Scary Triple H-Orton-Cena Stat, Million-Dollar ‘Mania



It’s interesting to note that since the creation of the second WWE Title in September 2002, every Raw title pay-per-view match besides two has featured either Triple H, John Cena or Randy Orton. And in the two shows in which none of the three wrestlers were featured, Triple H was in the main event of both pay-per-views, which of course were pushed bigger than the title matches on those shows. Those two shows are Bad Blood 2004 (featuring Chris Benoit vs. Kane in a long forgotten match with Triple H vs. Shawn Michaels in a 47-minute Hell in the Cell bout as the main event) and Vengeance 2006 (featuring Rob Van Dam vs. Edge in an undercard match and the in-ring reunion of D-Generation X in the main event, who took on the entire Spirit Squad in a 5-on-2 Handicap Match).

Regarding the Million Dollar giveaway on Raw, during the first week of the contest, WWE officials made a decision to have it “controlled” for television. The winners expected to be called during the show were first contacted by 9 p.m. to make sure they were watching Raw and to tell them they would likely be called later in the evening. This pretty much explains why the winners’ reactions during week one didn’t come off too big or spontaneous. Also, they didn’t want to call people who weren’t watching Raw, make sure there weren’t any busy signals, and that the people called would be at home. As it turned out, they still got a busy signal later in the evening. The process was tweaked for week two, hence the winners’ considerably more excited reactions during the program. WWE made another change regarding the phone cards given to Vince McMahon during the show. For week two, they printed the phone numbers in gigantic numerals on the cards so Vince wouldn’t have to break out his reading glasses, and thus come off as an old man all the while having trouble dialing the phone, which doesn’t exactly make for riveting television. In another interesting change, the week before Vince went on this huge spiel, doing an “us” vs. “them” speech, with “them” being elitist snobs who look down on professional wrestling. In week two, Vince himself came off like he didn’t want anything to do with his fan base and mocked a few of the winners in the process, a sharp contrast from the week before.

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