And on that note, let’s get this going. We’ve got a WWE Championship match for our last RAW of 2009. To the show!

Segment 1: We cold open to outside the arena, where Chris Jericho has a megaphone. He pesters all the fans around him to sign a petition to get him back onto RAW. Everyone around him just boos, tells him he sucks, and wants to take his picture. Heh.

Segment 2: After the legit opening, John Cena hits the ring to open the show. He waves to the crowd, then exits the ring while his music still plays. From under the apron, he pulls a table and sets it up in the middle of the ring. He sits on a turnbuckle as he addresses the crowd. He hypes that he and Sheamus have a match tonight, and he wants the rematch right now… and what the hell, let’s make it a Tables Match! This actually gooses the crowd into chanting for him.

Sheamus’s music fires up presently, and our WWE Champion pops out of the back. He heads to the ring and stands before the table, considering his words before speaking. He reminds us that he, indeed, wears the belt, and says that a rematch will be on his terms, ergo he doesn’t want a Tables Match. He wants a challenge, and beating Cena in a Tables Match already means it won’t be a challenge; ergo, it’ll be just a standard singles match.

Sheamus turns to leave, so Cena jumps over the table toward him. Sheamus turns around and goes for a punch. Cena ducks it and gives Sheamus an FU through the table. He celebrates and walks off, leaving Sheamus in a pile of splinters.

Not a bad start; pretty hot in general, and the crowd is really digging this. Works for me.

Segment 3: Timbaland is in the back, clearly waiting for his cue to begin speaking. He’s with the Bella Twins and Gail Kim, and they talk some stupid shit before Josh Mathews appears to ask what’s up with the main event now. Timmy talks like he’s completely drunk off his ass, and promises that the match will go as planned, since they’re even.

That’s right: Timbaland thinks it’s totally even between Cena being put through a table in a sanctioned match a month ago and Sheamus being put through a table outside a match two minutes ago. Oh, and he calls Cena vs. Sheamus II “The Biggest Match of the Century.” It’s going to be one of those shows, ladies and gentlemen: prepare your Southern Comfort, Vodka, Rum, Whiskey, Beer, Wine, Jager, Shooters to get through it. Oh, and fix yourself a PB & J. You know, just because.

God, Gail Kim is hot.

Segment 4: Generation Douche is walking down the hall and find Randy Orton in the locker room. Stupid talk ensues (including pimping The Marine 2), which results in Orton saying that he doesn’t associate himself with losers like these two. Ladies and gentlemen: the seeds of a DiBiase face turn have now been planted.

Anyway, Orton books two matches tonight, putting Rhodes and DiBiase in separate singles matches to prove their worth. If they lose, they’re out of Generation Douche team, and Orton will so totally kick their asses.

Post-Segment 4: We get a cutaway of Jericho still with a little picket sign and his megaphone outside the arena, surrounded by… absolutely nobody. BWA HA HA HA HA!

Pre-Segment 5: After a commercial, we get a close-up of Jericho’s campaign outside, begging everyone to “Stop the Jericho Embargo” and to sign the petition. Everyone ignores him. Heh.

Segment 5 [Singles Match]: Ted DiBiase defeats Evan Bourne by pin. Match was too time compressed to be good, but it was watchable. EB did amazing things like a floor-to-top rope huracanrana, but ultimately fell victim to Dream Street.

Orton was at ringside but didn’t do anything. In other words, he was just as entertaining as usual.

Segment 6 [Singles Match]: Cody Rhodes defeats Mark Henry by pin. Ditto the last match. MH basically did a squash, but when he went for some move toward the outside, he “hurt his knee.” Once he got back in the ring, Rhodes kicked him in the knee and gave him a DDT, which was it.

That’s right, ladies and gentlemen: MH goes down from a DDT despite surviving 20 minutes against Undertaker a few years ago. Awesome.

Segment 7: In the back, Jillian wants to see Timbaland, but Gail plays bouncer to refuse her entry. The camera pans and we see DX. Hornswoggle is duct taped to a skateboard, and Trips is bound and determined to see how far he can launch him.

Shawn admits he’s feeling a little less jovial tonight: Vince will address the Bret Hart rumors tonight, and Shawn is antsy about it. Trips says not to worry about it, to focus on their tag match against Big Show and a wrestler to be announced. “Don’t do anything stupid!” Trips says as he finishes strapping Horny in.

