The Bell To Bell News Report 06.21.09

Posted by Randy Harrison on 06.21.2009

Click on in for the first edition of the newly-formatted column! You'll also get my thoughts on Donald Trump, the best and worst from all of the week's shows and the rest of the biggest news in wrestling in the past seven days. It's all new and it's a better present than an ugly tie, it's the Bell to Bell!




Hello rasslin' fans, and welcome to this week's edition of the Bell to Bell! After last week's experiment with the format, I'm happy to bring all of my faithful readers the first edition of the Bell to Bell, V2.0!! Last week saw me straying away from the weekly calendar format in favor of focusing in on the big stories and while it seemed to go over well, there were a lot of people in comments and e-mails that suggested that they missed the show recaps. That seemed like a very valid point, so now (with the help of a couple of spiffy new banners, we have the report broken up into a section for each week's shows and pay-per-views and a section for the biggest and most important stories of the week. Hopefully, this will end up being a change for the better as it will give me a chance to talk in-depth on certain subjects while still retaining some of my original format and help me get rid of some of the filler. Well, by now I'm guessing you've heard enough about me talking about the column and you want me to get right into the meat and potatoes of the thing. To that I say.....actually, you're right, I'm kind of sick of hearing myself talk too. You know that thing where you read words and you can hear yourself saying them as you read them. Well, that's happening to me this whole time and all I can think to myself is "Get on with it, myself!! The people are getting bored!!". So I will listen to...uh....myself...and get this thing underway by ringing the bell!









Monday Night Raw Results:

WWE Intercontinental Championship: Rey Mysterio vs. Chris Jericho (C) - Winner: Chris Jericho (pinfall, Codebreaker)
ECW Championship: Christian vs. Tommy Dreamer (C) - Winner: Tommy Dreamer (pinfall, small package)
WWE Championship Fatal Four-Way: The Big Show vs. John Cena vs. Randy Orton vs. Triple H - Winner: Randy Orton (pinfall, RKO on Big Show)
Mickie James vs. Rosa Mendes - Winner: Mickie James (pinfall, DDT)
World Heavyweight Championship Triple Threat: Edge vs. Jeff Hardy vs. CM Punk (C) - Winner: CM Punk (pinfall, pins Edge after Hardy hits Swanton Bomb)
The Hart Dynasty vs. The Colons - Winners: The Colons (disqualification, Legacy-ference)
10-Man Battle Royal To Determine Number One Contender: Ted DiBiase, Cody Rhodes, MVP, Matt Hardy, William Regal, Kofi Kingston, The Miz, The Big Show, Triple H and John Cena - Winner: Triple H (eliminates Cena last)


This past Monday's edition of Raw saw a special three-hour show that crowned a new Champion for Raw along with naming his new number one contender, as well as title defenses of nearly all of the major championships in the company and the promise of a shocking announcement. While all of this sounds like the recipe for a great show, everything kind of fell apart for them by the time the three hours were over. For those of you living under a rock which I assume is not many of you (and how would you be getting internet if you lived under a rock anyhow?), the shocking announcement was that Donald Trump had "purchased" Raw and will seemingly be running things as the figurehead of the brand for the time being. I'm going to touch on that further in the Main Event, but for now let's just say that this was a poor decision that closes more doors than it opens.

Moving on to the titles, every title stayed with the man who brought it to the ring with him as Chris Jericho, Tommy Dreamer and CM Punk all made successful defenses. The Dreamer match with Christian was a joke and probably shouldn't have been on the show to begin with if they were only going to give it three and a half minutes. There is no story you can tell in that amount of time, let alone one that's important enough to warrant a title being on the line. It made everyone look silly and while I get that they tried to use the angle of Christian's injury being the reason for it, it still did more harm than good to ECW as a brand and Dreamer as their champion. The Jericho/Mysterio match was solid as most would expect it to be, but it felt a little bit like they were going half-speed at times and I was left feeling like I wanted a little bit more. It was good but not great, though I do have to give Jericho credit for the great promo before the match, especially continuing on his "Savior" routine that brought him back to the WWE to begin with. Great continuity.

