Hidden Highlights 01.12.09: Issue #176

Hidden Highlights
By JP Prag

Issue #176

Commentator: Previously, on Hidden Highlights…

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Commentator: New trolls made their presence known, but Hidden Highlights always protects the ones it cares about most.

Fiz: You know, sometimes, I think people are addicted to trolling. And people like me who take the bait aren’t helping.

Bah! Kill the comment section and be done with it.

T-mac: Can we all be friends again?

Stenographer: When were we ever not?

Commentator: Of course, the real topic at hand is always about those little things that make a huge difference.

Texter Morgan: I like these articles to start off the week. I would also like to add every time Hornswoggle does a dive to the outside, (usually called a tope) Striker calls it a low-pe (obviously due to Hornswoggle’s lack of size). Pretty cool of Striker to put a creative twist on a simple wrestling move.

Industry: Actually, I’ve always thought that Sim would be thrown out of Legacy when they found out that he was adopted and that what Jerry was saying is just a little insight in what’s to come…. maybe I’m wrong…

Ghost of JT: Too late now! Looks like everyone is getting thrown out of Legacy!

Commentator: Then again, not everything you see is a Hidden Highlight, though some are quite interesting…

Little Naitch: Does anyone else think that Manu losing his Legacy match and Umaga vignettes being shown could create a Wild Samoans II tag-team?

Commentator: The world may never know…

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Commentator: And now, 411wrestling.com proudly presents…

JP: Hello everyone putting in an offer on a house today (thank you terrible economy!), and welcome back to Hidden Highlights! If you’ve never been here before, let me tell you what we are doing in these pages.

Hidden Highlights are about the little things that make the product great. They are about showing the positive motions all those involved in wrestling do to make a better show. The Miz may hold his opponents hands down to make a pin attempt better. Charles Robinson may let a little tear shed from his eye every time someone mentions Ric Flair. Mike Tenay may tell you about the 17 year history of a visiting wrestler and make them sound huge in one sentence. These are all examples of little things that make the product far better.

Every week this article spotlights up to the Top 15 Hidden Highlights of the week, whether the be from television (RAW, ECW of SciFi, iMPACT, SmackDown!, and a PPV or television special if there is one), the past, small shows, tapes, or the indy scene.

This article may have an author, but it is also dependent upon the readers and true fans of professional wrestling—those who love what they watch and want to tell the world what they have found. The Top 15 are chosen from what I see and what readers write-in. Whatever is the best is what you’ll see!

And who am I? Well, I am JP Prag, and I bring you Hidden Highlights with one goal in mind: to appreciate all those little things that make a huge difference.

Now let’s get on with the Hidden Highlights!

Classic Hidden Highlight

JP: We’ll kick it off this week with some serious time travel to the TWENTIETH CENTURY! Get the Way Back Machine ready, Mr. Peabody.

Rosie: A retro Hidden highlight for you from the 1999 Royal Rumble: During the Big Bossman vs. Road Dogg, the Big Bossman gets a two count off a sloppy pin attempt and the King (on commentary with Cole) goes, “Bad policeman, no doughnut for you.”

JP: And kudos to you for finding something positive in that match! You have my eternal gratitude!

RAW – Retro 2 Weeks

JP: Sticking to the past, Or Alboher from one of my favorite stomping grounds in Israel made an interesting observation.

Or: Two weeks ago, Kelly Kelly found out the her hotel room was trashed and last week we found that she is in love with Randy Orton.

Am I the only one who finds a connection between the man she is in love with to her hotel room being trashed?

Randy Orton is known to be a hotel trasher; you should have that one scouted, Kelly!!

JP: I think the implication was that Miz and Morrison trashed the hotel room, but I can see where you are coming from. How do we not know that Orton didn’t do because that’s just what he does?!

Also, does anyone see the pattern in the guys Kelly Kelly goes for? Mike Knox, Randy Orton… Kelly Kelly is one of those girls that always goes with the guys that treat her like crap (with the exception of Balls Mahoney, who she didn’t even seem to miss when he got fired). She has low self esteem! Awwww!

