Tuesday, June 30, 2009

Raw Revelations: Swagger & Henry Arrive


Donald Trump made a secretive trade behind closed doors that wasn't mentioned on Raw last week, but in the move he swung a 15 superstar trade between Raw, ECW and Smackdown. In reality, Vince just said that to justify the fact WWE is rewarding several stars, or trying to make up for the loss of Batista, depending on how you look at it. Batista returned and served as a guest host for last night's Raw. During his night of fun, he scheduled a Night of Champions Tournament to decide the #1 Contender for Randy Orton's WWE Title. It's unclear how the pairings were decided but it came down to Triple H versus MVP and The Miz versus John Cena. Cena and HHH make sense, but do Miz and MVP? If anything Big Show had a recent win (with help from Miz) over Cena. The Miz and MVP haven't quite done anything to justify being part of any Championship situation lately. However, the Miz turned in an impressive performance on Raw against Cena and it would have been a true shocker to see him win. It also would have been great to see MVP somehow defeat The Game, but that was wishful thinking. It seems as if a beaten up Triple H from a 3 Stages of Hell match is still superior to a rested MVP who didn't wrestle at The Bash. With the Night of Champions Finals next week, it feels like Miz is going to interfere and HHH will once again move ahead to face Orton, this time in Hell in a Cell so Legacy can't get involved. But with Ted Dibiase Sr. in charge next week he may throw another stipulation into the match, or wrestler...maybe even his son?

Batista also got some sweet revenge by putting WWE Champ Randy Orton into a 3 on 1 Gauntlet match. Orton's opponents would be named at the time of the match, but the WWE Universe was told it would be 3 of the 5 new acquisitions on Raw. Those acquisitions turned out to be ECW Superstars Evan Bourne, Jack Swagger and Mark Henry. Surprising on a few levels, but also good for the young budding careers of Swagger and Bourne.

First off, it was shocking to see Swagger most out of the 3, because it looked like he was headed towards another ECW reign by defeating Dreamer. If you think back just a few months to the 2009 WWE Draft, Swagger was on Raw as the ECW champion facing the World Heavyweight champ John Cena. Swagger turned in an impressive yet losing performance. Swagger definitely deserves a push and this is the right direction. However, it would have been nice to see Swagger make the face turn last night instead of Mark Henry. How great would it be for Swagger to score a big statement pin on Orton to close the show, and give us a fresh new feud for Orton other than Cena and Triple H? Unfortunately, Swagger got counted out on purpose in what he claimed was a respect move for Orton. What followed was behemoth Mark Henry arriving to the ring as competitor #3, and he pretended he was going to get counted out, before turning in a big performance to eventually slam and pin the champ. Mark Henry has arrived, but again it would have been a nice fresh move to see Swagger in that role. Also, if Batista was so vehement about telling Legacy not to get involved in the Gauntlet, why not give Swagger some sort of reprimand for what he pulled? Batista must have backed down in that moment.

Overall, Swagger and Bourne's arrival to Raw gives them a big dose of talent injected into the show when they need it the most. Evan Bourne seemed like he should be competing for the Intercontinental Title on Smackdown, but he'll add some excitement to Raw. I have a feeling Swagger or Bourne will end up winning the United States Championship in their time on Raw, with Swagger more likely to compete for the WWE Title. Mark Henry's been on Raw before, but having another "big" guy won't hurt things too much. It's clear that adding Mark Henry and Swagger gives them two more heavyweights who can be part of the WWE Title picture. Perhaps there's another Championship Scramble on the horizon, and they need 5 or 6 for that. Using Miz, Big Show, MVP, Cena and HHH repeatedly just won't cut it so let's bring in the new talent. It'll be interesting to see who those other 2 acquisitions are, although they may be lesser used stars just to bring some squash opponents onto Raw.

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