The Wrestling News Experience: 04.09.07
Posted by Stephen Randle on 04.09.2007
You asked for it (well, not really) and I deliver: The Final Word on The Hardcore Diaries!
Good morning, everyone, and welcome to the Experience. I'm Stephen Randle, and it just occured to me today that I am, in fact, the son of the son of a plumber. No wonder I have so much charisma.
And the Leafs are out, due to the fact that they lost the games they had to win, notably that Buffalo game where they blew a 4-1 lead, and the Islanders game which let them back into it. Ah well, at least they took Montreal down with them. Besides, baseball season's started again, so I no longer have to care. Plus the Raptors somehow managed to win their division title with nobody paying attention. Talk about the worst luck, they're the best team in a city that only cares about the sport that they don't play.
Also, Happy Easter for those who celebrate such. What it really means is that I'm at my parents' house on their laptop, which explains why I may be a little less verbose today. I just can't get used to laptop keyboards. It's like a condition or something. Maybe they have pills.
Moving on.
Around The Horn
TNA has spent the last week in serious negotiations with Spike TV to extend their timeslot to two hours, and also add a second show of some sort. In TNA is actually shopping Impact with other networks, though this reporter has to feel that it's only as a leverage maneuvre with Spike. For their part, Spike has had a lot of faith in TNA, especially given their treatment of ECW and WWE in the past. TNA has delivered decent ratings for the network, and fits in nicely with their "tough guy" schedule of shows like UFC, Pros vs Joes, and the new reality show Bullrun (which isn't half bad). The addition of a second hour to TNA has seemed for a while to be somewhat of a Holy Grail, which would allow featuring more of their large roster than they are currently. Of course, for the longest time, that Grail has been guarded by rude French people, and it is only now that TNA has massed an army large enough to take the Black Castle of Arrrrgh and free the...
Wait, sorry, I got sidetracked.
Anyway, things look good for TNA on the business side. Ironically, TNA is under some serious critical scrutiny from fans, more than ever before, heading into Lockdown, due to an individual who shall always remain Vince Russo. So, who's turning in the Lethal Lockdown match? Get your bets in now, the pool closes soon!
Dana White has said on a radio show that Kurt Angle would get killed in a UFC ring, and would never survive a year of MMA training. Well, now he's going to try just to prove he can. Look what you've done, Dana White. Shame on you.
Mick Foley, whose book I will speak of further down in the report, will be speaking at MIT this Thursday, as part of a course which apparently studies pro wrestling and its place in popular culture. Just like I say when watching all those college movies full of hot, sex-crazy girls...I am totally going to the wrong university.
Former Tough Enough champion Matt Cappotelli will be having surgery to remove an aggressive tumour from his brain on May 1st. Of course, my thoughts and prayers are with Matt and his family and friends, as he attempts one more comeback from another bad break.
In case you still had hope, you optimistic little scamp, it turns out that this year, it will be WWE One Night Stand, and is being advertised as a presentation of all three brands. That's right, the ECW PPV's are dead. Of course, now we have a new problem: there's about 6 WWE PPV's in a span of three months coming up, none of which are single-brand. Be afraid, be very afraid.
Chris Kanyon has announced his retirement from wrestling. While it's unclear at this time, the early assumption is that WWE forced him into retirement due to his sexual orientation. Yes, I know he doesn't work there, they're just screwing with his head now.
WWE has admitted to Forbes that Vince McMahon is not really a billionaire anymore. I'll give you a second to pretend to be shocked.
Okay, that's enough.
And before I leave this segment, Marcus Bagwell has announced that he'll be reforming American Males with his tag partner Scotty Riggs, as well as Vicious and Delicious with his tag partner Scott Norton. This recycling of tag partners idea is so lame that one can only figure that WWE will use it. Oh wait, Haas and Benjamin. Forget I said anything.
The Injury Bug Bites
Inactive List as of 04.02.07
WWE
- Beth Phoenix, RAW, out indefinitely as of June 6 (jaw)
- Chris Jericho, out indefinitely (kayfabe, fired)
- Mark Henry, SD!, out 6-8 months as of July 15th (patella)
- Paul Burchill, SD!, out indefinitely as of May 29 (shoulder)
- Rene Dupree, ECW, out indefinitely as of March 2007 (Wellness)
- Rey Mysterio, SD!, out indefinitely as of October 2006 (knee surgery)
- Triple H, RAW, out 4-6 months as of January 7 (torn quadriceps)
TNA
No major injuries.
