The showstopper. The headliner. The main event. Shawn Michaels had his farewell last night on Raw and it was an incredible moment. He came out and gave a tearful and heart felt speech. Shawn got a huge ovation with chants of "thank you Shawn" and "please don't go". Before he could speak, Undertaker's music hit and he walked out on the stage. Taker gave a tip of the hat to Shawn and walked to the back. Awesome moment especially coming from Taker. Shawn tried his best to thank everyone but pointed out that he didn't want to go too far into names cause he would leave someone out. Shawn even went on to thank one of the production guys who puts together all of the incredible video packages for WWE. I loved that cause that is one of the unsung heroes of the company that he pointed out. He thanked Triple H, Bret Hart, Jim Ross, and Vince McMahon. He talked of how Triple H had always stuck with him when nobody else would. I liked his honesty where he said that he knew that he drove them crazy sometimes and that he was difficult to work with at times. He said that even with all that that Triple H never left his side. He thanked the fans saying that at one point in his life that the fans and wrestling was all that he had in his life. Shawn thanked Jesus Christ for being his Lord and Savior and for saving him which was awesome!! It is so great to have someone in such a high profile position being a Christian and testifying to others. A "one more match" chant broke out at one point from the fans and Shawn said that he appreciated it but that he was going to do everything to make sure that didn't happen. He talked of others that couldn't hold on to the promise of retirement and how he was planning on sticking to it. That was quite the moment where you just really got the feeling of that he really is done. Shawn closed the speech saying that he was going to close things out like he started and said that "the Heartbreak Kid has left the building". Shawn left the ring and got a big ovation up the ramp as he waved goodbye to the fans. Triple H came up behind him on the stage giving him a big hug. He raised Shawn's arm up in the air and laid some DX glow sticks down on the stage as they stood over them. Great to see him out there to take part in the farewell. During the show, other wrestlers paid tribute to Shawn including Triple H and Bret Hart. Triple H talked of how great of a friendship they had including him throwing up the old "Kliq" sign which was fun to see again. Triple H said how they took on the world together. Bret Hart spoke of Shawn wishing him the best with his retirement and saying that Shawn was one of the best ever while pointing out his epic career. How wild was it to have Shawn and Bret on the same show of Shawn's farewell speech? We really have come around full circle and it is very fitting.
I was thinking last night on Shawn's career. In my opinion, he is the best in ring performer EVER. He's better than Flair or any other name you want to throw in there. Shawn is a guy that could change his style to go with anything. If any wrestler had talent, the thought was to put him in the ring with Shawn and see what he could get out of the guy. He can take on big guys and small guys. I don't like watching a lot of big guy type matches but Shawn has a way of making them work. He was the complete package. I've heard Triple H talk of how Shawn was that guy that didn't realize how physically smaller that he was than others. He could do either role of being a face or a heel. How many classics has Shawn had? Way too many that I can count. Shawn could bring so many wrestlers up to another level.
As many of you know, Shawn has been the favorite of mine for a LONG time now. Enough to where I had to battle it out with a lot of you on opinions. LOL. I often have always said that Hogan was my all time favorite. Well, Shawn is right there even with him and has been for a while. Funny thing is that I liked The Rockers as a tag team but didn't really jump aboard the Shawn Michaels express until he turned heel and went singles. I started liking him quickly as a favorite as he started his heel run with Sherri. He was this great heel that had such amazing matches and it was fun to cheer him on. Then, he got the face turn and took off to his WWF championship run in 1996. I still remember that moment of cheering when Shawn won that first WWF championship against Bret Hart at WrestleMania 12. One thing with Shawn in that era was that you either liked him or didn't like him. Lots of fans didn't like him and it has reminded me for years of the reaction that Cena gets sometimes. It took a while for Shawn to win some fans over and it didn't happen in his first run. When he came back in 2002, I think the fans that didn't like him gained that respect for him as a performer. Shawn rarely has gotten boos since then and actually got the crowd most of the time in the face vs. face matches. He gained the respect of all the fans that knew how hard that he worked in the ring. He was that guy that you knew was going to give you 110 percent in the ring. I loved him for it and I saw that in him early on. Great talker and could just get you up on your feet cheering.
