The Custom Made News Report 04.20.08

Posted by Ryan Byers on 04.20.2008

Hey, did you know that today's date can be made in to a witty reference to marijuana use? I'd never heard that before.

Welcome, one and all, to the Custom Made News Report. It's been a long day, and I don't want to heap on the pleasantries here. Let's hit the ground running.

All the Stuff from Stamford

To Everything, Turn, Turn, Turn . . .

After Wrestlemania, WWE appears to have largely been in a holding pattern, but things are apparently going to be shaken up a bit. According to the most recent edition of the Figure Four Weekly newsletter, there may be some changes coming soon to the WWE landscape in terms of heel/face alignment.


Chris Jericho, complete with heelish facial hair

Many people have been speculating that, as a result of his feud with Shawn Michaels, Smackdown star Dave Batista will be turning heel in the not too distant future. According to the newsletter, though, this may not necessarily be the case. Instead, it's entirely possible that he will remain a face going forward, even if certain portions of his current promos are a little bit on the heel-ish side. The man involved in that feud who will probably be turning is none other than Chris Jericho, who was recently inserted as the guest referee in the Michaels/Batista match that will be taking place on the upcoming Backlash pay per view. Also potentially turning in the future according to F4W is Triple H, whose trip over to the dark side is likely on its way regardless of whether he wins the Raw Title in next Sunday's four-way match.

My thoughts on the situation? Frankly, the company does need a shot in the arm to shake things up and keep them interestig in the wake of Wrestlemania. However, I don't think that they should do anything too drastic like a big reshuffling of the rosters. (Particularly since people seem to be able to move from show to show at will now anyway.) A couple of major turns, perhaps supplemented by one or two players changing their primary show affiliation, could be just the happy medium that the company needs.

And, if the names reported as turning actually are, I'm happy with the choices made. Though Batista had a pretty awesome run as a heel as part of Evolution, I don't know that he would work in that role in the current WWE mix. When he was dominating alongside Orton, HHH, and Flair, he was consistently wrestling some of the greatest performers in the world, men who could take spectacular bumps for him, sell artfully for him, and make him look like an absolute monster for an extended period of time despite his somewhat limited in-ring skills. Several years later, the collective in-ring talent level of the WWE roster has dropped off significantly, and there are far fewer options when it comes to quality opponents for heel Big Dave. He's much better off as a face, where he can hit limited spurts of high impact offense to pop the crowd before backing off and allowing a more experienced heel to walk him through things.

As far as Jericho and Triple H are concerned, they are fairly solid candidates for new heels on the Raw roster. Though I know that there are a lot of folks out there who love themselves some babyface Y2J, I have to say that I've always preferred the evil version of the Ayatollah of Rock and Rollah. The man's real life personality has some incredibly geeky characteristics (read his autobiography if you don't believe me), and, when he's playing a heel, he always does a great job of bringing those out and making himself uncool to the point that the majority of fans have to boo him. Combine that with the fact that WWE's audience seems to be getting younger and younger, and I think that the number of folks who will cheer on heel Jericho will have decreased significantly when compared to his last run as a bad guy. Triple H, meanwhile, is an infinitely better performer as a heel. There's something about babyface HHH that I just find so generic, so boring. Yet, when he's smashing clean-cut fan favorites with sledgehammers and BURYING~! up and coming stars, he's the epitome of evil and a far more interesting character. Also, due to his DX reunion and his quad injury, it's been a couple of years since we've actually seen the H's on camera as a bad guy. Thus, the role would be a bit more fresh than it may sound on paper to long-term fans.

So, thumbs up to WWE. The last couple of weeks of their programming haven't been all that entertaining in my book, but at least they're taking what appear to be some decent steps to turn things around.

Being Called Down?

While some talent may be receiving new roles on camera in WWE, other talent is receiving new roles off camera. According to PW Insider, wrestlers Kevin Thorn and Drew McIntyre have been removed from the company's website. Given that they have not been released, the PWI notes that the smart money is on their having been recalled to WWE's developmental system.

Honestly, I'm a bit confused as to the rationale behind these moves. Granted, neither seemed to be particularly good wrestlers. McIntyre, in his handful of appearances on television, seemed to be competent but not outstanding. Thorn, meanwhile, was an absolutely dreaful wrestler when he was first called up under the guise of Mordecai and wasn't much better when he first started his run as ECW's resident vampire. He had progressed quite a bit over the last six or so months, though, working his way from "awful" up to "passable for a midcard guy." Meanwhile, in developmental, you've got a bunch of wrestlers who are nowhere near ready to be on television, and those are the guys who McIntyre and Thorn will be working with when they pop up in Florida Championship Wrestling. Thus, even though the company apparently wants them to improve in the ring, they're being set up to fail in that regard, because it's difficult if not impossible to improve when you're working exclusively with guys who are WORSE than you are.

