Austin arrest update, Ferrara leaving NWA-TNA, and more Submitted by William Martinez on Tuesday, August 20, 2002 at 2:43 PM EST
Steve Austin's recent arrest prompted some to assume that his wife Debra had filed charges against Austin for the domestic disturbance incident from back in June. That is not the case. The District Attorney of Bexar County decided to persue a case in criminal court after evaluating the complaint filed upon the date of the incident. Had a case in a civil court had been filed, then Debra would have been behind it.
When Ric Flair smashed the guitar against the ring post on Raw last night, some shrapnel from the guitar went into the hand of a man sitting in the front row but he was alright.
NWA-TNA announced today that Ed Ferrara is leaving the company to persue other interests. Don West and Mike Tenay will cover broadcasting duties for tomorrow night's pay-per-view.
The flyer in the program said that Christopher Nowinski and Regal would team against Bubba Ray and Spike Dudleys, but that apparently got cancelled. Instead, Spike and Bubba were in the Hardcore thing, and Regal and Mr. Harvard no-showed.
During the commercial break, Taker meanacingly pushed over Test's motorcycle, then 7 WWE officials came down, clueless on how to move it. You know, it does have wheels...
Fozzy preformed... what can I say? It was mostly incomprehensible. Just a lot of metal. It was like 3 minutes of minutely interesting feedback. It took them about 10 minutes to set up the stage, 5 minutes to preform, 3 for Flair to "destroy" it, and 1 for them to clear. They loaded the back three sets on carts and wheeled them, then swept the rest of the stuff off to the side, quite literally. I was unimpressed with their music, and given the little confrontation between Flair and Jericho, it served as only a littly hype to their match. Still, though, Jericho is great on the mic, and Flair is great to watch live.
It took the security guys about 5 minutes to prep the corridor where Brock was to enter, and by that time, a huge crowd had gathered, and everyone was looking in that direction. The Main Event was pretty good, definatley not the best encounter between the two, but the live energy made it enjoyable. I noticed a few things, though... The Rock is actually slapping his opponents, instead of punching. The smacking sounds rival those of Flair's knife-edged chops. Also, HBK's "dive" over the top rope was more of a fling... it looked like a white boy doing a running man off a diving board into a pool. I think he tripped on the top rope, I'm not sure, but at least he made mostly contact. Brock and Rock ran out right under me, which was cool. But the lack of a finish wasn't.
Post-RAW: HHH walks up the ramp and goes to the back. He suddenly comes back out, because HBK is punching him back. They brawl some on top of the stage, then Michael's takes like 15 steps back, and hits a marathon Sweet Chin Music on HHH. Then he leaves. No resolution to the Brock/Rock thing
Loudest Pops: (I have no idea of the order, so I'll do it chronologically) 1. D'lo got a respectable pop 2. The Undertaker, with chants of USA 3. Trish and Stacy got obvious pops, but the crowd was dead for their match, for the aforementioned reason. 4. HHH got a good mixture. People love seeing him, then remember they're supposed to hate him. 5. RVD's pop was surprisingly small. Not from me, though 6. Rock's promo, Rock's entrance, Rock's match being announced, Rock's T-shirts being shilled, any mention of Rock or anything similar sounding "ROd, bROCK, fOzzy. 7. This should really go at the top, because it was definately the loudest pop of the night: HBK. Both his initial run in, his first Sweet Chin Music, and his second post-RAW, were all to tremendous ovations. Disregard anything you may have read about no one caring about him or his match, because 13,000+ fans at the Scope were all behind him and glad to see him.
Heel heat: 1. After Fink and some air cannon guy shot out T-shirts, when they ran out, they got booed heavily. 2. The Un-Americans, obviously. They made a good choice in picking a city with a huge-military base as a venue for tonight's action. 3. Fozzy and Jericho probably got the most heat. Not a loud night for the heels, mostly because we were popping for everyone that walked out (except for the Un-Americans, and me and my bro were marking out for Lance Storm).
Two guys got kicked out, though I'm not sure why. JR had a fan club sitting in a section, which was cool to see. The signs were decent, but the only one that stood out was a guy walking around the ringside area before the show started holding up for the rest of us to read: "Your ticket sucks".