As much as I felt a little let down by those two title matches, I was made somewhat happy by the other two title matches on the show. Randy Orton won the vacant WWE Championship by pinning The Big Show after an RKO in a Fatal Four-Way that was actually a lot better than I was hoping for. This was a case where they were given enough rope to do something with in terms of time, but not so much that they hung themselves. By having to pack the match into 12 or 14 minutes, they cut out a lot of the filler and just had action jammed all the way through. As for Orton winning, he's really the only choice out of the four of them. Triple H was just returning so there wouldn't be a build to his title win, and Cena and Show have been off doing their own thing without the title being involved. Orton's sole focus has been the title and him winning this one was definitely the right choice. The same can't be said for the night's main event battle royal that saw Triple H named number one challenger though, as it's going to lead to the rematch that no one wanted to see. They stunk things up at WrestleMania and it's looking like they're going to get the chance to set a new low at SummerSlam if I don't miss my guess.

It might just be me, but I think they missed a couple of real opportunities here. One small one was having Miz hiding out under the ring and then throwing Cena over before being eliminated by Triple H. It would have helped further Miz/Cena along and could have actually led to a match between them to go with the solid segments Miz has been putting together in his one-man feud. The second missed opportunity is that I would have had MVP win the battle royal to elevate himself into the title picture. He and Orton already have a history, The Bash isn't exactly a huge show so there wouldn't be a bunch of pressure on MVP to carry buyrates and he could have had four weeks to cut awesome promos on Orton and Legacy while cementing himself as one of the top stars of the Raw brand. Instead, we get yet another Orton/Triple H feud. SPOILER ALERT: Triple H wins and gets one more step closer to passing Flair's title record. Bleah.

As much as I was put off by the finish of the main event match, the finish of the final championship match I'm going to touch on, the World Heavyweight Championship match, was pitch perfect. Punk was great throughout the match, playing up both the mixed reaction during his entrance as well as the "injury" he suffered in the match to let Edge and Hardy beat the crap out of each other. Punk is really straddling the line as he's not doing anything outwardly heelish, but he's putting others into negative situations through his manipulations, which is definitely a heel tactic. This is as entertained as I've been by Punk in a long time as he seems like a totally fresh character just by adding a little more darkness to some of the shades of grey that were already there. If they keep this up, they won't have to turn Punk full-on heel because the fans will turn on him, giving him a TON of ammunition for promos.

Definitely not the strongest three hours of programming that the WWE has put on and there were a lot of negatives, but the few positives that did emerge were actually encouraging when it comes to the future outlook for the product. Color me hopeful, but leery.





ECW on Sci-Fi Results:

David Hart Smith vs. Christian - Winner: David Hart Smith (pinfall, backdrop driver)
Mark Henry vs. Evan Bourne - Winner: Mark Henry (pinfall, World's Strongest Slam)
Jack Swagger vs. Tommy Dreamer - Winner: Jack Swagger (pinfall, Oklahoma Roll)


ECW on Sci-Fi came out of the three-hour Raw show by putting on a pretty solid show of their own that featured the coming out party of one of their new stars and the return of a grizzled veteran, all while sticking a recently familiar face right back into the title picture. The show-opening bout between David Hart Smith and Christian was great for me. They got time to work, Christian bumped around like crazy to help put Smith over as a top-level talent and Smith picks up the win after some nefarious dealings from the rest of the Hart Dynasty. Not only does Christian still look strong for needing three people to beat him, but he single-handedly gave all three of them credibility while making Smith look like a future main eventer for the brand. The after-match aftermath with Finlay attacking Christian after saving him from a Hart Dynasty beatdown shows where they're going with those two and it should be a solid feud between two pros. My only worry is that the Harts might get lost in the shuffle without one of the main eventers to play off of.

