Quick News
Calling WWE wrestlers entertainers is leading to Unions taking note.
This could hardly be better news. If only for health insurance, this is literally a life saver.
Matt Hardy has been working with several injuries.
That’s always been Matt’s luck. A big push where he really gets over leads to an injury or other drama. Anyone have his supposedly amazing match with Finlay from ECW TV recently?
Ted Dibiase will star in The Marine 2.
WWE marketing will ensure it does great as a direct-to-video release and they now have a greater than ever incentive to make Dibiase a star. Ladies and gentlemen, the next big thing.
WWE cut Armando Estrada.
He was a decent talker, but I guess superfluous enough that I understand this.
In other news, JBL was once told he’d be cut, but WWE upon learning that Stan Hansen was looking for him, decided they didn’t want to be a party to Murder by Lariat and kept JBL under contract.
For more WWE news including Cena, Vince, and AC/DC, check This Week in ‘E
Wrestling the Issue
This is the third instillation of the monthly feature where the week after a Pay Per View we look at each result, not merely for result, or even for match quality, but for what that result tells us about the WWE’s current mindset and view of their wrestlers.
Match 1: HBK’s Team defeats JBL’s Team (MVP defeats JTG, Khali defeats MVP, Rey Mysterio defeats Kane, Miz defeats Shad, Rey defeats Miz, HBK defeats JBL, HBK defeats John Morrison)
Glazer’s Take: A good chunk of this was HBK getting his win back on Morrison, while gaining some revenge on JBL. That’s fine, since HBK and JBL is all but guaranteed to continue, let Morrison have his win in front of the far bigger Raw crowd and maybe build something there down the line. Rey defeats two guys, including going over Kane yet again. He’s really being built huge, but the other major Raw heels (JBL, Orton, Jericho) have somewhere to go, so unless he gets in on the title hunt in a big “I deserve a shot†scenario, it looks like Rey will continue to tread water. A feud with the Miz and Morrison would be great, but Rey’s most likely partner is out hurt, so we’ll see. Khali is being used for one big move and one big pop, which worked out really well with MVP’s hokey victory celebration. MVP needs to be out of the doghouse now, but we’ll see. Shad was actually given a good deal of time to look awesome. He and JTG are an interesting dynamic. Neither can work, despite some cool spots, so hiding them in a team while utilizing their charisma makes sense.
Match 2: Smackdown vs. Raw Diva Match
Glazer’s Take: This is porn for those in the audience too young to get real porn. Wake me when there’s wrestling. Beth Phoenix, Victoria and Mickie James are all great, so at least they’re compensated well. Beth wins.
Match 3: The Undertaker defeats Big Show in a Casket Match
Glazer’s Take: Well, this was plodding nonsense. The casket spots here were especially contrived and this built nowhere. Show can return to watch Edge’s back while the Undertaker moves on to his next opponent. Kozlov looks like a free, big stiff they love to have face Taker. H and Jeff look to have issues over Jeff hitting H in the face, while Edge took the title, so they’ll go three way, with Show mixed in.
Match 4: Team Orton defeats Team Batista (Punk defeats Regal, Shelton defeats Truth, Orton defeats Kingston, Rhodes defeats Punk, Henry defeats Matt Hardy, Batista defeats Henry, Batista defeats Benjamin, Orton defeats Batista)
Glazer’s Take: Well, Orton got the biggest non-return pop of the night when he was ready to hit the RKO on Batista, so its good to see he’s a proper superstar. Orton can continue to play with Batista while Cena continues to kill time with Jericho, saving the major encounters for closer to Wrestlemania. Punk got punked by the heels, again, but if this leads to a feud with Regal where both get time, I think I can live with that. Truth is a terrible worker who can’t keep up with Shelton and the WWE seems to have noticed. Hardy comes off as a star and Henry is a monster, but they were kept to themselves. Batista is clearly a tier below the Orton, Cena, H, Taker crowd, a guy who can keep the top heels occupied and get a pop, but not someone they trust all alone on top.
Match 5: Edge defeats Triple H and Kozlov to win the WWE Title
Glazer’s Take: It’s really good to see that they legitimately view Edge high enough on the card for this. He has another title as a creep opportunist and it can only add to his awesome heat. Of course, I love Edge for breaking up this BRUTAL match between Kozlov and Triple H. Jeff Hardy ran out to attack edge, who presumably attacked him to take him out of the match, and got the second biggest pop of the night. He smacked H with a chair, so he’s clearly not being downgraded. I can’t help but see him as this year’s big Wrestlemania first title win guy. Kozlov needs to go away and since he couldn’t work with H, he’ll hopefully have his push scaled back a bit.
