Jonathan Coachman: I like him better as an announcer, but he really also functions well as a Don Callis-type Jack of All Trades in that he can conduct interviews, conduct himself pretty well in programs with other WWE talent, do the color commentary, and draw lots and lots of heat. In truth, Raw-on a show where the faces outnumber the heels-isn't doing nearly enough with this guy. Remember Don Callis' run in ECW with The Network? That's the kind of stuff that The Coach could be doing. But, instead...he's another underused talent. That implies a lack of vision on the WWEs part, which also falls under, you guessed it, inconsistent booking. C'mon. He can talk-well-he can take a bump, let him be someone's full time mouthpeice. La Resistance, Maven, whoever. I actually liked the Coach & Cade Connection. Come on.
Kane: I was about to say that he is inconsistently booked, but that would be erroneous. He IS booked consistently as a heel or as a face, as a Bam Bam Bigelow of the New Millenium. He generally dominates people on television...then loses to them all on PPV. That is his role, and he's not going to be elevated above that anytime soon. He's an upper-midcard guy who jobs regularly to established and yet-to-be established talent. His look has also worn out its welcome. I have no problem with him in this role, because I'm not sure I even want to see him in the main event. Ever.
Koshrow Daivari: It's a goddamnded shame it's coming to this. The gimmicks' barely a month old, and now this guy is getting DEATH THREATS from dumbass cowards. Some 'fan' wrote a long death threat to Daivari this week. Cowards. This guy is benefitting, however, from the natural heat that comes from playing the Anti-American gimmick as an Arab-American (I believe he was actually born in Iraq). Was once a highly-regarded worker on the indy-circuit, but the WWE apparently at this point has plans for him only as a manager (see his work with Chris Jericho, 1/17/2005), a role in which he excels. Draws tons of heat, has presence, and plays the manager/translator (?) role with style and flair.
Lilian Garcia:Doesn't do enough. Not because I'm personally a big fan of hers, which I am not, but fans seems to almost universally love this woman, which to me makes the fact that the WWE has yet to capitalize on this excedingly hilarious. See how SD handles its women. There's no role she can fill, no character that she can effectively portray on Raw? That's laughable. Raw continues to drop the ball on this one. She has a look, its not my favorite, but most others seem to love it. She can, apparently (hint, hint) speak. What's the problem, here?
She can't do what Rochelle, Maria, Candice, Stacy and Christy do?
Mark Henry:Has had millions of chances. I don't see the need for another. Talented workers (Jamie Noble) and workers who had at least more talent than M.Henry (Test) have since been released. Perhaps its HIS turn, now. Had potential and quite a bit of charisma at one point. Now..? To be fair, playing the squashee in a main-event feud with Goldberg is sure to snuff out anyone's fire. It made him look like a jobber. It was another example of forcing someone into the main event who had no business there (notice...even Batista had to struggle to draw a reaction after his pillmanizing of 'Berg). And honestly? I've never thought the guy was a heel. He's in the mold of The Big Show...a big man who looks like a heel, but is a natural face. The WWE used him incorrectly...and that = inconsistency in the booking department. And NOW he's torn his quad.
Maria: This is what I know about Maria Kanellis. She's a small girl from a small town (Ottawa, Illinois) with big dreams. She's a Pisces, which means she's a submissive, malleable, easily-led idealist who is really popular with everyone around her, because she is so kind, compassionate, easygoing and sympathetic. Everyone knows a Pisces, and pisces always, ALWAYS play second fiddle to Scorpios (hey, that's me!!!). She is nicknamed 'Boop' and 'Dancer.' I won't go into why. Little kids like to look at her breasts and express wonderment that their own mothers' teats look nothing like Marias', apparently. She is also ultra-hot. Smokin'. So, she grades out well against Christy Hemme. She displays just enough of a hint of a hint of a personality to justify keeping her around. But she has no real role outside of being shapely, comely eye-candy...and that will ALWAYS draw a cry of 'INCONSISTENT BOOKING!!!' from me. And quite frankly, why is she here, really? Christy has a reason to be on the show...she won. But displaying 'just enough of a hint of a hint of personality' and looking 'ultra-hot' should not garner you more airtime than actual female wrestlers if you can't do anything yourself of a wrestling nature on a wrestling program.
