wrestling / Columns

The Bell To Bell News Report 08.11.11

August 11, 2011 | Posted by Randy Harrison

Hello wrestling fans and welcome to this week’s edition of the Bell to Bell! We’ve got a stacked edition of the column that we’ll be getting to momentarily, but there’s a few things to touch on before we get to that.

Last week, I used the intro to pimp Todd and the Book of Pure Evil, an awesome show that is just starting to get some exposure here in the United States and the reaction was quite positive. There were a few comments and a bunch of e-mails from people asking where they could find the show and while I am hoping that the first season will be released on DVD soon, the best way to find the shows is to….uh……visit a certain bay that is known to have a lot of pirate activity like boat-jacking and treasure hunting and so forth. All of the episodes are there and while most of them are censored (think hatch instead of ass), they’re still pretty damned funny and a few of them are free of dubbing so you can watch them in all of their filthy glory.

Touching quickly on my beloved Blue Bombers, they started out rather shaky in their battle of the behemoths against the unbeaten Edmonton Eskimos, but a stifling performance from the “Swaggerville” defence in the second half propelled the Bombers to a 28-16 win in front of a sold out crowd of just under 30,000 appreciative Blue and Gold supporters. This week is a definite trap game as we play the 1-5 BC Lions in BC in a game that should be a Bomber win but could easily turn into an embarrassing loss if the boys in blue don’t bring their ‘A’ game. On the NFL front, the Patriots have shored up an already strong team with some surprising additions, bringing in former Jet Shaun Ellis and former Redskins bust Albert Haynesworth to shore up the defensive line while signing former Bengals wideout Chad Ochocinco to a new contract to become the new Patriot deep threat. I have to admit that I’m leery of these two as one of these days a Belichick reclamation project is going to have to go awry, but if they’re able to pull it off and get two key productive cogs for either side of the ball in Haynesworth and Ochocinco for next to nothing, I’ll happily admit to being wrong.

Moving on to the reason you’re likely all here, the action inside the squared circle, we’ve got a lot to cover this week with TNA’s Hardcore Justice pay-per-view, Ring of Honor getting set for their first batch of TV tapings with their new owners Sinclair Broadcasting, and the WWE dropping a bunch of talent from the roster, along with a whole lot more from the world of pro wrestling, so let’s dive right in!

You know the drill…


Ding Ding….

— TNA’s Hardcore Justice PPV is in the books (why did they keep that name again?) and when all was said and done, I have to put myself in the camp of being somewhat disappointed and underwhelmed with what took place last Sunday in Orlando. The company was coming into the show off of the high from last month’s Destination X show and while I knew that they weren’t going to be able to match that show note for note in the ring, I had at least hoped that the spirit of that Destination X show would carry on into Hardcore Justice. When I say spirit, I mean the feeling that many of us had when we watched TNA during the FSN days of Impact where we saw innovative young wrestlers attempting to push the envelope in the ring to get themselves and their product noticed. That was the feeling I was left with following Destination X and I was excited that given the larger platform with Spike TV there was a good chance that the enthusiasm and innovation could lead to bigger things. Instead, the feeling I was left with after the Hardcore Justice show was one of disappointment, not only in the TNA product, but in myself for falling for the same old song and dance.

Don’t get me wrong, this show had its strong points including the six-man tag which was the match of the night for me, but the prevailing feeling from most of the matches was that while they were decent matches, they were all missing one thing or another to push them up to the next level and make them good or even great matches. The opener with Aries, Shelley and Kendrick battling for the X-Division Title had a ton of promise, but unfortunately there were some missed moves including a big one near the finish that dragged things down just a little bit. The Knockouts matches, a former staple of TNA broadcasts, felt like little more than window dressing with the Knockout Tag Title match seeming irrelevant while the Knockout Title bout ended with a new champion in Winter following an overbooked mess of a finish.

The Bound For Glory series matches were a mixed bag as the D-Von/Dinero bout felt more like something that should have been on Impact rather than on a pay-per-view. When I say that, I mean that neither guy really brought the intensity to make me believe that this was a more important match to them than a match against some schlub, despite the fact that they’re involved in a long-running angle. As for the battle of BFGS leaders Rob Van Dam and Crimson, Van Dam did all that he could, but Crimson was just a bit too green and that slowed things down considerably. The finish was quite predictable too, especially considering Jerry Lynn’s pre-match spiel with RVD about being in Van Dam’s corner. You knew that he was going to play into the ending somehow and sure enough he did, costing Van Dam a ton of points with the disqualification loss while likely setting up a bout between the two men at No Surrender. I’m all for that match, but when you’re pimping the Bound For Glory series as a huge deal, it’s probably a good idea to not make it a backdrop for angle advancement for a guy that has barely wrestled in TNA in the past five years.

