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WWE Raw HOLT report
June 9, 2008
Oakland, Calif.
Report by Jon Mezzera, PWTorch.com Contributor

First of all, despite what the local CW affiliate has been advertising for weeks (before tickets even went on sale), this was not a double taping. They have been advertising that it would be Raw live, plus the taping for next week, but there was not a second taping, and I feel a bit ripped off.

I don't know if an attendance was announced on TV. It is hard to estimate. Oracle holds 20,000-plus for the Warriors, but with so many seats blocked off for production, plus the entire upper deck on the camera side blocked off as well, it is really hard to say. The rest of the arena was packed though. It was a pretty hot crowd, with lots of kids wearing John Cena shirts.

DARK MATCH:

(1) Brian Danielson beat Lance Cade. Predictably, Danielson was introduced as being from Oakland. There were multiple ''Let's Go Oakland'' chants during the match. Danielson got in an amazing amount of offense, including a nice dive through the ropes onto Cade on the outside, and a top rope dropkick. I was very surprised when he actually got the win over Cade with a really sick looking submission hold. It is hard to describe. With Cade face down on the mat, Danielson did a double underhook from behind, then flipped over into a bridge position, wrenching Cade's arms. That probably doesn't do the move justice. [Editor's Note: "Cattle Mutiliation"]

RAW NOTES:

During the show, there were a number of video packages. I was surprised that with all of the videos they showed during commercial breaks that they did not plug The Rock's DVD which comes out tomorrow.

I don't know how they came off on TV, but the Million Dollar Mania calls were deadly to watch live. We kept joking that it looked like Vince McMahon didn't know how to dial a phone. We were very bored with the scenes. The silliest was the first, as Mr. Kennedy lay in the ring the entire time McMahon was calling the first winner, selling the neckbreaker from Paul Burchill. He then lay there through much of the commercial break as well. I guess that was a very devastating neckbreaker. We saw Ron Simmons walk out when Charlie Haas was being kissed by Mae Young, but could not hear him say "Damn!." In fact, in my section at least it was very hard to make out much of what McMahon said, but we didn't have any trouble with the other mic work, like the Highlight Reel.

Speaking of that, the Highlight Reel was the Highlight of the show as far as I'm concerned. Shawn Michaels going through the Jeritron 6000 came off very well live as it looked like the glass flew everywhere. We obviously could not hear what Jericho was saying to Michaels, but we could when they replayed it afterwards, which was cool.

Umaga got a pretty good babyface reaction, especially when he did that great swinging slam on Cody Rhodes.

As for Cena, it was a very strong pro-Cena crowd. There weren't nearly as many boos or "Cena Sucks" chants as we have heard on TV from other cities. There were some, but not many. There were also some very vocal anti-Cena fans in my section who tried in vain twice to start a "Cena Sucks" chant during his match with JBL. That match came across as very slow and plodding live. It was the only long match, and we were ultimately very disappointed with how short the matches were, and the match quality in general.

I was particularly disappointed in the main event, as Jeff Hardy pretty much sold the entire match. Both were very over with the crowd. I'd say Triple H got a slight nod as far as cheers go.

POST-RAW DARK MATCH:

Hardy & Cena & Triple H vs. Umaga & Snitsky & JBL. Lillian Garcia had announced this match during the last commercial break (before McMahon did the final money giveaway). But, the wrestlers came out as if it were unplanned which was very stupid. Triple H came out first and challenged Cena. JBL came out instead and cut a great promo (better than any promo that was on the show itself) and they started fighting. Umaga and Snitsky came out to help JBL for some reason (seriously, we had to sit through two Snitsky tag matches in one night!). Then Cena and Hardy came out to make the save, setting up the tag match. The match itself was longer than I expected it to be, but got boring as the heels triple teamed Hardy for most of the match. He had to sell for the entire Main Event to Triple H, then for the entire dark match too. He eventually hit a Whisper in the Wind on JBL and got the hot tag to Cena who cleared house. Things broke down and Triple H and Hardy entered. They cleared the heels except Snitsky. Triple H hit the Pedigree, Hardy hit a Swanton, then Cena applied the STFU for a tap out. After Hardy and Cena left the ring after a lot of posing, Triple H's music played and he left to end the show. Lillian Garcia thanked us all for coming.

I still don't know why they advertised a double taping if that wasn't actually the plan. If it was, why did they change it? It was fun to be there live, but a pretty lame and boring episode of Raw from where we sat.

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