By Shane McKinley, PWTorch Absurd specialist

Monday's Raw was marked by the phrase "2012 will be the year of..." The start of Raw was indeed a showcase for WWE's new talent (Daniel Bryan, Cody Rhodes, Wade Barrett, Dolph Ziggler). Perhaps Ziggles should do handstands before every promo, because his "I'm a walking surplus" promo was mon-ay.

And then things got weird.

It started off with Johnny Laurinaitis, known backstage as a "finish guy," involved in an awkward finish. (Why wouldn't Johnny roll C.M. Punk back in the ring to potentially lose the WWE championship if he's such a hands-on G.M.?) However, the goal of the match was to get Dolph Ziggler a cheap win and to set up Punk vs. Ziggler with Mr. Excitement himself as special guest ref. I hope this year Ziggy holds the World championship longer than 10 minutes.

Then, WWE followed this up with some non-sense with butt-spanking Divas that set women's wrestling even further back. It's a maxim now that WWE matches features butt bumpin' and stink faces in the first minute...then they follow this up with a top-rope move...and everybody's happy.

These days, it's hard to truly gratify fans waiting for the payoff of mystery video vignettes. Fans were calling out "Y2J" for months now, so when the Allaytoh of Rock and Rollah showed up in his electro-lite jacket, a feeling of boring familiarity came over fans.

So, Jericho came down to the ring, all smiles and happy feelings. We're waiting for him to speak...but he keeps mugging to the camera, screaming "Yeah Baby!' for the 20th time.

Apparently WWE just brought Jericho back to kill ten minutes on Raw. This really is the end of things, huh?

Okay, Jericho's gonna speak now...nope, he drops the mic and does some more posing with the fans.

At this point, I took a rated PG piss, came back, and he was still mugging. Hmm...

Wrestling characters are varied, but they usually follow the prototypes viewers have grown accustomed too. People know the face and heelish tendencies and tricks in the book.

But, what if a guy comes along who is so enamored and in love with himself that he thinks every action he does garners rousing support from the world?

What if this guy keeps smiling his megawatt smile and plays to the crowd .... even if he does heelish actions and is viewed as a heel? To my knowledge, it's never been done before, and I would be curious to see if it could be pulled off.

The mystery video vignettes were dark. They had slogans like "The End Begins Tonight" and the general gist was that some funky apocalyptic stuff was going to go down. There was this weird juxtaposition with those videos and seeing Chris Jericho be a ham in his battery-powered light jacket.

Then, I thought of some sayings like "Beware of false prophets who wear sheep clothing" and how some people view the Anti-Christ as a slick politician who says the right things but is truly evil in heart.

It's a very complex character type, and considering the motto K.I.S.S. (Keep It Simple, Stupid) and that Raw's already got two nutcases (R-Truth, Kane), it's probably a stretch to think Jericho will go down that route. Most likely, Jericho will continue eating up time applauding himself until fans get tired of his babyface b.s. shoved down their throats. Jericho doesn't care about the show, about matches he's in, about what's else is going on...he just loves to pat himself in the back and to hear the crowd chant for him. I think the key thing here is that Jericho didn't speak. He denied people the chance to hear him, and it did irk people.

I still wanted Brock Lesnar coming down that ramp, though. I think mystery video vignettes have to be so obtuse like that now, where fans are left guessing a plethora of people that could show up.

Meanwhile, Cena vs. Kane is pure Hogan vs. The Dungeon of Doom shlock, but everybody's a sucker for shlock. I'll take red lighting and fire over Kane droning on and on to end a Raw, thank you.

Email is mckinley.torch@gmail.com

[Torch art credit Grant Gould (c) PWTorch.com]

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