By Greg Parks, Torch specialist

WWE Raw HOLT Report 12/17
Report by Greg Parks, Torch specialist

The HSBC Arena was about 80 percent full, I'd guess, and it seemed like there were more empty seats than in July for Raw.

Dark Match:

(a) Drew McIntyre beat Atlas DaBone. McIntyre played the face, despite being a heel on Smackdown. Crowd didn't even give this one a chance, with "boring" chants within the first minute. Still, not a good match.

Heat Tapings:

(1) The Highlanders beat Jim Duggan & Super Crazy. Crowd, predictably, was only into Duggan. Still, Crazy hit some highspots to save the match (kind of).

(2) Snitsky beat Mike Tula. I'm guessing on the spelling of the jobber. Short and sweet, like most Snitsky squashes, though Tula sold like a pro.

(3) D.H. Smith beat Charlie Haas. Crowd wasn't into this one much, either.

Dark match post-Raw:

(b) Chris Jericho beat Randy Orton by DQ. It went about 5:00, with JBL interfering to cost Orton the match. Jericho, of course, got the upper hand and put JBL in the Walls of Jericho. The match started right after the main event, as Orton was still recovering in the ring when Y2J came down for the match.

Other notes:

Crowd was okay for the most part, though I thought they were suspiciously quiet during the main event. They LOVED Hardy, and would've popped huge each time if he came out ten times during the night. They hated Vince, as all crowds do, and seemed to be into the first few segments with him and Triple H. Not much happened during commercials... we saw videos on the Titantron for things like the WCCW DVD and Tribute to the Troops. Todd Grisham did the hold-up-your-sign thing during a break, and Triple H talked during the first break before his match with Regal and Coach. He pretty much made fun of them, implying there was no chance they'd win. Overall, a fun night.

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