The one and only raw thread

[Guest Special K]

On the topic of Hall, I don't think he really deserves ME status (but if he is ME is debatable) or the money he's getting, but he's working really hard, and it's always good to see someone (hopefully) get his life on track. He ain't a great worker (he was) but with his charisma, I hope he has a good run in the WWF.

[Guest papacita]

Random Raw thoughts:

 

1. I miss Chyna! Does anybody else miss her as much as I do? WHAT DO YOU MEAN NO?!?!?!?!?!?!? SCREW YOU!!!

 

2. I kinda tuned out on the 2nd hr of Raw so I may have missed something, but was Brock on the show??? I was looking for him to attack Spike or somebody. I'd like to see him as Euro Champ.

 

3. Last time Big Show was in the nWo he put me to sleep at a live Thunder. That was also the last time I watched WCW TV...with the exception of Hogan/Goldberg. I dunno...something about seeing Hogan lose always made me smile.

 

4. For those who say that Perfect should join the nWo, I disagree. Right now, the problem with the nWo is that they've got a bunch of guys generally seen as jobbers, the same stigma that Perfect has on him right now. I think Perfect needs to go out and establish himself on his own before he even thinks about going to the nWo...and damn it, play up a little of his past with the I-C Title! Perfect is IMO one of if not the greatest I-C Champ of all time. It's silly for them to involve him in any way with an I-C level feud and not bring this up.

 

5. Where the hell was security while Taker was being attacked?

 

6. Was anybody else as annoyed as I was with that segment with Flair and Arn right before his promo?

 

Flair: Wait...are you saying I should go out there to the crowd and explain myself?

 

Arn: Yeah!

 

Flair: Hmmm...ya know...that's a good idea! (like no one's ever done an in-ring promo before)

 

7. As I said earlier...drop the 24/7 rule...and bring back the INSTANT REPLAY RULE!

 

8. AND BRING BACK CHYNA WHILE YOU'RE AT IT, DAMN IT....WHAT?????!

[Guest HartFan86]

UNDERSTOOD?

What the fuck is about?

 

Ah fuck me, my tape died.

Were you using a two hour tape? That never tapes an entire Raw.

If you watched the Bret/Owen special, you would UNDERSTOOD.

 

Also, the tape had previous Raws. I usually get 4 Raws without commercials  on a tape in SLP mode, but the fucking RCA tapes are gay homos, so it cuts out early.

[Guest Frankie Williams]

I kinda tuned out on the 2nd hr of Raw so I may have missed something, but was Brock on the show??? I was looking for him to attack Spike or somebody. I'd like to see him as Euro Champ.

Apparently you tuned out the first hour too because the show opened with Brock destroying Matt Hardy.

[Guest papacita]

Yeah, I missed the 1st 15 mins. I tuned in when Taker was getting his ass kicked. Oh well, as long as he wasn't forgotten.

[Guest cabbageboy]

I actually just started playing some Tony Hawk instead of watching that main event, and after reading the results I am glad I did.  That is the first time I have ever just flat out turned off Raw.  The show was ok till that point, but I just refuse multiple weeks of the KID in the main event.  It is disgusting.  And Big Show being involved made it all the worse.

 

Man, Perfect looked completely clueless in there against RVD tonight.  We're talking about 3 steps too slow to keep up.

[Guest RedJed]

After what I thought was an overall decent ppv last night (with hopes of angles maybe picking up) Raw tonight was a major letdown to me, other than three exceptions.

 

The first was the Big Show joing the NWO deal. I think I commented on this a while back that something needed to be done with him if they plan on pushing him. This is about the best way to go about it, since he's just not going to get face heat really in the monster role. With that said, I think this is one of the final attempts they have to really make Show worth something. Works well with the Flair-Austin deal, since this will play again into the angle that Flair is setting up Austin over and over again, which I think will end up being the case later down the road. I don't want to see Flair really join the NWO though at all.