Transactions
- Colt Cabana, signed a contract with WWE
Heard nothing but good things about this guy, apparently he was on WSX, but I (and everyone else) didn't watch it anyway.
- Hardcore Holly, out indefinitely as of April 3 (elbow surgery)
You know, I have a theory that Bob Holly and Mark Henry are the same person. When one gets injured, the other returns. And Henry HAS been making some house show appearances lately.
- King Booker, out two months as of April 6 (knee surgery)
Well, that explains the odd attack on the Undertaker at the end of Smackdown, especially since he got destroyed even though he was the ambusher. One wonders how much Booker really has left at this point, since the King Booker thing was a lucky thing that managed to extend his career another year, but with a new King being crowned (presumably) this year, what's left for Booker?
One Year Ago This Experience
Originally posted 04.10.06, and Randy Orton was suspended for 60 days for unprofessional conduct. A year later, he's at the center of a Sports Illustrated article about steroid use, and was pulled from public appearances because of fears that he would say the wrong thing. You know, even dogs learn if you hit them on the nose with a newspaper a couple times.
And Impact moved to Thursday nights, on its way to moving to Thursday nights during primetime, which would be at the same time as both Gray's Anatomy and Scrubs, proving to be a horrible mistake on their part. As far as me watching on Thursdays goes, anyway. Hey, I watch the replay on Saturday, calm down.
The Wrestling Fan's Experience
This week's Experience, as teased for a couple weeks, comes from Matthew Alan Roberts
---
1. Why I am a wrestling fan.
I enjoy the unique combination of colorful characters and incredible athleticism (except for Giant Khali matches that is). In the so called real sports (particularly over the last decade) all the athletes are anonymous and it just seems to be the same thing over and over again. I have quit watching wrestling plenty of times (from 1993 to 1998 and in 2003), but something always draws me back in (in 1998 it was NWO, DX, Austin, Foley and in 2004 it was Benoit / Guerrero getting pushed and Cena before Nipple H ruined him). Wrestling fans put up with a lot of crap on the show and in real life, but the special moments we share as a common history (Savage / Steamboat, Benoit / Hunter / Michaels, Austin 3:16, et cetera) make it all worthwhile.
2. How I got into pro wrestling.
I started watching in 1984 with the birth of Hulkamania and the rise of the WWF. My father (who I did not get along with) did not like me loving wrestling and most people I went to school with did not think wrestling was cool (I am a dork and proud of it), so I just got more and more into it to piss them off. I made friends here and there with other closet wrestling fans and became a fan of NWA, AWA, WCCW, et cetera as well. In 1998 I got back into it because by then it was cool to like wrestling and I met a lot of NWO marks who got me back into watching (by 1999 I figured out how stale WCW was and dumped them in favor of watching WWF full time).
---
We're hitting the limit on submissions again, so you know I'm going to beg for more. That's right, send me your responses to one or both of the following two statements, and I'll reward you by printing it right here in the best damned Monday news report in the entire Internet.
1. Why I am a wrestling fan.
2. How I got into pro wrestling.
So send those response in today, the next Experience could be yours.
Kyle McCowin has a correction for me, and it just deserves being copy-pasted because it's a better joke than I could come up with.
A minor point, but you missed Michelle McCool returning during the 10-woman tag on SD this week. Or so the recaps claim. I can't actually remember what she looks like. But, and this is going out on a limb here, I'm going to guess that she's one of the ones with a needless and nasty boob job.
Correction made.
Matthew Alan Roberts predicts that Kennedy will not be going over anyone with his MITB shot, since they already jobbed him to two out of the three champions in the last three months, and the third one is Cena. Plus, and I sort of agree, if everyone who gets the MITB shot wins the title with it, it becomes predictable. He also notes that he didn't buy Mania because he didn't think it was worth his 50 bucks, but will pick up the DVD. Hey, that kind of segues into this...
How dare you write about WM23 when you didnt even watch it. You are a complete retard. Stop talking wrestling when you dont even watch the biggest ppv of the year.
Go Fuck Yourself.
Oh, and this, sent to Larry and forwarded to me. Same author. Go figure, 411 writers share things like this with each other.
