Raw Thoughts - 26 Jan

· Strong Raw opening with sound reasoning and a new approach to simultaneous apology and defiance.
· The only negative thing to the opening Orton speech was that he could have been cheered for what he did. However, the “you suck” chant seemed to put paid to that.
· Interesting that Orton admitted to being the father of a newborn child. Didn’t he (kayfabe) sleep with Kelly Kelly a month or two ago?
· Pretty basic filler with the Mizorrison v Cryme Tyme match. Very standard stuff – I have little, either positive or negative, to add.
· Why would anyone sanction the HBK v Cena match to let JBL into the Chamber? And why didn’t JBL at least attempt to explain the actions of his employee during the title match last night?
· Do you know what? I nearly wrote down that I thought this would be a perfect sort of match for Kofi to win and get a helping hand to the next level. But I decided it was never going to happen, so left it.
· I’m really pleased that they’ve chosen to put Kofi over Kane there. It gives him a short-term boost and adds his brand of wrestling into the Chamber match. Put Kane in the chamber and he won’t win anyway, so you may as well have Kofi, who also obviously won’t win but will offer some more interesting fare.
· Rourke v Jericho? That’s not the bigger story for me. I’m more interested in the fact that Jericho kept talking about Flair. If Rourke gets in the ring is Flair going to be in his corner? Does that mean Naitch will be at the Hall of Fame for Austin?
· A slightly weak start to a Jericho v Rourke feud. After seeing Mayweather get involved like that last year, it might have been cool to put Rourke in the ring and have Jericho attack him or for Jericho to somehow wangle an appearance on a TV show and attack Rourke there, for extra publicity.
· I think they don’t know what to do with JBL and HBK now. They’ve done the double superkick and don’t know why, and are floundering. That exchange with JBL, HBK and Cena offered nothing.
· Classic stuff from Santino – “JR, have you been working out?”
· Spectacularly idiocy from the commentators, acting like they couldn’t work out who attacked Melina. Well who else would it be? That is a stupid, stupid move to let the announcers do that, because it means the audience won’t trust anything they say, since the audience will have worked out it was Rosa straight away.
· Mysterio in the Chamber makes perfect sense. That makes it Rey, Cena and Kofi.
· I liked the fact that they played up the fact that Jericho and Punk actually had a history rather than ignoring it like they sometimes do, but you just got the feeling the match couldn’t really be any good because it was so rushed.
· I can’t decide if I like that ending to Raw or not. I don’t like the fact that Shane was made to look tougher than all three of Legacy. I assume we are looking at Shane v Orton then at No Way Out. Was that the ‘bigger plan’ or is there more to come from Steph and Shane. What was the purpose of the roster standing on the stage?
· More questions than answers leading to next week, which I suppose is a good thing. Now looking forward to seeing what the Hardys have to say on Smackdown.