WWE Raw TV Report
 
By: Jeuron Dove
 
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Date: 11/24/08 from Providence, RI.
 
The Big News: Edge returned on Sunday and won the title! Oops wrong brand. Cena went nuts on Chris Jericho in the final segment. Also, Shane and Stephanie have started their sibling rivalry and the IC title was made to actually look important. Well, unless you ask Stephanie.
 
Show Analysis:
 
The show opened with Shane pulling up to the arena. He greeted a few wrestlers as he eagerly made his way into the building. He announced that since both Jericho and Batista had rematch clauses, then they would meet each other later in the night to determine the #1 contender for Cena’s title at Armageddon. Stephanie interrupted and announced that Orton would be added to the match due to “being a former champion who was recently injured”. It was quite the contrast to how she addressed Orton last week during the “Superstar Forum” when she was asked why Cena got the shot at Survivor Series when he hadn’t been around for months. Apparently, she likes Orton this week.
 
Stephanie then announced the upcoming tag match between Michaels and Mysterio vs. Miz and Morrison until Shane interrupted her halfway through. At this point all hell broke loose as Stephanie told her brother that she was tired of him showing up unannounced and making matches. She told him that she would be damned if he ended up ruining things and reminded him that Raw was her show. Harsh words. After she continued the verbal knockout, Shane came back and told her that she wanted to be in charge so she could sleep with another superstar in order to get a new husband. Nice one Shane! She slapped the taste out of his mouth for that one and Shane’s parting words were telling her that she would run the show right into the ground.
 
Mysterio and Michaels beat Miz and Morrison in a rematch from last week. Morrison and Mysterio opened up and just a few seconds into the match, the cameras cut to the back to show JBL preparing to drive to the ring. This match wasn’t even in the same league as their bout last week, but it wasn’t designed to be. The finish came when Mysterio hit a sunset flip power bomb from the top rope on Miz. Afterwards, Morrison attacked both Michaels and Mysterio. JBL walked into the ring and Morrison had Michaels right where he wanted him. Then to the shock of fans everywhere, JBL knocked out Morrison instead of Michaels. There was even a brief JBL chant going on. How weird.
 
Backstage, Grisham wanted JBL to explain his actions. He responded by saying he had recently made a deal towards Michaels that both would benefit from. He made it sound like Michaels was considering the offer.
 
Mr. Kennedy returned to television for the first time since completing his latest WWE film. He really wasn’t there to plug the movie as much as he was to plug himself. He showed noticeable support of Barack Obama and then told the fans that he had conducted a survey asking various fans which superstar best reminded them of Obama. He directed the fans to the titantron. There was a broad range of answers, some of which were surprising to me, but then again it’s all subjective anyway. HHH, Jim Duggan, Shelton Benjamin, Cryme Tyme, Batista, Randy Orton and Undertaker were just a few of the names mentioned.
This all led to Kennedy bringing up the fact that nobody mentioned him. He compared himself to Obama in that he was young, fresh and charismatic before ending the segment with the signature announcing of his name.
 
Grisham was backstage with Batista asking for his thoughts on his match. He praised Cena for his performance the previous night and even said that he had goosebumps when Cena was announced as the new champion. Wow. Talk about overselling. He then said that he would be back on the mountaintop soon.
 
Up next was an opening round match of the Intercontinental title tournament between Kofi Kingston and Kane. Even though this sudden push of the IC belt as being important is probably more so due to the new History of the Intercontinental Title DVD release rather than the fact that many of the biggest stars in company history have held the belt, it was nice to see it given such a high level of importance. Pat Patterson even came out for commentary and Michael Cole noted how it was created from the old North and South American titles. Don’t know if Cole got that from the headset, but at least it sounded nice. The match itself wasn’t too nice. Both seemed a bit off and the finish came when Kane twisted Kingston’s body around the ringpost and wouldn’t let go before the five count for the DQ. Afterwards, Kane continued to pummel Kingston until Stephanie arrived and totally made the whole IC title tournament look like a joke. She gave Kane the ultimatum of continuing to take his frustrations out on Kingston or take them out on Cena next week. Of course, he would choose Cena since I’m pretty sure he wasn’t distraught over losing out on his lifelong dream to once again become the IC champion. The biggest problem with this was that they did a good job of building up the IC title as something important (finally) and then the loser of the match attacks the winner while the main authority figure of the show then comes out and tells the loser that he will be fighting the world champion next week. So basically the winner of the match ends up looking like the real loser to the fans.
 
