WrestlingNerd Presents: WWE Raw 1/28/13 Review (WrestleRematch 29)

What up wrestling fans, I'm the WrestlingNerd bringing you another written review. Today, we take a look at WWE Raw 1/28/13. What is the Royal Rumble aftermath? Let's find out and begin. 

We open up the show with CM Punk. He is pissed off that he lost the championship last night and refuses to let anybody celebrate the Rock's championship victory. He claims Vince screwed him over at the RR and this will be known as the Phoenix Screwjob. Yeah, I think Punk's taking the championship lose rather well, don't you think? Vince quickly interrupts and claims he has proof Punk is working with the Shield, but will wait until later in the night when evaluating Heyman's job. Ahh, good old padding. 

Match #1: Antonio Cesaro vs Randy Orton

Because of the Raw Roulette rules, this match will have a special referee. Well, it turns out to be the Miz. Yeah, cuz that sounds fair. I really liked this match. I mentioned in the SD review that an Antonio/Randy rivalry would be pretty interesting if done right. I hope we get one down the road. The finish comes when Antonio argues with the Miz because of his officiating. Randy uses this assist to hit the RKO for the victory. I still wonder why Randy is still playing face. He just clicks better as a natural heel. Not only that, but you think you would get another heel turn since Del Rio and Miz have turned face. After the match, Miz hits the Skull Crushing Finale. This will continue to pad the rivalry for their eventual rematch. Hopefully, they can go a step above the pre-show and aim higher…..Like WWE Superstars. Now you're in the big time. 

Winner via pinfall: Randy Orton

It's time for Ryback and the Prime Time Players to tell us some jokes….

No, I'm just kidding. Nothing in this bit was funny. Ryback took out Matt Striker with the Shell Shock. Hey, that actually was pretty funny. 

Match #2: Wade Barrett vs Bo Dallas

Wade got to pick his opponent, so decided to pick the NXT rookie. Wade is about to hit the Bullhammer, but Dallas hits a slam to pick up a quick pinfall. Wow, he's not even two months into his IC title reign and he's already losing to rookies? What is this 'Barrett Barrage' I keep hearing about? I feel like it was a figment of my imagination. The IC title really is the belt WWE gives you if they aren't sure what to do with you. Well, I guess something like this helps out Bo. I didn't get to talk about my thoughts on the guy, so I'll do that know. For the most part, I'm really not that impressed with his look. He looks about as generic as you're gonna get. I guess WWE went a little overboard with the cookie cutter. Well, those are my early impressions on the guy. We shall see what else he has to offer down the road. 

Match #3: John Cena vs Cody Rhodes

So being inducted in the WWE Hall of Fame is….Bob Backlund again? What's the next announcement? Cactus Jack? Yeah, I know they were just playing the video again, but that seemed a little odd. I guess the editing staff really liked their video montage of Mr. Backlund. I should mention that Trish Stratus was revealed as the third entrant in the 2013 HOF. I have absolutely have no objections to this. She was one of the best. Not only did Cena win the match with his traditional move-set, he even does a superhero pose at the end. Look!!! They're showing the pose in slow motion!!! I'm not making this up. I'm almost expecting Cena to give us a sparkling smile. I love how Cody tried to run away from this match. It's like he knew that he was gonna fall victim to the most predictable move-set in wrestling history. After the match, Cena cuts a promo in either getting an easy victory or going up against two guys he has struggled with (Punk and Rock). Wow, Cena. You kinda come off as a dick by basically saying he could basically take Del Rio's WHC anytime he feels like it, but I digress. By the way, keep a mental note of Cena challenging either Rock or Punk at WM 29. This will be very key for later in the show. The Shield arrives to take out Cena since he served the injustice of not reaching the quota for his T-shirt sales. Sheamus and Ryback arrive at separate times to help Cena, but Shield takes them both down. Team work? What's that? I'm sure this is the match being set up for Elimination Chamber. It seems about the right time for another Shield match. You can only get away with random attacks for so long. 

Winner via superhero pose: John Cena

Time for WWE to eat up the clock in the worst way possible. Looks like you will finally get a Lingerie Pillow Fight, but it turns out to be Tensai vs Brodus Clay. Since WWE saw the potential lawsuits from Parents of America, they spun the wheel again and it turns out to be a Dance Off. Brodus doing a Dance off? Yeah, that's uh…..Quite a stretch. Brodus was supposed to tell Tensai about the new stipulation, but he didn't deliver the memo in time. What we have is an overweight, Japanese-wannabe in a dress. After that, the two start to dance. What was the point of this segment? Actually, I think I figured it out. WWE was using this time to create a new tag team with some of the biggest flops of 2012. They will be forever known as Failed Fatties. 

Match #4: Alberto Del Rio vs Big Show; Body Slam Challenge

Del Rio is convinced anything can happen in Vegas, thus giving you false hope that he could somehow pull this off. What ends up happening is Show being extremely pissed off and basically murders Ricardo and Del Rio, but only with the help of duct tape. Duct tape again? I think I just figured out Show's WM rivalry. Forget my Show/Booker T idea I pitched a few weeks go. Show vs Duct Tape is the true WM 29 main event. It would be the greatest match ever!!! It appears that Show/Del Rio will end up getting another match before the rivalry concludes. I'm almost expecting Dolph to cash in the MITB at EC, but we'll save that discussion for another day. 

No Contest

Match #5: Kaitlyn vs Tamina; Lumberjill match

Okay….What did I miss? 

