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2HOMERADIO ARCHIVENEWSLETTER ARCHIVETHE BOARDNEWSUFC NEWSWWE NEWSJAPAN NEWSROH NEWSTNA NEWSMEXICO NEWSINDIE NEWS
3APR. 14 2010 FIGURE FOUR WEEKLY: SMACKDOWN TO SYFY, NXT DONE, UFC 111 WITH SILVA INANITY, TONS MORE
4BY OBSERVER STAFF | STAFF@WRESTLINGOBSERVER.COM | @WONF4W
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6WWE announced on Tuesday that effective October 1st Smackdown will be moving to the Syfy Network as part of a new multi-year deal. While unofficial, this would appear to be the death knell for MyNetworkTV, and unless a new deal is signed it also signals the end of the current incarnation of NXT.
7
8The move was made about two weeks ago. WWE opened up negotiations with MNTV for a renewal this fall and MNTV told them they weren't sure about continuing to pay the $700,000 per episode that they're paying now, and also weren't interested in signing a long-term deal. Both of these statements seem to indicate that MNTV is aware their days are numbered. Earlier this year they stopped subscribing to ratings services and basically became a syndicate, which at the time was believed to be the beginning of the end for them. Vince, according to a source, "poker-faced them" and went right to Bonnie Hammer of USA, saying he wanted to be on an NBC Universal affiliate all along, and she signed the deal.
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10"He's learned a valuable lesson from the Spike negotiations," said one source in reference to the incident where he tried to play hardball with Spike when the Raw renewal came due in 2005 and they called his bluff, resulting in him being forced to take a far less lucrative deal with USA. "Good for him."
11
12One important thing to consider is that with Smackdown moving to Syfy and everything under the NBC Universal umbrella, theoretically WWE television now lives and dies at the hand of Hammer. She's hugely into the programming right now, but she's also moving up fast in the NBCU hierarchy, and the day may come when she no longer has the power to oversee the day-to-day operations as it regards WWE. Conceivably a Jamie Kellner could come in, hate wrestling, and cancel all the TV. While that's unlikely to happen since Raw still does great numbers, Kellner did cancel the WCW programming when they were doing numbers several times what TNA is doing now on Monday nights, and numbers that were closer to what Raw is doing now than what Impact is doing. Of course, there are two thing strongly working in WWE's favor that WCW didn't have. The first is that they're not owned by NBCU and losing money hand over fist as WCW was doing. That made the decision to cancel the programming easy. Also, they're actively working on the creation of their own WWE Network. While there are many hurdles to be overcome with that project as well, not the least of which is getting national clearance (keep in mind the NFL Network still doesn't have national clearance), this is at least a Plan B if something should go horribly wrong and WWE somehow finds itself unable to get a TV deal anywhere (which, realistically, sounds pretty much inconceivable, although a worst-case scenario might see them on a much lower-rated network making significantly less on rights fees).
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14The big question on the WWE side is why they will continue to air the show on Fridays. The show did significantly better ratings on Thursday nights, and not only that they were able to sell ads to movie studios promoting films that would be opening the next day. The move to Fridays was made several years back when the CW decided to give the Thursday night slot to the new show Everybody Hates Chris, which at least initially did comparable numbers and much higher ad rates. When WWE moved to MyNetworkTV they inexplicably stayed on Fridays, and the decision to stay on Fridays when they move to Syfy this fall was the number one question asked to me by people who have been following the situation. Nobody seems to have a good answer, so all I can do is speculate that WWE doesn't want to move back and admit that Fridays was not the best time slot for them.
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16The Friday Syfy programming in the 8-to-10 p.m. time slot will be moved to Tuesdays. The show will replay the following day on Universal HD, which airs replays of Raw and NXT currently. NXT is history unless they can be picked up by another network. WWE this week was in talks with both Bravo (a network whose name has come up in the past when discussions came up regarding where WWE programming might go if MNTV went belly-up), Universal/Universal Sports HD, and WGN, which is the home of Superstars. WGN is apparently a back-up to the back-up, and if they went there that would be the end of Superstars.
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18Syfy will be paying approximately $30 million per year for the show, down slightly from what WWE is making from MTNV right now. They'll also lose about 12 percent of their potential audience with the move, which is also bad. Of course, all of these negatives aren't so negative when you consider that the alternative -- MNTV going out of business and Smackdown not having a home at all -- would be significantly worse. There are also positives to the deal. Smackdown is regularly preempted on many MNTV affiliates in major markets due to sporting events, and that's not going to happen on Syfy. MNTV was also never available on DirecTV, and Syfy is, so that's an additional 18 million homes that didn't have the opportunity to see the show before but do now. It's not a major thing, but MNTV only broadcasts in 780p, and Syfy broadcasts in 1080p, so there will be an increase in HD quality for those who would be able to notice such a thing.
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20
21Silva a God damned tool
22The story of UFC in Abu Dhabi was what a fucking prick that Anderson Silva turned out to be.
23
24I'm actually probably being pretty nice here. People said some really horrible, nasty things about him. Dana White cut a scathing promo on him both at the show and at the press conference afterwards, including saying that he might become the first-ever UFC champion to fight on the prelims. People were wondering whether he was suffering from some sort of mental illness. Fans said they'd never buy a show he was headlining again.
25
26What happened was, he got in there with Demian Maia and it was pretty much what one would have expected. Everyone knew Maia had to either take him down and submit him or he was in lots of trouble. Well, he couldn't take him down and ended up in lots of trouble. But not quite as much trouble as people figured. I expected a first round knockout. Silva probably could have gotten it, but he didn't. Instead, he toyed around with the guy, openly mocked him in the second round, and then toyed around with him for most of the third until he apparently got really tired. Then he proceeded to do absolutely nothing. I mean, zero. It was an impossible fight to score. The second round, for example, was such a one-sided shellacking that I gave it a 10-7. Later rounds I initially gave to Silva because he was in there with a guy who couldn't do a thing to him at all, but then upon further reflection I asked myself why he deserved any points at all because superior fighter or not, he was doing NOTHING in those rounds. He won the fight unanimously, but he did it in such a way that he was booed vociferously and people were chanting for Maia by the end, essentially begging for him to kill the guy.
27
28"This was a historic event for us," White said. "The arena tonight was incredible. The energy was amazing, and to end it the way that we did was an embarrassment for me, the Fertittas, the UFC and the sport in general. I apologize, and I will – I don't know how yet – but I will make this up to the fans who bought this bullshit tonight. I didn't like [the main event] from the first minute of the first round. Nobody has been more supportive of Anderson Silva than me – talking about him being the best pound-for-pound fighter in the world. Even after a couple of goofy performances, I'll call them, I still stood behind him and supported him. I think this guy is incredibly talented, and in the first couple of rounds, he was showboating and doing whatever he was doing, and that's not what I'm in to. I don't like it. If you're that talented, be Mike Tyson. Go in and finish it in two minutes. I'd rather have somebody say, 'Let's not buy the Anderson Silva fight tonight because he knocks people out in two minutes,' rather than, 'He runs around like a jackass for five rounds.' As mad as I am right now, he's one of the most talented guys in the business. I don't know what I'm going to do to him right now. I don't know. I honestly don't know what to say. I'm so blown away and disgusted and saddened." He talked about putting him in prelims, which is never going to happen while he's champion, and then said, "Anderson Silva might be the first champion in history fighting on a prelim," White said. "How do you sell Anderson Silva after tonight? How do you do it? People don't want to see that shit. I don't want to see it. It makes me sick to my stomach."
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30White was particularly enraged because the show was put together to celebrate the purchase of 10 percent of UFC by new partners Flash Entertainment of Abu Dhabi.
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32Before the fight they were strongly hinting at a Silva vs. Georges St. Pierre fight next, but Dana said he had no desire to do that after this fight. St. Pierre would stay at 170 and Silva would move down, if that's even possible since his natural weight is in the 220 to 230 range and he usually trains around 212 to 215. That's a 45-pound weight cut, which is inconceivable but not impossible. He has fought at 170 before, but he was much younger and smaller. It's tough to say how a weight cut of that magnitude would affect his performance, but one would think it would not be good.
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34The other major news on the show was the 155-pound title change as Frankie Edgar, a major, major underdog, upset BJ Penn via decision in the semi-main event. Penn apparently had a sinus infection that severely limited his training in the last two weeks prior to the fight. Having just gotten over a pretty severe one-week sinus-related illness as well and having attempted to train through it, I can tell you that two weeks of that as a top level athlete attempting to train for a five-round fight would have badly fucked me up. The ironic thing is that BJ is better than Edgar at pretty much every facet of the game with the exception of his cardio. To lose even more of his cardio due to an illness was pretty much the one thing that was going to make a major difference in this fight, and that's exactly what happened. The fight was still very close, close enough that you could have scored it as a draw or for either man. I had it two rounds for Edgar, one round for BJ and two even rounds. At the time I thought, wow, interesting score I came up with, but Edgar isn't getting the win. And then he did.
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36It wasn't a great show. Part of the problem was it was 100 degrees out in Abu Dhabi, they were in an open-air building, the air quality was such that a lot of guys had trouble breathing, plus it was so hot that people were sweating all over and that made good grappling and takedown attempts nearly impossible.
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38The show did 11,008 fans for a $3.5 million live gate. DeMarques Johnson won the $75,000 Best Knockout award, Rafael Dos Anjos won Best Submission and Mark Munoz vs. Kendall Grove won Fight of the Night (and it was awesome).
39
401. Mark Munoz vs. Kendall Grove. Munoz took him down quickly. Kendall stood up but took some shots on the way up. Munoz went for another one and Kendall killed him with an uppercut, stuffed him, threw some knees and then started raining down what appeared to be hammer fists to the back of the head. I mean, this was like 20 shots in a row, but Munoz was grabbing the fence and that ended up being the main concern of the referee. Kendall went for one submission after another. He was just owning this poor fucker. Munoz was desperately grabbing his feet trying for the takedown. It was almost sad. Munoz survived but this was so one-sided I'd say 10-7. Munoz was swinging wildly with shots early in the second and got WAYLAID with a knee, then Kendall got him down and went for the back. Munoz made it back to his feet. It was actually kind of impressive that he was able to survive in this manner. He ended up in Kendall's guard. Kendall tried to roll but Munoz got his back, then proceeded to make a pro-wrestling-style comeback with a barrage of ground-and-pound, including what appeared to be some shots to the back of the head of his own, and Kendall just turtled up until the referee stopped it. A hell of a fight.
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42Munoz did a promo afterwards admitting that he'd been in serious trouble in the first round, but to be a fighter you need heart and that's what he had. He said he wanted to be a top fighter. "I just love being on top," he noted.
43
442. Rafael Dos Anjos vs. Terry Etim. Anjos went for a shot and Terry caught him in what appeared to be a tight guillotine. Anjos laid in it for a long-ass time. It was an arm-in guillotine so there was plenty of open space on the right side of Anjos' neck. Etim finally gave up, and Anjos got him in side control and threw a bunch of knees. Etim rolled to his side and the ref ended up stopping the fight and telling Anjos that the knees he was throwing were to the spine. Rogan said that looked like the body to me. This looked like bullshit. Anjos went for a heel hook and a kneebar but the horn sounded to end the round. Anjos dominated the round but Etim got the close submission, so 10-10. Anjos got him down again in the second and dominated from side control. He was dropping hard forearms and elbows right onto his face. He mounted him briefly and then went back into side control. Rogan described this as black belt jiu jitsu. Etim hooked the armbar and extended. Rafael tried to roll but couldn't make it and was forced to tap.
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46a. Alexander Gustafson vs. Phil Davis. Alex did all right early negating Phil's wrestling, but that was short-lived. Phil got him down and went for a guillotine. He didn't get it but Phil continued to dominate the positioning. I was about to write that Phil didn't seem to have any finishing skills, but then he hooked a perfect anaconda for the submission. This was fun while it lasted.
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483. Renzo Gracie vs. Matt Hughes. Renzo got a huge standing ovation coming out. Hughes got a decent reaction coming out but then the people booed during the ring intros. Both guys hugged -- HUGGED, I SAY -- before the handshake. A poor kickboxing match early. Renzo landed a couple of shots but nothing significant at all. Crowd was booing at the end of the first round. Yes, a full round of RENZO GRACIE and MATT HUGHES KICKBOXING. That sucked. That was a 0-0 round. Worse, as shitty as it was, they shook hands afterwards. This made me want to vomit. We got another high five at the four-minute mark of round two. Crowd was starting to boo again at the 2:30 mark of the second. This fight is hideous. Booing started to pick up with whistles and catcalls at the four-minute mark. They both landed some shots in the last minute. Hughes got a hold of his neck and then laid in some knees to the body and the legs. 10-9 Hughes. Pains me to hand out a total of 19 points for that round. Hughes was landing leg kicks in the third. Hughes landed an overhand right and then backed off. Rogan was like, why would he do that? Hughes started unloading on him. The fans loved Renzo but they were so excited to see ACTION that they popped big. Hughes gave him a hard leg kick that spun him all the way and knocked him on his ass. He invited Hughes to the ground, but instead Hughes went over and helped him to his feet. Renzo was pretty much taking bumps at this point, hoping Hughes would follow him down. Hughes just waited for him to stand up. Renzo had nothing. I mean, this was pathetic. Herb Dean finally stopped it with 30 seconds left in the third.
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50Rogan asked Renzo if he thought he should have taken an easier fight for his UFC debut and Renzo said something completely incomprehensible. He said he would be back. That's unfortunate. Hughes told his family he loved them and that he'd be coming home tomorrow.
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524. BJ Penn vs. Frankie Edgar for the 155-pound title. They noted that Edgar walked around at about 158 so he barely cut at all to make 155. He landed a hard leg kick early. His movements are very herky-jerky. Not necessarily a good or bad thing but it seems like it would take a lot of energy to always be moving like that. BJ landed most of the standing shots this round. It wasn't bad, but after the last fight I can see people really hating it. 10-9 BJ. They noted that BJ hadn't been taken down at lightweight in six years. So Frankie kept trying to take him down. So his plan was to have a GROUND FIGHT with BJ Penn? Edgar briefly swept him to the mat but BJ was back up seconds later. So I guess that was the first takedown in six years that we just witnessed right there. I'm such a nice guy I'm going to call this round a draw since Edgar actually got BJ to his ass for an instant. But I'm being very generous here. 10-10. Herb Dean called a time out due to excess lube on Edgar. They wiped him down. Rogan got to chit-chatting about BJ's knee pad and what it might mean. He was bored too. Frankie was getting in and out and landing shots and leg kicks here and there. He also tried some takedowns but kept failing. 10-9 Frankie. 10-10 fourth round. Pretty much JACK SHIT happened here. They showed a replay and Penn apparently landed two shots. That was all they could find in an entire five-minute round. Lots of boos after the round ended, but the people cheered going into round five. Edgar got a pure legit takedown in the fifth but Penn got right back up. Crowd cheered for the final minute. Edgar definitely won this round 10-9. I mean, based on my scoring Edgar won but when it was over I thought for sure it was going to BJ. Admin Tony was so bored watching this that he suggested both men be BEHEADED. Judges actually gave it to Edgar 50-45, 48-47 and 49-46. Regardless of my scoring this shocked me. Well, BJ should have destroyed this guy and he didn't so too bad for him. They didn't have time to interview him afterwards.
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545. Anderson Silva vs. Demian Maia for the 185-pound title. Silva killed him with a hard leg kick, but that was pretty much the only contact in the first three minutes. Anderson was bobbing and weaving but not going much else otherwise. Then he started doing this wacky dance, like he was trying to summon demons. Maia tried a shoot, got stuffed, then Silva started kicking his arms. He was totally mocking the poor fucker. But he didn't finish him. 10-8 Silva. Maia was running and diving for takedowns, failing every time. Silva was now openly fucking with him, begging him to do something. He stuck his chin out, he pounded on the mat, he slapped himself in the face, he danced and he shimmied his chest. In the last 30 seconds he started screaming "COME ON!", and then landing shot after shot in the midst of it. 10-7 Silva. Rogan was pretty much rendered speechless. Fans did not know what to make of this at all. Going into the third all I could think was that Silva had proven his point and it was time to end this. Silva did not end it. In fact, he stopped dancing, he stopped taunting, he just assumed a fighting stance and stood there. There was a moment where Maia got aggressive and Silva proceeded to eat his lunch for about 15 seconds, then Maia missed the takedown and Silva walked off cackling. Later, he ran behind the ref and kept hiding behind him until the ref shoved him away and told him to fight. 10-7 Silva via shenanigans. Maia actually punched him in the face early in the fourth. People started booing. They were openly talking about how after this was over Silva was going to fight GSP. At least it would be a guy who would push him. "I don't know what Anderson's doing," Rogan said. "It's almost like he got tired of beating him up." The people were now chanting for Maia. People then started chanting "GSP!" Round ended and crowd booed like crazy. Anderson's corner was yelling at him going into the fifth. Maia's face was completely fucked up going into the fifth. He had nothing to lose except for his life, so he went nuts just swinging wildly. He was connecting with shots, not super hard, but he was connecting, and boy was that something to see. Rogan concluded that Silva must be tired and didn't want to show it. Maia got a leg and almost got the takedown, and boy was he fighting, but Silva finally snuck free. He proceeded to jog around the periphery of the cage. The ref finally stopped it and told Silva that if he kept running around he was going to fine him a point. Hey, it was a good idea but it was too little, too late. I was PRAYING that in the last ten seconds Maia would just go all out, swing wildly, rush at him, maybe throw a dropkick. Nope. Crowd booed like crazy but then chanted "MAIA!" This fucking sucked a massive cock. More loud "GSP!" chants. Judges scored it "a win by unanimous decision" for Silva. I must see the scores. Silva got on his knees and bowed to Maia afterwards. Maia should have kicked him right in the face for that. Silva did a promo apologizing, saying he didn't know what got into him tonight, it was ring rust, it would never happen again, and that Maia surprised him with some of his shots.
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56
57In House Notes
58The number next to your name on the address label indicates which issue your Figure Four Weekly subscription expires with. Thus, if you have a [773] next to your name, this is the final issue of your current subscription.
59
60Very special thanks to the following people for their help over the years in producing Figure Four Weekly: Gladys "Granny" Gibson, Dave Meltzer, Tony Leder, Alex Marvez, Zack Arnold, Colin Vassallo, Kris Zellner, Manuel Gonzalez, Craig Proper, Vincent Verhei, Keith Lipinski, Robert Bihari, The Cubs Fan, Kyle Wolf, Devin Cutting, Shawn Garrett, Bob Barnett, Mike Lano, Adam Lebow, Mike Sempervive, Adam Summers, Mike Coughlin, Karl Stern, Steve "Dr. Lucha~!" Sims, Mike K, Forrest Lynn. Thanks also to everyone who sent in news over the past week.
61
62Worldwide renewal rates due to rising postage costs are $100 per one-year subscription (52 issues), $55 per six-month subscription (26 issues), $30 per three-month subscription (12 issues), and $12 per one month subscription.
63
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67WWE
68We may be moving back to publishing on Monday nights starting next week since there's not much to talk about in the ratings anymore. Impact did an 0.79 rating this week off hours of 0.82 and 0.78, with an 0.7 in males 18-to-49, an 0.7 in males 18-to-34 and 1.1 million viewers. Spike for whatever reason sent out a release claiming they did an 0.9. No idea how they got that number. The two hours were close enough that it appears they got zero bump from the unopposed hour, although they never announced on the show last week that 8 p.m. was the new permanent start time. An unopposed hour on Monday nights should do better than an 0.8, but I did predict months back that if they went 8-to-10 it would only be a few weeks before they were back to doing what they were doing from 9-to-11, and while this week doesn't really count it's looking like that could end up the case. Quarters were 0.74, 0.84, 0.83, 0.85, 0.78 (Raw started), 0.65 (Morgan & Red vs. Guns), 0.72, 0.80 and 0.97 (overrun which went 1 minute). Raw did a 3.2 rating off hours of 3.0 and 3.4. First hour did 4.399 million viewers and second hour did 4.994 million. They did a 2.05 in persons 18-to-49, a 2.75 in males 18-to-49, and 4.7 million viewers over the two hours.
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70Jim Ross on his future: "There are no issues or problems with my negotiations with WWE. The ball is in WWE's court to put together a new role for me within the company. Essentially they have decided to reassign me from weekly broadcasting and that includes the monthly PPV's to focus on other areas of the company. I am guessing, and I stress guessing, that may be some form of scouting and/or talent development. I might be wrong on that assumption but I'll know before the end of April as that is when my current extension expires." Ross is also talking with a number of publishers about either a book or a series of books on his career. I don't know this but I would suspect that he'd only want to do that if everything with WWE fell through, because I don't think he'd want to do a book unless he could tell the entire story, and I'm not sure he could tell the entire story if still working with WWE.
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72HHH is having issues with both his neck and one of his quads, so he's being taken off house shows for the time being. He is working all of the upcoming TVs unless they do some sort of injury angle with him. Cena vs. Sheamus headlined most of the Raw European house shows this weekend with Cena going over after a ref bump and a three-count by outside-the-ring enforcer Bret Hart.
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74Ezekiel Jackson suffered what was believed to be a torn quad on the April 10th Glasgow house show taking a bump over the top rope in his match with Kane. He'll be out 3 to 6 months.
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76Superstars did an 0.77 rating this week and 788,000 viewers.
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78Maria's new album came out on iTunes on Tuesday. It features four songs and is selling for $3.99.
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80Upcoming Raw guest hosts include Will Forte, Kristen Wiig and Ryan Phillippe of MacGruber next week; Wayne Brady on May 3rd; FLAVA FLAV on May 10th (not making this up); and Jon Lovitz on May 24th.
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82Several WWE stars have cameos in MacGruber including Mark Henry and MVP, so most likely it'll lead to a Carlito & Kozlov vs. MVP & Henry match on the show.
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84The June 7th Raw is also going to be a three-hour show. Maybe they'll do another King of the Ring tournament.
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86Smackdown two weeks ago did a 1.9 rating and 3.2 million viewers.
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88NXT did an 0.94 last week with 1.217 million viewers. The replay of last week's show which aired beforehand (now a weekly thing, meaning if you want to you only have to watch NXT every other week) did an 0.45 and 614,000 viewers.
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90Dos Caras Jr., sans mask, worked the WWE house shows in the UK this week. He's been doing a lot of work with William Regal, which is good.
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92Matt Hardy injured his biceps on the tour and was hoping at press time that it wasn't a torn biceps.
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94Billy Kidman, who is a trainer in FCW, was brought on the UK tour as an agent.
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96Goldberg on ESPN: "At this point, it's not that I want to get back in the ring, but I have a 3½-year-old little boy, and what an experience for him to still buy an action figure with his daddy represented? The doors are kind of open to negotiation as far as a merchandising deal. If it leads to something else? It's a wonderful day. It's not something that I'm seeking out to do at 43 years old. But you know, Wrestlemania is next year in Atlanta. Hulk Hogan and I put 43,000 people in the Georgia Dome with three days' notice. I've got a fairly big following in Atlanta. Is it out of the realm of possibility? I'd say no. If not, I'm totally content with the way I went out. To be able to get merchandise out there not only satiates the fans but hopefully there have been a lot of people wondering where my merchandise is. The reason why I want to do this is my boy; just trying to be a good father."
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99UFC
100In a very interesting move, UFC announced that the main event for the June 12th show in Vancouver is Chuck Liddell vs. Rich Franklin. Apparently the rumors of Tito dropping out of this season of Ultimate Fighter and being replaced by Franklin are true. Dana had tried to downplay the rumors in the past, but never outright said they weren't true, only that we had to watch the series to find out what went down. I still believe it has to do with Jenna Jameson's recent miscarriage, as that's a hell of a good reason to give up on working a reality show, and it would explain why Dana did make it very clear that there were no problems between himself and Tito. Although it's a spoiler and people were upset about it, the reality is that UFC couldn't put tickets on sale for Liddell vs. Ortiz if they knew full well that the fight was never going to happen and that Liddell vs. Franklin was the one they were planning all along. So they either had to announce the real main event or try to put tickets on sale without a main event announced at all, which a) would have been bad for ticket sales, and b) would have been a spoiler anyway.
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102Dana White has been teasing that he's close to a deal with Fedor. "I've talked to his people more recently than you would think," he said last week. He's told others that signing him is one of his top priorities right now. Of course, Strikeforce and M-1 have had issues of late and are not yet back on the same page. M-1 officials jumped on the story, denying it and saying they hadn't spoken to Dana and he was just trying to get people talking. They continue to claim they are close to working things out with Strikeforce.
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104Former UFC star Junie Browning disappeared last week. His family got really worried after they hadn't seen or heard from him in three days and called the police. They ended up finding him a couple of days later in Arizona. He's had a lot of issues of late.
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106Chuck Liddell will have a wax statue made of him at Madame Tussaud's Las Vegas, the first MMA fighter to be bestowed this honor. They're debuting it at the Fan Expo on May 28th and then it will be moved into the museum and housed with a pair of his trunks and a UFC title belt. An interesting trivia note is that each wax figure costs approximately $300,000 to create.
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108Per the judge's ruling in the UFC vs. Ken Shamrock case talked about a few weeks back in the newsletter, Shamrock was forced to pay $175,000 to Zuffa in attorney's fees, costs and expenses.
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110Saw an interview on YouTube with Frank Mir talking about why he lost to Shane Carwin. He spent about five minutes explaining it. Basically said that he spent too much time concentrating on training to avoid the takedown. He said he barely expended any energy in that first round and figured he'd let Carwin bull him into the fence, and then with a minute left he was going to explode out and steal the round. He said Carwin went to take him down and he was able to avoid it and he got all excited about that, thinking, wow, I avoided this fucker's takedown, and then the next thing you know said fucker punched him right in the face. He said he was shocked at how hard Carwin hit and when Carwin got him in the guts with the uppercut he was pretty much stunned. After that, he said, it was all a blur. He said he just lost and pretty much deserved to be at the back of the line right now but would fight his way back. Regarding his weight gain he said it wasn't like he gained 25 pounds of muscle. He said he was 245 dieted down and that was with no weight training whatsoever. He said he started eating more protein, watching his diet, and working on a guy doing Olympic lifts and was able to put on a lot of mass really fast because he was like a garden hose all sucked up before starting. He said he'd plateaued now. He said it was like a fat guy who diets and loses a ton of weight early on but then suddenly can't lose anymore, just in reverse where now he was stuck at a certain weight and couldn't put anymore on.
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112Spike will be airing two UFC 114 prelims on May 29th, Efrain Escudero vs. Dan Lauzon and Dong Hyun Kim vs. Amir Sadollah. They won't be airing the prelims for UFC 113.
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114Tickets for the show at the GM Place went on sale Monday to Fight Club members and they sold them all out in 30 minutes, the fastest sellout in company history. Within hours there were scalpers trying to unload floor seats for as much as $5,000.
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116Full line-up for the show outside the main event has Pat Barry vs. Mirko Crocop; Martin Kampmann vs. Paulo Thiago; Carlos Condit vs. Rory MacDonald; Evan Dunham vs. Tyson Griffin; Mac Danzig vs. Matt Wiman; Ben Rothwell vs. Gilbert Yvel; Peter Sobotta vs. James Wilks; Ricardo Funch vs. Claude Patrick; and Jesse Lennox vs. Mike Pyle.
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118Ultimate Fighter this week did a 1.2 rating.
119
120Full line-up for 113 on May 8th at the Bell Center in Montreal has Lyoto Machida vs. Shogun Rua in a rematch from a bout that many thought Shogun deserved to win for the light heavyweight title; Josh Koscheck vs. Paul Daley; Sam Stout vs. Jeremy Stephens; Kimbo vs. Matt Mitrione (should rule one way or another); Patrick Cote vs. Alan Belcher; Tim Credeur vs. Tom Lawlor; Marcus Davis vs. Jonathan Goulet; Yoshiyuki Yoshida vs. Mike Guymon; Joey Beltran vs. Chad Corvin; TJ Grant vs. Johny Hendericks; and Nick Catone vs. John Salter.
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122Everyone at UFC 111 tested negative for steroids and drugs of abuse.
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124
125TNA
126TNA debuted a new show on Monday nights, TNA Reaction, airing at 7 p.m. just before Impact on Spike TV. This was the press release description. "Spike presents TNA Reaction, a never-before-seen look at the combustible world of TNA Wrestling with exclusive backstage access and candid interviews featuring the biggest names in wrestling. Fans will experience all the unseen drama as rivals speak openly about their plans to destroy their most hated foes." (Not making that line up.) "TNA superstars featured include Hulk Hogan, Kurt Angle, Jeff Hardy, AJ Styles, and more." My DVR listed UFC on at that time. I saw a preview and it looked better than Impact at least in terms of building storylines and pushing PPV matches. I guess the idea is that it would remind people that TNA started at 8 p.m. so they wouldn't miss the early minutes of the show. Or something. You'd think if you wanted people to know that Impact started at 8 p.m. from now on you'd have waited another week and alerted them on television as to this fact, or the show designed to remind people would have been announced earlier than the day before. The show did a horrendous 0.25, which is well, WELL below the station average, under what a normal show would do in that time slot, and likely under what an infomercial would do. It was less than 300,000 viewers, but since they didn't announce the show until Sunday that number should be thrown out.
127
128So yeah, nothing has changed in TNA except that more and more people internally are of the realization of what a complete joke this is. It's not like a deal where I go rant and rave on the radio shows about who shitty it is and people there are all offended and can't understand why I'd be so mean. I'm not saying anything that isn't thought by at least a good portion of the locker room. The problems are with the higher-ups, who have to blow off anything critics say because, well, if they didn't it would indicate that they do, in fact, have absolutely no idea what they're doing. Vince Russo this week talked openly about being burned out on booking, which is quite the coincidence as ratings have plummeted to new lows of late. I've been burned out on his booking since approximately 1999. Most feel this is damage control so that there will be some sort of face-saving explanation for when he gets the boot. There are actually arguments that they can't get rid of Russo right now because there is no one to replace him. I would argue that the janitor at the Impact Zone could replace him. Yes, writing out those long-ass detailed scripts is a job nobody wants, but fuck, off the top of my head I could rattle off a dozen names in TNA right now that would (not "could") do a better job booking, not to mention if the people in charge really gave a fuck they'd be open to mending fences with people who worked there in the past who definitely had a clue, like Dutch Mantell and Jim Cornette. But they're not. Making sure they don't look stupid and making sure that they don't hurt people's feelings is far more important than actually turning the ship around or making any money, which is why I remain out of hope for anything getting any better anytime soon.
129
130TNA has re-signed Orlando Jordan, Brian Kendrick, Chelsea and Christy Hemme to long-term deals. There was a report claiming that Christy was making over $150,000 per year for three years. That sounds impossible to believe, but hey, it would hardly be the most astounding thing about this company. As noted a few weeks back, where the fuck is all this money coming from? For years I heard that the death of WCW was largely due to all these huge guaranteed contracts (even though it wasn't) and now here we are in 2010 and TNA is signing all of these people to all of these deals with the only major revenue stream being house shows, and believe me, based on their attendance figures and ticket prices that's not a revenue stream that's coming close to covering even a small number of these larger deals. And don't get me wrong, there are plenty of undercard guys making jack shit, and Awesome Kong left in part because they wouldn't give her a very, very minimal salary increase.
131
132As the wrestling world turns. Jeff Jarrett and Karen Angle have announced their engagement, so they're getting married. Meanwhile, Kurt Angle is also getting married to Giovanna Yannotti, described as his long-term girlfriend. I could have sworn he was dating Rakha Khan within the last year. I guess anything more than a month or so is long-term in wrestling. She's 24 and they worked together on End Game and some other projects.
133
134Speaking of Angle, he announced that he was taking some time off to rest his body and heal up, and then in the very same sentence also wanted people to know that he was not injured. So he's not injured but he needs to heal. Gotcha. He told everyone that he was totally fine after he took that horrendous bump in the ladder match last week, but then we got reports that he was walking around backstage like he'd been hit by a semi truck. For all the talk about how TNA is a big happy family, between that ladder match and the Rob Terry chairshot to the head this comes off as a company that doesn't give a fuck about the health and well-being of its performers. And I can tell you that it was not ignorance that resulted in the Terry chairshot, it was something that was debated and, well, it happened. So there you go. And last week I was debating whether there were two worse guys in TNA to put in a ladder match. Anderson's gimmick is basically that he gets hurt all the time and Kurt has broken his neck God knows how many times and is a physical wreck. These were the two people TNA decided to put in a ladder match. I was thinking it would be worse to put Hogan and Nash in there, but then I realize that Hogan and Nash would not have done anything NEAR as stupid as these two did, so yes, in conclusion, there were no two worse guys that TNA could have put in that match.
135
136Speaking of Nash, he got a concussion during the cage match when Jeff did the senton and landed on his head. A LOT of people are talking about the state of Hardy. His work has sucked since he came to TNA and his promos are rambling and sometimes virtually incoherent. Don't think people haven't noticed. This same thing happened the last time he came here, shortly after he was fired from WWE for refusing to go to rehab.
137
138Angle and TNA did a fund-raiser for the families affected by the West Virginia mining accident last week and raised $9,000.
139
140The Impact replay on Thursday, which started 10 minutes late since a movie ran over, did an 0.6 rating and 758,000 viewers.
