Welcome back. I’m posting this early since it usually goes up on a Monday but there seems to be some other thing going on this Monday that will almost certainly distract everybody and prevent them from going to insidepulse.com and seeing that lovely “Problem loading page” message on Firefox. We are getting a new server in January, honestly.
As you should have heard, we are currently deliberating the Pulse Wrestling Awards 2006. As part of my perpetual quest to avoid having my voice lost in the din, here’s how I voted:
Best Male Wrestler — DAVE Finlay
I suppose that Danielson has had the stronger body of work this year but he has had a far better quality of opponents as well. Joe has basically been treading water for half the year, doing little of any significance and subsequently performing below expectations through no fault of his own. Finlay, on the other hand, has nicked the DAVE crown from Batista by doing his best to make guys like Lashley, Hardy, Kennedy and the aforementioned Dave look better than they have any right to in between stealing the show against Benoit and with Regal. All this at his age and with a maxi-gimmick mini-sidekick? Class. Sheer class.
Comeback of the Year — DAVE Finlay
As above.
Best Female Wrestler — Trish Stratus
Well, duh. Any other answer is a result of one of the following: stupidity, ignorance, arrogance, or a fear of complimenting anything associated with WWE.
Best Tag Team — LAX
Good matches, good characters, good speeches and the ability to actually stay together for more than two months? Easy.
Best Non-Wrestling Personality — JBL
Only time will tell if he can be placed up there with Ventura, Heenan and Lawler in the great Classic Colour Commentator Commission in my estimation, but he’s certainly off to a flying start.
Best Gimmick — King Booker
All hail.
Storyline of the Year — LAX fights discrimination in TNA
To be honest, there haven’t been any particularly worthwhile storylines this year. LAX gets my vote based solely on the passion and realism of those involved (why was Foley/Flair not nominated, nincompoops?) but expect it the accolade to go to Mickie/Trish based purely on pathetic male libidos.
Most Improved Wrestler — Nigel McGuiness
I’d say he was pretty damn good before the year started but, hey, it beats voting for Carlito (lazy), Edge (lucky), Cena (luckier) or Nitro (lame).
Best Finisher — C.M. Punk’s Anaconda Vise
Fine, whatever, I don’t care. It’s like the Grammys giving an award for Best Musical Note.
Breakout Star of the Year — C.M. Punk
He got a bigger reaction than DX or the Hardys at one of the ‘big four’ PPVs despite doing little more than dispose of morons on Extreme Heat since June. Can’t argue with that. The only doubt now is whether he gets the ECW belt at WrestleMania or One Night Stand”¦
Missed Opportunity of the Year — DX not adding new members
It was the most appropriate of the nominations. Punk not winning the title at December to Dismember was a good thing – as was WWE ditching Angle — while TNA jobbing out Joe to Angle was a foregone conclusion, much like ECW2’s failure. However, DX returning was a stained-glass window of opportunity to get younger stars like Nitro or Doane over with the crowd. Instead they just continued to run the damn thing into the ground after SummerSlam to the point where”¦ well, we’ll get to that in a minute.
Best Match — Chris Benoit vs. Finlay at Judgement Day
No hype. No garbage. No pretensions. No doubt — this one thoroughly deserves the ‘overlooked classic’ tag it will receive.
Worst Match — The Undertaker vs. The Big Show in the Punjabi Prison at Great American Bash
As much fun as Taker might have on rope swings”¦ no.
Best Big Event — WrestleMania XXII
Nothing else can come close. WrestleMania is now a bigger brand name than WWE.
Best Promotion — Ring of Honor
Again, any other answer is just plain wrong. Fact > opinion, people. Raw discovered it has the inverted talent to turn original broadcasts into repeats, TNA has a few genuine talents capable of repeatedly great performances but anything stemming from the company itself was idiotic, and ECW shouldn’t even be acknowledged as a promotion since it’s just a TV show and a piss-poor one at that. Smackdown did have a fair few bright spots this year but there’s no need to award this category to a show with a dead guy as its biggest star. Only ROH came close to having an acceptable blend of great matches, moments and storylines.
So, those were my votes. Go ahead and make yours if you haven’t already done so.
Oh, and the question thing too. Yeah. We need questions for the column, so send ‘em here.
