Hidden Highlights 02.16.09: Issue #181

Hidden Highlights
By JP Prag

Issue #181

Commentator: Previously, on Hidden Highlights…

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Commentator: Though JP may like perfection in the readers, he is not above making a few mistakes.

The DaGreene: As you’ve now started to spell my name correctly (it ends with an e that you were chopping off) I shall comply with you request of watching my tenses, spelling, and grammar.

Stenographer: Except he did do it once last week. Whoops!

jeff: When was Chavo in the original ECW?

Jamal: OOH OOH ME! I KNOW THAT ONE! I KNOW THAT ONE!

……Never.

Ghost of JT: JP seemed to have been thinking of Chavo’s limited time in NJPW. Don’t ask how he got those two confused!

Commentator: Beyond the spelling and history issues, there were some quality Hidden Highlights. And some of them possibly had even more depth than first thought.

Joe Roche: I like Tazz saying “The Tazz” as a shot at Adamle, but don’t forget Tazz used to be The Tazmaniac when ECW was in it’s infancy. So he might have been tipping his hat to the old school ECW fans still out there.

Bill from CT: You only got half of the hidden highlight with Jericho and Cena. The way Jericho pulled Cena’s shirt over his head is the way they do it in Hockey when they fight…and Jericho’s dad was? Yep. A hockey player.

Commentator: Of course, that all happened in this article. Some people easily forget where they are.

O: I love the Hidden Highlights, umm by the way didn’t I read something about someone doing an African-American hall of fame for this site… Did Vince get to you guys and shut that idea down or what?

Stenographer: See the Small-for-All News Report this Tuesday for all of your African American Hall of Fame love.

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Commentator: And now, 411wrestling.com proudly presents…

JP: Hello everyone had not one, but two ladies stay overnight on Valentine’s Day (though both slept on the couch with each other), and welcome back to Hidden Highlights! If you’ve never been here before, let me tell you what we are doing in these pages.

Hidden Highlights are about the little things that make the product great. They are about showing the positive motions all those involved in wrestling do to make a better show. The Miz may hold his opponents hands down to make a pin attempt better. Charles Robinson may let a little tear shed from his eye every time someone mentions Ric Flair. Mike Tenay may tell you about the 17 year history of a visiting wrestler and make them sound huge in one sentence. These are all examples of little things that make the product far better.

Every week this article spotlights up to the Top 15 Hidden Highlights of the week, whether the be from television (RAW, ECW of SciFi, iMPACT, SmackDown!, and a PPV or television special if there is one), the past, small shows, tapes, or the indy scene.

This article may have an author, but it is also dependent upon the readers and true fans of professional wrestling—those who love what they watch and want to tell the world what they have found. The Top 15 are chosen from what I see and what readers write-in. Whatever is the best is what you’ll see!

And who am I? Well, I am JP Prag, and I bring you Hidden Highlights with one goal in mind: to appreciate all those little things that make a huge difference.

Now let’s get on with the Hidden Highlights!

RAW – Retro Many Weeks

JP: We’ll kick if off this week with… errrr… somewhere in the past. How many weeks ago was this?

Jasper Gerretsen: Goldust was shown in the back trying to convince Cody Rhodes to watch the new Starrcade DVD. During the entire dialogue, Cody called his father “Dusty” or “The Dream”, but never “dad”. I thought that was pretty interesting since even though The Legacy is all about being second (or third) generation superstars with a wrestling pedigree, Cody apparently still wants to distance himself from his dad’s jolly blue collar fat guy persona, which makes sense given his character.

JP: Which is odd, because in the interviews before this Cody is the one who called him dad and Goldust never said anything outside of a passing reference. All I can think about is at the Hall of Fame ceremony in 2006 when Cody put over his brother huge on the mic saying the WWE made a mistake not having him on the job. They should play that clip sometime, though that would require some crazy continuity!

ROH Final Battle 2009

JP: Sticking with Jasper but moving on to something completely different we’ve got this one.

Jasper Gerretsen: ROH Final Battle 2009: At this show Kenny Omega stepped into the ring to face his biggest challenge in ROH yet: Claudio Castagnoli. The Hidden Highlight is both in Omega’s attire and his entrance. His tights had Japanese lettering on the back and as he came down the aisle he paused to make the Kamehameha gesture from the Dragonball anime. Both these hidden highlights refer to the fact that he spent the past few months touring with the DDT promotion in Japan.

