Monday, June 8, 2020

Ruthless Aggression Era Project: WWE Raw Review - August 12th, 2002

WWE Monday Night Raw 
August 12th, 2002


The show kicks off with footage of Brock Lesnar and Paul Heyman walking through the crowd before the show went on air. BROCK HAS ON A HULKAMANIA SHIRT WOW. BRILLIANT considering he just obliterated Hulk on Smackdown. Brock & Paul have tickets and sit ringside.

Eric Bischoff catches wind of this and says if they interfere with the show at all they will be thrown out because they need to stay on Smackdown.

Triple H is out and starts tearing into Shawn Michaels and the fans. The Rock interrupts him for a pretty awesome verbal exchange. Rock wants to discuss Brock Lesnar who is sitting front row which pisses H off. Rock says "Do you wanna... go?" and H says "I would LOVE to go..." and I found that hilarious for whatever reason. This ends up breaking down no pun intended and Brock gets involved.

Backstage, Rock tries to pressure Eric into making him a match with Triple H.

1) Trish Stratus & Spike Dudley vs. Molly Holly & Chris Nowinski

Chris is still trying to butter Molly up to take her "virginity", Trish is an intergender matches almost every week and Spike has nothing better to do so here we are. Nowinski gets the pin on Spike after three minutes. Gross.

Goldust proposes that if Booker beats Storm tonight, they get a tag title shot at Summerslam, mini-dust humps Eric Bischoff's leg in the process.

Howard Finkel lays into Lillian and we get a Kane return tease that I got way too hyped for. We get nothing, though, just some nasty verbal jabs.

2) Booker T vs. Lance Storm

If Book wins, he & Goldy get a tag title shot at SummerSlam. This was simple enough and everything Booker does is hot so hell yeah. Lots of outside interference attempts, but Goldust is there to thwart it and Booker grabs the W!

Match rating - **

In Eric's embarassment segment of the week, mini dust gets destroyed by the samoans. So stupid.

3) Chris Jericho & Big Show vs. Ric Flair & Bubba Ray Dudley

This turned out to be quite a joy despite being real weird on paper. The Flair and Jericho stuff was red hot. Bubba clobbered Show at one point near the end and it was so badass but went virtually unnoticed. Flair somehow throws Show over the barricade. In the ring, Jericho locks the walls of jericho on Bubba for the win only to get PANTSED by Flair after the match. This was a lot of fun.

Match rating - **3/4

4) Tommy Dreamer (c) vs. Stevie Richards - Hardcore Title Match

The dread I have as this begins. At least it's these two, though. Revisiting this match from a few months back where they went at it in a singapore cane match and Dreamer got busted open. This time around they both get to bring one weapon to the ring. Dreamer has a CANE and Richards has a chair. This only lasts like 4 minutes, though and Dreamer retains. Harmless, but meaningless.

Match rating - *1/4

5) Jeff Hardy vs. Rob Van Dam - Winner Faces Chris Benoit for the IC Title at SummerSlam

Routine five minute match with Matt Hardy turning on his brother in the most random occurrence ever. I didn't even know this ever happened! So weird. But with that in mind, RVD wins with the frog splash and will challenge Smackdown's Chris Benoit at SummerSlam for the Intercontinental Championship in two weeks.

Match rating - *3/4

A Smackdown commercial apparently airs and Eric is pissed that Stephanie paid for run time on his show. So he storms into the production truck to see what happened. In turn, he announces Rock vs. HHH for next week to get him some RATINGZ.

6) The Rock, The Undertaker, Booker T, & Goldust vs. Triple H, Christian, Test, & Lance Storm 

This fucking ruled. Mad hot crowd and all these guys were running on all cylinders. Classic multi-man tag formula. Booker ends up getting isolating which builds to the Taker hot tag which made everyone explode. It breaks down from here into hell and Test clocks Taker with a running boot for the CLEAN PIN ADNSDIQQJQ. Best Raw main event in a minute.

Match rating - ***1/2

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