The Bell To Bell News Report 03.13.10

Posted by Randy Harrison on 03.13.2010

TNA vs. WWE on Monday nights kicked off this past week and the Bell to Bell has a full breakdown with a look at both shows in-depth, as well as the quarterly ratings for each show and what they mean. Add in a new McMahon on the way and some Wrestlicious thoughts and the rest of the weeklies and it's a jam-packed edition of the Bell to Bell!




Hello wrestling fans, and welcome to this week's edition of the Bell to Bell! Last week we opened with my thoughts on the Canada/US gold medal game at the Olympics and some people took offense to my nationalism judging from the comments section, but I stand by everything I said and posted. That being said, there's not much time to talk about anything other than wrestling this week as I'm swamped under with other work projects that have taken up the majority of my time this week. Next week I'll likely end up talking about my beloved Red Wings and their playoff hopes, but for now, we'll just head straight into the wrestling including a new addition to the McMahon family, the WWE/TNA drama, the rest of the weeklies and my thoughts on the first couple of weeks of Wrestlicious. Let's call in my brother from another mother Apollo Creed and get this party started!


You know the drill...





Ding Ding....









Monday Night Raw Results:

Kelly Kelly, Gail Kim and Eve Torres vs. Alicia Fox, Katie Lea Burchill and Maryse - Winners: Kelly Kelly, Gail Kim and Eve Torres (submission, Eve's cross armbreaker on Maryse)
The Miz and The Big Show vs. John Morrison and R-Truth - Winners: None (no contest, four-way schmozz finish)
Randy Orton vs. Ted DiBiase and Cody Rhodes - Winners: Ted DiBiase and Cody Rhodes (pinfall, DiBiase's Dream Street on Orton)
Evan Bourne vs. William Regal - Winner: Evan Bourne (pinfall, Air Bourne)
John cena vs. Mr. McMahon and Cronies - Winner: Mr. McMahon (pinfall, Batista Bomb)


Raw continued chugging towards Phoenix and WrestleMania this past Monday with a show that was light on wrestling and heavy on story progression, much the way things have been in the past few weeks. The show this week was pretty good in certain moments and pretty bad in others with the good outweighing the bad. Beginning the good was the opening promo between Shawn Michaels and The Undertaker that continues to help build to their WrestleMania rematch that is poised to be one of the centerpiece matches of the pay-per-view. They raised the stakes in their match by making it no countout, no disqualification with Taker doing a great job of questioning whether Michaels is confident or crazy, while Michaels is really selling that his obsession is a good thing rather that something that will cause him to unravel at the signs of pressure in the match. I also really like that they're taking away any possibility of a screwy finish as it means that there will have to be a stipulation that will be adhered to which means that there's another added layer of intrigue in who is going to come out on top.

Another of the programs that continues to gain steam as we head to WrestleMania is the Orton vs. Legacy feud that actually saw them face off in a handicap match on Raw with Legacy coming out on top. While this is somewhat confusing as it makes me wonder what they have to sell the potential WrestleMania match on after we've already seen it on free TV, Legacy getting the win was crucial to put them on the level of Orton and have people believe that if or when they end up facing each other at WrestleMania, there is a serious chance that Legacy can come out on top. While the match wasn't the best as it seemed like they were holding back based on what we might see at WrestleMania, I really liked that they are still having Orton continue to play the "viper" role by coming through the crowd to attack Legacy as that is something that you could easily see heel Orton doing. They seem to have learned their lesson from the last time they tried to turn Orton and are avoiding having him turn into a baby-kissing suck up. Keeping his edge is going to keep him entertaining and allow for any potential WrestleMania match to have some extra added oomph based on him being over as a babyface by being himself rather than pretending to be something he isn't.

In the bad section, we get to things like the Evan Bourne/William Regal match, which did next to nothing for either guy based on it being only a minute and a half long. I liked this one just for Bourne getting into the MITB match which means that he's going to get a showcase for his athleticism, but having it come at the expense of Regal, who I think still has a lot to offer the company, bothered me a bit. Along with that match, I have to touch on how terrible Criss Angel was as the guest host. I've never really gotten his whole deal and have never found him to be that entertaining, but there are people who swear by him being charismatic and interesting to watch and that just didn't translate on this show. I'm not sure if it was him being bored or not being thrilled with being associated with wrestling or if he was having an off night or what, but every segment that he was involved in died a slow death and was just a disaster. I didn't like it at all and I found myself eying the remote every time he came up on camera. The other thing that I found to be rather meh was the Sheamus/Triple H segment that felt a little flat to me. It was great in that it gave Sheamus a reason to show that he belonged in the upper echelon, even after his title reign, but I just don't buy them feuding yet because there's not really a lot of hatred to go off of. Yeah, they're attacking each other back and forth, but it all feels kind of half-hearted to me and it's just not as interesting as it could be. Whether that's because of how this one is coming off or because of how well the rest of the card is being built, it's just how I'm seeing it so far.

