Monday, January 11, 2021

Ruthless Aggression Era Project: WWE Monday Night Raw Review - December 23rd, 2002

WWE Raw

December 23rd, 2002

Oklahoma City, Oklahoma 

TONIGHT: Jericho/Christian vs. Book/Goldust for the tag titles plus a "Santa’s Little Helpers" Divas Match 

1) Rob Van Dam & Kane vs. Jamal & Rosey (w/ Rico)

“He got his chestnuts roasted over the open fire years ago...” -Jerry Lawler on Kane 

Rico is back and fully recovered from the flu per JR & King. Crowd is hot and Van Dam & Kane are lighting up as a new team early. Jamal & Rosey isolate RVD for a quick second before Kane hot tags. The baby faces win a short fun opener. 

Match rating - **1/4 

Uh oh. Rico slaps Jamal post match and OOF HE DOES IT TWICE. Jamal & Rosey almost fight one another and the trio eventually leaves together. Man they are building towards some big dissension. 

Bischoff and Morley chillin in the office. SpiKE MOTHa fuckin Dudley storms in and throws shit and breaks a light OMfg. He’s pissed about Regal using the brass knuckles on Bubba last week and Bischoff & Morley doing nothing about it. Bischoff puts Spike in a match against Batista tonight and says all the Dudleys will be suspended if any of them interfere. Vintage Eric. But anyway. Fuck Morley/Val Venis forever if you don’t have Twitter and didn’t know how much of a shithead he’s turned into. 

2) Test (w/ Stacy Keibler) vs. D-Lo Brown

Earlier in the evening, D-Lo tried to get Stacy to get “down with the brown” and that’s what leads us here. D-Lo has now ditched the singlet and sports a bandana, jeans, and a tank top as ring gear. The match is decent and the best thing both guys have done in a while as they got more time than normal plus a little story. D-Lo gets disqualified for fucking with the ref.

Match rating - **1/4

Earlier this week, Jerry Lawler had a book signing in Tennessee. 

Eric Bischoff and Sean Morley are out to the stage to announce Royal Rumble date and matches including H vs. Steiner, They then go after JR & King. Apparently during the commercial they talked shit about Bischoff showing footage of JR kissing Vince’s ass and it was caught by the commentary table cameras. This is pretty hilarious. JR is in his hometown so the clip being shown here of all places has them both disgusted. Eric says that JR should remember that HE HAS TONY SCHIAVONE’s PHONE NUMBER OMG. Eric says he should fire them tonight but he’s gonna give them the rest of the night to turn it around. Then announces that they are going to be in a god damn tag team match together later LMAO. JR’s face is priceless. Eric says he will compete or they’re both fired. 

3) Chris Nowinski vs. The Hurricane 

“We’ve got a lot of unwanted guests out here tonight.” -Jerry Lawler

The quote says it all. Maven distracts Nowinski and Hurricane is able to capitalize and score the win.

Match rating - *3/4

Backstage, Trips tells Coach he’s gonna call Scott Steiner out tonight. 

4) Batista (w/ Ric Flair) vs. Spike Dudley 

Batista destroys Spike. Bye. 

Backstage, Bischoff & Morley contemplate teaming to face JR/King later. William Regal & Lance Storm pop up and say that as the only undefeated tag team on Raw they’d love to beat up JR & King for them tonight. The chief and the GM oblige.

We see the Divas backstage warming up for the Santa’s Little Helper match. Holy moly. 

5) Trish Stratus, Stacy Keibler & Jacqueline vs. Victoria, Molly Holly & Ivory - Santa's Little Helper Match

Trish/Stacy/Jackie win. It’s whatever.

Match rating - *1/4

D-Lo Brown comes out and calls out Test and they have .. another match. Test beats him.. again. Same finish,, as earlier tonight. Okay then. 

Next week it’s a Best of 2002 Episode of Raw with replays of the best matches of the year! That means this is the last episode of Raw 2002 and I can move onto 2003 after this :-) wOOOO

Flair and H backstage talking about Big Poppa Pump. H says he’s calling Steiner out right now.

Back from commercial and the World Heavyweight Champ Triple H is headed to the ring. H calls out Scott Steiner and teases actually having the match tonight only to challenge Steiner to an arm wrestling contest. They do a bit where H gets the advantage and Scott smiles and was just messing around with H and then slams his arm to the table. H is furious and wants a rematch and Scott slams his hand down over and over. Steiner throws the table as H leaves. 

6) William Regal & Lance Storm vs. Jerry Lawler & Jim Ross 

Eric Bischoff and Chief Sean Morley take the headsets and are holding down commentary for this one. This is actually a ton of fun. Lawler works with Regal & Storm for the first half. JR gets in after a ref bump and gets booted by Regal & Storm. The Dudleys run down for a huge pop and lay out Regal & Storm. JR hits Regal with the brass knuckles and pins him for the win as Bischoff & Morley look on pissed and in disbelief. 

Match rating - **1/2

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