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WWE RAW HOLT REPORT (Happenings Off Live TV)
DECEMBER 4, 2017
LOS ANGELES, CALIF. AT STAPLES CENTER
REPORT BY MIKAL C., PWTORCH CORRESPONDENT
PRE-RAW “MAIN EVENT” TAPING RESULTS
(1) Akira Tozawa beat Brian Kendrick with the Drop Zone.
(2) Luke Gallows & Karl Anderson beat Heath Slater & Rhyno with the Magic Killer.
OFF-AIR NOTES
-Pretty good turnout. The whole upper deck was tapped off other than one section opposite the TV cameras and there was almost no one there. The lower bowl and luxury suites were pretty full. As the show progressed, more and more seats filled in to the point every seat was full. Probably 65 percent of seats in the entire arena were filled, regardless of whether they were blocked by the entrance stage or hard camera set-up.
-The Roman Reigns response was heavy boos and light cheers at first, but as the show progressed people were giving him a good reaction, especially when he was mixing with Seth Rollins and Dean Ambrose.
-During the commercial break before Roman Reigns vs. Jason Jordan, Samoa Joe kept interrupting Jo Jo’s ring introductions and giving Jordan and Reigns insulting versions of Jordan’s and Reigns’s names. That helped fill time as the TV show was at commercial.
-Chants for Samoa Joe started, but tended to fizzle out quickly.
-When Bray Wyatt popped up on the screen, business as usual, but then when Matt Hardy popped up, the crowd lost their minds. It was like WWE was flipping a light switch for 30 seconds when that video aired. The vibe that I got is everybody in the building understood what Woken Matt is and had a “this is what we’ve been waiting for” response.
-Everybody loved Braun. Braun is a monster. The Elias segment was the prefect segue into Braun. He beats people up for no reason. One weird thing Braun did was at the end of the whole segment with Kane’s video, Kane’s music played to end the segment. As Braun walked up the ramp, he raised his arms as Kane’s music played. (This was going on when the camera was on the announcers, and it was a bit distracting and made it seem like something was still happening in the ring with Braun because of the roar of the crowd.)
-No one cared for 205 Live wrestlers when they first came out. When the match started, no one cared. As the match progressed, people got into it and popped for the moves and Drew Gulak for being all-in on his character.
-Paige got a star reaction. There were a lot of fans who weren’t sure about Asuka, but a lot of fans respected her. Finn Balor got a star reaction, too.
-The merchandise stand had a good mix of stuff – Finn Balor, Roman Reigns, John Cena, Seth Rollins, and Dean Ambrose t-shirts, among other items like Sasha Banks sunglasses.
-After Raw went off the air, Kurt Angle made Samoa Joe, Cesaro, and Sheamus come back to the ring and they got their butts kicked. We kept chanting “Tables! Tables!” and there were apparently not tables under the ring. So some production guy immediately brought some tables to ringside and then Seth played around with the crowd and asked if they should put him through the table, and eventually they did. This was the segment where Reigns got the best reaction. When he’s on his own, it’s an uphill battle. The use of Jordan opposite of Reigns seemed to be effective in getting Reigns cheered. They have a chess piece that no one likes and they put him against the chess people they want people to like and it seems to be working. Jason Jordan was like unseasoned chicken – no one liked him. Back at No Mercy in L.A., nobody cared about Jordan, and now they have strong feelings about him.-They advertised on TV a main event of Braun Strowman vs. Kane. It didn’t happen, and I knew when I saw it advertised it wasn’t going to happen.
Send results and newstips to pwtorch@pwtorch.com
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