My apologies to one and all for missing the SmackDown recap. I still haven’t even seen the show, but I’ve got a good excuse: the greatest deal on Amazon finally arrived, and I spent the weekend drowning in jelly bean heaven. I’ve been looking for a place to get bulk jelly beans, because Wal-Mart just sells the stupid tiny packs that are full only of disappointment and longing.

…Hm, does Dayton have a Jelly Belly store, like how New York has an M&M Store? I need to look into that. Either way, buying jelly beans in bulk is the best way to go since they’re so damn expensive, and my new purchase should do me for the next month. Hooray! If only I had some control over the flavors… the black licorice ones, like real black licorice, are awful devil spawn only pretending to be candy. Blech.

Okay, enough of my sweet tooth. It’s time for RAW, and I’m watching for The Miz. Let’s roll!

Pre-Segment 1: Good news: we’re in my favorite city in the universe, Pittsburgh. Better news comes a moment later, and the fans have a hilarious reaction. Justin Roberts says “Please welcome the voice of WWE”—followed by a cascade of boos—“…please welcome, good old JR!” Massive cheers.

And here comes Cole, and the crowd turns to boos again. He’s got a stuffed gut, the black hat, and a soft collar on his left leg, as he gives the shittiest impression ever—also doing the Marlon Brando trick of stuffing his mouth with cotton—as he gets to ringside. Jerry Lawler is pissed enough to stand up, and Cole scurries into his Lexan blast chamber again, which this week is flanked by two guards. He sticks his tongue out at Lawler; mature broadcast journalist, there. But now, we’re going to start the show for realz, and apparently, it’s time to play the game.

Segment 1: Trips gets both cheers and boos as he talks about how awesome his WrestleMania match will be against the Undertaker. The words are generic, but well-spoken and actually sound heartfelt as he puts over the Streak, and says ending the Streak will be more of a career-defining moment than possibly all of his championships put together.

Trips says that before they beat the shit out of each other in two weeks, he wants to have a staredown in the ring next week. Trips will take that time to explicitly tell Taker that he’s going to beat his ass; Trips specifically wants to look Taker in the eye and say “You will lose.” That sounds about as responsible as using diarrhea as sex lubricant, but Trips really wants it. He concludes by saying directly at the camera: “At WrestleMania, you go 18-and-1… At WrestleMania, you will rest… in… peace.”

That seems even less responsible than the statement before it, but we don’t have time to dwell on it as Ted DiBiase of all people pop out of the back. Some girl absolutely loses her shit and squeals like a pig in heat, but everyone else boos him. Ted says how he was a rising star a year ago, but now he seems to be an afterthought, and he doesn’t like that very much. He says—with picture-perfect Randy Orton delivery—that he’s going to be seen and noticed because he’s going to take out Trips tonight.

So Ted gets on the apron, is immediately knocked off, and gets his ass completely handed to him. Trips even gets a chair into the proceedings, and concludes by doing a Pedigree through the announce table… after doing Taker’s throat slash taunt. Good showing, Ted.

Segment 2 [Singles Match]: Sheamus defeats Evan Bourne by pin. Very short, action-packed match. Almost a squash, they went back-and-forth for a minute, then Evan whiffed on Airbourne. Sheamus quickly followed up with the Blarney Boot, and that was that.

Post-Segment 2: Sheamus reminds us he’s “our new champion of the United States of America!” But before anyone can boo, Daniel Bryan hits the ring to respond. He says that America kicks ass because everyone gets an opportunity, and he wants to use his opportunity to invoke his rematch clause at WrestleMania. Sheamus responds by tossing DB the title belt, and as DB catches it, Sheamus hits him with a Blarney Boot. Or rather, he hits the belt with a Blarney Boot, which then smacks into DB’s face. DB is left laid out, Sheamus leaves with the title, and he again he proclaims he’s the champion of the United States of America. That… might get annoying. But I like it for now.

