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Raw Redux (July 5th, 2010): The Girl Who Cried Fox

Note from Melanie: Erin and I are excited to promote Steven to the regular position of Raw columnist. We hope you’ll enjoy his Raw Redux, as with Erin’s, every Tuesday. Congrats to Steven!

After losing her Divas Title in controversial fashion two weeks ago at Fatal 4-Way, Eve Torres finally got her chance to cash in her rematch clause on this week’s Raw. But before that we’re treated to back to back promos from Tamina (and those atypical Samoans) and the Divas Champion, Alicia Fox.

Tamina basically busts some knowledge on Josh Mathews (and the rest of us at home), helping him figure out which Uso twin is which. While Tamina may be the strongest on the mic in her stable, I always get the feeling that she’s trying too hard. I know she’s trying to be the super tough heel Diva, but it can come off a bit forced at times. Hopefully, this will improve as she gets more comfortable on the mic.

On the other hand, I thought Alicia came off great in her promo. She pretty much gets on Josh’s case about not interviewing her, despite her being the new champion. She then lets all the viewers know that her win at Fatal 4-Way was no fluke and she’ll prove it in the ring with Eve. She then struts off to the ring as we go to commercial break.

By letting Alicia cut this promo, WWE is giving the audience a sense of Alicia as a character and judging by the heat she was getting during her rant, I’d say it’s working.

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Raw Response: July 5th, 2010

Get your Monday night Divas fix by tuning in to Raw tonight at 9pm ET on the USA Network. Discuss the show in the comments! Also, be sure to join us for The Post-Raw Show live at 11pm ET.

Kaval Speaks on ‘Unique’ Relationship with NXT Pros, Lay-Cool

NXT Rookie, Kaval is profiled in the latest edition of ‘The NXT Interview’ on WWE.com. When asked about his relationship with his pros, Lay-Cool, he says: WWE.com: Switching gears a bit, how is your relationship with your WWE Pros, Layla and Michelle? KAVAL: Oh, it’s definitely unique. Their personalities are so far over the top. … Read more

SmackDown Redux (July 2nd, 2010): Kelly Going for Gold

Following last week’s disastrous ‘jump rope-gate’, the pressure was on this week for SmackDown to return to form. So what better way to get back on track than giving us the match that we have been waiting for since the moment Kelly Kelly was drafted to SmackDown back in April? She finally faced off against the co-Women’s Champion, Michelle McCool. Watch below:

Out first is Kelly with her Blondetourage team mate, Tiffany followed by McCool and Layla. As they arrive at ringside, Layla gets in Tiffany’s face and out of no where, Michelle blind sides her and knocks her to the ground. Michelle then grabs Tiffany and head first, throws her into the barricade. What an intense way to kick things off! Kelly Kelly checks on her fallen comrade while Lay-Cool mock her by spraying air freshener into the arena.

As the bell rings, Michelle rolls into the ring and then rolls right back out, exclaiming: “I don’t need to do this.” Obviously a reference to the fact that she, and Layla, don’t take Kelly seriously as a challenger for their belt.

With Michelle on the outside, the referee begins his 10-count but the co-champion rolls in by four — unfortunately for her, she’s met with stomps by an agitated and feisty Kelly. Michelle gets to her feet and kicks Kelly in the mid-section, sending her right down to the mat followed by a kick to the chest. Michelle then strikes Kelly with a swift uppercut followed by a butt bump. Michelle strikes Kelly across the back before hitting her with knees; she then drives her into the corner and begins choking her out with her leg. The referee breaks things up and Michelle begins arguing with him which allows Layla to sneakily spray Kelly with the air freshener can.

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Raw Redux Does WWE Superstars (July 1st, 2010): Two Bellas, One Jillian

Last week, we were treated to Brie Bella vs “The Singing Sensation” Jillian. This week, perhaps seeking some revenge, Jillian faces off with Nikki Bella. Where one goes, the other follows. Will we see more twin hijinks, or will Miss Hall score a victory? Lets find out!

The Bellas are first out and we get our first hint of trouble: matching outfits and flowers in their hair on the same sides. The sky blue is a nice color but the ruffles on the legs… honestly ladies, switch up the design! You don’t have to have ruffles on everything you wear. Just a tip.

