News to Start Your Weekend 11.10.06
Posted by Nick Marsico on 11.10.2006
There's a crapload of stuff to talk about in this one, and it's mostly positive! That's new, right? Mostly Rutgers and Ring of Honor, but Survivor Series stuff as well. And positivity. Strap in, kids!
Well I certainly am a happy fellow today, which is quite a different story than what you've seen from me last week, but other than the fact that I'm kind of hungry and would really enjoy a nice juicy steak to celebrate, I can't complain. Plus my neck is kinda sore. But other than that, it's all positivity today, peoples. My Rutgers Scarlet Knights will REMAIN UNDEFEATED for at least one more week, as we have knocked off FORMER #3 in the country, the Louisville Cardinals, and did so in spectacular fashion. A 28-25 victory, scoring 14 unanswered points in the second half – it was 25-7 at one point, but the defense held ridiculously strong and aided us in shutting Louisville (the former number 3 team in the country, by the way) out for the entire second half. To anybody who follows college football, and hell, even if you don't but liked to get in on the ‘Rutgers is a joke' bandwagon, eat me, because we are, much like Chris Benoit, FOR MOTHERFUCKING REAL. I'm just a happy fellow right now. One little annoyance, however, that I will certainly overlook due to the fact that the crowd is a humongous asset, is that out of those 44,000+ that filled the stadium last night, the vast majority of them didn't give a fuck about the football team until they started winning this year. Some of them cocked their ears and took a listen when they got into a bowl last year, but now that they're undefeated and ranked, eeeeeeeverybody wants to join the club. Yeah, that's how it works in sports, and I love to see my team getting so much support (and hopefully some fucking respect), but for a guy like myself who has been following the team since I was 8 or 9 years old, I can't help but feel a slight bit bothered by the people who, as recent as two years ago, would make fun of me for being a fan of such a shitty team, and for people in general who had nothing but bad things to say about them and who are now acting like they've been fans forever; I guess that's just how it is, though, and as I said, it's still really, really nice and really fulfilling to see Rutgers Stadium so packed that they had to add extra seats and to see my team playing on national television weekly, even on multiple Thursday nights and a Sunday night.
I remember the days when I was much younger, back when Rutgers was lucky to get one game on local television a season, and when my father and I used to listen to the games every week on the radio, hoping each year that we could at least beat Temple (which, many years, we didn't – that's just fucking embarrassing). It seems so recent to me; back in 1996 and 1997 my father and I would talk about how we just had to get out to Rutgers stadium to see a game. He had never been there (though he had seen them play at Giants Stadium a couple times), and I had only been following the team for a couple years, being only 10-11 years old at the time. Finally, in 1999 we decided to go for it and purchase season tickets for the home games, and that's where my love for the hapless, hopeless, helpless Rutgers Scarlet Knights, the not-so-pride of New Jersey, really began to blossom. I remember sitting in a packed stadium in one of our first games to watch my Scarlet Knights get routed by the Texas Longhorns – did I forget to note that out of the 40,000 or so people there, maybe 3,000 of us (and that's probably being generous) were there to root for RU? It was basically an away game, just played in a familiar setting. After that it tended to just be week after week and year after year of just an empty stadium, losses left and right, and an empty victory here and there, sparsely produced. Rutgers almost beat Miami once, and this was back before the Hurricanes fell apart – back when they were the number 1 team in the nation. Rutgers was #115 and went into half time with a 17-14 lead (that should have been 24-7 if not for a bogus holding call that brought back a 90+ yard interception return for a touchdown). Of course then they did the famous "pulling a Rutgers" move after a scoreless third quarter and gave up 28 unanswered points in the fourth… my father, my best friend and I all left the stadium after the third of four touchdowns only to hear them score once more as we made our way to the bus line to get back to the parking lot at the basketball arena.
But here we are now, with nine wins and zero losses, undefeated and the top team in the Big East Conference, and last night we beat a ranked team for the first time since 1988 (when I was 2 years old and didn't even know the concept of school yet, let alone football). It was the first time Rutgers, ranked in the top 25, squared off with another ranked team, and the Knights prevailed. To call me happy would be quite the massive understatement – right now, not only are the Rutgers Scarlet Knights the Pride of New Jersey, but we're the pride of the east coast, and damn it feels good. I'll say it again, and I'll say it like a true Scarlet Knight… We R For Real.
