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411 Fact or Fiction 10.22.09: Captain Lou Albano, Shane McMahon’s Resignation, Ultimate X and More!
Hello ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to another edition of 411 Wrestling Edition of Fact or Fiction! I’m Jeremy Thomas, and with TNA Bound for Glory in the Books, we have a lot to talk about! This week Ryan Byers of “2 Raw, 2 Furious” and “Into the Indies” takes on the the Movie Zone’s Roundtable organizer and author of “Ten Deep,” Owain J. Brimsfield! They’ve got a lot to cover, so without further ado, shall we? I think we shall!
1. When all was said and done, Bound for Glory delivered as TNA’s premier Pay-Per-View event of the year.
Owain Brimsfield: FACT. Although I do have to add the caveat that the show still wasn’t as good as it could have been on paper. Maybe chalk that up to having nine matches on the card which made a few things feel a little rushed. Aside from the two mediocre women’s matches and the horrendous overbooking of the Monster’s Ball (and seriously, wasn’t the whole point of that concept to lock up the competitors for 24 hours prior to the match? Otherwise it’s pretty much a straightforward hardcore match), everything else was good-to-great. Two solid variants on the spotfests we were expecting, the British Invasion claiming the TNA tag gold (yay for the Brits!), Morgan and Angle having a surprisingly good match and putting over Morgan strong in the loss, a solid main event and the stage set for some intriguing storylines as well as a Styles/Angle title feud, which makes me a very happy bunny. Certainly the best TNA PPV of the year and will likely be in contention for PPVOTY.
Ryan Byers: FICTION. Best pay per view event of the year? Maybe. “Premier” pay per view event of the year? That claim is laughable. Every year during the build towards Bound for Glory, I hear TNA itself and the promotion’s fans talking about how this show is their version of Wrestlemania. However, that statement is constantly belied by how TNA books the show and how their fans react to it. Bound for Glory has historically been booked to contain nothing more special than your average pay per view fare from the company, and this past Sunday’s BFG was no exception. EVERY TNA pay per view features some gimmicky X Division spotfest, the Dudley Boys trying to regain their former glory, Kurt Angle wreslting a technically solid match with no interesting build behind it, and Abyss mutiliating himself. That’s exactly what we got this time around as well. What TNA fails to realize is that Wrestlemania is Wrestlemania a) because of its history and b) because, for numerous consecutive years, it was designed to be the point at which the biggest matches in the biggest feuds in company history took place. TNA can’t just take a five year old event, call it “their Wrestlemania” and expect it to feel like Wrestlemania. A “biggest event of the year” is something that has to develop organically, not something that can be forced as hard as TNA is attempting to force this one.
Score: 0 for 1
2. Putting Eric Escobar in the seven-on-seven Raw vs. Smackdown match is a bad idea considering that he’s only had one televised match in the WWE to date.
Owain Brimsfield: FICTION. The audience certainly hasn’t seen enough of Escobar to know whether he’s a talent worth watching or not, but I do know that it makes a welcome change to see new blood being thrown into the mix with some established names. Working with the kind of talent present in this match, even if it is likely to be a bit of clusterfuck, can only be good for Escobar, and the WWE really should be driving towards creating new big-name stars to compete with the tiresome old guard.
Ryan Byers: FICTION. Well, as I’m writing this, it’s come out that Eric Escobar has been removed from the Smackdown team, so this question is really a moot point. However, before he was pulled, I actually LOVED the idea of Escobar being in the fourteen-man tag. One of the things that bothers me about WWE right now is how slow they are when it comes to pulling the trigger on making new wrestlers into legitimate superstars. If you go back twenty-five or thirty years, it used to be that a wrestler could make his debut in a promotion and be ready to legitimately compete in main event matches for the company’s top championship in a matter of six weeks. Nowadays, because WWE has gotten so far away from that type of booking, fans don’t buy that they’re going to give a “new” wrestler a shot until he’s been around for years. Unfortunately, that results in the E’s roster being quite stagnant. I’ve been begging for a while for somebody, anybody to head immediately into the top mix upon arrival in the company so that things could be shaken up a bit. Escobar could have been that guy, but, unfortunately, it looks like the rug has been pulled out from underneath him.
Score: 1 for 2
3. The Ultimate X match showed that TNA needs to get the X-Division competitors to tone things down before someone gets seriously hurt.