Bonus: Kenny Omega and Kota Ibushi hit a double 450 splash:

JP: Not sure what that “bonus” had to do with anything, but I guess that screams of ROH.

SmackDown – Retro 1 Week

JP: Getting closer to the present, we’ve got a few from last week’s SmackDown starting with the lovely Cathy K!

Cathy K: Did anyone spot when Vickie came out before the start of the battle royal to make her announcement, Chavo was waving his arm around and pointing at himself in a kind of small-child-in-the-school-play way – “Look at me, Auntie Vickie! I’m here, I’m going to win! Auntie, look at meeee!”

JP: Poor Chavo. He always makes the most of any role he is in but really has never been in a sustained major role that he could be taken seriously… except for when he was tagging with Pepe the hobby horse.

Talk about a Hidden Highlight, Pepe is wearing a neck brace from getting beat up so much!

SmackDown – Retro 1 Week

JP: Because I just can’t live without her, Cathy is going to get some double action in this column. Gosh, it’s much better with her than with Jasper.

Cathy K: In the tag team action, The Brian Kendrick steals a tag from Morrison to Miz. A minute later Morrison tags himself back in, then a minute later again Kendrick tags himself back in. It reminded me that back in their previous tag team incarnations as Londrick and MNM, they had a big feud which included Londrick de-pantsing Mercury and Nitro in the middle of the ring, and (kayfabe) caused MNM to split up in 2006. Just because they had to tag together now doesn’t mean they like each other…

JP: You know, that is much better continuity than even I was remembering! I keep thinking that The Brian Kendrick would work well with Miz and Morrison, but you are right in that they don’t like each other!

SmackDown – Retro 1 Week

JP: Just because I can’t spell his name doesn’t mean that he won’t get included. Here’s The DaGreene!

The DaGreene: Undertaker and HHH vs. Big Show and Edge

Taker has just given Edge and tombstone piledriver. As he was making the cover he made sure he faced The Big show and didn’t take his eyes off him until it was obvious Show had no more interest in the match or Edge.

JP: Don’t forget the history the Undertaker and Big Show have either! The Undertaker has no reason to trust The Big Show at all.

RAW

JP: Jumping ahead to RAW this week, Kelly Kelly and Melina teamed up to take on Beth Phoenix and Jillian Hall. At the end of the match, Beth Phoenix’s intern Rose Mendez tripped up Melina on the ropes so that her hero could make the pin. While the pinfall was happening, I was wondering where Kelly Kelly was since I had just seen her on the ring apron. Why would she not make the save? During the replay is when I caught it:

After the trip up, Kelly Kelly actually jumped down off the ring apron and ran over to confront Rosa Mendez for getting involved. Then Santino actually got in the middle and kept Kelly Kelly at bay while also completely distracting her. The entire story was going in just in the corner of the screen, but I was impressed that it was put together so well and worked to keep Kelly Kelly away. Normally they just do the knocked out to the ground spot, so this was a different and totally workable away to keep someone away from the save.

RAW

JP: During the mid-show main event, Chris Jericho, Kane, and Mike Knox teamed up to take on fellow Elimination Chamber opponent John Cena, Rey Mysterio, and Kofi Kingston. Shortly in to the match, Jerry Lawler actually pointed out a Hidden Highlight when he said, “Look at Jericho’s knee on the throat!”; pointing out that Jericho kept his leg on Cena’s throat as he tagged out to make sure that he did more damage.

But the King’s Hidden Highlight is not my Hidden Highlight! You see, when King said, “Look at Jericho’s knee on the throat!” the camera actually had to pan down and look at exactly what the King was talking about. That means that the King was not watching the monitor but was actually watching the live action. I really like when the announcers watch things live and react and respond to what they are seeing rather than react to the monitor. The cameras will miss some things, but unfortunately the WWE wants them to react to just what is shown at home.

ECW

JP: Over in the land of extreme, Christian made his surprise return, but that lead to an even greater moment.

Michael Sakurada: Matt Striker has done it again, as Christian is coming down when he is debuting, Matt says, “This moment has become Instantly Classic!!!”

Winner, winner, chicken dinner

JP: I wrote that down in about half a second, but we weren’t the only ones!

Ricky Young: This has probably been brought up to you a hundred times by now, but when Christian showed up, Matt Striker said that this moment had become “Instantly Classic.” This is a Highlight of course, because Instant Classic was his nickname in TNA. Matt Striker apparently does pay attention to TNA, even though his broadcast partner says that it’s for retards.

