Segment 1
-Glad Cena started the show, because despite their efforts to remind us of his presence by replaying his victory, by the time the show was over, his involvement with this episode had thankfully faded into my subconscious.
-I know Cena sells merch and tickets and this crowd in Tampa, FL was living proof of that, but I just don't like his current schtick. It doesn't entertain me. In fact, it gets on my damn nerves. But if WWE's trying to make money, they're doing the right thing by keeping Cena in the spotlight in a way in which the "Universe" seems to approve of. I just think there are better ways to accomplish the same goal.
-AJ has been stripped of all her charm and is now just a bland, vindictive bitch.
-I believe there are ways to make Dolph more marketable but some guys, like Cena, don't have to try, so I guess Dolph should be thankful for whatever breaks he gets in his career.
-Despite the crowd happily lapping up this opening segment, in reality it was all excruciatingly lame and the only payoff was yet another Ziggler loss to Cena.
Last Word: MINUS -
Segment 2
-Cena vs. Dolph, Part One. Not that these two can't have a good match, I'm just tired of seeing it.
Last Word: MINUS -
Segment 3
-The referee throwing the managers out routine seems to be making quite the comeback.
-Not one, but TWO terrific counters by Ziggler that should've resulted in him getting the win.
-Crowd is teeming with marks who were perfectly happy with the result despite the piss-poor psychology. Had Cena scored more near falls, it might have been easier to stomach, but Ziggler pushes him to the absolute limit and can't win, then gets beat with ONE Attitude Adjustment after taking very little punishment in the match makes him look like a human matchstick. I get that Cena HAS to win, but the execution was just insulting.
Last Word: MINUS -
Segment 4
-I was against Eve's heel turn last year because I didn't think she had the acting chops to pull it off but she has proven me wrong. She still can't wrestle worth a damn though.
-I haven't been impressed with Kaitlyn until now. She did a good job of carrying the action.
-I know the crowd could care less about the divas, but that's WWE's fault for always presenting them as an afterthought. This match was decent, it put value on the Divas Championship, it sold both competitors, and it built to a future match. No complaints.
Last Word: PLUS +
Segment 5
-Everything Wade said in his backstage segment with Santino and Steamboat was accurate. The Intercontinental title has meant more since he won it than it has in a couple of years.
-Orton is so insanely over with the marks, especially in this crowd.
-I applaud Daniel Bryan for not letting them take away his "Yes" chant completely. It's a shame though when you consider how crazy popular it used to be.
-This segment was all filler. Part of the problem with a three-hour show.
Last Word: MINUS -
Segment 6
-Crowd just wasn't into this tag match between Team Hell No and Team Rhodes Scholars. Not sure if it's the fact that it seems like it's happened too many times already, or that they forget that Team Hell No actually wrestle and are the tag champs because they're used to seeing them in cheesy backstage skits.
-Bryan, of course, has to eat the pin.
-As much as I like everyone involved in this match, it just failed to capture my interest.
Last Word: MINUS -
Segment 7
-I don't mind Randy Orton going over Heath Slater in this type of environment because it's what I call a "cheap pop" match. 3MB furthered their role as cheating losers and Orton is still, Orton.
Last Word: PLUS +
Segment 8
-I don't understand, if Barrett was going to be booked to get a strong win in his match with Santino, why wasn't he given an intro? Granted, his music sucks (and maybe that's why) but he's the champ. And little things like that go a long way in establishing him in the minds of the fans.
-I would actually love to see Ricky Steamboat come back as a babyface manager.
Last Word: PLUS +
Segment 9
-Crowd popped huge for Antonio Cesaro's win over Khali and rightfully so.
-Miz has thrown away all of his potential in his new role as a babyface. What was once a strength, his talking, has become his biggest weakness.
-Khali is a human punchline, but he got Cesaro over which is what he was out there to do.
