The Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and John McCain segments on Raw last week were at least partially written by the WWE creative team, hence the references to Randy Orton, King of the Ring, fatal four-way, etc. Part of the reasoning behind the presidential candidates appearing was simply that it was a chance for them to reach five million people on live, prime-time TV the evening before the primary in Pennsylvania. Dave Meltzer has noted that some of the Democrats running in the 2000 elections felt that Jerry Lawler campaigning for George Bush on Raw the night before the election, when the WWF was at its peak, may have helped make the marginal swing towards the Republicans in the Florida vote.
The fake Barack Obama on last week’s show was played by an independent wrestler from the Carolinas, Deon Davis. The fake Hillary Clinton was played by Lexie Fyfe, a female wrestling veteran.
The final rating for the 31 March episode of Raw, with Ric Flair’s farewell address, has been bumped from a 3.92 to a 4.23 by factoring in the number of people who taped the show to later watch it at their own convenience. This has of course been an increasing trend and it made the episode the most watched on-tape Raw in history.
An interesting note from Chris Benoit’s phone records… He had kept an answering machine message from Eddie Guerrero that was left at 15:50 on the 12th November 2005, the day before he died. Apparently Eddie was slurring his words, passing on his family’s best wishes to Benoit’s family and asking if Benoit, like him, was going to get into town a day early for the shows. The message was never erased after Eddie died.
WWE’s SummerSlam Anthology DVD set is due for release on the 5th August.
Credit: Wrestling Observer Newsletter, 28 April 2008 (subscribe here)
