DVD Review: Best of Raw packs punch
The Best of Raw - 15th Anniversary
I was so stoked when, at the beginning of December, I saw that this was coming out. Three DVDs featuring some of the best moments of WWE Raw? Sign me up, people! Suffice to say, the wait to get a hold of this one was pretty long but just before its initial release date, I wandered into a Future Shop and saw it on the shelf. I picked it up (along with a few beers) and headed home to immediately immerse myself in the nostalgia feast.
With Raw being on almost every week, over 700 episodes have aired and there are MANY great and shocking moments that WWE could have chosen. I will say this right now: I REALLY wish that there was a special feature on here where the people that were chosen to pick the footage that appears on the DVD set talk about their criteria and why they chose some certain segments. Speaking of the segments...
There are some really good segments on here: Vader attacking (the late and great) Gorilla Monsoon, Pillman's Got a Gun (where Pillman arms himself with a pistol and gets ready to shoot Stone Cold), Bret Speaks his Mind, The Debut of Mr. Socko and more.
On the negative side, there are some really bad segments that I don't consider the “BEST” of RAW and could have been left to be on certain wrestler's DVD collections. Examples are: Shawn Loses His Smile, The Rock: This is Your Life, Triple H Returns, The Rock Concert, and Shawn Michaels Returns (from like, what, four months ago?).
Along with some of the not-so-best moments of Raw on here, they REALLY focus a lot on HHH and HBK. For example, DX is here and there on this release, but it only focuses on HHH and HBK. I know that the former “Road Dogg Jessie James” and “Mr. Ass” are in TNA, but they are one of the reasons that DX took off after HBK left. They don't give the credit to them but for some reason they focus on when shitty X-Pac returned after his stint in WCW (plus his win years ago against Razor Ramon and a (decent) match against Bret Hart).
Stone Cold Steve Austin and The Rock are both featured quite a bit on here. We've seen these Austin and Rock bits so many times on other Raw DVDs or DVDs that were dedicated to The Rock and Austin already. My question is: why waste precious DVD time and other moments where we could truly look back and say, “that was awesome” or “I remember him!” during other moments during the show's 15 year run? Not to mention that Stone Cold and HHH BOTH have retrospective DVDs coming out this year.
For $30, three DVDs over nine hours is actually a good deal and I'm sure there are Rock and HBK fans that would want these segments on here. I enjoyed the set and will watch it for years to come to reflect back on why I love (and criticize the hell out of) wrestling.
On a side note, at Wal-Mart in the US (not sure about the Canadian version sold there), there was a limited edition set including a fourth DVD that contained the full first RAW episode. I'm not buying this set off of Ebay again to grab it, so I'm asking that if ANYONE reading this has it or knows someone who does, please get a hold of me so I may be able to, uh, borrow.
I was so stoked when, at the beginning of December, I saw that this was coming out. Three DVDs featuring some of the best moments of WWE Raw? Sign me up, people! Suffice to say, the wait to get a hold of this one was pretty long but just before its initial release date, I wandered into a Future Shop and saw it on the shelf. I picked it up (along with a few beers) and headed home to immediately immerse myself in the nostalgia feast.
With Raw being on almost every week, over 700 episodes have aired and there are MANY great and shocking moments that WWE could have chosen. I will say this right now: I REALLY wish that there was a special feature on here where the people that were chosen to pick the footage that appears on the DVD set talk about their criteria and why they chose some certain segments. Speaking of the segments...
There are some really good segments on here: Vader attacking (the late and great) Gorilla Monsoon, Pillman's Got a Gun (where Pillman arms himself with a pistol and gets ready to shoot Stone Cold), Bret Speaks his Mind, The Debut of Mr. Socko and more.
On the negative side, there are some really bad segments that I don't consider the “BEST” of RAW and could have been left to be on certain wrestler's DVD collections. Examples are: Shawn Loses His Smile, The Rock: This is Your Life, Triple H Returns, The Rock Concert, and Shawn Michaels Returns (from like, what, four months ago?).
Along with some of the not-so-best moments of Raw on here, they REALLY focus a lot on HHH and HBK. For example, DX is here and there on this release, but it only focuses on HHH and HBK. I know that the former “Road Dogg Jessie James” and “Mr. Ass” are in TNA, but they are one of the reasons that DX took off after HBK left. They don't give the credit to them but for some reason they focus on when shitty X-Pac returned after his stint in WCW (plus his win years ago against Razor Ramon and a (decent) match against Bret Hart).
Stone Cold Steve Austin and The Rock are both featured quite a bit on here. We've seen these Austin and Rock bits so many times on other Raw DVDs or DVDs that were dedicated to The Rock and Austin already. My question is: why waste precious DVD time and other moments where we could truly look back and say, “that was awesome” or “I remember him!” during other moments during the show's 15 year run? Not to mention that Stone Cold and HHH BOTH have retrospective DVDs coming out this year.
For $30, three DVDs over nine hours is actually a good deal and I'm sure there are Rock and HBK fans that would want these segments on here. I enjoyed the set and will watch it for years to come to reflect back on why I love (and criticize the hell out of) wrestling.
On a side note, at Wal-Mart in the US (not sure about the Canadian version sold there), there was a limited edition set including a fourth DVD that contained the full first RAW episode. I'm not buying this set off of Ebay again to grab it, so I'm asking that if ANYONE reading this has it or knows someone who does, please get a hold of me so I may be able to, uh, borrow.
