WWE Raw - Live Report From Nashville - September 5, 2005

The highlight of the show was obviously Shawn Michaels. After attending 15 events over 8 years, I have finally seen Shawn Michaels live and we were going nuts. Now, did I like him getting beat down by Chris Masters? Of course not but I can look past that with ease just knowing that I finally saw the man live.

The arena was full for the most part. Some empty seats here and there but the most packed I've seen the building since Judgment Day in 2002. The two previous tapings there have had one side of the arena blocked off and empty but that wasn't the case tonight. The crowd was loud and one of the better crowds in Nashville that I've been in. The fact that it's been 3 years since a Raw TV taping probably helped with the crowd noise. We got some music videos in the arena with one being the WrestleMania 21 recap video that was seen at the end of the WrestleMania 21 PPV. That was fun to watch along with a WWE 24/7 video to "Right Now" by Van Halen covering all the way from WWE, WCW, and ECW. Great video and it's too bad they can't release that. The dark match to start off the show featured the Miz from MTV Real World fame. This was fun to see the Miz and a welcomed surprise. I was impressed with him and he's come a long way in his training. The crowd is really into him too. Then, it was on to Sunday Night Heat. This was definitely not the best Sunday Night Heat taping I've seen live. While I was watching this, I was thinking that I could tell this show was on its way out. We got to see Johnny Swinger from ECW fame but is now going by Johnny Parizi. He took on Matt Striker. I enjoyed the match as I know Striker from ROH and it was fun to see Swinger. The main event was Tajiri vs. Rene Dupree. I love Tajiri and it was an entertaining match.

Now, on to the Raw portion of the show. Lillian Garcia came out and gave us all goose bumps with her rendition of the national anthem. It was fantastic. If you want to see it, they have it as a special video on WWE.com as the soldiers from Fort Campbell were also there. Speaking of extras, they also have the video of Shawn Michaels after Raw went off the air. Back to where I was. Then we got the "15 minutes till" tease with them going live on Spike to promote Raw. 8:00 came and it was time to go on the air. There is nothing like hearing that Raw theme song in the arena especially with how great the sound system is in that place and then the pyro going off. Gives you all kinds of chills. The first match was Eugene and Angle. The crowd was split in this one but a lot of support was given to Angle. WWE has a serious problem with Eugene cause I witnessed last night too with how the crowd is turning on him and getting tired of him. It was a surprise to see Cena that early into the night and attack Angle. It ended badly for him later in the night with Angle giving the nasty angleslam onto Cena on the stage. Cena is a lot of fun to watch live. Speaking of crowd splitting, there are a lot of people that just don't like John Cena. I've noticed it on TV and I saw it live last night. He has a ton of fans but also has those that just don't like him. I like Cena a lot and it was fun to see him last night. He has big time star power feel to him. Ric Flair was great last night. His attack on Carlito and the aftermath was a big highlight. I never get tired of seeing Flair. How funny was Flair throwing the barrel of apples at Carlito??!! We were cracking up. I also never tire of seeing Flair snapping with him dropping elbows on nothing and just going off. Good stuff there. Wow, there are a lot of bad gimmicks that are getting bad reactions from the fans. My first example is Rob Conway. I can't even count how many Buff Bagwell references I heard from fans during his match. Everyone and their mother knows that this is a Bagwell gimmick. I got to watch Snitsky wrestle twice. I'd like to thank WWE for answering my call on that one as I was hoping for a multitude of Snitsky matches on the show. If you don't know I'm exaggerating, I ask again if you even read this Wrestling List every week? ha ha. The new Chavo gimmick, Kerwin White, got a mostly negative reaction. It's so goofy though that it just has people laughing at it with how dumb it is. One thing that I don't think was shown on TV was that after Chavo left, Shelton went up the ramp on his way to find him. He paused and went to the golf cart and picked up a golf club and headed to the back to find him. It was funny. Big Show is just a monster live. He always gets a good reaction. Torrie Wilson and Ashley wasn't a very good match. A lot of people weren't looking forward to that announced match. I was and I'll tell you why. I thought Trish Stratus was coming back. She has been helping Ashley on the house shows and is apparently back to being a face. After Ashley was beaten down last week, I thought for sure she'd bring Trish this week. Instead, she just got beaten down AGAIN. So, a Trish return would have been awesome but it didn't happen. The tag team match with Hurricane/Rosey vs. the debuting Cade and Murdoch got no reaction whatsoever. I wasn't really sure what to think of Cade and Murdoch. I am for another tag team though as we need tag team wrestling. Sitting there last night though, I just thought it felt like 1995 seeing the cowboys, Conway's gimmick, Kerwin White, and the new Bashams' gimmicks.

The last segment of the show was Shawn Michaels and Chris Masters. The anticipation was big in our group waiting to see if HBK would step through the curtain. I kept waiting for an attack backstage all night that would keep him from coming out. It didn't happen and there was Shawn Michaels coming through the curtain and we were going nuts. He can get a crowd going like very few in this business. There were a lot of you screwed Bret chants followed by Bret screwed Bret chants. It was all entertaining really with all the back and forth between Shawn and Bret fans. 8 years later and it was still that heated of a debate.

Wow, I felt bad for all of you having to watch the Masterlock buildup segments at home. They didn't show that in the arena. How funny was it that Masters messed up on his entrance? Also, how funny was it that Masters messed up and lost grip of Shawn and thus the hold was technically broken. The crowd went nuts as we saw a great shot of him losing the hold. I heard it was shown big time on TV too so that looked bad on Masters as he wasn't supposed to lose him. So, technically Shawn won. Shawn took a nasty chair shot from Masters and was bleeding. After the show went off the air, the officials including Dean Malenko, who got a big reaction, helped Shawn to his feet. Shawn got up and walked around while looking around at the fans. He gave us all a thank you for the support and we gave it right back to him. It was a cool moment and then he was helped to the back.

The dark match after the show featured John Cena and the Big Show taking on Kurt Angle and Snitsky. It was supposed to be Edge teaming with Angle but I guess they wanted to keep Edge out of the ring to sell what happened last week. It wasn't a long match but it was fun. I love Big Show's new thing where he tells the crowd to be quiet and then nails someone hard with a chop so we can hear it big time. The crowd was making the noise with him. Cena and Show got the win to send us home happy. Show was about to leave and then Cena made him come back to do the chokeslam pose. Cena and Show both did the pose to all sides of the arena. Cena and Show then went around the ring talking to fans and signing autographs. That wrapped up the show.

Some side notes from the show. We saw 2 guys who had big Carlito wigs on. It was COOL!! They are promoting that move of Raw to USA Network like crazy. The commercial was the first thing that aired at the arena last night and was shown 3-4 times all night. Another interesting thing was how little it seemed people cared about Smackdown as they aired the Friday Night Smackdown many times too and it got little reaction. We also saw a preview of the DOOM movie based off the video game that stars the Rock. I don't know if that aired or not. It said it will be released on October 21st. The t-shirt guy was entertaining again. He and Lillian during commercials off and on will get in the ring and shoot shirts into the crowd. They were hitting the upper deck with it. The last one of the night got stuck up on the lighting stand. I can't believe Eugene did Hacksaw Jim Duggan's 3 point stance!! How about that tough guy? Hoooooo!!!