Brock Lesnar, John Cena bring the pain on WWE Raw

* After the events of last week's Raw, a tag team match between United States Champion Santino Marella and Brodus Clay and Jack Swagger and Dolph Ziggler seemed inevitable. We got that match tonight, and the result was a decent contest. There were a few sloppy spots, but overall, it looked good. Clay was in the match minimally, with Marella taking the beating, but the Funkasaurus scored the pinfall on Ziggler, who seems to be losing a lot of matches lately. Clay and Marella actually make a good tag team, as they can play off each other well, but it would be nice to see Marella defend his championship more often.

* Less than a week after winning a shot at the World Heavyweight Championship, Alberto Del Rio made Zack Ryder tap out. Ryder actually controlled most of the short match, before Del Rio locked in the cross-armbreaker and made Ryder tap. The Long Island superstar isn't exactly a top-tier challenger, but this showcased Del Rio's ability to lock in his signature submission move out of nowhere.

* Well, it didn't take long for WWE to book Lord Tensai against Yoshi Tatsu. Tensai made quick work of Tatsu, once again winning a match by referee stoppage and continuing the onslaught afterward. It's hard to gauge how much Tensai has improved or how well he will do in WWE from these squash matches.

* The Three Stooges were awful guest stars. The clips of their movie, which opens this weekend, did not look funny at all, and the actors did nothing to sell me on it. Their interaction with Marella at least drew a laugh from my roommate's 3-year-old son, so maybe there is an audience. Too bad they're not old enough to buy a movie ticket.

Match Rundown

Santino Marella and Brodus Clay d. Dolph Ziggler and Jack Swagger

R-Truth d. Cody Rhodes

Lord Tensai d. Yoshi Tatsu

Mark Henry d. CM Punk by disqualification

Alberto Del Rio d. Zack Ryder

John Cena d. David Otunga

My Take

Tonight’s episode of Raw started off on about as strong of a note as you could hope, but from there, it become a bit of an awkward show. From an in-ring, work rate perspective, there wasn’t much to rave about. But as a transitional story, evolving the stories from WrestleMania toward Extreme Rules, it made good strides. The lowlight of the show, by far, was the involvement of the Stooges. I think most fans would agree that angle would have worked better as a swerve to bring back Pat Patterson and Gerald Brisco. Following last week’s Raw was not an enviable task, and while this episode didn’t live up to that standard, it was still a fairly entertaining show.

Ring Posts’ Adam Testa has teamed up with My 1-2-3 Cents (http://my123cents.blogspot.com) and All American Pro Wrestling (aapwrestling.com) to bring you "From the Rafters Radio," (http://www.facebook.com/#%21/RaftersRadio) a weekly pro wrestling talk radio show airing on Monster Radio 1150 AM in Southern Illinois and streaming worldwide on wggh.net (http://www.wggh.net).