Ask 411 Wrestling 04.20.11: WWE Video Games, AIDS, and NXT Commentary!

Welcome, one and all, to Ask 411 Wrestling. Of course, I am Ryan Byers, and I am in the third week of a four week stint filling in for your normal host, Matt Sforcina. The past seven days have been rather busy for me, so I don’t have a heck of a lot of time for small talk in putting together this column. Instead, let’s just head straight into the . . .

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Backtalking

In last week’s column, I mentioned that Gorilla Monsoon won the Wrestling Observer newsletter’s “worst announcer” award for six years. A few different people responded to this. We’ll use Chris as an example:

Only fools would Vote Gorilla the worst play by play man, His interaction with Jesse and Bobby over a 10 year period was awesome, better chemistry then Lawler/Ross.

I think that whether you love Gorilla or whether you hate him (there seems to be very little in between) depends in large part on what you want to get out of your professional wrestling. If you’re somebody who views wrestling as a “variety show” that is supposed to involve a lot of spectacle and a fair amount of comedy, Monsoon was a good guy to have around because he and the Brain (and to a lesser extent the Body) were hilarious together. However, if you’re somebody who prefers to have your pro wrestling portrayed as close to a sport as possible, Gorilla drives you nuts, because there are things that he would do that were absolutely terrible in terms of getting over action in the ring (e.g. “He’ll never beat him with a move like that!” Oh yeah, then why should I care about the move?)

One of the things you have to remember is that we’re talking about the Observer awards here, which are voted on by the newsletter’s subscribers. The subscribers at this time were very NWA-centric and significantly preferred its presentation over the WWF. They wanted Gordon Solies and not Gorilla Monsoons.

Realistic Fan writes:

Don’t you mean Daniel Bryan? Or if you mean Bryan Danielson don’t you also mean Dos Caras Jr.? Or do you just randomly pick whichever name for a wrestler you like the best with no real rhyme or reason?

You pretty much hit the nail square on the head. I call the guy by whatever name I happen to think of when I’m writing about him. Usually it’s the first name that I saw him perform regularly under, unless he’s gone a long while with a different name or has had a complete gimmick overhaul. I don’t go out of the way to call him “Bryan Danielson” just like I don’t go out of my way to call him “Daniel Bryan.” I just use whatever name pops into my head at the time that I’m writing. Everybody knows who I’m talking about, so it’s really not that big of a deal. It’s not an effort to sound “smart” or anything of that nature, as many readers have implied. This is one of those things that people have freaked out about for years now, and I still really don’t understand why.

The Emperor of Wrestling (I guess he’s a bigger deal than Hero and Castagnoli) asks:

Where can I see all the old ASK 411 Wrestling columns?

Each column on 411 used to have its own easily accessible archive that could be reached by a drop-down menu at the bottom of the column. However, that feature has been offline for a little while now. What I would suggest you do is visit Matt Sforcina’s author profile and go through his archives. He’s written the column for well over a year now, so that will get you all of the recent installments.

Here’s Danny Thugman:

Awesome. My V K McMahon comment got some love from Ry-By (I like to give nicknames).

There are actually several people in my real, non-wrestling columnist life who call me that as well.

A line from LB on wrestling vs. sports entertainment:

I have a different opinion on the switch from pro wrestling to entertainment. When wrestling was billed as a sport, it fell under the supervision of each state’s boxing commission, much like MMA does. When you are facing trial over steroids, you would likely want people to stop snooping into your business. Hence, Vince needed to get away from regulators. The easiest way is to say, “Hey, we are just a performance like a concert or the ballet. No need to look over here.” I think you are right about marketing and trying to be a more acceptable industry as the recent reasons, but I’m sure the initial change was regulators.

The reason that you give is absolutely the reason that Vince McMahon and company started to publically admit that they are not an athletic competition, though they still regularly described themselves as “professional wrestling” on their broadcasts for many years after getting the athletic commissions off of their backs. I took the question asked to be more concerned with the dropping of the use of the word “wrestling” altogether from WWE broadcasts as opposed to going public with the fact that the in-ring action is not on the level.

Oscar (not the one from Men on a Mission) says:

Who made Paul Roma famous in the forums? How did the trend get started and why did it become so popular? Can you look at the history of the comments section and point to the first Paul Roma reference?

