NOTE: Ladies and gentlemen, do not adjust your computer screens–this is Erin doing the Raw Redux. Melanie and I have decided to switch shows in order to better fit our schedules. From now on, I’ll be writing for the red team and she’ll be working Fridays.
After last week’s lackluster Diva Championship rematch between Melina and Jillian, it’s safe to assume that the fans were hoping some real Diva action (a little less Chavo/Hornswoggle, a little more actual wrestling) this week to let Melina grow into her position as new Divas Champion. Well, if you got your hopes up you might want to grab a ladder and go get ‘em, because they’re gonna be hanging there for a while–it looks like we’ve got more unnecessary Superstar involvement this week as well, as Santino’s teaming with Melina to take on Jillian and Chavo:
I must not have been paying close enough attention to Raw, because Santino being a babyface kind of blindsided me. I guess his act is so cheesy it might as well be used to appease the fans. I wonder how long it’ll be before he’s shooting out t-shirts in between matches.
Anywho, enough with that. Santino and Melina make their way to the ring (to Melina’s music), followed by Chavo and Jillian (to Chavo’s music.. I guess it’d be too odd for Chavo to come out to the music stylings of Jillian, though it would’ve been cool for both Divas to get their full entrances, girl power~~ and all of that.) The match starts with the men, while Melina and Jillian play cheerleaders on the outside.
After Chavo takes one suckerpunch too many, Jillian eventually tags herself in. According to the ~rules Melina must now come in, but according to heel schtick (which, strangely, is followed more often), Jillian must first try to fight Santino. She slaps him in the face, and being the gentleman he is, goes and tags in Melina. The Divas get right into it, trading blows until Jillian goes for a haymaker that Melina bends back and avoids (the Melinatrix move?).
Jillian goes to pick up Melina, who seems to go for some type of hurricanrana, but can’t get a good hold on Jillian (translation: botch). She lands on her feet and turns it into an armbar, but Jillian clotheslines her before she can lock it in. God, these girls just don’t have any luck together, do they?
But before they can redeem themselves, out comes Hornswoggle to… do the DX chop? Really, what’s his reason for being out here, other than to further terrorize Chavo? I don’t get it. Does he think the fans are just dying to see him inject DX into the 95% of the show they don’t already take up? Whatever the senseless reason, he seems to have distracted Melina and Jillian a bit, as when Melina attempts the Last Call she nearly take off her own head. Was that even a Last Call? I guess you could call it a delayed roll-up.
Wait, let me try to decipher was exactly went wrong here:
• Melina was going into the move to do the Last Call but couldn’t get positioned right after attempting to do a 180 whilst on Jillian’s back.
• Her legs didn’t manage to get wrapped around Jillian’s midsection, as she couldn’t remain upright.
• After grabbing Jillian’s ass to try to stay up, she had to place her hands on the mat into order to actually stay on Jillian.
• Jillian’s backward momentum sent her back into a roll-up pin. Wisely, she just grabs the ropes instead of even trying to sell a pin from that clusterfuck of a move.
Was I even close? Who knows.. But back to the match, because it isn’t over yet..
Both girls get to their feet, and Melina decides to hedge her bets, grabbing Jillian into the Primal Scream and hitting it. She gets the pin and the win for her team. As they celebrate, Hornswoggle wants to soak up some of the adulation too, doing the crotch chop so much he might actually bust open a time vortex and send us back to when DX was actually relevant and people still wore Zumbas and listened to the Spice Girls. He gets handed a green envelope, but I really don’t care what’s in it, so I’ll end the review there.
It’s become pretty clear to me that the Divas division on Raw is pretty much a sideshow. I don’t mean to be melodramatic but for years now it’s seemed that while the Divas wrestled on their own at times, whenever a comedy act needed time on the show, they’d shove that in with the Divas. It sort of stopped recently, but it’s definitely back now. It’s just ridiculous and insulting that the girls can’t wrestle a simple match on their own (for two weeks running now) without a Superstar being added in to act goofy and grab attention from the actual match. Add that to the other girls acting as escorts to the weekly GM and you have a bunch of senseless Diva appearances on Monday nights.
SmackDown may have 4-minute long matches, but at least their affairs are kept separate from whatever jobber fuckery they’ve got going on with the Superstars. I’d love it if Melina and Jillian could actually have a feud without Santino, Chavo, or goddamn Hornswoggle sticking their noses in, but I don’t see that happening too soon. It seems the WWE higher-ups feel that the only sure fire way to make sure the fans get into a budding Divas feud is to put the comedy acts in. Maybe once Melina and Jillian get further into their feud they’ll be able to go off on their own, but with how botch-filled their matches have been, will they get that chance?
Of the three matches Melina and Jillian have had on Raw these past few weeks, every single one was disjointed and ugly. I don’t get it–is there a hex on Raw’s Divas? First Mickie and Gail’s epically bad encounter, then Mickie’s loss of “fire” and subsequent messy matches, and now Melina and Jillian’s toxic chemistry. We could probably get a better feel of them working together if they got more than the length of a piss break to wrestle in. Until then, we’ll probably get botches out the yin-yang. Someone reverse this curse! Call in a witch doctor or something! You can even sacrifice Hornswoggle to the gods–I wouldn’t mind!
RSS
Email
Twitter
Tumblr
Facebook
YouTube
16 Comments
I think I’m going to love Erin as the RAW reviewer, this redux was funny as hell!
