3 Hours Of Raw Entertainment?

This was the first regular 3-hour episode of Raw. Last week was special, since it was the 1000th episode. This week, back to business as usual. This time, however, with a whole extra hour to work with.

How did they do? Some people speculated that the first hour would be some kind of "pre-show" to hype up the regular two hours. That was not the case. It is indeed an extra hour of what you would expect from Raw. I am glad that they did not feature too much Tout moments on the show. That thing can get annoying very fast. Of course, they did bring up the fact that they had a fire multiple times during the show. I understand you can't completely ignore it, but mentioning it twice throughout the entire show would have been enough. There were a lot of recaps of various things throughout the show.

One of the things I was hoping with the extra hour is more midcarders getting used. How did they do in that department? I wasn't impressed. A few midcarders did get featured, like Sandow, Tensai, and so on, but they should be developing legitimate feuds and storylines with them. Besides that, keep in mind that there were some workers not featured. No Ryback? What about Sin Cara? What do you do when Wade Barrett returns? Only feature these guys on Smackdown? With a whole extra hour on Raw, you would think that at least 2 more midcard storylines or feuds get proper development.

There was one thing that was recapped multiple times on Raw that really annoyed me. Triple H and Brock Lesnar's confrontation. I can understand hyping the entire segment from last week. I can understand doing it again once more later in the show to hype Summerslam. But it is ridiculous when you stop and realize that this feud is becoming more hype than substance. You spend so many weeks hyping that Heyman is not going to have Brock face Triple H. Obviously, that leads to the moment the match is actually made. What are they going to do from now to Summerslam? Continue to show that same segment from last week? Have more promos about Brock destroying Triple H and Triple H not being afraid? The feud between John Cena and The Rock was much better than this. Giving my personal reason why, it is because The Rock went back to what he does best, entertaining. He brought those entertaining promos. For some people, the fact that the feud spilled over on the Internet may have helped. This feud did a better job at reaching out to the fans. Which side would the fans take? In this feud between Triple H and Lesnar, the guy you are supposed to cheer for is obviously Triple H. Can he conquer the beast? The path of this feud is just so dull. As of right now, it is not worthy to close Summerslam.

Velvet Sky Leaves TNA

Velvet Sky was pretty much TNA's version of a WWE diva. She had the image and the character that the WWE likes to push in their typical eye-candy divas. Was Velvet a phenomenal wrestler? No. Nevertheless, she was one of TNA's top Knockouts. And now, she is gone.

After her friend, Angelina Love, left a few weeks ago, it shouldn't be too shocking to see Velvet leave, as well. Honestly, they were treating Angelina a lot worse this year than they were Velvet. Winter also has good reason to possibly want to leave. What's the point of being with a company that does not use you right?

Was anything of value lost with Velvet leaving? As you will see in coming weeks, no big collapse should happen in the women's division. Ratings will be the same as they always were. Top faces of the division can include Brooke Tessmacher, Mickie James, Tara, and ODB. Heels can include Gail Kim, Madison Rayne, Sarita, and Rosita. Are they even going to use Winter? Point is, they still have women who have been there for a while. They can easily supplement that with women from the indies. And even though Velvet was over, TNA still has some over women in there.

Velvet to WWE? Mick Foley would like to see it. Honestly, since the diva division is broken right now, they might as well give Velvet a try. People can debate whether she's better than Kelly Kelly. Pushing this woman would not take the diva division in a new direction, however, since it would still be pushing an image above actual wrestling. Have to see what happens.

Antonio & Askana: Smackdown's Midcard Couple

Why am I talking about these two? To bring up another example of how the WWE could do better with their midcard? Not this time. Because I really love Antonio Cesaro? No, not really. Because I would rather see Askana with Jinder Mahal? They would make a cute couple, but that isn't it.

