By Jon Mezzera, Torch Specialist

RAW HITS

Edge vs. Cena: These two have faced each other so many times in the past that they can sleep walk their way through a decent match. Awhile back in a Raw Hits & Misses, I said the same thing in a Miss for a match between John Cena and Chris Jericho, whom I felt were going through the motions. That could easily have happened here, but in this case Cena and Edge gave good performances. It was far from a great match, and not particularly long, but it was good while it lasted. It went back and forth nicely and built well to the end with Edge getting what appeared to be a surprise pinfall victory. Of course, Cena had to win going into Hell in a Cell and Edge had to lose to increase his anger at the anonymous General Manager, so the decision had to be reversed. Unfortunately, it just sets a bad precedent of having rulings over turned and forcing matches to restart, as that means you either do it every time, or you leave your fans wondering why he restarted a match in this instance, but not others. That brought down the match a bit, but it was still just good enough to get a Hit.

Jericho's Opponent List: If Jericho is going to be gone for awhile (maybe forever? - though probably not), he definitely had a good final night. I loved his pre-match promo where he first called himself the Viper Killer then listed off several opponents whom he has beaten over the years. It was great that in the middle of the list, the show cut to commercial and then resumed with him still going. I liked how he started out with huge names in the business, then continued on to lesser names (no disrespect meant). I loved how he even listed some wrestlers more than once by listing multiple names that they've gone by at different times. This just made me laugh and think back on his classic feud with Dean Malenko from back in the day.

Orton vs. Jericho: Jericho's good night continued with his good performance in the main event against Randy Orton. Jericho certainly is one of the best in the world at what he does. This was a good match than went about 13 minutes. It was nice to see Jericho actually compete with the WWE Champion. This seemed more of a competitive match than some of his other recent matches during this current "downward spiral" angle. He had some close near falls and he and Orton did a nice job with the Walls of Jericho sequence with Orton selling the pain of the move while ultimately being able to slither out of it. The ending was a bit disappointing as Sheamus got in the ring to cause a no-contest (or was it a disqualification? I don't think there was an official announcement). The post-match happenings worked well to give Jericho a send off, while continuing to keep Orton strong and making the fans want to see what he is capable of doing to Sheamus in Hell in a Cell.

RAW MISSES

Rushing to the PPV: As I talked about last week, having only two weeks of tv to build to a PPV is just a big mistake. That fact definitely showed in the "build" for the Triple Threat Falls Count Anywhere Submissions match that was booked for Hell in a Cell for the United States Championship between Daniel Bryan, The Miz and John Morrison. The show started off with the random match of Bryan & Morrison vs. Miz & Alex Riley. The tension that exploded afterwards between Bryan and Morrison was totally forced. They went from helping each other, to sort of fighting each other, to trying to destroy each other in about 10 seconds. It was too rushed to get to the announced US Title match. I'm not sure why it has the stipulation either. This feels like TNA's past forced gimmick PPV matches at its worst.

The Cutting Edge: I'm just not sure what WWE was going for with this segment where Edge interviewed the computer of the anonymous General Manager. Was it supposed to be funny? If it was, then it failed. Edge did the best he could do under the circumstances, but he had a very telling line when he said that Raw had gone from Austin stunning McMahon to him arguing with a computer. This just didn't work for me. I didn't think WWE could do worse than the annoying way that Michael Cole interrupts the proceedings to announce that he has another email from the General Manager, but unfortunately I was wrong. Hopefully they are going somewhere quick with this after Edge destroyed the computer (which probably was Hit-worthy).

Tag Title Situation: Again I have to give this a Miss. I'm just not into Cody Rhodes & Drew McIntyre as the Tag Team Champions. I'm fine with shaking things up by taking the Titles away from The Hart Dynasty whose Championship run had grown stagnant. But, the problem with their stagnant Title reign wasn't as much their fault as it was the fault of WWE for not creating other legit tag teams for them to feud with. They had a chance on Raw with the Usos, but blew it. They had a chance on Smackdown with Hawkins & Archer or the Dudebusters but haven't done anything with them since a mini-feud on Superstars which was actually pretty good. So, now you have Rhodes & McIntyre (I honestly almost accidentally typed "Rhodes & DiBiase) who are going to have the same problem as The Hart Dynasty, with no legit competition. I don't care to see tension between Tyson Kidd and David Hart Smith. I don't think either is strong enough all around to do much as a singles wrestler (although Kidd has more potential), so they are better at this point as a team.

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.

[Torch art credit Grant Gould (c) PWTorch.com]

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