Wrestling News, Opinions, Etc., 03.22.05

Archive

In Memoriam: John DeLorean, who took us back to the future in his automobiles.

In Memoriam II: Bobby Short, who knew what a treasure the Great American Songbook was.

Insomnia yet again…went to bed on Sunday at 7PM, woke up at quarter to twelve. Well, I was on day shift this time, so I only had to wait until about 5AM to get to work instead of stay up until 2PM on evening shift. I decided that after renewing my prescriptions at Wally World that I could take a nap before Raw. Which, of course, I couldn’t do. So it was finish up the Pimp Section, scrounge for news from the usual suspects, decide what to put in if it holds my interest, and grab something to eat. All I know is that I’m going to be trashed today at work. This is going to well and truly suck.

And speaking of suck, let me suck up…

THE PIMP SECTION

Lucard discussed hauntings and statues.

JJ‘s back, and the Music Section has him!

Lambert has some weekly TNA predictions for you. And he’s good enough to get mentioned in a header column in the Wrestling section. Meanwhile, I get mentioned in the lead story, but not linked. Widro and Daniels have had two days to do this, yet nothing has happened.

Hollyric also does Impact, and covers my ass when torrents get uploaded late.

Ambrosia does some great coverage of Smackdown, and again my ass is covered if torrents get uploaded late.

I may not care about ROH, but Francis does, and he brings the scoops to you each week.

Aulbrook goes shorty this week.

Porter hates guys who bring disrepute to soccer.

More Paintball etiquette from Peterson.

Coverage continues of the Infinite Left Turn “Sport” from Price.

Urciuolo talks ‘roids and doesn’t mention wrestling once. God bless him.

I LOVE IT WHEN A DEMAND IS MET

Welcome to the audition match for Jannetty. Given the results of this, where Jannetty looked damn good, WWE could sign him as a tag specialist. – Me, March 15th

Okay, first things first. Marty, again, looked great. WWE would be foolish not to pick him up and give him a decent push (Raw? IC level?). – Me, this weekend’s Smackdown Short Form.

Wrestling Observer’s Dave Meltzer is reporting that after impressing WWE management with his performance on Tuesday against Kurt Angle, WWE has signed Marty Jannetty to a contract. Current plans or for him to be on the same brand as Shawn Michaels, which at the moment is RAW. – Fingers, Sunday news breaks

Damn, that was f*cking quick. It’s going to be great to see Marty back on a regular basis, although I expect him to be heat fodder for a bit before returning to Raw. His natural place, though, is with a tag team. Who on Raw do you team him with? Turn him into an “Iraqi sympathizer” and team him with Hassan? God knows that Daivari could get him over quick, but there’d be a Sergeant Slaughter problem at the back end. He can’t go with Michaels again without the whole “one-night special” being invalidated, although you have to ameliorate the blame on Michaels’ part; he didn’t know that Marty would get signed*. Turn him heel and team him with Snitsky? It’ll give something for Snitsky to do in order to get his heat back. Tag team with Benjamin after he drops the IC strap? That sounds damn great. Drop the belt to Christian and form them up.

Or he can be a singles wrestler. Put him in a feud with Hassan and give him cheap heat? Sounds good, and puts him at a level where he should be. Christian is a little too high up the ladder (no pun intended) for him right now.

The point is that there are a number of options right now for Marty. You can be certain of one thing. Michaels will want him to get a push. He’ll go to Trip about it. Mission accomplished. Congratulations, Marty, for getting back in the fold. We’ve missed you.

* – Of course, Big Johnson over at 1bullshit Junior is reporting this:

There are plans to do a “Rockers Reunion” run on the house shows with Shawn Michaels after Wrestlemania, so he’ll be working the Raw brand. If they wanted to do something really unique as an attraction, they could book The Rockers vs. Chris Benoit & Chris Jericho on a house show loop.

Thus, Shawn Michaels is a liar, albeit an unintentional one. For a change.

BLACK AND WHITE NIGHT, OR MAYBE JUST BLUE

After getting Frankie Kazarian, everyone was waiting with baited breath as to who the next TNA personality to transfer to the WWE would be. Well, thanks to Big Johnson yet again, we have the answer: Mike Posey. Yes, Mike Posey, the Dropkicking Ref. He’s already given his notice to TNA and has some WWE tryout dates scheduled.

Hey, this could be fun. It’s been a long time since we’ve seen refs in action (WCW, of course, made a habit of it, and WWE has the two main beneficiaries of that policy, Nick Patrick and Charles Robinson). Just for a little comedy after Wrestlemania, let Posey and Josh Matthews get into some kind of argument and book a comedy match around it. Look, it can’t be any worse than having two low-talent wrestlers main-eventing WM for the WWE title, can it?

SO WHAT’S GOING ON WITH THE ECW SHOW?

