By an odd coincidence, it makes two teams from Philadelphia that make up my backup teams in sports. In the Phillies’ case, it’s all because of Halladay. After he threw his perfect game a couple years ago, this guy thanked his teammates by buying each of them engraved gold Swiss watches. A total class act who is also damn good at what he does… if he’s not an inspiration, I don’t know who is.

Meanwhile, my backup NFL team is the Eagles because of Trent Cole, since I went to the school with the guy. Don’t me wrong, it’s not like we hang out or anything (I haven’t even spoken to him since we left high school), but it’s pretty awesome to know someone personally who is in the NFL. It was trippy to see a classmate’s in Madden, you know? So I have to cheer for him, especially since I know a piece of how far he’s come to be a solid professional football player. Of course, if he’s ever traded or released, the Eagles would officially be invited to kiss my left back pocket.

But enough about sports that aren’t predetermined. Let’s get to RAW and see how Johnny Ace fails as a human being this week.

Segment 1: Speak of the devil, here he comes to open the show. He gives a half-assed explanation about what he did, and will “finish the job Brock Cena started,” and no, that wasn’t a typo. This guy slurs more words than a drunken Irishman trying to speak a sentence in French. Ace goes on that he’s so totally honorable, which is why Cena isn’t here, because he’s forcing Cena to get rehab. That way, Cena won’t have excuses when Ace totally beats him at Over the Limit.

Cena will, however, be pulling a The Rock and be here live via satellite, where he will apologize for making fun of his voice. And for that matter, his voice wasn’t always like this, it was because he was injured in a match in Japan against “Dr. Death” Steve Williams. And while he’s on that topic, he gives us a slideshow of his Japanese days, where he looks just as clueless as he does now.

Ace says the Rock, Austin, and Hogan of Japan, all rolled into one. So now, at Over the Limit, “Ace vs. Cena” will be bigger than Rock or Lesnar against him. Yay? Ace finishes by imploring God to bless us all, bless People Power, and to have mercy on Cena.

And here comes CM Punk with a condescending finger wag on the stage. Punk hits the ring presently and calls bullshit on this “People Power” nonsense, since he totally doesn’t know what we really want to see or hear. So Punk is going to help him out by explaining what we don’t want to see: Ace himself. Cheers abound, and Punk points that out: we don’t want to see Ace, and we certainly don’t need revisionist history on Ace’s “talent.”

Punk is one to speak the truth, so he says to Ace’s face that this whole mess exists just because Ace put all his backing and reputation into Brock Lesnar, and Cena beat him clean. It’s as simple as petty revenge, with Ace attacking Cena only because Lesnar beat the shit out of him first. Oh: and the only reason Ace went to Japan in the first place was because no company or territory would pay to hire him. Truth is he was a joke then, and he’s a joke now, and Punk will watch Over the Limit, not just the parts where he beats Daniel Bryan, but where Cena will beat Ace.

Ace says that if he wasn’t in training for his match against Cena, he would totally kick Punk’s ass. So instead, he’ll have to deal with another guy who went to and came back from Japan: Lord Tensai.

Punk is no dummy and figured Ace would do that. After all, Ace has made a career of hiding behind talented big men, and Punk is fine with that. He’s looking forward to the challenge… just as much as he’s looking forward to Cena twisting Ace into a pretzel and making him tap.

Cue the music, and Punk is out as Ace continues to look offended.

Segment 2: After commercials, Ace is walking in the back and ominously texting when he literally runs into Big Show. Ace calls him stupid and tells him to stay out of his way; Show sardonically calls at him that he’ll do totally do that, then rolls his eyes. Camera pans, and we see that Eve heard him. Uh oh.

Segment 3 [Singles Match for the Intercontinental Title]: Big Show defeats Cody Rhodes by countout, but Rhodes retains. Meh. It was back and forth for a couple minutes, then Show started getting on a roll, and Cody just left.

Post-Segment 3: Cody preens with his title on the stage, then leaves through the back. Show finds a mic and says that Cody needs to get back to the ring, and if he doesn’t, it’s going to be a lot worse for him. Instead, Eve hits the ring and demands an apology from Show for mocking Ace’s voice from Segment 2. She wants a real apology from him too, since she’s pretty confident that there’s no use outside of WWE for a 7-foot 400-pound “freak.”

Show swallows his pride, looks her in the eyes, then gives her as sincere apology as he can give. Eve gives a victorious little smile as Show leaves the ring and mutters to himself as he heads to the back.

Segment 4 [Singles Match]: Dolph Ziggler (w/ Vickie Guerrero & Jack Swagger) defeats Kofi Kingston (w/ R-Truth) by pin. Match had a decent opening, with a strong—

RRRRRROOOSSSAAA!!!

