Here we go! Two guys established going face to face. The tournament becomes more meaningful. Jobs apologizes for his “hissy fits” and “rage” moments promising they will never happen again. Sure buddy. Aren’t you out of the tournament via loss? Will these questions be answered? And the twins continues their tension? Yes, that is what the prelude tells us…
It wasn’t that long ago. Just a few weeks, actually. I jumped right on this very website right after WWE RAW SuperShow to rant about how they ruined a perfectly entertaining show with the introduction of John Laurinaitis as the interim RAW General Manager. Now, I’m right back here after what many are saying was a terrible episode of RAW, and finding myself in a less than familiar situation – one where I’m not a cynical asshole.
Personally, I went on Twitter immediately after I watched last night’s show and mentioned that I felt like last night’s show was solid from top to bottom, and after re-watching it today with my wife I’m standing by that tweet. The fact is, the internet wrestling community (IWC) doesn’t know what they want. The same people who tune in to TNA and time the matches so they can jump on the internet and point out that there was only 10 minutes of wrestling in a two hour program are the same ones that I see right now saying that this episode of RAW, where the talking was kept to a minimum, was terrible.
Every performer on last night’s show put on a solid performance. The IWC doesn’t seem to think so, and I’d like to think that it’s because they’re so jaded about everything that the WWE does nowadays. John Cena has proven time and time again – despite the fact that I boo the hell out of his character – that he’s a solid performer and can have a good match with most of the guys on the roster, yet no matter how good of a match he has, you’ll still hear about the “five moves of doom.” The Divas have all been working very hard on their in-ring work, but as soon as they’re on television, the IWC collectively says “piss break!”
The biggest criticism I’ve seen of last night’s show was the ending. Oh no, “Super Cena” just beat Awesome Truth all by himself, why does he even need to bother with The Rock at Survivor Series? What show are you watching? Cena beat The Miz, then while Miz was incapacitated, R-Truth tried to attack him, but got caught and ate an AA for his trouble. That’s not Cena beating up two guys at once, that’s Cena beating two guys back to back. If it were Awesome Truth against Cena by himself, Cena gets beat down. See last week’s RAW for proof.
What bugs me is that if ROH did the exact same finish – let’s say with Davey Richards in the John Cena role, and members of The House of Truth in Awesome Truth’s place – these same people who are criticizing Cena would be praising Richards for outsmarting the opposition. You know I’m right.
This is what I want. I want all of my fellow members of the IWC to get off of their little cloud, and watch RAW back as a FAN and not as a cynical asshole desensitized to the business by the internet, and tell me what the hell was so wrong with last night’s show.
BWF reader/commenter Gee attended this past Monday’s RAW as a “seat-filler,” which basically means he got to go to RAW and get awesome seats for free just so the camera shows a full crowd at all times. Here is his experience in his own words, taken straight from the comments from Monday’s RAW.
Well, I did it, was a “seat filler” for RAW in Calgary. And since I was told we were technically WWE employees for the duration of the show, I guess that means that I got future-endeavored at the end. So here’ s my first shoot!
We went to our meeting place and waited around for about 45 minutes (even though we were on time). This guy whose name I never caught told us what our job was (i.e. employee duty). We were to start at the “home-base” seats which were on the floor facing the Trinatron, but at the very back end. The new HD looks awesome live on that screen!
If we got moved, it was to seats that would be on camera to replace no-shows or people getting a beer, etc. We were given special green wristbands with the word “pusher” on it. He told us that we are not given shirts or anything else that distinguished us as staff as to keep this a secret from the audience. If we got into any altercations with returning people who wondered why we were in their seats, security was aware of these bands.
So we go to the home base and watch Morrison and D.H. Smith begin their Superstars match. No spoilers, so no worries. I will say that Smith got some big pops from the crowd.
Our orientation guy comes and takes the entire group of us from home-base after the match. So we moved into a row facing the main ring camera dead-on (basically in perfect view). After a couple matches, we were moved out and ended up in the first row of non-floor seating. That lasted about 20 minutes and into the start of RAW we got to watch the intro up close. Lillian is really hot up close!
The commercial break… Back to home-base. Halfway through the first RAW match we have buddy come to move us back to better seats. He gets interrupted by another headset wearing guy who said something about “Kevin” telling him to get some guy with a ghost mask off camera side view. He said this ghost mask guy could stay at the event, but had to go to the other side of the ring.
