Lansdell's Sunday Brunch News Report 08.31.08

Posted by Chris Lansdell on 08.31.2008

Injury woes, Bischoff's new show, Jack Evans won't go and people you don't know. We also say goodbye to the greatest heel ever.

Greetings, humanity! Welcome to Lansdell's Sunday Brunch with me, Chris Lansdell. I hope everyone is enjoying their nice, long Labour Day weekend as much as I am. And if you don't get a Labour Day weekend, have fun at work tomorrow. BWAHAHAHAHAHA! It's been a busy busy week at work, far too much work for one human being to be doing and no sign of any relief. Still, it beats not working. I think. Wrestling-wise it's been a week of bad news, with very little good to offset it. Since the entire Brunch this week is pretty much a rant, let us go straight to the...

BANNER!



Note: As I was writing this column, the news broke on 411mania that Walter "Killer" Kowalski had passed away after fighting without life support for 2 weeks. Kowalski was a great in the ring in his time, and after retiring trained some of the very best, including Kaz, Saturn, Roxxi Laveaux and of course Triple H. The thoughts and prayers of us all at the Brunch go out to family and friends of Mr Kowalski.

The Spread~!

Cena and Kennedy out after surgery
Bischoff's at it again...
The Week in Links!
Début overload?
Random Video Interlude!
Jack Evans pulls out again
Espresso Shots!
Tomko back with TNA…kinda
The Tip Jar!

In-Jury Duty
As Cena and Kennedy go under the knife, Khali and Angle refuse to do so and Orton rehabs, questions resurface about wrestling's hectic pace

It all happened in a whirlwind this week for John Cena. We found out on Monday evening that he was injured and might be pulled from Raw. On Raw we found out that it was far more serious and he would in fact be out for months. The original reports said he would have surgery later in the week, but numbness in the extremities is nothing to take risks with, so it was rushed forward to Tuesday morning. This is the second major injury for Cena in less than a year, so nobody would have blamed him for resting and taking it easy for a while. What's that? He was at Smackdown tapings the next night? Oh dear. Commendable love for the business aside, spinal surgery is not the sort of thing you take lightly and Dr J Cena, PhD (Thug) should not be in a ring for at least 4 more months. News later surfaced that he had a Children's Wish Foundation commitment in Pittsburgh anyway, so he dropped in on Smackdown to see the crew.

News of the success of John's surgery was followed later in the week by news of Khali once again refusing to have his rapidly-degenerating knees fixed up, of Kurt Angle STILL being batshit crazy and not slowing down despite being a slight slip away from Droz territory, and of Kennedy's surgery on Friday going according to plan.

5 guys at or near the top of the card. 5 injuries, 4 of which could be career-threatening. All of which are repeat injuries. When you add in the propensity of Orton and Edge's arms, HHH's quads and Taker and Batista's everything to get hurt, pretty much your entire main event could be in hospital at once.

Injuries are nothing new in professional wrestling. Virtually everyone who ever stepped between the ropes has had to take some time off to recover. What is new is the crazy rate at which WWE in particular seems to be suffering injuries to their top guys. And it's not just a bruised rib here or a dislocated shoulder there, it's broken bones and compressed spines, it's torn ACLs and wrecked knees. How often did you see Hogan out with an injury? Aside from his plane crash, how often was Flair out in his prime? Sting? Hennig? Lawler? Hell, even TNA doesn't have the injury history that WWE has: Styles, Joe, Christian and Abyss have all been upper card guys for a while and for the most part have stayed healthy. That's despite TNA's riskier style and moves. This tells me that Vince's assertion that shooting star presses and Death Valley Drivers were the cause of his guys getting hurt.

So if that's not it, then what is? The answer seems obvious: you're working the guys too hard, Vince. Wear and tear on a guy's body is a far more insidious way of damaging it than dropping a guy on his head, simply because the effects are not immediately obvious. Now before you all start with the "LOL u suck Flair wrestled 60 minutes a night 5 nights a week and stayed healthy"...sure. Shawn Michaels has also managed to stay healthy since coming back, and I don't recall CM Punk ever having an injury. These are people in supreme shape, who are not absurdly muscled and who do not wrestle a style involving lots of lifting and heavy impact. As an example, Kurt Angle's neck is held in place with good will, a paper clip and Hubba Bubba, yet he still takes head bumps. On the other hand, Ric Flair never took another flat back bump after returning from the crash, and CM Punk stopped using the Pepsi Plunge because it was wrecking his knees. If you're going to wrestle a hectic schedule, then you have to be smart about it, and that just doesn't seem to be possible for most guys in the WWE these days. People like MVP, Finlay, Matt Hardy (recently), Samoa Joe and Christian manage to entertain without risking their lives every week, why can't others take their lead? Failing that, why can't WWE lessen the load on their guys?



