WWE Raw House Show - Live Report From Cape Girardeau - May 19, 2007

2nd live event in 3 weeks for me as I attended the WWE Raw house show in Cape Girardeau. Here are the happenings of the show.

Preshow notes. Good size crowd. The ringbell is LOUD!! They had a mic set up near the ring to get the sounds better but it must have been right by the ringbell cause it hurt our ears every time it rang. One last note is that Arn Anderson was sitting up by the sound booth for a lot of the show observing the matches. Looking up again later, we saw that Ricky Steamboat was up there as well talking to Arn. Never seen Steamboat so I was happy for that and it's always great to see Arn.

The show opened with an announcement by the ring announcer that Shawn Michaels was not there. He had been advertised so they told fans that they had till the second match to go and get a refund if they wanted it. The reason was announced as an injury to Shawn. He also did not appear at the house show in Louisville on Friday night. As far as the building, the only places that really had empty seats was in the very upper levels. We open with the national anthem. Opening match was Cryme Tyme taking on Shelton Benjamin and Charlie Haas. Cryme Tyme were the first ones out and got a big pop. I really underestimated their popularity after hearing the pops in Nashville and also Cape Girardeau. I'll be the first to admit that I underestimated their popularity. Haas and Benjamin walked out and Benjamin is a big guy. There was a fan in the crowd that had a "World's Greatest Tag Team Sucks" sign and Cryme Tyme got the sign in the ring. They held it up for their opponents to see and the fans to see. Pretty funny. This was a really fun opener. I always like Benjamin/Haas matches so it had that going for me. Cryme Tyme was fun in this match too and they've impressed me. The match ended with JTG getting a roll up pin while holding the tights on Haas. As he held the tights, he was giving a "shhhhhh" sign to the fans to get away with hooking the tights. After the match, Haas got the sign from earlier and ripped the "sucks" part off of it. Then, he held up the sign that just had their name on it. Funny stuff. Next match is Eugene vs. Dan Rodman. Eugene came out and looked like he was going to fall as he walked down the aisle. He circled the ring and started to head back down the aisle but got confused. The ref yelled at him that he was to get in the ring which Eugene did. Rodman came out. No clue who this guy is but he was a pretty good size guy. Not thick but tall. I found it ironic wondering if Rodman was going to be pushed here soon as the last show in Cape, we saw the debut of Eugene who got pushed. Now, here is a new guy facing Eugene. Pretty decent match. Lots of comedy stuff. Eugene got thrown into the turnbuckle and hulked up. He did the finger point and got a big "you" from the crowd as he pointed. Rodman ends up winning with a sort of full nelson slam. I keep trying to think who I've seen do that move before to describe it but I'm still blank on who it was. Next up is Chuck Palumbo taking on Viscera. Viscera is a large human being. Palumbo came out on his bike again. We got a ton of fumes from the exhaust of that motorcycle. Whew. Crowd was into Palumbo. Palumbo got the win with a bit boot to the face. Decent match. Viscera did his Rick Rude hips thing a couple of times which was funny. Next match. Earlier in the night, WWE picked out a fan from the audience to serve as a manager for the night. They picked out a kid named Clark. Clark got to return later on as a manager for new Intercontinental Champion, Santino Marella. Very cool moment for the kid. Marella wrestled Kenny Dykstra. Before the match, Kenny read this note on the mic that he supposedly found in Marella's bag which was just antagonizing Marella. Solid match. Marella ended up winning when he got superplexed but upon the landing rolled it into a pin. Lots of armdrags by Santino. It makes me wonder if a certain Dragon has been teaching him those. Next was a match that the crowd was hot for. Tag team championship on the line as the Hardys take on Cade and Murdoch. Cade is big!! The fans were in high anticipation of the Hardys arrival and the place went nuts. Jeff and Matt walked out and got a huge pop. Cameras were flashing all over the place. First time that I've seen the Hardys team together since, 5 years to the day, at the Judgment Day PPV. The crowd was going nuts as the Hardys kept teasing on where they were going to throw their shirts. Then, after that was done, Murdoch took his shirt and started doing this funny stripper type pose as he took his off. He then started asking fans who wanted the shirt to which he got boos. It was really funny. Really good tag team match. Good back and forth. Cade and Murdoch threatened to leave at one point cause they were not having a good start to the match. They of course ran back in when they almost got counted out. I'm more and more impressed with Cade and Murdoch the more that I see of them. They've got a lot of cool team moves with the Hart Foundation like move that they do which results in a boot instead of the clothesline. We got all the usual Hardys offense. Hardys end up winning after a twist of fate by Matt leading to the swanton by Jeff getting the pin. Hardys celebrated with the fans for a while and had fun in the ring. Did I mention that cameras were flashing insanely through this whole match and post match? Intermission time.