But now on to what is apparently supposed to be the business at hand in this column, wrestling. I'll spare you of having to read two long, drawn out stories in a row so I'll speak of my Ring of Honor adventure later on, although I won't wait until later on to plug my main man, the guy who gives Judaism a good name, mister Ari Berenstein of the Column of Honor. I love that guy.
Hows about I start with some Survivor Series brouhaha? Three matches have been officially announced at the time this column is being written and subsequently has been posted, and they are:
Traditional Survivor Series Elimination Match
Triple H, Shawn Michaels, CM Punk, Jeff Hardy & Matt Hardy vs. Randy Orton, Edge, Mike Knox, Johnny Nitro & Gregory Helms
Traditional Survivor Series Elimination Match
John Cena, Rob Van Dam, Sabu, Kane & Bobby Lashley vs. Umaga, Big Show, Test, Finlay & Montel Vontavious Porter
Traditional Survivor Series Elimination Match
Johnny, Nicky, Kenny & Mikey (w/Mitch) vs. Ric Flair, Roddy Piper, Dusty Rhodes & Sgt. Slaughter (w/Arn Anderson)
It makes me beyond happy that we're getting multiple 8/10 man elimination matches on this show, and I hope that they book at least one more. Apparently three singles matches are on tap to be booked on SmackDown (King Booker vs. Batista, Chris Benoit vs. Chavo Guerrero and Undertaker vs. Mr. Kennedy – if none of those weren't quite obvious), but I really wish they wouldn't do that. SmackDown has their own pay-per-view coming up on December 17, a mere 3 weeks after the Survivor Series. By booking these matches, especially the latter two, we're likely to be seeing one rematch and one rematch of a rematch at the Armageddon show, and that's just completely unnecessary. If I had the book (and yeah, I generally tend to save this for The Fink's Payload, which I'm currently one half of), I'd put together a card with 6 traditional style Survivor Series matches and one singles match, that one being for the World Heavyweight Championship (and it wouldn't close the show, by the way, because it would certainly leave us on a sour note). On top of the already confirmed three matches, I would throw on:
World Heavyweight Championship
King Booker vs. Batista
Traditional Survivor Series Elimination Match
Chris Benoit, Undertaker, Paul London, Brian Kendrick & Jimmy Wang Yang vs. Chavo Guerrero, Mr. Kennedy, KC James, Idol Stevens & Sylvan
Traditional Survivor Series Elimination Match
Little Guido Maritato, Tony Mamaluke, Tommy Dreamer, Stevie Richards & The Sandman vs. Matt Striker, Elijah Burke, Sylvester Terkay, Kevin Thorn and Rene Dupree
Traditional Survivor Series Elimination Match
Carlito, Shad Gaspard, JTG, Rory McAlister & Roby McAlister vs. Shelton Benjamin, Lance Cade, Trevor Murdoch, Charlie Haas & Viscera
To me, that is just about ideal for a Survivor Series card in 2006, and it would quite probably entice me into plunking down 40 smackeroos to see the show live. Not to mention the fact that it would give so many more guys a chance to get on PPV and to get that extra bonus money – it would be great all around. When's the last time you remember 60 different guys booked on one pay-per-view card where there wasn't a battle royal? This would just be tremendous in my mind. Hell, you could even throw me a bone and put a 5-on-5 elimination match on HeAt:
Traditional Survivor Series Elimination Match
Val Venis, Super Crazy, Balls Mahoney, Al Snow & Funaki vs. William Regal, Daivari, Rob Conway, Shannon Moore & Tatanka
70 guys booked on one show? That would just be massive ridiculosity, and in the best way possible.
As it stands it looks like we won't get that, but 3 ain't bad, and there's a definite possibility for four overall, and that is quite appealing to me. I don't know that it's forty dollars appealing, but it is at least something that comes close to piquing my interest.