If he comes back, will he be better than ever?
Eric Bischoff has reportedly been approached to start a wrestling show on CMT

Well here's a fresh new story that we haven't heard about in at least a month. CMT, which will be playing host to Hulk Hogan's "Celebrity" Wrestling this fall, has allegedly contacted Eric Bischoff about tying in a wrestling promotion with the show. Bischoff, who had a huge hand in Hogan getting the show in the first place, recently posted a blog where he said that doing the show whet his appetite for the wrestling world again.

From the time the show was announced, I wondered what the point of it was. It's not like the Ultimate Fighter where the winner got a UFC contract...Bischoff and Hogan had nowhere to send the winner with a contract. There's enough unsigned talent in the US right now to make a decent promotion, and putting Bischoff and probably Hogan's names on it would not hurt. The most intriguing thing is something I heard about from one of my readers, who asked to remain anonymous. The reader claims to have a source close to Cory Spracklin, who is the owner of Memphis Championship Wrestling. Apparently, Bischoff would be looking to combine the strong CMT presence in the south with MCW's southern fan base to start off with a strong viewing number. It certainly makes sense as it gives Bischoff a full roster to build on and some fans who will watch right away, in addition to the old WCW fans who will find the show. The question is, can the market handle a third nationally-televised promotion right now?

Ring of Honor would tell you that it can't. They've had a few offers for TV deals, but RoH president Cary Silkin has said several times that a TV deal will only happen when the time is right. Part of his hesitancy could be due to RoH not being ready yet, but a lot of it is likely down to the ratings slump in which wrestling as a whole currently finds itself. Now if Bischoff was able to obtain a relatively low ratings target from CMT, say under 1.0, then he might be able to pull it off and slowly build a fan base. Even if that were to happen, ultimately only one of TNA and Bischoff's new fed would survive, leaving us right back where we started.


The Week In Links
After all, what's a Sunday brunch without the paper?

The shows
Just like a TV Guide that's a week old

Wilcox's Raw Report. Rating: 2.84 on a different network. The replay on USA did a 0.5.
Bauer's ECW Report. Rating: 1.3
Wendell Mitchell's Cross The Line. Rating:
Csonka's Smackdown Report. Rating: Not Available at time of writing.

Required Reading
Best of the week's editorials

Ladies and gentlemen, the world is ending. I am actually suggesting you read Westerfeld this week.
Chin tells us why the nWo were important. Ooh ooh I know!
Jeremy Thomas continues to be a strong foil to Triple Csonka in the latest 4Rs.
Sforcina brings you part 8 of the Undertaker's evolution. And I thought the video game one was long.



Too much of a new thing?
Not the Scrambles, the débuts. With so many new people coming in, are the fans going to care?

This week we saw the début of Brie Bella and R-Truth on Smackdown. Bella was working a twin gimmick (well not really a gimmick since I believe they actually are twins) in developmental and they showed that this week by pulling a switch. Weird way for a face to get over, but whatever. Oh, and it's about the name. What are they going to do, call her sister Gouda? R-Truth is a gimmick which was originally slated for Paul Burchill, who would have been known as "Arrrr, Truth", but they reassigned it when Killings defected. Truth's return was met with an almost deafening...silence, while Bella got a semi-decent pop because she's hot and made her boobies jiggle after winning. In recent weeks we've also seen the débuts of Ezekiel, Shawn Spears, Primo Colon, Ricky Ortiz, Scotty Goldman and Ryan Braddock, along with the resurrection of Kenny Dykstra. Creative is reportedly not happy with this latest crop of call-ups, thinking they have done nothing to distinguish themselves with the possible exception of Goldman and ZEKE~! Truth sold too much for Dykstra, Ortiz and Colon are bland, and I had to look through the site to remember Braddock and Spears. Is this lack of response down to a deficiency on the part of the performers? Maybe in part, but I think there's more to it.

The way a wrestler débuts is often very important in getting fans to care. Despite weeks of vignettes, Truth got no pop at all in coming out for his match, something that could have been avoided had Dykstra come out first and then Truth had interrupted Dykstra's worked shoot promo. Goldman has had one singles match and looked OK, had a short run in the battle royal and hasn't been seen since. Spears and Braddock have disappeared after being squashed. Colon has had one match and it wouldn't bother me if I never saw another because he didn't do anything impressive or different. The problems are compounded by having them all come in at once. By doing that they all but guarantee that no one guy will get enough time to develop any sort of character, which makes it all but impossible for anyone to care what happens to them.

