Raw Update (Week 9 - 06.09.2008)

So this was the first week of McMahon's Million Dollar giveaway thing. Interesting concept, and it was fun watching McMahon be fairly candid while trying to operate the phone. At one point, he got one of those "Please enjoy the music while the person you're calling is located" recordings, and Rick Astley came on over the PA. Then, Vince hung up on the poor guy because he was confused or something. Thankfully,Vince called him back (with another appearance by Astley) and awarded the viewer some money. I wonder if Vince owes Astley some money, now . . .

Now, as of this writing, the ratings aren't out, but it'll be interesting to see what kind of impact this stunt had, or if it's just going to be the same amount of viewers, the only difference being that they're now registered for this contest. If this really is an effort to get fans to watch the show live, it's going to fail, because the secret password needed to win the money was shown both at the start of the broadcast and on the website. So . . . a Tivo owner like myself could just check the password around 8 PM and just wait for the phone call to come while watching something else.

Vince: "Hello, who is this?"
Me: "This is Dave Hoffa!"
Vince: "This is Vince McMahon from the WWE. Are you watching Raw?"
Me: "Uh, yeaaaaahhhh . . . "
Vince: "What's the password?"
Me: (checking a piece of paper I scribbled it down on) "Blah Blah"
Vince: "You just won money!"

Overall, the first week of this giveaway was pretty entertaining, but I felt sorry for the woman who only won two dollars! Way to appreciate the fans, Vinnie Mac!

In an exciting turn of events, the Wrestling Observer is reporting that Ring of Honor's Bryan Danielson wrestled a dark match before Raw and went over Lance Cade! They trained together, so I suppose it's cool to have Danielson win, even in the midst of a Cade singles push.

So . . . Raw.

So the two matches announced at the top of the show were Jeff Hardy vs. HHH and John Cena vs. JBL (again).

Show started with Kennedy defeating Paul Burchill in a quick but fun match. I like this feud a lot. Mainly because it's simple: Kennedy wronged Paul and Katie Lea Burchill's friend William Regal and they're pissed. Kennedy is the cocky American face, while the Burchill's are the snooty, foreign, UK bastards. Post-match saw Katie Lea distract Kennedy with a shitty slap and Paul Burchill deliver a new finisher (thank god) that's named the Twisted Sister. It looked like a swinging neckbreaker, but the camera angle was super shitty when Paul snuck up on Kennedy so I'm not sure.

So Cena and JBL wrestled while HHH did guest commentary. Match ended when JBL nailed Cena with the newly-christened Lariet From Hell, and started to dismantle the announce table for some sort of smashing-through. You know, taking monitors out and whatnot. When he went back into the ring to get Cena, JBL was rolled up and lost. Oops. Then, HHH stood on the announce table to taunt Cena with the belt. Cena joined him and they had a face-off. HHH got off the table and swept one of Cena's legs, causing him to weakly fall onto the table. It sort-of looked bad, and made HHH look like a dick. The lady and I were thinking, at this point, "OK, so HHH is going to be the heel in this feud." Not so fast . . .

During the main even, HHH took on Hardy, which ended with a Hardy victory via count-out when Cena (who was doing guest commentary, of course) swept HHH's legs out from underneath him, preventing him from getting back into the ring. So wait, Cena's a dickhead, too? They're both heels?! What's going on? As HHH and Cena stared each other down, Hardy seized the day and did a dive onto both of them, ending the show.

I guess this finish was just Cena getting back at HHH for being an asshole, but as the all-American face, shouldn't he have taken the higher ground. Like, shown that he could've interferred but then not, letting Hardy get a clean pin? Of course not! How dare Jeff Hardy get a clean pin over HHH?

Elsewhere, this show was pretty strong. Best segment of the night was Chris Jericho's Highlight Reel, where he once again had Shawn Michaels on as a guest. Jericho was putting over Michaels very strongly, which usually means some heelish activity is afoot, and it was. After praising the shit out of Michaels, saying that he looked up to him and all of that, Jericho asked how he went from being so amazing to such a "lying, cheating, pathetic little worm," in regards to faking his knee injury. Then, well . . . it's worth watching.

p.s. Shawn Michaels is bald.

Mickie James beat Beth Phoenix in a non-title match, and Melina came down the ramp afterwards for some Beth Phoenix-fighting action.

Umaga & Snitsky teamed up against Holly & Rhodes to further the Ted DiBiase Jr. storyline. Interesting to note that Lawler referred to the Umaga/Snitsky team as "uglier than Hulk Hogan's divorce." OUCH. Holly & Rhodes lost clean (Lawler also mentioned the fact that it was a "clean win," which was interesting), and Ted Jr. came out to remind Holly & Rhodes that at Night of Champions, he and a mystery partner were going to win the belts. I'm almost inclined to get the PPV just to see this storyline develop, but I probably won't because I'm not rich.

Cryme Time over Santino & Carlito. Decent little match. JR kept referring to Shad as "Shad Gaspar" or something like that. Weird.

Raw ended with McMahon giving away $250,000 to someone. Crazy.

Overall, this was a really strong show both match-wise and money-giveaway-segment-wise.