The last thing I wanted to touch on from Raw was the entire John Cena/Batista build and the main event between Mr. McMahon and Cena. After last week when we saw Batista deliver the promo of a lifetime, they continued to talk with Cena actually doing a really good job of making me believe that when he talked with Josh Matthews, he really felt like he wasn't sure about whether he could even beat Batista. Batista holds all the cards here as not only is he the current champion, but he's got the upper hand on all fronts with his SummerSlam win over Cena, his win at Elimination Chamber and his various attacks and beatdowns on Cena. That also came into play in the main event, where Cena and McMahon met with McMahon calling in favors from various cronies like Jack Swagger, Vladimir Kozlov and even Mark Henry before Batista came in to deliver the final blow with a Batista Bomb that led to McMahon getting the pinfall victory. This one was over-booked to the max, much like I thought it would as soon as it was announced, but it was over-booking in the good sense where everything fit into the larger puzzle rather than heading off in eight different directions. Cena/Batista may not have needed much in terms of build based on the name value of both participants, but it's getting a great build and this is feeling like the biggest title match main event since Rock/Austin II in my opinion. It's not that big a match of course, but this is the first one-on-one match for a major title at WrestleMania that has felt as epic.





TNA Impact Results:

TNA X-Division Championship: Kazarian vs. Daniels vs. Doug Williams (C) - Winner: Doug Williams (pinfall, Chaos Theory on Daniels)
TNA Knockouts Tag Team Championship: Taylor Wilde and Sarita vs. Angelina Love and Tara vs. The Beautiful People (C) - Winners: The Beautiful People (pinfall, Madison Rayne pins Tara after Daffney belt shot)
Rob Van Dam vs. Sting - Winner: Rob Van Dam (pinfall, Rolling Thunder)
Eric Young vs. Syxx Pac - Winner: Eric Young (pinfall, piledriver)
Jeff Jarret vs. Beer Money Inc. - Winners: Beer Money Inc. (pinfall, double powerbomb)
Hulk Hogan and Abyss vs. Ric Flair and AJ Styles - Winners: Hulk Hogan and Abyss (pinfall, Abyss' Black Hole Slam on Styles)


The first live Monday night Impact show is in the books and while there were some glimmers of good things going on, the show felt like they tried to cram three hours of things into a two hour show for the most part and there was just too much going on for my tastes, beginning right out of the gate. TNA hyped the first five minutes of the show and rightfully so because the Hogan/Abyss vs. Flair/Styles match opened the show. Of course, rather than give us the actual match, TNA used this as a platform to push the return of Sting, complete with a heel turn after he waffled Abyss and Hogan with his bat. This wasn't good because not only did it lead to them making the match again later in the show with no DQ rules, but it also turned Sting heel when he was barely a face again after his stint in the Main Event Mafia, making it a heel turn for the sake of a turn that ultimately meant little in terms of Sting as a character. The basic rule tends to be turn someone when they're at their hottest and having Sting come back and turn in about a two minute span is about as far from that as possible. That being said, I did get a kick out of Abyss channeling Nancy Kerrigan backstage screaming about why Sting would do such a thing.

From there we went into a somewhat lackluster promo surrounding the X-Division Championship featuring Daniels, Kazarian and Doug Williams. It's not that it was necessarily bad, it was just that anything coming on after that opening segment would have to be super to keep the momentum going. Luckily for TNA, when all three guys got in the ring they had the best match that I saw this week with great spots, great selling from all three and a real flow to the match that tends to be missing from most X-Division matches as they devolve into spotfests. Of course, for the one step that TNA took forward with the great match, they took two steps back by having Shannon Moore make a surprise return to TNA and immediately become the number one contender to Williams' X-Division crown. Moore has done nothing in a VERY long time on the national stage and for him to just jump into a title shot like this doesn't do him any favors while completely short-changing the entire division. The other thing that doesn't work about this one is that this is suspiciously similar to what they did when they introduced Brian Kendrick into TNA a while back. He got his title shot, lost it, and is basically already a forgotten man in the division less than two months since his return. Don't be surprised if the same thing happens to Moore, who has had flashes of being over but has yet to put together a sustained run anywhere.

