What a Tease

January 26, 2011 Patrick Hickey Jr. Professional Wrestling, TV 0

Continuing the trend from last week, this week’s Monday Night Raw featured some solid matches and even some good story telling. Nevertheless, there were several moments that were stagnant that hurt the overall quality of the show.

For one, seeing the finish of the Daniel Bryan/Bella Twins tag match with Ted DiBiase/Maryse/Alicia Fox was impossible if you sneezed. Wasting a guy like Bryan’s talent on such of a waste of a match is a slap in the face to the people who tuned in to see real wrestling action. DiBiase has good in-ring skills and would be able to put on a good match with Bryan. Let the fans see a 15-minute match between the two. Maryse and Fox can be solid top-tier acts in the Diva division, which pales in comparison to TNA’s Knockouts. Putting all of these people in a situation like this is just a waste of fans’ time.

The same thing goes for the ridiculous angle between LayCool and Nattie Niedhart. Why would the WWE waste a match up between Melina and Niedhart and develop heat between the two, to only bring in a new feud a week before the Royal Rumble?

Things like this hampered Raw this week, but there were positives as well.

Seeing the Corre meet up with the New Nexus was interesting. While the match between Wade Barrett and CM Punk was more of a tease, Punk is beginning to hit his stride creatively. Having more time to develop his role as a sadistic cult leader, Punk has been better, mainly because the bizarre antics are over and he can sell the angle through his mic ability, which is easily one of his strong points.

Continuing to push the group, the tag match Nexus had with tag champs Vladimir Kozlov and Santino Marella was a showcase of Husky Harris. Reminding us of his father Mike Rotunda at times, Harris is still green and needs to work on his conditioning more. Nevertheless, there’s some promise with him and his finishing move, reminiscent of Frank Kazarian’s swinging Complete Shot. Overall, even if you hated what Nexus brought to the table, Harris has a unique style worth watching.

The other big matches, especially between Edge and The Miz were mostly teases for the Rumble, but were entertaining. Edge got a pop from the fans and it’s obvious that Raw needs more stars like him. Adding extra faces from Smackdown has spiced things up some as well, but has eroded the whole branding differences between the two shows.

But that’s what bad ratings eventually do to professional wrestling, as the WWE continues to mix and match with as many different combinations as they can. Will they eventually be able to?

At this point who knows, but at least the overall quality of the matches has been stepped up some.

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About Patrick Hickey Jr. 13870 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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