We kick things off with another package promoting Vince/Trump. Fuck wrestling championships; hair is obviously more important in a main event match. You can have the gold, just don’t take my curly locks. Whatever. Actual show starts with the mysterious return of Lillian Garcia announcing our MAIN EVENT tag team title match. We just skipped to the end!

Enter John Cena..

CENA REACTION REPORT: Almost unfair as he is the first one to come out after the pyros. N/A.

…followed by HBK. They need a joint bastardized intro like Rated RKO’s: Are you ready? Your time is up! Break it down! My time is now! You can’t see me….DEGENERATION X!!!!!!! No, on second thought, they don’t at all.

We’re ready to go…and Edge/Orton appear on the tron. Apparently they’re not ready to compete yet. Fucking tease…meanwhile, they cut a promo with Orton saying something about HBK being “best actor” for telling Cena he’s got his back and calls him a liar. There’s no way Shawn’s a liar - they go to hell, Randy. RKO then show a video package (that they obviously put together themselves) of HBK backstabbing a bunch of people, like Jannetty, Diesel, X-Pac, Booker-T, and best of all, Hogan. Cool little package, if you like superkicks. Side note: PLEASE GO HEEL, HBK.

Back to reality where Edge chimes in channeling Henry Rollins by calling Shawn a liar, liar, liar, liar, etc. and telling Cena to watch his back. Ooooohhh…pot stirring….very heelish. Apparently this match still won’t be until later now, as Cena/Michaels just kind of stand there in the ring and share an awkward moment together.

Back from the break and after more Mick Foley book shilling (buy it! read it!), we get our first REAL match of the night as a freshly thumbed and title-less Jeff Hardy spazzes his way to the ring for a Money In The Bank qualifying match against Shelton Benjamin (who is using the WGTT theme music now because as of late there is plenty of stopping him, now).

JEFF HARDY vs. SHELTON BENJAMIN: MONEY IN THE BANK QUALIFYING MATCH

I’d really like to see both of these guys in that match…but fuck what I want. Odd intro to this match as Lillian does boxing-style intros after both guys are in the ring, then goes over the Money In The Bank match rules. Maybe if they were going to review the rules, they’d have done so before the FIRST qualifying match….eh? Either way, this match should be good….

….and it’s merely OK. The crowd is very much behind Hardy and Shelton’s playing the strong heel. Standard Hardy offense (runny-guardrail thing, Whisper (shhh) in the Wind) leads to the COOLEST spot of the match where Hardy is on the top rope going for the Swanton and Shelton jumps VERTICALLY from the mat to the top rope (in one leap, not like Angle does it) and suplexes Hardy over his head. Benjamin = underrated, underused, under appreciated, and probably going to be under Jeff Hardy when this match ends, unfortunately. What will happen next?

The excitement leading up to after the break brings us to…..a god damn chinlock. Gotta love those heels.

Some more back & forth offense leads to some blown spots (Hardy jawbreaker & clothesline) and then one BIG fuck-up where Benji totally eats shit on an attempted springboard from the apron and looks like he almost kills himself. Match goes home after this spot with a Twist of Fate & Swanton.

WINNER: JEFF HARDY (there was no way he wasn’t going to be in the MITB match this year. Remember, kids…all you have to do to get a push in wrestling is to flake out on the company that gave you your start, jump to the competition all twacked out on drugs, then get canned by said competition for being said twack, then get re-hired as if nothing ever happened because your previous employer is trying ever so hard to cash in on how cool they USED to be).

BEST PART OF MATCH: The Benjamin suplex. This guy needs to be in the MITB match. How can you NOT have him? ALL the highlights have him in it. Oh, wait - it would make SENSE to put him in that match. Never mind…..assholes

OVERALL: Should have been better, but they didn’t seem to work that well together and there was some blown stuff.

Judging by the graphic they show after this match, it seems that Money In The Bank this year is 8 people instead of 6. Holy crap. Even MORE excuses to not build any storylines for ‘Mania. I think 8 is too many, but then again I think sugar cubes are fun to eat by themselves. And FUCK King Booker being in this match as well - he’s above having to EARN a shot at that belt. Fuck Batista, while were at it….moving on…..

