WWE Raw TV report
April 14, 2014
Birmingham, Ala.
Report by Brian Pavlick, PWTorch reader

- Overall: The crowd seemed dead throughout the night during the actual matches except for a few moments during the Ziggler vs. Barrett match. It felt like 16,000 people gathered in their favorite Buffalo Wild Wings to watch Raw on TV.

Birmingham is family and kid-friendly, so cheers for the faces, boos for the heels, and lots of Cena shirts waiting to get in the doors. People were really excited when they found out they were getting free Ultimate Warrior masks. I snagged three!

Chronological Raw TV Notes

- Michael Cole was booed. Jerry Lawler and John Layfield got modest cheers.

- The crowd cheered when the entire roster made their way out for the Warrior tribute. The Birmingham crowd was very classy after every Warrior moment by giving a nice round of applause to show appreciation. I thought it was poor that WWE only gave Warrior three real moments plus his Hall of Fame/WrestleMania weekend speeches. A few people were asking where the WrestleMania 7 match against Randy Savage was. Of course, there was that random guy during the final toll of the bell that shouted out "I hate Cena." He got a few boos.

- Xavier Woods does not excite anyone. When the music first hit, everybody thought it was Brodus Clay and then when they realized what name was on the screen, they sat right back down.

- Outside of John Cena, the Wyatts were definitely the most popular stars of the night. The clapping along with the theme song is definitely something you should experience live in person. Also, I Fandango'd! Cross it off the bucket list.

- I was interested to see how the crowd would react to Paige. She initially got a great reaction then everybody got quiet as if to see if she was for real. For the life of me, I can't remember a Diva throwing a headbutt, but that's when I paid attention. Her submission on Alicia Fox brought a lot of oohs and aahs to the audience who eventually showed her much respect with a nice ovation after her match.

- Ziggler versus Barrett was definitely the match of the night. The only time the crowd was into a match. This also included the first "C.M. Punk" chant starting up with 20 minutes left in the show.

- When the Evolution theme first hit a lot of newer fans didn't know what was going on. When they realized they were seeing three tremendous stars of the mid-2000s in the same ring together, it finally clicked that Evolution had reformed. For the true wrestling fans in the audience the opening notes of Line in the Sand was a celebration.

- The Usos were a popular team with the fans. Lots of shirts and chants... Batista's pyro got one of the biggest pops of the night... The crowd went wild for The Shield every time they appeared on-camera or in-person.

- Cesaro coming down to the ring with no music was a slight disappointment, as everyone was ready to hum his theme song... If you're not buying into Russev, you better. That guy is a beast in-person... Cena's entrance put grown man on their feet...amazing! And, the loudest ovation of the night was when Cena said "Roll Tide!"

- Out of all the random mid-card heels that came out for the main event, Titus O'Neil received the biggest ovation. When Raw went off the air, The Shield was helped to the back. John Cena's music played and they set up the Dark Match.

- Dark Match: John Cena beat Bray Wyatt via DQ. With only about one-third of the remaining audience in the building, Cena versus Wyatt was the loudest all night. The match saw a repeat spot of the Five Knuckle Shuffle stopped by the inverted handstand, which received a nice ovation from the crowd.

The crowd was a solid 80 percent behind Cena the entire match, which ended when Cena locked in the STFU and Harper & Rowan and broke it up for the disqualification. Wyatt grabbed a chair from the outside and wound up hitting Rowan. Cena delivered an AA to Harper and that's how the show ended.

- Disappointing crowd, but the build up to Extreme Rules should be awesome moving forward.

***

Superstars SPOILERS 4/17

(1) IC champion Big E. beat Titus O'Neil. The crowd was really into both, especially Big E. Very stiff match and Big E. made Titus look awesome.

(2) Los Matadores beat 3MB (Drew McIntyre & Jinder Mahal). Comedy match. The kids loved El Torito and most of the crowd was chanting "Ole!"

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