…Bored yet? So am I. The other downside of bachelorhood is that this qualifies as excitement in my days off. Well, that and last Sunday’s UFC PPV, which I finally got to see. And, for that matter, I finally “get” the whole MMA scene. Lyoto Machida just got one more fan, and I’m going to have to keep my eyes open for when he makes his first title defense.

I have no clever way to end the precap tonight, so let’s just get right to RAW…

Segment 1: And we’re starting with idiocy as some douche who’s portraying Denver Nuggets Owner hits the ring. We’re going to call him “SDNO,” or “Simulated Denver Nuggets Owner,” for the rest of the recap.

And then we get a video recap of the non-drama, especially the ESPN SportsCenter clips. I don’t recap recaps, especially of recapped video recaps of crap that’s been recapped in recaps of recapped… uh… recaps? Sure, we’ll go with that.

Okay, I’ll tell you what: I’m going to recap this in the increasingly popular single-sentence recap! Here we go…

SDNO blathers to get cheap heat, blathers to get cheaper heat, blathers to get the cheapest heat ever; Vince McMahon comes out; Vince uses the idea of making an eXtreme Basketball Association just to do a retarded insult against SDNO; Vince then mocks SDNO’s real first name (which unfortunately the crowd actually chants for because Vince is totally a genius); Vince then gets cheap pops by saying how awesome the fans are; Vince then shoves SDNO, who falls out of the ring.

Here comes Miz… He walks down, gets some cheap pops by saying that he became a TV star here in Los Angeles, but… but… he takes off his shirt, shows a Cleveland Cavs jersey, and says he’s from the home of the real soon-to-be NBA champs. Miz further gets some cheap heat by insulting Kobe and Magic Johnson, then preens.

Here comes John Cena… but two guys are hauling ass to him. It’s Generation Douche, here to help Miz beat the shit out of Cena. Batista is out a moment later, cleaning house to make the save. Big Show materializes to help the heels, but Jerry Lawler (really?) wearing LA Lakers-colored tights (really???) comes in just to get his ass kicked. Cena and Bats work together to clothesline Show over the ropes, and Bats’s music plays them out.

Huh. It was incredibly stupid, but at least it finished with an actual pro wrestling-style angle.

Segment 2 [Singles Match for the WWE Divas’ Title]: Kelly Kelly defeats Maryse by disqualification, but Maryse retains. Other than Maryse losing half her left breast from her top, there was absolutely nothing interesting in this match. And the ending was retarded: Maryse flung KK out of the ring, threw her on top of the announcers’ table, and punched her. This, somehow, made her be DQed, even though the guys doing it would be sold as a so totally awesome spot. I don’t get it; wouldn’t the smart thing have actually let them continue like that and give a tiny itty bitty bit of hardcore action to wake up the crowd?

Whatever. K2 continues to show me that she is absolutely athletic, but absolutely sucks at wrestling psychology.

Segment 3: The Bella Twins are hanging off of a Simulated Jack Nicholson (don’t ask). The rest of the segment involves Goldust and Hornswoggle appearing. You know that can’t be good… and it isn’t.

Segment 4: After a video recap (which I won’t recap), we see Ric Flair in the locker room. Bats comes in… Flair immediately thinks Bats is here to talk him out of calling out Orton tonight. But no: Bats says that Flair should wait until after the Bats/Orton match at Extreme Rules, then call him out the next night on RAW. Flair gets the insinuation, gets offended, says that there is no way he’s going to take a pussy’s way out, because he’s Ric Flair, damnit! So fuck you, Batista!

…You know, for being less than 45 seconds of a segment, this was rather pretty damn well done. If Bats turns heel against Flair, well, that’ll go over like gangbusters, wouldn’t it?

Segment 5 [Triple Threat Match for #1 contendership of the US Title]: Kofi Kingston defeats Matt Hardy by pin, and will face MVP next week on RAW for the US Title. William Regal was the third guy in the match, and it was pretty decent. Matt played the chickenshit heel role, with Kofi being FIP for most of the match. Whenever Regal went for a pin, Matt would interrupt it, and would take over. Then he’d get close to make a pin, and Regal would break it up. Etc., etc.

Some cool spots, all from Kofi, were seen, but nothing exceptionally special to write about. Wait, I take that back: one clever spot had Regal give a backslide pin to Kofi. Matt saw this, hit the ropes, and did a sunset flip over both guys to pull Regal off Kofi and attempt a pin on Regal. It was very, very slick.

End of the match was decent. Matt did a Side Effect to each opponent, but failed at pinning both. When he went for a Twist of Fate on Regal, Regal countered with a back suplex, then ate a roundhouse kick from Kofi. Kofi failed the pin due to Matt breaking it up, Matt tried to follow up by smacking Kofi with the cast but missed. Kofi then hit his roundhouse kick again, this time to Matt, and made the pin.

MVP came out early to help with commentary. After the match, he and Kofi talked some light-hearted trash (better put: they hyped each other up), and broke apart without incident.

Segment 6: Ric Flair comes out to a strong ovation. Rather than boring me to tears, he gets right to the point, unlike almost every wrestling promo ever. Flair says that after Orton’s sucker punch last week, Flair has hyped himself up all week. He says that he admits that Orton is good, being the World Champ at all, but wants to see if he can fight with Flair actually looking at him. “Don’t be afraid for me; be afraid for what I’m going to do to you if you can’t beat me.” I like that.

Orton pops out of the back, but pauses on the stage. He asks rhetorically what would happen if they fought, and that he should beat down Flair just on principle (what principle, exactly?). Then Orton charges to the ring, screaming nonsensically as Flair challenges him again, that Flair’s words won’t bother him because he’s not Chris Jericho, or something.

