WWE Raw/ECW house show
Oshkosh, Wisc.
Report by Dot Net reader Kyle Schmitz

Great turnout for the show ... a bigger turnout than the WWE drew last year when they came to Oshkosh. There was also noticeably more children in the audience. Tony Chimmel handled the ring announcer duties, and Candace Michelle awkwardly handled the role of being the night's guest host (dead mics, children not responding to her, and her just not having a whole lot of mic presence in general).

1. Tommy Dreamer defeated Mark Henry. The opening contest was, in retrospect, probably the worst match of the evening, but when it took place it was pretty fun. I still don't understand how Tommy has such a huge following when he loses every week and has never really spent a lot of time on either of the two more mainstream WWE brands. But the crowd was definitely behind him, and there was a few decent ECW chants going as well. The match was mostly the same spots you'd expect from these guys, but Mark definitely made the match by playing off of the crowd really well. Tommy managed to evade Henry's splash and hit a DDT for a rare victory.

2. Beth Phoenix (w/Santino Marella) defeated Melina to retain the WWE Women's Title. Beth came down to the ring with Santino, who the crowd was clearly more interested in. I'm not really that much of a Santino fan, but this guy does put on a pretty entertaining live show, I have to say. This match was a lot more of a brawl-fest than I would've ever predicted ... and I'm not talking about hair pulling. There were tons of solid punches and kicks, leading way to more grapple-based moves later in the match. It really was a fun match, with Beth hitting her finisher for the win.

3. Kofi Kingston defeated Santino Marella. After the previous match, Santino told Beth to hit the showers and wait there for him, as the other half of "Glamerella" was about to wrestle. The rest of his promo was hard to understand (for me, anyways ... alot of other people seemed to be understanding it) due to distortion and horrible acoustics. What I did make out was pretty funny, though. He issued an open challenge to anyone in the locker room and Kofi accepted. Santino dominated most of the match, and Santino isn't exactly the greatest wrestler out there, but the crowd was definitely behind Kofi, and when he finally did get the upper hand, people were really into it. After landing a few of his usual spots, Kofi hit his finisher for the win, and then celebrated with the crowd for a bit.

4. John Morrison and The Miz defeated Cryme Tyme to retain the World Tag Titles. Michael Cole said on Raw this week that Morrison was injured from his match against Triple H last week on Smackdown ... I have no idea what the validity of this was, but I never would've known Morrison was injured from watching this match. Anyway, this is the first time I've seen these two teams square off live, and it turned out to be a great pairing.

The crowd absolutely ate this match up. The crowd was crazy for Cryme Tyme, and Morrison and Miz were hilarious in mocking the crowd. Then the two teams mocked each other, which was great. It's a shame WWE doesn't have a little more direction for Cryme Tyme, because they're obviously great workers ... and everybody already knows Morrison and Miz are great workers.

Some solid, fast-paced action in this match, including a cool roll-up pin JTG did off of sitting on the second rope ... I've never seen this move before. Morrison and Miz didn't really get to display their talent too much in this match; it was mostly just punches, kicks, and rest holds from them, but the energy of this match and the crowd was just too much to call it disappointing. The tag titles were on the line, so obviously Morrison and Miz came out victorious in the end.

5. Jack Swagger defeated Finlay (w/Hornswoggle) to retain the ECW Title. After an intermission, the show resumed with this match. Swagger definitely got the smallest response of anyone of the night; probably because he's the only one who really hasn't had any exposure outside of ECW. No matter, Swagger is great in the ring, and even people that didn't know who he was were booing him by the end of the match. Jack Swagger also saw the sign I made for him, which was a personal highlight of the night.

Finlay was, of course, accompanied by Hornswoggle, which should have been one of the most interesting parts of the show - Hornswoggle is from Oshkosh, and had to miss the show when the came here last year. But WWE didn't seem to want to break from tradition and mention that he was in his hometown, and, from what I could tell, pretty much nobody knew this was his hometown. Not that it mattered much; Hornswoggle gets a huge reaction regardless.

I had to fight off annoying kids from getting in my way. This match probably wasn't as good as Swagger's match this Tuesday, or his match last week against Finlay on ECW for that matter, but it was still fun regardless, and even I got kinda caught up in the spots where Swagger was going after Hornswoggle. It was a non-title match, but they still wisely had Swagger hit the Gut-Wrench Powerbomb for the win. To make everyone happy, though, Finlay caught up with Swagger on his way out and threw him back in the ring, where Hornswoggle landed what I believe is supposed to be a frogsplash.