Askana has a periphery role with her relationship with Antonio Cesaro. She is not the centerpiece of the division, always getting the better treatment around the Diva's Championship in comparison to the other women. And she is definitely not a credible jobber. She is not being used to put over other women if feuds. She is a periphery diva, and yet, they are not pushing her hard. Why is that worth mentioning? Because it shows that a woman in a periphery role may still not be getting the major focus to be a major star. Askana can be use in romance angles like this until the end of her career. When you look back to think about how the WWE used her, she would be classified as a periphery diva. Her becoming a very over diva, however, will rest mostly on what she does in this position. If they give Antonio Cesaro a better push right now, Askana would be along for the ride. That will help her.

Thinking about this couple made me think about Victoria and Stevie Richards. After Victoria lost her first Women's Championship, she still got featured now and then through her angle with Stevie Richards. Was Stevie Richards being pushed hard during this time? Midcarder, at best. You can say the same thing for Antonio Cesaro. Even though Victoria did turn face during her relationship with Stevie, she never got the storyline focus and rubs as someone like Lita got multiple times in her career. And after the relationship with Stevie did end, Victoria got lost in the shuffle even easier.

Point is, Askana and Antonio have potential to be mutually beneficial to each other. You can even compare them to Maria and Santino. Giving Maria chances to showcase character is one of the things that helped her get over. Making Santino a comedy character helped things. If they give Antonio and Askana more segment time and storyline development, Askana could get over well, and without the major attention AJ has gotten. Considering Askana probably won't be elevated to being the centerpiece or used as a credible jobber anytime soon, they might as well do more with her. Might as well make more diva stars during this dark age the division is currently in.

In an unrelated note. I came across the dirtsheet explanation for why Kharma was released. Weight issues and being difficult to work with. History is repeating itself. Same kind of crap they said with Mickie James. It really needs to stop. It was obvious even before she officially debuted that she was going to have limited options. When you get down to it, it was either periphery or release. They would not let her be centerpiece and using her as a jobber her entire career would be a waste and senseless, especially after you debut her by having her destroy your eye-candy divas. Just leave the matter alone.

CM Punk Back To Being A Heel?

There was some talk that the big summer angle would start at the end of Raw's 1,000th episode. What happens at the end of the show? John Cena became the first person to not be able to win a World title off the briefcase. Big Show screwed him. There was something more interesting than that. CM Punk did not try to save Cena from Big Show. When The Rock came out to save Cena, moreover, Punk attacked The Rock. Heel turn?

John Cena failing to cash in for the title is obviously not a big storyline. So what if the centerpiece has this blemish on his record? As long as the WWE continues to push him hard, he remains the centerpiece.

The Rock announced that he would go for the WWE Championship at the Royal Rumble. I don't consider that a summer storyline. It is big, but not really an angle for the summer. It is more similar to the build Rock vs. Cena at Wrestlemania had, only in less time.

Big Show throwing his weight around? No big summer angle there.

That leaves CM Punk turning heel. That is big. He is the WWE Champion. Outside of John Cena, Punk is the top guy on Raw. However, I really hope the WWE does not think turning him is a big summer angle in the same style as Nexus or the "pipe bomb" last year. John Cena turning heel would be a bigger deal. CM Punk turning will lead to some elaborate storyline, but they need to do a lot more than that to sell this as a huge story. Having CM Punk say that he was bitter about being overshadowed by John Cena all these months and jealous of The Rock would be such a mediocre way of turning him. I'm sure he will pull it off amazingly to please the fans in his promos, but in terms of the actual storyline, it would be weak.

Raw had a 3.84 this week. Amazing. When I saw that the show averaged over 6 million viewers, I was expecting around a 4.0, but 3.84 is the best number they have seen since last year. This was Raw's first regular 3-hour show. Those 3-hour specials they would do here and there in the past have usually been hit or miss. That extra hour sometimes drags ratings down, but the hype for the specials sometimes leads to better ratings, as well. And hype is definitely what did it for them this time. They hyped a title match. They hyped that legends would be on the show. The Rock, the man who helped raise ratings to a 3.9 last year with his return, was going to be there. People knew that. Problem is, how will the WWE do without all that hype? The Rock will not be there every week. The WWE title will not be defended every week. They will have to go back to featuring the likes of Jinder Mahal without The Undertaker to make an appearance. Ratings will drop. Until then, this week got the job done.