As Hardy celebrates and leaves the ringside area, Vince shows up on the tron, who is again shilling the whole Trump haircut thing. We get it, damn you.

Pimping of ECW as we head to the break. The “career-killing” steel cage (find me one dead career that was caused by this monstrosity) makes an appearance on ECW, where (guess who) will defend (guess what) against (really…guess who - they didn’t say). Give the guy a break on defending the belt, for shit’s sake - too many defenses will lower the perceived value of the championship….oh, wait…never mind.

Ashley on the set of her Playboy shoot. That’s all I’ve got. Gotta love WWE; hire pointless chicks to make them semi-famous, cash in big dollars when they pose for Playboy, then proceed to do JACK SHIT with said chick. You’re time’s coming, Ashley…

Cut to Milena backstage bitching about the attention Ashley’s getting (You want attention? YOU get naked, bey-atch) and bitch, bitch, whine, bitch, whine when finally NITRO (of all people) tells her to SHUT UP!!! (I was secretly hoping he’d say it and he DID! I may have wasted my last wish on that shit….). After telling Milena to stick it, apparently a pissed off Mr. Nitro has a match RIGHT NOW!!!

JOHNNY NITRO vs. SUPER CRAZY

He’s Super! He’s Crazy! He’s AN EXTREMELY INANE JOKE!! Never seen this one before….but we’re actually not going to see it this time as Nitro goes batshit on Crazy before the match ever starts, nailing him with a rope-dive dropkick that made my cable signal freak out, then finishes him off with a belly-to-back into a facebuster ON THE FLOOR. It looked as good as one could expect. Nitro leaves Crazy there for the “EMTs” to check on him as he leaves looking super pissed and drawing MASSIVE heat. Right on.

WINNER: NO MATCH, NO WINNER

BEST PART OF MATCH: Again, no match, but I’ll give it to the facebuster. Ballsy of them to even try it.

OVERALL: No match, no score, but still gets a thumbs up for what it was trying to do.

MORE shilling of the main event and Vince/Trump as we head to another break…which leads to a USA network promo about Raw and the Divas with some random chick (who I think was a former Diva Search girl) talking about how the Divas are empowering because they can do things the boys can do and sometimes do it better. Not to be sexist, but unless that “thing” they do better is making a thong look attractive, they’ve never really done it better. Not once. Sorry, ladies.

Slam Of The Week was the blown headscissors from Mickie on Milena. This was not the “anything” of the week. This was a blown spot that led to a title change. But what it DOES mean is that…..

MILENA vs. MARIA - NON TITLE MATCH

Brilliant segue…this one is the battle of the babes who bone the dudes who fought in the MITB Qualifying Match on ECW (Nitro/Punk). Milena should start wearing the Women’s title like Nitro wore the IC Belt, except hang it from her top. As Maria makes her entrance (I’d LOVE to make her entrance), they remind us of a Women’s Title match for next week of Mickie vs. Milena - Falls Count Anywhere. Unless they end up pinning each other in a hot tub or on a nudist beach or something, I still really don’t care. Anyhow, there is a match here - if you’ve seen one, you’ve seen them all. At one point, JR calls Milena “evil”, which she follows up with a Camel Clutch. Most definitely evil. Match ends when Maria goes for a bronco buster (oh, to be a bottom turnbuckle for 10 seconds - any longer and X-Pac might show up) but gets kneed in the v-lips and ROLLED UP (the streak-breaker) by Milena for the pin.

WINNER: MILENA

BEST PART OF MATCH: Maria. And not her wrestling, either…

OVERALL: Diva-tastic match. Same shit, different chicks.

EVEN MORE shilling for this Trump/representative stuff. You’d think I hadn’t been watching ALL NIGHT and didn’t know it was coming.

Wrestlemania: All Grown Up promo shows a kid dressed as a little HBK. I wonder which version? I guess we’d have to watch and see if he pops Flintstone vitamins, calls in sick to 4th grade because he “lost his smile”, or superkicks his playmates through the elementary school windows.

