'RAW' AROUND THE WORLD:

Over lunch last week, Jefferson County resident Glenn Jacobs - who performs as the masked man-monster Kane on the TV wrestling show "Raw" - was telling me about a recent bout in India, where a reporter thought he had stumbled upon something new.

"He wasn't aware of the entertainment aspects of what we do," Jacobs says, "so he wasn't very happy with the whole setup.

"He didn't understand it was entertainment. He was flabbergasted.

"The chairs over heads and the trash talk were all new to him - and it made for some spirited and negative copy in the Indian newspapers," Jacobs says. "Raw" is broadcast in India about three weeks behind what we see here.

However, the reporter hadn't caught the show and hadn't been expecting certain aspects of the live event, such as men dressed in Spandex hitting each other with trash cans and tables.

The whole wrestling experience in India was altogether different than what we have come to know here.

Crowds were so massive and tickets so hard to get that police were taking citizens out of their chairs and putting personal friends in, Jacobs says.

The flashy arena show was brought down a notch in India, too, he says.

"We were out in a field," he said. "They put some curtains around and ... they put some grandstands up for 10,000 to 15,000 people.

"The fan reaction was good," he said, despite all the differences.

In some ways, Jacobs said it reminded him of his early days in small-time wrestling around these parts, when the arenas weren't high-dollar venues and the crowds were down-to-earth.

Despite the drumming that they took in the press, "a lot of people understood what we do and went with it," Jacobs says.

"Raw" can be seen at 9 p.m. Mondays on TNN.

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