By Shane McKinley, Torch specialist

"Hey, what happened on Raw?"

"Well, there was this bit when one nerdy guy nobody likes read emails. And then a bunch of badasses wearing underwear beat up some old dudes. Uh, and um, Santino and Kozlov...did...something. Yeah."

-Why is it that when Michael Cole goes up to the Raw GM podium to read off an email, I'm reminded of Martin Luther King's "I Have A Dream" speech? Cole reading emails on every Raw is going to get annoying. For the PG audience, it's like the principal telling the students that the rest of the school day is going to drag. But, be sure to buy the PPV.

The mysterious GM's emails are quite professional and soulless. Maybe the GM is...a computer. WWE can't leave this mystery unanswered. This and Nexus are two of the only reasons why I'm still checking out Raw.

-Hart Dynasty was nailed from behind by the Usos, R-Truth talked about being a zookeeper, Santino and Kozlov played pattycake, and Ranjin Singh broke up with Great Khali. These events were pretty much the definition of filler, but especially Santino vs. Kozlov, where it was just two of them dancing in the ring in Philly, which is where they booed Santa Claus. Great.

-Rob Zombie came in, announced the participants for the "Money Not In Your Bank" ladder match, and then got the hell out. Nice job, WWE. Zombie was out of there faster than I was leaving Zombie's "Halloween II." Soon, a day will come when a Raw guest host only gets one word out:

Cole: "And now let's turn it over to our Raw guest host, M.C. Hammer!"

Hammer: "What's..."

Lawler: "Thank you Hammer! I bet you have all of his CDs, Michael Cole! Oops, time for you to read an email."

-Edge came on the screen and talked about two things:

(1) Pumped up how brutal the Money in the Bank match is. (Granted, these guys are not hitting each other with pillows, but the focus of MITB matches lately has been complicated set-ups and messy spots, unlike the highway hardcore car wreck of earlier versions.)

(2) Pumped up his feud with Randy Orton. (Great, but uh, can we get a one on one match here in this feud? You guys keep showing up in fatal four-ways and eight-mans and whatever. It feels like the feud hasn't really started. It might as well be invisible.)

-Sheamus, gulping with fear, beat Mark Henry pretty quickly with some resistance. There, champ. Don't you look strong. And don't complain or we'll Jack Swagger ya.

-Nexus, the badasses who only wear their undies (imagine Nexus showing up at a bar with their wrestling gear on), shove some WWE eggheads around. You see, we call ourselves Nexus because we were playing this video game and we saw the word "nexus" pop up, and...

-It's hard to believe WWE was promoting a DVD at the top of the hour. Lawler, Steamboat, and the ol' gang came up to say how cool Ricky was. This boring bit was the same as when the Nexus apologized: you were just waiting for the payoff.

What's worth noting about Nexus is that their attacks are done without announcers screaming that the Japanese are bombing Pearl Harbor. No announcing for the Nexus attacks does make it stand out.

Also, this Nexus angle does thrive on the fact that things are very, very stale in WWE programming. So, it's a treat for WWE viewers to see something, anything happen to the usual WWE drab. The no-blood policy does hurt the Nexus angle a bit. (Instead of looking utterly destructive with blood all over the place, it looked like they just roughed up Steamboat and the gang a bit.) But, it's still working.

And the Nexus attack was the only highlight of the show, really. Everything else was easily passable. The ending of the show was some eight-man doohickey with Orton on top of the ladder posing for the PPV commercial.

Raw's Absurd Verdict: Very Absurd

Email is mckinley.torch@gmail.com

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