It’s 2am on a Tuesday morning. What was I doing? Pretending to sleep. What was Birmingham, Alabama doing? Cheering at Monday Night Raw. Randy Orton is in the ring, his foot-soldiers are firmly by his side and the steel cage has been lowered around the ring. Let’s get cracking.

The tormentor of Mexican reporters everywhere explained once again how he planned on dealing with big Dave Batista at Extreme Rules. Tactics will include grinding Dave’s face against the metal (ouch), slamming the cage door in to his face (yaaawch) and running him face first, no, HEAD first in to every side of the cage over, and over and over again. Say over-and-over again for me, Randy.

Randy went on to inform us, and Dave, that he’d arranged with Vickie Guerrero that there would be  a steel cage match that night. He flipped a coin to decide whether Batista had to face Cody or Ted. Cody’s up. Despite looking terrified at first, he remembered he had to live up to his daddy’s cage match reputation and sucked up his angst.  Randy verbally patted him on the head and told him everything was going to be ok. Then he gave us a demonstration on how to walk through a door. Where has this man BEEN all my life?  He began wrapping up the promo but just as he raised the belt in to the air, someone decided they had something to say.

Yes, there were 13 WOOOOOs and 15 PUNKs in Ric Flair’s response to Randy’s promo. I counted. Randy reminded Ric that he was retired and was not legally permitted to take part in any in-ring fight or his pension fund may be jeopardised. But Ric didn’t want any old in-ring wrestling match. Oh noes, he wanted a car park brawl. (That’s a ‘Parking Lot Brawl’ for any Americans reading). Randy accepted and warned Ric that his days were numbered.  Cody, you’re up, buddy!

The personnel dispersed and Dave Batista joined little Cody in the ring. Cody clung to the turnbuckle as The (caged) Animal smirked right in his face. Being half Dave’s size, Cody Rhodes was struggling. Randy came out cage-side to see if he could put a little pep in Cody’s step, but even his posturing, grimacing and general clawing at the steel couldn’t save his little puppy. Naaaw! Bless.

Time for something really silly over in Vickie’s office. Big Show was bleating to Chavo and Vickie about the fact that he’d been paired up with chief prick, The Miz, against John Cena and a currently unnamed partner. They convinced him that all would be well and decided it would be a good time to draw a name from a pair of velvet wrestle trunks to see who John’s partner would be. By some amazing fluke, the name drawn was Chavo Guerrero. Wow! Whodda thunk it?

By the way, has anyone noticed Vickie’s fabulous taste in aesthetics? There’s nothing like a Van Gogh street scene and black leather seating to give that sophisticated air of….oh, I dunno….. dentist’s waiting room.

From one lady to another, Kelly-Kelly bounced her way to the ring and this dude made a proposal with his fan-sign.

Thank God he chose to paint an engagement ring and not a different kind of ring, or Linda McMahon might have had to explain away another awkward mess.  By the way, man, nice penmanship and all, but I don’t fancy your chances. I mean, LOOK at her!!! Mickie James joined Kelly in the ring and she was closely followed by their opponents, Beth Phoenix and Maryse. Rosa Mendes floated around in some leather trousers so she could distract the ref at an opportune moment. It was all over disappointingly quickly and ended with Maryse sticking a DDT on Kelly, pinning her for the win. Look at Rosa. Remember when you were in high school and there was always a pipsqueak girl who wanted to be in your group of friends, despite the fact that everyone left her out of everything in the hope she’d just go away? Rosa is that girl.

Next up, Carlito and Primo were taking on Matt Hardy and William Regal for the tag-team belts. YAAAAWN. Matt used his arm cast to try and take out Carlito but slipped and whacked his own partner instead. Own-goal, I believe. Regal dropped and Carlito capitalised with a pin to keep hold of the belts.

This was spotted…………….

and the camera moved back to the ring post haste. Ssshhh, if we don’t about him everyone will just forget.

For the third week running Ric Flair, who was pacing up and down the car park looking for hubcaps to frisbee at Orton’s head, had a verbal altercation with his fave beefcake, Batista. Ric explained how much he missed being the Nature Boy (I’ll be taking about that all serious-like in a near future post) and told Dave if he called him ‘The Man’ once more he’d vomit. Now THAT would be a show. Go on, Dave. Say it! After an emotive speech, Ric managed to convince Dave that brawling with a man half his age was totally do-able and asked him not to be a hero and rescue him from the evil clutches of Randy Orton. Gotta be honest, I wouldn’t want anyone to rescue me from the grope grip of Randy Orton either.

It’s been a while since we’ve seen a Man-Hug moment. The boys have been reather un-huggy of late, so huge thanks to Dave and Ric for enabling  me to resurrect this bit.

Back over in Vickie’s sophisticated office Regal and Matt Hardy informed her that they have arranged a match between her and SantinO Marella for that night. Vickie went all mentalist and started yelling in Spanish, which she only does when she’s REALLY freakin’ out. But it was ok, the guys had a plan to make it work, which Matt whispered in Vickie’s ear. She seemed whole-heartedly on board.