Hey, did you know that I've been following the progress of MTV's soon-to-be upstart promotion of sorts Wrestling Society X? Outside of the fact that I think calling it Wrestle Society X would be way cooler, this show has the potential to be quite awesome. All sorts of new talent continues to be added on. Browse the wrestling section here at 411 to find a full roster of guys signed to appear at the tapings, which will begin on Sunday and last until a week from yesterday. I just want to call to attention the fact that the two newest confirmations are misters Colt Cabana and Jimmy Jacobs (and LACEY~!). If I wasn't so afraid of being pegged as gay, I might go so far as to reveal to the public that this announcement makes me AROUSED~!
I won't go that far, though.
Oh, I forgot, also add Aaron Aguilera (Jesus), B-Boy, Sara Del Ray, Disco Machine, Quicksilver, Scorpio Sky and Joey Ryan, among others. This WSX thing is basically the showcase of showcases for the lesser appreciated awesome independents (well, basically Pro Wrestling Guerrilla) with a little Ring of Honor and former fairly big name stars mixed in to spice it up. Color me excited.
In my pants.
And not for Lacey.
Well, not JUST for Lacey.
They also announced some bands, but outside of the Deftones, I either don't like or know any of the others, so fuck ‘em.
I guess it's time to finally jump into Ring of Honor, which you can read about in even greater detail in a little piece called the Column of Honor. Ari Berenstein is my Homeboy! A new edition of said column will be posted on this very site tomorrow, by the way, so look forward to that just like me, ‘kay?
So what's going on in that Ring of Honor? There are no shows until Thanksgiving weekend, both of which (especially that Saturday in Edison) I could conceivably attend, but I'll be spending time chilling out at home with family and friends starting that Wednesday, and on Saturday I'll be enjoying myself with my daddy watching Rutgers stomp Syracuse. Signed for those shows, among others, are some good, good things, especially for the tag division – on 11.24 Austin Aries & Roderick Strong will have their second rematch against tag champs Chris Hero & Claudio Castagnoli (soon to be the departed Double C), and it will be No Disqualification due to the circumstances surrounding the finishes of their previous two matches, both ending due to shots with the Halliburton briefcase – first an undetected shot on Aries' ribs that led the Kings of Wrestling to their title victory, and last weekend it was Aries intercepting a briefcase pass and laying out the Kings in front of the referee for the disqualification. Add to that a tag match featuring Christopher Daniels & Matt Sydal vs. Davey Richards & Delirious, and tag team wrestling is still strong in ROH even with the oncoming departure of Claudio.
Plus, Pelle Primeau is involved in another multi-man match – maybe he can win again!
11.25 also has some strong matches, including the Kings of Wrestling, who, if successful against Aries and Strong, will be defending their tag titles against Christopher Daniels & Matt Sydal. Samoa Joe & Homicide are involved in a rematch of their street fight from a few weeks ago against the Briscoe Brothers, BJ Whitmer gets to fight for some revenge one-on-one with the man who broke his ankle and put him out of action Jimmy Jacobs, and Jimmy Rave has challenged, and been accepted, by Nigel McGuinness, after that wacky angle that they pulled last Saturday night in Philadelphia that will finally end the toilet papering of the ring when Rave enters. That was just an invitation for the retards in the audience to interrupt Rave's matches with TP as well as other things – god, I saw some of that shit going on in Philly last weekend, and I wanted to personally escort those individuals out of the building and aid in a bit of a "talking to", to put it nicely.
So yeah, some good stuff coming up in 2 weeks' time, definitely to be looked forward to.
