The Katz Files

The Kingfish Arnie Katz presents his February promotion report card for the good folks at WWE’s RAW.

WWE is on the eve of its biggest annual show, WrestleMania and it’s time to take stock of the promotion. Here’s how I rate the show’s performance in key areas:

Talent Pool

This close to WrestleMania, there’s little likelihood of anything but subtractions from the roster. It’s too late to build up anyone enough to make them viable at WrestleMania 24, so the only changes come from injuries, suspensions and firings.

The big news this time is, of course, the suspension of Jeff Hardy as part of WWE’s Wellness Program. He’ll be gone for two months and there’s no telling how severely this has damaged his chances for a championship run until he returns and we see how WWE treats him.

Grade: B-

In-Ring Action

The roster is really amped up for WrestleMania Even Vince McMahon, who hardly qualifies as a worker, put on a strong performance in his match on the 3/17 RAW.

Jeff Hardy’s absence is a negative, of course, but there are enough people on the roster who work really well in the ring that it shouldn’t be a serious problem.

Grade: B

Dramatics

No sooner did RAW finish with one awful long-term angle (Hornswoggle as Mr. McMahon’s son) than it got mired in another (Floyd Mayweather-Big Show). It is wrong from so many perspectives that it is almost inconceivable to imagine a smart man like Vince McMahon okaying it or continuing it in the face of fan disinterest.

Big Show has done a creditable job with the mic – it would be unfair to discuss the “matches” they have given him – but Floyd Mayweather needed a lot more coaching. A better writer for the boxer would have helped, too, since he hasn’t gone much past his first interview.

Grade>: C-

Announcing

The old reliables, Ross and Lawler, keep on rolling.

Grade: B+

Star Power

RAW has the best WWE roster, by far, but the booking is so unimaginative and, sometimes, wrong-headed that the promotion looks like less than the sum of its parts.

They’re going to miss Jeff Hardy, whose momentum will be shot by the time he returns.

Grade: B-

Overall

The writing simply has to improve. Even the ridiculous Mayweather-Big Show mess could have been made at least semi-tolerable with really good plotting and dialogue. With regard to Mayweather, “really good” might have to mean a winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature.

Pumping a crowd of “C”-list celebs into WrestleMania is not going to boost the buy-rate appreciably.

The Mayweather storyline has gotten WWE a ton of mainstream publicity, but it has hurt the TV show and it probably won’t be much of an asset at WrestleMania

Grade: B+

That’s it for today. I’ll be back tomorrow with another installment of the Internet’s fastest-rising daily wrestling column.

– Arnie Katz
Crossfire4@cox.net
(3/24/08)