Friendly Competition 6.16.07
Posted by Sam Caplan on 06.16.2007
Scott Steiner may have wrestled on TV a week after getting trachea surgery, but Vince DIED and got the whole show dedicated to him as a result. Now THAT is impressive.
The first thing I intended to write in this week's column was something along the lines of "All right, Lashley's gone! Party time!". Then I watched ECW On Sci-Fi and was totally disgusted at what I saw. Let me tell you something, as anyone who knows me or has read very much of what I've written probably knows I'm a pretty openminded person who's very difficult to offend, but the Vince McMahon memorial edition of ECW really pushed the limit. I'm not going to rant and bury it or anything, but this is not going to be one of my more positive columns. Then again, Impact was pretty good. Whatever.
ECW On Sci Fi Results 6/12/2007
I'm not going to dignify most of what I saw this week by recapping the tribute show to somebody who's still alive. If you want to read about that, go read Bauer's or Dunn's recaps. However, out of respect to the workers who wrestled on this show, here are the in-ring results:
-Tommy Dreamer defeated Balls Mahoney in an Extreme Rules match.
-The Boogeyman defeated Matt Striker.
-Chris Benoit & CM Punk defeated Elijah Burke & Marcus Cor Von via DQ.
TNA Impact Results 6/14/2007
The focus of this week's edition of Impact was on the in-ring action, and the top match on this week's show was the final qualifying match for King Of The Mountain, featuring Christian Cage taking on a mystery opponent who turned out to be Abyss, who Christian and company had put out of action with injuries after a beatdown a couple of months ago. Abyss totally dominated Christian despite run-ins from both Tomko and AJ Styles, but it was the chair that Styles brought into the ring that spelled the end for Abyss, as he took it and blatantly bashed Christian over the head in full view of the referee, giving Christian the DQ win and the fourth slot in King Of The Mountain. Abyss poured a bag full of broken glass on the mat and tried to chokeslam Christian on in, but Tomko and Styles intervened and Christian escaped with his skin.
In other action, Samoa Joe, Kurt Angle, and AJ Styles defeated Sting and Rhino in a match where, if Sting or Rhino won, they would have gotten taken the KOTM spot from the person they pinned. Sting and Rhino were originally supposed to team with Tomko, but Tomko had gotten laid out before the match and couldn't compete. We later came to realize that it must have been Abyss who attacked him. Also, in the opening match, Basham, Damaja, and the (obviously pretaped) Steiner Bros defeated Team 3D and VKM in an 8-man tag.
In between all the wrestling, a few angles did play out, such as the confrontation at the Slammiversary press conference which saw James Storm get into a confrontation with Frank Wycheck, setting up a match between the two at Slammiversary. Chris Harris and Hector Guerrero laid out a challenge to LAX, and Eye Spy Productions saw Sonjay Dutt meditating with Black Machismo and Kevin Nash.
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
Chris Benoit: He seemed revitalized after being put in an important role again, and looked like a million bucks in the ring.
Elijah Burke: He looked like a kid in a candy store getting the chance to work with Benoit, and he definitely had his game face on.
Scott Steiner: He looked really good for a guy who had trachea surgery a week ago.
Hector Guerrero: I had no idea he had any kind of a personality, even though he looked like he was channeling Eddy's Cheech Marin persona.
Abyss: The time off did him good, he came back this week and looked like a wrecking machine.
Dickhead Of The Week: Vince McMahon
OOOOOOH, look, Stu's disrespecting the dead again. Fuck that, Vince is a strong contender for Dickhead Of The Year after this week's episode of ECW. He went above and beyond all previous milestones of dickheadedness this week and, as much as I wanted to give this to Bobby Lashley one last time for old time's sake, there was no way I could not give Vince the nod this week due to the disrespectful angle that ran this week. Unbelievable.
Vital Social Issues N' Stuff With Stuart
Okay, I've had all week and given a lot of thought to what I was going to say about the Vince McMahon tribute episode of ECW On Sci-Fi, and though my initial reaction was straight up outrage, I've had a few days to think on it now, so here's my opinion. I realize that to Vince McMahon and the rest of his braintrust, there are no boundaries to what can be considered storyline fodder, and I also realize that they consider things that push very uncomfortable buttons to be riveting TV. They've even done a death angle before...anyone remember Al Wilson? But this is different because, while Al Wilson's "death" was played up for yuks, this is being presented as a serious event to the point where there's been legimitate news outlets that have mistakenly reported that Vince did die. We laugh at them because we all know better, but if WWE presented it as a joke thing instead of a legit accident, this wouldn't have been given a second glance by the mainstream media. Now when they find out what's really going on, they're just going to say "figures that WRESTLING would do a storyline about something like that" and paint the business with the same negative light that everyone BUT Vince McMahon has been trying to escape for years. Beyond that, now that Vince has crossed that line and brought death angles "into play", nobody's going to take them seriously when people do die for real. There's always that bit of doubt from some whenever anyone dies as it is, and I even recall being very disappointed that there were those who thought the deaths of Brian Pillman, Owen Hart, and Eddy Guerrero were all angles. Now that Vince has done the same thing as an angle, it's only going to worsen that perception that everything in wrestling, even death, is faked.