JP: Todd Grisham may have said such things in the past, but our next Hidden Highlight shows that he may be the retard now.

ECW

JP: After Christian confronted Jack Swagger at the top of the show, Todd Grisham was quick to add to Matt Striker’s awesome comments, “Christian wasting no time making an iMPACT on ECW.” See, even Grisham can reach Matt Striker levels of awesomeness from time to time.

ECW

JP: Sticking with ECW we have… Jasper? Damn, now you do outnumber Cathy in this episode!

Jasper Gerretsen: ECW, February 10th, 2009: TJ Wilson made his debut as Tyson Kidd, wearing black tights with a pink maple leaf on the front. The maple leaf was a nice touch as it referred to both the fact that he’s from Canada and that he trained in the Hart family dungeon.

JP: You forgot the most important part: the pink and black represents the Harts in total! Also, Natalya’s new hair and belly revealing attire threw me for a loop. She didn’t look like herself at all!

ECW

JP: All right, we detoured from Christian long enough. Let’s get back to him.

Matt P: My Highlight is from ECW and Christian’s return. On his Titantron clip, the two shown people whom he gave the unprettier to were; Shelton Benjamin (An established heel, reaffirming Christians face status) and Rhyno (A current TNA talent). Great work by production, confirming Christian’s face status and his superiority over his former employer.

JP: Wait for it.

Wait for it.

Wait for it.

Matt P: WHAMMY~!

ECW

JP: During the match itself, Jack Swagger threw Christian into the announce table. After he did so, Swagger came over to follow up and check out the damage. Hornswaggle saw that Swagger was heading in his direction, and immediately ran to the corner and started cowering! I thought this was a great touch by Hornswaggle to immediately run away from Swagger and be afraid of him considering what Swagger has attempted to do to him in the past.

iMPACT

JP: Leaving ECW and moving to a Christian-less TNA (tough he still has the top selling product on ShopTNA. Check out the Hamilton Ave Journal every Thursday for a follow-up on that one!), the Knockouts has a nine woman gauntlet match. Just before the final competitors got into place, Roxxi eliminated Velvet Sky and then Sojourner Bolt quickly threw Roxxi over the rope. When Roxxi hit the floor, Velvet Sky was already starting to walk to the back. When she saw that the girl who eliminated her was laid out, she turned towards Roxxi, gave her a quick kick to the back, and then kept on going. Nice work by Velvet Sky to get the quick extra damage on her perpetual enemy.

SmackDown

JP: I may be way behind this week on watching the shows, but other people managed to finish off the week for me!

David: In this week’s Smackdown, The Colons took on Miz and Morrison for the Bella’s affections.

I noticed one of the Bella twins had possession an apple, until Miz took it for a snack after the match.

It not only helps the WWE’s PG rating by showing kids the right foods to eat, it also hearkens back to Carlito’s ‘Bad Apple’ phase.

JP: And don’t forget what an apply symbolizes. And if you don’t know, take a class in biblical double entendres.

SmackDown

JP: Sticking in the same match, there was even more to see!

William Jansen: On SmackDown Miz & Morrison beat Carlito & Primo and thus won dates with The Bella Twins. After the match The Miz showed what a superficial prick he was, as he was a lot more concerned with being seen with his Bella-twin, than actually paying attention to her. He was singularly focused on holding her close, making sure that everybody could see them together and taking in peoples reaction. It wasn’t until they were way up the ramp, that The Miz even looked at his Bella-twin. Great way to show how The Miz is totally in love with his self-image, and completely indifferent to the girl on his arm.

JP: And this was the exact match I was watching while writing this, so the timing could not have been more perfect!

Well everyone, that wraps up this week’s show. Thank you for reading the 181st ISSUE of Hidden Highlights!

Do you have a Hidden Highlight from this or any week in history that you would like to share? Please e-mail this article at [email protected] with your thoughts! Send them by Saturday afternoon to be considered! And remember, they can be from any show, live or taped, or any house show, or anything you saw. The best of the best will be featured among the top 15 next week.

In the meantime, be sure to catch my very own Thursday morning news report The Hamilton Ave Journal: the only wrestling news report focused on the business of wrestling.

Until then, you have just experienced the most positive article in all of the IWC: Hidden Highlights!