The Week In Hardcore 10.28.06
Posted by Sam Caplan on 10.28.2006
Alcohol guides us through this week's analysis of ECW On Sci-Fi, plus the ECW Top Five, thoughts on ECW's upcoming taping schedule, and my musings on why the Devil would ever want to go down to Georgia.
A little bit of a change this week: I didn't get a chance to catch the show live this week, and got to read the Report before watching it. Since I knew what I was up against, I decided to try something a little different, so I watched the show and am now writing this column under the influence of alcohol. It actually increased the holy shit value of the Test suplex spot.
ECW On Sci-Fi Results 10/24/2006 From St. Louis, Missouri (1.6 Rating)
-CM Punk defeated Matt Striker via DQ (4:00)
-Test pinned Hardcore Holly (13:35)
-Rob Van Dam defeated ECW Champion Big Show in a Ladder Match for a shot at the ECW World Title (9:35)
Storyline Developments
-Rob Van Dam opened the show by casually mentioning that he beat the Big Show last week, and wonders when he's going to get his shot at the ECW World Title. Paul Heyman comes out of the back and tells RVD that Big Show was undefeated in ECW until last week. Then he tells Van Dam that if he wants his title shot, he's going to have to go through Big Show one more time, this time in a ladder match.
-Sandman wants to be Umaga's squash victim at Cyber Sunday. I think it's a great idea because I'm sick of Umaga vs Kane and I don't want to see Benoit be the victim, but wouldn't it be cool to see Umaga totally no-sell a bunch of caneshots to the head?
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 World Champion: Big Show
1)Rob Van Dam: Defeated the ECW World Champion for the second week in a row, and this time it's official, he is now the number one contender with a title shot coming his way.
2)CM Punk: It was a DQ win, but he still beat Matt Striker, continuing the undefeated streak.
3)Test: Another win this week, over the resugrent Hardcore Holly.
4)Matt Striker: He had a good showing against Punk this week, and looked better than just about anybody Punk's wrestled to this point. He didn't get pinned or submit, either.
5)Mike Knox: He finally got the balls to take a shot at Punk, even though it was from behind.
Hardcore Backstage News
Luckily for me, some last minute news on ECW came in, so I actually have something to put here this week!
Due to Halloween being on Tuesday this week, Smackdown and ECW are going to tape on Sunday night.
Well that's a relief. Wouldn't want a crowd full of Power Rangers and Ninja Turtles showing up to the ECW taping. Seriously, what's the big deal? I mean, do they honestly think that anybody's going to show up to the taping looking any weirder than the ECW roster?
ECW will then tape again the following night with Raw.
I don't begrudge them for not giving ECW its own taping just yet, since they really are the distant third brand at this point, but what's with taping two weeks worth of TV ahead of time like this? I guess the fact that they're willing to do this pretty much shoots their "spoilers getting out on the internet ruins our ratings" argument since they're perfectly willing to tape far enough in advance that their audience at the TV taping doesn't look like the crowd on Let's Make A Deal.
The main event for the 12/3/06 ECW December To Dismember PPV is currently expected to be Rob Van Dam challenging Big Show for the ECW World Title.
I know that the hardcores are jonesing for Van Dam to get the ECW Title back from the Big Show, but if I look at it in the grand scheme of the WWE Universe, I really have to wonder how well a PPV headlined by Rob Van Dam and the Big Show is going to draw. I know they both look great these days, but ECW really is a distant third in the WWE pecking order, and they don't have the same kind of star power that a John Cena, Edge, DX, Vince McMahon, Batista, or even Booker T and Chris Benoit have. I wonder what the repercussions are going to be if this show does a terrible buyrate.
Rob Van Dam posted the following commentary on his website, www.robvandam.com:
October 25, 2006 - Believe it or not Battle Creek, it looks like it's really going to happen.For the first time in my career, I will be wrestling in front of my home town. On November 6th, I will enter the Kellogg Center to memories of the first live WWF show I attended back in 85 or so. That was a great memory, but this time I'll be the main event, and I want the crowd to be bigger, so friends of days past lay off the comp ticket requests!!! I want to sell this mutha out!
