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Here are my thoughts on the major angles from the show:
Follow Up on the Invasion
Last week’s Raw left us with the images of eight men engaging in a rampage on anyone they saw at ringside during and after the CM Punk/John Cena match. As this week’s show approached, the talk was about the follow up and how the Raw roster would respond to the insubordination by the NXT Alumni. However, that anticipation took a turn off the cliff known as the Daniel Bryan release where a lot of the hope that many fans had for this angle turned into hatred at the decision to let Bryan out of his WWE contract.
They did not waste any time explaining why there were only seven men left at the start of this week’s show. I thought they did a good job of explaining why Bryan was not there in the storyline because he showed remorse for what he did last week. As a result, Barrett said that they did not want anyone who was not fully behind their agenda. Some might not like it, but it shows that the Alumni have a singular purpose and will not accept any dissent. It also allows for Daniel Bryan’s return in the future where he can either side with the Alumni and seek forgiveness for his indiscretions or he can be an ally of the Raw roster by saying that because of his experience in the business, he was frustrated with the time it took him to be recognized by the WWE and he wanted to make an impact but he realized after the fact that he was wrong and went over the line.
I like that Wade Barrett is the leader of the group and spokesman because he was the winner of the first season and is the best on the mic of the group. It made sense for Barrett to start off the show so he could explain the reason for the attack. I liked how Barrett and the rest of the Alumni refused to apologize for their actions, especially after they removed Bryan from the group. The way that Barrett went to all of the Alumni to have them apologize was a good way to have a loyalty pledge to the cause.
Since they made their impact last week, they unveiled their next step which was their demand to be given full contracts with a lot of benefits that most of the roster that has been with the company for years do not have. This was a part of the angle that I did not like. All rookies in sports are typically treated like crap and are forced to do menial tasks for the veterans and are hazed by those veterans.
I thought it was a good touch to have everyone who is at ringside who was a victim of the attack last week leave ringside while the Alumni were in the ring at the start of the show. These people (except for Lawler) are not wrestlers and are not used to taking bumps or are not expected to be assaulted at ringside while doing their jobs. They should not be a group of people who are going to stand up to the wrestlers.
Bret Hart did the right thing by rejecting their one sided demands and I thought his decision to fire Wade Barrett was a good touch based on the lack of respect that Barrett and the others showed to the WWE. While it could be argued that there are other wrestlers who are part of the roster doing similar things by attacking other wrestlers (it isn’t like Kane is asking other wrestlers to sit down for tea to discuss what happened to the Undertaker), only Barrett was under contract. Will the Alumni now try to do something on Smackdown or will they stay focused solely on Raw?
During John Cena’s promo in the middle of the show, you had a feeling that we would see the NXT Alumni doing something, whether it was an attack or some message being sent to Cena that they were not finished. When they showed up, we saw John Cena’s friends in the back, as well as some of his enemies come out to show their loyalty to the Raw brand and that they will not let these ‘rookies’ ruin their show again. Because of the brand loyalty, you didn’t see Edge attacking Orton or Sheamus attacking Cena (which I thought was explained well with Sheamus’ comments in the back about how he was going to be the one to take care of Cena, not the Alumni).
Now that the Raw Roster got back at the Alumni, it was time for the next level to be breached. Bret Hart decided to bring out the Raw roster to stand on the stage to prevent another situation like last week’s main event. If the Alumni were going to come through the crowd, they would have been able to get in a few shots on the participants in the main event. While the visual of the wrestlers around the ring might have distracted from the action in the ring but it would have been a better defense.
Since all of the wrestlers were inside the ‘arena’ that left the backstage area vulnerable to an attack and that happened. Since he said no to at the start of the night, Bret Hart was a logical target. By giving Hart until Sunday to agree to their demands from earlier in the night, it gives an incentive for people to watch the pay per view to see what Bret is going to do. Maybe they could do something on Smackdown where Teddy Long has a segment where he mentions that he talked to Bret Hart and that if anything should happen at the pay per view, the Smackdown brand will be with the Raw brand to fight off the NXT Alumni.
The stuff with Bret Hart in the limousine was okay. If the purpose was to try to intimidate Bret Hart to agree to the demands, I thought it worked, but if Bret said no already and he has the support of the locker room, why should he agree to anything they want. If Bret agrees to sign them without making their time on the brand a living hell, it makes Bret come off weak. Maybe this brings out Vince McMahon at the pay per view to tell Hart that the Alumni are good for business so despite what they did, the seven are going to be part of Raw.
After last week’s attack, I had some issues with how it would continue, but I thought it was a good follow up and it kept me interested in the further adventures of Wade Barrett and his band of Merry Men.
R Truth Gets the JR Hometown Treatment
It is always interesting to see the WWE in the home town of a wrestler. With a few exceptions, the superstar (when they are still on the roster in their home town) is treated poorly. While he was an announcer, every time they did Raw in Oklahoma, it seemed like Jim Ross was humiliated on camera. This week, Raw was in Charlotte, the home town of R Truth. As the United States Champion, you would expect that he would have a good homecoming where he could successfully defend his title. If you thought that was the case, you might be related to Sting.
In a preview of the Fatal Four Way pay per view main events, we got to see R Truth defend his title against Zack Ryder, John Morrison, and the Miz in a four way match. It looked like Truth would buck the trend and retain the title, but in the end, he lost the title to The Miz after Miz took advantage of John Morrison incapacitating Truth to get the pin and become the new United States Champion.
