Friendly Competition 6.02.07
Posted by Sam Caplan on 06.02.2007
My thoughts on concussion angles, Kevin Nash, Bob Backlund, and the infamous "crappy" Vince-Lashley promo, plus Vital Social Issues N' Stuff, what I learned this week, and YOUR Dickhead Of The Week!
First thing I'd like to do is give a big welcome home to Mom Robson, who's finally home after a month in the hospital rehabbing after knee surgery. Hi, Mom Robson! Now with that out of the way, let's get down to business!
ECW On Sci Fi Results 5/29/2007
Randy Orton made an unwelcome appearance on ECW On Sci-Fi, though to his credit he at least realized how unwelcome he was. He started gloating about what he did to Rob Van Dam on Raw, but this drew the ire of Van Dam's fellow ECW
Original Tommy Dreamer, who challenged Orton to a match later in the evening. Orton beat Dreamer with the RKO, then hit him with a second RKO and several kicks to the head after the match. This drew out Van Dam to try and save Dreamer, but one shot to the head put Van Dam down, casting his participation in One Night Stand into doubt.
The Elijah Burke-CM Punk issue continued as well, as the two men fought in a no DQ match. Nothing that could have caused a disqualification came in until late in the match, which gave both men a fifteen minute opportunity to showcase their ability to build a match. Finally at the end, a table found its way into the ring, and after both men came close to going through the table several times, Marcus Cor Von came into the ring and gave CM Punk the Pounce through the table as Punk tried to give Burke the Go To Sleep. The pinfall was acedemic after that, and Elijah had scored his first win over Punk.
Perhaps trying to ride the momentum from this win, Matt Striker confronted Brett and Brian Major backstage and, after gratuitously plugging the Draft Lottery on Raw, began gloating about his win over Brett last week and then challenged Brian to meet him in the ring as well to prove that he could beat both of them. Former New Breed member Kevin Thorn also had a strong week, dominating and defeating Balls Mahoney.
Finally, there was the promo everybody was talking about where the 61-year old ECW World Champion Vince McMahon had a satellite interview with Bobby Lashley, who will challenge him this weekend at One Night Stand. Lashley was unusually calm and jovial, and made several jokes at Vince's expense. The jokes sucked, but Lashley laughed anyway. Even though Lashley considers Vince old enough to be his dad's uncle (which he seemed to get a real kick out of), Vince insisted that he's from the street and is the King Of The Streetfight, and will do whatever it takes to destroy Lashley at One Night Stand.
TNA Impact Results 5/31/2007
The drama surrounding the build to Slammiversary's King Of The Mountain match continued this week, as due to family circumstances, Jeff Jarrett pulled himself out of the qualifying round and the match in which he was scheduled to compete tonight. This drew out Christian Cage, who bitched about the situation and, after accusing Cornette of being a bad businessman, insists that Cornette should give AJ Styles (Jarrett's scheduled opponent) a forfeit win and advance him directly to King Of The Mountain. Cornette told him that this was what he had planned to do, but since Christian considers him a bad businessman, he decided that he'd better not do what he normally would and instead books Styles to face fellow Christian Coalition member Tomko in tonight's qualifier. Miscommunication led to a Styles victory, as a chair found its way into the ring and Christian, trying to grab the chair and pull it out of the ring, wound up playing tug of war with Tomko for the chair, allowing Styles to roll tomko up for the win and create even more dissension between Christian and Tomko.
Christopher Daniels said that he had made his choice in regards to Sting, and now Sting had a choice to make as well. The choice Sting apparently made was to come beat the crap out of Daniels, because that's exactly what he did before Daniels' scheduled match against Rhino. He beat Daniels all over the Impact Zone before finally finishing him off with a pair of shots from a baseball bat. Now without an opponent, Rhino put out an open challenge which was accepted by LAX, who were still sore about Rhino getting involved in LAX's business last week. Rhino defeated Homicide in a singles match, but then he was beaten down by all three members of LAX, as were Hector Guerrero and Chris Harris, who who both tried to make the save.
More hostilities lit up between feuding wrestlers, as Kurt Angle told Samoa Joe that he always tells people before he's going to cripple them, and he plans to cripple Joe before Slammiversary. Joe says he can try, as long as Joe doesn't get him first. BG James also had a message for Basham & Damaja, that he's pissed and VKM are coming for them. In a more lighthearted segment, Kevin Nash told Black Machismo that he likes his coffee the way he likes his women (black) before being told by an excited Sonjay Dutt that next week, we will get to see the NEW Sonjay Dutt. Jim Cornette made Robert Roode vs Eric Young in a match for Eric's freedom at Slammiversary, and told Bob Backlund that he would give him a match with Alex Shelley pending Backlund providing a release due to his age. Finally, in a good match, X-Division Champion defeated Frankie Kazarian.
