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WWE Raw Hits

Shawn Michaels challenges Undertaker: A cool and unexpected moment. There seemed to be signs that they were going with Taker vs. John Cena at WrestleMania 26, but HBK's challenge is a great sign that we'll be getting a rematch of the WrestleMania 25 classic. Shawn's delivery was intense and immediately got me excited for the likely rematch.

Sheamus: I thought we'd see a lot more of the WWE Champion last night. He did a nice job with the limited time he had, but I can't believe they didn't do more with him the night after he won the WWE Title. Odd choice. That said, I enjoyed his acceptance speech and his line about being better than Hall of Famers Roddy Piper, Curt Henig, Paul Orndorff, and Ricky Steamboat because he won the WWE Championship and they never did.

Bret Hart tease: My guess is that they are building toward Hart hosting the January 4 show since we already know the rest of the hosts for 2009. Another fun an unexpected moment. As I wrote last night, I would have assumed Raw was going to be a great show if someone had told me beforehand that HBK would challenge Taker, and they were going to start teasing Bret Hart. Unfortunately, those were two of the rare good moments on this show.

WWE Raw Misses

Overall show: An embarrassing train wreck. This was WWE's worst effort of 2009. The feedback I've received on the show was 100 percent negative. The guest host was lousy, the crowd was dead, the campy comedy skits were beyond awful. I have a feeling that plenty of people made the decision to watch TNA Impact on January 4 as a direct result of this show. I'm sure Vince McMahon will blame the dead crowd based on his shot at them during the show, but he should look in the mirror if he's looking for someone to blame.

The creative team writes this campy crap because (a) they want to write something other than wrestling and (b) they know it appeals to his sense of humor. I wish he'd help make the former come true to making some long overdue changes to his creative structure. There are plenty of misses this week, but the Hitlist doesn't even do it justice. There were so many corny moments on this show that I could spend the rest of the day writing misses for this category. Just a horrible, horrible edition of Raw.

Slammy Awards: WWE delivered a pleasantly surprising quality awards show last year, but last night's show was so atrocious that I hope they scrap the Slammy Award concept permanently. They don't even make it easy to suspend disbelief or to take the awards seriously when they don't even bother to come up with an explanation for how the nominees were named or who determined the winners for most of the awards. Furthermore, the idea that the four nominees had to wrestle in a tournament to determine the winner of Superstar of the Year made the award seem worthless.

John Cena won't lose: As if viewers haven't already figured out that Cena overcomes the odds and wins most of his matches, now they're telling us he won't lose another match until he regains the WWE Championship. This made the outcome of his match with Randy Orton and future matches way too predictable. Sure, Jack Swagger didn't deliver on his promise to win out in 2009, but viewers know there's a big difference between Swagger and Cena.

Chris Jericho thrown out of the building: I felt bad for the guys who had to dress up in DX gear and throw Jericho out of the building. I was also embarrassed for WWE creative when reader Tyler Nimmons pointed out that all the wrestlers who removed Jericho from Raw were either ECW or Smackdown wrestlers.

Kane and Great Khali put their differences aside: Kane kidnapped Khali's brother and then tried to end his career with repeated chairshots to the knee. However, now they're putting their differences aside because they don't like William Regal and his minions? The creative team isn't even trying anymore.

John Cena vs. C.M. Punk: Punk got a nice heel reaction for his promo and then they fed him to Cena in a less than two minutes. Did Cena really need to be rebuilt after losing to Sheamus? Hell no. I went from thinking they should move Punk back to Raw in the draft after listening to his promo to hoping they leave him on the Friday night show permanently because the Raw creative team clearly doesn't see him as a headliner. Ridiculous.

Little People's Court teased for next week: After this three-hour campy comedy shit-fest, they're actually going to come back with Little People's Court next week? They've pushed this back a couple times already. If the reaction to their horrible comedy last night is any indication, they should just scrap the idea altogether and move on.

Michael Cole's acceptance speech: I'll change my tune if this was nothing more than a setup for Jim Ross showing up and giving the boot to Cole as the Raw play-by-play voice. Otherwise, it was idiotic to have a guy who has enough trouble getting over with the fans deliver a message about the beloved voice of WWE.

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