By James Caldwell, Torch assistant editor

What a downer of a show that was last night on Raw. What was the line Kevin Nash had on the two-hour vanity show about the turd in the punch bowl?

Vince McMahon is mad and grumpy. He wants respect for a great TV accomplishment hitting the #900 episode benchmark. He also had messages to send last night on Raw.

If you're in TNA, you're a nobody. Brock Lesnar is a nobody. If you're under 6'0" and can't talk, then you're a nobody.

If you had the audacity to find your own success in Hollywood, your movies suck. By the way, Legendary is out September 12. People who stand on "their moral ground looking down on WWE's TV product" are lying heels.

Who knew we would get a flashback to Right to Censor, Home Invasion, and Katie Vick on the 900th episode of Raw?

McMahon is tired of his flagship TV product, with its 900 episodes, being run into the ground during Linda McMahon's Senate campaign. He's tired of these wrestlers dying, besmirching WWE's good name, and overshadowing this wonderful accomplishment with 900 straight (eh, kind of) weeks of TV with wrestlers being afforded no off-season.

These sorts of "landmark, benchmark" episodes typically provide an indication of McMahon's mindset at the time. This time around, viewers suffered through two hours of inconsequential matches, magic tricks, insufferable Michael Cole being fed lines to repeat on Raw's place in TV history, and an attempt to revive a dying Nexus group.

It was one of the most hubris-filled episodes of TV ever conceived with WWE reminding viewers over and over where they believe Raw's place in history should be as a television property. McMahon was determined that if you say something enough times on TV, people will buy it.

In reality, the #900 episode is not that big of a deal to the average viewer. By the end of the night, most viewers were probably regretting the decision to tune in thanks to WWE's overbearing attempt to suggest this is a big deal.

Looking at the messages within the entire show, it seemed like a hand-written letter aimed at anyone who will listen with power in the TV industry that WWE demands respect (just look at this USA Network press release barely mentioning Raw as a top performer on the network) and WWE is tired of the constant negative focus on past TV programming.

The word "hubris" came to mind repeatedly during last night's show. One definition reads: "Hubris often indicates being out of touch with reality and overestimating one's own competence or capabilities, especially for people in positions of power."

As a result of WWE sending its messages to former and current wrestlers and sending its messages to the TV industry, the product was a disaster last night. It certainly didn't make any new viewers out of the people tuning in to see what's going on with WWE these days. It certainly didn't help WWE's business either.

I won't extrapolate the poor content of the show to a conclusion that we're watching the demise of WWE's Raw product, but there were some bad signs on that show that need to be monitored going forward.

The entire Raw mid-card was non-existent or deemed completely irrelevant. It's amazing how WWE has managed to mangle the pushes of John Morrison, Evan Bourne, Ted DiBiase, and some other guys who take up space and oxygen who viewers have completely forgotten about.

The main event watered down everyone. Nexus had a so-so night picking up a win they needed way back at Summerslam when people actually cared about the group. WWE champ Sheamus - I just don't know what that booking was. Randy Orton had zero mic time and was given a few seconds of focus in the main event with rapid-fire RKOs, but he lost momentum by show's end.

WWE can certainly rebound next week with an improved effort removing this angry, "lack of respect" tone from the show, removing the Smackdown cameos, and trying to re-establish the current characters on the Raw brand, but WWE is shooting itself in both feet with one bullet right now.

While MMA is taking pro wrestling's formula and turning it into big bucks promoting fights and match-ups people actually want to see, WWE is saying, "The heck with effectively promoting match-ups people want to see. We'll give them two-minute TV matches with run-ins and post-match angles, then give them over-booked PPV matches with four, no, five, no, six wrestlers."

Why? Because they're WWE, they came up with the idea, and because they came up with the idea, people will buy it.

MMA has taken pro wrestling's formula for promoting fights and conflicts that dates back 100s of years and modernized it to make money in 2010. The decision-makers in WWE and TNA just seem too stubborn and arrogant to change back to the old-school formula that MMA took and is using to make serious dollars on PPV.

It's time to move away from the Attitude Era formula of hot-shot booking with an eye on a quick ratings pop and go back to promoting pro wrestling with an eye on building to feuds and match-ups people will want to see play out over time.

As we saw on Raw last night, the Attitude Era had its time, its place, and people had a lot of fun, but pro wrestling isn't hot right now to get away with the shortcuts and hot-shot booking that worked back then.

It's time to re-establish long-term, relevant booking on a national scale. Right now, WWE's hubris and TNA's stubbornness to hold onto a dated methodology is getting in the way of progress. Meanwhile, UFC is laughing all the way to the bank while WWE and TNA can't figure out why PPV buys are the monthly turd in the punch bowl.

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