Terrie Neilson of Las Vegas, Nev. (5.0): Best: nothing Worst: After the crowd, where do I start? What happened? Tonight seemed like a lot of honest effort was wasted. The crowd was absolutely apathetic the entire night, especially the guy on the cell phone during the Kane-Rey match. Not nearly enough wrestling (what there was wasn't good), and pretty crappy build toward Jericho's title match, with the end result getting an anticlimactic response. Punk and Jericho played up their pre-existing conditions well, but I got sick and tired real quick of Punk's concussion from one kick being played up, while not mentioning one bit about the multiple blows to Jericho's head. Kane's promo made sense as he now clearly has an uppity attitude about those wearing masks, real or imagined. It was good to see Randy Orton face those he accused of disrespecting the titles; weird to see him accepted as a face until Batista showed up. Hopefully Santino is okay after Beth was spinebustered onto his face. Batista has gotten awful sloppy and careless in his moves lately. The Noble-Regal-Layla triangle is doing well not to repeat word for word what was the Noble-Palumbo-McCool triangle, And, sigh, the once-great Michaels-Jericho feud is dead and buried. May it rest in peace. Shawn and Chris actually had to lower the quality of their feud to fit back into the rest of the roster. Shawn still wants revenge against Chris, but isn't quite as angry as he once was. Michaels did get to release the righteous beating on Jericho, so maybe he mellowed out some. (His left arm still looked swollen, but it does look like the bullet was definitely dodged.) Chris went from brutal remoseless prick to whining self-absorbed jerk. And Lance Cade continues to be furniture dressing through all this. I've said here before that I am a longtime Shawn Michaels fan, but Shawn being Number One contender makes about much sense as Chris Jericho being the champion. I'm guessing this part we're witnessing is the reward for the feud coming in, but this is so artificial. I have no doubts the match will be very good, but neither of these two should be anywhere near the title orbit.

Mark DiNatale of Los Angeles, Calif. (6.0) Best: C.M. Punk vs. Jericho. Worst: Vince trying to lure hardcore NFL fans to WWE with a title cage match first. When will Vince learn that true NFL fans have to desire to watch WWE? Jericho winning by falling out of the cage was sweet. I love watching Punk get buried each week. It's almost better than watching the actual match. It's not a matter of if Punk is going to get screwed during his match - it's how is he? This didn't disapoint. The Divas match was blah! I want to see Beth Phoenix every week as champion bottom line. I would like to see WM 25 with Beth vs. Trish. JBL sucks, why is Tommy Dreamer on my screen? Since when does WWE build a story around events that are not caught on tape? The Kane-Mysterio build is interesting, but I haven't seen any sign of Rey being really pissed. However Kane has a great laugh. The announcement at the end of the show fell flat due to the lame crowd, and Admale's horrible reading of the script. If there's one announcement that will make me actually order a PPV, it's HBK and Jeff Hardy in matches for the title. Decent show but not great.

9/16 ECW REAX

Terrie Neilson of Las Vegas, Nev. (8.0): Best: Miz vs. Bourne Worst: Swagger vs. Stevens. Even the greenery in the Swagger-Stevens match didn't deter me from another solid hour of ECW. The greenery is simply needing to find a way to string moves together more smoothly. The crowd fairly died during the Henry-Finlay match; they seemed pretty sure that Finlay didn't stand a chance which took away from that match. What struck me tonight, though, was a lot of little good things. Evan Bourne's arm drag from what is usually a rope-aided sunset flip was very neat, as well as him checking (subtly selling) his mid-section before hitting his standing moonsault. There is finally an explanation for the construction of the title belt ("17 pounds of platinum") to explain why the silvery color. The simple explanations for how matches strung together from last week to this week continued (Knox's facial gash, Miz's interference in Miz-Bourne the previous week, Finlay clocking Henry with the shillelagh). Striker's additional little bits of trivia does add character dimension; some of it's kinda cheesy, but I'm enjoying them as more bits and pieces are added to each person he speaks of. Striker and Grisham were having fun with Hardy's theme (which I don't hear the same way as Striker does - I hear "I can't stand what you're made of"). Striker brings up Knox being a "yoeman" and doing the bulk of the work in the previous week's tag match; a lower-ranked soldier is usual saddled with the grunt work. Ortiz off camera takes Matt Striker aside about Striker's comments in a way that Striker then puts over Ortiz as more a face. The cheesiest was when Striker carried on with "Swaggah!" but I still chuckled a bit each time. Striker must have a name thing as there was also "Finlay" from its Gaelic origin meaning "fair haired warrior." Don't know if it's really true, but it does back up Finlay's fighting character who so happens to be fair-haired. And did anyone notice that the goodies were being passed to red-haired kids (recognized hair color for Irish)? It's comparable to Rey Mysterio personalizing a moment with fans who wear masks to the event. The timiest attention to detail makes for a very pleasing brand. Raw could learn some huge lessons from this.

We welcome your 1-10 score and comments on this show for a "Raw Reax" feature in the Torch Feedback section of PWTorch.com. Just to add a twist to this feature, include not just your hometown, but also your occupation (mechanic, lawyer, stay-at-home-dad, college student, etc.) so readers get a flavor for what everyone does as "day jobs." To contribute your thoughts on Raw, click here.

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