Mike Reviews Shows Considered To Be Stinkers – WWE Raw #522 (Triple H Vs Shawn Michaels and Ric Flair)

Happy Stinky Friday Everyone!

I’ve already reviewed Judgment Day 2003, so let’s take a look at one of the follow-up episodes of Raw with #522. Raw #521 had a really fun Triple H Vs Ric Flair Main Event where they teased a Ric Flair babyface turn and the crowd was into the idea. Let’s just say that the way they continued the story didn’t especially go down well, as the 4.22 score on Cage Match for this episode of Raw would seem to highlight.

You can view the full card for this episode of Raw by clicking below;

Raw #522 Card

Raw is emanating from Mobile, Alabama on the 26th of May 2003

Calling the action are Jim Ross and Jerry Lawler

We get a recap of last week, where Co-GM Stone Cold allowed Triple H to pick his own opponent in the Main Event. HHH picked Ric Flair thinking that his running buddy would lay down for him. However, Flair refused to do so following a pep talk with Shawn Michaels, leading to a very fun competitive match between the two where Tri eventually prevailed following a good effort from Flair.

Shawn Michaels joins us for our opening in-ring promo segment, because it’s Raw and that’s how you usually start one of these things. Shawn brings Ric Flair down to the ring so that they can have a respectful conversation and Shawn can continue to try and coax Flair to the babyface side of things. Flair is very over with the crowd, and they clearly want him to go Face. Shawn gushes all over Flair, and he sounds sincere whilst doing so, even tearing up at points. Shawn would like to wrestle Flair tonight in honourable combat; and Flair seems down to do that. However, Triple H can’t stand by and let the fans get what they want to see, so he storms out here and complains about how Shawn and Flair are making him sick. Tri is worried that Flair is going to breakup their partnership, but Flair correctly points out that he’s been HHH’s dogsbody and he doesn’t want to do that anymore. This leads to Triple H getting all angry and threatening to end Flair once and for all. We apparently don’t have enough people out here though, as Co-GM Eric Bischoff joins us to throw his weight around and say that Shawn Vs Flair won’t be happening in Mobile and will instead happen at Bad Blood. And on top of that; we’ve got Triple H Vs Shawn Michaels and Ric Flair in a handicap match later on. That’s a weird position for the Heel authority figure to put the top Heel in, but Sleazy E could be like that sometimes. This wasn’t too bad an opening segment in all honesty, with Triple H and Shawn Michaels both doing a solid job. Flair was actually a bit of passenger in this one, when you normally expect him to be the life of the party in situations like this. As far as 10-15 minute opening Raw segments go, this was one that definitely happened and it set up the Main Event as well as it could, although it’s not the strongest match you could have considering it involves the hated Heel getting put in an unfair situation.

Match 1
Test w/ Stacey Keibler Vs Booker T

Test had essentially gone Heel due to how much of a jerk he was being to Keibler, whilst Booker T was going after Christian’s Intercontinental Title. Test and Scott Steiner had briefly been a tag team, but that alliance has crumbled and they’d soon be wrestling one another at the Bad Blood pay per view. Test and Booker were actually the Tag Champs during the InVasion in 2001, but that friendship didn’t really last once 2002 got into full flow and Booker went babyface. This is your typical quick paced TV match, with Booker getting a bit of shine until Test is able to cut Booker off by sending him to the floor with a Hot Shot.

Booker sells well during the heat and Test does a solid job as a mean Heel, complete with angry faces when putting Booker in a chin lock. Booker of course fights back, getting the Spinaroonie no less, and that leads to Test pulling Keibler in the way of a Booker baseball slide like the big ol’ jerk that he is. Keibler sells that magnificently, acting like she’s totally out cold, and that seemingly sets up a Test win with The Meltdown. However, Booker is getting an IC Title shot at the pay per view, so he survives and manages to win with a Scissors Kick when Test is distracted by Scott Steiner coming to Keibler’s aid.

