The SmarK RAW Supershow Rant – 02.20.12

Live from Minneapolis, MN.

Your hosts are Michael Cole and Jerry Lawler

And we waste no time with Eve’s official heel turn, as she reveals her SECRET EVIL PLAN to the Bellas backstage and lays out how she was just using Zack to further her career all along.  Boy, she hitched her wagon to the wrong horse then.  Oh, and apparently Ryder is such a loser that he couldn’t even get to first base.  Probably wise to pull the trigger on that turn because she was gonna be a heel no matter what, but holy cow was that the most sudden shift into sociopathic behavior since the peak of 24 or what?  Sadly for her, John Cena walks in and overhears before she can follow through on her plan to screw him over as well.

So we go the opening interview with John Cena in the ring, and Eve comes down and wants to explain.  John notes that she’s drinking the “skank juice” and may in fact be a “ho-ski”.  So he suggests that she hook up with the Rock instead.  Eve is distraught and makes one last play for Cena, but he fights her off because he wants to remain disease-free.  This seemed kind of like the blowoff to the whole soap opera thing so Cena can move onto the Rock, but that might be giving them too much credit.

Sheamus v. Mark Henry

Why do they keep trotting poor Mark out there with his injuries?  Henry attacks in the corner to start, but Sheamus goes to the knee and blocks a charge with a knee.  Sheamus to the top with a shoulderblock for two.  Sheamus throws the forearms, but Henry fights him off and pounds him in the corner again.  Sheamus fights back, but the ref pulls him off for kicking too much ass.  Brogue Kick misses and Henry gets the avalanche, but a Brogue Kick finishes clean at 3:11 for Sheamus.  If Henry was well enough to work, why not do this match on the PPV last night?  **

Meanwhile, the GMs have a meeting backstage and exchange verbal banter.  The upshot is that tonight will see a 10-man battle royale for a shot at CM Punk at Wrestlemania.  LAME.

R-Truth & Kofi Kingston v. Primo & Epico

Good enough use of Truth & Kofi, I suppose.  Truth clotheslines Epico for two, but Primo gets the blind tag and pounds him down.  Kofi gets the hot tag 90 seconds in and hits Primo with the boom drop, but Epico necksnaps him while Rosa distracts the ref.  Kofi finishes with the wacky kick at 2:23 anyway.  Too short to be worth much, but they need something for the tag champs to do, I guess.  *1/2  This is the tag division in 2012, ladies and gentlemen, as makeshift teams beat the champions to establish themselves as a team.

Your latest Hall of Famer:  Ron Simmons.  Eh…that’s pretty debatable.

Chris Jericho bitches to Josh Matthews about how it’s unfair to eliminate him from the title match last night, and once again tonight is the end of the world as we know it.

Ezekial Jackson v. David Otunga

This would be the battle of surrogates for the GMs.  Jackson pounds away and misses a corner clothesline, allowing Otunga to hit a spinebuster for the pin at 1:28.  ½*

Undertaker returns to talk about how the apocalypse is coming due to HHH not accepting his challenge, and honestly it’s a pretty dull promo.  HHH comes out as asked, and Undertaker is TIRED of his excuses. HHH once again lays out the “bad for business” line, but Undertaker calls him a COWARD.  That finally gets a rise out of Corporate H, but the answer’s still no.  So Undertaker pulls out the “You know that Shawn was always better than you” card, and now the tie is OFF.  So finally, HHH decides to EMBRACE THE HATE and accepts the challenge on one condition:  It’s in Hell in the Cell.  Wow.  See what happens you get two guys who know how to actually make people believe what they’re saying and not just read jokey lines off a script?  I should also note that Undertaker fulfilled the very goal that Kane was trying to accomplish with John Cena, and got a much better storyline out of it.  Also, is it just me, or does anyone else feel like it’s a giant waste to have both this and the Cena/Rock match at Wrestlemania?  It feels like they could do at least as much as a Big Four PPV buyrate with Undertaker v. HHH alone.

Daniel Bryan v. Santino

This is non-title.  Santino gets the hiptoss and goes for the Cobra, but Bryan lays him out and finishes with the Lebell Lock at 0:55.  ½*

The Bellas v. Kelly Kelly & Aksana

Aksana takes an ungodly terrible-looking beating from the Bellas, missing every simple thing she tries, and Bellas switch and pin her at 0:30.  Yeah, OK.  The Divas stuff is pretty bad normally, but this was downright embarrassing.  The “elbowdrop” attempted by Aksana may have been the worst single wrestling move ever attempted.  EVER.

John Cena gets a second attempt at his promo, and he’s STILL whining about the Rock is too Hollywood for him, and he buries his own attempts at being a movie star.  But he always showed up and never left!  This comes off as so petty and jealous, but that might be deliberate.  And by the way, Cena absolutely did leave to shoot his movies, for quite a while in some cases.  At least they made an effort to give them an actual issue here.

#1 Contender Battle Royale

So we’ve got Jericho, Dolph Ziggler, R-Truth, The Miz, Kofi Kingston, Big Show, Santino, Great Khali, Wade Barrett and Cody Rhodes.  Everyone gangs up on Khali and gets rid of him first, and we take a break.  Hey, this is actually the first match tonight with a commercial break!  Probably because all the other ones one went 2 minutes each, but still.  Kofi and Miz fight on the apron while Jericho tries to put Ziggler out.  By the way, does anyone else look at Kofi’s logo and think that he’s in danger of having Batman spray explosive gel on it?  AIR TRUTH double-teams Miz and dropkicks him out at 3:41.  Show chokeslams them both, but Jericho hits him with a codebreaker, kicking off everyone hitting their finishes.  Barrett tries to put Santino out, but gets eliminated himself.  And then Ziggler gets tossed by Show onto Barrett, which looked BAD.  Like, Wade gets a broken arm bad.  And I bet it’s his SIGN POINTING arm, too.  And the refs make the dreaded X sign.  And then Kofi goes up and Jericho shoves him out, and Kofi has to dodge Vickie and nearly kills himself on the way down as a result.  This is becoming a bloodbath.  So we’ve got Jericho, Show, Santino and Rhodes, plus Barrett getting taken out on a stretcher by Buck Zumhoff.  So everyone gangs up on Show, but Santino readies the Cobra and puts Jericho down, only to get tossed by Cody.  And he’s limping too.  Show suplexes both Jericho and Rhodes and dumps Cody, but Cody grabs onto Show’s leg on the way out, allowing Jericho to grab a dragon sleeper and do the Benoit Rumble finish to eliminate Show at 11:40.  I wonder if that was deliberate?  Anyway, what was the point of Jericho getting knocked out last night if he just had to win a battle royale anyway?

HHH-Undertaker was awesome, everything else on the show is kind of a mess right now, but at least the pacing was better tonight and the two big matches for Wrestlemania are coming together properly.  That’s good enough for me at the moment, but what are they gonna do after Wrestlemania when ¾ of their main event double header leave again?

Tags: chris jericho, cm punk, Hell in a Cell, HHH, john cena, monday night raw, SmarK Rant, undertaker, WWE