—with a strong finish, but a weak middle. They cut away a couple times to the hottest diva since My Melina, who was watching on a monitor. Well, so were Epico, Primo, and Abraham Washington, who apparently is just going by “AW” now at this point. Mason Ryan appeared too; no words were spoken, but with everyone looking at him, it’s clear that he’s applying to be managed by AW.

Anyway, back to the match. Decent back-and-forth, with a false end game that saw Jack get on the apron as Kofi rallied. Kofi punched him off, managed to block the Zig Zag, and delivered the SOS, but only got a two-count. Kofi tried a second rally, but this time it was Vickie who caused the distraction to the referee. As she did so, Kofi wanted to go off the top rope, but Jack caught his ankle so Kofi just faceplanted the canvas. Dolph followed up with the Zig Zag, and that was it.

Segment 5: Michael Cole is in the ring because it’s time to interview Cena on the Titantron. Cena says that his doctors have recommended that he not compete for several months, but is technically medically cleared. But Cena is a fighter, and there isn’t going to be anything that will stop him from getting to Over the Limit. He also says that the Board of Directors called him rather than just immediately firing Ace over attacking Cena, and Cena begged the Board not to do any actions against Ace until… after… sigh. Why am I recapping this? It’s all vanilla.

Pre-Segment 6: Beth Phoenix is here on commentary for the next match. Cole wants to ask her about her totally sprained ankle, but she doesn’t want to blather about that stupidity. She wants to talk about how to get her title back!

We also get a “WWE.com exclusive,” which makes no damn sense since they’re showing it on TV, of Layla being so happy for winning the title after being out for a year. Nothing notable.

Segment 6 [Tag Match]: Layla & Kelly Kelly defeat Maxine & Natalya by pin. Lame, and it wasn’t Layla’s fault. Maxine had absolutely no heart or effort in the ring. No tags here: K2 basically ran interference by pulling Nattie off the apron, and Layla landed the Lay Out to Maxine. Pin, done.

After the match, Beth and Layla glared at each other, but nothing came about it.

Segment 7 [Tag Match]: Chris Jericho & Alberto Del Rio (w/ Ricardo Rodriguez) defeat Sheamus & Randy Orton by pin. A solidly executed match, with Jericho pretty much talking shit the entire time whether he was the legal man or not. Good match but, really, nothing was really noteworthy. The finish saw a Pier Four Brawl, but Orton RKOed ADR. When Sheamus went for the Blarney Boot though, Jericho ducked it, and Orton ate it instead.

Sheamus was in shock and looked concerned over Orton’s corpse, but it meant his back was to Jericho. Jericho took advantage of him by twirling him around and hitting the Codebreaker. One pin later, and the heels leave victorious.

After the match, Sheamus helped Orton up. Orton returned the favor with an RKO. Not surprising at all, and he got cheered, so I’m 150% sure it’s not leading to a heel turn or anything. It certainly plays to Orton’s character; no complaints.

Segment 8: Johnny Ace is in the back with Eve, and he decides Big Show’s apology earlier was insincere. Eve runs off to deal with him.

Then, Jericho, ADR, and Orton bust in one at a time to argue they should be the next #1 contender for the World Heavyweight Title. Punches are thrown, and then Sheamus appears out of nowhere to start punching too. Once everyone is separated and sent on their way, Ace tells Sheamus that it’s a Fatal Four-Way at Over the Limit. Sounds good to me!

Pre-Segment 9: Brodus Clay hits the ring for a match. We get a pre-taped to-camera where Brodus declares that this Sunday being Mother’s Day, we all need to call our mamas!

And here comes The Miz to bitch that instead of getting the honor of competing for a belt, he has to compete against that. “If I wanted to watch King Hippo jump around, I’d just go play Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out!!.” Yay nerd reference!

Segment 9 [Singles Match]: Brodus Clay (w/ Naomi & Cameron) defeats The Miz by pin. Was it me, or were there actually some strong boos against Brodus toward the end?

Decent match but nothing special. Miz made it competitive but ultimately fell short to Clay’s aggression after a few minutes. Good showing, though; I hope Miz gets another push soon.

Segment 10: We get a replay of the beginning of last week’s RAW where Brock Lesnar broke Triple H’s arm. He has to wear a metal “mechanical” brace and will eventually need surgery, but for now, he’s still running the company as normal. Next week, we’re going to see Triple H talk about it on RAW.

For now, Lesnar was given an invitation to attend tonight’s show, but he declined and instead sent his “legal representation.” Lesnar’s music plays for several bars, and… HOLY SHIT, it’s Paul Heyman! Man, he’s looking a little aged.

