By Jon Mezzera, Torch Specialist

I thought this was a totally lackluster Raw. After last week's great show, I was hoping WWE could continue Raw's momentum, but this week flat lined. It wasn't really a bad show, but very little stood out to me. It was mostly just ok. None of the matches were Hit worthy, but none of them were bad enough to get Misses either. With two exceptions, the talking segments were ok. None of the others were able to get me excited or entertained me in any way, but they weren't bad. I guess I will take this over a terrible show, but after last week it was certainly a disappointment.

RAW HITS

Jericho - Punk: The highlight of Raw was the promo from Chris Jericho, followed by C.M. Punk's "response." It was good to hear Jericho defining what his videos had meant by the end of the world as we know it and how he is returning to claim what is his. I loved his line about how all the other wrestlers became obsolete the minute he returned. I also liked the fact that he explained what he was doing in those early weeks of his return, proving that the fans were wannabe Jericho's in the way he was able to manipulate them without saying a word. It also put his focus where it needs to be, on Punk and the WWE Title going into Elimination Chamber. I loved his list of his Chamber opponents and how they copied everything from him, particularly the fact that Dolph Ziggler is copying him in coming to the ring with Vickie Guerrero simply because he himself once came to the ring with a woman. That was great. I also liked Punk's interruption. I loved how he purposefully copied Jericho by not saying a word. It flustered Jericho, too. It was all well done.

RAW MISSES

Triple H - Undertaker: Raw got off to a poor start in the way that it followed up on two of the plot developments from last week. I did not like the fact that John Laurinaitis had a chance to plead his case with the board of directors. Last week, the board put it in Triple H's hands, but this week, they had the power? That made no sense. After Triple H made it clear that he intended to fire Laurinaitis, why would the board then say he couldn't until they had heard what Laurinaitis had to say? That was lame and undercut Triple H's authority, so now we don't really know who is in charge. I also wasn't a fan of how Triple H basically shook the storyline off as if it didn't really matter, after weeks of build up and so much hype that he might fire Laurinaitis. WWE told us that storyline was important, then Triple H said that it wasn't. Someone was lying. Triple H's promo on The Undertaker was solid. It was well written to give a clear reason why he refuses to wrestle Undertaker at WrestleMania and Triple H was fine in the delivery. But, it left me a bit cold. I understand that there is going to be a build to him ultimately accepting and that build has the chance to be very good. But right now I am left to anticipate a match between two wrestlers, one of whom doesn't really want to wrestle the other. But, it was ok. The main problem was Undertaker's video response which just seemed totally out of character for him to produce such a video. I can't imagine Undertaker working with an editor putting that video together. It just didn't work for me.

Jon Mezzera is PWTorch.com's WWE Hits & Misses Specialist, providing his point of view for Raw and Smackdown 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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