Paul Roma made Paul Roma popular in the forums. Paul Roma started the trend and was the first one to make a Paul Roma comment. He was so Paul Roma that some people say he even Paul Roma’ed the Paul Roma. Paul Roma.

Your Turn, Smart Guy

Here is last week’s question:

I am a former ECW star who at one point had a ring name based on a legendary set of NWA World Tag Team Champions. A former TNA Knockout plays the role of my daughter in one promotion, and I have had matches against both rap stars and rock stars. Who am I?

The answer is Tracy Smothers. His WWF ring name Freddie Joe Floyd was a rib on former NWA Tag Champions Jack and Jerry Brisco, whose real names include “Fred” and “Floyd.” In Juggalo Championship Wrestling, former TNA star Mickie “Moose” Knuckles plays the role of his daughter, Isabella Smothers. He has wrestled both rap and rock musicians, as in 2009 an indy group booked him in a match against Oderus Urungus, the front man of metal group

Now let’s take a look at this week’s question:

I have wrestled in WWE, WCW, the AWA, and ECW but never TNA. Despite working for all of these companies and despite feuding with several main event level wrestlers, I never held a major championship. One of my most memorable angles involved me being blinded, and another involved me stealing a valuable piece of property from my rival. Who am I?

Good luck to everybody figuring this one out!

Questions, Questions, Who’s Got the Questions?

Josh says it’s time to play the game:

I was wondering about the Smackdown vs. Raw games. Are the road to Wresltemania story lines rejected tv plots? Or are they used to ‘rub salt in wounds’ of recently endeavoured. In 2011, MVP plays a large part in John Cena’s RTW.

I was of the assumption that they would only put people who were getting or going to be pushed in the main storyline for these games. I realize that MVP’s release probably was quite close to when final development was completed, but surely with his fairly large exposure in the game, he might have been on for a push in the near future?

Here’s the thing: The WWE creative team isn’t involved at all in the production of these video games. From what I understand, the production is handled almost exclusively by the video game production company. So, you don’t have WWE writers writing storylines for the games or WWE writers shipping their rejected ideas over to the studio for use in the games. You’ve got employees of the video game companies coming up with these storylines from scratch. Obviously the video game employees would have to be fans or at least have some familiarity with WWE in order to be able to make the stories work, but there is little to no communication with anybody on the WWE side. So, no, they are not storylines that are pitched for TV or storylines that are meant to “stick it” to anybody. They’re just whatever the team who develops that particular aspect of the video game can come up with.

Here’s a question about puroresu from Christopher:

What does the situation concerning wrestling on television look like in Japan compared to the US? Which promotions have weekly TV shows, on which channels? How big are those channels compared to US channels? How does TV work in Japan? Is there an equivalent to the US distinction between network and cable channels? What do the wrestling shows look like compared to US shows? Are there TV tapings like in US and in that case where and how many shows are taped at once? Are matches shown in their entirety and how many are shown per show? Finally, how about big events? Are there PPVs and if so which are the biggest ones, or are the events released on DVDs like for instance in ROH? If that’s not enough for you, how has the wrestling tv situation changed over the years?

Whooo boy, there’s a lot to cover there.

I think that, in order to give the most concise answer possible, it’s best to start with your last question about the history of televised pro wrestling in Japan and work our way forward to present day.

Perhaps even more than in the United States, the viability of a Japanese professional wrestling promotion has always been tied to its television exposure. The first major wrestling company in the country was JWA, the full name of which is sometimes translated as the Japan Pro Wrestling Alliance and sometimes as the Japan Wrestling Association. Headed up by Rikidozan, the country’s first major professional wrestling star, JWA had significant television exposure on Nippon Television (NTV) which was the first television network allowed to do commercial broadcasts in Japan. As a result of NTV’s penetration into Japanese homes and the popularity of Rikidozan, some of the matches from this era still rank among the most highly rated television programs in the history of the country. These matches include the 1962 bouts between Rikidozan and Freddie Blassie, which Blassie has always claimed were so intense that several viewers suffered heart attacks and/or died because they got so worked up about the beating that Blassie was placing on their national hero.

