That Was Then 12.24.05: 2005 In Review

Posted by Sam Caplan on 12.24.2005

aka How I Was Wrong About Everything.

Originally I wasn’t planning on doing anything like this. In late December and early January of every year, it seems like everybody on the planet has their own “Year In Review” type column, and then tend to get somewhat homogenous after a while. Originally over the next couple of weeks I was going to run a big four part work that I’ve spent quite a while working on, but decided to wait until after the holidays when somebody might actually read it. So I decided that I’d do a Year In Review-style column after all, but with a different approach than most people take.

See, we all make predictions about what’s in store for us, from the direction of a storyline all the way up to who’s walking out of Wrestlemania with the belt. The problem is that, unless you’re a creative team member for a wrestling promotion, you’re often wrong. This week I get to talk about a bunch of the predictions I made throughout 2005 that I was totally, absolutely, 100% wrong about.

Prediction – In the wake of getting dumped by WWE, Matt Hardy is about to become one of the top names in wrestling.

Early in the year, it came out that while Matt Hardy was on the shelf with a knee injury, his girlfriend Amy Dumas (known professionally as Lita) had an affair with Adam Copeland (known professionally as Edge). Hardy was very vocal about it on his website, and within weeks it was announced that not only was he not being brought back to TV when he was cleared to compete, but was in fact being totally dropped by WWE. The fan response, greatly egged on by Hardy himself, was enormous. In fact, I was in the crowd at MSG where the “You Screwed Matt” chant started, and it was off the charts. From there, it seemed like just a matter of time until Hardy wound up in TNA or ROH and instantly become the top man wherever he landed. Then the day his no-compete clause expired, he showed up on Raw and attacked Edge. Although he made all his internet fans look like idiots by pulling for him all this time only to see him go walking back to WWE with a big smile on his face, there was still the big money feud with Edge, right? Well not quite, as Hardy got squashed regularly and lost the blowoff match, sending him to Smackdown where he’s been stuck in the midcard. He wrapped up the year by getting squashed by Bradshaw in about five minutes in a special “Afterthought Match” at Armageddon.

Prediction – Samoa Joe vs Kenta Kobashi will be an awesome match.

I know I’m going to piss off a ton of people with this one, but I was in the crowd for the show and was COMPLETELY underwhelmed. I’m sorry, I don’t care how big a name Kobashi is, or how great a wrestler he might have been when he was younger, or what classic Japanese match I’ve never seen that this was supposed to be playing off of, this match blew ass. I went into it expecting something awesome, possibly involving actual wrestling, and ended up seeing Joe carry a beaten-up, broken-down, physically limited old man with more tape on his knees than I have in my wrestling video collection to a 20-minute chopfest. And that’s all it was. There were a few nice bumps towards the end, but I spent 20 minutes wondering when they were going to do something other than chop each other, as stiff as the chops may have been. I really cannot express how monumentally disappointing I found this match. Somebody explained it to me after the show as something that basically amounted to this: Puroresu has something called “Warrior Spirit” where as long as you get your ass kicked and keep getting back up, you don’t have to do anything interesting or entertaining in your match. So that explains the chopfest. My response to that was basically that we have something like this in the US. It’s called rochambeau, and it’s where two guys stand there and kick each other in the nuts until one of them gives. And this match was the kick in the nuts of the year for me as far as ROH is concerned. Don’t get me wrong, they absolutely got their money’s worth out of using the big name to draw the crowds and DVD buys, but the match was way, way, WAY overrated. Thankfully, I was at the show in Philly the next night as well, and that match was much better, but somehow I have to believe that Homicide and Low Ki being in there to help carry Kobashi had a lot to do with it.

Prediction – Brock Lesnar is a lock to return to WWE very soon.

Well, things didn’t quite work out that way, did they? In all fairness, I think a lot of people were fooled by Lesnar being featured on the main page of WWE.com. In retrospect, it seems that it was just so WWE could get some sort of advantage over him in the lawsuit. I will give Brock enormous amounts of credit for having the balls to defy Vince and go wrestle in Japan, but as far away as a return to WWE seemed in January, it seems much, much further away now. It seems like a tossup at this point as to whether Lesnar or Warrior is less popular in Stamford.

Prediction – Eddy Guerrero will win the Rey Mysterio, Jr feud.

I really made this prediction due to my love of Eddy’s work and my distaste for Mysterio in general. Sure, Mysterio’s a good athlete and all, but I’ve never considered him the slightest bit believable as a legitimate threat to anyone over 175 lbs, much less to a former World Champion and one of the two or three greatest all-around performers in the country today. Given that Guerrero wound up in a World Title program after the feud, while Mysterio spent most of the fall counting the lights, I don’t see how this helped Mysterio in the slightest, but I think it’s ridiculous and insulting to have somebody like Guerrero repeatedly job to Mysterio.

Prediction – In light of his injury, Batista will have to vacate the World Title, which will then end up on either Eddy Guerrero or Randy Orton.

This is another one of those situations where common sense pointed in the opposite direction of what actually happened. The muscle tear Batista suffered in his back would, in all likelihood, leave Batista unable to really move very much, let alone wrestle. He would surely have to give up the title and go in for surgery, keeping him on the shelf for six months and leave him out of Wrestlemania. However, instead of doing any of this, Batista opted to try and rehab his injury, and work through the pain in the meantime. One would think that after looking at Paul Orndorff’s right arm which he injured while in the Hogan feud, and also the state of Kurt Angle’s neck following his “miracle surgery”, the right choice would be clear if he expected his career to last any length of time after he finally loses the title. In the meantime, he’s being hidden in tag matches, short squashes, and run ins. None of this can be helping the back, but at nearly 40 years old, I can understand him worrying about losing his spot and not getting another run at the top. Orton, in the meantime, is clearly being built up to make a run at the title at Wrestlemania, a situation he was aborted out of last year and replaced with Batista. Now with Guerrero dead, Orton is almost a lock to take the title from Batista, assuming Batista’s body holds up long enough to do the job.

