Raw Hits

Shawn Michaels’ promo on Ric Flair: This was easily the highlight of the show. HBK showed tremendous timing by switching from humble friend to confident performer at just the right time. Flair played his part well by taking in HBK’s comments and standing in the ring with his jaw dropped. I’m sure they could have had a good verbal debate, but I love the way Michaels’ comments left Flair speechless. One can only expect that the tension will be turned up a notch next week when Flair responds.

Overall show: The “Hits” and “Misses” are even this week, but that doesn’t mean I didn’t enjoy the overall show. WWE packed a lot into two hours. There was no filler. As I noted in my Live Coverage of Raw last night, the show was filled with meaningful matches and angles that forwarded WrestleMania 24 story lines. Even the Umaga vs. Super Crazy squash match had a purpose in that they’re trying to rebuild Umaga for his match with Batista.

Carlito vs. Cody Rhodes: A good match with a little intrigue. I think most people assumed Carlito was going over, but I wasn’t so sure given the way WWE snubbed him by leaving him off the WrestleMania show last year. The match was fast-paced and had several quality nearfalls, which is about all you can ask for from a four-minute match.

Raw Misses

Big Show and Floyd Mayweather verbal exchange: This was a horrible segment. I thought Mayweather was awful, but a wrestler pointed out to me this morning that Big Show should take the bulk of the blame for this segment because he talked over the Mayweather. As a veteran wrestler, Show should have known better and let the outsider finish his thoughts to avoid talking over him. Mayweather wasn’t exactly Flair on the mic last night so I suppose it’s possible that Show was told to cut Mayweather off, but it made for a lousy exchange.

Floyd Mayweather interview: What a difference a week makes. Mayweather saved the press conference and garnered tons of mainstream publicity with his $20 million payoff claim, but he was downright awful last night. He knows how to make a live crowd hate him, but it was obvious that a live interview is not his forte. It sounded like he was just winging it, which is was a terrible decision if that was the case. WWE should be feeding him lines. More specifically, they should sit him down for a pre-taped interview so they can let their video editors work their magic and help him drive home whatever message they want him to get across.

Mr. Kennedy: One step forward, two steps back. Kennedy was an unexpected star last week when he hit Cena with an unexpected Mic Check at the end of Raw. Unfortunately, that was only to set up the revenge loss last night to Cena. Kennedy’s stock has clearly dropped this year. He was red hot heading into WrestleMania 23 and he peaked when he won the Money in the Bank match, but he’s never bounced back or been put in a position to rise above the upper mid-card since he lost his MITB briefcase to Edge last year. Of course, he was about to get the biggest break of his career right before he was suspended. I dig Kennedy's act and I hope WWE will help the character grow this year. By the way, I’m not forgetting the JBL and Hornswoggle segment. It was a disturbing angle and I didn’t care for it, but WWE accomplished their goal of shocking viewers and setting up the JBL vs. Finlay match for WrestleMania 24.

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