RAW – Retro 1 Week

JP: Getting a little closer to the present, we have one from just a week ago.

wrn: During the 10 man tag on Raw, watch John Morrison. The SECOND that Dolph Ziggler enters the ring, Morrison extends his hand and introduces himself to Dolph.

Classic.

JP: Morrison is in a fight in my head with AJ Styles to be my favorite wrestler today. But AJ has extra points for being cool to me personally (unlike some Christian Cages I know), so I’m a bit bias in this one. Maybe if abs number 1 and 2 pop out for me I’ll move more into the Morrison camp.

RAW – Retro 1 Week

JP: Sticking in the past, we move on to RAW’s main event of the evening.

cathal627: At the end of the match, when JBL had pinned HBK, someone actually threw an open bottle of water into the ring. It was just barely visible and I had to pause and rewind to make sure what I had seen was correct. It looked like it came from behind the announce desk. I don’t know if it was planned or not, but I assume it wasn’t as HBK, JBL and the announcers chose to ignore it, but I thought it was a HH as it showed how disgusted someone actually was at both men to throw a bottle of water into the ring as some water scattered itself onto the canvas.

JP: No, I saw it too and really wondered who was that upset about JBL winning, especially in that manner. But if you read Scott Slimmer’s recent adventures standing in line to buy wrestling tickets, you’d know that some people aren’t exactly the smartest. Then again, all the garbage that got thrown in the ring when Hollywood Hogan formed the nWo at Bash at the Beach really made the moment awesome. Man, WCW fans were quite passionate. I miss a lot of that today; though I suppose the “fire Russo” chants are pretty close.

RAW – Retro 1 Week

JP: Sticking in that same main event, we’ve got one more!

David Greene: During the main event from RAW last week, JBL is telling Shawn to lie down and you can see Mike Kehoe shacking his head no as if to say “Come on don’t make he do that”.

JP: That is why I gave the referees an award at the end of the year. They have been the best thing going for Hidden Highlights and cannot be missed!

RAW

JP: Finally moving ahead into this week, it was whacky tag team action as Melina (I’m begging WWE Production staff to stop telling faces they have to have big smiles during their entrances) teamed up with Goldust to take on Glammarella, Beth Phoenix and Santino Marella. As Melina was making her split entrance, you could just barely see Goldust sitting in the corner in the upper right side of the TV (at least in standard format; I have no idea what you HD people see!). But when Melina did her actual split, Goldust started hopping up and down like a little monkey! I thought it was quite the funny moment that was not really picked up by the camera, so Goldust was just doing it for the live audience and for his own character.

RAW

JP: At the end of the same match, Rosa Mendez again jumped the barricade and attacked Melina. This time, though, Melina decided that she had not had enough and went after Melina in the crowd. When she did so, I caught sight of a fan who had a sign that said, “Rose Mendez Fan”. I got a good chuckle out of that one making fun of the storyline but still making it work, especially since he was sitting so close to her. Of course, his “Nick Hogan drove me here” sign was just a bit to smarky for my taste, but what can you do?

ECW

JP: Over in the land of extreme, the show began with Finlay taking on number one contender for the ECW Championship Jack Swagger. During the match, Finlay was able to trap Swagger in a pretty standard leg vice. Instead of just holding the move, though, Finlay actually took his elbow and pushed it into the back side of Swagger’s knee. That was a great way to dish out the extra pain and I would give Finlay the William Regal Award, but somehow given their history that does not seem right.

