Unfortunately, there are still some divisions severely lacking in legitimacy… During the 4-Way Tag Team match I spent at least two minutes racking my brain, trying to remember who held the WWE Tag Team Championships. Obviously R-Truth’s recent injury had a lot to do with that lapse in judgment, but my point still stands: the tag team roster is crap. That being said, I thought tonight took about ten steps in the right direction. The match was slightly above mediocre (I just recently watched Survivor Series 2002), but the fact that there are actually five tag teams in the WWE surprised the hell out of me. And two of them now have managers and a fun story in the works! The swerve at the end, while not as “shocking” as they would have liked, was a great move. WWE finally told some sort of story in their tag team division, and that gives me hope, even if “Prime Time Players” have an awful name and even worse ring attire…
Quick note: I really like the Ryback character, and I don’t think he needs an immediate feud to get over. It seems I’m one of the few content watching him decimate jobbers two-at-a-time. Notice at the end of his match he said “feed me three!” That is definitely something I’d like to see on Raw tonight. Maybe in the near future they can get the band back together, and have him run through the Spirit Squad? Who knows, it may set up a fun feud with Dolph Ziggler…
The other main events were good, but neither the Championship match or Steel Cage main event blew me away. AJ’s involvement was a nice touch, as was all of Big Show’s recent victims coming down to help even the odds. But both outcomes were predictable, and honestly didn’t get me excited about tonight’s episode of Raw. Kane and AJ? $10 says she did it to help Punk win. John Laurinaitis is fired? He’ll be back. Another $10 says he’ll be on Raw and walk out with some kind of angle that keeps him around. It’s not bad story-telling, I’ve just seen this show a million times.
No Way Out did have some good moments, as I’ve said. Solid matches, an actual appearance by several tag team wrestlers, and a few fine details sold me. But there were a lot of “why am I watching this?” moments mixed in; things WWE needs to avoid. Ricardo and Santino, while both hilarious 99% of the time, were terrible. It’s always good to see Triple H in a WWE ring, but I feel they could have come up with something more creative than “Brock Lesnar…I want to fight you.” And for the love of Sheamus’ great uncle Fargus’ lucky green testicle, why am I STILL paying to see Sin Cara and Hunico pretend to be half as fun as Guerrero and Mysterio back in WCW? It’s not working… kill it with fire.
More building blocks were laid tonight for a decent foundation. Now it’s time to build up, and stop drawing from the same well that ran dry five years ago…
