Silly, sure, but we both got a good laugh at it. Until I got home, that is, and found out the power was out for-real in my apartment. Not a huge deal—as much as I love my computer and consoles, my life doesn’t revolve around electronics—but it was pretty hot since I couldn’t operate my fans or air conditioning.

Plus I was a little worried about my food, since I was silly enough to buy a bunch of perishables before coming home, but luckily everything turned out okay. (My apartment is on the same grid as city hall and the city jail, so power usually comes back quickly.)

Wasn’t that a fascinating story? No? Well, that’s okay, you’re not here to hear me blather; you’re here to hear grown men in tight trunks prattle! So let’s get to RAW where, uh, stuff will happen I’m sure…

Segment 1: Despite the beatdown he suffered at the hands of Big Show last week, it’s John Cena who’s here to open the show. They’ve got the RAW Money in the Bank briefcase hanging over the center of the ring to remind us what the next pay-per-view is, which includes Cena himself. If you may recall, John Cena, Kane, Chris Jericho, and Big Show have qualified for the RAW MitB match. Pretty sure they’ll be adding or two tonight.

The crowd is on fire and is overwhelmingly pro-Cena tonight. Cena gets a mic and gets to the point, though he’s pretty upbeat: despite the assault last week, Cena actually thanked his assaulters (he’s counting Jericho as well). See, Jericho said last week that anything can happen at a Money in the Bank match, so last week’s assault was just training for what could happen at the RAW MitB. Cena assures us though that he’ll be ready for it all when the PPV rolls around, and he’ll come away with the contract, then cash it in for the WWE Championship.

And, uh, here comes Daniel Bryan without music, who just repeats “Yes!” a hundred times as he hits the ring. He insists that Cena is basically irrelevant to him, but at MitB, he’ll totally beat CM Punk for the WWE Championship. Ergo, if Cena does get the contract, then DB will simply cause Cena to be the first winner to cash in the contract and lose.

And here comes CM Punk without music as well. Punkers polls Cena, Jerry Lawler, and the audience; apparently, everyone disagrees with DB’s assessment of the situation. Punk specifically asked, “Do you disagree with DB?,” and got everyone chanting “Yes!” again.

DB isn’t amused and begs someone on the roster to stop stealing his catchphrases and actually have an original thought. Punkers provides that original thought: AJ is the guest ref and will totally help Punk win! Then Punk ignores DB entirely as he says that if Cena does win MitB, well, then it’s Cena/Punk one more time for awesomeness.

And here comes Chris Jericho with his music. CJ quickly tells Punk that his blathering wasn’t an original thought at all, and DB needs to just stop complaining about people stealing his catchphrases since it happens to him all the time, “No offense to you Mr. ‘Best in the World.’ ” Punk replies: “No offense taken, Mr. Bon Jovi.” Heh.

CJ tells DB to shut up, introduces us to RAW is Jericho, and that no one will EEEVVVEEERRR be the same again. Cute. [Ed. Note: Cena made me laugh here, as he was -- with a very serious look of sincere concentration -- counting along as Jericho showed off how easy it is to have multiple catchphrases.] CJ has enough of cheap pops so he focuses on Cena then, declaring that he will so totally win the MitB match, and he dares any of them to come to the ring and tell him otherwise.

And here comes Kane, which makes Jericho immediately regret his choice of words with perfect Broad Gesturing and expressions. Kane uses Jericho’s mic just to look at him and say “Otherwise.” Heh, again.

And here comes Big Show, thus crowding the ring substantially. Cena starts freaking out and wants him to come down to the ring, but DB attacks him from behind. Thus starts at five-way brawl in the ring, six once Show finally gets to the ring to start brawling with Show. That doesn’t last long as Kane goes after him as well, but Show stands tall and dominates. Everyone winds up flat on their back… and then Show leaves. Message given, message received.

Segment 2 [8-Man Tag Match]: Santino Marella, Christian, Kofi Kingston, & R-Truth defeat David Otunga, Cody Rhodes, & The Prime Time Players (w/ AW) by pin. Decent enough match for what it was. The faces had a lot of gold among them (or gold and whatever the Tag Titles are made of), and it was a fun little match to watch.

Standard formula with all the faces getting in some offense, and I think all the heels did as well, though honestly I’m not entirely sure if Cody did anything. Didn’t matter: Kofi was the face in peril strangely enough, with Santino playing the savior. Santino went on a roll against Otunga but wasn’t able to close the deal after the PTP broke up his pin attempt.

