I admit, I’m a sucker for gimmick Pay Per Views. Royal Rumble, old-school Survivor Series, King of the Ring, and the blood-filled Hell in the Cell.

When last night’s Raw show was over, I felt ripped off.

As a two hour television show, Raw was great. Rey Mysterio beat The Miz to win the WWE Championship in a really good match to start the show. When Mysterio is given time to do his thing, there are very few better than him. Triple H made a few proclamations, one being that Jim Ross is back on TV, and hopefully for good, however long good is. John Cena beat Mysterio for his newly won championship at the end of the show in another good match (thanks to Rey). And then the cult of personality came back. CM Punk walked to the ring and stood toe-to-toe with John Cena, raising his belt in the air after Cena raised his.

Now, if someone told me all of those things were going to happen over a month span, I’d have been pretty excited. The fact that they happened within a span of a two hour show bothered me. WWE may have missed the boat here. To me, the key to the CM Punk angle was that his win over John Cena at Money In The Bank was so important and meant so much that he didn’t really have to wrestle again. It should’ve been Cena, not Punk, who was reactive and begging for a rematch because he lost. Maybe that’s where they will still go and having Punk come back to one-up Cena is only there to make Cena anxious about getting his rematch.

(And wouldn’t this thing be hotter if Cena didn’t have the “interim” title? Shouldn’t he be chasing his ass off right now?)

What doesn’t make sense to me is that if Triple H re-signed Punk, what was all the Comic-Con stuff about where Punk insulted his wife? Yep, insult a man’s wife and he wants to throw millions of dollars at you to bring you back after you disrespected his father-in-law and made him go crazy. I guess they can figure it all out and make it logical at the end, but I have my doubts. I really thought the CM Punk angle was one that they could’ve stretched out for months to crescendo into something really hot. Last night, he looked like a superstar, but he’d only been gone from TV for one week and the steam is already coming off.

I haven’t logged a WWE non-PPV in a while and since I’m more interested in this “special” Raw mostly because I expect there to be a lot of history, I figured I might as well pull out the old timely recap.

It should also only take them about 25 months to get to the 1000th episode.

6:03PM – Bret is back! Wait, I thought the General Manager never wanted Bret on WWE TV again?

6:06PM – Hart says that he and the Undertaker were the only two guys who were on the first Raw and who are still with the company. Kane’s music plays and he walks out. Talk about a bait and switch.

6:09PM – Kane brings up Shawn MIchaels and how Bret must’ve loved watching the Undertaker retire him. Jeez, the writers must hate us tonight. Isn’t is supposed to be a celebration?

6:12PM – Kane attacks Bret, the Hart Dynasty come in, and the Undertaker appears and sends Kane walking away. My iPod Touch notification sounds, I mean, the GM e-mails Michael Cole and says that Bret Hart will face Taker. Sigh.

6:13PM – They only thing I remember about the very first raw is Bobby Heenan trying to get inside the building.

6:18PM – Dream nerd tag match – Kaval and Daniel Bryan vs. Michael McGillicuddy and Kofi Kingston vs. The Miz and Alex Riley. Ok, maybe only a dream nerd tag team.

6:22PM – Miz had to skull crush poor Kaval for the finale. Then he had to clip Bryan with his briefcase. I wonder if this was their way of trying to get people to vote for Alex Riley for tomorrow’s NXT season finale?

6:31PM – Melina pinned Layla in a tag match with Melina and Eve vs. LayCool. Eve didn’t even get in the match. Maybe they’re running low on time. LayCool challenged Melina to a title unification match. I’m guessing this is at Night Of Champions. I say they keep the Diva belt over the women’s title. Melina accepted as long as it’s a Lumberjack match. King or Cole made sure to use the term Lumberjills. Melina must’ve messed up.

6:40PM – So far, out of four of the historic packages they’ve shown, two have been from the last two years. What an utter fail. No one wants to see that stuff. We want to see Austin, Rock, Foley, and HBK. Well, it’s better than the HHH hype that I expect to be coming shortly.
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March 8th, when TNA returns to Monday Nights, this time permanently (unless they tank), at 9PM to compete with WWE.

This is interesting because the last time TNA went head to head with WWE on Monday Nights was the infamous January 4th show when they made their debuts. Apparently, rather than try to pop a buyrate by having Flair’s first televised match since his retirement on this hemisphere and Hogan’s last in forever, they are planning to throw haymakers at WWE.

The planned match as of this writing is AJ Styles and Ric Flair vs. Abyss and Hulk Hogan. Sources close to TNA have speculated that the Abyss feud with AJ is only a placeholder until The Pope can retake the primary feud.

This is an interesting strategy to examine considering that the rumors of RVD coming in and Jeff Hardy returning on that date are going to be running rampant as we approach March 8th, but just to seal the deal, will have Hogan and Flair make a dual debut. I wonder if this is just a desperation tactic for that night. The issue is – how will they be able to follow it up afterward?

Rumors are also flying that the final Thursday Impact is set to be headlined by AJ Styles vs. Desmond Wolfe vs. Abyss vs. The Pope in a non-title four-way. Should be a fun match, but I wouldn’t have Pope and AJ touch until Lockdown. Oh well, this is TNA.

Brother, if it wasn’t 1995-esque before… it sure as hell is now!

Usually, Smackdown isn’t a newsworthy show. It’s just a good wrestling show heavy on the matches and not as heavy on the angles. But come Mania time, Smackdown can be just as newsworthy and angle-worthy as Raw, in addition to having the strong wrestling. Last Friday’s show was really good in this way.

They were able to keep the intrigue alive of who Edge was going to challenge, as he teased spearing The Undertaker at the end of the show. He also went face to face with Chris Jericho, giving Chris Jericho the “how dare you?” for being happy that Edge was injured and unable to continue doing his childhood dream. Edge was in total babyface mode. CM Punk was also made strong as he danced with Jericho, Edge, and Taker in the main event segment.

The other intriguing angle from Smackdown was Dave Batista losing to Punk in the match to be the participant in the Smackdown Elimination Chamber. After showing footage of Batista attacking John Cena after Raw went off the air, Batista walked out of his match and was counted out, taking him out of the chamber match and adding more intrigue to the John Cena/Vince McMahon/Bret Hart storyline. Why did Batista opt out? Did Vince want him to opt out? We got a little bit of progression on Monday when Vince admitted that he paid Batista to attack Bret Hart, but it’s not yet transparent.

Now that both Elimination Chambers are set, here are the main events for the formerly known as No Way Out PPV.
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Here’s a video of what happened when Raw went off-air. It’s awesome to see stuff like this.