The Wrestling 5&1 2.18.12: Stacy Keibler Versus Christy Hemme!

Yet another busy week, filled with Valentine’s Day, my birthday, and more! By the way, this is my 70th edition of The Wrestling 5&1! Now, time to ignore the trolls!

You see, it was my birthday on Thursday. As a present to myself, I decided to ignore the trolls this week. Now many of the comments were great, but I still gave myself the time off. What did I get for my birthday? First off, a ton of birthday wishes on Facebook, via e-mail, text, phone, and in person. Birthdays are great for that. I also got some great gifts from people at work and from the family. Finally, someone you know took a moment to send along a few nice birthday wishes as well…

Thanks Buggy!

Now, before you hear it anyplace else, I’ll let you hear it here first. Buggy Nova traveled to Fresno, California on Tuesday, and it just so happens that WWE Smackdown was in town! This of course means that Buggy had another tryout. It’s look #3 in a month’s time for the “Greg DeMarco Show Starlet” (credit to the leader of the VOC Nation himself, Bruce Wirt). Her first look was at RAW in Anaheim, where she cut a promo for WWE officials. She was brought back to Smackdown in Las Vegas, where she completed a physical, worked a match with AJ Lee, and participated in a photo shoot (this was her biggest day). She also filmed a WWE commercial for Kmart in Los Angeles the next day (remember the famous Buggy, Sheamus & Lizzy Valentine picture that has circulated the internet?), but that doesn’t count as a tryout/look. Now, she was brought back to Fresno, where I can confirm she worked another tryout match, once again with AJ Lee. What’s next? I can’t make any comments at this time. But I can promise you one thing, when it comes to Buggy, you’ll hear it here first!

And this also makes it a great time to present…

The Greg DeMarco Show, presented by 411Mania.com/Wrestling, comes to you each Tuesday night at 10:30 PM eastern. Greg and Patrick O’Dowd are joined by regular contributors Steve Cook, Tony Acero, Justin Freemyer and Buggy! Plus, you never know who might call in or stop by “The Snake Pit” (chatroom).
This week: Greg, Patrick and the crew take the week off in celebration of Valentine’s Day! In its place, we present “The Best of The Greg DeMarco Show.”

Joey Ryan joined the program in the fall to discuss his participation in the Wrestling Retribution (formerly Revolution) Project tapings, his experiences in the NWA and the WWE, as well as his involvement with Pro Wrestling Guerrilla.

Jessie McKay joined the program while she was in the United States for SHIMMER. Here her perspective on training, the wrestling scene in Australia, and the great times she’s had with SHIMMER.

The Sheik (excerpts): joined the Greg DeMarco Show in November. Listen to his discussion of the NWA Worlds Championship controversy and his own take on using the “Sheik” gimmick in these entertaining excerpts.

“The Greek God” Papadon made his first appearance during the summer, and was interrupted by his upcoming challenger for the ECWA Heavyweight Championship, Tommaso Ciampa. What followed was an obscenity laden promo tirade from both men that definitely didn’t fit the “Family friendly” mold that the ECWA strives to promote!

And finally, brand new content in the form of a special Valentine’s Day Date with Buggy Nova. The Greg DeMarco Show scores a date with the Candyland Princess herself. Hear Buggy Nova like never before—on a first date! She talks about life, love, wrestling and more. Did The Greg DeMarco Show score a second date? Listen to find out!