Finally back in the ring and it’s time for The Miz to do his annoying pre-match gamble about how he’s what, like, 347-0 against John Cena or something? He informed us that John’s supposed penchant for corporate selling-out put him in the same category as Spongebob, The Jonas Brothers and Hannah Montana. Ok, so Spongebob is silly and The Jonas Brothers are far too miserable looking to be pop stars, but what’s wrong with Miley? To quote Britney, and God knows I never thought I’d say THAT, she’s NOT.THAT. INN-O-CE-ENT! Do a Google image search for Miley Cyrus. You’ll see what I mean.

And look, she’s a wrestling fan too…….

I have no words.

Let’s try and forget that image and talk about the match….. It was fine. You know. Not blow your brains out brilliant, not absolutely awful either. John was not looking too healthy and The Miz wanted him, not LITERALLY, I mean he wanted the pinfall himself. But Big Show wanted in too and tried to persuade The Miz to tag him back in. But it was no dice, and when The Miz turned to go and throw himself at JC, Big Show swung his ginormous fist at The Miz to clear the way.

With The Miz out cold Chavo leaped in to the ring and pinned him for the win. The crowd went nuts for Chavo who, in his role as Vickie’s sycophantic nephew, doesn’t get much of a chance at big-time matches these days.

John was none too pleased that Chavo had stolen his pin and slammed him in to the mat. There was a further tussle between John and BS which left John unconscious too. When does this Big Show/John Cena storyline end again? Whenever it is, make it snappy! PLEASE!

Fresh from the senior prom, MVP was preparing to face Kofi Kingston to hold on to the United States Championship. It began with a polite meeting of the mutual appreciation society, but soon dissolved in to a slanging match and then an AWESOME wrestling match.

I wasn’t sure where it was all going at first. I was wondering why everyone on the interwebz were so excited by it when I got up on Tuesday morning. The crowd were seated and silent. But as it progressed it really did turn out to be fantastic.

Yep, we have a new United States champion.  Congratulations, sir. I feel like I want to reward Kofi with something. Because, you know, winning the match, the belt and the title just isn’t enough. He doesn’t fall in to my swoon worthy gentlemen category, but what the hell…………….

Play it and do some chair dancing for the remainder of this post. Wind ya waaaist, people.

From a great match to a great mess. William Regal and Matt Hardy’s evil plan to take out Santino Marella was about to come to fruition. I won’t bore you with the details. It was physically and emotionally painful to watch. Who knows what complete and utter tripe they’ll churn out at the PPV tomorrow night. Just know that the match ended like this.

Looks like Batista defied Flair one more time and called him ‘The Man’ again. Well, Ric DID promise he’d vomit if he did it again. Speaking of Flair, his Fight to the Finish was about to kick off in the car park. (See what I did there?)

Ok, so it started with a game of Hide & Seek. Off screen, Randy had already stood in the corner with his eyes covered and counted to 100.  Ric had scuttled off to hide.

Anyway, let’s be honest, the fight didn’t set me on fire. We all know Ric Flair isn’t supposed to be doing this stuff. But I would like to thank him for ripping the chest area of Randy’s shirt open. It made up for the nonsense. Wait, is that one of the $45 Top Rope t-shirts? It seemed to rip open awfully easily. I won’t be wasting my money buying one THOSE then . Shoddy products or set-up to rip when Flair touched it? The decision is yours.

And then, because people paid good money to see a main event, they shuffled their way in to the arena. By the time they made it to the ramp, the oldest player in the game was not looking too clever. Randy had full command. The King said “Right now, this is especially difficult to watch.” Not really, Jerry. It’s actually hilarious to watch. Randy finally ripped off the scraps of fabric hanging from his arms and got back to work. But as Flair looked like he was finished for all time, he did a bit of a mule kick and caught Randy in the knackers. Obviously, being a girl, I have no idea how painful this is, but I did grab at my crotch in sympathy. And I have it on good authority that it’s the most painful thing a man can experience. So you have that and we have childbirth.

Back to the match and Randy’s manhood was still causing him some trouble, giving Ric the opportunity to capitalise.  There seemed to be a lot of blood, but it could have been jam or ketchup or hot chili sauce from when they collapsed in to the refreshments table in the car park.

Flair put Randy in a figure-4 and the rest of Legacy came to the rescue. They dragged him in to the steel cage which, by some coincidence, had been lowered back over the ring. They were meant to have some fisticuffs in the car park, right?  This was not an official match, right? Ha. It ended up with Ric and Randy locked in the cage with Dave watching on in despair.  Even if he could get in, he made a promise not to be a hero and save him. Poor Dave. He was just trying to protect his pal from some serious geriatric abuse.

Randy did his “My IED is kicking in now” face and Batista shouted through the barricade that he was going to break Randy in half. If he did break him in half, which half would I want to keep? Tricky. Both are impressive. Oh well, it’s not going to happen anyway.

Shall we have some Smackdown next, folks?