We Are The Champions
ECW World Champion: Vince McMahon (Champion Since 4/29/2007)
TNA World Champion: Title Vacant (Champion Since 5/13/2007)
TNA World Tag Team Champions: Team 3D (Champions Since 5/13/2007)
TNA X-Division Champion: Chris Sabin (Champion Since 1/14/2007)
People Who Impressed Me This Week
Elijah Burke and CM Punk: These guys had a great match this week and showed some good psychology in the match. If there's two guys they should make a point of giving as much TV time as possible to help them develop, it's these two.
Marcus Cor Von: I don't know about you, but I fucking pop every time he hits the Pounce, and this week's Pounce through the table on CM Punk was extra awesome.
Brett & Brian Major: They accomplished absolutely nothing this week, but warranted mention by actually having the balls to come out and say that they consider themselves to have made it by getting to ECW. Talk about setting low standards for yourself.
Sting: just because he totally beat the shit out of Christopher Daniels. That was a kickass beatdown, man.
Tomko: For inexplicably finding some way to sneak into another main event. I'm calling it now, by this time next year, Tomko will be TNA World Champion.
Chris Sabin and Frankie Kazarian: they pulled out a good match this week, and I hope that this showing and his continued individual character development lead to Kazarian getting a singles push because he's way better than anyone's given
him a chance to show.
Jeff Jarrett: for doing the right thing and taking the week off instead of pushing himself to work with everything that's been happening in his life lately.
Kevin Nash: For making me laugh harder at anything on that show than I have in months.
Dickhead Of The Week: Bobby Lashley
Greenhorn makes his triumphant return to prominence! Because of the shoulder injury, I can forgive him not wrestling in ECW for the last few weeks. However, over all this time it's possible that people have forgotten what a great wrestler he is. No, I'm really only kidding about that last part. But however people do perceive him, he really didn't do much to help people perceivd him as some kind of badass when he's smiling and making weak jokes about the guy he's facing in the main event of this week's damn PPV. He's a guy who should really just let his ringwork, weak as it is, do his talking for him because, between his lisp and his pussy voice, he really ruins his image every time he opens his mouth. Why they keep putting this guy in front of a microphone is beyond me.
Vital Social Issues N' Stuff With Stuart
I get a lot of email from people asking me how I can be positive about anything on either ECW On Sci-Fi or TNA Impact, especially when there's much better/more important stuff happening on Raw and Smackdown. Well, for one it's my job to at least try and look objectively at both shows and analyze what I do and don't like, as well as pointing out what I think they each need to do to improve their product. But the other secret is that I don't watch Raw or Smackdown. I know it sounds ridiculous that I blow both shows off and watch ECW and TNA instead, but there's several reasons for this. First of all, Raw and Smackdown just take too much of my time to watch regularly. I've got enough going on in my real life (plus the two other weekly columns) that I can keep up on what's happening via 411's TV reports, but don't have time to sit there and watch both shows each week. But the thing to realize is that this puts me in a unique position to appreciate or criticize what I see in ECW and TNA based on their own merits rather than, even subconsciously, measuring them against Raw or Smackdown and having to sit there and say "well this sucked, and this sucked, and this sucked, this was okay, but this sucked..." and so on. I think that if I watched Raw and Smackdown (assuming I had the time) I'd find it harder to separate ECW And TNA from what's doing on "the big two shows".
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Speaking of which, I really didn't think that the Vince/Lashley promo was as bad as everybody's making it out to be. I definitely don't think I'd call it "among the worst promos in history" or whatever other cliches people are using, I think the worst thing you can say about it was that it was unspectacular when it was supposed to be the go home sell for the main event of this weekend's PPV. I will say that I do not understand WWE's bludgeoning insistence on continuing to give Bobby Lashley interview time. The guy is a monster, I can't take that away from him, but I don't understand how you can make the guy continue to look like a monster when, every time he opens his mouth, it sounds like a combination of Mike Tyson and Sylvester. Is Vince McMahon one of the greatest promos in the history of this business? In my opinion, yes. Was this anywhere near his greatest promo of all time? Definitely not. But even a bad Vince McMahon promo is light years better than anything that can possibly happen whenever Bobby Lashley speaks. The interview should have been Vince going on a rant for five minutes, and at the end Lashley just says "Vince, at One Night Stand, I'm going to break you in half." and that's it. Bobby Lashley has no talent for cutting promos, so unless they're going to give him a manager to do his promos for him, they can save themselves five minutes of promo time and just have him kill bitches.
