Rolling RAW 17/01/05 thread [spoilers]

Batista will be scary over in Toronto.

What an AWESOME segment, one of the best RAW opening interviews in ages. Hassan indeed came out to a mixed reaction, turned himself with an anti-Canada promo, scrapped with Jericho, Benoit made the save ... everybody came out of it looking like a million bucks.

Damn, Orton came out to a big pop, but was getting a mixed reaction on the mic. Mentioning HHH brought boos, but when HHH came out he got a pop. JR and King immediately acknowledged the strange crowd reactions -- this is a change from their usual attempts to ignore them.

Shawn got a BRUTAL reaction, that was fucking HARSH. Even Montreal didn't boo him that much at No Way Out 2003.

The crowd reactions are now being essentially acknowledged as a plot device tonight.

Always with the exact same lines from Lawler every time they come through Canada: Lawler sez "why won't these fans forget about Montreal?"

Maybe because every time you come to Canada, you make a point about having the announcers bring it up, and book angles and matches that are based on the events from Montreal (with the Canadian wrestlers).

Well, Batista was certainly over like nuts, but that match didn't make him look good. Batista's whole offense consists of throwing people around, so he spent the whole match selling for Viscera, only to hit him with a bleh spinebuster out of nowhere for the pin. But the crowd was into it, so I guess I can't complain.

This will probably be a great match with a non-finish thanks to a Hassan run-in.

Jesus, Benoit got a non-reaction, wtf?

That was a good, but not great match with a weak-ass finish. I can't believe they're making Snitsky-Kane the main event. I'm predicting that the crowd will shit on this match.

I mean seriously, you're the booker. You've promoted Benoit-Jericho and Snitsky-Kane for the following week. On one hand, you've got a lame feud between two slugs who have already had two crappy matches. On the other hand, you've got two guys who are gold in the ring every time they meet, fighting in their own country where they're viewed as national heroes. Which is the main event? Guess again.

The WWE has a hard-on for jobbing people in their hometowns -- Xtian tonight, and Benoit vs Jericho is now looking like an excuse to put two Canadians in the same match so that only one guy would have to job (and they didn't have the good sense to make it the main event). At least it wasn't as bad as jobbing Regal when RAW was in England, or jobbing Booker T every time they've been in Houston for the last three years.

As if on cue, they get Kane to embarrass Trish in her hometown (which TSN in Canada didn't even show, since they always censor man vs woman violence on RAW).

Now I'm *really* hoping the crowd shits a brick on this match, but it's 11:00 already, so I doubt it'll be long enough to reach that level of awfulness.

The crowd is now doing the wave out of boredom. Good for them.

I HAVE NEVER BEEN SO HAPPY TO HEAR A "GO LEAFS GO" CHANT.

What kind of ending was that? I guess this means that the Snitsky-Kane feud continues. Yippee.

I missed the Hassan segment. I was thinking they could do some interesting things with him, being in Canada and everything. I tuned into the last hour and was hoping they'd turn Benoit/Jericho into a tag match with Hassan going over big to repair the damage they did to his character at the PPV (which Im sure nobody watched anyway, so no biggie there). Instead the Jericho/Benoit match was snoozetastic with a big chunk of the 'action' edited out due to commercials.

Yeah, I don't know why they had Hassan do a segment with Benoit and Jericho, replayed that segment right before their match, but didn't have him appear on the show again.