photo courtesy: wwe.com
Welcome to our review of Monday Night RAW Starring Brock Lesnar from this week!
Yes! Daniel Bryan is the number one contender for CM Punk‘s WWE Championship after submitting Jerry Lawler in two and a half minutes to beat Randy Orton‘s time of 4:16 in a Beat the Clock contest. Such contests are a lot of fun if you like seeing a lot of wrestlers get TV matches, but crappy if you also want any of them to go longer than three or four minutes. Bryan wore his best Cody Rhodes grin as the semi-retired Lawler entered as his opponent, following a series of more even, if quick and forgettable, match-ups in The Miz vs. Santino Marella, the nonstop athletic action of Kane vs. Great Khali, Chris Jericho vs. Big Show, and Jack Swagger vs. Randy Orton.
Needless to say I’m as thrilled as Mark Henry at a Vegas buffet for the developing Punk-Bryan rivalry and for their eventual match at Over the Limit. The very best part is that the next PPV looks to have no Rock or Brock or Undertaker to overshadow everyone, and that John Cena will be will be occupied an undercard-gimmick match vs. John Laurinaitis meaning that Bryan-Punk pretty much stand alone as the headlining main event. That’s the kind of faith in those two that is on display here, which, if you’re a fan of theirs, should be pretty cool.
WWE has wisely kept Punk and Bryan apart, and, though I think they could easily main event Wrestlemania next year at this rate, WWE’s pulling the trigger on this now. It’s going to be a test of whether Bryan can keep the contrarian fan base he’s developed as a heel when he’s up against someone sharper on the mic and more popular among Bryan’s fans than Sheamus. For Bryan that’s a win-win situation, he’ll end up either the most loathed villain on the roster or they’ll find the YES! YES! YES! just can’t be stopped and his following will grow unchecked. You guys excited yet? Two great wrestlers, wrestling. Get excited.
Brodus Clay brought the funk to JTG in a squash match flashback to January. Hornswoggle didn’t accompany Clay and the Funkadactyls, and if Brodus ate him I think that’s fine. Afterward the trio danced with awkward children whose parents should have warned them to avoid romping Funkasauri.
Vickie Guerrero moment of the night: Just remembering to add “…and he is the most handsome…” to the end of her intro of her prairie Lego man client for his match against Randy Orton. I’m letting it slide because wrestling is fake, but Guerrero is obviously mistaken: I am the most handsome (source: my mom).
The good news for Primo and Epico and their manager, Wacky Waving Arm-Flailing Rosa Mendes – After weeks of irritation over lack of screentime, they got to wrestle a whole match with introductions and everything. The bad news – They lost their titles to Kofi Kingston and R-Truth, or Jimmy Boom or whatever they’re going to call themselves.
Lord Tensai is a good deal when it comes to shopping for lackeys: get one enormous walking canteloupe, get his worshipper free. Laurinaitis is mad atCena, books a match between them at the PPV, and I’m sure they’ll explain why at some point. Never seen this storyline before, have we?
For more, check out WWE’s backstage interviews with Lawler, post-title loss Primo, Epico, and Mendes, Abraham Washington, and The Miz:
source: fighters.com