141
142Hogan did a tryout of sorts for his own radio show on Sirius radio Monday night. The show went from 7-to-8 p.m., head-to-head with the new TNA recap show. I can't wait until he tries to go 7-to-8 and needs to be at the building at 8 for the show, especially since, like in WCW, they're rebooking all throughout the day leading to the live shows. I didn't hear the show but was told it was really bad and he came off as a guy who had not done any preparation whatsoever. One person said he admitted on the air to drinking while doing it. He talked about slamming the 700-pound Andre the Giant; how Warrior couldn't even lace his own boots up; how Warrior tried to take the match home in 8 minutes at WrestleMania VI and Hogan had to put him in a chinlock and tell him they were GOING to finish as planned; how he'd never heard the Stephanie McMahon/Randy Savage rumors (that Savage did something with her sexually and that's why he's blackballed from WWE); how a Hollywood producer came onto him in his 20s and when he refused the sexual advances his movie career flopped (that's a good one); how one day his wife walked in on Brutus Beefcake getting a blowjob from some blonde and then later accused Hogan of being the blonde and having an affair with Brutus (this man is amazing); and how in due time TNA would be the number one wrestling company in the world. The last one, realistically, is probably his biggest whopper of all.
143
144Brian Knobs did an interview on the Monday night Mayhem Show saying he didn't know for sure if they were done with TNA because nobody from TNA had told them anything and they couldn't get an answer from Hogan either. Well, that doesn't sound like a good sign. He said the rumors that something happened at the Hard Rock Café with the two of them that resulted in their firing was not true. He said the stories were that he took his pants down and ran naked across the pool in front of a bunch of Spike execs, but that was stupid and they "knew better than that." For whatever it's worth, all I can say is that I was told something happened at that party, but that it involved Sags, not Knobs. "Let me put this into perspective. Something did happen two or three weeks ago, but I was there with Orlando Jordan's significant other and Ric Flair. Now you don't think that if I went crazy and we haven't been there in over a month, even if it was in February or January, somebody would have said or put on the Internet because they are a bunch of fans in front of everyone? There are no private parties like they put on the Internet. There was nothing like that. Every time we were through with a match, we went out for a couple of beers, and we were professional as hell. We were at the Hard Rock Cafe, and we were with everybody. So you don't think if we were acting like people are saying, it would have been on the internet the next day? Not when you hear The Nasty Boys are not there now, and this might have happened; that's all speculation, and it's a bunch of BS.".
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146Kevin Nash said he hated the name The Band and was looking for something different. WWE owns the rights to NWO and Wolfpac so those are out of the question. He told fans to come up with names and said he'd fly the winner to Florida and put them on TV.
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148
149Strikeforce
150Line-up for this weekend's show on CBS from the Bridgestone Arena in Nashville, Tenn., has Jake Shields vs. Dan Henderson for the middleweight title; Gegard Mousasi vs. King Mo for the light heavyweight title; Gilbert Melendez vs. Shinya Aoki for the lightweight title; Jason Miller vs. Tim Stout; Zach Underwood vs. Hunter Worsham; Josh Schockman vs. Cale Yarbrough; Dustin Ortiz vs. Justin Pennington; Andrew Uhrich vs. Dustin West; Chris Hawk vs. Ovince St. Preux; and Thomas Campbell vs. Cody Floyd. CBS wants the show off the air in two hours so they're only airing the top three fights. Inexplicably, all three are title matches, which means the potential for five rounds, so 90 minutes of fighting not counting commercials. May be bad times timing wise, and also probably means no interviews, no ring intros, no video packages, no personality profiles, etc. In other words, all the things normally used to hook casual fans who might be flipping channels and catch the spectacle on CBS.
151
152Scott Coker this week said that they had the ability to exercise one more fight in Shields' contract if they chose to. He also said they had a negotiation period worked in there with him as well. Shields has talked openly about the possibility of going to UFC after this fight, and in fact he appears if you look closely in the newest season of Ultimate Fighter as one of Liddell's assistant coaches. Dana White has expressed interest in bringing him in. In fact, he's flat out said that he plans on making a great offer so that if Strikeforce wants to keep him they'll have to pay out the ass for it. I think a lot will depend on how he does on April 17th on CBS. If he has a great showing and beats Henderson and comes out of the show looking somewhat like a star, it'll be on. If Henderson destroys him, well, that's another story.
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154
155Other Wrestling
156CMLL ran on April 9th in Mexico City with Sombra & Mascara Dorado & Mistico beating Negro Casas & Felino & Dragon Rojo Jr. Mistico is now a full-fledged tweener as he worked this show on the babyface team and working babyface highspots. He was heavily cheered. For a while he was doing babyface stuff on Tuesdays and heel stuff on Fridays but this was a Friday show and he was back to doing babyface stuff. They did play up that Dorado and Sombra weren't comfortable teaming with him. Part of it is that this was back to the usual 8,000 fans that they draw, and when they were doing bigger crowds it was the extra rudo/anti-hero fans that showed up and were all ready to boo him. Mistico unmasked and threw it at Felino, who caught it and was seen and DQ'd. Felino demanded a singles match with Mistico afterwards and Mistico said no problem, as long as it's mask vs. hair. That is the match that Felino wants in real-life for the payoff and they're strongly teasing that's the direction they'll go.
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158They are about to start the Torneo Gran Alternativa tournament, which is where veterans team up with young guys and the idea is that the young guy on the winning team gets moved permanently up the cards. The tecnico teams are Sombra & Diamante, Blue Panther & Rey Cometa, Hector Garza & Polvora, and La Mascara & Sensei. Rudo teams are Atlantis & Inquisidor, Terrible & Disturbio (best team ever), Mephisto & CANCERBERO, and Rey Bucanero & El Semental. Those are some awesome rookie names.
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160Konami will be distributing the new Lucha Libre AAA: Heroes del Ring video game in the US, Canada and Latin America -- everywhere in North America except Mexico, actually. Gamexpress is in charge of Mexico distribution.
161
162Texas Stadium, the last vestige of World Class Championship Wrestling, was imploded on Sunday. SportsCenter on ESPN showed footage of it and actually noted that it was the home of the famous Kerry Von Erich vs. Ric Flair match at the David Von Erich Memorial Show in 1984.
163
164Paul Lazenby with an update on Vancouver, this time in regards to pro-wrestling: "Vancouver City Manager Penny Ballem, who has already been throwing many obstacles into the path of UFC coming to Vancouver, is also proposing that all pro wrestling organizations no matter how small be required to pay both a promoter's fee and a $100 per show event fee, which could cripple or kill groups like ECCW. She also wants a hike in the seat tax for large-scale wrestling shows (over 500 spectators) up to $1 per seat. Now what do you think that's going to do for our chances at getting Vince to bring Wrestlemania to the 55,000-seat BC Place?".
165
166ROH announced Kings of Wrestling vs. Chris Sabin & Alex Shelley for May 8th in New York, which should be a hell of a match.
167
168The ROH PPV did around 900 buys for the initial airing. Didn't get word on the replay yet. That's down a bit from the December show. It would seem most of the same people bought this one as the last one and that they lost some viewers due to the production issues that plagued Final Battle. Unlike with traditional PPV they can make money off 900 buys so it wasn't a disaster or anything like that, but they were hoping a month or so out that they'd do 2,000 to 2,500 buys. It probably didn't make a huge difference but it also didn't help that they were pre-empted the two weeks prior to the PPV airing by HDNet. One interesting note is that we ran a poll on our site and a decent number of respondents, more than 30 percent, said they didn't buy the show but would have bought it had it aired on normal PPV. Don't know if that's really the case or not because people say all sorts of things both positive and negative and it doesn't mean much until it's time to act (case in point, all the feedback we got in December from people who said they'd never ever buy an ROH Internet PPV again and then when the time came it appears most of them did), or even whether if all of them did order on normal PPV that would be enough to be profitable, but it was interesting.
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170Even though Wrestlelicious announced new tapings for May, it was announced this week that the show on MavTV and BiteTV would be going on hiatus. They claimed this was to let syndicated affiliates catch up so that when the network shows resumed everyone would be caught up. That makes absolutely no sense to me.
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172Masked Republic announced this week that they'd be launching a PPV series, Viva La Lucha, to run every two months starting in June, featuring "lucha libre's biggest stars." Names listed include Los Perros Del Mal's Perro Aguayo Jr., Damien 666, Halloween, Mr. Aguila, Charly Manson and Sabu. The first show will be taped May 2nd in Mexico City and debut June 11th on PPV (day before UFC in Vancouver).
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174For DGUSA, the Open the Northern Gate show in Windsor on May 7th has B&B Hulk & Pac vs. YAMATO & Shingo, Dragon Kid vs. Masato Yoshino best of three falls, and more. For the 8th in Mississauga, Ont., it's BxB Hulk vs. Yoshino for the Open the Freedom Gate Title, CIMA & Dragon Kid vs. YAMATO & Shingo in a grudge match, Naruki Doi & PAC vs. Mike Quackenbush & Jigsaw, and Masaaki Mochizuki vs. Akira Tozawa.
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176John Moxley vs. Drake Younger has been added to the May 1 EVOLVE show in Rahway, N.J.
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178
179Bryan's Friend Vince's DVD Review
180
181History of the Intercontinental Championship
182Todd talked about Jimmy Snuka and doing his big splash years before Rob Van Dam and Eddie Guerrero made the frog splash popular. He also talked about Superfly’s leap off the cage, and how everyone remembered where they were when they saw it, especially Mick Foley.
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184Don Muraco vs. Jimmy Snuka. From Madison Square Garden, October 17, 1993. Vince interviewed Muraco backstage about his match in “the hungry cage.” Muraco talked about how calm he was. He said he had trained for months as a champion, and he was prepared. He said Superfly was the finest, but he wasn’t the smartest, and since Muraco was still the IC champ, Snuka clearly wasn’t the best. Muraco came out to the cage and waited for like four minutes for Snuka to enter. Pat Patterson on commentary was very concerned about the steel cage collapsing. Gorilla Monsoon assured him this had never happened. The cage was about seven, maybe eight feet high by the way. They started trading chops and selling like they’d been wrestling for ten minutes. About three minutes in Snuka took a slingshot into the cage. He gigged and started bleeding everywhere. Muraco raked his face against the cage and worked his face over. They brawled on the top rope and Snuka sent Muraco down to the mat. I actually thought they were going to do the splash right away, but Muraco recovered first and slammed Snuka off the top. He went for the door, but Snuka cut him off. Muraco took a wacky turnbuckle bump where he got about halfway through flipping upside down like Ric Flair, then came flying out of the corner upside down. He ended up bleeding somehow and Snuka worked him over. Snuka hit a running headbutt in the corner, but Muraco went upside down backwards over the ropes and right out the door to win. Well, that makes them both look like geeks. Snuka dragged Muraco back inside and hit a suplex. He went up top, scaled the cage, and hit the giant splash. Everyone went ballistic, of course. Match was just sort of there until Muraco won via shitty finish (“He won this match on a fluke,” Monsoon noted), but none of that matters because nobody remembers everything except the cage splash (“Eighteen to twenty feet,” claimed Monsoon). Muraco sold this like complete death, unable to even roll over for several minutes.
185
186Grisham compared Snuka’s dive to Foley going off the Cell. He then talked about Tito Santana and Greg Valentine.
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188Tito Santana vs. Greg Valentine. Lumberjack match from Madison Square Garden, March 17, 1985. So two weeks before the first Wrestlemania, in the same building. My GOD has wrestling changed. Howard Finkel explained that the lumberjacks were there to throw the wrestlers back in. Valentine was decked out in a phat-ass lavender velvet robe. He also was introduced first, even though he was the reigning champion, which they hardly ever did back then. They brawled back and forth. Valentine rolled to the floor amongst the heel lumberjacks, but Ricky Steamboat and some other guys ran over and threw him back in. That happened a few times, then Valentine got the heat with a reverse atomic drop. Rocky Johnson was at ringside and Monsoon kept calling him The Rock. That was distracting. Tito came back and hit that old school move where you hook the guy like you’re going to do a piledriver, then just jump up and land on your feet. I’m bringing that back as soon as possible. Valentine kept trying to flee and failing. I think Axel Rotten may have been one of the lumberjacks. Tito finally ran into a knee in the corner and Valentine started working over the leg. He tossed Tito out right in front of the babyface lumberjacks, and they gave him a ton of time to recuperate. Not much of note happened for a few minutes, then Tito made his comeback. They traded some of the best punches you’ll ever see. Tito went for a figure-four, but Valentine rolled outside and got shoved back in for the 400th time. Is this match going anywhere? Just like that, Tito finally hooked the figure-four in the middle of the ring and the place went crazy. Jimmy Hart took the ref and Big John Studd pulled Valentine into the ropes, so the ref broke it up when he turned around. Tito went after Studd, but Valentine cut him off from behind. It looked like they were on separate pages for a bit. Then they bonked heads, and Valentine fell on top for the pin. They sure did find creative ways of giving the heels screwy wins back in the day, I’ll say that. Match just wandered around for a while and was pretty forgettable.
189
190Up next are a pair of Randy Savage matches, against Santana in Boston Garden, and against Steamboat at Mania III, but I just reviewed those on the Savage DVD like six months ago. The Steamboat match basically had to be on both sets, but I have no idea why the Santana match was doubled up.
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192Grisham said that Ric Flair called Steamboat his greatest opponent ever, so you knew it would take somebody special to beat him. Enter the HONKY TONK MAN.
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194Ricky Steamboat vs. Honky Tonk Man. From Superstars, June 2, 1987. Jesse Ventura was disappointed that Honky didn’t play his guitar behind his back. Honky attacked at the bell, but Ricky worked in his skin-the-cat spot and went to work. Honky’s selling was so great. Steamboat went for an O’Connor roll, but Honky kicked him off and Steamboat went into the corner for the heat. Steamboat evaded the shake, rattle & roll, dodged a corner charge, and went up top. He hit the karate chop, but Jimmy Hart had the ref. They did a convoluted spot that saw Honky bonk into Hart. In the middle of all this insanity, Steamboat hooked a small package, but Honky countered the hold and held the ropes for the pin. That was like the best five-minute match of all time right there.
195
196Honky Tonk Man vs. Ultimate Warrior. From SummerSlam, August 29, 1988. Grisham told us beforehand exactly how long Honky’s title reign had been (longest of all time of course, and as Grisham pointed out, that will probably never be broken), then said that if you’re concerned about him spoiling the next match, he wasn’t giving away much. Honky had no scheduled opponent here, but demanded a title match on this big show, so nobody knew who the challenger would be, not even Finkel. They waited for like a minute until Warrior’s music hit, and Honky pretty much knew he was fucked. Warrior lit into Hocky, and the reaction was amazing. Thousands of people jumping in the air and waving their arms back and forth. Warrior won in like a minute with some of the worst clotheslines ever and the big splash, and that just drove the people even more insane. STAR MADE.
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198Grisham talked about former IC champions were either technical wrestlers or high flyers, and Warrior stood out because he was all about power. Then he talked about Warrior dropping the title to Rick Rude at Mania.
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200Ultimate Warrior vs. Rick Rude. From SummerSlam, August 28, 1989. Announcers were Jesse Ventura and TONY SCHIAVONIE. Rude had maybe his best tights ever, a picture of Warrior in tears. Warrior no-sold all of Rude’s offense early. Warrior press slammed him over the ropes to the floor. That would suck. Warrior went to work on the floor, including hitting Rude with the belt. Ventura called for a disqualification. Schiavonie explained that it was allowed because they were outside the ring. “SO WHAT?” Jesse cried. “You can SHOOT your opponent as long as it’s outside the ring?” Then he called Schiavonie the stupidest man ever, stupider even than Gorilla Monsoon. This team is fucking MONEY. Seriously, this was back when Schiavonie still cared about wrestling and was a pretty good play-by-play guy, and he was a perfect straight man for Jesse to fuck around with. Warrior hit a top rope axehandle for a nearfall. He got another with a BODYSLAM, and then with a suplex. He then began to assault Rude’s ass with an atomic drop and, well, he just picked Rude up and dropped him on his ass. He went up top again, but Rude cut him off and crotched him. He worked Warrior over for a bit. He went for the Rude Awakening, but Warrior powered out, so Rude hooked a sleeper instead. Warrior escaped and tackled Rude, who bonked into the ref and all three were down. Warrior was running at full speed and, well, it was believable that three men would be knocked unconscious here. Rude recovered first, and took a long time to survey the scene. He attacked Warrior, but Warrior WARRIOR’D UP. They traded Mongolian chops, which is one you don’t see every day. Warrior hit a bunch of clotheslines and a powerslam, but the ref was still down. So Warrior added a piledriver. The ref came to and inched his way across the ring to count, but Rude got a foot on the ropes. That fooled the fans and they all cheered, then groaned. Warrior hit a powerslam and went for the splash, but Rude got the knees up. Rude picked Warrior up and hit – I shit you not – a TIGER DRIVER ’91. It was slightly different because Rude had him by the waist and not with the arms butterflied, but the result was the same, Warrior landing on his head. Rude added a top rope fistdrop. Roddy Piper chose then to make his way to ringside. Rude hit a standard piledriver for another nearfall. Then he noticed Piper on the floor. Rude flexed at him, so Piper mooned him. Rude, outraged, climbed to the middle ropes to yell at him. Warrior came up behind him and hit a GERMAN SUPLEX. He followed with the press slam and the splash for the win. Rick Rude was a fucking MAGICIAN here, a SORCERER, because he got an easy ****-plus match out of the Ultimate Warrior. They then cut to Sean Mooney, who cut a promo about how great it was to be out among the fans. Thus endeth Disc 1, and boy did it go out on a high note.
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202
203Bryan's TV Reviews
204
205ROH on HDNet
206They showed photos and clips from the Big Bang PPV last weekend including Tyler Black's win in the three-way.
207
208Cornette called out Tyler to open up the show. This was taped before the PPV but Dave Prazak and Mike Hogewood did new voiceovers talking about his title defense in Charlotte. Cornette told him it was clear this wasn't going to get any easier for him. Tyler said he was mostly concerned with Roderick Strong, who appeared to have fallen off the deep end. He said he wasn't like Roderick, a guy defined by his failures, but rather a guy who learned from his failures, kept trying and ended up succeeding as a result. He said if he could get by Aries and Strong he felt like the majority of his battle was won. Out came Davey Richards. He did a promo saying Tyler was used to dealing with guys that like to play games, and so he was going to cut to the point: Tyler was the champion and he wanted his belt. "YOU SUCK!" He said as of tonight he was the hunter, Tyler was the hunted and the hunt was on.
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210Announcers did a cut-in plugging the PPV and saying you could still watch it on demand on your computer right now.
211
212We got a Jerry Lynn in ROH video package. He's making his return. The video package showed highlights of his ROH career and built to Rhett Titus and Kenny King putting him out of action with a stuff piledriver.
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214Jerry Lynn vs. Jake Manning. Manning got the heat and worked over the piledriven neck. Jerry made his comeback and hit the cradle piledriver for the pin. Very basic TV match getting over Jerry's return. Kyle Durden interviewed him afterwards. Lynn said there was one thing he agreed with Kenny King about, and that was that everyone knew the risks they took the moment they stepped into the ring. He said Kenny shouldn't feel bad about what he did because he wasn't going to feel bad for what he did to him later.
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216They showed clips of KOW beating Briscoes for the tag titles.
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218Durden interviewed Corino about his predictions in the Eddie Edwards vs. Kevin Steen TV title tourney match. Corino said there was no need for a prediction, Steen was obviously going to win. Durden said he was supposed to be wrestling Generico tonight but he was still in a suit and tie. Corino said he'd been wrestling forever, and if anyone needed to concentrate on getting ready, it was Generico. He vowed to destroy him and make sure Generico would never forget the name Steve Corino.
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220Corino vs. Generico. Corino came to the ring still wearing his suit. He cut a promo saying the reason Generico wore a mask was because a) he was ugly, and b) he was hiding behind the fact that he was never really any good. He told him he was a certified loser. Where do you get that kind of certification? If Generico died tomorrow, he said, nobody would care. That's not very nice. He said Generico was nothing but a tall skinny piece of garbage. He said he didn't care about Generico and never did, therefore he was forfeiting the match. Hogewood said he couldn't understand why Generico stood there and took this. "He's a coward," Prazak said. Corino concluded saying Steen was right, Generico would never be anything without him. Generico attacked him, ripped his suit off, wiped him out with a dive, and then geeks ran down to break it up.
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222They showed clips of Steen beating Titus and Eddie beating Colt in tourney matches. This is how you promote a tournament.
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224Eddie did a promo saying people were talking about how there was tension between himself and Davey Richards, and that if they faced each other in the finals it would destroy the team. Kenny King walked up and told him to stop looking past him towards some imaginary final. Eddie told him that geeks like Kenny were too busy trying to look as pretty as possible as opposed to concentrating on getting wins. This was not the best interview segment I ever saw.
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226Steen vs. Edwards. Steen cut a promo before the match saying he had something very important to say. Last year, he said, the Wolves were involved in one of the most intense feuds in ROH history against himself and Generico. He said for that year he really hated Edwards, but leading up to this match he went back and watched some footage of the feud and concluded that the reason Eddie did what he did last year was because of Generico. He should have explained what it was that Eddie did because for new viewers like me, I was sitting here having absolutely no idea what he was talking about. He reminded us that he broke Eddie's elbow once and didn't want to do it again. "Actually, I think I do!" he said, and attacked him. He worked over the elbow for a long time. People got into Eddie's comeback quite a bit. Steen cut him off and hit the big senton but Eddie kicked out. They traded nearfalls and people chanted "LET'S GO EDDIE!" Steen unwrapped the tape on Eddie's elbow and began stomping on it. He finally got the crossface on but Generico came out and distracted Steen. Edwards then got a surprise small package for the pin. This finish would have worked a lot better if they hadn't kicked out of 200 giant moves earlier, because it made Steen look like a chump, even with the distraction.
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228
229WWE NXT
230Show opened with the Teacher calling all the NXT guys out and discussing their rankings. He talked about how Otunga won the guest host spot on Raw, had the chance to win the tag titles with John Cena and then walked away. He explained that he could have tagged in Cena and taken Miz's head off, but he didn't like Cena in the first place and by walking out on him he guaranteed that Miz, a judge on this show, would help him out. Well, that makes no fucking sense. He could have been tag champs with JOHN CENA and had the right to work on EVERY SHOW, but he threw it all the way so he could get an NXT vote from Miz? This was an Impact-worthy excuse. Teacher asked Daniel if he felt he deserved to be in first place. He said he wasn't sure. He wanted to know if Miz deserved to be a pro, did Otunga deserve to be the guest host on Raw, did Cole deserve to replace Jim Ross on Raw? He said no, he didn't deserve it, but he'd do his best to become a WWE superstar. Stryker said he was in first place and the answer should have been yes, he did deserve it because he was Daniel Bryan. Cole said, and I quote, "He's a peewee." A PEEWEE. Stryker interviewed Tarver about whether Daniel should be in first place. Tarver said no he didn't, and he (Tarver) was sick of being ignored. He warned everyone that he was a pitbull ready to attack and everyone had better watch out. Promo was awful. Teacher said every week we were going to have some sort of physical challenge. This week the guys had to lift a keg, carry it around the ring and then back over a line. Whoever did it fasted won. Daniel went first. He was laughing the entire time. He held it at waist-height and shuffed around the ring. It took him 24.9 seconds. Barrett went second -- 14.7. Size matters in keg challenges. Cole, I should note, said Barrett had won "a number of tough-fights over the years." Gabriel made 13.6. Slater made it in 12 flat. Otunga, who got massive heat, did it in 14.1. He looked like he was in danger of tearing something with every step. Sheffield did a 12.4. He would have won but he hoisted the keg onto his shoulder first and that killed a good second of time. Tarver dropped the keg immediately and was DQ'd. Darren Young also failed and also looked like he was going to tear everything. Since Slater won they announced that he was getting the main event tonight against none other than Kane. Sucks to be him.
231
232Sheffield did a promo claiming the keg was rigged and that's why he didn't win. The same keg everyone else used? He said the people weren't ready for him. "The universe isn't ready," he said. I can see that.
233
234Daniel vs. Darren in a first-place vs. last-place match. Daniel ran wild on him early with a running knee off the apron. He put on the cattle mutilation but it seemed like almost nobody knew what he was doing. He took the entire match and did a great job with the guy, then Young just swept his legs and pinned him with a folding press. It's not Bryan's fault, but Young is so green that this finish came off as ridiculous, like Daniel let him win.
235
236Michael Tarver vs. Justin Gabriel. Gabriel is badly lacking in personality but I think they've got something in him. He made a big comeback and went up top, but Tarver split his legs. They fought up top. Tarver got knocked off, then Gabriel hit the 450 for the pin.
237
238Wade Barrett vs. David Otunga. I am really watching this match. Otunga made a big comeback they actually showed a replay of him hitting the ropes and taking his first step with the wrong leg before hitting a shoulderblock. Wade then yanked him off the top rope and gave him his fireman's carry slam for the pin.
239
240Kane vs. Heath Slater. Heath hit a flying dropkick and a flying body press early, but then Kane cut him off with a boot to the skull. This was actually better than your usual Kane match because it was so simple. It also had a shocking amount of heat. Kane hit the flying clothesline and eventually hit the chokeslam for the pin. I turned the corner on Heath here. And Kane. I mean, this was a real thumbs up.
241
242
243Smackdown
244Show opened with Jack Swagger coming out to celebrate. He talked about how he won the title last week, and now tonight Edge and Jericho were going to fight for the right to face him at the PPV. He claimed he was the odds-on favorite to walk out of the PPV as champion. You'd never have known that had you watched Raw. He said some people were born to be champions. "I'm one of them." He said he deserved to be champion. He was pretty much in the middle of his speech when Morrison's music hit and out he came. The Teacher said Morrison was the resident rock star on Smackdown. Has he ever sung a song once, or played an instrument? He did get nearly a rock star reaction here. He said Swagger got lucky one night, and while that made him a titleholder it didn't make him a champion. He noted that he got buried on Raw and even showed clips. Well, fuck me. What next? He said Swagger may claim he was a changed man but he had the same stupid haircut, the same stupid nickname, the same stupid speech impediment. Anything else while they're at it? Swagger said Morrison was just upset that he lived in the shadow of Miz. Swagger went after him and Morrison low-bridged him.
245
246Morrison vs. Swagger. So in the middle of this match Swagger got busted open and they stopped the match and sent geeks in there to clean it up. This is a TAPED SHOW and they aired this. Astounding. Swagger looked so pissed off as they went to work closing him up. Well, it did kill the momentum immediately. Morrison, of course, had tons of time to recover but had to pretend he was still badly hurt the entire time. It took a while but they finally got back into it. Swagger added the run-up-the-ropes Kurt Angle belly-to-belly. He went for the Vader bomb but Morrison got his feet up and then made his comeback. They traded nearfalls, then Morrison went for the twisting moonsault. Swagger rolled outside to safety, then clipped Morrison's leg when he went out on the apron. This whole sequence was clunky. "LET'S GO SWAGGER!" Swagger then rolled him into the ring, hit the gut wrench, and actually pinned the guy. Wow, a win by Jack Swagger.
247
248Swagger ran into Jericho backstage and said he was pulling for him tonight. He said the only reason he cashed in on Jericho and not Cena was because Jericho was hurt and was therefore a sure thing. Jericho demanded he give him the belt back, saying cashing in the way he did didn't make him world champion. Swagger slapped the belt and said THIS made him the World Champion.
249
250Shad, who has shaved his head, came out and showed the video of him beating up JTG last week. He said he knew there were people out there who could relate to him, people with a sibling who got more attention than they did, or people who knew a co-worker who got the benefits they didn't. Stand up, he said, take what you want, and don't let people like JTG stand in your way. He said this wasn't Cryme Tyme, or the people's time, it was his time, Shad Gaspard's time. That remains to be seen. JTG ran down to attack him and immediately got booted like a complete fool. Way to go there.
251
252Drew came out and cut a promo simply saying that he wasn't going to waste his breath on the people. Drew vs. Matt. It was fine. Drew worked him over for a long time, then Matt hit a side effect out of nowhere that people actually bought as a finish. Still astounds me that they buy it every time. He made his big comeback and they traded nearfalls. They ended up outside and Drew gave him the underhook DDT on the mats. He threw Matt back inside and covered him for the pin. "Big win!" said the Teacher. In what sense?.
253
254Punk and his crew came out, including his NXT dude, Darren Young. Serena cut a promo about all the fans leading miserable lives of excess. She told us to find straight edge through the grace of Punk. Gallows was next, telling us the moment of cleansing was worth a lifetime of pain. He said when he realized straight edge was his destiny he was saved. Someone had a "CM SKUNK" sign. Punk got to talking to Darren about how he needed to embrace straight-edge since he was currently ranked dead last and was on his way to being eliminated. Darren facially looks shockingly like John Cena. Punk sat him down in a chair and told him he needed to shave his head. He asked if he was ready. Surprisingly, Darren was ready. Well, to be honest, if my hair looked like that I'd be fine with it getting shaved as well. Punk made him raise his hand and pledge allegiance. Darren got his hand up, began to pledge, but then slowly lowered it and said he'd changed his mind. Punk got on him so Darren shoved him. Gallows attacked him from behind, they started stomping on him, and they were about to do the deed when Rey hit the ring and made the save. It was funny because they piped in a buzzing sound effect for the clippers which, if real, would have made them the loudest clippers in the history of man. The clippers ended up on the ground and Rey grabbed them. He was about to shave Punk when the disciples pulled their man to safety. Rey cut a promo accepting the match at the PPV, saying he was not going to beat Punk but he was going to shave his head and break up the Straight Edge Society. I can't believe this is a one-stip match, meaning Rey, the babyface, has absolutely nothing at stake except a loss.
255
256Trent Baretta and Caylen Croft, who are still employed, came out and cut a promo on the Hart Dynasty. They're actually referring to themselves as THE DUDEBUSTERS. They talked about how awesome they were. Trent, it was noted, beat Call of Duty IV in one day. They told fans to call their friends and tell them to TiVo them. That had to be a knock on TNA. Harts vs. Croft & Baretta. The Teacher was talking about how Trent and Baretta were big into Facebook and other forms of social networking. I am not into video games much, but I recognize that a lot of people in the 18-to-34 demo are fans of video games, the Internet and Facebook, which makes it kind of baffling that the wrestlers who supposedly like those things are portrayed as geek heels. Harts made a comeback and Harry put Trent in the sharpshooter for the submission. This was actually a lot of fun.
257
258Josh interviewed Dolph. He wanted to know how it felt to have put Great Khali to sleep last week. Dolph said it felt like this, and proceeded to choke Josh out. Commentators sold this like Dolph had, I don't know, sprayed him with water or something equally non-violent. Dolph's technique, I should add, was awful. Shouldn't there be some sort of punishment for attacking an announcer without provocation?.
259
260Swagger ran into Edge backstage and said he hoped Edge won tonight. Edge said listen, when I first cashed in my briefcase years ago I was much like you, young and cocky, and I ended up losing the title three weeks later. He said he was going to win the match against Jericho tonight and then in, coincidentally, three weeks, he was going to go to the PPV and beat him with the spear. Or, more precisely, he said, the "thpear." He left and Swagger insisted he didn't have a speech impediment.
261
262Edge vs. Jericho. They had a good, long match. Not to the level of WrestleMania or anything like that, but a hell of a TV main event. Got about 20 minutes, including going through two commercial breaks. Edge made a big comeback but Jericho cut him off with a bulldog. He went for the lionsault, Edge got his knees up and Jericho turned it into the walls. Striker said this was the most painful submission hold in WWE today. Jericho hit the codebreaker but Edge fell out of the ring. Jericho rolled him back inside and made the cover but Edge kicked out. Edge hit the DDT and set up for the spear. Jericho leapfrogged and ran outside. Edge followed him out and into the crowd. The ref rapidly counted them out. Since this was the number-one contender's match it looks like it'll be a three-way at the PPV, which is for the best since Swagger is a weak champion and his title match will need all the help it can get. Show ended with Jericho going to get a chair but Edge speared him out of his boots to a big pop.
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264
265Raw
266Show opened with David Hasselhoff coming out. People made fun of me when his name was announced and I made a Knight Rider reference, but as it turns out his entrance did, in fact, involve both the car and the Knight Rider music. He had dancing girls with him, the whole nine yards. The man has barely aged. He made a bunch of Hoff references, like how we were going to have a HOFFSOME NIGHT, etc. Finally, he said, THE HOFF has returned to Monday Night Raw. People chanted "HOFF!" He was wearing a black glittery jacket and looked like he was doing some sort of stage show in Vegas. As you'd expect, he signed a Baywatch Babe Triple Threat Tag Team Match. He claimed he'd been watching Smackdown the other night and he realized there was no number-one contender for the World title. That's something else, as I didn't even notice that. He said it only made sense to him that if you beat the champion twice in non-title bouts you should get a title match. So yes, at the PPV, it's Swagger vs. Orton for the belt. Jesus, he's a better booker than the people in TNA. He signed Orton vs. Batista for later in a battle of number-one contenders. He said let's kick this off with the Divas Title match. Hoff needs to host every fucking show. He was great here.
267
268Maryse vs. Eve for the Divas title. Eve ran wild, then went up top for a moonsault. Maryse moved out of the way and then began wildly cackling. She started slapping her around and went for her DDT when Eve turned it into a wacky cradle for the pin. I am probably the only person in the entire world who thought this, but when I saw it I thought it was a message being sent to Maria after Maria did all those interviews talking about how sad she was never to have won the belt. Anyway, this was fine while it lasted.