I'm not even going to get into the Young/Pac or Beer Money/Jarrett matches because they just reeked of trying to fit five different storylines into one match, especially the Beer Money/Jarrett bout that had Mick Foley as guest referee for reasons WAY beyond my possible comprehension. Not only were there those problems, but it also made Beer Money look like chumps as they were in a two-on-one against Jarrett and couldn't finish him off until the silly finish with Foley and the barbed-wire baseball bat. Even then, Beer Money needed a low blow to lead into them getting the pinfall. Wow. The best team in wrestling today and that's what they end up getting for the first live Monday Impact show? I guess it's better than being an afterthought like they were in January, but not by much.

The biggest surprise of the show that wasn't really a surprise was the TNA debut of Rob Van Dam, who beat Sting in less than ten seconds before getting waffled by Sting's bat, much like Abyss and Hogan had been earlier in the show. Of course, rather than having Sting just leave Van Dam laying to have their potential feud stand on its own, SUPER HOGAN had to come down to try to make the save and take another beating. So to reiterate, the newest star in the company gets beaten down after a ten-second victory and the nearly sixty-year old guy in the main event has gotten his ass kicked...twice. Sigh. Everything about this debut segment was just wrong to the tenth power as a much more efficient way to get everything done would have been to have the main event tag match at the end of the show get interrupted by Sting, with Van Dam coming out to make the save on to close the show. Then not only have you avoided the whole bait and switch at the beginning of the show, but you've made Van Dam as big a deal as you possibly can while setting up a money match in Sting vs. Van Dam either as your next Impact main event or at Destination X in one of the featured matches. Instead, we got this mess that didn't do much good for anyone and turned Van Dam from conquering hero to just another guy in one segment.

That leads me into the main event which was the second take of Abyss/Hogan vs. Styles/Flair, a match that wasn't the best in the world, but still proved to be fairly entertaining with great efforts from Abyss and Styles and plenty of bleeding from Flair and Hogan. I didn't care much for the spot with Abyss trying to channel the power of the ring in the middle of the match while letting Styles punch him, but the rest of it was solid. The faces got the win, the crowd got their feel-good moment and then we had Desmond Wolfe come out to attack Abyss leading to the TNA re-re-re-debut of Jeff Hardy, who laid out all three heels with some punches before dropping Styles with a Twist of Fate. Of course, that was supposed to be followed by a Swanton, but apparently TNA's over-run had run its over and we missed the culmination of Hardy's second return to TNA since January. The guy can't seem to catch a break can he? First there's the whole Homicide cage deal and now his finisher gets cut off from live TV when he gets to involve himself with the TNA World Heavyweight Champion. In a way, it was the perfect way to end the show as it pretty much summed up the way the night went for TNA. Close, but no cigar.





WWE NXT Results:

R-Truth and David Otunga vs. The Miz and Daniel Bryan - Winners: R-Truth and David Otunga (pinfall, Otunga's spinebuster on Miz)
Carlito vs. Heath Slater - Winner: Heath Slater (pinfall, roll-up)
Wade Barrett vs. Justin Gabriel - Winner: Justin Gabriel (pinfall, 450 splash)


WWE NXT continued their building of the next generation of superstars this past week with the focus continuing to be on Daniel Bryan, though Justin Gabriel and Heath Slater were nipping on his heels this week. The opening tag bout between Truth and Otunga vs. Miz and Bryan was a really good match with a nice little promo beforehand with Miz laying a tongue-lashing into Bryan, threatening him with getting kicked off of the NXT show after reminding him that he's 0-2 so far. That played into the finish as Bryan went 0-3 after Otunga got the spinebuster on The Miz, but still got the upper hand as he got yelled at again by Miz before faking a punch that caused Miz to be a Flinchy McGee. He even followed that up by getting in Miz's face in the post-match interview with Matt Striker, suggesting that Miz has been carried by every partner he's ever had. Sure, Bryan has lost so far, but he's still managing to find ways to get over and keep himself as the front-runner of the brand so far. He's the guy that seems the most tailor-made to jump right into a WWE feud when his time on NXT is done and he's doing the best with what he's been given so far, which appears to be leading into a full-on feud with The Miz down the road.