Thus started a Pier Eight Brawl, but that was quickly aborted as AW pulled his guys out of the ring and screamed “We don’t need this!” Otunga crawled to the heels’ corner for a tag, but Cody saw the writing on the wall and decided to bail too.

That’s when Brodus Clay’s music fired up, and he and the Funkadactyls hit ringside (because Otunga beat the crap out of Brodus’s leg, remember?). Otunga tried to bail east, but Christian caught him and tossed him back in. So then Otunga tried to bail north, but Kofi and Truth caught him. Then Otunga tried to bail west, but Brodus caught him and tossed him back in. No punch was thrown so I guess that means no DQ was drawn, so Santino finally hit the Cobra and made the pin. Fun opener, but not exactly useful for the storylines.

After the match, Christian hit Otunga with the Killswitch, and Brodus nailed him with a splash just as revenge. Brodus and the Funkadactyls started dancing around, and basically the others joined him, although Santino was really into it. I’m surprised he didn’t sprain something.

Segment 3: We smash-cut to the back where Teddy Long is dancing along with them while watching a monitor. That’s when Alberto Del Rio and Ricardo Rodriguez wander in. ADR reminds Teddy that he’s had a title match owed to him for the past three months since before his concussion, and every time he’s been promised the match, someone gives him the runaround and doesn’t give it to him. (Translation: the WWE “Creative” Team forgot entirely and are only just now remembering that little C-word they don’t often remember to use.) So, yes, as Rick pointed out in his editor’s note in our SmackDown recap, someone is finally retconning things so ADR’s story makes sense again. Such retconning should never be necessary in the first place, but hey: better retcon than non-continuity, I suppose. DC Comics lives and dies by that credo.

Anyway, ADR begs, but T-Long disagrees and says that ADR doesn’t deserve anything… but the Board of Directors disagrees, and ADR will get his title match at Money in the Bank against Sheamus! But that’s in a couple weeks… for now, he’s got a match next (after commercials). ADR wants to know who his opponent is, but it’s going to be a “Teddy Long surprise, playa.” Huh.

So, yeah, to use Rick’s vernacular: plus-ten for retconning things so ADR gets his match after all, but minus several million for needing a retcon in the first place.

Segment 4: We get another RAW memory, a new one surprisingly, this one from Stephanie McMahon. It’s the training montage where Shane McMahon trained Vince for the Royal Rumble against Stone Cold back in 1999. That, I confess, was pretty funny, and I had forgotten about it. Until literally one nanosecond into the montage, when I remembered the chicken, which was the best part. Ha!

Segment 5: As ADR hits the ring for his match, the crowd starts chanting something in Spanish. Was that “Pendejo,” or were my ears deceiving me?

The mystery opponent was Sin Cara, but as Cara made his entrance, ADR just beat the holy crap out of him and chucked him out of the ring. There, ADR slapped on the Cross Arm Breaker, and Sin Cara started tapping out like a madman. Two things: they’re outside the ring, and the ref never rang the bell. ADR didn’t care and just held the move for entirely too long. The ref was totally useless at breaking it up, but ADR eventually let him go.

ADR stood and flashed a shit-eating grin to everyone as they started up their chant again. Jerk.

Segment 6: We get a close up of what’s supposed to be CM Punk’s wrist wraps with the X’s on them, but it’s a red X instead of a black one… and those hands have black fingernail polish on them. Unless Punk has gone goth in the last half-hour since the opening, I’m pretty sure those are dainty girl hands.

Yup, it’s AJ, who is playing with some bracelets too that match her outfit. Pretty hot, she looks good in blue. Daniel Bryan arrives from behind and, after stealing a rose from a bouquet, tries to apologize to DB and gives her the flower. She says it’s totally sweet of him to apologize… and is sure this apology has nothing to do with her being named special referee.

DB tries to deny that, but AJ isn’t falling for that crap, and knows that DB never cared about her at all. So she’s going to out, win her match tonight, then run into “the arms of the man who the WWE fans know is my soul mate.” Poor Punk. Or lucky Punk, I’m not sure which.

AJ caps off her line be biting the flower off the stem, then spitting it out at DB’s feet. Awesome… and crazy. She slaps the stem into DB’s chest—too bad it didn’t have thorns—and walks merrily away.