Congrats to Tito for setting the record straight with three wins over Shamrock a couple weeks ago. Ken's had a great career and we'll always remember him for introducing the Ultimate Fights to us back in the day.
If anyone's been missing ECW tv lately, that's your loss. If you were a fan of the old ECW, and didn't want to put this new idea over, change your mind. We all had to make some adjustments and ECW has been developing and right now it's something I'm damn proud to be a part of. People still ask why I went to ECW and I'm always surprised. I ask if they've seen it lately and they reply that they have, and that it has to be killing my body. Now I get where they're coming from. They need to pop in a copy of my DVD- One of a Kind and watch me wrestle 10 years ago. This is what I do. I get paid to show what I got and I have a lot to show. I'm tough, able to absorb a lot of physical punishment, and I'm an extremist! I have matches and do things that my fans pay to see because they know they could never survive such brutality. I take pride in that. ECW is my best showcasing. It's my preferred brand and it's the best wrestling program on television today. How much stronger can I friggin' endorse it?
Until next week, here's my score for this year so far. Two returns, two times with money in the bank, two World Titles and going for my third.
Try to keep up-
RVD [robvandam.com]
While a lot of this just seems like "pushing the company line" type rabble, I do truly believe that the letters ECW mean something to Van Dam, and that he's much happier making the same money while being able to work a style more like what he prefers to work instead of being stuck in a tag team with Rey Mysterio, or standing around the back saying "cool." And can you believe that Van Dam's never wrestled in front of his hometown? Pretty wild.
Vital Social Issues N' Stuff With Stuart
This is a bit off the beaten path, but since only like three people read this column anyway, I figured what the hell, why not have a little fun?
So I was listening to that song The Devil Went Down To Georgia, and when you actually listen to it, you begin to realize it's one of the most absurd songs ever written.
For those unfamiliar with the song, it tells the story about how the Devil was hard up for some new souls to dump in Hell, so he takes a trip to Georgia and finds some poor sap named Johnny, who he challenges to a fiddle playing contest. If the Devil wins, he gets Johnny's soul, but if Johnny wins, he gets a golden fiddle. I know what you're thinking, "Well Stuart, that sounds like a pretty fair trade to me!" But I think the thing that the Devil failed to take into account is that a lot of people in Georgia would probably be willing to skip the contest and head straight to Hell just to get out of Georgia.
But putting that aside for the moment, Johnny (being a total nimrod and all) takes the Devil up on his offer, and they proceed to have a fiddle-off. The Devil starts us off, but gives Johnny a little surprise: he's got backup in the form of a band of demons. They proceed to put on a rocking little tune, leaving us wondering how Johnny can ever possibly compete. But our hero doesn't let us down, because he then picks up the fiddle he was presumably carrying around when the Devil happened upon him and plays...something about a chicken and a breadpan. I never understood quite what Johnny was supposed to be singing about, but I think he may be retarded. After all, the Devil successfully roped him into a FIDDLE PLAYING CONTEST.
But whatever the case may be, Johnny finishes up his little ditty, and the Devil had no choice but to admit defeat in the face of poor retarded Johnny's awesome fiddle playing skills. He gives Johnny the golden fiddle (which Johnny surely took right away to get bronzed) and disappeared back to the pits of Hell. Johnny calls him a son of a bitch and plays his song about chickens again.
Once again, I know what you're thinking: that the Devil taking a trip to the sticks of rural Georgia to challenge people to fiddle playing contests is probably one of the stupidest ideas for a song EVER. But fear not, you're in luck, because we soon get the sequel: The Devil Went BACK To Georgia. That's right, one of these songs isn't enough, so now we're stuck listening to the narration of the rematch, which follows exactly the same tune as the original song.
This time around, the Devil has been sitting around Hell for ten years getting pissed because a retarded guy beat him in a fiddle playing contest. So he finally decides to head back to Georgia and find Johnny and challenge him to a rematch of their first meeting. Johnny thought they had this settled, but is more than happy to let the Devil take another run at him. Unfortunately, he hasn't played much since he fathered a baby in June. I could have sworn that there were some kind of laws about people with Down's Syndrome not being allowed to reproduce, but apparently they don't have these laws down south because, let's face it, if they DID have laws like that down there the total population of the entire South would be like seven people.
