Okay first things first. On Sunday, my wife plugged the wrong camera cord into the computer which made it make a very loud beeping sound and basically destroy itself. Every time we turned it on it would beep incessantly and go to a frozen startup screen. Not even the F buttons worked. So we brought it to Best Buy's Geek Squad and that guy didn't know what was wrong with it either. For 60 bucks, they took it for a diagnostic. No word yet on whether or not anything can be done. If the motherboard is fried, we're screwed. So I'm on my mom's computer at the moment.
Yesterday I took a little road trip down to NJ. One of the Christmas presents my mom got me was paying for my ticket to go with my cousin to see WWE Monday Night Raw. My cousin got them off e-bay so, as he put it, we "ridiculously overpaid". $120 each for $40 tickets. I'm happy to say that the seats turned out to be awesome and we felt the show was very well worth attending. We were on the floor, which I was initially wary of because I thought we would not be able to see, what with all the people that hold signs, but we were in the bleacher type section, so it was elevated. The best part was that we were directly across from the entrance ramp so we could see everyone come out perfectly, and also have a straight ahead view of the big screen. You can't really tell on TV, but that thing is huge.
As we were waiting for the show to start, Sean (my cousin) said to me, "Look down in the front row. There's two hot girls." You would think, to read that, that we were just guys being guys, but no, we stayed true to our nerdy pro-wrestling roots and had a five minute discussion on how those girls were clearly "plants" and were going to be pulled out of the audience for part of the show. I think everyone knew it too, because the people in their section were getting pictures taken with them. I should also add that the impatient crowd was yelling WOOOO a lot. This is Ric Flair's trademark call for those who don't know. Sean said, "Sure are a lot of Flair fans here." I said, "I think it's just fun to say WOOOO."
Raw goes on the air at 9 EST, but the tickets say 7:45. This is because for the first hour we got to see them record some B-level matches for the Sunday Night Heat show. The first match was Chavo Guerrero vs. "some guy". 'Some guy's name was actually Mike something, but I didn't catch it and they never put his name up on the screen. I said to Sean that he has obviously read the book "How to Be a Bad Guy- Level 1" since he was doing basic things like complaining about a phantom hair pull and telling the crowd to shut up. You could tell he was just getting his career started. Mike worked in some arm damage, but never really put up too big a fight. Chavo won with the frog splash as a tribute to his late uncle, Eddie Guerrero. That got a big response.
Next up was Gene Snitsky vs. Val Venis. Snitsky is just a big ugly and Val Venis is the wrestling porn star. Sounds like a funny gimmick, but his ship sailed in 1998 and he is just so old and not even close to being over with the crowd that you know he is out there specifically to lose. And he did. Snitsky won by kicking Val in the face, which is an insult in itself since that isn't even Snitsky's finishing move. I will be shocked if Val survives the next round of roster cuts. Sean was surprised that Val had nothing to do with the hot girls in the crowd.
Next was a very confusing match. The Heartthrobs tag team, who are classic, good-looking, vaguely homosexual villains came out and played to the crowd as if they were supposed to be cheered. They were facing some generic dudes who didn't even get an introduction, but they said that before the match started, they wanted to dance with some Jersey girls. Sean gave me a knowing glance. One of the guys used his crotch as a radar and found the two hot girls in the front row. It was funny because he said, "How convenient- there's two hot girls who just happen to be sitting right in the front row!" Sean and I agreed that the business has changed a lot, since twenty years ago they never would have been able to poke fun like that. When the match was over, the two unescortedhot girls mysteriously disappeared from the crowd.
The "main event" of Heat was Viscera vs. Tyson Tomko. Despite his disgusting name, Viscera is actually a 500lb man billed as the world's largest love machine. He wears a smoking jacket to the ring and wrestles in pajamas. His opponent is a tattoed freak who Sean and I thought would get an easy victory, but alas, he lost to the big guy.
It was still a quarter to 9 so we decided that the souvenir lines had probably died down (since they were unbelievably mobbed when we walked in) so we went out to take a look. To our disappointment, they did not have one single Kurt Angle item. I settled for a Carlito T-shirt, since he is visiting FYE at the mall on Saturday so maybe I can get it autographed.
The real show began at the top of the hour and was kicked off by the WWE chairman, Vince McMahon, talking about himself, of course. Then he made the opening match- Kane vs. Shawn Michaels. Vince is mad at Shawn for story purposes so he made any use of a super kick (Shawn's finisher) an automatic DQ. The match was a little boring since I don't like either of the participants, but I learned that it really is fun to say WOOO!. (Whenever someone does a knife-edge chop across the chest the crowd lets out a Flair-like WOOO because that is a Flair signature move.) Shawn Michaels does a LOT of Flair chops. We could tell when the match went to commercial because there was a five minute sleeper hold segment which I knew would make for less than enthralling TV. Finally came the moment we all knew was coming- Shawn had Kane set up for the super kick and was hesitant about what to do. As he was about to just go for it, McMahon came on the mic and announced that if he did the move, he would be taken out of the main event of Sunday's pay-per-view. This started an argument and when Michaels turned around, he walked into a Kane chokeslam and was pinned. The theme music of the winner plays a lot longer over the commercial time and Sean and I were surprised to learn that Kane's song has lyrics.