Jillian meanwhile starts singing as Timmy pops out of his room after all. Trips launches Horny, who bowls over Jillian to stop her from assaulting Timmy’s ears. That’s worth a high-five… well, “high” is relative when dealing with a midget, but still.

Segment 8 [Singles Match]: Maryse defeats Kelly Kelly by pin. Match was about 30 seconds long. K2 did a top rope crossbody, which was impressive. However, she missed her follow up backflip elbow thingy, and Maryse DDTed her for the win.

After the match, Maryse trashes My Melina, saying she’ll totally never be as sexy as her. Maryse is my #4 diva in WWE in hotness, and I’m offended. Bitch.

Oh, then she kicks K2 for no reason. Heh.

Segment 9: Jericho is still at it outside. Big Show comes upon him, telling him to let it go. Jericho admits his wet dreams for Big Show—making Firewoman cry, poor girl—and informs him that long-distance relationships so totally don’t work. There’s quite a bit of truth to that nugget of joy, that’s for goddamn sure.

*ahem* Show tells him to let it go, then heads into the arena after giving Jericho an envelope. Jericho says he’ll cherish it, whatever it is. He opens it up, looks at it, and cackles. Uh oh.

Segment 10: Here comes Vince McMahon. Once he gets in the ring, a “We want Bret! We want Bret!” fires up before the chairman gets in two words edgewise. Vince ironically panders to us, then gets to the crux: next week’s guest host will be Bret Hart!!! Holy shit, I just creamed myself.

Vince says that he’s got a so totally unbiased video package of Bret’s career for all the youngsters who don’t know who the hell he is. And we get that video package, which is pretty damn good… until they get to Survivor Series 1997, where Vince slants it that Bret so totally screwed himself.

We cut back to the arena, where Vince again reiterates that despite the selfishness of Bret caused his own undoing, but just for us, he’s allowed Bret to come back. Vince takes us back to Bret’s Hall of Fame induction speech: Vince says that Bret didn’t shake his hand afterwards, and they never said a word to each other. “Bret show me nothing but contempt.” I actually believe that, whether this is just kayfabe or whatever.

Vince goes on that just for us, to show us that he loves us fans, that next week’s guest host will be…

He leaves it hanging.

He composes himself, and… says that he just can’t do it after all. He declares that Bret will never be a guest host on RAW. Ass.

…And here comes Shawn Michaels? He dressed in his DX gear but comes out to his own music, looking rather stoic and serious as he comes to the ring. Shawn says that there are some rivalries that are bigger than wrestling itself. Vince thinks that he means the rivalry between him and Bret…

But no, Shawn is talking about himself and Undertaker. Shawn wants the Undertaker again at WrestleMania. He isn’t here to appeal to his morality, but to Vince’s wallet, that he vs. Taker one more time would put asses in the seats and make for mucho PPV buys. Vince says no… but only because he doesn’t want to run afoul of Undertaker’s mood. He says that if the match is going to happen, Shawn has to make it happen.

Vince starts to leave, but Shawn stops him. Shawn adds one more thing to the conversation: that he can understand Vince’s fear of Taker, but not his fear of Bret. “You don’t have many open chapters of your life: you should bring some closure to this one. What do you have to lose? Bring Bret Hart back to RAW!” Wow. Shawn promises that if he does, “only good things are going to happen.”

Vince smiles and says he’s fearless of everyone, Taker and Bret included. He has Shawn repeat the “only good things” phrase. Shawn adds that he “will be very happy to see Bret again.” Vince seems to read something on Shawn’s eyes, and finally indeed declares that Bret will be next week’s guest host.

Shit. I’m buying some booze for that one! It’s enough of a reason for me to throw a party, and I’m not the partying type.

Segment 11: Josh Mathews starts to interview Sheamus in the back concerning the main event. Sheamus appears out of nowhere and kicks his ass for all of two seconds until a swarm of refs break it up. The commentators assure us that any health advantage Cena had is now gone. Whatever.

Segment 12: We’re in the back office with Timbaland, who is talking to MVP. Some stupid pimping of some Timbaland product occurs, and then Kofi Kingston comes in. He thanks Timmy for a chance to take a shot at the US Title… MVP says that Kofi beat MVP for that title in the first place, so he should get the first match at Kofi once he beats Miz. Get all that?