We get moved to the best seats we had all night for the rest of the show. I am on TV all night when the main ring angle is used. Never moved again. Best seats I’ve had at a show with a perfect view…. and…. wait for it…… FREE!!! I am one row back, two to the left from your perspective of the guy with the “LESS Big Show, More Gail Kim” sign in a black tee shirt.
The post television match was basically Cena speaking about Bret Hart’s legacy and impact on prowrestling to Orton who was at the entry ramp on his way out. While untelivised, this was not only Cena’s best reaction, the crowd was never louder during his speech on Hart. Cena then told him that while he may not agree with some of Orton’s decisions, he respected him and that next week they would be teammates. Orton came down to shake Cena’s hand (oh really?). This of course turned into a fight which was vastly superior to the main event which was pretty live in person. I’m going to watch myself watch wrestling now and will add bullet points below for anything I might have missed.
My own (Gee’s) “Random thoughts” and points about the live show
—————————————————————————————–
Best sign I saw while there: “Shaq your Sega game sucks”
Honourable mention: “I am not a nugget!” (We are the Hart-land after all. My brother used to see Jericho at a favorite pub on open-mic night often. Had numerous Hart brothers as substitute teachers as a kid including Keith and Bruce for sure. Stampede Wrestling and Ed Whaylon ruled. My best friend’s cousin when I was a kid was “He Who Shall Not Be Named.” He bodyslammed me onto a couch along with my friend and my brother. Yeah that last one sucks now as wrestling topic, but you get the point. The Harts and the Dungeons students were hard to avoid growing up here in the eighties and nineties. Thus, Owen references get the nod).
They may not be selling Jeff Hardy stuff online, but they sure were selling it at the Saddledome
Evan Bourne is awesome live, although the match was very short.
Masters sucks and the crowd yelled a lot of steroid related comments at him (e.g.. Roid monkey).
The crowd was a bit louder for Eugene than the “Calgary Kid” They also booed the referee for this match for some reason. That came across bad with me, I actually think this new dude is good at it.
Santino’s shirts were really popular, almost seemed like every twentieth person was wearing/carrying one on the way out.
MVP is really over up here (probably because he rules).
The was a huge pop for Jerry the King Lawler.
You could hear an almost silence of shame come over the crowd during the Piven recap. Except when Dr. Ken took his bump. They muted the crowd here.
Jillian is more painful to listen to sing live. They had to crank her up so loud, WWE must have really turned the audience booing down for that segment.
Canadians cheered for Y2J regardless of what he said or did. The crowd was VERY divided as the usual kids and women and a bunch of metrosexual-looking types where I was.
The “We Want Bret” chant was VERY loud and reoccurred often after Slaughter’s little sketch.
The fans booed the US Army stuff they put on during commercial breaks. Makes sense, we are Canadians and have OUR OWN troops overseas too fighting alongside the US. Maybe they could have acknowledged that?
I saw a lot of signs taken, but some the guy just to my right, down one row kept his “THIS IS STUPID” sign the whole night. I’ve seen him with it a bunch now just in the Show/Orton match already. HD makes is very easy to read.
Yes, we do call Calgary “Cowtown” as mentioned by Jericho. Our city was settled by ranchers and the beef industry is still huge as is oil.
Peace.
Thanks, Gee, for sharing your experience with us! RAW is coming back to Buffalo in October, I wonder if I can get in on that?
Finally – ThinkSoJoE… HAS COME BACK! to reviewing shows. I’ve been trying to get motivated to write about the programming lately, but I’ve been sleeping through most of it. RAW’s been boring, ECW’s been entertaining but I haven’t really been paying a lot of attention to it, and SmackDown hasn’t been bad – but I’m usually sleeping when it’s on. That’s the problem with working overnights, I guess. Anyway, Kofi Kingston will be taking on MVP for the United States Championship tonight, so without further adieu, let’s get started…
(Bonus points to anyone who knows where the title came from.)
Wrestling fans can’t whine and moan about the lack of respect shown to the industry by the rest of the world when some amongst them don’t respect it either. To quote Christopher Titus, that’s right, I said it, who wants some??? Wrestling fans not respecting wrestling and wrestlers seems to be impossible, but it happens all the time. The most grievous offenders are the ones with the least excuse for doing so – the supposed “smart” fans. If you’re actually reading this, that label probably applies to you, but there is a sub-group of “smart” fans. You know the type. The ones who want everyone else to know how cool they are and how much they know. The ones who couldn’t just sit back and enjoy the show if their pathetic, meaningless, wretched little lives depended on it. The ones who chanted “Fallen Angel!” at Curry Man. The ones who constantly refer to wrestlers by their real names. The ones who continue to chant “You fucked up!” during matches, even if the wrestler recovers in mid-move. The ones who are there to make themselves a part of the show, even if it isn’t called for. The ones who talk as if they have inside information on all aspects of the business, even though what they spew is utter nonsense. The ones who make the rest of us hang our collective wrestling fan heads in shame and cringe. Those people.
