Recap of InsufficientScotty Goes to WWE Raw Part 1

Sorry for the delay in posting this. Yes, Raw is on Monday, but I wanted to include pics from Superstars, which streams on Thursdays, so here we are.

Who among us can say they didn’t get swept up with the WWF back in the glory days of the 80’s and 90’s? Hulkamania, Hacksaw Jim Duggan, Ultimate Warrior, Bret Hart, Macho Man Randy Savage, Undertaker, they were legendary heroes. Before this week, I’d only been to two other WWF shows. One house show that after research I’ve narrowed down to being August 24, 1991, which featured a match with Ultimate Warrior and Undertaker, Bret Hart and Ricky The Dragon Steamboat were both there, and there was a six man tag match involving Earthquake and The Big Bossman. That’s all I really remember about it, other than I was in row 6, and I was mad because I wanted to be on the aisle because I wanted to see Ricky Steamboat breathe fire, and the ticketperson who sold us the tickets told us we would be, but she sold us tickets on the opposite side of the arena. Other than that it was a good time I suppose. Back then I was huge into WWF, I had the posters, the coloring books, the card sets, the magazine subscription, ate the ice cream bars. I once won $50 of Toy-R-Us dollars at a school raffle, I used it to buy a ring and a bunch of LJN WWF Superstar action figures. I made my parents get cable so we could get WrestleMania VII on pay per view. But soon after I went to high school, and kinda outgrew it for a while.

That all changed when I went off to college. When I was freshmen, I had 4 other roomates, all of whom were big WWF fans. This was late 1999, the heart of the Attitude era. So as a shared bonding experience, we all went together to a Raw taping. Because we needed 5 seats together, the best we could get was the very last row of the lower bowl, all the way on the farthest side of the arena. It wasn’t all that good, mostly because as it turns out, all my roommates were assholes, and we couldn’t see shit. All I remember was there was a steel cage match, I believe involving Shane McMahon. I stuck around through the Invasion, but I got a girlfriend sophomore year and had moved on to other things right before the brand extension started.

That was the last I had really been into WWE until last year. One of the girls I worked with went down to see WrestleMania XXVII in Atlanta, and as she was telling me about it, I got back into it. Along with the CM Punk “pipe bomb” incident, which blurred the kayfabe line got me intrigued. That and the episode of Tosh.0 with the “It’s still real to me” guy. So I started watching Raw again, went on bit torrent, downloaded all the “Big Four” 4 pay per views, and watched them all in order till I got caught up.

So, what’s it like for a childhood lover of WWF to go to a RAW taping 22 years later? Read on after the jump.

Now that I’m an adult with a rather sizable income and no real bills, I tend to find myself with large amounts of disposable income. I usually spend it on food, comics, and toys. But I figured what the hell, this will be an experience, and it’s two weeks before WrestleMania, if I’m gonna go I should go to this one, so I went big, and got the VIP pass, which for $250, gets you in the first 3 rows, camera side, as you can see above. RAW doesn’t go live until 9:00, but the show starts at 8:15 with a bunch of “dark matches”. (I’m a bit of a “smark”, I know all the lingo and read some of the “dirt sheets”). First the ring announcer and the play by play guys for Superstars come on down and get introduced. We had three dark matches. These are matches before the show starts to get the crowd warmed up. Also, frankly, it’s pretty much all the actual pure “wrestling” that goes on at the event. When you break down the 2 hours of Raw, it’s 30 minutes of commercials, about 75 minutes of promos and other worked bits/packages, and only maybe 15 minutes of wrestling at best. You don’t really realize it as such until you are there, 10 feet away from it and you mostly are just watching shirtless dudes yell at each other (or a video screen).

So the first match is a quick squash match between Brodus Clay and some jobber, damn if I had ever heard of him. After some research, turns out the jobber was Michael McGillicutty. Clay has a fun gimmick, but I’m getting kinda tired of all these squashes, I’d like to see him really take on someone seriously. Basically his music hit, he came out with his hot hoe dancers, everyone shook their booties for a bit, and in the time it took me to get my camera out and snap a few pics, the match was over. You can see for yourself below. And I’ll apologize now for my pictures. I’m a really shitty cameraman, and also, most of my pictures are of people’s butts, because, well, they were facing the camera on the other side of me.

After that was a tag team match involving the Tag Team Champs, Primo and Epico, and their slut of a valet Rosa Mendes against some more jobbers in the team of Alex Riley and Mason Ryan. First things first, Mason Ryan is fucking huge, I don’t know how many steroids he’s on, but it is far too many. He’s a damn freak. Also, the champs I could not care about at all if it weren’t for Rosa Mendes. She’s basically that stripper at the casino, the one out on the floor that looks decent dancing from far away, but once you make your way over to her you’re like “ugh, no thank you”. So these four dudes beat up on each other for maybe five minutes of not too exciting action.

