WWE Monday Night Raw 7/23/2012 - WWE Raw 1000

WWE Monday Night Raw 7/23/2012 - WWE Raw 1000

I totally missed the opening up until the 30 minute mark. It takes a while for me to recover from the timezone differences in Japan. I woke up during the 6-man and I wish I could have slept through that as it was nothing.

After the 6-man, they had a whole bunch of skits and tout stuff. My thoughts on it are here:

- Mae Young appeared with her "son", a giant hand. This was the greatest thing I've ever seen. 10 million stars. Promote the guy who thought of that.
- I don't mind the Tout stuff so much. I'm sure I'll be saying the opposite in a few weeks, but 30 seconds less of Michael Cole each week is a good thing.
- You can really tell that Charlie Sheen has no idea as to what he's watching. I was thinking how funny it would be if Skype had buffered while he was on.
- The Sonic Carhop appearance would have been a great vehicle for reintroducing Cherry. Cherry was one of my favorite diva's along with Melin and Ariel.
- I like Brodus Clay's new gear. I liked the Dude Love appearance as well.  hated to see Swagger lose in 5 second though.
- I liked the DX appearance and the reference to HHH's bad back needing massaged by Trish from a decade earlier. WWE is on tonight. I was even happy to see Billy Gunn again.

Daniel Bryan/AJ Wedding
You can never go wrong with hearing Jive Soul Bro. They really missed out on not having guests at the wedding. They could have done some fun cameos. Well, this ended up being a waste of time as AJ said yes to being the general manager, not to being Daniel's wife. I'm about to say yes to going to sleep.

Punk/Rock/Daniel segment
Hey, Punk Rock! Rock announced the winner of the Royal Rumble faces him at Mania. I guess that kind of confirms Rock/Cena 2, right?

IC title with Bret Hart as the special guest ring announcer - Christian vs The Miz
Miz's new beard doesn't work for him. He looks like a golfer now. Miz won the title here and the crowd popped pretty big for it surprisingly.

Regis Philbin did a small package showing a picture of the Destroyer on his show. He then talked about some different wrestlers that were on his show throughout the years like Blassie and The Rock. He didn't mention the Warrior though unsurprisingly.

HHH and Paul Heyman had an in-ring arguement with Heyman talking about HHH's kids. Stephanie McMahon came into the ring then looking better than last time she appeared, though she definitely got rid of her implants. Heyman finally accepted HHH's challenge for the HHH/Lesnar match. Stephanie then beat up on Heyman. Brock then came down and had a nice brawl with HHH. I shouldn't even need to tell you who won this one, but HHH naturally got the better of Lesnar. Lesnar told HHH to "F-Off" which got bleeped. HHH took of his shirt and he's in the best shape that I've seen him in in years.

Cole and Lawler played with the new WWF wrestling buddies. The new wrestling buddies are too small which negates the point of them. I have no idea what you would do with them now. Mine got abused, that's for sure.

Heath Slater open challenge with Howard Finkel announcing
Lita came out to challenge and she's still in good shape. Lita announced that she hired the APA for protection. Slater tried to escape but a whole group of legends stopped him including Sid and Vader. JBL hit the Clothesline from Hell and Lita hit the Twist of Fate along with the Moonsault for the win. Ron Simmons said his line after.

Sean Mooney did a backstage interview with Daniel Bryan. Mooney looks pretty good still.  Dainel was still really upset and said Charlie Sheen needs life management.

They had a segment with Fozzie Bear talking about some of the famous WWE catch phrases.

There was a segment with Zack Ryder, Cena and Mean Gene with Ryder saying Gene was behind GTV.  The Rock and Cena then met backstage and Cena said he will be champion at the Rumble and will fight Rock.

Kane came out but was interrupted by Jinder Mahal and a bunch of guys from Smackdown. They tried to attack but Undertaker came out for the save. Taker threw some awesome punches. WWE then stupidly scheduled an anti-bullying campaign ad after Kane was almost bullied.

Charlie Sheen challenged Daniel Bryan to a match the next time WWE comes to LA, which happens to be Summerslam. I can't imagine how much this would cost WWE to pull off.

WWE Title - John Cena vs CM Punk
Punk pulled out a nice abdominal stretch. They did some nice strikes with great crowd reactions. The ref got taken out and Big Show speared Cena. He then hit Cena right in the forehead. Cena was out and Punk almost didn't pin him after thinking about it. Cena ended up getting the STFU on Punk and then Show came in again and unloaded on Cena. Punk didn't help out Cena but The Rock came out(looking ALOT less muscular) and saved Cena. The Rock went for the People's Elbow on Show but then Punk clotheslined The Rock. He hit him with the Go2Sleep to end the show. Punk turns heel!

Overall thoughts: This was a pretty good show. The cameo's were good and they built up alot of things for the future. I thought the wedding really sucked though. Overall, this is one of the better Raw's in a long time and the show went really fast. I highly reccomend checking this out.