Welcome back to Pulse Wrestling Answers, our resident Q&A feature. If you’ve anything you want to ask, send it in here and we will like you.
First, some SummerSlam notes…
– It’s rather sad to see how Kane went from shit-scary psycho to Uncle Fester’s cuddlier cousin. Kind of like how the Manic Street Preachers went from Motorcycle Emptiness to The Love Of Richard Nixon. Will Kane ever get his Autumnsong?
– How come Vickie Guerrero wasn’t at the GM party? They didn’t even mention her when Vince complained about the sausage fest in progress.
– Rey Mysterio returns… tonight! You already know this because you bought the show but, still, we thought you’d appreciate an advert for something you’re currently watching anyway! What the hell?
– So if Kennedy is meant to be akin to Triple H circa 1998, that makes Carlito the new D-Lo Brown and Umalgina the new Mark Henry?
– Only Rey Mysterio’s head actually returned. His torso was played by the bloated corpse of Jeff Hardy’s wet nightmare. His legs were stolen from Sabu, or at least the shiny, shiny, shiny trousers were.
– Steve Austin hasn’t wrestled since 2003 and he’s still getting bigger pops than the rest of the roster, bar Cena. AND he still can’t make a WWE movie project work, so what the hell hope have the rest of their films got??
– Harmless enough segment, by the way, though it would have made far more sense to keep it for Smackdown and advertise Austin’s appearance in advance just as they plugged Holyfield on SNME before that aired. Austin drinking beer won’t help buyrates but it might help ratings. And would it kill them to have Hardy actually involved in the ‘contest’?
– I’m telling you, if they turned Regal into The Rapping Man’s Man and had him feud with Cena, we’d get the funniest promos this side of 2001.
– Hey, look, it’s the ECW title.
– The Hs get a pre-match video package, a bit of the DX theme, a ton of pyro, a bit of the King of Kings theme, then the Play the Game theme? What, no Ode to Joy? He should name his sledgehammer Joy.
– This Triple H In-Ring Celebration is sponsored by such other excessively long non-entities as Pirate Of The Caribbean: At World’s End and Embracing Boredom: A Guide To Watching Paint Dry.
– Since he lost the title at WrestleMania, Batista has failed to beat The Undertaker at Backlash, failed to beat The Undertaker in a Cage Match on Smackdown, failed to beat Edge at Judgement Day, failed to beat Edge at One Night Stand, failed to beat Edge at Vengeance, failed to beat Gary and Kane at the Great American Bash, and now has failed to beat Gary at SummerSlam. No wonder Teddy Long is not fit enough to be GM by himself. By this reckoning, Funaki is about due for a PPV main event.
– Cena/Orton could have been great if they had gone for an extra 15-20 minutes. House show reports say that they have been having such long matches, so why not on PPV? C’mon, WWE has had over 20 years to get the timing issues sorted out.
Anyway, onto the questions…
“Simple question oh Burnie one; when the f*ck are they going to bring WWE 24/7 to SKY TV in the UK? I wanna watch old wrestling and live in the past toooo!”
– Will Cooling
Living in the past is the way forward. Everything points towards some kind of video-on-demand WWE service being launched in the UK eventually, though their current TV deal with Sky lasts until 2010 so don’t expect anything to happen before then. Apparently Sky Italia offers a slightly truncated form of WWE 24/7, with the channel available three days a week and each day being split into three blocks of three hours each. Perhaps somebody working there has an irrational love for the number 3. The weekday blocks cost 6 Euros per day, the weekend blocks 8 Euros. They also shy away from screening the more recent PPVs, which the North American version of 24/7 does carry. PPLive in Japan also carries some 24/7. It’s a P2P video network you can check out here if you are so inclined and are savvy with the lingo. Back in the UK, there was a rumour that NTL were looking to secure the exclusive rights to show WWE but then their cable service was bought out by Virgin Media and it fell through the cracks. It will happen some day in the future, particularly if the Sky Box Office PPV numbers hold up and the UK territory plans move forward. Those two things are easier said than done, of course, but for now just take solace in being able to turn around to Americans and say “Ah, but ROH does have a TV deal â€Â
Personally, my oversized plasma TV is able to get onto YouTube so being able to watch old wrestling whilst sprawled on the sofa is easy-done.
By the way, telling girls that you like to sprawl on the sofa and watch old wrestling is very rarely a good idea. Probably an idea to also tell them that you like to pick your nose when you think nobody’s looking, you’ve alphabetised your CD and DVD collections and that you want to be Die Hard when you grow up. Just get it all out there at once, man. Has Knocked Up taught us nothing? (No, no it hasn’t.)
Now, to placate young Will, here’s something that might well be a part of 24/7’s upcoming Sheepherders program – taking on the Fantastics in a six-man barbed wire cage match from the UWF:
Still not quite as hardcore as licking Sean Mooney’s head though, is it?
“Simple and trite: Which current champion has the worst finisher?”
– ML Kennedy
Kennedy. ROLFMATOMATO.
Let’s have a look at the current crop of championship finishers, then:
John Cena
Oh, no! I’m being FUd! Pray for me as I am gently placed onto the mat from a modest height!! And what’s this?? The STFU!! Dear heavens, how am I to survive having one leg slightly cocked and my face being cuddled?!? Argh!!! Um, shut up. The problem here is not with the moves themselves but with the man doing them. Certainly the STFU at least has not proven difficult for countless other wrestlers to apply in a seemingly more devastating manner. If only Regal would take Cena aside for ten minutes and give him some pointers. Also, like I said on the forums the other day, why not have him start to use the Boston Crab? He could call it the West Newbury Clutch or something even more asinine if so inclined. ‘Throwback’ would work actually, yet he’s taken that for something else. It’s piss-easy to do and would be an easy lead-in to the STFU. Or invisibility. That’d do the trick.
Gary
Look, it doesn’t really matter what his finisher is. Let’s be honest – if any of us were being touched on any part of our bodies by Gary, we’d shit ourselves, admit defeat and just hope to hope itself that somehow, someway, he didn’t kill us, eat us or adopt us as a pet. The man himself is a finisher. And not like Ludvig Borga. I mean, just look at this picture he drew:
John Morrison
What the f*ck is his finish move, anyway? I’m quite proud to say that I have never seen any John Morrison matches except for that one at SummerSlam, which I only just remembered about obviously it didn’t leave much of an impression beyond Morrison failing to grasp the basic tenets of ‘heel puts feet on the ropes to get pinfall’. Maybe that is his finisher – failing fundamentals. Wait; apparently it’s a corkscrew neckbreaker. Well, at least it involves a teeny bit of flipping. It’s hard to hate on things that flip.
Kurt Angle
Allow me to finally come out and say it – the Ankle Lock is a f*cking idiotic hold. It doesn’t look like a devastating manoeuvre, it just looks like attempted shoe theft. The Angle Slam isn’t much better, having only marginally more impact than Cena’s version of the same basic move. Call it the FU Hard.
So I don’t know which one to pick. Might as well go with Morrison, since he made me go and look up his finisher, thus instantly making it infinitely lame. You might think that I should watch ECW every week in order to qualify for this gig but then I would have to dislike you.
Here’s the address, keep the questions coming in. More answers to come tomorrow!
