News to Start Your Weekend 07.06.07

I rarely ever end up using the gift cards I receive as Christmas presents. It’s not that I don’t like the stores they’re for, but I’m lazy and tend to order most everything I buy online. Which, you would assume, would make a 50 dollar iTunes gift card perfect. Well, it’s been 7 months and today I finally used the card I got for Christmas. I downloaded the second and third Audioslave albums, and they’re decent. I’m going to have to listen more than once, but upon first listen, neither was anything special, and they’re both a good bit below the original album quality wise. They are similarly structured as far as song placement, though. I also got the new Velvet Revolver CD, which I have yet to listen to, and the new Queens of the Stone Age, which I’m really enjoying. In a time where there really isn’t anything new, different, or really any good in mainstream rock, QOTSA is rather refreshing. It’s not as good as the album that brought the band to their first real stardom (Songs for the Deaf), but I’m about halfway through, and it is a very entertaining album.

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all of that fine news from the past week

– I always love a good Hogan mock fest, and some of the stuff that has come out about him this week is quite good to poke fun at. Apparently, the next season of ‘Hogan Knows Best’ is going to be all about his and Linda’s possible divorce. I’m sure that will be riveting. There’s nothing better than a poorly written ‘reality’ show that tries too hard to come up with good material to entertain the rubes who watch.

– Hogan is also involved in a new project called the “Official Uniting Towel Wave of America”. The idea of the concept is that, within the next year, ‘feuding’ celebrities are supposed to make up and be able to wave a towel together in unity on next year’s Fourth of July. Of course for Hogan, the big payoff would be him and Savage doing it, I would assume, and I don’t see that happening. It would be great if Hogan were to use this as just some more stupid publicity for his show and it ended up as just him and Linda waving the towel together after reuniting from their fake marital problems.

– Finally, Hogan is once again trying to put together a farewell tour. After the bomb his appearance and match against the Big Show did in Memphis a few months back, Hogan is looking to get a bunch of guys who should have retired years ago and were never nearly as successful as him (although much more likable and way less abrasive, so really, I have no reason to be so mean about them) and tour around the country to say farewell to the fans. Well, apparently not really this country, as Hogan has apparently rethought the whole situation because of his obvious lack of drawing power in America and is looking to do shows in Canada and overseas, where people are apparently 25 years behind as far as entertainment is concerned.

– Speaking of Big Show, word is that he may be training to become a boxer. It is said that he is down in weight from 500 pounds to 449, which is odd, because everything that had been circulating before now always led me to believe that he was well below 500 pounds by the time he retired, although his weight did fluctuate a hell of a lot throughout his career, so you never know. He does look pretty good in a recent picture I saw of him. As far as boxing, the man is 36 years old and, recent weight loss or not, has been in poor physical shape from wrestling for so long that I don’t see how it would make much sense for him to get into boxing. Unless the guy is so amazing that he’s impervious to getting hit, I don’t see what he can really do, because he can’t be much more mobile than he was for the last few years of his career. I don’t know… I wish him luck I guess. I’ve always liked Show, so I have no reason to attack him on any front.

– Rey Mysterio made his return to WWE competition on July 4 in Mexico, and is going to continue on the current tour of the country. He will have something to do with the Great American Bash PPV, so they better hurry getting him back. He doesn’t appear on tonight’s SmackDown, and after this week there are only 2 more episodes left of each WWE TV show before the PPV. Maybe his return will be a surprise appearance at the show as opposed to a return on SmackDown and some quick build to a return match. I’d go so far as to bring him back next week on SmackDown and just promote a small return match for him, just to get him back into the mix of wrestling before throwing him back into the big picture. Why not have him return, have Jamie Noble cut a promo on him, and have Rey make his big comeback match in a victory in a great match with Noble at the GAB? It gives Rey a surefire good return and can help give Noble a bit of a rub in the process.

– TNA wants to run all of its PPVs outside of Orlando in 2008. That sounds like a good plan to me. I personally really enjoy the atmosphere of their on the road shows. Chicago is still set to be the location of this year’s Bound for Glory PPV, what I assume will be the final out of Orlando PPV of this year.

