Raw's New Jackass Angle

Last night's Raw had a pause in the wrestling action to bring a few Jackasses out of the audience into the ring. They were of course Johnny Knoxville and his pal Chris from the Jackass show. The two were there per The Great Khali's invite, and references to Khali's size were once again made in jest. Later, Santino Marella invited Knoxville into the ring, and Beth Phoenix slapped and slammed the Jackass star. From there, Big Dick Johnson, Hornswoggle, Boogeyman and finally, The Great Khali all made an appearance. By the time the action was over, Knoxville received a Tadpole Splash, a running powerslam from The Glamazon, and his pal Chris got to eat worms with Boogeyman.

It's possible Knoxville and Khali are building up to a Cyber Sunday contest or even Survivor Series. Hopefully it goes down on Raw, because these are the sort of antics the WWE needs to distance itself from. While entertaining and humorous if you're in the audience, it's better to have wrestlers facing wrestlers. The Jackass stars were supposed to be a big part of Summerslam last year, but pulled out due to the dark cloud hanging over WWE, as well as for other rumored reasons.

As for Khali, it's hard to figure out what direction WWE is trying to take with his character. One moment he's the huge, unstoppable wrestler, competing for Triple H's title or John Cena's former title. The next moment he's used in slapstick skits and Kiss Me Cam presentations. One moment he's shown defeating 3 amateur opponents and the next he's being mocked by Charlie Haas. Khali needs a new role and a new opponent, and a Jackass won't do the trick.

Meanwhile, WWE's move to MyNetworkTV with Smackdown has been a success in its two weeks so far. Even though there have been complaints of having to order the new channel in a different cable package, the channel scored a viewership record this past Friday.

According to BroadcastCable.com:

The wrestling show, which move to the network this season from The CW, recorded a 2.1 household rating and almost 3.5 million people, the biggest-ever audience for the network, beating the week-old record of a 1.9 rating and 3.2 million people for the first WWE outing the previous Friday.