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Hits & Misses
HITS & MISSES - 11/24 WWE Raw: Lots of Talking Early, Harper vs. Ambrose, Mizdow, Survivor Series Follow Up, Anonymous GM

Nov 26, 2014 - 5:47:22 PM
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By Jon Mezzera, PWTorch Specialist

RAW HITS

Ambrose vs. Harper: It took about 45 minutes to finally get to something good on Raw. I enjoyed the Intercontinental Championship match between Luke Harper and Dean Ambrose. The match went over 14 minutes and featured good hard hitting wrestling action. I am a fan of Luke Harper. I don't like what WWE has done with having The Wyatt Family go their separate ways, but I am hopeful that Harper can become a breakout star. I hope he continues to have good matches going forward. I wasn't a huge fan of the disqualification ending, but I can live with it in this instance. It also set up a chance for Bray Wyatt to get revenge on Ambrose for what happened at Survivor Series, continuing to hype their upcoming match at TLC.

Miz & Mizdow vs. Gold & Stardust: This was another pretty good Title match, this one for the Tag Team Championship. I continue to enjoy the Damian Mizdow character. The fans are certainly into it and he plays the part very well. This match was well booked to get him his cheers, while also getting heat on The Miz for milking his injury only to come in and "steal" the victory from his stunt double. The long term issue is that Sandow is over as Mizdow doing his Miz mimicry which is hilarious (by the way, my wife is predicting a Tag Title Ladder match at TLC where Miz will be climbing a ladder in the ring while Mizdow is climbing one that is set up outside of the ring, and when Miz gets knocked off the ladder, Mizdow will then have to jump off the ladder on the outside). But, if he brakes away from Miz to become a babyface singles star, he won't be mimicking Miz any more, so he won't be doing what makes him popular, therefore it is doubtful that he will remain popular.

Rollins with J & J Security: I enjoyed the backstage scene with Seth Rollins and J & J Security. I laughed out loud when Jamie Noble said that the three of them would be The Shield 2.0. Rollins was good in being condescending to them, while trying not to be condescending to them. I also liked after Dolph Ziggler's appearance when he said that his millions of twitter followers were going to vote for them to be Rollins' partners, how they got all excited at first, before realizing that Rollins was very upset about this possibility.

Ziggler & Cena vs. Rollins, J & J Security: This was a fun main event. I was a big fan of Jamie Noble back in the day, so it was good to see him back in a WWE match. I wish WWE would have done more to acknowledge his and Joey Mercury's past. They did mention that Noble was a former Cruiserweight Champion, but that was 10 years ago. The match had some comedy spots early which worked well, before going into a more traditional tag match with the heels using their numbers advantage to take the lead in the match. The ending with the double pin was ok and having Bryan on one more time to throw Rollins back in the ring to get his was a fine way to end the show (too bad it wasn't the actual end!). I will say that after Survivor Series, WWE has a chance to push Ziggler to the moon. I would much rather see him win the Royal Rumble and face Brock Lesnar at WrestleMania than Roman Reigns. Having Rollins cash in Money in the Bank on Ziggler afterwards would be huge and would lead to potentially a great series of main event matches next summer between Ziggler and Rollins.

RAW MISSES

Opening Two Segments: The post-Survivor Series Raw did not get off to a good start with back to back long talking segments before finally getting a match (which ended up lasting less than a minute). I would say that WWE differentiates Raw from PPVs by not having these long talking segments kick off the PPVs, but that's exactly what they did at Survivor Series. I would have preferred having The Authority totally gone. If they were going to be on to address going away and set up possibly returning down the line (no!), then make it brief please. And don't script Triple H to channel Jack Nicholson from "A Few Good Men" (deep down at places we don't want to talk about at parties, we want them in charge, we need them in charge). The fans in the arena were chanting "boring!" and rightfully so. I did like seeing Daniel Bryan come out to gloat with his "Yes! Yes!" chants getting in The Authority's face. But, I was disappointed to find out that Bryan would just be the first in a presumably long line of guest general managers for Raw going forward.

The second segment with Daniel Bryan addressing Team Authority wasn't very good. I don't really care to see a babyface authority figure humiliating heel wrestlers by putting them in comedy situations like Bryan set up for Kane and Rusev. Bryan was good at times, but he stumbled some when setting up the vote for Seth Rollins' partners. It was also too long and dragged. The fans were only excited when Bryan did the "Yes!" chants, but didn't seem to respond well to anything else he said. And by the end of the show, like all authority figures, Bryan would over stay his welcome. I was also disappointed that after arguably the biggest night in his career, instead of starting with Dolph Ziggler, they waited for so long to finally get to him.