WINNER: BOOKER T
RATING: **

Thoughts: This was your standard TV match that both advanced the Test/Steiner/Keibler storyline whilst also giving Booker a win ahead of his big IC Title match at Bad Blood, so it ticked the boxes it needed to and the fans seemed to enjoy it. Honestly, if Test was using Keibler as a human shield then it might have been more effective for him to do it in a match that he was winning, as Keibler took a fantastic bump and Test using it in order to win would have drawn even more heat from the fans. However, they were in a position where Booker kind of had to win here if he was going to be getting a Title shot, so they possibly could have saved the Keibler bump for another day

Co-GM Stone Cold Steve Austin has a black eye from slipping in the shower. Triple H comes in to suck up to Stone Cold in an effort to get the Main Event changed later on. Austin won’t change it though, so Tri starts getting mean but the match is STILL ON!

Trish Stratus joins the commentary desk for the next match.

Match 2
Steven Richards w/ Victoria Vs Val Venis

Richards spent a big chunk of 2003 as a lackey for Victoria in her many forays into the Women’s division. Hey, if you need someone who can play the lackey role to the hilt then you call Stevie! Venis had previously been Heel authority figure Chief Morley, but now he’s back to being a Porn Star again, which magically seems to make him a babyface, because Pro Wrestling. Yet again we’ve got former partners fighting here, as both Richards and Venis were in the RTC together. Venis tries to get Victoria to act in an adult movie he’s making, but she has the GALL to be OFFENDED by such a kind offer, so Stevie attacks Venis and works The Big Valbowski over. Venis shrugs that off with reasonable ease and makes his usual comeback with the moves he stole from guys in All Japan, such as the running knees against the ropes and the Blue Thunder Bomb. Stevie gets a quick DDT, but that leads to nothing and the big splash off the top wins it for Venis

WINNER: VAL VENIS
RATING: *1/2

Thoughts: Bordering on a squash, but for a sub 3 minute TV match it wasn’t offensive or anything. Stratus didn’t really do much on commentary and I’m not really sure the point of her being involved other than to just remind people that she existed

Jonathon Coachman is in the interview area with Kevin Nash. Nash cuts a pretty boring promo in all honesty, where he says he’s going to defeat Triple H at Bad Blood and that he hopes Tri loses tonight.

Terri Runnels is interviewing IC Champ Christian in the bowels of the building. Christian insults the people in Mobile, because they give him the creeps. Speaking of giving the creeps, Goldust walks over and insults Christian whilst stuttering because he had tourettes at the time due to being electrocuted. No, I didn’t make that up, that was actually the storyline they had going at the time. Christian and Goldust argue, which leads to Booker T interrupting and telling Christian that there will be a new Champion at Bad Blood. Christian was pretty funny in this segment as an arrogant, yet still lame, Heel.

Co-GM’s Eric Bischoff and Stone Cold argue about Bad Blood. Stone Cold wants the military to get in for free, which Sleazy E of course doesn’t like because he’s a snivelling Heel. They agree to some kind of competition at Bad Blood, which led to the awful Redneck Triathlon, but we’ll get to that next month at some point because I have that show on DVD.

It’s Memorial Day, so Lilian Garcia sings “America the Beautiful” until evil Frenchians Rene Dupree and Sylvain Grenier interrupt, complete with berets, to insult the American fans, as snooty French people are seemingly want to do. Stone Cold Steve Austin isn’t going to stand around and tolerate blokes in berets ruining an opportunity for the USA to naval gaze though, so he stomps down to the ring to rid it of the dastardly Gallic duo before inviting Garcia back into the ring to complete her song. This was as paint by the numbers as a “USA Vs Evil Foreigners” angle could be (all it needed was Hacksaw Duggan getting involved somehow), although the live crowd seemed to enjoy Stone Cold getting involved and Garcia’s singing.

Ric Flair is warming up backstage, whilst a mysterious Randy Orton shaped man in a mask watches on menacingly.

