When we heard that Flo Rida would be hosting WWE Raw, it seemed like, "That ain't gonna work." But the more we thought about it, the more that particular tag team made sense. Both are splendidly packaged celebrations of pop culture, and boy are they entertaining.
Wrestling deals in iconography. And what is Flo Rida but the perfectly anthropomorphized, walking, talking representation of fun club culture? He is Miami's icon!
If our city was in a situation that could be resolved only via body slams, we would send out Flo Rida as our champion. Well, if The Rock weren't picking up his phone, of course.
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But we digress ... As special guests of World Wrestling Entertainment, we were allowed to arrive for WWE Raw via the innards of the American Airlines Arena.
On our way in, we immediately recognized a chilled-out Great Khali leaning back onto a table. We hadn't watched wrestling for years, and felt like we had outgrown it. But coming face to face with a seven-foot-one, 347-pound behemoth is enough to inspire awe and make one feel like an absolute child.
Last night's crowd at the AAA seemed to agree with us. The audience was composed of a lot of families and younger kids. We have been to our share of Miami Heat playoff games, and the NBA decibel level doesn't even compare to the chants of this lower-capacity group of WWE aficionados. It was an impressively engaged pack.
RAW followed hot off the heels of Sunday night's Battlegrounds pay-per-view, in which John Cena retained the WWE World Heavyweight Championship. And much of the Miami show was devoted to the fallout of said event.
Wrestling legend Triple H came out to start things up, expressing his grief over the result of the Sunday night match: "I'm going to tweet my displeasure. I'm going to tweet about it until my fingers bleed." Guess he is not a Cena fan. (We bet he's Cena 'nuff. Haha.) And he would decide on who would be the best prospect to challenge the champ at next month's Summerslam.
Randy Orton -- whom we've always loved after completely unfounded rumors spread that he shit in a WWE Diva's gym bag -- was the first to demand a rematch against Cena. As he was speaking to Triple H, we almost had a heart attack when a terrifying pop thundered from a poker-red pyrotechnics rig to signal the arrival of the masked Kane, who felt he was deserving a title chance as well.
The pops would occur throughout the night at various surprise entrances. It kept us on our toes.
Another theme song blasted, and Roman Reigns charged toward the ring through the rowdy crowd. Dude has a pretty badass tattoo/hair combo, and he's generally seen in the WWE-nerd community as the next big star. The place went nuts when he suggested that the people had demanded Cena vs. Reigns at Summerslam.
Various other characters made their bids throughout the night for the eventual title match spot. But at the end of the night -- spoiler alert! -- Brock Lesnar would make a surprise appearance, and villainous WWE bigwig Paul Heyman would come out and make a crazy fucking promo, cementing Lesnar as the Summerslam challenger.
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