News to Start Your Weekend 5.4.07
Posted by Nick Marsico on 05.04.2007
Can a man get a bed to sleep on? Please? Oh, we're back to just wrestling this week, by the way.
Ya know, I can't win. Last week I told you about how my air bed has a leak, and thus I was sleeping on a very deflated bed. Early this week I just gave up and started sleeping on the floor. No big deal – I've slept on worse, and I can sleep just about anywhere. On Wednesday night, though, I remembered that my roommate's brother used to sleep on an air mattress, and found that mattress. I filled it up, all happy that I was going to get to sleep on a bed of some sort. I plugged the whole on the end of the bed where you fill it up, but once I finished, I still heard air coming out. Yeah… apparently the bed had a hole that the guy patched, but it's been a while. So this bed has a leak as well, and once again I went to sleep on an inflated bed and woke up on a deflated bed. That's always fun.
I also watched some of last year's CZW Cage of Death 8 show. I've only seen the first of 2 discs thus far, but it's kinda fun. What I've seen so far is a lot of guys who could be really good, but right now they're still sloppy. Lots of potential, though.
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Wednesday saw some huge news in the wrestling world. Ring of Honor announced a 6 PPV deal and WWE announced the return of the Diva Search.
I'm going to leave other people, such as Ari, talk about this more. I'm just excited about the prospect of this and am excited about the future. There are a lot of questions about how this will affect a lot of different things, including entrance themes and talent. I read that Gabe was looking into trying to make sure to get the rights to the entrance songs. It also looks like Homicide and Aries are going to be gone now that TNA is pulling their guys from the independent scene. I'll just say that this whole thing is very interesting and exciting and I'm looking forward to see where this all leads.
Also, I'm going to be front row for the first ROH PPV and you're not.
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Undertaker has been injured, and he's going to be gone for 6 to 8 months. That's a damn shame, but I will admit that I am glad that it at least keeps us from having to put up with them booking another needless Hell in a Cell match. It does make the booking for next week on SmackDown and Judgment Day interesting. How do they book the cage match? To me, the ways they can do it are having Batista win the title, have Kennedy cash in his title shot, or have Mark Henry take out the Undertaker and have the title vacated. I fear that they're going to waste Kennedy's MITB on this.
Speaking of Undertaker, the Last Man Standing match was AWESOME until the horrid finish. I have no problem with them booking a double count out. Not at all. But the way they did it? I hate the stupid pyro they always use when guys fall off the stage. I hate that they had to make those pillars fall. It looked silly and planned. It didn't look like the two guys fell off the stage and made things fall apart. It looked like they fell off the stage and somebody pulled a string to bring down the pillars. That's bad. It was a blemish on an otherwise really great match that built off of their WrestleMania match and was also much better.
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- Stone Cold is getting a career retrospective 3 disc DVD that is coming out in November. When is The Rock going to get one? I hope Vince isn't holding out on it because he can't get Rock to appear live on shows to promote it. In related news, Rock turned 35 on Wednesday. 35? Holy shit. Time goes by really, really fast.
- WrestleMania's buyrate has been estimated at 1.2 million buys worldwide. That would make it the most bought wrestling PPV in history. 768,000 of those are domestic.
- December to Dismember has been dropped. Now if only they have some more sense, they'll drop a few more.
-Apparently, Deuce and Domino were supposed to win the tag titles back at No Way Out. Can somebody PLEASE explain what doing things like that does for anybody? What is WWE's fascination with bringing in a new tag team and immediately giving them the straps?
- Allegedly, Orton trashed his hotel room after being told he was going to be sent home from the tour. I read that he was ‘messed up', and that was the reason. I assume that means he was doing some borderline Juventud Guerrera shit.
- An announcement may be made at the Sacrifice PPV about the TNA/NWA title situation.
- UFC President Dana White said that UFC will be running an event at Madison Square Garden in 2008. That's pretty cool.
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I liked Backlash. I thought it was a fantastic standalone show. Of course by that I mean that the build to it was horrendous. The show was really good, though, and I liked it more than WrestleMania.
The Hardys vs. Cade & Murdoch was a damn good opener, and it looks like these guys are going to get some sort of push. I really am looking forward to seeing where this is all going with them. I've been a fan of Cade and Murdoch since their debut, and I'm glad that they may actually be getting a real push now. I don't consider their early tag title reign to mean anything, mostly because the tag scene was an even bigger joke back then than it is now.
Mickie and Melina had a damn good match. All of the women in WWE seem to be improving week by week, too. Candice has been showing improvement for the past few months, Michelle McCool has been looking good, even Torrie has done some decent stuff. It's fun to watch.
Benoit vs. MVP was another good match in a series, but it was only better than their TV match from last Friday. I do love that they are continuing to build upon each match during the matches, by both guys doing different things to counter things that worked for the other guy in the previous matches.
The first few minutes of the ECW Title match was really fast paced and quite fun. That was the part where Lashley was just throwing around everybody. After that it slowed down, but it was still solid enough to be a pretty entertaining waste of 15 minutes. I gotta say, I've been really down on Vince for a while now, especially during his feud with DX (although the stuff in church was hysterical), and I hated how much time he wasted doing nothing but recapping his feud with Donald Trump leading to WrestleMania. The evolution of his character (or de-evolution, as it seems to be) into just a completely insane man has led to some really funny stuff.
Like I said earlier, the Last Man Standing match was really good. Like the Benoit/MVP match, they did stuff that was a nod to their previous match. I liked that a lot. I already exclaimed how much I hate the finish.
The WWE title match was a heck of a lot of fun.
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I wrote a final statement about all of the controversial stuff we've been discussing over the past few weeks, but I've decided that instead of posting it, I'm just going to let it sit, and let it be over.
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With the new development of the Ring of Honor PPV expansion, it has a chance to be seen by a whole lot of new people. I'm curious, readers of this very column. This question goes out to those of you who aren't very familiar with Ring of Honor or have even never seen a show. These PPV events are going to be 2 hour events that cost only 10 dollars. Will you be considering buying the shows? I'd like to know.