The #1 contender triple threat match was next. Cody and Manu were shown watching backstage during Orton’s entrance. It started with Batista dominating the other two until Jericho hit him with a springboard dropkick. Jericho then hit a running bulldog and missed a lionsault on Orton. Orton was then teasing an RKO as they went to break. When they came back, it was more back and forth action with each man getting the near fall when one of the other two would break up the pin attempt. Good finish when Batista speared Orton as he was doing his running soccer kick. As Batista made the pin, Jericho kicked him off and made the cover for the win. This was a good match given the time and well booked as far as still keeping Jericho as the man who always comes out on top in the end despite no longer being champion.
 
Santino and Beth were in the ring. Santino complained about not being featured on the new IC title DVD as well as not being in the tournament. He threatened whomever his opponent was which turned out to be Goldust. Goldust won with some new inverted suplex finisher that looked pretty cool.
 
They showed Orton walking past Cody and Manu backstage. Both gave him a smug look while Orton looked a little salty over his loss. Cody was dressed like a star by the way.
 
CM Punk beat Snitsky in another match of the IC title tournament. Regal came out for commentary and was fantastic in getting over the IC title. Someone needed to after how badly Stephanie buried it earlier. Regal gave instant credibility to the belt when he mentioned how he beat Edge for his first IC title and how Edge is now the WWE champion. He also said that he wanted to retire as the champ and praised Patterson and a match of his against Ted Dibiase from the DVD. Punk won after reversing a pump handle slam into the GTS.
 
Grisham was with Mysterio backstage and mentioned that he would be fighting Miz next week in the IC tournament. Mysterio said he watched the DVD and wanted to add his name to the list of great IC champions. Mike Knox then walked in for his weekly staredown. This actually made sense because of the fact that Knox attacked Bourne last week and since Mysterio and Bourne are friends, it’s only logical that he would target him next. That way Mysterio and Bourne can still be linked together once he returns to action.
 
Mickie, Candice and the returning Melina beat Jillian, Beth and the almost forgotten Katie Lea. Match was basic diva fare. The heels worked over Candice until she made the hot tag to Melina to absolutely no response from the fans. That was until she did some pretty hot offense. She did a sunset flip power bomb to Katie which was very similar to the Canadian destroyer of Petey Williams in TNA. She pinned Katie following her split leg drop finisher.
 
Jericho was making his way to the ring when he bumped into Stephanie backstage. He told her that he was going to be Cena’s one-man welcoming committee.
 
Jericho was in the ring running down Cena when he appeared on the titantron around a bunch of fans. He told Jericho that he has lost touch with reality and accused him of being above the fans. Cena then came through the crowd to a loud positive ovation. He basically did a promo about how great the fans are while Jericho bashed the fans. Cena was ready to fight and Jericho walked off. Jericho then came back and insulted the fans more and Cena eventually lost his cool and destroyed him. Literally. This was one of the best and most effective face beatdowns that I’ve seen in many years where the good guy just loses it and kills the bad guy. He dragged him through the announce table, hit him with the ring steps, put him in a full nelson and applied the STFU. The show ended with Cena standing tall over a beaten Jericho.
 
Final Thoughts:
 
The segment with Cena and Jericho was excellent. For the first time in his career, Cena came across like a total badass face which is something that fans have been wanting of him from the very beginning. It will be interesting to see how his feud with Jericho continues after this. The rest of the show was pretty good in terms of advancing storylines. The Stephanie-Shane feud has appeared to begin and the continuing story of Orton-Cody- Manu continued to play out well even if it was just for a few seconds on this show. The JBL-Michaels deal has got me a bit intrigued and this IC title tournament is the best thing that has happened for that belt in a long time. This was a good show.