The match was a botchfest, it was rushed, even when Chavo and Santino were in the ring, it didn’t look natural at all! I think Melina and Jillian get the award for selling botches the best, they were quick and smart on the way they sold it as a real non-botched move, but it couldn’t hide the fact that it was a major botchslam. Worse than the botching itself is that shithead Horny, I know it’s WWE Creative Teams fault, but that little guy gets on my nerves, I swear I’d get his bum kicked if that meant I wouldn’t need to watch him on my TV for at least a year…
You know, as centerstage as he seems to be sometimes i wonder if Hornswaggle really is Vince’s bastard son.
oh dear, such a bad match, it was so rushed,
and I’m fed up of hornswoggle always getting involved with diva matches.
he’s dressed as DX so why doesn’t he sod off and annoy them
Goodbye Raw Redux! Great job Erin… more effort than was put into this segment, evidently. They botched every move they attempted, just awful.
jillian didnt fall as fast as everytime when selling the scream thingy move but they both botched the other one..
donno wht happened to them they used to work very good together!!
divafanjill – Oh God, I completely forgot about that. Maybe it was my brain purposefully blocking it out to protect me from the horrible memories.
Hornswoggle is very populair with the crowd, so dont expect any changes in the near future. As long as people cheer for him he will be involved in midcard matches.
great job erin,i’m going to love you as the new Raw redux girl,RIP melanie,lol jk jk
question for melanie-did you switch reduxs because the matches sucked on raw or was it really because it was more convenient?
I don’t like pointing fingers but the botches were mostly melinas fault,jillians job was to carry and lift melina and she did that perfectly but melina just messed up executing the moves,i blame the lack of time given to the girls on that,when emlina set up for the last call,melina fell forward but i love that Jillian was smart enough to grab the ropes,big points to her
this whole Jillian/melina fued has been lackluster,this fued hasn’t even had a lengthy match,every week is 2 minute matches so the girls are rushing and that leads to botches,WWE GIVE THEM MORE TIME
The match was just AWFUL!
The fact is Jillian ‘SUPPOSE” to be a top heel diva on RAW when Alicia is the top heel diva on RAW right now, but not being use as one.
I think RAW so just focus on Gail and Melina. Let them have a amazing feud turn Gail a heel. If Alicia have a great match with Kelly they could have a Alicia and Kelly feud as well the second top babyface and second top heel diva.
the match last week between melina and Jillian was cleary there best match,there was no botches last week and both divas got some offence in despite getting like a minute ring time
I want Jillian and melina to have a REAL SINGLES match,not a 2 minute match,like a normal 5-6 minutes wrestling match,i hope we get it in the coming weeks
Gail & Mickie now Jillian & Beth…this just goes to show nobody is perfect in the ring no matter if you have 14 yrs of expierence…Jillian and Melina messed up. Although this is like the 3rd week in a row they botched but what the hell…we mite complain about how botchful diva matches r but at least we get them..Vince can be a real ass and just take away diva matches…how would we cope with that eh….
Great work, Erin. A well written, entertaining post.
You would think after a fairly well received Divas match at Bragging Rights, the WWE would want to capitalise on the women’s hard work by, you know, having an actual wrestling match as opposed to some ill-conceived gimmicky mess. Watching Hornswoggle parade around the ring is as pleasant as waking up and finding a rat in your cereal.
Erin-If I were you,I’d be friggin pissed!No more good matches.As RKOyou said,R.I.P Melanie,lol.Great job on the Redux,Erin,it was hilarious!
I hate that little Hornswoggle,go back to the end of your rainbow damn it!I think Melina is very good at hiding her frustration,but I think Jillian is heading into Mickie territory,no more passion.I hope dhe gets a push,but if not,TNA is always the answer.Am I the only one who wants to kick Hornswoggle in the face?I mean,really.
Am I the only one who feels like some girls don’t keep up with their training. I mean i know being on the road is brutal but you can some what assume which divas train on their off time while others come across as if they do get booked in matches for TV they sorta just look like the hope they can keep a match together i.e. The Bellas, Kelly Kelly, and now Jillian. Because all those girls i mentioned once had a spark where it seemed like they really showed improvement whether it was in the start of their run or somewhere down the line in their career. In Jillian’s case she started off strong( see OVW matches) but then it kind slowly became underwhelming to watch her especially these past two years. Yeah she was a good worker but what has she really done lately too show that. Because even though girls like Victoria(when she was with WWE) and Natalya get placed in positions to put girls over they always made girls look good in the ring and never slacked on their parts either. I just hope they get it together soon because live TV is very unforgiving and we all know both of these girls are fully capable of doing better then what was displayed Monday.
I’m getting frustrated with these girls. I mean, I’m not a huge Jillian fan but I feel bad for the girl. She’s a good worker and has been put on the back burner for years and now that she’s finally getting a chane to shine it seems it might be over before it gets started. Melina is a different kind of monster, she’s good but she’s inconsistent and her offense is so frantic that it must be hard to pull off all the time for her and her opponents. But come one, this is what, the third time in a row these girls have messed up big time? Luckily this night, Hornswoggle was there to take the focus off the match (he was good for something for a change) but for those of us who ya know, actually like women’s wrestling we still saw the botch. It seemed that Melina wasn’t able to wrap her leps fully around Jillian and while she was adjusting she had all her weight shifted and Jillian fell over. It’s quite sad to see these vets messing up like this because if they can’t get it done, do you think the WWE will think the others can?
Awesome Redux Erin!