The RAW Ladder
By Bill Pritchard for Wrestlezone.com
TNA wrestling fans usually chant "this is wrestling" when they see someone perform a cool move or when they get treated to a great match. In another TNA tidbit of info, Vince Russo once bragged about getting a high rating when they only had 16 minutes of wrestling on that week’s Impact. (He later apologized and offered up a bunch of reasons why he said what he said, but that’s for another time.) I do the play-by-play for both RAW and Impact here at Wrestlezone.com, and I don’t pick sides because I still enjoy both companies, but RAW sucked.
It flat out sucked and it was just a big cluster**** of run-ins and beatdowns. No one chanted this is wrestling, because there was none, and if they had 16 minutes of actual wrestling, I would be surprised. I’m pretty sure the wrestler’s intros were longer than the time given to matches. This week was almost as bad, if not just as bad as the RAW Viewer’s Choice. How do you compare a dancing Kozlov to endless MITB plugs? The Hart Dynasty facing Khali & Hornswoggle versus almost no matches at all?
I understand how WWE is supposed to work. RAW is the flagship, and it features more promos. Smackdown is more wrestling based, and ECW was crap, then they made it like a developmental TV show. Promos are fine, but this past week was a little ridiculous. We got a long opening segment, a no contest because they never made it to the ring, and another backstage segment, before we finally got to the first match after 9:30. And look what we got, Santino vs Kozlov. At least it was a match, but it didn’t even go very long. Santino tried a few moves, and Kozlov hit a slam and won. Regal coming out and Kozlov making the save took longer than the match. I get that it was done to further a feud, but it doesn’t come off well when it happens all night.