Click here to go to the show’s page, set a reminder or follow the program and receive weekly updates. Or you can listen here:

About the show:
The Greg DeMarco Show with Greg DeMarco & Patrick O’Dowd, presented by 411Mania and streaming worldwide through the Voice of Choice Nation—airs live every Tuesday at 10:30 PM eastern time and is heard by over 10,000 listeners throughout each week. Discussing current events in professional wrestling—including RAW, Smackdown, TNA, Ring of Honor and many US independent promotions and regularly features guests from Ring of Honor, Pro Wrestling Guerrilla, Dragon Gate USA, Evolve and countless other promotions, Greg and Patrick present opinionated analysis on the wrestling world that remains rooted in a love, passion and respect for the business. The show is presented live on Tuesday nights by 411Mania at http://www.411wrestling.com/wrestling and streams worldwide each Saturday through Monday via Bruce Wirt’s Voice of Choice Nation at http://www.vocnation.com. You can reach the show via e-mail at [email protected], Facebook by searching for “Greg DeMarco Show” or Twitter @gregdemarcoshow.

Next week, The Greg DeMarco Show returns with the return of NWA World’s Heavyweight Champion “Scrap Iron” Adam Pearce!

Finally, I have some additional DeMarcette news to share…

DeMarcette Veda Scott established a wish list of a different sort this week. She made a wish list of charitable organizations…for everyone to support!

In her own words…

I get a lot of inquiries into whether I have one of those wishlist things. I don’t. Here’s why: I live an extremely charmed life and the last thing I need are, well, more things (though I appreciate the sentiment!). That said, I’ve decided to publish a registry of some organizations I support. If you really, really want to give me something I’ll love, give to one of these causes. Or take the $$ and pass it on to someplace you love. Thank you ♥ VS

Click here to support the cause!

Now…news time!

Last weekend, TNA followed up on what can be called the best two weeks of programming the company has put out in years (both London editions of Impact Wrestling) with a very strong Against All Odds pay-per-view.

Let’s take a look at the results.

Main Event: TNA World Heavyweight Championship
Bobby Roode retains against Jeff Hardy, James Storm and Bully Ray
The match itself was good—very good. But it had two tremendous flaws, both related to Sting and the officiating. Sting missed Bobby Roode with the bat shot and struck Jeff Hardy. This caused Sting himself to count the pinfall that gave Roode the win. Hey, we’ve all seen Summer Slam ’97 before, and that was 15 years ago. I don’t have a problem with that. Couple it with the fact that Sting refused to make two other counts earlier in the match, and it’s mind boggling. TNA usually strives to make their referees look like complete morons. But when they do it to their Icon Authority Figure, it’s mind boggling yet again. And that all but ruined what was a great main event.

Garett Bischoff loses to Gunner
You know what, I am man enough to admit that I was wrong about Garett Bischoff. Unlike the rest of you, I was 100% wrong about the kid. Of course, the reason I say “unlike the rest of you” is because I was in support of Garett Bischoff, and said he had a bright future. Now I just can’t support that claim anymore. He might end up with a great career, but it seems like we’re doomed to have a “Garett Bischoff tries to wrestle” segment on the future “Rise and Fall of TNA” DVD set that the WWE will eventually produce. I hope I’m wrong, because I genuinely like the kid. But he could have had a better career as Jackson James, pro wrestling referee. I’m just glad that Gunner got the win.

AJ Styles beats Kazarian
Great match put on by two guys who know each other so well it isn’t even funny. It started slow, but had a great build into the fast paced action sequences. I think this match was extended to fill time, most likely time lost in the opener.

X-Division Championship Match: Austin Aries retains against Alex Shelley
Classic X-Division match that ended clean—and I wish it hadn’t. We easily could have extended this feud through Lockdown and beyond, culminating in an Ultimate-X match, the signature bout for the division. this match is the #1 reason to check out this show.

Tag Team Championship Match: Matt Morgan & Crimson drop the straps to Magnus & Samoa Joe
Finish of the night for me. Not in the actual maneuvers used, but the fact that Joe & Magnus won the belts, and did it clean. The fans in the Impact Zone seemed to be influenced by their British counterparts, cheering the heels to victory. TNA has something in Joe & Magnus, and could use them to rebuild the division. Now they just need some opponents…

Knockouts Championship Match: Gail Kim retains over Tara
This is one of those matches that leaves us saying it could have been longer. But that’s a fine line to walk. Regardless of what we think we wanted, what we got was a good, fast paced Knockouts title match with a clean win for the champion. And no complaints from me.

