By Jon Mezzera, Torch Specialist

RAW HITS

Elimination Stipulation: I was very glad to hear from the anonymous General Manager (on a side note, John Cena flinging his mic in disgust at the interruption was really good as it felt like he was sympathizing with those of us fans who are already sick and tired of this gimmick) when he made the 7 on 7 Nexus vs. Team Cena SummerSlam match an elimination tag. One fall would have been ridiculous.

Orton's Short Interview: Sometimes, an interview or promo doesn't have to be very long to be very effective. That was certainly the case with Randy Orton's brief statement responding to Josh Mathew's question as to why he RKO'd The Miz interrupting his attempt to cash in his Money in the Bank WWE Title opportunity. I wondered when it happened if it meant that Orton wanted to face Sheamus instead of Miz, and it was nice to hear Mathews ask that very question. Orton's response was even nicer when he said he wanted to make a statement that it doesn't matter who is the WWE Champion going into SummerSlam, that he will be the Champion coming out of SummerSlam.

RAW MISSES

Cena's Super Hero Speech: This is the type of crappy humor that makes adult male fans hate John Cena. It was not funny or clever. It was lame. Hearing him compare himself to Aquaman, or talking about Batman & Robin, or talking about The Great Khali dressing up like Wonder Woman was not funny. It made me want to change the channel right at the start of the show and that is not a good thing. Cena is so much better when he is serious and intense (but not over doing it like he did here before the super hero stuff). He was giving better promos earlier this year, but lately he has gone back to what made so many fans boo him in the first place like talking about DC Comic heroes. Besides, I'm more of a Marvel comic sort of guy.

Orton Squashes Uso: I have no problem at all with Randy Orton getting a squash win to continue to build himself up as a major threat to Sheamus' WWE Championship at the PPV. The problem that I had with this is that the Uso Brothers are a young up and coming tag team that could mean something on Raw if used properly. After a very good first few weeks of introducing them to the WWE Universe, the WWE writers have dropped the ball. There had to have been someone else on the Raw roster who could have served the same purpose. Orton could have squashed anyone setting up a post-match attack by Sheamus, for Orton to then turn the tables on the Champion and hit him with an RKO setting up what happened next with The Miz. Everything could have been the same without sacrificing Jey Uso (or Jimmy afterwards).

Nexus Too Dominant: I understand fully that the point of this show was to demonstrate that Nexus is a threat to team Cena/Jericho. They effectively did that by having Nexus show a unified front, while showing the cracks in the foundation of the Raw team. However, Nexus was just a bit too dominant in their warm up elimination tag match against the random Raw wrestlers. This was very predictable. I knew they were going to win 7-0. And while some of the Raw team were basically glorified jobbers, there was also Mark Henry, The Hart Dynasty, and biggest of all, Evan Bourne. You didn't just make Yoshi Tatsu and Goldust look bad. You made one of the NXT pros look bad when he got pinned after taking one single clothesline (are you kidding me? Skip Sheffield is no JBL). You made the Tag Team Champions look bad when one took a weak looking finisher from Heath Slater that was a rip off of Dolph Ziggler's zigzag and the other took a clothesline from Sheffield. You made Bourne look bad just for being part of this huge lopsided loss. WWE still hasn't done anything to lessen my concern about the quality of the in ring abilities of the majority of Nexus. I give them credit for hiding those limitations with this format, but at some point they have to be given more ring time, and then we will see that they can't really wrestle very well. Having a strong faction dominate like this reminds me of the nWo days. But, Hulk Hogan, Kevin Nash, Scott Hall and Sean Waltman were more deserving of being dominant over a locker room than this group of rookies.

Morrison - Truth Tension: Some of the tension among Team Cena worked pretty well. The best was clearly the tension between John Cena and Chris Jericho as they obviously don't get along and have issues with who will lead the team. I mentioned above not liking the opening promo from Cena with the super hero references, but the rest of the opening was good once Jericho interrupted. I probably should give their exchange a Hit, but Cena's fake names for Jericho's team were more of the crappy lame humor which took it out of the Hit column. While I liked the tension between Cena and Jericho, some of the other tension didn't work as well, particularly the tension between John Morrison and R-Truth. This was just way too forced for my tastes. WWE needed them to have a disagreement, and this was all they could come up with. Morrison clearly saw what happened on the replay after the match, but he was still mad? What an ass. Isn't he a babyface? Why should I cheer for him when he treats his friend like this?

Jon Mezzera is PWTorch.com's WWE Hits & Misses Specialist, providing his point of view for Raw, Smackdown, NXT, and Superstars each week. Email him at jmezz-torch@sbcglobal.net.

For another view from the original Hitlist author, compare Jason Powell's views to mine by visiting prowrestling.NET's "Hitlist" section here.

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

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