There's no coincidence that there were 10 guys released recently (and 2 referees) and now there are 10 new people showing up. My issue is that they all showed up at the same time. They've been set up to fail and we'll be right back where we started, complaining that WWE aren't building any new talent.

Random Video Interlude!

I would sell my wife for one of each of those Kai En Tai t-shirts in XXL. Well maybe not, but I want them. And this is possibly the best example of their best gimmick.



Commitment Issues
Jack Evans screws PWG again, is this an epidemic?

Jack Evans is a very gifted athlete. I've seen him do double-flip moonsaults of steel cages, standing corkscrew moonsaults and 630 splashes with little to no effort. His matches against Roderick Strong in particular have shown that he is also blessed with seemingly elastic bones as he has been stretched and bent into positions that I wish I could get my wife to try. He's far from the best puncher in the business, and he looks like a half-starved Bryan Danielson in winter dipped in bleach, but he has on occasion entertained me greatly.

It's a shame he's an unprofessional jackass.

Evans pulled out of yet another PWG event this week, not even having the decency to contact the company and let them know himself. After several attempts by the company to contact both Jack and his father, the finally got an email from Jack Sr saying simply "Jack's not coming". He'd rather stay in Mexico, apparently. Although to my knowledge Jack has never no-showed a RoH event, he is getting quite the reputation for standing up others, PWG most of all. His decision to wrestle in Mexico after his facial injury left RoH in the lurch as he was being pushed as the leader of the Vulture Squad and heading for big things. Between Mexico and Japan he's hardly been seen in the US over the past 18 months and although you can't begrudge a man the opportunity to make a living, you can question the way he chooses to do so. If you don't want to wrestle for PWG, don't tell them you will. If you don't want to commit to a long-term storyline in RoH because you might have opportunities elsewhere, then say so. Don't fuck over the promoters who wanted to hire you, and above all don't fuck over the fans who bought tickets expecting to see you.

The issue of no-shows is not new in wrestling. Jeff Hardy and Scott Hall are both infamous for no-showing huge events, in Scott's case on multiple occasions. One of the many problems that have plagued Teddy Hart is his lack of reliability. Tomko was in the dog house for months in TNA after no-showing a fan festival. Both the Briscoes and Super Dragon have pulled out on PWG in the past, and Dustin Rhodes has no-showed a fair few indy events. It seems like the smaller the company the bigger the chance, which really sucks for places like PWG which puts on some great events. You hardly ever hear about a WWE guy no-showing, probably because Vince would fire them so fast the door would be hitting their ass before their head was out the door. Indy feds have less control over the talent that works for them and therefore have to be more careful about how they discipline people. If you refuse to book a Jack Evans or a team like The Briscoes, you are ultimately hurting yourself more because they are draws. This sort of passive empowerment makes it less likely for the habit to be broken. TNA did themselves a huge favour by firing Jeff Hardy when his dependability went down, and since then their issues have been minimised. If more companies could do what PWG are doing with Jack and basically cut ties with repeat offenders, this problem could be stamped out.

With that said, performers need to realise that they are hurting themselves too. Indy fans by and large are smart wrestling fans, people who read the internet and know why their favourite wrestler isn't at the show. If you let down the fans, who ultimately are the ones putting money in your pockets, then soon nobody will pay to see you. Then you're fucked. Any other job in the world, if you don't show for work and don't let anyone know you will be dismissed in short order. You might be and "independent contractor", for now at least, but the principle stands. Remember the old saying: Be careful of the people you step on while on your way up the ladder, because they will be there to boot you in the ass on your way down.





One-line looks at minor news

WWE lose interest in Morishima because he's "not in shape" - Hey! Round is a shape!
Jerry Lawler's son arrested - I didn't know being a douche was a crime. Oh, not Grand Master Sexay? Carry on then...
Santino sends $500 to OVW - That's payroll covered for another week.
Kevin Nash says WWE want him - For what?
TNA giving away a good DVD with preorders of their game - From the latest developer interview, they'd do better giving away with game and selling the DVD
Iron Sheik writing an autobiography - Oh yes, hilarity WILL ensue
Joey "Mercury" Matthews and Christian York coming back to WWE - Oh good, more new guys.