269
270Show and Miz came out and Show cut a promo saying when they were first teamed up he was skeptical about whether it would work out, but after WrestleMania and last week he'd concluded that they were actually pretty special. Miz said that's right, we are special, and nobody has been able to take these titles from us. He proclaimed them the greatest team in WWE history. Crowd booed. Miz was appalled. "WHO BETTA THAN SHOWMIZ?" he asked. He repeated his statement when Bret's music hit. He came out and said he could name two teams off the top of his head that were better than them -- the Hart Foundation, voted best WWE Tag Team of all time, and the British Bulldogs. Miz said if he'd been around in the '80s they've have beaten both those teams. Show told him to hit the bricks. Bret said I'm not ready to leave, and in fact I've got a tag team back there that could beat you right now. Hart Dynasty came out. Miz said no, this wasn't happening. Harry actually got to do a promo. He said everyone knew his father was there watching tonight, and so he was issuing a challenge for a one-on-one match with Miz. If I win, he said, we get a tag title shot at the PPV. Show called Miz over and appeared to be telling him they didn't need to do this. Miz, meanwhile, was all cocky. He said Show thought this was a mistake but he considered it an opportunity. He said he'd accept on one condition -- when he won, then next week live on Raw Bret would have to declare that Showmiz was, in fact, the best tag team of all time. Bret consulted with his team and then said, "You're on. Deal." Good stuff.
271
272Miz vs. Harry Boy. Crowd wasn't much into it until Harry started his big comeback. Miz cut him off and came off with a double sledge but Harry kicked him right in the face. Harry put on the slowest sharpshooter ever. Big Show jumped up on the apron to distract him. Tyson tried to make the save but Show punched him in the face. He then proceeded to punch Harry in THE BACK (they claimed kidney) allowing Miz to hit his finisher for the pin. So next week, they said, Bret would have to go on TV and admit that ShowMiz was the best tag team of all time.
273
274Batista met with Otunga backstage. He said he was tired tonight and could use an energy boost. "Why don't you go get me a cup of coffee?" Otunga was like, HAW HAW YOU GOT ME, but then he realized that Dave was dead serious and said well, I was thinking of going to get a cup of coffee myself. As he was leaving he ran into Hoff. He made some jokes about how old Hoff was, so Hoff signed him to a match with Cena later. KITT predicted that Cena would beat him in 22 seconds.
275
276Carlito vs. Evan Bourne. They had a match. It was fine. Evan hit the shooting star for the pin.
277
278Cena vs. Otunga. They're putting David Otunga in a singles match with John Cena. This could be ugly. Cena schooled him on the mat early. This was strangely entertaining. John Cena, shooter. He did some holds, then he punched him a few times, then he put him in the STFU for the submission. Complete squash match. Batista on the ramp was irate, so irate that he began taking his clothes off. He teased heading to the ring but then changed his mind and said he'd decide when they'd fight. People chanted "YOU TAPPED OUT!" Dave was wearing the most absurd pair of pants. Made him even greater.
279
280Sheamus came out and did a promo. He said he knew that HHH only brought out his sledgehammer when he was facing a guy he didn't think he could beat. He said he'd just gotten the official word that at Extreme Rules the two of them were going to compete in a streetfight. He said he grew up in the streets of Dublin, Ireland "where real men come from". He said it was tougher than anywhere in America and certainly tougher than "anywhere in this fallen empire." Them's fightin' words. He said if HHH showed up at Extreme Rules he'd be the one making the mistake, and it would be one he'd regret for the rest of his carer. Great promo and Sheamus was so visibly happy at having drawn so much cheap heat. Kofi came out. He said he'd just spoken to David Hasselhoff. I LOL'd. That should have been a vignette. He said if Sheamus thought he could get away with beating him down like he did last week he was sadly mistaken, and The Hoff had signed them to another match here tonight. Kofi vs. Sheamus. Sheamus gave him a lot early. Kofi made his big comeback, fucked up his jumping split into the corner again, and then hit the wacky kick. Sheamus got the ropes. People bought the nearfall. Sheamus ended up rolling outside and hitting Kofi with the monitor for the DQ. He then proceeded to beat the piss out of him, running him into the post numerous times, etc. So they were fine with Sheamus killing the guy, but it was very important for Kofi to not lose via PIN FALL. Sheamus screamed afterwards that this was what he was going to do to HHH.
281
282Carlito was looking for Hasselhoff and ran into VLADIMIR KOZLOV, who wants some COMPETITION. Carlito said he was sick of guest hosts who only cared about themselves. He said this was his livelihood and the goofs were fucking with him, and therefore if he didn't get traded to Smackdown in the Draft he was quitting WWE. Kozlov wanted to know who the guest host for next week was. Carlito said it would be the cast of MacGruber, and whatever they did it surely wouldn't involve the two of them. "Next week I will get what I want, otherwise I DESTROY MACGRUBER." MONEY RIGHT THERE.
283
284Orton did a promo saying as far as Batista was concerned, he'd been looking forward to this for a very, very long time.
285
286Gail & Kelly vs. Bellas vs. Jillian & Rosa Mendez in a Baywatch Babe Triple Threat Tag Team Match. Santino was there as special guest referee. Hasselhoff was out there as the "special guest lifeguard." They had the girls wearing Baywatch outfits, and they ran to the ring and they aired it in slow motion. That was funny. Wedgies right and left here. Crowd was almost dead silent once they began wrestling. Hasselhoff was peering on like an old pervert. That was great. Broke into a six-way. Bellas switched and one of them pinned Rosa. This was horrendous. Jillian shoved Santino and he supposedly swallowed his whistle. The crowd was screaming for Hoff to give mouth-to-mouth. Instead, the midget's music hit and he booked to the ring in slow-motion. He tried chest compressions and then tried yanking the whistle out, but that didn't work. So he did his frog splash and Santino spat the whistle high in the air. This was at least creatively entertaining. Match still sucked a big one though.
287
288They showed clips of the European tour.
289
290Big Dave vs. Orton. On Raw. For free. Well, they do have to beat Impact in this quarter. Oh, wait. Orton missed his knee and Dave tossed him shoulder-first into the post. It was funny because Dave set up for the spear at the end and a few people actually screaming "SPEAR!" Orton gave him a boot in mid-move and sent him shoulder-first into the post. They traded punches and got the "YAY!" "BOO!" chants. Orton gave him a fast-rotating powerslam, which was pretty impressive. He set up for the RKO but then decided to try the punt instead. Dave rolled outside to avoid it. As he was heading back in, Orton punted him and hit the draping DDT, but Dave kicked out. I remember when that was a deadly finisher. Orton set up for the RKO again. Dave turned it into a spinebuster and set up for the powerbomb. Orton turned it into a flash RKO and was going for the cover when Swagger hit the ring for the DQ. Not a bad match. Swagger tried to get Orton up quickly but was going too fast and struggled badly. He finally hit it. Cena hit the ring and put Dave in the STFU. Dave tapped repeatedly. Geeks ran down to break it up. Show was designed to build matches for the PPV in two weeks and they did a pretty good job with it.
291
292
293Impact
294Show opened with Jarrett coming out. I'll bet he starts yelling about something. I was right. He was mad at Sting. He made sure to remind us that he was the founder of TNA. I'm not sure what is funnier, the fact that he reminds us of this every single week or that he actually takes credit for it. He said he wanted Sting and was gonna go git him. He went upstairs into the rafters, found him and started stomping a mudhole in him. People chanted "TNA!" Jarrett was screaming that he wanted an answer for why Sting had turned heel. They finally got down to the ring and the lights went out, and when they came back on Sting had his bat. He beat the crap out of Jarrett. Jeff Hardy, Abyss and RVD ran down to make the save.
295
296Team Flair was backstage to hype up the PPV on Sunday. He said what just happened with Sting was what was going to happen all night tonight. He ranted and raved about how much he hated Hogan. In St. Louis, he said, they'd destroyed Team Hogan and Hulkamania. This was like a promo right out of the '80s. Not that there's anything wrong with that. Bobby Roode said he was going to wipe out Hardy tonight. Desmond vowed to maim Abyss. He said the ring would be his. Chelsea said no, it will be mine. Yeah, sure, he replied. Chelsea is an enigma to me.
297
298Brother Ray came out and grabbed a mic. He said they just got out of Hogan's office and Hogan was just as mad at the Band as they were. He said their match tonight wouldn't just be a regular match, it would be a six-man New York Streetfight falls count anywhere in the building match. Any why not? What better stipulation for the first-ever match in a feud on free TV? Of course, it's not like a straight match would have been any good. Team 3-D & Jesse Neal vs. Hall & Nash & Waltman. Shots to the head galore with various instruments. This went on for fucking ever. And it wasn't even back and forth. The babyfaces beat on them over and over with instruments for minutes on end. The fans were going nuts, I'll give them that. It was finally time to get the tables. "This might be kind of anticlimactic," Taz said. I love Taz. They set up the table anyway. Who should come out to make the save for the heels but Bubba the Love Sponge. Really. He distracted Bubba the Other Sponge, allowing Pac to hit the X-Factor off the top through a table for the pin. So since this is TNA I presume they go from here to a straight no-stip match. Eric Young then ran down to clean house and make the save. He cut a promo. Apparently the match and finish we just saw was done to lead to -- wait for it -- Kevin Nash vs. Eric Young in a singles match in a cage. What?.
299
300Christy interviewed Hogan. He said his team was going to prevail at Lockdown. Just then he looked behind a curtain and saw Eric talking with Flair. Eric Bischoff, that is. Two Erics and two Bubbas on this show is no buys. Hogan told Eric he wanted to talk about this in the office.
301
302Shannon Moore vs. Kazarian. They had a pretty damn good TV match. Taz was talking about how goofy both Shannon and Jeff Hardy were and said there must be something in the water over there. Yeah, something like that. Douglas Williams came out and did commentary. He did his usual promo about how this wasn't real wrestling, it was flip-flopping and wackiness. He was the champion, he said, and he won the title with catch-as-catch-can grappling, not flips. Tazz asked him if he knew what dilligaf meant. Douglas said he had no idea. He should have said no, but he knew what a wristlock was. Shannon hit a huge moonsault off the post. Lots of nearfalls. In a great TNA moment, they got a shot of the announcers from behind and I'm not sure if Tenay was aware of it because instead of looking angry and stern as usual he was instead giggling at Douglas' commentary. They ended up going to a time-limit draw. Fans were NOT happy about that. This was one of the best Impact matches in months. "LET THEM FIGHT!" Douglas grabbed the mic and was completely appalled that these two spot monkeys (almost his exact words) hugged and kissed after their match. They chased him to the back.
303
304Velvet Sky's breasts did a promo. I mean, you should have seen these things. She said tonight's match wouldn't be for the belt. Why? Because it would be on the line Sunday in a three-on-two tag match with Velvet & Madison & Lacey vs. Tara & Angelina with the person getting the pin becoming the champion. Well, that makes no fucking sense. She could try to win it tonight by stripping Angelina down or she could pass on it and try to win it Sunday in a match with FOUR OTHER WOMEN where any of the four could get a pin and win the belt.
305
306Hogan was bitching at Eric backstage. He wanted to know what the hell was going on here. Bischoff said he wasn't going to apologize for being himself. He said he was who he was and Hogan had to know that going in. Hogan said he didn't want an apology but he wanted to know why Eric was conniving with Flair. Eric said they weren't conniving. He said Team Hogan was getting their ass kicked and he was trying to gain Flair's confidence so that he could help Hogan and they could get this thing back on track. He said if Hogan knew him he knew he could believe that. I don't believe that. After Eric left Jay Lethal rushed in and wanted to know what they were going to do about the Band. He wanted to team up with Flair against them. After Lockdown, Hogan said, if Lethal could find his tights they'd do it. That match sounds HORRENDOUS.
307
308Angelina did a promo. She's a serious wrestler now and said she didn't come to TNA to "parade around the ring like a lady of the night." She really said that. Tara walked up and was really mad that Angelina won her belt last week by opening a box. They got into an argument and cut away in the middle of it. Guess it wasn't important.
309
310Christy interviewed Abyss and the Pope. Pope hyped up the PPV and Abyss hyped up the tag match he and Pope are doing later. Aside from the Moore vs. Kazarian match this was the best thing on the show by far.
311
312Angelina vs. Velvet in a non-title leather and lace match. Rules were that you had to strip your opponent down to her undies to win. Velvet came out and since she was allowed to choose the stips she said this wouldn't be a leather and lace match after all, but rather a match where Angelina was handcuffed and she whipped the piss out of her. The ref immediately handcuffed Angelina. This made Velvet's decision to not make this a title match even more fucking stupid. Well, her gimmick was never that she was smart. Angelina jumped her as she was coming through the ropes and stomped on her. Velvet hit her with the belt, knocking her out, then added another stipulation -- it was an I Quit match. Velvet beat on her and demanded she quit. Angelina kept refusing. Velvet said maybe if I strip you naked you'll quit. She tore her shirt off exposing her bra. Angelina still wouldn't quit. The other two Beautiful People ran down and were tripling on Angelina when Tara ran down to make the save. So yes, we got an I Quit match without a finish. Also, Tara somehow had the key to these cuffs and was able to free Angelina. And why not? Angelina wanted a handshake from Tara afterwards but Tara walked off. TNA Special ™ here, the tag partners who hate each other.
313
314Christy was outside. Abyss was dead. Apparently he was hit by a car. Then they cut away. Guess it wasn't that important.
315
316Back from commercial, Christy confirmed that Abyss got hit by a car. Remember when Hernandez got kicked into the post and they stopped the show for 10 minutes tending to him? Well, Abyss got HIT BY A CAR here and they spent 30 seconds on it before cutting away to something much more important, Matt Morgan talking about how great he was. He said he was all cool with defending the tag titles by himself but TNA management was demanding he get himself a partner. So he got Red. So basically we've got a fighting babyface who is a heel in Matt Morgan.
317
318Morgan & Red vs. Machine Guns. There was an awesome spot where Red ended up outside and as he was avoiding a dive Sabin kicked him right in the face and Red took a full flip bump. That was the coolest spot I have seen on this show in years. Should have been a finish it was so great. Morgan dragged Red to his corner and made a one-man comeback on both Guns. The people putting this show together have literally no idea how to promote faces and heels. Guns made their big comeback but then Morgan hit the ring and cut them both off. He went for his finish on Shelley but he was taking too long and it allowed Red to pin Sabin with the code red. This made Morgan upset so he killed the little bugger. Morgan was about to give him the boot against the post when Sabin made the save. Gotta help a brother out.
319
320Christy was outside saying there was security camera footage of what happened with Abyss and we'd get that when we came back. So they showed the footage and it did, in fact, show Abyss getting hit by a car. So they showed it twice and then zoomed in and basically said MY GOD LOOK WHO'S DRIVING. I rewound it like three times and I have NO fucking idea who that was supposed to be. It was a human, I know that. They came back and Mike Tenay was like THAT FACE LOOKS FAMILIAR!, but then he said he didn't want to point fingers so he wasn't going to name names. WAT.
321
322Jeff Hardy vs. Robert Roode. Good match. I will say that it does, in fact, appear that there is a TNA Jeff Hardy and a WWE Jeff Hardy and that they may not necessarily be the same human being. Roode did a great job with him. Jeff hit a Stone Cold stunner and went up top but James Storm cut him off. This was right in front of the ref and it wasn't a DQ. Jeff shoved him off and CRUSHED Roode with the senton. I have no idea what happened at the pinfall but something happened where it appeared Roode was reversing the pin into a crucifix but the ref counted three anyway. Storm got in the ring afterwards and supposedly blew a fireball in Hardy's eyes. Apparently it took three takes live and I guess the third one still didn't work because at least on my TV the screen froze during the spot and we never saw any fire, only the post-fire smoke. The referee gave the raised fist to indicate Jeff was fine. RVD ran down to make the save and the heels beat him up as well. This was pretty good stuff.
323
324Angle did an interview in a hospital bed or something. The acoustics were awful. He was talking about troops and the medal he'd been given. Kennedy then did a promo saying he wasn't here to make friends, he was here to make money and win titles. This was a good video package, but the problem was we've already seen them wrestle 100 times, we've already seen Angle get his revenge, we've already seen the entire US military get their revenge, and so I'm not sure why we need to see it again.
325
326Pope did a serious promo. He said his prayers were with Abyss. Jay Lethal ended up walking up, calling him Reverend Slick, and then saying he'd be his replacement tag team partner tonight. This made Pope happy.
327
328Pope came out for the main event. Before Lethal could come out he was attacked by Beer Money backstage. He started making a comeback but then James Storm killed him with what was hopefully a fake beer bottle to the head. So it was Pope vs. AJ & Nigel in a handicap match. AJ cut a promo before the match basically saying it sucked to be Pope. As Desmond was coming out Hogan laid him out with a chairshot to the back. Pope and AJ started brawling. Tenay said Hogan must have concluded that Nigel was the one who ran over Abyss. He also said Jeff Hardy was OK, his face was seared by the fireball but he was responding and OK and would be good to go Sunday. I guess this was a match because they rang the bell repeatedly after Flair hit the ring and clonked Pope with the title belt. Beer Money ran down for the four-on-one. AJ threw Pope outside and he took this huge flying bump to the floor. That was nuts. Show ended with Hogan coming out on the ramp and staring at the heels. Per TNA standards this wasn't a bad go-home show, but it's not doing near the numbers of Lockdown in year's past.
329
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340HOMERADIO ARCHIVENEWSLETTER ARCHIVETHE BOARDNEWSUFC NEWSWWE NEWSJAPAN NEWSROH NEWSTNA NEWSMEXICO NEWSINDIE NEWS
341APR 20 2010 FIGURE FOUR WEEKLY: STRIKEFORCE ON CBS FATE, LOCKDOWN AND IMPACT, RAW ISSUES, CORNETTE
342BY OBSERVER STAFF | STAFF@WRESTLINGOBSERVER.COM | @WONF4W
343TWITTERFACEBOOKGOOGLE+
344The story of Saturday night's Strikeforce on CBS show from Nashville ended up being whether they're going to run another one.
345
346The event was a disaster in pretty much every way. The televised show, which was scheduled for two hours, went 45 minutes long, bumping local newscasts around the country. That was a major issue at the last show, but the decision to do three five-round title fights in two hours, which quite frankly anyone could have seen going in was a recipe for doom, was OK'd by CBS in advance, so the network would have to at least split the blame for the overrun. To make matters worse, the three fights went the distance and were hardly crowd pleasers, and then when the show seemed all wrapped up a gigantic brawl broke out in the cage with Team Cesar Gracie basically gang-raping Jason "Mayhem" Miller.
347
348It was funny because there was initially a lot of heat on Miller despite the fact that he didn't do anything that guys don't do all the time, that being ask for a title match, and even during the brawl he was probably the one guy in the cage aside from announcer Gus Johnson that never threw a punch. After 185-pound champion Jake Shields won an upset decision over Dan Henderson, Miller jumped into the cage and asked him when he was going to get his rematch. From watching the tape, the first person to make a move was Shields' teammate Gilbert Melendez. Melendez shoved Miller. Miller just stood there smiling. Shields shoved Miller, and then the entire camp descended upon him. This wasn't just your usual pull-apart brawl. This was everyone in the Cesar Gracie camp including Nick and Nate Diaz (the latter of whom fights for UFC) basically trying to kill Miller. It was a violent, brutal fight, and they quickly cut to commercial. As violent and brutal as it was, however, when they returned from commercial CBS not only showed a replay, but they pulled Shields out of the cage and interviewed him about what happened.
349
350It was a very controversial deal and the Internet was going nuts Saturday night about how it was a major black eye for the sport. Pretty much everyone involved apologized. It was interesting, though, to hear the reaction of Cesar Gracie.
351
352"I went to a hockey game, a (San Jose) Sharks game last week," Gracie told MMAJunkie.com. "There were three fights where the teams were fighting each other. That was at a hockey game where there are supposed to be no fights. So a fight broke out at a fight. That's not a good thing, and I'm not condoning it -- but a lot of people are jumping on this because they're babies. The same night, they had an NBA fight. They want to talk about a fight at an MMA fight between MMA fighters. How would it be damaging? If you're a sports fan, you're used to seeing fights all the time. It's really, seriously, a bunch of pussies latching on to this and trying to make it a bigger deal than it is. Is it a good thing? It's not a good thing. We're sorry. Everybody involved has apologized. But you've got a lot of crybabies that are going to latch on to this to the bitter end, but they're not going to say anything when a hockey game has fights every night. Young sport, old sport – people are making a much bigger deal than this. It's hype; it's all hype." He said he told his team not to do that kind of thing again because it distracts from the fights, and said the right way for Shields to have reacted was basically to trash-talk Miller right back, perhaps saying, "Who are you again? I just beat Dan Henderson. Your fight wasn't even telecast."
353
354I actually agree one hundred percent with Gracie. Unfortunately, it doesn't matter what he thinks or what I think or what anyone on the Underground thinks. What matters is what CBS thinks. Was that the straw on a disastrous night that broke the camel's back? Apparently officials saw the overrun as something that wasn't great, but also something that you had to expect in a live sporting event. Did they see the brawl the same way Cesar did, something that wasn't the right thing to happen and something that you hoped didn't happen regularly, but you knew was destined to happen here or there?
355
356In the end, the answer to the question of whether there will be another Strikeforce on CBS show is going to come down to whether the numbers justify it. We don't have the overall rating yet but it looks like it's going to come in at around a 1.6 or 1.7, which was pretty much exactly what I'd predicted. We don't have all the demos either, but we know that the adults 18-to-49 demo did a 1.0, deep in last place among the big four networks, with 2.63 million viewers. The most important numbers of all, which we won't have until after press time, are the male 18-to-49 demos, which CBS has flat-out said are the most important because they had advertisers specifically targeting those demos on this show. If they do all right, the programming may be cheap enough comparatively to make it worthwhile for them to do another show.
357
358Even if they're not, it's not a definite the CBS slot is finished, because there may be a realization among the people at the network that a show headlined by Jake Shields is not the sort of thing that you can promote and expect to do a good number. There are people who have done strong numbers on network TV, like Kimbo Slice, Gina Carano and even Fedor. Obviously Kimbo is out of the question. Gina has been working on a film but she could perhaps be talked into coming back for one more fight. And if things get worked out with Fedor, perhaps CBS will say, hey, let's try this one more time with a guy who has done acceptable numbers in the past and see if we can make it somewhat of a success.
359
360The future of Shields is up in the air coming out of the fight. This was his final fight on this current contract, and pretty much everyone felt going in that Henderson was going to destroy him quickly. That almost happened, but Shields, after getting dismantled in round one, was able to survive, and then in round two Henderson for whatever reason got tired. Dan will never make excuses and refused to at the post-show press conference, but there were rumors of neck and back injuries. All he would admit was that he got tired and was beaten by the better man. So with Shields having retained the belt, Strikeforce is likely going to try to exercise the clause in his deal that will guarantee them at least one more fight. It's not a champion's clause like in UFC where your contract automatically renews as long as you're champion, so after this next fight he could conceivably go to UFC. Dana White has expressed interest in him, and will probably make him an even bigger offer now that he's beaten Henderson. It's pretty much guaranteed he'll make a big offer even if he doesn't want him because he's all but said he'll do so in order to have Strikeforce pay even more for him than they would have without a bidding war. Shields has expressed interest in going to UFC as well, but refused to comment on what his plans were after Saturday night. He's heading to the beach to relax and his father will be talking to Strikeforce officials about a potential renewal probably by the time you read this.
361
362Strikeforce head Scott Coker had not seen footage of the brawl as of Saturday night's press conference and said he'd make a decision after he'd seen it about whether to levy fines or other punishments against the guys involved. He was under the assumption that Miller started the whole thing and so he greatly downplayed the chances of another Miller vs. Shields fight in the future.
363
364"I would like to formally apologize to CBS, Strikeforce and all fans of mixed martial arts for my role in the events following the 'Strikeforce: Nashville' event," Miller said Monday. "In retrospect, my timing could not have been worse to ask for my rematch with Jake, and I take full responsibility for entering the cage and setting off a chain of events that cast a dark shadow on the sport. I've been a fighter and a fan of MMA for over 12 years and would never do anything to intentionally tarnish the sport I've given my life to. In the excitement of the moment, I let my emotions run high and made a bad choice that resulted in a debacle. For that, I sincerely apologize."
365
366The Tennessee State Athletic Commission will also be investigating.
367
368As for the fights themselves, as noted, nothing to write home about. King Mo beat Gegard Mousasi in a big upset by using his wrestling grit and toughness to outlast the champion and win his belt. Gilbert Melendez vs. Shinya Aoki a battle of Strikeforce vs. Dream champions, looked to be either a fight of the year candidate or a styles clash. It was the latter. And the main event was super exciting for two rounds, but then once Henderson got tired it was a game of Shields controlling the positioning and not coming close to a submission or a stoppage for three straight rounds. The general consensus from fans (and I watched with several) was that the show sucked until the pull-apart brawl at the end, which was so wild that it left you with somewhat of an adrenaline rush.
369
370The show drew 8,196 fans to the Bridgestone Arena in Nashville.
371
372Gus Johnson, Mauro Ranallo and Frank Shamrock opened up the show.
373
3741. Gegard Mousasi vs. King Mo for the light heavyweight title. Mo got his entrance, coming to the ring dancing with his crown and wacky cape. I spoke too soon. He was just coming out on the ramp with his dancing girls, one of whom had an umbrella, and they cut to commercial. How lame. They showed the KEYS TO THE FIGHT by airing animations from the video game. That was hilarious. Mo was standing right in front of him and throwing wildly. He quickly went for a single leg, took a ton of quick shots to the head, then got the takedown. Mousasi said his plan was to let Mo wear himself out on top. He held him at bay with his long legs, pulled him in close at times, and then threw wild upkicks. Mo was throwing shots from the top but didn't look like he had a ton of power behind him. Gegard stood up and Mo looked like he was already tired. Gegard stuffed a takedown and landed some Muay Thai knees. Mo took him down but was too tired to do anything. Technically he won this round 10-9 but it looked like it was going to be bad news for him going into the second. Mo got another takedown early in the second. Mousasi was actually landing more shots from his back than Mo was from the top. Gegard got his back standing with 20 seconds left and tried to finish him off but the bell sounded. 10-9 Gegard. Slow-motion stand-up battle in the third. Gegard looked a little tired as well. Mo took him down, sorta. They both fell down and Mo ended up on top. I like how Gegard's strategy was to let the guy get tired, and then he apparently didn't do enough to avoid getting tired himself. Mo was actually getting his second wind here. 10-9 King, so he was up two rounds at this point. Mo took him down again in the fourth. Jesus, Gegard. It's funny because I think Mo was the more tired of the two but as a wrestler he had the toughness to fight through the exhaustion that Gegard didn't have. John McCarthy got bored and stood them up. Mo took him right back down. 10-9 Mo, so 39-37 Mo at this point. Mo took him down again in the fifth. Mousasi got a point deduction because he delivered an upkick to Mo's head as Mo was on all fours. Crowd booed like crazy. They ended up on their feet with one minute left and Gegard took him down again. With 10 seconds left they started swinging and Gegard had one shot to finish this fight. And he got taken down. 10-8 Mo with the lost point, so 49-45 Mo. Mo got the win and the title.
375
376Gus interviewed Mo, who said they were on CBS and may as well put him on CSI. You know, because he looked like the victim at a crime scene. He said he got careless but everything else he said was mumbled. He then turned on the fans saying they may as well boo him because he was gonna keep winning, "so thanks to my haters!" That was good.
377
378Henderson did a promo. He looked as confident as a person could possibly look. Mauro asked him what he thought of Jake's fighting style. He said it was rather slow. I LOL'd. He said he had done a good job adding a little excitement over the years. He said he planned to go out there and knock him silly.
379
3802. Gilbert Melendez vs. Shinya Aoki. Aoki was wearing normal board shots, sadly. Aoki looked like he should be fighting at 135 pounds. Just diminutive. Crowd gave them two minutes before they started booing. Melendez then needed a time out for an eye poke. Aoki pulled guard and went for something, perhaps a gogoplata, but Melendez avoided it and they ended up back on the feet. Melendez took him down and landed some HARD shots to the head against the fence. Aoki was trying for a submission but had to give it up because he was getting hit so hard. 10-9 Gilbert. Aoki had a bloody nose in the second and was getting tagged. Shinya pulled guard and Melendez responded by throwing two hard shots and then backing off out of reach, and staying on his knees while doing so in order to avoid the kicks. 10-9 Gilbert. They interviewed Jake during the break. He was talking at 50 miles per hour and looked as nervous as you could possibly look without projectile vomiting after the first question. Aoki tried a butt scoot in round three and Melendez responded by punching him in the face. I laughed. Gilbert was gaining confidence here, not fearing the Aoki guard at all. Melendez was destroying him with shots from the guard. There were at least three stand-ups by the ref in this round alone. 10-8 Gilbert since he dominated this round. More of the same in the fourth. Ref Mario Yamasaki was NOT down with the butt-scooting. This was the round where the refs got bored and started talking about what a great martial art wrestling was, and then Gus asked if boxing was considered a martial art and the others guys went yeah, sure. Crowd was booing. Aoki did another butt scoot and Gilbert punched him right in the face. The ref stopped it and everyone thought the fight was over. I guess Mario had asked for a stand-up when Gilbert punched him and so he stopped the fight and issued a warning. Mario was standing them up way too fast off the butt scoot which was why this happened. 10-8 Gilbert. Aoki showed almost nothing. So at this point, 40-34 Melendez. Aoki was at least trying in the fifth. Mauro said there was talk of an immediate rematch in Japan. Who could POSSIBLY want to see that? 10-9 Melendez. Aoki at least tried in this round and Melendez didn't do all that much. They were wildly swinging in the last 10 seconds. 50-43 Melendez. Melendez won 50-45. They did the fight stats and Melendez scored ZERO takedowns in a fight where Aoki was on his back 80 percent of the time. That should tell you something.
381
382Gus asked if Melendez thought he was the number-one lightweight champion in the world. He said he was at least top three. What the fuck is wrong with these fighters? SAY YOU'RE NUMBER ONE.
383
384They showed clips of the Mayhem Miller fight. At the 10:45 p.m. mark of a show that was only scheduled for two hours. The clips were of Miller beating up Sam Stout for 20 seconds and winning.
385
3863. Jake Shields vs. Dirty Dan Henderson for the 185-pound title. "I think he's going to destroy Jake Shields," Frank said, "but I may be an optimist." He also said he found Jake's style boring. Gus noted that Frank didn't like Jake at all and refused to sit in on the fighter's meeting when he was there. So it looks like they're trying to set up Shamrock vs. Shields for down the road. That would be a fun fight, actually. Mauro noted that Dan had beaten no fewer than 10 BJJ black belts during his career. Big John was the ref. Dan clocked Jake with a shot almost immediately. He went after him on the ground and Dan went for a leg hold. McCarthy warned Dan about grabbing the fence. Shamrock was burying Jake for having no chin. Dan knocked him on his ass again and demanded he get back on his feet. Another shot dropped him again. Place was going nuts. A short clinch by the fence. Jake shot for the takedown and Dan switched and stood up with him. 10-8 Dan. They had quite the scramble in the second and Jake ended up mounting him. Dan was elbowing the thigh hard from the bottom. Jake was landing some shots from the top but was doing a lot less than you'd think. Dan was largely just laying there. If Jake had hit him harder he might have gotten a ref stoppage but there wasn't much behind the shots and the ref let it go. 10-8 Shields. Even going into the third. Gus put Frank on the spot here about how well Jake did in the second. Frank said it looked like Dan was getting fatigued. Dan's corner apparently told him to stop fucking around and finish the guy. Jake went for another takedown, kind of got DDT'd, and Dirty Dan stood back up. Jake went for another shot. He was getting single-legs on Dan Henderson. Jake passed into side control. Shields got the mount again. Shields went for the armbar with 10 seconds left but Dan held on. 10-9 Shields. Jake tried another takedown in the fourth and got stuffed. He would not give up on the single leg. They had a goofy scramble. I thought Dan was going to try a BANANA SPLIT. Jake ended up mounting him again. Jake tried a straight kimura. Didn't get it. Fans were booing with 20 seconds left in this round. 10-8 Jake. So it's 38-35 Jake going into the fifth. Jake took him down again in the fifth and mounted him. People were booing for some reason. Maybe the Olympic Greco-Roman team is in the crowd. John McCarthy got bored and said, and I quote, "Come on Jake, work for a finish!" This had Frank in hysterics. Jake tried an armbar and then a kneebar, but got neither. 10-8 Shields so 48-43 Shields total. Judges scored it 49-46, 49-45 and 48-45 for Jake.
387
388At this point Mayhem hit the ring, demanded his rematch and they had the huge pullapart. They went to commercial, came back for the wrap-up, and Frank was there shaking Jake's hand and telling him he respected him now. We then got the promo from Mauro talking about how DISGUSTED he was with Mayhem Miller's behavior. In the right time and place, this would have ruled. This was not the right time or place.
389
390
391Lockdown
392TNA Lockdown 2010 was one of the most horrendously-booked shows of the year with two awesome matches plunked down in the middle of it. It was like when you read in the newspaper about how some kids were watching cartoons on Nickelodeon and then for some reason in the middle of the show there was a malfunction and they got 30 seconds of porn. This was like a bad wrestling show where there was a satellite malfunction and we got two awesome matches inserted.
