RAW in Vancouver

In the evening we went to see some wrestling (it's been, what, about two months since the previous event? too long) as WWE RAW was finally coming back to Vancouver. I had read some reports previous reports from past house shows in Vancouver that were slightly depressing - half-hearted and half-empty crowds, but this one turned out to be nothing of the sorts. The event was held at PNE Agrodome, a quaint little arena with little over 3000 seats, and it was almost full. Wrestling fans in Vancouver seem to be a bit more casual than the fans we're used to in England, and we felt almost freekish in our fan t-shirts (me in a Wrestlemania and Dragon in a Benoit t-shirt) - which in England or other events we've seen would be standard equipment.

Show was excellent fun, and for the record brief description follows:

• At first Tyson Tomko vs. Vicera - with Candice Michelle as guest announcer - seemed like a strange curtain raiser, but crowd was really into Vicera. He made the match funny, and used quite a large set of moves unlike he does on TV, and for a man that weighs 500 pounds he sure moves fast. Vicera won and after Tomko had left he asked and Candice to come and dance for him, which she did - and they left together hand in hand. Cute!
• Next up was Chris Masters vs. Tajiri, and Masters got some respect out of me for the first time. Firstly, he's much more handsome in flesh, and secondly he could actually wrestle (and being with Tajiri obviously helped quite a bit), something of I haven't been quite sure of before. Tajiri got huge ECW chants from the loving audience and got loads of really painful looking kicks in, although Masters did win with the Masterlock.
• Next up was the first title on the line with Tag Team championship: The Heart Throbs vs. Maven & Simon Dean vs. Hurricane & Rosey (c). The match wasn't the greatest, but ring psychology was first rate so it made all the difference and a very entertaining match. Some great comedy spots, and quite surprisingly the biggest chants were for Simon Dean ("Simon sucks!") - champions retained, of course.
• The announcer was just about to announce the Diva match next, when The Coach came to interrupt him. He did a bit of a heel speach and then announced the match: Victoria vs. Christy Hemme and once the ladies were in the ring he said that since he had "created" both of the divas, he was the only one qualified to referee this match and told the real referee to leave. Dispite Christy's short wrestling career she did well, and crowd was quite excited about the match - much more so than any other crowd I've been in before. Victoria did a bit of a heel turn in the middle of the match, but Christy ended up winning after a low blow to the Coach, and a new referee came to do the lightning fast three-count.
• The following match was Chris Benoit vs. Gene Snitsky with ECW rules ("no rules"), and was a bit of a disappointment. Benoit works so much better in a proper match - but it was cool to see my first hard-core match live though. Mostly because live you can see much more clearly how the wrestlers don't actually try to kill each other but use the weapons much more carefully than what it looks like on TV. Benoit was a crowd favourite - although a little less than I expected. Benoit won after a flying head butt.
• The match of the night was undeniably the Intercontinental Championship match: Christian vs. Shelton Benjamin (c). I was expecting Christian to get a big pop, but the love the crowd showed was pretty extraordinary. What was more extraordinary though was the reception Shelton Benjamin got - the crowd actually boo'ed him the minute he appeared - the babyface champ. The men came to the ring, started the match a bit, but after some serious "Let's go Christian" chants Christian stopped the match and took the mike. He then proceeded to do his best to get the heat he needed by insulting the crowd ("I'm from Toronto Ontario, not Vancouver BC!") and out city ("I don't even like Vancouver - in fact I hate Vancouver!") but to no avail - people had decided to love him, so love him we did. So they continued the match for a bit, but Christian still got huge loving from the crowd, so now Benjamin takes the mike - at this point they had given up their roles and decided to switch them like the people wanted, so it was his turn to insult us. He said that we didn't know good from bad, and that we didn't deserve him and that he would take his belt and stop the match. Which he did and started to walk away - for a moment audience was in shock, I mean was he really going to leave after only few minutes? - but got quickly on the bandwagon and started a huge "You suck!" chant. Christian sent Tomko to get Benjamin back, and the match continued, this time with the switched roles. I had forgotten how good it was to see Benjamin as a heel - and he seemed to really get into it too, and a top quality match followed with Shelton Benjamin's win (of course). Even in the end the crowd refused to show him love and waved him of with a "na-na-naa-na".
• After that match it was really hard to top it, even if it was Edge vs. Kane. I was surprised at Edge's reception: I was expecting proper heat, but there was some lame heat, some lame cheering. Edge took the mike and said that Lita wasn't here because she was waiting in their hotel room - and at first he was going to stick it to her husband, and then he was going to stick it in her. Que Kane's music - and another surprisingly lame reception: people cheered, but not that much. Match that followed was short and not that exciting, people were not that into it after that brilliant match before. There were some "You screwed Matt" chants, but nothing compared to some of the recent crowd reaction on TV. Edge won after hitting Kane with his briefcase - another disappointment, like Kane was going to drop with something like that.
• After the intermission (and the t-shirt gun guy) the announcer announced Muhammad Hassan w/ Daivari. This was another strange reception - half of the crowd was actually cheering for him. First I wasn't sure if it was the fact that he always dissed Americans that made him cool in Canadian eyes - but I think it was more to do with lot of Arabs in the audience (there were even pro-Hassan signs). In any case he made his status very clear by giving the ultimate insult to Canadians: claiming that they just wanted to be Americans. After enough insults Daivari took the mike, with another suprising reaction: after first words (in Farsi) there was a big section in the crowd that started cheering loudly - I can only assume they understood what he said. Daivari didn't get very far though, since Chris Jericho's music hit to a fantastic pop. Jericho got to the ring and said that he knew that Hassan and Daivari were just a bunch of ass clowns who liked to cheat, so he was going to bring his friend to the ringside to back himself up. So he announced Rowdy Roddy Piper who got the biggest pop of the evening. Piper announced that together with Y2J they were going to represent Canadians, and they were going to kick Hassan's and Daivari's asses. Hassan got some respect out of me in this match - again, lots more moves than on TV. Some comedy spots, of course with Piper and Daivari, and Jericho won with a Walls of Jericho. During the whole match there were huge Y2J chants going around the arena.
• Main event was a handicap match Batista vs. Triple H & Ric Flair. Huge pops of all wrestlers, especially Batista, who also got the biggest number of signs. Trips and Flair were mostly playing fair with only one man in the ring at any time, and lets just say that this match was as good as Batista gets. I mean, with workers like Triple H and Ric Flair who have similar styles to his and can carry him pretty well, it doesn't get better than this. Not saying that the match was great, as it wasn't, but it was a solid enternaining match that lasted probably about 15 minutes. Good finisher with Batista keeping the belt - I don't know if it was a work or not, but he looked absolutely rotten afterwards, dead tired and panting. Like a real champ though he did his poses on the ring posts.

Biggest pops:

1. Roddy Piper
2. Christian
3. Chris Jericho
4. Batista
5. Triple H

Biggest heat:

1. Shelton Benjamin
2. Tyson Tomko
3. The Coach
4. Simon Dean
5. Gene Snitsky

All in all, a very good evening - does even rank quite high in the list of house shows I've seen, especially due to the fantastic athmosphere in the Christian vs. Shelton Benjamin match. The announcer said that they would be returning to Vancouver "in the near future" - I hope that's true because that would save us some money and inconvenience. I took some photos in the event too, but due to the poor lighting most of them didn't come out. I might put up the ones that did later.

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