Now, on we go”¦
Andrew Clarke (not the Andrew Clarke?) lets rip:
“Right burnside ere’s another.
I watched WCW round about 1991, I remember a wrestler who on his way to ring, would rap to his entrance music. Whats his name? And have you got any of his records?
He was fat, wore a spandex baby-grow, and I seem to remember him tag-teaming with El Gigante one time. Thats all i can give.”
I believe that was “The Rapmaster” P.N. News, a booking creation of one Dusty Rhodes. His career more or less peaked at Great American Bash ’91, when he and Bobby Eaton beat Steve Austin and Terry Taylor in a Scaffold Match and partied with Salt N Pepa. After that he was shuffled down the card and out of WCW after he broke an opponent’s leg doing a top-rope splash (he weighed about 400 lbs, after all). He later turned up in ECW as one of Da Baldies, a stable that included such other luminaries as Vic Grimes and Rodney Mack, and had the pleasure of getting beaten up by New Jack until the promotion folded in 2001. Oh, and he’s also the half-brother of WWF jobber extraordinaire The Mantaur. That must be one hell of a family dinner at Christmas.
And, no, I don’t have any of his albums. The only rap albums I have are Public Enemy and Edan.
Next”¦
Dave Higgins gets inventive:
“Hi Iain”¦
Just wondering, how would you book Paul Burchill upon his return to the main
WWE roster? Personally, I’d stick him in an all-British stable with William
Regal, Dave Taylor and a debuting Harry Smith, and push them hard as a
group. Then I’d groom Burchill for the top belt, Smith for the undercard,
Regal as the mouthpiece and to continue tagging with Taylor as he is now.
Trouble is, knowing WWE, if they went down that route the stable would end
up coming to the ring in bowler hats with cups of tea and acting all snooty
rather than being given a chance to be a group of legitimate talents.
Your comments?”
I can definitely see them doing something like that, although Harry Smith seems destined for Raw and an eventual feud with Shawn Michaels next year. Honestly, I don’t really mind what they do with Burchill as long as they let him wrestle. It’s been great to have Benoit, Finlay and Regal carrying the workload of Smackdown this year but none of them are going to be able to remain in that spot for much longer, so they really do need to start utilising younger talent capable of filling their roles. Smith and C.M. Punk have been treated very well so far, getting a slow-burn approach that bodes well for WWE’s interest in their future. Burchill has already been given plenty of TV exposure but nothing that could seriously dent his chances of succeeding in good time. Add him to ECW’s roster with a view to taking over Punk’s midcard wrestling spot once Punk is inevitably pushed up to the main event when RVD inevitably ducks out next year. Build him up slowly and let people come to appreciate his skill in their own time, just as happened to Benoit and Malenko in the ‘90s. The potential for a feud between the wrestling elders (Finlay, Benoit, Regal, Taylor) and the eager juniors (Burchill, Punk, Smith, maybe even Haas and Benjamin) certainly can’t be ignored though”¦
Or do the bowler hat thing and form a stable based on The Avengers, which could rock if they understand the source material (but they clearly wouldn’t).
By the way, in case anybody doesn’t have enough examples of how out-of-touch Vince McMahon is already, the reason Burchill’s pirate gimmick was dropped was because Vince didn’t understand it as he didn’t know about Pirates of the Caribbean or Captain Jack Sparrow. Quite how anybody who is ignorant of one of the biggest movie franchises in recent times can hope to successfully operate his own movie production company is a question that even I can’t answer.
Next”¦
“I remember hearing last year HBK would be moving to a part time schedule, but hasn’t. Now, I know DX has played a major roll in this not happening, but what are the odds of 1. DX ending anytime soon really? and 2. HBK really going part time even when it does?
Also, how do you see them really blowing-off this whole DX angle?
Be as little flip as possible, as much as I do appreciate sarcasm.”
The rumours of Michaels wrestling on a part-time basis have pretty much persisted for nearly nine years now, ever since his back finally crapped out on him back in 1998. That Vince McMahon chose the severely injured Michaels over a fully-fit Bret Hart might give some people added perspective of the Montreal incident. But I digress”¦ so I’ll digress some more; even it could be construed as ‘flip’. Michaels, as I’m sure you all know, is a born-again Christian and credits his faith with healing his back. Well, the late, great, perfect Curt Hennig, another renowned over-bumper, had to put his wrestling career on hold in the early ‘90s due to chronic back pain as well but eventually returned to a full-time schedule without a God intervention. Also, the Michaels that came back in 2002 was quite different from the Michaels that quit in 1998. That Michaels was drinking too much, over-medicating, very depressed and alone. Perhaps he should credit his faith — and his family — with curing those ills, which in turn made it easier to make the needed physical repairs. Perhaps he does, I’m just striving for accuracy here.
