Want more wrestling news, rumors, and results? Be sure to visit PWInsider.com and PWInsiderXtra.com.
Daniel Bryan
Most of the people who read this site are familiar with the work that Daniel Bryan did on the independent scene as Bryan Danielson and know that he is one of the most technically sound wrestlers in the sport. After signing with the WWE, he wanted to go down to developmental for a few matches to get the ring rust off and he had one of the best matches that I have seen this year in a nine or ten minute match with Kaval in FCW that showed that it was not a matter of if Danielson was going to be on one of the brands, but when if he could adapt to the ‘intangibles’ that the WWE looks for to complement his wrestling skills.
Bryan was announced as one of the rookies on NXT and after the first week, I thought he stood out as the next big star after his match with Chris Jericho. Bryan continued to lose, but after the first Pro Poll, Bryan was in first place because he was able to impress the pros. He continued to lose, but he had the other top match on NXT against William Regal, that despite being less than ninety seconds was the type of match that you would expect from two wrestlers who were involved in an intense feud. Eventually, Bryan was eliminated because of his honesty. While his promos were not that strong during the competition, Bryan showed an emotion that some probably did not think he had in him, but it was something that I was able to see develop while he was in FIP and was the top heel in the company and had every crowd hating him for showing his face in the building.
Bryan’s continuing feud with Michael Cole was some times a distraction from the show, but once the eliminations started, it was the most compelling part of the show. While the first physical confrontation might have gone a bit too far, last week saw Cole try to get a shot in and then he ran from a man who could probably turn him into a human pretzel.
Despite looking more like Richie Cunningham than a world class wrestler during his last few promos, Bryan showed that intensity that he tried to convey when he was giving his ‘tap or snap’ promos while trying not to hurt his pro. Last week, he got his hands on the Miz when he was done with Michael Cole and as Dave and Buck mentioned on last week’s No Name Show, it looked like a real fight.
That brings us to this week’s show where Daniel Bryan was given a one week contract for the Raw brand and he got to wrestle his pro. This made sense because of the pull apart brawl that they had on NXT and the progression of the competition because of the way that Miz was critical of the praise that Bryan was getting when he couldn’t win a match.
The match between Daniel Bryan and the Miz was something that you normally do not see in the WWE. Instead of the slowly progressing match, you had Bryan being the aggressor against someone who had tried to bully and intimidate him. There were no lapses in action during the match and it felt like the Danielson/Kaval match that I mentioned above. It was two men who were moving faster than anything else you saw on the show but it was not so fast that the wrestlers were making mistakes. The shots that each man gave looked snug and both men did a great job of showing the impact that they took on their bodies. Bryan applied a few submission holds on Miz and locked in the omoplata but almost had it backfire when Miz was able to counter with a rollup, but since Bryan has such a wealth of wrestling knowledge, he was able to counter Miz’s counter and got the biggest win of his WWE career. I almost thought that Miz was going to get the win.
Miz reacted to the loss the way that any man who had bragged about how he was better than his opponent for more than two months and had to deal with people saying that he was the one being taught by his rookie; he attacked Bryan who turned his back on his opponent. Miz sent Bryan to the floor and coincidentally, it was right in front of the man who has been verbally eviscerating Bryan for the entire competition and had threatened to sue Bryan. In a traditional ‘bad guy’ blunder, Miz did not finish off Bryan and he wanted Bryan to apologize to Cole. However, Bryan sent Miz into the announce table and then he threw Miz onto Michael Cole before leaving.
I thought Bryan did everything perfectly during the match and post match brawl. I also thought Miz did an excellent job during the match and attack after the match. Cole also did a decent job showing his contempt for Bryan and his victory. While this was happening, I mentioned to some people I was talking to during the show that I thought Daniel Bryan probably made believers of the casual WWE fan that he has a future in the company while The Miz made believers out of the ‘internet wrestling fans’ who might have thought that he was a good promo guy who had shown some promise in the ring, but did not take things to the next level. Miz delivered by wrestling a style of match that is closer to Bryan’s style than the WWE style and did not look out of place.