Rikidozan had two protégés that he was grooming to take over as wrestling’s top stars when he finally walked away. The first was Antonio Inoki. The second was the Giant Baba. The two of them were major attractions for JWA for some time, but there were ultimately political differences which resulted in them splitting the company down the middle in the 1970’s. As a result of the split, each man formed his own wrestling promotion, with Baba founding All Japan Pro Wrestling and Inoki founding New Japan Pro Wrestling. Baba and AJPW took the JWA’ s deal with NTV. JWA shows had also started airing on a network called TV Asahi, a network that started up in the late 1950’s and quickly became a rather large force in Japanese television. Inoki and NJPW took the JWA’s deal with TV Asahi.

New Japan continues to air on TV Asahi to this day. However, there have definitely been some changes involving All Japan and NTV. When AJPW founder Giant Baba passed away in 1999, reigns of the company were handed over to his wife. There was almost immediately discord between her and the wrestlers, which resulted in Mitsuharu Misawa, the company’s biggest star, breaking away and forming his own company in 2000. That company, of course, is Pro Wrestling NOAH. Misawa was in talks with NTV executives before forming the company, and the result was that NOAH stole All Japan’s television deal out from under it. Unfortunately for Misawa’s company, NTV announced in 2009 that they were canceling NOAH’s show to replace it with a less expensive product. (NOAH blocks had already been pushed to obscure early-morning hours so that it was not viewed by nearly as many people in puro’s glory days.) NOAH does still have television exposure on a much smaller satellite network called G+, which is owned by NTV.

Currently, the “big three” companies in puroresu are still New Japan, NOAH, and All Japan, in that order. As noted above, NJPW is still on TV Asahi, though at odd hours. NOAH is on G+. All Japan, after losing its original TV deal to NOAH, was picked up by an all-sports network called Gaora TV, similar to ESPN. Dragon Gate, which is at worst the fourth largest promotion in the company and is arguably larger in some respects than both AJPW and NOAH, also has regular coverage on Gaora. Each of the shows referred to above airs on a roughly weekly basis, though, because pro wrestling is covered a bit more like a “sport” in Japan than it is anywhere else in the world, occasionally events that are bigger than usual will result in smaller shows being preempted, only to be brought back in its normal timeslot the following week.

Those are the main wrestling shows in Japan. However, they are far from being the only wrestling shows in Japan. There is a ton of pro wrestling TV in the country because, unlike the United States, there is an entire cable network dedicated to airing pro wrestling and MMA events. It is called Samurai TV and, though not insanely popular, it has managed to be around for many years. New Japan and NOAH both have supplemental programming on Samurai which backstops their main shows on Asahi and G+. Also, DDT, an independent group, has a regular weekly show on Samurai called Dramatica Fantastic. The majority of the wrestling on Samurai, though, consists of smaller shows from independent groups, including but not limited to Big Japan Wrestling, ZERO1, JWP, SMASH, FREEDOMS and the Inoki Genome Federation. Basically, if you can get a decent camera crew to your major Japanese independent show, it’s not too hard to get it on to Samurai.

There are also a handful of independent level promotions which have their bigger events broadcast on Gaora, including TAKA Michinoku’s Kaientai Dojo and joshi group OZ Academy. Osaka Pro Wrestling, which draws less than 100 fans to most of its shows, does have its bigger cards aired on a satellite network called Sky-A Sports+.

Regarding how things tape, the larger promotions generally follow a pattern in which they will run shows for two to three weeks, take two to three weeks off, and then run shows for another two to three weeks. During the “tours” some of the more important shows will be taped for television and the less important shows will usually not be. (New Japan has, in recent months, bucked the trend by taping just about everything and releasing matches from the shows that would not otherwise air on TV on their official YouTube page.) With smaller promotions who are only airing a major show on TV once every couple of months, it’s only the major show that is being taped.

There are companies that broadcast pay per views in Japan. However, PPV as a whole has never been as popular in Japan as it is in the United States. That applies not just to wrestling but also to boxing, MMA, and virtually every other form of entertainment. Whereas wrestling in the United States has almost always focused giving away less on TV and using televised wrestling as a hook to get people to buy tickets to a large event or a pay per view, the business model in Japan evolved differently in that big shows were almost always given away on TV for free, ever since the beginning of Japanese wrestling. As such, it was hard to sell people on the concept of buying major matches on PPV since they were used to always getting the most important matches possible without having to lay down a single dime. That doesn’t stop New Japan and Dragon Gate from airing some of their shows on pay per view, but it’s not like America in which PPVs are the biggest shows and everything else pales in comparison to them. PPVs are usually just the means through which you get to watch live a show that you can usually watch for free at some point later on tape delay.

