I am listening to Reviewawai since it's very early days, but first time posting on here. I finished watching Raw a couple of minutes ago and am now listening to the review a raw podcast. I 'd like to talk a little bit about the Punk/Jericho segment.
I posted this on another forum too, but since John and Wai seemed to enjoy the segment I would like to share my point of view here too.
I see a lot of love for this segment and I don't quite understand why, I certainly wasn't a fan of it.
I do like both Jericho and Punk, but in my opinion it was one of the weakest segments during the whole show. It felt very stupid to me. Yes, I know this is the WWE and I shouldn't take it that serious, but I'd like to explain my point of view, so let's go through some points of this segment again.
So, Jericho gives Punk the liquid-basket as a "gift", Punk gives the basket to Mathews, but keeps a bottle of JD (for whatever reason). Then A-Ri comes randomly along and tells Jericho he saw Punk drinking (I thought Riley is a face at the moment, why would he tell Jericho?). We follow them to Punk's dressing room, Jericho opens the door and we see Punk from behind drinking out of a cup with the half empty bottle of JD standing next to him. How exactly did Riley witness Punk drinking in the first place? I guess he was spying on Punk... But compared to the rest, to me this was a rather small flaw.
The segment continues in Ace's office
Eve, of course by coincidence, has been reading about WWE policies recently. Again I am just guessing here, but these rules about no alcohol 12 hours before a WWE event got to be very new and/or very well hidden in the rulebook. Appearently no one else knows about it. Steve Austin and tons of other people certainly didn't know about them.
After the little exchange between Punk and Long in the dressing room we go to the sobriety test in the ring. Punk comes out looking drunk and fucks up the test. Jericho tells Long to strip the title off of Punk and hand it over to him. WTF? Even if Punk was stripped off the title, why should Jericho become champion? Why wouldn't the title get vacated? I don't get it, but whatever I was already lost on this segment.
Anyway, suddenly Punk admits he was trolling everybody the whole time. He still fucked up the alphabet, but it certainly doesn't count this time. In the end Punk leaves still the champ.
So we are led to believe that Punk planned this all along. It was his plan when Riley saw him "drinking". It was his plan when Riley and Jericho saw him from behind in his dressing room, with the bottle of JD next to him. Punk obviously knows about the rules prohibiting "WWE Superstars" from drinking 12 hours before an event and he somehow made sure, that Eve, who just got the job as Ace's assistant, or whatever she called it, knows about these rules too. And since Punk is such a funny joker he decided to fool everybody, including the audience and babyfaces.
Why did he do that? What was his gain?
What did this segment accomplish? There was no progression in the storyline and it didn't make me want to see the match any more, which should be the goal on the go-home Raw before a PPV. I felt cheated out of my time I invested watching the segment and felt like Punk's character was less likeable going out of this show than going into it.
And yes, I know, on the same show we had at least two attempted murder (Orton & Kane), but there are huge differences inbetween these segments, the characters, storylines and what they set out to accomplish. (not that I was too high on that one neither)