wrestling / Columns

The Wednesday Wire: 8.8.12: My Commentary

August 8, 2012 | Posted by Nick Marsico

It’s Wednesday again therefore it’s time for the #WedWi! I’m Nick Marsico coming to you LIVE from Florida where the high tide brings the seaweed and the sunsets are orange and pink.

The Wrestling News Experience with Stephen Randle
The Wrestling 5&1: Brooke v. Reby with Greg De Marco
The Contentious Ten Wrestling Madmen with Gavin Napier
The Piledriver Report: Punk’s Turn with Ronny Sarnecky

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My man Zack Ryder
Had Jericho on his cake.
Must have been bathsalts.

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PROFESSIONAL WRESTLING NEWS: Reality of Kharma; Hope for Tag Teams

Kharma Wants A Reality Show
It was finally confirmed that Kharma was released from her WWE contract and it seems that it spawned from her growing depression after the very unfortunate miscarriage at the end of 2011. She became depressed (who can blame her?) and gained weight (the opposite of what WWE wanted) and that ended up being the exact recipe for being handed her walking papers. According to an interview she did with TMZ she is now focused on getting back into ring shape and healing her mind. Her goal is to transition the recovery into a reality show, which one would assume would cover her miscarriage, fall into depression and then her recovery and weight loss before ending the series on the high note of finally getting back in the ring to resume her career. I don’t know that it would get picked up for TV (nor if I would watch it), but I do wish her well and I greatly anticipate her return to the ring. SHINE has some great girls that I would love to see her work with. I also would be overjoyed to see her head to CHIKARA where men v. women matches are a fairly common occurrence.

Tag Team Resurgence: Still Not Holding My Breath
Recent reports have revealed that “top” or “key” officials in WWE have been pushing for a revamp/revival/recreation of the tag team division. If you are familiar with the WedWi you will know that I am a very big fan of tag team wrestling so the possibility of this news being true is very exciting for me. I seem to remember a story about Triple H wanting to get the division rolling not too long ago and then they did a fourway tag match at No Way Out that got my hopes up. R-Truth (& Little Jimmy!) came back from injury, Primo & Epico had a feud with the Prime Time Players and the PTP are making a drive for the titles. Hunico and Camacho make a good team, The Usos are great and the fans get behind them even though they are treated like nobodies and Reks/Hawkins are fun to watch but probably don’t have a chance. That’s 6 teams and the reports say that WWE is considering bringing a new team up from developmental as well. I expect that it will be The Ascention of Conor O’Brian and Kenneth Cameron. Cameron isn’t too bad of a name for their gimmick but Conor O’Brian doesn’t work. That’s not the big deal though — recent history states that they will come in and get the big push for the titles and jump ahead of everybody who has been working on the main roster, be made to look like a big deal and then fall off and end up on Superstars. Maybe that will be different now if this rumor is true. The tag division has been better as of late so I will stay optimistic but I won’t get excited. I’d rather not be let down again.


The Ascension’s Entrance from NXT

Will JBL Actually Return to the Booth?
It doesn’t seem like Bradshaw is being at all serious regarding a real return to the commentary desk on WWE TV, but in the wrestling business you never know. Since he made the comment on Twitter that he was “definitely” coming back due to how awful Michael Cole is the internet has spent lots of time speculating that he actually is definitely returning. He responded that it is not true, but obviously that doesn’t mean he’s telling the truth. Do I think he’s coming back? No. Would I love to see him back? Yes. I know this is a subject that has been done to death, but here’s a quick bit of reader interaction…


DISCUSSION POINT! Commentary Teams

Part of the impetus for this Discussion Point comes from our great friend Bonerfied:

“I pretty much zone the announcers out during the entire show anymore.. I wish I could mute them only.. They so badly need a heel announcer that doesn’t seem like he’s forced to play that persona, a la Heyman, King of the 90s, Heenan, The Body, etc..”