 

Second was the Goldust-Booker vignette. They better plan to turn Booker face a few weeks down the road because he is entertaining as hell right now.

 

The Brock match in the beginning was ok too.....Matt didn't get as much offense as Jeff, which was smart.

 

Now then as for the rest. The Taker-HHH stuff was at first looking good as far as intensity went, but then turned to a complete joke with the police arrest sh*t. How many times do we have to see this? Didn't take long for them to break the rules of other stars from the other company to show up on the other show either huh? It ruins future happenings of that totally since they have done it so fast. Along with that it seems they are actually going to do Hogan-Taker as a singles at the ppv. The bookers and Vince really area naive to think that will sell a ppv, because I don't think it will at all. I sure as hell am not shelling out 35 for that, I already have decided. Very dissapointed that they seem to be goin in that direction.

 

None of the matches were even worth a star rating in my eyes, even the ME. Austin continues to make everyone offense look like crap.......what is his deal? Is he paranoid of losing stock in his character that badly? What's ironic is the more he does this, the more he's going to be punished for it, I think.

 

The Flair promo was boring, and it didn't get much better when Austin came out. How many times did Flair have to repeat himself, and his "evidence" made no sense, that wasn't exactly from his POV, the angle was from way over on the opposite corner of the ring. There was no explanation why the NWO was out there last night either, and then Flair for payback to Austin books him against the NWO? Ummm shouldn't he have said Austin gets a title shot too down the road at least or something? Maybe thats the whole story....since Flair is shafting Austin, he's not making sense. To me it just seems like an excuse for illogical booking. And I'm sorry, but this feud doesn't seem to have much steam to it.....it should be played out faster than it's going, if you ask me.

 

This was the first Raw in I don't know how long that I also was flipping around the tube watching other stuff occasionally. The show just couldn't keep my interest, even though I was interested extremely in the show going into the night. F'n WWF, I'm sick of being dissapointed like this OVER and OVER again.

 

Anyway, why do these Raws after the ppv seemingly always be a letdown?

[Guest The Man in Blak]

*** POST CONTAINS POSSIBLE SPOILERS ***

 

Having just arrived back from Raw, I can give you a little bit of an on-site observation of stuff that went on:

 

First off, the crowd - for the most part, it seemed like everybody was either on their feet or sitting on their hands for most of Raw.  Strangely enough, it seemed like a couple of HeAt matches (Guerrero/D-Lo, specifically) got a little more pop than some of the upper tier Raw matches.  Besides that, though, the atmosphere was great.

 

People That Were Over:

Big Bossman (HeAt).  You can say anything you want, but Bossman was working the crowd and the crowd was just really hating Bossman all over.  No "go away" heat, just genuine "god, this guy is a bastard" heel heat.  They'll probably edit it, but I totally destroyed my voice in his match with Crash yelling "Big Bubba Rogers" a couple of times throughout.  But I digress.

 

D-Lo Brown (HeAt).  That's right, D-Lo was at the HeAt taping and he just about pulled off the pop of the frickin' night.  Guerrero and D-Lo pulled together a great match by HeAt standards, in my opinion, and after the match, when the cameras were off, D-Lo climbed the turnbuckle and got an amazing pop.  Just a crazy feeling.

 

Raven (HeAt):  Total face pop when he emerged from the commentary table to accept Richards' challenge.  I'm kind of sad that it didn't make more of a match, but the crowd was quite into it.

 

Matt Hardy.  The arena went batshit when the Hardyz music came on and, when Matt came out of the crowd and the lights turned back on, the crowd remained hot.  People around me were really buying into Brock Lesnar in a big way, but Matt was getting great sympathy heat.

 

Brock Lesnar.  See above - too bad my "Please, Brock - Don't Eat The Kittens" sign didn't get on the air from what I've heard.

 

Triple H.  When they cut to him walking into the ring, good GAWD, what a pop came through the crowd.  Though the pop kind of petered out during most of the brawl with UT (go figure), the throwing into the side of the Raw ramp and the return of the sledgehammer(~!) kept the crowd on their feet.