The Hart Dynasty and Usos
Over the last few weeks, the Hart Dynasty has been given a good push. Whether it was due to Bret Hart’s involvement with the company or not, they are three people who have a lot of talent and if given the right opportunity can have successful careers in the company. While the tag team division is not the focus of the television product, they have done a good job on top since winning the tag titles. Last week, we saw the debut of a team that decided to make their mark by going after the Dynasty after their match. While we did not learn the names of these three Samoans, we saw them standing over the Unified Tag Team Champions and Natalya. I thought this was a good way to debut the Usos and Tamina and left open a lot of ways to build this feud.
There were a lot of good things that happened this week. First, we saw Bret Hart telling the Hart Dynasty that just because they are family, he is not going to do them any favors and that they need to do something to show that they are not going to lay down to the Usos. It was also a good touch to have Bret tell the Hart Dynasty that he signed the Usos and Tamina while saying that he did not expect them to attack Smith, Kidd, and Natalya.
I thought the promo that Jay, Jimmy, and Tamina cut during their segment in the ring went a little too long, but it did a great job of giving us a justification for them going after the Hart Dynasty. They have a westernized look that sets them apart from most of their relatives who have been in the WWE. Since the Hart Dynasty has embraced their ties to the Hart family and they have done the Legacy storyline with Cody Rhodes, Ted DiBiase, and Randy Orton; it makes sense that they would talk about all of their relatives who have wrestled.
I thought the brawl that they had was good, but I wish that they would not have played the Dynasty’s music because it gave away any chance of a surprise attack in retaliation for what happened to them. With the Dynasty having a purpose for their response, it made sense for them to have the early advantage in the brawl, but in the end, the Usos and Tamina got the upper hand and continued to frustrate the champions. The image of the triple splash from the turnbuckles is a great visual.
Because of what happened the last two weeks, I know that I am interested in seeing what is going to happen next week and in the short term future. Will Smith and Kidd give them a title match even though we have not seen the Usos in the ring? (they are a good tag team based on what I have seen of them in FCW) If they have the match, will it be on an episode of Raw or will it be on the Fatal Four Way pay per view? Since Bret Hart is affiliated with the rest of the Hart Dynasty, will we see any of the Uso’s or Tamina’s relatives? If this feud is going to continue for a few months, maybe it can build to Summerslam with Bret Hart in the corner of Kidd and Smith and The Rock in the corner of the Usos.
Evan Bourne
Evan Bourne is another wrestler who developed a reputation for being a good worker on the independent scene. I had the opportunity to see him work in person at FIP shows and I have seen a lot of his work in Ring of Honor on DVD. While he is not going to have the same type of matches in WWE as he did in those companies, he is able to showcase a lot of the high impact offense that he used in the past.
During his time in WWE, Bourne has been able to show flashes of brilliance in the ring, but has been booked as the next generation of Jamie Noble. He has been used as a wrestler who will get the crowd into his matches, but in the end because he is facing a larger opponent, he will be the person not going to the pay window at the end of the night. Bourne does a great job in his matches selling his opponent’s offense to make the opponent look like a monster in the ring. While he does not get the chance to showcase his talent as much as he did when he was in ECW, Bourne does get some chances since he moved to the Raw brand.
As the show started last night, we saw Bourne being attacked in the ring by Edge and we were told that Bourne interrupted Edge who was talking before Raw started because Bourne wanted to make an impression. I liked that the show started with the brawl in progress because it gives the show the live feeling where anything can happen instead of the standard open.
After Randy Orton’s injury because he did not close the door to his dressing room and he did not realize that Edge had made his way in there during the night to slam it into Orton’s injured shoulder, I was thinking that we were going to get a handicap match with Cena finding a way to beat Edge and Sheamus because he is ‘SuperCena’. Instead we got John Cena telling Sheamus and Edge that he has people lining up to be his tag team partner and he chose Evan Bourne.