Owain Brimsfield: FICTION. I think what it shows is that TNA needs to give the X-Division more time in the limelight, so the wrestlers don’t feel the need to pull out all the stops and bust their asses just to get noticed in their sole PPV outing, which is invariably a multi-man match to open the show. As entertaining as watching Daniels fall fifteen feet directly onto his head can be, it shouldn’t have to be the case that Ultimate X was the only thing the X-Division talent could take away from what is supposedly the year’s most important event for TNA. Having said that, Red’s title reign seems to be setting things up for somewhat of a renewed focus, which can only be a good thing.
Ryan Byers: FACT. The last several X Division gimmick matches on TNA pay per view have done that. People call wrestlers in promotions like CZW and Big Japan idiots for regularly cutting each other up with barbed wire, weedwackers, and light tubes. However, I consider several of the big X Divison spots from this year’s TNA pay per views to be significantly dumber than any spot I’ve ever seen involving glass, barbed wire, or tacks. Yes, if you get hit with a light tube or a barbed wire bat, you’re almost definitely going to get lacerated, and, in the case of the tube, you’re probably going to be lacerated deeply. However, I would much rather be in a situation in which I would definitely be cut than a situation in which I had to fall twelve feet to the ground, possibly breaking by neck, back, or several other important bones in the process. That sort of thing has not happened in TNA yet, but, if they keep pulling off spots like the ones we saw on pay per view this past weekend, it’s only a matter of time.
Score: 1 for 3
4. Captain Lou Albano will be remembered as one of the greatest managers in sports entertainment history.
Owain Brimsfield: FACT. Confession time, though, as I’m not really that familiar with his work as someone who became a fan in the Attitude Era. I remember doing the Mario, but that’s about it. Going by the comments surrounding his death though it does seem as though he’ll be remembered in high regard, and deservingly so.
Ryan Byers: FICTION. He should be, but he won’t be. I fully admit that I was not alive during Albano’s heyday. However, every article that I have read and every interview that I have listened to about Albano’s career as a manager in the WWWF in the 1970’s and the pre-Hogan 1980’s indicates that he was consistently a major factor in selling out the promotion’s most important venues. He managed to take heel challengers who couldn’t have drawn flies on their own and, soley through his promos, turned them into characters who everybody wanted to see Bruno Sammartino, Pedro Morales, or Bob Backlund vanquish. Though the promotion had other great managers at the time, including Freddie Blassie and “Grand Wizard” Ernie Roth, Albano undeniably had one of the most important roles in the promotion to play. However, despite all of this, I have a hard time believing that he’ll be remembered as one of the greatest managers of all time. Why? It’s because the vast majority of people who were fans of the WWWF at the time that Albano was putting on his best performances are no longer watching professional wrestling. If you take a look at the demographics in which WWE and TNA have their best ratings, they’re like me and far too young to remember the glory days of Cap’n Lou. For whatever reason, the E has never seemed too intent on educating their fans about the history of the company prior to Wrestlemania I, and I don’t see them going out of their way to do it for Albano. As a result, his best days, like the majority of 1970’s and and 1960’s World Wide Wrestling Federation history, will probably be forgotten. Fortunately for Lou’s legacy, he at least has his involvement with Cyndi Lauper in the Rock n’ Wrestling era that will keep him alive, even if that is not quite enough to have him go down as one of the greatest managers in the history of the sport.
Score: 1 for 4
SWITCH!
5. Putting the TNA Legends Title on Eric Young was the wrong booking decision.
Ryan Byers: FICTION. The TNA Legends Title is a completely meaningless midcard belt. It’s never been positioned to mean anything on the company’s shows, and, they way they book, it probably never will be. There’s not a wrong guy to put the belt on, because the belt is worthless.
Owain Brimsfield: FICTION. Certainly an unexpected booking decision, but that doesn’t make it wrong. Had Nash retained the title by pinning Hernandez, that would have been wrong. As it is, although the three had little more than a decent match together, the outcome protects Hernandez as he survived what was basically a handicap match, and goes some way towards proving Young right in his claims that his faction has the brainpower to succeed. Whether World Elite holding three belts proves to be a good thing, I don’t know, but this certainly sets the stage for some potentially intriguing storylines, and having Young’s newly formed character hold the Legend’s belt in particular should pay dividends.