393
394TNA wants Jim Ross. Most everyone knows that. If they could get John Cena or Edge or Chris Jericho or Batista or pretty much anyone with any star power, they'd snatch them up.
395
396The people they should really try to snap up are the WWE agents. It was so evident watching these show that these agents have absolutely no idea what they're doing or how to put a good match together. I'm sure Terry Taylor and whoever else are nice guys and all of that, and part of the blame has to be put on the people booking these shows (it's not Terry's fault the babyfaces had the man advantage in War Games), but Jesus.
397
398Let's look at some of the booking stupidity on this show:
399
400* Babyfaces had the man advantage in War Games. I mean, come on. Yes, one of the babyfaces got laid out and couldn't get into the cage, but that was the LAST ONE who was supposed to enter. We had a near fifteen-minute period where the heels were beating up the babyfaces despite having the man disadvantage. The babyfaces looked like complete tools, which is one of the reasons the only people who got over in the main event were Hulk Hogan, Ric Flair and Eric Bischoff.
401
402* Cage matches where you had to distract the ref. Why would you have to distract the ref in a cage match? Apparently Russo has said in the past that there is no rule saying you can't be DQ'd in a cage. OK, fine. So why, in the Mr. Anderson match, was the finish a choke-out with a chain, which should have been a DQ? There is no consistency to the rules in this company.
403
404* Cage matches where you could win by going over the top and other cage matches on the same show where you couldn't win by going over the top, and other cage matches where you could only win by going out the door.
405
406* Ric Flair being ejected before a cage match where the entire idea of the cage is that nobody can get in and nobody can get out.
407
408* People going in and out of cages seemingly at random, which begs the question why there is a cage there in the first place.
409
410* The women's match, which was just in general a complete clusterfuck of booking. It also included a babyface having the opportunity to get a tag but not making it, like an idiot, and then the babyface missed a moonsault which led directly to that same babyface making the hot tag, which made no sense.
411
412* Two title matches in a row where the title changed hands and the champion wasn't even involved. In one of them the champion (and the belt) weren't even on this continent. In the other the champion who lost the belt without getting beaten had won the belt two weeks earlier by opening up a box in basically a raffle.
413
414* A match where the ref told the guy to break a choke or he'd be DQ'd. It's bad enough that this happened in a cage match, but it also happened in a three-way match where there aren't even DQ's anyway.
415
416* A streetfight in a steel cage.
417
418* A match where a guy threw away the key to the cage, and then later when he had to get out he just opened the door and the announcers speculated that there must have been a second key. Why was there a second key when the entire point of a ladder match a week earlier was to determine who got the only key to the cage?
419
420* A match where a guy did a moonsault off the top of a cage, hit his opponent, and then not only was this not the finish but his opponent completely recovered and hit his finisher 30 seconds later.
421
422* The preposterously booked main event.
423
424This was like a throwback to the old days of TNA where they'd have all this great wrestling on their PPVs but it wouldn't matter because nobody was buying the shows. And when you ask people today why nobody buys the shows, or why they don't watch TNA at all, 95 percent of the time you'll hear one of two responses:
425
4261. Everyone is old.
427
4282. It's stupid.
429
430And so what we got here was a show with a whole bunch of stuff that was really stupid and a main event that ended with Hulk Hogan (56), Ric Flair (62) and Eric Bischoff (54) as the centerpieces. And that tells you what you need to know about how things are going under this new regime.
431
432The show got very good reviews live and drew about 3,000 in the 5,000-seat Family Arena in St. Louis, Mo.
433
434They called this the most dangerous PPV of the year.
435
436The pyro went off to open the show. No music. Perhaps there was music in the building but they didn't pipe it through the speakers	.
437
438They said Douglas Williams had been grounded in the UK due to the volcanic eruption. They said as a result of this legit ACT OF GOD he was being stripped of the X-Title. That's the stupidest thing I've heard of in, well, a few minutes. They also said X-Pac wasn't there. Call time was 1 p.m., Tazz said, and X-Pac didn't make it. "Obviously a case of Syxx-Pac being Syxx-Pac, so who knows?" he concluded. Tenay said Bischoff was supposed to be there but he wasn't either. Tenay said they'd seen him at the Fan Axxess deal yesterday so they presumed he'd show up. This made TNA come off so fucking low rent. The story was that X-Pac was at an indy show the night before and was blitzed out of his mind, ranting and raving that he wasn't showing up to do a job unless they paid him the big bucks. In 2010.
439
4401. RVD vs. James Storm for the man advantage in the main event. The very first spot on this show was RVD kicking the door into Storm's face, and then them going outside the cage and brawling. Yup, show opened by killing the show-long stip. They brawled all around ringside. RVD did his legdrop off the side of the cage onto Storm draped over the guardrail. RVD got busted open. They finally got into the cage. Van Dam was bleeding pretty bad. They did the BOO! YAY! punch spot, then RVD made his big comeback. RVD hit the split-leg but Storm kicked out. Storm distracted the ref, spat beer in RVD's face and then DDT'd him. Great nearfall. He missed the superkick, got booted, then RVD hit the frog splash for the pin. Yes, the babyfaces have the man advantage going into Lockdown. I can't make this up. (***1/4)
441
442Christy interviewed Hogan, who said his team had been beaten up pretty bad of late. Yeah, life is tough based on the finish of the opener. He was talking about how it was OK to hit a guy over the head with a fire extinguisher but it wasn't OK to run a dude over with a car. Don't tell Cornette that. He said they were going to tear down the house tonight and the man advantage was the little bit of momentum they needed. He said if Team Hogan lost tonight, maybe he'd just have to leave TNA. Christy wanted to know where Eric was. He said he had enough on his plate. Eric's going to do what Eric's going to do, he said. It was out of his hands and he was over it. What a weird fucking promo.
443
4442. Motor City Machine Guns vs. Homicide & Brian Kendrick in an Xscape the Cage match. The stips were that whoever got out first would be put into the three-way match for the X-Division title with Kazarian and Prince of Punk later. Kendrick was bleeding two minutes in. BLOOD EVERYONE. Tenay said he'd just gotten word that Hogan told Scott Hall that he had to either get himself another partner or go one-on-two against the Team 3-D later. May as well have another match with backasswards psychology on this show. Match went about three minutes. It was good while it lasted. Finish was great. Homicide and Kendrick agreed to work together and did so until the very end when they laid out the babyfaces and then Homicide ran for his life. Kendrick tried to stop him but failed, and Homicide was hilarious pointing at him and mocking him before dropping to the ground. (**1/4)
445
4463. Kevin Nash vs. Eric Young. They were talking about how Hall was running out of time to get a partner. Does Hall know better than to ask Nash to work twice? Nash distracted the ref so that he could give Eric a low blow and get the heat. That's two time in three matches that heels have distracted the ref prior to cheating. IT'S A FUCKING CAGE MATCH. THERE ARE NO DQ'S. Jesus Christ these fucking agents. There were "LET'S GO ERIC!" chants. Eric sold the whole time, then Nash hit him with a powerbomb for the pin. This also went about three minutes. Young came off like a complete jobber. Young was also bleeding, I should add. Perhaps this cage is made of barbed wire. (*)
447
448Nash did a promo saying he had news for the boys in the back. He said if Hogan and Bischoff thought for one second that Hall was coming out alone they were dead wrong. He said he was the partner and they were coming to get Team 3-D.
449
4504. Madison & Velvet vs. Tara & Angelina in a match with all titles on the line. It required a full screen to run down the rules. Basically, Angelina is the Knockouts champion, so if either Madison or Velvet get a pin in this match they win the Knockouts title. However, if Tara or Angelina get a pin then they win the Knockouts tag titles. There was no visible blood in this match. Heat on Tara. If you want to call it that. Tara made a comeback but refused to tag like your typical moron babyface. She went for a moonsault instead and missed. So yeah, Tara missing led to her getting the hot tag. Don't ask. Angelina made a comeback and then made a blind tag. She'd been on the apron for 20 seconds and was now no longer selling. The ref was distracted, the third time in four matches, and Lacey walked into the cage. Yup, just opened the door and walked in. She hit Tara with the title, then left. Thank God there is a cage here. And thank God the ref was distracted because in TNA you can gave DQ's in cage matches. So yeah, Madison Rayne then pinned Tara and won the Women's Title. Every agent on this show needs to be fired. One of the worst booked matches of the year. Tara begged Angelina for forgiveness afterwards. Angelina turned her back on her so Tara attacked her and ran her headfirst into the cage. For historical purposes, this is the second straight Knockouts title change where the champion didn't get beaten. (1/2*)
451
452Borash interviewed Flair's team. At least Sting was there. Flair did a promo putting over all of his guys and how they were better than all of Hogan's guys. He said they were going to bloody up and destroy Team Hogan, and promised the wrestling world that after tonight we'd never see Ric Flair again. AJ then did a promo about the main event, saying he was the longest-reigning TNA Champion in history and had beaten everyone. He said there was no way Pope could beat him. AJ's promos are getting better, but him following Flair every week is such a disaster.
453
4545. Homicide vs. Kazarian vs. Shannon for the vacant TNA X-Title. Tazz flat-out said it wasn't cool that TNA stripped Douglas Williams of the belt for travel issues. They did a bunch of MOVES. Most looked good, some did not. Homicide choked Kazarian. Ref gave him a five count and told him to break. You can't CHOKE A MAN in a THREE-WAY CAGE MATCH. More botched spots near the finish. Or they weren't botched and they looked botched, which is just as bad. They noted that the belt was also stuck in Europe and so the winner of this match didn't get anything when it was over. Crowd chanted "THIS IS AWESOME!" This was THE most offended I've ever been to hear that. Kazarian took a bad landing off the top and may have hurt his shoulder. This was a complete mess at this point. Kazarian finally dropped Homicide on his head with a move for the pin. That looked like it killed the guy. So for historical purposes this was two TNA matches in a row on PPV where there was a title change and the champ wasn't involved. (*1/4)
455
456Pope did a promo with Christy hyping up the main event. This was a GREAT fucking promo.
457
4586. Hall & Nash vs. Team 3-D in -- A STREET FIGHT. Yes, a falls count anywhere streetfight on an all-cage matches show. Crowd went nuts for the crowd brawling. They fought all over the place, hit each other with stuff, then Ray got laid out and Hall and Nash locked themselves in the cage with D-Von. Bubba busted his way back in with a chair. Hell of a sturdy cage here. He ran wild on both guys. They did the wazzup spot and then put Hall through a table with the 3-D. Place loved this match and it was far better than you'd have expected. (**1/4)
459
4607. Mr. Anderson vs. Kurt Angle in an Xscape the Cage match. Anderson tried to escape early, but when that failed he punched Angle in the head repeatedly with a key. Must be a pretty blunt key as somehow this didn't bust Kurt up. But he did get busted up being sent headfirst into the cage. They key, I should note, ended up in the padlock and just sat there, so they only played up that stip for like 60 seconds. Anderson was now bleeding. Kurt gave him the super belly to belly off the top. Anderson started choking him with his tape. Wasn't that a warning by the ref earlier? It was legal here. Nothing like consistency in the rules. I spoke too soon. The ref didn't force a break by threatening a DQ, but he did grab Anderson's hands and tried to break the choke. Kurt ended up backdropping his way free. Dropped him almost right on his head. Kurt made his big comeback. Anderson cut him off and hit the rolling fireman's carry, but since the only way to win was to escape he couldn't go for a pin. Angle gave him six rolling Germans and then put him in the ankle lock. No submissions here. Anderson kicked free and hit the mic check. Anderson opened the door but Angle gave him the slam. Kurt saw the door open, but instead of escaping he went over, locked the door, then flipped off Anderson and tossed the key into the crowd. So now, twelve minutes into the match, Anderson started to sell that he was LOCKED IN A CAGE WITH KURT. Hilarious. Anderson tried to climb but Kurt stopped him, and then, while standing on the middle rope, gave him a German. Anderson landed right on his shoulder. "THIS IS AWESOME!" Well, it was a lot more awesome than that three-way. Angle went for the moonsault, but then changed his mind and went to the top of the cage. No. Yes. He did a moonsault off the top, nearly hit his head on the cage in doing so, and crashed and burned in spectacular fashion. I thought for sure either him or Anderson or both were dead. So this was the most spectacular TNA spot in probably years, and where did it lead? Well, not to the finish. Angle went to leave. Even though he locked the cage door and threw away the key, he went over and just opened the door. Tazz said there must have been another key. Is that what it was? As he was about to leave Anderson flipped him off. Kurt went back in to give him more. And yes, Anderson was fine 30 seconds after taking that moonsault. So Kurt went back in and got a mic check. They wrestled for another two minutes. Finally Anderson was about to leave through the door when Kurt took his medal, choked him out the same way Anderson choked him out in the ladder match, and then when Anderson was unconscious Angle stomped on his balls, walked out the door and won. A hell of a match but my GOD was there some stupid shit done here. (****1/4)
461
462Angle did a promo afterwards thanking the fans of St. Louis. He said if the people didn't already know he was going to take some time off and regroup. But when he came back, he said, he only had one goal in mind, and that was to win the TNA Title. And why would we know he was taking time off? Oh yeah, because we're on the INTERNET all the time.
463
4648. AJ vs. Pope. Earl Hebner kicked Ric Flair out early. Brilliant. Flair can't be at ringside for a CAGE MATCH. Fans in St. Louis chanted "WE WANT FLAIR!" Mat wrestling early. We got dueling chants of "POPE IS PIMPING" and "LET'S GO AJ!" This was the most real heat for a TNA match in a long time. AJ finally cut him off and went to work on his leg. People were going "WHOO!" He went for a kneebreaker but kind of slammed him instead, right onto his shoulder. Pope either hurt himself or decided to sell that the rest of the match. Pope made his big comeback and they traded nearfalls. AJ hit a 450 off the ropes but Pope kicked out. So AJ decided to go up to the top. He tried a high cross off the top and MISSED, landing flat on his gut. Pope cradled him for a nearfall, then hit his awesome codebreaker for another nearfall. AJ's bump off that move was even better than the one Nigel took. AJ ended up reaching through the camera hole in the cage, grabbed a pen from the cameraman, and hitting Pope in the eye with it. He made sure to hide this from the ref since, you know, you can have a DQ in a cage match in TNA. AJ hit him with a lariat, then picked him up and hit a Styles clash for the pin. As AJ was selling his win it was TO THE BACK~!, because there was something more important than AJ retaining his title -- Bischoff showed up. He refused to talk to Borash. So yeah, anyway, the match was good. (***3/4)
465
4669. Team Hogan vs. Team Flair Lethal Lockdown with the babyfaces having the man advantage. Just wanted to write that again. Abyss and Robert Roode started. Abyss was completely fine after getting hit by a car on Monday. I guess the dream is over on this show. They claimed Abyss had suffered a hairline fracture of the hip. Roode raked his eyes. Taz was like, well, I don't know how you rake the eyes of a guy wearing a mask, but perhaps the eye holes are big enough to get your fingers in there. I love Taz on this show. So they wrestled for awhile, then the next guy entered -- Rob Van Dam. So Roode, the heel, was put at the disadvantage here. RVD ran wild on him the entire period. In next was Nigel. So now it was a fair fight. Jeff Jarrett was in next. This led to two heels beating up three babyfaces. Seriously. The babyfaces had the ADVANTAGE and they were LOSING. They looked like such complete tools. James Storm was in next. It gets better. Storm and Nigel were beating on babyfaces, and meanwhile, Jeff Jarrett, there in the same cage, was beating on Roode. This was so fucking stupid. I mean, FUCK HOW DO YOU FUCK THIS UP? Jeff Hardy was in next to help the babyfaces, who were losing a fair fight. He didn't come out, though. They showed Sting having laid him out backstage. Sting should be booking this show, he gets it. So for the next two minutes we got a three-on-three match where the babyfaces were still getting destroyed. Sting was the last man, FINALLY giving the heels a man advantage. He went "WHOOOOOOOOOOO!" and the fans cheered. And why not? They lowered the top of the cage. For those of you who watch every TNA show and still don't understand the rules of this match, it's a one-cage War Games where after everyone is inside they lower the cage top, which has WEAPONS attached to it. Beer Money did their suplex and everyone cheered. Sting had been in the match for five minutes at this point and was still wearing his trench coat. Jarrett and Beer Money ended up outside. So what the fuck is the point of the CAGE? Abyss spread thumbtacks in the ring and went to chokeslam Sting into them. Storm broke it up by hitting Abyss with a beer bottle. Sting started bleeding somehow. Cue Jeff's music. He ran down with a kendo stick and beat everyone up. Jeff hit someone with a guitar and RVD hit a frog splash on Nigel. Sting tried to put Abyss in the tacks but Abyss stopped him and gave him a chokeslam into the tacks. Sting appeared to be wearing padding under his shirt. Jeff climbed to the top of the cage and demanded Beer Money meet him up there. They obliged. Jeff gave Roode a twist of fate on the roof, then put Storm on the table. He then set up a ladder on the top of the cage and put Storm through the table with a splash. It looked like he was considering a senton but actually thought better of something for once. Flair's music hit and he ran down. He started stomping on Abyss and then tried to steal the Hall of Fame ring. Cue Hogan. He grabbed a bat and was threatening Flair when Bischoff ran down. Hogan demanded to know what he was doing. He got between Flair and Hogan and begged off. He convinced Hogan to put the bat down, then produced brass knux. Flair thought Bischoff had swerved Hogan, but no, Eric gave the knux to Flair. He punched Flair, who gigged, then continued to punch him until Flair fell into the tacks. Then he kept beating on him, hitting him with garbage can shots. Abyss then gave Nigel a black hole slam and that was the finish. This was so sad to watch in so many ways. A freak show booking disaster that nobody gives a fuck about. (*1/2)
467
468
469In House Notes
470The number next to your name on the address label indicates which issue your Figure Four Weekly subscription expires with. Thus, if you have a [774] next to your name, this is the final issue of your current subscription.
471
472Very special thanks to the following people for their help over the years in producing Figure Four Weekly: Gladys "Granny" Gibson, Dave Meltzer, Tony Leder, Alex Marvez, Zack Arnold, Colin Vassallo, Kris Zellner, Manuel Gonzalez, Craig Proper, Vincent Verhei, Keith Lipinski, Robert Bihari, The Cubs Fan, Kyle Wolf, Devin Cutting, Shawn Garrett, Bob Barnett, Mike Lano, Adam Lebow, Mike Sempervive, Adam Summers, Mike Coughlin, Karl Stern, Steve "Dr. Lucha~!" Sims, Mike K, Forrest Lynn. Thanks also to everyone who sent in news over the past week.
473
474Worldwide renewal rates due to rising postage costs are $100 per one-year subscription (52 issues), $55 per six-month subscription (26 issues), $30 per three-month subscription (12 issues), and $12 per one month subscription.
475
476To order through the mail, send a check, money order or cash payable to Figure Four Weekly to PO BOX 426, Woodinville, WA 98072. To order with a credit card, send your Visa or Master Card order with your name, address, phone number, Visa or Master Card number, expiration date AND CVR number (three-digit security code on the back of the card) to figure4@ix.netcom.com, or you can order by faxing that information to 530-730-2920. You can also subscribe via paypal at www.paypal.com using the bryan@wrestlingobserver.com address, or subscribe via credit card by mail. Please include all the information listed above, particularly the CVR security code that many people forget.
477
478
479WWE
480
481As everyone is aware who watched Raw, the volcanic eruption in Iceland fucked up everything for the company for most of the last week. Because of all the ash and the subsequent flight cancellations across Europe (airplanes and ash apparently don't go well together), the Raw crew ended up being stranded through press time, and the Smackdown guys barely made it home in time to make it to the Raw taping Monday. The guys were all over Twitter this weekend lamenting their state, including Chris Jericho saying the trip had taken two years off his life. Raw ended up featuring mostly Smackdown guys and Raw guys like HHH who didn't end up going on the trip. At press time, the Raw crew had been scheduled to fly out Tuesday morning US time, but then the volcano started spewing more lava and ash and the word was that flight disruptions could continue through the middle of the week. Updates were expected through Tuesday. My guess would be that if they can't fly out Tuesday morning as planned they'd try to charter a plane from Ireland, where they were standed, further down into Europe, and then take a flight from there back to the US. One would think they'd have made that move earlier, in fact. The disruption of air travel also caused them to cancel their shows in Austria and Turkey, both of which will likely be rescheduled for this coming November.
482Superstars this week did an 0.75 rating and 837,000 viewers for a show they've already pretty much given up on. The replay did an 0.19 rating and 170,000 viewers. I think statistically that pretty much means nobody actually watched it.
483
484Golf Online in the UK is claiming that WWE has approached Tiger Woods about hosting Raw on June 7th. I suppose it's possible but I just think that coming off the scandal the last thing his people would be advising him to do is make an appearance on a pro-wrestling TV show. You know WWE would want to do something with him and the Bellas and I'd imagine he'd want nothing to do with something like that as well. They wanted Rock to do that show (it's in Miami), but last we heard he wasn't going to do that date but was open to doing another date later on this year.
485
486Jim Ross, whose current short-term WWE deal is up on April 30th, will be getting the Art Abrams Award at the Cauliflower Alley Club banquet a couple of days after we go to press. Steve Austin will actually be flying out there to present him with the award, which is a really nice thing to do and a major coup for CAC. "The fact that Steve Austin is coming to Vegas to introduce me when I receive the Art Abrams Award is especially rewarding to me personally," Ross wrote. "Steve is so busy these days with his ever-evolving movie career, and for him to make time to attend this event is extraordinarily special. One of the great gifts of being in the biz are the friends that one is fortunate enough to make. And Steve and I will always be friends, thanks in part, to the wrestling business".
487
488Ezekiel Jackson underwent surgery for a partially torn quad with Dr. James Andrews last week and is out six months.
489
490Regarding Matt Hardy's bruised biceps, it didn't end up being a torn muscle so he's fine.
491
492The UK Daily did a story talking about Drew McIntyre's relationship with Tiffany (the former ECW GM). They're getting married soon. She met his family for the first time during the European tour and his mom thought she was just so nice.
493
494NXT did a 1.0 rating and 1.2 million viewers this week, beating Impact.
495
496Daniel Bryan on his NXT promo: "It didn’t help that Matt Stryker interrupted me, but its not like I was going to light the world on fire anyways. When he said 'passion,' the idea that ran through my head was this: Explain the Daniel Bryan Manliness Meter. Describe one thing I’ve done that was really manly (in 2007 I detached my retina in a match and then continued fight for another ten minutes). Say that not only was that manly but it shows the passion I have. My closing line was going to be, 'Passion is what got me here, and passion will take me home.' It’s a line I’ve heard somewhere else, but I can’t remember where. Alas, I never got there and I didn’t feel like I had enough time after the interruption, so I just went for a cheap crowd reaction. And I DO love England! As a side note, I saw Vickie Guerrero later in the evening and she said, 'You sucked tonight.' Nothing to boost the old confidence like constructive criticism." Jericho on his Twitter wrote: "To truly make it in the WWE, you have to be able to adapt to any situation and be ready for anything every time you step into the ring. Sometimes you have to add five mins onto a match with no notice. Sometimes injuries occur and you have to change things on the fly -- And sometimes you have to cut a 30-second promo about toothpaste. The best can go with the flow and succeed in all situations and that's why the NXT Rookies had the talk off this week and that's why it was a very important and relevant segment.".
497
498Brock Lesnar did an interview with ESPN and said he would be open to guest-hosting a Raw show in the future. Brock is being managed by Paul Heyman in real life and my guess is that Heyman suggested it wouldn't be a bad idea in terms of gaining some publicity. I think WWE would be interested because he's become such a huge star, but the bitterness left over from him leaving and then successfully filing suit against the company may outweigh all thoughts of how big a rating it could conceivably pop. He put over WWE in the interview, saying he had a great run, made a lot of money, even met his future wife there, but in the end it was just his time to move on.
499
500Melina on Eve's title win: "Just to make sure everyone understands, I think Eve is an up and coming talent. She has potential like many of our Divas. Like many of our Divas, they deserve a better title moment than that. With a good chase and a good build up. Maybe you need to be a wrestler to know that feeling but, it's an incredible feeling when you have reached such an honor. Where it took time and you invested so much to reach that moment/ that level. She got cheated out of that. No one understands that. Good for her. Be good to your heels, they make you who you are -- As a former heel, I know. Do your thing chica. I still stand by what I say. Back in the Trish/Lita/Jazz era, the women earned the title and fought for it. It meant so much. Women looked at them and wanted to be as great as them. It shouldn't be about taking turns on who gets to put in on this week. It should be about who earned it and who brings credibility to it. I still wish it could have been Jillian, Katie or Gail to have that opportunity. All I wanted was to start a new era. To make those women proud to see we were keeping it alive." This wasn't the only weird statement she's made on Twitter this week. This is what I'll say. In the past, and even to a degree today, being the WWE World or Heavyweight Champion is somewhat of a big deal in the sense that unless you are there strictly as a transitional champ you're the guy that is responsible for representing the brand. The champion certainly doesn't draw anymore, it's the WWE name, but even as recently as the mid-2000s guys like Eddy Guerrero took it very personally when ratings and attendance dipped while they were on top. It was a source of great stress to them, and many guys over the years have let that stress get to them and it's broken them down. Today, with two champions for the separate brands and titles changing on seemingly a monthly basis it's not really like that, although most guys do find it to be quite the honor to be chosen as the top guy on their brand. The tag titles are important in the sense that the champs have to be good enough that they can work and have decent matches with a variety of people on all three brands, and they are considered main event belts nowadays. Below that, the belts don't mean jack shit. It means nothing to be IC Champion, it means nothing to be US Champion, and it sure as shit means nothing to be the Women's Champion. With that said, it's funny how seriously the women almost universally take those belts. They get very, very emotional about winning and losing them, which is astounding when you realize that WWE gives them absolutely no reason to feel that way because the belt is never pushed as anything special either on TV or to the fans.
501
502NXT last week did a 1.01 rating and 1.282 million viewers, so it beat Impact. The replay that went on an hour beforehand did an 0.49 rating and 644,000 viewers.
503
504Dos Caras Jr. got very good reviews from the crew on the overseas tour this week, and he speaks perfect English so that's a big plus. He's been working without his mask and apparently when pictures of him in WWE show up in the magazines in Mexico they actually blur out his face. I guess the deal is that as long as he doesn't work TV they'll protect his identity, but as soon as he shows up on Raw, Smackdown, Superstars or NXT unmasked then all bets are off and he'll lose out on the opportunity to lose the mask in Mexico for big bucks.
505
506HHH got the role of AJ in the upcoming WWE film Killing Karma. This is a bigger story than it appears to be on the surface because the guy who was originally scheduled for that role, Batista, lost it most likely because he hasn't signed a new WWE deal and the company believes he'll be taking an extended period of time off starting sometime in the next few months. Batista is looking to get into acting and was said to be furious that this role was pulled from him. HHH has been up for a number of different roles in the past including in the new Conan film, and this is good for him in the sense that he's got a lot of injuries he's working through right now and it'll give him a chance to take time off and heal. The film will also feature Michael Rapaport of Prison Break, Parker Posey of Highland Park, Julie White of Transformers 2, Michael Cudlitz of Southland, and Bruce Dern of The Big Valley.
507
508
509UFC
510The next UFC Primetime will cover the Quinton Jackson vs. Rashad Evans fight on May 29th from the MGM in Las Vegas. Primetime is basically the UFC version of HBO's popular 24/7 feature that they used most famously to build up Floyd Mayweather Jr. vs. Oscar De La Hoya, resulting in that show shattering the PPV record with 2.4 million buys. The UFC version will be three 30-minute episodes on May 12th at 11:30 p.m., May 19th at 11 p.m. and May 26th at 11 p.m. They had tons of momentum for this fight coming off the last season of Ultimate Fighter, but then Quinton pulled out of the early-December fight in Memphis to shoot the A-Team movie. He actually announced that he was quitting fighting shortly thereafter following a deal where Dana publicly buried him for doing the movie instead of the fight, but both sides have since made up. This will bring their feud back to the forefront again, and both guys, particularly Quinton, are such great personalities that this will probably be the most successful Primetime to date, and conceivably could end up with them drawing the biggest MMA buyrate of the year thus far (though that record will probably be broken in July for Brock Lesnar's return against Shane Carwin).
511
512Chael Sonnen, who will be getting the next fight against Anderson Silva, has been awesome of late cutting promos on the champ. It's only going to get better in the next few months. Hopefully he legit gets under his skin enough that Anderson goes out there and tries to kill him. The fight will take place in either July or August. July would be best because it would semi-main underneath Brock vs. Carwin, and that would guarantee that people would buy the show in spite of Anderson headlining. Outside a Brock vs. Anderson fight, there isn't a single match that Anderson could have in a headline position that I think would draw at all after his last few performances. Maybe Anderson vs. GSP, but Dana refuses to book that fight now anyway so it doesn't matter.
513
514Alex Karalexis vs. Anthony Pettis and Leonard Garcia vs. Chan Sung Jung will air on Spike TV from 6-to-7 Pacific on Saturday as a free prelim teaser for the WEC PPV. Although technically it is a WEC PPV featuring WEC fighters, UFC has taken over promotion of it, they're promoting it like it's a UFC event, the prelims and the countdown show will be airing on Spike TV and the UFC announcers will be calling the action. It's the smartest move, because it should help bump the PPV up past the 75,000 that WEC was expecting. I went on record a few months back predicting 250,000 buys, which probably is very high, but Dana is now predicting 150,000, which is certainly up from original projections. Guess we'll see.
515
516The Countdown show airs at midnight on April 21st.
517
518UFC cut Rafaello Oliveira, Matt Veach, Mostapha Al Turk, Rob Emerson, Brad Blackburn and Fabricio Camoes this week.
519
520TUF last week held up all right, doing a 1.3 rating and 1.6 million viewers. That was up slightly from the week prior but down from the 1.9 million viewers the debut drew.
521
522Tito Ortiz was actually threatening fans on Twitter, saying he was all pissed off that people were having the temerity to call him a pussy without even knowing why he wasn't doing the fight with Chuck. He said nobody who was bitching had ever fought in their life, and if they had a problem with him they could e-mail him their address and he'd go out there and show them what kind of pussy he was. "You ever been treated like a pussy?" he asked. I'm not sure how to answer that question but I could make several lewd jokes.
523
524It's not official, but a Frankie Edgar vs. BJ Penn rematch for the 155-pound title has been discussed.
525
526Dana this week said that he still didn't consider Fedor Emelianenko the best in the world pound-for-pound, but he did really want to make a deal for him to come in. He also reiterated that he was sickened and embarrassed by Anderson Silva's performance at the last PPV and said if he ever fought a fight like that again he would cut him. He also said people would have to watch this season of TUF to find out what happened with Tito and why it's now Chuck vs. Rich Franklin for Vancouver.
527
528. No word on the future of Renzo Gracie, 43, in the UFC, but the feeling is that he probably won't get another fight after being completely taken apart by Matt Hughes. Dana has praised him as a legend and a really great guy, but a guy who got old and just can't hang anymore. He said Hughes, 36, had a job in the company for life and would probably fight again. Hughes has three fights left on his deal and was open to the idea. Renzo signed a multi-fight deal, likely as part of the Abu Dhabi sale since he helped teach the people in charge of Flash Entertainment jiu jitsu.