It’s almost 10! It’s VINCE O’CLOCK!!!!! The man himself comes to the ring to huge heat and mentions that everyone is talking about this match. The part he leaves out is that people are talking because TRUMP is in it, not because of VINCE and TRUMP. He basically just says a bunch of shit we’ve already heard over the last couple weeks and recaps his “message” to Trump when he and Umaga smashed Rey Mysterio on Smackdown. I’m willing to bet Trump wasn’t watching Raw - he probably had more important things to do and didn’t catch the “message”. At this time, Estrada & Umaga come to the ring; Umaga’s sporting a new tattoo on his stomach that reads “Samoa”. I have questions:

1. Did he get this idea from Mysterio’s “Mexican” tattoo while he was thumbing his throat?

2. How does a savage get into a tattoo parlor?

3. If I were to tattoo “White” on my stomach, I wouldn’t be nearly as cool, would I? (probably quite the opposite)

Either way, we are still listening to Vince shit on Donald (including a gem of a joke in which Vince calls Trump a “bald” faced liar. That’s why this man is a genius and a billionaire.) before Trump shows up on the tron (oh so NOT live) to intro his representative: LASHLEY.

Bobby Lashley heads to the ring to the standard overpushed mixed reaction, with a dash of the “pyro pop” thrown in (what Kane’s been living off of for four years now). He locks eyes with Umaga as they both contemplate whose championship belt is more worthless. Vince calls security to the ring BEFORE the inevitable “they can’t wait until *insert PPV here*!!!!!!” brawl, which is always fun to watch the guys who AREN’T fighting because you’ll catch a glimpse of the old timers as agents trying to separate the two (like Dean Malenko and I.R.S.). I spaced off for a minute as I envisioned Umaga just saying “fuck it all” and starts thumbing EVERYONE in the arena, and when I tuned back in, they were still brawling. In the couple minutes they’ve interacted, they sure grew a hatred for one another. Hair will do that.

After the break and the inevitable brawl recap, we’re joined by…..Chris Masters. Whoopie. Judging by the mid-ring chair, I’d say there’s a Masterlock Challenge coming up, which is accepted by the Great Khali, who just might have gotten the most positive reaction of his career coming out to make Masters look like a weakling. Remember, kids…the Masterlock has never been “officially” broken; I’d really like to see that official rulebook on Masterlocks, but then I’d probably find out that it can’t be broken unless management decides that Masters is in the doghouse. It’s actually pretty funny watching Masters try to put the lock on Khali, as he really is too big…then KANE crashes the party (!?). Brand extension? He goes after Khali for screwing him out of the MITB Qualifying match last week on Smackdown (Khali should be getting mass cheers right now as he kept Kane out of another ladder match that he didn’t belong in. Just because you were in one good one doesn’t mean you were one of the reasons it was a good match). They’re probably going to push this one as the big inter-promotional match on WM. That will suck.

Cut to Vince and his slave. Only point of this segment is that there will be a special guest referee in the Lashley/Umaga match. What? McMahon then makes his house boy get him some water as we YET AGAIN shill the main event.

Coming up….the next Hall of Fame inductee….

….Jerry “The King” Lawler. He’s the John Madden of WWE; it almost doesn’t matter all the great things he did before he became an announcer because all you think of when you hear his name is his obnoxious and tired-ass commentating, but instead of “the key to winning is to outscore the opposition”, we get “Puppies, JR!!!”. Props to his wrestling career, however - he’s earned his spot.

Cut to pointless backstage segment with Rated RKO, where they re-cap the pot-stirring AND RE-SHOW the HBK back-stabbery video. Once = cool. Twice = wasting time. The superkick on Hogan was still awesome, though….

EVEN MORE shilling of the main event. You’d think this was Rock/Austin vs. Lesnar/Angle the way they were hyping this match.

Hey! Wrestling!

CARLITO (coming to the ring with “it must be cold in that arena”) vs. WAIT ‘TILL AFTER THE BREAK!!!