Television Championship Match: Robbie E. retains against Shannon Moore
The TV title is a joke—and I really want it to hold meaning. But that takes TV appearances by the champion, televised main events and talent holding the strap that fans believe in the main event. Bully Ray? James Storm? Great guys to insert into the division to elevate it to the next level. Despite what was a good match, no one cared that Robbie E made an open challenge, and no one cared that Shannon Moore accepted. TNA would have been better off giving more time to the other matches than cart this nonsense out there.

X-Division Championship #1 Contenders Match: Zema Ion beats Jesse Sorensen via countout
This match has been covered in great detail everywhere. The events that surrounded the finish are sad, and Jesse Sorensen is expected to make a full recovery in 12 months’ time. Will he ever wrestle again? I don’t know. If you ask Kurt Angle, he’ll be back in time to win a title at Bound For Glory! The kid already risked his life by choosing wrestling as a profession. Now he’s had the chance to look his own mortality in the face—and that has to change a man.

All in all, this was a great effort out of TNA, their best since the first half of Bound For Glory 2011. Given the news of the week, it will be interesting to see where their product is headed.

You Decide: Was last weekend’s Against All Odds PPV a step in the right direction?

Vince Russo out as TNA booker.
Earlier in the week, Dixie Carter announced via Twitter that Vince Russo had parted ways with TNA. In the announcement, she stated the parting was “amicable and professional.” Which means he was nice about it when they fired him. That’s what happens when you’ve been expecting to lose your job for a while now.

But the biggest non-surprise is the level of happiness that people seem to have over this decision. And I can’t help but wonder if all of that energy is simply misdirected. Maybe this is just another case of “we don’t really know anything” coming out of me. Maybe it’s the fact that I’ve seen more backstage drama and actually been involved in the booking of wrestling shows than most of my readers combined. (Notice I said most. I’m lucky enough to actually have some great people inside the business that read my column.) Or maybe I know better.

It’s been reported before that TNA followed a creative structure that saw Vince Russo and a few other staff members work for weeks writing TV and PPV scripts in advance of their taping/airing. In recent months, the scripts would be reviewed by Bruce Prichard and rubber stamped with minimal changes. On the day of the show, Eric Bischoff and a few other staff members would review the script and changes would be made. So the product we’ve been watching wasn’t always what Russo had planned. How do we know that the positive aspects didn’t come from him, and the negative aspects were last minute changes. Remember the end of Bound For Glory 2011? That was a Hulk Hogan initiated change, one that even Kurt Angle disagreed with. I know it worked out, but you can’t tell me that James Storm couldn’t have been built up as a challenger that Roode couldn’t put away–so in the end he turned heel to do it.

What kind of environment is that? Would you want to work like that? I know that many of you will indicate that the higher-ups at your work change things on you all the time. Guess what? Me, too! But our jobs largely aren’t creative in nature, where we are masterfully molding a product only to have it ripped to shreds and/or completely changed in the end.

Now I am a huge fan of Dave Lagana. I think he will have some great ideas that could really lead to positive changes in TNA. That is, of course, if his ideas aren’t changed when Hogan and Bischoff arrive! But don’t think we’ve seen the last of Garett Bischoff, the TV title being an afterthought, and Eric Young paired with ODB. Because I seriously doubt we have.

Another thing that won’t go away? Seeing the inside of the Impact Zone. Take the past two weeks of Impact Wrestling and put them in Orlando’s Universal Studios soundstage. We’d be complaining left and right about those shows.

Will Lagana be better? Most people immediately say yes. At least, most people on the internet. I love Lagana’s work, but I say we have to wait and see. We know what Russo did with the current roster—let’s see what Lagana does. I can say one thing, though… we are about to see just how good or bad Russo was. We’ll finally have an immediate and similar product to compare it to. And it’ll be interesting to see the reaction to TNA’s product over the next few months.

