Wildwood, New Jersey- July 17th, 2005
by Tim B, rajah.com reader
They opened up the doors about 7:45. Around 8:00, they played an instrumental version of the National Anthem. The announcer then welcomed us and said that Jim someone had left his lights on on his car and the Wildwood Police would like him to turn them off or something.
The show was just about the same thing as it was in Lexington, KY, with a few minor changes, so I won't bother to go into too much detail, as the matches in detail were already posted.
Match 1: Viscera over Tomko. Big Vis got a pretty good pop, especially when he pulled up Tomko's attire, making a thong, and started humping him.
Match 2: Kerwin White over Tajiri. Tajiri got a good pop, as well. I thought this part of the show was hilarious. White hung his sweater in the corner of the ring on a hanger, which got a pretty good laugh.
Match 3: Christy over Victoria. Maria came out to announce. In the beginning, Victoria tried to apologize to Christy for their past. After the match, Victoria attacked Christy, but Maria helped Christy out.
Match 4: Hurricane & Rosey over Heart Throbs. The match was a very regular style tag team match. It took the Heart Throbs a long time to get to the ring.
The Coach then made his way to the ring after several boos. He talked for several minutes, mentioning Bischoff wasn't there because of the FU last week. He said that he was in charge this evening and would change the lineup tonight. Rene Dupree came out, supposedly as a favor of Coach. The Coach mentioned something about teaming up with Dupree since Dupree was looking for a tag team partner. Dupree said something bad about the Jersey shore, blah, blah. Seconds later, Hurricane and Rosey came back out and attacked the two.
Match 5: Big Show w/ Snitsky wrestled Edge w/ Lita. I'm not quite sure what happened here. Lita came into the ring as if she was going to hit BS with the breifcase, but was chased around the ring by Snitsky. I think that the Big Show won by disqualification, but can't remember if they announced it at all. Edge hit BS with a steel chair at ringside at pushed him into the steel ring steps.
Intermission
Match 6: Carlito over Shelton Benjamin. This match was the worst match of the night. The people who didn't use intermission time to go to the bathroom and get drinks used this match time to. Carlito won using the ropes as leverage. Shelton must had not been ready to come out to the ring when it was his time. It took him about a good minute or two to even come out from the back, as it did the announcer, too.
Match 7: "H.B.K" Shawn Michaels over Ric Flair. This match was really good. I was on the edge of my seat for most of it. HBK pulled down Flair's tights for nearly half a minute, all except for the front of the, barely, but thank God. Anyway, Sweet Chin Music to Flair to give HBK the win. After the match was over, Flair went over to the paramedics, who looked at him for a minute. He walked to them with someone holding his face or mouth up, I couldn't really tell. Apparently, I'm guessing he was OK, but it looked, from where I was, as if something went wrong. I don't know if it was staged or if he was seriously injured.
Main Event: John Cena over HHH. Huge pop for Cena. HHH went for the Pedigree, but Cena got the FU instead.
Cena gets on the mic thanking everyone for coming to see him, blah, blah.
Additional Notes from the Raw Live show:
At one point during the night, I think after intermission, the announcer came out and helped the T-Shirt guy hand out shirts. He announced that someone had a Raw sticker in their program for the show and they won a free T-Shirt signed by Cena.
Biggest Pops: Cena, HBK, Heart Throbs, Viscera, the Divas' match, any time Wildwood or the Jersey shore was mentioned
Biggest Heat: Tomko, Coach, Rene Dupree
There were about 5,000 or so people in the place. None of the wrestlers had their pyro. I don't know if they do or not at House Shows. They did in Philly a few years ago, though. I'm guessing it was because it was not inside an arena and the roof of the Convention Center was pretty low.
They were having major sound problems. A few times, a sound tech climbed up one of the four metal block things around the ring and messed with a few wires.
All in all, the show was extremely excellent. There are areas that they could have improved in, not majorly, but not bad for $18.
