By Ryan Kester

Miami Crowd

I cannot stress enough how important a live crowd is to getting various segments over, and one could not have asked for a hotter crowd than what we got in Miami. From start to finish they were involved and engaged in everything that happened and it made a show I would have otherwise considered to be solid and good absolutely phenomenal and memorable. If you happened to have attended Raw last night and contributed to that atmosphere, thank you.

John Cena and Brock Lesnar

John Cena's promo was more or less what you'd expect from the stalwart character that is Cena, but I found myself attentive and enjoying the spiel simply because the veil of invincibility has been lifted from his character. Now, WWE can certainly regress on that at a moment's notice, but for now it's refreshing to see Cena having to address his shortcomings rather than revel in another victory.

Lesnar's return was well done and again, the live crowd made that moment huge. It will be interesting to see how he is positioned in the next few weeks after attacking Cena. I imagine WWE would prefer to have him as a heel, but they will find a hard time getting those that have grown tired of Cena to boo the man that shows up just to destroy him. Whatever way they go, it is good to see Lesnar back in a WWE ring and I am excited to see the storyline they set up for his run.

CM Punk and Chris Jericho

Poor CM Punk; rather than a celebrating his WrestleMania victory, the man got mauled by Mark Henry and doused with liquor. I enjoyed this segment for several reasons. It made Henry look like a beast again, it put massive amounts of heat on Jericho, and it continued the trend of making Punk a more traditional sympathetic babyface.

Punk and Jericho's rivalry is obviously continuing, but I question how it can effectively sell a PPV at this point. Jericho can still do wonders for Punk's character, but for fans ordering a PPV Punk has already proven he can overcome the odds and defeat Jericho. Fans could easily just enjoy the weekly build and pass on the PPV because they already assume their guy is going to win.

As a brief aside, while I liked the brevity with which Laurinaitis' character was used last night, I am not crazy about the continued feud between Laurinaitis and Punk. I'll keep an open mind to see if they can convince me down the line, but for now it seems like a poor man's McMahon/Austin and I'd rather see Punk's character grow without having to fit into the mold of wrestling's greatest antihero to date. The similarities are already there on an archetypical level; they do not need to be present in the booking.

The Rock

Rock's show-opening promo was pretty much proof that he hasn't lost a step in his ability to work a crowd and it made for a very enjoyable and entertaining segment of television. However, I cannot say I am thrilled to hear talks of going after the WWE Championship. Rock has already proven capable of defeating Cena, WWE's current top wrestler, and I question if they have the ability to produce a more convincing man to upset Rock after he's captured the title. It's certainly a bold idea, but it's one that could easily bite WWE in the ass if they don't use some very careful planning.

I will say this, if Rock were to win the WWE title, I'd almost prefer if his schedule stayed sporadic. It can actually help the prestige of the WWE Championship if seeing the champion isn't always a given, and it would give the other championships some breathing room and a chance to get some love from the booking. That's more or less a pipe dream if you go by the way the titles have been presented in recent years, but it's certainly a possibility with Rock as a champion if WWE had the foresight or the desire to go down that path.

Lord Tensai

I enjoyed Lord Tensai's debut as it managed to get over his brutal offense, but the referee stoppage was poorly executed. If Riley couldn't continue, then he really shouldn't have been able to start rolling around after a couple of seconds.

Still, I think that WWE could use some more characters that aren't standard guys in tights, and I enjoyed the direction they seemed to be going for Lord Tensai. It's a bit too early to give a full breakdown of Tensai's character as there's so little revealed thus far, but as far as first impressions go, this was effective for me.

Overall Show

This was a great show. Every segment managed to entertain thanks to the white hot live crowd, and it ended with a properly memorable post-'Mania moment. I hope the energy produced by this show can transfer to the coming weeks and WWE manages to maintain this momentum for a long stretch.

If you have any questions or comments or just wish to chat with a fellow wrestling fan about whatever, then feel free to email me at ryan.kester@gmail.com or follow me on Twitter at @TheRyanKester.

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