This was also a big show for Christian's rookie Heath Slater as he became the first NXT rookie to score a one-on-one victory over a pro by pinning Carlito after a roll-up in a great nod to last week when Carlito spit his apple into Slater's face. I don't necessarily like Slater's goofy character that he's playing at the moment, but he seems like he has some real potential and being the first guy to get a win over a WWE pro is big for him. Granted, Carlito is about as far as you can get from the WWE pros like Chris Jericho and Christian, but he's still technically a pro. The only thing that I saw out of this that could be a problem is that Slater's promo work is pretty far behind his in-ring work, which could possibly hold him back for the next litle while. If he can work on getting that promo stuff to catch up to the rest of his skills, he could have a chance to be one of the breakout guys from this batch of rookies that gets to jump to the main roster.

As I mentioned earlier, Daniel Bryan may appear to be the featured star on the show so far for the rookies, but this week was a great one for Justin Gabriel, who not only got a great "A Look At" promo that while a little bland did a tremendous job of getting people to know a little more about him following his big win last week. That led into the main event where he took on fellow rookie Wade Barrett and he even got a bit of a nod from Chris Jericho, who acknowledged that Gabriel's performance last week was impressive while telling him that he was going to lose to Barrett. He didn't lose to Barrett however, as Gabriel and Barrett put on a solid match before Gabriel laid out another picture-perfect 450 splash for the win. Jericho even got involved with Gabriel again afterwards by beating him down and getting some heat on Barrett. Aside from Bryan, Gabriel is looking like he's got the biggest upside as he has a solid base of in-ring skills and semi-decent promo skills that will only get better the more chances he has to use them. We're three weeks into the NXT experiement and I have to say that so far, I am very impressed with the show and with what they're doing to try to help the rookies get the best foot forward.





WWE Superstars Results:

Dolph Ziggler vs. Shelton Benjamin - Winner: Dolph Ziggler (submission, sleeperhold)
Mike Knox vs. Goldust - Winner: Goldust (pinfall, Final Cut)
Santino Marella vs. Zack Ryder - Winner: Zack Ryder (pinfall, Zack Attack)
MVP and Christian vs. Chavo Guerrero and Carlito - Winners: MVP and Christian (pinfall, Christian's Killswitch on Chavo)


This week of Superstars was a hit and miss effort with much of the first half of the show falling into the miss category while the final portion of the show was most definitely a hit. The show opened with MITB participants Dolph Ziggler and Shelton Benjamin putting on a three-minute match that seemed to be here only to remind us that they're both in the Money in the Bank match and to try to get over Ziggler's sleeperhold as a finisher. From there, we had Mike Knox and Goldust meet in another short match that seemed to fill time and little else. This one was even shorter than the first match and was little more than both guys hitting a couple of moves before Goldust got a pinfall to continue Knox's 0-fer streak in 2010. On top of that match, we had Santino Marella and Zack Ryder in what ended up being nothing more than a squash to get Ryder over. Sure, Santino got a comeback in, but this was here strictly for Ryder and while it will help him that he won, he still doesn't have a lot going for him yet in his Raw run.

The only redeeming quality of this entire show and the best match that I saw on WWE TV this week was the main event with MVP and Christian teaming up to take on Chavo Guerrero and Carlito. I really enjoyed this one, even with the commercial break, as it was refreshing to see a match go longer than three minutes and actually have a chance to build towards something. While three out of the four guys are pretty much poster boys for what few ideas the WWE has for their midcard guys and the fourth seems like he might be headed for the same fate unless he wins Money in the Bank, they still managed to make this an interesting and entertaining match-up that got roughly twelve minutes and had four solid pros firing on all cylinders. For a company that seems to not have a lot going for them in the tag team division outside of whoever holds the Unified Belts and whoever is challenging for them, this one was a good show and showed that it may not be the worst idea in the world for them to take some of the guys that are cluttering up the midcard and spinning their gears and team them up regularly to try to actually build a division. All of that being said, this was a fun reminder of what good tag wrestling can look like in the WWE.