– Word is that Samoa Joe has declined to sign a new 3 year contract extension with TNA. Speculation is that his current contract has only about a year or so left on it. What does that mean for Joe in TNA? Moreover, what does that mean for Joe in Ring of Honor or possibly WWE? With Foley around, Joe may have a bigger chance getting into WWE than he might without him, but that all remains to be seen. I’ve also seen some rumblings that Jeff Jarrett is slated to win the TNA World Title some time soon, which would appear to mean that once again Joe’s road to the belt would once again be cut off. I think that may have something to do with it, because it currently appears that Joe’s current direction leads straight into a World Title match, and victory, against Kurt Angle. Jeff Jarrett could end up destroying those plans. Either that, or he could be put over Joe soon after Joe wins the belt, which would be even worse than Joe not taking the title at all.

– Everyone’s favourite wrestler, Teddy Hart, has moved down to Tampa in hopes of possibly getting a shot in WWE’s new developmental territory, the Florida Championship Wrestling promotion.

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nwa world title tournament update

The semi finals of the NWA World Heavyweight Championship tournament are now coming closer to being set. One man has advanced at this point. It has come out like this thus far:

FIRST ROUND

Bryan Danielson def. Nelson Creed
Fergall Devitt def. Mikey Nicholls

Adam Pearce def. Aaron Aguilera
Chad Parham def. Damien Wayne

Claudio Castagnoli def. Pepper Parks
Sicodelico Jr def. Roughneck Ryan

Fred Sampson def. Glamour Boy Shane
Brent Albright def. Osamu Nishimura

QUARTERFINAL ROUND

Brent Albright def. Fred Sampson
Claudio Castagnoli v. Sicodelico Jr

Adam Pearce v. Chad Parham
Bryan Danielson v. Fergall Devitt

Dates have not been set for the final three quarterfinal matches, however it seems very possible that the two men scheduled for the next two Ring of Honor World Title matches in the US may go one-on-one with each other in hopes of advancing in the tournament to win the NWA World Title. That would be Albright, who already has advanced, and Claudio, who has a good shot at advancing, especially considering the news about the NWA Tag Titles.

This Sunday, July 8, the vacant NWA World Tag Team Titles will once again have an owner. A triple thread tag match has been signed, as Billy Kidman & Sean Waltman will take on the teams of Sicodelico Jr & Incognito and Joey Ryan & Karl Anderson at the Convention Center in McAllen, Texas.

Could we end up seeing two final rounds of all Ring of Honor competitors vying for the NWA World Title? We’ll have to wait and see.

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new referee policy on television

The new WWE referee policy is beginning to get out of hand. It came out a couple months back that they started telling referees the finish to the matches they would be officiating only to change the finish without letting them know. Now, they’ve decided to switch it up by letting the refs know the real finishes, but last minute jumbling up which guys do which matches, thus rendering the information they had been given worthless. The refs have countered this by letting each other know the finishes to all of their previously assigned matches beforehand, so that every ref knows the finish to every match.

The policy has also found its way to television. Not in a case as extreme as not letting the officials know the finishes, but fines have been issued to a few refs. Remember a few weeks back on ECW when the Benoit/Punk v. Cor Von/Burke match was ended out of nowhere when referee Scott Armstrong rang the bell and declared the faces the winners? Apparently it wasn’t supposed to come off as the clusterfuck it did, but because the refs have been told to enforce the rules much stricter, he DQ’ed the New Breed team because they both stayed in the ring for longer than a 5 count doing double teams, which, of course is illegal. Armstrong was not fined and was told that the incident wasn’t his fault. Instead, Cor Von and Burke got in a bit of trouble for it. Chad Patton, however, was not as lucky, as he did receive a fine for his work during the June 18 Mickie/Candice v. Melina/Jillian tag match on RAW. He was allowing the girls to enter the ring without tags, which, of course, is not legal within the set rules of a contest.