The Anderson/Bully Ray bout was hard for me to get into as it seems like it’s silly to have Anderson already feuding with a member of the faction he just joined a couple of weeks ago, but that’s beside the point. The biggest thing that turned me off about the match was the infantile promo that Anderson cut earlier in the show before the match even took place. As he moves further and further away from the REPEEATINNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNG WORDS GIMMICK………………………………GIMMICK into his new “Asshole” persona, he looks like he is regressing in his ability to cut a decent promo. Now, I’m not saying the guy has to be the next Ric Flair in his prime or Chris Jericho from two years ago, but when you’re reduced to making fart sounds on a pay-per-view broadcast, I think that it’s time to admit that maybe your work on the mic has fallen off the rails.

That brings us to the main event for the show, a match between Kurt Angle and Sting for the TNA World Heavyweight Championship that I had decent hopes for going in. The match itself was better than I expected with Sting looking better than he has in months, but just when I felt like things were going in the right direction, the overbooking that has plagued TNA since its onset reared its ugly head once again. Instead of beating Sting clean like he had sworn up and down he wanted to do in the build to the match, Angle blasted Sting with a chair that he had stolen from Hulk Hogan to win the match and the title following an Angle Slam. Silly swerve not withstanding, if they were going to have Sting lose the title to Angle at the PPV anyways, why did they even bother having him beat Anderson to begin with on Impact? I’m not criticizing the amount of times the title has changed hands as that’s neither here nor there, but rather the manner in which they took place. Angle had been terrorizing Immortal in the lead-up to the show and having him beat one of Immortal’s top guys in Anderson to take the belt would have been much more compelling than what Anderson did with Bully Ray and would have likely left the extreme overbooking out of the finish.

If TNA is that dead set on having Hogan vs. Sting for one more go-round, they could have just had Sting do something simple like a distraction to cost Anderson the title in the match against Angle. That would infuriate Hogan as it would flush his idea of having the belt and having the power with Immortal down the toilet and set up Hogan/Sting nicely. Instead, they pulled a half-turn that the crowd didn’t really buy and I felt was tacked on and unnecessary, going against everything Angle had been doing in the months previous without any real explanation. It was a swerve for swerve’s sake, something that TNA has been guilty of time and time again and something that really soured the end of the show for me. It’s unfortunate that TNA seems to take one step forward and two steps back more often than not as they’ve got a talented roster of wrestlers that could be doing so much more than they actually are. I was rooting for them to make it two in a row with this pay-per-view, but they fell way short of that mark and have some serious scrambling to do if they want to make Bound For Glory feel like anything other than just another random PPV offering from the Impact Zone, just in a different arena.

— The WWE has gone without a roster purge for quite some time, but this past week saw a Black Monday for a good number of the company’s superstars as they were handed their walking papers. Gail Kim (who quit the company a day or two earlier), Melina, DH Smith, Vladimir Kozlov, Chris Masters were released from the main roster, while Lucky Cannon and Ariane Andrew were dropped, among others, from the FCW promotion. Cannon is remembered for being on both NXT Season Two and Four and coming up short both times, while Ariane was a member of the cast of this past season of Tough Enough. She was also the cast member that nearly reduced Stone Cold Steve Austin to a bewildered heap when she proclaimed that Melina vs Alicia Fox was her favorite match of all time.

Kim is expected to be leaving the wrestling business altogether as she is planning on marrying buff celebrity chef Robert Irvine sometime soon and Kozlov is also expected to be calling it quits as he is already nearly 40 and it looks as though he may have missed his window for becoming a big star. Smith is already looking at working in Japan, which I think would do wonders for him to get him more seasoning before he takes another stab at working in North America, while Masters hinted on his Twitter account that he may be taking his act to Orlando to try to join TNA’s roster. Given that TNA recently signed former reality star Jessie Godderz, whose gimmick is eerily similar to Masters, he may find himself SOL unless TNA decides to go with “The Masterpiece” vs. “Mr. Pec-tacular” in a muscle-off. All kidding aside, Masters is actually a decent worker and could be a solid addition to TNA’s roster, but they’re bloated enough as it is and can barely find room for the guys they already have so I can’t imagine it working out much differently for Masters than it did in the WWE.