Ted DiBiase is the New Santino Marella
When Ted DiBiase assumed the role that his father made famous in the WWF, many people thought that Ted would finally get out of the shadow of the Legacy storyline where he could establish a good character and achieve the potential that a lot of people saw in him. It also appeared that Ted would thrive outside of the Orton bubble instead of Cody Rhodes. For some reason, they are treating Ted DiBiase as a joke and he has become the person on the Raw brand who has been made the butt of the guest host. Meanwhile, on the Smackdown brand, the other part of Legacy has been given a better push than he had on Raw.
It is a shame that they have not capitalized on the Son of Million Dollar Man gimmick and has made him into a bumbling fool. DiBiase is unable to convince anyone to accept his financial offers. If Ted does not rehabilitated in the next few weeks, they might have lost someone with a great upside.
Here are my thoughts on the rest of the show:
While I did discuss it in great detail above, I wanted to briefly discuss the opening segment with the NXT Alumni. When they have Barrett talking, you can definitely see the difference in promo ability between him and the rest of the rookies. Even when David Otunga was given time to give the group’s demands, he came off a lot worse than Barrett because Otunga seems like he is reading a script instead of sounding like he means what he is saying.
I think we found out twenty five times that John Cena only has a twenty five percent chance of retaining his title. However, don’t the other three men also have a twenty five percent chance of winning?
I thought the United States title match was okay and I was still a bit surprised that they would do the title change even though they were in R Truth’s home town. I liked that they didn’t keep Morrison and Truth from fighting since they are both faces and on and off tag team partners. I was a bit surprised that John Morrison hesitated so much before hitting his finisher when he realized that it was R Truth. While it allowed Miz to recover and throw Morrison out of the ring, it did not make sense since the goal of the match was to win.
I thought the message in Randy Orton’s promo was good, but I don’t like how he stares off camera as if he is looking at cue cards. Orton is the type of person who would appreciate what the Alumni did last week so it made sense that he would praise them. However, with Orton’s pedigree in the business, it also makes sense that he would condemn them for not showing respect to the veterans. It also showed that while he might not be best friends with John Cena, he did not appreciate what happened to him and set the tone for later in the show when the roster showed support for Cena.
While I thought Mark Feuerstein had a good delivery during his segments, I did not think he did a great job as the guest host. He did something that few guest hosts have been able to do, he disgusted the official arm candy of the Raw Guest Hosts. Mark did work well with Big Show during the backstage segment.
The Bourne/Jericho was too short to really give an opinion on the quality of the match. Bourne and Jericho worked well in the match and Jericho did a lot to help Bourne by giving him a win even though it was by disqualification. The disqualification was not well done because it appeared that he got disqualified for threatening to punch the referee. Bourne was also able to hit a shooting star press after the match so he continued to look strong.
Cena’s promo was okay, but it came off as the usual John Cena promo. It seemed like SuperCena was back because he was going to take on all seven of the men. It did make sense that he would point out that Barrett blamed management and some of the pros, but they only attacked three people who would have been part of that group (I don’t consider Luke or Serena to be part of that group even though they accompanied Punk to the ring for most of the matches Darren Young was involved in). You also had Cena going against the wishes of Bret Hart by wanting the Alumni to come back after Barrett was fired and they were told to leave.
With the wrestlers coming out to help John Cena, they have set up a few interesting pairings once the NXT Alumni are back on television. Even though I have been critical of the lack of development in my opinion of Justin Gabriel, they can do a Justin Gabriel/Evan Bourne match. William Regal can battle Wade Barrett even though he praised him so much during the competition, but that was before Barrett showed no respect to the wrestlers. Mark Henry can face Skip Sheffield, Michael Tarver, or David Otunga.
As I mentioned above, I liked the comments that Sheamus made in the back when he was confronted by Josh Mathews in the back. He is someone who is focused on winning the title and he does not want anyone who is going to question his victories if there is a suggestion that his opponent is not at 100%.
I thought the women’s match was okay and did more to set up their match on Sunday than anything on this week’s Raw. We saw some issues develop between Maryse and Alicia during the match and I thought that we were going to see some tension when Gail gave the title belt to Eve after the match.
As I mentioned above, I think they are slowly destroying the Ted DiBiase character with his association with the guest host and his inability to influence anyone to take his price. I did not like the tag match. While the purpose was to get Show and Feuerstein over without really hurting DiBiase in the ring, it did not help having Virgil on the mat for about thirty seconds while Feuerstein made us yearn for the return of Scotty 2 Hotty to show him how to properly do the worm.
At least Santino and Kozlov were in the same segment so we did not have to deal with them in two different matches. I wish they would have let Kozlov referee the match in his red shorty robe.
The idea of having the entire Raw roster (or at least most of the roster on the stage was a good visual. It was the standard ‘faces on one side, heels on the other side’ as they stood there. I was almost expecting something happening on the stage as a tribute to the opening credits of Soap.
I really liked the main event and the fact that they gave them more than fifteen minutes of television time (not including the commercial break) to showcase the four men in the main event for the brand at the pay per view.
I was a bit surprised that they did not mention that John Cena talked about a concussion after last week’s attack and did not comment on the effect that Sheamus and Edge working on Cena’s head would have on Cena’s ability to function in the match. It is something that Matt Striker or Josh Mathews would have talked about if this match was on a show where those two are announcing the match.
I was not surprised that the main event had a non-finish, but I did not expect it to end the way it did. It made sense that they would have attacked Bret Hart since everyone else on the roster (for the most part) were in the arena portion of the building so Hart would be vulnerable. The limo situation might not have been the best thing, but it did a good job of bringing Hart into the fold for the problems with the Alumni. They did enough to send a message to him without trying to incapacitate him.
What to watch on DVR: The opening segment; The brawl during the Cena promo; the main event and post match attack on Bret Hart.
