Reported by Mike Siciliano of WrestleView.com
On Tuesday, June 12, 2007 at 12:45 AM EST

PLEASE READ:
Please be aware that this is NOT an attempt at infringing on my colleague Hunter Golden's forthcoming recap of the Raw Draft. I had not one intention on writing tonight until I saw the end scene of Raw. Once that occurred, I had to do it. If you want blow by blow recap of the action tonight, this is not for you. When you're done reading Hunter's column, I hope you take the time and come back and check this out. This is a rant from a fan with the forum, not a full blown recap of what's transpired tonight. Thank you.

Ok. I am sufficiently pissed off. There's a million reasons why, but the reason I want to talk about right now is WWE Raw.

For reasons that I wish I, nevermind, I saw Raw this week live, and while I want to go through the draft picks one by one, I have to discuss the elimination of the character of Mr. McMahon, the evil chairman.

One Night Stand sees the chairman lose the precious ECW World Championship back to Bobby Lashley, which sends him in to a stress overload, and near insanity. I can buy that, it's legit, it's almost real, and I can buy it. I can certainly buy the insanity that transpired over the past few weeks on the shows involving the Hardys, Ashley, and other talents back and forth. I can buy all of this.

I can even buy trying to mask the draft in to this stupid appreciation night to make McMahon 'feel' better. Made the world feel like throwing up in their collective mouths, but hey, that's one man's opinion. For the first time in a long time, I WANTED WRESTLING, and I didn't get it full throttle that I thought I would get. I got Roddy Piper. I got Dusty Rhodes. I got Mick Blessed Foley who probably wishes he was back in an ROH ring for the amount of work he's done since Glory By Honor IV when he left that company to return to WWE.

I digress. Vince McMahon decides he's going to remove himself off television by having his character whacked, ala the Sopranos, ala DeNiro in Casino, ala any stupid removal of an evil sycotic madman from any soap opera. Now while I do NOT in any way shape or form disagree with the removal of the character, it brings back an old topic from a previous column.

Remember when I bitched and complained about how they wrote off RVD and HBK? Well, I could do that again ten fold for this one. (BTW, I AM going to publish that stuff.. please bear with me on that.. I still have it. If you haven't seen the column I'm referring to, let me know, and I'll hook you up.)

So now, we have a show where I WANTED TO SEE THE WRESTLING, I wanted to SEE WHO WON, and even though we all know it was fixed, I wanted to SEE who was being drafted where, we get ridiculous promos making fun of an evil genius, only to have that genius eventually destroyed.

Meanwhile, the latest goal for the evil genius, the removal of Lashley as ECW Champion, had been completed. Lashley was drafted to Raw, DON'T ASK ME WHY, and from that statement, the ECW title is brought back to the office as vacant, because we obviously can't have interpromotional champions, as evident from Cade & Murdoch beating the Hardy Boys a week or so ago.

So, here we are, ladies and gentlemen. The removal of the evil maniac after the goal has been achieved. The removal of the evil maniac after the goal has been achieved by taking him, placing him in a car, and blowing the car up. Is this wrestling, a soap opera, or freaking fear factor? Someone please make up their minds, tell Vince McMahon to focus on the DAMN PRODUCT OF WRESTLING, and maybe stop calling the crap he's putting out there sports entertainment, because quite frankly, it's not entertaining.

You want a perfect example of the 'AVERAGE' fan's reaction to this? Although the person who I am going to use for this example is far from average, (that being my lovely wife), here's the perfect response. The limo goes up in smoke, and her exact response was,

"Where's the humor in that?"

Now, obviously, we're not looking for yucks, yucks, yucks, but come on, SOMEWHERE in the depths of hell that these people call creative minds, there's got to be a better way to write off a character than to have him presumed dead. Again, we're back to the same question.

How would YOU write off Mr McMahon? (Damn, i got more work to do, now. But hey, it's fun to read this stuff.)

My email link is at the bottom of this piece.

Quickly, on to the draft picks, for now.