So after that they tell us that they will be doing a live cut-in on USA in 1 minute, and to get all our signs ready. So everyone just stands around for about 50 seconds, then the ring announcer tells use we are live in five, and then everyone goes crazy for the 15 seconds of the promo, then we’re done. It’s odd, because while the show is on the air, the live feed is pumped to the TitanTron, so everyone in the arena is seeing the exact same thing as viewers from home. So for those 15 seconds, we see the same thing. One thing you notice when you are there, is how worthless the announce team is. I hate Michael Cole, (though I’m supposed to, he’s a heel), but when you don’t hear him, it becomes very clear how little he actually adds to the show.

So after the cut-in we get a Divas tag match between the now villainous Eve and her partner Beth Phoenix against Tamina and Natalia. It was the longest Diva’s match I’ve seen since I started back. It’s a real shame the WWE clearly doesn’t give a shit about the Divas as anything but eye candy (see the two prior matches), as most nights, including tonight, don’t have a televised Divas match, and when they do, its almost always under a minute and half. It takes longer to get everyone to the ring than most Divas matches. Which is a real shame. I remember the glory days of the Women’s Championship as it was called then, with Sunny and Sable, and the Kat and Terri, Stephanie McMahon, and of course I went insane for Trish Stratus. The women were a big pull back in the Attitude Era, but now, now so much. Despite the lack of love, the match was pretty decent, except for Eve’s obvious botch on the moonsault.

So as you may have noticed if you read the site alot, I happen to know a good deal about television. Therefore, I know that when the red light goes on on the camera, that is the one that’s on air. So as the diva match is wrapping up, I notice the main camera isn’t cutting away. This is when I get up and decide to show off my signs. And I mean, alot. I was waving my sign back and forth for like a minute and a half and they never cut away. Well, at least in the arena. If you watch Superstars, this is all you get of me. Unfortunately, I was dead center ring, so while I was on TV, a LOT, many times a wrestler or ref was blocking me. The shots below are the best I could get of the signs, as Superstars only streams in 720i on youtube, but you can see what they looked like in my prior article.

That’s all you could see of the sign, because immediately after then match ended, during the 5 minutes of just sitting around with the lights off waiting to go live, security came over and confiscated the sign. Apparently “I put pants on for this?” is not considered funny and is too risque for the PG audience. When I said “Well can I just use the other side?” and he said “Well what is that?’ I said “My website logo” and he went “Awwwww hell no!” and promptly swiped it. It wasn’t until later on in the show that I realized, not a single person in my section had a large sign during the live show. Security took the “Rize above deez nuts” sign from the guy next to me before he even had his jacket off, and other signs were taken after each of the dark matches. I could swear any other week I see huge signs all night long, but maybe they were just being paranoid with WrestleMania two weeks away. I don’t get it, I saw a sign that said “Boots to Man-jina” which is fine. Anything with any originality that didn’t just say “Team Bring It” or “You Can’t See Me” was a no-no apparently. I guess they only care if you are gonna be seen all night long. If you’re off to the sides and will only get a fleeting glimpse they don’t mind. And I never understood, why do people in the cheap seats all the way up in the rafters bring signs? No one can see them.

So at this point the ring announcer comes out and tells us to expect a bunch of pyro to go off and we’ll be live in 1 minute. The TitanTron lights up, starts showing the into, the music plays, and then finally all hell breaks loose. Those pyro are bright and loud as fuck. CM Punk’s music hits, and he comes down to the ring. One thing you may not notice on TV, that camera that follows people down the ramp, that is a huge apparatus strapped to some dude’s chest. And it’s not just one dude. That is a whole team of people. There’s the camera guy, then he’s got a spotter to keep him from falling, and two grips running around behind him pulling cable, making sure not to get caught up and trip anyone. So Punk is just hanging out in the ring while a video package of last week’s highlights runs. Then it’s funny because the camera guy in the ring for the close up shot gives him the 5 second countdown like in Wayne’s World when it’s time for him to start up. So Punk puts on his mean face, and gives a pretty good motivational speech about overcoming adversity. It was nice. Then Jerico comes on the TitanTron. It’s kinda funny because Punk pretty much just stands there until it’s time for the camera to cut back to him. But once he’s on, he’s on, even dropping a “Bullshit” twice in case you missed it. It’s interesting, as Punk cuts a great promo, but it still feels weak because it’s just him talking to a big video screen.

I’m just getting started with my recap, I haven’t even gotten to the first televised match yet! Come back later as I finish up my thoughts in Part 2.

 
 
Also, special shout out to theCHIVE for the main picture, which made it into Chive Everywhere, and was not submitted by me but by a fellow Chiver who watched the show, and alleviated me from having to take the screencap myself.

JohnScott is the proud owner of a life size replica Captain Kirk Chair. He is a hoarder of Comic Books, Transformers, and Star Trek action figures. He attended Space Camp as an adult. He has taken vacations to the closing of the Star Trek Experience and the final night Shuttle launch. He has been known to yell at his television when the kids can't put together the damn statue in the Shrine of the Silver Monkey. When not writing for InsufficientScotty, he is a Software Engineer for a major healthcare communications company. You can Email or follow on Twitter @NotEnoughScotty or Facebook