The night's main event saw Jack Swagger taking on Tommy Dreamer in a non-title affair that showed that while there may have been some nostalgia to giving Dreamer the belt, he can still go when he needs to. He kept up really well with Swagger and they put on a great little ten-minute match that saw the right guy go over. Swagger needed a win here after seeming to be on a losing skid for a while now and he picked up the win by outsmarting Dreamer and forcing him into a mistake. Again, after the match Finlay laid on more beatings with his shilelagh and stood tall as the show faded out. With four guys all clamoring to have the belt, it only made sense to book an ECW Championship Scramble match for the Bash. With that being said, I think that they made a mistake by putting Mark Henry into the match as he's been far out of the title picture for a while now. What they could have done was put Smith into the bout based on his win over Christian, which could have really helped him get over as one of the new top stars of the brand instead of having Henry lumbering around with no real hope to win the match. If you're going to have someone in there that everyone knows won't walk out with the belt, why not make a star while you're at it?





WWE Superstars Results:

Santino Marella vs. Chavo Guerrero - Winner: Chavo Guerrero (pinfall, inside cradle)
Zack Ryder vs. Mike Williams - Winner: Zack Ryder (pinfall, Zack Attack)
Eve Torres vs. Layla - Winner: Eve Torres (pinfall, handspring moonsault)
Jack Swagger and The Hart Dynasty vs. Christian and The Colons - Winners: Christian and The Colons (pinfall, Carlito's Backstabber on Kidd)


Well, we all knew it was going to happen. After weeks of putting on great matches with top stars, it looks like this could be what we're in store for when it comes to Superstars. Now, part of me is just hoping that it's a situation where a lot of the Smackdown and ECW stars were being rested up after working the three-hour Raw show from Monday night, but a bigger part of me thinks that this is going to be Superstars into the future. When the show debuted, I suggested that it was going to likely be a few weeks or months of strong shows to start the ratings out with a bang and then it was going to drop down to the same level as the former WWE "B" shows. It's the same formula that Sunday Night Heat ended up following, so it stood to reason that it would happen here and if Thursday's show was any indication, it's beginning to happen.

The first half of the show was filler and crap and I won't even get into it to save myself the breath and column space. Instead, I'll touch on the main event that saw ECW and Smackdown collide as The Colons teamed with Christian to take on Jack Swagger and the Hart Dynasty. While I know that Swagger and the Harts both have issues with Christian, you have to wonder what part the Colons played in all of this as they don't really have any ties to Christian other than that they're all faces. It might be a minor thing, but that unexplained partnership kind of nagged at the back of my mind throughout the match and took away from my enjoyment of it. The match itself was decent and well-wrestled, as you would expect from six solid hands, but it felt like everyone was going through the motions and there was no real fire from anyone. It was almost as if they all knew that there was no reason for the Colons to be there so they half-assed it and hoped no one would notice. Easily the worst episode of Superstars since its debut on WGN and if this is what we're going to be getting on a weekly basis I will admit that I'll be a little disappointed and a lot less likely to tune in regularly.





TNA Impact Results:

Daniels vs. Amazing Red - Winner: Daniels (pinfall, Best Moonsault Ever)
Clockwork Orange House of Fun Match: Jethro Holiday vs. Raven - Winner: Raven (pinfall, Holiday runs into the cage)
Angelina Love and Daffney vs. Taylor Wilde and Awesome Kong - Winners: Taylor Wilde and Awesome Kong (pinfall, Kong's Implant Buster on Daffney)
Lethal Consequences and The Motor City Machine Guns vs. Team 3D and Beer Money Inc. - Winners: Team 3D and Beer Money Inc. (pinfall, 3D on Shelley)
Three-Way Tag Team Match: AJ Styles and Samoa Joe vs. Kurt Angle and Sting vs. Mick Foley and Jeff Jarrett - Winners: AJ Styles and Samoa Joe (pinfall, Joe's Muscle Buster on Angle)


TNA Impact this week was the go-home show before Slammiversary, which will take place this Sunday at The (please don't be two-thirds empty and look like shit on PPV) Palace of Auburn Hills. Where to begin with this show. First things first, I really, REALLY wish that TNA would try to be TNA instead of recreating what made the WWF popular in the late-90's. I'm not saying that TNA's entire product is a direct rip-off of the old Raw shows, but that Foley/Jarrett segment during the opening of the show felt like an incredibly sad attempt to redo the "This Is Your Life" segment featuring Foley and The Rock. Only Foley is still Foley and Jarrett ain't no Rock. Yeah, it ended up building to King of the Mountain a little bit by having Joe and Angle get involved too, but that felt a little tacked on at the end when Joe punched Angle in the face. Maybe it's just me being too hard on TNA, but there were a lot of better ways to get to where they got than by opening the show with that nonsense.