Please sir, can I wrestle some more?
TNA won't learn from their mistakes and bring back Tomko

It wasn't that long ago that we reported on Tomko leaving TNA. In this very column I mused about the possibilities for him, and postulated that he could be heading back to WWE with his new-found overness. Stories then surfaced that he would be spending some time in Japan, where he's rather well-known as a tag team specialist, with the fledgling Inoki Genome Federation. Is it just me, or does that sound more like something that Solid Snake should be infiltrating? IGF has been home to both Kurt Angle and Brock Lesnar since it opened, and Tomko would have been a big name there. However, IGF started cancelling a lot of their shows, leaving Tomko with a distinct deficiency in income potential. So, like any other person would, he went crawling back to his old employer in the hopes they would take him back. All reports after Tomko left TNA stated that the spit was relatively amicable, so it seemed the logical thing to do. However, the way TNA have let him come back is a bad idea.

Before Tomko no-showed a fan fest, he was being pushed hard. People were buying in to him for the first time in his North American career, and he had a relatively clean win over Samoa Joe to his credit. He was depushed as a punishment, but even in his losses he looked strong and he carried the TNA Tag titles for a while with AJ Styles. Only on his way out did he get jobbed severely, to his replacement as monster project du jour Matt "Beast…in…SPAAAAAAACE!" Morgan. He left, it was mentioned on Impact, and now he's back? Not only is he back, but back on a non-contracted, part-time basis. Yes, because that worked SO well with Rikishi and Shannon Moore. If you book him strongly, you look stupid when he leaves. If you don't, he leaves faster and the wins that people get over him mean less. He is not blessed with the charisma of a Sting or a Mick Foley, which means that between his part-time appearances the fans may well forget him or at least lose interest. And of course you run the risk of him bolting on you with no notice. Is it really worth it for Tomko? Freaking TOMKO? It's not like John Cena quit WWE or The Rock decided to come back to wrestling and wanted to go to TNA, it's a midcarder for life who screwed you over once. A very wise man once said "Those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it." I never ignored history, the teacher was a fox.


The Tip Jar
Your thoughts from last week

Honestly, did you just suggest replacing benjamin, hardy and MVP in the main event with Kozlov, Great Khali, and big show? That's classic Mcmahon booking at it's best: showcase the monsters. We should be excited that these athletes all get the chance to possibly (although unlikely) be elevated by being in a ppv main event title match with Triple H. I mean, Brian Kendrick? a couple months ago, he was essentially a jobber on Raw, and now he's competing in the main event. While questionable, we should be rejoicing that this great wrestler is getting the chance to shine.

Posted By: joe (Guest) on August 24, 2008 at 12:50 AM

I wasn't suggesting it to showcase the monsters, I was suggesting it to make the match more credible. The only believable person to win the Smackdown title is Jeff Hardy, but they won't do that because of the hot three-way feud with Shelton and MVP. Kendrick is there merely to job. I'd like to be pleasantly surprised, but I can't see it. At least with the guys I mentioned, you could see them winning.

I have to say, people are over-rating Kim's importance to the Knockouts. After her little feud with Kong, I have heard more about Kong, Wylde, The Beautiful People and ODB than I have about Gail as far as the Knockouts are concerned. Also, given the talent that they do have left there, it isn't that big a loss. Now if Vince were to go after a couple more, then start to worry, but as is losing one wont really damage things as much as say, WWE losing one of their top Divas

Posted By: Lynx Raven Raide (Guest) on August 24, 2008 at 02:00 AM

Gail is a big loss because, although they have tried to put others at the forefront of the division, Gail was the number 1 face. ODB is in a position to take that role over, and after this week's Impact she might just have done so, but last week the situation looked a lot more bleak. I can tell you one thing for certain: Wylde is NOT ready.

the beautiful people have slowly become the faces of the knockout division.
again this is further proof that some fans are never satisfied. fans complain that the same people are for for the world titles. now we have FOUR brand new competitors in the main event and still with the bitching.
i think mvp will win. they will save jeff's title win for maybe survivor series.

Posted By: jd (Guest) on August 24, 2008 at 06:40 AM

The Beautiful People are over, they are hot...but they are heels, and only one of them is any good in the ring. The division has been built on good in-ring action and to let Velvet Sky go to the top of the card would be a step backwards in that regard. I have faith that the bookers know what they are doing, they certainly seemed to have booked themselves out of a hole this week, I just think it will take time to recover from losing Gail. I'm not complaining about new blood in the title picture, I'm complaining that a world title match is being used to promote a US Title angle. Very, very few people think anyone but HHH is winning that match.

Well boys and girls, that's about it. Randle is in tomorrow, as is JP. Michael O and Matt Short are in today. I'm off to watch the dozen or so DVDs still in shrink wrap that I recently picked up. Before we go, let me leave you with the worst nightmare of smarks everywhere:

Lansdellicious - Out