By Jon Mezzera, Torch Specialist

After a week off, I'm back to present my Hits & Misses. A quick word about last week's Raw which I did not cover. Raw seemed to be a show that split the audience, with some liking it and others hating it. I happened to like it. I liked where WWE was going with Edge vs. Randy Orton and their show ending verbal encounter was great. I was also very intrigued by the possibilities of a Chris Jericho / The Miz team. WWE also did a nice job keeping Sheamus in the mix despite not having an obvious opponent at the moment and built suspense for John Cena's decision in regards to the match stipulation against Batista at the next PPV. Now on to this week's show:

RAW HITS

Maryse Training Video: I enjoyed this short scene. It showed a bit of a behind-the-scenes glimpse at Maryse training. I like how that suggests that she is trying to improve as a wrestler. That is something that WWE could do more of and I would not complain. It is also something that has been missing on NXT for the entire season. And it allowed Maryse to show her character as she got frustrated with her trainer and slapped him. She was good. The trainer did a nice job in his role. I liked it.

Batista Makes a Statement: I'm not sure about elevating Mark Henry to be the one to come to John Cena's rescue from Batista and Sheamus, but I have recently complained about the balance of heels and babyfaces on Raw and someone needs to be elevated to even things out. I don't mind it being Henry on a short term basis. It ended up working well this week as Henry provided Batista the chance to really make a statement by destroying him before their match even got started. It showed his mean streak and how viscous he can be. It also gave him a chance to show off a submission hold before the "I Quit" match.

Vickie Resigns: I'm very happy that WWE's long term plan does not include Vickie Guerrero as the Raw GM. I was happy when she resigned at the end of the show. I'm not thrilled with the fact that she resigned because she felt physically threatened by a male wrestler. But, at least she resigned. The ending of the show worked pretty well to have Orton standing tall over Edge and ruining his plan with Vickie. It also elevated Ted DiBiase by having him in the main event and R-Truth by having him get involved as well. It leaves open the question of who will be the new GM now that the guest hosts have no power and Vickie resigned. For some reason, I'm hoping for JBL.

RAW MISSES

Orton, Meat Loaf, Edge, Guerrero: I didn't like Raw this week (as you might be able to tell with three Hits and seven Misses). It got off to a poor start with the opening segment. The Meat Loaf appearance was horrible. I get it. They wanted to give Orton a chance to beat up another celebrity to set up Edge's announcement about the guest hosts. But, it was a bad scene. It made me want to change the channel at the start of the show which is not a good thing. I felt that they are trying too hard to make Orton the new Stone Cold Steve Austin. He is the Viper while Austin was the Texas Rattle Snake. He can strike any time with an RKO while Austin could strike with a Stone Cold Stunner. He was a heel whom the fans wanted to become a babyface, like Austin. But, WWE is forcing it at this point. I am fine with celebrities not having power on Raw, but why have guest hosts then? They barely served a purpose before, and now they serve none. If you are doing away with the concept all together, then I would be on board. But, they aren't. The guest hosts will still be in terrible scenes (I will be talking about one in a bit), but they won't have a purpose any more. Then Edge introduced Vickie Guerrero as the new Raw GM and I wanted to change the channel again. I like Vickie. She plays her role well and gets a ton of heat. But, there is a time and place for her talent and being a GM isn't one of them. Obviously, I already addressed the fact that she resigned at the end of the show. However, during the opening we did not know that would happen. All I knew is that I didn't want to see old plots rehashed like Vickie as GM (been there, done that), or Vickie teaming up with Edge (been there, done that), or Vickie using her power to stick it to a top babyface (been there, done that). I hated how the show started and it didn't get much (if any) better as it proceeded.

Jericho vs. Smith: As I said above, I was intrigued by the new team of Jericho and Miz. However, this week they seemed to be rushing things going right to them getting a Unified Tag Team Title opportunity. Their two matches would have been fine individually in terms of their stipulations (other than rushing earning a Title shot). But, the announcers were confused in trying to explain to the fans the stipulations. That is not a good sign. The match itself between Jericho and David Hart Smith was too short to amount to much and seemed a step off. I didn't like the lack of wrestling on Raw (more later), but in this case I didn't really want to see more. It also didn't make me want to see an eventual tag match either. On a bit of a side note, (this may should weird) tall wrestlers should never do a Sharpshooter. It looks good when it is done by shorter wrestlers like Bret Hart, Owen Hart, Chris Benoit, and Tyson Kidd. But, it never looked good when a taller wrestler like The Rock used to do it. And it looks bad when Smith does it now. When applied by shorter legs, it looks really painful and cool. When applied by longer legs, it looks much less painful and really awkward.

