WWE Raw house show
Newark, N.J.
Report by Dot Net reader Christopher Jones

The upper tier of the arena was blocked off, with the rest of the arena about 75-80 percent full. Justin Roberts welcomed everyone to the show. 

1. John Morrison beat Ted DiBiase. Morrison’s music played for a long time before he came out. Maybe he was in the bathroom backstage. Decent match which lasted about 10 minutes. Good pop for Morrison (when he finally did appear). Ted controlled most of the match then Morrison made a big comeback at the end and hit Starship Pain for the win. 

There were a couple of funny moments in this one, first Morrison was standing on the ring apron and Maryse started spanking his ass, then later in the match Maryse took a sign off a kid at ringside and tore it up. The kid's parents looked legit angry. Fantastic. 
 
Next out was The Miz accompanied by Alex Riley. Very loud reaction for Miz including a lot of cheers. Miz and Riley cut a promo on the NJ crowd then Riley started talking about he was going to win NXT this Tuesday. When he mentioned beating Kaval the crowd went nuts, he’s pretty popular.
 
2. The Miz beat Evan Bourne to retain the U.S. Title. Good 12-15 minute match here with lots of flashy offense from Bourne. Miz had the crowd in the palm of his hand, as always. The people sitting behind me started discussing whether or not WWE should begin using video replays for incidents missed by referees after Riley hit Bourne with a couple of cheap shots. I hope they weren’t being serious. Miz got the pin after countering Air Bourne. There was a really cool spot in this match where Bourne reversed the Skull Crushing Finale into a roll up.
 
Eve Torres came to ringside to choose a kid to be special guest bell ringer for the next match. She said they had to answer a quiz question based on current events in the WWE. A guy a few rows behind me immediately shouted ‘The answer is Batista got fired for using steroids.’ No idea what he was going on about but this wouldn’t turn out to be the last strange but hilarious contribution from this guy. Also I thought Batista liked fishsticks not steroids…
 
3. Mark Henry squashed William Regal in about three minutes. Regal spent most of the match running from Henry then offered to shake his hand to which Henry responded with the world’s strongest slam for the pin.
 
Justin Roberts came back out to promote Smackdown’s imminent move to SyFy. His voice did that weird thing where it goes really high. Maybe he’s still not recovered from the tie choking…
 
4. Yoshi Tatsu beat Zack Ryder via spinning heel kick from the top rope. The crowd couldn’t have cared less about this one, especially Ryder. There were a couple of boring chants during this one. I thought it was a decent match but the lack of crowd involvement took away from it.
 
Postmatch Chris Jericho attacked Yoshi and hit him with a Codebreaker. The crowd loved this. Massive Y2J chants until he called us gelatinous parasitic tapeworms. He then bragged about how he single handedly took out The Nexus at SummerFest and called out John Cena.

Cena came out to the loudest (and most mixed) reaction of the night so far. In my section there were a group of 10 guys who were aged in their mid 20s so we all booed the shit/crap out of Cena, depending on how PG you are. Before Cena could say anything he was ambushed by Sheamus and the two fought their way backstage. Wade Barrett, Justin Gabriel and Michael Tarver then hit the ring and beat down Y2J until Daniel Bryan and Randy Orton made the save to a huge pop.
 
The really annoying general manager email sound then played and we were informed that the main event would be Cena vs. Sheamus for the WWE title inside a steel cage and that The Nexus would take on Y2J, Orton and Bryan in a six-man tag right now. Jericho underwent an instantaneous face turn when he grabbed a mic and said he’s pissed off with Nexus and tonight is the return of Y2J. Huge pop and chanting for this.
 
5. Randy Orton, Daniel Bryan, and Y2J defeated The Nexus in a six-man tag. This was a really good almost 20 minute match which ended when Justin Gabriel tapped to the walls of Jericho. Orton was barely involved in this match for some reason I think he only tagged in once at the start. The Batista steroids from earlier guy chanted vegetarian every time Bryan was in the ring. Must be channelling Michael Cole’s spirit.

Post match The Nexus beat down Y2J until Orton cleaned house and delivered the punt kick to Michael Tarver. This looked absolutely sick and Tarver sold it like a champ as he was carried to the back by some referees.
 
6. Melina defeated Alicia Fox to retain the WWE Divas Championship. Perfect time to go get a hot dog, I thought. Unfortunately most of the people in the arena had the same idea if the length of the queue at the food stands was anything to go by. Didn’t see any of the match but I know Melina won the match.
 
7. The Hart Dynasty beat The Usos to retain the WWE Tag Titles. The Usos came out to zero reaction from the crowd. This was a great 15 minute match with lots of innovative double team spots from both sides. These guys really can work, it’s a pity many people in the crowd didn’t know who The Usos were. Tyson Kidd took a beating then got the hot tag to DH Smith and hit the Hart Attack for the win.
 
There was a 20 minute interval whilst the ring crew assembled the Steel Cage.
 
Sheamus came out to good heat and trash talked some kids in the crowd. Cena came out to another very mixed reaction. Lots of dueling "Lets go Cena/Cena sucks" chants.

8. Sheamus defeated John Cena in a cage match to retain the WWE Championship when Nexus interfered. Another very strong match here with a lot of back and forth action and some very convincing nearfalls (or at least as convincing as they can get in a Title match at a house show). At one point Cena hit the Attitude Adjustment on Sheamus and went for a pin cover immediately which I think had a few people in the crowd believing we were going to see a title change but Sheamus kicked out at 2 and 7 8ths.

After about 15 minutes Cena had Sheamus in the STFU in the centre of the ring until Barrett, Gabriel, Heath Slater, and David Otunga hit the ring and destroyed Cena, allowing Sheamus to escape the cage and retain his WWE Title.

Cena then hulked up and cleared The Nexus from the ring except for Barrett who got an attitude adjustment for his troubles to send the crowd home happy. Cena spent a lot of time after the match chatting to fans at ringside and posing for photos for kids. As much as I was booing the guy all night he’s definitely a class act.
 
Interesting side notes: The merchandise stands featured a ton of Cena and Orton stuff as well as t shirts for The Harts but they didn’t have any of the Awesome Miz t shirts whatsoever. Damn.
 
Staying with T shirts there were A LOT of Eddie Guerrero T shirts in the crowd. Not really sure why this was.
 
There was a guy a few rows in front of me who wore a full Rey Mysterio face mask and did not take it off once for the whole show, even drinking his beer through it. What a legend.
 
Myself and a number of others were disappointed that Edge did not appear at this show.

Overall it was a thoroughly enjoyable show, my first since I was a kid at the One Night Only show in England in 1997. I hope Vince finally realizes having a WrestleMania at Wembley Stadium in London would be a massive draw so I can go to a really big event which isn’t too far from my home in Scotland.

Biggest Pops:
 
Cena
Y2J in face mode
Orton
John Morrison
Daniel Bryan
Miz
 
Biggest Heat:
Miz
Sheamus
Y2J in heel mode
Nexus

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