Of course, once I’m done with the guide, I’m going to grab Borderlands for the PC, and then I’ll probably be lost in THAT until my next strategy guide, but still…

All right, onto the real fake wrestling show, so I can spend more time with the fake fake wrestling virtual show! Oh, and as usual, I write this assuming you read Rick’s recap of Bragging Rights and know what went down last night.

Segment 1: JeriShow comes out to brag about the so totally awesome swerve last night that none of us saw coming. Big Show starts off that he is still a proud member of RAW (a statement which makes Jerry Lawler incredulous), but before he can expound on that, Chris Jericho wants to express his fondness for his 7-foot friend for “ending DX’s reign of tyranny.”

Show thanks him and shrugs that off, but tells him he needs to listen up. See, Show needs to talk about SmackDown— And Jericho starts saying that SD would have won anyway because Jericho would totally have won it for them anyway, because he’s a genius.

Show again is upset at the interruption, and continues that he turned on Team RAW for his own gains and his own career. After Bragging Rights, he called up Theodore Long and struck a deal, that he is the next opponent for the Undertaker’s World Title! This is less than 60 seconds after he said he’s a proud member of RAW, so that doesn’t make a goddamn bit of sense.

CJ and BS start arguing, and they are cut off by annoyingly loud engines. Naturally, this leads to an external camera shot of the two NASCAR driver guest hosts doing donuts in the parking lot, which already gives me indigestion at how stupid this is going to be. After an unnecessary amount of time, the drivers get to the ring after driving up to the stage. Each one has a mic, and I go for my Pepto Bismol.

Okay, I don’t know who the fuck who these dipshits are, and I can’t tell them apart, so we’re going with the old Spirit Squad system of naming: we have some guy wearing a hat that reads #20, and a guy who is wearing a hat that doesn’t have there. Ergo, we have #20 and Not-#20. If I pay any more attention to them than that, I’ll have to turn in any semblance of a man card I’ve got left.

Not-#20 opens his redneck mouth first and prattles nonsensically about… uh… something… and finally wants to shake Show’s hand for doing what he did last night. Clearly, Not-#20’s strength does not lie in his ability to speak without a script. Or, even with a script, if it comes to that. Maybe we can just chalk it up to nervousness, but still.

Regardless, he draws cheap heat: if he could talk worth a damn, what he would be saying is “I respect the fact that you turned on your team for the sake of your own career; that’s hardcore gangsta, yo!” Instead, he spoke in general generalities, and it wouldn’t have really surprised me if he uttered the phrase, “You know, what you did last night was big. Because you’re the Big Show! Get it? Big? Big Show? I’m so witty and clever!” Not-#20 and Show finally shake hands as Show gives his thanks.

#20 grabs his own mic and says that Show is so totally an ass, and he won’t shake his hand because turning against your own team (and he stresses the word “team”) is the worst possible thing you can do. I would like to remind you, dear reader, that these clowns are from the same racing team. Clearly, we’re going for a face/heel stupid dynamic for the guest hosts. Just as clearly, Rick is absolutely not paying me enough to recap this shit.

#20 and Not-#20 argue lightly about who has won more championships, and Not-#20 rips on the Buffalo Bills here in Buffalo, New York, which draws even more cheap heat. The only amusing line here came from Jericho: when Not-#20 said that New York is eventually going to be singing “Oh, Canada!,” Jericho responded with “Well, what’s wrong with that?”

#20 decides to pop the crowd, and without any fanfare at all, says that Big Show is going to have to deal with Triple H, whom he sucker-punched last night. Woot!

Jericho says wishes Show the best of luck with that, and wants to lead the guest hosts backstage to talk about… something. Not-#20 says that he can make matches too. So tonight, we’re going to see Chris Jericho vs. Kofi Johnson! I mean, Kofi Johnskingston! I mean Kofi Kingston! Yes, Kingston! I bet you we’re going to watch this on SummerFest! …God I hate NASCAR.

And Kofi comes out immediately, so I guess we’re rolling with this now? Oh, after a commercial.

Segment 2 [Singles Match]: Kofi Kingston defeats Chris Jericho by pin. Really? Goddamn, what an upset! And a fucking good match too! No exceptionally high spots, but this one is a must-watch: good stuff from beginning to end, plenty of false finishes, each guy busted out his finishers, it was great! Ending sequence was Jericho hitting the Codebreaker, but the pin was too close to the ropes, and Kofi got his foot on them. As they all got up from that, Jericho argued with the ref; as Jericho went for his next attack, he ate Kofi’s Trouble in Paradise roundhouse kick, which ended it.

