the MVP vote-winner because that's my hunch.

And, surprise surprise, Jericho won in a landslide with 45 percent of the vote. Unfortunately, that won't win you a Senate seat in the state of Georgia, but it'll give Jericho yet another decisive victory in the MVP voting.

Starting in January 2009, I'll be keeping track of these MVP voting tallies and we'll update the leaderboard each week to see who's taking home the hardware for MVP of Raw at the end of the year. I'm still waiting for the Slammy Award voters to show themselves and/or submit their ballots for public inspection.

In any event, the next-closest in the MVP voting was Randy Orton, who picked up 13 percent of the vote. The Green party was represented by Santino Marella and/or Beth Phoenix, which I could have shortened to Glamarella when creating the poll last night, but opted for the longer version, as they earned 12 percent of the vote.

After that, it was a jumble of six, five, and four percenters. And, not a single Torch reader went with Triple H for their MVP vote. Goes to show the man whose final image is on the broadcast doesn't always pick up the MVP votes.

But, not even one vote, Torch readers? Great Khali even picked up three votes. For shame.

- Sticking with the Jericho theme because, quite frankly, he's one of the top wrestlers in wrestling right now, earlier today, I wrote about the seven-year anniversary of Chris Jericho winning the first Undisputed Title in 2001.

The moment was a pre-cursor to the brand split when WWE divvied up the combined WWE, WCW, and ECW talent into the Raw and Smackdown brands. Today's question I want feedback on is whether WWE should re-focus on the brand split, which now includes ECW, or scrap the entire concept?

Here's an argument in favor of scrapping the whole thing from Torch reader Curtis Setter, who posted a comment on my Spotlight Take on Jericho's anniversary.

The brand split should come to an end. There should be the WWE Title, IC Title, Women's Title, and Tag Team Title and they should scrap the rest, and make ECW a stand-alone brand with WWE production but not involvement.

Reading Curtis's response, I go back in my mind to what Vince McMahon told Wade Keller in the Torch seven years ago about wanting to make sure there was something new and fresh on each of the Raw and Smackdown broadcasts to differentiate between the two shows.

I remember very well how easy it was to skip Smackdown prior to the brand split, similar to WCW viewers being able to skip, forget, and push out of their minds WCW Thunder, because there weren't any new stars to check out.

Storylines from Raw and Nitro were simply being re-hashed on the respective Smackdown and Thunder shows, with Smackdown having far more success.

Pro wrestling is a star-driven business, as J.J. Dillon has described and others have subscribed to the theory of, which means fans want to see a different group of stars when they tune into each TV broadcast.

If WWE were to scrap the brand splits and scrap a few meaningless titles, the task would be utilizing talent in fresh, new ways on each of the Raw and Smackdown broadcasts. McMahon said in 2001 that there wasn't a whole lot new between Mondays and Thursdays (when Smackdown was on Thursday nights).

But, I want to hear from you. Keep the brand split and create a stronger focus? Scrap it and allow for longer TV matches/segments/storylines utilizing fewer stars on each show and spreading them out over two shows?

Email me at pwtorch@gmail.com

Speaking of splits, here's a moving look at Booker T and Goldust parting ways a few years back. Check out more official WWE clips at WWE Fan Nation on youtube.



- Sometimes the TNA Spin Cycle video roundtable discussion will leave you questioning everything in life. Who would I side with in the Mafia vs. Frontline? Or, who looks better in HD - Mike Tenay or Don West?

TNA's latest installment is an all-Knockouts edition with a panel of ODB and Christy Hemme on one side and So Cal Val and Rhaka Khan on the other side. It would be unfair to say I walked away less intelligent than before starting the video, but this was essentially the Khan and Val show, as they delivered some classic exchanges with Hemme.

CH: "With the HD, I know everyone was nervous about it, but when I went back and looked at everything, I thought everyone looked wonderful."

RK: "Why you have to be positive all the time?"

SCV: "Ooh, sunshine, and rainbows, and puppies, oh my!"

CH: "Everybody looked really good! They did! They looked better!"

KH: "No they didn't!"

JB: "Ladies, the two of you do look good in HD, but I gotta say the two of you are walking around with more make-up than Sting these days."

ODB: "Ooooh."

If you're looking to kill 15 minutes on a work break or in between class at school, check out some light entertainment here. Forewarning: ODB lewd joke meter hits about six or seven here, including a rough visual with Santa Clause.

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