Powell's Blog: Strange decision by WWE for tonight's three-hour Raw special, various thoughts on TNA Impact including Rob Van Dam and Sting, Mr. Anderson and Jeff Hardy, and Rosie Lotta Love

Monday, June 7 – 5:21 P.M. (CT)

-Tonight is WWE's Taboo Tuesday, er, Cyber Sunday, er, Viewer's Choice edition of Monday Night Raw. The three-hour special was given a lot of of hype on last week's show, and viewers were encouraged to check the WWE website for more details.

Here we are a week later and website users still aren't allowed to vote for anything on the WWE website. Apparently, they opened the voting briefly today, as Dot Net reader Cody Springer sent me a link, but it was closed by the time I checked it out.

Either way, I don't understand the approach. I'm guessing the idea is to open voting during the show or close to the start time of the three-hour Raw. I'm sure this will lead to a major surge of traffic for the WWE website and it's not like WWE is going bankrupt anytime soon, but they missed out a lot of online traffic by not opening the voting after last Monday's show.

Even if they weren't creatively ready to unveil all of the voting options, they surely could have picked a match or two to let viewers vote for and in turn generated traffic for the newly redesigned WWE website while keeping the buzz going about the three-hour Raw.

-It was a bit of a hectic weekend, so I haven't had a chance to chime in on Thursday's TNA Impact until now. Impact was a strong show. Sure, there were the usual awkward moments, such as when Eric Bischoff booked a match and then said he didn't have the authority to change it, but I enjoyed the overall show.

I'm puzzled by the decision to give away Rob Van Dam and Sting together in the four-way main event. It's not the most attractive match on paper to this viewer, but TNA is trying to bill it as a first match between two huge names. As such, it would have been wise to save their first real in-ring work for the pay-per-view.

-The Mr. Anderson character is really clicking thanks to the new "asshole" gimmick. Will he remain a babyface or is his character setting up Jeff Hardy? TNA creative loves a swerve, but a friend pointed out today that there really wouldn't be a major payoff if they turned Anderson heel again.

No matter how hard he tries, there will be a large group of fans who root for him now that he's rolled out the "asshole" line. Plus, what would his character really get out of it? Okay, he turned on Jeff and presumably pissed off a lot of heels along the way. Then what?

I still think Anderson would be the ideal candidate to lead Ric Flair's faction if he were interested in playing a true heel. He could shy away from the a-hole stuff and lead a faction that consists of Beer Money, Desmond Wolfe, and perhaps Kazarian. This is much more appealing to me than Kazarian or A.J. Styles in that spot.

By the way, it looks like the latter is on the verge of a babyface turn, which is fine with me. Is it only a matter of time before Kaz is billed as "Franklin Kazarian" now that he's a heel?

-I like the Rosie Lotta Love character from the standpoint that she's not a heel just because she's a big woman. The name is clearly inspired by the old AC/DC song "Whole Lotta Rosie," which feels really dated, but it can be argued that the song is a well known classic.

Either way, she seems like a good foil for The Beautiful People. I'd much rather see her start in this role than being miscast as the immediate Awesome Kong replacement. Kong's shoes will be tough to fill, and it's a shame that she and TNA officials have yet to work through their differences. Rosie is still green. Maybe she'll become a great heel for the company someday, but there's only one Awesome Kong.