Report by: Gavin Anderson, rajah.com reader
Hey guys, just back from a great Raw Wrestlemania Revenge Tour house show
here in Edinburgh and thought I'd post you some comments on it :
First off, Lillian came out to her usual pop and wolf-whistles and sang our
national anthem, 'Flower Of Scotland', but was interrupted by La Resistance
who proclaimed that the Quebec flag is the only true blue-and-white flag in
the world (the Scottish flag is also blue-and-white) and they proceeded to
sing 'O Canada' to some superb heat before Regal & Tajiri came out to shut
them up. The match was a good opener and the crowd was hot for the tag
champs, possibly for Tajiri more that William, which surprised me. Regal won
the match with his now standard running knee-lift finish.
Next up was The Masterpiece vs Hurricane. Masters himself was actually
pretty impressive in this match, I thought, and his entrance had one of four
sets of pyro used tonight, and was rather cool indeed. He managed to get
some good heat from the crowd, especially after finishing off the Hurricane
with his Masterlock, which does look a lot better close up and in person.
Next was the Coach who came out to announce some of the matchups on the card
and then he punked out Lillian by demanding she get out of the ring so he
could announce the next match, which was Christy vs Victoria.
Both ladies were looking superb and I cursed myself for not having brought
some binoculars, as they were really not wearing much at all : )) Coach said
there was only one person who could referee such a match, so he sent Jack
Doan from the ring, unbuttoned his shirt to reveal a ref's shirt underneath.
Christy's wrestling skills are improving all the time, and she was pulling
off some really good technical moves.
Victoria surprised a few people by feigning a leg injury only to attack
Christy when she wasn't looking, incurring some good heat in doing so.
Christy had a few 3-counts but Coach would pretend to have a sore arm as it
came down for the final count, so Christy whacked him in the balls which
sent him to the outside. She countered the Widow's Peak and did he
split-legged pin for the victory, with Jack Doan coming back to count it.
Overall a good performance by the girls.
Next, out came the huge behemoth Viscera and proceeded to take apart a
pretty defenceless Val Venis, at one point even doing a Van-Dam-like
spinning heelkick into Val's face! The big guy can fairly move when he wants
to! He also did some Kurt-Angle-like mat manoeuvres which illicited much
laughter from the crowd, and finished off with basically a Batista-bomb
sit-out slam for the victory.
Next came Tyson Tomko to a nice bit of heat, and then Benoit to some really
good loud cheering. After managing to counter an immediate attempt by Benoit
to go for the crossface, Tomko worked over the arm that had been ostensibly
hurt by Edge over the past few weeks, but got 6 German suplexes and a major
league flying headbutt for his bother. He was put in the crossface a couple
of times, but always got to the rope, until finally he simply could not get
out of the Sharpshooter and had to tap out. Good work by both men here.
The first half of the show ended with a triple-threat match for the IC title
between Jericho, Christian and Shelton. Christian is definitely one of my
all-time favourites and has so much presence in the ring. He came out to
rapturous applause mixed with more half-hearted heat, but the guy is so
great everyone wanted to cheer him : ) The match was pretty to-and-fro, with
the fighting happening in a kind of round-robin style, with each man going
up against one other whilst the third was out of the ring.
There was one superb bit where Jericho bounced Christian's head off the top
turnbuckle, the middle one and the bottom one around 5 times on each, then
he let Shelton in to do the reverse, bouncing Christian's head all the way
back up each turnbuckle until he was comically dizzy and fell on his face.
Pure Christian gold, it was! : ) After some great action including a 3-man
superplex+powerslam and each of Jericho and Christian's finishers, Shelton
picked up the win with the T-Bone on Christian whilst Jericho was knocked
off the apron. Once the others had left, Jericho got on the mic and
proclaimed himself an honorary Scot for this evening, to a huge cheer and
chants of Y2J.
After the 10-minute interval, Edge ran out with his briefcase to some good
heat, but the heat (and noise) really came when Kane's huge pyro went off. I
was glad I was over the other side of the arena as I imagine the sound for
those right next to it would have been deafening! Not too much to report on
the match but it was all solid fare. There was only one 'You screwed Matt'
chant during the bout, but it didn't get picked up by the majority of the
audience, a lot of whom were parents with very young children and most
likely did not know about it. Kane took Edge's spear and hit him with a
major chokeslam for the victory. After Kane had left, Edge staggered to his
feet and, as he was walking past some fans, someone threw him a Scotland
flag. He got in the ring with it and held it up, the crowd popping for him
really loud, but then he proceeded to mimick wiping his ass on the flag, to
which he good a huge boo! On his way down the exit ramp, he seemed to get in
a heated argument with some fans there, but I guess it was just standard
trash-talking.
Out next was Muhammad Hassan, and I must say I was impressed with him, with
the way he worked the crowd and
with his in-ring work too. He has the makings of a top-flight wrestler, and
I can also really imagine a strong and popular face run for him in the
future. However, tonight he played the heel to a T, getting on the mic and
claiming the Scottish were just as racist, bigoted and stupid as the
Americans he's had to deal with. In the middle of his tirade though, HBK's
music hit to probably the biggest pop of the night and he stormed down to
the ring looking like he meant business.
The two went at it in a great, fast, technical and powerful matchup, but in
the middle of it, a fire-alarm warning in the building sounded which seemed
to bewilder the crowd somewhat, as it kept on going as the match progressed.
About a minute after it had started, it seemed to me that someone had got
word to Shawn to wrap things up quickly as a precaution, because, from out
of nowhere, he countered a punch and went straight into the Sweet Chin
Music, no
leg-stomping build-up in the corner, nothing. He covered 1-2-3 and about 20
seconds later was through the curtain without any posing for the crowd.
Hassan and Daivari gestured for a while at the crowd and made their way to
the back too, the alarm still going on in the background.
Lillian came out and advised they were investigating what had caused it, but
she said they might as well just get on with the show, as the show must go
on. With that, 'Also sprach Zarathustra' sounded and the Nature Boy came out
to a big pop and huge shouts of 'Woooooo!'. He strutted to the ring in his
customary fashion and was soon followed by The Game, who, unusually, did his
water spray on the side of the ring facing away from the runway. He got on
the mic and claimed that Batista must have set off the fire alarm as he was
too scared to face them both. This quick-witted repartee got some great
reactions from the crowd.
Trips really knows how to control an audience. He was cut off too, however,
by a massive pop for Batista as he came ringside. This match was classic
stuff from the Evolution guys, both past and present, and was highlighted by
an
apparent game of one-upmanship between the Nature Boy and HHH as to who
could do the longest semi-conscious wander around the ring before falling to
the mat. This time it was won by Triple H, who wobbled, almost falling, for
about 40 seconds, milking it like the seasoned pro that he is. The crowd had
a great laugh along with him.
The night rounded off with Batista knocking Trips out of the ring and
putting a huge Batista-bomb on Flair for the win, before celebrating on all
four corners and then outside with the fans.
Biggest Pop :
1. HBK.
2. Coach mentioning that Batista would be wrestling in the main event.
3. Batista actually coming out for the main event.
Biggest Heat :
1. Hassan.
2. Edge.
3. La Resistance.
Best Performances :
1. Christian.
2. Hassan.
3. Triple H/Ric Flair
Best Matchup :
Triple threat for the IC Title.
Overall a great night out and wonderful to see the WWE back in Scotland.
Many thanks to them for their superb performance!
