Sunday, February 28, 2010

Least Surprising Future Endeavoring Ever

Courtesy of Dot Net

HaasCharlie Haas is the latest in the WWE's hatchet-spree. If anyone is caught by surprise by this, then please, by all means, beat yourself with a club until you draw blood or lose consciousness. The fact that he hasn't been on TV in almost a year should tell you how highly they think of him. He asked for his release earlier in the year and the WWE hilariously refused. I guess they came to their senses and realized that Haas really has no intrinsic value to them at this point.

However, it makes me wonder who's next? Jack Swagger? You'd hope not because he was a FCW Champion and has a lot of potential. Mike Knox? I'd be homicidal since Knox is the one guy they have who could replace and surpass Undertaker or Kane. Vladimir Kozlov? ...I don't think I'd care too much about that one, actually. We'll see. With the elimination of ECW, I don't think the future endeavorings are over.

Saturday, February 27, 2010

From the Archives: Ricky Steamboat vs. Steve Austin, 3/94

The most famous encounter that "Stunning" Steve Austin and Ricky Steamboat had in WCW was when Austin injured and retired the Dragon in August of 1994 in a weird bit of karmic foreshadowing for Austin himself (having had his career ultimately shortened on an errant Owen Hart piledriver). About six months before that, the two had a number one contendership match for Ric Flair's WCW World Heavyweight Championship on WCW Saturday Night. It was a pretty decent match with an insanely hot flurry of pin attempts from Steamboat at the end, which finished with Steamer winning on a DQ because Austin's manager, Col. Robert Parker, entered the ring to give his charge an advantage. Notable in this match is a pairing of Bobby Heenan and Tony Schiavone where they worked well together. I guess Eric Bischoff and the Monday Night Wars were to blame for Schiavone's descent into shill-happy sucktitude. Anyway, enjoy!


Ricky Steamboat vs. Steve Austin
Uploaded by Stinger1981. - More professional, college and classic sports videos.

Friday, February 26, 2010

The Hurricane Free to Join Jeff Hardy in Orlando PLUS ETA

...and so is his arch-nemesis, The Ripper.

From the Torch

Helms and BurchillGregory Helms and Paul Burchill both got their releases from the WWE today. Not surprising on either front. Helms was clamoring for his release so he could join his BFFs in Orlando, Jeff Hardy and Shannon Moore, both of whom who've only been seen in promos for TNA Impact's move to Monday nights since 1/4. Plus there was that whole incident in the cab with Chris Jericho that people were saying was Helms' fault.

As for Burchill, he really did nothing wrong other than have creative not come up with anything for him after his feud with the aforementioned Helms, including a stint as "The Ripper", came and went. You could say it's a shame, and believe me, I thought Burchill had potential, but at this point, it's not surprising given that more than one of the NXT guys are going to get contracts (at this point, I think everyone except Darren Young is in play for one), and fat does need to be trimmed. Burchill might be better off in the indies, but you know TNA will make a play for him, since you know, they're not satisfied with the other 23,000 wrestlers they have to cram into about 90 minutes of new TV run time every week.

ETA @ 2:50 PM EST: From the Torch

Maria Kanellis is gone now too. Didn't she just win the Slammy for Best Diva and is representing the company in the newest round of Celebrity Apprentice? Weird firing.

Friday Five: Women, Divas and Knockouts

This week's FF is dedicated to the fairer sex in professional wrestling.

1. What was your recollection of GLOW?

2. Who was your favorite female valet?

3. Would you watch a show dedicated to the TNA Knockouts?

4. Who was the best combination of wrestling talent and sex appeal in wrestling history?

5. What is your favorite move innovated by a woman?

Thursday, February 25, 2010

TH vs. Recaps: An Explanation

A scene that could be happen over the next month and be recapped a million times


It's been a long running gag around places I frequent on the Internet that the ad nauseam recaps the WWE runs during its programming make my blood boil with the intensity of a hot spring. It's not unwarranted. I do hate those recaps for the most part, especially ones that virtually replay an entire segment from earlier in the night, or ones that are repeats of recaps they ran earlier in the show. I know that they want to drive home the importance of angles and stuff, but I feel the way they recap stuff is overkill.

But the thing is, I don't think that recaps are bad in and of themselves. I have to say that the WWE production team does a stellar job with these. For example, the much-praised Undertaker/HBK feud recap that aired on RAW the other night was fantastic. The song was right, the clips that were picked were the right ones and the pacing was fantastic. You can watch it here. The problem I had with it though, it's a video package that's better suited to go before their match at WrestleMania, on PPV, not one that you sink up time on free TV for. It's the timing and length of the recaps and the utilization of the TV time they have remaining for the other things on the show, namely building the other angles and actual wrestling.

It's not all "hurr, they need moar tiem for Evin Born to do his flipz!!1" like the reason why I was accused of not liking recaps at one board. That is just one of the reasons, but it's not the largest one, especially heading into WrestleMania. The build to WrestleMania is the climax to the year. It's not the time to build new guys up on the main shows, it's the time to really amp up the builds to your marquee matches. So it's a shame that a guy such as Bourne isn't going to get much TV time except to job here or compete in a MitB qualifier there, but that's the breaks. Time is needed for matches and events surrounding the WM card.

But wait, you say, that's what those recaps set out to do, why are you bitching? Well, here's the thing. They're clumsily put together or placed in the show. There was a recap last year that replayed the entire segment where John Cena revealed he videotaped Vickie Guerrero and Big Show making out backstage the next week. Barely any editing at all. It was just an example in the total malaise that every match save HBK/UT had going into last year's WrestleMania. It was like each feud had its own big moment between No Way Out and WrestleMania and the rest of each feud was just lazily advanced with .500 heat trades and squash matches featuring the heels' inept henchmen (Chavo Guerrero, Legacy, etc.) The feuds aren't being driven home due to great build week-in and week-out; they're being built by repetition of single events here and there.

That's my problem, the recaps are being used by a lazy writing team that really doesn't want to do the work to make WrestleMania special. Notice that this only happens during the build to WM, when they don't have to build a new star or when they have to actually write angles and feuds to sell PPVs since WM sells itself. Yet, looking back, that's not how it used to be. I mean, the MegaPowers exploding was a masterfully crafted angle. Austin/Hart, great feud with a stellar blowoff at WM13. The Ironman match the year before... it wasn't just the matches that felt epic, but it was the lead-ins going into them.

If they did recaps short style, like hitting the two or three major things that happened during the important events they want to refresh and left more time for the wrestlers to perform and give us something more to build on, it would be great. Imagine how different last year might have been if they had fleshed the angle out among Show, Cena and Edge better instead of just playing off that clip and then replays of the little that happened each subsequent week? Imagine how much more exciting Money in the Bank could be if they actually gave it more than just a group interview the week before WM as a build and actually put subplots into it rather than making it just a midcard talent dump.

So when I groan about recaps on the card, don't mistake it for not wanting them at all. If there were no recaps, then it'd be like TNA, who could stand to use a recap package here or there rather than throwing a million details and snarky, insider comments out there and expecting people other than the Crucial Crew to remember them. I just want them to be used smarter and not used as a replacement for quality booking. Make my WrestleMania special again, WWE. Give me a build rather than one event and a million recaps, please.

This Week in Off-Topic: SNOWKILL '09-'10

Thanks to blogfan Marty Day for that title.

SNOW SUCKS!


The last time the Philadelphia area got as much snow as it's gotten this winter, I was in 8th grade. Back then, snow was a God-send. It meant time off from school, playing tackle football in the streets and a license to sleep in and be lazy. Even when the snow was too deep to go outside and play in it after that epic blizzard in 1996, I still had a bunch of stuff to do indoors. I had a NES and a buttload of games, a Creepy Crawlers oven and illegal cable to watch movies ad infinitum on pay-per-view (don't judge me now, cable companies, I'm totally legit at this point). The only bad thing about it was the shoveling, but really, when you have two brothers and a father like me, it didn't matter if youdid a half-assed job. Shoveling in and of itself wasn't even that big a deal to kids in general; the entrepreneurial spirits in the neighborhood saw it as a way to make a nice sum of cash for their labors.

Fast-forward fourteen years, and as the Delaware Valley is bracing for (or in the midst of if you really think what we're getting right now is bad) its fourth accumulating snowstorm in the last 2-and-a-half months, I meet the new weather pattern with a loud groan. As you grow up, snow suuuuuucks. Big time.

For one, you no longer get snow days unless you work for the government. Most jobs remain open or at the very least, with the proliferation of reliable wireless Internet connections, make you work from home. Bummer. In addition, snow gives commuting by anything other than snowmobile as great a degree of difficulty as trying to get a babyface over with a flamboyant homosexual gimmick in the WWE. Double bummer. And don't think that you get off the hook for shoveling. More often than not, your kids whom you send out to shovel do a half-assed job (Lord knows I did when I was younger), so you have to clean up after them. If you don't, and some dumbass slips and falls on your property, you're liable. Joy. And of course, if you don't want to do it yourself, you're paying for one of those aforementioned entrepreneurial kids to do it for you. Snow then goes from a potential money maker to a money sink.

So yeah, with another 3-to-18 inches of snow baring down on the area on top of the already record-breaking snowfalls seen this winter, you can't blame me for being a bit testy. Well, unless you live in Canada or Buffalo or some other locale that gets this kind of snow all the time. Then you can tell me to shut up. But yeah, snow sucks when you're an adult, and the last time I checked, despite the four video game systems at my disposal and my ever-burgeoning comic book collection, I'm an adult.

So what's the point of this? Well, there really is none other than to vent frustrations at Mother Nature. It's all you can ever do about the weather, really. It's a fickle bitch. But then again, maybe it's not all that bad.

I mean, being snowed in provides an excellent opportunity to catch up on watching wrestling on DVD, right?