 

Hulk Hogan.  The reaction for Hogan was actually decidedly mixed throughout the show until Hogan came out for the promo.  At that point, the bowing down commenced and there was really no division...until after the cameras went off the air.  I tried as hard as I could to boo during the replay segment of Hulk beating Yokozuna...but alas, my voice was already quite gone by then.

 

Steve Austin.  Essentially got the pop of the night in a nutshell.  No real explanation necessary.

 

Rob Van Dam.  Second biggest pop of the night, as everybody was on their feet.  Nice little touch during the commercial break as Rob's music kicked back up and he bowed for everybody at the head of the ramp.

 

People That Were...not so much.:

Bradshaw.  Almost zero reaction from his attack...and I don't mean that in the "ohmygodhegotkilled" type of zero reaction either.

 

Mr. Perfect.  He was just painful to watch.  Some people gave him a standing ovation, but there was absolutely nothing going for him during the match.  Just awful.

 

The nWo.  Not surprisingly, the nWo wasn't really that hot and I think it showed in the match.  They've been reduced to the point where seeing Austin mudhole stomp both of them in the corner at the same time doesn't really seem that ridiculous...and that's a bad thing.

 

Shawn Stasiak.  Don't let the huge amounts of boos during his interview fool you - a girl was arguing/ejected from the arena for teasing some frontal during the commercial break and, for the most part, almost everybody didn't even realize Stasiak had any semblance of a promo until they turned and saw Regal offer to knock some sense into him.

 

Other Observations:

The Raw set is surprisingly teeeeeeeny - I really expected more of a massive ramp to walk down, but I suppose that illusion was all production team.  Nice job.

 

The event started with the acclaimed Desire history video (EXCELLENT decision - talk about giving people an advertisement for what they were about to see) and then Lilian knocked it out of the park with an amazing Star Spangled Banner.  Three rows down, some fool yelled "what" and got smacked by his girlfriend.  I was quite pleased.

 

My respect for Scott Hall has increased ten-hundred fold.  I sat almost 35 rows away from the ring and I could still hear his shots on Austin.

 

Live WWF (or at least this show) had some really nice touches between backstage skits and commercial breaks.  Examples:  Matt Hardy still playing dead throughout Flair's interview with the tech people, which is a perfect "hard sell".  Others included Bubba Ray consoling Spike after their loss and the RVD bow that I mentioned earlier.

 

And then what happened after Raw went off the air.

 

Oh.  My.  God.

 

I'm pretty sure they were just testing the waters...but down comes Hogan during the pose and he socks Hall, socks X-Pac and then deals with Big Show.  He clotheslines Show over the top and I catch Austin giving a double stunner to Hall and X-Pac.  Hogan turns around...and gets STUNNERED.  The crowd went frickin' bananas for Austin and he starts calling for the beers.  I, being the Austin mark that I am, scream like a school girl with what semblance of a voice that I have left.

 

And then Hogan interrupts his four-corner beer bashing, and we get the staredown of the last 20 years and the crowd is positively manic.

 

Austin, unfortunately, caves in and shares a beer with Hogan and, in a strange bizarro world, we see Austin and Hogan going to two different corners and bashing beers together.  Two things to note:  1)  Hogan does not catch beers very well at ALL.  2)  Hogan was specifically squeamish about drinking any of it - he kind of looked out of place at times, though he played along quite well.  Many, MANY beers were bashed, with Hogan even doing a little bit of a cartoony sell throughout.  Austin toasted with damn near everybody - Hogan, JR, a cameraman, and even Earl Hebner got into the act with the beer drinking, climbing up the turnbuckle himself at the near end.  All this was being done with Austin's music in the background, I should note.

 

Eventually, after almost two coolers worth of beer being bashing, spilled and thrown (or dropped, in Hogan's case), Austin walks up the ramp and Hogan leaves with Hebner to Hendrix, stopping for a quick posedown at the top of the ramp.