The Devil starts again this time, and for some reason, plays EXACTLY the same tune he did last time. You'd think that having lost once already, he'd come up with something better this time around, but you'd be wrong. So Johnny excuses himself to the woodshed and we're left listening to crappy fiddle playing for about 30 seconds, and I guess the implication is that he's practicing to get his rhythm back or something. Then he comes out and plays another, even crappier song on his fiddle, and the Devil is again forced to concede because, as we all know, Johnny's the best there's ever been.
After listening to all this play out, I can't help but feel a little bad for the Devil. I always thought that his fiddle playing blew Johnny's away, and thought he should have come away the winner. Oh, what's that? He had a band of demons there to help out? Well fuck that, there's no official rulebook for this, so the band of demons was fair game in my opinion. And no double standard here, if Johnny was able to come up with his own band of demons, that would have been perfectly legal as far as I'm concerned. But since there's no official rulebook, we have to note that there was also no judge or referee of any kind, which brings up the question: how did they decide that Johnny won both times? It seems that the Devil just kind of admitted defeat both times, but you would think that since he was the one doing the challenging, that he would have a plan laid out ahead of time just in case his intended victim was a better fiddle player than he was. I mean, what was to prevent the Devil from just being like "Fuck you, you suck, you're going to hell!" no matter how good Johnny was? What would Johnny (or anyone else, for that matter) be able to do about it?
You know, it's no small wonder that my Friday nights are free to write this and do Smackdown Reports and stuff like that. I hate you all.
Extremist Of The Week: Test and Hardcore Holly
Let's face it, their match this week was really sloppy and they missed a bunch of spots, but they didn't lose their cool through the entire match despite the crowd completely turning on them. The ending totally sucked, yes, but they didn't pull a Batista on us. And by the way, the Test suplex to the outside was ridiculous. Guys that big shouldn't be taking bumps like that, and that showed a lot of heart and work ethic on his part.
F'N Links
Steve Cook is back with this week's edition of Ask 411 Wrestling. I guess since he's the sixth person to do Ask 411, that would make him Colin Baker, wouldn't it? Let's hope he just has a longer (and less interrupted) streak than Colin did. He does dress in a much less eccentric fashion, however.
In this week's Fact Or Fiction, 411 newcomer Jordan Linkous and Tim O'Sullivan debate the correct timing on putting the ECW Title back onto Rob Van Dam, among other things.
Douglas Nunnally makes his 411 debut this week with the first edition of Column O' Nonsense.
Michael Weyer gets in on my history action with this week's Shining A Spotlight, where he takes a look back at the Magnum TA-Nikita Koloff feud of 1986 that has achieved legendary propertions in the 20 years since. I can't believe it's been that long already.
Finally, my requisite shameless self-promotion: in this week's edition of That Was Then, we're on Part 5 of There Can Be Only One, which chronicles Bret Hart's career from WWF Title win #2 at Wrestlemania 10 to WWF Title win #3 at Survivor Series 1995.
Slow week, but the big question coming out of this week's ECW On Sci-Fi is when Rob Van Dam will cash in his now (presumably) guaranteed ECW Title shot. Big Show's already booked up for Cyber Sunday, so it won't be there. Survivor Series, maybe? Or will Van Dam hold out until December To Dismember?
CM Punk and Mike Knox finally got physical with one another, and Punk got the advantage despite Knox getting the advantage with a sneak attack. How long before a sanctioned match happens between them?
Hardcore Holly's heat seemed to have disappeared completely this week in the wake of the Test match. Did they really blow it all in one match, or is there a chance for Holly to save himself and get back to the level he was before this week?
Banging Out
That's it for me this week, folks. Alcohol is your friend, and Sam Adams Octoberfest may be the greatest beer you can buy. Thanks again for reading, and see you all next week. This is Stuart "F'n" Carapola, signing off. Thanks for reading.
All feedback can be directed to stuwrestling@hotmail.com.