529
530
531TNA
532The big story of the weekend was Jim Cornette's rant on Vince Russo which included what Dixie Carter apparently felt was a real death threat. Cornette got really upset last week and wrote a letter to Terry Taylor. He said he wanted Terry to know that he liked TNA and he liked a lot of people there and that when he tore the place apart it was nothing personal. Then he wrote: "I will say it because I am trying to quell the burning in my heart--I hate Vince Russo. I despise Vince Russo. I want Vince Russo to die. If I could figure out a way to murder him without going to prison, I would consider it the greatest accomplishment of my life. I hate him for the money he's cost me. I hate him for what he's done to the business. I hate him for keeping TNA from being competitive to WWE. I hate him for the careers, even the lives he's ruined with his shitty booking and the irreparable damage he's done to every promotion he's been involved with. I regularly wake up from dreams in which I am in the act of murdering him. I literally burn whenever I think of him. I have sworn to myself that I will willingly go to jail if I ever see him in person again, and he had better pray to his fictitious invisible man in the sky that that day never comes. I intend to make it my life's work and mission to fuck with him and anything he ever has anything to do with in the wrestling business. Why am I writing you this? One, I got the irresistible urge to explain to you the depth of my abhorrence for this abominable prick, and two, I want to make sure that you, and anyone you care to share this with, knows that I truly and genuinely wanted TNA to succeed and liked working with all of you. I am no longer a supporter of TNA as a company, I hope it goes under quickly and painfully because of the stupidity Dixie has exhibited in employing Russo and now the WCW murderers, and I apparently will see my wishes come true with the new direction, but I really did want to see it succeed. I still like everyone there, and am only mad at a few people--Jeff, for talking me into co-existing with that miserable waste of human flesh for 3 years to the point where I have trouble looking at myself in the mirror and not a day goes by that I am not ashamed of myself for abandoning every principle I ever had and speaking to the motherfucker; and Dixie, not just for employing that useless twat, but for lying to me about the reasons for my firing (never mentioning Ed Ferrara's name and acting like Russo had no part in it), and lying ABOUT me (letting some Russo stooge spread rumors that I was fired for acting unprofessionally toward him, then not putting her name on the retraction while knowing it wasn't true.) Otherwise, I like everyone there and wish their hard work could be rewarded, and they could all make millions--but they won't, because of a lack of competence and judgement in their leadership. I have nothing to lose--I'm done with corporate wrestling, and I will never again have to occupy the same arena or even city with Vince Fucking Russo, but I still feel bad for everyone else who has labored long and hard in vain because of what he's done to the company's chances. I like you--I like Tenay, and West, and Mitchell, and Sahadi, and Ryder, and the talent, and the crew, and all the rest--even Penzer! And I don't want you or any of them to take it personally when I verbally roast TNA every chance I get--but as far as I'm concerned, Jeff should have WAY known better than to hire that asshole, and Dixie, as clueless as she may be about wrestling, should have been more careful in whom she entrusted her father's money, and more perceptive when it came to spotting imbeciles. I don't want any of you to be harmed or affected because of their stupid decisions, but as I said, it's now my life's work to fuck with anything Russo has anything to do with." Shortly thereafter, Cornette got a legal letter from Guy S. Blake of Davis Shapiro Lewit & Hayes in California. Attached to the letter was a copy of the e-mail he'd written to Taylor, which had been forwarded to Russo. The letter said that TNA took the letter very seriously, considering Cornette's statements "terroristic threats," and were forwarding the information to Kentucky law enforcement officials. "Generally," Blake wrote, "under both Federal and State Law, a person will be guilty of having made terroristic threats if such person willfully threatens to commit a crime which would result in death or great bodily injury to the victim and demonstrates specific intent to communicate such threat to the victim or to a third party who the perpetrator believes will convey such threat to the intended victim. Your e-mail satisfies all of the foregoing elements and it is irrelevant whether you intended to actually carry out such threat or not. Nonetheless, we must assume the worst. Indeed, the language of the e-mail is so specific, unequivocal and unconditional that Vince Russo (a TNA employee) has understandably experienced extreme fear for himself and his family. TNA management shares his concern, not only for Vince, but for all of its employees, staff members and talent (some of whom were specifically named in your e-mail as being targets of your anger)." Cornette was so concerned that he posted all of the information up on his Web site. Kentucky state law enforcement officials did not, in fact, arrest him and throw him in jail, nor does it look like anything will come of this. Bischoff responded to it on his Facebook page, writing: "Jim needs psychological help. I know it must be tough getting up in the morning and looking at yourself in the mirror and realizing you look like 240 pounds of sausage stuffed in a 12 ounce polyester bag -- but Jim needs to move on. The television business passed him by many Big Macs ago. Threatening to kill someone, posting confidential corporate information, and posting terroristic threats doesn't make you a 'genius' any more than criticizing the efforts/success of others when they realize that you have nothing to offer. Jim is a washed up, has been IWC icon to the 5% of the people that makes up a television audience." I have no idea what that last line is supposed to mean. Cornette responded: "Eric continues to wound my sensitive feelings--so I feel I must rebut his Facebook comments point by point. It WAS real tough to look at myself in the mirror while working for the same company as Vince Russo, but with that out of my life I believe I am a darn good-looking guy. I recently went on a low-carb diet, and with the advent of Sprite Zero I'm down to 231 pounds. Everyone in the world except Easy E knows I don't eat Big Macs, they're far inferior to Wendy's Triple Cheeses. The only confidential corporate information yet to be revealed about TNA is how much Eric and Hogan soaked Dixie for when they played her, and whether Jason Hervey is getting Eric's Midget Wrestling title. Lastly, I never criticized TNA's efforts or success since there's no evidence they have ever legitimately made the former or achieved the latter. I think Eric is jealous of the fact that I don't have to do as he does and continue to work alongside and/or kiss the ass of people who have sued him, blamed him for the death of WCW, or taken him down in a locker room and roughed him up with no rebuttal. That kind of thing can make you bitter, Eric, perhaps counseling could help. Don't knock the IWC, E, keep producing programs like Impact and that '5%' will look like the ratings for the moon landing." Well, I have no idea what that last line is supposed to mean either. Chris Morgado of Inside Pulse probably summed it up best, writing: "If the Internet knows that Cornette isn’t actually coming up with a Dr. Doom style plot to murder Russo and get away with it, you would think that people who have worked with and known the man for decades would as well. And in a year full of tea party protesters with Death To Obama signs and death threats on Senators over health care, the TNA higher ups and lawyers can’t possibly really think the Feds are going to look into Jim Cornette’s big mouth. To me, what this really is, is a giant bluff; an attempt to silence perhaps the loudest and most outspoken critic of the company, who has now lent his talents to what some would consider their REAL competition: Ring Of Honor. Will it work? Will Cornette keep his mouth shut from here on out? Will the Feds now come knocking on his door to question him every time a TNA employee gets in a fender bender or to drag him to jail every time Vince Russo stubs his toe? Come on. Those things are about as likely as Jim Cornette actually killing Vince Russo." Actually, I have to disagree in the sense that a fair number of people on the Internet apparently did not, in fact, know that Cornette wasn't coming up with a Dr. Doom style plot to murder Russo and get away with it.
533
534Waltman wasn't at the PPV, as noted. He did an indy show on Saturday night and we got a report that he was telling people there that he wasn't doing a job for TNA unless he got paid the big bucks. Others said that the company knew in advance that he wasn't going to be there and that it might have had to do with a health or licensing issue. Although they played it up on the PPV like he was history, on TV the next night they just said that Dixie Carter had excused him from the show and that he was still with TNA. Nash was always supposed to be in the Team 3-D match, but originally it was supposed to be Nash & Hall & Waltman vs. Jesse Neal & Team 3-D. The only problem with the story of TNA knowing he wasn't going to be there several days in advance is because people who saw the format over the weekend saw him still listed on it.
535
536More notes from Lockdown. They had ring crew guys come out after every match and wipe down the turnbuckles, cage, mat and ropes. Apparently the cage was legit brutal and most of the blood on this show was hardway. Nobody live had any idea how AJ beat the Pope since they didn't show anything on the big screens they set up. The live crowd also never got a replay of Angle's moonsault. It was never announced to the crowd why Waltman wasn't there. At some point they did announce what happened with Doug Williams, but it might have been during the pre-show period because we got other reports from people who said they never heard what happened. One person said that Jeremy Borash pumping up the crowd before matches and telling them that whoever cheered loudest would get taken backstage was a bad idea because it helped to burn the crowd out. "The main event was terrible but people were into the garbage," one person said. "Overall below average show, but Angle vs. Anderson was great as was Pope and AJ". D'Angelo Dinero's shoulder injury was legit, though we didn't get word as to how badly he was hurt. May have been a separation. James Storm injured his ribs.
537
538Dixie Carter was in St. Louis on Thursday working with a consulting firm. She hired them to do a study on the viewing patterns and ratings on Spike. Maybe they can do what WCW did and spend months doing a survey asking fans what they want to see, and then get results they don't like and decide the fans don't know what they want to see and throw everything out.
539
540More and more talk of Russo backing away from TV writing duties. The company is actually concerned about who will replace him. I know that sounds absolutely astounding, and don't get me wrong, it is, but the concern is largely based around the fact that he goes in there and writes these big long detailed scripts, and nobody wants to take that job. Hogan and Bischoff are making tons of booking suggestions and rewriting the shows all the way up until they start filming (exactly like in WCW), but neither of them have the desire to sit down and actually create these scripts. I guess the deal is that in TNA they feel they need to have scripts even though some of the best and most successful bookers of all time put entire TV shows together on napkins at breakfast a few hours before a show.
541
542Bischoff went on the house show loop last week and people were praising him for doing so. I love that this is cause for praise, the guy in charge actually went and watched some house shows. Should tell you something about what wrestlers think about management. Part of the reason he was praised for it is because Russo has never been to a single house show. Based on the quality of the house show I attended here in Kent, Wash., hopefully he stays the fuck away.
543
544The TNA Epics show on Thursday night following the Impact replay did an 0.52 rating and 533,000 viewers. The Impact replay lead-in did about 980,000 viewers, or just under the 1.1 million that the live show did on Tuesday. After doing an 0.25 rating last week, it appears the idea of the 1-hour lead-in for TNA is history.
545
546TNA Slammiversary takes place June 13th from the Impact Zone, the night after UFC in Vancouver.
547
548Dixie on ratings: "Good question. I want to be very clear on this, we NEVER expected to have competitive ratings with RAW at the beginning. I have been very specific in saying that our goal was to grow our brand and our ratings and we felt like we could do that faster on Mondays. Sometimes you have to take a step back to take a big step forward. We expected to have to rebuild part of our audience when moving our programming day and timeslot. We have finally settled in to an 8 pm ET/7 pm CT Monday timeslot with an encore presentation on Thursdays as 9 pm ET. It is going to take some time to build both audiences. We have no ego in saying iMPACT! has to draw a big rating in one night. With the encore, we have grown our overall viewing audience significantly from 2009 averages. We have 4 hours of exposure in prime time on Spike TV. So short term, we have settled in to a new programming schedule and need to give both some time to grow, but are happy with our increased viewership. Long term we want to see the overall ratings for iMPACT! increase significantly, no matter how many airings we have".
549
550The DirecTV Lockdown commercials featured both Mick Foley and a six-sided ring.
551
552AJ Styles on the departure of Chris Daniels to AOL Fanhouse: "I think Ring of Honor has made one of the greatest acquisitions in a long time, and I'm happy for them and I'm happy for Chris going back there. I'd definitely love to see him back in TNA, but that's not up to me." He pretty much said flat-out that he couldn’t really answer the question without saying something bad. He also talked about how he didn't like the added blood and violence on the show because it was unneeded, plus he had a three-year-old who loved wrestling and he couldn't let the poor bugger watch a show like this.
553
554The June 1st TNA taping has been canceled, meaning they'll tape four weeks of TV on May 17th, 18th and 19th. Taping four weeks of TV in three days is begging for trouble, and has been trouble in the past for TNA. For obvious reasons.
555
556
557Other MMA
558Mike Whitehead, who has fought for both UFC and Strikeforce, was arrested last week and charged with three felonies including sexual assault, attempted sexual assault and gross lewdness. Las Vegas Metropolitan Police named him as a person of interest in regards to the sexual assault of a former girlfriend of his, and he turned himself into police shortly thereafter. Each charges carries a maximum sentence of one year in prison. Police also discovered a "marijuana growing operation" at his home and charges relating to that are pending as well.
559
560
561Other Wrestling
562We're sorry to report the death of former NWA World Heavyweight Champion Gene Kiniski after a long battle with cancer. Kiniski, 81, won the NWA Title from Lou Thesz in 1966 and held it for three years, wrestling all over the world. Thesz didn't just drop the title to anyone, and that's a testament to what a tough guy Kinski was in the sense that he had an amateur background but wasn't an NCAA Champion or a renowned shooter, yet was so tough that Lou respected him and knew that as the champion he'd be able to take care of himself in the ring if something went down. When Kiniski dropped the title to Dory Funk Jr. in 1969 he cut a famous promo on the NWA Board calling them a bunch of pimps who were whoring out the wrestlers and making money off their bodies and fucking them over on payoffs and such. He was such a big star and made them so much money that he continued on working for the NWA into the 70s. He also went into promoting and in a strange way my own career links back to him as he ran All Star Wrestling in Vancouver, which Al Tomko later took over, and Tomko's All Star Wrestling was where my trainer Buddy Wayne and Tim Flowers worked for years.
563
564CMLL did an interesting angle at the Puebla show on April 12th before 3,500, where a bunch of undercard guys from Perros del Mal did a run-in. After the third match, which saw Virus & Taichi & Okumura beat Sombra & La Mascara & Hijo del Fantasma, who should hit the ring but Alebrije (the original from AAA), Cuije (his mini sidekick), Histeria (original from AAA, who also happens to be the brother of CMLL's Durango Kid), Psicosis (Juan Gonzalez, the one who beat the current Nicho el Milonario for that name) and Maniaco. Mistico, Super Porky and Brazo de Plata ran out to make the save for the CMLL guys, but then Averno and Terrible and Texano Jr. came out and ran interference long enough for the ex-AAA's to escape in a black SUV. Not sure where they are going here but if Los Perros is on its last legs an invasion angle is certainly the way to go, and Perro Aguayo Jr. returning to the promotion for main event matches with Mistico and such would be pretty damn huge.
565
566The former AAA guys did another run-in on April 18th at Arena Mexico. This time it was Histeria, Psicosis, Maniaco and Monsther, and they ran off and jumped into a red SUV afterwards.
567
568Friday was a pretty big night at Arena Mexico as they did round one of the Torneo Gran Alternativa tournament, which is where a veteran and a young guy team up and the winning young guy gets moved up the cards. All we know is that the show did a poor attendance. Block A winners ended up being Hector Garza and Lo Polvora, who is actually 30, beating La Sombra & El Diamante in the finals. It's funny because Polvora, the "young guy" on he winning team is actually 30, making him ten years older than Sombra (the veteran on his team) and 12 years older than Diamante, who is only 18. Main event on the show was Felino beat Mistico in two falls of a no-stip match. Both guys did the usual mask vs. hair challenges afterwards.
569
570Tyler Black vs. Roderick Strong has been added to the May 8th ROH show at the Manhattan Center.
571
572Wrestlelicious signed a deal with Fight Network to start airing shows in May 2010.
573
574AAA taped TV on April 17th and shot an angle in the main event where Vampiro turned heel on Joachin Roldan and the AAA army, beat the piss out of Joachin, and they gave him a Michinoku driver through a table. He sold it like he was dead. His wife, Marisela, came out and this caused Dorian, her son who is leading the heel stable, to call off the attack. She ended up cutting a promo on Dorian and slapping him before leaving with Joachin, who was being taken out on a stretcher. Vampiro had talked of late of doing one last big angle before calling it quits, so I presume this is it. They also did a deal on the show where LA Park challenged La Parka to the big match at TripleMania, then gave him the dreaded martinete piledriver and left him for dead.
575
576Goldberg was booted from Celebrity Apprentice this week.
577
578
579Bryan's Friend Vince's DVD Review and Karaoke Showcase
580
581History of the Intercontinental Championship
582Grisham opened Disc 2 wearing Ultimate Warrior’s yellow Intercontinental belt around his waist, over his suit. He did lame comedy, then explained that Warrior vacated the IC belt after winning the WWF title at Wrestlemania VI. They showed clips of Mr. Perfect defeating Kerry Von Erich in a tournament final for the belt. They showed clips of Perfect wrestling Hulk Hogan and Big Bossman. Then they showed clips of Bret Hart. Grisham pointed out that Perfect was going into the next match with a serious back injury.
583
584Mr. Perfect vs. Bret Hart. From SummerSlam, August 26, 1991. This is one of Bryan’s favorite matches. The following confession may get be banned from the newsletter and perhaps from planet Earth, but I’ve never seen it. Perfect was led to the ring by COACH, a character so colorful and successful I’d forgotten he existed. Perfect opened the match by vaulting into the ring, looking totally healthy and fit. They opened with like the greatest lockup you ever saw. Even Bobby Heenan on commentary pointed it out. They did basic tackle-dropdown spots and headlock takeovers, moving not like men across the ring, but like angels. As great as the wrestling was, I couldn’t take my eyes off the crowd. They lit the building differently than they do now, and the individual fans were much more distinct, even up in the rafters. I suppose keeping the fans in the dark (literally) makes the wrestlers stand out more on screen, but lighting the crowd up makes you appreciate how many people are there. So anyway, Perfect and Bret continued to do the best wrestling ever. Perfect teased a walkout, but Bret pulled him back into the ring, tearing his singlet apart in the process. I have not watched a Curt Hennig match in far, FAR too long. Just watching him throw a kick to the gut was a treat. Bret was knocked from the ring and tried to climb back in a few times. Perfect knocked him off the apron and into the guardrail. He landed on a photographer he tried to get away, but Bret lay on top of him, selling. Bret took some of his ridiculously great turnbuckle bumps. They brawled on the top rope, and then one at a time they tumbled easily down to the mat. Perfect went into full asshole mode, slapping Bret and tossing him around by the hair. LET’S GO BRET! Perfect hooked a sleeper. Bret fought out and went for a crucifix, but Perfect dropped him down. He hit a Perfectplex, but Bret kicked out. They put this over like he was the only man to survive Vesuvius. Bret made a comeback targeting Perfect’s ass. No, really. Bret got a nearfall with a suplex, and the fans booed when Perfect kicked out. This was 1991, not 1971, and the fans bought a VERTICAL SUPLEX as a finish. He got a bunch more nearfalls, including a neckbreaker and a second-rope elbow. They fought on the floor and Perfect took an insane flying bump off a whip to the post. Back in the ring, Bret kicked the leg out of his leg a few times. He went for the sharpshooter, but Coach jumped on the apron. Bret decked him, but then he stepped to the apron, and Perfect kicked the middle rope into his nuts. He continued his testicular assault. He attempted a legdrop to the balls, but Bret caught the foot, scissored the leg, and rolled over into the Sharpshooter. Perfect instantly submitted for the win. With the match over, Bret yanked off the tattered remains of Perfect’s singlet, leaving him in his black skivvies. I realize that they were not doing matches like this on Raw every week, but it did make me feel like the good old days are long gone. Anyway, *****, for sure.
585
586Grisham said that Bret’s match against Davey Boy Smith in England was one of the few times during his title reign that he was not the fan favorite. They also talked about Davey being married to Bret’s sister.
587
588Bret Hart vs. Davey Boy Smith. From SummerSlam, August 29, 1992, before a FUCKLOAD of people. Davey Boy was accompanied by Lennox Lewis, waving the Union Jack. WOW, Bret Hart used to be a lot younger. You know what I mean. I had also forgotten how GOD DAMN GREAT he was, just doing things like O’Connor rolls and headlock takeovers. They traded armwringers for a while. They did a highspot that ended with a slingshot into the buckle, and they were really far away, which means Bret was LAUNCHED into the corner. There actually dueling chants for a while. Bret hit a knee to the gut and everyone booed. Bret shot them a look like, fine, you wanna boo me, I’ll just be an asshole then. On commentary, Vince called an inverted atomic drop a “reverse piledriver.” That ring looked enormous. Was it 22 feet? They had to fucking RUN to hit the ropes. Bret got the heat and things slowed down for a bit. He got slammed off the top rope, but Davey Boy missed a flying headbutt. Davey Boy went for an O’Connor roll, but Bret ducked and Davey went flying out of the ring. If I remember right, that’s where Davey Boy got his bell rung and forgot the entire match. If it wasn’t there, it was earlier, because Bret went for a pescado and Davey Boy didn’t even try to catch him. He just leaned on the apron as Bret landed across his back. Actually, it probably happened earlier, because there was a point when Bret had him in a chinlock and was talking to him a lot. At this point he went back to the chinlocks, interrupted by the occasional dropkick or suplex. Bret was getting more dickish as the match went on, slamming Davey Boy by his braids. Bret hooked a sleeper. Davey Boy got the ropes, but Bret wouldn’t release the hold, not even after the ref counted five. HE’S RISKING DISQUALIFICATION! They kept showing shots of Diana, who just sat there with a concerned grin, a facial expression I did not know existed. Bret kept going to the sleeper, but Davey Boy kept fighting free. They traded punches, then Davey Boy pressed Bret over his head and dropped him on the ropes. I think Bret was supposed to crotch the top rope, but he ended up with his leg tangled in the ropes. Davey Boy made a big comeback with clotheslines and a press slam. He hit his delayed suplex and called for the powerslam. He hit it, but Bret kicked out. That left the fans astonished and unhappy. Both guys were selling exhaustion now. Davey Boy got a nearfall off a top rope suplex. A highspot ended with another double-down, then Bret managed to hook the sharpshooter from his back. Davey Boy got the ropes and fans were pissing themselves. Bret went for a sunset flip but Davey sat down on him. The ref counted three (a fast count, actually) and WEMBLEY EXPLODED. The ovation actually didn’t last long, although everyone remained on their feet. Davey Boy’s reaction left a lot to be desired. He just stood there holding the belt and smiling. He offered a handshake. Bret teased walking away, then came back for the big hug and they finally played Bulldog’s music. I made fun of Diana earlier, but she was actually crying now. The three of them hugged as the pyro went off. Vince ranted about how this was the greatest SummerSlam of all time. They showed the entire stadium as fireworks shot into the sky. I repeat my earlier statement: A FUCKLOAD of people.
589
590
591Bryan's TV Reviews
592
593ROH on HDNet
594Show opened with tons of clips from last week's show.
595
596Ricky Reyes vs. Colt Cabana. They did a couple highspots early, then Reyes cut him off and worked the eyes. That's a new one. This was Reyes' first match on HDNet. Colt made his comeback and hit the Colt 45 for the pin. Very basic match.
597
598Steve Corino's Forehead cut a promo hyping up the Corino & Steen vs. Cabana & Generico match. He said he'd warned Cabana three times about interfering in their business but Cabana refused to listen and now he was on THE LIST. Steen said people thought he didn't want to fight Generico because he was afraid, but the real reason he didn't want to fight him was because he didn't want to be responsible for "killing him". Don't let Dixie hear that. He said it was nice that Generico showed some guts, but pretty soon everyone would see those guts when he ripped them out of his body. In another locker room Cabana, all bloody, said Generico tasted redemption just like was tasting his own blood right now. So these promos were taped after the angle on last week's show where Generico made the big comeback on Steen setting up the tag match. This was an old-school babyface promo by Cabana.
599
600Kyle Durden interviewed Tyler Black about the challenge for this title made last week by Davey Richards. Tyler said Davey was a dangerous guy, but Roderick Strong and Austin Aries were as well. He said he wasn't overlooking anyone, and there was only one champion, himself.
601
602They had an ad for the replay of the Big Bang PPV.
603
604Kyle interviewed Kenny King about his match with Davey later in the TV Title tournament. He was in the middle of burying Davey when Davey walked up and told him to continue to his face. So Kenny did. He said he was Mr. HDNet, and that Eddie Edwards shouldn't be overlooking him and talking about wanting to face Davey in the TV tourney finals. Davey said he didn't have a lot of catch-phrases and such, but he'd keep it simple. Tonight, he said, Kenny was going to fail and he was going to beat his ass.
605
606They showed clips of the Briscoes losing their tag titles at Big Bang. We got clips of a post-match interview where Mark did a promo telling his brother they'd get those belts back, and that the Kings of Wrestling were CHICKENS. Awesomeness.
607
608Briscoes vs. Josh Raymond & Christian Able. Nothing like indy job guys. They actually got some heat on the Briscoes. This was absurd. There was a great moment where Raymond made a cover with his foot and screamed, "WE'RE WINNING!" Dave Prazak was burying them for being geeks. This was fabulous. It was more fabulous because Mike Hogewood was marking out. Briscoes made their comeback and they traded nearfalls. Turned into a fun little match. Briscoes got the pin with the doomsday device.
609
610Austin Aries did a promo talking about how he turned heel on HDNet and not only became the best in the world but became the only two-time ROH Champion.
611
612Davey Richards vs. Kenny King in a ROH TV Title semifinal. Good mat wrestling early. Davey finally went for his big running tope and Kenny kicked him in the face for the heat. King worked over his guts until Davey made his big comeback. He hit the diving headbutt and then put on an armbar but Kenny got the ropes. Davey went for a tornado DDT but Kenny gave him an overhead belly to belly into the corner. That had to suck. Dave put him in a series of armbars but Kenny got the ropes every time. "LET'S GO DAVEY!" King hit a bunch of spots and a blockbuster but Davey kicked out. They did a top rope huracanrana spot that was kind of sloppy but nobody died. Davey hit a backdrop suplex and then put on another armbar. Kenny tried a couple of reversals but finally got caught in it in the middle and tapped. Very good main event, and next week it's Davey vs. Eddie in a battle of tag champs for the TV Title.
613
614
615NXT
616I'm almost to the point where if I ever heard fucking WILD AND YOUNG again I will boycott this show. I mean, there is nothing in the history of my life I have hated as much as this song. God FUCKING dammit. The Teacher called all the guys out and they played the song for four fucking minutes. He interviewed a few of the guys. He wanted to know if Tarver was letting the pressure get to him. Tarver said no, and whether he won or lost he wasn't going to lose. Nice one. Otunga is nothing in the ring but he is getting a push and the people are reacting to him. He said regardless of what happened Monday he wrestled the WWE Champion on Raw and none of the other NXT guys could say that. Crowd chanted "YOU TAPPED OUT!" Gabriel got cheered. Striker wanted to know how he'd have done against Cena. Gabriel answered a completely different question. Striker repeated and this time he said well, give me a match and we'll see. Striker said last week they tested their physical abilities, and this week they were going to test their mental skills. He said the audience was the judges, and whoever won tonight would get to go to WWE headquarters and help create their very own entrance theme. He said he had a list of topics and each guy was going to get 30 seconds to speak on the topic of Striker's choice. Bryan went first. His topic was "passion". He started to talk about the Daniel Bryan Manliness Meter. Striker told him to stay on topic. He had to start over, was running out of time, and so he screamed "I LOVE ENGLAND!" Wade Barrett got the word "blasé". He talked about how he wasn't blasé. People cheered. Gabriel got the word "flowers". He said he was from South Africa and people booed. He said he didn't like flowers much but he liked the rose, an English flower. Tons of boos. So he quit. I howled. Cole said he was still better than Bryan. Heath got "cereal." He just started rattling off different kinds of cereal. He said he couldn't eat it because his body wouldn't take it. What? Fail. Otunga got the word "sleep." He said sleep was something he didn't get much of because his mind was always racing. He said he didn't get this body by sleeping. "I can sleep when this competition is over." This was the best by far. Skip got the word "rainbows." He did his catch phrase "YUP YUP YUP!" and didn't mention rainbows a single time. Striker did not tell him to stay on topic. Tarver got the word "itchy." The crowd was chanting something at him. "I could do an hour on itchy," said Josh. Tarver refused to say anything at all. Darren went last. His word was "toothpaste." He said he didn't want to be rude but it was something that a lot of people here in England didn't use. He wanted to make sure that was PG. He said he'd rather be anywhere but here. Tarver then grabbed the mic and screamed that if he had something to say he'd do it on his terms. Striker polled the fans. Sheffield and Barrett tied, so the Teacher said they'd have a TALK-OFF. Skip had 30 seconds to talk about "bubble gum." He wanted to talk about how he won the keg-carrying contest. Crowd hated that. Wade got the topic "wind." He spoke of the winds of change blowing through WWE right now. "Wade Barrett is going to be the first English WWE Champion." So Wade kicked ass here. They announced Barrett vs. Christian for later.
617
618Punk met with Darren backstage. He said he thought he was ready but he changed his mind about the head shaving and was sorry. Punk said if it wasn't for Rey they'd have shaved his head bald. Punk said he admired the kid's guts. As he was talking Luke kept interrupting. So Punk said listen, you think you can beat this guy? Luke said yes. Punk said fine, the two of you are wrestling tonight. If you win I'll forgive you for what happened last week. If Luke wins, we're shaving your head tonight.
619
620Christian vs. Wade Barrett. Jericho was out there with his man. People chanted "Y2J!" Pretty basic match. Carlito and Tarver looked on backstage. Christian made his comeback but Barrett booted him in the face and cut him off. "LET'S GO BARRETT!" Jericho took the ref. Slater took the opportunity to trip up Barrett, allowing Christian to hit the killswitch for the pin.
621
622They aired the Otunga thing again. What a rib.
623
624Miz yelled at Bryan backstage for sucking earlier. He said Bryan was like Susan Boyle, all the talent but not charisma. He said Daniel was 0-7 and hadn't impressed anyone. Anyone? How did he get voted number one then? He begged Bryan to take his charisma and go out there tonight, win, and become a star.
625
626Daniel vs. Regal. As good a one-minute match as you're going to have. Regal fought out of a guillotine and hit the running knee for the pin. Miz attacked Regal afterwards, helped Bryan to his feet, then gave him his finisher. Daniel was bleeding from the mouth.
627
628Gallows vs. Darren. Not much to it. They also got about a minute. Darren ended up cradling him for the flash pin, so he's not getting his head shaved. Punk got in the ring with him after the match and raised his hand in victory. Gallows didn't know what to make of that.
629
630
631Smackdown
632Jericho came out and cut a promo. He said Orton was a Raw guy yet for some reason he was facing Jack Swagger for the World Title. He said that belt should be exclusive to Smackdown and thus this decision by the Hoff was complete bullshit. He said Swagger cashed the briefcase in on him and he should have been given an immediate rematch, but that didn't happened. He said it was all Teddy Long's fault, calling him the biggest buffoon to ever hold a position of power. He told him he needed to rectify the situation by handing in his resignation and ensure that at Extreme Rulez he faced the winner of Orton and Swagger the moment that match was over. People were applauding the idea that Teddy hand in his resignation. Edge came out. He said he agreed with Jericho about some of the things he'd said, but he didn't think he was the guy who should be the savior of the title. He said he'd speared him a hundred times, and if Jericho cared about the title and the show he'd just give up now because in the condition he was in he probably couldn't beat Orton or Swagger. Jericho wanted to know if he thought he could do it. "I know I can!" Edge said. He offered to spear Jericho right now and prove it. Not sure how that would prove anything, to be honest. Crowd chanted spear. Out came Teddy. Edge demanded he give him what he deserved right now. Teddy said if he gave Jericho what he deserved it would involve security throwing him out of the building. He said Orton wouldn't have a title shot right now if Jericho and Edge hadn't gotten themselves counted out last week. He said he'd give Jericho his rematch tonight, and Edge hit title shot as well -- in a three-way with Swagger.
633
634Drew came out and cut a promo. He said people didn't like him, and perhaps it was because he was young and handsome. Maybe it was because he was champion, he said, or because he was the chosen one. He said the people didn't like him but he didn't like them either. If Drew wants people to hate him he should come out to WILD AND YOUNG. Kane vs. Drew. Stryker made a comment about how Drew was a real man, not some goof who ran down and got married in Vegas. I presume that was a shot at Swagger for some reason, as Swagger got married in Vegas a couple of weeks back. Actually, the day after he won the title. Short match and not much to it. Kane went up top and hit the clothesline, then set up for the chokeslam. Drew bailed outside to take the countout. The ref got to four, but then Matt Hardy ran down and threw Drew back inside. Ref responded by calling for the bell. They said it was outside interference by Matt. Kane gave Drew the chokeslam, then gave Matt the chokeslam for good measure. You know, because Matt cost him the match he was going to win by countout otherwise. Wins are very important to the Big Red Machine.
635
636Swagger met with Teddy backstage, irate that he was going to have to defend the title in a three-way later. Teddy said he was in charge and as long as that was the case Swagger was going to have to do as he said.
637
638Dolph Ziggler came out and did the sarcastic apology to Josh Matthews. Supposedly Teddy Long had demanded this. I guess we're supposed to believe he didn't have a problem with this. Ziggler vs. Truth. Truth cut a promo on him before the match saying he had no heart, no soul, had never been sincere or humble about anything in his life, and that truth is he didn't mean a word he said. In a few minutes, he said, Dolph was going to find out that the truth hurt. Match went like a minute. Truth made a comeback almost immediately but missed his spinning forearm. Ziggler put him in the sleeper. Stryker claimed Ziggler's technique involved pressure on the sides of the neck and the TEMPLES. Is this 1970? Truth was going out so the ref stopped it. Hold still isn't over yet but they're trying.
639
640Michelle vs. Mickie James. Mickie went for a tornado DDT early but Michelle cut her off and sent her shoulder-first into the post. Mickie made a big comeback and did a Thesz press off the apron onto Michelle, then a second one to Layla on the outside. She hit a neckbreaker in the ring but Layla jumped up on the apron. Mickie yanked her inside and punched her, and although Matt throwing Drew inside was a DQ this was not. Michelle then booted her for the pin. I realize that Layla didn't touch her, but she was in the ring and it immediately let to Mickie getting pinned. No idea why I care, to be honest. Beth ran down afterwards and scared the heels away.
641
642Luke Gallows was backstage yelling at Darren Young. Punk showed up and told them to knock that shit off, and if wanted to fight they needed to do it out in front of the world, not here in the back.
643
644Punk & Gallows & Darren vs. Rey & Hart Dynasty. Miz did commentary. Some pretty cool triple team spots from the babyfaces. Miz was funny saying that if Todd got "drafted to the indies" in a few weeks he could do commentary with Stryker. An amazing permanent duo that would be. Heat on Rey early, then he made a big comeback and Punk bailed to the outside to regroup. Second heat on Young Tyson. They idiot-proofed this by having Darren tag in briefly, do one move, then tag back out. Tyson finally hit a wheel kick on Punk and Harry made the tag. Serena tried to take the ref but it backfired. Rey hit the 619 on Punk around the post, then Punk stumbled into Harry who hit him with the running powerslam for the pin. This was a really fun match.
645
646Jericho told Wade Barrett that he was going to win the title for the lucky seventh time tonight. He said he hoped that someday Wade found himself in a similar position, where he'd be able to go outside and prove that he was the best in the world at what he did.