Match 3
Non-Title
WWE Intercontinental Champ Christian Vs Goldust

Christian had recently cheated his way to winning the IC Title at Judgment Day and was feuding with Booker T, so Booker’s buddy Goldust is now wrestling Christian as a continuation of that storyline. Christian actually got a pretty effective makeover during this period, as he got the shorter haircut that he still has today and he also switched to wearing tights after mostly wearing a really ugly looking singlet for the previous few months. It was a good way of trying to draw a line under his previous underwhelming year or so by giving him the IC belt and a repackaging at the same time. As someone who was watching at the time and considered himself a Christian fan, I was certainly glad to see them seemingly start taking Christian seriously again.

This match follows the pattern of all of the other ones on the show thus far, as it’s serviceable from an in-ring perspective but it’s pretty short and the wrestlers don’t get much time to tell an especially engrossing story. Goldust gets a brief shine, Christian dodges a cross body and works a little bit of heat, and then we get a bit of a back and forth at the end. Surprisingly they actually have Goldust win it with a Powerslam, even though Christian was the one with the fresher character who was supposedly getting a renewed push, whilst Goldust was a wacky lower card comedy character at the time who often lost to the real stars unless he was tagging with Booker.

WINNER: GOLDUST
RATING: **

Thoughts: Another serviceable short TV match there, although the finish was a bit of a head scratcher, as I don’t think it led to Goldust getting a Title shot or anything. Goldust getting a fluke win in order to get an IC Title shot only to then lose clean in order to get the fans possibly invested in Booker T avenging his buddy might have made sense as a build to Bad Blood, but Christian losing clean to a lower card act after only just winning the IC Title and then nothing really coming from it is just boneheaded booking, which sadly was very much par for the course in WWE at the time

Match 4
White Boy Challenge
Rodney Mack w/ Theodore Long Vs Bubba Ray Dudley

Mack and Long are racists who don’t like white people, which is certainly bad (although as a card carrying white person myself I can confirm that sometimes we do totally suck). Bubba has to survive longer than 5 minutes in order to win here. This was one of the many tasteless angles they had going on during the Ruthless Aggression Era, which sometimes was as bad or even worse than the Attitude Era when it came to them doing disagreeable angles and stories in an effort to recapture the lightning in the bottle that was the AE. This one is mostly a slugfest, as both of these lads are hefty fellows who like to throw-down. Correct me if I’m wrong, but did a prominent wrestling writer like Wade Keller or someone of that ilk pitch Mack against Goldberg for SummerSlam because they thought this gimmick had real potential? Spoilers; but that one didn’t end up happening. Bubba mostly gets the better of this one, with it taking Christopher Nowinski interfering in order for Mack to win it after 2 minutes 30.

WINNER: RODNEY MACK
RATING: *1/4

Thoughts: I honestly can’t remember why a white boy like Nowinski helped out the racists here, but Nowinski himself wouldn’t last much longer following this as a series of concussions caused him to retire from wrestling and set up an institute that investigates the effects of prolonged head trauma in multiple different sports. The match itself was another short outing that was mostly inoffensive and advanced a storyline, although there were some sloppy moments due to the two perhaps not being on the same page

D-Von Dudley rescues his partner Bubba following the match, which I believe led to Long and Mack trying to recruit him to their side because D-Von, unlike Bubba, isn’t a bulbous white boy.

Eric Bischoff appeases the whining Frenchman by booking Grenier against Rob Van Dam in a flag match, where Grenier and Dupree will get a Tag Title shot if they win. Dupree was pretty funny selling that he was all shook up by Stone Cold’s attack earlier.

Last week; someone tried to run Goldberg over. It turned out to be Lance Storm, but it was Chris Jericho who put Storm up to it.

Triple H and Ric Flair have another argument, and Flair is fired up. Flair was excellent here, going into classic Flair Mode.