Some of “those people” have the twisted idea that since they paid for a ticket to the show, since they are so much “in the know” about all things wrestling, or since they are in a way the customer and the customer is always right, that they are entitled to say and do whatever they like with no consequences. Little kids are even taught that this is acceptable. I live in an area with multiple independent wrestling companies, and the major ones come through fairly regularly. I attend a good number of shows. It’s quite disheartening when, at more and more of these shows, regardless of who puts it on, children who haven’t entered their teens are screaming obscenities and insults at wrestlers, giving them the finger, and challenging them to do anything about it because they will sue. The adults who teach and encourage this behavior are no better. To them, it’s funny when a nine-year-old yells that a wrestler sucks and is gay and a variety of other things that would generally not be appropriate in public. Funny really isn’t the right word to describe it.
The leap from verbal assaults to physical ones is small. Any wrestler going into the crowd suddenly has hands all over them. This has always made me very uncomfortable, and while I’m probably in the minority, touching the wrestlers is not necessary to enjoy the show. It’s a different thing entirely to slap hands with someone entering or exiting the ring area, or high-fiving with a wrestler who has jumped into the crowd from the ring or enters from the audience. Those things are fine. Anything else involving touching the wrestlers while the show (not just the match) is going on really isn’t fine, and those of us who claim to be fans need to take a collective step back and remember where we are.
I come from a theatre and performing arts background. If I were at a performance of “Romeo and Juliet,” and the brawl between Tybalt and Mercutio spilled off of the stage and into the crowd (which HAS been done before), the last thing I would do would be to touch the actors who were fighting. It has nothing to do with high-brow theatre versus low-brow wrestling. The concept is the same. The actors in a play have lines, blocking, and fight choreography to follow. They want to put on the best possible show, and get those elements right. They have to be able to pay very close attention to one another because in stage combat, armed or unarmed, so many variables could change in an instant, and the performers must be able to compensate. Distance apart, placement of blows, reaction, environmental changes, and so on require actors, even highly skilled fighters, to concentrate on the action at hand, not the behavior of the audience. I once got my forehead sliced open in a rapier fight because something went wrong. It takes considerable effort to pull off a good fight. The same is true in wrestling.
The more perceptive of you probably realize that the incident at Ring of Honor’s “Final Battle 2008” where Austin Aries punched a fan kickstarted this article. I wasn’t there. I didn’t see it. Very little is being said about it at all, which is probably good. The little bit that I have been able to read from people who were actually there indicates that the “fan” brought it on himself through a series of verbal and physical attacks on Aries. Why is anyone surprised? In any other location, a total stranger yelling at you about wanting to get with your girlfriend, then grabbing you by the shoulder and spinning you around as though he were going to throw a punch would result in the afore-mentioned total stranger getting his teeth knocked down his throat. Why should someone be able to get away with the same behavior at a wrestling show? The fact that it happened doesn’t surprise or bother me nearly as much as the attitude that it’s acceptable for fans to treat wrestlers that way, that people need to just lighten up and get a life instead of being bothered by it, and that since it’s just a fake wrestling show, people in attendance are free to shed all vestiges of decorum, dignity, and class. If you really love wrestling and appreciate what the wrestlers are doing, show them by suspending your disbelief, living in the moment that they create, and understanding that while it may be FOR you, it isn’t ABOUT you.
In Chris Jericho’s autobiography, “A Lion’s Tale: Around the World in Spandex,” he writes about a Japanese wrestler punching a fan in the face who had touched him. The wrestler then chased the fan through the stands and threw him out of the building. “In the States, if you even look in a fan’s general direction, you can be sued. In Japan, to be attacked and beaten by your favorite wrestler was a badge of honor, something to brag about to your friends.” It’s easy to act like the guy at “Final Battle” when you imagine that you’re safe behind the threat of lawsuits and a sense of entitlement. I’m certainly not encouraging wrestlers to declare open season on annoying fans (we’d be destroyed, admit it), but any performer is a human being first, and shouldn’t be expected to endure out-of-line behavior. Believe me, I know what it’s like. I teach public school.