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411 Instant Analysis 02.11.13: WWE Monday Night Raw

February 11, 2013 | Posted by Ben Watters

Greetings and salutations everyone and welcome to 411mania’s Monday Night Raw instant analysis. As usual, I’m Ben Watters and I’m here to give you some (possibly controversial) thoughts and views on this week’s Raw Broadcast. So, with cider in hand, let’s get this Elimination Chamber go-home show underway…

SEGMENT ONE: Heyman… Resigns?

Well, this was an interesting segment. I never did believe that Heyman would pull a legit Pope Benedict, but I did enjoy this. You could say it was a waste of time as nothing really happened, but I didn’t totally mind. It built Punk up for the Elimination Chamber title match and, above all else, Punk and Heyman were entertaining. Not a great opener for the show, but not bad either.

Rating: 6.5 out of 10

SEGMENT TWO: Mark Henry vs The Great Khali
Match Result: Mark Henry via World’s Strongest Slam

In an ironic, car crash way, I enjoy a fair amount of Khali matches. They’re so bad, they’re good – like The Room. Regardless of that though, this segment was damn good to watch anyway as Mark Henry is back and he’s destroying people again. Which is always badass. Him getting a clean win over Khali almost immediately after returning is a superb way to make him seem strong straight away and the post match attack of Hornswoggle also made him look like a remorseless monster. Even though people chanted ‘one more time’ afterwards. Which was awesome. And one more thing – this segment was short, snappy and to the point. I like that.

Rating: 7.0 out of 10

SEGMENT THREE: Daniel Bryan vs Chris Jericho
Match Result: Chris Jericho via Codebreaker

Pretty damn awesome match here. Lots of great counters, some sick looking moves from both guys and some near-finishers. For a TV match this was superb and left me wanting a decently built PPV match between these guys. The only downside is that I never really bought Daniel Bryan as a threat to Jericho but, then again, I expected the very obvious Kane interference which never happened, so I’m glad of that.

Rating: 8.0 out of 10

SEGMENT FOUR: 3MB vs John Cena, Ryback and Sheamus
Match Result: John Cena via Attitude Adjustment

Well, this is a straight-up mismatch. But, then again, 3MB are mismatched against everyone so that comes as no surprise. This was always going to be a borderline squash match where the faces look strong, but that triple power-move finish was kinda cool. Promo after the match was pretty generic as well, but it all built towards Elimination Chamber so it wasn’t a total waste of time.

Rating: 5.5 out of 10

SEGMENT FIVE: Big Show is an Angry, Angry Man

I absolutely love this feud. It’s been one of the highlights of last month or so – Del Rio has played the face role perfectly as he’s not been the recently-turned-superface I expected and Big Show has played the angry/cocky but-still-looks-strong heel much better than I expected. This segment itself was a bit odd – I guess it put over how angry Big Show is tonight but I wasn’t really digging it. Striker sold the WMD perfectly though. Oh Striker…

Rating: 5.0 out of 10

SEGMENT SIX: Zack Ryder vs Jack Swagger
Match Result: Jack Swagger via Patriot Act

Dutch Mantel is a very, very interesting choice as a manager for Swagger. And based on that promo, I love the direction this is going in. I despised Swagger for a long, long time – he was boring and going absolutely nowhere – but they seem to have made him interesting again and I’m very intrigued to see where this is going. And the squash match itself was reasonably entertaining as well – it was typical ‘let’s get Swagger looking strong again’ stuff, but it did make him look energized. Didn’t have high hopes going into this, but I came out pleasantly surprised.

Rating: 7.0 out of 10

SEGMENT SEVEN: Cody Rhodes vs The Miz
Match Result: The Miz via DQ

The match here was a non-event – it’s not even really worth talking about. The post-match beatdown by Cesaro on The Miz was pretty damn awesome though – purely because the big swings into the barricade looks very unique. Looked pretty damn savage and it again shows how fresh Cesaro seems to be in most segments that he’s in – he always seems to bring something new to the table. I am kind of sick of the Miz/Cesaro feud now – I’m pretty sure Cesaro has already beaten Miz pretty soundly so I’d like to see another challenger step up for a shot.

Rating: 5.5 out of 10

SEGMENT EIGHT: Primo and Epico vs Tensai and Brodus Clay
Match Result: Tensai via Splash

At this moment in time, I’m enjoying the Tensai face turn push. It’s so fucking absurd – I can’t help but like it. I can only hope they go somewhere with it – maybe give him some light-hearted promos or something. I don’t know. But as long as they don’t just have him dance and do the same thing every week like they did with Brodus’s initial face push, I hope I won’t get totally sick of it. For now, I’m enjoying it – but I don’t think that’ll last if they do the same shit over and over again. Oh, and the match was squash city. But we all expected that, and quite frankly I was shocked to see Primo and Epico on Raw.