If you, the wonderful readers of Wednesday’s premier column were in charge, who would you have on commentary for RAW and SmackDown? Would you have the same commentators for both shows? Would you use two guys? Three? The only rule is that you have to choose current WWE employees or guys who have a relationship in some way such as Foley or even JBL. I would go with the following.

RAW: Josh Mathews (Play-By-Play) & Michael Cole (Color)
Yes, I know it probably won’t be a popular choice amongst the internet readers, but when he’s not doing that shitty over-the-top gimmick that he has been doing for the past couple years Michael Cole can actually be a very strong commentator. He is a crappy PBP guy, but it’s likely that most of that comes from him being yelled at so much in his ear to talk about other stuff that he can’t pay close enough attention to the ring to call everything. Mathews isn’t bad recapping feuds and talking about current issues between wrestlers but his real strong point is calling the action in the ring. I know that’s not what WWE is all about, but this is my broadcast team. Cole can go back to being similar to how he was — he generally sides with the faces and gets annoyed when heels break the rules. Mathews is good at playing devil’s advocate and being unbiased.

SMACKDOWN: Matt Striker (Play-By-Play) & JBL (Color) with Scott Stanford
JBL should be self-explanatory. Striker, when on commentary, does a lot to try to get himself over, but it wasn’t really like that when he was doing it for ECW on Sci-Fi. He didn’t have to struggle to get a word in edgewise like he did on SmackDown and a lot of people, myself included, thought he really shined. Plus he’ll be kept in check by Bradshaw. Scott Stanford is funny and I think he deserves to be highlighted somewhere. Maybe he can be the backstage interviewer but come out once in a while to serve as a third man at the desk because he has gained some extra insight via his backstage research.

DISCUSSION POINT: Who would you put on commentary?


Short Form: The Rest of the News

– CM Punk’s new DVD is out on October 9. An Official preview is out now and it looks awesome.

– Primo & Epico’s valet Rosa Mendes was reported to be arrested over the weekend for allegedly being drunk… in… pub-lic. I was going to make a joke but it turns out that her douche of a boyfriend (Jackson Andrews; real name Steve Slocum) who couldn’t hack it in the wrestling business assaulted her. He has a reported history of attacking her. He’s also a douche.


Pictured: Douche.

– TNA is posting videos on Twitter now. I don’t really get it. It’s the segments that they stream live on Youtube (and now Twitter) during the commercial breaks on Thursday nights. Seems like a great way to get people talking about the show as it happens and further invest themselves in what goes on. I don’t really pay attention to/understand the whole “social media score” thing, nor do I really care about it, but it certainly is very important and I believe social media will be the way wrestling makes it into its next boom period (if that ever happens). Not everybody thinks wrestling is cool, but a gigantic amount of people think social media is cool. If wrestling companies can do interesting things on social media, which they’re trying to do, maybe it will reach people that normally would have nothing to do with wrestling. Hell, maybe it could even give the fans the kind of power that WWE claims they have when they get to choose between a street fight or a no DQ match!

– Dean Ambrose wrestled over the weekend on a house show. Other resurfacings include Kelly Kelly and Wade Barrett, both of whom are listed to be on tour with WWE in Japan.

– It is being said that Paul Heyman’s deal with WWE is over at SummerSlam but that he will likely continue working with WWE and Brock past that time. Doesn’t that mean that they made a deal?

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COMMENTARY DISCUSSION: Slater’s Man-Tits and Fires

From MachoManFan Still: “I wondered the same thing! Did they just need more footage to replay several times over the course of the three hour show? Expect more fires!”

This week they really didn’t attack us with video packages. There was a lot of wrestling on the show and plenty of legitimate storyline development. It still is odd that they showed that fire so many times though.

From Sheath Later: “OK. This can’t be denied. WHAT IS the problem with Slater’s pecs ? That is the worst case of gyno I have seen ! Get those things drained , Heath…If those arent ‘juice boobs’…they don’t exist.”


It looks more like he is just underdeveloped. I’m no doctor.
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– There was also some talk about the situation with Team Ambition in the comments section. For a great recap of the whole deal check out last week’s Wrestling 5&1 with Greg De Marco.