That brings us to the curious case of Melina, who has long been rumored to be a bit of a handful behind the curtain as well as a bit of a pill in regards to her relationship with John Morrison. Melina was dropped by the company on Monday afternoon and things took a bit of a weird turn when she attempted to accompany Morrison to that night’s edition of Raw and was denied entry to the building. Apparently, she had planned the trip previously and had hoped to continue on with those plans, but the WWE would not let her inside the building. Fans offered her a ticket to get inside, but somehow I don’t think that would have been quite as fun for her. She’s another name that is likely going to be rumored to be heading to TNA, but she is only taking bookings for appearances at the moment, so a leave of absence from the ring is also a possibility. Now that she’s gone though, I wouldn’t be surprised if someone starts rumoring and hinting that Morrison is going to leave so he can be with his woman down in Orlando. You just KNOW that that’s going to be coming sometime in the next week or two.

— In more housekeeping news, Triple H’s pet project Sin Cara is set to return this week and will be taking part in this Friday night’s episode of Smackdown. How will he be doing that you ask, as he is still in the throes of a Wellness Policy suspension that kicked in the night after the Money in the Bank pay-per-view last month? Simple, it won’t be the original Sin Cara under the mask. Instead, it will be WWE Developmental talent Hunico who will be portraying the role, presumably until the real Sin Cara returns, although with the orginal’s inflammatory comments to a Mexican newspaper shortly after his suspension, this Cara may become the “real” Cara sooner rather than later. Hunico has been a longtime member of the CHIKARA roster and even won the 2008 King of Trios tournament with partners Lince Dorado and El Pantera. Since December of 2009 though, he’s been in Florida Championship Wrestling, winning that promotion’s tag titles on two separate occasions with Epico (Tito Colon under a hood).

In an interesting little twist to the story, Hunico competed in Mexico under the name Mistico from his debut in 2000 until 2005 when CMLL won a court battle over the legal rights to the name, allowing their Mistico to continue working with the name while Hunico changed his name to Mystico. It will be interesting to see if this is merely a one-time arrangement to allow the WWE to bring Cara back to the show earlier than they could have if they waited for his suspension to be finished or if it is an indication of a larger change coming in the future. Cara is advertised for house shows in the month of September and is still being pushed heavily for the company’s tour of Mexico, but I don’t know if the Mexican fans would be as receptive to the gimmick if it was someone other than their fan favorite Mistico under the mask. There’s no word on a possible release of Cara despite the rumors that were floating around, but there is plenty to watch out for in the weeks ahead as the WWE hopefully settles this masked mystery once and for all.

— The WWE wasn’t the only company that had some roster shake-ups this past week as TNA announced that they had released Amazing Red, while Matt Hardy made it known that he was going to be putting his wrestling career on hold for the time being. What that means exactly is anyone’s guess, but I’d expect for there to be a lot of YouTube videos being posted, possibly with grapes and beer. Hardy’s loss isn’t really much of one as despite all of the hype that was given to him by TNA when he debuted, he made very little impact (no pun intended) and quickly went from hot(ish) commodity to afterthought. While he’s off doing whatever, he’ll probably not even give a second thought to why TNA suspended him in the first place, but I guess that’s what happens when you think that the universe revolves around you and your brother.

The loss of Red comes at a weird time as TNA seems to be bringing in lots of new X-Division talent and focusing more on their lighter weight stars, something that seems tailor-made for the former three-time TNA X-Division Champion. Red was informed by TNA that creative didn’t have any ideas for him and that that was the reason he was being let go, which has to suck for anyone to hear, let alone someone who was working two gimmicks for the company. I don’t understand why the couldn’t have kept him around to at least guide some of the new signees or job to them on the way out, but at least both sides seem to be cordial about the split which keeps the door open to a possible return down the road. I’ve always had a bit of a soft spot for Red so it’s disappointing to see him go, but hopefully he’ll bounce back on his feet with a good run in the indies where there’s plenty of room for a guy with his abilities inside the ropes.

— Perhaps if he is able to Red could follow the lead of another former X-Division Champion in Jay Lethal. Lethal was released by TNA earlier in the year and promptly returned to Ring of Honor, where he spent the better part of three years from 2003-2006. Lethal must have impressed the new management at Sinclair Broadcasting with his return because the company announced this past week that the former “Black Machismo” has been signed to a new contract with Ring of Honor. Lethal defeated Mike Bennett in his return match at the Best in the World show earlier this summer and is set to be the first challenger for El Generico’s ROH World Television Championship during the first SBG TV tapings that are set for this weekend in Chicago Ridge, IL.

