Friendly Competition 4.14.07
Posted by Stuart Carapola on 04.14.2007
Glory Day, CM Punk has joined the New Breed! I have plenty to say about that, plus the usual rankings, Vital Social Issues N' Stuff, and YOUR Dickhead Of The Week!
Well, CM Punk finally made his decision and I firmly believe it's the right one. More on than later. Also, TNA had the final lead-in to their Lockdown PPV tomorrow night, so what did they do in the go home episode of Impact? Well, let's take a look.
ECW On Sci Fi Results 4/10/2007
-Vince McMahon opens the show and tells us that he can't get revenge on Steve Austin or Donald Trump since they're not around, so instead he'll get his revenge on Bobby Lashley. Unfortunately, he says that Lashley's not here tonight because of the beating he suffered on Raw. Vince envisions himself winning the ECW Title at Backlash, a thought which must almost certainly be making the guys at PWInsider want to die so they can spin in their graves. BTW, I still love that hat.
-Rob Van Dam catches CM Punk backstage shadowboxing, and he tries to sway Punk to the side of the ECW Originals. He is interrupted by Elijah Burke (w/clicking hair beads) coming out and insisting that next week, he'll join the New Breed. CM Punk says "Fuck that, I'm giving you bitches your answer tonight." Well, he doesn't say it in those words, but that's what he probably meant.
-Kevin Thorn defeats Tommy Dreamer with the Tower Of Transylvania.
-Backstage, we're in Hardcore Hobags' dressing room, and Gene Snitsky (w/o steroids) comes in and breathes heavy at them. These four is a rape porno waiting to happen.
-CM Punk has his weekly match with Stevie Richards, but much like a girl at an ROH show, he's got people standing around watching him, in this case Sandman for the ECW Originals and Matt Striker for the New Breed. I really feel bad for Stevie Richards, he's such an extra at this point that it's not even funny. Sandman takes a swing at Striker with his cane and accidentally hits Punk. Richards rolls him up, but we all know better than to think that Stevie's going to beat anyone, and as you might imagine, Punk reverses the rollup to a sitting cradle for the win. Sandman gets in the ring to explain himself, but Punk looks unconvinced.
-Hardcore Hobags comes out to do their dance, and apparently Layla's too stupid to figure out how to get out of a wrestling ring, actually ducking under the ropes and then turning back in. Luckily, Balls Mahoney runs into the ring and Layla, seeing him enter, figures out where the door is and bails. Balls nails him with a chair, but Snitsky no-sells, kicks him in the face, and leaves.
-Main event time, as Rob Van Dam takes on Marcus Cor Von. The end comes when Burke attacks Sabu at ringside, prompting Van Dam to take chase, but when they find their way back into the ring, Cor Von pounces his head off and gets the win. This brings out CM Punk, who checks on Van Dam and Sabu before running in the ring, making angry faces and clenching his fists at the New Breed...then smiling and shaking their hands. Well, I would have been happier if he'd laid out Van Dam and Sabu before joining up, but it's the right move at the end of the day so whatever.
TNA Impact Results 4/12/2007
-Jeremy Borash is backstage, and LAX has a big surprise for tonight! Gee, I wonder if it'll be Big Dick Dudley's corpse?
-Sting is in the ring with Team Angle and after apologizing for the delay, accepts the invitation to be the fourth man on Angle's team. However, Angle is still reluctant to tell who his fifth man is going to be, prompting Samoa Joe to accuse Kurt Angle of working them all, saying that Angle's road to the title would be a lot easier without the rest of them around. Angle tells Joe not to question his integrity, and that the fifth man would become known before the end of the evening.
-Against the odds, Jay Lethal pops me yet again with his Macho Man imitation, showing that he not only does a dead on impression of the way he talks, but actually coming out in a Macho Man outfit with the tights, jacket, hat and sunglasses, and then actually wrestles the match so much like Randy Savage that if I wasn't looking closely, I honestly wouldn't know the difference if Lethal wasn't black. He cleanly defeats X-Division Champion Chris Sabin in what was presumably a non-title match.
-Christian Cage is backstage with his team and is freaking out over the way things are going, but decides that Team Cage would do better to worry about tonight first before worrying about Lockdown, and he doubts that Angle has a fifth man because if he did, he would have said who it is by now.
-"Black Machismo" Jay Lethal is backstage with Kevin Nash who introduces Sonjay Dutt's new persona...Vin Man. Thankfully it's not another lame Vince McMahon reference, but actually Sonjay Dutt dressed and acting like Vinnie Vegas. They file out just in time for another lame backstage segment with Eric Young, Robert Roode, James Storm, Jackie Moore, and Miss Brooks that's so lame that I won't even bother recapping it.
-Robert Roode & Miss Jackie beat Petey Williams & Gail Kim, prompting Chris Harris to run in after the match and attack Storm and Jackie, but the heels overpower him. Eric Young runs out to make the save and Roode tries telling him to put down the chair, but quickly bails instead.