No Contest?

The Rock comes out to talk about winning the WWE Championship and ending Punk's reign until Punk interrupts. Punk basically stats that Rocky didn't earn that championship since it was handed to him. Tear down that kayfabe wall!!! After the two continue to argue back and forth, Rock wants Punk to get in the ring and prove he's still the 'champ'. Punk declines since he wants to do things on his terms. In other words, it will be Rock vs Punk 2 at EC. I would've liked this announcement….If Cena hadn't spoiled the damn thing earlier in the night. Opps? It completely takes the fun of the announcement, but I guess it was just a matter of time. I would like to think Rock/Punk 2 will be a better match. After all the bulls*** overbooking last night, I expect them to just deliver a good match without too many puppet strings. Hey, I can at least be hopeful about this possibility. The promo segment between the two was pretty good. I think Punk had just a little more to offer, but Rock wasn't too shabby. 

Match #6: Damien Sandow vs Sheamus; Tables match

Let me ask an honest question. How many times have we seen a Damien/Sheamus match in the past 2-3 months? I like their matches, but it just seems like WWE's answer for giving Sheamus another victory. Was nobody else available? This was a fair tables match. Sheamus wins this match by sending Sandow through the table. Damien lost the match on purpose since he didn't find it elegant enough for his tasting. 

Winner: Sheamus

We now prep for a karaoke segment involving Hornswoggle, Kh-STOP!!! I think I know what the creative staff did after the show. They took all the crystal meth they could find and ended up writing this. How else can you explain a dance off, karaoke, and that divas match? I know WWE is gonna have bad segments. Hell, pro wrestling has had stupid segments for decades, but how in the world do you get this many terrible segments in one show? I know you're attempting comedy, but you need actual comedy for this to work. If you don't have the comedy, what are you performing? I love how the commentators apologize for these segments. Even they know it's s***. Okay, I think I got that out of my system…..Let's continue.

Match #7: Chris Jericho and Dolph Ziggler vs Team Hell No

Oh, save me Y2J. SAVE ME!!! Well, he does the best he can. Jericho plays up the crowd until Dolph Ziggler interrupts. After a couple of jokes that were pretty entertaining. See, this is comedy done right!! Good comedy!!! It's funny!!! LOL!!! LOL!!! Okay….I….I think I'm good now. Anyway, Vickie Guerrero informs us that she signed Jericho to a new contract. It will be interesting to see how they write off/bring back Jericho from future vacations, but we'll wait and see. The wheel spins and it lands on Strange Bedfellows. I thought that meant AJ was gonna have a live orgy in the middle of the ring, but apparently not. The match forces two people who cannot get along with each other to work together in a tag match. During the match, Bryan and Kane have another moment where they are almost on the brink of fighting each other. I think the anger management certificates were printed from a box of Coco Puffs. During their argument, Jericho sets up Dolph to fall victim to the Chokeslam. I mentioned last year how I thought Dolph vs Jericho would happen at WM for the WHC. It would take a couple of strings for it to bend that way, but I still think this is will end up happening for the big event. Gotta stick with my theories. 

Winner via pinfall: Team Hell No

The final segment of the night is Paul Heyman's job evaluation. Vince shows us a video that proves Pauly paid off Brad Maddox and the Shield to help out CM Punk in those championship matches. I don't know why, but I find this reveal to be disappointing. Just as Vince is about to can Pauly, Brock Lesnar shows up and ends the show by hitting the F5 on Vince. I love Heyman's reaction to Brock attacking Vince. OMG!!! What did you do? Say whatever you will about Pauly, but the man knows how to play a character. So, it seems my theory of a Punk/Triple H match is pretty much dead since it seems it will be Trips vs Brock. Most of you know that I personally didn't like the match the two had at SummerSlam. It felt very flat and lacked in-ring chemistry. If this match is gonna happen again, I hope this is something they can figure out or else it will suffer like the previous match. So, WM 29 consist of two matches that are gonna be matches we saw within the last year? They should just call it WrestleRematch 29. Despite how this may come off, I did enjoy this segment. This was one of the better segments throughout the whole night. I wish the whole show could've been something cool like this, but what can you do? 

Overall Impression:

Yeeeeeeeaaaaaah…..This show. This show was something else. It started off well, but this really felt like a roller coaster ride. It went downhill when the dance off was brought into play. Once that happened, the show came back to life when Rock/Punk had their exchanged, but quickly went back into the depths of hell when we gotta make room for karaoke. The show ended well with the final two segments, but the entire flow of this evening was all over the place. There was some good things to watch, but it was the constant back and forth between fun and bulls*** that really keeps you from enjoying this as a whole. From top to bottom, I cannot recommend this episode. I liked certain spots, but a strong warning is issued if you watch the whole show. And for a show following one of the bigger WWE PPVs, I was expecting a little more with new storylines. That doesn't happen at all since it seems WM 29 is looking like we are gonna be seeing matches we saw within the last year. That can be a bit disappointing. To be fair, there's still loads of time to prep for WM 29. I may not like the early presentation of the card, but I'm sure there will be something I could be interested in. Plus, I have to at least view the segments before judging since there's still a chance they can get me interested in the match. If they did it once, I'm sure they can do it again. Well, I can at least be optimistic about it. That's gonna do it for the review and I hope you enjoyed it. As always, tell me what you thought of my review or tonight's show. I will see you guys and girls in the next one.