I’ve never heard that much about wrestling shows being released on DVD in Japan. I’ve heard enough to know that some shows are put on DVD, but the fact that I don’t hear all that much leads me to believe that it’s not too big of a deal.

Also, I should note that New Japan Pro Wrestling has done one thing that, to my knowledge, no wrestling promotion in the United States has ever done regarding the airing of professional wrestling. Every year, NJPW has a major show called Wrestle Kingdom. In 2010 and 2011, the company arranged for cameras to be present which could shoot the action in 3D. The 3D footage was edited together into a roughly one hour long “digest” version of the show, which was later shown in movie theaters. It will be interesting to see if other companies adopt that practice and whether it ever takes off in the States.

Francisco Ramierz has a very specific question:

I’ve heard the former Hakushi, sorry don’t remember his name, actually would walk the ropes ala Undertaker, but I heard he once did this on barb wire, any fact to that? Any video?

He absolutely has done it. He might have pulled off the spot in more than one match, but the most notable example I am aware of was in a January 10, 1994 tag team match in which Shinzaki teamed with Masaru Toi to face The Gladiator (later known to fans in the United States as Mike Awesome) and Big Titan (later known to fans in the United States as the fake Razor Ramon). I wasn’t able to dig up any video, but I WAS able to find a still picture of Shinzaki pulling off the barbed wire rope walk on Titan:

Also, while we’re on the topic of Shinzaki, I figured I would tell the following story about him for those who may not have heard it yet: Shinzaki’s home these days is in the city of Sendai, Japan, which is one of the cities that was most heavily damaged by the recent earthquake and tsunami. He also has two business ventures in the city, as he owns two ramen noodle restaurants and also has an interest in SENDAI Girls, a dojo which produces female wrestlers. Shinzaki’s home and the buildings that all of businesses are housed in were damaged fairly badly in the disaster to the point that he was living out of his car for a period of time. However, as soon as he was able to get one of his restaurants back up and running, he started driving several hours a day back and forth between the restaurant and its supplier, not so that he could make money but rather so that he could help feed the numerous people who were left to stay in homeless shelters.

Now that right there is a real man.

If Greg T. can get through this, he can get through anything:

I enjoyed the hell out of NXT season 3 due in part to Micheal Cole, Matt Striker, and Josh Matthews’ seemingly off-the-cuff antics. I remember one bit where Matthews and Cole were busy playing games on their phones and not paying any attention to the competition. Another time the two of them scribbled down their own signs, like “I hate NXT” and “I’m with Stupid.” The whole season, Striker tried to keep some measure of professionalism but couldn’t contain insider zings and one-liners when they came. All of that was funny to me, but how the hell could they get away with even a quarter of the stuff they did and said on air? Was it that the show shifted to online-only? Are the girls really that looked down upon? Was that season just a creative pressure valve or something? Were the episodes filmed during Vince McMahon’s lunch break? Even considering those reasons, I have a hard time believing that even with a limited audience a company so tied to its image would loosen their belts so much. What gives?

No matter how hard it might be for some people to understand, I think that Cole and Matthews were given so much leeway with their NXT commentary because, believe it or not, the show really was that low of a priority to the folks who call the shots for WWE. I would imagine that the top brass in the company, Vince McMahon included, had almost zero clue what was going on with the program.

There is actually precedence for this, too. For example, if you go back and listen to Josh Matthews’ commentary on WWE Velocity when that show was on the air, he was constantly making references to Japanese companies like Pro Wrestling ZERO-ONE and throwing out other obscure trivia from outside of WWE that would never be allowed if his announcing were micromanaged in the same way that the Raw and Smackdown teams are. Also, in 2002, Stevie Richards declared himself the “General Manager of Sunday Night Heat” and started (in storyline) booking matches and making other important decisions on that show. When Stephanie McMahon, who at the time was general manager of Smackdown and a big wheel in the creative team, heard about Stevie’s angle, she put the kibosh on it, saying that it diluted the importance of her own role as GM. The thing is, this storyline had already gone on for months, and it wasn’t until that point that Stephanie had even heard of it to lodge any complaints.