I would move on to the actual wrestling on the show, but it felt like the wrestling was there as filler for all of the skits and vignettes featuring ODB and Cody Deaner and crap like that. All of the matches were criminally short, including the eight-man tag which was basically a burial of the Guns and Lethal Consequences to put more heat on the Team 3D/Beer Money match at Slammiversary. You know, I get it, Team 3D and Beer Money are the two hot tag teams in the company right now and they're trying to put them over huge heading into the next installment of their feud, but when you consider that all four of the guys on the other side are heading into a King of the Mountain match for the X-Division Championship on Sunday, it makes them look like chumps. One of the things I hate most about TNA is their uneven booking when it comes to the X-Division. When they need them to save a show, they throw guys together in a gimmick and let them give the people at least one entertaining match on a pay-per-view. The rest of the time, they're booked as an afterthought and a joke. How is anyone supposed to come out of that division to become a future star if they're being treated like trash three days before the compete for the division's championship?

The main event saw the "Can't We All Get Along?" triple threat match and like everything else in the ring during this show, it got shafted for time. For once, the right people went over as the young guys Samoa Joe and AJ Styles got the pin, but if there's anything we know about booking before a pay-per-view, it's that the guys that look the strongest usually lose. Guess we can expect a Foley, Angle or Jarrett win on Sunday then, huh? Yipppeeee!! I'm not normally so down on TNA because they do have the ability to put on great shows that have the right blend of in-ring action and backstage drama, but this week's show had the formula almost completely backwards. For every splash of actual wrestling, we got segment after segment of crap and filler, to the point where it felt almost like an old-school pre-show for a pay-per-view rather than a two-hour show trying to build to one. I'd love for TNA to become an alternative to the WWE because they've proven in the past that they can put on good enough shows to force Vince and Co. to eventually have to step up his game, but if they keep on with shows like this, that day will never come.





Friday Night Smackdown Results:

Chris Jericho vs. Jeff Hardy - Winner: Jeff Hardy (countout, Mysterio-ference)
Dolph Ziggler vs. The Great Khali - Winner: Dolph Ziggler (disqualification, chair shenanigans)
Melina vs. Alicia Fox - Winner: Melina (pinfall, reverse powerbomb)
Edge vs. John Morrison - Winner: Edge (pinfall, Spear)
Shelton Benjamin, Charlie Haas and Ricky Ortiz vs. R-Truth and Cryme Tyme - Winners: R-Truth and Cryme Tyme (pinfall, Truth's corkscrew elbow on Benjamin)
CM Punk vs. Rey Mysterio - Winner: CM Punk (pinfall, Go 2 Sleep)


As has been the case for most of the past few weeks, the WWE's final show of the week is the one that saves everyone from a week of utter and total failure as Smackdown put on another strong show in a seemingly endless string of them since the WWE Draft. All of the major players of the brand faced off against each other and all three of the matches ranged from good to great. The good came from the opening bout between Jeff Hardy and Chris Jericho. While I remember these two having their mini-feud before WrestleMania XIX (especially their match at No Way Out in Montreal), they've never seemed to have the chemistry to put together a really great match. They didn't get much of a chance here as Rey Mysterio interfered and put a screwy finish into an already short and uneventful match. Normally, I'd have a problem with this, but they needed to find a way for Rey to get some momentum heading into the pay-per-view so I'm willing to let it slide.

The main event saw CM Punk taking on Rey Mysterio in a non-title bout and this one was a lot better than the bout I was talking about earlier. It still wasn't great and wasn't on par with some of the Punk/Mysterio matches in the past, but it was a good enough showcase for both guys with Punk continuing to walk the fine line of becoming a full-on heel (his telling the referee to count Mysterio out after Jericho ran his head into the ringpost was tremendous). As I mentioned, Mysterio got attacked by Jericho to continue building to their little grudge match at The Bash, so again the finish was a little screwy, but both guys tried real hard and did what they could with what they were given.

