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PWTorch.com reader Terrie Neilson, Las Vegas, Nev. has sent the following in-person notes from No Way Out last night...

I came to No Way Out well before the start. Outside the Fan Axxess Tour was in full swing. There was the Raw vs. Smackdown 2008 video game challenge kids were having fun with. Vince's Secret Stash (cases containing footage and items from the vault) were on display. Tommy Dreamer and Justin Roberts were signing autographs outside, and Hillybilly Jim (how different he looks now) was also there. There were booths to have to have your pictures taken as a champion, trivia contests for prizes, and one for those who wanted to act out their favorites' ring entrances. Lots to do and see before the doors open. No discernible majority represented by merchandise though the faces dominated. One girl had Ashley's look, and one guy only needed the hair to complete his Jeff Hardy look. To understand where I was in relation to everything, I was third row ringside, less than 10 feet from Coach, and catching the rear views of Finlay and JBL during the Elimination Chamber matches.

A dark match of Kane vs. Shelton Benjamin took place. Two on TV played out well, and this one was just as good. The match went about 6-7 minutes with the finish being Kane escaping Shelton's finisher and pinning Shelton clean after a chokeslam. Very athletic match with no real lulls in it. There was a WWE 24/7 plug, Lillian singing the National anthem, the announcers' introductions and a two minute warning of sorts revving the crowd to have their signs ready. A funny thing happened in the seven months since last they were here: then the crowd was very pro-Cena; tonight it was like 2005 and the crowd was split down the middle.

CM Punk vs. Chavo Guerrero opened with a very good match. Personally it came across much better here than their previous matches. Technically it was very sound, and the finish was pretty clean. An odd thing to hear Punk getting booed loudly from my area during his version of the Three Amigos. And people worry about the Crossface being used? Chavo was able to do it on his own, which he needed for his character. Rey is interviewed, and Floyd Mayweather is involved. This is going to sound odd, but while Mayweather is synonymous to sports and Las Vegas, he wasn't very popular in the building. It was treated as a face interview nonetheless.

The Smackdown Elimination Chamber was better than I think most people expected, and my expectations were pretty low. Once Khali and Big Daddy V were eliminated, "business picked up" as JR would say and the match improved immensely. The crowd went nuts for Batista's spinebusters on the big guys, Finlay's Celtic Cross on Undertaker and Undertaker's super chokeslam on MVP (from our corner). The "You Can't Wrestle" chant couldn't be any louder. Any exchanges between Undertaker and Batista were met with the same "boo-yays" that followed them last year until kickouts of the Batista Bomb and Last Ride and the Tombstone finish when the crowd went bonkers.

Being that we were on the opposite side of the entrance door, we missed much of the shenanigans involving Singh and Hornswoggle (saw Finlay with shillelagh in hand but didn't know Horny had passed it to him). Biggest pops: Undertaker, Batista, Finlay Biggest heat: MVP (legit heel heat), Khali, and Big Daddy V

With the crowd as hot as it was, all the promos and segments not related to matches were hard to hear, so couldn't tell you much about them. Good thing they were all brief.

I gotta give Rey Mysterio a lot of props for going on with the match with his injury. You could see the injury was legit, and I expected him to have trouble with the 619 if he even attempted it. Edge didn't really go after the arm (another key that the injury was serious enough) and bumps happened in such a way that the arm was as protected as it could be considering. The win by Edge was expected, and the spear finish was excellent.

Most people have probably forgotten or are not familiar that Rey and Big Show (who looked very well considering how haggard he looked when he left) have feuded in the past, which actually helped here, as Rey is in a position of sympathy when Big Show attacked him. Floyd put the dukes to Big Show, and someone in my area saw that Big Show bled from the nose. Shane McMahon showed up out of nowhere, another nice surprise, though I think it was more as assistance than the angle at this moment. We'll see, but the execution of Big SHow's return was done very well. As mentioned earlier, what a difference seven months makes. Last July at the house show at the Thomas And Mack, the crowd was 95+% in favor of Cena. All has not been right since his return. The crowd was just as hot for the Cena-Orton match tonight as then, but the reason has changed quite a bit. Randy Orton has definitely come into his own. Before when the crowd was cheering him on despite him being a vicious heel, his response was to verbally try to turn it around and get the crowd to boo him. Tonight he went with the flow and accepted it the cheers and channeled it back into the match; good for him! He even brought out his hands-up peacock pose he hasn't used in months, which I consider a sign that he's much more confident and emotive in his heel persona as opposed to being a heel but not feeling the role.

The Raw Elimination Chamber was as good as expected. That chamber does look as intimidating in person as it does on TV, even with seeing two matches in it. Our crowd didn't seemed fazed by there being two chamber matches. Going into the match, I am a Shawn Michaels mark, but knowing it wasn't going to be his night wasn't disappointing as before he left, he showed why he is Hall Of Fame bound. He took some of the sickest bumps during the match, including one-half of a Whisper In The Wind with Triple H, two butt drops while face down on the steel, and getting the worst of the business end of a double Samoan drop by Umaga. Some of Shawn's blood had to have come hardway as much as there was spilled (which in turn sells very well the dangers of this match), and several in my area were actually concerned for his safety. Not to be too outdone, Chris Jericho was sandwiched in that Samoan drop and took a huge butt splash hit into the chamber glass. There were some very cool spots: Shawn getting Flair flipped over a hanging Triple H followed by the head butt to Triple H, Jericho's Walls on one end and Shawn's crossface on the other (which met with cheers and not heat), and the finsher sequence on Umaga. Jeff had barely little room crouched in position for a Swanton, but the move was still impressive. Everybody was expecting a Triple H win in my area, so it was a little anticlimactic. I was expecting Triple H to turn heel tonight when I came in the building, but when Randy left as champion, it made sense that H didn't as a heel-heel championship match just doesn't sell well. The closest he came to even going in that direction was him pedigreeing and pinning Shawn, but that'll likely be explained as the every-man-for-himself aspect of the match. He turns heel with a title win, or a turn makes no sense period.

In the end, I gave the show a 10. I never rolled my eyes once throughout the entire program, the crowd was hot for everything, nothing was noticeably botched, and no one in my area had any complaints about anything, either. As for me, my voice is shot, and the rest of me is thoroughly exhausted. But I had fun, and show was worth the price of admission (and I went big on the admission price, for the record, and prize my seat that I got to keep).

Note from Wade Keller: For the very latest fallout on No Way Out including insider news on the Big Show-Rey-Mayweather storyline, our new co-affiliate website, Jason Powell's prowrestling.NET, has all the latest. I recommend you check it out today; it's living up to its motto as "Your New 1st Stop for Wrestling News on the Net": CLICK HERE

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