Favorite matches of Shawn's for me. Obviously, both matches against The Undertaker this year and last year. Incredible matches and the two have an amazing chemistry in the ring that few wrestlers have. Their matches in 1997-1998 do not need to be overlooked either. What I always found funny as a Shawn fan was that Undertaker could never beat Shawn. From a fan standpoint, I loved it to be able to brag about that. Undertaker talked all sorts of trash and then would lose. LOL. A moment that took place in their last match of their series in 1998 would lead to another favorite Shawn match of mine. If you don't know the story, Shawn took on Undertaker at the 1998 Royal Rumble in a casket match. During the match, Shawn was backdropped over the top and his lower back accidentally caught the end of the casket. The match went on but days later, Shawn found himself unable to move and crawling around his house in terrible pain. He tells the scary story in his book. Shawn would have to retire and his last match was set to be WrestleMania 14 against Stone Cold Steve Austin where he would drop the title to Austin. This is the gutsiest performance that I've ever seen in wrestling history. Shawn is out there barely able to move and is flipping and flying with all he has. He would not slow down. There is one moment where he is crawling to the top rope to drop the elbow and lands it. People wondered if he could even do the match and he literally gave all that he had left. Shawn would drop the title. After helping to build the start of the Attitude Era with DX, he would have to sit on the sideline which I'm sure had to frustrate him so badly as WWF took off business wise. Shawn would show up for various appearances over the next few years and his life was in disarray. His wife was a great Christian and he accepted Jesus Christ as his Lord and Savior. Shawn's life turned around and he eventually worked his way back to returning to WWE. That return is also a favorite Shawn match of mine. That return match at SummerSlam in 2002 against Triple H in the street fight was also one of the most amazing performances that I've ever seen. The guy has been out of the ring for four years and goes out there like he hadn't missed a beat. It was unbelievable!! The matches that would follow in years to come would be great classics with Kurt Angle, Chris Jericho, and more. Going back to his earlier days, his match with Mankind in 1996 at Mind Games is also a favorite of mine. That was another example of Shawn switching styles to go with Foley using an extreme style in front of the Philadelphia fans where ECW was going strong at the time. The ladder match at WrestleMania X against Razor Ramon really put Shawn on the map. The matches with Bret Hart are classics including the ironman match, Intercontinental title matches, tag team matches against The Hart Foundation, and more. Shawn and Bret are always going to be tied together cause of their rivalry in and out of the ring. As far as live shows, I've seen Shawn wrestle a few times. One was a house show match against Chris Jericho which was amazing. The last time that I saw him was this past February at Raw where he took on Randy Orton. I wish that I had taken the moment in a little more knowing that it might be the last time that I would see him live.
Will Shawn be retired for good? It is wrestling so you never know but that speech last night sure convinced me that he was done. He's talked retirement for a while now and what better way to go out than he did at WrestleMania. How do you top that? At the very least, I think this is it for him full time. Shawn left us wanting more and that is how it should be. We know that he is fully capable of incredible performances. He can top every show with his matches. It reminds me of back in the day of the stories of Shawn having a great match in his early big run and going backstage yelling for everyone to "top that" or "follow that". You can't. You can't top it. Shawn is that type of performer. He is the guy that you don't want to try and follow and these two WrestleMania matches against Undertaker showed that. Thank you Shawn for all the amazing years that you gave all of us fans. You're going to be missed and I hope that the younger talent has learned a lot from you. My advice to the younger talent is to buy the DVD's and watch him perform. You made this long time fan of yours jump out of my chair so many times over the years that I can't even count. You've earned every bit of this retirement and wishing you all the best with the time that you now have with your family. You left us wanting more and it reminds me of the old tribute song back from 1995-96. Tell me a lie. Say that you won't go.
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Tuesday, March 30, 2010
Monday, March 29, 2010
WrestleMania 26 Recap & Thoughts - March 29, 2010
Super Bowl Sunday for me has come and passed. WrestleMania 26 is now in the books and I really enjoyed the show. One judge on that the show was good was me looking at the clock and thinking how I was surprised to be that far along in it. WrestleMania has become the only PPV that I buy every year. I have to say that the build to this WrestleMania has been better than most in recent years. Really strong lineup and there wasn't any match on this show that I didn't like. I had one finish that I didn't really like and no, it isn't the one that you'd expect. LOL. The official attendance at the University Of Phoenix Stadium was 72,219. The building looked amazing and started with there being sunlight outside as they had the roof open.
