Raw Review - Monday 18th February 2008

Now as I didn’t want to stay up until 4am to watch Raw live on Sky Sports and as I forgot to set the Sky+ I had to wait until Thursday to watch the fall out from No Way Out.

Now the show in itself was a tight solid show that did what it needed to do but from an entertainment standpoint I didn’t rate it too highly. The important thing was for the show to set the wheels in motion for Wrestlemania which it did but could have been handled a lot better.

One thing to note was the lack of backstage segments in the show with only little bits like Rey Mysertio in the locker rooms with Floyd Mayweather shown with the majority of the action happening in the ring. This is great for the fans in the arena live but from a televisual perspective didn’t make for the most entertaining two hours as it is the skits, vignettes, promos etc that happen behind the curtain or outside of the arena which for me help to build the storyline and character and are thus a very important part of the show.

Lots of things I predicted happened not that you had to be a genius to figure them out. As soon as the show started and Regal announced that John Cena would be facing Randy Orton later on in the night you knew he would win to make it a triple threat for the title at Mania. You knew Floyd Mayweather and Big Show would set up a match for Mania and you knew when Michaels came out to inform everyone of Flair’s Hall of Fame induction that they were building something between them.

Now yes characters and storylines have to make sense and the fans need to be able to follow them, this is how you get viewers tuning back in next week but you need a bit of unpredictability. Yes the Vince Russo era of WCW may have gone too far the other way but when done right the unpredictability factor can make an ok show great. It wasn’t what they set up for Mania which annoyed me but the actual results of the matches on Raw which a three year old could have predicted.

Jeff Hardy beat Snitsky and Kennedy beat Val Venis both winning places in the ‘Money in the Bank’ match at Mania. Now after the push they have been giving Hardy they weren’t going to have him lose and Kennedy wasn’t going to lose to someone who is hardly ever on Raw. If this wasn’t enough Maria had her Playboy shoot at stake if she lost to Beth Phoenix so you knew Maria wasn’t going to lose and you knew newcomer Paul Birchall wasn’t going to lose to Super Crazy as they are currently building his character.

Ok Snitsky isn’t the best wrestler in the world and doesn’t have the best mic skills but to have him beaten by a banged up Jeff Hardy and to book him like they have been doing makes no sense as for him to be able to help build other wrestlers fans have to think that Snitsky has a chance of beating them which they won’t if he is forever booked to lose.

Looking at the first two confirmed competitors for ‘Money in the Bank’ I would like Jeff Hardy to win. He has been on a monster push recently and I think giving Jeff the title shot would be great. With it he could move to Smackdown and could have a great programme with Edge because of the history between his brother Matt and Edge he could get him involved and the storyline would make sense. Also giving him some time as the champion on Smackdown would be a good test for him to see if he could ever be a full time Raw Main Eventer like Cena, Orton and HHH. On the other hand it makes no sense for Kennedy to win it as it will just prove his career is going round in circles. Yes I think he deserves a major title push and he never really got the chance to enjoy his win last year and use his title shot properly but having him win it again I think would be boring and lazy booking.

Now on to my gripe with how they are treating Paul Burchill and Katie Lea. The fans can’t buy in to the storyline or the characters as they are trying to get over a creative storyline but aren’t given any time to do it. They came on to Raw with no build up and without the fans given any warning. The first they knew about them was when the ring announcer announced them no the way to the ring last week. Now last week they were allowed to cut an in ring promo and this week they had a taped promo which played during their match so the fans in the arena were dead. If they are going to give Burchill and Lea five to ten minutes a week on Raw they need to invest some thought and time in to getting them and their storyline across.

So all in all they did the important things right but the WWE need to do more to entertain us.