Back from the intermission. Duggan's music hits and Maria and Hacksaw Jim Duggan are introduced. They come out to the ring and throw free shirts into the crowd. They say "last one" and throw it out. Duggan then gets the mic saying "well, there is one more" talking about the Cena shirt that Maria had on. She took her shirt off and then threw it into the crowd as well. Maria's music played as they exited the ring. Just a fun deal and some freebies for the fans. I was happy to see Maria as she didn't make an arena appearance in Nashville. We only saw her on the screen. Next up is Ric Flair vs. Carlito. Yep, we got a PPV match as this is on the Judgment Day card. Pretty cool. Before the match, WWE picked a guest ring announcer out of the crowd. A guy came in and did the ring announcing. He was actually messing with Carlito as Carlito had made his way into the ring. Funny. Flair and Carlito had a good match. Carlito dominated a lot of the match. Flair though was laying in some heavy chops!! Ouch. Match ends with Flair winning with the figure four. Flair then wouldn't let go of the hold afterwards. More refs came out and got Flair to break the hold. Carlito then fell down on the floor and laid there. He then scooted backwards all the way down the aisle looking scared of Flair. I've got to say that it was awesome seeing Flair and Anderson in the same space together as of course Arn was observing from the production booth. Ok, next up is the women's match. Rematch from Nashville. Mickie James and Candice Michelle vs. Victoria and Melina. Candice and Mickie walked out separately first. Then, Victoria made her way out and was doing a heel bit where she was walking right in the middle keeping away from the fans. Women's champion, Melina, walked out holding the belt in the air. Very solid match. There was a spot at the beginning that I really popped for when Victoria was doing kind of an imitation of Melina's entrance and then Mickie and Candice double dropkicked them off the apron. It looked awesome and the crowd loved it. Mickie stayed in the ring most of the match as she took quite a bit of abuse from Melina and Victoria. Cool spot where they put Mickie in a tree of woe position. Then, Melina ran back to the middle of the ring and did her loud scream. She ran and just landed on Mickie's stomach with kind of a bronco buster type jump. Mickie finally tagged out and Candice got in the ring. Candice hit the spinning hurricanrana. Candice ended up getting the pin on Victoria if I remember right. Mickie and Candice celebrated with the fans. Mickie actually turned as she was walking by us and went back and hugged some kids. Victoria and Melina made their way back to the locker room. This guy two people down from us yells "you suck Victoria, you suck". She then turns to him and yells back "you suck". It was very funny!! Next it was main event time and the anticipation in the building was HUGE. People were literally running to the aisle to try and get a closer view of John Cena. Randy Orton was the first one out. Then, the music stopped and the anticipation built for Cena. His music hit and the place went nuts. This woman standing near me was literally jumping up and down in excitement. Very funny. He walked out and immediately looked over at the girls sitting in the aisle and did a funny thing looking like he was hitting on them. Cena got in the ring and cameras were flashing all over the place. Cena and Orton had a very good match and the crowd was very into it. I didn't notice the boos for Cena until about halfway through. The anti-Cena group started making some noise. They were pretty well drowned out from what I could hear though. LOTS of kids in attendance making a ton of noise. Orton did one of the prettiest drop downs I've ever seen when an opponent was bouncing off the rope. Cena bounced off the ropes and Orton just did this awesome drop down letting Cena jump over him. It was pretty. Cena went to the top rope during the match hitting a legdrop. Cena hooked the submission at one point but Orton got to the ropes breaking the hold. A minute later, Orton hit a nasty RKO that popped the building in just a reaction of oooohhhh. Orton couldn't recover quick enough to get the pin as Cena kicked out. Cena then recovered and hit his finisher for the win. Really good match. Funny moment as Orton made his way from the ring. He was stumbling around and then stumbled on to one of the girls getting his sweat all over her. We knew which one was his fiancee right then. LOL. It was a funny moment. The girls were all laughing about it. Cena then spoke in the ring to the crowd. He said that he doesn't do this often but he wanted to say what a tough opponent that Randy Orton was. He said Orton had been through a lot and is trying to turn things around for himself. Same stuff that Orton said on TV lately. Looks like they're really pushing that. He said that Orton should make Missouri very proud of him (he's from St. Louis of course). He really put over Orton big saying he had a lot of respect for him. He then turned saying that the person he had no respect for was the Great Khali. He made a point to say that Khali wasn't there cause Khali must think that the great people of Cape Girardeau aren't good enough for him to appear. He talked about how sneaky that the guy tried to be and joked that how can a guy that size try to sneak around with a hood on his head thinking no one will notice. He talked about the Khali match and got very intense pointing out that he will win. Really good speech and the lighting hitting Cena in the ring made him look awesome. It kind of looked like he was glowing. Cena then made his way around the ring celebrating with the fans. He made his way back down the aisle by us and held the belt up. He posed for a picture with a kid and did a lot of high fives.