I guess now is as good a time as any to bring you my thoughts from the ROH show in Philadelphia last Saturday which I attended live. My friend and I originally intended to take the train over to the Manhattan Center and meet the bus provided by PWI's Mike Johnson to Philly, but when I awoke on Saturday around noon, I was greeted with the news that at 10:30 or so, Johnson personally called my friend and explained to him that the bus trip was off due to some miscommunication with the bus company. I actually thought it was him just ribbing me, but then I went over to the ROH message boards and saw it for myself – I don't know him to play jokes like that, so I guess I should have believed him. In any event, he didn't come over and we didn't play Guitar Hero for hours and hours Friday night just to sit around and do nothing on Saturday, so seeing as I do happen to have a car, we decided to make the just sub-2 hour drive down to Philly from here in Westchester County, NY. Of course the dope that I am I misjudged where a sign was and immediately missed our first exit, so that added 15 minutes to our journey, as I just turned around, came back here and we started over. Plus the sun was just a bitch at 4 in the afternoon, so that didn't help anything. Well eventually we got on the right track and made our way over the GW Bridge (lower level, motherfuckers! The Martha Washington, as I like to call it – yeah… it's a missionary style bridge), and we trekked over the NJ Turnpike, my favourite highway to drive on ever ever, as it is basically unacceptable to drive any less than 70 miles an hour – any slower and cars WILL pass you on either side. Eventually we made it to our destination, the Pennsylvania National Guard Armory in Philadelphia, and it was time for the show.
I have to say, the bleacher seats there are AWESOME, which made the 20 dollar GA seats way worth it. Much better than having to stand on a chair for the entire show like I did at the Manhattan Center. Granted we showed up there over an hour late because I forgot our tickets on my dresser here at the apartment, but still. Stu Carapola expressed his thoughts on the show here, and I echo his sentiments, basically. Some notable things were Allison Danger's fantastic tiny little cheerleader outfit (I had a great view of her – as Coach Boone might say in my favourite sports movie ever Remember the Titans – John Brown hind parts) was wonderful, and Chris Hero is the asshole of all assholes for punching that sweet innocent girl in the face like he did. But then, the man does eat babies, so such is to be expected. Also, Pelle Primeau got the win over Cabana, Tolland and Whitmer and followed it up by crowd surfing in the GA area on the opposite end of the arena from me – and they dropped him. That was truly a wonderful moment with the perfect ending. Konnan was fun on the mic, but it was too bad that they only appeared to have one microphone that actually worked properly, so he sounded like shit while insulting Cornette, especially when the contrast of the quality of the two mics was shown every time Cornette answered back. It was a long promo, though, before Homicide and his posse came out, and the crowd began to turn on it, and not in a good way. Cornette really must be sick, because he was just rambling almost incoherently out there. Either that or he's just that good at portraying his character, since he is supposed to be playing a man driven nearly to insanity.
The tag title match was pretty good, but it was more just a hot angle that spanned from the first match of the show up until after intermission, as the Kings brawled with the former Gen Next after the Daniels/Cross match which set up the wild atmosphere of the title match. The angle they ran after the opener really got the crowd excited.
KENTA vs. Sydal was definitely the match of the night for me, and Sydal just looked fantastic here. He looked tough, he looked smooth, and he just looked good overall. KENTA is, of course, KENTA, so excellence is to be expected. It was just a brutal match that I am definitely looking forward to seeing again when this show's DVD is released. Plus the angle with Joe slapping KENTA after the match is sure to make 2007 quite interesting for Joe – it looks like it may turn out to be the year Samoa Joe takes on Japan, and it frightens me. In a good way, though.
Corino versus Homicide was about what it was expected to be, just a wild brawl with barbed wire and general brutality, and it closed the book in a very strong way on the 3+ year rivalry between Homicide and Corino. Can you believe that this feud began due to simple miscommunication during a tag team match where Homicide and Corino teamed up to defend Ring of Honor against the Backseat Boys, who at the time were basically invaders from CZW? Funny how things work out.
All in all it was a really fun show – not as good as Glory by Honor Night 2 in Manhattan, but really, who was asking it to be? And of course, in true Nick Marsico fashion, I managed to get us quite lost on the way back home to the tune of about an hour and 20 minutes off schedule. It was fun, at least, and when we finally made it back to New York and to our nice little diner right on the nice little college campus, we were able to enjoy a very obnoxious drunk girl a few booths away who laughed like none other than Count von Count of Sesame Street fame. We laughed and laughed as we made fun of her from a small distance, and the absolute highlight of the night (including the ROH show) came just before she walked out of the diner. There was a lull in our conversation (about her and the laugh, of course) and just as she's about to leave, we were treated to one more "ah – HA – ha". It was truly a great moment in world history. We laughed so hard that basically everyone in the diner (which was packed at 4AM Sunday morning) glared over at us.
