RAW Dark Matches, Heat Taping and Off Air Notes

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Jeff Spencer sent this report.
Here’s a report from Monday’s Heat taping and Raw live show in Huntsville, AL.

Regarding attendance, the Von Braun Center holds about 7,500 at capacity. Tonight the crowd was maybe 4500 tops. In addition to having the normal area behind the jumbotron tarped off they had the entire upper deck behind the hard camera position tarped off. By comparison, the last time Raw was taped in Huntsville last fall only the area behind the jumbotron was tarped. The crowd was quite a bit less. However, almost every seat not covered was full. I noticed on local radio in the final days before the show commercials advertised a special match “after the cameras stop rolling” between Triple H and Randy Orton. More on that later.

The first match, which I believe was a dark match, “The Masterpiece” Chris something beat a local guy whose name I also didn’t catch but he was announced as being from Huntsville and had “Carnival Freak” on his tights. I’m not a Heat watcher so I didn’t know either of these guys. Winner – “The Masterpiece”.

Next the Coach was introduced to a very loud chorus of boos. Todd was introduced to indifference.

First Heat match was Trish Stratus versus Victoria. Wow! One week you’re Women’s World Champion and the next week you’re opening up Sunday Night Heat. Seems like Vince did a similar thing to Chris Benoit. Good match here as both women can wrestle and are easy to watch. Trish won it in less than 4 minutes with the Stratusfaction.

Second match pitted Val Venus against a short guy wearing red tights. Didn’t catch his name and didn’t recognize him. I looked for a squash here but it went on for what seemed like forever. Val’s decision on whom to give his towel to after the match was more entertaining.

After yet another “Coach sucks” chant, the third match pitted Simon Dean versus the Hurricane. Simon got fairly decent heal heat and the Hurricane got a nice pop. This match didn’t turn out to be that great.Hurricane ended up winning via DQ with Rosey coming out for the save, breaking up Simon’s choke on the Hurricane.

Next up was the Muhammad Hassan (sp?) video promo. Blah!

Heat’s main event pitted La Resistance against Rhyno and Tajiri. Good heel heat for the French, err Canadians.well, Robert Conway isn’t Canadian.nevermind, you know what I mean. Nice pop for Rhyno and Tajiri. Tajiri started things off by spraying his green mist.didn’t actually hit anybody though. Good final match with La Resistance winning with a roll up aided by the ropes.

Raw live was OK. The crowd wasn’t as hot as last fall’s show. It seems that people in the crowd want to get involved in the matches but they needed some kind of cue or trigger. That’s one of the things that make wrestlers like Stone Cold, the Rock, Hulk Hogan and Rick Flair stand out. They know that they have to play to the crowd and come up with some recognizable catch phrases and moves that the crowd can know to react to.

Did the vignette with Triple H begging/whining for the belt seem especially stupid, even by WWE standards?

The crowd really reacted to Mick Foley. Again, a wrestler that can push the crowd’s buttons and make them feel like they’re a part of the show. I wonder what Vince’s reaction was to the “What?” crowd chants in response to Muhammad Hassan. Not a lot of boos, the crowd just had fun saying “What?”

Wow! Dave Batista is really getting over with the crowds. They popped for him when he pinned Benoit in the tag match.

After the cameras stopped rolling, Bischoff told everyone to clear the area because the “adverstised match” between Triple H and Orton was going to happen. Apparently radio advertising isn’t what it used to be because half the audience was already on its way to the exits before hearing Bischoff’s announcement. Most people stayed. Triple H started walking up the ramp not wanting anything to do with Orton but came back when Bischoff threatened to pull him from the Elimination Chamber match and “any other future shot at the World Championship belt”. Good back and forth match between the two. It ended at the 13:00 minute mark after Orton turned a Pedigree attempt by Triple H into an RKO for the clean 1-2-3.

My unscientific gage of Raw heat and pops:

Biggest Pops:
Mick Foley
Randy Orton
Lita
Batista
Eugene

Most Heat:
Bischoff
Edge
Triple H
Maven

Credit-Dave Scherer & PWInsider.com