Matt Hardy:Inconsistent booking...and then he got hurt. Comes to Raw to feud with Lita, which went nowhere, then takes her back to feud with Kane (went somewhere, but the place it went to was predictable). At least it got him out of the cruiserweight division. Come to think of it, the booking was more inane than inconsistent. And in the aftermath of his breakup with his longtime girlfriend Lita (due to an affair with Edge), the guy may be moved to SD. Whatever happens, this guy is one of the very few guys in the WWE that I would like to see moved-slowly-up the card to somewhere at or near WHC level. I personally think he has 'it'...whatever IT is.
Maven:I don't personally care if he didn't have to give his blood,sweat and tears for 10 years just to finally get his first big break. I don't care if he has a unibrow. I don't care if his voice sounds funny, and if he comes across as a little fruity to some people. So what. Maven's WWE history to date looks like a row of pyramids silhouetted on the horizon: up and down, up and down, up and down. Feud with Ric Flair, and then do nothing. Feud with Evolution and then do nothing. Get to Survivor Series and then do nothing. Feud with Eugene and then do nothing. Start off a feud with Shelton Benjamin, and then...do nothing...BUT get squashed TWICE on PPV and then one more time for good measure the next night. All the while, develop the beginnings of a really cool heel character...but that's okay, because you can do all this just to do ...nothing. I really don't understand this any other way than to say inconsistent booking.
Muhammad Hussan: Still need to see this guy work a real match with a real wrestler. Outside of that, his promos are gold (And from what I've heard, very much from the heart). A terrific speaker, which is what the program he is in demands. Unfortunately, he works for the WWE...which means that his current program is not going to get the development that it deserves. Worse still, it represents Vinnie Mac capitalizing on our merry little 'war' (read:occupation of an insignificant military apparatus that played NO ROLE in 9/11). BTW, everything Mohammad Hussan says is THE TRUTH. And everybody knows this. A terrific heel in the making...even if his finishing move is a little bit of a letdown. Not that it's not good...I was just expecting more than what basically equates to a reverse Rock Bottom.(*Now, that I have seen him work, I have come to the conclusion that this is just another very average worker-and that's putting it kindly with a can't miss gimmick and very good mic skills. In short, anyone who can have a bad match with Chris Benoit needs to be down in OVW. Period. Blown spots, a general lack of presence and he seems to be in a fog at times in the ring.)
Rhyno: Ohmygod, see Christian/Eugene/Kane, etc., etc. During the Invasion angle, it looked like this guy was going to break through. Then that petered out. Then he got hurt. Then he had some aborted angles on SD that I thought were going to go somewhere. They did not. So I was wise to the fact that he would go nowhere on Raw. And he really didn't. The feud he and Tajiri (the Gore-rillas in the Mist) had with La Resistance served mainly to elevate La Res, so it wasn't really a feud, just a sequence of jobs. It's been a tale of 2 extremes for Rhyno. Either he's getting shoved down our throats (see ECW) or he's being held down (WWE). Next.
Robert Conway: I am high on La Res, and this guy is the main reason why. Nice work, nice in-ring charisma, the little bit I have seen of him on the mic (from 2003 to now) tells me that he's little more than adequate in this area, and somewhat bland. But La Res is a nice little team with a nice tandem finisher (the Au Revoir) that people might actually respond to if they were actually booked as what they are:the last (=best) tag team on Raw. Semi-inconsistent booking insofar as that while I personally like the La Res gimmick, it is not going to elevate him at all in the long run...in fact, it will hold him down (see 'Cane/RVD/Kane for people held down by their gimmicks). In fact, it holds him down so much that La Res can go out and get SQUASHED. CLEANLY. BY ONE MAN. on Raw (Batista). So, while I'm high on La Res, it's cold comfort...because the WWE certainly for sure ain't high on The Quebecers 2K5.
Rochelle Loewen: So, now there is somebody else on the Raw roster from Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. Alberta is also a great place to find Late Cretaceous (Campanian-Maastrichtian) dinosaur fossils...mainly tyrannosaurs, ceratopsians, hadrosaurs (both hadrosaurine and lambeosaurine), other ornithopods, nodosaurid ankylosaurs and the odd ostrich-mimic and pachycephalosaur. Alberta is a fantastic place. And Rochelle is fantastic to look at-as a matter of fact, IMO the best-looking woman on SD not named Dawn Marie or Hiroko Suzuki. But as you may have noticed, I'm talking about dinosaurs here...which is a fairly good indicator that Rochelle is about as interesting as sun-dried liver in her current role, as she apparently can't act, speak or wrestle or do anything other than look good, and quite frankly the WWE could just go hire Kimona Wannalaya for that. In other words, who cares. Next.