Interesting indeed.

You Decide: Do you really think the change in TNA’s creative leadership will lead to a change in the televised product?

Two things became evident to me in watching the two London editions of Impact Wrestling and TNA’s Against All Odds PPV. The two men pictured above seem to occupy the same category in TNA at the moment—potential for much more. But which one is headed in the right direction?

“A-Double” Austin Aries has been the TNA X-Division Champion since September 11, 2011. He is the company’s longest reigning champion, and his reign is second only to that of Cody Rhodes and the Intercontinental Championship in terms of the big two US promotions. Aries made his return as part of the build to Destination X, where a TNA talent contract was put on the line for several different wrestlers. At the end of the PPV, Aries was the one holding that contract, and ready to start what I think has to be the best career resurgence of 2011. Aries has been booked so well that when Alex Shelley kicked out of an Aries’ brainbuster at Against All Odds, no one could remember the last time it happened (if on TNA TV at all).

Aries had emerged as the class of the X-Division, but in 2012 he’s grown beyond that. He’s one of the top heels in the entire company, and could carry any division. I would love to see him hold the X-Division title through either Destination X or Bound For Glory. BFG is preferred, but I am willing to go with Destination X if that title change is given the main event spot and a main event build. TNA has an amazing opportunity with Aries.

But that opportunity doesn’t end with the X-Division. When he does drop the title, I believe Aries could be used to build another title—the TV title. That “division” barely exists, but it has a ton of potential. And Austin Aries is just the man to carry that title to prominence in the company. That’s why I say, whether it be at Destination X or at Bound For Glory, once Austin Aries does lose the X-Division championship it will be on to bigger and better things for A-Double…quite possibly the greatest man that ever lived.

“Cowboy” James Storm is a former TNA World Heavyweight Champion, but the company has to remind you of that face each and every time Storm wrestles. The booking of Bound For Glory 2011—when Kurt Angle used the ropes (and the incompetence of the official) to retain the World Championship over Bound For Glory Series winner Bobby Roode—was an event that many expected would send TNA into an insane tailspin. The company followed that up by having Roode’s longtime Beer Money tag team partner James Storm pin Kurt Angle in a very short match to win that very same World Championship. The win came as a shock to everyone…possibly even Storm himself.

Two weeks later, a Bobby Roode heel turn and a broken beer bottle cost Storm his belt, and launched the new heel persona of World Champion Bobby Roode. Roode has slowly developed into one of the best heels in the business, while Storm has seen his promo time decrease and his in-ring performance ratings drop as the weeks move on. After Bound For Glory, Storm found himself in a feud with Kurt Angle. And the duo soon developed a pattern of putting great match after great match.

Since going solo, Storm has been far less consistent than Bobby Roode. And I honestly have some concern for TNA’s booking of him. They consistently put him in the ring, and as a solo wrestler he’s very limited. He’s amazing on the microphone, and he keeps getting less promo time. He needs to become more of a brawler, with a fast paced offense. But I fear he isn’t in the proper cardiovascular shape to do that. Since each Impact taping takes place a few weeks to a month after the last, there are noticeable differences in his physique each time out.

Who has more potential?

That’s actually a question for next week! Please chime in with your opinion, and we’ll explore this in more detail.

The announcement came as a bit of a surprise when I was leaked on Wednesday, but the WWE is hosting WrestleMania 29 in New York! Sorta. It’s actually in New Jersey at Met Life Stadium—home of the Super Bowl Champion New York Football Giants.

Much has already been said about the cold weather at the stadium. It’s going to play host to a Super Bowl, and that’s in February! NY/NJ won’t be so bad in early April. Take a look at the Heather Cross’s description at About.com:

April marks the beginning of Spring in New York City, making it a wonderful time to visit! Early April can still be chilly, so pack some warm clothes and your umbrella but don’t let it keep you from visiting during April, or else you’ll miss out on celebrating Easter, celebrity sighting at the Tribeca Film Festival and the Cherry Blossom Festival at the Brooklyn Botanical Garden.