— Rey Mysterio’s wonky knee appears to be giving him trouble again as a house show match in Salt Lake City, UT last weekend featuring Mysterio taking on Alberto Del Rio was cut short due to Mysterio suffering an injury during the bout. It’s unknown how long Mysterio is expected to be sidelined as he was written out of this past Monday’s Raw with the attack by The Miz, but the hope backstage is that it was merely a tweak and that Mysterio will be ready to work through the injury and return by SummerSlam this weekend. I hope that it’s merely a tweak and not something serious, but one has to wonder if Mysterio may be living on borrowed time regardless. The WWE’s “Littlest Big Man” has been plagued with injuries for the past few years, seemingly spending as much time on the injured list as he has in the ring. Given his small frame and his high-risk style, it’s surprising that he has lasted as long as he has and it’s not surprising that injuries are beginning to take their toll. If Mysterio is seriously injured however, don’t be surprised to hear of retirement rumors as those started to swirl even the last time that Rey-Rey was out of action. Best wishes to Mysterio on a speedy and full recovery and look for an update to the injury as news on Rey’s condition is released.

— There was a momentary flurry of activity regarding a possible return of The Undertaker to the WWE this past week as a writer from the WWE Magazine made a claim that it would make sense for Taker to return in October as some of his best moments have taken place at the company’s October PPV events. This piece led to a short firestorm of speculation that The Deadman might be ready to make a return for the first time since his Wrestlemania 27 match against Triple H. Those rumors were pretty quickly squashed as it is believed that he will only return when he is ready to do so and there are no indications that that is coming any time soon. Considering that the last time he was seen in public a couple of weeks ago, he had his head completely shaved, I don’t think we’ll be seeing him in the ring anytime soon unless he’s going to go with a completely different take on the gimmick when he comes back. Or maybe they’ll just hook him up with a wig and some super glue.

— The Bound For Glory series rolled on this past week including the matches that took place at the Hardcore Justice pay-per-view show and here’s how things shake down as we enter the stretch drive…

* Crimson: 43
* James Storm: 33
* Devon: 30
* Gunner: 28
* Bully Ray: 28
* Bobby Roode: 28
* Rob Van Dam: 25
* Matt Morgan: 24 [INJURED – OUT OF SERIES]
* AJ Styles: 21
* D’Angelo Dinero: 17
* Scott Steiner: 14
* Samoa Joe: -10

After a costly loss at Bound For Glory, Rob Van Dam has fallen well behind, dropping all the way to fifth place after being as high as second leading into the pay-per-view, while Crimson is still chugging along as the leader of the series after beating RVD in that bout. While I get where they’re going with the Crimson thing and this is certainly helping his credibility to get to hang with the top stars in TNA, I think that having him main event Bound For Glory would be a mistake, no matter who he’s in there with. He’s shown himself to be fairly green and botches fairly regularly and with the pressure that a pay-per-view main event would bring, I worry that it might get worse. The seasoning that he’s gaining here is invaluable and if he takes it and applies it for a few more months or so, he could grow into the role that TNA obviously sees for him at the top of the card.

That would mean ending his current undefeated streak in the finals of the BFG series though and since TNA seems hellbent on making the guy the second coming of Goldberg, I don’t think that that’s going to happen. The only problem then becomes that they may have to book a triple-threat match to try to protect him a little bit and that style of match usually forces TNA’s overbooking to rear its ugly head again. Those things can be worried about when it’s all said and done though, because for now I’m actually enjoying the BFG series and what it’s brought to TNA. Sure there’s been some headscratchers (Samoa Joe at -10 points?), but it’s nice to see TNA make an effort to have the matches that usually mean nothing on Impact Wrestling and at house shows actually have a point. Hopefully they make this a yearly thing for TNA as it’s a way for them to crown a number one contender for their centerpiece PPV show that is completely original instead of just being an attempt to crib off of an already successful idea from the WWE or some other promotion.

— Dragon Gate USA has announced a rather interesting idea for their weekend shows running from September 9th to September 11th in Indianapolis, IN, Chicago, IL and Milwaukee, WI. The promotion is calling their idea “Tag Team Discovery” and they will have two undiscovered teams meeting on the first night in Indianapolis. The winners of that match will move on to Chicago to battle another undiscovered team with the winner of that match heading to Milwaukee to face a duo from the Ronin faction. This is a fun way to go about not only adding talent to the roster but to help drum up some local support for the upcoming shows. No word yet on which teams will be brought in by DGUSA for the Discovery, but given their track record of finding talent, I’m pretty sure that they’ll be up to the task of keeping up with the promotion’s roster of workrate demons.