Miz comes in and assures everyone that he will still be the US Title in 2010. Oh, and Gail so totally can’t “keep up with Maryse.” Gail: “Ew.” I love you, Gail.

Gail leaves, and Timmy decides to add a little stipulation. He’s still drunk or something, so I’ll translate (as Miz did): if Kofi wins his match, then he will face Miz for the US Title immediately afterwards. Miz is actually unhappy with this, even though logically he should be in favor since Kofi would be exhausted and have a bigger chance of losing. Instead, he acts like this is horrible.

What is truly horrible is Timmy’s and MVP’s “dancing” afterwards. And then we cut to Michael Cole, who is dancing too. Permit me to vomit.

Segment 13 [Singles Match]: Kofi Kingston defeats Miz by pin. Basically a squash, Kofi won in for moves, concluding with by doing a Trouble In Paradise in mid-fucking-air while Miz came off the top rope with a double axe handle. Holy shit, that was sweet!!!

…Except for the fact that that this match lasted 30 seconds. Oh well, it sets up the true match, after the commercial…

Segment 14 [Singles Match for the US Title]: Kofi Kingston defeats Miz by disqualification, but Miz retains. Gay. GAY. FUCKING G-A-Y. God, I hate dirty finishes.

Both guys were in “Hypershit Mode,” a rapid sequence of moves on both sides that seemed to signal “end game.” That was, er, because it was the end game: Kofi managed to hit the Trouble In Paradise, but Orton came down and pulled him out.

Orton shoved Kofi face-first into the corner post, then hit him with an RKO. To Orton’s credit, the RKO was damn good: usually when Orton hits an RKO out of the ring, it looks weird and compacted, but they did it perfectly.

Anyway, Orton stares down Kofi’s corpse as we go to the next commercial.

Pre-Segment 15: DX hits the ring and talks before their match, assuring us that Show will consummate his relationship with his new partner right now. “Not there’s anything wrong with that,” says Shawn. Not at all, buddy.

Oh wait, before we get to the ring, Jericho appears! He comes through the crowd… oh wow, so surprising, the envelope Show had was a front row ticket. Who didn’t see that coming?

Segment 15 [Tag Match]: Degeneration X defeats Chavo Guerrero & Big Show. Match was lame. Shawn was Face in Peril, with Trips getting the hot tag. As Show stopped that, Hornswoggle came in and tried to do the Pedigree to Chavo behind the ref’s back. Really. Chavo back body dropped him, but then walked into a Pedigree. Show as flattened outside and couldn’t break it up.

They tried to do a spot earlier where Chavo tried a Frog Splash from the top of Show’s shoulders. They took too long to set it up though, and by the time he went for it, he wasn’t balanced right. Instead, Chavo basically fell off and into the canvas. Sigh.

Post-Segment 15: After the match, Jericho hopped the barricade and threw a temper tantrum. He jumped on the apron, but Shawn immediately Superkicked him off. Trips pulled a mic out of his ass and declared that, fine, next week DX will take on JeriShow for a for-real rematch. The caveat: if Jericho loses, no more silliness, he’s off the show forevers!!!

Pre-Segment 16: Timbaland hits the ring to be our guest ring announcer, wearing a Cena shirt. Ugh.

Segment 16 [Singles Match for the WWE Title]: John Cena defeats Sheamus by disqualification, but Sheamus retains. Match was gay as fuck. It was all punchy-kicky until the end, when Sheamus was put in the FU position. Before being hit by it, Sheamus took a page out of DX’s playbook and grabbed the ref, kinda throwing him across the ring. This drew a DQ. Gay. As. Fuck.

Post-Segment 16: Sheamus starts to retreat, but Cena grabs him and throws him back in the ring. Sheamus then hits his finishing bicycle kick to put Cena on his back. And then as Cena gets back up, Sheamus kicks him again and celebrates. Gay. As. Fuck.

Final Thoughts: This night sucked… but to be fair, it was watchable in a post-2001 kind of way. If you’re one of those people who enjoy wrestling: skip it. If you’re one of the jerk modern fans who is part of the problem, I’m sure you’ll enjoy it.

Oh, and no appearance by My Melina. I need to go cry now.

Rating (out of 5): 2.0