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[2004-08-16-WWE-Raw] Randy Orton vs Chris Benoit


Superstar Sleeze

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World Heavyweight Champion Randy Orton vs Chris Benoit - RAW 8/16/04

 

This is a really simple layout, but executed to perfection. They both played their roles to a tee. Benoit came out hot right of the gate and delivers one of the all-time great shitkickings. If the Michaels match was an exhibition of how great Benoit is at selling, this match is an exhibition of his offensive prowess. To Randy's credit, he sells being overwhelmed perfectly. I love all his little attempts of creating space like an eyepoke or tights pull, but nothing is stopping the Rabid Wolverine, who is chopping the fuck out of him. Benoit hits an awesome superplex and cant get the pinfall. He just keeps tearing into Orton. Dropkick from the apron to the floor, kneecrusher on the steps and then a Sharpshooter and they are in Canada, BABY! This is a great shine. Benoit is on the apron when Orton nails him with a dropkick and this was the exact opportunity Orton needed. Orton sells the knee throughout his heat segment and even though it was no super focused on he is still selling it. Impressive. Orton is focusing on Benoit's neck with neckbreakers and a great, great chinlock. I remember him getting a lot of guff around this time for his chinlock this is one of the best damn chinlocks ever. Nothing lazy about it. Benoit three elbows and fires off his offense rolling Germans, Diving Headbutt, Crossface. I love the tenacious roll throughs on the Crossface ala Wrestlemania XX. Evolution hits the ring and it is an RKO outta nowhere! Damn they started doing the "outta nowhere" that early! The end of this match is quite famous and one of the more memorable angles of my teens. Orton was totally not ready to be babyface, HHH totally kneecapped him by winning the title back in September. You can argue Orton never really recovered. If he did it was probably not until 2011 I would say as a babyface at least. Great TV match with Benoit firing on all cylinders. I would say Orton has shown more promise than Cena so far and Big Dave has not even had a match worthy of my attention. We will see when Cena pulls ahead, but not for a while because I am returning to 80s wrestling. ****

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  • GSR changed the title to [2004-08-16-WWE-Raw] Randy Orton vs Chris Benoit
  • 4 years later...

I liked this a wee bit better than their SummerSlam match as it had the added edge of Benoit trying to win his belt back. There was a vignette between Triple H and Orton that set up Randy's story for the match, which was a "butterflies in the stomach" type narrative where Orton was meant to be afraid that he was going to lose the title back to Benoit straight away (the same psychology Evolution had used on Edge when he defeated Orton for the IC title, incidentally.) Lawler kind of shat all over that by constantly mentioning that Randy had been partying all night and was hungover, but whatever. It was obvious that Evolution would show up, and it was equally obvious that something was up with the post-match celebration. I gotta admit, I kind of liked the way the beating played out. Say what you will about Triple H, but he was good at WWE style melodramatics. It was kind of sad to see the end of the criminally underrated Evolution run (at least the version with Orton), but a blind man could have seen it wasn't going to sit well with Triple H that another member of Evolution was holding the world title. 

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