Raw picked up Lashley, King Booker, Snitsky and Mr. Kennedy. Snitsky means zero in the grand scheme of things. Although I would love to see Snitsky and Umaga go absolutely ape on each other for about a match and a half, he means zero in the grand scheme. However, three men that come to Raw from the blue and white and ECW will bolster the main event scene of Raw for some time. Its already shown in the upcoming Night of Champions main event with Booker and Lashley being added to the open challenge WWE title match. Who here can't wait to see Cena vs. Mr. Kennedy? Cena vs. Lashley? I can't wait. I AM GOING TO LOVE THAT FEUD when it happens, and we all know it is going to happen. Hell, Booker's a lock for the IC title, and probably has at least a feud for a close shave with the WWE title before all is said and done on Raw. Trips and Shawn being injured just became a moot issue for the flagship on Monday nights.

ECW lost their champion. Why? ECW planned on building the brand around Bobby Lashley. Did they decide that Lashley' lack of mike skills was his death knell as a champion? Perhaps. However, it doesn't make sense when he just won the title back at One Night Stand only two weeks ago to have it stripped from him due to the draft is really odd and weird booking. Hopefully, with this being said, an eventual match, (someone say chamber match?) will be brought up for a new ECW titlist, and perhaps these guys can compete.. Say, CM Punk, Tommy Dreamer, Elijah Burke, Marcus Cor Von, Kevin Thorn and CHRIS BENOIT. Ladies and gentlemen, if Chris Benoit is not ECW Champion SOON, I will be shocked, stunned, and down right angry. Benoit needs to be champion. Benoit needs to be champion of this brand, and feud with the likes of Burke, Punk, Cor Von, and Thorn. Those five men can take the brand as a whole and turn it in to a viable contender with Raw and Smackdown for years to come. The Boogeyman on ECW. Well, let's say this. Sci Fi has their representative in full effect. Next.

Smackdown got railed. They got Torrie Wilson. Hrm. Someone want to say that she's on the fast track out of the company? She was the only woman moved, out of the show with the women's title. Either A) she can't wrestle, B) she don't want to wrestle, or C) WWE doesn't want her near the title. Either which way, the lovely former Mrs. Billy Kidman will be looking for work, soon. Chris Masters is on Smackdown. Yawn. I am not a Chris Masters fan. Why? Simple. He's too one dimensional. He deseprately needs to step his game up to a major level to take over a big spot on friday nights, or his time in the company will be short lived. This is a last olive branch for the Masterpiece, I can guarantee you that. Ric Flair was brought to Smackdown to make Dave Batista happy. If you people can't see that, then you're blind. Batista is crying like a whiny little, well, nevermind, that he's on Smackdown, he's not the champ anymore, and he wants out. Flair was sent to Smackdown to make Batista happy, and maybe pacify him with tag team gold. A reunion of the former Evolution stable mates is a virtual lock. AND lastly, Smackdown got the WWE's version of the hot potato, the Great Khali. HOW MANY BRAND JUMPS has this guy done in the past 12 months? Think about it. He was on ECW briefly, he's been on Raw, he was on Smackdown forever, and now he's back. I LOVED Cena's look to Edge when Khali was announced. Cena's like, "good luck, you egomaniac, you try and carry that load, I did my share already, and it was nearly impossible, even for a strong guy like me." Edge will have to carry that load eventually, and that is something the canadian champion is definitely angry about it, if you ask me. In the mean time, Batista vs. Khali is a lock, and that, ladies and gentlemen, scares me to death.

I personally loved the format for the draft. I loved the randomness of it, regardless if it was fixed or not, and we all know it was. I would've liked to see triple threats throughout the show for all three brands to be represented in all the matches. Anyway, the matches were good, Lashley and Benoit put on a clinic before Benoit went to ECW, and I thought they were beginning one hell of a rivalry, but obviously, WWE dropped that ball in a big big way. Candice continues to win, yet, Melina is nowhere to be found to cause havoc during her match with Kristal. Bret Hart wants to punch Vince in the face, Jesse Ventura finally got hair, Donald Trump still can't pronounce UMAGA, and the show definitely was a downer with the last scene. I missed Austin's pre taped segment, but I would've preferred they dropped this whole McMahon sphiel, and did more drafting. It was almost an entertaining 3 hours. Now, we have to wait 48 hours to see what happens next.

Which leads me to my next email question. What does happen next? Who else gets moved?

Click here to send me your answers.

Thanks a lot for reading. Take care everybody.

NOTE: The views of this column represent those of the author solely, and not those of the other staff members or administration of this website.