Great Week in the WWE

Following the special Raw Tri-Branded Draft that added some excitement and fresh possibilities, the creative forces behind WWE did not disappoint.

The Night of Champions PPV was a solid show. Miz and Morrison retained their tag titles over Finlay and Hornswaggle, as it should be. M & M are perhaps the best team working in the company at the moment. Morrison has some great in-ring work when he's paired properly, and I can't believe I'm going to admit this, but Miz has become a decent worker and is improving all the time. The other Tag Team Champioship match launched Ted DiBiase Jr and his partner the sudden heel Cody Rhodes in to the tag titles and with what followed later in the evening and on Raw the subsequent night, set the stage for a new, younger drive on RAW.

Mickie James had a fine women's match against a still coming into her own as a single Katie Lea. The recent injury to Melina leaves very few solid in-ring divas on Raw, So I'd expect another feud coming between Beth Phoenix and Mickie in the next few weeks.

Matt Hardy retained his US Championship, though there was little doubt he would. What his move to ECW will mean for his career is hard to say. It all depends on how he is used, but he is clearly one of the top stars on the show.

The stunner of the night was the IC lost by Chris Jericho. Not that he lost the belt, but whom he last it to. Kofi Kingston, recently drafted to RAW, stunned the audience by delivering a flying kick, with a little help from an HBK distraction, to claim the IC title from Y2J. Another salvo from the 'youth movement'.

The three World Championship matches were solid, though the ECW Triple Threat was a bit slow. You can't place too much blame as the three monsters were in there battling it out. The only guys missing her Khali, Umaga, and Snitzky and all the big beef would have been in there. Mark Henry's win was probably a way to smooth his ruffled feathered, but Henry has worked really hard to get back from a slate of recent injuries and I think the idea has long been to use ECW to highlight the big monster types anyway.

Edge had another classic weasel heel victory over Batista, something he does so well. The loss puts Batista onto Raw as an angry animal which is how they've been booking him on Smackdown for a while now. He's in the middle, not face nor heel...just a lone wolf, and I expect that to continue, eventually either leading to a full on heel turn or pushing him along with HBK and Y2J as upper echilon guys who don't need a strap to draw.

The final match featured the Cena-HHH 2, or at least that's how it was pushed. When Edge won I wondered if they'd really go through a PPV cycle with the two big champs on Smackdown, because I full expected HHH to win this match, evening up their big championship rivalry. They had a great back and forth match that used Cena's brawling skills with HHH's cerebral assassin mat work, leading to a great series of false finishes and reversals that really had the crowd into it from start to end.

I think there will be plans for a Cena-HHH 3, possibly at Wrestlemania 25 where Cena finally wins back the title, but March is a long way, and they're on different brands now. They are clearly the two biggest draws in the business, but they need to use their name to rub some of the second tier talent into main event status. Cena has CM Punk, Randy Orton, Kofi Kingston, Rhodes and DiBiase as the young lions, while there's the old guard of JBL, HBK, Y2J and Batista to be served as well. Raw is an interesting place with lots of possibilities, and the Monday Night Raw stunner, of C.M. Punk's championship, cashing in his money in the bank, against a Batista battered Edge was a brilliant, bold, and challenging move. So while Raw lost HHH and Jeff Hardy, two of its biggest crowd pleasers to Smackdown, it instantly elevated serveral young guns ready (or hoping to be ready) to be big stars.