We get a recap of last week’s shenanigans before Jillian comes out in a nice purple ensemble. She looks all business tonight as she climbs into the ring. The poor dear looks fustrated! She then speaks words that drive a dagger into my heart: after last week, after what the Bellas did to her, she can’t even sing. Woe to her fans! Our weekly perk has been denied us thanks to that devious duo! However the twins clap as does the audience. Everyone’s a critic. Jillian removes her portable mic and the referee calls for the bell. Michael Cole gets one of his oh-so-witty jabs in, “Instead of Lady GaGa, they should call Jillian Lady Gag.” I hope he doesn’t write his own material. I choose to tune out the commentary and focus on the match.

Nikki and Jillian lock up, with Nikki forcing Jillian into a corner. The ref calls for them to break it up. Nikki backs away but the pop star rushes out, nailing Nikki with a strong right hand to knock her on the ground! Vicious move and the crowd signals it’s displeasure. Jilly follows up with a kick to the shoulder then grabs Nikki by her hair, jerking her back against her knee. Waiting until the last moment, Jillian finally releases the brunette, who’s grimacing in pain. Hall goes for a pin but only gets a two-count.

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NXT Lay-Kav-Ool Watch (June 29th, 2010): Who Needs Victories When You Have The Internet Behind You?

Last week on NXT, we were promised that not only would us fans get a chance to vote, but the pros would cast their votes as well. I’m sad to say that I wasn’t home to vote due to a prior engagement, but had I been home, then maybe Titus wouldn’t have left the competition. But nonetheless, the fourth episode of NXT proved to be full of drama, suspense, highs, lows, tears, ect. To date, this has to be the best episode and we finally got a chance to see where the WWE was going to go with this. In addition to the first ever rankings, we got two matches (one awful and one great), and a surprise elimination followed up by a heartfelt speech. Missed NXT? Go watch it. But read this first, of course! Our adorable Kaval was in the great match of the night so before we get into anything else, lets take a look at that.

Joining our sweetness on Team Kaval was Michael McGillicutty and Lucky Cannon. Their opponents were Team Weirdo comprised of Eli Cottonwood, Alex Riley, and Titus O’Neil. No Laycool at ringside! McGillicutty and Cottonwood kick things off with Mr. Perfect’sspawn going for the early advantage. Sweet Eli simply isn’t having that tonight. He attempts to behead the perfect child with a clothesline and McGillicutty ends up flat on his back. Cottonwood looms over his opponent and when he drags him towards the Team Weirdo corner, Titus tags himself in. Cottonwood is none to thrilled about this but he can’t really do anything about it. McGillicutty is able to get away and tags in Lucky.

Titus powers Lucky into the ropes, and Riley shows off good heel instincts by grabbing a handful of the Pretty One’s hair. That’s enough of a distraction to knock Lucky off his game and he gets taken down with a clothesline. The referee never saw it because Cottonwood had him locked in some type of conversation. They were probably trying to figure out which shampoo is better for damaged hair: Herbal Essence Hydralicious or something fruity smelling by Garnier Fructis. O’Neil stomps away on Lucky and the heels decide to isolate the handsome young upstart by keeping him in their corner. Titus makes the tag to Alex Riley, and we get our first look at Miz 2.0.

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Raw Redux (June 28th, 2010): Sticking to the Formula

Alicia Fox‘s Divas Championship reign got off to a mostly underwhelming start, being saddled with a random mixed tag match right off the bat. This week, we see another tag team match, but thankfully it makes a bit more sense, as Alicia teams with Maryse against Eve Torres and Gail Kim. Watch the match below:

Maryse and Alicia enter together (I’m sure having to come out to Alicia’s music makes Maryse cheery), followed by Gail and Eve making a tandem entrance. Eve and Alicia start off the match, Alicia wasting no time, charging over and kicking Eve in the midsection. Two two trade blows until Eve is whipped into the ropes and takes down Alicia with a sunset flip on the return. Alicia halts her momentum, though, and sits on Eve into a pin, but Eve blocks it, and Alicia satisfies herself with a knee to the face. She sends Eve into the corner and nails her with a high knee and, after taunting the crowd a bit, hits her with a snapmare and attempts a pin, which Eve kicks out of at 2.

She brings Eve to her corner and, after an exchange of attitudes, Maryse tags in. They stare at each other warily and make it pretty clear that them teaming together doesn’t mean they’rre suddenly BFFs. I prefer that kind of heel interaction, because it just further sells their nasty attitudes if even kindred spirits can’t get along. Maryse kicks Eve and pulls her head back by the hair, tugging a bit before slamming her head first on the mat. She tries for a (extremely, extremely delayed) pin, which Eve of course kicks out of. Maryse pulls her up and rams her head into her corner’s turnbuckle, tagging Alicia back in.