The best match of the night and of the week was clearly the bout between Edge and John Morrison. Morrison has been on a real hot streak since splitting from The Miz and moving over to Friday nights, but this may have been his best performance yet. Granted, anyone can seemingly have at least a three-star match with Edge these days, there was still a lot that Morrison brought to the table as well, including some stellar selling that helped rally the crowd behind him during the furiously-paced finish. Morrison went step-for-step with the guy that most people feel has been one of the WWE's MVP's this year and in doing so may have just booked himself a slot near the top of the card. The only way this could get any better for me is if they get booked into a rematch at The Bash and get about twenty minutes to do their thing. I highly doubt it would happen, but it would be great if it did.

The last thing I wanted to touch on from Smackdown was the opening segment featuring Jeff Hardy and CM Punk as they build to their World Heavyweight Championship match at the PPV. While this type of segment with two principals and an interviewer can tend to be death, this one came off amazingly well. From the lukewarm reaction to Punk during his introduction to the subtle sneering tone that Punk took during his promo to the mixture of cheers and boos for Punk during the pop-off at the end of the segment, this was everything that we need to have to continue sowing the seeds for the slow-burning Punk turn. Punk feels justified for doing what he's done and what he's continuing to do and the more he explains himself, the more the fans hate him for it. Not only that, but the more frustrated that Punk is becoming with the fans. If you've ever had one of those fights with your girlfriend or spouse where it starts out as a simple misunderstanding, but gets far worse the more you try to explain to each other where you're coming from, you'll know exactly what they're doing here. Punk is trying to explain why he's right to a crowd that thinks he's wrong and the more he can't change their minds, the more he's going to resent them for it. It's only going to make the turn all the more sweet and all the more hated when it finally happens because unlike a shock turn where it takes a few weeks for everyone to boo, by the time Punk is full-on heel, they'll be hungry for his blood.





ROH on HDNet Results:




No in-depth look at ROH this week as I'm up against both a deadline and live coverage of tonight's Ultimate Fighter 9 Finale show on Spike TV, so unfortunately that portion of the column will have to wait until next week to make it's debut. I will say that there is nothing stopping me from including it next week, so look for it then.






MAIN EVENT


Makes you wish he had lost and gotten his head shaved doesn't it?

The biggest story of the week came from this past Monday's epsiode of Raw where Donald Trump made his return to WWE programming to become the new "owner" of Monday Night Raw. Everyone expected the big announcement to be the announcement of a new GM on Raw and a lot of people thought that that new GM was going to be Ric Flair. Given that Raw was in Charlotte, that would have made a lot of sense. Instead of that, what we got was McMahon selling Raw over to Trump in a move that if made in a legitimate business setting would have given Trump's financial advisors more strokes than a Times Square peep show booth. Understandably, the fans shit all over the segment. The last time that Trump was involved with the WWE was god-awful and while I get that he and McMahon are marks for each other because of how rich they are, this was just a bad move all the way around.

Trump doesn't know anything about the WWE and knows even less about the day-to-day happenings on the show. Everything he chooses to announce or anything he decides to get involved in is going to be extremely wooden and forced and it's going to die a painful death. They've tried to go this route before with someone other than McMahon as an owner or part-owner of the WWE or one of it's brands and every single time it's failed. Ric Flair as part-owner of the WWE was a flop and the Shane McMahon/Stephanie McMahon ownership saga during the Invasion angle is still thought of as one of the biggest examples of the WWE throwing away free money in the history of the business.

Look, I get that Trump still has a smidge of mainstream presence due to The Apprentice and I acknowledge that the WWE are media whores that will do anything to get just a glimmer of that spotlight. That's still no reason to bring back one of the most uncharismatic and tongue-tied celebrities that the WWE has ever worked with. Seriously, have you ever heard Donald speaking on live television and not wondered what the hell he's talking about, when he's not stepping all over anyone else who is in the segment with him. He's too rich to remember things so he just goes with what stays in his brain and fills in the blanks for the rest. I've got an over/under of three weeks before we get him making a main event between "Legacy Ted DiBiase and "Macho Man" The Savage" because he remembers how great their match was when WrestleMania was at Trump Plaza. My guess is that Trump couldn't name you five WWE wrestlers if you spotted him all five.