My first thought (and probably a few others) was that we would see Bourne get pinned if there was going to be a clean finish in this match. The addition of Bourne made sense because he was involved in the opening segment with Edge and he had a few matches against Sheamus (if you consider Sheamus beating the snot out of Bourne ‘matches’). During the match, Bourne showed the same intensity that he showed at the start of the show and he was able to get in a lot of offense so he looked like he belonged in the ring despite not having the same size as the other three men in the ring. Bourne showed a lot that you would see from Rey Mysterio or Eddie Guerrero when they were in the ring with bigger opponents. Another positive for Bourne was that he did not have to slow down his offense in the match so he looked as fluid against Sheamus and Edge as he would if he was wrestling a cruiserweight. Even though Bourne was in the ring for most of the match, when he was on the apron at the end, he was partially responsible for setting up the finish when he kicked Sheamus in the head to allow Cena to hit the Attitude Adjustment. Then we got to see Bourne hit the Shooting Star Press to get the three count on one of the contenders for the WWE Title at Fatal Four Way.
Then Bourne was the focus of the celebration after the match since his music played and the cameras focused on him. With three weeks before the pay per view, it was not necessary for any of the wrestlers in the main event to be the focus at the end of the show. With Randy Orton’s availability at issue on Raw, if they need to put a fourth man in, Evan Bourne leapt over a lot of people on the brand and would make sense since he got a win over one of the people in the match.
Other Thoughts from Raw
Because of the length of my discussion of the three topics above, I will be brief with my other thoughts on the show so I might miss a few things.
After being so smart dealing with things, why was Edge so close to Randy Orton in the opening segment. Hasn’t he seen Orton hit RKOs out of any position so why wouldn’t he think that Orton would try to give Edge an RKO?
I thought Ashton Kutcher was better than Jon Lovitz last week, but I would not consider him one of the better celebrity guest hosts. He did appear to know who the wrestlers were so that was a bonus over some of the other hosts. I thought he was overacting at times. I was worried that Ashton was going to try to get involved in something with the Miz after his comments when he announced the Miz/Bryan match.
I guess talking about taking a hit on someone is ‘TV PG’?
I was a bit surprised that Vladimir Kozlov turned on William Regal because there appeared to be some loyalty and I would think that Regal would be a better horse to hitch your wagon to than Santino (even though Santino is on television a lot more than Regal). With all of the movie marathons on over the Memorial Day weekend, I was seeing the way it happened as the scene from Return of the Jedi when Vader (Kozlov) killed the Emperor (Regal) to save Luke (Santino) [in no way am I equating Santino Marella with Luke Skywalker because if Santino was going to be compared to a Star Wars character, he would probably be Jar Jar Binks]
I don’t know why Maryse would have left with Kozlov.
I thought the segment to set up next week’s Viewer’s Choice Three Hour Raw from Miami went a little bit too long but it was an interesting way to set it up. We know that Smackdown wrestlers will be on the show as well. I don’t know if they should have had Ashton Kutcher be the one to bring up the Viewer’s Choice concept.
I thought the segment with Bret and Vince was good and it was good to see Vince back on television. He is someone who is better when he is not on every week and is working with someone who has a history with him or will be able to hold their own with Vince.
My personal pick for next week would be a tag match of Daniel Bryan and Josh Mathews versus The Miz and Michael Cole.
Since Zack Ryder is partially responsible for Randy Orton’s injury, will we see The Viper strike against Zack?
With the red herrings of Great Khali and Goldust by Ashton Kutcher, you had a feeling that it would be Alicia Fox who would be the one to take out Zack.
I thought Sheamus and Edge had a good segment in the locker room when they were talking about weakening John Cena for their match at the pay per view since they already had taken care of Edge. Like any situation where you have two people fighting for the title, they shouldn’t trust anyone else until they get the title. Despite their desire to weaken Cena, they kept Bourne in the match a lot more than they should have to serve their purpose.