Cena's Announcement: Was I the only one underwhelmed by Cena's stipulation? If Batista is leaving the company, then the humiliation of saying "I quit" to Cena would be a reason why he would actually quit. I get that. But, that doesn't mean that I want to see an "I Quit" match between them. I'm not a fan of the stipulation in general. It is always a bit goofy with the referee holding the mic up to the wrestlers and asking them if they quit. This is their fourth match in as many PPVs. The feud got started at Elimination Chamber with Batista's surprise win over Cena to become WWE Champion. The build towards their WrestleMania rematch was awesome. After two pretty brutal matches, they should be building to something bigger than this. Hell in a Cell was made for a match like this. The culmination of the feud between the two top stars since the Attitude Era should end in that match, not an "I Quit" match. But, because of WWE's stupidity with having a Hell in a Cell PPV, they can't water the match down more by having Hell in a Cell at a different PPV where it would make sense given the storyline and feud as opposed to the Hell in a Cell PPV, where potentially you have matches in the Cell prematurely.

Miz's Announcement: I was also underwhelmed by Miz's announcement that he will be defending the US Title against Bret Hart next week. For one thing, the announcers did such a poor job of explaining the match stipulation, that when he said he gets to pick any Hart to defend the Title against, it seemed like he was making it up. I hate to be overly technical, but they said the stipulation was that if he lost, he had to defend the Title against a member of the Hart Dynasty, not the Hart family like he said. It was convoluted. We don't know where this is going, but Bret should not ever be in the ring any more. If he is going to have another match against an actual wrestler (unlike Vince McMahon) then it should be a bigger deal than this. At this point, all we can really hope for is a bait-and-switch which is not good.

Bryan's First Win: I have to admit to laughing at Goldust, Santino Marella and Yoshi Tatsu doing their ring entrances in slow motion with John Morrison. Also, if there is going to be a second season of NXT, then hopefully these four will all be NXT pros. There is comedic potential having Goldust and Marella giving advice to a rookie. To the actual point of the Miss, it was a bad decision to have Daniel Bryan finally get his first win in this way. You either keep him winless, or you make his first win mean something. I suspect that WWE felt they needed to give him something to explain why he isn't the first rookie to be eliminated on NXT this week. Maybe they should have thought of that sooner after making him look like a chump week in and week out. This was not the moment that his first win could have been if properly handled.

Backstage "Comedy" Scene: Now we get to the horrible guest host scene mentioned above. This was an overly long and very unfunny scene involving guest host Flavor Flav, the Bellas, Santino Marella, Vladimir Kozlov and William Regal. It sucked. It made Regal (who could be used in much better ways than this) look like a total fool. It was a huge waste of time. Did I mention that it sucked and that it was unfunny? These are the types of scenes that make the guest host concept so bad. These are the types of scenes that make me want the guest host gimmick to come to an end. These are the types of scenes that are going to continue, even if the hosts have no power on Raw any more.

Lack of Wrestling: I mentioned the first match of the show, Jericho vs. Smith as being short. However, at 3 minutes it was one of the longer matches on the show. The second match, R-Truth vs. William Regal was barely started before Primo & Carlito interrupted. I like that they made a statement after reuniting on Superstars last week, but was a bit disappointed that they did so only to get paid by Ted DiBiase. Evan Bourne vs. Zack Ryder was a good match while it lasted. But, it only lasted 2 minutes. It was a nice tease for a possible mixed tag match with Bourne & Gail Kim vs. Ryder & Alicia Fox, but they could have had the same tease with a match that went 6 or 7 minutes and I wouldn't have complained. Miz vs. Kidd has potential to be a good match, but this week WWE decided to only give them 30 seconds which was disappointing. The NXT tag match was longer at 4 minutes, but still too short to amount to much. I said a few positive things about the main event, but it fit in with the theme of short matches as it was just 5 minutes long. On the whole, it was a show with too little in ring action.

Jon Mezzera is PWTorch.com's WWE Hits & Misses Specialist, providing his point of view for Raw, Smackdown, NXT, and Superstars each week. Email him at jmezz-torch@sbcglobal.net.

For another view from the original Hitlist author, compare Jason Powell's views to mine by visiting prowrestling.NET's "Hitlist" section here.

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