ECW

JP: Later in the evening, Alicia Fox and Katie Lea Burchill took to the ring in another ECW Diva bout. About halfway into the match, Fox was on the offensive and looked to be doing well hitting moves like a split leg drop. But if you watched on the outside, you could actually see DJ Gabriel mimicking all of the moves. That’s when I realized that it was DJ Gabriel actually giving all of the moves to Fox! It was quite a bit of awesome work and I saw how good Gabriel did as an outside manager. Meanwhile, if you paid attention to the subtext of the match, Fox spent so much time watching Gabriel for what to do next that she actually became distracted and Katie Lea was able to take advantage and win the match.

iMPACT

JP: On TNA iMPACT, they had the final segment of Rough Cut starring Beer Money, Inc’s Robert Roode and James Storm. During one of the many jump cut scenes, they showed the two tag team partners playing pool. When they did so, James Storm had a pool stick and was about to hit the number 3 ball. Robert Roode then corrected him and pointed out the correct ball (the cue ball) to hit. It was a subtle little moment to show how drunk Storm is and how Roode still works great with him and I thought it worked perfectly.

iMPACT

JP: Although the segments with “Governor Palin” and the Beautiful People have been pretty painful and been going on for way too long, I finally got a perfect Hidden Highlight moment out of it. When they returned to the crew at the horse and goat farm later in the evening, Velvet Sky had stains all over her knees! Now this could have been because she was on her knees picking up hose dung, or it could have been because she was on her knees puking like she promised in the first segment. Either way, it was a most excellent bit of detail and whoever put those stains there deserves a lot of credit.

SmackDown

JP: In a surprising pick for second match of the night, US Champion Shelton Benjamin took on the rarely seen Undertaker (with an almost 4-minute entrance! The fight for longest entrance between Triple H and the Undertaker continues!). During the match, Undertaker started to hit several arm wringers on Benjamin while setting up for the Old School. As he did so, the Undertaker actually took Shelton Benjamin’s fingers and started pulling them backwards, dishing out a bit of extra pain. Guess he was taking some notes from Finlay on ECW (if only they were taped in the correct order)

SmackDown

JP: Further into the night, MVP was hosting the VIP Lounge with special guest Mr. Kennedy. Unfortunately for MVP, the repo guys decided to come right when he was doing his show. They took away all of his furniture save one couch. But what I liked that that they really took away was the velvet rope entrance to the VIP Lounge! It was only seen briefly for one second when Mr. Kennedy was going back up stage, but the ropes had disappeared (though the security guard remained). Now I just wonder why the didn’t have Jesse and Festus do the repo job since they did so good as movers?

SmackDown

JP: Sticking in our SmackDown world, David Greene is back for more!

David Greene: From the Primo Carlito vs. Kendrick and Ezekiel Jackson on SmackDown: When Primo was chasing after Kendrick on the out side the camera just picked up Primo looking up at Ezekiel to confirm where he was and it was safe to pass.

JP: The only things I’m going to say is it’s THE Kendrick. Remember that!

SmackDown

JP: We’ll finish it up this week with a first time (quite a dangerous thing, I know).

Michael Stoehr: With the recent “accident” with Jeff Hardy and a hit-and-run driver on Smackdown (1-09-09), it was said that the “accident” happened in Hardy’s hometown of Cameron, NC.

If you visit the WWE website and look at the photos of the “accident”, the sheriffs car has Plaquemines Parish on the the side. That would be Plaquemines Parish in Louisiana!!

JP: Whoops! Well, that’s just a bit to the funny side. I was amused anyway that it happened “that morning” considering SmackDown was taped two weeks ago. Ah, the age we live in!

Michael Stoehr: Also, if it was his hometown, why did the officer ask who he is?

JP: That is pretty sad when the WWE Champion isn’t recognized… especially a WWE Champion looks like that! I was watching the show with a buddy of mine who never sees wrestling and he could not stop commenting on how Jeff Hardy looked… and he didn’t even see him with his painted face and hair!

Well everyone, that wraps up this week’s show. Thank you for reading the 176th ISSUE of Hidden Highlights!

Do you have a Hidden Highlight from this or any week in history that you would like to share? Please e-mail this article at [email protected] with your thoughts! Send them by Saturday afternoon to be considered! And remember, they can be from any show, live or taped, or any house show, or anything you saw. The best of the best will be featured among the top 15 next week.

In the meantime, be sure to catch my very own Thursday morning news report The Hamilton Ave Journal: the only wrestling news report focused on the business of wrestling.

Until then, you have just experienced the most positive article in all of the IWC: Hidden Highlights!