Torch Today TORCH RAW POLL ANALYSIS: Randy Orton vs. Chris Jericho - Who was MVP of WWE Raw from Royal Rumble to Backlash?
Apr 29, 2009 - 2:07:56 PM
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By James Caldwell, Torch assistant editor
For the past two days, I've been working on a project to tally up the weekly Raw polls that we run right after the conclusion of each week's WWE Raw on Monday nights. Now, you might be wondering why I didn't take the time to tally up the Pick 'ems from the Rumble, No Way Out, WrestleMania 25, and Backlash. Well, that's a good question. I'm going to ignore it, though. I had a better question in my mind that I wanted to answer.
Who was the MVP of Raw during "WrestleMania season" - Chris Jericho or Randy Orton?
I wanted to start the tabulation from the very first week of January, but I kept snapshots of the poll results starting with the January 26 show, which just so happened to be the night after the Royal Rumble.
Thus, the "WrestleMania season" for our intents and purposes is January 26 - April 20 just before the Backlash PPV on April 26. We're calling it Season One of our Raw MVP poll tracking.
It also helps that WWE officially began a "new season" with Raw this past Monday on April 27. New faces. New names. New MVPs...literally.
With the question in mind on who was the MVP of Raw during Mania season - Jericho or Orton - I'll explain how I discovered the answer.
-- First, I looked at the number of times Jericho and Orton won the weekly MVP poll. That didn't provide the answer, as each man took three (3) MVPs during Mania season.
I then looked at the number of Top Five finishes in each week's Raw MVP poll. That didn't give me an answer, either, as each man took ten (10) Top Five finishes in the weekly MVP polls.
So, I had to dig a little deeper and average out the polling percentage for each week of TV from January 26 - April 20. The answer was there. I'll get that shortly. First, though, a break down of the first two categories.
As you can see, Chris Jericho and Randy Orton each took three MVP victories based on Torch reader voting. Jericho won February 9, March 2, and April 20. Orton took January 26, February 2, experienced a lull, and won March 23.
Neither one had the highest-percentage of an MVP vote, though. Ricky Steamboat took 59 percent of the voting the night after WrestleMania 25 and Jack Swagger took 51 percent of the vote during the April 13 Draft when he took John Cena to the limit in a champion vs. champion match.
-- Our next category was Top Five finishes in the MVP voting. I totaled up the number of times Orton and Jericho finished in the Top Five and discovered that each man took ten Top Five finishes out of the twelve weeks I looked at.
The only weeks Jericho missed a Top Five finish were March 9 and April 6 - the night after Mania. Orton missed a Top Five finish on back-to-back weeks - March 9 and March 16 - when he was in the middle of the Triple H Terrorizing the World program and not exactly presented in the most positive light.
Following is a leaderboard for Top Five finishes extending beyond Orton and Jericho.
Top Five MVP Finishes: Jan. 26 - Apr. 20
(1t) Randy Orton - 10
(1t) Chris Jericho - 10
(3) Shawn Michaels - 6
(3t) Triple H - 6
(5t) John Cena - 4
(5t) Ric Flair - 4
(5t) Santino Marella - 4
(8t) Ricky Steamboat - 3
(8t) Edge - 3
Keep the Cena vs. Santino race in mind, as they were very close to each other when I tabulated the overall voting percentage for each week's show.
Check back in a few minutes, as I'll post the results of Orton vs. Jericho once I crunch the numbers just a little bit deeper to find the MVP of Raw during the WrestleMania season...
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