WWE Raw Review :: London 02 Arena 20/4

This was the second time I have been to see WWE Raw live and the show did not disappoint.

On arrival to the O2 arena my mate and I were greeted with the usual howls of 'wooo' with excited fans replicating Ric Flair's signature phrase. We also came across a number of men dressed up as Hulk Hogan while others chose to carry around full size title belts on their shoulders.

Merchandise stands had queues that were three or four people deep and with printed t-shirts at £25 a pop this wasn't going to be a cheap outing for some people.

The event began with a dark match between William Regal and Dolph Ziggler and Regal must have felt disappointed that he wasn't considered for the main show especially as its in his home country.

Compared with my last experience of Raw in Manchester I thought that the atmosphere in the arena was far more electric with all areas of the crowd being very vocal.

This was particularly apparent whenever John Cena appeared as half the crowd booed him and the other half cheered him. The amount of reaction he generated was unbelievable.

The English crowd seemed to have a liking for the heel wrestlers which was shown early on as chants of Y2J could be heard despite Jericho telling the crowd they were parasites and hypocrites.

At one stage male fans were booing every punch by Cena and cheering every punch by Jericho which I wasn't expecting to happen. Obviously most of the women and children were cheering for Cena but they were being drowned out.

This also happened when Randy Orton was fighting Triple H which was the best match of the night. Orton had the WWE champion on the canvas and was stomping on him in an arrogant manner when all of sudden I could hear 'RKO RKO RKO' from the crowd.

I don't think Orton was too happy about this considering he is meant to be a massive heel and he snapped at the crowd making them boo him. This is certainly something for the WWE to note as this is not the first time I have heard Orton being cheered.

There was an embarrassing moment in the very boring match between Kane and CM Punk where they botched the small package pin. CM Punk left the ring victorious but then had to come back in, awkwardly walk up to Kane and perform the then ending again. It was painful to watch and they were lucky that Raw was not being shown live.

After Raw had finished the crowd was treated to some more matches as the new WWE show 'Superstars' was being filmed. Having endured a match earlier between Big Show and Rey Mysterio we were given another serving of the lethargic giant who paired with Kane to take on Misterio and CM Punk in a pointless tag team match. Rubbish.

We then had Edge vs Kofi Kingston followed by Edge vs Cena which really didn't excite.

The one disappointment of the night was that Shawn Michaels didn't make an appearance but overall it was an enjoyable show and I would give it 7/10.

See the full match results here.

WWE's UK tour imminent

World Wrestling Entertainment makes its first stop in Britain on April 17th and I for one cannot wait.

The reason for this is that I am very forunate to be going to see the televised episode of Raw at the O2 Arena in London three days later.

I prefere to go to the televised shows as I think that the wrestlers want and need to perform at their best. Whereas at the standard 'Wrestlemania Revenge Tour' events they can get away with putting 70% effort in as only the crowd in the arena will see it.

My other gripe about the Revenge Tour is that it features the same matches each night so I would presume that it must be rather tedious for the wrestlers to do the same moves with the same finishes for nine evenings.

The main event for Raw has been announced and to be honest I'm not overly excited about it. It is a tag team which features John Cena and Triple H taking on Edge and Randy Orton.

I always think putting a meaningless tag team match as the main event is a cheap way of getting the four biggest names out all at once in the same ring. Perhaps this is a 'can't lose' for television ratings but I'd much rather see a match with something riding on it.

For instance a world title match involving two of those four would be far more suitable. I'm not asking for a title to change hands but an entertainining contest with a few nervous moments for the champion would have the crowd gripped.