Post-Segment 2: Kofi celebrated his way up the ramp. When he got to the top of it, Randy Orton came out of nowhere and threw him off, making him smack his head on the edge of the stage. Refs ran out to assist him, and he was fine after a second. Not so fine was Orton, who demonstrated the depth of his acting ability by staring hard at Kofi.

Segment 3: Orton is WALKING~! and is come upon by Josh Mathews, who asks what that was all about. Orton says that it was all Kofi’s fault that he lost his… title… last night? Huh? Guess Rick’s recap didn’t go over that, not that I blame him.

Anyway, Orton’s backdoor buddies appear and dismiss Josh, then say they’ve got Orton a present. A few feet away, it sits… pull back the cover, and it’s a NASCAR with Orton on the hood! Orton is very impressed with it (probably because his dream is to get seated behind himself), and continues to picture humping the car as his boys go on that John Cena’s title is totally going to be back with Legacy by the end of the night. Orton is so enraptured at a picture of himself that he doesn’t get the obvious hidden meaning that, possibly, DiBiase or Rhodes is going to have the WWE Championship tonight.

Segment 4: The host idiots are talking to Eve, and, uh, hype some stupid race. Jack Swagger appears to introduce himself, and asks for a match against John Cena. The drivers say that they will pick Cena’s next opponent tonight, which makes Swagger excited.

Miz then appears and asks if Swagger is serious about thinking he deserves the next shot at Cena. He expresses that he is the only winner from RAW in the cross-brand matches. So he should be the new #1 contender, because HE’S THE MIZ… AND HE’S…

…And at this point, it fully hits me how catchy Miz’s catchphrase really is, and how over he is with the crowd, because the crowd hits the last word, but Miz doesn’t. It reminds me of when the Rock always leaves the “Cooking” part hanging, which the crowd always falls for, while he does something silly and unrelated. In Miz’s case, his silly aside was to take Eve’s hand, lift it to his face, smell it, then give it a slimy kiss despite his obvious (to Eve) repulsiveness. Then, and only then, does he whisper, “…awesome.” Which was, uh, very awesome indeed.

Cut Scene: MELLLLIIIINNNNAAAA!!! …is WALKING~! with Santino Marella. Waaahhh!!!

Pre-Segment 5: My Melina and Santino hit the ring for a match. Melina specifically gets Santino’s attention and does the split, and holds it, looking over her shoulder to make sure Santino is staring at her ass. I’m about to type a sentence I have never even considered in my brain processes, but…

God, I wish I was Santino.

…Ouch. That hurt to type. Snapping me back into reality is Jerry Lawler, who says “I wish one of my pickup lines would work on Marella—I mean, Melina.” Add that to some technical interference moments later that gave some feedback and static that threw even the commentators off, and you know this is one of those nights.

Hilariously, after My Melina did her wonderful split, she invited Santino to try too. Santino looked like he readied himself, then split his arms on the apron, and slid in the ring casually. He gestured (Broadly) that he didn’t want to try that again after his last mishap… which I remember fondly as Melina demonstrated the split for him after he fell off the apron, and she held the split while panting her wonderful… uh… torso as she smiled sweetly at him.

God, I wish I was a ring apron.

Segment 5 [Mixed Tag Match]: My Melina & Santino Marella defeat Jillian & Chavo Guerrero by pin. Match was meh if we restrict ourselves to pure technical merits, but it was extremely entertaining. Santino had his best moves going for himself, including what I now am officially calling the Trouser Snake Punch. He did that to Chavo, and Jillian tagged herself in. My Melina followed, and did a very time-compressed series of moves.

Hornswoggle came in for no reason to do some DX chops. While he did so, Melina did an awkward series of moves that resulted in a victory roll, sort of, though she kinda fell off halfway through and Jillian had to tumble around unnaturally to get in a pinning position… which was all for naught because she was in the ropes, and the ref broke it up.

So My Melina made up for all that by hitting the Screaming Orgasm Johnny Cage Split Leg Drop of Doom and Pyro’s Pants-Creaming Pin for the victory. After the match, she jumped on Santino with a hug and wrapped her legs around him; then, as she put him down, he and she slapped each other’s asses. After that, Horny did DX chops while Santino did his silly trumpet taunt and Melina embarrassed herself by pretending to, uh, drum, or something. And then Santino and Melina hugged again.

God, I wish I was Santino.

Post-Segment 5: A guy in a suit comes in the ring, hands Horny a green packet, then bails immediately. Horny opens it up, reads a paper… can’t figure it out. He shows it Jerry Lawler… apparently, DX is giving him a cease-and-desist order to stop his gimmick infringement.

Hornswoggle looks very sad, hangs his head, and starts to head to the back. Aw… I actually feel bad for little Horny!

