ThunderStruck: Raw Analysis 04/09/12

John Laurinaitis and David Otunga come to the ring. JL talks about the new face of WWE and plays a video clip of Raw’s closing moments last week. He introduces the man who will face John Cena at Extreme Rules, Brock Lesnar. Lesnar comes down and thanks JL for bringing legitimacy to WWE. John Cena’s music hits and he comes the ring. He slaps Lesnar across the face and they brawl. The entire WWE locker room comes to the ring to break these two up. They go back and forth trying to break through the crowd of superstars to get to one another. Cena’s lip is bleeding.

^If ever you want to give a rivalry some fuel, just have two guys beat the hell out of each other without prior words. I loved this! Cena needs to be pissed off and ready to fight or else no one is going to believe his character can defeat Lesnar.

Backstage segment with John Laurinaitis telling Teddy Long he failed to contain John Cena and now he wants Teddy to get an explanation from Cena for what happened. Eve shows up and wants to talk to JL. He tells her he will set up a meeting in Stamford with her and she tells him to call her.

^I have a strong feeling Teddy Long will be back in a position of authority before the year is over. JL seems to be blowing off Eve. This could become apart of Laurinaitis’ downfall if he dismisses everybody that has done him favors.

Santino and Brodus Clay take on Jack Swagger and Dolph Ziggler. Clay wins the match after destroying Dolph. He pins after a big splash as Swagger just watches on. Santino and Brodus celebrate by dancing after the match,

^Could this be the small start of moving towards a Swagger/Ziggler split? I know the two have shown animosity in backstage segments over time as it is, but maybe WWE is finally moving towards a face turn for one of these two. On the bright side, Brodus did more moves than I’ve ever seen him do in a match.

We have another backstage segment with JL. JL dismisses the Miz and tells him they will talk next week. Teddy brings Cena into his office. Cena accused JL of bringing in Lesnar to try to put Cena out of business. Cena says he is just getting warmed up. He tells JL he wants to compete tonight and JL can pick his opponent. JL tells Teddy to tell Otunga that he will face Cena tonight.

^Dismissing the guy who scored the pinfall to make him sole GM of both brands? It seems like this whole dismissing everybody angle is going to backfire for Laurinaitis much sooner than I originally thought. I like angry/crazy Cena. It reminds me of heel Cena, and supposedly heel Cena is something we aren’t going to see in the near future.

Santino is shown looking for the Three Stooges. He asks Hawkins and Reks if they’ve seen them. They say no. He asks the WWE tech people and they also say they haven’t seen them. After the commercial, Santino runs into Kane and asks if he’s seen the Stooges. Kane says nothing and Santino runs away from him.

R-Truth comes out for his match with Cody Rhodes. Big Show interrupts and Shows the highlight of what happened to Cody last week with his loss to Kofi Kingston. Truth hits the little jimmy finisher on Cody and gets the win.

^So for a month and a half, we watched Cody embarass the Big Show, and then Show won the IC Title. Now, we have Rhodes being embarrassed by Show every week, and it’s getting old. Can’t WWE be a little more creative than that? I wonder what sort of match they will have at Extreme Rules, but I can almost guarantee they will have a rematch confirmed for the show.

Santino finds a huge box labeled “fragile.” Santino uses a crowbar(that just happens to be on the ground) to pry the box open and out fall the Stooges. They do the usual comedy routine with Santino and he wishes them luck for their performance tonight. The stooges don’t know what their performance is yet.

^I know it’s a wrestling show, but the Stooges are hilarious! Santino as the fourth Stooge? Even better.

Lord Tensai takes on Yoshi Tatsu. He destroys Tatsu and wins when the ref stops the match. He continues the assault after the match with the claw to Tatsu’s face and skull.

^I love the Albert chants from the crowd. Tensai looks impressive again this week. WWE using social media(Twitter) to build a feud over the course of a week is interesting to me. Maybe it will prompt more fans to use it and keep up on WWE news that way? I would like to think WWE has a potential feud in mind for Tensai or else I’d have to question the reason for bringing him in to just destroy opponents every week.

CM Punk comes out for a match with Mark Henry. He cuts a promo about what Jericho did to him last week. He gets personal and talks about the smell reminding him of his father. Jericho shows up on the tron and taunts him with alcohol and drinking jeers. Punk gets pissed off and tells Jericho all of his antics have backfired because now Punk is just going to use it as fuel to kick Jericho’s ass.

