WWE Raw Review - 26th May 2008

I was looking forward to Raw tonight with one Night Stand only a week away I was looking forward to see how the headline feuds would develop and get us in the mood for the PPV.

Good Points

Lots of Vince segments

I think Mr. McMahon is one of the best on screen characters in the WWE so to see him heavily featured was great. He proclaimed that tonight was going to be Fan Appreciation night which lead to many funny backstage segments with wrestlers coming to Vince and telling him what he should do to show appreciation to the fans. This culminated in the end with Vince saying that he is going to be giving away some of his millions in the coming weeks on Raw which has never been done before.

New Wrestler Debuts

Was great to see WWE legend the Million Dollar Man introduce his son and latest addition to the Raw roster who is also called Ted Dibiase. Immediately he laid down a challenge to the tag champs and set the wheels in motion for a feud with Holly and Rhodes.

Finally Burchill has a feud

After Mr. Kennedy getting William Regal fired last week Burchill this week decided to blindside Mr. Kennedy after his match with Carlito and after he had been distracted by Katie lea. I just hope they handle this properly and make it a good feud so that Burchill can get some regular TV time and a PPV match.

Bad Points

Lack of build for One Night Stand

Besides the first ten minutes which had a face off between HHH and Randy Orton little was done to build the main event matches for ONS. The last match of the night was Jericho vs. HBK when you also have Cena / JBL or HHH / Orton who should have been part of the last match. The show was then ended by a great Vince McMahon segment but in my opinion this should have been saved for the episode of Raw after One night stand.

Silly Roddy Piper segments

Now I know they want to give Roddy something to do and that the involvement with the Jimmy Kimmel show is great publicity but I can’t stand these segments with Roddy getting involved with the people on the show. If they were to be having a match with either Roddy or the guys from the show on One night Stand then it would make sense but at the moment it just provides a throw away segment every week.

Overall

The complete opposite of last weeks show, last week was heavy on the build for ONS but light on the entertainment whereas this weeks show was light of the build for ONS but heavy on thee entertainment.

WWE Raw Review - 19th May 2008

After being away for over a week and missing TNA Sacrifice as well as all the weekly WWE and TNA shows I was looking forward to tuning in to Raw to see what had happened since I had been away.

Good Points

Good Start

The show started with a bang with the return to Raw of Jeff Hardy after his surprise appearance at Judgement Day. He has been thrown in to another programme with Umaga but at least it was an intense match with Umaga knocking out Jeff Hardy outside of the ring. This is also a good way to ease Jeff back in before he hopefully makes his way back up the card.

Setting up for One Night Stand

With only two weeks to go before ONS they used this episode of Raw well to get four matches announced for it. We had Batista beating Jericho to get a match against HBK at ONS, we had the team of Randy Orton and JBL beating HHH and John Cena so that they could both get rematches from Judgment Day and we had the returning Jeff Hardy beating pitted against Umaga. All of these are stipulation matches.

Katie Lea given some promo time

It was great to see Katie Lea given some promo time as she confronted Mickie James backstage. She is great on the mic and has some great character skills. That would be a big boost for her career if she was put in an ongoing storyline with the Women’s champion.

Bad Points

Lack of use of HHH

We had to wait nearly two hours until we saw the heavyweight champion on screen and his only involvement was a quick backstage segment followed by his match. A heavyweight champion is suppose to carry the brand and be the main reason that people tune in so to use him like this is majorly under using him.

All the time invested Regal gone to waste

Over the last few weeks Regal has been given more on screen time than ever before to build his character of the out of control general manager. All of WWE’s investment came to nothing this week as after he had to be suspended for his second drug violation. To get him off screen quickly he lost to Mr. Kennedy in a loser gets fired match which was all very rushed. I think that drug testing is positive for the company although it can play havoc with the storylines. If WWE is going to invest time in someone they need to make sure that they are clean.

Overall

A mixed bag in all. They did well setting for One Night Stand but they need to remember that to get pay per view buys you have to get people watching the free weekly shows and to do that you have to put on an entertaining show. So they need to learn to build for PPV’s in a way that is entertaining for the viewers although trying to build for a PPV in two weeks is madness.