Wednesday, February 24, 2010

What They're Saying about NXT

Daniel Bryan with Chris Jericho in a heel hook


With the big debut of WWE NXT last night came reactions as well. Here's a sampling:

Rich Twilling
Good match and good showing for Daniel Bryan. I actually believed Jericho might have tapped out. So far, I like the show. It feels like a reality show and the idea is to really feel for the rookies being in the position they are in, and they succeeded with this viewer. I'm curious to see how long this format will remain interesting. I thought they did wonders with Miz and Bryan tonight.
Totally disagree with the "reality show" feel comment. It felt like a regular WWE show with some different stuff sprinkled in. It didn't feel like I was watching Jersey Shore or Next Food Network Star, but in a way, that's a good thing.

Chris Jericho
NXT was pretty cool. Daniel Bryan and Wade Barrett will be stars. However, Punks guy has the worst hair I've ever seen....
Jericho also retorted mockingly to someone who whined about him being too stiff with Danielson last night. The whiner deserved it. I mean, people don't realize that Danielson has been in matches that would make the one last night look like gay porn.

Cox813 of Cageside Seats
Overall, it was a decent hour of wrestling. It seemed like there might have been timing issues, as there were a TNA-esque amount of commercial breaks in the last half hour, which hurt the flow of the show, but there was enough different between the sit-down interviews, the crane camera, and the hyped "pros vs. rookies" conflict to where it felt like it wasn't standard WWE fare. We'll see how long they are able to keep that feeling, but for now, the show feels fresh.
Yeah, the RAW Rebound and the commercials really hurt the end of the show from a timing standpoint. I think if they had combined the two shorter commercial breaks into a slightly longer one, it might have helped things leading into the match.

Good Ol' JR
Enjoyed NXT..thought the announcing had an interesting edge. Adding some sizzle & attitude to commentary nice, new element.
The announcing was probably the freshest thing on the show.

In another intriguing note, Michael Cole has removed his profile from the WWE Universe page because he doesn't want to associate with us Internet fans. God bless them for really going all out with this angle.

The Best Moves of All-Time: Space Flying Tiger Drop

The Great Sasuke is known to fans of the WWF thanks to his mini-feud with TAKA Michinoku, which produced some fine matches, the most notable being their tilt at the infamous In Your House: Canadian Stampede. Puro fans know him as one of the most influential junior heavyweights of all-time, and whose career accomplishments include runner-up at the seminal 1994 Super-J Cup Tournament (losing to Wild Pegasus, i.e. He Who Shall Not Be Named). He's also responsible for giving us one of the most recognizeable moves from the ring to the outside, the Space Flying Tiger Drop. Enjoy!

Tuesday, February 23, 2010

Instant Feedback: NXT Up, Something Interesting

WWE NXT's debut show, like Vince McMahon promised, delivered something that I never thought any show could possibly have done.

They made Michael Cole interesting and sound innovative.

No, seriously, dead seriously. I groaned when I saw him and Josh "Dead-Air" Matthews would be the on-air staff, but both guys were tolerable and damn well good. Cole especially during the Bryan/Jericho match (yes, they put Bryan Freaking Danielson against the World Champion in his first WWE match... more on that later), when he was HEELING IT UP TO THE EXTREME describing how he'd never heard of Daniel Bryan and about how he had no charisma. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the heel play-by-play announcer. That in and of itself is innovation.

But enough about Cole, what about the rooks, you say? Well, it was a mixed bag. First, we start with Bryan. I can almost hear every corner of the Internet bitching and moaning about how he was "buried" because he was bitch-slapped by Miz and then jobbed to Jericho while Michael Cole was cackling about his inexperience. The way I saw it was completely different. The guy carried himself like a star for the most part. For one, he was proving the scripted material about his lack of charisma wrong all night. His promo delivery is solid, more solid than I came to expect, although I really know him more for his ring work. He came close to making Jericho tap to his heel hook. They built up his character as a submission machine right away to the point where once he slapped on the heel hook, it was like he was already with the company and had established his in-ring MO. And if anything, Cole's attention to him was a device to get him over. Think about it. Cole sounded like a complete smacked-ass in his criticism of Bryan, right? What's the reaction to that kind of outrageous argument? Well, if you don't agree with him, and trust me, the WWE fans over the years have learned to loathe Cole even if by accident, then the stubbornness and zeal of said argument tends to polarize you towards the opposite. The WWE tried their best to get Danielson over as much as they could on his first night, and outside of one glaring flaw, he carried his end of the deal.

Speaking of that flaw... well, I didn't like how he was all smiles, giggles and LOL after Miz slapped him in the face. That not only undermines the credibility of the segment, but it gets you in hot water with Papa Vince. Let's hope that he curtails that, because that can be a major flaw.

Other than that, we didn't get as much of a look at the other five guys featured on the show. Of the limited dosages we got, I liked Wade Barrett the best. They seem to be molding him as a kiss-ass to Jericho. Hopefully his game in the ring is as good as the snippet we saw out of it. Heath Slater seemed to annoy most of the people watching, but he didn't bother me. That being said, I don't see what's so special. Neither did I with Michael Tarver, although I must say, they didn't really stink it up in the ring in their tag match (Slater and Christian vs. Tarver and Carlito). Christian and Carlito actually rebounded from their match last night, which is good. Darren Young didn't really show much except that he was trying to get Punk's attention. Punk's aside-promo before the match kinda set up that that's going to be the vibe for this season, which is good I suppose, but do we really need to have tension for more than one or two of the couplings? (Jericho seemed annoyed at Barrett's kiss-assiness) Finally, there's David Otunga, who showed some douchebag charisma in his promo segment (Batista would have been a great mentor!), but man, the little bit I saw of him in his squashing of Young was pretty bad. If that spinebuster thing is going to be his finisher, well, he's gonna have to learn to use it better. Sad thing is, that might not matter, as his physique and whom he's engaged to may short-track him to the roster.

One other thing I want to mention is the camera angles. They used a lot more close-up angles, like they didn't want to show the apron or the ringside area too much. To me it seemed a bit cutesy, like they were trying too hard to distinguish NXT from the other shows. However, I'll give it some time to get used to.

After one week, I can see the promise. Their big focus is definitely on the right guy (Bryan), and I think that the other guys and partnerships might have promise as well. This may all change when we get Fat Hardy on screen, but things are looking up so far. Hopefully, they keep it up. Good work.

Wrestling Six Packs: Wishlist for Chikara King of Trios 2010

Speed Muscle in action


Seven teams have been announced. One other team featuring two Chikara members and a Wrestling Society X alumnus (The Throwbacks and Colt Cabana? Badd Boyz and Jimmy Jacobs? A trio unknown to everyone except Chikara officials at the moment?), and AIW is conducting a trios tournament where the winner gains a berth. That being said, there are still a whole bunch of spots in Chikara's King of Trios tournament that are open and begging to be filled like your mom's box. This week's six pack is my personal wishlist of teams I want to see in it. There's only one, maybe two teams that are actually realistic from this list, but that's why they call it a wishlist. Here goes:

1. Team DGUSA
CIMA, Naruki Doi and Masato Yoshino

There will most likely be a Dragon Gate USA team. Who will be on that team, no one knows. BxB Hulk, YAMATO, Shingo Takagi, Dragon Kid, Susumu Yokosuka, Ryo Saito and Genki Horiguchi have all made their marks in America, but if you ask me, the team I want to see is the elder statesmen and their most talented pairing. Yeah, I know, CIMA is part of WARRIORS-5 and Speed Muscle (as Doi and Yoshino are collectively known) are part of WORLD-1, but you can't tell me that you wouldn't mark for that teaming if you knew anything of what DG or DGUSA was about. Of course, the consolation prize wouldn't be bad, like say, a WARRIORS-5 team of CIMA, Dragon Kid and Juventud Guerrera (!?!?!), but like I said, this is a wishlist.

2. The Sisterhood of the Cross
Sara del Rey, Daizee Haze and Pinkie "Pink Ant" Sanchez

The BDK will no doubt get another team in this tournament in addition to the current trio of Claudio Castagnoli, Tursas and Ares. There are several different combinations, but this would be one full of the most win, the ladies of the Brüderschaft (literally for the first two, and well Pinkie's gay). It wouldn't be a bad team in-ring either. As I suspected, Team DeathHaze looked way better against the Osirian Portal than against any other female opponents that I've seen them work against in either Chikara or ROH (I don't get to watch a whole lot of SHIMMER, unfortunately).

3. Britain Through the Years
Johnny Saint, Dave Taylor and Jody Fleisch

Saint and Taylor were both at KoT last year on different teams. Saint palled around with Skayde and Mike Quackenbush on the Masters of 1000 Holds. That isn't happening this year, as Quack is on Team FrightNing with Hallowicked and Frightmare. Taylor was on Team Uppercut with the erstwhile Castagnoli and the now-WWE contracted Daniel Bryan Bryan Danielson. I'd love to see both guys back, so why not throw in one of the most exciting young high-flyers in Fleisch and enter a sort of tapestry of British wrestling history?

4. Team Future Endeavored
Ken Doane, U-Gene and Paul London

The team name would be lulz-inducing, and they'd be three faces familiar to first-timers looking to find guys to latch onto, as well as foils for Colin Delaney and the UnStable in a potential first round match. Doane has inroads to this tournament as he's signed with EVOLVE. London and U-Gene might be harder to get, but the payoff would be pretty sweet if they could. If only they could...

5. Team KILLYOUINTHEFACE
Eddie Kingston, Arik Cannon and Rasche Brown

Yes, it's a randomly thrown together team. Yes, I know Cannon will probably be here again with the North Star Express. Yes, I know Kingston is a lone wolf type now that he's dumped the Roughnecks. But this team would be awesome if just for the stiffness, the strikes and the intensity.

6. The Zoo
Chiva IV, Yellow Dog and Grizzly Redwood

Finally, a silly mishmash of two animalian type wrestlers and a midget lumberjack with an animal in his name. Yellow Dog was a scream when I saw him at the Young Lions Cup, as was Chiva IV, the Mexican soccer playing goat luchador. Grizz is always a favorite of mine as well. This would be a fun first round team to use as fodder without seeming like roadkill.