Apparently the new rule is that referees are only to allow tag partners to make one save to break up a pinfall or a submission per match, and if it happens more than once, to DQ the team that does it. I don’t see how that can be a good thing. I know they want to try to make everything seem a little more legit (including checking shoulders during pin attempts, which wasn’t done for the Super Crazy/Mr. Kennedy roll up on RAW), but this may be a bit too much. The wrestlers have historically not paid attention to the referees’ warnings, and it’s going to be a damn tough habit to overcome. In the long run, if it works out we may have a new definition for “WWE Style”, with the rules actually being followed. If nothing else, I guess it could make the matches with No DQ stipulations stand out more, especially ones like we’ve seen in the not too distant past that barely even took advantage of that lack of rules. In the short term, though, it may end up causing a lot of poor finishes in matches, and things could become quite fucked up. They might want to rethink this. For house shows it’s fine, but it looks like they’ve decided to bring this to television, and I can’t see it being something that adds to matches.

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the ring of honor section

– Both Austin Aries and Chris Hero have officially signed contracts with Ring of Honor. Aries did his signing as part of his return to the company at the end of June at the second PPV taping in Chicago. Chris Hero, we can assume, has been given a contract that superagent Larry Sweeney felt was for enough money to compensate his charge for his work in Ring of Honor.

– Speaking of Sweeney, he is also taking one of his newest signees, Matt Sydal, and shopping him around to other promotions. According to Ring of Honor officials, not only has Sweeney been making Sydal’s presence known to TNA, but he may be trying to catch the eye of another big American promotion. This all said, Sydal is still scheduled to make all of his signed appearances for Ring of Honor, as he will be wrestling at the Tokyo and Osaka shows on 7/16 and 7/17 as well as the 7/27 and 7/28 shows in Long Island and Edison and 8/10 and 8/11 in Boston and Philadelphia (the final two shows are Death Before Dishonor V weekend). Following these six events, Sydal will move back to Japan to work for the Dragon Gate promotion while Sweeney finds the best offer for Sydal’s services, be it with Ring of Honor or elsewhere.

– The next two months of action in Ring of Honor are set to be very hot. The first shows in July are Ring of Honor’s debut shows in Japan, and both shows have big time cards set:

ROH in Tokyo, Japan – Monday, July 16, 2007
– Takeshi Morishima v. Nigel McGuinness (ROH World Title)
– Naomichi Marufuji, Jay & Mark Briscoe v. Matt Sydal, KENTA & Ricky Marvin
– Bryan Danielson v. Go Shiozaki
– Delirious v. Roderick Strong (Fight Without Honor)
– Jack Evans & Kotaro Suzuki v. Davey Richards & Rocky Romero
– BJ Whitmer v. Jimmy Rave

ROH in Osaka, Japan – Tuesday, July 17, 2007
– Jay & Mark Briscoe v. SHINGO & Partner (ROH World Tag Titles)
– KENTA & CIMA v. Davey Richards & Rocky Romero
– Matt Sydal, Ryo Saito & Dragon Kid v. Delirious, Naruki Doi & Masato Yoshino
– Jack Evans v. Roderick Strong
– Bryan Danielson v. Jimmy Rave
– Nigel McGuinness v. BJ Whitmer

YAMATO was scheduled to be the partner of SHINGO to take on the Briscoes for the Tag Titles, but he has been injured and will miss the show that is scheduled to take place in 11 days. A replacement will be named shortly.

– Also in July, Ring of Honor is putting on a huge tournament to determine which guys in the locker room are really looking to take a top spot in the company. Dubbed “The Race to the Top”, this tournament will take place over two weekends at the end of July.

“The Race to the Top” Tournament Night One
Friday, July 27, 2007 – Long Island, NY

– First round tournament action will take place, as 8 matches will happen between these 16 men: Jack Evans, BJ Whitmer, Brent Albright, Chris Hero, Claudio Castagnoli, Davey Richards, Delirious, El Generico, Erick Stevens, Hallowicked, Jigsaw, Kevin Steen, Matt Cross, Matt Sydal, Mike Quackenbush and Pelle Primeau.