Segment 3: Randy Orton is here, coming off a bus, which I find amusing. Oh wait, it’s his private bus; well, okay then. The new interviewer whose name I don’t remember asks him about the bus, sadly. Orton talks about how awesome the bus is since he can take his family with him to events, and then that the New Nexus sucks and he’s happy he’s taken them all out. And he assures us that CM Punk may think he’s sick and twisted but doesn’t really know what “sick and twisted” is. I’m not entirely sure how we got from A to B, but to be fair, I bet Orton doesn’t either.

Pre-Segment 4: We smash cut from Orton to Maryse, who is in the ring bending backward over the top rope, which activates several biological urges in me simultaneously. Can I promote her to my #2.5?

Segment 4 [Singles Match]: Eve defeats Maryse by pin. Meh, never mind: you can’t wrestle like that and be my #2.5. Like last week, Cole interrupted the match by saying how boring it was, which, to be fair, he was right about. At the end, Eve tried her signature standing moonsault, but Maryse blocked it. Then I swore Maryse screamed “Well Michael, what about now?,” but Lawler said that whatever she said was French, so one of us has bad hearing. Anyway, Maryse went from that to attempting a reverse neckbreaker, but as they stood there holding each other, Eve spun on her Z axis and somehow succeeded in changing whose head was in whose armpit, leading to Eve hitting a spinning neckbreaker. It looked confusing at best, but it worked and finished the match.

After the match, Cole says thank god that’s over, prompting Eve to attempt to breach the Cole Mine. The Arena Security Staff stop her from getting too close, but Cole stupidly stands on his private table to scream at her from over the top of the Lexan walls… prompting Eve to reach up and slap him. The crowd gives her the biggest cheer she’s ever received, but the guards peel her away as he threatens to fight her. Classy.

Segment 5 [Tag Match]: Justin Gabriel & Heath Slater (w/ The Corre) defeat Vladimir Kozlov & Santino Marella (w/ Tamina) by pin. Another very fast match, it was back and forth for about 60 seconds when they Justin was able to hit a 450 Splash on Vlad to end it. After the match, the whole of Corre assaults the faces, and then…

Post-Segment 5: Big Show’s music—mixed with Kane’s—hits the arena, and the two big men hit the ring. Unlike last week’s SmackDown, where Corre beat the shit out of both of them, they were in-tune and absolutely mauled the heels, ending with a dual chokeslam on Zeke. After Kane blows his corner pyros, Vlad and Santino apparently thank the guys for the save. Kane and Show don’t seem to care one way or another, but either way, I guess this means Kane is a bona fide face now.

Segment 6: John Cena is on the Titantron, as now he’s bringing it from his house live via satellite. I have to give credit to Cena, as it must take an immense feat of superpowers to conduct this interview without a hint of irony. Truly, after saying that what makes him better than The Rock is showing up week after week live for the fans, doing this takes a set of balls so massive that he permanently installed a forklift to his pelvis.

Cena tries to be ultra-serious about next week, because he and Rock will both be standing face-to-face live in person on RAW. He meanwhile admits that he’s underestimated The Miz, and that Miz’s ass-beatings on him the last month prove that he deserves to be the champ. And Miz is in fact celebrating tonight (what Miz is calling a “rewriting of Miz-tery”) and John—pause for emotional crocodile tears—wishes he could be there tonight to see it in person.

…A comment which immediately fires up alarm bells in my head, as I’m now 100% sure Cena is going to wreck Miz’s celebration and actually show up tonight. That would explain why Cena isn’t feeling the irony after all.

Anyway, as soon as Cena flashes his stupid smirk, which seems to indicate that the interview is done, Cole finds a mic and says that as big as Rock/Cena are both just doing asshole satellite segments, Cole is here in person! And on the other side of the commercial break, Cole has another “present” for Lawler. Hm…

Segment 7: After the commercial, we see that Jack Swagger is there with Cole too. Jack shortly hops out of the ring and stands guard between Jerry’s seated position and the ring as this goes on. We get a clip of Brian Christopher’s blathering last week, so now we get a slide show of Jerry’s dad, William Jerome Lawler accompanied with snarky comments from Cole.

