Pepsi Arena – Albany, New York | TV Rating: 4.8
The Good: Nothing. No, really. Nothing. Might be the worse edition of RAW of all time. Honestly. [So for SEO purposes, Mr Editor has labelled this as April Fool’s Day RAW for no real reason other than it’s on April 1st 2002]. Anyway, straight to The Bad… It’s a new era. It’s a brand extension/split time. So of course, Vince is on Raw (which is Ric Flair’s show), saying that he will sign Steve Austin for Smackdown. He gets “escorted” out by the Big Show but they couldn’t have kept him off Raw for one week? Furthermore, he’s shown throughout the show and is in the main event segment. And that main event segment, where Stone Cold signs for Raw but stuns both Flair and Vince takes 15 minutes to give us absolutely nothing…
Perhaps it’s a little unfair to include it in this section but Raven against Bubba Ray Dudley for the Hardcore title isn’t very good AND we’re at the stage where no one really cares about the division anymore as we’ve seen everything in it before. And they use a sleeper hold in a Hardcore match… April Fool’s!
Terri and Trish Stratus have an 80-second paddle-on-a-pole match. I don’t think I need to go into details…
The Indifferent
- We start (beyond Ric Flair holding a new belt that he will present to HHH tonight) the new era of Raw with a match for the IC title between Rob Van Dam and Booker T. They get nearly seven minutes. We get a clean finish. But unfortunately, it is fought at a snail’s pace and isn’t all that good. What is good is that Eddie Guererro runs in afterwards to attack RVD, so at least we have that to look forward to.
- As Spike Dudley beats William Regal by fluke… there is at least a “shock” value to the match but again it’s passable at best.
- Is anyone really calling out for Scott Hall to feud with Bradshaw at this point? Do we need three segments of backstage stuff to push that feud? Nope, and Nope. This is the best thing that they had for Scott Hall.
- The Undertaker interrupts Ric Flair before he can present the new title belt to Triple H. It’s the Undisputed Championship belt, which I bet you forgot debuted on this horrendous show. So of course, Triple H interrupts the interruption. The two will meet at Backlash. Yay.
- I bet The Hardy Boys against Mr Perfect and Big Bossman is something you thought you would never see. It’s crap, and is only an excuse for Brock Lesnar’s latest destruction job but still. That saves it from the bad section, but it was CLOSE.
Overall: This might be one of the worst shows I’ve seen yet. It’s the chance for a big re-set of Raw. Instead, we get the same old, same old but with half the cast members (minus Vince) missing. Forza Le Draft. April Fool’s Day. Etc.