Your New GM: AJ Lee

I felt like ripping something to shreds. It was one of those moments where you just wish you had a bunch of 8x10 photos of Jinder Mahal lying around. AJ Lee was named by Vince McMahon as the new GM on Raw last night.

AJ is the most overpushed female wrestler in the periphery of the diva division there has ever been. She has gotten rubs from main-eventers. She has been featured in main events. She has gotten multiple elaborate segments devoted to putting her over, including the wedding segment on Raw. Lita got these kind of things over the course of her roughly 6-year career. AJ has gotten it in less than a year since the WWE first paired her with Daniel Bryan on Smackdown. And now they raise it to another level by naming her GM.

They are keeping her on the periphery. Could they have developed her to be the actual centerpiece of the diva division? That would mean taking the division in a direction it has never been to since it became a diva division. As General Manager, she will not be wrestling much. Even during her romance angles, she was not wrestling a lot of televised matches. That is what it means to be a periphery diva. You get that build and focus mostly outside of regular diva matches on a consistent basis, and when you do get diva feuds, they might just be lesser pushes than the centerpiece would get.

This overpush annoys me. Keeping her with Daniel Bryan would have been fine. Even finding another guy to pair her with would have been okay. But shooting her even higher than that. Too much focus. They pushed her hard to get over and are pushing her hard to keep her as a star of the diva division. I can never picture her ever being used as just a credible jobber.

Nothing Without Laurinaitis

Back when I was talking about the end of John Laurinaitis in power, I don't think I did proper justice to what would happen to his two sidekicks, Eve and Otunga. I should have. Obviously, without Mr. Excitement in that GM role, Eve and Otunga would not be featured as prominently as they were before. That is exactly what happened.

When Eve returned, she found herself without that gimmick she had alongside Laurinaitis. What has she done instead? She has been involved in the storyline with AJ, but AJ is obviously the one getting the major push right now. Eve doesn't really have that strong purpose. Pairing her with Miz regularly might be a good move. Personally, I was expecting a feud between Eve and Layla over the title. Why not? Eve is a heel and Layla is a face. Both won a Diva Search. It could be a good feud, but the WWE needs to actually go in that direction. Just making a basic title feud would be dull. There is room for potential.

Otunga doesn't have anyone to play an attorney for with Laurinaitis gone. He did have that brief minor feud with Brodus Clay, but the WWE was inconsistent with even that. Brodus Clay is back to beating jobbers, who are now putting up more of a fight. Once again, there was potential to do something good here. Didn't happen.

I still would have continued having Laurinaitis be GM for a few more months. The longer it lasted, the better the feuds and storylines for his sidekicks. The way things went down, nothing great was really developed for either Eve or Otunga before the plug was pulled, and the WWE has been inconsistent since. With a heel GM backing those two, feuds would have been risen to a whole new level. The faces who feuded with them would have something to actually overcome and the fans would love seeing the heels get it in the end. Only Laurinaitis really got it, and too soon to build up the other two properly.

TNA's Nexus

Aces & Eights. This is just a glorified Nexus. They first came on the scene when they attacked Sting a few weeks ago. Recently, they attacked Hulk Hogan too, before moving on to other members of TNA's roster. Brutal attacks for apparently no reason by some group? That's Nexus.

Back when the WWE ran the Nexus storyline, TNA did have this thing where former ECW guys were making an impact, but that fizzled off rather easily. It looks like TNA is reworking the idea again, and it looks like they are doing it better this time.

On the one hand, you have another blatant example of one promotion taking an idea from the other or trying to top something the other did. For that reason, you can say TNA is being it's regular pathetic self. On the other hand, I have to give them credit for once again trying something that might draw in more than their regular fans. That's what they need to do, especially now that their programming has been dropped for many viewers.