Why does this column always seem to somehow wind up talking about God?
Now, to actually answer your questions:
1. Ideally it would have ended at SummerSlam this year but Hunter is having fun, Michaels doesn’t have to live-up to his self-imposed expectations of his in-ring work since it’s all for comedy, and Stephanie is convinced that DX makes for good TV. Plus, they have a new DVD set of the group coming out in February. You might think that such a ‘definitive’ release of a stable should wait until the stable has been fully laid to rest but, hey, that logic hasn’t stopped U2 releasing 3 greatest hits collections and it won’t stop WWE with DX. After that is out there are only five or so weeks until WrestleMania and there’s not really much point in breaking them up before then. In fact, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if they wound up pitting DX against John Cena for the title at Mania itself in either a triple threat or handicap match. It would be an extraordinarily heated match, the build-up actually would make for some good TV (for some, not for me), and pitting the three most dominant wrestlers on Raw against one another for the belt on the biggest show of the year does make sense — and would be mirrored nicely by Batista/Undertaker doing the same thing on Smackdown. As far as the eventual break-up is concerned, it can only realistically work one of these ways:
– One of them turns heel on the other and we get yet another Triple H vs. Shawn Michaels match. This is the option I’m least keen on.
– They have another draft lottery and they wind up on different brands. As refreshing as it would be to have either guy leave Raw for the first time since the original brand extension, it’s sadly still a long shot.
– Michaels finally does take a sabbatical, giving Triple H the opportunity to go back to his usual self, and whenever he comes back they just act like the DX thing never happened. This is perhaps the most likely to happen.
Oh, or they could die or run off and marry Dixie Carter or something. The unexpected only comes when you don’t expect it”¦ so far as I can tell”¦
2. One can only hope. He signed a new five-year deal a few months back for a guaranteed annual downsize of $1.5 million, even though he is quite limited in what he can do in the ring at the moment (hence masking it with DX comedy matches, as mentioned above) and almost certainly will take at least a few weeks off sometime after Mania. Other than that”¦ it’s just a case of ‘wait and see’.
Next”¦
Andrew Clarke (perhaps the) returns with:
“When will ‘Woozie’s corner’ be returning?”
Three days after I win the European Title from Bret Hart at Starrcade.
If you missed the wondrous Woozie666 from our forum then feel free to grease yourself up real good and click here. Just don’t blame me for the ensuing rash.
Next”¦
And over to Patrick Robinson we go:
“Hey love the column and thought I’d chime in with something I’ve been thinking about for a while now.
When was the last time Cena lost CLEAN (i.e. no ref bumps,no distractions, no heel antics etc.) as well as taking the pin since his initial reign as WWE Champion?
Must be back in early 2005 or 2004 at least cause he sure as hell hasn’t this year.”
Mmm, good question. I think it actually was this year, when Triple H hit him with the Pedigree and pinned him during a Handicap Match (Edge was on HHH’s side) the Raw following WrestleMania. Also, Edge did pin him at the end of New Year’s Revolution but I suppose that entire ‘match’ was a heel antic. Before that, if we’re not counting weapon shots, outside interference, feet-on-the-ropes pinfalls and the like, I think we’d have to go way back to the 27th August 2004, when Booker T pinned Cena at a huge house show in Sydney, Australia to go 2-1 up in their forgettable Best-of-Five Series for the United States Title. Some might not like Cena being so well-protected but it’s just the way the promotion works now. Vince wants to make him lose as little as Hogan and, well, that does actually make sense. It’s also why a big Mania match between him and the unstoppable DX would feel appropriate in front of a 70,000 crowd, as I mentioned above.
Next”¦
Yup, keep sending them in and we’ll get the fifth column up at some point in between Christmas and New Year. It’s one of the many benefits that come from me not being at all interested in either holiday, even if Santa Claus might smash a Coke bottle over my head in a dark alley one night.