As a wrestling writer how do you allow Randle to write every Monday. That asshole didnt even watch WM23. I will not return to 411 until I hear from you or Ashish about this. Please reply cause I enjoy this site everyday.
Well, Ashish is a busy guy and Larry has hate mail of his own to answer, so as co-Editor of the Wrestling Zone (which, by the way, is why I'm allowed to write every Monday), it fell to me to respond to your request.:
Boy, I bet you really hoped that I'd print your name with those e-mails, didn't you? I'm fairly secure in my decision not to watch WrestleMania, mostly because as a student holding down a full-time job, I don't have fifty extra dollars lying around for PPV's all the time. I did watch the Royal Rumble, because it's my favourite PPV, but unless something really takes my breath away, I probably won't watch another WWE PPV until next year's Rumble. I've never made a secret of the fact that I don't watch PPV's of any brand, and no one's ever had a problem with it until you. So...who's more in line with the general public's opinion...you, or every other reader of my report? Take a second, I know it's hard work, thinking.
I suppose I could pepper my response with swear words, and mock your lack of intelligence or something, but it's not really worth my time. Besides, you aren't reading this anyway, right?
He won't be missed.
And now, for some semi-lighter fare, Manu Bumb provides a YouTube video of blown spots right here. These pop up every once in a while, and they're usually interesting. I do kind of wish they wouldn't put in spots where wrestlers horribly injure themselves, but other than that, it's a decent watch.
And One To Go On - The Final Word: The Hardcore Diaries
Okay, so I bought it, from Amazon.ca (and thus saved about half the cost, not a good sign when a book that's a month old is nearly 50% off) and read it last week. Anyone who knows me, knows I like Mick Foley. His first book is one of my favourites, and I read a large amount of books, so that means a lot. I even own Tietam Brown and Scooter, which makes me one of very few people.
That said, the Hardcore Diaries are less a book and more a meandering series of random thoughts from Mick, without much attention to timeline or spatial organization. The greatest strengths of his first books were their flow, through Foley's life and career, in well-organized chapters. This is just a jumble. Admittedly, some of the stories are interesting, some are funny, and some are heartfelt. But there's no order here, it jumps from thought to thought without any real segue. Plus, it jumps forwards and backwards in time seemingly at random. We're at late 2001, then we're at WrestleMania 22, then back to Mania 20 and his Orton feud. I found myself often confused about exactly his stories were happening in the WWE timeline.
There have been complaints that he focuses far too much on Terry Funk, and also on Melina, but really, if you can hold onto the main thread of the plot, they're both the main characters in Foley's story of his attempt to create a storyline for the ECW PPV and a feud with Ric Flair after that. Some of Foley's beliefs about Funk may be a little crazy, but they don't ruin the story or anything.
Really, it's the poor organization that does that. It seems like they didn't even attempt to edit Foley this time, just took his pages of notebook paper and bound it. So, in the end, the Hardcore Diaries ultimately disappoints, even though some of the stories are worth reading. It's just not the quality product that I expected from a Foley book, and when he's written several, you kind of have to set high expectations. Buy it if you're a completist or can handle his haphazard style, but if you're looking for the high-quality writings of Have a Nice Day, look elsewhere.
That's my show, before we go, we check in with our good friend Larry Csonka, for a preview of tomorrow's Your News, My Views. Larry, how are you doing?
Fine, Randle. No thanks to you.
Me? What did I do?
I know it was you who poisoned me last week, giving me the Asian Death Bird Flu and preventing me from bringing my traditional wit and style to the live coverage of a historic WrestleMania.
Larry...
Your denials will fall on deaf ears! Can you imagine how I felt last week, knowing I was missing a classic Great Khali-Kane showdown? Or what about the lumberjill match? The poetry of those Divas as they exhibited their technical expertise in a main-event level spectacle? Do you know what it feels like to have missed that?
No, I can't say I do, Larry.
You should be ashamed. Because of you, I missed the ECW Originals vs The New Breed. It was the match that set up the ECW Originals vs The New Breed on ECW on Sci-Fi this week! It was the prologue! That's like watching The Empire Strikes Back without seeing A New Hope first!
I'll take your word for it, Larry. Larry Csonka, ladies and gentlemen. 411 will have live coverage of Raw tonight starting at 9 pm EDT. I'm outta here, I'll be back next week.