Will it work? There is the intrigue of who these guys are and what their goals are, but they will most likely be workers most critics will say are rejects from the WWE or nobodies from the indies. Question is, will TNA allow this thing to really change their landscape? Go back to Nexus two years ago. The WWE used that angle to put over Cena. After that, the group fizzled down and out. Wade Barrett, who many considered to be the one the WWE was trying to get over with that storyline, went back down to being a midcarder. He was starting to be moved back up to the upper-midcard through his feud with Randy Orton. And it seems like they were building him up and hyping him for a big push, before his injury. Fact is, the Nexus storyline itself just put over Cena when it was at its height. It did not change the actual landscape. TNA doesn't really have anyone like Cena. They have no real centerpiece of the whole company that they push like that. They could use this current storyline to put over Hogan and Sting, which would anger a lot of fans who want to see the younger guys get built up. Personally, I would like to see them use this storyline to really try to change the direction somehow. Don't just use it to put some legends over, then go back to the same old thing. The same old thing is not leading to the company expanding across broader types of fans. That is why they are getting poor ratings. They need something new. Funny how I am hoping that something new comes from some old idea they are taking from the competition?

And She Says Yes

It looks like there is going to be a wedding after all. Without any titles to gain from having AJ, Daniel Bryan has gotten back together with his former kayfabe girlfriend. He proposed to her. And she accepted. That makes for another elaborate segment for the 1000th episode with great potential to draw.

I mentioned Daniel Bryan in passing yesterday. Chris Jericho was turning face. There were signs that the WWE might be doing the same with Daniel Bryan. That would make for possibly too many top faces. I'm glad I held off on jumping to that conclusion. It seems Daniel Bryan is in fact back in tweener territory for this storyline. He played a face on Raw, but things will be a little different on Smackdown this week. So what is he trying to accomplish? Getting AJ back on his side to have someone to help him win matches and distract his adversaries down the road? Playing with AJ's mind so he can just dump her at the altar? That would be a strong heel move.

As for AJ, the WWE continues strong development for this woman. She is getting better treatment than any other woman on the roster. Most importantly, there is no woman in this storyline that AJ is being developed to put over. Eve was more of a pawn or supporting character in this story, thus far. There is no centerpiece in the division. AJ is the one they are building into a star. No doubt about it. And there was a certain word that Michael Cole mentioned at least twice on Raw when talking about AJ. Courageous. He was talking about AJ coming back out to finish reffing that title match last Sunday. It was almost like he was reading it right off a script. This is an idea they want to sell for this woman. And she is still getting a major rub from Daniel Bryan. And since I don't care if I repeat myself, as I just said, none of this is being done to develop AJ for the benefit of another woman. She is not a credible jobber here.

About a week or so ago, I came across this "report" from a wrestling site that said the WWE was developing AJ to be a major star along the same path as Ms. Elizabeth and Sable. Quotation marks of doom? Why? First of all, it was already obvious before they said anything that AJ was being developed to be a major star. Stating the obvious to readers who most likely could see it for themselves is news? Second, I completely disagree with the comparison to Ms. Elizabeth and Sable. Ms. Elizabeth was a non-wrestler at a time before the WWE turned their women's division into a diva division. Treating a non-wrestler as a non-wrestler? Shocking! No, not really. And Sable? Sable was the first centerpiece of the diva division. That means she was getting developed right before the diva division was really created. Once it was created, she was the focal point, and in a major wrestling capacity. She was the predecessor of Trish Stratus and Michelle McCool. Unlike Ms. Elizabeth and Sable, AJ was hired with some wrestling experience. Moreover, unlike Sable, Trish, and McCool, she does not have that image you associate with the centerpiece of the diva division. To put it simply, it's one thing to treat a non-wrestler in a non-wrestler role, but for AJ to get treated like that is different. This is just like what happened to Lita. At a time when there was no centerpiece, the WWE developed Lita in the periphery, alongside the men. Now that the division has collapsed again, they are pushing AJ in the same manner they did Lita. That, in my honest opinion, would be the proper comparison to make. This is comparing a woman with wrestling experience not being developed as a star as the centerpiece in the diva division to another woman with wrestling experience not being developed as a star as the centerpiece in the diva division.

