The Wrestling News Experience: 12.11.06

Good morning everyone, and welcome to the Experience. I’m Stephen Randle, and I’m willing to pitch for any major league team for a mere million dollars a season. Hey, you gave Andy Pettite 16 million dollars, and he barely pitched the last two years. And it’s not like the Jays couldn’t use someone to plug that hole left behind when they failed to sign anyone at all. If Vernon Wells doesn’t get a big long contract extension out of this, I’m going straight to Toronto to bitchslap Ricciardi.

All right, with that settled, let’s get started.

PPV In Review – TNA Turning Point 2006

Ashish did the live recap, Larry was beating up his cable guy again, I assume.

Senshi won a PCS match involving Austin Starr, Alex Shelley, Sonjay Dutt, and Jay Lethal

I’m not entirely clear what the rules of the PCS are, or how you win, other than it’ll be happening on Impact for the next few weeks. At least the Kevin Nash Open Invitational X-Division Gauntlet Match had rules and a trophy and stuff.

Eric Young defeated Ms Brooks in a Bikini Contest

Pointless semi-comedy. Rest assured, despite it making absolutely no sense, Eric Young will join Robert Roode because it’s a swerve. Either that or Brooks will turn on Roode and join Young. The important thing is, a swerve will occur.

Christopher Daniels defeated Chris Sabin to retain the X-Division Title

So now Lynn is defending Sabin? Okay, whatever, let’s keep going before people notice things like that.

Dale Torborg and AJ Pierzynski beat up David Eckstein and his brother

When baseball players collide! Seriously, did people pay for this?

AJ Styles defeated Rhino

Ah, the old “fake an injury, work the crowd, then win with a sneak attack”. You know why no one does them anymore? Because they’re dumb.

LAX defeated America’s Most Wanted in a Flag Match

And apparently the AMW break-up is back on, because Harris shamed America. Don’t be silly, America has no shame.

VKM issue an open challenge to D-Generation X

Ah yes, in the grand tradition of Eric challenging Vince to a fight, and Goldberg challenging Steve Austin. Can you guess the common thread in all of them? If you said “WWE ignored the challenge completely, and enjoyed free publicity for their company on the rival’s show”, you would be correct. By the way, not to break up this wonderfully insane fantasy that seems to exist in someone in TNA’s head (I assume his name rhymes with “Mince Lusso”), but WWE hasn’t acknowledged that TNA itself exists, let alone VKM and its parodies, so it’s pretty hard to believe they’ve been “begging” VKM to stop.

And hey, you know what Vince, accept the challenge. Tell VKM to come to New Year’s Revolution, make a killing off the increased curiosity buys, then no matter who wins the fight (and who in their right mind believes Billy Gunn and Road Dogg could win a fight with Triple H and Shawn Michaels? Trip is built like a tank and Shawn wrestles full time on a back with four fused vertebrae, something no human should be able to do), you make money and TNA makes none.

Abyss defeated Sting and Christian Cage to retain the NWA title

Seems odd that Tomko would roll the ref back in to give Abyss the win, but then, I don’t book for TNA. Although I probably could.

Samoa Joe defeated Kurt Angle

Seemed better than the first match. Okay, no rematch (for a while), now what do you do with both men now that you’ve blown the whole dream match thing? Oh, I’m sorry, you hadn’t thought that far ahead. I’ll wait.

Overall, honestly, it seems like a well-wrestled show, but the continuity and logic gaps are really starting to annoy me. I know I said VKM was funny, but that was last week, when it seemed totally not serious. The challenge is horribly bush-league and won’t help TNA in any fashion, and everything else is so crazy that I can’t keep track of anyone’s motivations anymore. Shades of gray return with a vengeance. Somebody put a leash on Russo, already.

Around The Horn

The relatively big news of the week is that Paul Heyman has once again been sent home without dinner, because the relatively poor showing of ECW is totally his fault and no one else’s, even though Vince has been pretty much running the show for a while now. As usual, some people are running around crying that the sky is falling, some people are saying he should go to TNA (ignoring that he’s still actually under contract with WWE, just not being used), and some people are being totally rational about the whole thing. Okay, that’s just me. I said it in Fact or Fiction last week, Heyman will rise again. He’s done it many times before, and he’s too valuable a resource with too much fan credibility to let him go anywhere. Before the end of 2007, Heyman will return to WWE TV. You heard it here first.

The Westminster Dog Show is on the horizon, in February, to be precise. Wait, February? What the hell, this isn’t news yet. Moving on.

WWE is airing commercials featuring alleged celebrities talking about how they love watching WWE in a desperate attempt to seem “cool” and “mainstream” again. Which would be great, if they were getting, say, George Clooney to appear. Instead, we get Steve-O from Jackass, who actually causes me, a wrestling fan, to be embarrassed that I watch the same show he does. Great plan, WWE.

WWE spent the last week in Iraq for their yearly “Tribute to the Troops” show that will air Christmas weekend. Not to wander into the minefield of politics for too long, but I’d be happier if this wasn’t becoming a yearly tradition. Eventually, it’s going to get depressing to note that they’ve been going back to Iraq for so many years because it’s still going on.

Kurt Angle claims he’s going to participate in a shoot fight in TNA sometime in 2007, despite never having been in a shoot fight, and being ten years removed from his amateur wrestling career. The good news is, if he goes any crazier, we might actually get to see a career retrospective DVD put out by WWE for him. Too bad it’ll be called “The Self-Destruction of Kurt Angle”.