Friday Night Smackdown Results:

The Miz vs. R-Truth - Winner: R-Truth (pinfall, Lie Detector)
Drew McIntyre vs. Aaron Bolo - Winner: Drew McIntyre (pinfall, Future Shock)
The Big Show vs. John Morrison - Winner: The Big Show (pinfall, KO punch)
The Hart Dynasty vs. Cryme Tyme - Winners: None (no contest, Undertaker beats down some bitches)
Tiffany vs. Michelle McCool - Winner: Tiffany (disqualification, Vickie-ference)
Luke Gallows vs. Kane - Winner: Kane (disqualification, Punk-ference)


Sadly, this week's Smackdown was forced to go by the wayside because of my busy schedule, but based on the spoilers I made it a point to see the opening segment of the show featuring Rey Mysterio and CM Punk so that I would be able to give my thoughts on it here in the column. I've watched it at least two or three times and there's not much more to say other than CM Punk may be the most talented promo man and storyteller in the WWE today. When you consider that he is part of the same roster as Chris Jericho, that's really saying something. The entire segment was fantastic, from Rey playing the plucky babyface role to perfection with the talk of his daughter's birthday and the gee shucks stuff, to Punk's condescending asshole tone and his asking the kids about them shutting their eyes and ears so they don't have to see and hear Punk hurt their daddy. The slap was tremendous, Rey walking away and trying to be the bigger man was a great move and Punk continuing with the snark and verbally berating Rey up the aisle before singing the most sarcastic and caustic version of Happy Birthday in recent memory was the cherry on top of the sundae. Considering that the match was only made during this segment, this match has already shot near the top of the list for me in terms of must-see matches at WrestleMania just based on this one segment alone and that is something that only a few people could ever pull off. Punk has been on fire as of late, but this segment just put him into a whole other level. Expect big things from Punk in 2010 kids, because he's not going anywhere.






-- Very, VERY little to go on for news this week, so we're going to focus heavily on the Raw vs. Impact battle on Monday night, from both an entertainment aspect and from the perspective of the ratings, my thoughts on Wrestlelicious' first two weeks of programming, and that's about it...



-- The first battle in the Monday Night Wars v2.0 is in the books and as many expected, it was a rather resounding victory for the WWE as the Raw show drew a 3.4 rating to a 0.98 for the first live edition of Impact. In my opinion, this wasn't so much a battle as it was a slaughter as TNA lost a ton of momentum from their rating that they posted on January 4th when they first went live against the WWE and put up either a 1.5 or a 1.7 depending on who you talk to. Granted, the 0.98 gets rounded up to a 1.0 and that is roughly where Impact was at last week on Thursday, but this has to be a grim reminder of just what TNA is up against by moving their show to Monday nights against the most well-established national wrestling program since the NWA laid down its roots at 6:05 ET on Saturday nights.

When you shift your focus to the quarter hour breakdowns, it doesn't get much better for TNA as it showed that they may not exactly be in touch with what wrestling fans want these days. The show's best rated segments were in the middle of the program and saw a D'Angelo Dinero interview, the Sting/RVD match and post-match beatdown, a Hogan appearance and the promo segment with Kevin Nash, Eric Young, Scott Hall and Syxx Pac, with much of the credit likely going to the debut of RVD, which I've already talked about above in the Impact report. Perhaps the most telling number out of the quarterlies for the TNA show was the middling 0.76 that was earned by the Abyss/Hogan promo and the second take on the Abyss/Hogan vs. Styles/Flair main event. It gets a little better when the overun is factored in at a 1.01, but this is really bad news for TNA when their "surprise" return pops a bigger rating than the main event tag match that had a couple of weeks of build going into it and the in-ring returns in North American for Hogan and Flair.

Hopefully, TNA has their fingers on the pulse of what people want to see in the ratings and will use them as tools to help figure out which stars people want to see pushed and which guys the fans are most willing to get behind and watch on a regular basis. Unfortunately with Bischoff and Hogan at the helm, it's more likely that they will find reasoning behind why the ratings ended up the way that they did and they will just continue on doing what they're doing while suggesting that the fans that don't like it, just don't "get" what TNA is trying to do. They did it before when they threw out the six-sided ring for the traditional ring and the fans didn't like it and I'm worried it's what's going to happen here as from the looks of things, we might be getting a Sting/Hogan program, as well as continued in-ring involvement from Flair, even after the poor performance this week.

On the WWE side of the coin, the biggest rating for any of their segments came on the backs of John Cena, Vince McMahon and the rest of the main event as the final quarter hour posted a 3.6 and the overun was a 3.98. This falls right into line with what the WWE is looking to do as this is THE match heading into WrestleMania and the most eyeballs that watched a segment on Monday night watched a segment revolving around Cena/Batista. Conversely, the lowest rated segments involved the Divas, Hornswoggle, Criss Angel and the Orton vs. Legacy match, with the Orton/Legacy match being the only thing that stands out as a bit of a surprise to me. Considering that none of the three are officially on the card at WrestleMania as of Monday night when the show aired though, it shouldn't be considered too big of a disappointment. Every other segment featuring wrestlers involved in WrestleMania drew well with the Undertaker/Shawn Michaels promo that began the show pulling in a 3.45 and the HHH/Sheamus segment landing a 3.56.