Segment 6: The ring announcer, whose name I’ve forgotten since he’s replaced Lilian Garcia, announces John Cena… but Legacy comes down instead. They prattle, and pitch themselves as opponents for Cena’s title because Orton can’t anymore. (Remember, no rematches for Orton due to the fact that he lost the Iron Man match.) Ted DiBiase goes on that this request isn’t through the guest hosts or anything like that, that their challenge is directly to Cena himself.

Cena comes down presently and puts the Iron Man match over and, after blathering, says that he and Orton did the match because the Orton/Cena feud needed to end (amen, brother). And further, he says, people are tuning in all over the world to see who his next opponent is… and would be totally disappointed if it was Orton’s Legacy, i.e., someone still connected to Orton. Another good point.

Cody expresses that they’re not Orton. Cena concedes that, but also expresses that it’s close enough to Orton that we fans are going to think we’re watching reruns of the same boring shit, which is also a good point (albeit already true). Cena says that if they really want a shot at the title, they need to work for it and earn a legit shot rather than just “earning” a shot just for being attached to Orton.

Cena polls the crowd, who is in agreement that the “Baby Oil Boys’ Brigade” haven’t earned a thing yet. To start the earning it, Cena has convinced the hosts to make a match tonight…

And here comes MVP and Mark Henry. Yeah, that’ll prove something.

Segment 7 [Tag Match]: MVP & Mark Henry defeat Legacy by pin. Meh. Match was pure formula, with MH being Face In Peril and MVP being the savior. Nothing to write home about.

Post-Segment 7: As Legacy argues with the ref, Orton’s music fires up. He apparently has paused jacking off to his own image to come to the ring and file a complaint about Legacy’s actions.

Orton rages that he doesn’t care about the stipulation of the Iron Match, even if he has to go all the way to the board of directors about it. Kofi Kingston appears on the Titantron and tells Orton to stop crying like a baby and face up to the fact he lost. Ladies and gentlemen: Kofi has officially been pushed to being an upper midcarder!

Orton loses it because he didn’t get the memo and thinks Kofi is still a midcarder. Orton says: “Say that to my face, I dare you!” Kofi says that that’s an interesting choice of words… as Kofi is standing on the car. Uh oh.

Orton flips out more, and threatens to make Kofi’s life hell if he touches the car… Kofi says that he loves NASCARs because they’re so totally durable: so he flings a box into the side of the door. Kofi points out that there’s not a scratch on it despite the size of the box, but small objects can do more damage… so he pulls out a key.

Over the next two minutes, Kofi keys the car, smashes the painted Orton’s face in with a crowbar, smashes in the windshield, then throws a giant bucket of orange paint all over the hood. Kofi’s final move is to slam the empty bucket into the hood, which drenches Kofi in paint and nearly makes him fall off the car. In fact, it’s a damn good thing Kofi has the balance he does, because about five times during the sequence he nearly fell off, and if he had, the whole promo would have been stupid and laugh-worthy rather than intense. Instead, Kofi proves the whole “controlled intensity” or whatever he calls it, and it does come across as intense. I’m sold… especially because Orton/Kofi is about as different from Orton/Cena as can be, and lord knows we need something new in WWE.

Segment 8 [Singles Match]: Evan Bourne defeats Miz by countout. Match was good, but the ending was lame. Swagger came out to talk some trash next to Miz. Miz exited the ring to deal with him, which gave Evan Bourne a chance to do a jumping vault to crossbody both of them. Then, he ran back in the ring, but the ref never reset his count, which runs counter to all countout rules in the history of pro wrestling ever. (But it was Referee McDoucher, so I’m not really surprised.) Miz was confused about who to attack after the match, and settled on just ranting like an idiot.

Segment 9 [Singles Match]: Sheamus squashes Jamie Noble by pin. I refuse to recap squashes.

Pre-Segment 10: As the Show/Trips match gets started, Trips announces that the match has been changed to a Lumberjack Match… and the lumberjacks are hand-picked, the members of Team RAW last night. And Santino for some reason. Kofi is clean of paint when he comes down, which is amazing.

As they start to get underway again, Shawn Michaels announces that the match is ALSO no-DQ… and also, the ref is needed, as we’ve got a special guest referee.

And here comes John Cena? Alrighty, no arguments from me. Cena gets in the ring and pretends he’s a ref as Big Show charges Trips. Cena’s music is still going as the commentators say that we’re going to commercial, and also simultaneously Big Show goes flying out of the ring thanks to Trips and all the lumberjacks converge on him. This is rather hilariously controlled chaos, and for some reason reminds me of the days of “anything can happen in WWE” just because of how many silly things are going on simultaneously.

Oh, and Jericho? He took his trophy (“my grail of greatness!”) and ran away through the crowd. Tee hee!