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WWE RAW 8.6.2012: Wrestling!

Here’s a question: Were you hoping that they would utilize the first hour of RAW similar to how WCW used it for Nitro? A couple matches and some hype for the two main hours? Did you expect them to do something like that?

– Hey look! No new haircut for Punk! The world doesn’t care!

Opening Segment: AJ Takes Charge
AJ comes out to welcome us to RAW and is swiftly interrupted by CM Punk, who apologizes to her with the intent of getting the triple threat at SummerSlam canceled. That doesn’t work out and Cena interrupts HIM. They bicker about respect until Big Show’s music hits but AJ stops him before he can do much interrupting and lays down the law. That was pretty awesome. Maybe I was wrong about AJ not being an effective GM. She shut those boys up and told them to save it for their matches. THAT is taking control of the show. So far she has looked very strong in her first two weeks.

My son to CM Punk: “You want respect? Do the match!”

– Good little match with Punk and Mysterio. Obviously the right guy won but Mysterio didn’t look bad at all in defeat.

– Sweet return promo for Wade Barrett. I wonder who he’s going to go after.

– Del Rio and Christian had a good match for the short time it got. Classic heel victory with the boot shot from ADR. Not surprisingly, and quite sadly, Christian is right back to Nowheresville after losing the IC Title to Miz.

– Oh Sheamus, what a hooligan! Stealing a car, that cad.

– Big Show matches really end in countouts a heck of a lot. It was a good match but the RKO to finish the segment is baffling. Big Show is in the WWE Title match at SummerSlam and even though he has been proven not to be, he’s supposed to be unstoppable. Oh well. I prefer Orton anyway.

– What a shame about Reks and Hawkins.

– Tag team wrestling! I know Primo & Epico only got the win because PTP were distracted by the Tag Champs but it was a decent match and the crowd seemed to care. I’m not giving up hope yet.

– So what do we think? Sandow v. Clay in the SummerSlam preshow match?

– Hey look! Kelly Kelly. It wasn’t a good match or a bad match. Just there.

– I was going to dedicate a paragraph to the HHH/Lesnar segment with HBK, but it was boring. I did like that Lesnar threatened Michaels that he would be seeing him before SummerSlam.

– Alex Riley won his first match since Methuselah was alive!

– Kane pins Miz clean. Uh… okay. How does that help anybody?

Closing Segment: Cena v. Bryan & Show Stands Tall
The show closed with a darn good match between John Cena and Daniel Bryan, another match in which both men looked good during and Bryan didn’t look bad after taking the fall. This segued right into the end of the show with CM Punk delivering a great promo at the commentary table that would not have worked on a regular house mic to the audience, so it was a good choice to do it the way they did. Of course it left the live crowd waiting in silence but it made for really good TV that had a very chaotic feeling. Big show also got to gain back his heat, I guess.

– Overall I thought this was a very good episode. I was never bored and other than Miz getting pinned clean and easy by Kane I wasn’t bothered or bewildered by anything. Much better than last week and they didn’t spend valuable time airing 100 promo videos! They had about 55 minutes of wrestling including the commercial breaks and nothing was bad, in fact most of it was good. I’d like to see more of Alex Riley, though. Never thought I’d say that.

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Free Pro Wrestling: Insanity Pro Wrestling


Ricochet v. AR Fox || IPW Showdown in Naptown – January 1, 2011

From TJ Hawke: “This match was a lot of fun, and I can only imagine what they would be capable of doing now. AR Fox had only just joined the DGUSA/Evolve family at this point, and he has made tremendous strides since this time. Ricochet was already having great matches around this time, but he too is so much better now. I definitely recommend that you check out this match.”

For More, Please Visit FreeProWrestling.com

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The end.

Next week: TNA talk? Ring of Honor frustrations? Excited chitter chatter about Paris Hilton’s bikini butt?

– Nicholas A. Marsico

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