Around the Ring: Pay-per-view bores, RAW rebounds

Here's my two cents on what I thought was one of the WORST WWE PPVs of the year (matches in no particular order).

World Tag Team Champions Cody Rhodes & Ted DiBiase vs. Cryme Tyme:
Typical WWE tag match here. One of the faces gets worked over most of the match, the bigger one comes in and cleans house and then the heels get a win by something sneaky (thanks to wanna be Umaga look-a-like and poorly named “Manu”). Boring.

Shawn Michaels vs. Chris Jericho
I'm sorry to say that this match fell so short of my expectations that it was almost painful to watch. THIS IS NON SANCTIONED!!! Why did the ref keep pulling them apart? Why did the ref stop the match after HBK gave Jericho not even one-fourth of the beating he got? Where were the weapons? This was so, so very anti-climatic. I was wondering why Jericho was Michael's bitch the whole match and what happened at the end of the night gave me my answer.

Michelle McCool vs. Maryse for the Divas Championship
BORING.

ECW Championship Scramble Match
Mark Henry bear hugs everyone for the five minutes he's in the match. Miz is everyone's laydown/beating boy. I'm happy that Matt Hardy won a belt, but it seems a little less impressive with this match.

Smackdown Championship Scramble Match
This was the worst scramble match of them all. Once again, Shelton Benjamin and Jeff Hardy showed why they are WWE gold, but MVP's lackluster performance and HHH's dominance over almost everyone when he got in the ring really soured the match. The ending was the most ridiculous. Hardy had the match won. He was the champion. So why the hell did he stand there and watch HHH pin MVP with seven seconds left? Instead of kicking HHH and breaking the count, Hardy waited until there was two seconds left and tried a pin of his own on Kendrick. DOES THIS MAKE SENSE? GARBAGE! At least THE Brian Kendrick got to shine a bit during this match and showed his worth with the big boys.

RAW Championship Scramble Match
This match had a little more action than the other two scrambles but the ending, where Jericho replaced an injured CM Punk (due to a concussion from ONE knee to his “head”) and won the belt from a supposedly unaware Batista was also crap. I'm glad Jericho is now the champ because he's gold, but this was another crappy ending.

And now for the side notes:

Big Show's heel turn was so predictable that it was horrible. The whole segment was drawn out and should have been used for Smackdown so we could have had another match. I'm not sure I want to watch another Show/Undertaker feud myself.

So, CM Punk was the champ, pinned JBL many times, jobbed to Jericho and then didn't get to fight in the match that affects his title reign? What are the writers thinking? They could have easily made an excellent Orton/Punk feud with Punk as the champ. Instead, they bury this guy. I can't wait to see how the steel cage match where Punk will try to get his belt back from Jericho will keep Orton from interfering once again.

I've used all my space, but I have to say that Raw the following night was actually the most entertaining in a month and it's nice to see that the Kane/Mysterio feud that we all thought was going to involve Kane's old mask/persona is going to continue.

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