Chris Jericho Finally Going Back Face?

Dolph Ziggler, who won a briefcase at the recent PPV, was running his mouth on Raw. Chris Jericho came out, obviously to run his own mouth. But Ziggler beat him to the punch and mentioned Chris Jericho's failure since returning. When was the last time he won a meaningful match? Jericho had no verbal response. He did take out Ziggler. Face turn coming? Looks like it. I actually liked that entire segment.

Even though I liked the segment, I should take a step back and look at the bigger picture. I am glad that they are going somewhere with Jericho losing so much. They are turning it into a storyline, turning Jericho into a face, and developing a feud between him and Ziggler, which is fresh. However, all that does not let them off the hook for not capitalizing on the hype earlier this year. If you want Jericho to lose a lot, that's one thing, but you can definitely have done more with swerves or surprises when Jericho did return. They didn't. Whether you want to put the blame on Jericho or the WWE for not pushing for more, all the hype led to absolutely nothing. Not even some clever plan. It was just hype. When they finally did move on to a regular feud between Punk and Jericho, they inserted this idea that Jericho would make Punk drink. He was playing mind games with Punk. He actually had a plan this time. It failed, but it was still something to get fans interested as it was working out. Jericho's return, it didn't have that bite to it. He still could have lost at the Rumble, but seeing some kind of plan to make it a big storyline, similar to his feud with Punk, is what I was hoping for. And having it work out like that wouldn't have really ruined things much to get to where we are now. They could simply sell the idea that Chris Jericho came up with all these plans, talked so big about getting the job done, and failed every time. The hype failed, the plans failed, and Jericho failed. It still could have worked, and possibly might have done a better job of drawing in the fans.

As for Jericho most likely going face, not a bad decision. Then again, you also should bring up Daniel Bryan's recent actions, but that is something for another day. Jericho has been a heel for years. Having him turn makes sense. You frequently see turns coming off of losing streaks. A frustrated face would turn heel. A heel who has failed too many times will go face, especially when another heel is mocking them.

What about Ziggler? For a while, it looked like he would be the one turning face and breaking away from Vickie. Should they have gone that path? If this is a situation where it was either Jericho or Ziggler that had to turn, I think Jericho should have been the one. His character was already heading there and he can connect with the fans as a face or heel. Ziggler is starting to connect with the fans, but if they turn him face too soon, his new character may have gone sour. Let him be developed as a good heel. A good main-event heel. Everything being considered, I think the WWE made the right choice with the set up for this feud.

Nice Tag Division Development

When you look back at last night's Money in the Bank PPV, you will see that the tag-team division got featured pretty well. Not only did R-Truth and Kofi Kingston win a pre-show match, but the actual PPV featured a tag match, as well. Primo and Epico took on Darren Young and Titus O'Neil. You can say it is weird that the Tag Champions didn't get on the actual PPV card for their match, but the challengers did. However, this is good to get the focus on other teams that need it.

There is something that is even more surprising than good focus on the tag division last night and the Champions performing on the pre-show. The challengers to the tag titles actually lost. Epico and Primo are not being buried, yet. I like that. That means that you have a lot of potential here for a good feud in the tag division.

Go back to last year, when the WWE hyped that there was going to be some kind of revival of the tag division when Kofi and Bourne won the titles. I didn't buy it. They didn't have enough resources for a proper revival. More importantly, they didn't really push a proper revival. Even before Bourne had his issues, possibilities were running dry. Now, however, I see some kind of proper revival happening. Actions are speaking louder than words. How long will it last? Unless they create more teams when the time comes or start signing more teams, it will run dry sooner or later. Until then, the WWE is continuing to push the tag division better. And it isn't just hype.