TAKE PWTORCH
WITH YOU! Get our iPhone App (FREE!): Click Here Or enter "PWTorch.com" on your Blackberry or other Smart Phone browser for mobile-version of PWTorch.
CALDWELL'S TAKE
CALDWELL's RAW TAKE: A Comedian, a Rabbi, and a Farmer walk into a bar ... or is it a Comedian, a Rabbi, and a Farmer walk onto a silly wrestling show? Sep 22, 2009 - 11:18:49 AM
Hey, did you hear the one about the comedian, the rabbi, and the farmer walking into a bar?
Naw, I didn't.
Well, I didn't either, but a comedian, a rabbi, and a farmer - with his goat!!! - walked onto that silly wrestling show last night.
You don't say?
And you better put on a bulletproof vest...because they killed!
The above was supposed to die like Santino's ironic attempt at comedy last night, but if you laughed, well, I'm glad. Almost as glad as seeing 35 points for my Fantasy Football team on Monday night ... but still losing by 25 points to drop to 0-2 on the season. I'm not upset, though. It's a long season. I'm just going to hang in there and show up every week and work hard and give 110 percent...somewhere John Cena is making funny faces with his tongue and eyes bugging out of his face.
Anyways, the opening to last night's Raw should have died in the writer's room before it was ever considered for air. How that segment ever made air will never, ever, never, ever be explainable. It was like a really bad SNL skit that someone thought would be a good idea on Monday and somehow made air on Saturday.
Beyond any subjective opinion on the quality or lack of quality for the segment, the problem is people were changing the channel at the start of Raw. We had more than usual emails from readers who checked out of Raw after that segment. They probably were not alone.
You know how it goes. Top of the hour, let's see what's on the wrestling program tonight. Oh, look, there's the most ridiculous segment I've ever seen. Hey, I have Monday Night Football or countless season premiers as options. Back to Peyton Manning leading the Colts down the field. Even his 1,001 commercials seem to be more entertaining than what's on Raw right now.
Yet, immediately after that segment was the best segment of the entire show with the continuation of the DX vs. Legacy feud. Sure, Triple H was Triple H with a mic in his hand. He couldn't possibly be scripted to give Legacy any credit for beating DX at Breaking Point. However, the match-up that followed between Hunter and Cody Rhodes and the attack on Hunter was great for business at Hell in a Cell. Hunter's got the fans lining up on the highway to see Cody and Ted get their backsides handed to 'em.
What's so great about this feud is Legacy not backing down and showing tremendous aggression against DX. Cody's strikes against Hunter this week and DiBiase's strikes on Shawn Michaels last week looked like something out of a legit fight you'd see on a Saturday night at 1:30 in the morning. It was darn good TV.
With so many different options on TV against the beginning of Raw, WWE changed up the formula to deliver hard-hitting action and a compelling DX vs. Legacy segment instead of the usual talking-heads opening promo exchange.
Problem is, they didn't kill that opening skit when the comedian, the rabbi, and the farmer walked onto the silly wrestling show. WWE was five minutes too late with DX vs. Legacy.
Send feedback on this article to pwtorch@gmail.com and we'll regularly publish reader feedback in the "Torch Feedback" category on the Main Listing.
INCREDIBLE BENEFITS! Over 50 full-length audio updates per month (iPod compatible)... New weekly award-winning Pro Wrestling Torch Newsletter (text and printable pdf versions) with latest exclusive insider news, new Torch Talks, great columns, Keller's cover story, much more... Hundreds of full-length back issues of PWTorch Newsletter from late-'80s to today... Ad-free access to PWTorch.com's Main Listing... VIP Forum with interaction with other subscribers and Torch staff... Torch Talk Library with text and audio of hundreds of interview installments from last 20 years... Great layout... Deepest archives on pro wrestling history anywhere... Keller's PWTorch Today PDF Bulletins with email alerts... VIP Email reports on major PPVs and TV shows... Staff Roundtable Reviews (text and audio) followiing major events... The best staff of writers and world class reporting since 1987... We'd love for you to join us and experience the most entertaining, authoritative, experienced staff of professional reporters and commentators in the business...
Compare the value of four or five months of PWTorch VIP content to the price of just one PPV. Can you cut 25 cents a day from your budget to make room for PWTorch VIP?
AND NEW FOR 2009! Monthly "Vintage Audio Torch Talks." We are releasing for the first time ever audio versions of our text Torch Talk updates, the historical first series of insider interviews ever. Wade Keller's newsmaking in-depth interviews with wrestling's biggest names are now being made available exclusively to VIP members. But you must be a member each month, as these are not archived, so they are replaced with a new one each month! This debuted in January 2009 with a 68 minute interview with the late "British Bulldog" Davey Boy Smith. Who's next? Hulk Hogan? Eric Bischoff? The Rock? Goldberg? Jeff Hardy?
