30 Days of WWE Challenge Day 14- Favorite Memory

First House Show: 12/26/06

Christmas Day 2006. I remember it as if it was yesterday.

I get a card from my brother on the couch, and I open it up.

I think it’s a gift card or something.

Instead however, it’s got a picture of John Cena locking Umaga in a, STF(U), and the RAW LIVE logo.

He told me that we (as in him, myself, and my sis) were all going to Albany, New York the day after Christmas to watch the RAW Live show!

For a second, I thought I was dreaming. And then I felt like a person at least ten years younger than my ripe old seventeen year-old self!

In continuation of one hellacious day after Christmas (revolving around a rare trip to the Galleria Mall and snatching a copy of WrestleMania X-Seven for free), time to head to the Albs-town!

On this chilly late-December evening, two things popped into my mind: one, we were parking well above in the parking garage, and two, there were WOO-offs all over the then-Pepsi Arena.

After the lights went down and the national anthem was played, the opening contest was that of Cade & Murdoch vs. Cryme Tyme. To say that CT was over with the crowd was an understatement, and how they never got the tag team titles ONCE I’ll never know.

A pleasing opening contest, the card was full of them. From Mickie James and Victoria to Cena and Umaga as the main, it was all good, even with rose-tinted glasses.

Two matches caught my eye though.

Just before intermission, I noticed the Intercontinental Championship on a rung above the ring. I nod towards my brother, and I tell him to go look at that. We both scream like little kids in synch that there was going to be a LADDER MATCH! And sure enough, Jeff Hardy defeated Shelton Benjamin, Carlito, and Johnny Nitro to retain said title in one of the sickest scenes of creativity known to man. Shelton running a ladder is better than most men’s daring spots of this nature.

The other was a six-man tag with D-Generation X (Triple H and Shawn Michaels) pairing up with RIC FLAIR versus Rated RKO (Randy Orton and Edge) and Kenny, who was feuding with Naitch at the time.

Because of what happened on RAW the Monday previous with D-X being DESTROYED by the RKO tandem, Howard Finkel announces it will be a no disqualification match!

After 15 minutes or so, I believe Kenny got superkicked into a Pedigree, and that was it. Although the match was over, Triple H then proceeded to Pedigree Kenny again, but this time it was ON A CHAIR!

Kenny sold that thing like death and had to be helped from the ring.

Cena’s entrance to the ring was deafening, and that the reactions on TV are no fluke/seagulls (aka the SMACKDOWN pop). Cena I believe won the match via DQ after a low-blow, but the crowd went home happy after Armando Estrada, Umaga’s manager, and the monster himself got cleaned out of the ring.

A happy ending, with something even rarer off in the distance… a honk-off! The wait in the parking garage was so long that a four-level honking contest pretty much began! My brother, the driver, was on the fourth level honking, pulling down the window, and yelling WOOOOO to the people below. EVERYONE followed suit!

Now if this isn’t a happy memory stretch of time, I don’t know what is, or is it?