Segment 10 [Lumberjack No-DQ Singles Match, John Cena is the special referee]: Triple H defeats Big Show by pin. Match started out a little illogically, with the lumberjacks actually being nice and respecting the rules of the match. However, things broke when Trips got in trouble, and Cena started counting… but stopped at two because of a so totally sore muscle in his arm.

Show got in Cena’s face, and that’s when he got absolutely mugged. It started with a double dropkick from Chavo Guerrero and Primo, which sent Show to the corner. Swagger got in and did a running body splash, though Show pushed him away. This was followed up by Miz doing a running jumping clothesline, though Show threw him over the top rope. Mark Henry followed up with another running splash, and Show stumbled away from the corner. MVP came in and did a running kick to floor Show, and immediately Evan Bourne hit the World’s Most Beautiful Shooting Star Press. Santino got into the act with an attempted Trouser Snake, though Show gave him a chokeslam. However, Kofi was able to follow up with a Trouble In Paradise. Cena then hit an FU, followed 30 seconds later by a Shawn Michaels-delivered Sweet Chin Music that got the whole fucking arena on its feet, including the other wrestlers. As Show stumbled from that, Show fell into a Pedigree. And only then did Trips make the pin… Good lord, did Show pay the price! The whole sequence was almost poetic.

Cena and DX celebrated in the ring afterwards as everyone else powdered out and started to leave… but not for long…

Post-Segment 10: The drivers come out to an absolute chorus of boos. They say that they couldn’t decide who to name as Cena’s opponent, but one man put it all together for them…

And Hornswoggle pops out. At first, everyone, including me, is wondering what the hell fumes our idiot hosts were huffing. But then, they explain: we’re going to have a triple threat match at Survivor Series between John Cena, Triple H, and Shawn Michaels. Whoa… guess Horny was really pissed about that cease-and-desist!

Final Thoughts: Okay, that wasn’t so bad. The first couple segments were atrocious, but it got better once the retarded hosts stayed the hell off the show. Nothing was great from a technical perspective, but good lord was it entertaining. Actually, just looking at my word count here, I’m up to about 3500 words, and normally my recaps are like half that. There was a lot to talk about and describe, and it was pretty fun. I wouldn’t call this one a “must-watch,” but I’ll definitely endorse it as a “should-watch.”

Cena’s and Orton’s new threats are a breath of fresh air. While we’ve seen Trips/Cena before, I don’t recall when the two actually feuded… throwing the fact that DX is going to have to be against each other in a month is interesting. Will they turn one of the guys heel? Trips is almost “due” for another heel turn soon… though I’d just prefer to see Cena turn heel and get that ball going. He and Trips have a whole thing now from last week, and there can definitely be some fun played up with that.

Meanwhile, Kofi is unproven to play with the main eventers, but everyone has to start somewhere. While his promo with the car was a bit silly, it wasn’t overdone and it played into his character very well. Orton sold it too, to his credit: if he had just laughed at Kofi or expressed that the car was meaningless, then Kofi’s entire actions would have been made unimportant. As it is, it was set up very well, and seeing Orton against someone bouncy and flippy has great potential. I hope this doesn’t mean that Kofi is going to have to enlist the services of MVP/Mark Henry to fend off the rest of Generation Douche, but you know he’s going to have to, unless Cody and Ted are content to sit on the sidelines… which they won’t be, seeing as they lost to them earlier tonight. Regardless, Orton doing anything that is actually interesting, even if he himself is not interesting, is a welcome change from the past god knows how many years.

Meanwhile, we’ve got a new feud developing between Swagger and Miz. While I’m still not sold on Swagger’s promo abilities (he comes off more annoying than annoyingly clever), I am sold on Miz’s, and they’ve both proven themselves in the ring (Swagger especially) that their matches should be pretty damn good.

Sheamus is still a giant question mark. I liked him when I initially saw him in ECW (when I saw him when I covered for Firewoman’s recaps in July), but either I’ve forgotten the limits of his move set, or he’s gotten boring since then. Of course, you can’t judge a wrestler’s career based off a Jamie Noble squash match, so who knows. After Eric Escobar failed to impress and Drew McIntyre starting to bore me on SmackDown though, I don’t have a tremendous amount of hope. But if Sheamus is the only dull spot in an episode of RAW, that’s pretty much above expectations for WWE nowadays, and I’m stoked about next week.

Speaking of next week, our guest hosts will be Ozzy and Sharon Osbourne. Provided we can understand the bastard, that should be rather entertaining as well. Looks like RAW is starting to assert itself as being the best show again, and it’s not just because SD is starting to suck so bad.

RATING (out of 5): 3.5