– Jay & Mark Briscoe v. Bryan Danielson & Nigel McGuinness (ROH World Tag Titles)

Night Two of the tournament will see the quarterfinals, semis and finals as well as other matches that have yet to be signed.

– A post Fourth of July sale is going on right now in Ring of Honor. You can get 30% off any purchase at ROHWrestling.com. The sale ends Monday, July 9 at 10AM eastern.

– The first ROH PPV debuted last weekend on DISH Network, and it will now air for the first time on TVN PPV providers. Sunday, July 8 is the first air date, so if you get your PPV through TVN, now is the time to buy. The show will begin running on iNDemand on Friday, July 20. I have seen the show both live and on tape, and it’s a really good show, and the best 10-15 dollars you can spend on a PPV this year. It’s more than worth it, so if you’ve never seen Ring of Honor, give the show a chance sometime this month or in August. You won’t regret it.

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random tv thoughts and whatnot

– SmackDown last week was another solid offering with a bunch of good matches. Matt Hardy continued his hot streak with another good match, this time defeating Lance Cade. Flair and Carlito were solid, as were MVP and Kane. I’m glad to see the Cruiserweight title and a bunch of the guys showing up every week, too. I hope they start doing something with them. Yeah, it’s a long shot, but at least they’re getting time every week. Mickie and Victoria also had a fun match.

– Batista v. Edge was, I think, their most solid outing of the four this past week on TV. The final five or so minutes of the Vengeance match was good, but not good enough to make up for the boring rest of it or the shitty ending. The SD match was solid throughout, though, and I really liked the finish. Not so much that Batista won, because at this point it doesn’t matter. We already know he’s an idiot who can’t get the job done in a title match, so why put him over the champion clean when he can’t even challenge for it any more? The actual closing spot was cool, however, with Batista countering the spear by jumping up just a bit and catching Edge between his legs to set up for the powerbomb. That was pretty sweet, I must admit.

– I really haven’t been liking Batista lately, and that makes his last few title match losses even sweeter for me, because they’ve been written so poorly. The idea was to build sympathy and make him seem desperate for the belt that he kept getting ‘screwed’ out of. The problem is that he was never screwed out of it. He lost it clean to Undertaker at WrestleMania. He caused a draw in their rematch at Backlash. In the cage match, he lost fair and square in what I guess can be called a draw as both men touched the ground at the same time. Edge, then, showed how smart he is by once again ‘stealing’ the World Title. After that, it’s all been Batista’s fault. He lost completely clean to Edge in their first match back at Judgment Day, no matter what excuses stupid Michael Cole wants to make for him due to his leg injury. In their cage match at One Night Stand, Edge got out first. That’s it. He didn’t cheat, there was no outside interference, he wasn’t an ‘opportunistic asshole’… Edge won the match the exact same way Batista was trying to win it, but Edge escaped first. He did it fair and clean, and all it did was show that Edge was superior to Batista. Big Dave also showed no emotion during the match (as he is wont to do) and only showed any fire when he was tearing up the announce table. Jesus… you’re trying to build sympathy, not show everybody how sore a loser he is. The way they did it isn’t going to convince me how much the world title means to him. It’s just going to tell me that he can’t handle himself in defeat and that he’s a baby. Finally, he lost due to his own stupidity and slow reaction time at Vengeance. Like a dope, he decided to powerbomb Edge on the outside of the ring while the 10 count was already just about half way over. That was the first dumb move. Then, instead of just rolling into the ring and back out to break the count, he tried, with about 3 counts left, to roll Edge back in. What a fucking waste of time, you big dummy. Do you even know the rules? I don’t see how any of this was supposed to be at all effective in doing what they intended to do.

