RAW 1/1
The first 2007 Monday Night RAW took place in Miami last evening, with a main event that has been hyped for weeks with Kevin Federline taking on WWE Champion John Cena. The match was held first on the show, and ended up being one with what I thought was a very hot crowd reaction with Federline getting a pin on Cena after it was declared as a no-DQ match and Umaga coming in and laying out Cena. I have already read comments on how having Federline go over was the wrong thing to do as they say it cheapens the WWE Title.I could not disagree more. It's not like they put the belt on Federline, all it was was a way for the company to use a guy like him for one night, he had awesome heel heat, and in my opinion the match totally got over. Cena got his revenge at the end of the night in a 4-1 match where he went up against Umaga, Nitro, Coach and Federline, and the night ended as it should with K-Fed getting FU'ed. How could you argue with the effect of the storyline, and it also cemented Cena more as a superstar face for a guy that will still get boo's in many arenas across the country?
Too much is made of the "status" of the WWE Championship. I mean, its a belt that is given to the guy that should represent the company. If that guy is John Cena, than great. He carries the company. If John Cena loses, but keeps the belt in an ongoing storyline, than so be it. He's still the face of the company, and within a span of two hours he then get his revenge and all was well with the world. Quit looking too deep into the whole storyline and giving us this "the WWE title is compromised" if Cena loses to a guy like Federline. Give me a break.
As for the rest of the show, I thought it was a solid build for the Sunday PPV. We have a couple of matches announced, including Umaga vs Cena, Rated RKO vs DX, Mickie James vs Victoria, Hardy vs Nitro in a cage for the IC belt and a tag between the Worlds Greatest Tag team vs Cryme Tyme. The card looks as good as any NYR that thay have had, and I will be interested to see what they do with the belt and Cena on this one. They could have Umaga win it and regin for a month like last year, when Edge won it, only to then lose it at the Rumble, or they could just keep it on Cena and head into Mania with him carrying it.
One thing I didn't like was Ric Flair again getting laid out by RKO. I mean, isn't Flair getting laid out week after week getting old? He gets smashed one week, and within two weeks is back for revenge. Let him lay out for at least a month to 6 weeks, and then get some revenge. The beating and then return in two weeks is getting a bit old.
Other than that, I didn't have a problem with much on the show, and thought the overall Federline-Cena thing was well done. As stated above, I also like the build up to Sunday.