6. Rey Mysterio defeated Ted DiBiase (w/Cody Rhodes). Besides the main event, the other thing they advertised this show on was that Rey Mysterio would be in action, so there were tons of Mysterio signs in the crowd. Ted came down to the ring with Cody Rhoades, whom I probably would've preferred to be in this match. We still haven't seen a whole lot of what Ted can do in a solo match yet, so this was kind of a proving grounds. The crowd went nuts for Mysterio, and I've never heard a pop for a luchador quite like what he got for doing the 619.

Mysterio finished off the match with the Falling Headbutt from the West Coast Pop stance that he's been doing lately (can we get an official name for this move?). After the match, though, Rhodes helped DiBiase to his feet, and they ended up in this (shirtless, mind you) embrace, which they snapped out of after a few seconds and tried to reassure the crowd that it wasn't what it looked like. I really have no idea why this took place. I have no idea what a homophobic angle has to do with either of these guys. Hopefully this is the last of it.

7. William Regal (w/Layla) defeated CM Punk to retain the Intercontinental Title. Like Dreamer, I'm also not really sure why Punk is as over as he is, since he's constantly marketed to Cena and Batista fans who really have no real appreciation for technical wrestling. But, regardless, he got a gigantic pop when he came out, comprised of equal parts kids, teenage girls, and adult dudes who probably miss the days of Benoit and Angle. Not too many people have as varied of a fan base as Punk does. Regal was accompanied by Layla, who seemingly was wearing a gallon of perfume.

Regal also got a ton of heat for a guy that hasn't really did a whole lot of anything on tv since his prior suspension. Anyway, this match was for the IC Title, so you knew Regal was going to find some way out of it; I'm just thankful it wasn't in less than three minutes. This was easily the longest match of the night; I was so into it that I lost track of time, but I'd say it fell somewhere in the 10-15 minute mark. Anyway, you'd think that with this kind of talent this would be a good match, but I didn't expect it to be this great. For the first five or so minutes there was some excellent mat work that's been missing from WWE tv programming for longer than I can remember.

Creative submissions, reversals, and a really nice side-surfboard stretch from Punk. The next five or so minutes were more physical, with some amazingly hard hits, and a painful-to-watch release-pumphandle-suplex from Regal. The crowd generally didn't really seem to have a real appreciation for this stuff, but nobody was calling it boring, and there were definitely some people out there who were really into this match. With the assistance of Layla, Regal eventually weaseled out a victory ... excellent match; I don't really see how their official match, whenever it really does happen, will top this.

8. John Cena defeated Randy Orton to retain the World Hvt. Championship. This match was advertised to be a triple-threat match also including Chris Jericho (who was also advertised to be the champion), but nobody really seemed to notice or care. I've seen Cena a couple times at house shows before, and he's usually every bit as charismatic as he is for a TV taping, but he seemed slightly under the weather tonight ... just slightly. I'm not sure if he was sick, overworked, or maybe just plain a little off.

It didn't really matter that much, because Orton handily carried the vast majority of the match, and didn't even have to rely on rest holds. He really managed to keep the pace of the match up. I don't know if it's because there were more children in the crowd, but I don't remember the last time I've been in a crowd that was so pro-Cena ... what Orton fans there were at the show were drowned out. After around fifteen minutes or so, Cena reversed Orton's RKO attempt and hit the FU for the victory. Cena didn't drag out the post-match celebration like they usually do.

Parting Thoughts: I really hope the great turnout (in weather twenty degrees colder than last year's show, no less) encourages WWE to keep coming back to Oshkosh every year. It's a lot smaller than the cities they usually have house shows in, but it's right in the middle of the state and seems to attract fans from all over, and the result tonight is probably the most fun house show I've ever attended. I really wasn't expecting a whole lot tonight, but I ended up getting a PPV-worthy show. Worth the money and then some.

Biggest Pops:

1. John Cena
2. Rey Mysterio
3. Finlay (by way of Hornswoggle)

Biggest Heat:

1. Randy Orton
2. Mark Henry
3. Morrison/Miz

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