You'd think that after all of the problems that wrestling has gone through after bringing in non-wrestling people to write television that the WWE would learn their lesson, but you'd be thinking dead wrong. Hell, I'd be willing to be that it was one of those sitcom hacks that thought that this would be a great idea to begin with. Trump is the worst choice that they could have gone with for a new authority figure for the company and if they're smart, they'll have Trump announce Flair as the new GM of Raw next week before he disappears for good. Not only would the people love Flair for being Flair, but they would love him even more for saving them from months of Trump's over-bearing nonsense. Oh well, at least we get a commercial-free Raw next week out of the deal, even though that will probably be just as tough to sit through as this week's three-hour show was.



Featured Bouts


"I swear, the pile of money they gave me must have been THIS BIG...."

-- News broke this week of SoBe Entertainment suing The Big Show for breach of contract after they alleged that Show signed a deal with them as a performer, entertainer, boxer, wrestler and all-around celebrity and he broke that deal to re-sign with the WWE. The suit states that the company fronted Show money based on a promise that he would be managed exclusively by them during his boxing career. SoBe also claim that Show reneged on the deal and told them that he was going to go back to the WWE despite already receiving the advance and that Show's bout with Floyd Mayweather at WrestleMania XXIV and the angle leading up to it was based on the fact that people knew Show was training for a boxing career.

First things first, if Show really did take over $2 million in front money and then left the company in the lurch, that's pretty shitty. There's no way to slice that one that doesn't make Show look like a giant asshole. Secondly, the company claims that the WWE profited at the expense of SoBe for numerous pay-per-view events. That one I would have to call shenanigans on the SoBe people for, because if they're assuming that people are clamoring to buy WWE pay-per-views to see The Big Show, they're dead wrong. Finally, there's the issue of whether the Show/Mayweather angle was based on Show's potential boxing career. Again, as much as I hate to go against them, the SoBe people aren't going to win on this one either because for anyone to claim that show could have had a successful career as a boxer is silly at best and delusional at worst. He's too huge for real boxing and would have been nothing more than a sideshow freak compared to legitimate boxers. The Show/Mayweather deal was based on Floyd being teeny and the WWE wanting to have a David vs. Goliath deal. No more, no less.

This looks like a situation where Show was desperate to try to bring in some money while taking time off from the WWE and locked himself into something when he thought that Vince's checkbook had gone away for good. When the opportunity came up to work in the WWE again, Show dropped the company he had already taken money from like a cheap whore to go back to Stamford. Show was wrong to take the money, the WWE had nothing to do with it outside of signing Show to another contract, and I would expect that both sides will settle out of court with Show paying a hefty sum back to the company to cover some of the losses they took when Show left them twisting in the breeze. It's not a great deal for anyone, but Show should thank his lucky stars it's only a civil matter or......

He could have been stuck in one of these....




....getting a whole lot of this......






The Midcard


At least as long as she looks like this, she'll never be hurtin' for money...


-- The WWE announced the releases of both Sim Snuka and Candice Michelle on Friday and it's a situation where neither one will be sorely missed. To be honest, I was shocked that Snuka was even still on the roster as I thought that he had been released after WrestleMania, but I guess he managed to sneak under the radar for another few months. Word going around is that one of the main reasons for Snuka's release is that he was the cameraman that was supposed to catch The Undertaker at WrestleMania 25 in a bump that almost turned the Dead Man into a turnip. If that's the reason, it's a silly release because there are far better reasons to release Sim Snuka. Being Sim Snuka for one. As for Michelle, she hasn't been the same since the unfortunate accident where she broke her collarbone and she falls into the category of being one of those cautionary tales where all it takes is one slip and your career is in shambles. That's not to say that it's all her fault that she was released, but she has not been even a shadow of her former self since coming back so it's probably best for everyone that she goes off to do her own thing whether it be rediscovering her passion for wrestling elsewhere or moving on to a new career outside of the ring.