The show opened with American Idol season three winner Fantasia singing America The Beautiful. This is always amazing and then we had the military flyover during it. The opening video was greatly produced as always and a good pyro opening. Show opens with the unified tag team title match with ShoMiz taking on Morrison and R Truth. It's interesting to see who they let open the show every year cause that is an important spot to be put in. Wow, I think they upped the pyro for ShoMiz. Really cool entrance by everyone involved. This was a really short match. The champions retain as Morrison goes for a springboard but is caught by a Big Show knockout punch. Miz pins Morrison and the champs retain. Pretty good pop from the fans when it happened. Next is the triple threat match with Orton vs. Dibiase vs. Rhodes. Solid match and predictable. Dibiase and Rhodes did have separate entrances. Doubleteam for a while and then Dibiase went for the pin. Cody was going for a moonsault at the time. Cody jumped off the ropes to break it up. The two end up in a brawl to the floor. Orton starts to get up and both start paying attention to it. Attention goes back to Orton. Orton gets on the offense including hitting a double DDT off the middle rope which looked really cool. Big pop from the crowd on it too. Orton started to go for the RKO on Cody but then changed his mind. Orton nails the punt kick to Cody. Dibiase tries to sneak up and hit dreamstreet from behind but Orton counters it into a RKO for the win. After the match, they lowered the screen from above which had the RKO graphic on it as Orton posed. They did this throughout the night for various superstars. Funny segment backstage promoting Slim Jim. Basically, it was a comedy segment where Santino would snap into the Slim Jim and the person next to him kept changing. It started with it being Mae Young who kissed him, turned into Mean Gene in a dress, and then turned into Melina who he walked off with. Glad to see the injured Melina getting on WrestleMania even if it was just for a cameo. That brings us to the Money In The Bank match with all of these participants: MVP, Christian, Drew McIntyre, Shelton Benjamin, Matt Hardy, Kane, Evan Bourne, Jack Swagger, Kofi Kingston, and Dolph Ziggler. Lots of wild spots in this one as you would expect. The ladder sandwich on Swagger with the others climbing was a new and fun spot. Bourne of course did all sorts of nasty spots, airbourne off the ladder and also took a nasty hiptoss from Hardy off of a ladder. I liked the spot with Dolph climbing Kane as he went up the ladder to get over him. Kofi walking the broken ladder as stilts to climb up was really cool. The finish had Christian and Swagger up on the ladder. Swagger nailed Christian with the briefcase and won the match. The Hall Of Fame class was brought out next with after an excellent ceremony recap video. I definitely enjoyed seeing Bob Uecker and Dibiase on the same stage again thinking back to WrestleMania 4. They were introduced by Howard Finkel. Next was Triple H vs. Sheamus. Solid match for sure. Sheamus hit the big kick on Triple H but he kicked out. Triple H later got hit with another one but Sheamus couldn't capitalize on it. He then went for the celtic cross but Triple H escaped and hit the pedigree to win the match. That was the finish that I didn't like. I thought Sheamus should have gotten to kick out of one pedigree if Triple H is kicking out of his stuff. Triple H wins. Next is Rey Mysterio vs. CM Punk accompanied by his crew. If Rey loses, he has to join Punk's group. Fun match. The finish had Rey going for a 619 but Serena stopped it. Gallows then blocked it on the other side. Rey then took out Gallows and hit the 619 on Punk followed by the springboard to win the match. Next was Bret Hart and Vince McMahon. The video package before this match was awesome. Vince announced that he had bought himself some lumberjacks and a special referee. He brings out the the entire Hart Family and they all are supposedly against Bret. Bret talks to them saying that the Harts always get paid up front and how annoyed he was. However, then he said that the Harts had let him in on what was going on. The Hart Family was united against Vince. Bruce was the referee. This match was Bret beating Vince up for about ten minutes or so. Vince didn't land anything. He took a hard slap from Natalya. The family would throw Vince back in the ring after beating him up on the outside. Bret hit him a chair at one point at my count of eleven consecutive. He then pounded him more with it. Vince tried to pull a tire iron out from under the ring but Bret got a hold of it and used. Bret teased a sharpshooter which got the crowd up on their feet. He went back to using the tire iron on Vince. Then, he hooked the sharpshooter for the tap out victory. The Harts all celebrated together after the match. The World title match was next with Chris Jericho and Edge. Crowd was kind of settled down for the first half of this match. I wondered if the squash booking of the last match kind of brought them down or if they just needed a break. They had been hot to this point. Jericho went for the walls and that got the crowd up and they were up for the rest of it. Jericho went for a spear but got a kick to the face. Edge's spear attempt landed in a codebreaker. Edge then had his achilles tendon worked over by Jericho. Jericho grabbed the belt at ringside and went to use it. The ref got in the middle of it and Edge accidentally knocked the ref down. Jericho nailed Edge with the belt but Edge kicked out of the pin attempt. Jericho then nailed the codebreaker and won the match. Jericho started to work on the injury once again on the ring post but Edge made a comeback. A furious Edge put Jericho on the table. Edge ran off of the other table and speared Jericho through the barrier at ringside. Looked awesome!! Next was the ten divas tag match. Mickie