-Jeremy Borash is backstage trying to get a word from Christopher Daniels, but Daniels just shoves him with the bat and walks off. Luckily, they do get some words from LAX, who have taken Brother Runt captive and I guess they're going to sacrifice him or something later. We catch up with them out in the ring and, despite the protestations of Team 3D (who for some reason protest from the video wall instead of running out to help), Konnan tazers Runt because the US shoots first and asks questions later or something.
-Samoa Joe defeated AJ Styles in the main event to win the numbers advantage for Team Angle in Lethal Lockdown. Team Angle and Team Cage both came to ringside and brawled while the ref was bumped, allowing Jeff Jarrett to make his return, hitting Styles with his guitar to set up the Joe victory and making it known that he's the fifth member of Team Angle.
Overall Top Ten Ranking
As voted by me. This ranking includes wrestlers from both groups, is done on a week by week basis, is based on a combination of how well they produce in the ring and how much they entertain me, and is entirely subjective.
ECW World Champion: Bobby Lashley (Champion Since 12/3/2006)
NWA World Champion: Christian Cage (Champion Since 1/14/2007)
1)CM Punk
2)Samoa Joe
3)AJ Styles
4)Marcus Cor Von
5)Jay Lethal
6)Kevin Thorn
7)Elijah Burke
8)Rob Van Dam
9)LAX
10)Christopher Daniels
Dickhead Of The Week: Layla
While this section is normally reserved for, you know, WRESTLERS, I couldn't ignore Layla's unique contribution to the annals of dickheaddom with her amazing ineptitude in the mechanics of entering and exiting a wrestling ring. This earns her the unique honor of becoming the first ever Miss Dickhead. Here's something you may never have picked up on: you ever notice that these lovely young ladies are already in the ring when their stupid dance routine starts? I'd be willing to bet they spend the entire commercial break helping them figure out how to get in the ring. The once inside, we discover that there is actually somebody on this planet stupider than Kelly Kelly, who seems to have no trouble getting out of the ring, and that person's name is Layla. Listen, you and I both know that a high IQ is by no means any kind of requirement to do well in the WWE Diva Search, but it has now been scientifically proven that you have to be more intelligent to navigate a wrestling ring than do an "erotic" dance. That's enough to leave even the mouthiest person shaking their head speechlessly, but then to make the situation even stupider, she just stands there in front of the ropes gawking at Snitsky with the worst scared face I think I've probably ever seen while poor Joey Styles and Tazz are sitting at ringside being forced to take the situation seriously. This is truly tragic.
Vital Social Issues N' Stuff With Stuart
I cannot applaud enough the decision to turn CM Punk heel. I've mentioned it in the past, but CM Punk is a really, really good heel. I'm not just saying this as an ROH fanboy, but as a wrestling fan, Punk is an amazing heel and one of the best I've ever seen at cutting heel promos. Punk just has this way of knowing exactly what to say to connect with the audience to make them hate him, he knows exactly what buttons to push and exactly how to carry himself to make it believable. The ultimate example I point to is at Death Before Dishonor III when he challenged Austin Aries for the ROH World Title in what was supposed to be his last match in the promotion before going to WWE. He surprised the crowd by winning the title, and then proceeded to cut this amazing promo where he told the crowd that had supported him for over a year in his quest to win the ROH World Title and all the feuds in between that he had used them all to get what he wanted and now that he was the ROH World Champion he had no problem telling them exactly what he thought of them and ROH, which he planned to leave and take the title with him. I can't do the promo justice, but the crowd that was just minutes earlier going nuts and having their heartstrings tugged at as the biggest hero in ROH history won the title nobody expected him to win had now completely turned against Punk, who had now become the most dastardly heel in the promotion with one promo. I was there live, and still consider it one of the greatest things I've ever seen, but the point is that he knew exactly what to say and how to say it to get exactly the reaction he wanted. I'm calling it now, if they let him cut loose with his heel promos, he's going to be THE star for the next big boom.
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One of the questions Ari and I were asked in this week's Fact Or Fiction was whether we believed that Gene Snitsky should be released, and my answer was no because being a shitty wrestler and/or boring personality is no reason for me or Ari to go passing judgment on people's careers. However, I think a better question would be why these people were even hired in the first place? Snitsky's been on the roster for what, three years now, and they're just now finding something to do with him? How much you wanna bet his big push will be dead and forgotton by Summerslam? So he's just going to go back to obscurity and remain under contract until they give him another half-hearted push in a year or two. I call it the Mark Henry Push. But he's not the only one, what about La Resistance? What have they done since 2003? They're just sitting there taking up space on the roster page without ever having accomplished a damn thing. What about Daivari? He stands next to big scary guys and gets forgotten. Shannon Moore? Somebody explain to me what the fuck the benefit of having Shannon Moore on the roster has EVER been, please. I'm really at a loss as to why anybody thought any of these people would be worth signing if there was never any real reason to believe they'd ever be used effectively. What has any of them ever added? Doesn't WWE realize that these people are just sucking up money and not being used for ANYTHING? It's like WCW in the 90s. Listen, I know that WWE is the top show in town, but that doesn't mean they have to hire everyone. Don't they feel they have ANY accountability to the stockholders?