But beyond that, there is also the disrespect factor. I know that some people might say I'm being too thin-skinned about this, but the ten-bell salute is something that should be held sacred in this business because it really is supposed to be reserved for when people really do die. It's one thing to have the referee throw the X when somebody isn't really injured, but it's another thing entirely to basically mock something this serious. If you're really determined to do the death angle then fine, but leave the 10-bell salute alone. Again, they're not playing this for yuks, they're treating it as if Vince really did die, and when he comes back (and I guarantee you he will), the whole thing will have become completely meaningless. This is like when they booked Hawk as an alcoholic based on his real-life substance abuse problems that ended up leading to his death. Like, I'm really wondering where this is going to go and how much longer this is going to be dragged out. Are we going to be mourning his death every week? You thought the constant references to Eddy Guerrero after his passing were too much? I can't imagine how much we're going to be hearing about Vince over the coming weeks. I was hoping that this angle would be used to write him out, but I guess I was wrong.
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By the way, in the middle of all of this week's festivities, did anyone remember that the ECW World Title is vacant? I think I might have heard somebody mention it in passing this week, but they do have only two weeks to work with before Vengeance, and you'd think that they'd at least make some mention of what will be done to fill the vacancy. This is, of course, assuming that they do plan to crown a new champion at Vengeance instead of holding off until Summerslam to give us a few more weeks to grieve for the Chairman. I know ECW's the third-string brand and all, but you could at least TRY and make the ECW World Title seem at least as important as a character who has, at least theoretically, been permanently removed from storylines. Oh well, at least it's not the Intercontinental Title.
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Does it bother anyone else that TNA broke up their marquee tag team, built to the matches for months before they actually happened, had a couple of great matches including what was probably the best match on Impact this year, beat their bodies to crap for the sake of it all, and now one's fighting a football player and the other's teaming with a guy who's been retired for years in a meaningless feud with LAX? Forgive me if you think I'm being unreasonable, but tag teams have traditionally been broken up for one of two reasons: to begin singles pushes of one or both, or they fuck up and are being punished. Since I am unaware of any backstage problems involving Chris Harris and James Storm, I am left to assume that at least one of them was meant to get some kind of big singles push, yet here we are with Storm facing a guy who isn't even a wrestler in a match that'll be forgotten the next day, while Harris is in a match I had to go look up because I didn't even know he was on the PPV. Call me crazy, but after those last two matches they had, I envisioned a bit more for them going forward.
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That said though, I think the quality of TNA Impact has increased dramatically over the last few weeks leading into Slammiversary, and a big part of that has been an increased focus on the matches and keeping the angles to a minimum. One of my biggest complaints in recent months was that we'd get 6 or 7 minutes of wrestling and the rest would be angles and commercials, but then we get that great, 20-minute Harris-Storm match and then this week we get almost no storylines so that we could get solid matches in the 8-man, 6-man, and KOTM qualifier, and I think that this is what they need in a go home show before a PPV. Now, have they also been possibly making bad decisions in giving away matches they could make money on some day, such as that Samoa Joe vs Sting match from a few weeks ago? Yes, and they should be very careful about giving away too many big matches like that like WCW used to, but if that's what they think they need to do to draw in new viewers, then let them. After all, if we're being realistic, we realize that people are more likely to tune in if they see Kurt Angle and Sting on their screen than Chris Sabin and Alex Shelley.
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I know I went into this last week, but I have to say it again that it's really not cool for TNA to promote the Steiners vs Team 3D match since they've now known for nearly two weeks that there's no way it's going to happen. It occured to me that they didn't say anything last week because Scott appeared in the 8-man this week and removing the match might have screwed up their show big time, but they could have had some kind of taped announcement that they stuck in later in the show, something like "Scott Steiner was injured during tonight's match and will be unable to compete at Slammiversary" or something to that effect. But there was no mention of it and, unless they make an announcement on their website or webcast or something and people happen to see it, there's a whole lot of people out there who are going to buy the show just for that match that are going to be really disappointed. It's just bad business, they needed to get that message out somehow last night, but they didn't. Disappointing.
Links To Stuff You Can Read
Andy Clark checks in with part three of the Shawn Michaels Report Card in The Shimmy.
I'm really impressed at how well the 411 Fantasy Draft came out, and I highly recommend that you all go read it because John, Bayani, and Matt did a great job.
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 and TNA. 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...
-No storyline is off limits for WWE.
-It is possible to offend me.
-I can still come up with a ton of crap to write about a show without actually referencing anything that happened on it.
This week on TNA Impact, I learned that...
-The only way for minorities to really get over is to play a stereotype.
-Steiners vs Team 3D must still be on since they didn't announce a change to the card.
-TNA must not have been able to get ahold of Dale Torborg in time for Slammiversary.
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What a weird week...the show I usually enjoy watching gives me every reason to hate it, and then the show I usually tear apart was really good this week. This is confusing the hell out of me. In fact, I think I'll be confused for the next 24 hours until The Ominous Thoughts News Report, which goes up tomorrow morning RIGHT HERE on 411mania.com! Thanks for reading, and I'll see you then.