Match 6: John Cena defeats Chris Jericho to win the WWE Title
Glazer’s Take: This was an extremely normal match, but Cena’s awesome heat carried it. Jericho keeps showing he isn’t what he once was in the ring, which is to say a world beater who could carry anyone, but his character has improved so much, it simply doesn’t matter. If Cena vs. Batista is the Wrestlemania plan, Jericho will get the belt back soon, like he did vs. Batista to keep them even, then spend the intervening time returning jobs to both. If Orton is involved, all bets are off and they could just have Cena continue to stay over Jericho for awhile. This will be an excellent test as a ratings draw for Cena, since the best recent ratings were during Punk’s title run, when Cena was around, we’ll see who those were attributable to.
The Smarkish Raw Ranty Short Review Thing for Raw, 11/24/08
A different, more op-ed coverage style this week. Let me know if you prefer this style or the usual in the comments below.
Shane wants tonight to be Chris Jericho vs. Batista in a number one contenders match. Steph puts in Randy Orton. Why the hell doesn’t Punk count again? I mean, everyone else lost the title, he never did.
Steph gets mad at Shane ruining Raw and tells him to go to NY so she can run the show. Shane wonders if she’d like to sleep with another wrestler, so she slaps him and Shane agrees to watch her mess up Raw. Well, looks like we get her screechy ass voice and weird fanboys craving her on a week to week basis again.
Match 1: Mysterio and Michaels defeat Miz and Morrison (Pin, Sunset Flip Powerbomb, **)
JBL decides to be driven to the ring mid-match, which overshadows Cole’s best call ever, noting Morrison hit Michaels in his career threateningly injured eye! Keeping that alive makes for an awesome way to get insta-heat on Shawn.
Rey ends up alone with Miz for a long time and Miz just gets wrecked for a bit before being pinned by Rey. Morrison beats n HBK post match pretty badly, leaving Michaels eye a mess, but JBL gets in and boots the crap out of Morrison in a move that the crowd just kind of shrugged at. As Wiswell says, “What in the TNA?†At least Morrison’s push continues.
JBL explains that he made HBK an offer earlier… oh, what a twist!
Ken Kennedy says he’s in a movie and talks crap. He waited on the line and talked to a bunch of people about who reminds them of Obama. None are interesting. Sorry if you’re one of those. His name isn’t mentioned. He’s surprised. This is interminable and terrible. It was all set up for Mr. Kennedy being shouted. He needs to go be hurt again now.
Batista gets a promo to suck Cena’s dick… figuratively only, sorry ladies and gay me. Batista wants that feeling again. Giggity goo.
Time for a tournament for an Intercontintal title shot. Pat Patterson is out. Apparently we’re trying to up the prestige of the belt for the new DVD. Good deal.
Match 2: Kofi Kingston defeats Kane (Disqualification, Corner 5, dud)
Kane kills Kofi, then twists him around the ring post until the ref DQs him. That sucked. Kofi gets smacked with stairs post match, so Steph offers him Cena next week if he’ll stop.
Match 3: Chris Jericho defeats Randy Orton and Batista (Pin, ***)
The heels controlled most of this, but Batista got a huge spear on Orton and nearly got a win, but Jericho stole it. This was easily the best thing on Raw thus far. Batista, with two amazing heels, finally got the face response they want. This is the smart way to do it. Cena-Orton and Cena-Batista are both huge matches and better to save for down the line.
Santino gives a godly promo and Goldust interrupts.
Match 4: Goldust defeats Santino
That was rather strange. Why would they have an ancient Goldust going over anyone?
Orton… walks by Cody and Manu backstage. We’re just filling time before Dibiase returns.
Match 5: CM Punk defeats Snitsky (Pin, Go to Sleep, *)
That went on longer than it had any right to. Punk sold a lot, came back with his kung fu, and then nailed his usual sequence. On the plus side, Regal said he and Punk had a classic feud in them, so I’d really, really love to see that.
Degeneration X have a goofy commercial for the Smackdown vs. Raw 2009 video game. The fans are amused, so I guess it works.
Diva segment, it sure happened. 6-woman match. Melina came back. She’s used a Yoshi-tonic. That was cool.