-- Dragon Gate USA made some big news this week as they have announced that they have signed on for a pay-per-view distribution deal with G-Funk Productions, the company that was ROH's pay-per-view provider until that deal was quietly dissolved earlier this month. The company's first show, which takes place at the old ECW Arena on July 25th, will serve as the first pay-per-view offered in the deal, though there is no date set for the premiere. The deal calls for an event to be put together every sixty days from various Dragon Gate shows around the country, though even details of that are a little sketchy at this point. This is great news for the start-up company, though it doesn't come without some problems. One would have to think that all of the ROH-contracted talent that is set to appear for DGUSA won't be allowed onto pay-per-view, much like TNA did not allow their stars on ROH pay-per-view, and when you add that to the fact that ROH's pay-per-view numbers were modest a best for a company with a much wider fan base, this could doom the company before they truly begin. To me, this looks like Dragon Gate will essentially be to ROH what ROH was to TNA, a feeder promotion. Dragon Gate may not like ROH and they may not want to be that, but it's looking like that's where they're going to end up on the food chain.



Jerking The Curtain


Chris, Chris, Chris......

-- Chris Jericho had a bit of a trouble earlier this week at a house show in Hershey, PA when he left his WWE Intercontinental Championship belt at the hotel, forcing him to defend the WWE Women's Title with some conveniently placed electrical tape helping to keep the ruse up as best as it could. Apparently Jericho is getting quite the ribbing from the boys in the back, though there won't be any heat on him for the situation. Hey, if he can face Chyna for the Intercontinental Championship than it's only fair that he can wrestle a man for the Women's belt.


"Stand on tiptoes....check. Suck in my stomach....check. My Mil Mascaras costume is complete!!

-- After numerous previous reports that have suggested the same thing have proven to be wrong for one reason or another, the WWE appears to have finally signed Mexican star Dos Caras Jr. to a three year contract. In a smart move, Caras Jr. has negotiated to keep the rights to his name and gimmick, but will give the WWE permission to use those rights for as long as he is with the company. I'm not sure what it is that they have planned for him, especially in light of the rumors that Rey Mysterio is not happy with life in the WWE at this point, but one would think that they would have to bring him into ECW or Smackdown to help get him some exposure rather than throwing him to the wolves on Raw. I've been proven wrong before, but that's what would make the most sense for all inolved.

-- Finally, the WWE has sent out another survey this week, asking fans the best names for an all Hell in the Cell-themed pay-per-view, much like the all-submission pay-per-view that was surveyed on previously. Here are the choices;

* WWE No Escape
* WWE Rage In A Cage
* WWE Hell In A Cell
* WWE Lock Up

Now while none of these are great, they all fit pretty well into the Hell in a Cell theme. That being said, the idea isn't a very good one because much like with the Lockdown PPV in TNA, having that many Hell in a Cell matches on one show increases the likelihood that they'll burn out the gimmick. I applaud them for wanting to try something different, especially when I was so gung ho about the submission-only PPV show because it would put a bit of a different feel to an event that would likely be the same as all the rest without it, but they're starting to seem like they're in the wrong ballpark when they go this route. I was one of the people that thought that they were going too far with the double Elimination Chamber deal, so I think that to have three or four matches inside a Hell in the Cell, all on one pay-per-view, would be disastrous to a gimmick match that has been able to withstand the past decade with its aura intact.



The Final Bell

That does it for the first edition of the new Bell to Bell. I'll be back next week with my thoughts on Slammiversary as well as everything else that's happened in the past week of wrestling. Randle's in tomorrow with the News Experience, which I understand is quite good. Be sure to let me know what you thought of the format in the comments and whether it's the best mix of the new and the old and as always, I'll leave you by saying in the mean time and in between time, I'll meet you back here next time for the next edition of your weekly wrestling wrap-up, the Bell to Bell News Report!


If you're a fan of MMA, be sure to check out Nokaut.com for more of my work.