Orton winds up on the apron, who says “It’s over.” And that “it was over back in Evolution,” but he still doesn’t say what “it” is. He implies that “it” is his career because he says Triple H just kept him around for the hell of it back at Evolution. Either way, Orton never clarifies himself, but gets in Flair’s face and again says “it’s over.” Flair slaps him in the face.

Orton is stunned, but takes Flair down and starts punching him in the face. Bats finally comes out and Orton bails, as Flair gets up and starts raging around the ring as he is wont to do. Orton from the stage says that just like Extreme Rules, “it’s over,” that Batista will lose. What the fuck, is this his new retarded catchphrase? He’s amazingly using it contextually wrong in every occurrence he says it! Basic rule of English, Randall: define your pronouns before using them, else you look like a guy who barely made it through elementary school.

Anyway, Orton is ready to leave, when Mr. Kennedy Kennedy Kennedy pops out. KK calls for God’s Microphone as Orton looks on, and proceeds to tell him that “it’s not over,” that rather tonight is the return of KK himself, a man who has WWE Championship dreams. Even though I like KK, he too didn’t define his pronoun, making me even more annoyed that some genius decided to use the phrase as the focal point of the whole fucking angle. Bah.

Segment 7 [Mixed Tag Match]: Mickie James & Santino Marella defeat Beth Phoenix & Chavo Guerrero (w/ Rosa Mendes) by pin. Match was too short to be anything but really fucking lame. It’s pretty sad that when these four are the in the ring, the one with the most workrate is Mickie James. Anyway, the match ended with a… uh… crucifix pin, I believe, is the term.

Post-Segment 7: Vickie Guerrero hits the stage after the match, doing the Queen Elizabeth wave as she wears her Miss WrestleMania sash and tiara. Now, the whole reason she’s out here is that, because Santino’s team won, he gets to pick the stipulation for a Santina/Vickie match at Extreme Rules. Wait, they’re actually doing that at a frickin’ pay-per-view? I’m going to get a stroke if I try to think too hard about it.

Anyway, Vickie warns him that he’s not worried, because Chavo is going to be in her corner no matter what the match is. Santino throws out his original two ideas, which were Leaning Tower of Pepperoni Match and the Pasta Primavera on a Pole Match, both of which I have to assume were actual ideas by the WWE “Creative” Team at some point. Santino says that rather than go with any food-related stips, Santina and Vickie will have a… Hog Pen Match? When the fuck did Santino turn into Henry O. Godwin? Maybe the Pasta Primavera on a Pole Match would have been better.

Segment 8: In the back, Miz runs into Big Show. Show opens that he doesn’t like Miz, but understands if Miz wants to fight Cena a bit in their five-on-five main event tonight… but he better not try to pin him. In fact, says Show, his plan is to make Cena tap. As Show walks away, Miz mutters, “Yeah, just like you did at Judgment Day?” Show hears this and turns around, but Miz backpedals and says he totally didn’t say anything. Good call, buddy.

Segment 9 [Tag Match]: Goldust & Hornswoggle defeat Brian Kendrick & Festus by pin. Looking at this match setup, I feel like I just fired up the WWE videogame and told it to make a tag match with four random wrestlers. Because really, that’s the only reason this should have existed.

Further, this match was stupid, mostly because WWE threw one of its long-standing rules out the window just to make the end game happen. The match was sloppy to begin with, and BK found himself as the Heel In Peril. When he wanted to tag, Festus said no. Finally, BK punched him in the face. For some reason, this did not constitute a legal tag, even though we’ve seen guys smack each other all the time (most recent in memory: the Highlanders) and it work. But for some reason, this time, it wasn’t a legal tag, and the ref had to restrain Festus. Conveniently, he didn’t see Goldust hit the Curtain Call, nor Horny hit the Two-Star Frog Splash, but he did turn back around to see Goldust pin BK.

What a fucking lame match. Primo and Carlito were on guest commentary, and even they couldn’t save things.

Post-Segment 9: After the match, Festus turned back into his retarded self, giving BK a chance to bitch him out. BK brought a chair into the ring. Primo ran over to the bell, and just as BK was about to swing, Primo rang it. No violence transpired, as BK bailed and ran away.

Pre-Segment 10: It’s time for the main event. And the way they introduce the wrestlers? The Lakers’ official arena announcer (at least, that’s what they said) announces each guy one by one, giving them fake positions. Cody Rhodes is playing shooting guard!!!

This altered way of doing the introductions adds a good four to six minutes of TV time that could be better spent, oh, I don’t know, with more wrestling. God, I hate Vince McMahon sometimes.

Segment 10 [10-Man Tag Match]: MVP et al defeat Cody Rhodes et al by pin. As with any 10-man tag match (really any 8-man tag match or more), no one got much face time to do much of anything. Essentially, the minor faces took turns being FIP, while the heels did quick tags and did some double-team crap to keep things “interesting.” Which means, “not very” in this case.

The match ended when Cena slammed Rhodes, then tagged in MVP. They did a stereo Ballin’ Elbow and You Can’t See Me Fist Drop of Doom, which was kinda neat. After they hit that, Miz came in to break up the pin, but Lawler punched him in the face to stop it. None of the other heels felt obligated, so Rhodes took the loss.

Post-Segment 10: After the match, then things broke down, with everyone hitting finishers basically. Batista and Cena did a double suplex on Big Show, and it was a nice smooth one, which was just damned cool to see. The five faces had an extended celebration after that to John Cena’s music as JR called the show a “two-hour thrill ride” though his voice dripped with irony.

Recommendation: Hell no. The show limped along and the whole NBA non-drama was so forced that it would be easier to shove a square peg into a round hole, or give Orton some personality, or something. Add in the fact that the show lasted a good 15 minutes longer than usual, and it was annoying and more painful than usual. Pass.