The Redman Report: WWE Raw 5/9/11: The Rudos of Raw!By Jimmy Redman| September 7, 2011 The Redman Report So, the saga continues. Who sent the text? Just how terrible is Kevin Nash? Could CM Punk be a bigger douche? All questions answered within. You gotta love this video package. To wit; Hunter is a perfectly nice babyface boss. CM Punk is a total douchey asshole to him. Hunter has been patient but has finally had enough and wants to quite deservedly kick his ass. Just in case you missed it. Anyway, time to play th-bugger. I like Punk, I really do, but between last week and the first 5 minutes of this promo, wow. His sanctimonious, self-gratifying, “I’m so special and cool, look at me and how special I am” promo was quite the masturbation session. As with most things, actually coming out and saying “I’m so special” just makes you seem really…not. He was fine once he got onto Nash and Hunter, but this first bit, yikes. This in general, I didnt hate it, but on a creative level, everything they were trying to accomplish was almost ruined by Kevin Nash being so f*cking atrocious. It boggles me how he is this bad. He still cant speak properly, his lines when he came out whining to Hunter, “This cancer!” and “The Universe isnt big enough for the both of us!” were so f*cking cringeworthy. I dont cringe at wrestling a lot, I can handle bad Acting and corny lines and such things, but man, ouch. “I made this cool again!” was also laughably, absurdly bad. God he sucks. In terms of the angle, it was really weird to blow off the text angle by just saying it was you Nash, it was you all along. But the way Hunter said there was secret footage without actually showing it makes me think it wont be the end of it – they usually milk ‘secret footage’ for all its worth. Plus, the continuing Ace and Nash conspiracy means there’s definitely something still going on. I’m not mad at the angle itself, just Nash. F*ck him. Jinder and Khali. You’re not helping, Double Double E. They’re fine as a random team to feed to Air Boom though. AHAHAHAHA, OK, I take it back, this was ALL COMPLETELY WORTH IT when Khali accidentally Chopped Jinder to Doom. They need to lose ALL their matches that way. Enjoyed. Women! Eve vs Beth for the PPV shot in Buffalo. Wonder who wins this. Well, unless they’ve lost their minds that is. Its kind of neat that they used the internet angle to further the TV angle so much, I thought they’d mention it in passing but it became a real thing. Seeing Nattie come out and hug MICHAEL COLE and buddy up to him, on commentary, was the most surreal thing I’ve ever seen. I liked them on commentary though, for all Kelly cant Act or promo she’s not the worst commentator in the world. Of course I couldnt pay any attention to the match itself because of this, everything was a commentary blur, the only thing I remember is the finish. But all is well, because The Rematch! In Buffalo too. A female Cena vs Punk we have here folks – the angle, the ‘shooting’, the hometown, everything. Excellent. There are certainly worse things to rip off. I have no idea where they were specifically, but Alberto’s backstage skits RULED. He’s amazing, Ricardo is amazing. Loved Drew getting a cameo, enjoyed the continuing gimmick of Superstars geeks getting jobbed before the conversation starts. And I do like these skits where the heel works someone else into getting mad at the guy the heel is feuding with, even when the other guy recognises it they still kind of let themselves be ‘worked’ like good heels. And obviously the best part was the Bellas coming up wanting to f*ck him. I hope Rosa Mendes isnt hurt. That was completely boss. R-TRUTH BITCHES and Miz ruled once again. Only Truth can make poop jokes work. The ‘epiphany’ stuff was just brilliant though. No idea how Miz is going to contain himself doing this. Punk vs Truth was fine, it would probably have been good only MICHAEL F*CKING COLE went off the rails again here and ruined it. My Lord. Good finish though. They need to eject heels more often, its always great value. No DQ was to be expected, both because its that kind of match, plus there’s absolutely going to be shenanigans. Hunter putting his job up is weird, my first thought was that it just telegraphed the result needlessly. But we’ll see. They’ve delivered two PPV finishes out of two so far, I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt. The Zack Ryder video was AMAZING. He’s so goofy but completely likeable, loved all the footage, and it reminded me of the ‘drawing money’ punchline, which is still my favourite. Cannot repeat enough how cool it is that they’re using videos for all these guys now. King and Zack are one wacky team. A great wacky team, though. I hope they keep it up. Glad they just beat those geeks completely cleanly too. It was nice. And he got some more Cena backstage time, complete with a Rock jibe as his name comes back onto television. Orton vs Slater was a fine squash. In this day and age its actually really strange to see a guy just hit all his moves in a row and win. Guys like Orton and Cena always have proper, main event matches, its strange seeing them in squashes. This did remind me that this show lacked some serious Mark Henry, although they put him over on commentary quite well. I love you Cena, I really do, and I know we’re shootin’ brother, but you need to stop burying Alberto’s cars. Spoiling the entire segment and having Alberto come out and just prove him right like an idiot only made it worse. The latter would have been fine on its own, but combined with the gimmick exposing it just made him look like a goof. Especially after he spent the first 90 minutes looking like a cool, Bella-banging motherf*cker. Having said that, Alberto won it all back with THE RUDOS OF RAW! What was weird to me, though, is that the way they were all talking backstage I figured that there was already a match announced. It never occurred to me that Alberto was trying to get guys to randomly attack Cena. But anyway, TLo sighting and we have a multi-man main event! And a fun one it was too. The result was insanely predictable (when it started I thought “none of these geeks can pin Cena”, and when it was 2-on-1 I thought “Dolph and Swagger trip over themselves and lose”) but it was still fun to watch. I laughed at Morrison getting jobbed so badly. Not so much at Riley getting jobbed so badly The sudden Swagger push was weird, since he’s a jobber and the angle so far has seen Swagger continuing to lose. But whatever. Sheamus and Barrett together were pretty great. That could be a super Smackdown match. The Sheamus/Christian brawl was fun too. Sheamus in general was great. And the stretch was fun enough with the Double 5KS and the Ankle Lock-STF finish, even though, as I say, Stevie Wonder saw it coming. Alberto getting punked out again felt kind of unnecessary, although I really liked that he got FU’d and ran away for about 5 seconds before he realised “SH*T MY BACK!” and collapsed. The main problem is that, as fun as it is for everyone, going right back to happy Cena endings every week like usual just seems so lame, the exact ‘status quo’ thing Punk was saying.
