Caliban

I can top that. Three-person announce team. Romero. Grisham. And the announcing antichrist... Ivory~!

I'm a bit drunk, this may sound pretty weird, but since we're all around 20 years in age... you should get me. I just watched the initial pop when Cena's music hit. It was the sound of 10,000 kids popping like fucking MAD. Listen to the sound... it's children, the next generation of wrestling fans, just like most of us like 10, 15 years ago for Hogan, etc. What WWE has right now, is the potential to create the next wreslting boom, be it 1 or 2 years for now... I really feel like 2001-2003 was a downward trend, 2003-2005 things pretty much stablised and 2005- onwards, WWE and the wrestling industry in general has been heading upwards. I personally am excited, but anxious that WWE doesn't screw up all the potential new stars that are emerging at the moment....

Heyman's promo gave me goosebumps... that whole segment with Vince, Eric and Paul was awesome. I can't wait for One Night Stand!

Ahhhh... Boston. They were shitty for WM XIV as well, if you recall.

From the observer... --Raw on Monday night did a 4.0 rating from England Was it Christian, or Batista... or the hot crowd?

I like his promos, but I'm not a big fan of his in-ring work. He really has forged an entertaining character for himself. His long title reign has giving him the credibility he needs to be just bubbling underneath the main event, but after the match with Cena at Judgment Day he should move to the upper midcard. JBL needed the title reign to get his character over, but I don't think he needs the title now, he's over in his own right. He's not a drawing card though.

I thought they were going to re-enact when Sid jumped off the apron instead of tagging Hogan, but this turn was cool in it's own right. I was worried about fans not accepting Eddie as a heel but don't forget Eddie is one of the best heels in the business, and he's off to a great start...

I just watched the Royal Rumble again - Edge got no reaction while he was on offense. These chants are the only reaction Edge gets these days, so until something interesting happens with his character, I think they'll continue.

I'm not surprised Cena was booed. Before Raw, he was booed when he appeared in the Lonely Road of Faith video...

At first I thought the chants had been wiped out completly, but the crowd reaction IS there after the break. I remember we all saw the "Raw Live" logo on the Tron, and being a smart crowd we knew we had got back from break and it was time to step it up.

Lilian announced to the crowd to would be shown live on Sky, but she's lying - it's not on until 2am as normal, when you lot see it... Only Vis vs Kane was announced with Trish and Lita in the respective corners. No mention of a tag team turmoil match. Oh, and it seemed to us Lita wasn't on Raw at all, but I saw the Tron show Maria about to interview her... there was MASSIVE booing and the Tron switched off... blinked and you missed it if you were there.