Photo Credit: Scott Finkelstein - Please visit his site to view the plentiful amounts of pictures he's taken for DGUSA, ROH and other indie feds: Get Lost Photography

Pro Wrestling and Black History Month

Ron Simmons... DAMN!I got a question on my Formspring page that chided me for not celebrating Black History Month on the blog. I understand where it was coming from, but at the same time, while I like the idea of reminding people that African-Americans have contributed a lot to society, I don't like the idea of Black History Month vis a vis pro wrestling for two reasons. The first reason is why I'm not a fan of BHM on the whole - contributions made by black people to our nation's history should be remembered all year long, not just in the shortest month of the year. I feel like it's patronizing.

Two, considering pro wrestling, there isn't a whole lot to celebrate. There haven't been a whole ton of really successful black wrestlers in wrestling history. I mean, you had Junkyard Dog, Tony Atlas, Rocky Johnson and then later on, Koko B. Ware and Ron Simmons, but until recently, the pickings were slim. Additionally, even as recently as the last airing of TNA Impact, the attitudes towards black wrestlers has been less than exempliary. The most shining example of the institutional racism that still kinda creeps beneath the surface flaring up was in the build to WrestleMania XIX, where Triple H brought out Booker T's mugshots from earlier in his life to paint him as a petty thug while getting no comeuppance for it, taking Booker out at WrestleMania in the blowoff, clean as a whistle. Yeah, Booker may have been okay with it, but from an outside perspective, from a fan's perspective... it was a really, really ugly angle. Not only that, but it took 46 years since the birth of the NWA before a promoter had the idea to put a World title on a black guy in Simmons.

I touched on this topic during Futures Week, mainly, about how minorities were pretty underrepresented both in the main event and really in the crowds, but with increases in both numbers, the future looked bright for them. I still stand by that, but to me, that only means that there'll be something to be written for BHM later on in the future. Right now, well, there's Ron Simmons as WCW World Champion, The Rock and Ron Killings as the only other black Champions and a handful of guys like the aforementioned Johnson, Atlas and JYD as rare featured faces.

So I wouldn't take the lack of a retrospective this month as disrespect from me. I'd take it more as professional wrestling, as always, being behind the times. Things are changing. In a few years, guys like Pope D'Angelo Dinero, Kofi Kingston, Michael Tarver, Kenny King, Rasche Brown, Sugar Dunkerton and even Human Tornado, should he step out of an all-too premature retirement, may very well be the leaders not only of wrestlers of their race, but of all wrestlers.

Monday, February 22, 2010

Instant Feedback: I For One Welcome Our New Douchey Overlord

Batista saved RAW.

Think about that for a second. This time last year, did you think I'd be saying something like that? This time last year, he was a guy for whom the best feeling I could conjure was apathy, and now, he's among the reasons I tune in on Monday nights. Odd how things go, innit?

But yeah, this week's RAW may not have been on par with last week's schlockfest, but it was hardly anything on the level of what they were putting out in January. Seriously, is the same company? Christ, the inconsistency is glaring. For one, we've returned to recap-a-mania. OH JOY RECAPS I LOVE THEM SO!!!1 Secondly, they went and proved my point about how little they cared about building up Sheamus by not having him appear on the show at all. I'm convinced winning the title was the worst thing that could have happened to him now. Thirdly... bullriding with Divas? Really, that's what passes for compelling television? God, SCSA's RAW can't get here soon enough. Fourth, I've had bowel movements with better workrate than what Maryse and Gail Kim showed tonight. Fifth, the program's overarching malaise even wrecked the mojo of the best worker in the company, as Christian had his worst match since returning to the WWE tonight against Carlito. Sixth, I've seen better dramatic acting on PAX TV than what I got from Taker and HBK in their segment tonight. They better bring it in the ring at WM, or else I'm storming Stamford with an ice pick and aiming it right for both their geriatric eye sockets.

But unlike last week, there were more than a few bright spots. Miz and Big Show (Show especially) did their best to save that putrid bullriding segment. Jewel has aged well, which is always nice. Chris Jericho, AS MOTHERFUCKING ALWAYS, ruled shit with his opening promo. Even if the content was just a big nyah-nyah to the crowd, the guy's delivery is flawless. The Legacy dissolution stuff was good, and anything that gives us Evan Bourne getting a pinfall victory on a show other than Superstars is a plus in my book.

But the real star of the show is Batista. I'm dumbfounded as to how good he's been since Bragging Rights, and it's not just his character either. You had to figure out that if he just dropped the bland "I can has title shot?" babyface character that he'd improve, but who knew he had uber-heel potential? I mean, he plays the smug douchebag better than most smug douchebags do. The strut to the ring, the ducking out of the ropes, the taunting of John Cena after he got himself blatantly DQed, the beatdown at the end... it looks like the WWE Championship match is going to have a primo build.

If it weren't for Batista, RAW would have been more in the toilet than not. I don't have high hopes for the build to WM, mainly because I feel like we're going to get suckerblasted with a shit-ton of recaps and a lot of really slow, dragging segments because of said recaps, but as long as the little meat we get is good, I'll be somewhat happy.

Weekend Wrap-Up and a Commentary on "Needing the Title"

BatistaWWE's Elimination Chamber *sigh* was the biggest event to happen this weekend, probably the only really event of note. Both World-level Championships changed hands. Undertaker lost the World Championship to Chris Jericho (thanks to some HBK-shenanigans), which sets up the Jericho/Edge title program for WrestleMania. The WWE Championship changed hands twice. First, in the actual chamber match, John Cena emerged victorious. Then, afterwards, Vince McMahon came out, swung his dick and made an impromptu title match between Cena and McMahon's newest bodyguard type, Batista. Of course, Big Dave won.

No sooner did Douchebagtista gain his rightful spot at the top of the heap as WWE Champion (no sarcasm... if you're talking the upper echelon prime main eventers the WWE has among Cena, Jericho, Triple H, Orton and Edge, Batista's the one whose character has been freshest and the most entertaining) than did the chatter from the Internet start, mainly that Sheamus wasn't Champion at the end, and that Cena and Batista "didn't need the title" to have an effective program.

Normally, I'd agree with that sentiment, if we were talking about, say, The Bash or No Mercy or whatever gimmick-named PPV they replaced both of those events with. There are times when you need to build up a new guy with strong PPV title defenses. However, WrestleMania is NOT one of those PPVs. A WM title defense has to have the luster of being the most important match on the card, or at least.

In that respect, the WWE Championship needs Batista/Cena, even if Batista/Cena doesn't need the WWE Championship.

As much as I was pulling for Sheamus to win last night, him going into WM as the Champion wouldn't have had the same aura as Batista. Let's face it, although Sheamus wasn't booked to look like dogshit, there's no denying that he got one of those "new main eventer" weaksauce title reigns. He won the title in a tables match, any bigtime title defense he had against a legit main eventer (Cena, Orton) that he retained was a screwy DQ finish and his reign as Champion was at the very best the third most intense focus on RAW, after the ZOMG DX DRAMA and McMahon vs. Hart. Not exactly the kind of momentum you want your supposedly superstar heel Champion to have going into your biggest event of the year. Winning the title needs to seem like it's an accomplishment. Beating a guy who hasn't done much in kayfabe to earn and keep his title is meh. The same would be true if Sheamus kept the belt and retained at WM. WM is not an event where you build up a heel's credibility. Generally, you either send the crowd home happy or you drop a bombshell like, say, turning Stone Cold heel. Do anything else, and you get WrestleMania 2000, where heel Triple H retained despite the right call being either Mick Foley or The Rock winning and giving the crowd something satisfying to close the show, i.e., you give them meh. The WM main event should never be meh.

Then there's the next complaint "The title is being devalued!" In this day and age, I don't understood the argument that the title gets devalued simply by changing hands in a short amount of time. Televised product drives the action nowadays, not house shows leading up to an untelevised big event at Madison Square Garden/The Omni/Mid-South Coliseum/etc. A program that would stretch out over half-a-year just so that each house show in each market could get the chance to see the progression of the product is now condensed into a-one-or-two month cycle spanning over one to three PPVs. Title reigns that back in the day lasted for years on end today would probably be the equivalent of six months.

That being said, there still needs to be a good reason to switch the title. The title switch HAS to mean something (which was a big criticism I have with the Sheamus title win looking back... what did it mean ultimately, other than the start of making Sheamus look like a chump compared to five or six guys on RAW who weren't holding the title?). The Batista win last night meant something. In the context of the feud, it worked as McMahon putting the screws to John Cena after his defiance and resistance to McMahon's lust to put Bret Hart away for good, and it worked as a reward to his loyal soldier, Batista. And again, having two of your top stars fighting for the title at WrestleMania gives that title WAY more value than the perceived devaluing it would get from a "rapid-fire" switch.

So no, I don't get the bitching about what happened after the WWE Championship elimination chamber. I think it's a smart move, and one that advances a storyline and helps make the title match more valuable than seeing Triple H or some other established star predictably plow through Sheamus.

Sunday, February 21, 2010

From the Archives: WrestleMania 2000 Ladder Match for the Tag Team Championships

The Dudley Boyz (c) vs. Edge and Christian vs. the Hardy Boyz

Even though this wasn't officially billed a TLC match, it was the first TLC match, the match that gave full life to the craze and really cemented the golden age of tag team wrestling. The Hardys and Canadian Blondes had a ladder match a few months ago during the dreadfully named Terri Invitational Tournament, which established the Hardys as ladder experts. The Dudleys' forte coming in was tables, and Edge and Christian liked chairshots. IT was an exciting match, the best match on a very promising but ultimately disappointing card. While the other matches did not deliver (the most disappointing being the three-way for the IC and Euro titles among Kurt Angle, Chris Jericho and He Who Shall Not Be Named and of course, that motherfucker Triple H going over in the main over Rocky and Foley), this one more than made up for it. It very well might be the greatest spotfest of all-time. Enjoy:


WM2000 Triangle Ladder Match
Uploaded by olla666. - More professional, college and classic sports videos.