Cole’s punch line is that his family is comprised of nothing but losers. Lawler hops up, and Jack punches him in the face. Jerry is able to dodge the next blow and slam his face against the table, then dives in the ring. Cole bails and runs around to Jack’s side of ringside, and Jerry stupidly follows. Jack nails him with a clothesline, then smashes his face against the glass of the Cole Mine, where Cole talks shit to him.

Jack then puts Lawler on his face and slaps on the ankle lock. Cole pops out and takes Jack’s place, holding the ankle lock for awhile. Jerry sorta-kinda taps, and Cole finally lets go, posing over Jerry’s corpse as he high-fives Jack.

You know, unlike the wankers, I’m actually enjoying the storyline overall, but several of Cole’s segments have felt entirely too long… and this was definitely one of them.

Segment 8: We come from commercial, and Cole apologies for “letting Jerry push his buttons,” which makes sense only if you have an aneurysm. And from there, we get a video package of what Josh Mathews sadly calls “Snooki Mania.” I think now I’ve got an aneurysm.

Segment 9: So we’re supposed to have a match, John Morrison vs. Dolph Ziggler. Dolph comes with Vickie Guerrero and Laycool, and John’s got Trish Stratus. I’m surprised no one advertised that Trish was showing up again, but whatever. The match started, shit quickly broke down, and General Manager Vista decided to just make everyone fight everyone else. We deal with another commercial, but after that…

Commercial: I really want to see Your Highness. I became an instant fan of Danny McBride after Tropic Thunder, and I love fantasy movies, and I love satire, so this should be a triple-threat of fun and hilarity. The trailers look pretty sweet too.

Fun fact: when I first typed that last paragraph, I typed “Chi McBride” instead of “Danny McBride.” They look slightly different, don’t they?

Segment 10 [Handicap 4-on-2 Intergender Tag Match]: Vickie Guerrero et al defeat John Morrison & Trish Stratus by pin. Despite the “intergender” stipulation, we didn’t get to see much man-on-woman violence. JM opened with Dolph and had the honor to tag out when Dolph did too. Trish then became the Face In Peril but looked damn good in the process, apparently shedding all the ring rust she had a few weeks ago. (She didn’t really have ring rust last week either, but everything she did this week just seemed a bit smoother.) Finally, she made the hot tag out to JoMo, and again had the honor to wait until Vickie tagged out to Dolph.

Dolph then proceeded to get his ass kicked until he was set up for the Starship Pain. At that point, Layla ran around the ring and pulled Trish off the apron. Her movements distracted JoMo, who took a little too long to hit the Starship Pain, giving Dolph time to move. Dolph then followed up with the Zig Zag, then tagged out so Vickie could make the actual pin. She did so, doing a cougar-esque pawing-in-the-air as she did so.

Segment 11 [Singles Match]: Rey Mysterio defeats Randy Orton by countout, presumably. So, this match existed as a “WrestleMania rewind” match. After a minute of back-and-forth, CM Punk appears on the Titantron. Referring to Orton’s previous promo, Punk agrees that he doesn’t know what “sick and twisted” means… but he does know what a kick-ass bus Orton owns, and just can’t wait to meet his wife.

Orton shows class and honor that, heretofore, we’ve never seen by immediately bailing from the ring and hauling ass to the parking lot. He arrives to find the bus door locked, and instantly gets Nancy Kerriganed by Punk with a wrench. Punk talks some shit, then stomps Orton’s face from point-blank range on the cement.