This is one of the many reasons that I and other people have for quite some time called for more veteran wrestlers to be actively involved with developmental, being a part of the promotion on-camera and regularly working against the wrestlers. Oh well, I guess we'll just have to deal with another generation of guys who learn what they need to know after they get called up to the main roster instead of beforehand.

Random Video Interlude

In this clip, indy wrestler Trent Acid fails at life.



To view videos that have appeared in previous editions of the Custom Made News Report, be sure to check out my new YouTube page.

Random Wrestler of the Week Rant

I try not to discuss the "politics" of 411mania too frequently in this column, but this is a situation that I feel needs to be addressed.

For those of you not aware, the site's wrestling zone regularly posts a Wrestler of the Week column, in which authors from across 411 vote on the grappler who they believe has been most deserving of recognition during the prior seven day period. I regularly participate in this column. Lately, I've been receiving a good deal of flack from readers for some of my selections, so I wanted to take a moment to address some of those criticisms. I obviously can't do that in WOTW itself due to the column's format, and this seems to be as good of a place as any.

First of all, I should probably note that I'm not the guy who gets the most grief for his votes. Samuel Berman (and, to a lesser extent, Michael Bauer) has consistently been torn to shreds by readers for voting almost exclusively for independent wrestlers with the occasional Japanese guy thrown in there. I, on the other hand, generally vote for a mix of competitors which, in a given week, may include competitors from WWE, TNA, U.S. indies, Japan, Mexico, and occasionally even Europe. This is the source of much consternation for many people, as they can't believe that an author would have the audacity to consider something which happened overseas or in a National Guard armory as important as something which took place in one of the two major U.S. promotions. There are two major reasons, though, that I continue to cast my votes for individuals who may not have regular television exposure in the United States. These reasons follow, and, in discussing them, I will use my most recent "controversial" decision to illustrate my thought process a bit. This decision involved pegging Kohei Suwama at the top of my five wrestler list this past week while slotting Samoa Joe in second. Joe won the TNA World Title from Kurt Angle in the voting period, while Suwama won AJPW's Champion Carnival tournament.

The first reason that I regularly vote for foreign and indy wrestlers centers around the fact that, believe it or not, the 411 authors were never given objective criteria in terms of what to consider when casting their votes. We were never firmly told what Wrestler of the Week is supposed to be and thus were free to generate our own voting considerations. Many of the writers on staff take the approach of lining up their votes with wrestlers' kayfabe accomplishments. Thus, for example, these writers would vote for a new holder of the Raw Title regardless of any of the circumstances surrounding the victory. It is a major accomplishment in the storylines, so it is automatically a major accomplishment for the voting purposes of these writers.

I, on the other hand, do not operate that way. This is not a kayfabe website, and almost nothing else we do here covers wrestling as though it were real. Thus, it's always been my opinion that it's a bit stupid to base your voting only on a wrestlers' kayfabe accomplishments. Instead, I focus more on what a particular accomplishment actually means for a wrestler's career. For example, let's say that Triple H won the WWE Title next week. I would not necessarily vote for him at number one. Why? Because Triple H is a top guy and will be a top guy until he decides to retire. He'll be just as over as he would've been without the belt, and his place in history will in all likelihood be the same. Therefore, I don't see it as a big accomplishment. I see it almost as a maintenance of the status quo. Expanding on our example, let's say that Claudio Castagnoli won the ROH Title in the same week that HHH won with Raw Title. I would be far more likely to put Claudio at number one because it would be the biggest singles title win of his career. It would actually indicate that Claudio is moving up in the world as opposed to staying at the same level he's been at for years. To state this principle more generally, I look at what a wrestler has done not out of context but rather broadly and in comparison to where he was prior to the achievement and where he will likely go after the achievement.

This helps to explain my selection of Suwama over Joe. Suwama, for those of you who may not follow All Japan, is a guy who has been what I would describe as an upper midcard heel for several years. In recent months he has turned face and has looked to slowly break in to the main event scene. His Champion Carnival victory signaled that the promotion actually was on board in terms of making him in to a major star. It was a breakthrough in his career, something that will result in him being moved up to the next level. Joe's TNA Title win is an entirely different situation. Yes, this was the first time that he was awarded the big prize. However, he was awarded it an entire year after the peak of his popularity. I'm not saying that the title win won't do anything to elevate Joe, but it almost certainly won't put him above the level that he was at prior to his first match with Kurt Angle. If anything, it will only serve to put him back on that level. Thus, Joe winning the belt wasn't a sign of him moving up in the world. It was more likely than not a sign of him returning somewhere that he had already been.