Match 5
Luchas de Apuestas
Grenier Must Win To Earn His Team A Tag Title Shot
Flag Match
Sylvain Grenier avec Rene Dupree Vs Raw Tag Champ Rob Van Dam w/ Kane

Grenier and Dupree were both very young and probably not ready for this level of push at the time, but Grenier was a buddy of Pat Patterson and the USA was mad at France at the time due to the French refusing to take part in the illegal war in Iraq, so Grenier and Dupree were made into a sneering French Heel tag team known as La Resistance. Grenier has to win here in order to earn himself and Dupree at shot at RVD and Kane’s Tag Titles. RVD and Kane were doing the whole “unlikely duo who can somehow work together” bit at the time, although it sadly wouldn’t last much longer. To win this match you have to grab your flag and bring it down from the corner. It’s essentially an item on a pole match, which I’m sure made Vinny Ru happy had he happened to be changing channels at the time.

Grenier actually takes a couple of big bumps here, including getting knocked off the top rope to the floor at one stage. Why are you making a guy greener than turtle excrement take bumps like that? RVD is actually quite good in this one, as he hits all of his trademark spots successfully and the crowd enjoys seeing it. RVD manages to grab his flag, but the referee is bumped, so the match continues. This leads to Dupree and Kane getting involved whilst the referee is down, as I start to worry that the finish will be the referee waking up to see Kane’s rampage leading to a lame DQ. However, thankfully the finish is at least a little bit less lame, as La Resistance end up cheating to get the better of both babyfaces and that leads to Grenier claiming his flag for the win.

WINNER: GRENIER
RATING: *1/2

Thoughts: Not much of a match, but I appreciated the fact that La Resistance actually won it under their own steam by being devious cheats as opposed to them just getting handed the win because Kane couldn’t keep his cool. Grenier wasn’t much of a match for RVD in a fair fight, but as a combined force La Resistance were capable of getting one over on the Champs, which is absolutely fine as they’re supposed to be conniving villains, so that sort of thing suits their characters. Grenier just winning the match wouldn’t have really made much sense, so the chicanery helped make the win more believable. Dupree actually looked somewhat like he could hang here because he had done some wrestling for his father’s company before coming to WWE, so he wasn’t a total greenhorn, but Grenier was WAY out of his depth and it would take about a year or so before he became somewhat competent in-ring, and by that point he was tagging with Rob Conway as Dupree had left for SmackDown in order to become a singles star

The Highlight Reel
Chris Jericho with special guest Bill Goldberg

Jericho starts off by saying that The Rock will be his guest next week (although Christian would end up taking over the interviewing duties that week due to Jericho being busy with Goldberg related stuff). Jericho says that he tried to take out Goldberg last week because he doesn’t want Goldberg in WWE. Jericho cuts a semi-shoot promo talking about how Goldberg’s meteoric rise in WCW made Jericho angry because Jericho thought he was more talented than Goldy. Jericho mentions that he couldn’t get a match with Goldberg in WCW, so he’s challenging Goldberg to a match at Bad Blood. For some reason they are still dubbing Goldberg’s WCW theme in for these shows on the Network, even though he was using a WWEised version of his theme at the time that they surely have to own the rights to? I agree that the WCW version of the song is better, but leaving in the WWE theme means that they don’t have to dub out the crowd reactions, which is the most annoying aspect to the dubbing in my opinion. I don’t really care which music is playing, but crowd reactions are a big part of the enjoyment of wrestling for me, and when you dub in music you lose the crowd reactions and that really hurts the viewing experience for me. Anyway, Goldberg wants to fight Jericho right now, but Jericho isn’t down with that. Jericho of course gets too close to the bee’s nest though and is about to get stung, but it turns out that Jericho has a cannister of pepper spray with him. Goldberg thus gets sprayed and blinded, leading to Jericho giving Goldberg a Spear before running away. This was a decent way to tease the match between the two, as Jericho was a a conniving Heel who ran away from a fair fight, making you want to see him get his just desserts when the two eventually wrestle.