Friday, February 19, 2010

Your Newest Chikara King of Trios Tourney Entrants

Straight from Matt Jackson's Twitter

The Jackson 3


The latest additions to the KoT lineup are none other than TNA's Generation Me/The Young Bucks and their brother Malachi Jackson. This is exciting news, because the Bucks are breathtakingly awesome. I'm interested to see how their little brother does as well. This is shaping up to be an incredible three nights for Chikara.

The Miz Blog on WWE Universe

WWE Universe Blogs

Miz and Bryan


The Miz posted a blog on his WWE Universe site responding to criticisms from the Internet about the experience disparity between he and Bryan Da... err Daniel Bryan. He basically accused those voicing those concerns as toothless fatasses and says that main eventing in front of hundreds at a bingo hall is not the same as in front of thousands at WrestleMania. My response?

FUCKING AWESOME

Remember, this is most likely an in-character posting, and Miz is the conceited heel among a sea of conceited heels in the WWE. This is a heat-building device, no more, no less, and it's a great one responding to the people who most care about something like this (and people who will make up a big chunk of NXT's viewing audience at first). This is why The Miz is one of the best all-around talents on a stacked roster right now.

EDIT: More NXT news, F4W Online is reporting that MVP is out as Skip Sheffield's mentor and William Regal is in. Love Regal moving in, but why did MVP have to go and not Carlito or Matt Hardy? Maybe he failed another pot test, or maybe they have plans for him. Who knows.

Friday Five: Money in the Bank

With the announcement that Money in the Bank (as well as Fatal Fourway and "spin the wheel, make a deal") has gotten its own PPV, here's a Friday Five about the match itself:

1. What was your favorite Money in the Bank match?

2. Do you think that Mr. Kennedy would still be with the WWE today if he hadn't gotten hurt and actually cashed in his briefcase for the title?

3. Do you think it's a wise idea if they ran two MitBs (one at WM and one at the PPV) a year?

4. Who would you like to see win MitB this year, whenever it happens?

5. Do you think MitB headlining its own PPV will work?

Thursday, February 18, 2010

A Solution to WWE's Overglut of Talent: Form a Freaking Stable

The Last True WWE Stable


Now that ECW has gone and passed and the WWE has decided to go with the all-rookie route for their NXT students, the question arises as to what to do with the talent dispersed from the former third brand. Both RAW and Smackdown already have more than a few wrestlers, some talented and some not as much, who don't have anything to do and are lucky to get a cameo spot in a backstage segment or a match on Superstars. Even though there are about 12 guys coming in from ECW tops, it's still going to cause an overflow effect where more guys are going to end up lost in the shuffle.

Of course, even without creating another third brand or making Superstars its own show, the WWE could solve this problem of overpopulation quite easily without going on another talent hatcheting that would make Lizzie Borden proud. It could get guys face time, an in for multi-man tag matches and even a rub by getting a chance to meaningfully face off against an upper-card guy for a reason. They could start forming some honest-to-God stables.

Yeah, I know what you're saying. The WWE fucked up probably the easiest stable to book in Legacy. Their track record with stables hasn't been all that great since the first pass at a more-than-two-man DX. Well, I'm not saying that those fears should be discarded. In fact, I really don't think the WWE knows how to properly book a stable anymore except by accident. However, there are way too many talented guys on the roster right now to just have guys get future endeavored willy nilly.

Take for example William Regal and Ezekiel Jackson. They're rumored to be going to Smackdown, so why not have Regal recruit some new guys for a new, even more Ruthless Roundtable? Imagine a fearsome fivesome featuring Regal, Jackson, Mike Knox, Tyson Kidd and David Hart Smith? Or how about CM Punk recruiting some new blood into his Straight Edge Society, like a currently directionless and bland-as-a-face Vladimir Kozlov? Evan Bourne gravitating towards Yoshi Tatsu and Goldust and that threesome attaching itself to, say, John Cena in his war against Vince McMahon's new Corporation, featuring Batista, Sheamus, Carlito and *shudder* Vance Archer?

Or since they don't feel like the Dudebusters really need mentoring, how about grouping them with Zack Ryder in a stable led by The Miz? This stable is a key example to something that kinda bugs me about the WWE roster. There are plenty of characters right now who are similar to each other at best and redundant at worst. You have cocky asshole Miz, cocky Long Island asshole Ryder and cocky fist-pumping assholes Trent Baretta and Caylen Croft (not to mention bleach blonde cocky asshole Dolph Ziggler, but let's not overstuff all our stables here). Aren't these guys screaming to be grouped together? I mean, if they're going to be that lame and uncreative with their character archetypes, they might as well group them together and make something useful out of them.

When you have guys grouped together, it gives feuds more variety without having to blow your wads on giving away matchups (which they seem to do anyway). Giving guys good reason to team together is never a bad thing, especially when it comes to putting multi-man tag team matches together. It can also give rubs to lower card guys just by association. Tell me that the Dudebusters couldn't benefit from getting some of the excess heat that Miz generates to warm their cold bones, and I'll laugh in your face and tell you that they'd get boos by following Miz out to the ring. There's a reason why old school promoters leaned on the stable and why guys like Arn Anderson are treasured as legends despite the fact that they barely cracked US Title level.

Honestly, with the number of guys, talented wrestlers that the WWE has, they need to go this route if they're not going to have a third brand for their low-carders and select vets to populate. NXT throws a wrench in the system, and now, it looks like a bunch of guys are going to get cut because they don't know how to book a stable when it's really the easiest thing in the world to do. Hopefully, they take my advice, because alliances are one of the things that makes wrestling great.

This Week in Off-Topic: The Best Show You're Probably Not Watching

The Finest Adult Swim Has to Offer


Cartoons for adults have become a huge market. The Simpsons paved the way for the genre to take off, while Seth McFarlane and his cavalcade of shows have exploded the market. Cartoon Network, which shows classic and new fare for kids during the day, turns over its network at night to the adult cartoons that us nerds and even non-nerds love so much. They show reruns of the aforementioned bigger shows (as well as Futurama), but they have original programming. The most famous of the original shows is probably Aqua Teen Hunger Force, but the one that has my attention and is my favorite is The Venture Bros.

I think it's safe to say that most people aren't watching this show. Given its timeslot and the network it's on, that's not a far-fetched statement. However, if you like shows like the Simpsons or Family Guy and/or are a comic book nerd, you'll absolutely love this show. It's a very effective mix of raunchy, witty and satirical, and each episode is funnier than the last one.

The show is about a ne'er-do-well single father superscientist, Dr. Thaddeus "Rusty" Venture his two dim-witted children, the titular Venture Bros. Hank and Dean, and their bodyguard, Brock Samson, who's voiced by Patrick Warburton (Puddy from Seinfeld and Joe from Family Guy). While the title of the show comes from the kids, more often than not, it's Dr. Venture, Brock or even their arch-nemesis, the butterfly-motifed supervillain The Monarch, who's at the center of the action. The Venture family itself is meant to be a crude spoof of the family from Johnny Quest (and they actually feature both Race Bannon and Johnny Quest in episodes). There are also caricatures of the Fantastic Four, Walt Disney, Hunter S. Thompson and Shaft among others, and one of The Monarch's henchmen is voiced to sound almost exactly like Ray Romano.

There is one caveat about the show though. It's based heavily on continuity. While you can definitely watch an episode out of order, you won't get the full effect if you would if you haven't seen previous episodes. You can view episodes here. Right now, they do have the first two full episodes online on the first page, which are "Dia de los Dangerous" and "Careers in Science!" If you like those, then you'll probably like the rest of the series, and thus the DVD sets are ideal purchases or gift requests.

Again, if you like cartoons for adults and have a quirky or nerdy sense of humor, this show is definitely for you. It sure beats the hell out of what Family Guy has become.

Wednesday, February 17, 2010

The Best Moves Ever: Bret Hart's Sharpshooter

The sasorigatame. The Scorpion Death Lock. It's a move that has a few names and a few iconic users. Innovated in the '80s in Japan by puro legend Riki Choshu, the move quickly gained a foothold in America being used by two bigtime stars. One of them was Sting. The other, Bret "The Hitman" Hart, who called the move the Sharpshooter. Arguably the best user of the hold, Hart used it to win many a match, and the application of the move on one Vince McMahon is most likely the endgame of their current angle. Here it is applied to Shawn Michaels at Survivor Series 1992, ironic seeing that Hart would be driven out of the WWF five years later with Michaels applying the move to him in the most infamous screwjob of the modern era. Here it is:

NXT's Official Roster and Release

From the WWE site itself

lolNo Kaval. No Fortunate Sons (DiBiase and Hennig). No HBK. Looks like a bit of the leakage from yesterday was misdirection, but for the most part, the names were there. The big news from the WWE NXT unveil was that Daniel Bryan (Bryan Danielson) was paired with a guy with less than half the pro experience that AmDrag has in The Miz. From a smarky standpoint, it is lulz-inducing to the extreme. From a kayfabe/chemistry standpoint though, it's the best possible pairing for Bryan not named Shawn Michaels or William Regal, both guys conspicuous by their absences as the pros. Among the pros, there are two names that I'm really scratching my head over.

Matt Hardy and Carlito.

Seriously, these are two terrible choices both from a kayfabe standpoint and a "how the fuck does this make sense out of kayfabe" standpoint. Off-camera, both have been blasted for being lazy, with Hardy reportedly asking for his release so he can join the drug party with his brother down in Orlando. Carlito's accusations of laziness were in the past and he seems to have turned it around from a work ethic standpoint, but at the same time, they're not doing anything with him in character, and the most notable thing he's done since losing the Unified Tag Titles has been getting punked out by John Cena. Everyone else makes sense.

Going back to lulz though, the experience disparity in favor of the student in the Miz/Bryan team-up is but a chuckle compared to the guy I have pictured. That's Darren Young. I'll give you a second to laugh at the utter ridiculousness of the way he looks. Go ahead.

...