It’s likely to be in the upper 50s—not terribly cold (unless you’re traveling from the south…). Plus, you’ll likely get two ROH events at the Hammerstein Ballroom, and two DGUSA shows at BB King’s. Two of the top indy promotions at their best venues? Yes please. And I love the potential for RAW, the night after ‘Mania, hailing from Madison Square Garden.

Think about this… NYC, 2013: ROH at the Hammerstein Ballroom (twice), DGUSA at BB Kings (twice), WrestleReunion in Manhattan, WrestleMania at Met Life Stadium, and RAW at Madison Square Garden. That could quite possibly be the greatest weekend of wrestling ever assembled.

You Decide: What do you think of the prospect of 2013’s WrestleMania Weekend.

Known Matches

Main Event
The Rock vs. John Cena

Assumed Matches

The Streak vs. ???
The Undertaker vs. Triple H

WWE Championship
CM Punk vs. Chris Jericho

Assumed Matches

Celebrity Match
The Big Show vs. Shaquille O’Neal

World Heavyweight Championship
Daniel Bryan (champion) vs. Sheamus vs. Randy Orton

Dolph Ziggler vs. Mick Foley

Intercontinental Championship & Dustin’s Retirement Match
Cody Rhodes (champion) vs. Goldust

Kane vs. Mark Henry

Money in the Bank
Jack Swagger vs. Kofi Kingston vs. Christian vs. Justin Gabriel vs. The Miz vs. R-Truth vs. Drew McIntyre vs. Wade Barrett

Divas Championship
Beth Phoenix (champion) vs. Kharma

Pre-Show World Tag Team Championship Match
Primo & Epico (champions) vs. Jimmy & Jey Uso

Analysis: Not too much movement this week. I moved Show-Shaq down to assumed. Randy Orton appears to be done with Wade Barrett, so I moved Barrett into Money in the Bank and placed Orton into the World Heavyweight Championship Match. After Elimination Chamber (and the subsequent RAW), the revelation of the card will begin…

You Decide: What matches do you want to see at WrestleMania?

Last Week: Stacy Keibler had no troubles beating Shelly Martinez last week…

This Week: Does this firecracker prove to be her biggest roadblock?

Is Stacy going into the Hall?

Or does Christy Hemme start her journey?

YOU MAKE THE CALL!

Stacy Keibler vs. Christy Hemme. Take your pick!
Stay tuned as next week as I’ll reveal the winner!

This week I was lucky enough to talk about two of our DeMarcettes! Now, see them fight!

Hit up the ‘Mania on TWITTER (so Ashish will like me, okay?)

http://www.twitter.com/411mania
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http://www.twitter.com/411mma
http://www.twitter.com/gregdemarcoshow – that’s me!

After watching the Knockouts Battle Royal in Impact Wrestling, I realized how much I miss this duo. They were the only reason to care about Mexican America, and I really wish we could see them feud with Tara & Brooke Tessmacher for the Knockouts Tag Team Championships.

Get reading!

Randle’s Wrestling News Experience!
The News from Cook’s Corner!
Marsico presents The Wednesday Wire!
Fact or Fiction, featuring the ME!
Tony Acero presents the Low End Theory…complete with Greg DeMarco created logo and Hip Hottie of the Week Buggy Nova!
Ari Berenstein offers some great perspective on the new look of Ring of Honor house shows in his latest Column of Honor!
Yours Truly provides the best Impact Wrestling coverage in the world! THE WORLD!

You know what to do…not get to voting! Will Stacy make it into the hall? That is up to you. Chime in on WrestleMania (28 or 29), TNA, and if you prefer, talk Elimination Chamber as well!

Until next time…

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