James, Kelly Kelly, Gail Kim, Eve Torres, and Beth Phoenix against Maryse, Michelle McCool, Layla, Alicia Fox, and Vickie Guerrero. I was wondering how active that Mickie would be in this match. Then, she planted a nasty DDT on Michelle and I got my answer. Vickie kept screaming whenever she'd be in trouble which was funny. Michelle took out Beth after the divas were hitting move after move on one another. They set up Kelly for Vickie. Vickie hit a bullfrog splash as it was called. Vickie gets the pin although it was an awkward one. She celebrated after it doing a Eddie dance which was fun to see. WWE title match was up next which meant that Shawn and Undertaker was closing the show. Batista had a cool entrance especially with the lights all set after the sun had set outside the building. Cena had a military entrance with the troops which was really cool. Mixed reaction here. Lots of anti-Cena signs right in the way of the main camera. Punch exchange between the two really showed the mixed reaction from the fans. Cena's five knuckle shuffle attempt got turned into a spinebuster which got a big reaction from the Batista cheering section. Cena would later hit that move off the top rope. The finish had Cena getting nailed with the a powerbomb after Cena jumped off the top rope again. Batista went for the Batista bomb but Cena countered it into the STF and Batista tapped. John Cena is the new WWE champion. That leads us to the final match. Streak vs. Career. Undertaker vs. Shawn Michaels. Big entrances and this match had such a big fight feel to it. Undertaker went for old school early and hurt his knee early on. Shawn went right for it. Lots of fun spots in this one. A kip up into a chokeslam from Undertaker. Shawn went for a dive off the middle rope on the floor and Undertaker caught him and hit the tombstone on the floor. Shawn countered the last ride and hit a nasty superkick. His second superkick was countered into a last ride. Both kicked out of each other's moves. Undertaker looked to do damage to Shawn on the table on the floor. Shawn countered and superkicked Undertaker on to the table. Shawn then did a moonsault off the top rope on to the table which looked incredible. Shawn hurried to get Undertaker back in the ring to pin him but to no avail. Undertaker would hit another tombstone and Shawn would kick out. Undertaker got very frustrated at this point seeing that Shawn wouldn't give up. Good commentary as I believe it was Striker that said that Undertaker is now realizing and looking at his greatest opponent ever. Undertaker pulled the strap down and started to do the throat slash. He saw Shawn getting up and Undertaker looked at him in amazement telling him to just stay down. Shawn then did the throat slash back at him and slapped Undertaker. That fired up Taker and he hit a nasty tombstone that left you thinking that was definitely the finish and it was. Undertaker wins and is 18-0 at WrestleMania while Shawn's career is over. Undertaker pulled Shawn to his feet and the two faced off. Undertaker offered a handshake and Shawn accepted. Really cool moment. Undertaker walks off and Shawn gets the ring to himself. Standing ovation for Shawn from the fans and he walks out paying tribute to the fans and of course bowing before God and thanking Him for everything. Interesting that the show closed with Shawn walking off instead of the traditional music video.
Other notes from WrestleMania. The match placement was interesting on this show. They had big matches leading off the last three hours. Like I said, time flew by watching this show. It did not feel like I had watched four hours of wrestling. Shawn's finale was great with the tribute at the end. The two put on an amazing match and it will be hard to top it for match of the year. Like I said, the only finish that I wasn't crazy about was the Sheamus/Triple H match. I would have been better with it if Sheamus had to have gotten to kick out of at least one pedigree. The entrance order and length was interesting to watch of the Money In The Bank match where you got to get a feel of where they ranked. McIntyre got the last entrance which showed his position within the company. Love his entrance but not crazy about him. Matt Hardy still gets that great pop from the fans. Anyone else shocked that Flair got mentioned during that figure four from Triple H? I figured his name would be ignored for now. Great to see Mickie get to work after the serious staph infection that she got in her leg which was going to have kept her off the show. I felt bad for Swagger when it took him forever to get that briefcase undone. That few seconds felt like an eternity especially thinking of it from his position. Lots of heat on CM Punk. He had a lot of anti signs in the crowd. He has turned into possibly the biggest heel in the company. Rey continued his tradition of dressing up for WrestleMania as this year he had an Avatar outfit. Did you see that his entrance got messed up? Some sort of malfunction there. Wow, that Bret Hart beating on Vince went on forever. It went about as it could cause you can't have Bret taking hits cause of his physical problems. That was really all anybody wanted to see was Bret beating up Vince so it was fine. With that beating, Vince SHOULD be off of TV for a while. WWE is going to Atlanta next year for WrestleMania at the Georgia Dome. How long of a drive is Atlanta? LOL. Vickie's outfit was hilarious with "excuse me" written on it. I thought the divas match was fun. Cena and Batista was a match that I was surprisingly excited about. Great build to this one and I think Batista is probably doing the best that he has ever done. He has been a really good heel. Kudos to WWE for the great build in this match. Undertaker's entrance was cool with him rising up on the stage. Shawn definitely had an extra bounce in his step for his entrance which had me wondering if this was it for him.