Segment 7: Seems like Brock Lesnar himself isn’t responding to Triple H’s challenge for a SummerSlam match. Instead, it’s Paul Heyman doing a to-camera interview via satellite. Michael Cole poses the question to Heyman, who says that Brock does have “an answer,” and will deliver that answer “straight to Triple H’s face” at the 1000th episode of RAW, which is in three weeks.

Heyman posits that Trips indeed wants to face Lesnar, but not for the reasons Trips has stated. Heyman thinks Trips is just doing this for a money grab so he has the financial backing to deal with the lawsuits that Heyman will level against him, especially the new one in light of Trips punching him in the face two weeks ago.

Heyman also thinks Trips wants to face him at SummerSlam as an “exit strategy,” that Trips wants to get the crap beaten out of him so he can end his in-ring career and move on to being a permanent executive. Stupid logic, but whatever.

Oh wait, Heyman clarifies: he thinks Trips wants to leave that way so he can end his in-ring career “by being carried out on his shield” like a hero, and then go on to live that faux legacy for the rest of forever. Interesting… it’s a stretch, but it’s somewhat believable.

Random Commentator Announcement: Apparently matches are being tweeted now, as Long has made two more matches for tonight: Kane vs. Big Show in a no-DQ match, and Sheamus & AJ vs. Dolph Ziggler & Vickie Guerrero in a mixed tag match. Huh. The latter match is happening on the other side of the commercial.

Pre-Segment 8: Vickie gives herself a fantastic boxing entrance in lieu of any music, even calling herself the Queen Diva. Vickie, in her skin-tight wrestling outfit, looks like she’s really lost some weight. She’s actually looking pretty good, other than that hairstyle.

Segment 8 [Mixed Tag Match]: AJ & Sheamus defeat Vickie Guerrero & Dolph Ziggler by pin. Fun match, nothing special. It was basically the Sheamus and Dolph show, and it was technically executed well with no noteworthy spots. Well, other than a bizarre DDT delivered by Dolph where he sorta tweaked Sheamus’s neck on the way down. Not sure if that was intentional, an accident, or just a weird optical illusion from the camera angle.

In antithesis to Dolph’s recent matches, this one was practically a squash. Sheamus dominated, though Dolph got in a few attacks. Like was saw in Dolph’s last match, we had a spot where Sheamus was leaning on the second rope facing outside the ring, aka the 619 position if Rey Mysterio had been involved. Dolph exited the ring on that side, stood on the apron, then did a running Shining Wizard-like move (basically a falling enziguri, or maybe just a falling one-legged dropkick). It doesn’t have a name, but if that’s one of Dolph’s new signature moves, I’m onboard. It involves Dolph basically jumping off the apron and belly-flopping the ringside mats, which can’t tickle. Solid move with a bit of risk.

Anyway, that wasn’t enough to stop or even slow Sheamus, who went on a tear and set up for the Blarney Boot. Dolph tagged out, and Vickie yelled at him for it… until AJ came in, kicked her in the stomach, then did a stiff and sloppy Shining Wizard to Vickie’s face. One pin later, and the faces win.

After the match, as AJ’s music played, she stole the mic from Lilian Garcia, then stole DB’s catchphrase once again.

Segment 9: Smoothly from replays, AJ skips back to the ring, and we cut to her wandering backstage. She finds Punk, who’s on the phone, and wonders who he was talking to. She interrupts him so much that he finally hangs up, then asks why she would be bothering him when he was on the phone with his sister.

AJ sorta looks hurt, but brushes it aside and merrily asks if Punk saw her match. Punk replies he didn’t know she even had a match since, again, he was on the phone with a personal issue. That breaks AJ’s heart, and though he apologizes for not seeing her match, she weeps with “You weren’t… paying attention to me?” before running off. Good god, that particular line makes me think of one my exes… ugh.

For Punk’s part, he hits a cartoonish “What’d I do?” face expression. Not subtle, that particular one.

Pre-Segment 10: As we come back from commercial, Heath Slater is in the ring. And then we get a montage of Slater getting his ass kicked over the last few weeks by the returning WWE stars. After that, Slater tells us all that that shit ain’t funny, because he’s the One Man Band, damnit! He’s not a clown!

Wait… clown? Oh good lord, here comes Doink. There’s another name I never thought I’d type again.