Next, Gregory Helms, who recently ditched his superhero gimmick (which makes him EVIL) called out one of the announcers, Jerry Lawler, for making fun of him all the time. In one of my only missed calls of the night, Lawler actually won the ensuing fistfight and was able to stay in the broadcast booth. I had been certain that Lawler would get beaten down so that the announce team could be "fixed" down to two guys. There has been a lot of criticism that three announcers is too many. Anyway, I was wrong about that and it doesn't look good for Helms if he can't even get the better of an announcer.
Next up was a long segment, not entirely aired I don't think, where Maria, who plays a really stupid girl came out and had the camera focus on people. It was the LOVE-CAM and if you were shown on the screen, you had to kiss. Some people really got into it, too. Oh, the funny part was when Maria said that she debuted the cam last week and this week she was going to debut it again! See, cause she's stupid. The evil girls came out and put a stop to it. Then Maria, who is not a wrestler, was forced to face Victoria, the former women's champ. Victoria was selling a hurt neck from when she wrestled Carlito the week before. The end came when Maria moved out of the way and Victoria hurt her neck again on the turnbuckle. Maria rolled her up and got the pin. This didn't sit well with the evil girls so they stripped her and beat her down. Maria was saved by Ashley, but then she got beaten down too. During a commercial, Mr. McMahon came out and told the wounded women that they will be in a bra and panties gauntlet match which means you win by pulling your opponents' clothes off. The gauntlet part means it will be a series of matches where the winner keeps going until there are only two left. I know that that announcement was made during a commercial because they immediately showed it again on the screen two minutes after it happened.
Edge came out and showed a "home video" of Ric Flair's road rage incident, which of course was Edge pretending to be Flair and acting outrageously. Inevitably, Flair came out and got into a fistfight with Edge. The crowd loved Flair. It's fun to say WOOO, if I haven't mentioned that.
Shelton Benjamin, whose current angle is that he can't win to save his life, lost to The Masterpiece Chris Masters. Later, there was a backstage segment on the screen where Shelton got scolded by his "mama" for being a loser. That angle is a million bucks right there! Well, I hope it at least means that Shelton will start winning again since he is way too talented to be a loser.
Next came the most surprising moment of the night. The most hated man in the company, Triple H, came out to a GIGANTIC ovation. I mean, it was off the charts huge how much everyone loved him. And you can tell he was surprised himself, in a good way, because he's supposed to be a dangerous, take no prisoners bad ass, yet he was smiling the whole time, almost out of character. He was really able to feed off the crowd when the big screen aired the wrong footage and he ad libbed that this was live tv and he had to wing it. That got the biggest laugh of the night. Big Show, who had his hand broken by Triple H last week, came out with a huge cast on his hand, which he proceeded to use to smash everything in his path. Chairs, TV monitors and stairs were no match for Big Show's cast. I said to Sean, "He's got Hulk Hands!" Sean said, "I wonder if when he hits stuff, the cast says, 'It's clobberin' time!'"
The main event of the evening was WWE Champion John Cena vs. Kurt Angle in a "first blood" match. Sean and I discussed this at length on the way home- we cannot remember a champion who has ever had the crowd so split down the middle as Cena does. Usually a good guy is loved and his detractors are me and a small minority. But this crowd was so fused (amaingly loudly) by both Cena lovers and Cena haters, that it made it one of the most exciting things to be a part of. The crowd was so lively and hot for this match that when we watched the recording back at Sean's house, the announcers even mentioned how great the crowd was. It was just so much fun to be part of deuling chants- "Let's Go Angle!!! "Let's go Cena!!!" I've spent my whole wrestling watching life going against the grain and rooting for the bad guys, it felt kind of good to have a few thousand other people rooting for my favoritewrestler too.
In the end, Angle wonthe first blood match by making Cena bleed after a chair shot. It wasn't until he was announced as the winner that we realized this was a non-title match. Sean and I agreed that we were glad we didn't know that because it would have made us KNOW that Angle would win. We're wrestling savvy like that. After the conclusion, which saw every participant of the upcoming pay-per-view's main event get laid out in one way or another, Mr. McMahon came out and stopped the crowd from leaving. Sean and I knew about the post-show dark match so we felt smart for staying in our seats as everyone else came rushing back, if they could. Mr. McMahon said that since Angle won, he earned an immediate title match which would also include Triple H. This was a quick five minutes which saw Big Show come back out to chase Trips away- then Angle got pinned by Cena. Send 'em home happy, I always say. Though I wasn't happy. But I was still excited that my favorite wrestler in the whole wide world got to win on the televised portion of the show and I got to see it live.
When we got home, we watched the whole thing again to see how the crowd noise translated on TV and what made it to air and what didn't. Alas, we didn't make it onto TV- probably because we didn't bring a sign, but also because we were in the darkened portion of the arena. You can really only see yourself if you're down really, really close and are in the bright lights that light up the ring. Overall, I really enjoyed myself and would definitely go again if given the oppurtunity.
I forgot to mention the personal funniest part for me. During a commercial break, the redneck cowboy wrestler Trevor Murdoch came on the screen and talked about how his first sexual experience was with an old lady. He said, don't judge me because if she came at you with that look in her eye and her teeth out, what would you do? We were chuckling, but then the old security guy who was posted right next to us said, "Don't knock it til you've tried it, guys." That put us in hysterics.
WOOOO, thiswas a long one! If you'll excuse me, I've got an episode of Arrested Development to catch up on.