Done? Okay good. Now here's the really funny part. He's CM Punk's charge. That alone will make NXT worth watching over the next couple of weeks, just to see how this Jersey Shore reject interacts with Punk's militant on-screen character. Aside from Bryan/Miz and Wade Barrett/Chris Jericho (Barrett being the salient color commetator from FCW as well as a wrestler, as our anonymous commenter on the Danielson/Kaval FtA let us know) teamings, this is the one I'm most looking forward to.

Anyway, aside from the obvious WTF? namings of Hardy and Carlito as mentors (Regal and Finlay would have been so much better), nothing that was announced last night deters my tempered optimism for NXT. I'm still looking forward to it, and hopefully, it'll be worth the taking of ECW off the air.

Tuesday, February 16, 2010

Wrestling Six Packs: No-Brainer Non-Wrestler Guest Hosts

LT and Bam BamLast night's RAW is a stark reminder of how the guest host experiment can go EPIC FAIL in the matter of one segment. A great guest host can go a long way in determining the quality of the show, even if the writing sucks. The next six choices are people I'd feel would shine given the opportunity, and would be no-brainers for whatever reason. I excluded ex-wrestlers or wrestling personalities because hey, we know the wrestlers would do well on a wrestling show. Duh. Here they are.

1. David Letterman

The WWE writers are known for wanting to stay "hip", and they usually fail miserably. Although the Late Night Wars II have died down a bit with the Olympics starting up and with the Conan debacle, they provide the writers with a chance to be somewhat timely. I'm not sure how well Conan would play to a wrestling crowd (remember, Dennis Miller kinda bombed) and while Jay Leno has a history in the wrestling business, it was as one of the most embarrassing wrestlers ever and no one really likes him anymore anyway. That leaves Letterman, whose acerbic sense of humor, hayseed upbringing and fandom of old-school wrestling growing up in Indiana would make him the perfect candidate to host RAW. The only real caveat would be having to work around taping his show, as he has to be in New York for that and that he'd probably want to have RAW lead into new programming. Still, Letterman might be the most buzzworthy host they could potentially land, especially now. They'd be fools not to try to land him.

2. Lawrence Taylor

LT is unique in that he not only plays to the jock crowd and the WWE writers' desire to create "SportsCenter moments", but he's actually headlined a WrestleMania before in his special attraction match against the late Bam Bam Bigelow. As long as he wasn't on the crack, he'd be a great host. He seems like he's got presence in front of a camera; he was pretty good in his The Waterboy cameo, where he also showed he has no problem making fun of himself. I think a segment with Santino and LT would be pretty hilarious.

3. Mickey Rourke

As if Iron Man 2 needs any extra promotion, Mickey Rourke has an excellent excuse to slum it back on RAW this year without having to lean on his work in The Wrestler, although that history gives him more than enough cred to host. Hopefully, now that he's made his big comeback, he's not too big for the WWE, because he'd be a very intriguing host

4. Chef Robert Irvine

He's got recent history, heat with two guys on RAW (Miz and Santino) and he's a celebrity who'd have enough to gain to host again. Besides, it's the low-key hosts, the guys you don't expect to be good like Dule Hill or Seth Green that knock it out of the park. The downside is there'd be that spectre of seeing a return of the Gravy Boat match.

5. Kevin Federline

Don't laugh. Federline may be a G-list celebrity, but he has history with the WWE and is not afraid to make fun of himself. Besides, John Cena needs to get his win back. Heh, I keed, I keed. Federline as Douchebag-tista's little buddy sidekick would be comedy gold. And if all else fails, he has trainwreck potential written all over him.

6. Danny DeVito, Rob MacElhenny, Kaitlin Olson, Charlie Day and Glenn Howerton

If you don't know, these guys are the crew from It's Always Sunny in Philadephia. They did an entire wrestling-themed episode, and I think at least the three main guys (MacElhenny, Day and Howerton) are somewhat wrestling fans. Of course, the big argument is that RAW is kid friendly and IASIP isn't, but let me stop you there. RAW in the last six months has featured a oiled-up fat guy in nothing but a thong, a bow-tie and a smile, jokes about prison rape and an implication that Santino Marella couldn't ejaculate during sex with Kelly Kelly. I think that the Sunny guys would fit in fine provided that they were able to write their own material. I don't want the shitty WWE writers to feed these legit comedic actors their weaksauce lines.

Joey Styles Looks Back at ECW

Joey's Blog on WWE.com

Mr. OH MY GAWD~!Normally, I wouldn't post links to any of these blogs about the ending of ECW, mainly because they're written by smarks who miss the point or by bitter ex-ECW guys who write (and in most cases, rightfully so) about something they loved being distorted from what the original vision. This one's different though, as it comes from the voice of the original ECW and a guy who up until last year was the voice for the current model as well. Joey Styles is one of three guys who really experienced ECW on both sides of the coin for long periods of time (the other two being Tommy Dreamer and Taz), so when he posts something about the ECW name finally being laid to rest, I think it's worth reading.

It's nothing that's going to be all that cutting, but it's nice to see the words of a lifer, a guy who identified with both incarnations and with whom fans still identify with, reach print. It's very heartfelt and it feels real.

GOOD GOD NOT ANOTHER NXT UPDATE

This one comes from sources close to Bryan Danielson... errr Daniel Bryan. Here are a few tidbits of information that make the project sound a lot more appetizing on the whole and encouraging should it fail:

- Danielson is the only one with a full contract; everyone else including Low Ki/Kaval has a developmental deal, so if this thing goes tits up, Danielson/Bryan will most likely be safe, especially given his connections.

- They're not just going to be sending the Finlays and Regals of the world. According to BD, Chris Jericho, CM Punk, MVP, The Miz and Shawn Michaels look to be the guys being paired off with the rooks. Un.Be.Liev.A.Ble. It looks like they're dead serious about this concept, but I'm wondering how it'll interplay with the mentors' regular schedules, seeing that they're not going to interrupt HBK's, Punk's or Jericho's WM programs just for a C-show.

The interesting thing about all this is that Ki and Danielson have been wrestling longer than some of the guys mentioned as potential mentors. Having Miz mentor Danielson with half of the experience time would be lulzworthy from a "smark" standpoint, as would Punk being a mentor, given that the two were contemporaries in ROH. However, the interplay would be good regardless. If Michaels is definitely involved, I can almost guarantee he'd be Danielson's mentor, just for the full-circle thing.

The more I hear about this, the better I feel about it going forward.

Your 9 WWE NXT Rooks

Courtesy of Dot Net

Kaval and BryanNine names have been reported as being part of the first season of WWE NXT. Unsurprisingly, the two biggest ones are Kaval (Low Ki) and Daniel Bryan (Bryan Danielson). Also on the list are third-generation wrestlers Joe Hennig (son of Mr. Perfect and grandson of Larry "The Axe" Hennig) and Brett DiBiase (duh). Also on the list are Justin Angel, Skip Sheffield, Michael Tarver, Darren Young and Heath Slater. I've heard of Angel and Slater before, but I haven't seen much of anything from them.

I already know what Danielson and Ki can bring to the table. I'm more nervous about the other guys, especially the ones who aren't legacy wrestlers. NXT will be a test of the WWE's scouting process to see if they can score future talents who aren't either in the family business or who aren't indie darlings. Hopefully, they get paired with good talented veterans. Especially Finlay. This show was made for a guy like Finlay to be a mentor.

My Dream Fed

Y2J and Captain CharismaI got a very interesting question on my Formspring page (BTW, have you added that to your bookmarks yet? Ask me anything! Please!) that I thought would be fleshed out better on the blog here. The question is as follows:
Describe your dream fed. Who would be in it? What would the titles be? What would the big feuds be?
I started to answer it on the Formspring template, but with the depth that the question required, I thought that I'd give it a whirl here and really go into details.

Let's start with the first part. "Describe your dream fed." I started to answer this on Formspring, so I'll just reiterate what I said there. My dream fed has a clear focus on wrestling, wrestlers and the personalities of the wrestlers. That isn't to say that it would be a fed solely focused on "wrestling as sport". Although I'd personally love to see EVOLVE break big or to see another major wrestling promotion try to make overtures towards that, there's something to be said about having interesting storylines that deal with things other than trying to get ahead. But basically, the shows would be centered around the wrestlers, their matches, their feuds, their promos and their conflicts.

Also, no omnipresent authority figures. If there's going to be an authority figure, it'd be a Jack Tunney-esque president who mainly lurks behind the scenes. When he/she makes an announcement, it's important. The authority figure will not be the top heel in the company like Eric Bischoff or Vickie Guerrero. The authority figure will not be a deus ex machina device for the faces like Tiffany.

I'd also eliminate the backstage segment. No, not the wrestling promo, not the standby interview or anything like that, but the segment where two or more people are talking as if there isn't a camera there. The segments that look straight out of a reality show. I've grown to hate those with a passion. I want to go as far away from the scripted bullshit model, the Vince Russo model, as I can.

So now that the mission statement is out of the way, let's get to the roster. Generally, I'd want a young, hungry roster, one that has a good grasp of how to work a wrestling match, or that is willing to learn. There would be veterans on the roster as well, as no roster should be without seasoned wrestlers to help mold the rookies and provide leadership. So, here's how my roster would shake out:

John Cena, Chris Jericho, Rey Mysterio, MVP, CM Punk, AJ Styles, The Miz, Christian, El Generico, Austin Aries, Mike Knox, Bryan Danielson, Nigel McGuinness, Zack Ryder, Mark Henry, Low Ki, Evan Bourne, Hernandez, Kevin Steen, 2 Cold Scorpio, Scott Steiner, Tyson Kidd, Human Tornado, Eddie Kingston, Hallowicked, Frightmare, Goldust, Yoshi Tatsu, James Storm, Robert Roode, Chris Hero, Claudio Castagnoli, Luke Gallows, Colt Cabana, Beth Phoenix, Awesome Kong

With that roster, you have a mix of seasoned veterans (Jericho, Steiner, Goldust, Scorp), viable, ready-made draws (Cena, Mysterio), nuclear heels (Punk, Aries) and hungry guys before or in their primes ready to break through. There are a multitude of styles mixed in, guys who can go on the mat and guys who thrill in the air. There would definitely be a focus on tag wrestling, and yes, Phoenix and Kong are there to tangle with the men in tag team form.

