WWE House Show Results from Santa Barbara, California 9-23-02
Submitted by Calvin Martin on Tuesday, September 24, 2002 at 5:29 PM EST





Report by Brian Shaw

The night started with the Smackdown announcer welcoming us to the Event Center. That was his first mistake. The venue is better known as The Thunderdome. Oh well.

Funaki was the first one to come out. He introduced himeself and introduced Dawn Marie. Dawn Marie tried to explain why she is better than the other divas, especially, Torrie Wilson. Torrie Wilson arrived and a small impromptu fight took place. Torrie ripped Dawn's top off and that was that.

Once both divas returned backstage, Reverend D-Von showed up for the first actual fight of the night vs. Funaki. D-Von got cheered at first but the crowd turned on him when he condemmed the antics of Dawn and Torrie as a sin. The fight was decent. There were many calls by the audience for D-Von to get the tables (he did not). D-Von, did win the fight. (The original card scheduled Randy Orton vs. D-Von but the change was probably due to Orton jumping to RAW.)

The next fight was a tag team match. The first tag team to the ring was The Big Valbowski and Doug Basham. They got good cheers until The Big Valbowski ripped on the girls at UC Santa Barbara. )UCSB is right on the coast and there is a large beach on campus. The number of girls wearing swimsuits on campus yesterday would have given Jerry Lawler a heart attack. Ok, I have pushed UCSB enough.) Their opponents were Billy and Chuck. Billy and Chuck did several of their poses and the match began. Thanks to the Big Valbowski's ignorance, the crowd was solidly behind Billy and Chuck. At one point in the match, Valbowski went to the top rope only to lose his balance and take a cornerpost to the "spaldings". Billy and Chuck pinned Basham for the win. After Billy and Chuck left, Valbowski was still stuck on the cornerpost in pain. As he tried to get up, Basham and the ref started arguing. Basham pushed the ref and the ref pushed Basham into the ropes causing Valbowski to land on the corner post again. There was, of course, no sympathy for Valbowski from the UCSB crowd.

Once Valbowski finally limped backstage, the next match was between John Cena and Matt Hardy. The crowd was solid behind Matt. Matt tried to get some heel heat by saying that Jeff was not here. The crowd still cheered him, though and he simply took the cheers after that. Matt also won the fight.

The next match was a mixed tag team match pitting Billy Kidman and Torrie Wilson against Jamie Noble and Nidia. Billy Kidman got the win, but the funniest part of the fight, in my opinion, was Noble getting Nidia out of the ring by rolling her to the ropes and drop kicking her to the floor.

The match before intermission was for the WWE Championship between Brock Lesnar (without Paul Heyman) and Edge. The match was main event worthy. The ref took a hit resulting in a ghost 3-count for both fighters. The inevitable F-5 finish resulted from interference on a top rope Edge stunt by Eddie Guerrero. Both Lesnar and Guerrero stood over Edge after the fight until Lesnar noticed that Guerrero was still standing.

The sit down match was between Batista and Bull Buchanan. They wore the same color shorts and the only way to tell them apart was Batista's body art. Batista won.

The next match was the "Kiss my Ass Match" between Kurt Angle and Rikishi. Angle got a few "You Suck" chants from the audience. The match was simply classic. Rikishy won and went for the stink face only to get a low blow from Rikishi. Angle tried to set up Rikishi for a stink face but Rikishi countered in the same way. Angle finally got the stink face and that was that.

The next match was Shannon Moore vs. Tajiri. Shannon Moore won a decent fight.

The final match of the night was Chris Benoit and Chavo Guerrero vs. Crash Holly and Rey Mysterio. The crowd was solidly behind Rey but otherwise impartial. The crowd cheered loudly when Benoit made the throat slashing gesture. He then tried to nail Crash with a head butt that missed. The ending of the fight featured a 619 to both Guerrero and Benoit.

OVERALL THOUGHTS

The UCSB crowd did not give any of the heels heat from the start. We made all of them earn the heat that they received that night by treatign them as faces until they gave us reason to do otherwise. The only wrestlers that received any amount of heat were Dawn Marie, Kurt Angle, Revered D-Von, and The Big Valbowski.

The overall performance was well worth the cost of admission. There are no bad seats in The Thunderdome. Too bad it is too small to host a televised show. My estimate is that there were around 2500 in attendance (50% of the seating capacity).








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