Prediction – Shawn Michaels will beat Hulk Hogan at Summerslam.

This prediction was based in equal parts on my being a huge Shawn Michaels mark going almost all the way back to the beginning of my wrestling fandom, and also the common sense thinking that Michaels will be on Raw the night after Summerslam while Hogan would go back home for another six months to a year. Despite his injuries over the years, Michaels is still in a lot better condition than Hogan and almost certainly has several years left in the tank. I also thought that this would be a good way of springboarding Michaels into another World Title program after Summerslam. But instead, Hogan pulled a Kidman on him and walked out with the win, also vetoing the proposed second match with a Michaels win. This was to me the most personally disappointing wrong prediction of the year.

Prediction – Charlie Haas will be drafted to Raw and put in a storyline with Shelton Benjamin.

Okay, here was what I had in mind for this scenario: Haas gets drafted to Raw and immediately gets excited at the prospect of reforming his team with Benjamin. Unfortunately, Benjamin is reluctant to team full time with Haas again because he has an Intercontinental Title to defend. Hass is disappointed, but seems to understand Benjamin’s decision. Weeks go by, and Haas finally talks Benjamin into giving the team one more try, and they have a match where Haas turns on Benjamin and throws him to the wolves, then cuts a scathing promo that while Benjamin was pushed to the moon on Raw, Haas was left to twist in the wind and buried on Smackdown, then Haas comes to Raw but Benjamin thought he was too good to team with Haas anymore. They have a grudge match at the next PPV for the IC Title and Haas wins clean and throws it in Benjamin’s face, similar to when Owen beat Bret at Wrestlemania X. They have a rematch a month or two later with a No DQ or 2/3 Falls stipulation where Benjamin wins the title back to blow off the feud. Even if the storyline totally bombed, Haas and Benjamin’s real life friendship and sheer natural talent would have produced phenomenal matches. Of course, Haas ended up getting turfed a few weeks after the draft and killed any chance of any of this happening. Ironically, while Haas didn’t get Benjamin’s spot as I had laid out, Benjamin got Haas’s spot, dropping the IC Title to Carlito and jobbing to everything on two legs for the rest of the year. Major bummer, and major missed opportunity for what would have been a great old school feud.

Prediction – Now off of FSN, TNA would be unable to secure a new TV deal and would be stuck webcasting Impact until its rapidly approaching death.

Now granted, this was a doom and gloom prediction, and certainly not one that would be good for the business in the slightest, but it seemed like everything was working against TNA until shortly after they lost the FSN deal, and everything’s been straight up from there. Of course, it certainly helps that they hired all of ROH’s top talent, but I guess they can still boast about having created AMW and Abyss. Now TNA is in a situation similar to WCW in the mid 90s in that, while I highly doubt they’re about to knock WWE on its ass the way WCW did, they have a popular show with great matches, and are hiring all the best talent they can get their hands on, whether it comes from ROH, WWE, ECW or elsewhere, and look to be on their way to being taken seriously as a competitor to WWE. This was one I was glad to be wrong about, as TNA is a sorely needed breath of fresh air.

Prediction – John Cena will lose the WWE Title to Christian.

I think that this was more of wishful thinking than a real prediction, but given months of the two sniping at each other from opposing brands, I think we all expected more than a one match blowoff, and then Christian getting drafted away from Cena. To tell the truth, I’ve always hated John Cena, both as a worker and a character, and would have been ecstatic if he lost the title to either Christian or Jericho in the summer, but alas. Now the race is on to see whether Cena or Batista loses their title first, and given how they’ve done everything in their power the keep the titles on both men, it’ll be interesting to see how that plays out in 2006.

Prediction – CM Punk will put up an amazing fight, but ultimately lose to Austin Aries at Death Before Dishonor III, then head to WWE.

Another one I was glad to be wrong about, and lucky enough to be in the crowd for, it seemed completely ridiculous that Punk could win the title in his last match in the promotion because that sort of thing just doesn’t happen, but he did end up winning…and then completely turned on the crowd in a major shocker. The sub-prediction here is that Punk would, of course, lose his first title defense and leave ROH. But he won. Then he won his second, third, and fourth title defenses. Finally, a month later, Punk finally lost the title to James Gibson and had his real, final match in ROH by putting over his best friend Colt Cabana in a 2/3 Falls match.

Prediction – Scotty 2 Hotty, Nunzio, Funaki, Paul London, both Bashams, Rene Dupree, Sylvan Grenier, Hardcore Holly, Stevie Richards, and Val Venis would all be released by the end of the year.

This is one that I am absolutely shocked hasn’t happened yet. Why do any of these guys have jobs? Not to knock any of them as workers because they’re all great, but any kind of credibility that any of them had went out the window years ago, and you almost feel embarrassed to see these guys out there doing three minute jobs to the new guys when you consider the kind of success most of them had in the late 90s. Although I’d hate to see these guys lose their jobs, it’s also hard to see Vince wantonly bury the guys that contributed to his Attitude Era empire.

Now that’s a lot of predictions that were way off base! Well, let’s hope that as we go into 2006, I’m a little more reliable with this stuff. And next week, I think I’ll throw out a few New Year’s predictions for 2006 as well.

In the meantime though, I’d like to ask you readers to send in your wrong prediction for 2005, and next week I’ll throw in as many reader responses as I can. The wronger the better! In the meantime, have a Merry Christmas, and see you all on New Year’s!