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WWE NEWS: Cena appears after Raw goes off-air, plus tons of Raw TV taping notes - Batista cuts off-air promo, Punk chants & signs, hi-jacking prevention, Emma's bonus dance, more



Feb 4, 2014 - 1:42:43 AM

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WWE Raw TV taping report

February 3, 2014

Omaha, Neb.

Report by Reyal, PWTorch reader



- After Raw went off the air, Kane and Randy Orton resumed their beat down of Daniel Bryan... until John Cena ran out to make the save. Cena went into his finishing routine on Kane and then gave Kane and Orton AAs one after another to bring the show to a close. No Advertised Dark Match and no return date mentioned.



Live Raw TV Notes



- There were tons of "C-M Punk" chants leading into the warm-up USA promo. By the time Raw went live, though, all the energy of the chant died out. Definitely a sign of things to come for the rest of the night.



- Randy Orton's opening promo could barely be heard over the C.M. Punk chants. I do find it interesting that he did not do the normal pause delivery. He cruised through his lines until the chants stopped. WWE was trying to get in front of this "show hi-jacking" thing.



- Big E. Langston and Roman Reigns were the stars of the opening match. Big E's entrance and theme got the pop of the night up to this point.



- I found it interesting that there wasn't a single time where there was any sort of pop for the WWE Network. We got several videos for it and not once was there any sense of enthusiasm from the crowd. Conversely, lots of cheers for WM video packages and "20 years of Raw" stuff.



- Side note on Emma: tonight was my nephew's 10th birthday and we were lucky enough to be four seats behind where Emma was planted. During the commercial when the dancing bit was getting set up, I called her over and had him hold up his "Kiss me, it's my birthday" sign. He got no kiss, but she gave it a good laugh and made sure to tell him Happy Birthday and dance for him a little bit. Really classy way to make a 10-year-old's night.



- Ryback did an amazing job of keeping a crowd looking for a reason to get unruly under control during the Sheamus vs. Curtis Axel match. Whenever a hi-jacking chant would start, he'd heel it up and draw some heat. It's a little thing, but again, WWE is trying to keep from getting caught with their pants down, so to speak.



- Prior to Batista's entrance, he came on the Titantron and cut the most disinterested local promo I've ever seen. He said: "I'm a big sports fan, but most of all, I am a big baseball fan. And for that reason, I'm so excited to be in Omaha, Nebraska, home of the College World Series." He went on briefly, but the point was clear: Please don't boo me, I like you guys.



- The crowd went into "entertaining itself" mode during the Bryan-Orton main event, which was their best one of the series, I'd say. "JBL" chants started briefly, "Jerry," and even some of the vocal males started to turn on Bryan and chanting "RKO" at different times.



Raw Wrap-up Notes



- On the way into the building, security was confiscating signs. They were unclear about what they were looking for when asked, but I'm sure you could imagine whose signs were being snatched... C.M. Punk.



- The arena was about 80-90 percent full with a lot of families, but an alarmingly big number of "vocal males." Omaha usually doesn't go against the grain, but tonight's crowd clearly has been watching and looking forward to hi-jacking the show.



- There were a ton of Cena shirts being sold at the stands and a lot of Daniel Bryan shirts in the crowd. Surprisingly, few C.M. Punk shirts were being sold from what I could tell.



- Biggest Cheers: Daniel Bryan, C.M. Punk (very close second; lots of cheers for him, but nothing lasting in duration), and Big E. (the crowd came unglued for his hot tag and entrance for that matter).



- Most Heat: Orton during the opening promo, Batista, Kane's run-in.



[Torch art credit Grant Gould (c) PWTorch.com]



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