647
648JTG vs. Caylen Croft. JTG had a slightly different look this week with a new hairdo, no more braids, leather pants and a leather jacket. Shad came out to watch. "You ain't nothin' without me!" he kept screaming. He's dropped noticeable weight. JTG got the win with a running neckbreaker thingy. People were into his comeback somewhat but not like he was a major superstar or anything. Shad immediately hit the ring and laid him out with a clothesline. God it sucks to be poor JTG. But then no sooner should I speak than he made his own comeback, hit an X-factor out of the corner and then sent Shad packing with some punches and a dropkick.
649
650Edge was talking with Josh backstage. He said he kind of related to Swagger in the sense that the guy saw an opportunity and cashed in his briefcase just like he (Edge) had done years ago. He said Swagger didn't even have to get pinned to lose the title, and on top of that he (Edge) could pin either him or Jericho and win the title. This wasn't even an interview segment, it was Edge talking with his little buddy Josh backstage. Not sure why I found that so funny.
651
652Swagger vs. Jericho vs. Edge for the title. The ring intros along were nearly 10 minutes long. They got 20 minutes of TV time for the match counting commercials. Jericho and Swagger worked together early like true dastardly heels. Edge tossed them outside and teased doing a dive, but did a baseball slide dropkick instead. He's no idiot. Pretty much your generic WWE three-way until Edge started making his big comeback. Swagger got sent outside and Jericho and Edge traded nearfalls. Crowd was really getting into it. Edge set up for the spear but Jericho turned it into the walls. Don't even ask how he managed that. Swagger tried to break it up and got put in the walls himself. Edge broke it up with a DDT. Swagger went for the doctor bomb but he got DDT'd as well. Fans were going nuts. Jericho went for the spear on Swagger but Jericho broke it up. Jericho set up for the spear on Edge. Edge leapfrogged him and speared him out of his boots. Swagger yanked him out of the ring and covered Jericho for the pin. A great TV main event right there. Swagger gave Edge a doctor bomb afterwards for good measure, then left. But it was not over. Jericho went to work on Edge's Achilles, because apparently this feud MUST CONTINUE. I'm fine with that.
653
654
655Raw
656Show opened with Hunter coming out to hype up his match with Sheamus at the PPV Sunday. Lilian Garcia was there as the ring announcer. Hunter did a promo telling the fans not to kiss up to him because he was the only one there. He talked about how the volcano erupted and unfortunately the entire Raw roster was stuck in Europe. Luckily, he said, the WWE brass was working feverishly to make sure we had a quality show this evening. And if Sheamus made it back from Ireland in time of the PPV he'd beat him any color but white. That's what he said. He said Sheamus thought he was a bad dude but he (Hunter) was deadly. He said it had been a long time since he'd doled out a beating the likes of which he was going to deliver Sunday. Cole said there had been rumors all day that the Smackdown crew was going to attempt to steal the spotlight from the Raw crew tonight. Punk came out and talked about how he might not be on Smackdown again after the draft next week, and if he did get sent to Raw he wanted HHH. Hunter made fun of him, saying the idea of Punk bringing the entire Straight Edge Society over from Smackdown was funny seeing as to how there was only two of them. He wanted to know why Punk made them shave their heads and he didn't. He insinuated Punk didn't use soap or shampoo. Punk said the reason he didn't shave his head was the same reason Hunter didn't shave his despite the fact that his partner HBK was bald. Hunter plugged the Punk vs. Rey match saying if Punk did get drafted next week he'd be showing up on Raw bald. Punk vowed to show that straight edge was the most powerful thing on the planet. More powerful than gravity? This was so weird because Punk was out there preaching and being deadly serious and Hunter was out there doing comedy. Hunter said he didn't believe in straight edge. Tell me more. He believed in freedom, he said. He went around ringside making jokes about all the things these fans could do with their freedom. How about fly from Ireland to New York? He even targeted Lilian, saying if she wanted to come back here for one night just to HORSE around, she could do that. She came back to be made fun of again. He finally concluded that he had the freedom to beat the crap out of Punk. Punk said he wasn't asking him to join the Straight Edge Society, he was telling him. They jumped him, Hunter fought back, they cut him off and stomped a mudhole in him. Punk grabbed the clippers and was going to go to work when Rey ran down and made the save. He got hold of Punk, grabbed the clippers, and chopped off a chunk of Punk's hair before Luke was able to make the save.
657
658Drew McIntyre vs. Matt Hardy. These guys didn't even get ring intros. You'd think they'd have wanted to kill time. They said that we were going to hear from John Cena via satellite later. These guys basically had a house show match. Matt went for a twist of fate but they bonked heads. Matt went to the middle rope to do his elbow but Drew yanked him off and then just pinned him. Sucks to be Matt.
659
660Cena did a promo via satellite. He said he'd never seen anything like this and wanted to send out apologies to everyone for them not being able to get there. Cole wanted to know how his preparations were doing for Sunday. He said he was doing just fine, and if things didn't turn around fast he very well might jump into the Atlantic and swim back to America. I'd need a video package of that. He vowed to beat Dave in the Last Man Standing match.
661
662Vladimir Kozlov was in the ring GET MACGRUBER. He demanded Lawler get into the ring to read his prepared statement. "READ MY STATEMENT NOW." I wish Kozlov would have read it first. The statement read, "I, Vladimir Kozlov, am protesting the unfair treatment I have received by the Raw guest host. I am an elite athlete who demands elite competition. I don't expect any of you to understand, you are all spoiled, ignorant Americans. You are physically inferior, therefore you are weak. Worst of all, you are from a state devoid of class and integrity, the single most depressing place on Earth, New Jersey. I cannot wait for my fellow Russian to buy your pathetic NBA franchise and move it out of this horrible state forever." Kozlov then demanded competition. Out came the folks from MacGruber, in character. The dude, MacGruber, had an American flag. Also, a mullet. He had a girl, Vickie, with him. Her statement was that Mr. McMahon had ordered a superpowered main event -- Punk & Gallows & Jericho vs. Hunter & Rey & Edge. MacGruber stuck up for New Jersey. He rattled off great Americans from New Jersey like Bon Jovi and Paul Blart Mall Cop. He called Kozlov a giant pile of suck. Kozlov threatened to END HIM if he said one more bad thing about him. So MacGruber started burying Kozlov's mom. So Kozlov said he'd destroy him -- later tonight. MacGruber said he already had a match -- versus Truth. WAT. People didn't quite know what to make of that. MacGruber said if Kozlov tried to leave he would fail because the building was wired with explosives. So then an explosive went off and supposedly blew up Truth. Kozlov then said he would see MacGruber later tonight when he destroyed him.
663
664MacGruber was trying to escape and ran into HHH. Supposedly he'd peed his pants in fear. They did some "comedy." This caused the announcers to do the famous fake forced laugh.
665
666A robot in the form of Randy Orton vowed to beat up Jack Swagger and win the title Sunday.
667
668Swagger came out and did a promo saying talk was cheap from 3,000 miles away, and if Orton had been there tonight he'd have given him the ass whipping he deserved. He demanded a ref come down to the ring and issued an open challenge to anyone backstage. He said normally a giant would come out, but he was JACK SWAGGER and thus that wasn't about to happen due to his intimidation factor. Nobody came out. "That's what I thought," he said. He was about to leave when Undertaker's DONG sounded. Taker vs. Swagger. I was going to say that Taker didn't look thrilled to be out there working when he was supposed to be on a break, but he always looks pissed off. This was his first match in three weeks so he was probably feeling a little better. Swagger got the heat with a powerslam. He worked him over forever, focusing on the leg. People got super into Taker's comeback. He hit the big boot and legdrop of doom but Swagger kicked out. He set up for the chokeslam but Swagger fought free. Swagger got a nearfall with a float-over DDT. Sounded like a good deal of this was being called in the ring. Taker ended up hitting the chokeslam and following it up with the tombstone for the pin. Sucks to be Swagger, but at least he lost to the Undertaker and not, you know, Carlito.
669
670Jericho met with Punk and Gallows and said listen, I saw what happened earlier and clearly things didn't go well for you. So tonight, make sure you listen to me and everything will be fine. Jericho then ran into the MacGruber guys backstage. Y2J has a role in the film. He said he'd heard there was early Oscar buzz about his performance and that there was talk of doing a sequel with him in the lead role. MacGruber wanted advice for the match with Kozlov. Jericho told him to go out there, offer a handshake, and when Kozlov fell for it he could slap him around and deliver a mudhole stomping. "Thank you, brother," said MacGruber. Trouble comin.
671
672MacGruber vs. Kozlov. MacGruber tried a handshake. That didn't work. So he slapped the guy. Kozlov hooked him and started giving him the headbutts to the chest. He was about to hit the uranage when Ryan Phillipe came out. He said he'd talked to WWE brass and they'd agreed to change this to a handicap match. He introduced MacGruber's tag partner, Khalruber, who was Great Khali in disguise. If people aren't switching to Impact right now Dixie may as well pull the plug. Khali and Kozlov actually had a short match. Not short enough. This was horrendous. Kozlov ended up taking the chop and heading to the back. Khali gave chase, meaning he walked slowly after him. Both guys got counted out. Worst Raw moment of the year. MacGruber cut a promo to end the segment. This was so fucking godawful I don't have the words.
673
674Sheamus did a promo via satellite as HHH was coming down to the ring for the main event. He said HHH was lucky he didn't come overseas, because he'd have beaten his ass. He said he could tell Hunter what he was going to do with him, but instead he'd show him. He proceeded to beat the crap out of a production guy. Hunter just watched on and when HMMMMM!.
675
676HHH & Rey & Edge vs. Jericho & Punk & Gallows. The babyfaces ran wild early and Rey got backdropped over the top onto the pile outside. Somehow they barely caught him. Heat on Rey during the commercial break. Edge got a hot tag and ran wild on Gallows. He set up for the spear but Serena took the ref and Jericho broke it up and booted his bad Achilles. Edge made the hot tag to Hunter, who ran wild on Punk. Gallows broke it up with a clothesline. Rey flew in with a flying silla. Broke down into a six-way. Rey hit the 619 on Punk, then Hunter booted him and hit the pedigree for the pin. Of all the guys to pin in this match they had to beat Punk? This show blew.
677
678
679Impact
680AJ came out and cut a promo saying he proved to the world last night that he was pound-for-pound the best wrestler in the world. Pound-for-pound? He's heavyweight champion. He said he got into a cage with the Pope, one of the best wrestlers in the world, and through pure athletic ability and no help from Ric Flair he beat the guy. He said Pope could join Sting, Kurt Angle and Jeff Jarrett as guys that had also failed in title matches with him. "I am the best!" he said. "I am the best-looking, I am the best athlete, I am the workhorse of TNA!" Who should interrupt but Rob Van Dam. He was super over. He said he was back there listening to AJ talk, and he was doing a lot of talking. He said AJ thought he was the best athlete in TNA, but clearly he was forgetting ROB VAN DAM~! Crowd chanted "AJ SUCKS!" RVD said TNA was where all the wrestlers wanted to be. Sometimes TNA says things and it's the wrong night to say it. This was not one of those nights. Jeff Hardy was out next and the place went nuts. He cut a wacky promo talking about how big his own head was. Physically big, as in like Tito Ortiz. He said the revolution had begun and he was going to win the title. Hogan finally came out. He cut a promo saying it was all about the title and it was time for everyone backstage to up their games. He congratulated AJ on being the world champion, and said when you're the champion you're the best at what you do. He did a long promo about having to prove you're the best every single night, and how there is always a target on your back. Long story short, he signed Jeff vs. RVD with the winner getting AJ in the main event tonight. Yes, all on one show. Hogan was fabulous here. Good segment and the crowd made it great.
681
682Velvet & Lacey & ODB & Daffney. Match was horrible but the people were into it. ODB had the pin in Velvet but Madison took the ref. Lacey then sprayed stuff into ODB's eyes and Velvet rolled her up for the pin.
683
684Borash tried to interview Flair backstage. He was in the locker room with AJ, who was ranting and raving about how this was unfair bullshit. He told Flair they'd banned him from ringside as well. Flair said last night was a disaster and he wasn't going to let this go on much longer. He said he didn't care whether RVD or Jeff won, AJ could beat either of them. Flair said on top of that he was demanding a Team Flair vs. Team Hogan match for later. He wanted it signed in five minutes, he said, or he was going to claim victory via forfeit.
685
686After commercial Abyss and Jarrett were in the ring. Abyss said he and Jeff heard about his little challenge, but apparently Flair hadn't heard because the war between Team Hogan and Team Flair ended last night at Lockdown. Flair came out with his entire Team and told them to go down there and kick their asses. At least we got a four-on-two advantage heel deal here. Who should make the save for the babyfaces but BIG ROB TERRY. As big as Rob is he was unable to press Desmond Wolfe. He cleared the ring, and then out came Bischoff on the ramp. He said if Flair wanted a rematch, fine, they'd have it tonight, Team Flair vs. Abyss & Jarrett & Rob Terry & THE MYSTERY MAN.
687
688Matt Morgan met with Shannon backstage and asked him to be his tag team partner for next week. I guess we find out weekly who the stupidest guy on the roster is. Apparently it's not Shannon. He said he was busy next week, he had a match for the X-Division title. He told Morgan to kiss his ass, and Morgan was NOT happy about that.
689
690Hogan was backstage with Eric saying he'd never doubt Eric again after he put the knife in Flair's back last night. Hogan said they were making history tonight with the title match. "Flair's gonna flip, brother!" No, that's AJ. Hogan wanted to know if HE was going to be here for sure. Eric said yes, and the people were going to love it. And what about the ranking system for the World Title, Hogan asked. Bischoff said he'd break it out next week, the people would love it and it would revolutionize the business. TNA is going to have a RANKING SYSTEM. I cannot wait to see them try to not screw that up. He had Brooke's Ass go get him the files. And they cover up her ass, by the way. TNA.
691
692Jeff Hardy vs. RVD in a number-one contender's match. RVD ran wild on him for a long time early. His wound from Sunday night opened up so he was bleeding all over. Jeff made his big comeback and RVD took all sorts of nutty bumps on his head and neck. Lots of great nearfalls. "THIS IS AWESOME!" It was the best TV match on Impact in a long-ass time. They fought up top at the finish. Jeff went up there and got cut off, then RVD tried for a superplex. Jeff shoved him off and went for the senton, but RVD moved. RVD then sprung up and immediately hit the frog splash for the pin. This was awesome TV and the match was in the ***3/4 range.
693
694They did a deal afterwards where Christy interviewed RVD and Jeff, who are still best buds. They thanked each other and shook hands. Then Christy said let's watch some clips here. They showed some of the highspots as both guys stood there and did commentary, saying stuff like, "Wow, that hurt!" Best segment ever. RVD said he knew he had Jeff's support tonight, so now he had to focus on AJ. RVD said he wasn't going to lie, Jeff had taken a lot out of him, but he was going to stretch for awhile and be ready to go. This was such campy fun.
695
696Abyss was ranting and raving backstage about Team Flair jumping them earlier. He put over Big Rob for raising his game tonight. Rob said at the end of the night everyone was going to know he was THE FREAK ROB TERRY, especially Team Flair.
697
698Team Flair vs. Team Hogan in a War Games without a cage. It started with Sting and Jarrett brawling in the crowd. They got into the ring and did some spots and it was pretty good stuff. Desmond Wolfe was in next. THEY DID IT RIGHT. I spoke too soon. They said once the third guy entered it broke down into a tag team match. So Desmond had to tag Sting to get into the match. In next was Big Rob. Jarrett tagged him in and he ran wild, nearly killing poor Desmond with a backdrop. They had Orlando Jordan come out on the stage to watch. They went to commercial and when they came back, Robert Roode and Abyss were both in there. James Storm was in as the last member of Team Flair. Jeff got a hot tag and ran wild on all the heels. Thankfully they cut him off, since he was killing the psychology here and it was the last two minutes before the super secret member debuted. The heels should have laid all the babyfaces out. I don't know why I let this stuff get to me. So the final guy came out and it was SAMOA JOE, back from God knows where. Joe ran wild on everyone including seemingly killing poor Sting with a kick to the head, then hit Roode with the muscle buster for the pin. Great finish.
699
700AJ Styles vs. RVD for the World Title. RVD came out with blood still on his forehead. They noted that this was RVD's second match of the night, the first of which almost went fifteen minutes, so he was at a major disadvantage. AJ killed him with a huge dive to the outside early. They botched a spot early but tried so hard to save it that it kind of worked even better than had they done it right. AJ went to work on his leg. RVD made his big comeback and ran wild as the place went nuts. He hit the rolling thunder and went for the cover but AJ kicked out. AJ cut him off and put on the figure four. AJ went for a springboard but got powerbombed in mid-air. RVD then leapt to the top rope and hit the five star frog splash for the pin. Last few minutes were really good and it was awesome to see a clean finish in a title match. Place went nuts and they dropped confetti -- red and yellow confetti, I might add -- from the ceiling. Show ended with Hogan pulling Dixie Carter out of the crowd, then the babyface locker room emptied and everyone came out to hug him and lift him in the air on their shoulders. This was awesome and really put over the title as being meaningful, and really put over RVD as a deserving champion and the biggest star in the company. It's still going to do an 0.9 or so, which is too bad, because this was the best Impact in FOREVER.
701
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752Last week I wrote about how much I loved this job and getting a chance to meet people. This week I was reminded of the other side of that.
753
754The longer I do this and the more people I get a chance to meet, the more often it becomes that someone passes away who I knew. Such was the case this week with the death of Chris "Kanyon" Klucsaritis, 40, after an apparent suicide via overdose, the second suicide death so far this year after Adam Firestorm of someone who at one point I was very good friends with.
755
756Kanyon was one of the first people in the industry that I became friends with after starting this newsletter back in the mid-90s. He was working for WCW at the time, first as Mortis and later without the mask as Chris Kanyon. I can't remember exactly how we met but I seem to recall that I found his mailing address somewhere, likely on the Internet, and I started sending him the newsletter unsolicited. He called me out of the blue and the next thing you know we were friends. He had a very easy number to remember as the last seven digits spelled out LOBSTER, and he seemed strangely proud of that. I remember we used to talk more about the art of wrestling than anything that was going on in the business, although we did talk about that, and one day he called and told me that he was put in charge of recruiting cruiserweight talent and asked me to send him a videotape and an 8x10. He was, in fact, trying to recruit me into WCW, but of course nothing ever became of that. I believe it was through him that I met Dallas Page, and, strangely enough, we talked a lot about the art of wrestling as well and he was the first person to explain to me the process of putting a match together. The two of them, of course, were good friends and ended up doing the Positively Kanyon gimmick together, of which a few of the skits were among the funnier things in WCW at the time when that ship was sinking.
757
758Kanyon was a huge WWE fan growing up. It is said that he snuck into the building at WrestleMania IV, stole a turnbuckle pad, and still had it all the way up until his death. He spent the first five years or so of his career both working various indies and doing jobs for WWE, ECW (then Eastern Championship Wrestling) and WCW. His first big break came when he donned a mask and worked under the name Mortis for WCW, one of what would end up being a few different video-game-style characters (the others being Glacier and Wrath) managed by Jim Mitchell of future ECW and TNA fame. He dropped the mask during a feud with Raven in early 1998. They had a bunch of matches together and then joined forces for a period before Raven took time off and Kanyon got a job working as a stunt coordinator for the Jesse Ventura movie. When he returned, he teamed up with Page and Bigelow as the Jersey Triad, which was probably the high point of his WCW career as the three of them won the tag titles and worked briefly as sort of a modern day Freebird team where any two of them could defend the titles at any given time. They eventually lost the belts to Harlem Heat, at which point he and DDP went to work on the ill-fated Ready to Rumble film starring David Arquette and the rotund Oliver Platt. Page was one of the stars of the film while Kanyon worked as the stunt double of Platt, which was actually pretty astounding given each man's respective physique.
759
760When he returned to the company he worked for a brief period as "Champagne" Chris Kanyon, doing something of a pimp gimmick I guess playing off the fact that he'd gotten work in Hollywood, but that was rather short-lived. Russo then joined the company and quickly booked an angle at Slamboree 2000 where Mike Awesome gave Kanyon a powerbomb off a Triple Cage structure, the same one used in Ready to Rumble, and Kanyon crashed onto the ramp and was seemingly killed. This show, believe it or not (and ten years later this is still astounding) took place at Kemper Arena, the same building where a year earlier Owen Hart had legitimately fallen from the ceiling at the WWF Over the Edge PPV and died. Chris had practiced the stunt one time, onto a crash pad, then they put a tiny X on the ramp where he was supposed to land and he did it live on the air and thankfully hit the mark perfectly. He returned shortly thereafter in a wheelchair and ended up turning on Page, unhappy that he'd been thrown off the cage instead of DDP. Or something. This led to the Positively Kanyon DDP parody where he dyed his hair blonde, stole Page's finisher, and would run around randomly hitting the move on various people at inopportune times. One of the people he hit was Judy Bagwell, Buff's mother, and that led to a Kanyon vs. Bagwell feud that culminated in a Judy Bagwell on a Poll match at New Blood Rising. I am not making this up. TNA later hired Vince Russo and he's still working in the business today writing television with some of the biggest names in the history of pro-wrestling that is drawing less than a 1.0 rating on Monday nights in prime time.
761
762So yeah, WCW died. Kanyon's deal was picked up by WWE and he joined the company as part of the WCW Alliance for the very ill-fated Invasion angle of 2001. He got a huge push early on in the sense that for a period he was both the US Champion and the WWF Tag Team Champions simultaneously, the latter belts he held with DDP. He lost both titles within a month of each other in August and September of 2001. It was a rough time for him because despite the initial push he was, like a lot of other guys (including, seriously, Chris Benoit), labeled as someone who "didn't know how to work". His claim to fame in WCW was as the "innovator of offense", and he took pride in coming up with all sorts of different never-before-seen moves that ended up being stolen by other guys and used in various other promotions. He was basically given the message that it was OK to be good, but it was not OK to go out there and be great or try to steal the show, and that really screwed him up mentally since he took such pride in his work. They also weren't high on him because he had somewhat of a lisp, and in fact later that became something he was made fun of for on television.
763
764In October he tore his ACL in a dark match with Randy Orton and was out until May of 2002. They sent him to Ohio Valley and he loved it there, because he loved to work and he loved to help the young guys out. On July 13th he suffered a shoulder injury against Lance Cade, underwent surgery a week later, and due to complications his lungs ended up filling with fluid, he lost 32 pounds and nearly died. They were able to save his life and after recovering for several months he was sent back to Ohio valley in October. He didn't return to TV until February 2003, when he did this completely bizarre angle where he burst out of a crate on Smackdown singing "Do You Really Want to Hurt Me" and Undertaker beat the holy hell out of him. This was the last major thing he did with the company and it was clearly a cruel message of some sort that they sent to him. He wasn't released until approximately a year later, in February of 2004. Although he made some appearances in TNA, this was pretty much the end of his major league career.
765
766The last time I talked to him regularly was around the time that he nearly died in WWE. I called him and got his voice mail several times, and I seem to recall it being months before he called me out of the blue and thanked me for checking up on him. Apparently I wasn't the only person who called where it would always go straight to his voicemail, and others noted that, particularly of late, he'd disappear seemingly off the face of the Earth for months at a time before getting back into contact with them again. I did somehow end up his first friend when he opened up a Facebook account in March of 2008. He was astounded that I remembered his old phone number. We talked here and there about trying to set up an appearance for him on the radio show but it never ended up happening.
767
768Over the last few years he did a number of things to try to get attention, including announcing that he was coming out to become the first openly gay pro wrestling superstar, and that he was joining with Scott Levy and Mike Sanders in an attempt to sue WWE regarding WWE's claim that its wrestlers are independent contractors, not employees. The suit ended up being thrown out. It didn't make much sense to me at the time, but in August of 2007 he sent a brief email asking how the Japanese and Mexican wrestling systems compared to the US, and wanted to know about "the types of contracts the wrestlers sign here and their status of independent contractors? Do other companies have contracts? Are they Independent contractors? Can they work for other promotions?" Presumably this was research for the lawsuit attempt. He made regular appearances on the Stern talking about his various problems, and Stern noted a few days after his death that Kanyon had tried to call in a few days prior but that Stern hadn't taken the call. Stern then said that maybe his refusal to take it was what had sent Kanyon over the edge.
769
770Although he announced his retirement he never could let go of the fact that his major league career ended the way it did and he took occasional indy dates, including for Mikey Whipwreck's New York Wrestling Connection. He showed up at their event just last week and tried to buy a ticket to get in, and Mikey told him there was no way he was charging him for admission. They'd stopped booking him because he had just been out of control of late, completely manic. He would go into the locker room, line up all his 8x10s on the floor, pick them up, line them back up in a different order, pick them up again and repeat. He'd sent Mikey a bunch of emails with booking ideas, and they'd be these long 3-4 page tomes with spots timed to the millisecond. "He was treating every match like it was WrestleMania," Mikey said. He got so hard to deal with that Mikey told him he could just do whatever he wanted, but then his matches got worse and worse. They booked him for two shows which he didn't show up for, and they finally had to tell him to take some time off, get his head together, and get back to them, and that the door was open at any time for a return.
771
772Kanyon was found dead by his brother in his Queens, NY apartment on April 2nd. While it has not officially been ruled a suicide and will not be until toxicology reports come back, there apparently was a suicide note found near his body. It was one of those weird things. He'd obviously had serious issues for a long time and it was no mystery to friends that he battled depression and bipolar disorder and really needed help. He threatened suicide in the past, including publicly on the Howard Stern Show, but it's a strange thing in that sometimes the people who make the threats are the least likely to commit, whereas others, like Firestorm, don't seem to ever make the threat at all and then one day just do it. He'd threatened it so many times that many people concluded it was simply a cry for help and he'd never actually do it, and in fact, in the two weeks prior to his death friends said he seemed to be in a really good mood, was smiling and joking around again, and seemed to be in a good place. There were other people who said that just a few days before his death he'd started talking about his depression again and saying that he wanted to kill himself. This isn't confirmed, but according to one person he'd been having some financial issues and that made it tough for him to afford his medication at times.
773
774The question also remains as to the state of his brain at the time of his death. He was a big bump taker and most likely suffered a number of concussions during his career. With his heyday being in the mid-90s and early 00s, the mindset in wrestling at that time was that concussions were just dings and things that could be worked through, and it's very likely that, like Firestorm, Benoit, Awesome and others who ultimately took their own lives, his brain had been badly scrambled and that made a bad situation even worse. Interestingly, he wrote a big thing on his Myspace a few years back taking WWE to task for issuing a statement downplaying the theory that brain damage and concussions lead to Benoit's murderous rampage. "I personally know for a fact," he wrote, "that Chris had at least 2 concussions in matches against me. Both times in the late 90's in WCW. Both concussions were caused by the diving headbutt. Both times they resulted in bloody noses from the move and when we got to the back to congratulate each other for the match, he told me that the headbutt had caused the bloody nose as well as a concussion. I am one opponent. Chris probably did that move well over 1000 times in his career. He has also done it off the top of a steel cage a few times. He has taken tons of chair shots. Believe me, he has had a bunch of concussions, and for the WWE to try and insinuate that because no medical records exist to back that up that Chris has had no concussions, in my mind is criminal, disrespectful of their current slaves (I mean wrestlers), and worthy of a boycott of their product." He later added, "Wrestlers will continue to hide injuries, especially concussions. Wrestlers will continue to die at an unbelievable rate, and Vince will continue to have, in my opinion, the most EVIL lawyer on the planet, Jerry McDevitt, and this heartless broad, Jennifer McIntosh, put their spin on what's going on to protect his billions of dollars, insuring that more and more people will die prematurely. If that is not reason enough to boycott, I don't know what is."
775
776One wrestling personality who knew him said it was very clear he was bipolar and manic depressive and that they'd tried to convince him to get help since that is often "misdiagnosed and not treated properly. Most people who are bipolar and manic depressant try to self medicate with prescriptions or recreational drugs to attempt to balance themselves out." They added, "I am not chalking this up as another wrestling death. Instead I chalk it up as a person with a personality disorder that was not treated properly. I actually find this death more tragic than the standard heart attack under 40 by most wrestlers."
777
778
779ROH Big Bang PPV on gofightlive.tv
780The ROH Big Bang PPV from Charlotte was a good show, though perhaps overly long at nearly four hours.
781
782The positive of the online PPV format is that the show is only 15 dollars, there are no time constraints, it's almost impossible for the promotion to lose money given the miniscule start-up costs, and it's easy profit for a promotion with a decent following. The downsides are that a lot of people still haven't figured out how to hook up their laptop to their TV via HDMI cable and so you end up watching a four-hour show on your computer screen, plus for many people there will be some streaming issues unless you've got a super fast Internet connection. In a few years this medium will be far more successful, though there are people on the cutting edge now who can do OK with it.
783
784The show itself was very good, although personally it's really hard for me to sit through three straight uninterrupted hours of wrestling, especially a show like this with a lot of highspot-heavy action. I was really getting tired by the time the Briscoes match rolled around and was pretty much exhausted by the main event, but I was still able to acknowledge that both bouts were extremely good. In the end it was well worth the $15, especially for hardcore wrestling fans.
785
786We don't have any info on number of buys. The first show did around 1,000 and this was promoted significantly better. It did suffer from the TV show being pre-empted for the final two weeks before the show, something that ROH didn't know was going to happen when they booked the date. So really, the next show will be the real experiment as they'll be able to promote the event all the way through the final Monday before it airs, which should help buys quite a bit.
787
788Show opened with a good video package hyping up the show, which according to my player was 256:31 minutes long. That cannot be right. Well, it better not be right.
789
790Dave Prazak and Kevin Kelly opened up the show. Sad to see Mike Hogewood not there but this was a live show and Kelly was much better suited for the job. They plugged all the matches. It was funny to see Kelly claim he couldn't wait to see Blue Demon in action. A blatant lie, that.
791
7921. Jack Salvation vs. Phil Shatter. These were two local Charlotte guys. Salvation looked like an indy version of James Storm. Shatter is the NWA National Champion and came out with his belt. Fans were into him huge and chanted his name. What a great crowd. So then he got the heat. They botched something and got a "YOU FUCKED UP!" chant. It appeared to take them three tries to set up a triangle choke out of the corner. Salvation tried a guillotine next. Shatter finally pinned him with a sidewalk slam. (*1/2)
793
7942. Kenny King vs. Davey Richards in a Pick 6 match. Davey offered a handshake and King shoved him away. That was foolish. They said King was ranked number five in the World title contender rankings, so if Davey won this match he'd get King's spot and a $2,500 win bonus from HDNet and Mark Cuban's wallet. It was patently clear during this match that Kelly is better than anyone calling matches in WWE today. Granted, that's not high praise with Michael Cole and Todd Grisham as our options, but still. Rhett Titus interfered so Kenny could get the heat. Davey hit a diving headbutt and made his comeback. Very good heat. He ran wild with kicks and they traded nearfalls. Davey hit a German superplex and turned him inside out with a lariat, but Kenny kicked out of both that and a regular German. "ROH!" Rhett tried to interfere again but Davey went after him. Rhett took a boot to the outside, King went after him, and Davey went for his dive. King cut him off. Crowd was very sad about that. Tons of cradles and later submission attempts. Davey finally put him in the cloverleaf for the submission. Really good match. (***3/4)
795
796Prazak interviewed Davey afterwards, who said he used to live in Charlotte. He said there was no off night in ROH, the best wrestling company in the world, but with that said he needed to be the best wrestler in the world. No matter what people said, he wasn't the best until he had the title around his waist. He said he was on the hunt, Tyler was the prey, and he was going to devour whoever he had to go through. Suddenly, the music hit and out came CHRIS DANIELS. Kelly used the famous "HE DOESN'T EVEN WORK HERE!" line. Well, he does now. Crowd chanted "FALLEN ANGEL!" and "FUCK TNA!" He said he had a problem with what Davey just said. For 17 years, he said, he'd fought, bled and worked to make the name Fallen Angel Christopher Daniels synonymous with best in the world. He said after being held back and held down he was back in ROH to prove he was exactly that. He said he didn't care where or when, if Davey wanted to be called best in the world he'd have to go through him.
797
7983. Necro Butcher vs. Erik Stevens in a Butcher Rules match. I think this was the first match they had graphics up for. Stevens without his Mohawk looks like just a guy. Necro punched him in the face and did a cannonball off the apron. No catch whatsoever, he just crashed and burned. He tried suffocating Erick with a plastic bag. Stevens was bleeding from the mouth due to the punch I'm sure. Ernie Osiris got hit with a Section B sign. Necro beat the fuck out of him before finally getting tossed off the apron for the heat. Prince Nana tried to interfere and, as usual, was thwarted. Butcher immediately punched Erik in the face and then pinned him with an O'Connor role. Fabulous finish. Butcher cleared the ring of the heels afterwards. (*1/2)
799
8004. Rhett Titus vs. Cassandro. Rhett does the old-school '80s heel heartthrob gimmick. Cassandro is a lucha exotico, basically doing a transvestite gimmick. Fans went nuts for him. He did a bunch of lucha highspots. Rhett gave him a headscissors but Cassandro fought back with a kiss on the lips. Rhett got the heat and did some gay spots of his own, like a wheelbarrow where he made sure to hump him first. Cassandro sent him outside and hit a huge flip dive, then grabbed his leg. He broke it on the landing, just a total fluke thing. So then he got back into the ring, did a top rope dropkick, and then did a highspot that involved an attempt at running leading to a cradle finish. Tough dude, and hopefully he's OK. (**1/2)
801
802Announcers hyped up the next match and the audio went out so you couldn't hear a word they said.