Like I said, I really enjoyed the show. Best build by WWE to a WrestleMania in quite some time. WWE has been really good lately for the most part. With Wrestlemania behind them, it will be interesting to see how their motivation is following it.
The show opened with American Idol season three winner Fantasia singing America The Beautiful. This is always amazing and then we had the military flyover during it. The opening video was greatly produced as always and a good pyro opening. Show opens with the unified tag team title match with ShoMiz taking on Morrison and R Truth. It's interesting to see who they let open the show every year cause that is an important spot to be put in. Wow, I think they upped the pyro for ShoMiz. Really cool entrance by everyone involved. This was a really short match. The champions retain as Morrison goes for a springboard but is caught by a Big Show knockout punch. Miz pins Morrison and the champs retain. Pretty good pop from the fans when it happened. Next is the triple threat match with Orton vs. Dibiase vs. Rhodes. Solid match and predictable. Dibiase and Rhodes did have separate entrances. Doubleteam for a while and then Dibiase went for the pin. Cody was going for a moonsault at the time. Cody jumped off the ropes to break it up. The two end up in a brawl to the floor. Orton starts to get up and both start paying attention to it. Attention goes back to Orton. Orton gets on the offense including hitting a double DDT off the middle rope which looked really cool. Big pop from the crowd on it too. Orton started to go for the RKO on Cody but then changed his mind. Orton nails the punt kick to Cody. Dibiase tries to sneak up and hit dreamstreet from behind but Orton counters it into a RKO for the win. After the match, they lowered the screen from above which had the RKO graphic on it as Orton posed. They did this throughout the night for various superstars. Funny segment backstage promoting Slim Jim. Basically, it was a comedy segment where Santino would snap into the Slim Jim and the person next to him kept changing. It started with it being Mae Young who kissed him, turned into Mean Gene in a dress, and then turned into Melina who he walked off with. Glad to see the injured Melina getting on WrestleMania even if it was just for a cameo. That brings us to the Money In The Bank match with all of these participants: MVP, Christian, Drew McIntyre, Shelton Benjamin, Matt Hardy, Kane, Evan Bourne, Jack Swagger, Kofi Kingston, and Dolph Ziggler. Lots of wild spots in this one as you would expect. The ladder sandwich on Swagger with the others climbing was a new and fun spot. Bourne of course did all sorts of nasty spots, airbourne off the ladder and also took a nasty hiptoss from Hardy off of a ladder. I liked the spot with Dolph climbing Kane as he went up the ladder to get over him. Kofi walking the broken ladder as stilts to climb up was really cool. The finish had Christian and Swagger up on the ladder. Swagger nailed Christian with the briefcase and won the match. The Hall Of Fame class was brought out next with after an excellent ceremony recap video. I definitely enjoyed seeing Bob Uecker and Dibiase on the same stage again thinking back to WrestleMania 4. They were introduced by Howard Finkel. Next was Triple H vs. Sheamus. Solid match for sure. Sheamus hit the big kick on Triple H but he kicked out. Triple H later got hit with another one but Sheamus couldn't capitalize on it. He then went for the celtic cross but Triple H escaped and hit the pedigree to win the match. That was the finish that I didn't like. I thought Sheamus should have gotten to kick out of one pedigree if Triple H is kicking out of his stuff. Triple H wins. Next is Rey Mysterio vs. CM Punk accompanied by his crew. If Rey loses, he has to join Punk's group. Fun match. The finish had Rey going for a 619 but Serena stopped it. Gallows then blocked it on the other side. Rey then took out Gallows and hit the 619 on Punk followed by the springboard to win the match. Next was Bret Hart and Vince McMahon. The video package before this match was awesome. Vince announced that he had bought himself some lumberjacks and a special referee. He brings out the the entire Hart Family and they all are supposedly against Bret. Bret talks to them saying that the Harts always get paid up front and how annoyed he was. However, then he said that the Harts had let him in on what was going on. The Hart Family was united against Vince. Bruce was the referee. This match was Bret beating Vince up for about ten minutes or so. Vince didn't land anything. He took a hard slap from Natalya. The family would throw Vince back in the ring after beating him up on the outside. Bret hit him a chair at one point at my count of eleven consecutive. He then