Television: “The Savior enters the boxing ring”: This was the Raab comeback

The sun is slowly setting over Düsseldorf as the old and the new television meet in the entrance area of ​​a smart multi-purpose hall. All kinds of celebrities have come to attend an event that hasn’t been seen for almost ten years: Stefan Raab in a television show. There are presenters crowding into the hall, comedians – and, this is the new television, stars from reality TV.

One of them is RTL’s “jungle king” Filip Pavlovic, who once became famous in the dating format “The Bachelorette” and later won the jungle show “I’m a Celebrity – Get Me Out of Here!” What does he associate with Raab? Pavlovic’s eyes almost glow. “My childhood!” he says. “TV total”, the famous clips, all that. “I think Stefan Raab has influenced four or five generations.”

Drag queen Olivia Jones is a little more reserved in her wording. “I don’t know if I would have advised him to do that. Because the pressure is very, very high,” she says of Raab’s return. The television landscape has changed. Many young people don’t even know who the man is anymore. And the expectations are so huge. “It’s as if someone has been resurrected,” says Jones. “The Savior is entering the boxing ring.”

What else can Raab do?

The conversations in the VIP area describe the diffuse mood of this evening in Düsseldorf’s PSD Bank Dome quite well. What can Raab still do? And above all: where does he want to go? Euphoria meets skepticism, nostalgia meets new beginnings. It is clear that the “Raabinator” is now both new and old television. He takes his legendary status, throws it into the balance and presents a new show next Wednesday (September 18) after a break of several years – not on traditional TV, but on the streaming platform RTL+, as he will announce late in the evening. Raab will be an RTL face – just like Filip Pavlovic in a way. Whether he knows who Filip Pavlovic is remains to be seen.

First of all, a boxing match against Regina Halmich has been announced, just like in 2001 and 2007. For months, there has been a lot of speculation about it, and the audience is feeling the tension. No one knows what the man, whom many still know from their teenage bedroom, looks like today. In 2015, he said goodbye to all his TV shows. Around Easter, mysterious internet clips suddenly announced – with their usual big mouths – another Halmich fight.

Lots of looking back – until the sky opens

The hall fills up early on, and by the end there will be more than 13,000 people. A large part of the audience is estimated to be between 30 and 50 – people who grew up with a television in which Raab was seen as a super-anarcho. The show’s producers cater to them accordingly: in long retrospective clips, old Raab shows are shown and the presenter is praised for his achievements. Nothing about it is really new.

Only singer Herbert Grönemeyer stands out by comparing Raab with the Cologne musician and comedian Hans Süper, a great of the Rhenish carnival. A strangely specific and new interpretation of the life’s work of the former butcher’s apprentice from Cologne-Sülz.

There is a big laugh when an old “TV total” clip is shown in which a panelist in Hans Meiser’s former talk show talks in a completely incomprehensible way. The old reflexes still work. The clip is several years old, but everyone knows it. During the commercial break, Raab’s old hit “Maschen-Draht-Zaun” is played in the hall. The blanket of nostalgia is spread wide.

Then Raab finally appears – and presents himself as an almost god-like figure. The former Jesuit student descends to his audience – one might say his disciples – on a long staircase that is lowered from the roof of the hall. From heaven to the depths of today’s television landscape, that’s how one could interpret it. Fitness influencer Pamela Reif floats through the hall on ropes as an angel. While Raab is celebrated, Halmich practices punches and steps in the ring. She is clearly taking the matter seriously.

Who is the man?

Finally, Raab can be seen from the front, shirtless, it is the moment that everyone has been waiting for. Raab looks surprisingly fit – and white-haired. “My sister wrote to me: she thought Nino de Angelo was coming down,” says one viewer.

“King Funny” is fit. But since we haven’t seen him for so long, the contrast is particularly stark. A symbol that time simply doesn’t stand still. Which suddenly gives the evening, all this fervently staged nonsense, a new note. Raab has to take a lot of hits. But the audience cheers him. He is the event – not the fight.

In the end, Raab – still slightly shaken and red-faced – summons the press to the catacombs of the hall to talk about his future plans. The new shows he wants to do. He and RTL have signed a five-year contract and Raab has even written a song about his new station. After Raab was the face of ProSieben for years, it’s still something to get used to.

Raab is in a great mood, joking, singing and talking. He jokes about all the speculation that has sprung up. What we don’t find out, however, is what he has generally done with his time in recent years.

In the show, “Let’s Dance” dancer Ekaterina Leonova says: “Maybe he has a talent for dancing too!” Raab on “Let’s Dance”? After this evening, almost nothing seems impossible. The “Raabinator” is back among mortals.