Larry the Cable Guy: Not only do we need to get a string of guest general managers, but do we also have to get a string of celebrity guest stars? Last week it was Grumpy Cat and this week it was Larry the Cable Guy. I know he has his fans, but I'm not one of them and I can't imagine even his fans enjoying what he did this week. He was lame with his multiple segments hanging out with Santino Marella to hype their direct to dvd "movie" "Jingle All The Way 2." I didn't care to see them on the stage, or in the back with Kane, or doing guest commentary. It was terrible all night long.

Concessions Kane: As I mentioned earlier, I wasn't a fan of seeing guys like Kane punished in humiliating ways. Watching Kane be picked on by a demeaning manager wasn't fun. His scene with Santino and Larry the Cable Guy wasn't funny. I didn't like his scene with Ryback later on either. I guess at least that last one does set up a Ryback vs. Kane match, but did we need to see more mustard and ketchup gags? And did the cameraman really have to zoom in close on the bag of nuts before Ryback delivered the lame nuts punchline? Like the audience is too stupid to know that it was a bag of nuts without zooming in on it.

Rusev: I wasn't a fan of what WWE did with Rusev either. For the most part, they have done a very good job of building up Rusev as an unstoppable monster. Lana has been very good in her role and while she is often funny, it is not a comedy act. Humiliating them by forcing them to recite the Pledge of Allegiance in what was supposed to be a funny segment (I think?) was not a great way to go. Plus, Bryan said he had to do the Pledge or defend the United States Championship in a battle royal with the entire roster. They didn't end up doing either. So, what was the point? And we have already gotten a feud where Jack Swagger failed to get the job done against Rusev multiple times. Why are we seeing it again?

The Big Show: Big Show turning on Team Cena during the Survivor Series main event worked well. Yes, it was yet another turn for Big Show in a long WWE career of turn after turn. But, the real problem to me was the follow up on Raw. Having him come out and explain that he panicked and made a mistake and ask the fans for forgiveness for a mulligan didn't do anything for me. I would have liked to see a less wishy-washy presentation for Show and have him just say that he only cares about himself and he did what he did to protect himself and that he doesn't care what anyone thinks about him. I don't want to hear a heel asking for forgiveness. I don't want to hear a heel asking the fans to cheer for him. And then I wasn't interested in seeing Erick Rowan come out to challenge Show at that point. I'm glad it won't be Cena vs. Show (at least right away), but Show vs. Rowan doesn't get me excited. None of this worked for me.

Bellas and AJ: I don't understand why suddenly Brie Bella is totally supporting Nikki. I can accept the fact that she would have reluctantly kissed AJ at Survivor Series as part of a plan hatched by Nikki because she was forced to do it as Nikki's personal assistant. But, she wasn't acting reluctant at all. On Raw, she was basically playing a heel character with none of the reluctance that she had shown the previous three weeks. Now that would be ok, if there was an actual explanation for it. Yes the announcers did question and speculate what was going on which was at least something, but not enough. The fact that this all happened on the night when Brie's husband was in charge just further pointed out the inconsistencies in her character. AJ really did nothing to make me want to cheer her either which has been an issue since her return and her "frenemy" feud against Paige a few months back. I also hated the end of AJ vs. Brie. Nikki got in a cheap shot on AJ's arm, and then Brie won with an Oklahoma Roll which is a leverage pin. AJ wasn't injured enough to get pinned without the extra leverage from that move. Yet, AJ didn't even bother to kick her legs and make it look like she was struggling to kick out. She acted like the slingshot to her arm knocked her out which was a very weak ending.

Anonymous GM: I don't want to see a string of guest GMs on Raw moving forward. I especially don't want to see a string of retread former authority figures like John Laurenaitis, Teddy Long, Mick Foley or Vickie Guerrero. And I particularly don't want to see the return of the Anonymous Raw GM, even for one week. They revealed it was Hornswoggle which was bad enough, but to then go back and just ignore that is even worse. Having a fun, happy ending to the show overshadowed by the announcement of the return of the Anonymous GM was a terrible way to end the show. That was a terrible way to hook fans to tune in next week. By the end of Raw, the focus should have been on The Authority being gone, Sting, and the incredible star-making match for Dolph Ziggler. But instead, we were left with the annoying computer sounds, the blinking lights, and Michael Cole back to his terrible role as the email reader on the computer and lectern that seemed to magically appear next to the announce table without anyone noticing.

Jon Mezzera is PWTorch.com's WWE Hits & Misses Specialist, providing his point of view for Raw and Smackdown each week. Email him at his NEW email address - jmezz_torch@yahoo.com.

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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8/24 WWE Raw Hits & Misses: Opening Segment, New Day, Dudleys return, Stewart, Sting
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