The Week In Hardcore 9.09.06
Posted by Sam Caplan on 09.09.2006
This week we cover Matt Striker's reference to the death of Steve Irwin, the CM Punk-Shannon Moore Incident, DX's guest shot on ECW On Sci-Fi, and more. Plus, the usual backstage news and analysis, the ECW Top Five, and more on the Extreme Third Brand!
ECW On Sci-Fi Results: 7/25/2006 (2.1 Rating)
-Sabu and Rob Van Dam defeated Test and Mike Knox in an Extreme Rules Match (13:05)
-Stevie Richards pinned Balls Mahoney (2:50)
-DX defeated ECW Champion Big Show by DQ (5:59)
Thanks To Larry Csonka for match times.
Storyline Developments
-Ariel and Kevin Thorne are backstage and Ariel gives Kevin a reading on what the future holds. She draws the "Shitty Promo" card, but for some reason finds this sexual. Hey, I knew that crap like this had to be making SOMEBODY happy. Later on, they come out and cost Balls his match against Stevie Richards. Weird that he'd pick a fight with a guy he already beat.
-Matt Striker is out and makes the terrible, heartless line that has caused famine and death in several large parts of the third world and draws the ire of bored crusaders everywhere. Seriously, how dare he make such an unacceptable, evil remark like "and there is a reason why you will never see me carelessly swimming in the ocean with stingrays!" (By the way, I think people need to grow some thicker fucking skin.) Oh yeah, he also busts on the Sandman some more because he's a big dumb jock. Sandman comes out to fuck him up, but Striker runs, and Sandman beats up the chalkboard instead, which for some reason just proved Striker's point. I don't know if I'd call Sandman a jock, he always struck me more as the guy who hung out after school getting wasted behind a building somewhere.
-Shannon Moore says he's bringing the sexy, but turns around and finds himself face to face with CM Punk, whose list of sexual conquests would seem to indicate that he's even sexier than ol' Shannon. Punk calls him a queer and beats the shit out of him, then smiles at the hate crime he just committed and walks away, leaving poor Shannon to jingle all by his lonesome. I don't think Shannon will be coming this week. Maybe he will, I don't know. Fucking queer.
-For some reason Paul Heyman decided to remove the Extreme Rules stipulation from the main event, probably because that would have meant Big Show would have had to beat DX by himself before Unforgiven, and we can't have him doing that without the McMahons. The match ended in a DQ when Hardcore Holly ran in and attacked DX. The reason he did that was because DX, as a gag, taped over all his porno movies, and Holly freaked out and came out and beat up Triple H. Yes, you read that right: Hardcore Holly came out and beat up Triple H. Glass ceiling my ass. Anyway, Holly, Show and the Rent-A-Bashams beat up Michaels until Triple H comes in with the sledgehammer and hits the Rent-A-Bashams with it.
ECW Top Five (As voted by...ME!)
All rankings are based on what happens on TV. House shows do not count. If it didn't happen on TV, it didn't happen.
ECW Champion: Big Show
1)Sabu: Back on the winning track, scoring the fall in this week's Extreme Rules match against Test and Mike Knox.
2)Rob Van Dam: Also on the winning side of the Extreme Rules match, but needs to do more on his own to move above Sabu.
3)CM Punk: didn't wrestle this week, but made his presence known by doing something a lot of us would probably have like to have done.
4)Shannon Moore: Let's hope the shot in the face that he took from CM Punk, unlike most of the shots he takes in the face, will get him wrestling instead of reading bathroom graffiti at us.
5)Stevie Richards: He's basically on here because this is likely to be the only win he's going to get for the rest of 2006, so I figured it was the least I could do.
Hardcore Backstage News
Okay, let's get all the coverage of the totally overblown thing about Matt Striker's comment out of the way up front:
Some workers thought that Matt Striker's comment about Steve Irwin's death was totally out of line. [pwinsider.com]
Vince McMahon posted the following: "We at WWE apologize for the remark alluding to the death of Steve Irwin which was made on ECW on Sci-Fi Tuesday night. The remark was, in the least, disrespectful to Mr. Irwin's fans and family." [ECW.com]
Brian Gewirtz was the person who wrote the line about the late Steve Irwin on Tuesday's ECW show, of course the idea was green-lighted by Vince McMahon. Since then, McMahon has issued a public apology.[pwinsider.com]
Even after offering the apology for the comments made about Steve Irwin on this week's brodcast, the UK's first showing of this week's ECW on Sky Sports still had the segment air unedited. [wrestlingobserver.com]
Despite all the controversy and apologies, WWE still has footage of Matt Striker's Steve Irwin comment on their website.
Okay? Okay. I really don't want to talk about it anymore because it's totally and got way bigger than it should have. This is what you call a slow news week. Moving right along...
Jim Ross had the following to say about Kurt Angle on his BBQ website: "There is no doubt that the UFC-like entities will dream of Kurt Angle (some, no doubt, against Brock Lesnar) competing in an octagon or similar battle ground but my advice to Kurt would be to stay away from such activities and focus solely on getting healthy." [jrsbarbq.com]
This pretty much echoes the sentiments I had a coupe of weeks ago when I said that Angle's release was for his own good, and if he were to turn around and get ring back to work, it would become a meaningless move.
