[Cool King]

I finally got around to doing my now usual "Sunday Thing" of watching Raw & SmackDown from 2002.

I was supposed to be watching Judgement Day 2002 today but I didn't have time to watch Raw & SmackDown last Sunday so I watched them today instead and will watch Judgement Day on Saturday so I can be all caught up for next Sunday.

There wasn't really much to point out or say about the two shows other than they were quite enjoyable.

I noticed a big difference in the episode of Raw I watched where Booker T was announced at the new member of The nWo and what Raw is like now, in that in the episode of Raw I watched, the audience was always being given a reason to stay and watch, be it title defenses, appearances from big names or the main one, who the new member of The nWo would be.

All the way through the show the audience were being teased with this reveal of who it could be and through the work of some good promos, that you could tell came straight from the minds of the wrestlers themselves, the audience at home were always being told to stay and watch the show.

Now, the audience get nothing like this and the WWE's reason nearly every week to watch Raw these days is basically them saying "Hey guys, Roman Reigns is on the show tonight and he's going to beat up all the bad guys, sometimes all at once!".

Raw doesn't even have regular title defenses/changes like they used to from around 2002.

Anyway, before this evolves into a post I would usually reply to Noid with, the usual bullet points of random thoughts:

Raw:

• I'm actually quite surprised that Shawn Stasiak had the amount of TV appearances that he did. I've always remembered him being in the WWE and I've always actually kinda liked him, but I can't really remember him appearing on Raw the amount of times he actually did.

This episode of Raw even show fans with Stasiak signs. Something that actually made me say "wow" to myself, as I couldn't remember seeing any Stasiak signs when I first watched Raw around that time as a kid.

I liked his little crazy quirks he used to do, like his twitching/face pulling that he was doing during his backstage segment with Eddie Guerrero where Guerrero asked him if he's on drugs. It's the little things like that that I didn't really pick up on as a kid. I remember how he use to talk and I always liked that but it's the little things like the twitching/face pulling that really helped and added to the gimmick.

• This Raw was the debut of the "A Day In The Life Of Tommy Dreamer" vignettes and those are vignettes I remember extremely vividly.

I loved them and I still do.

• It's probably because I was a kid at the time but I didn't realise how good Steven Richards looked back then. He looked to be in great shape and it's probably the best I've seen him look.

• Finally from Raw, here's a random SpongeBob sighting from the show.



SmackDown:

• Some random French-Canadian midget came bursting out of a cupboard brandishing a camera, only to tell Stacy Keibler that he was "here with Panasonic's new e-Wear AV Recorder". He kept emphasising the letter "E" and appeared and then disappeared yelling "EEEEEEEEEEEEE!" so I'm assuming he was a character from Panasonic's adverts for the device and that was his catchphrase or whatever?



That was obviously edited out when it was broadcast over here in the UK because it's an advertisement but I didn't know that something like that actually existed, so this was the first time I had ever seen it and I just watched it in complete bemusement.

• There was an almost ten minutes of constant cheering for Hogan as he stood in the ring, which when it ended, Hogan called the crowd "awesome" and I think that if that happened today, the crowd would have broken out into a five minute "We Are Awesome" chant.

• Finally, a sign during Rico's entrance that is one of many wrestling signs showing bad grammar:



(Just like last time, it's the difference between "Your" and "You're" that these sign makers seem to have a problem with)