Thanks to reader Nick L for sending this along:
I was lucky enough to snag my company’s box suite at the Sprint Center so the evening was already starting well by the time my friends and I sat down. There was a Superstars taping which started with Tons of Funk & The Funkadactyls vs. The Usos and The Bellas. It was a nice opener that got the crowd into it. One funny segment included Sweet T taking a double butt bump from the Bellas while his head was in their ropes. He got up, jumped back into place, and started loudly begging them to do it again, which got a great response from the crowd. The funky crew won and danced for the crowd – but unlike past appearances didn’t pull any kids in.
The second match was Alex Riley vs. Damien Sandow. A Ry got in a bit of offense but Sandow won clean in a short but action-filled match.
Raw opened with no pyro straight into the Ryback promo. It came off very well and sold that while him and Cena both had rough nights, Ryback was the man able to walk away from their encounter. During the commercial break they brought out a ladder to help Ryback off the roof of the ambulance which got some entertaining catcalls from the crowd.
Miz and Jericho both received very loud cheers during their entrance. I’m not sure if that’s the first time Wade Barrett has used the new music, but it sounded like a much better fit than “I don’t care any more”. I only saw one or two people try to start fandango’s theme during the match, and even they didn’t look too enthused. The post match interaction between Jericho and Summer had the crowd cracking up. Massive Y2J chants when he blew her off.
KC was very happy to see Sheamus. However, if we judge popularity solely off the six year old girl in front of me, the Prime Time Players were far ahead. She was doing the Millions of Dollars dance the whole match and it made me smile. Oh, the match itself? It was fine. I think we all knew who was going to win.
I was thrilled with Heyman bringing out Mich—–erm, Curtis Axel. Unfortunately, the crowd was DEAD. Too bad, because I think Perfect Junior is a great wrestler who just has some charisma problems. No better way around that than letting Heyman be his mouthpiece. We had an energetic crowd already but they LOST IT when HHH came out. I really don’t think any of us were expecting to see him. When he announced the match it almost blew the roof off the Sprint Center.
I’m starting to ramble so I’ll lump together the next three matches. ADR vs. Big E, Layla vs. AJ, and Zach Ryder vs. Cody Rhodes were all just sort of there. This is my second three hour Raw, and just like the first the crowd just starts to lose steam during such long events. This was where things slowed down.
The Shield / Hell No & Kofi match was exceptional. 17 minutes or so, lots of near falls, and the crowd was all over every second of it. Lots of ‘This is Awesome’ chants, and more than a few standing ovations for the Shield once it was over.
We all new Orton was winning the vote, but when they announced it that may have been the loudest cheer of the night. The match started slowly but received enough time to use that to tell a cool story about Orton really going for high impact against Swagger (going for the hanging DDT 3 times for example) while getting both legs neutralized.
We all knew because it was already 10:00 that something would happen pretty quick in the HHH / Axel match. I knew they were selling HHH’s injuries from last nights, but a LOT of people hadn’t ordered the Pay Per View and without announcers we also didn’t know WWE was playing up a “Not cleared to wrestle” angle with HHH. When he started selling the head injury a lot of people seemed confused and it just sucked the energy out of the crowd. I get it for storytelling purposes but it seemed to bring everything to a screeching halt on what was otherwise a really energetic and fun night.
After they went off the air they tended to HHH for a few more minutes and once he left Cena’s music hit. He ended up teaming with ADR vs. Swagger and Ryback. It was a pretty standard tag match, about 5 minutes long, and Cena hit an AA on Swagger followed by one on Ryback. Ryback was legal and took the pin (okay fine, I’ll say it) “to send the crowd home happy”.
All in all, this was a great Raw. We had a fun crowd who brought the energy through another long show. People seemed to be having fun, and personally I felt like the WRESTLERS were also having a lot more fun compared to the last time they were here. I’ll be interested to read how it came off on TV.
Jeremy Donegan sent this one in:
People went crazy when the ambulance showed up, but they silenced real quick when it was Ryback. Apparently, the word hospital is not in Ryback’s vocabulary because he used the term “medical facility” several times. Someone needs to be his mouthpiece.
The fans went nuts when Fandango made is entrance, but other than Chris Jericho people could not have cared less about the other participants. Fans were getting agitated when Chris Jericho was being looked at by the trainer. This whole no blood thing is asinine.
The whole Sheamus match went on way to long. From a live perspective it was very sloppy.
When Paul Heyman walked out I was excited. I kept thinking they were either bringing someone back or maybe even Brock Lesnar. When Curtis Axel came out I looked at my wife and said, “This is dumb, I’m going to the bathroom.” I came back and not even seconds later Triple H’s music started. The crowd went ape shit. The promo was weak but the slap could be heard all through out the arena.
The next three matches were just plain awful and boring. Big E is way bigger than I thought. AJ is just as bad as every other Diva. And I was just hoping that someone was going to squash Zack Ryder, who, by the way, looks like a doofus with his haircut. Ryback destroying him just was as flat as his opening segment.
The six-man tag was match of the night. The Shield had so much heat you could barely hear them talk and when Kofi and Team Hell No came out it was deafening. The action was great. Everyone was all for Daniel Bryan. He was tied with Randy Orton and Triple H for loudest pop of the night. The finish was predictable but it was a great match nonetheless.
Did WWE really think we wanted Great Khali. I knew it would be Randy Orton. It was a good match a lot of back and forth. Orton winning was also predictable. He celebrated well after the commercial break, I’m guessing since its his home state.
Triple H’s entrance is awesome live. The match just plain sucked. I know what they’re going for, but I wanted a decent match. The whole thing reminded me of the Shawn Michaels angle from back around the start of the Attitude Era.
Overall, an okay show. I will really think hard about buying tickets for the show in October. I didn’t stay for the dark match. I just didn’t care to see anyone in it.
