Elias鈥� heat, Super Show
In the world of pro wrestling, there is a secret lingo that those on the inside of the business know that fans and the general public do not.
Well, for the most part.
For the past 20 years, 鈥渋nsider鈥� terms have become more public.
(With that said, for those not on the inside of the business, don鈥檛 try to look cool by using inside terms to those actually on the inside of the business because it makes you look like an absolute joke.)
I digress.
Having done my first pro wrestling column as a kid in 1999, I have always tried to steer away from using inside jargon in the columns because I didn鈥檛 want to look bad to others in the business.
But after watching Raw Monday night, which emanated from Key Arena in Seattle, I am going to break my own self-imposed rule.
The phrase I want to look at is cheap heat.
Cheap heat, by definition, is when a wrestler incites a negative crowd reaction by insulting the crowd, typically by bringing up something totally unrelated to the wrestling business.
Examples would be Smackdown being in Pittsburgh and a wrestler talking junk on the Steelers or a wrestler talking smack on Cleveland because LeBron James left again.
This past Monday on Raw, Elias and Kevin Owens were in the ring and Elias was about to perform a song.
Then, out of nowhere, cheap heat became gold.
Owens made a comment about how the two of them were to face John Cena and Bobby Lashley on the Super Show-Down card last night in Melbourne, Australia.
All it took was a quick one-liner by Elias about Seattle, the host of Raw.
鈥淚t doesn鈥檛 make sense, you know, like having a basketball team in Seattle,鈥� was Elias鈥� response to the crowd in the next to last event ever at Key Arena.
The reference struck a sensitive chord with the audience, and apparently the town is still really bitter over the SuperSonics leaving in 2008 for Oklahoma City.
What followed was pure, unscripted magic.
For six-and-a-half minutes, the crowd booed so loud that Elias and Owens could not continue their segment.
The pair tried to talk on their microphones, but they had to literally scream to hear each other, and they were sitting right next to one another.
The segment was money, and the crowd finally came down a little when Lio Rush came out to cut a promo.
A partial clip of it can be found at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XigdA6kiLcE.
The last time a crowd reacted like that, it was the night after WrestleMania 33 when Roman Reigns came to the ring to start the show.
The night before, he defeated The Undertaker in what was then believed to be Taker鈥檚 last match.
Reigns stood in the ring for over eight minutes and couldn鈥檛 speak because each time he raised the mic to speak, the crowd booed him unmercifully.
Super Show-Down results
Elias once again drew the ire of the home crowd as he and Owens had the Melbourne audience blistering mad.
Don鈥檛 get me wrong, I didn鈥檛 get all of the references as I am not up on Australian sports, but the crowd was livid.
I like the Elias and Owens pairing, and it will be interesting to see if WWE keeps them together.
In their match, Cena and Lashley won when Cena pinned Elias, as of course Cena had to win.
The previously-mentioned show from Australia aired live yesterday morning on the WWE Network at 5 a.m. and some results were predictable.
Like we have looked at in this column for a few weeks, Shawn Michaels helped Triple H defeat The Undertaker and post-match, Taker and Kane chokeslammed Triple H and Shawn Michaels.
Look for their anticipated tag match at Crown Jewel to be announced as early as Monday night.
In a surprising move, AJ Styles retained the WWE title by making Samoa Joe tap out and Styles will defend the title against Daniel Bryan at Crown Jewel.
WWE Network price to change?
According to www.pwinsiderelite.com, WWE may finally make changes to the pricing of its network.
If the report is correct, there will be four different price levels ranging from free to $14.99 a month.
Rare Undertaker interview
Ed Yong recently interviewed The Undertaker out of character, and the video is a unique look at the man behind the character.
The video can be found at https://www.youtubewatch?v=4mcd8BAjU0c&t=630s.
Email questions/comments to Bill at powerhousehughes@gmail.com or tweet them to me @BillHughes_III.