WWE Monday Night Raw - 4/2/07

Pre-Raw Matches:
1) Steven Richards vs. Kofi Kingston – 2
2) Chris Masters vs. Eugene – 3
3) Victoria vs. Candice Michelle – 1
4) Viscera vs. Pat Buck – 1
5) Kenny Dykstra vs. Val Venis – 3

Richards and Kingston had fun little match while staying very basic. Kingston scored the upset victory and afterward Stevie had Lillian tell the arena that everything would be okay. The first match up for the Heat taping was Masters and Eugene. Eugene got a great pop despite getting his head shaved and looking like the bastard son of The Highlanders. Masters is still totally immobile and still sucks. His gimmick is totally dead now that his unbreakable masterlock full nelson was broken a few weeks ago by Lashley. Victoria and Candice did their standard fare and furthered the point that the women’s division is totally pointless except for Mickie James. Viscera ate Pat Buck from OVW and then went backstage and devoured the entire catering area. Rounding out Heat was Kenny against the long forgotten Val Venis. They definitely had the best match of the Heat taping and kept everything fluid and simple for a decent capper to an otherwise lackluster version of Heat.

Raw:
1) 10-Man Tag Team Battle Royal (Michaels & Cena retain) – 3
2) 10-Man Tag Team Battle Royal (Hardys win belts) – 4
3) Ric Flair & Carlito vs. Shelton Benjamin & Charlie Haas – 3
4) The Great Khali vs. Super Crazy – 0
5) Bobby Lashley vs. Umaga & Armando Alejandro Estrada – Handicap Match – 2

The first tag battle royal was fun and was used mainly to set up the second one which caught everyone off guard. To be honest, the whole show could’ve consisted of battle royals and it wouldn’t have bothered me a bit. The second battle royal was used as a vehicle to fully turn Michaels on Cena and to reset the Raw tag team division by giving the belts to The Hardys. Flair and Carlito have a good future as a team and I could forsee some quality matches between the two once Carlito finally turns on Flair. Khali beat Crazy so bad that the inside of his pants could’ve been mistaken for a green card. Finally, the main event was piss-poor and featured a mass exodus with nearly half the arena gone before the match was over. Lashley and Umaga do not work well together and I was mercilessly yelling negative things toward the ring before a guy a few rows in front of me responded to my comments with a rather warm “then go home, asshole!”. As soon as the bell rang, my group bailed and two of us hit up the Steak N Shake across from the arena where we met up with Ken Kennedy, Gregory Helms, Marcus Corvon, and Kevin Thorn. We spoke with the briefly on the way out and all four were very friendly and approachable. Of course, one could always wonder how nice they would’ve been had we not paid for their food, which we saw as a small way of giving back to them because they give us 52 weeks of entertainment a year.