The soundtrack for this is episode comes from THE GREATEST BAND IN THE WORLD TODAY, MUSE.

Welcome to another edition of THE RAGER and this week, in the spirit of Valentine’s Day and all things with warm fuzzy feelings in general, I share with all of you some of the things I love about WWE right now.

I know what you’re thinking and no, I won’t do that for anything less than $25 and I know you’re thinking “All-Powerful King Chriso (don’t question it), if the title of your column is ‘THE RAGER’ then shouldn’t your column be full of anger instead of what you love?”

Well my answer is simple. Moving on then…

1) CM Punk – Yes, Punk has given us plenty to enjoy since the summer and still every once and a while, he will throw out a perfect gem of a sentence and we will all giggle away and wait patiently for the next one. He’s just fun and isn’t that exact what he said he wanted to do? To make this fun again? Huzzah.

2) John Cena – WWE has done something that I never thought was possible in my wildest dreams and that’s WWE got me actually giving a crap about Cena. I’m not talking about all the lame crap Kane has pulled lately but I am talking about Cena’s reaction and the slow build to what has to be Cena’s snapping point (which we got a glimpse of against Jack Swagger). What seems to be happening is a very very slow, methodical heel turn and giving into the fact that Cena is already getting boo’d everywhere he goes. Of course, I’m purposely overlooking the “party up in here” moment and Cena smiling while he beat up on Kane followed by Kane retreating and almost ruined the whole thing…how about we all pretend that didn’t happen? And just the way there’s this huge catering to Rock over the past year, I’m actually rooting for Cena to win at Mania. There, I said it.

3) Zack Ryder, Dolph Ziggler, Mark Henry – I lumped these three together because these are guys who have struggled through the middle and below cards for quite a while (obviously much longer is Henry’s case) and now have risen to the verger (or beyond) the top levels of the company. Starting with Ziggler, the guys has just been flat-out impressive over the past year and even before then (I became a fan after his match with Daniel Bryan at Bragging Rights in 2010) and he sells any move and make it look like gold. He could sell a shin kick from hornswaggle and (as Joel Leonard and myself have joked in the past) I really think Ziggler could sell CM Punk drugs.
For Zack Ryder, before this time last year, who really gave a crap about this guy? He just took it upon himself and created a devoted fanbase that wouldn’t rest until Ryder got his shot…and yes, he’s been a punching bag for Kane as of late but its better than those halfsies trunks and barely getting a match on Superstars.
And then there’s Mark Henry. I’ll admit I’ve jumped on the anti-Henry wagon time and time again in the past but thats only because he hasn’t shown anything the past few years and seemed as if he was just getting by for a paycheck and was the random big guy that they could put up against whomever was being pushed. At the beginning of his push, I just thought it was WWE giving Henry one last pat on the back for sticking around for so long because the guy is 40, he can’t be doing this for much longer, right? But instead, we got to see a Mark Henry that I would’ve loved to have seen all along. Someone who was awesome on the mic and dominated like we all knew he could in the ring. Its like the sleeping giant (which makes me think of Mastodon and their randomly weird but awesome music video) finally woke up and whats interesting was that the hall of pain idea was originally pitched for Brodus Clay…does that mean Sexual Chocolate was almost gonna be the Funkasaurus?

4) The Emphasis on Mic-Work – I know this is nothing new because WWE has always been a personality-driven industry (hence why Santino has a job and Vladimir Kozlov doesn’t). But the characters on the mic nowadays is really something special. Just look at the opening segment of RAW (not the Kane closeup) with the Elimination Chamber Debate and I know it was cheesy but it featured probably the best talkers in the business today.
- CM Punk – I’ve already stated that he’s just himself and its fun to watch.
- Dolph Ziggler is just Dolph Ziggler, which means he’s just showing off at this point
- R-Turth is craaaazy and he comes up with random junk and throws it all together and creates something absolutely hilarious.
- I will admit that something is going wrong with Miz as of late. He’s usually pretty fantastic on the mic but lately has just…you know…fallen flat…as in, last Raw, he was trying to get a punchline for a joke and he just couldn’t…catch it (see what I did there?)
- Chris Jericho…need I say more?
- I guess you could consider Kofi to be the weakest link in the debate (aside from the Miz…stepping out of the way) but he kinda simply laid it out there and I enjoyed it.

5) Past Meeting the Present – WWE has always done a great job of honor the great wrestlers of the past and has brought them out occasionally so we can all just go nuts one more time. However, I never have remembered a time where so many greats and legends have been itching to step back in the ring and work with the current talent all at once. I mean, we have Rock, allegedly Stone Cold, Chris Jericho, Booker T, Mick Foley, The Great Khali (I’m kidding…I just had to find a way to throw him in my column this week), and the list goes on. I don’t know if its just me, and I could be far off base here, but I get the feeling that WWE is on the verge of an awesome new era and the legends of the past see it and want to help bring us into to it. Of course, it may not be as dramatic as I’m painting it out to be but you can’t deny that something…different is going on.

In other news, my birthday is coming up (Feb. 20th) and I expect something shiny and expensive to be sent to my apartment.
Also, I just finished reading the first book of The Hunger Games and I thought it was amazing. I highly recommend and this is coming from a guy that believes books are for prisoners. If you don’t wanna read it then wait for the movie to come out because the trailer looks fantastic.

I challenged you, Rageans, to comment below and share what you love…and hate (I don’t even care if its not wrestling related). Follow me on twitter and join in on a fun little thing I call #liverager during Raw every week.

Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do twice,
Chris

The Answer:
The Perfect Love Poem

Every time
I see you face
it reminds me
of you.

(from B is for Bad Poetry)

Tags: chris jericho, cm punk, Dolph Ziggler, john cena, kane, Kofi Kingston, Mark Henry, R-Truth, Stone Cold Steve Austin, The Miz, The Rock, zack ryder