Heyman is looking balder and not covering it with a ball cap, but he hasn’t missed a step in cutting a promo. He cheered when he announces his own name, but he puts over Lesnar with fantastic gusto and pretty much instantly gets booed. Heyman says WWE is different now than it was ten years ago when Heyman first represented Brock, and isn’t happy about the changes.

Heyman tries some legalese to justify Lesnar’s demands contract demands, and that he is so totally now betrayed by us fans. So instead of showing up himself, Lesnar has given Heyman an official statement to read. Lesnar isn’t sorry for what he did to Cena or Trips, and Trips has always been scared of him. After all, Trips went against Undertaker for “nearly an hour” in Hell in a Cell at WrestleMania, but couldn’t even go a single minute against Lesnar in a fight! Of course, Heyman sort of glosses over the fact that Lesnar sucker-punched Trips. Lesnar’s statement finishes with the declaration that he’s never coming back, so there; he quits.

Heyman drops the mic and storms away without music, but the fans cheer for Lesnar quitting. Yay! Double yay if it means more appearances from Heyman than a one-off appearance.

Segment 11: Big Show is talking to the two stars of some new show on the USA Network. They insult Johnny Ace and talk about totally investigating why Ace has so much power (because they play cops on TV, you see). They start mocking Ace’s voice, and Show laughs along… until Eve arrives and everyone feels guilty. Uh oh.

Pre-Segment 12: During Punk’s entrance, Ace appears on the stage to cut his music. Ace says that Punk isn’t going to have just a singles match against Tensai; it’ll be a handicap match against Tensai and Daniel Bryan.

Segment 12 [1-on-2 Handicap Match, Tag Rules]: Lord Tensai & Daniel Bryan (w/ Sakamoto) defeat CM Punk by pin. Good match for what it was with a foregone conclusion. It did everything it needed to by storyline, including having DB “show ass” through much of it and let Tensai do the heavy lifting. Superbly executed by everyone involved, too; can’t ask for more.

Tensai busted out a sweet move on Punk during the heel beatdown phase, starting off with a move that I had to pause and think about before I was able to describe it. It’s a double underhook vertical delayed suplex. He’s done double underhook suplexes to other, lighter guys before, but not delayed ones, and certainly not to guys as heavy as Punk. Punk isn’t exactly a super heavyweight, I know, but he’s no Hornswoggle either. (Also: I can’t believe it took this long for “underhook” to be added to my custom Online Onslaught dictiOOnary. And “dictiOOnary,” for that matter.)

The end game saw Punk rallying against DB, but Tensai was able to blindly tag himself in. Punk started to re-rally against Tensai anyway, but as Punk wanted the Macho Man Elbow Drop, Sakamoto distracted the ref on the opposite side of the ring. This let DB trip up Punk, causing him to crotch himself on the corner and fall into the ring. From there, Tensai took control, slathered the Green Mist on his hand, then applied the stupid claw to put Punk down. Punk wasn’t able to kick out despite his shoulders not technically being uncovered; his face was covered, and Tensai had too strong of a grip and was blinding Punk besides.

Post-Segment 12: Tensai was fine with the victory and left with Sakamoto, pausing just long enough to pose on the stage. DB wasn’t done though, so he just shit-kicked Punk’s arm, then slapped on the Yes! Lock twice for good measure.

Final Thoughts: Good night for storylines, but not exactly a thrilling night in the ring. Everything other than the divas match was done well enough, so I’m not exactly sure what the problem was… I honestly can’t tell you why the night didn’t gel with me. My only guess is that I actually watched live, rather than on my normal heavy fast-forward as I usually do, and maybe the commercials and other filler killed my momentum. That’d be a piss-poor reason, but it’s my best guess; or maybe it was the show itself and it’s not just me. There could have been some timing problems, after all, seeing as that the heels didn’t even get entrances in the main event, which was weird.

I’ve said everything I wanted to say, and I still haven’t finished my outstanding IGN projects, which is personally irritating me. Also: the Phillies lost and the Cubs won, which is good. Maybe I’ll have time to watch actual games tomorrow if I get this final guide done. So, I’ll bid you guys good night for now, and we’ll chat again on Saturday-ish for the SmackDown recap if Rick doesn’t have too much fun with post-birthday celebrations!

Happy birthday, Rick! Here’s a present from me to you! [Ed. Note: Thanks. I'll pretend that's because you had leftovers from Cinco de Mayo, and not because you believe I have the same lady-like taste in beer as Randall Orton.]

Episode Grade: C+