pounded him more with it. Vince tried to pull a tire iron out from under the ring but Bret got a hold of it and used. Bret teased a sharpshooter which got the crowd up on their feet. He went back to using the tire iron on Vince. Then, he hooked the sharpshooter for the tap out victory. The Harts all celebrated together after the match. The World title match was next with Chris Jericho and Edge. Crowd was kind of settled down for the first half of this match. I wondered if the squash booking of the last match kind of brought them down or if they just needed a break. They had been hot to this point. Jericho went for the walls and that got the crowd up and they were up for the rest of it. Jericho went for a spear but got a kick to the face. Edge's spear attempt landed in a codebreaker. Edge then had his achilles tendon worked over by Jericho. Jericho grabbed the belt at ringside and went to use it. The ref got in the middle of it and Edge accidentally knocked the ref down. Jericho nailed Edge with the belt but Edge kicked out of the pin attempt. Jericho then nailed the codebreaker and won the match. Jericho started to work on the injury once again on the ring post but Edge made a comeback. A furious Edge put Jericho on the table. Edge ran off of the other table and speared Jericho through the barrier at ringside. Looked awesome!! Next was the ten divas tag match. Mickie James, Kelly Kelly, Gail Kim, Eve Torres, and Beth Phoenix against Maryse, Michelle McCool, Layla, Alicia Fox, and Vickie Guerrero. I was wondering how active that Mickie would be in this match. Then, she planted a nasty DDT on Michelle and I got my answer. Vickie kept screaming whenever she'd be in trouble which was funny. Michelle took out Beth after the divas were hitting move after move on one another. They set up Kelly for Vickie. Vickie hit a bullfrog splash as it was called. Vickie gets the pin although it was an awkward one. She celebrated after it doing a Eddie dance which was fun to see. WWE title match was up next which meant that Shawn and Undertaker was closing the show. Batista had a cool entrance especially with the lights all set after the sun had set outside the building. Cena had a military entrance with the troops which was really cool. Mixed reaction here. Lots of anti-Cena signs right in the way of the main camera. Punch exchange between the two really showed the mixed reaction from the fans. Cena's five knuckle shuffle attempt got turned into a spinebuster which got a big reaction from the Batista cheering section. Cena would later hit that move off the top rope. The finish had Cena getting nailed with the a powerbomb after Cena jumped off the top rope again. Batista went for the Batista bomb but Cena countered it into the STF and Batista tapped. John Cena is the new WWE champion. That leads us to the final match. Streak vs. Career. Undertaker vs. Shawn Michaels. Big entrances and this match had such a big fight feel to it. Undertaker went for old school early and hurt his knee early on. Shawn went right for it. Lots of fun spots in this one. A kip up into a chokeslam from Undertaker. Shawn went for a dive off the middle rope on the floor and Undertaker caught him and hit the tombstone on the floor. Shawn countered the last ride and hit a nasty superkick. His second superkick was countered into a last ride. Both kicked out of each other's moves. Undertaker looked to do damage to Shawn on the table on the floor. Shawn countered and superkicked Undertaker on to the table. Shawn then did a moonsault off the top rope on to the table which looked incredible. Shawn hurried to get Undertaker back in the ring to pin him but to no avail. Undertaker would hit another tombstone and Shawn would kick out. Undertaker got very frustrated at this point seeing that Shawn wouldn't give up. Good commentary as I believe it was Striker that said that Undertaker is now realizing and looking at his greatest opponent ever. Undertaker pulled the strap down and started to do the throat slash. He saw Shawn getting up and Undertaker looked at him in amazement telling him to just stay down. Shawn then did the throat slash back at him and slapped Undertaker. That fired up Taker and he hit a nasty tombstone that left you thinking that was definitely the finish and it was. Undertaker wins and is 18-0 at WrestleMania while Shawn's career is over. Undertaker pulled Shawn to his feet and the two faced off. Undertaker offered a handshake and Shawn accepted. Really cool moment. Undertaker walks off and Shawn gets the ring to himself. Standing ovation for Shawn from the fans and he walks out paying tribute to the fans and of course bowing before God and thanking Him for everything. Interesting that the show closed with Shawn walking off instead of the traditional music video.
