The first segment was good and again Hardy did a really nice job on the mic. Orton challenged Hardy to an Intercontinental match. We knew that the match wouldn’t last long because they already have that big match at the Royal Rumble, anyway a nice segment to open the show and Jeff was good on saying that he wanted to hurt Orton live on Raw.
Match 1: Ashley/Mickie James/Maria vs Melina/Beth Phoenix/Jillian Hall
Just a filler women match to put the Glamazon over again.
MATCH RATING: ¾*
Next is a segment between Regal and McMahon where Vinny wants Regal to beat Flair and then Snitsky comes in to say he likes to hurt and McMahon wants him to make an impact against Triple H. Announcing Snitsky against Triple H is probably not the best announcement in history.
Shawn Micheals entered the ring for his Royal Rumble qualifying match and it was a strange promo because he’s a face and that was more of a heel promo because he wasn’t happy to have a match, normally he’d be happy to kick some a** to get a good reaction from the crowd, he tried to play that one on a “face” tone but it was strange. Murdoch answered the challenge.
Match 2: Shawn Micheals vs Trevor Murdoch
The match started strong for Murdoch but Micheals quickly came back and won with a reverse figure four. Basic TV match.
MATCH RATING: *1/2
Then Kennedy appears on the screen and says he has proven that he is better than Shawn but he will face him again next week.
Match 3: Gene Snitsky vs Triple H
Not much a match but good psychology there. Snitsky wanted to hurt bad HHH but The Game was able to get out of this match with the upper hand and the match wasn’t too boring. It wasn’t a classic but watchable TV match and the crowd was hot for HHH. Snitsky got the win by DQ.
MATCH RATING: **
Vince McMahon then tried to calm down HHH when his face appeared on the Titantron but HHH destroyed it with his sledgehammer with the pyro and good stuff.
Backstage, McMahon was angry at Triple H for destroying the Titantron and he told him that he was back in the Royal Rumble, as long as he won his match next week. Interesting stuff.
JBL came out and did a promo about Jericho. Very good segment, JBL is probably the best heel on the microphone (for the wrestling it’s another story). His speeches are really good and keep the crowd interested, I would’ve liked to see Jericho but the segment was really effective, JBL talked about the marks around the neck of Jericho and his kids. Nice segment.
Match 4: Midgets Royal Rumble Match
Pointless match, Horny was very funny as usual, but pointless and unnecessary. At one point, Khali’s music hit and everyone thought mini-khali would arrive but it was the real one so he tried to beat down Horny but Finlay came for the rescue and attacked Khali with a chair.
MATCH RATING: ½*
Then there was a backstage segment between Finlay and McMahon talking about the deal again. This deal is starting to become really interesting.
Match 5: Ric Flair vs William Regal
Career Threatening Match
Basic match again. Nothing really emotional like the confrontation against HHH on the last Raw of 2007. It was what it was and Flair won a rollup when he had the tights.
MATCH RATING: *3/4
Match 6: Jeff Hardy vs Randy Orton
Intercontinental Championship
No match, as soon as the ring bell rang, Orton got the low blow on Hardy. He told the crowd that the show wasn’t finish though and then he attacked Hardy but the rainbow haired warrior fought back onto the stage area and backdropped Orton from the stage to a padded area, he then went up the Raw set and did a swanton bomb from 25 to 30 feet, really impressive stuff there. Good end to Raw.
Final Review: Not a really bad show, with nothing being horrible, but not a good either. It was what it was. It didn’t build enough for the Rumble in my opinion, the Midget rumble was totally useless and I would’ve liked the matches to be longer. Thumbs between middle and down.
No comments:
Post a Comment