Rosey: Remember 3-Minute Warning? Remember his moonsault on Raw? Remember when it looked like this guy might amount to something? Remember the agility and athleticism the big man showed? Remember when he wasn't stuck in a gimmick that would just continue to haunt him and dog him and hold him down? Remember all of that? The WWE doesn't. Rectal booking. The guy is a joke right now, and it is sad. Very sad.
Shawn Michaels: I've never-ever-liked this guy. I don't like his promos, I don't like his schtick. His gimmick and his intro are fine enough...but who cares. He should be strapped firmly down in the midcard and should be force-fed a healthy diet of underdeveloped/underestablished talent to put over. Or should he? Twice he's drawn Christian, and twice Christian has took the loss...but more importantly than that, the 2nd time around Michaels made Christian look like garbage with Michaels' sloppy and uninspired work. So so what if Michaels is arguably the greatest worker of this generation (?). So what if he's done it all. He's not a draw, he's boring and to top it all off people who need him to put them over get stiffed, so the future of the WWE is in very precarious shape if they are depending on Shawn to give them the 'rub'. Inconsistent booking? No. He is consistently made to look VERY strong, which should help the undercard when they work with him-provided he's actually putting you over. 'Losing' a match and putting someone over are two different things. So, 'inconsistent' booking? No. WRONG booking? Most definitely. Stop making him look like Superman for no reason. It's Stone-Cold Steve Austin all over again, but of course, at least Steve drew. Next.
Shelton Benjamin: I don't like the basics of the push of Raws' best pure athlete. Pairing him off with Maven. Gene Snitsky. 'Jack LaLanne 2005' Simon Dean. Let's be serious, here. The WWE finally got it right by putting him in the same ring with Chris Benoit, but this-sadly-is just the exception, not the norm. It should be simple: Give him real feuds against real wrestlers. Shelton can do it all in the ring, but he's still learning the basics of how to work a great wrestling match. He's still learning psychology. Which means that it could blow up in the faces of the WWE, Maven and Shelton by expecting Shelton to carry Maven during their little program. Or Snitsky. OR S.Dean. Other than that, he still needs to learn how to cut a promo, and his current intro music has got to go. His promo skills are not absolutely ridiculous-he's not Jeff Hardy (thank god) bad-but he clearly needs work in this area. Also, his finisher is NOT a T-Bone Suplex, J.R. Good god, where's Mike Tenay when you need him? Just call it the Exploder Suplex, and be done with it.
Simon Dean: I pine for the days of Nova. Oh, how I long for the days of Nova-caine and The Kryptonite Crunch. How I long for the days in ECW where-even though he was sporting a ridiculous gimmick-the fans almost universally supported this guy. No one owns up to supporting 'Jack LaLanne 2005' Simon Dean...and for good reason. Where, exactly, is this gimmick supposed to take him? Of course, it could work...but only if the guy who he is working with for the most part right now (The Hurricane) were not so blatantly and obviously being fed to S.Dean. Which means S.Deans squashfest will do him no good. This is Rectal booking at its 'finest.' All that aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaand...the gimmick is lame. IMO.
Steven Richards: I don't understand why this guy isn't doing anything. He's a tremendously talented comedic heel with sharp and dynamic mic skills (hey, that is the same thing one would say about Simon Dean!). But all he's doing is hard time on Heat, and getting his face crushed by the ridiculously green Chris Masters. WTF? I don't understand, and neither does anybody else. Clearly, the WWE doesn't quite get it. Which makes them morons...and everybody knows that morons book inconsistently. A lot. What happened to him and Victoria? Why is he not at least playing a bigger role on Heat? Isn't that part of his gimmick (Stevie Night Heat)? Am I the only one who sees that Steven Richards is 'Must-See Steeee-Veee?' Why is ANYONE being forced to 'put over' The Masterpiece? Come on!!!
Sylvain Grenier: I'm not as high on this guy as I am on Robert Conway, not nearly as high on him. There's something missing in Greniers' equation, and I don't know what it is, to be frank. Somewhat green in his work, and sometimes' he just embarrasses himself (see the botched nip-up a while back). Is well behind Conway and Rene Dupree. Got a great singing voice, though. I think.
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