Other notes from WrestleMania. The match placement was interesting on this show. They had big matches leading off the last three hours. Like I said, time flew by watching this show. It did not feel like I had watched four hours of wrestling. Shawn's finale was great with the tribute at the end. The two put on an amazing match and it will be hard to top it for match of the year. Like I said, the only finish that I wasn't crazy about was the Sheamus/Triple H match. I would have been better with it if Sheamus had to have gotten to kick out of at least one pedigree. The entrance order and length was interesting to watch of the Money In The Bank match where you got to get a feel of where they ranked. McIntyre got the last entrance which showed his position within the company. Love his entrance but not crazy about him. Matt Hardy still gets that great pop from the fans. Anyone else shocked that Flair got mentioned during that figure four from Triple H? I figured his name would be ignored for now. Great to see Mickie get to work after the serious staph infection that she got in her leg which was going to have kept her off the show. I felt bad for Swagger when it took him forever to get that briefcase undone. That few seconds felt like an eternity especially thinking of it from his position. Lots of heat on CM Punk. He had a lot of anti signs in the crowd. He has turned into possibly the biggest heel in the company. Rey continued his tradition of dressing up for WrestleMania as this year he had an Avatar outfit. Did you see that his entrance got messed up? Some sort of malfunction there. Wow, that Bret Hart beating on Vince went on forever. It went about as it could cause you can't have Bret taking hits cause of his physical problems. That was really all anybody wanted to see was Bret beating up Vince so it was fine. With that beating, Vince SHOULD be off of TV for a while. WWE is going to Atlanta next year for WrestleMania at the Georgia Dome. How long of a drive is Atlanta? LOL. Vickie's outfit was hilarious with "excuse me" written on it. I thought the divas match was fun. Cena and Batista was a match that I was surprisingly excited about. Great build to this one and I think Batista is probably doing the best that he has ever done. He has been a really good heel. Kudos to WWE for the great build in this match. Undertaker's entrance was cool with him rising up on the stage. Shawn definitely had an extra bounce in his step for his entrance which had me wondering if this was it for him.
Like I said, I really enjoyed the show. Best build by WWE to a WrestleMania in quite some time. WWE has been really good lately for the most part. With Wrestlemania behind them, it will be interesting to see how their motivation is following it.
Tuesday, March 9, 2010
Monday Night Wars Return - Recap & Thoughts on TNA Impact & WWE Raw - March 9, 2010
Welcome to the “I was predicting a Brooke Hogan heel turn last night” edition of The Wrestling List. LOL. Last night was the first night of the new Monday Night Wars between WWE and TNA. This happens almost nine years to the day of when the original Monday Night Wars came to an end in late March of 2001. Back to the old days of watching four straight hours of wrestling. Well, I cut that down quite a bit with taking commercials out obviously. Still, it was midnight before I finished Raw. I watched Impact live and then watched Raw afterwards. It was a very entertaining night of wrestling for me. There were things that I liked and didn’t like about both shows obviously. We had a big debut on Impact and returns while WWE was mostly the same stuff as they build to WrestleMania.
I’ll start with TNA Impact. I am going to recap this thing and then I’ll go into my opinions on the show. The show opened up with Hulk Hogan and Abyss coming to the ring with a very hot crowd in the Impact Zone. Hogan said that the main event was taking place right then and there to kick off the show. Ric Flair and AJ Styles made their way to the ring and the match was underway. The match gets rolling and Abyss and Flair go at it for a while. All four end up in the ring and AJ takes down Hogan with the pele kick. Hogan and Abyss are down on the mat. The lights go out and then Sting appears in the ring. He stands with Hogan and Abyss as the crowd goes crazy. Sting then turns and nails Abyss and Hogan with the baseball bat. A Sting heel turn. AJ and Flair look surprised at what is going on. AJ and Flair nail Hogan and Abyss with unprotected chair shots to the head. They leave and then a bloody Hogan gets on the mic saying that this match wasn’t over. They would finish the match later in the show and it would be No DQ. Sting was shown backstage being confronted by Dixie Carter wondering what Sting was doing. Sting pushed her against the wall and said that he owed her nothing. Borash interviewed Flair and AJ who were hyped up on what had just happened with Flair saying that FINALLY Sting had come to his senses all these years. They were pumped for the match to finish later in the night. Abyss was shown in the back yelling on why Sting did what he did. We see Brooke Hogan backstage talking to Hogan’s girlfriend, Jennifer with Jennifer saying that Hogan would be ok. Brooke said that he is not ok and that she couldn’t watch the rest of what would happen. Dixie Carter is interviewed later and the announcers put over about how Dixie has always promised to never make matches but yet she was now. She said Sting would wrestle tonight and would have a surprise opponent. Sting makes his way to the ring and Rob Van Dam makes his TNA debut. Huge pop for RVD who hits the ring. RVD pins him immediately following a rolling thunder. Match lasted probably fifteen seconds. RVD goes to celebrate