Score: 2 for 5
6. The Divas trade that took place last week will do nothing to improve the divisions on either of the big two shows.
Ryan Byers: FACT. See everything that I said about the TNA Legends title in the previous question and apply it to the women’s divisions on Raw and Smackdown. In the grand scheme of things, they’re filler. They mean nothing to the overall presentation of the two shows. There are a small handful of obsessive WWE Diva fans out there, and I have already heard them speculating a good deal about what this trade will “mean for the company.” Here’s what it will mean for the company: You’re going to see the exact same two minute matches that you were seeing before the trade, expect there will be one or two combinations of women wrestling now that you’ve not seen wrestle previously. The trade is going to lead to minor variations on an established theme, not something that will drastically improve the quality of women’s wrestling on national television . . . and that would have been the case almost regardless of who they traded to what show.
Owain Brimsfield: FACT. I can’t remember the last time I enjoyed watching a WWE women’s match. Even Gail Kim seems to have had her will to live sapped by having to participate in such subpar endeavours. Moving the women around is hardly likely to ignite any renewed interest in the division, particularly coming as it does off the back of a seemingly random decision. I couldn’t tell you what *could* improve things, but I hope to god somebody figures it out soon, for everyone’s sake.
Score: 3 for 6
7. Putting a Six Sides of Steel and Ultimate X match on the iMpact right after Bound for Glory is overkill and will do damage to the “specialness” of the gimmick matches.
Ryan Byers: FACT. The original purpose of gimmick matches has been completely lost on modern wrestling bookers, at least when it comes to the two national promotions in the United States. It used to be that a gimmick match would be part of an established feud and would in some way tie into the events of the feud. For example, if two wrestlers were having a series of matches and the heel kept running away, he would be put into a lumberjack match or a cage match with the face. If two wrestlers were having a series of matches and they kept getting disqualfied, they’d have a street fight. Nowadays, however, gimmick matches are thrown out on television and pay per view with no rhyme nor reason, presumably to pop ratings and buyrates. However, it has become abundantly clear from tracking TNA’s ratings that these supposedly “special” bouts mean nothing in terms of increasing viewers. The only thing being accomplished by putting these matches on television on a regular basis is conditioning the people who watch the show every single week to not be satisfied by regular, one-on-one bouts.
Owain Brimsfield: FICTION. Overkill, perhaps. Damaging to gimmick matches? Compared to McMahon’s seeming intent to gimmick-ify every single PPV his company holds, this is just a drop in the ocean. TNA has done well of late in keeping the gimmicks under control, and seeing the balance swing the other way quite to the extreme it seems to at the moment, is actually quite amusing. Seeing Ultimate X crop up on Impact from time to time is actually quite novel and breaks the routine up, and unless they hack it up with commercials I don’t think it’ll damage what is by its very nature one of the most idosyncratic gimmick matches in mainstream wrestling. As for Six Sides of Steel, they’ve had yearly PPVs focused entirely on that gimmick for many years, so the occasional TV appearance isn’t going to do anything that hasn’t already been done.
Score: 3 for 7
8. Shane McMahon’s resignation from the WWE is the most shocking story of the year so far.
Ryan Byers: FICTION. In just about every other year in wrestling history, this would be an easy “fact.” However, this is 2009. On June 13 of this year, Mitsuharu Misawa, one of the biggest worldwide names in professional wrestling of the 1990’s, died. He didn’t just die, though. He died in the middle of the ring. He didn’t just die in the middle of the ring, though. He died in the middle of the ring when the impact of a backdrop suplex performed by his opponent performed what can essentially be referred to as an “internal decapitation,” severing the legendary wrestler’s brain from his spinal cord. Is Shane McMahon walking out on WWE something that I never expected that I would see? Sure it is. However, a legendary performer and draw like Misawa dying in the manner that he did was something far more surreal in my mind. It feels like the finish to a movie and not a real world event, whereas Shane leaving WWE feels far less incredible.
Owain Brimsfield: FACT. That’s kind of a given, isn’t it? NO ONE saw this one coming. Still, Shane holds a pretty good legacy with the company, so if he wants to tackle something new then good for him. Unfortunately for him though, I think everyone will be engaging in uninformed debate about this resignation till kingdom come.
Score: 3 for 8
Owain and Ryan split the difference on some tough questions! I’d like to thank both of them for participating, and as always you our readers for checking out what they had to say. Next week we’ll have Bragging Rights and much more to talk about, so join us then for more 411 Wrestling Fact or Fiction!
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