Television At Its Finest

On Monday, one of cable's highest rated shows, WWE Raw, made it's return to St. Louis and the Scottrade Center. It was my first time going to the Scottrade Center and it was amazingly similar in design and structure to the old Savvis Center. Anyway, here are some notes from a monumental edition of WWE Raw:

The Good

- We had decent seats. Of course when we got to our seats (no usher in sight, I might add) some brother and his woman were not just sitting, but sprawled out in the seats like they were settling in for the winter. They had stuff everywhere. After a very pleasant exchange, I am happy to report that they got ta steppin' without incident.

- I got to see some of my favories, including Ric Flair (he didn't talk, but he did make a brief cameo giving a low blow to Kenny Dykstra), the spectacular Victoria, Shelton Benjamin, and Edge. We had a spirited conversation about WWE Women's Champion Mickie James. She seems like a really neat lady.

- During one of the breaks they played an excellent video on the big screen of the WWE Divas to Jet's "Are You Gonna Be My Girl". I admired it for its great production values.

- No, really.

- And in other good news, no one hopped the rail and jumped into the ring, not always a given in St. Louis.

The Bad

- The main event was WWE Champion John Cena (fresh from a non-title loss to the massive Kevin Federline-Spears) against the seven foot giant The Great Khali in an epic battle that lasted all of two minutes. Not exactly Flair vs. Steamboat.

- Some fan (a grown ass man!) had a sign that said "Get Well, Triple H". What a sap.

- On the way home, my friend Upgrade and I spotted a middle aged white woman yelling and seemingly pleading her case to some young G in a black leather coat. We knew it could only mean one thing: somebody came up short on the money! Woman, give that man his 100 percent! I didn't even know they had set up a track on North Broadway.

The Ugly

- The show was largely built around a "match" between a Rosie O'Donnell impersonator and a Donald Trump impersonator. This was almost typical WWE brand humor (i.e. not funny) except it went well past the normal standards. This was an abomination of epic proportions. And it went on forever. Think of the worst Saturday Night Live skit that you've ever seen and triple it. Time stood still as these two had a fake fake wrestling match. I could feel a beard growing. To the fans' credit, they were chanting such thing as "BORING", "We want wrestling", and "TNA" (Total Nonstop Action, a rival wrestling group on Spike TV). When "Rosie" kicked out of a pin attempt, the crowd erupted in boos because they were so ready for it to be over. This thing ended with "Trump" throwing a cake in her face (at least that's how I think it ended-- I had zoned out and was thinking about football by then). Just dreadful. But they're back in May!