This Show is Not Awesome

Monday Night Raw is a disaster right now.

When your tag team champions get punk’d out by a bunch of green rookies, you know there’s a problem.

When one of your best wrestlers is used in a weird, sadomasochistic role when he’s supposed to be a levelheaded straight-edge elitist, you know there’s another problem.

When your World Champion is embroiled in a feud with a 60-year-old, you know there’s a huge problem.

It gets better though.

The fact that so much time is given to Alberto Del Rio, between his mariachi-singing announcer and his interference with Shawn Michaels goes even further in showing this creative team doesn’t have a clue. Why would you let Del Rio, a guy you’re pushing to be a top-tier guy, get pissed on by Michaels, a guy who is retired and been out of the ring for months? It’s bad enough the guy has a horrible finisher and is annoying on the mic; now you just made him a joke.

Because of all of this, this week’s Raw was so abysmal that even the biggest mark for the company has to start seeing that whoever is writing this drivel is completely out of ideas.

Wasting a quarter of the show on an idiotic angle with the “new” Nexus and capping it off with CM Punk mocking the audience for thinking he was going to jump off the top of the Titantron was complete fodder. Seriously, if their was ever a time to make a sandwich during wrestling, that was it. But lets be fair here, Punk is a great athlete and has talent on the microphone. This type of writing just doesn’t play to his strengths.

In all honesty, the only wrestler that could have played that scene the way it deserved to be was Brian Pillman. The fact that anything like that would even be tried is utterly retarded. Any reasonably smart fan knew from the beginning that this was just a bad angle and was forced to sit through it.

Good wrestling suspends disbelief.

That’s something the creative team behind this show doesn’t get. Right now, Raw is like a terrible soap opera.

Remember, wrestlers aren’t actors, they’re athletes. Athleticism has to be the first thing stressed before a storyline can truly get over. Get fans to care about what happens in the ring and then develop a storyline around people that have chemistry together. That’s how good wrestling shows should be produced.

Two guys who could have a good match together, Daniel Bryan and Ted DiBiase Jr., are pussy-footing in the ring for a few minutes in a shoddy tag match is not enough.

Real fans of this show deserve real in-ring action.

The same thing goes for what the company is doing with R-Truth. Let him say “Wassap!” a few times and then get him get in the ring. While the guy is an amazing athlete, he’s not and will never be a decent rapper. Why do we have to hear him rap for two minutes every time he comes to the ring? It’s repetitive and bland, cut it out already. A few months ago it was alright, but now that the guy isn’t involved in any real angle and isn’t being pushed, why would you do that to your audience?

The fact that the creative team behind this show doesn’t know this and everything else that’s horribly wrong with this show is sad. They also seem totally incapable of bringing out the strengths of their superstars besides John Cena.

That being said, this is going to be a long year for the WWE.

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About Patrick Hickey Jr. 13819 Articles
Patrick Hickey Jr. is a full-time Assistant Professor of Communication & Performing Arts and Director of the Journalism program at Kingsborough Community College and is the chairman of the City University of New York Journalism Council. He is the Founder and Editor-In-Chief of ReviewFix.com. He's also a former News Editor at NBC Local Integrated Media and National Video Games Writer at Examiner.com where his work was mentioned in National Ad campaigns by Disney, Nintendo and EA Sports. Hickey was also the Editor-In-Chief of two College Newspapers before he received his BA in Journalism from Brooklyn College. Hickey's work has been published in The New York Daily News, The New York Times, Complex, The Hockey Writers, Yahoo!, Broadway World, Examiner, NYSportScene Magazine, ProHockeyNews.com, GothamBaseball.com, The Syracuse Post-Standard, Scout.com and the official sites of the Brooklyn Aces and New York Islanders. His first book, The Minds Behind the Games: Interviews With Cult And Classic Video Game Developers was released in April 2018 and is chock full of interviews with legendary developers. His second book in the series, The Minds Behind Adventures Games, was released in December 2019. His third book, The Minds Behind Sports Games, was released in September 2020. His fourth book, The Minds Behind Shooter Games, was released in March 2021. The Minds Behind Sega Genesis Games and The Minds Behind PlayStation Games were released in 2022 and The Minds Behind PlayStation 2 was published in January 2023. Hickey is also a contracted comic book writer, currently penning his original series, "Condrey," as well as "The Job," "Brooklyn Bleeds" "Dem Gulls" and "KROOM" for Legacy Comix, where he serves as founder, owner and Editor-in-Chief. Hickey Jr. is also a voice actor, having starred in the 2018 indie hit and 2019 Switch, PS4 and Xbox One release, The Padre (also serving as English language Story Editor), from Shotgun With Glitters. The sequel, The Padre: One Shell Straight to Hell was released in February 2021- Hickey also served as a Story Editor and Lead Voiceover performer. He has also done narration and trailers for several other titles including The Kaiju Offensive, Relentless Rex and Roniu’s Tale. Hickey is also the lead voiceover performer on Mega Cat Studios’ upcoming title WrestleQuest, responsible for nearly 90 characters in the game, as well as Skybound's Renfield: Bring Your Own Blood, where he voices both Dracula and Renfield, as well as several other characters. He also stars in Ziggurat Interactive’s World Championship Boxing Manager 2, where he performs the VO of nearly every male character in the game. He also worked on the Atari VCS’s BPM Boy.

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