The second reason that I continue to vote for foreign wrestlers is that, no matter how much our more xenophobic readers may want to admit it, the promotions in which their accomplishments occur actually DO mean something to the world. No, Japanese wrestling isn't on TV in the United States. No, Mexican wrestling isn't on an English language station in the United States. However, they are nationally televised in their home countries, and they are often just as successful (and in some cases moreso) than their American counterparts. For example, lucha libre promotion CMLL runs shows in a venue known as Arena Mexico at least once a week. Their April 11 show drew 12,850 fans, and there have been six month or even year long periods in the company's lengthy history in which at least one Arena Mexico show a week has drawn that many fans. If we use the 12,850 figure, that's 51,400 tickets per month not just in the same city but in the same BUILDING. That's to say nothing of fans who only watch on television or fans who attend events held outside of Arena Mexico. It also doesn't account for the fact that the country supports a second major promotion and several indies. That's a hell of an accomplishment which goes to show the overwhelming popularity of lucha in its homeland. Should this popularity be ignored just because it is not rooted in the United States? No. To say otherwise would be to display a sickening degree of Americentrism.

This once again ties back in to the Suwama/Joe vote. One reader commented that he couldn't believe that I'd picked an "obscure" Japanese wrestler over TNA star Joe. I just had to shake my head due to the level of ignorance involved in that comment. Newsflash, buddy: AJPW is just as big in Japan as TNA is in the United States, if not larger. When it is on tour, All Japan regularly draws in crowds of around 2,000 fans for its shows, which is a level that TNA has just recently reached if they've even reached it at all. That's to say nothing of New Japan Pro Wrestling and Pro Wrestling NOAH, the two other major Japanese groups which are actually even more popular than AJPW. The term "obscure" is completely relative, and, until I'm given a direct edict from the powers that be which states that 411mania now only covers American wrestling, I'm going to base the weight that I give to a promotion's popularity on the promotion's popularity in its home country as opposed to its popularity in the U.S.

The other thing that I should probably mention before I wrap this up is that, even if you don't agree with anything that I've said here today, you should at least be able to admit to yourself that this voting isn't anything that should be taken too seriously. It's just professional wrestling. In fact, now that I think about it, it's not even professional wrestling. It's a bunch of guys who don't get paid for their opinions sitting around and writing down what they think about professional wrestling. It's not the end of the world if your favorite wrestler isn't named WOTW in a given week, and it's CERTAINLY not the end of the world your favorite receives WOTW honors but was left off the top spot on a couple of individual writers' ballots. The swearing, name calling, and general immaturity that I've seen in the responses for some of these columns is completely uncalled for.

So, that's my piece. Hopefully this allows everybody to understand where I'm coming from a bit better and also allows some of the more rabid WOTW followers to calm down just a tad.

SHIMMER Special

Oh yes, it's that time of the year again. One week from today, my favorite indy promotion, SHIMMER: Women Athletes will resume its live shows. The promotion decided to not run during the winter months in order to avoid problems associated with travel during that period, and, on April 26, they will return to the Eagles' Club in Berwyn, Illinois for a taping in which Volumes 17 and 18 of the company's popular DVD series wil be produced.

If you want to attend this show . . . you're out of luck. The venue sold out well over a month in advance of the taping, meaning that only those of us who acted quickly will be getting in. However, if you want to see some live SHIMMER in the future, the company has already put tickets for its next taping on sale at SHIMMERwrestling.com. That show is set for July 5, and both reserved front row tickets and general admission seats are currently available. On top of that, the two newest SHIMMER DVDs, Volume 15 and 16, will be available for sale at ROHwrestling.com in late April or early May. The prior fourteen volumes are already there.

Of course, I will be at the April 26 taping live. As I have been prior to past SHIMMER shows, I'm rather excited about this. To channel some of that excitement, I've decided to bring to you the top four things that I'm looking forward to next weekend.



Number Four: The Fate of Cindy Rogers

Connecticut-based wrestler Cindy Rogers has opened a lot of eyes on recent SHIMMER volumes. Originally a fairly generic undercard babyface, Roger turned heel back on Volume 9 and was immediately embroiled in an intense feud with Allison Danger which saw the two work some rather hard-hitting conventional matches in addition to a two out of three falls bout, a street fight, and a dog collar match. Rogers appeared to have been the winner of the feud, gaining the majority of the victories over her opponent and winning what many thought was the blowoff match in the company's Inverness, Florida taping last summer. Then, in a move that certainly surprised me, Rogers and Danger had yet another match on Volume 15, with Allison disposing of Cindy handily and promising in a promo to move on to bigger and better things. On Volume 16, Rogers defeated Daffney, which, though a victory, isn't exactly a huge feather in her cap. Thus, I'm curious to see where the so-called "Definition of Technician" goes from here. Does she take her momentum from the feud with Danger and turn it in to further ascension up SHIMMER's ranks? Or were the out of nowhere loss to Allison and the unimportant match on the subsequent volume indicative of the fact that Rogers will forever be stuck in midcard purgatory? I hope that the first question is answered in the affirmative and the second in the negative, because Cindy has a ton of potential, and it would be unfortunate to see her upward mobility taken away from her for no good reason.