As for Championships, I'd have four different titles. A World Championship would headline the fed, obviously. The next tier down would be the North American Championship, an IC-level title where midcarders and guys on the cusp would compete. As sort of a sideways-tiered title to the IC would be the Television Championship, which would have a few twists to it. For one, it would have to be defended every week on free television. All matches would have strict 10 or 15 minute time limits, and as a bonus, title reign lengths would correlate to shots at other titles. For instance, 25 weeks as Champion would get you a North American title shot, and 52 weeks a World Championship opportunity. The title belt would be less in prestige than both of the other titles, but it would be a place where everyone on the card would compete for it. Finally, the Tag Team Championships would round out the title slate.

Finally, there's the question of big feuds. To start out, I'd put the World Championship on AJ Styles in his Nature Boy, Mk. III character. He'd head up a new generation Horsemen stable with the rough-and-tumble Tyson Kidd and his power-packed kicks as enforcer, the Kings of Wrestling - Claudio Castagnoli and Chris Hero - as his tag team specialists and Ric Flair in the JJ Dillon managerial role. He would feud off the bat with Rey Mysterio over the title, which would produce some fine high-flying matches with perhaps a ladder match blowoff to the feud.

Another big feud would be Chris Jericho against Christian. Both guys have the charisma to produce at the main event level, and they don't need the title to produce crowd heat. John Cena would go against Mike Knox with the story being that not only is Knox Cena's equal in strength but he's outsmarting Cena at every turn. This would bring freshness to the Cena-as-underdog narrative, y'know, actually BOOKING him like an underdog that has to defy the odds, and it would elevate Knox even if he lost the blowoff match in the end.

I'd put the North American Championship on Bryan Danielson and have him face off against Nigel McGuinness, playing the role of cocky foreigner who thinks he's above the continent of North America. Evan Bourne would hold the TV Title and fend off challenges from heels and faces alike, from styles clashes against Steiner to explosive affairs against guys like Generico and Ki.

CM Punk would still be heading the Straight Edge Society with Serena as the valet, only he'd be in the thick of things for the World Championship as well as his feud partner MVP. Punk's charges, Luke Gallows and Colt Cabana, would be defending their Tag Titles against Beer Money, Inc. Both feuds would pretty much write themselves.

Down the line, other big feuds would surface, like Miz/Cena, Styles/Danielson, Punk/Mysterio, Aries/Hernandez, BethKong/Incoherence and the like. Basically, there isn't any feud out of that combination of wrestlers that would suck. The key to having a great fed is to have a roster that meshes well together no matter what the circumstances.

Just to close things out, I'd have Dusty Rhodes as the commissioner, bringing him out for a big, big pop to make his quarterly decrees. Joey Styles, Matt Striker and Lightning Mike Quackenbush are my main announce team, and I'd run with 4 hours of weekly TV (two 2-hour shows) and PPVs every 6 weeks (8 a year) with four free-TV Clash of the Champions type events (for 12 big events a year).

So there's my vision for my dream fed. You can see why I wanted to answer it here and not at Formspring. I love fantasy booking, and fleshing out a dream fed is the ultimate in that arena.

VKM's New NXT Details: Big Brother (Charity, not 1984)

Courtesy of the Torch

Vince McMahon unveiled more details on what NXT is going to be all about to Variety today. It'll consist of 8 FCW rookies teaming up with a WWE veteran apiece and competing in a sort of The Ultimate Fighter/Tough Enough mash-up. The show will have 2-3 seasons a year, which means we'll have anywhere from 4 to 6 months to watch the rooks progress. The top performers will be signed to RAW or Smackdown.

Again, I hope that it's not just going to be FCW wrestlers, but some current ECW guys too. I mean, if they're going to be this invested in Vance Archer, the Dudebusters and even Vladimir Kozlov (if they want him to go face, which is a turrible idea), they're going to need some help. Yoshi Tatsu, Big Zeke and Zack Ryder may be ready for the bigs, but that doesn't mean EVERYONE from ECW is.

Monday, February 15, 2010

Instant Feedback: Jerry Sucks

I had high hopes for tonight's RAW, as the flagship program has been dealing heat since the New Year. You figure that they were due for a bump, but that it might come last week with Carl Edwards (who knew he was charismatic?) or next week with *shudder* Jewel and Ty Murray. But Jerry Springer? Yeah, then you remember that the WWE "writers" have TV backgrounds and not wrestling backgrounds, a fact tailor made for a situation like this. In retrospect, I should have known this was going to be a stinker, or at least have a stinker of a segment. And don't kid yourselves people, that segment was the worst segment in the last year and a half on any program. Even worse than the Osbourne suckfest (at least we got Chris Masters' dancing pecs out of that). And seriously, I don't think they should even put the pretense up that they're marketing to kids anymore. Put RAW back to TV-14 and concentrate on doing a Saturday morning show that PG-ifies everything. Awful.

It wasn't the only thing wrong with the show though. For one, too many recaps/pre-recorded segments. IS there a rule that the closer you get to WM, the more of that canned bullshit they show? Two, could the Bret Hart stuff have dragged any more slowly than it did tonight? I mean, did we have to have two cutaways to the booth for Lawler and Cole to banter about stuff in clear stall mode? Plus, the limo crash stuff felt so fake. Yeah, I know, it's fake, it's fake, but the point of good wrestling TV is that when you're in the moment, you almost forget that it's staged. Three, I can think of five worse nights that Hart had than tonight, Michael Cole. Four, Triple H looked like he wasn't even trying tonight, epitomized by that laughable single-leg crab he slapped on John Cena. If anything, it looked like mild discomfort of having to stand up on three of four appendages rather than a pain-inducing submission hold. Five, did I mention the recaps and how much I hate them? The only one that really served a purpose was the one before Cena's in-ring segment with Batista, just as a stark contrast to what Cena was about to address.

This was the first time all year that RAW really whiffed, and they whiffed hard. I guess the saving grace for next week is that we get the greatness of Douchebagtista live and in the arena (no lie... Batista'd be the best heel in the company right now if it weren't for CM Punk) and that Murray and Jewel don't play into the shitty formulaic television model that Springer did. There were a few good nuggets on the show (the end of Orton/Sheamus, Sheamus laying out everyone at the end of the night, everything up to the finish of the tag match... ps, note to bookers, there are other ways to try and set up a title program than having the Champ(s) lose in a non-title match - USE THEM), but it wasn't nearly enough to save a truly bad night of RAW action.

Weekend Wrap-Up: Belated Edition

Your new ROH Champ- ROH has a new World Champion. Tyler Black defeated Austin Aries at the 8th Anniversary Show in New York on Saturday, much to the delight of the crowd and to the chagrin of haters like me. Yes, Pearce probably pulled the trigger way too late on him, but according to people in attendance, the title change was done really, really well. In fact, the notoriously hard-on-ROH posters at Chikarafans had a favorable opinion of how the match went down. While I may not like it, hell, he's over, so congrats to ROH and Tyler Black. Also on the card, Davey Richards and El Generico apparently tore the house down, the Briscoes retained the Tag Titles over the Dark City Fight Club and it was announced that the Motor City Machine Guns would be returning to ROH for a few dates (thanks to TNA lifting the ban on their talent appearing in ROH). A good start to the year for Ring of Honor.

- Against All Odds was last night, and the 8-Card Stud tournament got a mini-surprise winner as Pope D'Angelo Dinero took the one-night card. Everyone was expecting Kurt Angle from the sounds of it, but since AJ Styles is being pushed as the new Ric Flair, it makes sense that Pope won, seeing as how he won a non-title match two weeks ago on Impact. This was a strategy that was used in JCP back in the '80s to hype up Flair title defenses against local heroes. It was stupid then and it's stupid now, but given TNA booking, they probably won't remember the win Pope had and will think of something else to build heat for the match.

- Speaking of TNA, the move to Monday nights is official, and it'll start on March 8. Hmm, sound familiar? Oh yeah, Meltzer reported a move was coming and reader CJC passed the news from the paid newssite to me. Again, while some might see it as a bad move, I don't think that's entirely the case. I don't think they'll really beat RAW, but they'll get better numbers than on Thursday and will get people to flick back and forth between the two.

Photo Credit: Scott Finkelstein - Please visit his site to view the plentiful amounts of pictures he's taken for DGUSA, ROH and other indie feds: Get Lost Photography

Sunday, February 14, 2010

Happy Valentines Day, Wrestling Fans

I'd just like to wish all my readers who have significant others out there a happy Valentine's Day. Even though it might be a cheap ploy by the greeting card companies, jewelers and chocolatiers to make assloads of money, it still serves a purpose. If you have someone to love, then please, take this opportunity to look at your relationship, appreciate it and hold onto him or her with love.

For everybody else, here are some pictures of Velvet Sky. Don't say I never gave you anything!

After the jump...












Saturday, February 13, 2010

From the Archives: Bryan Danielson vs. Kaval

Or is it Daniel Bryan vs. Low-Ki? American Dragon vs. Shenshi? Regardless of the names, whenever these two guys get in the ring, the results are usually pretty good, and this tilt from the WWE's developmental territory, Florida Championship Wrestling, is no exception. This is one of Danielson's first FCW matches (maybe his first one?) and it'll be one of the last matches where they bill him as Danielson and not Daniel Bryan. IT would be a great match regardless, but what I think puts the viewing experience over the top is the announcing. Byron Saxton is the PBP guy, and for those who know him as the color announcer on ECW, this is a major wakeup call. The guy is talented as fuck, and he shows it on this match. Why they have him on color analysis and not as the lead PBP guy over Josh "Dead Air" Matthews is beyond me. Saxton knows how to call a match. The color announcer is really good too. I can't find out who he is. Wikipedia is unreliable because it still lists Dusty Rhodes as the PBP guy. Aaaaanyway, enjoy the match, especially as a precursor for the future, especially if these two guys are going to be the focus of WWE NXT like what is rumored. If that's the case, this is only part of a series that isn't anywhere close to ending.