Oh, and in case you were wondering, I passed by her on campus a couple days later, and yes, surprisingly enough, that IS her normal laugh. Freaky.
The Television Section
Well this should be quite easy. In the spirit of positivity, I will not speak of RAW nor Cyber Sunday. I certainly will not tell you that I watched the first couple minutes of Kane vs. Umaga and then promptly fast forwarded to the tag team schmozz, watched that because it was a scant 4 minutes long and because I wanted to see Cryme Tyme steal Lawler's laptop, and then for some reason unbeknownst to man and God I decided to torture myself and sit through the 13 minute shitfest of an IC title match. I finally came to my senses and realized that I just didn't give a fuck about 13 seconds into the DX vs. Orton and Edge match and stopped watching.
Then I proceeded to watch RAW in 8 minutes' time. It sucks and I don't care.
ECW was, as usual, pretty decent, featuring a good match between Punk and Knox (in Punk's first real match on television, no less), a decent squash for Daivari, and RVD was once again able to pull out a miracle and make 10 minutes of him getting beat up by the Big Show fairly entertaining to watch. Van Dam is a man revived – too bad Vince apparently wants to keep the title far away from him.
I will complain about the Daivari squash, though, and squashes in general. You want to know why it takes so long for a new guy to get over 9 times out of 10? Because he isn't booked in an interesting way. It's either a big hoss who gets to dominate little guys for weeks and months on end, a chickenshit heel who gets cheap yet somewhat dominating victories for weeks and months on end, or any combination of the two. If guys were booked into situations where they went out and wrestled hard fought matches (against anybody), whether they win or lose, it would get them over. The fans actually respond to a good match taking place in the ring, and they generally don't tend to respond when somebody they've never heard of spends 3 minutes on TV every week for 2 months beating up on people that they don't give a damn about. That booking basically never works, and the fans generally don't start giving a fuck until the new guy gets his first real feud. The era of the jobber should be over, except for on HeAt, where it those matches can be used as a way of evaluating prospective talents and the like. There's just too many shows being run for guys to be oversaturated with boring squash victories the way they are, and it's just a silly way to do business, and no matter how decent McMahon might be doing right now profit wise, he'd be doing exponentially better if he got rid of shitty booking trends like this one.
Well that's that rant, and since I haven't seen iMPACT yet, that about wraps this section up. Here's a quick run down of the matches for tonight's SmackDown, though:
King Booker vs. Bobby Lashley
Matt Hardy & Jimmy Wang Yang vs. Gregory Helms & Sylvan
Chris Benoit vs. KC James
Boogeyman vs. TJ Dalton
Batista vs. Finlay
Check out this shit
RocketBusta Radio, which is now airing on our own little radio station known to all as Radio TGO. Part 1 of our interview with Eddie Kingston aired last week and that show is up for download, and Part 2 will air tomorrow night along with much more goodness. All of that (aside from the interview) will be LIVE at 8 PM EST.
The rest of my links (well Ari's column, Stu's 11.4 thoughts and a blatant plug of my other column) are scattered throughout this column. Check out the wrestling section of this very fine website and read what interests you. There's a whole lotta good going on ‘round here.
Oh, and I don't like to beg or plead, but I would like to mention how I do quite enjoy feedback, and right now I'm getting little to none every week. There was a time where I really, really enjoyed writing this column and looked forward to it, and that was a time in which I received multiple emails from people who read this every week. It's probably not a good thing to talk about in a column, but I really would like some feedback – your opinions on anything, responses to the shit I say – whatever you want; your responses were what drove me to write my best columns here, and as far as I'm concerned the quality has substantially dropped off since I stopped receiving much or any feedback at all. Granted I can't blame it all on you, because there's a long list of factors that has lead to a bit of a rough spot with my work here, but the lack of feedback certainly has contributed. I know people are reading, and if nothing else, just drop me a line every once in a while and let me know. Knowing that I have people reading and enjoying (or hating, but still reading) what I write every week is something that will keep this little column here going strong, and I would just generally appreciate the support. Also, I think my cat just took a shit on the chair next to me. Thanks for ruining the moment, cat.
