I attended last night's special 3-hour edition of Monday Night Raw at the Bi-Lo Center in Greenville, SC. The building was almost filled to capacity, except for a few tarped off areas in the upper deck. The crowd was hot throughout the night. Overall, I enjoyed the show from a wrestling standpoint. We got some solid matches, and the tournament theme added some importance to the bouts, as opposed to WWE's usual method of just throwing stuff out there to take up TV time. The booking of the tournament left me throwing my hands up in frustration, but I will get to that later. The stuff that I knew would suck sucked, but it was kept short (thank God for Umaga). And the main event was solid and entertaining.  On to my thoughts on Raw...

I was excited about the King of the Ring tournament going in and it delivered. I loved the Punk-Hardy and Jericho-MVP matches. I liked that you could easily imagine any one of participants winning the tournament. You didn't see any obvious set-ups, like, for example Big Show vs... Brian Kendrick. Yeah I know, say what you will about Hornswoggle being in the tournament, but he gets more wins on television that Brian Kendrick does.

As far as the booking of the tournament... eh, I don't want to say I hated it because I didn't. But a lot of it left me scratching my head. This Sunday, one of the big marquee matches for Backlash is MVP vs. Matt Hardy for the US Title. So what does WWE do? Job them both out in the first round of the tournament. Sure, you could argue that Matt Hardy was kept strong in that his loss to CM Punk came out of nowhere, but MVP tapped out to a referee. There's no excuse for that. I liked the booking of the Khali-Finlay match, as Finlay won while Khali was kept strong. Lord knows I don't want to see Khali wrestle twice in one night (or even once for that matter). William Regal beating up Hornswoggle and then targeting Finlay's injured leg was great for his character. Remember when he was pushed as the stiff, blue collar british badass who used to fight in the back alleys of Blackpool for money? I'm glad they went back to that.

Here's the problem. WWE has not been pushing that version of Regal for a long time. Don't get me wrong, I think the world of Regal as a performer... but he's the GENERAL MANAGER! Why the hell is he even in the tournament? He should be the guy rewarding the winner with their trophy/crown/whatever, not winning it. This tournament was the perfect opportunity to elevate CM Punk as a main event player. Punk's carrying around the coveted money in the bank briefcase and no one thinks he could be a world champion. This tournament should have made believers out of us all. Instead, he taps out to the General Manager. You have got to be kidding me. Punk was "orton'd" last night. Bottom line. I hope he recovers his momentum, but with WWE's booking I just don't see it happening.

As for the political stuff... eh whatever. I thought the recorded messages from the candidates were funny. The "wrestling match" between the democratic candidates was stupid, as we all knew it would be. As I said above, thank God for Umaga. The crowd loved his run-in as it ended this awful segment.

The "good divas vs. bad divas" segment was wierd. It definitely had a west side story feel to it. The whole time I was waiting for the switchblades and dancing. Was I alone there?

Hardcore Holly vs. Carlito? Time for a bathroom break!

As I said above, the main event was solid. Chavo definitely seemed out of place among the big guys didn't he? Undertaker standing tall at the end was cool I guess, except that ALL FOUR COMPETITORS in the big fatal four way match for Backlash were staring at the lights at the end. That's your big pay-per-view main event folks, lying right there in the ring. Unbelievable.

Well there you have it. Overall a solid wrestling show with some odd booking, but not terrible. WWE didn't completely rip me off like they did with December to Dismember (I know, I'm bitter), and this show was probably better than the Smackdown tapings that have come through the Bi-Lo in the past few years. In all honesty, I thought the TNA Against All Odds ppv last February was better, but that's just my opinion.  Please leave comments, I'd love to hear your opinions.

- Devin