When you’re responsible for four hours of programming on major cable stations like WWE’s top executives are, sometimes you just have to focus directly on those important properties and delegate less important shows to people further down the ladder. That’s what resulted in things making it to air on NXT, Velocity, or Heat that never would have flown on the major shows.

Dion has a serious question that I really can’t make a joke about:

I was wondering if wrestlers get tested for HIV at all? I tried researching for myself, and came across this interview with Ric Flair which shocked me a little. Just surprised he would be so uncomfortable.

According to the WWE Corporate website, in addition to being drug tested, WWE wrestlers are made to submit to an annual physical that includes blooding screening. (This would be blood screening separate from drug testing, which is addressed in a different portion of the policy.) What exactly the blood screening is looking for is not made clear on the website, but you would have to think that any blood screening that is worth a damn could catch a blood-born virus such as HIV or, at the very least, a case of AIDS which would eliminate antibodies naturally occurring in the bloodstream.

Aside from possibly WWE, I am not aware of any wrestling company regularly conducting nay sort of blood testing on its performers. There certainly wouldn’t be any on the independent circuit or in the territorial days unless mandated by a state athletic commission, as currently on the indies or in the past, wrestlers truly are/were “independent contractors” who had/have very few restrictions put on them to work for specific companies.

Here’s a question about Chris Benoit from Phil Marquis. Jesus, first HIV and now Beniot? Talk about your rough topics . . .

I know you follow Japanese wrestling and Chris Benoit had tremendous success there as Wild Pegasus, having won the Super J Cup in 1994 and what not. WWE has pretty much erased him from their history but how has Japan treated Benoit in their history books since July 2007?

First off, I should probably note that Benoit wasn’t quite as successful in Japan as he was in the United States. He did win the Super J Cup and was an IWPG Junior Heavyweight Champion in New Japan, and those are certainly noteworthy accomplishments, but he was only full time there for roughly five years, and being a successful junior heavyweight in Japan doesn’t mean near as much as being a successful heavyweight, which Benoit never was. As a result, it’s a little bit less awkward to erase him from their history than it is from the history of WWE where, for at least a year, he was pretty heavily involved in the main event scene and won one of the company’s most prominent championships on the biggest show of the year.

To actually answer the question, my understanding is that, though they’re not going out of their way to hero-worship Benoit (nor should they be) the promotions for which he worked are acknowledging him when acknowledging him is necessary. For example, New Japan Pro Wrestling released the video below to hype up the 2010 version of the Best of the Super Juniors tournament. It runs down every past winner of the tournament and shows the finishes of the final match for each year, and they don’t at all gloss over Benoit’s victories in 1993 and 1995:

In fact, in a move that probably would have had people up in arms in the United States, Benoit’s former character of the Pegasus Kid made a special, one-time only appearance on a New Japan show on October 24, 2009 on a show held at a U.S. military base. The character at that time was played by Irish wrestler “Prince” Fergal Devitt, who originally donned the Pegasus Kid hood in Japan in 2006 for several matches before Benoit committed his heinous double murder-suicide.

D has an inquiry about one of the best pure in-ring wrestlers of all time:

Why did Jushin Thunder Liger never win the IWGP title in NJPW? He’s a cruiserweight legend in Japan, the NJPW equivalent of WWE’s Rey Mysterio, minus the World title runs. He was on par with Mutoh, Hashimoto, and Chono during the 90s when he could have plausibly won the title, and even after all those guys stopped performing at a high level, Liger killed cancer and returned performing like he used to. Like Rey Mysterio in North America, he’s shown that his influence transcends his small stature, and he could Main Event without it seeming out of place, so why do they never consider putting their ‘world’ title on the guy? I’m pretty sure Jushin Liger as world champ would draw better than Togi Makabe as champ…

I actually don’t think that Jushin Liger would have been a credible IWGP Heavyweight Champion. Don’t get me wrong, he could certainly wrestle good to great matches against just about anybody who has ever been in New Japan’s heavyweight division. However, the man has been booked as a junior heavyweight wrestler for 99% of his career. In Japan, junior heavyweights and heavyweights generally don’t mix unless the junior is moving up to the heavyweight division for a permanent stint. In the rare instances where you DO have a match featuring a heavyweight against a junior, the heavyweight almost always picks up the victory. It’s just the way things are done, and it’s been that way for so long that it probably isn’t going to be able to change before Liger’s career comes to an end.