Many people backstage are wondering today if the Joey Styles lap dance was booked as a way of humbling him a little bit. Vince has had his problems with Styles in the past regarding his commentary and while Styles has changed to try and fit the WWE style, word is that he has been a bit cocky backstage. Styles is apparently a very religious and monogamous person which is why the lap dance may have been very intentional. Vince has often used embarassing on-air segments to send a message to an individual or group of individuals. [pwinsider.com]
I think it was a joke thing because from what I've heard, Vince has been warming up a bit to Joey's work lately. But if he has been letting his attitude get away from him, that's another matter entirely, isn't it? But then we get this:
The Ariel lap dance on Joey Styles wasn't a rib, it was a planned spot used as an extension of the character that Ariel did down in OVW. While in OVW she danced with Beth Phoenix around and on the announcers. Styles was said to be a total professional about doing the spot. [pwinsider.com]
Well, so much for our little conspiracy theory, huh?
My buddy and yours, AJ Styles, had this to say in a recent interview for IGN.com: But do I think WWE fears us? Absolutely, that's why they brought back ECW. They're afraid and they should be. We're growing at a super fast rate, and that's something to be scared of." [IGN.com]
Sure, AJ, they're quaking in their boots. That's why they resurrected what they consider to be an inferior brand to what they were already doing, so that they could run their weekly TV show on a different night than Impact, run everywhere but the one town you run shows in, and don't do PPVs like you do. Oh, that's right, they stole Shannon Moore and denied us the awesome Moore-Styles feud. Fucking idiot.
The ECW on Sci-Fi replays will be starting soon. The replays are part of the new TV deal that was recently agreed to. [pwinsider.com]
This is great news, especially for people like me who fell asleep before the show started and had to find a perfectly legal place where I gladly pay full price to download the show from the internet in order to see what happened.
Ponderings Of A Stu-Man
-This seemed like a mostly filler week, but the opening match was really good. If there's one thing you certainly can't say about the new ECW, it's that the wrestling has been subpar.
-Seriously, why is Kevin Thorne still picking fights with Balls Mahoney? This is like going back and stepping on an ant you already squished.
-Why do I have this uneasy feeling that Big Show's going to be the one doing the job in the Cell?
-Maybe Ariel found the sexuality in Mahoney putting his balls on the wall?
-I was surprised by the lack of ECW Originals this week. For those of you who weren't around for the glory days, the ECW Originals are pretty easy to pick out. They're the guys who just stand there staring off into space and shaking, and the only word they know is "ECW!"
-Speaking of which, I think that Paul's doing a great job managing the talent. Except for the designated job guys (who actually come out looking much better than the Raw and Smackdown job guys), Paul hasn't so much been building up new guys as much as he has been cycling people around so everybody gets exposure and looks good, which is probably the one thing Vince Russo was really good at. Finding something interesting to do with your entire roster is a GOOD thing.
Extremist Of The Week: CM Punk
I can't drive home enough how cool this guy is. In addition to fucking like every hot chick this business has seen for the last five years, in addition to being a great worker who can have a great match with anyone you put him in there with, and in addition to probably being the best talker in the business today (yes, I said it), he also smacked the shit out of Shannon Moore, to the delight of non-dumbasses everywhere. Now if only he'd make trips to Raw and Smackdown to smack Matt and Jeff around too, I'd be the happiest motherfucker in the world.
F'N Links
Julian Williams has his picks for the top ten Kurt Angle matches of all time. Sorry though, Julian, there's no way the Wrestlemania match with Michaels beats out the Benoit match from Royal Rumble 2003. I think that was actually both guys' best matches, at least that I've seen.
Among other things, Larry Csonka (double plug!) and Randle discuss whether ECW needs the top name Raw and SD names like DX to maintain its current rating in the latest Fact Or Fiction.
And of course my own weekly, shameless self-promotion. In this case, Column Of Honor's Ari Berenstein and I go back and take a look at ROH In 2005 in this week's That Was Then.
Extreme Outlook
Not much happened this week, so we're left with a lot of the same questions as last week.
What's next for the Big Show? The ECW Title seems to have become secondary to his involvement in Hell In A Cell, so we'll probably have to wait until after Unforgiven before we discover who the next challenger is going to be.
The two top choices, Van Dam and Sabu, also seem to be in limbo, perhaps waiting until after Unforgiven to start the next part of their program with the Big Show.
Kevin Thorne inexplicably picked a fight with Balls Mahoney, pointing at another match between the two down the line. Will Balls pick up his first big win, or will Ariel pull the "Dead End Angle" card?
CM Punk's super awesome bitchslap of Shannon Moore leads you to believe that they're going to be programmed against each other going forward. I haven't actually seen much of Shannon's work outside of doing jobs to AJ Styles, but I've been told he's a pretty good worker. I know Punk's a really good worker, so if nothing else, this should lead to some good wrestling, and it'll perform the task of getting what basically amounts to two new guys to the WWE audience over. I'm actually looking forward to this.
Matt Striker has shown that like Punk, he's got the gift of gab, but will he be able to bring the goods when he gets in the ring with the Sandman?
Banging Out
That's it for me folks. I'll be back in one week with more, more, MORE of The Week In Hardcore! Until then, this is Stuart "F'N" Carapola signing off. Thanks for reading.
All feedback can be directed to stuwrestling@hotmail.com