 

Overall, one of the coolest wrestling experiences I have been part of, as, IMO, both Raw and even HeAt were really quite decent tonight, though I might have been wrapped up in the experience.  I really didn't have any issues with other fans around me and it was just great.  Strong recommendation to go if it hits near you.

[Guest Jobber of the Week]

Damn man you are new. You never watched WCW? This is Big Show's first run in the WWF.

Not really new. Well, not old either. But I've been one of those WWF 4EVER marks who would rather shoot himself in the head than watch WCW.

 

In case you're curious, the first match/show I ever watched was a Road Dogg vs Bossman Hardcore match at Royal Rumble 99.... Do not even attempt to ask how someone could get interested in wrestling after watching that. I do not know. =b (admittedly, it was Foley vs Rock that made me tune in the next night)

 

I've done a lot of backtracking on WWF history but I never really cared for WCW. Although the introduction of the nWo to WWF makes me interested in perhaps acquiring some PPV tapes or something. I love really shitty wrestling just as much as I like really good wrestling, it's just the "meh" crap I'm not interested in. However, I can't figure out what year to start watching WCW since it's all some of the most spectcularly bad crap I've ever seen. Do I start in the early 90s with Ole Anderson booking and the Black Scorpion? Mid-90s when the nWo hits it big and everybody and their brother joins, or 2000 and the rise of Russomania?

[Guest cobainwasmurdered]

no i didn't. I marked for the hart foundation,the rockers,savage,etc. but NEVER EVER Hogan.

 

The marks are feeling nostalgic, they would turn on hogan after 2 months of him as champ, remember 94-95 he was the most hated babyface around

 

 

 

Well, you're full of shit then. Everyone, when they was young, marked for Hogan at least one time. Do you think that any children were cheering for Sgt. Slaughter at Wrestlemania 7? No, not unless they lived in a foreign country anyway. I refuse to believe that anyone on this planet has never ever ever liked Hogan.

I DO live in a foriegn country. I live In Canada. I didn't cheer for slaughter and I didn't cheer for Hogan I sat through the crappy match, I sat through Hogan Parading around the ring after the match with the American flag acting like he'd just won the Gulf War.

 

That's why I hate Hogan, not because he's a bad wrestler or a backstage politcion (all true though) but because he used people's patriotism for his own gain (Just like I didn't approve of the hart foundations anti-american stuff). because he didn't seem to give a damn about the boys overseas fighting.

[Guest]

You hate Hogan Because:

"because he used people's patriotism for his own gain (Just like I didn't approve of the hart foundations anti-american stuff). because he didn't seem to give a damn about the boys overseas fighting."

 

That is easily the most retarded thing I've ever heard. To say that he diddnt care about the soldiers is stupid. Hulk Hogan is American, so he obviousley cared.

 

With that said, I too think hogan is an old sumbich who needs to retire now, but he isnt Benidict Arnold.

[Guest cobainwasmurdered]

You hate Hogan Because:

"because he used people's patriotism for his own gain (Just like I didn't approve of the hart foundations anti-american stuff). because he didn't seem to give a damn about the boys overseas fighting."

 

That is easily the most retarded thing I've ever heard. To say that he diddnt care about the soldiers is stupid. Hulk Hogan is American, so he obviousley cared.

So because he's american he OBVIOUSLY cared. Now that's the stupidest thing I'VE ever heard.

[Guest Hogan Made Wrestling]

You know, the WWF continuously gets bitched out about the gulf war thing a good decade after it happened, yet at the time I don't recall anyone complaining about the way CNN covered the whole thing (basically turned it into a live G.I. Joe action series), or the countless movies and such that have come since profiting on it, often humorously (Hot Shots, Three Kings, etc.).

[Guest Big McLargeHuge]

Three Kings is hardly a movie that exploited the Gulf War. That's taking things a tad far there.

 

And Hogan is evil.