Rating: 5.0 out of 10

SEGMENT NINE: “You’ve Failed, John”

The first legit in-ring promo that the Shield have had – and it was tremendous. I did feel it started as a slightly standard promo but it definitely built up into a pretty fucking deep and meaningful promo against John Cena. It was odd how they directed their promo towards John Cena in particular, but it made sense how they said that Cena had ‘laid the groundwork’ for guys like Sheamus and Ryback, as it were. Seth Rollins was pretty decent on the mic tonight, Roman Reigns was great as always and Ambrose fucking killed it on the mic. He genuinely blows me away occasionally with the passion and conviction in his promos. The ending was a little bit ‘WWE booking’ with the faces standing tall using the Shield’s own tactics, but that was fine – it built up the Elimination Chamber match well, made the faces seem strong and didn’t make the Shield look terrible, I guess. Some people might say it damaged the segment as a whole, but I disagree.

Rating: 8.5 out of 10

SEGMENT TEN: Damien Sandow vs Alberto Del Rio
Match Result: Alberto Del Rio via Cross Armbreaker

Short and kind of pointless match. You could possibly justify it being short and uncompetitive by Sandow getting a strong promo and Del Rio being the World Heavyweight Champion, but I wouldn’t buy it. The Del Rio promo afterwards was fairly strong though.

Rating: 6.0 out of 10

SEGMENT ELEVEN: Wade Barrett vs Kofi Kingston
Match Result: Wade Barrett via Bullhammer Elbow

I’m not going to pretend that I’m tired of this match. I know it’s been a while since the Kofi/Barrett feud, but the match just doesn’t do it for me at all at the moment. The Bo Dallas attack before the match was actually kind of unexpected and pretty decent and the finish of the match itself was very unique, which I did enjoy – but that doesn’t justify a full match being needed. It just seems like a waste of time.

Rating: 5.5 out of 10

SEGMENT TWELVE: Kane vs Dolph Ziggler
Match Result: Kane via Chokeslam

Fairly standard match here. I wasn’t really feeling it at all if I’m honest, but the finish did confuse me slightly. Mainly because Ziggler last week stated that he didn’t want to be in the chamber, then tonight said that he did want to be in the chamber (because of Jericho) and then just loses. Doesn’t make him look great. Neither Kane or Ziggler particularly need to be in the Elimination Chamber, but I can’t pretend that I wouldn’t prefer Ziggler over Kane, based on potential match quality alone. The whole thing seems like a case of ‘holy shit, let’s get a 6th man in the chamber’ booking, but I guess Kane has that intrigue with Daniel Bryan going into this, so it’s not a horrible choice.

Rating: 6.0 out of 10

SEGMENT THIRTEEN: The Rock Tells Us a Story

This was a pretty mixed segment. Firstly, whilst I enjoyed The Rock’s story, it seemed totally irrelevant to everything else going on in the show. It was a large majority of his promo and seemed strangely entertaining and a total waste of time at the same time. The Punk/Rock brawl to end the show was pretty decent but didn’t really seem ‘epic’. Maybe I have fairly high expectations, but this is Punk and Rock’s last angle going into their (most likely) final match and it seemed like a fairly generic brawl. I enjoyed it, but it wasn’t great by any means – I’m hyped for their match at elimination chamber, but not because of this segment in particular.

Rating: 6.5 out of 10

FINAL THOUGHTS

Segment of the Night: The Shield Promo and Angle

Trash Segment of the Night: Tensai and Brodus Clay vs Primo and Epico

Final Analysis: Well, another mixed Raw. It had its ups and downs – as always – but overall I’d say it was a decent go home show for the Elimination Chamber PPV. At a base level, it built up the key feuds well – which is what you expect – and it did it with minimal Raw horror segments. It wasn’t the best viewing overall, but it had some good stuff mixed in with the average/generic segments so I can’t really complain overall. That’s Raw in a nutshell – you’re going to get some shit, but you’ve got to hope there’s some good stuff to balance it out occasionally.

Verdict: 6.5 out of 10

411 RATINGS SCALE:
0 – 0.9: Torture
1 – 1.9: Extremely Horrendous
2 – 2.9: Very Bad
3 – 3.9: Bad
4 – 4.9: Poor
5 – 5.9: Not So Good
6 – 6.9: Average
7 – 7.9: Good
8 – 8.9: Very Good
9 – 9.9: Amazing
10: Virtually Perfect