RAW 11/13
This past week's edition of RAW was four-hour tape delayed from Manchester, England, and despite the push to put on a good show overseas, it was more of the same for this crew from the week before, and that is taking away the focus on wrestling to push comedy that just does not make the grade for the fans. The premise of the show was heavy on DX and a "bounty" put on them by Coach, as well as a tag-title match that mercifully ended the two week reign of Roddy Piper and Ric Flair, as they lost the belts to Randy Orton and Edge.
The whole "bounty" thing was dumb from the start, as it basically was nothing more than DX getting over on wrestler after wrestler, and the comedy was just not very funny. I have enjoyed DX from the start, and it takes you back to a time when things in the sport were fresh. None of the stuff they have done for about the last month has been fresh, and if you want to take these two seriously, you need to have them start wrestling again, and not just burying wrestlers week in and week out.
I am not sure about the premise of giving Orton and Edge the belts, as it seems like a transition move to then move them to..glup....DX. I don't know if that is the long term goal, unless they do a tag title program with Orton and Edge vs Cryme Tyme, with the eventual switch coming with DX doing a run-in that would cost the champs the belts. That would seem more likely than giving two guys that clearly don't need the belts in HHH and Michaels the belts for a few weeks.
The other angle that they pushed was the Umaga vs Cena feud, as the two had a match that was a blow-off so Big Show could interfere and beat down Cena as a push for the upcoming Survivor Series match highlighting Cena's team vs Big Show's team. The program between Umaga and Cena is expected to be the main event for RAW from now till the Royal Rumble, with Cena eventually getting the better of the Samoan.
The best match of the night was another IC title match between Nitro and Jeff Hardy, which in the end saw Hardy regain the belt. The post match beating that Hardy took with a ladder sets up a predictable ladder match between the two at the next RAW only PPV. It was a solid match and again, as Hardy's comeback started out slow, it has been a pleasant surprise to the 2006 year in wrestling.
The rest of the wrestling on the show was few and far between, and the show was really not well booked and pretty lame from a viewer standpoint. The week after week storyline that pushes DX is really getting stale, and they really need some fresh stuff to get things moving again as they get set for some pretty big upcoming PPV's.