Rumours are leaking that TNA may be trying to sign Hulk Hogan as both a booker and a wrestler. Well, he can barely do either, but that’s not the point. One of these days, Vince is going to let him actually sign something with TNA, just so he can point at the 1.0 rating TNA does for “Hogan’s first TNA appearance”, and laugh himself into a hernia.

And before I leave this segment, WWE has tapped Dave Lagana to replace Paul Heyman as head of ECW creative. Lagana, of course, is the former head of Smackdown creative who was replaced by Michael Hayes, and is best known for having his lips surgically attached to Stephanie McMahon’s ass when she became head of Creative. Wait a second…new head of ECW…Stephanie McMahon…oh dear God…NO!

The Injury Bug Bites

Inactive List as of 11.27.06

WWE

– Beth Phoenix, RAW, out indefinitely as of June 6 (jaw)
– Candice Michelle, RAW, day-to-day (broken nose)
– Chris Jericho, out indefinitely (kayfabe, fired)
– Mark Henry, SD!, out 6-8 months as of July 15th (patella)
– Michelle McCool, SD!, out indefinitely (enlarged kidney and electrolyte imbalance)
– Paul Burchill, SD!, out indefinitely as of May 29 (shoulder)
– Rey Mysterio, SD!, out indefinitely as of October 2006 (knee surgery)

TNA

Transactions

– Big Show, ECW, retired from active competition

Essentially. You know, Show might actually get one of my votes for Wrestler of the Year. He didn’t have any great matches, and even a few crappy ones with Kane, but this man has worked his ass off for the last year, and even the last several years. Watching his final ECW match, he seemed so motivated to put on a good match with Lashley, and in the end, put Lashley over clean as a sheet. Say what you want, but he’s done everything that’s been asked of him in seven hard years of wrestling, and he’s earned a good long rest.

– Paul Heyman, ECW, removed from active roster

I reiterate, he’s still under WWE contract, they’ve just essentially sent him on paid vacation. Pretty nice if you can get it.

One Year Ago This Experience

Originally posted 12.12.05, and Triple H has discovered the Internet. Shortly after, he discovered Internet porn. Fortunately, his wife was already pregnant by then. I think. I can’t remember.

Anyway, the other notable story was the casting call to play Shelton Benjamin’s mother, which ended up going as well as you might expect, and died a slow death when it became apparent that Shelton Benjamin has no personality.

And I slammed Arrested Development. I stand by my actions.

The Wrestling Fan’s Experience

See, once they realize I’m running out, I get more submissions. This could last forever at this rate. Or at least until I go crazy and start thinking I’m bigger than 411.

This week’s Experience comes from Matthew Croft, from Australia, the land where Scott Rutherford roams free. I pity him.

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I guess i would have been around 12 or 13 when i first started taking an interest in wrestling. Ironically, it was through my younger brother & a school friend of his at the time who managed to find some tapes of WWF PPV’s, & the occasional NWA/WCW show. They were right into it, & i gradually got dragged into sitting down & watching some of the shows. I guess i found it a cooler and less predictable form of fighting/boxing, with all these cool looking guys & tag teams doing all these fancy moves inside the ring, and not knowing who was gonna do what move next was entrancing. I was particularly into the Hart Foundation & the Killer Bees, Bulldogs, etc. We did get some late night T.V coverage during the late 80’s, but mainly in those days it was a 2 or 3 month wait for the next PPV to be released over here, though only WWF stuff got released, which is why i never really followed WCW or ECW.

My brother & his friend went their separate ways, & as they grew up they lost interest in wrestling, but for some reason i stuck with it. I came very close to stopping watching wrestling after the ’97 Survivor Series as Bret was always my fav. wrestler, but ’98 marked the return of WWF to T.V in Australia (even if it was WWF Superstars at midnight Friday). As the attitude era began, wrestling became cool again, & with pay-TV finally getting a foothold in Australia & the discovery of the internet, I never really looked back. Finally i could get instant results, and didn’t have to wait until June for Wrestlemania to come out on video! I even dragged some friends into it, including my brother to some extent. In the last few years, wrestling has slipped backwards, even losing pay-TV coverage here for 6 months in 2003. I’ve stuck with it however, but good lord does Vince & Co need a shot in the arm of SOMETHING to awake them from this “cruise” mode they’ve been in for the last few years.

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This feature continues to move along briskly, and you can get yourself involved. All you have to do is send me your best response to the following two statements.

1. Why I’m a wrestling fan.
2. How I got into pro wrestling.

That’s it, that’s all, send in your submissions today.

Links For Fun And Nonprofit

Small and the Tomko to my Christian (it’s been a while since that one’s been available, which is a shame) had the weekend news reports.

Ashish’s live Turning Point recap.

From the glowing box, Small and Slimmer have Heat, Dunn, Csonka>, and Furious have Smackdown, Csonka has Road to Turning Point, and Csonka and Byers have Impact.

Clark has The Shimmy

The Triple Threat turns 30.

Boo has Ringside or Cheap Seats

Ari has Column of Honor

Feltham has The Quick Talkdown

Linkous has WWE vs TNA

And Carapola returns with the newly renamed Friendly Competition.

The Gab Bag

Nothing this week, probably a good thing, my inbox was stuffed with writer applications. While we have done some hiring already, we’re still doing a few more, so it’s not too late to get your stuff in. Get writing!

Why haven’t you started writing yet?

And One To Go On

411 will have live coverage of Raw tonight starting at 9 pm EST, and coverage of ECW on Sci Fi tomorrow night. Larry’s in tomorrow, I’m back next week, and keep an eye out for the new round of hires, making their first appearances in the upcoming week.

Have a good one, and always be a fan.