Segment 10 [Singles Match]: Heath Slater squashes Doink the Clown. Really?

Post-Segment 10: Diamond Dallas Page hits the ring? Really? I guess WWE wanted to remind everyone that Randy Orton exists, so they let DDP hit the ring to deliver the RKO Diamond Cutter? Nice little surprise, I suppose, but pretty pointless.

Segment 11: Another long trailer for No Holds Barred, then commercials. Bah.

Segment 12 [Singles No-DQ/No-Countout Match]: Big Show defeats Kane by pin. Pretty much an extended squash, this match was conducted more outside the ring than inside. Kane got the shit beaten out of him, and though he had a couple hope spots, it wasn’t much.

It was pretty slowly paced, a little slower than I’m comfortable with, but given who’s involved and the stipulation, I suppose it wasn’t all bad. The finish saw Show toss Kane in the ring, then a steel chair. Kane managed to avoid eating steel, but wound up tweaking an ankle in the process. He hobbled around and retrieved the chair, but as he readied it, Show hit a Spear out of nowhere into the chair, which bounced into Kane’s face. Not sure how smart of a move that was on Show’s part.

Kane agonizingly rolled around and subtly pushed the chair into the center of the ring under the guise of attempting to pick it up. Very smooth. Show recovered, though selling the left shoulder since that’s what hit the chair, then chokeslammed Kane onto the chair. That did it, and the fans were not happy (for the right reasons).

Segment 13: Hey, it’s Eve! She runs into Teddy Long, who says since she’s been gone several weeks, he’s got something for her: a huge nametag with “My Name is Eve!” Heh.

Long leaves and Eve rips it apart, then starts heading down the hall and runs into the melancholy AJ. Eve says that AJ has certainly been busy in the last few weeks, but should leave the mind games to the grownups. Instead, AJ should do what all little girls do: go into the corner and cry.

Eve starts to leave, and AJ says at her back “You’ll do anything for attention, won’t you Eve?” What’s with this sudden “attention” theme? C’mon AJ, you’re reminding me of my bad ex and making me uncomfortable.

Eve turns back around to face AJ, who goes on to run down Eve’s activities prior to her disappearance (to film that reality TV show that I can’t remember the name of). AJ says that Eve tried to seduce Johnny Ace, who is gone, so who is she going to brown-nose next? Or what TV shows or movies will she be in? It’s all to get attention!

Well, AJ is going to show her how to get attention. She’s going to show them all how to get attention.

AJ smiles and leaves, and Eve looks worried. I think that’s the first time I’ve agreed with Eve since her heel turn.

Segment 14: Oh, back to reruns for the RAW memories. Now it’s ADR’s memory of DX trying to drive the tank into WCW’s arena.

Seriously, when you have several dozen guys on a roster and drawing from nearly a thousand episodes of footage, you would think they wouldn’t need to do any reruns.

Segment 15 [Singles Match]: Tyson Kidd reverse-squashes Tensai (w/ Sakamoto) by pin. Holy shit, this is the indicator that Kidd’s star is on the rise! The match was over in about fifteen seconds, and I think it’s similar to Shelton Benjamin going clean over Triple H many moons ago. (I’m not saying Tyson over Tensai is equal in terms of importance or shock, but it’s not like this one was any sort of foregone conclusion.)

Tensai opened the match by trapping Kidd in the corner and headbutting the skull out of his face. Tensai then did a clean break at the ref’s insistence, but Tensai charged Kidd. Kidd dodged, making Tensai slam himself chest-first into the corner. Kidd quickly rolled him up and earned the three-count, then bailed before Tensai could recover and take revenge.

Awesome! Can’t wait to see where Kidd is going.

Post-Segment 15: Without Kidd to assault, Tensai just beats the crap out of Sakamoto. Jerk. Once he was done, we see that Tensai had a small cut over the bridge of his nose. Not sure if that was from something Kidd did or during Sakamoto’s beatdown.

Segment 16: Jericho is getting ready in the back when DB comes up to him. They insult each other’s fashion sense, then decide they need to figure out how to embarrass Cena and Punk tonight. DB says “Yes!”

CJ says “Don’t say that.”

“Yes!”

“Stop it.”

“Yes!”

And on and on. Eventually DB is just screaming his chants, so then CJ starts chanting back “Ever again! Again! Again! Again!” Funny, but just plain awful trying to put it into text.

