Raw, Hall Of Fame, Tough Enough Premiere, & More - April 5, 2011

Welcome to the "Rock, Austin, Triple H, and Trish on Raw in 2011" edition of The Wrestling List.

WWE's week in Atlanta continued last night with Raw being held in Phillips Arena. I bet that 95% of that crowd was at WrestleMania the night before. We got the big announcement of the main event of WrestleMania XXVIIII. Rock and Cena closed Raw out with the big challenge being laid out. It will be Rock vs. Cena at WrestleMania XXVIII in Miami. WWE has never announced the main event this far out. Now, I'm sure that WWE has done this in the past as far as booking cause back in the day they used to go ahead to WrestleMania's planned main event for the next year and book backwards on how to get there. That is a gamble to book that far in advance and that automatically takes Cena out of the title picture for WrestleMania. Well, I guess they could always throw that in but I don't see the point. A title doesn't need to be added cause people are already going to care about it. I liked Triple H's promo where he said that he hit Undertaker with everything that he had and hit him harder than he had ever hit anybody but he still kept going. He closed it by saying that he knew Undertaker would be back and that he would be waiting for him when he did. I was thrilled to see JR open the show on commentary but it was not to be as we soon got the return of Michael Cole. We finally got the U.S. title match with Sheamus and Daniel Bryan. The big moment out of it was the debut of Sin Cara. He has been getting rave reviews on the house shows and he had a big debut here. His jump to the floor looked incredible. I look forward to seeing him work a full match. Trish Stratus on Raw. Great thing. Always happy about that. Austin was on the show and introduced the Tough Enough cast. Austin then was confronted by The Miz. Miz attacks Austin and then leaves him for Alex Riley to have. Austin takes out Riley and then heads over to the Cole Mine to have some fun with Cole. Wow, three segments for Orton and Mysterio against Punk and Rhodes. That surprised me. Solid match.

Other notes from Raw. How hilarious was the "stun them all" chant from the fans in the front row to Austin for the Tough Enough contestants? Austin got a laugh out of it too. Soon after, the rest of the crowd joined in on it. Funny how Triple H and Undertaker happens and then suddenly Triple H mentions, oh by the way, we have wrestled before at WrestleMania. Funny how that works. I wonder if Cena is going to hear those "fruity pebbles" chants every week now. I'll be curious to see what the reaction is to Cena over the next several weeks. It will depend on what part of the country they are in obviously but has this Rock deal brought the boos back out more nationally now? How wild is it that it is 2011 and we have a Raw that has Rock, Austin, Triple H, and Trish Stratus all on it? I like 2011 if that is the case. Speaking of that, the face off with Austin and Triple H was fun. I like these little segments over the last couple of shows just having these old rivals have a face off to give us fans a retro moment.

Moving on to the Hall Of Fame from this past Saturday night. I did watch the special last night on USA. I don't watch it really closely cause I know it is going to be heavily edited due to time and all. I usually really wait to pay close attention to when the full special is released on the WrestleMania DVD. That being said there was a LOT of editing on that thing last night. I'm talking about just the speeches that they did show as I was following the live online coverage of it during the night. Dusty's speech was chopped amazingly. He had a lot of stories to tell and they basically cut him down to saying, I introduce the Road Warriors. Drew Carey had a lot of editing done to it and that was from a technical point of view. He was booed throughout his speech. They did some big time audio editing to that to where it almost sounded like that I heard a laugh track at one point to cover the boos. You could very faintly hear the boos in the background during the speech and his entrance had the music cranked up really loud. Fans just aren't going to like that induction. The Shawn speech was edited down but contained a lot of it. Triple H's speech was edited down too. Good that they did show the Kliq reunion at the end of the Hall Of Fame with Kevin Nash and Sean Waltman making their way to the stage. Shawn's speech was good and he was extremely nervous based on him getting his Hall Of Fame ring backstage before the show. He said he was less nervous performing in front of 70,000 people but this was making him nervous. Triple H had fun with his speech picking at Shawn. I loved Shawn's comment saying that he came to the Hall Of Fame and a roast broke out. Triple H got very emotional though when it was time to stop the joking and introduce his friend. Shawn spoke more about his early career in his speech and his family. Fun moment. I was disappointed that Sunny's induction was just glazed over so I look forward to that on the DVD. The Hall Of Fame special was fun but it was edited big time. If you want the full version, pick up the DVD or wait for it to air on Classics.

There were no injuries coming out of WrestleMania which is great to hear.

Shawn Michaels reaction to watching the Triple H/Undertaker match was caught on camera and you can watch it at this link.

The other must see video is this one which shows Vince McMahon presenting Shawn with his Hall of Fame ring. Really touching moment including Shawn telling Vince, thanks for putting up with me.


WWE has set something in motion that they are no longer a wrestling company. They are an "entertainment" company. Wrestling is to not be used in talking about the company anymore. They are also being referred to now straightly as WWE and not World Wrestling Entertainment because they don't want wrestling in there.

Last night was the premiere of WWE Tough Enough. I'm going to talk spoilers here so if you haven't seen it and don't want to know things about it, read this later. I enjoyed the show. I liked the original show so I was interested to see what the return would be like. Stone Cold Steve Austin serves as the host with the trainers, Trish Stratus, Booker T, and Bill DeMott. It is very much like the original show. The cast is put through the training and learn the basics. Simple things like running the ropes, doing a roll, and taking bumps. That was the first episode. We had some moments in this first episode including Miss USA using a pad to protect herself on bouncing off the ropes. Ariane was voted off as she didn't have the fire that Austin was looking for. She really knew nothing about the business including her telling Austin that her favorite match ever was Melina vs. Alicia Fox. Austin's face was stunned when he heard that. She didn't help her cause with running the ropes and holding on to her pants the whole time from falling down. Trish's biggest pet peeve is that the women have got to do everything possible to make sure they are clothes ready when they enter the ring. The show went by fast watching it. I wasn't crazy about some of the language used in it and the fact that it wasn't bleeped. Those that know me will know what that was. Never like that. Overall, the show is definitely worth watching. Give it a shot and see what you think of it.

That is it for this week. Big week for all of us wrestling fans. Love WrestleMania week! Take care and God bless!!