Ongoing observations on tonight’s WWE Old School Raw. Warning: these observations themselves may be hits or misses.
MISS: Ric Flair looks really old Yeah, sure, Ric Flair actually is old. I get it. He turns 65 next month. But he didn’t always look old, not until tonight.
I’m sure some people will say that Flair was on the sauce, and that’s why it sounded like he was slurring his words, but I don’t think so. What I heard and saw was a guy who looks like he has a heart condition, or maybe the early onset of dementia.
It was to a point where it looked like that awkward segment that eventually included Randy Orton and John Cena was going to end with Flair being attacked by Orton, and all I could think was, God, no, please, no!
Thankfully for Flair’s health, that didn’t happen.
Unlucky us, we had to watch something just as painful: Cena kissing Flair’s ass in creative’s continued effort to keep his character’s maturity level perpetually stuck at age 15.
HIT: Piper’s Pit Rowdy Roddy Piper (who turns 60 in April) doesn’t have the same issue with premature aging as the Nature Boy. That his Piper’s Pit segment wasn’t up to ‘80s quality is more because of the bad writing than anything else, but the run-in by the New Age Outlaws saved the day.
HITS: Goldust, DDP and Ron Simmons I know it’s simple, but Ron Simmons saying “Damn!” with the camera jumping back as he says it still gets me to crack up.
Diamond Dallas Page was a fun addition to the show. I liked the shameless plug for DDP Yoga. He might have flown to Baltimore for free just for that.
Goldust isn’t technically a legend, because he’s back on the active roster, but he was on a Top Rope show a year ago (literally a year ago Sunday). That, and DDP’s recent past appearing on two shows from our sister company AWE, made these two segments special for fans in our local base in Virginia.
MISS: Not putting Arn Anderson in as special guest referee in the Great Khali-Damien Sandow match You can’t go Old School if you can’t bring The Enforcer out for a segment.
HIT: OK, that Cobra Clutch was a nice touch Sgt. Slaughter misses Sandow’s foot on the ropes in counting him down for the pin, then puts the objecting Sandow in a Cobra Clutch for his trouble. The twerking display afterward almost pushed this back toward MISS.
MISS: The whole Brock Lesnar segment Paul Heyman is one of the best in the business on the mic, but his promo tonight went on way-y-y-y too long. And then the payoff fell short: a brief Mark Henry appearance, and a briefer hero save by Big Show. The whole segment seemed pointless, and it took us a long time to get there.
MISS: Bob Backlund This isn’t a critique of Backlumd, but of the buffoonish character that he has been forced to portray in his sporadic returns to these legends events. I never got it, or liked it.
HIT: The New Age Outlaws Talk about being over … the crowd was into the Outlaws like it was 1999.
BIG HIT: Jake the Snake concludes Raw Give credit to the Snake for the swerve. Jake lamented on Twitter over the weekend that he hadn’t been contacted about being on Old School Raw. Naturally, he showed up at the end of the main event between CM Punk and Roman Reigns, depositing the new-age Damien on a prone Dean Ambrose after Punk had delivered a post-bell Go To Sleep. Definitely the highlight of the night.
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