[Guest Hogan Made Wrestling]

How exactly did the WWF "exploit" it? By making money off of it? Then it's exactly the same thing.

[Guest Big McLargeHuge]

I never said the WWF exploited it. Not ONCE. I agree that people give the WWF too much of a bad rap for the whole thing.

[Guest Mystery Eskimo]

Gah, Big Show in nWo? Is the WWF now just following WCW's storylines for lack of anything more orginal? Stupid idiots.

[Guest Risk]

I'm glad I missed RAW, I feel asleep before it came on.

[Guest JHawk]

Good first hour, poor second hour IMO, but one thought.  Who didn't see the Big Show turn coming?  Hall's reaction meant either Show was turning or Hall's a worse actor than Hogan.  Since, with the exception of Stephie Mac and Halle Berry nobody is a worse actor than Hogan, it was pretty simple to narrow down.

 

And I gotta admit.  As ignorant as the Goldust-Booker T segment was, I was LMAO at it in spite of myself.  I still don't get the point of them teaming, but good effort anyway.

[Guest Just call me Dan]

I marked out for Show.  I don't like his workrate, and sometimes I swap over when he's on, but he can really get over if they push him hard and be something to behold.  The emotion will make up for his slowness.  Take a look back at the Raw match about 4 years ago where Austin took on Show.

Lots of emotion, looked good.

 

And damn he held Austin up in that Chokeslam for about 10 seconds!

[Guest Max Danger]

Also, the tape had previous Raws. I usually get 4 Raws without commercials  on a tape in SLP mode, but the fucking RCA tapes are gay homos, so it cuts out early.

Yes they are.  That's what I use(heck, there are ten of 'em for like seven bucks), and I get two Raws and two Smackdowns on 'em, but if there's a Jakked/Metal match I want(like Storm/Morrus from last week) to tape, then I'll end up having the second SD! on the tape cut off at the end and I have to scramble for another tape to open and shove into the VCR before it all ends.

 

But anyway, I guess I should mention something about Raw.  Um... um..... I like the nWo in backstage skits.  They is funny.

[Guest cabbageboy]

I used to use those crappy RCA tapes until a guy I traded some stuff with ranted at how much they sucked.  He was right...the RCA tapes in the white box with the dog are weak.  Old ones were decent.  

 

And by the way, just get a 12 pack of Sonys for 11.77 at Target.  That's about as cheap and you get a decent tape.

[Guest HartFan86]

Yeah, I got like 16 RCA tapes for Christmas with the fucking homo dog on  it. I'm gunna start buying better quality tapes because RCA is just shit.

 

12 bucks for 12 Sony tapes? That's good quality shit too.

[Guest evenflowDDT]

And I gotta admit.  As ignorant as the Goldust-Booker T segment was, I was LMAO at it in spite of myself.  I still don't get the point of them teaming, but good effort anyway.

Glad to see I'm not the only one who loved the Goldust/Booker T "at the movies" segment.  Too bad it's probably just going to be a one time deal, their "odd couple" pairing up is really funny and has a lot of potential chemistry.  The Scorpion Queen line was hilarious.

 

Unfortunately, that damned Hogan put me to sleep... seriously, I remember watching him come out and the next thing I looked up and saw it was Star Trek... DAMMIT! Why do I always sleep through the main events?!

 

Planet Stasiak owns you... unless you ain't crazyak?!

[Guest notJames]

Unfortunately, that damned Hogan put me to sleep... seriously, I remember watching him come out and the next thing I looked up and saw it was Star Trek... DAMMIT! Why do I always sleep through the main events?!

Wow. And I thought I was the only one. Three weeks straight, both Raw and Smackdown. Okay so techinically it's not all Hogan's fault, but still, either these shows are really going downhill or I need to get more sleep.

 

(Seriously, I had to read on the 'Net that Big Show joined the nWold at the end of the show...)

[Guest evenflowDDT]

(Seriously, I had to read on the 'Net that Big Show joined the nWold at the end of the show...)

I only found out because I read this thread!