Maryse holds Eve up for a kick from Alicia, and that seems to be the extent of their teamwork. She exits the ring and Alicia takes over. Alicia whips Eve into the corner and goes for another high kick, but Eve moves, causing Alicia to tangle herself in the corner while she tags in Gail. Gail comes in gangbusters, nailing Alicia with a flurry of offense punctuated by a frankensteiner. Alicia reverses an Irish whip into the ropes and seems prepped to flip Gail into a backbreaker, but Gail reverses it into a splash. She covers Alicia, who kicks out at 2.

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Raw Response: June 28th, 2010

Get your Monday night Divas fix by tuning in to Raw tonight at 9pm ET on the USA Network. Discuss the show in the comments! Also, be sure to join us for The Post-Raw Show live at 11pm ET.

SmackDown Redux (June 25th, 2010): Jump Rope Gets More Screen Time Than Divas

Only in WWE could an altercation be incited by gasp, a jump rope. The starring role, it seems, of tonight’s Divas segment went to said jump rope and it looked to me as though it got even more screen time, focus and attention than any of the Divas. In the words of The Miz: “Really? REALLY?” ‘Jump rope-gate’ came across as silly child’s play and made me wonder whether SmackDown had been transported to a kindergarten playground. These are grown women, right? Is it that hard to come up with real, personal animosity to sell storylines for the women? Apparently so. Watch ‘Friday Night Jump Rope’ below:

The segment opens with Rosa Mendes in the ring skipping in the ring. Sure, she’s got jump rope game but why is this on our TV? Out comes Kelly Kelly accompanied by Tiffany before Lay-Cool come out with Kaval and join commentary. Matt Striker explains that last week, Lay-Cool told Rosa to get in shape and that’s why she’s jumping rope. Hey Rosa, couldn’t do that backstage? Cue some funny comments from Lay-Cool and yes, I am still loving the rolling R’s. [“Rrrrrosa… Rrrrring”]

The bell rings, Rosa goes to hang up her rope, gets clubbed from behind by Kelly. Kelly hits the K2 and in the words of Bugs Bunny, “That’s all, folks!” So, the entrances took up two minutes and the whole match, bell to bell, lasted what… 10 seconds?

After the ‘match’, if it can even be called that, Kelly shows off her jump rope game before throwing the rope at Lay-Cool who are at the announce table. Layla and Michelle get heated and try to enter the ring to confront Kelly but Tiffany evens up the numbers and the co-Women’s Champions back off. Wait… haven’t both Layla and Michelle beaten Tiffany? Not that logic applies to WWE’s writing but wouldn’t it be easy for Lay-Cool to take out Tiffany considering she’s fallen to both of them before? Then couldn’t they just gang up on Kelly? It doesn’t seem all that ‘smart’, as Matt Striker put it, to me. Then again, you can see both Layla and Michelle are in expensive shoes and short skirts so it was given that there’d be no scuffle here. At least make it believeable!

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Raw Redux Does WWE Superstars (June 24th, 2010): Two-on-One

This week on WWE Superstars we have Jillian taking on the Bella Twins. Okay, so she’s really facing Brie Bella, but by now we know that when you face one Bella, it’s pretty much a 2-on-1 affair. Watch the match below:

Jillian comes to the ring all microphoned up and in keeping with the World Cup fever sweeping the world, she sings the “Olé Olé” tune until she’s interrupted by the entrance of the Bellas. With Brie in the ring and Nikki at ringside, the match begins. They start with a tie-up, Brie getting control and wrenching Jillian’s arm, but Jillian slams her to the mat. Brie regains control, twisting her arm behind her back, but Jillian quickly trips her up and causes her to hit face-first onto the mat. For good measure, I suppose, she slaps Brie on the butt. Good lord, I hope that doesn’t become some recurring thing. I can only dread what the WWE would do with a spanking gimmick.

Brie seems to take this as a personal insult, as she immediately leaps onto her and starts a bit of a tussle on the mat. After all the scrambling and hair-pulling, Jillian reverses an Irish whip into the corner. Brie braces herself against the corner, leaping and latching her legs around Jillian’s neck, but it’s telegraphed and Jillian pulls her free of the turnbuckle, letting her fall full-on onto the mat. Jillian then chokes her against the second rope, bashing her throat against it. After toying with her a bit, Jillian hits a snapmare and kicks her square in the back, attempt a pin that only garners a 2-count.

She grabs Brie by the arm and twists it back, wrenching her shoulder. When Brie starts to fight out, she simply slams her face onto the mat. Jillian hits her with a scoop slam and goes for her cartwheel splash, but is met in the midsection with Brie’s knees. This slows her down considerably, and allows Brie to go on the patented Diva babyface offensive tear (I’m sure it’s in the manual somewhere, with illustrations of dropkicks and clotheslines), hitting a series of dropkicks, a clothesline, and a bulldog. She goes for the pin, but Jillian kicks out at 2.