Friday, February 12, 2010

Rehashing: When to Do It and When to Let It Go

The original bandRehash.

It's a dirty word amongst longtime, smarter fans, and yet it's this mantra, a way of doing business amongst wrestling bookers. If it weren't the desired business model, then DX wouldn't be an anchor teaming in the WWE, and TNA would be staging a full-fledged nWo reunion if just the terminology weren't owned by those bastards up North that they can't seem to stop referencing. It seems like there are two irreconcilable forces at work, a part of the fanbase that at times drives the trends in the business that always wants the companies to push the next thing and be original and the bookers who seem to want to fall back on the same things that got over in the past. As always, the answer is somewhere in between those two opposing forces. But where?

As much as the jaded, hyperactively-progressive fans will never admit, rehashing does work to an extent. For example, Evolution was a rehash. O rly, you might ask? What other stable in history was called Evolution? Well, no other stable to tell the truth, but what Evolution was was a vague rehash of the Four Horsemen, a stable as a vehicle to collect gold and serve as the elite force in the wrestling company at the time. You had the leader in Triple H (Ric Flair), the enforcer in Batista (Arn Anderson), the crafty technical wrestler in Flair (Tully Blanchard) and well, there was the fourth member in Randy Orton who really didn't fit any of the other archetypes in the group, but then again, the fourth member of the Horsement rotated a lot, from Ole Anderson to Barry Windham to Lex Luger, He Who Shall Not Be Named, Steve McMichael.

You could argue that Evolution wasn't that successful a stable, but I'd say it was only because of the short life of it. In the kiss-kiss, bang-bang, ADHD-addled nature of the big two companies today, Evolution wasn't given enough time before it exploded upon the group turning on Orton. But in the short time that it was active, it was an effective stable. Even if it was effectively the Horsemen rebranded, it felt new because the trappings, the details, the specifics were changed.

Compare that to probably the most rehashed group in recent history, the nWo. When it first came out, man, was there a stable that was better? It was fresh, it blurred the lines between the WWF and WCW, and the first six-to-nine months of it were some of the greatest moments in wrestling television. It managed to last a few years before it really petered out, but then WCW had this idea to bring it back again after the flame finally flickered out. They branded Bret Hart, Jeff Jarrett, Scott Steiner and Kevin Nash as nWo Silver, and the reaction was okay for it, but really, it wasn't as great as it was even in the days of the nWo Wolfpac vs. nWo Hollywood. It died a quick death after Bret Hart's career ended by the sloppy foot of Goldberg, and that's all we'd see of it, right? Well, no, Vince McMahon thought it'd be a good idea to bring it back to "kill" the WWF after his ingrate children turned it and his prize acquisitions of WCW and ECW into a joke in his eyes. That version went over so great that it died an even quicker death. And now, TNA is doing its best to rehash it again, and you can see how well it's doing for them with their negligible growth in audience thus far.

The problem? Everything was so specific, right down to the detail. There was nothing fresh about it, no new details added. It's the same problem with their rehashing of Montreal a few weeks ago. It was done down to the letter. Nothing fresh was added. It was just reading from a script. And because of that, because they had gone to the well too many times, the law of diminishing returns started to establish itself, and the pops aren't as hot as they wanted or foolishly expected.

Yeah, there are exceptions. The law of dimininishing returns certainly doesn't apply as starkly to the many reformations of Degeneration X, but then again, you could argue that each reformation has been slightly different. The way I see it though, DX is the exception that, to us haters, annoyingly proves the rule. But the rule is there. The more specific you try to do a rehash, the worse it's going to turn out.

I mean, let's face it. Wrestling has hardly been a business driven by innovation or being on the cutting-edge. The only reason it found itself on that edge in the late '90s was because the industry as a whole was lucky enough to see two companies catch lightning in a bottle around the same time, WCW with the nWo and the WWF with Stone Cold Steve Austin. Before then, it was traditionally a business that recycled storylines all the time; the difference was that the bookers recycling those storylines had the common sense to change a few things here and there to be tailored to the wrestlers in them. That, and well, wrestling has always been a business driven more by personalities rather than the stories they were entrenched in.

Still, you rehash something so blatantly and you run the risk of alienating a portion of that audience, especially when you don't have the personalities to back it up. I guess a big reason why DX's diminishing returns aren't as steep as other blatant rehashes is that Trips and HBK both have more clout with the crowds than AJ Styles, Kurt Angle and broken down, non-wrestler Hogan have multiplied by a hundred. While personalities are the key though, smart booking can go a long way, just as stupid, lazy booking can go a long way to turning fans off.

So rehashing isn't a dirty word. It's actually a good tool if you apply care and don't act ham-handedly enough that you're lifting an entire stable or storyline verbatim from when it happened before. I.E., don't rehash shit like TNA rehashes it. It'll just fail harder than Sean Waltman taking a drug test.

Friday Five: Dream Matches

Today on the FriFive, I give you five wrestlers, you give me a dream match for each one of them:

1. Who would be your dream opponent for Vader?

2. Who would be your dream opponents for the Steiner Bros.? (circa 1992)

3. Who would be your dream opponent for Roderick Strong?

4. Who would be your dream opponent for Bad News Brown?

5. Who would be your dream opponent for Jun Akiyama?

Bryan Danielson Is No More

...say hello to Daniel Bryan.

Daniel BryanYep, not even Bryan Danielson can escape the rebranding process that the WWE puts on all its new acquisitions and trainees with the exception of CM Punk (which still baffles me to this day unless they paid him off handsomely for the rights to the Punk name). Turns out he was introduced as Daniel Bryan at the latest FCW taping, which is odd, as you'll see tomorrow (FtA SPOILER ZOMG), he was introduced and referred to as Bryan Danielson during his first FCW match with Kaval (i.e. Low Ki). As far as the caliber of the name goes, it's closer to Evan Bourne or even Desmond Wolfe (to take an example from TNA) than it is to Braden Walker or Scotty Goldman. I can't say that I hate it, and I think it might get over. Good for AmDrag though.

More scuttlebutt about him as refers to NXT, it sounds like he, along with the aforementioned former Low Ki, will be the focus of the new concept. Couldn't think of two better guys to anchor the show around. Hopefully, we'll see the Dudebusters (Caylen Croft and Trent Baretta) there too, because I think they need some major help getting over and a good bit of seasoning as well. They have promise, but really need more than just generic tights, a friendship and that exploding fist bump they do to reach a WWE audience. I digress though.

Thursday, February 11, 2010

Quick Hits: The Quickening

- Courtesy of the Observer site, more news on that conference call Vince had with the stockholders today. Mainly, they're looking at replacing Survivor Series with any number of ideas, including a street fight PPV (which is asinine with Extreme Rules on the slate), a tournament (would love it but based on how well KOTR has done in the past, it'd flop), BattleBowl (another awesome idea, but it would need a lot of delicate booking, which is LOLworthy to expect out of the WWE), Money in the Bank (excellent idea, as WM doesn't really need to have it), the draft (suck), Spin the Wheel Make a Deal (ugh), Night of Legends (could be fun) or War Games (lol Multimania?). My personal pick would be a tournament (preferably featuring mid-carders or rookies) or the MitB PPV.

- In other news from the conference call, revenues are down but profits are up. Guess that's good news.

- From the same link, John Morrison's ankle injury isn't as serious as initially thought, and the "broke in three places" comment was the joke part of Morrison's Tweet, not the "gonna walk it off" part. He made the flight to Quito, so who knows at this point.

RIP Survivor Series: 1987-2009

Courtesy of the Torch

Survivor Series


In a conference call to his shareholders, Vince McMahon announced that the Survivor Series name is going to be scrapped and the PPV rebranded. It's unclear as to whether the name is the only thing changing about the PPV, but whether it is or not, this is huge, huge news. Survivor Series has been traditionally one of the company's Big Four PPVs and was the second oldest PPV in the company after WrestleMania. The fact that they're going to rebrand it is not a decision to be taken lightly. Aiding in the decision no doubt is the news on PPV buys from the last quarter of 2009. Buys were up for three out of the four PPV slots. Guess which one didn't increase buys? You guessed it, Survivor Series. Hell in a Cell, Bragging Rights and Tables, Ladders and Chairs all had more buys than their counterparts last year, No Mercy, Cyber Sunday and Armageddon. It certainly puts a hurting on the talking points of folks like myself who liked the less direct names, but it's definitely a win for McMahon and his marketing strategy.

As for the concept, I like and have always liked the multi-man elimination matches, and I hope that they don't do away with them completely. They can be used effectively in the building of new stars or to test out newer feuds, shaking up the main event scene. Had they not dropped the ball afterwards, Kofi Kingston's Survivor Series moment would have been remembered as his breakthrough.

But if it's not selling, it's not selling. Still, sad to see a part of my childhood and wrestling history go by the wayside.

This Week in Off-Topic: Italian Plumber Appreciation Day

It's-a me, Mario!Call me old-fashioned, but I wasn't really all that excited for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 when it came out. I'm not a huge fan of first person shooter games with a few exceptions (one of them being Goldeneye for N64). I did give into the hype and I played it, and it confirmed my malaise towards it. More power to those who love it and engage in epic multi-player battles online, but it's just not my cup of coffee. However, I do consider myself a gamer, although more a casual one these days. My days of hardcore gaming died when the N64 fell into obscurity, and really, the salad days of that hermitry were when the NES was the big system out.

So it's not really all that surprising when I say that the older franchises are the ones that pique my interest. Zelda is my favorite franchise of all-time. Metroid, Mortal Kombat, Madden NFL, Final Fantasy and Sonic the Hedgehog all are titles I look for when they're announced as new. The original King of the 8-Bit Characters and Nintendo's mascot franchise is what has been taking up most of my gaming time nowadays though. Yep, a little Italian plumber named Mario, after nearly 30 years, still gets more attention from me than the most hyped shooters that seem to saturate the market.