— As I mentioned earlier, Ring of Honor is set to have their first TV tapings under the new ownership of Sinclair Broadcasting Group this weekend in Chicago Ridge, IL and here’s the line-up for the show on Saturday night…

* ROH champion Davey Richards vs. Roderick Strong.
* ROH Tag Team champions Shelton Benjamin & Charlie Haas vs. The Kings of Wrestling (Chris Hero & Claudio Castagnoli)
* ROH TV champion El Generico vs. Jay Lethal.
* Eddie Edwards vs. Michael Elgin.
* The Briscoes vs. The All Night Express.
* Kyle O’Reilly & Adam Cole vs. The Bravado Brothers.
* Jimmy Jacobs (with Steve Corino) vs. Mike Bennett.
* Tomasso Ciampa vs. Andy Ridge.

While the standout matches are clearly the three title bouts, which all look like they have the potential to be show stealers, the entire card is rather interesting with the Briscoes/ANX and Ciampa/Ridge matches standing out for me personally. The All Night Express seem ready to be the next big thing in the tag team division for ROH and if they’re able to put their stamp on the first SBG tapings by earning a win over a team that is arguably synonymous with ROH, it’s a huge stepping stone for them in the future. As for the Ciampa vs. Ridge match, both of these guys appear to have bright futures with the company and it will be interesting to see how this one goes as it may tip ROH’s hand slightly regarding who they’re looking to push short term. All in all, it looks like they’ll get three weeks of TV out of this taping and if the production and promo work is there when the shows air, it could be three great weeks as Ring of Honor makes its return to the airwaves in September.

The promotion seems to be doubly committed to making sure that the taping is a success as they have also announced that there will be a special meet and greet and autograph session that will take place prior to the tapings with Chris Hero, Claudio Castagnoli and Sara Del Rey all set to meet with the fans. The doors for the event open at 6:30, so one would have to assume that the meet and greet will take place sometime shortly after that and they picked three great wrestlers to face the public. Hero and Del Rey are both fan favorites while Castagnoli is probably the most personable wrestler that I’ve ever had the pleasure of meeting, so this seems like it’s tailor-made to be successful and I wouldn’t be surprised to see events like this added to all of the future SBG TV tapings as an incentive to get fans out to the building and to get them out early for the shows.

— With the WWE shaking things up with the end of Vince McMahon’s run on television and Triple H beginning to take a bigger role backstage, it looks as though the structure of how the WWE runs is set to change as well. Triple H’s new talent recruiting division now has two of the company’s higher-ups working directly with him to help find new talent, while a writer will be specifically assigned to Triple H to help with the introduction and development of these new characters on television. While there may have been some busts here and there, one of the things that the WWE has done better than almost anyone in the past twenty years or so has been their ability to build up new stars that are coming into the company. With Chris Jericho’s debut as the easiest example, they’ve been able to bring in new talent and get them over with vignettes without having people devoted to it specifically. Hell, even the flops like Sean O’Haire were made incredibly interesting with their debut vignettes before ultimately falling by the wayside. Now that it looks like there’s a division in place that will make getting new talent over its main purpose, it could be even easier for the WWE to make some of these debuting wrestlers into the stars of the future.

— Finally this week, I send my congratulations out to 411’s own Matthew Sforcina, the master of the Ask 411 Wrestling domain, as the promotion that he wrestles for has produced their first iPPV show that is currently available on demand on WWNLive.com. Sforcina wrestles in the AWF (Australasian Wrestling Federation) as Massive Q and is one of the featured wrestlers in the AussieMania iPPV show, taking on Concrete Davidson in a battle billed as “Size vs. Strength”. I haven’t seen Concrete work before, but I would assume that with a name like that, he would be providing the strength while the Massive One provides the size. Sforcina is a very entertaining wrestler and his persona is down pat. From what I’ve seen of the AWF promotion online, they look like they’ve got a good thing going and with the show clocking in at over two hours, it seems like a good bang for the buck as well. Ask 411 Wrestling has been one of my favorite columns here at the site even before I became one of the contributors and Sforcina has done an awesome job with it, so I’m happy to give him a plug here and hope that the show does great business leading to bigger and better in the future. Give em’ hell, Massive Q!

Alright folks, that’s it for me for this week. I implore everyone to take some time and check out some of the new talent that will be joining the 411 Wrestling family in the coming weeks in the various sections. One of the hardest things about starting here is the feeling that no one notices your work as you struggle to find your footing. Give the new guys the chance to impress you and you never know what you might find. Hell, Greg DeMarco used to be one of those new guys and now he’s got the 5 & 1 coming up over the weekend as well as his own eponymous talk show here at 411. I’ll be back next week with my thoughts on the final build to SummerSlam, the results from ROH’s first TV taping and lots more, so in the meantime and in between time, I’ll see you all back here next time for another brand-new edition of the Bell to Bell News Report!

If you’re a fan of MMA, be sure to check out Nokaut.com for more of my work.

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Randy Harrison

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