^Solid promo from these two to continue the heat with their rivalry. I wasn’t sure if I liked the level of personal that this feud is being based around, but then I remember loving so many feuds like this growing up. I guess it just feels like it’s been awhile since WWE made a feud this personal. Maybe there is a recent one that I’m forgetting about.

Punk and Mark Henry have a “match.” Punk attacks Henry immediately and gets himself disqualified after hitting him with a monitor off the announce table. Jericho comes out and Mark Henry attacks Punk from Behind. Jerico goes to pour beer on Punk when Henry is done and Punk kicks him before attacking him. Jericho gets the upper hand and gets the codebreaker. He pours beer all over Punk until the refs come down to stop him. Jericho hits another codebreaker on Punk before leaving.

^Adding to what I just said, I love this rivalry for a few reasons. Number one, Jericho is an amazing heel and is good at making a crowd hate him. Number two, these guys are both golden with their back and forth promos. Number three, these two are the best performers in the company and can actually back up their rivalry in the ring.

Zack Ryder goes one on one with Alberto Del Rio. Ryder gets the upper hand in this match and hits the boot to the face in the corner. He goes for the roughryder finisher but gets caught and dropped on the top turnbuckle. Del Rio hits the cross armbreaker submission and Ryder immediately taps out.

^I hope WWE has some big plans in store for Zack Ryder and that this is just the “Daniel Bryan” jobbing phase for him for the year 2012. Del Rio is gaining momentum for his rivalry with Sheamus. They will probably continue building him up to Extreme Rules and make it appear as though he will be the next World Heavyweight Champion.

The Stooges are shown backstage and Mo says they better come up with an idea fast. Curly gets an idea and runs off after telling them he’ll meet them in the ring. They come to the ring and wait for Curly. Curly comes out dressed as Hulk Hogan to the Real America theme. Curly does a Hogan impression before Kane comes out. Mo and Larry run away and Curly ends up on the receiving end of a chokeslam.

^I loved this. I don’t know if this was an attempted plug for TNA for allowing WWE to have Ric Flair at the Hall of Fame ceremony, or if this was a just a jab at Hogan’s character. Either way, I enjoyed it. This was Kane’s only spot for the night until I’m guessing WWE figures out what his next feud will be.

Mark Henry has an interview with Josh Matthews. Henry announces that JL gave him another match with CM Punk next week that will be no DQ. He says he will be the next World Heavyweight Champion.

^Well, I’m glad Mark Henry knows what title he was competing for the last two weeks(sarcasm).

Brock Lesnar is interviewed by Josh Matthews. Lesnar puts himself over big and talks about his accomplishments and why he is proud of himself. He tries hard to make the crowd hate him by making remarks about not caring what they think, but they still cheer for him. He also mentions that Cena isn’t good enough to hold his jockstrap.

^Lesnar has always cracked me up on the mic. You just don’t expect a guy that looks like he does to sound that way. I’m still glad that he’s back. The fans will not boo him no matter how much of a heel he tries to be.

John Cena takes on David Otunga. This one doesn’t last long as Cena hits the five moves of doom and finishes off Otunga with the STF while John Laurinaitis watches on. Lesnar attacks Cena with an F5 after the match. He leaves and goes up the ramp as the show goes off the air.

^Anybody that bitches about John Cena not being able to wrestle really needs to take a look at David Otunga sometime. Where’s his former tag team partner? You know, the one who could wrestle(Hennig’s son). Oh yeah, that’s right, he’s stuck on NXT and working far better matches than Otunga could ever dream about. I love the Cena/Lesnar feud so far, and I can’t wait to see these two destroy each other at Extreme Rules(last man standing would be my pick for the match).

Some would call this Raw average or mediocre, and while I wouldn’t argue, I would point out that I fairly entertained by most of the show. I’m always intrigued to see how the big E will decide to put together their show and who they will and won’t feature. Where the hell were Sheamus and Bryan besides the opening segment? Is this no longer going to be a super show? If that’s the case, I don’t want to see Mark Henry on Raw anymore. I’ll have NXT up next and my first specialty column for the month by next week. Until next time, you’ve been ThunderStruck!

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