Tonight on WWE RAW MVP made a rookie mistake that even I'll admonish him for; Maryse spoke the language of love and unveiled a gem of dialogue; Vicki came up with a clever scheme to expose Santina's true identity but only succeeded in making things worse - Santina now plays for the other team; The Miz got John Cena in the ring, talked circles around him and walked out claiming victory; and a commercial was the most entertaining of the show. Yes, it was an ESPN-style documentary about Little Mac from Mike Tyson's Punch Out looking back at his prize fight with King Hippo. Read about the goodness - wrestling and otherwise - in my WWE RAW not-quite-live thoughts.

Tonight on Friday Night Smackdown the campaign raged on, and I'm not talking about the Star Trek promotional campaign. In one of his smartest moves in recent memory Vince McMahon would appear to have told the young talent that he's looking for a few new stars, and sent them out there to battle for his attention. The result has been two weeks of refreshing WWE television. One couldn't point to a lot of big events on the shows. No limousines have been filled with quick drying cement. Nobody has been kidnapped or crucified. Yet they feel more like can't-miss programming than we saw in the weeks leading up to Wrestlemania 25.

When you're a team like the Washington Nationals sometimes two in a row has to be considered a winning streak. For the WWE - who hadn't allowed a fresh and exciting influx of young talent into the main event picture in quite a while -  staying on track for two weeks in a row with promoting new main event talent would be an accomplishment worth going to Denny's over.

Last week on WWE RAW they really got the ball rolling with a main event match for MVP, long in-ring interviews for The Miz and Matt Hardy, a win for Kofi Kingston and a new costume for The Brian Kendrick. They continued the trend on Friday Night Smackdown with CM Punk defeating the champion, Jeff Hardy winning a title shot, MVP getting a celebrity guest manager and John Morrison picking up a win. With Batista and Shawn Michaels both saying publicly that they don't know how much longer they'll continue and The Undertaker's health in real question there's never been a better time. But you know how well Triple H shares his toys.

The 2009 WWE Annual Shareholders Meeting was held Friday morning. That may sound like the most boring three hours of incomprehensible statistics and prolonged discussions about bake sale funds imaginable, but it's actually reliably full of news right from the horse's mouth. And by the horse I mean Vince McMahon.

Among the highlights, the McMahon family gave up their big bonuses and returned the money to the shareholders. The WWE is looking to create a show on Wednesdays so they're airing five nights a week. Playboy approached the WWE this year about another crossover and Vince said no - the WWE feels it's better business to go in a PG direction moving forward. The WWE plans to hold a big party leading into SummerSlam this year. Vince will open a WWE Hall of Fame in the future and he's discussed locations, but he has no immediate plans because it wouldn't be a huge profit stream.  Vince wouldn't appear in a WWE movie because he wouldn't have the patience to deal with the constant retakes, and he wouldn't personally be the one to screw The Undertaker out of his Wrestlemania winning streak because he thinks a great number of fans would be very displeased with that outcome. Vince is happy with the creative direction of ECW, though not the ratings success. He uses it as an entry point for new talent, a chance to assess what does and doesn't work. He's not inclined to hold Wrestlemania overseas because making it live for North American audiences would present scheduling issues and when they tried holding SummerSlam in London once before it was not a buyrate success.

Last night's WWE Smackdown was the second in a pair of successful debuts for the new brands. Much like WWE RAW on Monday the emphasis was on showcasing younger talent. There was an important difference between the shows. While RAW's new stars - MVP, The Miz, Matt Hardy - have never achieved success on a main event level Smackdown's instant front runners - CM Punk, Jeff Hardy and John Morrison - are former one-time world champions who haven't gotten the sustained push they needed in order to catch fire. All three of their previous title reigns were a month to a few months long and booked hesitantly at best with undercard stars often getting top billing over them.

Was tonight the very start of a new era in the WWE? That may be pushing it, but for the first time in a long time this episode of WWE RAW was systematically built around building up a new crop of stars. MVP, The Miz, Matt Hardy, Santino Marella, Kofi Kingston and The Brian Kendrick all got something to work with and seemed as though none of them were getting to let the moment pass without doing all they could to prove they deserved it. Maybe The Undertaker, Shawn Michaels, John Cena and Triple H all being off at the same time will prove to be the best thing to happen to the WWE in a while.

As usual I blogged my live thoughts.