CARLITO vs. apparently KENNY DYKSTRA

Ok. It’s Kenny….and the match has started. We could have seen the beginning had they not shown that damn HBK vi-oh, wait, they just re-showed it anyway. It involved an apple spit, which Carlito hadn’t done in forever. Leave it to WWE to have a guy find something unique and then rarely ever have them use it (Cena). Carlito does his flippy offense, which eventually backfires and the match shifts to Kenny. This match is well-paced (compared to both of these guys wrestling Flair). There’s a point in the middle of this match where King asks JR if he remembers the match they have as the main event tonight. I’d sure fucking hope so, guys…Carlito & Kenny trade kneelifts (only one is a Million Dollar kneelift) and the match winds to a great finish with Kenny countering a standing hurricanrana into a sitout powerbomb (haven’t seen a powerbomb on Raw in a GRIP, dawg….), then crotches himself on the middle rope in the corner before being hit by Carlito’s Backcracker (next time someone needs to pop their back, I’m SO going to nail them with that).

WINNER: CARLITO

BEST PART OF THE MATCH: The last 30 seconds led to a good finish

OVERALL: Good pacing, nothing extremely special, but Kenny’s got HUGE potential (he’ll probably end up in TNA)

Flair comes out clapping after Carlito’s win like a proud daddy or something. He really should go heel on Carlito and steal his bimbo away from him (Space Mountain may be getting older by the day, but everyone still wants to ride! WHOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!)

Vince is going to ECW to make Lashley’s life a living hell (which is what a Chairman does to his employees that piss him off instead of firing him - I LOVE WRESTLING!!). He he…Coach is actually packing Vince’s bag for him here….

By the way, the main event is next. Tag title match? Tonight? No WAY??!!??

RATED RKO vs. CHAIN GANGERATION-X (maybe?): TAG TEAM TITLE MATCH

CENA REACTION REPORT (2): Not as loud this time, but still plenty of women.

Shawn comes down to the FULL DX entrance again…do they really HAVE to kill time before the main event? Can’t they just wrestle for that time? Man, HBK is balding…God can save your soul, but not your hairline. HBK/Edge start this match off with plenty of chops from Shawn (the “over 40″ rule - you must chop). Typical face/heel team shit; you’d think HBK of all people would know NOT to try to get in the ring to make a save when you’re the face team. You’ve been in the game long enough, son. Especially when Edge is on the other side. That guy’s got the RECORD for most tag title reigns, y’know…Back to the action. HBK hits his move series (forearm, nip up, scoop slam, top-rope elbow, call for CHIN MUSIC….) but almost kicks Cena instead of Orton as we go to the LAST BREAK!!!

We return to find…..the match looking like it re-started with Edge/HBK. Ok. Y’know, as I watch this I realize that Cena/Michaels have a common ability - to both get their asses thoroughly kicked throughout the whole first half of a match. Meanwhile, Orton has applied a chinlock. Alert the media. He hits HBK with a Bagshitter before tagging to Edge. After another rest hold, Shawn Christs-up which eventually leads to the dual hot tag - cue the 5 moves of DOOM. Obligatory main event ref bump + chaos ensues, which leads to HBK channeling Eddie Guerrero after he hits Edge with a title belt and tosses it to Orton, causing Edge to be all like “Fuck You” and leave Orton behind….leading to superkick and Pedigree…no, wait…F-U…and that’s game.

WINNERS (AND STILL TAG-TEAM CHAMPIONS): CENA/HBK

BEST PART OF MATCH: The ending was different than expected, so I’ll give it to that.

OVERALL: Just ok. Same matches from these guys the last few months, but with Cena instead of Trips. I’m not sure if that’s a good trade - kind of like swapping cancer for a brain tumor. But it wasn’t rotten. And only ONE chinlock.

Face-tastic ending to the show with Cena & Shawn backslapping and glad-handing each other. Yay hooray. This better lead to a heel turn for one of these guys…the thought of a FOUR face Wrestlemania double main event is bugging the shit out of me.

SPEAKING OF MANIA….LAST NOTE!! Who will the special referee be? What?

OVERALL SHOW RATING: Not as good as last week, but it had some not low points. I’ve definitely seen much worse shows, which this one probably would have been if ‘Mania weren’t just around the way. An astounding load of meh. But there was only one rollup, and no “DAMN”. Damn.

Peace, amigos!