Pro Wrestling Chronicle

The night after Wrestlemania usually brings a Raw that helps lay out where the company is moving for the next year. Apparently the writing team didn’t get that memo.

Last night’s Raw started out hot. John Cena came out and once again stood defiantly against the masses and announced, “The Champ is Here.” Shawn Michaels came out soon after and basically issued a challenge to Cena for his belt by telling him, “Cena wasn’t the better man the night before.” Before they could throw down though Coach came out and announced that the tag belts were on the line in a 10 team battle royal. It was there the show started moving downhill.

See there were actually two battle royals so in all 18 teams were involved in the title hunt. In the middle of the second battle royal Michaels came up from behind Cena and threw him out. Michaels said he did it to, “Uncloud the situation.” The message was he wanted just the world title. In the end The Hardy Boyz won the tag belts and maybe will usher in a new era for the tag wrestling division.

More importantly though, the Cena/HBK interaction fell completely flat after the interview. There was no sense of urgency to their defense. They could’ve done more with Michaels trying to get eliminated and Cena saving him everytime. In the end though they settled on HBK making John Cena look dumb. Even worse there was no interview afterwards with Cena to drive home the angle. I know it’s too soon to complain a whole lot but they need to drive home this angle in the next few weeks leading into Backlash.

Other than that though- a bunch of nothing happened. Vince McMahon was embarassed by Bobby Lashley and put him in a match with Umaga and Armando Alejandro Estrada (I love typing that name). The match that a lot of tricks the night before to cover some weaknesses didn’t have them last night and the crowd was uninterested for the most part. They did come alive towards the end but they didn’t seem to be interested. It didn’t help either that Jim Ross had no voice and had to hand over duties to Jerry “The King” Lawler in the final match. Lawler just can’t get over something the way Ross does.

All in all this wasn’t really a good Raw. It almost felt like a hangover type day coming off the big night in Detroit. Hopefully next week they can get their footing under them again and build towards next month