Last Word: PLUS +
Segment 10
-Nothing wrong with this match. It was decent action and a fun win for Sheamus, but it felt a little like overkill having two squashes involving 3MB on the same show.
-The crowd, bless their widdle hearts, stayed with the match and that kept it from becoming a total snoozefest.
Last Word: PLUS +
Segment 11
-First half of the TLC match. Nothing spectacular, but solid action.
Last Word: PLUS +
Segment 12
-As with their Hell In A Cell championship match, I felt like the TLC between Punk and Ryback should've been better. By the time the show ended, it was almost as if this match didn't happen. For a TLC championship match, that's not a good thing.
-Still, it wasn't terrible so I guess it gets a plus.
Last Word: PLUS +
Segment 13
-The Team Hell No segment was childish but it keeps their "momentum" going and now fans have something to look forwad to with Dr. Shelby returning next week.
Last Word: MINUS -
Segment 14
-The Big Show squashing Kofi was basically filler on a show like this but it was memorable filler. I like Show being built up as a monster. Unfortunately, the result of Friday's Smackdown, which is actually Tuesday's Smackdown have since been reported and this "monster" was apparently stopped by Alberto Del Rio of all people, and in a Last Man Standing match of all things. But at the time, I didn't know that so, this match was fine for what it was intended to be.
Last Word: PLUS +
Segment 15
[Author's Note: Here's where I plan to rant a little. I tried to keep the review brief on purpose until now because CM Punk's "pipe bomb" has had a lot of people talking since Monday and I've been itching to give my take on what really happened.]
-CM Punk's promo was exactly that, a promo. It wasn't a shoot, or a work, or even a pipe bomb. It was a wrestling promo designed to solicit a particular response from the crowd. And it accomplished exactly what WWE and CM Punk, and even the Rock, wanted it to accomplish.
-What were CM Punk's goals going out for that promo on Monday night?
1) Make people care about him.
2) Make himself a threat to the Rock.
3) Sell tickets to the Royal Rumble and pay-per-view buys.
-Now let's examine how he was able to accomplish these three things.
1) While Punk has been the company's top heel for the past few months, working a program with the Rock is a whole other ball game. Until now, these two have always been viewed as being in entirely different leagues. It's one thing for John Cena to challenge "The Great One" but CM Punk? Get real, kid! You're just a lame duck keeping the WWE title warm until it's time to have Cena win it back, right?
All true, until Monday night. Punk hasn't created a "buzz" since his "pipe bomb" two summers ago in Las Vegas. With his "shoot" comments, he took himself out of the regular roster of Superstars and made himself someone who transcended the WWE, just like the Rock did when he made it big in Hollywood. The same thing happened on Monday. All of a sudden, CM Punk is no longer just a wrestler following the script but he's some kind of renengade, he's a real person who is speaking his mind.
Whether he actually believes what he was saying or not doesn't matter. It accomplished what it was supposed to accomplish. It set CM Punk apart from the rest of the WWE roster and made him more than just a wrestler. Which gave him gave him the clout and the stanind he needed to challenge the Almight Rock.
2) While Punk hasn't been on a roll lately as far as clean, convincing wins, the fact that he dared to make "shoot" comments and "pull back the curtain" makes him a "loose cannon." And a loose cannon is capable of anything. This makes him dangerous, and a threat to the Almighty Rock.
He and the Rock bolstered this by reminding us of when he laid out Dwayne on the 1000th episode of Raw and with other standard "tough guy" talk. But the point is, the guy who has never been able to cleanly beat John Cena has gotten us to at least entertain the notion that he can find a way to defeat one of the few people who has.
3) After the Rock went through his opening monologue, it was critical that CM Punk come back strong. The importance of Phil Brooks not falling flat and simply rolling over for the transcendent Dwayne Johnson cannot be stressed enough. If he had fizzled in his rebuttal, accomplishing the first two goals would have all been for naught.