Looking at what all of this means for both sides, you can look no further than the management of the respective cable networks, USA and Spike TV. USA Network's VP of Program Research, Ted Linhart, wasted little time touting the victory for the WWE program, posting on Twitter that it was "Not much of a Monday Night 'War'" and that Raw "trounced" TNA with 275% in regards to total viewership. Spike TV took things a little more low key and are said to be fine with the rating and that the 18-34 demographic did well, with no one willing to speak on the record or push their ratings for the program based on what I've seen. While this can't be considered a full-on disaster for TNA after just one week, there has to be some concern in the Orlando camp after putting all of their eggs into the Monday night basket and seeing the bottom of that basket essentially fall out. There is a lot that TNA has to work on in the next weeks and months if they want to avoid having this go from embarassing but expected loss to weekly ass-beating. Whether they realize the work that they have to do and whether they're willing to put in the time and energy to make the product better will tell the tale of whether or not this Monday night experiment sends the TNA brand to new heights or whether it could possibly bring about the beginning of the end.



-- The first two weeks of Wrestlicious' Takedown show are in the books and it's almost like it's a tale of two completely different shows so far. The comedy segments that they've tried to run have been god-awful with them going from bad to worse with none of the "it's so bad it's good" comedy that I had been hoping for. They're just bad, which makes it a tough show to sit through from beginning to end as every rough segment pushed me one second closer to changing the channel. The yin of the horrible backstage segments and interview segments is counterbalanced by the yang of the matches in the ring being decent (the six-woman tag match that main evented the first show) to great (the Paige Webb vs. Autumn Frost match from this week's show). For all of the crap that you have to suffer through, it appears that the promotion has actually taken the time to find some of the best women's talent available to them, which is refreshing to see for someone who only gets the odd decent Knockout match to enjoy.

Granted, a lot of what's going on in this promotion is probably going to change quickly given the fact that the shows were taped so long ago (Paige Webb being snapped up by the WWE as part of CM Punk's Straight Edge Society for example), but this has actully turned out to be a far better show than I thought it was going to be when that trainwreck of a rap video was first released. I've heard someone refer to it as being a show that looks like GLOW, but actually went to wrestling school and I'd have to agree with it so far. It's on my watch list for now, provided that the sketches don't get much worse. If they do, I'll probably just skip them altogether and enjoy the wrestling as best as I can.



-- Congratulations are in order for the couple of Triple H and Stephanie McMahon as Linda McMahon has announced that the couple is pregnant with their third child. The couple have two children, Aurora Rose and Murphy Claire. The announcement from Linda was rather sparse on the information as there was nothing in terms of a due date or confirmation from Stephanie, so there's not a lot to go on, but this has to be an incredibly exciting time for the entire family. Of course, the fact that McMahon is pregnant for the third time in four years raises the question of whether or not Triple H is just going to keep firing until he gets a boy, but that's speculation for another day. Congratulations again to the entire McMahon family and good luck to Stephanie and Triple H as the pregnancy progresses.



-- Late-breaking news from TNA as they have announced that Kazarian, Christopher Daniels, Amazing Red and Brian Kendrick have been booked into a four-way ladder match at the Destination X pay-per-view. While I'm a fan of all four guys and have always had a soft spot for the ladder match gimmick, I'm also a guy that doesn't like when ladder matches or Ultimate X matches don't have a title on the line because it looks a little goofy to see guys fighting over a clipboard or a cardboard X or the like. I'll reserve my full judgment until the reasoning for the match or the particulars are fully revealed, but for now I'm thinking that this is going to be one of those matches where it's a decent spotfest that gets forgotten about soon afterwards or it's an epic trainwreck with four guys that are all trying to get their spots in and messing up 90% of them along the way.


Well folks, that's it for me this week. Sorry for the brevity this week, but as I said in the opening, it's been a madhouse for me this week. Randle's got you covered to start your week off with the Wrestling News Experience featuring previews of the WWE and TNA Monday night shows and a whole lot more. In the mean time and in between time, I'll see you all back here next time for a full to the brim, brand spanking new edition of the Bell to Bell!


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