Well, we all know about Lance Storm wanting to make an “unretirement” (gee, one night only, Shawn?). According to Da Meltz, he’d like to do some matches in OVW to get back into shape and do a dark match against Chris Benoit at the Raw taping in Calgary…Alberta, Canada. Good for him. I’d love to see him back in action, just as long as they don’t get the urge to get his ex-partner involved with anything…actually, that probably won’t be possible the way that P. J. burned his bridges when he left WWE in a huff.

But there might be someone else on that scale coming back as well, also according to Da Meltz. Since Nunzio is already in WWE and has the ECW background to participate in the PPV, Tony Mamaluke is saying he wants to join up with him to reform one of the permutations of the FBI. I’ll accept this if he can do another one of those “being thrown over the top rope and landing hard on the guardrail” spots that looked so utterly sick back in the ECW days.

WWE IN EXILE

I sometimes wonder about All-Japan. Just when they’re back on their feet and making a little noise again, they decide they want to be WWE East and pull the gaijins in who have been let go by Vince and company. On Sunday, the next phase of this transition began. First of all, they had the parts of the WWE FBI whom they got rid of, Chuck Palumbo and Johnny Stamboli, on the same side of a tag match. On the other side was Jamal, the member of Three-Minute Warning who didn’t get stuck wearing the asinine superhero outfit. He was teaming up with Taiyo Kea, who must have wondered what he was doing in there. Well, the match was going fine, until someone did a run-in? Any guesses? Here’s some clues: hairy back, body piercings…yep, it was good old Albert. He made Jamal his target in order to start a feud that wouldn’t have even made Heat back in the day when they were still employed in America.

You know, this is really sad. All-Japan is giving us feuds that would have seemed ridiculous back in WWE. TNA can’t decide whether it wants to be a geriatric ward or a gathering place for suicidal bump artists. ROH is happy to get TNA’s leftovers when they’re not booked for anything else. And WWE resigns Marty Jannetty. So when will the seventh seal be broken on the Book of the Apocalypse?

Probably when Raw turns out a consistently good show from start to finish. Let’s see if they’ve successfully called the demons from hell this week…

THE SHORT FORM

Okay, let me be honest: I missed the first twenty minutes of Raw. I was called in to do a little overtime, and you know how greedy I am. So this is going to be a “joined in progress” thing, and I’m not commenting on the Michaels/Conway match, not having seen it…

Match Results:

Mister Regal, Yoshihiro Tajiri, and Christy Hemme over Simon Dean, Maven, and Molly Holly, Mixed Tag Match (Pinfall, Hemme pins Holly, Twist of Fate): Oh, yippie, I got home just in time for this crap. I pity poor Regal and Tajiri for having to bear the albatross of an angle advancement match for the Women’s Title. Sometimes, suicide is an option.

Edge and Christian over Chris Jericho and Shelton Benjamin (Pinfall, Edge pins Benjamin, spear): You know, if this was, oh, late 1999, I would have been excited as hell about this match, given an appropriate substitute for Benjamin, of course. But it’s 2005, and we’re stuck with what we have, where Benjamin is the only guy out of the four who will go high-risk. The other three, way back when, well…tempus fugit, I guess. Decent match all around, and nice run-in by Benoit at the end. Nothing to really float anyone’s boat, but a definite life preserver.

Our Lord and Savior over Tyson Tomko (Submission, crossface): My guess is that this one was included for two reasons: 1) They felt they needed an actual match to break up the flow of the constant promos and 2) because Benoit was the only guy in the Ladder Match who wasn’t in a match tonight. Neither are good enough reasons to exist.

Dave Batista over Kane, Lumberjack Match (Pinfall, DAVEBomb): I don’t mind clusterf*cks that much. But there’s an art to doing one right. This was a poorly-choreographed clusterf*ck. Not even the commentary helped. When Edge and Christian were beating down Kane during the whole schmeer, Ross didn’t even try to mention that the three are involved in the Ladder Match at WM. Of course, maybe the audience could just assume that…no, this is WWE, where subtlety and properly estimating the public’s intelligence do not exist. You know, a nice little brawl would have been nice. But not this.

Angle Developments:

Fireside Chat: From that mixed tag into a Trip-by-numbers promo…all of a sudden, I’m upset that I missed Michaels/Conway. You know, during the promo, I took a tranquilizer. Then I wondered why I bothered. Trip’s promo would do the job better than the K-Dawg would. Dull, dull, dull. I can imagine how it was for the live audience to have to go through this shit with no distractions like me taking a piss, popping some pills, and typing this.

Memo To My Beautiful and Beloved: Dearest, you know what foreplay is like with me. A glass of good cabernet, some cuddling and kissing, me worshipping your body in ways that people out there couldn’t imagine. Never in that time have I ever done an RKO on you. If you’d wish me to include that in the future, please tell me as soon as possible. And, by the way, please gargle with some sort of antiseptic mouthwash. You don’t know where Orton’s tongue has been.

And at this point, after the insomnia and the extended work hours, I don’t know where my tongue has been. My fingers, though, will be on a keyboard, hopefully for tomorrow. Until I see you next time, try to avoid me.