Segment 17: Elsewhere backstage, Punk and Cena are chatting about how they should mess with the heels, I guess. Punk insists that now that he’s the champ, Cena needs to follow his lead. Cena hesitates, then says “Okay, I’ll just listen to you.” Punk seems placated, but my money is on Cena not exactly being honest there.

Segment 18: After commercials, Josh Mathews interviews Tyson Kidd in the back… for two seconds. Then Tensai arrives and beats the total crap out of him by slamming his head a couple times into the lockers. It’s like my high school routine every day.

Segment 19 [Tag Match]: CM Punk & John Cena and Daniel Bryan & Chris Jericho wrestle to a no contest or double disqualification; your mileage may vary. The first half of the match was a typical Cena match, as he played the face in peril as both heels (especially Jericho) beat the crap out of him. After entirely too long of that, Cena made the hot tag, and the match went from “meh” to “must-watch.” Punk and DB put on a clinic, and they went at a hyper pace for several minutes with fantastic, smooth spots and counters to re-countered counters.

Punk tried to end things with the Anaconda Vise, but CJ broke it up. Cena recovered enough to fling CJ out of the ring, and they brawled all the way to the back. No cameras followed, and it essentially became a singles match.

Punk punctuated things with a top rope superplex, but even that wasn’t enough to finish DB. They continued fantastic back-and-forth action until AJ’s music hit. She pranced around the ring… and no one cared.

Well, the fans did, but not Punk and DB, who ignored the music and her and just kept pummeling each other. Eventually she slowed her skipping with a worried, confused, irritated look on her face. She finished her lap, but still nothing, so she hopped up on the west apron. The guys still beat the crap out of each other, even as the ref was yelling at AJ to get off the apron.

No violence to AJ, but she got even more miffed. She hopped off the apron, then started searching under the ring. Finally on the east side, she discovered a table, which (drawing on her Wrestling Geek background) she properly set up better than most of the guys do. Of note: as she did this, some fan screamed something like, “You’re crazy, call your therapist!” That’s fan moment of the year so far, in my humble opinion.

With the table set up, AJ started laughing… then stopped and looked sad as she considered it. She slowly climbed the stairs to the north apron, then sadly looked at the guys. Then she slowly climbed the northeast corner of the ring, just staring at the table. During all this, apparently there wasn’t any action in the ring; this was excused by DB and Punk hitting opposite ropes and doing running jumping crossbodies to each other simultaneously, which absolutely cannot feel good.

Anyway, AJ climbs up enough so one foot is on the top rope, and one is on the middle. She’s clearly thinking suicide (or at least as much of the concept of suicide WWE will be willing to show when Tim White isn’t involved), and DB finally slips out of the ring. He stands between that corner and the table and tells her not to jump.

AJ looks conflicted but finally climbs up again. Then Punk recovers and stands on the east apron, climbs to the middle rope, and stops her, begging her not to do it. AJ responds by applying the Lip Lock of Womanly Charms… then smirks and shoves Punk off. DB “catches” Punk, and they both crash through the table.

AJ, still on the ropes, is suddenly all smiles as she starts chanting “Yes!” again. And we fade out to black.

Post-Show Commercial: Immediately following the show, we got a quick commercial of some of the RAW superstars and Vince talking about RAW’s move to 8pm starting July 23rd. I only mention it because the commercial was absolutely hilarious, and you need to check it out.

Final Thoughts: WWE has become pretty consistently watchable lately. 19 segments in two hours means a lot of short segments, and a lot of filler. That wasn’t so good, but almost all of it was tolerable. The wrestling, however, was top-shelf stuff. Well… maybe second-to-top shelf, at least in terms of storylines even when workrate wasn’t really important. All major and minor stories advanced well, and I’m not sure anything more needs to be said about this episode that I haven’t said already. It’s definitely a should-watch.

Remember that SmackDown airs tomorrow (or “tonight” by the time you read this), live at 8pm on Syfy with a “Great American Bash” theme, whatever that means. As I’ve said before, I’m a sucker for the red, white, and blue ropes, so if they have that, I’ll be happy. Maybe a food fight too, who knows. [Ed. Note: and Hacksaw Jim Duggan. For realz. He confirmed it over the weekend.]

All right, I’ll see you all tomorrow for the SmackDown recap. Enjoy your Tuesday, folks.

Episode Grade: B+ (excluding the filler)