Stephanie congratulates Jericho, who’s going to welcome Cena back.
Jericho come out and badmouths the fans and announces that Cena will end up like Batista and the rest of Jericho’s list of victims. Cena goes from with kids to his “anti-Sandman†entrance through the crowd. He claims to be one of the fans and shows that they are good enough in a long winded, terribly inspirational speech.
A quick note. Cena may be intended as a hero, but his HLR shirt really undermines that. Hustle may be a current rap catchphrase, but no one in WWE has bothered to figure out what it means. You see, much like Skeet, the use of Hustle has been co-opted as something cute or quant. To Hustle is to sell drugs. Great job, WWE, your role model is dealing drugs with loyalty and respect. The shirt that your pushing wouldn’t be allowed in the high school I teach at.
Raw closes with Cena “changing†because Jericho insults him and the fans once to many and delivering a “vicious†beatdown that lacked any intensity. Welcome back, Steph!
The three way was good, otherwise this was the definition of a missable Raw.
The Middle W
This isn’t a reference to our soon to be ex-President, but rather the Wrestling in World Wrestling Entertainment. Jim Cornette once said “Wrestling fans tune into a wrestling show to watch wrestlers wrestle.†For me, at the very least, this is certainly the case and I watch a ton of wrestling from all around the world. Each week I’ll be attempting to broaden WWE fans horizons with a review of a great match they might not have ever seen or even heard of.
Here’s our own Mark Buckeldee with a review:
October 25th 2008: Title vs. Title match
GHC Jr. Heavyweight Champion KENTA vs. All Japan Jr. Heavyweight Champion Naomichi Marufuji.
These two wrestlers have a long and storied history. They formed one of this decades most successful Jr Heavyweight Tag Teams, holding the GHC Jr Heavyweight Tag Titles for around 2 years. This was made better by the quality of the title defenses. Eventually they parted ways and, whenever their paths cross, they always do their best in order to prove who is the better man. Marufuji won the GHC Heavyweight title from Jun Akiyama in 2006 and his first (and only) successful defense on Japanese soil was against KENTA in what was a MOTY level match for that year. This time Marufuji has the All Japan Jr Heavyweight title, after he returned to the promotion where he was trained (he was part of the great exodus of 2000 that formed NOAH), while KENTA had recently won the Jr Heavyweight title from another of his great rivals, Bryan Danielson.
The opening exchanges show their familiarity with each other with some very fast paced outmanoeuvring before Marufuji gained a short advantage with his superior mat wrestling skills. After escaping KENTA used his strikes to force an opening on the mat in order to work over the ribs with a body scissors. This slowed Marufuji down, preventing him from continuing to use his speed to keep out of harms way. Eventually Marufuji kept using innovative moves to get into a position where he could work on KENTA’s legs, including a standing “snap†Figure 4 leg lock. This bought Marufuji the opportunity to focus on his main offense, weakening the neck to set up the Shiranui and the Pole Shift, a move that Marufuji debuted in order to defeat KENTA 2 years before.
Despite this story both wrestlers kept fitting in big, unique spots like double arm suplexes into turnbuckles, dropkicking each other of the top rope to the outside and a brainbuster on a guardrail. This furthered the idea that both wrestlers were coming up with new moves to surprise their opponents, with all the big counters featuring moves they were familiar with. All the while Marufuji kept returning to the neck with Cravates and Cobra clutch variations. This match is all about the wilier Marufuji outthinking the more passionate KENTA. One great spot was a moonsault to the outside that played off their encounter 2 years before, although one of my favourites was an awesome Cutthroat wrist clutch backdrop suplex hold. The match then went into a finishing stretch with some great spots and finisher trading where Marufuji only just escaped a Go To Sleep before the match ended up as a 60 minute draw.
All in all, this was a good match between two well-matched wrestlers. It played off of their match from 2006, while being fresh and easy to follow for newcomers. This match was all about 2 rivals, with both their pride and titles n the line, bringing out newer, bigger and better moves. In the end, KENTA showed himself to be smarter then usual, which helped him avoid a repeat of the 2006 match. Some of the spots were great, and the storyline was good but this is still a match that will be loved by some and hated by others. If you love big spots and these two wrestlers then you’re in for a treat. If you prefer matches with deliberate pacing, good selling and little overkill then this won’t be your cup of tea.
Want to see this match? Contact me at hbk826@aol.com
