I don't want to go too far into detail with this reaction. Simply put, the first hour sucked. Triple H did a fifteen minute promo that barely advanced any sort of story line, if at all. Basically, he just confirmed the conclusions that everyone came to at the end of last week's show when there was no dialogue. John Laurinaitis is still technically interim RAW General Manager and Triple H did in fact decline the Undertaker's challenge. At the end, the lights went out and an Undertaker video played. Taker sort of explained why he wants a rematch with Triple H. In layman's terms, Undertaker didn't want the image of him being carted out of Wrestlemania to be the lasting memory of him. He wants another match to erase that.
Big Show and Daniel Bryan had a match. It was completely uneventful and I felt it didn't really do much to further the story between the two. AJ came out again and was at ringside with a neck brace on. The match ended when Big Show almost ran AJ over again. Daniel Bryan grabbed her and walked her up the ramp, causing Bryan to lose via count out. After that, Bryan had a mic and cut another heel promo about how the Big Show is a freak and how Bryan is a vegan, etc. Same stuff as the last week or two.
David Otunga came out for a promo, asking the fans to pray with him for John Laurinaitis to keep his job. Otunga got on one knee and was basically "Tebowing." Justin Roberts interrupted him and said Triple H had scheduled a match for Otunga that would take place now. Sheamus came out. Same old Sheamus squash match. Thank God we only need three more television shows of this until the Elimination Chamber is over and Sheamus can pick the title he's challenging for. Sheamus won via an obligatory Brogue Kick - or as I'm now calling it, the Obrogueatory Kick.
At the halfway point things finally got interesting. Chris Jericho came out to cut his first full promo since returning. All the fans' assumptions were confirmed. Jericho is a heel. He's got a big problem with CM Punk too. Basically, Jericho is calling all the fans and current superstars posers. Rip offs. Copy cats. Plagiarists. Jericho wannabes. Jericho even confirmed and verbatim said he "trolled" the fans. CM Punk eventually interrupts, walks down to the ring with a mic, and stares down Jericho. Without saying a word, Punk drops the mic and raises the WWE Championship above his head. He turns around to walk out but pauses for a moment. Jericho looked like he was ready to strike Punk or potentially defend himself. Punk finally walks out. Jericho proceeds to lose his mind, telling him to come back or say something to him. Punk walks out without ever looking back and that is how the segment ends.
Next was a tag match with Wade Barrett and Cody Rhodes against Randy Orton and... The Great Khali. Awful match was awful. It was obvious that Orton and Khali weren't exactly getting along. Right when Orton was poised to finish the match, Khali forcefully tagged himself in and picked up the win. There was a Khali-Orton confrontation after the match that ended in Orton giving Khali an RKO.
An eight woman tag match followed. I'm not going to name everyone, but the face team beat the heel team via Tamina's Superfly Splash. The notable thing that happened was that, allegedly, Eve broke her nose during this match.
Backstage segment with Triple H and Johnny Ace aired. Ace said that Shawn Michaels would be on next week's RAW and that he's scheduled an Ambulance Match between John Cena and Kane for Elimination Chamber. The two bantered for a little while and that was it.
The main event followed: A six-pack challenge with all the RAW EC members (Punk, Jericho, Ziggler, Kofi, Miz, Truth). Decent match with cool spots. It didn't make up for the entire show, but this with the Jericho/Punk confrontation were the highlights of the show. There was an incident where the Miz failed to catch R-Truth on an outside dive. After the commercial break, it was shown that Truth had to be taken out of the match. He probably suffered a concussion. The match ended when Punk hit Ziggler with the GTS and went for the cover. Jericho broke it up from outside the ring, pulled Punk out, and threw him over the announce table. Jericho then went and picked up the scraps, covering Ziggler for the win. Because of that, Jericho will now enter as the final man in RAW's Elimination Chamber match.
After the match, Jericho got the WWE title and sat down in the middle of the ring, mocking CM Punk. We cut to some terrible (acting) shrieks of distress. Eve is backstage and is cornered by Kane. Kane talks about how Cena is close to embracing the hate. Kane then says for the first time in his life, he is afraid of his own self. That's the end of the show. Obviously, that was taped before RAW because Eve didn't exactly have a broken nose when we saw her.
Overall, RAW was bad. The only match that was enjoyable was the final match. The only promo that was intriguing was the Jericho/Punk one. Together, that's about 25% of the show tops. Dare I say, I missed John Cena. I'm not his biggest fan, but he and Kane doing something traditional on the screen in this episode would've helped fill out the two hours much more than a D-Bry/Show match or that terrible SmackDown tag match. Where was Cena? No clue. Maybe there's an answer on those dirt sheet sites, but I have not looked for it. They did air a video that was supposedly last week where NASCAR driver Carl Edwards told Cena that he'd be waving the green flag at this year's Daytona 500. Other than that, no Cena. Perhaps that'll lead to something bigger next week after the strange Kane/Eve finish to the show.
I'm hoping for a good SmackDown and a better RAW next week, but I'm not getting my hopes up.
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