Orton’s wife materialized behind the door before Orton was stomped but after he was Kerriganed, making me wonder why she wasn’t there in the first place to warn him, but I guess she has his level of intellectual equipment. (Unless we’re willing to grant that she had no idea Punk was even out there in the first place and only moved to the door when Orton knocked on it, which would explain away the stupidity… You know what? That’s what I’m going with, because then I won’t have to ponder the fact that Orton and his wife have a combined IQ of 94.)

Whatever the reason, Orton’s wife looks on angrily, and Punk blows her a kiss in the sleaziest possible way. After he smirks and leaves, only then does she pop out and call for help while uselessly touching Orton and asking if he’s okay.

Segment 12: …And that was our main event match, because after commercial, it’s 10:54pm and the ring is carpeted in red, so clearly we’re done with wrestling and now it’s time for the main event promo. Alex Riley is there and informs us that he’s been rehired by WWE as “Vice-President of Corporate Communications,” a position I have to assume he’s grossly underqualified for. But whatever: he’s here to show a mysterious podium draped with a black cloth, and he announces and introduces The Miz.

Miz hits the ring presently wearing a god-awful pink shirt/purple tie combo, then goes down memory lane of how people would drop hundreds of dollars to see Muhammad Ali fight, or Michael Jordan play ball… and now, we’re all thrilled to be watching Miz! Miz says that people said he was annoying (sadly, I was one of them), but look where we are now!

Miz gives himself props for imitating Rock last week since he “was the first person who ever actually imitated The Rock correctly.” He puts himself over as having more charisma than Shawn Michaels, is physically more dominant than Andre the Giant, and is more intelligent than Cena and Rock combined. The way he puts it all, his delivery, is a thing of beauty.

So now, Miz stands near the podium and says that he has flipped people’s perceptions of him, and has flipped the wrestling world since he arrived. And now he… Well, he takes off the little plastic cube that has the WWE logo on it from the mic and holds it up. “And now, I have flipped the WWE logo…” which he does, making it an M. He slides the cube back on the mic, and the crowd actually starts cheering for this, giving him props for being pretty damn inventive and clever. “And that M? Stands for Miz.” More huge cheers.

And it’s only now that I consciously realize that Miz doesn’t have the title belt. Does this mean it’s the end of the retarded spinner belt?

Well, uh, no. Miz pulls back the black cloth, and the belt’s still the belt, but the WWE logo is indeed upside down. Still pretty sweet. Miz assures us that the title is going to look like this for the rest of forever. And he’s not going to be a multi-time champion, because he’s never going to lose it… because HE’S THE MIZ, and HE’S… AWESOME!

…And then Cena appears on the Titantron, golf-clapping, and he proceeds to crap all over Miz’s promo as being lame. Cena says that the promo was like how Cena himself has been getting his ass kicked, but then proceeds not actually complete the analogy.

But then a couple stagehands appear and move the “walls” of Cena’s “house,” and we get some kickass murals of Mario Lemieux in the background. Surprise (to absolutely nobody except apparently Michael Cole), he’s actually here! Which explains the lack of irony!

Cena hits the ring, goes right after both guys, and manages to get the upper hand. However, Miz bails before anything can really happen, and Alex winds up in the SSTF. Miz looks on from the stage but is unwilling to engage. Cena lets go and celebrates when Miz finally gives Broad Gesturing for “fuck it” and just leaves.

Final Thoughts: Meh. It was sustainable episodic TV, but from a pure workrate perspective, the only match that lasted over a minute was the 4-on-2 tag match. The storylines advanced, but if you’re not an every-week watcher, it isn’t really worth going out of your way to see this one.

Next week will be the last RAW before WrestleMania, and they’re stacking the deck. We’ll have Taker/Trips face-to-face, we’ll have Cena/Rock face-to-face (with Miz probably not waiting too long in the wings), Trish might pop up again… Hell, at this point I wouldn’t even be surprised if Austin finds a reason to show up. It’s probably a must-see episode… unlike this one.

Grade: C-