– RAW was pretty good, but I’m not a big fan of the way they used the Beat the Clock format. It was a fantastic idea for the Elimination Chamber match from 2005. But to use it in order to determine a number one contender? I’m not sold. It provided a good running storyline throughout the show, and I liked the King Booker/Shelton backstage segment, but I’m not a big fan of using a concept like this to get to what they did. As far as getting Lashley as the next challenger, I don’t mind doing it in a way that there’s a reason for the feud to begin in the sense that Lashley wanted a World Title after being stripped of his and having to earn the shot. That was well done. They just could have used something better than beat the clock. A mini tournament with just four men would have been better than the BTC, but of course then you have a problem since Kennedy isn’t cleared to be wrestling yet. How do you remedy that? Don’t book yourself into a situation where you have to put a guy who isn’t cleared into the ring. I do like the Lashley/Cena match up, though. Cena has been proving that he can drag anyone to a pretty good match, and Lashley has shown in the past that he can follow somebody else’s lead. I also prefer this to any of the other matches that could have come out of it all, so it’s a fine main event for the GAB.

– I don’t know what their intentions are with Santino or with Umaga as IC Champion, but chances are that neither are likely any good. I’d like to be wrong.

– Is it me, or did it seem like Regal was putting on a thicker accent than usual?

– I like the direction of ECW, but I have qualms with the way it’s playing out. The ‘pick your poison’ concept is fine. They’re building the show around two guys who should be in the position they’re in, and are quite capable. I just wish they would let them cut some promos. That’s a big problem I have in general with WWE right now. Nobody gets any promo time. You have Cena on the mic every week, but even then only some of the time gets focused on his feud and how important the title is. Outside of that, nobody else on RAW outside of the main event gets any mic time. Their angles aren’t strong enough to work only on what happens inside and around the ring. No anticipation is built when all you get to see is a match and then a stare down, or somebody costing somebody else a match. It’s boring. Batista and Edge had some promo time, but it was mostly Edge doing his shtick, and the last show before Vengeance, his promo was solely to set up the tag main event for that night. In a case like that, as I delve back into the Batista storyline for a moment, you HAVE to put Batista on the mic. The situations they were writing to progress the story weren’t working well at all in conveying the fact that the World Title meant everything to Batista. All we got was temper tantrums, and the few times Batista did get on the mic, it was just him acting cocky and as though Edge wasn’t even a challenge. Meanwhile, you have Cole going on and on about Batista’s passion for the title and how it means the entire world to him, which very much conflicted with the way Batista was playing it. It didn’t seem at all important that it was his last chance at the title, because he was never given a single opportunity to talk about it.

That goes for everything. The Punk/Nitro feud could be good, and it has the basis and foundation to be good. CM Punk has been in ECW since the beginning, and he has been around the title picture for a good portion of that time, including being in the first PPV title match. The title was vacated and Punk earned himself a shot at it, but this newcomer Nitro gets a free pass into the match and wins the title right out from under Punk. That’s a strong base. Nitro then has a great showing, almost defeating the top of the top of the company in a tough loss to John Cena, and on the same night, Punk fought through a tough 2 out of 3 falls match with his biggest rival to this point to get a shot at the new champion and his title. Where were the promos from Punk and Burke about the match that can be seen as the culmination of the first chapter of their feud? The culmination that leads to one of them moving on to bigger and better things, and the other having to start over. Instead, there’s just a match, and at the end, the champion just came out and looked at his new challenger. Then they got to do the aforementioned ‘pick your poison’, a place where promos about why they chose who they did would have worked quite well. Instead, nothing; and at the end of the night, we closed the show with another stare down, just like last week. Nitro is decent enough and improved from the last time we saw him speak, and Punk is a masterful promo guy. SO LET THEM TALK!

If nobody gets to tell us what’s on their mind, we don’t get to understand why they’re fighting for whatever it is they’re fighting for. Sometimes we don’t even get to know what they’re fighting for at all. For a company that is supposed to hang its hat on the ‘entertainment’ side, they sure aren’t dedicating much time to getting across their ever important angles and storylines. Things are just happening with little rhyme or reason. The wrestlers come off as mindless pawns just following a formula rather than men who are fighting for purposes, and that’s not something you would expect from, as I said, a company that supposedly puts the sizzle ahead of the steak, as the old cliché goes.

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the goodbye

That’s going to wrap it up for this week. I’ll be back next week. Seeya.