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Here's another popular target of late that I have no problem with: concussion storylines. I know that there's lots of people who have all kinds of problems with depression and other physical issues stemming from concussions, but you know what? Concussions happen, so in the words of Adrian Chandler: Sorry, Charlie. I don't consider doing a concussion angle to be any different than doing any other kind of injury angle. For those who have said "Well, it's like doing a death angle or a drug addiction angle", I will respond by saying that concussions are one of those things that happen, and happen very publicly in contact sports, so I don't consider it to be in poor taste no matter how many fucking football players commit suicide. If anythng, I think it does a great job of building up the RKO as a real killer finisher. I think Randy Orton looks like a damn goon when he tries to "look crazed" or whatever, but everything else they've tried doing with him has failed like a Lindsay Lohan sobriety test, so if this is the one thing they can do with him that will actually work, I'm all for it.
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Is anyone else curious to see how Bob Backlund will do when we finally see him wrestle? It's going to happen eventually, I don't think they're having him hang around and get into confrontations with the X-Divison guys for the hell of it without any plans to ever have him wrestle. Then again, Kevin Nash has made a paycheck by hanging around backstage making jokes for the last year, but I like to think that Backlund's case is a little different. I think they said he's 57 or 58 on Impact, and of course that number's going to draw immediate comparisons to Vince McMahon over in ECW, but again I have to think things are a little different here. Backlund's one of those old school wrestlers like Bruno and Thesz who have always been serious about keeping themselves in great shape even years after they retired, and even though I won't expect and 60-minute Broadways out of him, I have to think that Backlund's still in good enough shape to hang for 10 or 15 minutes. I can guarantee he'll look a lot better than Flair does now. Plus, the guy's a legit shooter with a really strong base in amateur wrestling, so I'd even be happy seeing him go hold for hold for 10 minutes with Alex Shelley who, incidentally, is the perfect guy to put Backlund in the ring with when it does happen because he can go too. I'm really looking forward to this one when it happens.
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Speaking of Kevin Nash, I know that Section 17 Paragraph 4 of the Internet Wrestling Columnist Ethics Guide says that we all must hate Kevin Nash, but I can't help but laugh at nearly everything that comes out of the guy's mouth. Even in a 30 second segment where Jay Lethal is making coffee and Kevin Nash tells him he likes it "the same way I like my women...BLACK", I can't help but laugh even as I write this a night later. You know what else I thought was funny? That thing he did with Alex Shelley a few months ago when they caught him taking a leak in the men's room. I nearly pissed my own pants when I saw that, even though it was "so stupid, and took time away from what could have been used for another match" or whatever tight ass BS they were spewing out at the time. I don't know about any of you, but I'd be a lot happier if ECW took the time they devote to Extreme Expose every week and gave it to Kevin Nash to just do whatever the hell he wanted. History has shown that making Kevin Nash a full booker can be disastrous, but those Eye Spy segments have consistently been the most entertaining thing on Impact.
Links To Stuff You Can Read
It's Four Corner Survival UP YOUR ASS in the latest edition of Sam Berman's Independent Mid-Card.
Julian ranks The Top Ten Latino wrestlers of all time.
Even though Edge has been screwing John Cena for four weeks, Daniel Wilcox takes us back to that feud for the fifth week in a row in Schmozzes And Screwjobs.
Mike Minotti predicts the next IC, US, and X-Division Champions in Can They Be Champ?
O'Dog talks about the importance of marketing to kids in The Goodness.
Mat Sforcina brings us part 1 of his look back at the sometimes-annual WWE draft in Evolution Schematic.
In week ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY NINE of Fact Or Fiction, Bayani Domingo and Steve Cook go head to head on a number of topics.
The devil made Bayani Domingo write Truth B Told. Well, that explains a lot. Just kidding, Bayani, I love you! JUST DON'T TELL ANYONE HOW MUCH I LOVE YOU.
Finally, Rob Halden not only tells us That we're an idiot and why, but then tells us to vote on some good ol' modern idiocy.
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...
-Randy Orton at least realizes nobody likes him.
-It's easy to be satisfied when you set really low goals for yourself.
-WWE doesn't think that pissed off, vengeful babyfaces sell anymore.
This week on TNA Impact, I learned that...
-Sting is still the worst Christian ever.
-Kevin Nash is still the funniest man in the history of the business.
-Legally binding contracts can be nullified by the result of a wrestling match.
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Well, that's it for me for today. I'll be back tomorrow with your favorite Sunday news column, The Ominous Thoughts News Report, so until then, this is "Weekend Warrior" Stuart Carapola signing off.