During the break, Jericho tries to escape in a car but the car won’t start, so he has to run off into the night instead. That was a funny snafu that actually made Jericho look even more of a coward when he had to flee on foot, so I’ll let it slide.

Match 6
Raw World Champ Triple H Vs “The Heartbreak Kid” Shawn Michaels and “The Nature Boy” Ric Flair

So it should shock no one to learn that this has all been set up to be a big SWERVE, bro, as Flair is still on the same side of Triple H, which means that Shawn gets ganged up on and eventually pinned by Tri. Honestly they could have milked that swerve for much longer than they did, with Flair pretending to be Shawn’s friend for weeks until they finally pulled the trigger on it. I’m not sure whether the fans truly believed that Flair had gone Face or not, but you could tell throughout the night that they really wanted him to. Flair would remain a Heel for nearly 2 years after this, possibly because he didn’t want to turn babyface as he’s always preferred being a bad guy and he fought tooth and nail against switching sides. Eventually though they reached a point where fans just would not boo The Naitch, so he had to go back babyface in 2005. I think they would tease a fake Flair Face turn a few more times after this, with it eventually becoming totally played out as a storytelling device.

WINNER: TRIPLE H
RATING: N/A

Thoughts: This was more an angle than it was a match, and because they’d only spent a week teasing that Flair was going Face, it wasn’t very effective when they pulled out the carpet from under everyone.

Kevin Nash tries to rescue Shawn from Tri and Naitch, but the masked man who looks a lot like Randy Orton ends up running down to help the Heels before revealing himself as…B. Brain Blair?!?!?! Only kidding, it’s Randy Orton because…

Anyway, the reunited Evolution puts a beatdown on the babyfaces and that’s how we end the show. Batista was out injured but he’d be back in the autumn and then Evolution would have about a year or so of being a four man unit until WWE made the poorly advised decision to try Randy Orton as a singles babyface for a bit.

Is It Really A Stinker?

Honestly I wouldn’t say this episode of Raw was a Stinker no. It was a bit dull, and some of the booking decisions didn’t make a lot of sense (mostly Christian losing clean to Goldust for seemingly no reason) but most of the matches were passable and the storylines were advanced well enough. They made it clear that the big matches at Bad Blood were going to be Triple H/Nash, Christian/Booker, Flair/Shawn and Jericho/Goldberg, and they threw in some angles in order to hype those matches up to varying degrees of success.

La Resistance clearly weren’t ready for the level of push they were getting, and it might have made more sense to save Test pulling Keibler in the way of a big move for a match where Test could then go on to win, as they kind of only had the chance to do that big angle once and they burned it off in a match where Test had to lose because Booker needed the win. Honestly they could have cut the Richards/Venis match and had Test defeat Venis whilst Booker defeated Stevie. I know Venis had only just been repackaged, but it’s Val Venis, that dude had a ceiling and he was never getting past it.

Have Test make Keibler take the bullet before defeating Venis, have Booker defeat Stevie, have Christian defeat Goldust, and do something with the Main Event to maybe stretch out Flair’s eventual Heel turn a bit longer. Maybe Orton runs in to distract Flair and that leads to a distracted Shawn getting pinned by Triple H, followed by Nash chasing off the Heels whilst Shawn starts to have doubts about Flair’s loyalty? Triple H still gets to win, Kevin Nash gets to look strong and you can tease for another week as to which side of the divide Flair is going to fall on? That could have turned a by the numbers Raw into a slightly more interesting one perhaps?

Regardless, I’ve seen much worse episodes of Raw (in 2002 and 2003 especially) and this one didn’t really offend me, so I’m not going to call it a Stinker. The closing angle/match got the groan of indifference rather than genuine heat, and that would continue to happen with all of the false Flair turns that were still to happen, but the show itself was okay at best and meh at worst, so I’m not going to label it as a Stinker.

Final Rating – Odourless
(Rating’s done on a scale of Stinker/Stinky/Odourless/Pleasant/Fragrant)