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For months, I've been wondering what the idea behind Hardcore Hobags and their weekly dance was and where it was designed to eventually lead. I quickly realized my error in believing that WWE ever has any kind of long term plan, and quickly abandoned that line of thinking, instead thinking that it would be cool if Snitsky would just come in and wipe all three of them out. So now it finally looks like this is where things are going, but the bastards teased me with potential fun before diverting it to what appears to be the beginning of a Snitsky-Mahoney feud. So this is it, huh WWE Creative? This is the best payoff you could come up with to this mindless weekly waste of time? This "feud" is going to last maybe two weeks and we all know it's going to end with Balls getting fucking squashed. The only way they can save this at this point is to have Snitsky squash Balls, then go after Hardcore Hobags again, only to be cut off by another wrestler. Keep this cycle going through three or four wrestlers and keep teasing people before finally letting Snitsky kill them DEAD to a huge crowd pop. Well, at least it would pop me.
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Short of Ed Leslie, I don't think there's a better example in this industry of somebody latching onto someone with star power and riding it for everything it's got than Matt Hyson. By all rights, the guy shouldn't have ever had a job anywhere after ECW died, and even then his gimmick was really contrived. Okay, great, he did a cute giant killer gimmick in ECW that lasted a short time before it was back to jobbing for him. Anything and everything he's done since then has been a joke. He's not horrible in the ring, but he's far from a lightweight workrate machine and his style is so goofy sometimes that it's barely over the line of passable. Regardless of what I personally think of Team 3D, they have inexplicably become national stars, and if it weren't for them, Hyson would have been back in civilian life six years ago when ECW went out of business. The fact that this guy keeps getting work because he's a third-string member of a forgotten stable that disappeared ten years ago is not only mind-boggling, but actually insulting to the serious wrestlers who could add something other than being the guy who gets beat up by the guys Team 3D's wrestling at the PPV.
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Boy, have they killed off all the Team Canada guys, or what? Listen, not that Robert Roode was ever going to be a PPV headliner or anything, but they at least had people the fans cared about in Petey Williams and Eric Young, but now they're both DEAD. The whole storyline where Robert Roode owns Eric Young is so lame and nonsensical that I really feel like if Eric Young turned on Roode tomorrow, nobody would care because of how poorly this storyline has been booked. Forgetting for a moment that it's illegal to own somebody, Eric Young was chugging along fine as TNA's mascot until he got involved with that black hole of heat himself, Robert Roode. Now thanks to Robert Roode (who is so bad that whenever he wrestles, nobody wins), they've killed another guy the TNA fans actually cared about. Petey, in the meantime, is easily the most talented member of Team Canada, so what do they do? That's right, they made him American and had him job to James Storm for three straight PPVs. Now he's unfortunate enough to get sucked into the Robert Roode Vortex Of No Escape, and I'm thinking you can probably kiss his heat goodbye too. I think that the only way to get a positive fan reaction out of Robert Roode at this point would be to kill him live in the Impact Zone. I don't mean the Al Wilson, have him screw Miss Brooks to death way, but like the Weekly Execution Of AJ Styles way.
Links To Stuff You Can Read
Didn't catch TV this week? That's okay, because Michael Baure and JD Dunn have ECW On Sci-Fi, while Larry and Ryan have TNA Impact.
Andy Clark looks back on interpromotional matches in The Shimmy.
My ROH amigo Sam Berman gives us the second part of his look back at the CM Punk vs Raven feud in The Independent Mid-Card.
Whoa ho, double appearance by me on Thursday! First, I join up with the rest of the ROH regulars in previewing this weekend's ROH shows in the ROH Roundtable Preview.
Then, after that, I go one-on-one with another ROH booster, Ari Berenstein, in week ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY FOUR of Fact OR Fiction.
What Did We Learn This Week?
In all things, there is at least one lesson to be learned. Here I will impart upon you what I took away from the weekly television of ECW, TNA, and WSX. You too can learn important life lessons from Kevin Thorn and Maverick Matt, and are encouraged to send in your own revalations.
This week on ECW On Sci-Fi, I learned that...
-There's a reason there aren't many nonviolent heel turns.
-Wrestling rings are right up there with Alcatraz and the mob as the toughest things to get out of.
-Thomething fewt wike it wath mithing thith week.
This week on TNA Impact, I learned that...
-It is possible for an imitation to be so good that it's actually more entertaining than the original.
-Ed Leslie has taught Matt Hyson everything there is to know to make a career out of being a hanger-on.
-Every time I think I couldn't care less about Robert Roode and Eric Young, I'm always proven wrong.
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That's it for me today, I'll be back tomorrow with my preview for Lockdown and more in the Ominous Thoughts News Report. See you then.