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NXT Lay-Kav-Ool Watch (June 22nd, 2010): Awwww! Poor Kaval.

After reading the comments last week, a few of you expressed your opinions and said that you didn’t enjoy the long recaps and whatnot. The majority of you, however, enjoyed having the whole show spoken about so in the interest of fairness (I’m not a World Cup referee), I’ve decided to try and come to a compromise. Hopefully no one will complain about my writing style this week, and if you do, then oh well. It’s not my problem because at least I tried. Anyway, lets get down to it! Last week, Kaval saw his first in-ring action against standout rookie, Alex Riley. He came up on the short end of the stick, but this week he had a chance at redemption against creep-o, Eli Cottonwood. Were Michelle McCool and Layla able to cheer their man to victory or did John Morrison’s psych ward reject steal the win?


skip ahead to 5:15

Kaval versus Cottonwood begins after a commercial so that means we have to miss Kaval’s entrance. That saddens me because this week Laycool is standing at ringside. They have on matching tops and skinny jeans, with porn star shoes, and of course, yours truly is already jealous. These two are so hot! Speaking of hot, the man who needs no mic skills comes out with Eli Cottonwood and Josh Mathews begins throwing out a million different analogies to describe this match. Kaval tries to start the match off on his terms, striking the much larger man in the legs. Cottonwood just brushes it off and bullies Kaval into the corner. Kaval fights back and gets Eli to back off, and he hits him with a fancy air move. Eli staggers but he doesn’t go down, much to Lay-Kav-Ool’s chagrin, I’m sure. Kaval bounces off the ropes and attempts to slide under the legs of Eli, but the monster freak catches our plucky little Brooklyn boy and carelessly tosses him half-way across the ring into a turnbuckle.

Cottonwood takes over the match and begins to punish Kaval for just getting into the ring against him. Eventually he ends up lifting Kaval up into a huge bear hug. Laycool begin cheering on their man and bless him, Kaval begins to fight back. He strikes Eli in the head a few times and that prompts the big man to slam Kaval into the opposite corner from where they began. Kaval keeps trying but Eli grabs him by the throat. Kaval doesn’t give up and he turns Eli’s offense into an illegal submission armbar or something on the ropes. Now that’s pretty damn cool. Kaval breaks the hold right before the five and stands up on the second rope. Eli lumbers towards him but Kaval kicks him back. Eli presses forward and tries to throw Kaval across the ring again. The crafty Kaval lands on his feet and runs towards the ropes. He springs off the middle one and nails Eli in the mouth with a stunning kick.

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Ashley Valence’s Identity Revealed

We now know the identity of new NXT host, Ashley Valence. She is a sports arena hostess who works at the FedEx Forum in Memphis, home of basketball team, the Memphis Grizzlies. Valence’s role includes hyping up the crowd and hosting ‘time-out activities’ during games. MemphisSport.com reports: Grizzlies co-emcee Ashley is now WWE’s Ashley Valence. … Read more

Raw Redux (June 21st, 2010): And Just When It Was Getting Good..

Last night’s Fatal 4-Way PPV left open a lot of possibilities. The mission of tonight’s Raw was to pick that up and run with it. But unfortunately (if we’re sticking to the running metaphors), they pretty much stumbled just out of the gate. They just didn’t keep the excitement going. What did they actually do? Well, good thing you asked..

The first thing we learned about the post-F4W Raw landscape is that Maryse is now managing Ted Dibiase, effectively replaced Virgil. Watch their adventures below:

They seem to have good chemistry, and while it may be seen as a demotion for Maryse to go from being in the thick of a Divas Championship feud to merely managing, it’s good to see that the WWE is still thinking of things for her to do. She wasn’t going to be at the forefront forever, so it’s great to know that she won’t just be sitting on the sidelines twiddling her thumbs until her number gets called again. Plus, this can help put to use what many fans deem to be her greatest asset–her personality. We’ll see if it goes anywhere interesting, but for now, it’s got potential.

Later, Natalya and the Harts were interviewed by Josh Matthews.

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Raw Response: June 21st, 2010

Be sure to watch Raw tonight for all the fallout following Alicia Fox’s surprise Divas Championship win. Tune in at 9pm EST on the USA Network. Discuss the show in the comments! Also, be sure to join us for The Post-Raw Show live at 11pm EST.