803
8045. Colt Cabana & Generico vs. Kevin Steen & Steve Corino. Four-way stuff early, then Colt held Steen so Generico, after all these weeks and months, could finally waffle his former partner. Corino broke it up before Generico could do it. Heat on Cabana. Crowd sang the "OLE!" song. Generico got the hot tag and ran wild on Corino. He hit a tornado DDT and demanded Steen get in the ring. Steen dropped off the apron but Colt threw him inside. Corino cut Generico off before he could do anything again. The Generico/Steen staredowns were getting a lot less heat than you'd think. Steen gave Generico a powerbomb onto the ring frame. That was fucking completely insanity there. Cabana wiped out the heels with a dive. He put the reverse crab on Corino and Steen broke it up with a chairshot for the DQ. Crowd hated that and chanted "BULLSHIT!" (**1/4)
805
806Heels went to work on Colt and bloodied him up afterwards. Steen was actually licking blood off his hands. "YOU SICK FUCK!" Generico made it back in and tossed Corino outside. Steen slapped Generico across the face so Generico finally fired up, gave him the running boot in the corner. Geeks came in to break it up. Again far less heat than you'd think. Generico did follow it up with a flip dive that caused the place to explode. He got back into the ring and hit Steen with a German, a Yakuza kick and then went for the top rope brainbuster. Cabana was holding the geeks back. Corino ended up saving Steen and dragging him backstage. Generico then laid out several of the security geeks with brainbusters and such. Crowd did love that. He then hit poor Grizzly Redwood with the top rope brainbuster.
807
808They had a long intermission that thankfully I could fast forward through.
809
810Cornette came out with Bobby Eaton, who looks about 280 pounds, and Tommy Young. Cornette said Dennis Condrey wanted to be there but was stuck on business. Eaton, he said, was there to check out the Briscoes vs. Kings of Wrestling tag team title match. I'd give anything to watch that match with him. Cornette said he was picking the Briscoes, the best tag team in the business, and Eaton said he'd pick the Kings. Cornette also said Tommy would be the outside the ring referee and enforcer to make sure there were no dirty tricks in the main event three-way. Tommy said he was going to keep his eye on Austin Aries, who he compared to Ric Flair.
811
8126. Briscoes vs. Kings of Wrestling for the ROH World Tag Titles. Briscoes ran wild on the heels early. Prazak talked about how Hero had injured his back last weekend and made a miraculous recovery. The funny thing is that it was a legit injury and that's true about the recovery being miraculous. They said he was at about 75 to 80 percent. Claudio ended up getting a blind tag and Hero booted Jay in the face to get the heat. "LET'S GO BRISCOE!" Basic old-school heat at this point. Mark got the hot tag and ran wild. He tossed Hero outside and Jay followed it up with a huge dive. Mark tried one of his own but Claudio caught him in midmove and Hero hit a rolling elbow. Mark kicked out but it was time for heat on him. They teased the hot tag forever using all sorts of tricks, knocking the brother off the apron, etc. Mark finally rolled through a cradle and went between Hero's legs to make the desperation tag. Cool spot. Heels hit a multiple Yakuza kick spot, then Claudio hit his super European uppercut. "THIS IS AWESOME!" Claudio hit a sweet springboard tornillo elbow. Hero hit two rolling elbows but Mark kicked out. Briscoes foiled the giant swing/dropkick spot. That was sad. They hit a Demolition elbow on Hero for another nearfall. Claudio hit the UFO, a no-hand spinning torture rack drop which is awesome, then they followed it up with the giant swing/dropkick for a nearfall. More nearfalls and kickouts. A single guy managed to start a "THIS IS AWESOME!" chant. This was right about the time it was starting to go on too long. Awesome spot where Briscoes went for a doomsday device but Claudio grabbed Mark in midair and turned it into a giant powerslam. Kings hit their KRS-1 but Jay broke it up at the last second. Briscoes went for a second springboard doomsday device but Shane Hagadorn shook the ropes. Jay went after him and fans chanted "FUCK HIM UP!" As the ref was distracted Hero hit Jay with the loaded forearm pad, then threw Claudio on top for the pin and the titles. Jay barfed after the match. Hopefully he was just blown up and hadn't suffered a concussion. (***3/4)
813
8147. Tyler Black vs. Austin Aries vs. Roderick Strong for the ROH Title. Aries did a promo before the match talking about how he had no idea Tommy Young was still alive, and how while he respected Black and Strong it was too bad the two of them didn't respect each other. He did all he could to stir the pot, then said he'd let them settle their differences and he'd wait outside until they were done. This was a great promo. Strong and Black did mat wrestling at a quick pace early. Cornette did commentary here and was just awesome explaining every possible facet of this match. They noted that poor Roderick is 0-12 in title match opportunities. Aries finally got involved and they did a bunch of great three-way spots. Black hit a Fosbury flop dive over the top onto both guys. This was 201 minutes into the show and the fans were totally into it so they deserve a medal of some sort. Strong didn't have his shoulder taped up but he did smash into the barricade and they mentioned that he'd been "hurt" in Phoenix. He ended up Strong'ing up and running wild on both guys. He put Aries in a crab, but then Tyler hit the ring and put the sleeper on Strong. Strong broke out with a jawbreaker but sat on Aries' legs in the process. That looked like it sucked. There were chants for all three guys. Strong chopped the shit out of Aries. Cornette spent a lot of this match putting Roddy over super strong, so to speak. Tyler took the back suplex on the apron. Aries then hit Strong with a DVD on the apron. And I mean the move, not a plastic disc. Aries went for his tope of doom but both Strong and Black split apart and Aries crashed and burned on the guardrail. Everyone took turns running wild on everyone else. They noted this was an elimination match, meaning you had to pin the champion at some point to win the title. Crowd was getting tired at the 217-minute mark of the show. Amazing they lasted that long. Black missed the Phoenix splash and Aries turned him inside out with a lariat, then went for the 450. Black got the knees up. Roddy hit a stomach buster and followed it up with the Strong hold. Tyler broke it up. Well that made no sense. Strong hit him with a backbreaker and a flying kick but Aries broke up the pin with a kick and brainbuster. Again, why are these guys breaking up pins? Black hit a buckle bomb and a superkick, but Roddy no-sold it and spat in his face. Cornette said in 35 years he'd never seen anything like this. "THIS IS AWESOME!" Strong finally hit rolling brainbusters on Roddy for the pin. They put him over like a million bucks in this match, though. Aries hit his tope on Tyler. Black hit a superplex and rolled into a God's last gift, but Aries kicked out. Aries hit the buckle bomb and two superkicks but Aries got his feet on the ropes. Kenny King came out to take the ref. Tyler kicked Aries into him, hit two superkicks to the back of the head, a third to the face, and God's last gift for the pin. Finish was a little clunky and I don't think they needed interference, but still a hell of match. (****1/4)
815
816
817UFC Fight Night
818Kenny Florian beat Takanori Gomi in the main event of a UFC Fight Night show previewing the newest season of Ultimate Fighter.
819
820Show was fine. There weren't any blow-away matches. It was fun seeing Roy Nelson's Gut kill some dude and cause the fans to go nuts with joy. Florian looked great in beating Gomi, formerly a top star with PRIDE and the company's final lightweight champion, but a guy who hadn't been fighting top competition in years.
821
822Bonuses of $30,000 were paid to Kenny Florian for Submission of the Night, Roy Nelson for Knockout of the Night, and Ross Pearson and Denis Siver for Best Fight. The show didn't sell out, but drew 7,700 and a $590,000 live gate to the Bojangles Coliseum in Charlotte (real place).
823
8241. Ross Pearson vs. Dennis Siver. All on the feet early. Pearson rocked him with a shot and went behind him. Siver tried to drop down and grab the leg but Pearson put in a hook and got his back, then body triangled him. Siver turned and got mounted. He was bleeding like crazy. He did a sweep but Ross stood up. Siver came at him swinging. Good round, 10-9 Pearson. Siver hit a spinning back kick and Pearson threw a flying knee. Siver briefly had a takedown. Not much of a round, neither guy really did anything, 10-10. Ross tagged him but got immediately taken down. Pearson took him down but Siver stood right back up. Another nothing round. 10-9 Ross, so he wins 30-28. Ross won 30-27. Rogan liked this way more than I did.
825
826They interviewed BJ Penn about his upcoming fight with Frankie Edgar next weekend. BJ tried to convince us that Frankie was a threat. I was unsold. A tsunami can't stop BJ Penn, what is Frankie Edgar going to do?
827
8282. Jorge Rivera vs. Nate Quarry. Jorge tagged him with a few good shots. He dropped him, but Quarry was back up quickly swinging with punches and elbows. Jorge dropped him a second time and just went to work on him. Quarry was bleeding from the nose. Jorge was beating the holy piss out of him in the final 30 seconds. 10-7 round as this was very close to being stopped. Nate survived the round but Jorge finished him off a few seconds into round two. A pure legit ass beating here.
829
830Dana did a promo hyping up Ultimate Fighter. He's put on some weight. He promised great fights this season.
831
8323. Stefan Struve vs. Roy Nelson. They were in the middle of introducing this fight when the fucking power went out. They cut to a shot of Kenny Florian backstage, who looked completely stoned. When he discovered the camera was on him he woke up and started bouncing around. They went to commercial and came back and the power was still off so they went to a prelim instead.
833
834a. Caol Uno vs. Gleison Tibau. This sucked for three and a half minutes, then Tibau dropped him with a shot and pounded on him. Caol survived for a bit but was eventually finished with shots from the back.
835
8363. Stefan Struve vs. Roy Nelson. Let's try this again. They said Roy was a Kung Fu fighter. They should have said KUNG FOOD. This was the most absurd match ever. Roy is short and fat and Struve is 6-foot-11 and 240 pounds. Roy dropped him immediately with a shot and finished him off. A hell of a performance. "This guy gets his ass into his punches," Rogan said. "There's a lot of muscle behind that fat!" Fans went nuts for Nelson. They've got something in this guy because he's so different and he can fight. Roy put over Stefan after the match saying he'd be a stud at 25. Rogan wanted to know who he wanted to fight and he said James Toney.
837
8384. Kenny Florian vs. Takanori Gomi. All on the feet in the first round. 10-9 Florian as he lit him up with jabs for five minutes. Second round exactly the same. Gomi landed a nice shot in the third but Kenny took him down. He got the mount, then his back, then put him in the rear-naked choke for the submission. Florian looked awesome here.
839
840Florian did a promo afterwards saying he was honored to be face Gomi and was thrilled to have beaten their last lightweight champion.
841
842
843WAR UPDATE
844Still not much of one. But TNA did do better this week from 8-to-10 than they were doing from 9-to-11, and that was with only a week of promotion for the (well, at the time) one-time-only timeslot switch.
845
846TNA did its best number since March 8th, an 0.857 (basically an 0.9) off hours of 0.91 and 0.82. The first hour, with no Raw competition, did much better than usual, and surprisingly the second hour was stronger than usual as well despite not only going up against Raw, but also Dancing with the Stars and the NCAA Finals, both of which did approximately 20 million viewers each. The show did an 0.84 in males 18-to-49, and 0.84 in males 18-to-34, and 1.2 million viewers.
847
848Quarters were 0.87, 0.85, 0.98 (first half of women's match), 0.93 (second half, so they lost viewers), 0.81 (Raw came on the air, and that's a big plunge in the middle of the Angle vs. Kennedy ladder match), 0.88, 0.73, 0.70 and 0.97. UFC Unleashed started at 10 p.m., and given that this show usually draws three-quarters of a million viewers, most of that overrun bump was probably MMA fans tuning in for their show, although TNA will attribute it to the women and the trainwreck TV they were producing at the time. That's a bad thing, by the way.
849
850Raw was hurt badly by the non-wrestling competition, mostly the NCAA Finals, as they plunged 22 percent in persons 18-to-49 and 26 percent in males 18-to-49, their lowest-rated demos of the entire year. The first hour did just a 3.0 rating and 4.3 million viewers, and the second hour grew slightly to a 3.3 and 4.895 million viewers.
851
852Based on how Raw's first hour usually does when they start at 8 p.m., Impact's first hour was probably down about 20 percent from what they would do if that became their permanent home, which the company announced would be happening starting this coming Monday. If you presume a 20 percent increase, hour one goes from 0.9 to 1.12, and if we presume the second hour is going to average an 0.8 that's an 0.96 weekly average, or basically a 1.0. That's still below what they were doing on Thursday nights, and with the added expense of going live every week that doesn't seem to be worth it. They have announced a special encore for Thursdays, perhaps to try to regain some of the viewers that will apparently watch on Thursday but not on Monday.
853
854It is quite fascinating to observe the flip-flopping of various timeslots during this brief war, TNA constantly looking for the "best possible formula" while simultaneously making absolutely no changes to creative which just happens to be their single biggest problem right now.
855
856
857In House Notes
858The number next to your name on the address label indicates which issue your Figure Four Weekly subscription expires with. Thus, if you have a [771] next to your name, this is the final issue of your current subscription.
859
860Very special thanks to the following people for their help over the years in producing Figure Four Weekly: Gladys "Granny" Gibson, Dave Meltzer, Tony Leder, Alex Marvez, Zack Arnold, Colin Vassallo, Kris Zellner, Manuel Gonzalez, Craig Proper, Vincent Verhei, Keith Lipinski, Robert Bihari, The Cubs Fan, Kyle Wolf, Devin Cutting, Shawn Garrett, Bob Barnett, Mike Lano, Adam Lebow, Mike Sempervive, Adam Summers, Mike Coughlin, Karl Stern, Steve "Dr. Lucha~!" Sims, Mike K, Forrest Lynn. Thanks also to everyone who sent in news over the past week.
861
862Worldwide renewal rates due to rising postage costs are $100 per one-year subscription (52 issues), $55 per six-month subscription (26 issues), $30 per three-month subscription (12 issues), and $12 per one month subscription.
863
864To order through the mail, send a check, money order or cash payable to Figure Four Weekly to PO BOX 426, Woodinville, WA 98072. To order with a credit card, send your Visa or Master Card order with your name, address, phone number, Visa or Master Card number, expiration date AND CVR number (three-digit security code on the back of the card) to figure4@ix.netcom.com, or you can order by faxing that information to 530-730-2920. You can also subscribe via paypal at www.paypal.com using the bryan@wrestlingobserver.com address, or subscribe via credit card by mail. Please include all the information listed above, particularly the CVR security code that many people forget.
865
866
867WWE
868Jim Ross on his blog wrote: "JR is NOT retiring. It's tempting and financially doable but I want to work a few more years in a role that is fun and not as laden with stress as some of my previous assignments have been. No I am not 'vanishing.' Life is so good here in Norman and I have a tremendous amount of things to look forward to although I know that I have not broadcast my last event. One doesn't do something for over 35 years and stop cold turkey or at least I don't. There are no issues or problems with my negotiations with WWE. The ball is in WWE's court to put together a new role for me within the company. Essentially they have decided to reassign me from weekly broadcasting and that includes the monthly PPV's to focus on other areas of the company. I am guessing, and I stress guessing, that may be some form of scouting and/or talent development. I might be wrong on that assumption but I'll know before the end of April as that is when my current extension expires." His current short-term deal is up in a few weeks.
869
870Elimination Chamber this year appears to have done approximately 290,000 buys, up from the 280,000 buys the show did last year. Keep in mind that's with a greatly expanded international universe, and international buys bring in less revenue than domestic buys.
871
872This has to be a rib, but I was told that WILD AND YOUNG, by the band American Gang, the fucking hideous NXT theme song, was number 46 last week on the Mediabase Active Rock charts. Maybe 2012 is the end of the world.
873
874Superstars last week did an 0.67 rating and 707,000 viewers, so it just lost to Impact. That's a terrible number by the way.
875
876Batista shoots the latest WWE Film, Killing Karma, starting on April 13th. Doubtful he'll have to miss any TV time since Randy Orton shot all his scenes for the upcoming Big Red in about a week.
877
878The DiBiase angle is probably leading to a new faction involving his younger brother Brett, who is a spitting image of him, and Joe Hennig. At least, that was the plan originally. They may use the name "The Fortunate Sons," but I hope not because that's lame.
879
880The Draft, as noted several weeks back, is April 26th on a three-hour show, so five hours of wrestling in one night between WWE and TNA. Well, if TNA is still on Mondays by April 26th, which God knows they may not be. They'll be having Raw and Smackdown guys working both shows until the Draft because, well, that makes absolutely no sense but it's what they do ever year.
881
882The Briscoes' contracts are coming due in the next few months and they are negotiating with ROH over new ones. They've been given both dark matches by WWE and invited down to Florida to attend tryout camps. Not sure what WWE's thoughts are on them right now but Jay did our show and talked about how they grew up as WWE fans, and if the money is right they'd love to go there. A WWE source says they are on the radar, but the problem is that a lot of guys there pan them for their work and look. Bryan Danielson has always had guys like Regal and others backing him and talking about how he's legit and can go, unlike the Briscoes who don't have that kind of backing. Danielson had been on the radar since around 2002 or 2003. If they went there would almost certainly be a name change due to Jack and Gerry's legacy. Another WWE source said the problem was that maybe two people on the creative team were really aware of them since most of the people doing that job don't follow the indies at all.
883
884WWE is actually working on a book about the life of Goldust. He's certainly had his ups and downs over the years and his battles with various demons, and this is probably the best place he's been in a long, long time. I would presume that means they'd have to bring him back to TV at some point and push him at least to some degree. I guess that also means at some point he's a lock for their Hall of Fame. The gimmick is long since played out and he's been typecast as a low midcarder, but his work over the last two years on ECW was probably the best of his entire career.
885
886Jericho did an April Fool's joke on Twitter saying he had been sequestered for jury duty and would be out six weeks minimum.
887
888Some notes on next year's WrestleMania. Talk won't get far, especially since the Phillips Arena is right next door, but there was a brief discussion about doing both Mania and Raw at the Georgia Dome with night two massively scaled down. Either the Phillips or Fox Arena will get the Hall of Fame. Goldberg is probably a lock, as is Ron Simmons. Other suggested names are Sting (thought not if he's with TNA still), Luger and the Steiner Brothers.
889
890Linda McMahon, as part of her Senate campaign, resigned from the Connecticut Board of Education this week. Board members are now restricted from engaging in political activities so she pretty much had no choice. She said she regretted having to quit the Board. "Although the opinion does not preclude a board member from running for public office, it does disallow them from engaging in many of the activities that are necessary to be a successful candidate," Linda wrote upon resigning. "The recent revelation of this rule has come as a surprise to me as well as to other members of the board," she wrote. "Therefore, in order to avoid any violation of this rule or even the appearance of a violation, it is with deep regret that I must immediately resign and relinquish my position on the board".
891
892David Hasselhoff is this coming week's Raw guest host. The MacGruber cast hosts the week after and there is no host listed for April 26th yet. They are working to try to get Tila Tequila in for sometime next month.
893
894Syfy started doing NXT replays at 9 p.m. ET this past Tuesday. They'll air the prior week's show at 9 and then the new show at 10 p.m. So really, you only have to tune in every other week now and you won't miss anything. Will be interesting to see what kind of rating the replay airing does.
895
896Lance Cade, who was released from his contract due to passing out on a plane after taking too many pills, was rehired in October, never used, and just this week released again. Basically he asked to go to rehab again several months ago and then shortly after he got out they released him again. Most likely they figured that after having two different pill-related incidents he was too big a potential liability.
897
898Zach Gowen also completed WWE-sponsored rehab for a pain pill addiction as of March 15th and is now staying at a sober-living facility and taking indy bookings again.
899
900We're told the new Hart Family DVD is awesome. There is a very sad half-hour period early where they cover the deaths of Owen Hart, Stu, Helen and Bulldog. Overall it's said to be the best thing WWE has put out since the Ric Flair Hall of Fame DVD, and we're told that after watching it, at least for the time being, it'll be pretty much impossible to boo the Hart Dynasty.
901
902There is a Ricky Steamboat DVD coming out at the end of June.
903
904Jack Tunney's son Eric, 45, who worked as both a stand-up comedian and writer, died this week. No word on the cause of death but we're told he'd been going through a really rough spell.
905
906HBK's retirement speech will be a bonus on the WrestleMania DVD that comes out in May.
907
908The citizens of St. Louis got a mailer last week asking them if they wanted to bid for WrestleMania in 2012. There are a half dozen different cities bidding to get the show between now and 2013.
909
910Edge has been involved in every single Money in the Bank title change. At WrestleMania 21 he won the deal and beat Cena at New Year's Revolution; he helped RVD beat Cena at One Night Stand following Mania 22; he beat Taker after winning the briefcase from Mr. Kennedy following Mania 23; he lost the title to Punk following Mania 24; Punk beat Jeff Hardy to win the title at Extreme Rules after Mania 25 after Hardy had finished a match with Edge; and Swagger won the title from Jericho after Mania 26 following Edge beating up Jericho.
911
912Smackdown did a 1.8 and 3.025 million viewers last Friday.
913
914Carlos Colon, Teddy Hart, Bobby Heenan, Danny Spivey and Mean Gene Okerlund (looking 300 pounds) were all at the Hall of Fame last week.
915
916
917UFC
918UFC announced that they'd be airing UFC 110: Nogueira vs. Velasquez head-to-head with the Strikeforce show on CBS April 17th. Well, you knew something like this was going to happen. I'm going to be interested to see this rating. They should be beaten by CBS given the respective TV universe for CBS as compared to Spike. UFC 110 was one of the least-purchased UFC PPVs of all time. I'm wondering if that means low rating for the replay or if it might actually mean a higher rating since most people didn't buy it. UFC 100, when it aired on free TV, didn't do a record rating or anything like that perhaps because so many people either bought the show or went and watched it at a friend's house. Wanderlei Silva vs. Michael Bisping is also on the show.
919
920Thiago Alves underwent an eight-hour brain operation last week to correct and an arteriovenous fistula in his brain. That sounds like a pretty fucking major deal, but apparently it's not and he'll not only be returning to training in a few weeks but he'll be facing Jon Fitch at UFC 115 in Vancouver's GM Place on June 12th. And yes, they're booking Fitch for another fight after his boring-ass performance at GSP vs. Hardy.
921
922TUF Finale takes place on June 19th in the Pearl at the Palms Las Vegas.
923
924The first episode of the new season of TUF did a 1.5 rating with 1.9 million viewers. That's down a ton from TUF 10 with Kimbo, but nobody in their right mind was expecting it to do anywhere near those numbers. I'd consider a 1.5 and 1.9 million viewers to be a success, to be honest with you, since it's the 11th season of this show, there are no big stars among the fighters, and Tito vs. Chuck, at least to me, seems completely played out. Maybe they'll manage to turn it around in the next few weeks. The show did a 1.8 in males 18-to-49, a 2.1 in males 18-to-34, a 1.3 in males 18-to-24, and a 2.6 in males 25-to-34.
925
926Among the guys at the tryouts for TUF 12 in Charlotte last week were Charles "Krazy Horse" Bennett and Jason Guida, brother of Clay. Guida was a contestant on season eight but came in too fat, got ill during weight-cutting and was bumped from the show after the commission told him they weren't going to allow him to try to cut any more weight before his upcoming fight.
927
928Full line-up for the April 24th WEC PPV has Jose Aldo Jr. vs. Urijah Faber for the 145-pound title; Ben Henderson vs. Donald Cerrone for the 155-pound title; Shane Roller vs. Anthony Njokuani; Scott Jorgensen vs. Antonio Banuelos; Chan Sung Jung vs. Leonard Garcia; Anthony Pettis vs. Alex Karalexis; Demetrious Johnson vs. Brad Pickett; Anthony Morrison vs. Mackens Semerzier; Rani Yahya vs. Takeya Mizugaki; and Tyler Toner vs. Brandon Visher. Show airs live from the Arco Arena at 7 p.m. PT.
929
930
931TNA
932Don't know whether he asked for his release or was fired, but Chris Daniels is done with TNA and going full-time with ROH. He had an awesome PPV match with Samoa Joe and AJ Styles late last year, and then Hogan and Bischoff came in and he totally fell off the radar. They didn't see anything in him, which tells you something about their eye for talent, and him getting the hell out was probably destined to happen sooner or later.
933
934TNA sent out a deal offering "8 Reasons to watch Impact Tonight." Of course, they sent this out on Thursday, when Impact wasn't airing. I can't make this stuff up.
935
936Jeff Jarrett in an interview with Kentucky.com put over the house show business, saying all the shows were financial winners. Well, I don't know about every single one of them but they are largely making money, mostly due to low advertising costs (which is funny because they'd probably do a lot better at the gate if they did advertise) and the low overhead costs of running smaller buildings. They have done some shows where attendance was so small (300 or so) that I can't believe they broke even. He also said by the end of the year they wanted to have more of the TV stars on the road so that what you saw on TV was what you got at the house shows. Christ, I hope not, because the house show I went to last year was an awesome wrestling show and all I need are guys like Hall and Nash bringing them down.
937
938The 9-to-11 Thursday time slot that Impact used to inhabit was filled with a Chuck Liddell special that has been replayed countless times and only did an 0.4 rating. So I guess the number can go that low. Why they're not replaying Impact is beyond me. I guess they want everyone watching Monday but clearly it made no difference whether there was a Thursday replay or not because the rating was actually better on Monday when there was. Pretty amazing when you can get rid of a Thursday replay and it results in the rating for Monday dropping. This promotion is a comedy of errors.
939
940TNA Epics episode 4 airs on April 15th at 11 p.m. on Spike TV.
941
942
943Strikeforce
944Lashley will not be fighting on the Strikeforce show. They couldn't find anyone for him and hadn't even approached him with any potential opponents. He did an interview saying nobody told him why he was off the show, but that he figured he'd be fighting on the May show, which will be aired on Showtime. He did an interview with MMA Junkie saying that fans were clamoring for him to fight Fedor and guys like that, and while those were the kind of fans that were going to bitch no matter what (true) he did feel that it was time he started facing stiffer competition.
945
946Strikeforce is also working on a show for June 26th at the HP Pavilion in San Jose. The rumors are that if they can get everything worked out that would be the show with Fabricio Werdum challenging Fedor Emelianenko. Although Scott Coker said last week that everything had been settled between his company and Fedor's M-1 management group, they were actually still working on a contract renegotiation at press time.
947
948If you look closely you'll see Strikeforce Middleweight Champion (for the time being) Jake Shields in the background on the new season of Ultimate Fighter, as Chuck Liddell brought him in as a trainer. The two have been friends for a long time. Shields has talked openly about potentially going to UFC after the Dan Henderson fight on the 17th, which is the final one on his current contract.
949
950
951Other MMA
952War Machine was arrested again last week for assault with a deadly weapon out the Thruster's Lounge Bar (?) in San Diego last week. Never got a report on what the deadly weapon was. They actually put a spit bag over his head as apparently the officers were not happy with how he reacted to his arrest. It was all over TMZ on Wednesday.
953
954
955Other Wrestling
956Bob Ziolkowski, 34, an indy wrestler from Wisconsin, passed away earlier this week of heart failure. No further details on this one.
957
958I was going to the post office last week to get stamps for the print newsletters and got a call saying I needed to run back home to grab something to mail. So I turned around, went home, and when I returned what should I see but the entire post office shut down and swarming with cops and firetrucks. I think, "Sweet Christ someone tried to shoot up or blow up the post office and had I not gone home I might have been there when it happened!" I legitimately thought my life had been saved. As it turned out, there was a "suspicious vehicle" parked out front with a canister on top of it spewing some sort of mysterious substance, so the place was evacuated. I thought back to all the times I've gone to the post office and the weirdos are out front with their goofy signs that have, for example, Barack Obama's face with a Hitler mustache painted on it, and thought these men had finally gone too far and flipped out. In the end, what happened was a guy parked at the post office in his cleaning truck and locked his keys inside, and left to go find a locksmith. Someone saw the vehicle running, freaked out, and the rest is history. I can't wait to read the Woodinville Weekly Police Beat on that one.
959
960CMLL ran their 76th anniversary of Arena Coliseo show on April 4th at -- where else? -- Arena Coliseo. Main event saw Mistico beat Atlantis. It's a weird deal because Mistico is kind of working babyface on Tuesdays and heel on Friday's at Arena Mexico. His win was the sixth straight for the babyfaces on this show. Atlantis wanted a return singles match at Arena Mexico and Mistico said the only way he'd do it is if it was a mask vs. mask match. Well, that's not happening this Friday.
961
962DGUSA on May 8th in Toronto has BxB Hulk vs. Masato Yoshino for the Open the Freedom Gate Title; CIMA & Dragon Kid vs. YAMATO & Shingo; Naruki Doi & Pac vs. Mike Quackenbush & Jigsaw; and more.
963
964New Japan announced that Negro Casas would be defending the CMLL Middleweight title against Jushin Liger on May 3rd in Fukuoka. Hiroshi Tanahashi is going to CMLL in May. They also announced that all of the CMLL big shows, such as the anniversary show, Dos Leyendas, etc., would be airing on Samurai TV this year.
965
966AAA is running a poll on their Web site asking what kind of match fans would like to see La Parka vs. LA Park become, and it was 3-to-1 in favor of a mask match. AAA was hoping people would vote name vs. name. There was a feeling that so many of the AAA viewers today are newer or younger fans that nobody would care at all about the mask aspect of this feud.
967
968CMLL did 1,500 last Tuesday for a show that featured Brazo de Oro losing his hair, as he does every spring, to Asesino Negro with a Boston crab in the third fall.
969
970CMLL isn't doing much at all until the next WWE tour concludes, feeling everyone is going to be saving their money to go to the big shows the first week of May.
971
972All of the planned Perros Del Mal shows in Texas this month have been canceled, and it appears the Yonkers Lucha PPV is off as well.
973
974Wrestlelicious announced that they will be doing TV tapings on May 28th at the 1st Avenue Nightclub in Minneapolis, Minn., so the project lives on.
975
976
977Bryan's Friend Vince's DVD Review and Karaoke Showcase
978
979History of the Intercontinental Championship
980DVD opens with trailers for other DVDs, including a re-done version of the Eddie Guerrero DVD that now includes “the last match of his illustrious career.” Yes, I really want to see Eddie in a throwaway match with Ken Kennedy in which he takes a super-hard chairshot just days before his death.
981
982They aired a video of a bunch of guys winning the title, including Steve Austin after Owen Hart dropped him on his head. Some odd editing on this so far. Todd Grisham listed a lot of men who had held the title, including Austin and the Honky Tonk Man. He told us that the title was born in Rio De Janeiro, Brazil, although now the story is that Pat Patterson unified the North American and South American championships, nothing about a tournament.
983
984Pat Patterson vs. Ted DiBiase. From Madison Square Garden, October 22, 1979. Howard Finkel announced this as one fall OR TO CURFEW. I don’t know who the ref was, but he may have also officiated David vs. Goliath. He was old, you see. He was also very tiny. Maybe I should have said he officiated Frodo vs. Gollum. Patterson stalled forever at the beginning. Vince McMahon on commentary had a guest from some magazine discussing a feature on the sexiest album covers of the year. He also plugged a concert by FOREIGNER. DiBiase finally had enough and lit it into Patterson, who took without question the greatest turnbuckle bump I’ve ever seen, going back-first into the corner and then flying high into the air. Patterson stalled some more, then DiBiase went to work on the arm. He hooked an abdominal stretch that they used as a false finish, with the ref checking Patterson’s arm and everything. He finally got the ropes. Think about this: Pat Patterson nearly lost the IC title to an abdominal stretch five minutes into a match in which had seen zero sustained offense. Wrestling has changed in the ensuing 30 years. Patterson cut DiBiase off and attacked with punches and chokes. DiBiase fought back with a dropkick, but missed a second one. Patterson then reached into his trunks and pulled out an ENORMOUS pair of brass knuckles. INSANE heat for this. DiBiase punched him first and the knuckles fell to the mat. DiBiase grabbed them, but then Patterson cradled him and put his feet on the ropes for the pin. Not an all-time classic or anything, but a fun look inside a time capsule. **1/4.
985
986Ken Patera vs. Pedro Morales. From MSG, October 20, 1980. This is described in the match listing as OLYMPIC STRONGMAN vs. FIERY LATINO. That is BUYS right there. Grisham explained Patera’s weightlifting feats, and they showed him doing a clean-and-jerk in a wrestling ring, then said Pedro was old but the Puerto Ricans loved him. He did not use these exact words. Patera, who was managed by the Grand Wizard, declared that his belt would never go around Morales’ fat waist. So then Pedro came out and fought Patera out of the ring, and the heat was like nothing I’ve ever seen before. JESUS. Austin at his peak never got a reaction this rabid. And it wasn’t just the Puerto Ricans, there were plenty of white folk in the crowd who loved Pedro too. The match finally began. As far as Olympic strongmen turned pro wrestlers go, it sucks that I missed out on most of Patera’s career and saw all of Mark Henry’s. That dude was so good. The action was all kicking and punching and elbowing and throwing each other out of the ring. Patera hit the safest bodyslam ever on the floor. Every time Pedro tried to get back in the ring Patera cut him off and knocked him back out, then he finally threw him into the post. Then Patera hooked a front facelock in the ring. Pedro lay there for a few minutes, then fought up to his feet and everyone went crazy. Then Patera muscled him back down. Then Pedro fought up again, this time hitting a move that was half backdrop, half northern lights suplex, breaking the hold, and the place went electric. That whole facelock bit killed like four minutes. Pedro fired up the crowd and made a big punchy comeback, then went for the eyes. Patera cut him off with a suplex and dropped some elbows, then hooked a bearhug. That’s a few more minutes killed. Pedro started punching him and they fell to the mat. Patera’s shoulders were down, but he maintained the bearhug and just rolled over. Pedro finally fought to his feet and escaped with an earclap. That served only to infuriate Patera, who snapped like the Incredible Hulk and unleashed flurry of stomps and kicks. Unfortunately for him, Pedro out-angered him (he was a fiery Latino, you see) and unloaded on him in the corner. The ref tried to separate them, but first Patera shoved him down, then Pedro, then they both did, and he called for the double-DQ. By this point Pedro was in control and a half-dozen geeks came out to break it up. Patterson and Rick Martel were out there for the faces, and Patterson almost got into it with a guy who I think was Buddy Rose. Pedro fought free a few times, but the heels finally escaped. This started off great but went too long and ended up going nowhere. ***.
