The Rager - Raw Thoughts 1/10/11

Welcome to the return of everybody's review of the longest episodic blah blah blah blah, Monday Night Raw. My apologies for not posted for the previous couple Raws but...ok, I have no excuse, just sheer laziness, it happens. But anyways, I'm back and the lights are on bright and everyone is excited about the return of John Cena! Lets get started:

1. Thanks to CM Punk, Nexus is now a cult, its like everything awesome about the Nexus is now joined with everything that was creepy about Punk's Straight Edge Society. Everything from McGillicutty ceremoniously being carried away after taking a beating, the awkward lashing of Husky Harris and then the "ultimate sacrifice" by CM Punk which went way too far for me and it made no sense to me why WWE wrote such a thing in a story. For a company thats hypersensitive about staying clear of their own screw-ups (i.e. the erasing of Chris Benoit from WWE history), it seems really irresponsible for them to pull this in light of the death of Owen Hart even though its been almost 12 years. Since his death, WWE has stayed completely away from all suspension cable stunts, no matter how closely they may resemble the Owen Hart incident and then out of no where, they pull a fake that almost mirrors it? WWE then covers their butts by having Punk go on about how stupid it would've been for him to have jumped. Yeah, great job, WWE for cutting a public service announcement with your top heel that the kids would refuse to listen to. If WWE wasn't trying to pull off a TV-PG show every week and not trying to aim everything at kids, I wouldn't be outraged about this at all but knowing who their target audience now is, it really is shameful.

2. Woo, sorry for the rant but I had to get that out. Anyways, the following promo between Punk and a via satellite Cena was pretty good, we got a little bit of jokey Cena as well as angry Cena. Really should've been saved for the last segment of the show but its whatever.

3. Does it bug anybody else that last week, they told the truth about Cena's injury and this week they turned and lied that Punk was the cause of it and then by the end of the show, they completely ignored it and said he's wrestling next week.

4. I can't express how giddy I was to see that Shawn Michaels would be inducted into the Hall of Fame, the highlight video was fantastically done and I about jumped through the roof when he came out, I really didn't think that was gonna happen. The whole bit between him and Albero Del Rio was alright, felt good to see him pop somebody with SCM, makes me believe they're going to us him to some extent at Wrestlemania which is more than fine with me.

5. I don't really feel like talking much about any of the matches because none of them seemed important or furthered anything at all. I'm getting annoyed at how they're using Daniel Bryan (teaming him with Chocolate Big Boy and the Basic Twins). The match between John Morrison and King Mayo seemed just try to legitimize Morrison as a top card which is funny because I could've sworn thats what the last 3 years were for. And the only thing established in the final tag team match was that Alex Riley is still a Bo-Bo doll, Randy Orton is the best, Miz doesn't quite have what it takes yet to convince everyone that he can hold his own as champion and Lawler can't pin anyone on his own.

6. Speaking of Lawler, the whole bit with him and Michael Cole seemed to drag a bit too much and WWE is making it really obvious that Cole is the real GM and he's just pretending to read emails.

7. Can I say how disappointed I am that they just threw Wade Barrett off Raw and put him on Smackdown? They had an opportunity to build an interesting story between him and CM Punk. The entire segment between Punk and Cena, I was really expecting WWE to do the right thing and have Barrett appear with other former Nexus members (because now we're down to just 1 original member left with Otunga) and confront Punk and the new Nexus, creating a Nexus civil war of sorts or something.

8. The Nexus story just seems to get more and more ridiculous as time goes on and its starting to become obvious that WWE creative didn't really have an end game for the story and are just trying to milk it for as long as they can. Don't get me wrong, I love CM Punk, he's easily the best heel in the game and adding him to the mix is a refreshing change up to the story. The thing that everyone seems to forget and I'm waiting for WWE creative to bring up is the fact that the night Nexus made its debut, yeah they attacked Cena in the ring but they also attacked his opponent that night. The opponent, for everyone that doesn't remember, was CM Punk.

9. Finally, can I just say that I'm ready for Undertake, HHH, and Chris Jericho to return?