Plus New Japan did try to repackage him as a heavyweight once, and it didn’t work. He moved up to the heavyweight division for a good portion of the year 2000 and, though there were some good matches, none of them really allowed Liger to break through as a force to be reckoned with. It already failed to work once and now, with Liger in the twilight of his career, I doubt it would work now.

Laszlo backs Backlund:

Did Bruno Sammartino ever have a match against Bob Backlund and if so, did they have a (W)WWF World Title bout?

Did Bob Backlund ever have a rematch for the WWF World Title against the Iron Sheik and if so, what was the result(s)?

I recall Backlund having a feud with Arnold Skaaland around the angle that Skaaland threw in the towel to sabotage Backlund’s match against the Iron Sheik. Do you have any details on that feud like which promotion it was in and who represented Skaaland in the matches revolving around the angle?

Off of the top of my head and after a fair amount of research, I am not aware of Bob Backlund and Bruno Sammartino ever having had a singles match against one another, let alone for the WWF World Title. As a matter of fact, I couldn’t even find a record of them competing against one another in tag team action in the WWF. This probably has a lot to do with the fact that they were both babyfaces during the majority of the big runs where they would have been in the same promotion, which occurred in an era where face vs. face matches were incredibly rare.

As far as a title rematch against the Iron Sheik is concerned, that is a match that Bob Backlund had. On January 14, 1984, Backlund and the Sheik locked it up in the semi-main event of a show of the Boston Gardens with the title on the line. The Sheik was still the champion at the end of the night, but it was only because he got himself disqualified. There was a subsequent rematch on January 18, 1984 in Warren, Ohio which went to a no contest. Backlund picked up another DQ win over the Sheik in a title match on January 19 in Monongahela, Pennsylvania. In fact, the January 23, 1984 match in which Hulk Hogan ended the Iron Sheik’s title reign was originally supposed to be yet another Backlund/Sheik rematch, but Hogan was substituted at the last minute for the former NCAA wrestling champion. Again, because there were very few face-face matches at that time, Backlund never did get a title shot against the Hulkster.

I am not aware of an extended feud between Skaaland and Backlund over Arnold costing his protégé the WWF Title. However, what you may be thinking of is the fact that, when he started doing his “psycho” gimmick in 1994, there were several angles in which Backlund would put the crossface chicken wing on a hapless victim. One of those victims happened to be Skaaland, which was preceded by Backlund blaming him for throwing in the towel to end his title reign all those years ago. This did not lead to an actual rivalry between them, though. It was just done to put more heat on Backlund as he feuded with the current babyfaces in the WWF.

Bash (not to be confused with the Great American version) has two questions:

During the summer & fall of 1997 during the “border wars” era between Canada and the United States there sure seemed to be a lot more Raw tapings and PPV’s being held in Canada. Was that planned ahead of time or where house show dates turned into Raw tapings to capitalize on the current storyline with the Hart Foundation?

There always seemed to be a MAJORITY of wrestlers with long hair in the 80s and 90s and even into the early 2000s. I know long hair has been in and out of style but I always assumed it was something more than just for looks. Did wrestlers always have long hair because it was easier to cover up their mouths so they could communicate better in the ring without being noticed?

Believe it or not, there weren’t that many Raw tapings and pay per views held in Canada during the period of time that you reference. I agree that it feels like there were more, but, when you actually look at the numbers, there were not. This probably has a lot to do with the fact that the crowd reactions during the few Canadian shows that existed were off the charts, making them incredibly memorable.

The first televised Canadian show of this period was the Canadian Stampede pay per view, which emanated from Calgary on July 6, 1997. This was followed the next night by a Raw taping from Edmonton. Just two weeks later, Raw would be broadcast from Halifax. Having two Raws from Canada so close together certainly was unusual, but you can probably chalk it up as being a coincidence given the fact that WWF television/pay per view would not return to the Great White North until November 9, when the infamous Survivor Series was held in Montreal. Raw was taped the next night in Ottawa.