From the time when he was climbing scaffolding to try and save his girlfriend from a giant ape in a game where he wasn't even in the title to the myriad number of games he's anchoring for Nintendo today, Mario's journey to the top has been pretty special for both his parent company and the gamers who've played as him over the years. Nearly every game he's been associated with as a lead character has been awesome, the exception being the boring and overly difficult Super Mario Sunshine for Gamecube.

The best part about most Mario games is that they have replay value, something a lot of current games don't have. Obviously, the older Mario games have this. The allure of the NES, outside of the obvious nostalgia, is that with no or limited continues and limited or no in-game hints (i.e., the game doesn't hold your hand when you're trying to defeat it). The games are still a challenge to beat to this day. It really doesn't matter how many times I've beaten the original Super Mario Bros.; each time I fire it up on my Wii Virtual Console, it's a challenge. I can't say the same for some other games. Still, even the later games in the series, even with the save points and the hints, there's still a degree of difficulty that makes the challenge unique even if you're coming back for a second or third time to play through. Additionally, the later Mario games have so much content in them, so much stuff to play through, that beating the game and beating the game are two different animals. Take for example Super Mario Galaxy. You can beat the main quest of the game by accumulating 60 stars and taking out Bowser, saving Peach and the Universe in the process. That's great, but there are 120 possible stars to collect. That opens up the gameplay even more, and on top of that, after you collect all 120 stars, you unlock Luigi and can play through the entire game again with the green-suited brother of Mario. That's what I call getting more bang for your buck.

Nintendo gets blasted for not getting with the times, still producing "kiddie" games and not getting the third-party support that the other systems do. Those criticisms may be founded to other gamers, but to me, I don't really care. Nintendo first-party titles for the most part have the intuitive gameplay and the degree of difficulty (i.e. not hand-holding easy but not skull-numbingly difficult) that I look for in games. Even what many people thought was a throwaway title, Luigi's Mansion, was engaging and kept me busy for hours on end.

So here's to the fat Italian plumber in the red hat. For gamers like me, he's an icon, one of the steadiest rocks in video game history. Plus, it gave us this:



Yeah, that's the stuff.

Wednesday, February 10, 2010

The Best Moves Ever: Muscular Bomb

There are some moves that are classic, ingrained with an all-time great and indelible in their place in wrestling history. Some moves inspire awe in the amount of skill it takes to pull them off. Some moves are graceful beyond description. Some submission moves blur the lines between shoot and work.

And then there are just some moves that are great because they're good, old-fashioned head drops. The Muscular Bomb is one of those. It's a half-nelson wheelbarrow neck driver. It's also Naruki Doi's finisher, and it's probably my favorite finisher in wrestling right now. I got to see it done live at Open the Historic Gate, and now, you get to see it on Youtube. Enjoy.

John Morrison Breaks His Ankle

Courtesy of F4W Online

John Morrison broke his ankle in three places last night at the Smackdown tapings. Ouch. He joked about walking it off and he's headed to the Smackdown South American tour, but how the fuck are you working on a broken ankle? Pencil JoMo out of the EC, which is a shame because I think that's an environment where he could have shone. This also shoots my post from yesterday out of the water since I doubt he's making WrestleMania.

Who replaces him in the EC? Smart money is probably now on HBK, although Christian, Scrooge McPoyle and Batista are all options as well. Sucks though. I guess to look on the bright side, at least Morrison will get a good pop when he comes back.

WWE NXT Rumblings + Follow Me on Formspring!

Before I get into the meat of the post, The Wrestling Blog has entered yet another social networking area... Formspring! For the uninitiated, basically Formspring is a forum dedicated to asking questions to the user and having them answer. You don't need to have an account to ask the questions or see my answers. Please feel free to ask away, and I'll answer anything you want, about wrestling or not. I'd prefer wrestling questions, but anything's fair game.

NXTThere really hasn't been much news about the changeover from ECW to WWE NXT lately. They debuted the logo and dropped the news that all ECW superstars are free agents come the closing of the third brand. Other than that, nothing official has really come out from the Stamford camp. However, a lot of leaks and rumbings have come out giving possible inklings as to what is going to happen on this new show. Basically, if you like UFC's The Ultimate Fighter program, you might like this.

For those who don't know, TUF follows fighters around behind the scenes leading up to their first fight. It's like the Real World only with MMA fighters. The WWE has forayed into that reality television arena before with Tough Enough. A lot of the opinions I've seen about this seem to fear doom or are at least in the groaning stage. My jerk reaction was similar; I mean, I'm sick of seeing reality TV dominate the landscape, but oddly enough, if NXT is what I they're saying it'll be, then it could be something interesting.

Reality television as it is right now, following the "cast members" around all day... is it that any much different than what we see in the backstage segments on any given wrestling show? No, and it's far less insulting to our intelligence because the reality show cast members know they're being taped and act as such. If anything, on NXT, they can drop all pretenses. They can go full on with the backstage stuff and even build angles in the ring off it. While a feud being built off spilled coffee on RAW has always been joke fodder, but in a faux-reality show setting (faux because let's face it, they're not going to stop with the work-aspect of it nor should they), stuff like that, spilled coffee, fights over women, even stuff as petty as maybe using someone else's toothbrush, can be used as fodder for a mini-blowoff wrestling match, especially if the show is not shot live and is in a setting where the wrestlers live in the same house or complex.

What they can't do though is heavily script everything. What makes reality television watcahble for the people who like it is that it's at least partially organic, that they're watching people act normally. Working scenarios that lead to heat and thus matches is fine, but they have to come off as if the guys are doing it naturally. It would be embarrassing to have guys in "reality" situations tripping over lines, even moreso than when they're in the ring. I mean, you'd expect a guy cutting a promo to have memorized what he was going to say, but if the crux of this show is going to be based backstage, watching the wrestlers as they go through "real life" situations, then overt scripting of the material will just expose the business even further, especially if everyone in that situation isn't a natural actor.

However, I feel like if it works, it'll work in a big way. Even though reality TV produces stars that end up being famous for 15 minutes tops, there's no denying that they're among the biggest, most obsessed-about celebrities when they're on top. The WWE has the advantage in that they can take their big reality stars and put them in an even bigger position to succeed in their regular programming. Sure, they may not retain a lot of their mainstream or crossover celebrity, but they could come out as big stars within the company, becoming moneymakers for the WWE in a time when building draws is being done so ham-handedly by them, and the program itself if it's executed correctly might bring in new or return viewers, which would help grow the audience, something that the WWE may not need but could absolutely use.

So yeah, I'm not totally all doom and gloom about this WWE NXT with the rumblings coming out about it. It could be a really cool thing, and it might be the best way for a guy like Bryan Danielson to get over without having to change a whole lot about him, for example.

And it certainly sounds a lot more promising than the "conspiratorial angles" that were first floated out there as a base for the show.

Tuesday, February 9, 2010

Wrestling Six Packs: My Wrestling Bucket List

WrestleMania


I'm 28 years old. The concept of a bucket list isn't really for people my age. Then again, you know not the time and place when the Lord comes a-callin', because death comes like a thief in the night. I know it's morbid, but regardless, I still have my bucket list of things I want to do before I shuffle off this mortal coil. Many of them have to do with wrestling. Here's the six biggies for me.

1. Go to WrestleMania

Really, is this even necessary to spell out? Unless your vitriol for the WWE and Vince McMahon surpasses that of Jim Cornette, Bret Hart circa 1998 and Phil Mushnick combined, you want to see the spectacle known as WrestleMania live if you're a wrestling fan. The fact that it's moved on to big arenas hurts my chances to see it locally unless Philly, NY or DC gets a big domed stadium, so I'll have to make a road trip. But wouldn't it be worth it? The Fan Axxess, being there live for the event plus soaking in the culture of a new city.

2. Watch a PWG event live in Reseda

It might be the opposite in scale to WrestleMania, but what I've heard about the Reseda crowd has made me want to trek out there to see a show. They've been compared to an ECW crowd at its height. Of course, it helps that PWG puts on dream matches every card. Plus, it's in sunny SoCal, which has a lot of other attractions to take in in my spare time.

3. Get a sign on TV

This might seem piddling compared to the first two, but it's always fun to be able to go back on the DVR or on the airdate if it's a taping and seeing yourself and your sign on television. Plus I can tell my friends to look for you. It's a bit on the egotistical side, but hey, at least it means that I've gotten great seats for a wrestling show, eh?

4. Witness a show in Japan

I've always been fascinated with puroresu. The aura around the main events, the big moves, just the larger-than-life shadow these guys cast over the business from across the ocean. I've been a part of some raucous American crowds, but I want to experience the opposite. I want to be a part of the mostly respectful Japanese crowd and see things from their perspective. Plus, the fresh local sushi and their spin on baseball doesn't hurt things either. The show doesn't matter, although I'd prefer to see Kenta Kobashi or another one of the guys I know.

5. Own a Championship belt

Not one of those chinsey plastic replicas either. I want to own a real leather and gold replica. It's just one of those things that any wrestling fan should have. It has to be a cool title too. Not the shitty pretty butterfly belt or the pedestrian new look US Title, but something like the Big Gold Belt or the WWF Championship, circa Brock Lesnar's reign, or the Intercontinental Championship from 1992. I can imagine my mancave having a wrestling display with my title belt as the centerpiece and all my collected lucha masks and wrestling posters as satellites around it.

6. Meet Chris Jericho

Seriously, you weren't expecting this? I love meeting people from the business and at least saying something to them, whether it's as terse as a "I'm a huge fan" to a nice conversation like the one I had with Lince Dorado before YLC VII night 3. It's easy to approach a guy at a Chikara show, and it's great when the guy lives up the street from you like Stevie Richards did back in 2002 (true story, I asked him about how stiff Bradshaw's clothesline was). But a bona fide superstar like Jericho, one that I've idolized as much as a wrestling fan can idolize a wrestler for the last decade plus? I can't even imagine how I'd get access unless it was at one of those trade shows or at the aforementioned WrestleMania Fan Axxess. But I want to do it. I mean, even though I think we have enough in common to have a conversation, I'll settle for a hello, a handshake and a "I'm a HUGE HUGE HUGE fan".