Raw 2-27-12

Before I begin, I want to say that due to moving, and the delays that are inevitably involved, it's entirely possible that we will miss Impact this week, and therefore there may be no Impact review on Friday. If you keep up with me on Twitter (@ajakitty), I'll keep up with updates on when we can be expected to return.


Matches:

1. CM Punk v. Daniel Bryan - 4 out of 5
2. Kelly Kelly v. Nikki Bella - 2 out of 5
3. John Cena v. The Miz - 3 out of 5
4. Primo & Epico v. R-Turth & Kofi Kingston v. Dolph Ziggler & Jack Swagger - 4 out of 5
5. Sheamus & Big Show v. Cody Rhodes & Mark Henry - 2 out of 5


Jericho and CM Punk started the show by cutting one of the best promos I have seen in this company for a very long time. CM Punk was snarky as always, and Jericho showed us the most emotion we've seen out of anybody since The Shoot Heard Round the World. The Rock/Cena promo that would end the show is paled in comparison to this, which is probably why they bookended the show this way. The Rock said really nothing for 10 minutes before John Cena came out. In fact, I had given up on the whole thing and left the room before then. I was just bored by it. It was not the Wrestlemania-caliber promo that we should have seen from the Rock, and it was not what we should have seen between these two men. From what I understand, though, Rock seemed genuinely ticked about some of the comments from John, so hopefully we can get some via-satellite responses that better fit the character of the Rock sometime in the next month.

I have mentioned before that I was never an advocate for, nor am I a fan of, Heel Eve. It just doesn't fit her well, and in the middle of the show she came out for 5 minutes and talked about how she couldn't help it if men fell over her all the time. The match between Kelly and Nikki was really only there so that the announcers could talk about how Kelly didn't understand what was going on with Eve. And then of course there was the crowd chanting "Hoeski" at her while she was in the ring. I just hate everything about this so far, and the worst part is that I really can't see this going anywhere. Not anywhere good, anyway.

But! here's the fun part. Since the GMs are so heated in rivalry right now, the Board of Directors have decided that they will switch places next week, with Teddy Long running Raw, and John Laurinaitis running Smackdown. If nothing else, this should prove to be an interesting experiment with the characterization. I've been known to dabble in fanfiction, and it's always fun to drop a character into a new scenario and see how they react. This should be a test for Creative to prove that they know who they are writing, and also a test for the GMs to see if they can handle the other's job. If anyone was wondering, by the way, I'm on Team Laurinaitis. Teddy works on Smackdown (although I haven't let him off the hook for his jab at Vickie yet). I'm just not sure that he will translate the same to the live show.