987
988Pedro Morales vs. Magnificent Muraco. From Madison Square Garden, December 28, 1982. Muraco had Lou Albano with him, although he was taken to the back before the match started. Since the last match, Pedro had won the belt from Patera, lost it to Muraco, and then regained it. You’ve never seen two men do so little in the first five minutes of a match. They did lockups, headlocks, a punch here and there, stalling. Muraco finally hit a low blow for the heat and the action really began. I love that Muraco had a lightning bolt on the hip of his trunks. Because he was quick as lightning. Or something. He did a long front facelock, got a nearfall with a suplex, then dumped Pedro out of the ring. He worked him over on the floor and the crowd became angered at this dirty play. Pedro fought back with elbows in the ring until Muraco knocked him back outside with a dropkick (!). Morales then apparently just decided it was time to become angry, whacking a chair into the guardrail and attacking Muraco in the ring. The crowd was into the match for the first time. I just love that there was no impetus for this comeback. Muraco didn’t miss a move or get cut off or anything. Morales was just on the floor, alone, and I guess that enraged him. The ref got shoved down. Oh Jesus, not again. Then Muraco just kicked him right in the gut. That was a DQ. Who in the HELL picked the matches for this set? Pedro won the postmatch brawl again. And it went FOREVER, like five minutes or more before Muraco finally walked away. This was hideously boring until Pedro’s comeback, and then it went right to the finish, so fuck this match. * “Now that was the definition of a classic,” said Grisham. That was a lie.
989
990
991TV Reviews
992
993TUF 11
994Dana opened the show alerting us that Tito and Chuck hated each other. Sometimes the coaches' rivalry is a work but this one is pretty real. They introduce the guys. JOE HENLE is one we'll be talking about. Giant hair, giant beard, automatically awesome. Also, there is a man named WOODY WEATHERBY, who said this training center looked DOPE. Tito looked really weird. He was super head and had a giant head. Dana said there would be a new deal this year, THE WILDCARD. He said there were 28 guys, 14 would get in the house, and then after the first seven prelim fights they'd pick two guys who deserved a second shot, and those guys would face off for the WILDCARD SLOT, the eighth position in the quarterfinals. Is Russo booking this show? Dana cut a promo on the guys telling them to go in there and let it all go and not leave it in the hands of the judges or they'd be riding home in that fucking bus asking themselves why they didn't go all out and regretting for the rest of their lives that they didn't throw. Good promo to start the show.
995
996Jamie Yager, who has absurd giant hair, versus Ben Stark, the HEBREW HAMMER. Jamie went in there and just threw a bunch of wild wacky kicks. The Hebrew Hammer did nothing and just got knocked out in 20 seconds. Hilarious.
997
998Jordan Smith vs. Brad Tavares. Jorgan makes Bryan Danielson look like Mayhem Miller. He got KO'd in like 20 seconds. "Awesome," said Tito.
999
1000Cleburn Walker vs. Cris McCray. Cleburn could play a convict in a horror film. McCray said he had the "most ferociousness" in the group. He immediately suplexed Cleburn and destroyed McCray's shoulder. These fights were all edited. "I'm like a SWAMP THING," said Cleburn.
1001
1002Norman Paraisy, a Frenchman who looks like a Briscoe, versus James Hammortree, who looks like a generic fighter. Fighting is fun for him. It sure was tonight. The Frenchman said he was going to prove tonight that what people thought about French people, that they're soft, wasn't true. He then quit after the first round. No joke. Chuck cut a promo on him for being a complete pussy, saying doing that was like tapping for strikes. "Oh wait," he said, "I think Tito did that once.".
1003
1004From here they showed a bunch of random fight clips. Kyle Noke, one of the favorites, won a bloody battle. Court McGee, who nearly died due to a drug addiction, won a three-round battle. Victor O'Donnell vs. Cris Camozzi had a long battle that Dana, Tito and Chuck gave a standing ovation. Cris won, and Victor fought two rounds with a broken orbital socket. Unlike the Frenchman he didn't quit. Kyacey Uscola vs. Brent Cooper. Uscola said he had a shit record but he could beat these goofs. Actually he called them "cats." Punching people in the face "is what I do," said Cooper. Uscola killed him. More fights occurred. My DVR died. Fight Night went long so this show started late and then my DVR cut off at exactly 11, which was before this show ended. And it's funny because I set the DVR to go an hour long on TUF to make sure this didn't happen and it did anyway. Oh well.
1005
1006
1007NXT
1008
1009Show opened with The Teacher welcoming us the most important night in the history of NXT. He said the guys had done everything to impress their pros and the WWE Universe. "How are they doing so far?" he asked. No one cared. He said for the first time ever they were going to reveal the PRO'S POLL. All the geeks came out to the fucking most annoying song in the history of mankind. Daniel Bryan came out second to last and had to stand right there next to the gigantic Wade Barrett. Striker said they were judged on their win/loss record, quality of opponent, heart, and "the ever-popular IT FACTOR." They played nutty music. Standings were Darren Young number 8, Michael Tarver number 7, Skip Sheffield number 6, David Otunga number 5, Heath Slater number 4, Justin Gabriel number 3, Wade Barrett number 2 and Daniel Bryan number 1. Bryan, Slater and Gabriel all got pops at least. Striker interviewed Darren, who blamed this all on CM Punk. Bryan said his win/loss record wasn't the best and Michael Cole kept telling him that he didn't have the IT FACTOR, but there were a lot of guys there who looked like superstars who may be married to people who were famous, but the truth was they couldn’t wrestle. Otunga was not happy about that. He said he was the first person to admit he didn't have the most experience. He said he had more charisma than anyone there. He said Daniel could do a lot of moves but talking to him was like eating mashed potatoes. Daniel wanted to know what that meant. He buried Otunga's sunglasses and his crappy jeans. Otunga responded, and I quote: "Crappy jeans? These are True Religion!" I howled at that. Striker said the next time they do voting they were going to eliminate the lowest-ranked guy, and keep doing that every week until they were down to the final four. The guy who wins the NXT competition not only gets to become the next breakout WWE star but they can also challenge any WWE champion to a match on PPV. He added that they were doing a battle royal tonight and the winner would get to host Raw on Monday. HOST RAW ON MONDAY.
1010Cole and Josh had a huge argument at the booth about Bryan and whether or not he deserved the number one spot. Cole wouldn't give up on the fact that he hadn't beaten anyone yet and was ranting and raving. Cole on this show is actually awesome because he has believable passion, which he does not have AT ALL on Raw.
1011
1012Christian & Regal & Miz & Carlito vs. Punk & Matt Hardy & R-Truth & Wade Barrett. Wade took the place of Jericho. Regal and Punk tagged in and Regal got on his knees and begged for him to tag Barrett in. Barrett got in there and Regal immediately tagged Christian. He did all right when working with Christian but also looked green in spots. Michael Cole said, and I quote, that 50 million people watched WrestleMania, so I guess that means that each house had, on average, 50 visitors watching the PPV. Miz asked Jericho why Daniel Bryan was chosen number one. Jericho responded by telling him that Truth was doing a great comeback and they needed to pay attention to the match. He did put over Daniel as a great worker. The funny thing is that as Jericho was commanding us to pay attention to the match his back-and-forth with Cole about what a geek Cole was was literally a billion times better than this match. Crowd got into the match at the finish, particularly as Truth fought for the hot tag. Punk and Christian got the hot tags. Broke down into an eight-way. Everyone either hit or failed in trying a finish. Truth did a big dive to the outside and landed on his face. Wade tired himself in but got hit with the reverse DDT. Christian went to finish him off but Jericho distracted him, allowing Barrett to hit a fireman's carry slam for the pin. At least they gave the rookie the win on the rookie show.
1013
1014They showed an AWESOME Shawn Michaels video package.
1015
1016NXT Goof Battle Royal. Barrett was tossed immediately. They came back from commercial and Skip Sheffield and Darren Young were both gone. Daniel tossed Tarver. Slater tossed Daniel and went over at the same time. So after 1 minute of televised action it was down to Otunga and Gabriel. Gabriel hit a 450 but couldn't cover since this was a battle royal. He went to throw him out but Otunga dead-weighted him, raked his eyes and then threw him out for the win. Lame finish. Otunga did a promo talking about how awesome it was going to be when he guest-hosted the show Monday. Yeah, I'll bet.
1017
1018
1019Smackdown
1020Show opened with Jericho coming down to the ring and looking surly. He said he was still the World Heavyweight Champion and the best in the world at what he did. He said he told us last week that he was genetically superior to Edge and in the end he was right. He wrestled a perfect match, he said, dismantling Edge piece by piece, and he deserved their respect. But afterwards, he said, Edge had the temerity to spear him off the table and through the dasher boards. He said he couldn't understand why this happened and as he was there internally bleeding all he could hear were 70,000 fans chanting "SPEAR!" He said the fans were just like Edge, losers who cut corners and took shortcuts. He was a champion, he said, because he was an honest man and always did what he said. Edge interrupted. He said Jericho made a valid point, maybe he did have a lot in common with the fans, such as the fact that they all loved watching Jericho get speared. And they'd love to see me do it again tonight. He demanded a rematch for the title right now. Jericho said he didn't care what anyone wanted, Edge had his chance at WrestleMania and lost, and that put him at the back of the line. He told him he was a loser and nothing Edge could say or do would change that. "GET OUT OF MY RING NOW!" Edge attacked him, ripped his shirt off to reveal taped ribs, gave him a big suplex and then speared him out of his boots. As he was leaving the ring Swagger rushed down and walloped Edge with his briefcase. He demanded a ref come down to he could cash it in right now. The ref made sure to clear the ring and allowed Jericho to get to his feet before ringing the bell. Fans were actually chanting "RING THE BELL!" Swagger immediately hit the doctor bomb and won the title. He didn't do any of his goofy wacky smiling, he just looked into the camera deadly serious and raised the title over his head. Fans were going nuts, I guess just happy that they'd seen a real life title change.
1021
1022Truth & Morrison vs. Cryme Tyme. Yes, Truth and Morrison are still a team. This went one minute. JTG never tagged in. Truth immediately hit his axe kick and then Morrison pinned Shad with the twisting moonsault. JTG was in the corner befuddled. Shad then proceeded to kick the piss out of his partner for really no good reason. This seemed totally rushed. Shad looked like he killed him with one of the punches.
1023
1024Swagger was walking around backstage as various people begrudgingly congratulated him, including Tony Atlas, who is still employed. Swagger walked by Shelton and told him that maybe HE should be called the gold standard now. This upset Shelton.
1025
1026Josh interviewed Shad backstage. Shad said Cryme Tyme was finished, and now it was MY TIME. Compelling.
1027
1028Drew McIntyre vs. Matt Hardy. Drew attacked him before the match, posted him, then gave him the DDT. Then he got his belt and celebrated. Bell never even rang. This is the night of burials here.
1029
1030Vickie, Michelle and Layla were backstage. Vickie was upset that people weren't calling her finisher the frog splash, they were calling it the HOG SPLASH. Michelle said they should call it the COUGAR SPLASH. Jack Swagger walked up. He looked ten feet tall. He wanted to know where Teddy was. Vickie said she was official consultant so maybe she could help him. He said he wanted a State of the Championship Address tonight. Vickie said yes, he could have all the time he wanted out there. He responded by giving her a kiss on the cheek. This caused them to all giggle.
1031
1032Dolph Ziggler vs. Great Khali. Dolph took all of his wacky bumps early, then put Khali in the sleeper. Khali fought free once, but then got put back into it. He got his foot under the ropes but the ref didn't see it. In fact, Ranjin Singh was trying to alert him but the ref just told him to fuck off. That wasn't very nice. Khali went out and the ref called for the bell. Khali asked for the mic afterwards. Another burial here, by the way. Khali told Ranjin to tell the people that he had been doing a lot of soul-searching (??? In the last 30 seconds?) and it was time for him to go back home to India, spend time with his family, regroup, build up his strength and stamina, and then return to become World Champion. And that was the end of that.
1033
1034Punk and his crew came out. Luke cut a promo saying the people needed to open their ears and listen. Punk had saved him, he said, and each and every one of you. He told us to look at how much he'd changed since going under Punk's wing. So if drugs were fucking up Festus, shouldn't Jesse be held responsible? Serena grabbed the mic next and told us to show him some respect. She said Punk was perfect in every way, which is always such a great line. She said he was selfless and remarkable, and also a healer. She told us to look into his beautiful eyes and we'd see that he wasn't blinded by a world of sin and addiction like the people were. If it weren't for this man, she said, she and Festus would be like the rest of the people. She said she looked into the crowd and saw a sea of demons, which in Vegas may have actually been an accurate statement. Punk did a promo saying if there was ever a city that needed to be saved it was Vegas. He talked about how decadent Vegas was, which caused everyone to cheer. He called the people sheep following the herd. They were so happy that what happened in Vegas stayed in Vegas. He wanted a rematch from Rey, saying he was willing to sacrifice something very important to himself -- his hair. He said he was willing to sacrifice a piece of himself just to say Rey. Then they played his music and that was it.
1035
1036Tiffany & Beth vs. Layla & Michelle. Tiffany sold early. It was horrendous. Beth made a hot tag and ran wild. That saved the match. She KILLED Layla with a clothesline, knocked Michelle outside, then ducked a Layla kick and hit her with the glam slam for the pin. They showed Teddy smiling and nodding backstage. Jericho walked in and said he was going to say this one time. "I demand that you reverse the decision and give me back my World Title." Teddy wanted to know if he was out of his mind. Teddy said he wasn't going to do that but he wanted to know if he wanted his rematch tonight. Jericho said no, he was hurt. Teddy said if you don't want it tonight then I have nothing else to tell you, playa. Jericho vowed that Swagger wasn't going to get away with this.
1037
1038Josh interviewed a VERY JUBILANT Hart Dynasty. They celebrated the doom of Vince McMahon when Swagger walked up, got in front of them and posed with his title. The Dynasty all just stood there looking stupid.
1039
1040Kane came out with a huge black eye. He said he was getting kind of bored, and when he got bored he got frustrated, and a frustrated monster was not healthy for anyone. He demanded some COMPETITION. He demanded to take on the entire NXT roster, all eight of them. Oh God. Kane and Daniel started. The other seven NXT guys were all on the apron. They did a spot and then Darren tagged in. Kane beat them all up one at a time. They put Wade Barrett in there to alert the world that he's not really as big as we thought. Kane quickly beat him with a boot. They announced this was an elimination match. Heath tagged in and was immediately chokeslammed. They've gone from burying individual workers to entire rosters. All the guys then hit the ring and gang-raped Kane for the DQ. Daniel gave him a huge dropkick off the top and then Gabriel went up top and hit the 450. Then they played WE ARE WILD AND YOUNG. Kane began to stir and he was ANGRY so they all left. Yeah, that song would piss me off too.
1041
1042Swagger came out for his State of the Championship address. He said this was the first of many he would be giving. He had a few statements. He congratulated all the fans on being part of history tonight. He vowed to be champion for an extremely long time. He told them to give him complete silence until the speech was over. He began reading his life history. People were booing like crazy. "You have found your replacement for Shawn Michaels as the greatest living wrestler on the planet." So who is the greatest dead wrestler on the planet? Jericho's music hit. Jericho came out all taped up and demanded Swagger give him the belt back. Swagger said he couldn't do anything about it. Jericho said he was the champion, not Swagger, and Swagger had committed the biggest crime in WWE history tonight. He said Swagger was so lucky he was injured. He healed quickly, he said, and then he was going to take his belt back. Out came Edge. He said if Swagger wanted to show what kind of champion he was he should put his title on the line against him, since Swagger wouldn't be champion right now if it wasn't for him. Face someone who is not injured, he said, and not afraid to face you. Crowd chanted "TRIPLE THREAT!" Jericho and Edge bickered about who should get the shot. Teddy came out and said since they had a little situation here. He said Jericho deserved a rematch but wouldn't take it, and Edge wanted one but wasn't in line for it. So he said next week Edge and Jericho would face off and the winner would get Swagger. Edge turned his back and Jericho gave him the codebreaker, then Swagger rushed in and hit the doctor bomb on both. Edge looked like he smashed his head on the mat.
1043
1044
1045Raw
1046Show opened with WWE proving they didn't give a shit about Impact, as they opened with Jack Swagger coming out to talk about how he'd won the World Title. He said he was thinking of cashing in against Cena, but figured it would be better to cash in against the guy who was largely considered the best in the world at what he did. He said he'd have beaten Cena if he wanted to, and he'd have done it in less time then it took him to beat Jericho, which was 9 seconds. He said nobody on Raw could compare to him in terms of ability so he was going to be exclusively a Smackdown guy from now on. Cue Cena. He said Swagger was the luckiest guy in the world, having cashed in a briefcase to win a title. He said what was important now was what Swagger was going to do next. We'll be so sorry to see you leave, he said. However, he took exception to the fact that Swagger claimed nobody on Raw could compete with him. He said he didn't consider Swagger a deserving champion, and that behind the façade he was nothing but a weasel. He dared Swagger to try to shut him up in a match tonight. In addition, he said, he was so sure he'd do to Swagger what he did to Batista that he'd put his title on the line. "Your move, champ, what's it gonna be?" Orton's music interrupted. He said perhaps Swagger would rather face the man who beat him last week. "Me." Cue Miz and Big Show. Miz was ranting about being awesome and all the bullshit when David Otunga of all people came out. He had the Raw logo shaved into the side of his head. At least that was unique. He said this show was going to be top-notch, A-List all the way around. He signed Swagger vs. Orton for later. "What else can I do?" he asked. He signed Miz & Show vs. Batista & Cena for the tag titles. No one was happy about that. Then they played the worst song in the history of the universe and there was major feedback. Orton went for the RKO on Cena but Cena shoved him off and he gave an RKO to Swagger. That was a neat little spot.
1047
1048Sheamus vs. Kofi Kingston. Sheamus won in two minutes with the Razor's edge. After the match Sheamus went under the ring, got a metal pipe, which I guess is his version of the sledgehammer, and waffled poor Kofi in the back of the head with it. After Kofi had been killed they cut to backstage where Hunter was slowly making his way to the ring. They went to commercial and when they returned Sheamus was ranting and raving about Shawn Michaels. He said it had been a great career for Shawn but it took him eight years to win his first World title, and he won his in just six months. Hunter, he said, fucked it all up and now he was ANGRY. He said Shawn left before he could take him out, but Hunter was just too stubborn. He said he didn't think Hunter had any more great matches left and wanted to know if he was going to leave on his own or if he'd have to send him away in a wheelchair. This was a hell of a promo. Hunter came out on the ramp, stared the dude down, walked to ringside, got his sledgehammer and proceeded to go to work on Sheamus. Sheamus ran for his life, jumping the rail and fleeing backstage. So yes, Hunter beat him clean at Mania and has now run him off like a coward. This is one strange feud.
1049
1050Maryse came out to do commentary for the Divas Red Carpet Dress to Impress Battle Royal. Not making this up. Was this a rib on Vince Russo? The winner, they said, got a title shot against Maryse next week. The participants, all in evening gowns, were Kelly, Alicia, Gail, Rosa, Jillian, Katie Lea Burchill, the Bellas and Eve Torres. Titanic battle royal, both because everyone jumped ship quickly and because it was a disaster. I wanted to make a joke about a lack of heat and the iceberg but there was actually a ton of heat. Came down to Alicia, Jillian and Eve. Eve's selling consisted of pulling her dress up repeatedly. "I'm proud I'm not part of this!" said Maryse. Can't blame her. Alicia got sent out. She tried to eliminate Eve but failed, then Eve low-bridged Jillian for the win. So it's Maryse vs. Eve next week.
1051
1052We got the same David Otunga promo we've seen about 600 times. It's a rib at this point.
1053
1054Otunga was backstage with an entourage of geeks. Santino showed up, as did the midget. We got some slapstick.
1055
1056Showmiz vs. Cena & Big Dave for the tag titles. Cena started. Dave stood on the apron looking like he could care less whether he ever got in there. So why doesn't he just leave? Well, no sooner should I speak than he did. So Cena went after him and they brawled on the ramp. Dave gave him a boot to the gut and then walked off. Cena was then counted out. He was so sad about that. The man is a competitor, what can you say? Otunga came out on the ramp afterwards. He said Miz and Show weren't getting off that easily, because later tonight they were going to defend their belts again. Since Cena and Batista couldn't get along, he said, Cena's new partner was going to be himself, David Otunga, the A-Lister. Oh God.
1057
1058Ted DiBiase -- the 2010 version -- came out with the Million Dollar belt. He said last week at WrestleMania his father was inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame. He said that prestigious honor had some profound effect on him because last week on Raw he did something he'd never done before, ever. "He tried to act like a father!" Well, he said, newsflash, one act of random kindness doesn't make up for all the lost years, the missed football games, birthday parties, his graduation. But, he said, Ted knew better than anyone how to win him over. He thanked him for the trust fund and for his Million Dollar title. "It truly is good being the fortunate son," he said. So how did he get the belt? That was never explained. DiBiase vs. Christian. OK, this whole fucking thing was straight out of TNA. So last week they had a lumberjack match, and Christian won clean to set up a normal match the next week. DiBiase yelled at his dad after the match, then yelled at him this week, yet still came out with the old Million Dollar belt. And then DiBiase won the parity booking rematch here. No idea what's going on.
1059
1060Jack Swagger vs. Randy Orton not for the World Title. Swagger tossed him off the apron into the dasher boards for the heat. They had about the 40th commercial in the last 15 minutes. Orton did the dead-weight gimmick on a few suplex attempts. That did wonders for Kennedy's career. He booted Swagger coming through the ropes and hit him with the draping DDT to a big pop, but Swagger got his foot on the ropes. Orton made his big comeback and set up for the RKO. Swagger cut him off and hit the Vader bomb but Orton kicked out. He hit a second one and then set up for the doctor bomb. Orton flipped out and hit the RKO for the clean pin. This was completely baffling. Swagger needs all the help he can get and they beat him clean here. Well, it's not like this isn't how they operate. I mean, if this was setting up a title match next week that would be one thing but I have this funny feeling it won't.
1061
1062Showmiz vs. Cena & Otunga for the WWE Tag Titles. Cena started but gave Otunga a tag almost immediately. He is so green he can't even run the ropes. He actually lifts the wrong fucking leg when he hits them. I mean, this is a first week of wrestling school fuck-up. So Cena tagged in and he was like HBK in his prime. He sold for a long time and they were setting up Otunga to make the comeback. My God. Cena crawled and crawled and crawled and Otunga dropped off the apron and refused to make it. Big Show then punched Cena out for the pin. So let me get this straight. This guy, David Otunga, wants to win NXT, and he had a chance to win the Unified Tag Team Titles with John Cena and he dropped off the apron and bailed on the guy. What a shitty program. Batista came down afterwards and gave Cena the Batista bomb. He demanded his spotlight, then Otunga told the world that Dave had an announcement to make. "I'm invoking my rematch clause for the WWE championship at Extreme Rules," he said. He explained that you couldn't win via tapout, the only way to win was to be the last man standing.
1063
1064
1065Impact
1066
1067Show opened with Christy explaining something called the TNA Diva Lockbox Showdown. I swear to fucking God this HAD to be a rib. This was the most convoluted, unnecessarily complex explanation for a match perhaps in the entire history of wrestling, and it was for showdown involving the girls. If I had the time I'd have gone back and transcribed this entire thing but it would have taken me hours. In the end, I had no idea what this showdown was about, a single one of the rules or what led to what or how you won. I know that there was a stip involving nudity, a spider and the girls stripping down and parading around ringside. The best part was that she began by saying, direct fucking quote here, "The rules are simple." This was so OBVIOUSLY a fucking joke that I give it two thumbs up because it made me laugh like a fucking idiot. Oh, also, the show -- a LIVE show mind you, was titled, "Advantage Team Flair." HOW THE FUCK COULD THEY KNOW THAT WHEN THE SHOW WAS LIVE? This is the worst TV show ever in history. So anyway, Velvet and Madison came up and started talking about the stips. The fact that they understood the stips was pure legit comedy. Madison said they'd get everything they deserved tonight. LOL. Lacey in a towel was excited to parade around naked later.
1068Hulk Hogan, Jeff Jarrett and Abyss came out. Place went nuts for him. He said they had some real firepower behind their team. Abyss cut a great promo about how he was going to kick the shit out of Flair's team. Abyss deserves so much better than this. Actually, almost everyone employed in this company does. Flair's music hit and he came out with Desmond, Sting and Beer Money. He's still in a wheelchair being pushed by Chelsea. "HOGAN!" Flair did a promo saying Hogan had to be kidding. "THAT'S YOUR TEAM!?" He put over all the guys on his team, plus Chelsea. He vowed to take his Hall of Fame ring and shove it down Abyss' throat. Hogan told him to shut up and never sell him short again. He said Flair would find out who his team was when the time was right. Flair and his crew started making their way down to the ring. Jarrett told him to hold on. He demanded Sting put the bat down and get into the ring so he could answer one question man to man. Jarrett said they'd known each other over 20 years and they had a storied history. His one question for STEVE was "Why now?" He said he might not deserve an answer but the people did. Jarrett slapped him across the face so Sting beat him up and left him laying, then Flair sent his troops into the ring. Jarrett and RVD made the save. They came through the crowd and were in no hurry whatsoever. The heels just stood there like geeks waiting for them.
1069
1070RVD vs. James Storm. Not a bad match and the crowd was super hot for it. RVD made his big comeback and hit the rolling thunder for a nearfall. He kicked out of the eye of the Storm whirlybird deal, then hit the split-legged moonsault for the pin. Storm broke a beer bottle over his head after the match and they did the major injury angle type of deal. This was a winner of a segment. They went to commercial and came back and RVD was bleeding all over. Blood. I may have spoken too soon about this being a winner of a segment. Jeff Hardy ran down and beat up Storm and sent him packing. Robert Roode then came through the crowd and laid out Hardy with a spinebuster. This was still OK but, as usual, this was two week's worth of angles in ten minutes.
1071
1072Christy interviewed Tara, Angelina, ODB and Hamada. Tara said this whole thing was a joke. She said TNA wanted ratings and they were doing all this bullshit at her expense. This show is astounding.
1073
1074Homicide vs. Rob Terry. Tenay kept telling us to call and text our friends and tell them Impact was on. I want to keep my friends. Homicide bumped all over, then Terry pinned him with a powerslam. Homicide gave him a chairshot to the back afterwards, which Terry no-sold. So Homicide KILLED HIM with a chairshot right to the forehead. Terry no-sold that one as well, but he got hit so hard that the chair was destroyed and he was busted open hardway. Maybe that was TNA's way to pay tribute to the multiple concussions and subsequent suicide of Chris Kanyon. So yeah, fuck them all to hell. Orlando Jordan then came out and poured milk all over himself. Worst show ever on television.
1075
1076The Beautiful People were stretching backstage. It consisted of them shoving their tits out and bending over.
1077
1078Tara & Angelina & ODB & Hamada vs. Beautiful People & Daffney. Tara pinned Madison immediately. So it appears that meant they were both out of the match and Tara got a key. What did Russo watch that has resulted in all the fucking KEYS on this show? During the break Daffney pinned Hamada to eliminate both of them and win Daffney a key. Taz got some sort of WCW reference in here. Velvet pinned ODB to win a key. So it was down to Lacey and Angelina. Angelina pinned her to win the final key. They showed the lockboxes backstage and said they'd all be opened later.
1079
1080Angle vs. Kennedy in a ladder match to win yet another KEY. This match started during a commercial break. This is what Kurt needs, by the way, to be taking suplexes on ladders, which he took here. The announcers said if Kurt won the key he could keep Anderson from fleeing the cage at the PPV. So can he throw the key in the river tomorrow if he wins tonight, and then Anderson could never get out? Does he have to bring it to the PPV? Kurt went to climb and Anderson tipped over the ladder. Kurt took the fucking most insane bump ever to the outside. I thought he was dead. People chanted "HOLY SHIT!," which was bleeped, then "ANGLE!" Anderson almost had the key but Angle took the ladder out with a dropkick. That looked like a legit train wreck. So you've got Kurt Angle with all his injuries doing a ladder match with MR. ANDERSON, whose gimmick is that he is the most fragile wrestler in the business this side of Edge. Angle put Anderson on a ladder and hit his moonsault. Completely insane. Angle went to climb and Anderson choked him with the medal. Kurt was being choked to death but kept climbing. When he was almost there he went unconscious and fell off the Empire State Building. Anderson got the key and won. I hope we don't get a swerve and his key actually opens the box that requires him to strip down to his underwear and parade around ringside.
1081
1082Borash interviewed Hogan about all the horrible things Bischoff had done last week when Hogan was gone. Hulk said what happened between him and Eric was between them alone. Bubba the Love Sponge showed up. Hogan wanted to know why Bubba was running with the Band now. He told Bubba he was running with the wrong crowd. Bubba said he was having fun with them and hadn't been having fun with Hulk. Jay Lethal was up next. This was like a Raw Hornswoggle skit except it wasn't supposed to be a comedy segment. Machismo said he was going to go find his MegaPowers tights. Didn't the MegaPowers explode?.
1083
1084Morgan did a promo with both of his TNA Tag Title belts. He's the one-man tag team champs right now. Yes, he's a heel but he's defending both belts on his own. "I'm so confused," Christy said. "Help me here!" Join the club. She said he was defending the belts next week against the winner of Machine Guns vs. Team 3-D. They had a pretty damn fun little match. And then the Band came out and beat up both teams for the DQ. Welcome to Nitro. Hall managed to give Sabin the edge without assistance this week. Heels tagged them afterwards. In 2010. This segment went through commercial. Nash did a promo saying they weren't signing the checks but they were running the show. He said Hogan was worried about Flair and Bischoff but that was the worst of his concerns. He said Hogan was looking at his worst nightmare. He said they'd been carrying his ass for 15 years, and if people thought they were bad, they learned if from Hogan. Then they did the Wolfpac dance. In 2010.
1085
1086Borash interviewed Pope. He was cutting a great promo when Desmond came up. He said he didn't have any idea why they were having a match tonight because he beat Pope last week and should be facing AJ at the PPV. Pope said if Desmond beat him tonight he could have his spot. But tonight, he said, it would be a different ball game.
1087
1088Doug Williams came out and cut his usual funny promo about the shitty X-Division acrobats and the greatness of technical wrestling. He demanded to be referred to as DOUGLAS WILLIAMS from now on. He doesn't need to ask twice. He said he'd arranged a gauntlet match with Generation Me. Douglas beat the blonde one with chaos theory and then beat the dark-haired one with the guillotine. I love this Douglas Williams push, the best thing on this show. Shannon Moore ran out afterwards and beat up Williams. That made me sad. Shannon then cut a promo and said what he hated was boring-ass wrestlers like Williams. What the fo.
1089
1090Christy interviewed Team 3-D, who were all pissed off. They challenged Wolfpac to a match on free TV next week.
1091
1092Desmond vs. Pope. Desmond didn't even get an entrance. This was fun while it lasted. Pope won with seriously the greatest codebreaker in the history of man. AJ attacked Pope afterwards, knocking him right into one of the HD cameras. You know how much those fucking things cost? Probably more than both of Generation Me and the Machine Guns make in a year here. Thankfully TNA has the money to burn. Abyss ran down to American Made and scared AJ out of the ring. This allowed Nigel the opportunity to attack him, then AJ clipped his leg. Nigel laid him out with a fire extinguisher and they cut to commercials as the announcers were ranting.
1093
1094It was time to reveal the contents of the lockboxes. This was the Impact main event going up against a John Cena match. I guess they've given up. Borash is at least a great game show host. Velvet got the open contract. People booed, wanting the striptease. Tara got the spider. The spider meant more to her than her title belt. So it came down to Daffney and Angelina with one of them being new champion and one of them stripping. Angelina got the belt and so Daffney had to strip. Daffney tried to bail and Borash told her that she'd signed the deal and needed to either strip or be fired immediately. They played goofy stripper music and she was taking as long as humanly possible to strip. Lacey then ran down with her giant pink dildo, wacked Daffney, then stripped down. Meanwhile, Angelina and Tara got into a fight over the belt. This ended the striptease. So yes, they not only didn't deliver on the original stip, they didn't deliver on the swerve. So then Velvet did a promo saying, "No Beautiful Person upstages another one." She said she was cashing in her match next week and wanted Angelina in a leather and lace match, presumably for the title. And this was the end of the show. Holy shit this show sucked.
1095
1096wrestling news
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