Melanie

Despite tacking on yet another gimmick to the Divas match, Raw managed to pull off a decent match which was dubbed a “Legs Match” with Kelly Kelly, Gail Kim, Alicia Fox & Rosa Mendes wrestling in shorts. Following in the footsteps of last week’s SmackDown, the red brand gave the ‘second string players’ a chance to shine a la Layla, Eve and Natalya on Friday. However unlike SmackDown, Raw also managed to push it’s Night of Champions match in addition to the second string quartet.

Earlier in the evening however, we saw an interesting dynamic in the ‘feud’ between Maryse and Mickie James, when Maryse sprayed a can of what we’re to assume is hairspray in Mickie’s eyes. This feud has never really been dialled up in the past two months that it’s been going on, we just seem to have Maryse avoiding Mickie because ‘she’s scared’ — which to me is just WWE’s excuse for lazy booking, they can’t come up with anything original or exciting. However in the final two weeks before their big pay per view match, we finally see the pace picked up as last week, Maryse pinned Mickie in the ‘Swimsuit Spectacular’ and this week she sprays Mickie in the eyes. What this tells us is that the writers are happy to bore us with teases of Maryse being scared of Mickie for two months and then when as we approach the PPV, go for the hard sell. To me, it’s a case of too little too late and while I’m sure they’ll have a great match on PPV, I’m not as excited as I should be. I don’t feel the personal animosity between them like I should do. Doing a hard sell the Monday before the PPV just comes off as desperate and is extremely transparent.

That said, I enjoyed this segment. It’s funny that WWE’s writers are actually in tune with the fans, as we saw in Mickie’s scripting last night — but yet they still go completely the other way from what we want to see. They had Mickie bring up the fact that Maryse beat her in a ‘Summer Swimsuit Spectacular’, sharing the same distaste for that type of match as the viewers and alluding to the fact that Maryse is an inferior worker which we know to be true. They mock it through Mickie here, yet they continue to book it. Things went downhill from there though, with nursery school rhyming — whichever writer came up with ‘Trampions’ deserves a gold star *Eye roll* Out comes The Miz, Maryse’s rumoured real life boyfriend [hence Vince’s pervy booking] berating Mickie. I know he’s playing a character, but I can’t help but sense that Miz truly does believe what he’s saying. I get the feeling that he and Maryse as a couple would be more narcissistic than Speidi. I liked Mickie’s comeback though, about getting his material off the Internet — coz it’s true! Out comes Maryse in a gorgeous pair of sandals and sprays Mickie in the eyes and does what she does best: flips her hair, smirks and waves her arms around. I heart her mannerisms.

Thoughts on the ‘Legs Match’ after the cut:

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