As far as the long hair question is concerned, you pretty much hit the nail right on the head. In addition to adding to the “rock star” aura of professional wrestlers, more than one person who has set foot into the ring has said that he liked keeping his hair long because it provided a “cover up” and made it easier to communicate with opponents during a match. The other argument that I hear in favor of long hair from time-to-time is that it adds some visual flair when wrestlers run around the ring and take bumps, as seeing a guy’s hair go flying when he takes a punch or a back body drop is one more thing that can emphasize the impact.

My Damn Opinion

It’s he, it’s he, it’s that G-r-e-g T.:

With the meteoric rise of the Miz last year in mind, in your opinion, which superstar or superstars are most likely to get their first world title runs by the end of next year? I’ve got my eyes on Morrison, Barrett, and Del Rio.

Given recent events, I think that Del Rio is almost a lock to win the title at Extreme Rules, and he definitely has the potential to do something big with a well-booked reign. I do not think that John Morrison will ever be a WWE Champion. He’s gotten so close so many times now and always managed to screw it up himself or have some other factor work against him that I think he’s well past the point that the company thinks of him as somebody who can carry one of the two brands. I’m also beginning to wonder if the company still has any faith in Barrett. Though he does have the Intercontinental Title now and has received a fairly high level push in the past, he has also recently been a part of a stable which just can’t seem to beat Santino Marella, which doesn’t bode well for his chances of holding one of the two big belts.

Looking up and down the rosters, I honestly don’t see any other potential first-time world champions, unless Christian somehow winds up with the belt for a brief run as part of his ongoing feud with Del Rio. (Which, at least in my opinion, would be a mistake.) WWE doesn’t seem to have that many underneath wrestlers who they have confidence in elevating to main event status.

Little Naitch asks what he refers to as the “token steroid questions.” His words, not mine:

Do you think that the general consensus is that the bloated steroid look is not appealing to fans now? Orton for one looks way better leaner than he did when he was all puffy and I remember in Hogan’s book him talking about how he could see his abs and how pleased he was with his look when he stopped juicing. It’s a fine line between looking big and looking like the Michelin man (aka Dino Bravo).

I don’t think that steroid use has decreased in WWE because wrestlers don’t like the “look” that steroids give them. I think that steroid use has decreased in WWE because, even though it’s not a foolproof system, the company really does have a drug testing program which they do enforce in at least some instances. To the extent that there is a reduced consumption of performance enhancing drugs, I believe that it can be traced directly back to the implementation of the Wellness Policy, as if you look at the roster prior to the institution of the policy and after the institution of the policy, you can see that, generally speaking, wrestlers are smaller, and certain specific wrestlers who used to be rather “puffy” looking have toned down quite a bit.

And, last but not least, here’s more fantasy booking from 411’s own Michael Ornelas:

How would you book Eddie Edwards’ reign as RoH champion (in regards to a storyline with Richards)?

I have to admit that I’m not the biggest Ring of Honor fan right now, and I’m not exactly the biggest Eddie Edwards fan. He’s one of those guys who can go out there and have a **** match with just about anybody but leaves me scratching my head as to why exactly I should care about his four star match. (Compare this to somebody like Bryan Danielson, who is an excellent independent style wrestler but also carries with him a certain level of charisma and storytelling ability that I feel Edwards is lacking.) However, the question has been asked, so I’ll do my best to get an answer out there.

There unquestionably has to be an Eddie Edwards-Davey Richards title match at some point, and I think that it has to end with Edwards dropping the belt. ROH fans have been clamoring for Richards to get the company’s top prize for many months now, and, if the company doesn’t actually give it to him, they run the risk that the fans will grow tired of him before the title run, similar to what happened with Tyler Black before his departure from WWE.

And, honestly, I wouldn’t even waste much time getting to the match or set up that much of a “feud” behind it. It’s already a dream match in the eyes of ROH fans as it stands right now. Just have Richards win a series of matches that clearly establishes him as the top contender to the championship, do a couple of basic angles in which he has staredowns with and cuts promos on Edwards, and, bam, I think that you will have everything you need to get the ROHbots worked into a frenzy for when the bout finally comes. Sometimes the simplest booking is the best, and this is one of those situations in which I don’t think that you need to reinvent the wheel when coming up with something for the wrestlers to do.

That will do it for my penultimate week of filling in on Ask 411. Come back in seven days for my big, April-closing blowout!