If you like Christian you'll LOVE this show

RAW Spoilers from Birmingham -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Yup, I was there, yup, it was great. I find now that I don't have a lot of energy right now, so I'll just leave it brief... Heat matches were Simon Dean over Robbie Brookside (local indy wrestler), The Heart Throbs over two local indie guys and Hurricane over Maven. Raw starts with Coach coming out for commentary, then King "Jerry!, Jerry!". It then starts proper with Batista getting a MASSIVE ovation, bringing him out at the beginning of the show was perfect, as the crowd was at his hottest. He gets easily the biggest reaction since he became champ... He brings out JR who also gets a huge ovation, congratulating on his victory last week. HHH comes out and the fans are eating this up, the heat in this segment will be amazing. Doesn't really go anywhere though... Now you have to understand the crowd were REALLY into the opening, with all the big stars having already appeared, so the next few bits are a blur. Y2J over Sylvain Grenier (or was it Rob Conway), short, pretty dull, decent reaction for Y2J. Shelton saved Y2J from the post-match double team, but they turned on each other. I'm hoping my "Shelton" chant is heard, 'cause it was the only one, sadly. They showed various segments on the Tron of Viscera's date with Trish, there are four segments, Viscera is pretty funny in them and had the crowd laughing. "Cheque please..." ahh... you'll get it... Christian came out to do an interview and the crowd popped big for him, but that was nothing compared to later. Christian is all over the show this week, DMM will be please to know. Kane interrupted for some reason and beat up on Tomko. Christian also had some classic backstage segments with Flair and HHH, seriously funny stuff. As I said, lots of Christian on this show. The backstage segments through the night had Christian suggesting HHH should move to Smackdown to beat Michael Cole. Seriously. The upshot of the segments though is that Coach is the special ref in the main event, with Evolution at ringside. Masterlock challenge with some local jobber. Boring. Next. Backstage in an obviously pre-recorded segment, Mean Gene interviewed HBK and Hogan. Hogan got a huge pop live but it died down as people realised he wasn't in the building. All the Divas came out with some women from the Daily Star. They were there to throw a party for William Regal, who was celebrating the release of his autobiography. Regal got a great ovation from the Birmingham crowd. As the "party" started, of course Hassan and Daivari interrupted which segues into a non-title tag match. No Bischoff on this show, the matches just... happen. Hassan pinned Regal somehow. Quick and dumb finish, since the crowd were heavily behind Regal. Edge over Val Venis... the crowd was disapointed with Edge's opponent. Plenty of "We Want Matt" chants again tonight, he said "well you ain't getting him!" and was playing to the chants. Chris Benoit saved Val from Edge's post-match beatdown. Really disapointing that Benoit didn't have a match. Benoit got a great ovation, but not sure if it will be televised. And the main event... Christian vs Batista with Coach as special referee, and HHH and Flair at ringside. I hope it comes off on TV - this was like our version of Rock/Hogan at Skydome... cast Christian as Hogan. Plenty of "Lets Go Christian" chants and as the match went on, the crowd would boo Batista and cheer Christian. There was a lot of interference from Evolution so it will be interesting to see if they acknowledge the reaction, or try to blame it on the interference. Finish was Batista clean with the Demon Bomb, but HHH got the low blow and Pedigree in. End of show will be HHH posing over an unconcious Batista. Afterwards Batista slowly got up as HHH was mouthing off, then of course Batista attacked Evolution, posed for a while and left. Not much else. Really entertaining event though from 7.30 - 10.30. Hope the crowd comes out on TV, because it was HOT. Not much in the way of good wrestling on this show though, very hype-intensive. But the main event was classic. Vince - the people have spoke again - push Christian to the main event. Oh yeah, after we saw Ric Flair coming out of the arena on a coach... Maven was also on there with some girl but he hid when he saw everyone. Flair didn't acknowledge the fans at all which was kind of weird. And this was 30 minutes after Flair and HHH were in the ring with Batista - in a hurry or what? Saw Arn Anderson from a distance at the same exit too - on the way in BEFORE the show I saw Jerry Brisco too - only one other person recognized him, from a distance anyway. Well, see if you can make some sense of this. I am utterly shattered, and am going to set my video to tape this and see if I can get on TV. I'm wearing a red T-shirt next to a guy with blond hair and a black guy in a white outfit, maybe holding a "Batista- unleash the Beast" sign with them - to the extreme left of the hard camera

Christian is the new Chris Jericho, circa 1998. Hope they do what WCW DIDN'T do back then and push him to the moon.

http://forums.thesmartmarks.com/index.php?showtopic=67289

I managed to get £45 lower tiered seating, 4 tickets for Raw. Dialled that phone number so many times, took 90 minutes until I got a dial tone. Can't fucking wait. This'll be my first live show since One Night Only in the same arena. You get a great view in the NEC.

They'll blame it on Cena's new manager, Judas.

Normally I'm a lurker of this forum but I'm surprised no-one else has started a Half Life 2 thread, so here you go. First of all I want to say Valve have done a tremendous job of optimizing this game. If you have anything just above the minimum specs of the game, get it now. It looks beautiful even at lowest settings. Though it is very RAM intensive, I'd say it needs at least 512MB. I have played through the first four chapters so far. The opening of the game is every bit as spectacular as the original Half Life was at the time. It was my most cinematic gaming experience ever. The whole game just feels as revolutionary as the first did six years ago. It's incredible. But I really do not want to spoil anything. Theres plenty of other places on the web that can do that for you. So does anyone else have this yet and what are your thoughts?

And I noticed "Sylvain Granier" (sic). Yeah I'm sad, it's on the Superstars page. Monkeys.

It should be the hottest Raw crowd in recent memory. 'Bout time we got a TV taping....

I Need Love

One Night Only on DVD? Awesome. Finally! I was there live, and taped the PPV while I was there, the tape's falling apart now. There was definitely a mixed reaction all night, but you can hear it most clearly in the Bret/Taker match... There were a few of us cheering Shawn and booing Bulldog but it didn't come out on TV... Oh, and Owen was a face for one reason... before the show, Jerry Lawler starting insulting England over the mic... and Owen came out to make the save... the marks bought it

Never heard of him... but he looks like prime jobber material for the E.

There was no PPV in March 2001 as well, and Wrestlemania was on April Fools Day...