James Caldwell, Torch Assistant Editor (4.0)

Rough show. There was about 30-45 minutes of absolute filler that made this show drag on like a bad TNA PPV. But, viewers at home can thank Triple H and John Cena for saving them $40 on ordering the Night of Champions PPV. Hunter- in a veiled attempt to say he's not winning the WWE Title on Sunday- said he doesn't even want to win the title in the three-way main event. Meanwhile, John Cena brought up the fact that we already paid money for the exact same PPV main event at WM24. Thanks, guys!

I don't understand the booking of Chris Jericho right now. It's like the Raw brand writers are intent on killing off heels or slowly taking out the scissors to cut their testicles off. Ever since the Raw before the Royal Rumble, Randy Orton has slowly been decimated by the writers. He's been reduced to mush with zero credibility as a heel champion. He can't draw any heat right now, which means WWE isn't selling a PPV on Sunday. The audience has already seen him get his comeupance week after week after week after week. Meanwhile, Chris Jericho is stuck in a feud with Mark Henry taking a beating and bumping around for him. Fortunately, Jericho had the last word against Cody and Ted after his match, but WWE is wasting away their premiere heel in the company.

I'm not a fan of ZZ Top or anything, but I was willing to give them a chance since Billy Gibbons went to the same high school as my dad in Houston. As it turns out, they added nothing to the show and seemed to detract from the pacing with those bad segments with Santino. I'm sure many folks got a kick out of them relating WWE storylines to classic songs, but the bits didn't work and the acting was rough.

My fear of Jack Swagger being lost in the shuffle has already materialized. He could win the U.S. Title on Sunday and all will be forgiven, but he's been reduced to a mid-carder being tossed around on Raw. Like I said, Raw is the place where heels go to die. ... WWE continuing to make sport of the Guerrero name doesn't appear to be ending anytime soon. ... Very interesting set-up for the Divas Title PPV build with Mickie James on the old-school WWF TV platform. Miz has been reduced to playing Kip James to Maryse's Angelina Love, though. Again, Raw is the place where heels go to die. Unfortunate.

Bruce Mitchell, Torch Columnist (7.0)

It's nice to see Vince McMahon sticking to his PG-13 direction for the last few weeks. This was an easy-to-follow, (pretty much) kid-friendly show that had room to focus on two issues: the semi-main of who Chris Jericho was going to choose from the WWE talent roster to be his championship tag team partner, and the main issue of who among three top Raw stars- John Cena, Triple H, and Randy Orton- would win the three-way title at the pay-per-view Sunday. It's not sexy, but it may be WWE's best chance to rebuild their programming and the best way to consistently sell their product.

Tony Donofrio, PWTorch.com Contributor (3.5)

Raw was book-ended by a decent start and a somewhat decent finish. That's about the best I can say for it. As much as I loved ZZ Top growing up and still enjoy their music from the 80's, they were a major miss. Their segments weren't funny even though the attempt was there, even with Santino, who is usually pretty funny. Also, why pretend to play the guitar when it was blatantly obvious a track was being played over everything.

Aside from the book-ends, everything else fell flat for the most part. The 6-man tag wasn't awful but why was Primo a part of this when he's not in the 6 pack match for Night of Champions and even more head scratching, why did he get the win? Big Show came out of it looking the strongest but I'd bet that he doesn't win this match on Sunday.

I did like Chris Jericho's part in the show other than the fact that he has now lost 2 weeks in a row to Mark Henry. A loss doesn't hurt his heat right now but he has been made to look weak the past few weeks on Raw. One shining moment on Raw was his interaction with Legacy though. It is fun trying to guess who Jericho will pick for Sunday. Unless it is a total out of the blue surprise, it looks like someone is going to be double booked for Sunday (here's hoping that it's not The Brian Kendrick).

Triple H, Randy Orton, and John Cena all did their part last night to try to save the show. Unfortunately, those guys might not be able to wrestle on Sunday now because they broke their backs trying to carry Raw last night. You can't even blame the mid-card right now. In my opinion, the booking/writing for Raw has been terrible for quite some time. Raw's mid-card is not made to seem important, so why does anyone at home want to care then either? This was a difficult show to watch and I'm praying that ECW and Smackdown can pick up the slack going into the PPV like they have the past so many months. Although, Smackdown will probably have to shoulder that burden as ECW has struggled since the re-boot after the 15 star trade.

Greg Parks, PWTorch.com Contributor (3.0)

Wow, between the bad backstage skits with ZZ Top and the stale, re-hashed main event, there wasn't much in between to keep me interested. The opening segment was too much WWE humor and it came off looking badly that Cena and Triple H didn't mind taking on the top heel group 2-on-3. The six-man tag was fine, but seeing Big Show lay everyone out doesn't do much for me. He's big, we get it. The good: The Brian Kendrick. The bad: He loses to Jerry Lawler. I was happy that he put in a bid to be Jericho's partner, plus at least he didn't lose to Hornswoggle (again). That honor went to Chavo Guerrero, whose feud with Horny is overstaying its welcome. Speaking of overstaying a welcome, I hate to say it, but Santino has lost his touch it seems.

Mickie James getting sprayed by Maryse was fine, except I see The Beautiful People do that every week it seems on TNA. Mark Henry vs. Chris Jericho was about as good as you could expect. But I don't really see what it does for Jericho. Shaquille O'Neal as host next week could be interesting. The Divas tag match was better than I expected, but that's not saying much. I feel like the main event I've seen in some form every week for the last 6-8 months. This just didn't seem like a fresh edition of Raw, and having ZZ Top only appear in front of the crowd at the end didn't help things.

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