Number Three: Wesna Debuts

SHIMMER isn't advertising much in advance for this show. Frankly, given their ticket sales for recent cards, they had no reason to. However, the one fact about the lineup which has been confirmed is that Croatian wrestler Wesna Busic will be making her debut with the company on April 26. I first mentioned that story in this very column back in January, and, if anything, I'm even more excited for it now than I was then. Wesna is a top-notch competitor with experience throughout Japan and Europe, with her matches against Cheerleader Melissa in particular having a reputation for being epic struggles between two very hard-hitting women. Though we don't know whether this appearance is a one-time deal or part of a longer run with the company, it will at the very least be nice to see Busic get an opportunity to take on two of the promotion's finest, particularly if she is slated against wrestlers who do not normally venture to her home continent.

Oh, and one more thing about those matches with Melissa. They produced this particularly ugly-looking spot:





Number Two: What of TNA?

The last SHIMMER taping took place in October. A lot has changed since then. Long-time indy wrestler Rain has gotten much more involved in TNA as Bobby Roode's valet Peyton Banks. Additionally, Melissa Anderson, better known as Cheerleader Melissa, has started up in the same company with a character whose name I can't be bothered to learn how to spell. This has resulted in much speculation among the SHIMMER faithful as to whether the two women will be continued to be allowed to compete for the promotion. Obviously, clauses in TNA contracts could prohibit this, and, even if the two are uncontracted, there may be a situation in which their better known employer either requests or demands that they do not work this particular show. Though the happenings at the tapings will not necessarily provide a definitive answer as to whether Melissa and Rain an carry on in the company (as a one-time conflict may prevent them from appearing), we will most likely be given a good indication of what the cards hold for their SHIMMER careers.



Number One: The Title Picture

In a way, it seems like a bit of a cop-out to list the developments in the title picture as the thing that I am anticipating the most at the tapings. Of course an ardent fan of the promotion would be interested in seeing what happens with it championship. However, the promotion did a great job of leaving the possibilities for championship matches wide open at the close of the tapings for Volumes 15 and 16, so I'm much more excited for the upcoming title bouts than I otherwise would be.

Obviously, your SHIMMER Champion is still Sara Del Rey. She defeated two top-notch opponents on Volumes 15 and 16, although she did so in a manner that gives both of those women legitimate claims for rematches. The first of these individuals was Amazing Kong, who Death Rey beat by barely avoiding a double knock out, getting to her feet literally a split second before the challenger did. This finish was obviously designed to keep Kong strong, and, though this is pure speculation on my part, it would also seem to provide an excellent setup to something like a last woman standing rematch. The second woman in question is "Dark Angel" Sarah Stock, who wrestled Del Rey in a two out of three falls match taped for Volume 16. Though the champion retained her belt, Stock did come out on top in one of the three falls, making her only the second woman in SHIMMER history to pin Bryan Danielson's prize pupil. Additionally, to several of the fans in the crowd that night, it appeared that Stock's shoulder popped up just before the three count in the final fall. Whether this was an accident, an intentional spot meant to play in to a storyline, or an accident that will be turned in to a storyline remains to be seen, but those two factors together would seemingly put Dark Angel in line for a rematch.

Finally, though she has not yet been officially announced as making a SHIMMER comeback, Del Rey's old rival Mercedes Martinez has returned to the ring since the company's last taping. Martinez, who was on the shelf for quite some time due to a shoulder injury, is the first woman to pin Sara in SHIMMER competition and is technically still the only woman to ever beat her. (Since Stock's gaining one fall in the best of three match doesn't constitute a victory in the strictest sense of the word.) The duo's history would make a feud for the strap a no-brainer, and we could see the seeds planted for that if Mercedes is actually in Berwyn seven days from now.

All in all, this is looking like it could be quite the fun show. I'll be off from this column next week while I'm in Chicago-land to take it in. You'll be left with what I hope is a suitable replacement. I'll be back in two weeks, in all likelihood with a recap of the show and definitely with all of the latest news from professional wrestling.