But not only did Phil Brooks not roll over for Dwayne Johnson, CM Punk smashed the Rock's fast ball in a line drive right back at his head and got off a line that everyone will still remember come next Monday and mark my words, will be replayed multiple times before this angle it finished. And most importantly, he accomplished the one and only goal of the entire segment: Sell. This. Match.
Last Word: PLUS +
Segment 16
-During the Slammy episode of Raw, the Rock won an award for something (I can't remember what) and of course, he wasn't there to receive it and the crowd booed vociferously. And while watching this I remember writing in my notepad, the crowd may boo the Rock every time he's not there, but these same people will cheer and chant when he is there.
Point being, "The Rock" Dwayne Johnson is a big effing deal in professional wrestling. It's the importance of leaving on a high note and establishing a legacy and going on to accomplish bigger and better things. We as fans may try to belittle the Rock's involvement in anything current in WWE, but to Vince, Hunter, Stephanie, Linda, and the board of directors, he may as well be Midas (the legendary figure from Greek mythology whose touch could turn anything into gold, not the oil change place, ya rednecks!).
But just like it was important for Punk to come back with a strong response to the Rock's dog-and-pony show, it was equally important for the Rock to close out strong. He was clearly rattled by Punk's memorable rebuttal, but he got his revenge with an equally memorable response and punctuated it with perfectly-timed Rock Bottom that seemed to bring the roof off the freaking place.
It was the kind of set-up to a big match that gave you goosebumps and reminded you of what makes wrestling so unique and so much fun. You're never going to see anything that cool in at a UFC weigh-in so shut your mouth about wrestling losing fans to "real fighting." This is theater. This is art. And the two artists who were in the ring on Monday night worked together in perfect harmony to produce a masterpiece that should be appreciated for what it was, not twisted into something it wasn't (I'm looking at YOU, Billy Graham...the wrestler, not the evangelist).
Last Word: PLUS +
FINAL TALLY: 10 PLUS, 6 MINUS
Don't read too much into this final score. I expected them to book a strong show for the Rock's return.
My chief complaints:
- John Cena. It's not just that he's bland and annoying and wrestles like shit....well, come to think of it, yeah, that's exactly what it is.
- The misuse of talent. AJ and Dolph could be doing so much more. But I guess there can only be one top program and right now, it's Punk and the Rock so at least they're not completely irrelevant. Remember, Dolph was once teammates with this guy...
My chief points of praise:
-Antonio Cesaro. Apart from the segment with Punk and the Rock, his Neutralizer on Khali will be the one thing most people remember about this show.
-The final two segments with CM Punk and the Rock was as good as any pre-match build up segment there has ever been. It may not go down in history with other memorable moments like Jake "The Snake" Roberts DDT'ing Ricky Steamboat on the concrete floor, or the "Macho Man" Randy Savage crushing Steamboat's larynx with the ring bell (boy, poor Steamboat had his ass handed to him back in the day, huh?), but as far as mic work is concerned, it was as good, perhaps better, than anything I remember seeing in twenty-eight years as a fan.
I've rambled on enough. I'll be watching the Royal Rumble and you should too if you're a fan at all. I consider myself old-school and hard to please and despite my ability to break a segment down and analyze it for what it really is, I'm still a fan at heart who wants to mark out for wrestling done right. And that's what I was treated to Monday night by CM Punk and the Rock. Whether of not they can keep it going reamins to be seen, but for now, I'm going to allow myself to enjoy it. In a wresting landscape filled with watered-down pop radio garbage, it was nice to get a little Punk-Rock to remind you how much fun wrestling can be. Now, last one into the mosh pit wears his sister's Doc Martens!
That's the last word, bitches. Discuss!
{"Handsome" Dan Lopez is mentioned regularly on his favorite wrestling shows, The Shining Wizards Wrestling Podcast and Turnbuckle Throwbacks. Follow him on Twitter, @DansLastWord.}
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