but Sting nails him with the bat and takes his leg out. Officials try to stop all of this but Sting wears out RVD with the bat. A bloody Hogan makes his way back out with officials holding him back. Bubba The Love Sponge was back on the show and was holding Hogan back as well. Hogan gets to the ring and gets nailed by the bat from Sting. Sting is continuing to pound RVD at this time too. Hogan is pulled away from ringside again but Sting follows him up the ramp. Sting nails him with the bat again and also takes out some officials. Later in the show, Hogan is confronted by Earl Hebner who wants a second chance. Bubba talks about second chances and Hogan is talked into it. Hogan makes him the ref in the main event saying that he needed someone to control the match and someone he could trust because his family was freaking out over this match. Brooke was shown backstage crying to Hogan about not wanting him to get hurt out there while Hogan was saying that the fans were calling him and he had to answer the call. He said that Abyss had his back but she demanded that this be his last match. The main event takes place again. Hogan and Abyss taking on AJ and Flair. Hogan and Flair went at it for a bit with Flair being bloodied along with Hogan. Abyss gets the hot tag and we end up with a double hulk up with Abyss and Hogan hulking up. Double fists, double big boots, and then Hogan whipped AJ into Abyss for a black hole slam for the pinfall. Desmond Wolfe then attacked both of them with a chair. His match with the Pope was canceled for earlier in the show as Wolfe had attacked Pope and his injured ankle. Hogan and Abyss start to get beat down and then Pope runs out to help. The odds still are stacked in the favor of AJ, Flair, and Wolfe. Jeff Hardy’s music hits and he runs to the ring. Hardy cleans house and nails multiple twist of fates on the heels. The show ends with Hardy still doing damage. Kurt Angle did an in ring promo with the Army surrounding the ring. They’re playing the storyline of that Anderson bashed on the military while Angle is standing up for them. He said that Anderson spit on them two weeks ago and he wasn’t going to take it. Anderson appears on the screen with the warrior medal while calling the military “high school dropouts”. Angle left the ring immediately while Anderson kept talking. Angle walks in and nails Anderson with them playing up that Angle knew exactly where he was in the building. The fight ends up back in the ring. Angle keeps throwing him to the floor to the Army guys who pound on him. Anderson ends up nailing Angle with the medal and goes to walk out. He backs into the Army who back him to the ring. Angle then gets back on the attack hitting the Angle slam. Angle is then lifted up on the shoulders of the Army crew. Kevin Nash and Eric Young had a segment with Hall and Waltman where they said that Bischoff had agreed to let Hall and Waltman wrestle for one night. Hall and Waltman made their way out with Hall calling Nash a sellout and saying that 2/3 of the Wolfpack were there which was a rip on Nash. Hall pointed out that the attack by Sting showed that Hogan wasn’t running this show. Hall says that they want their match to include the stipulation that if they win, they get a “fat money” contract and calls out Bischoff. Bischoff appears on screen and agrees to it. If they lose, they’re gone for good. That was Bischoff’s added stipulation. Waltman slapped Young and the fight was on between those two. Bischoff then said that he was tired of paying security extra money to take care of Hall and Waltman every week and had the two of them go at it in a match. Waltman misses the broncobuster and then Young nails a piledriver to win the match. The X-Division was featured on the show with Kazarian saying that he had proudly returned to TNA seeing how they were about to take off. Daniels made his way out saying that he had been there the whole time and had built the X-Division. Current champion Doug Williams makes his way to the ring and gets involved in the discussion. Both say that Williams is just the current champion while Daniels and Kazarian argue over the X-Division history. Bischoff makes his way out and says that he loves the X-Division and doesn’t just see it as the heart of the company but the adrenaline of the company. He has the three go at it in a three way for the belt. This was a fun match. Williams wins the match to retain after hitting the chaos theory on Daniels. Shannon Moore hits the ring and hammers on Williams. Bischoff then announces that Moore is Doug’s opponent for the title at Destination X. The Beautiful People defeated the teams of Angelina & Tara and Taylor & Sarita to win the knockouts tag team titles. Daffney got involved nailing Tara with the Knockouts title as Tara was about to hit the widow’s peak. That cost them the match. Beer Money was put in a match with Jeff Jarrett by Bischoff with Foley as the special referee. Jarrett was mad at Storm for agreeing to the match cause of Jarrett hand picking him to join the company. Storm basically said “what have you done for me lately?” Foley tried to help Jarrett out by giving Jarrett a barbed wire bat from under the ring. Referee Slick Johnson ran out and pulled the bat away which led to Beer Money finishing off Jarrett.
Ok, thoughts on the overall show. Not a lot of wrestling on the show obviously. The wrestling that was on it was really good. X-Division match was good and I enjoyed the knockouts tag match too. The Sting heel turn did not sit well with me at first. I just kept thinking that this never works out. The fans won’t boo him. However, I started to get won over as the show continued. They just had him as a mean, nasty heel beating everyone with a bat. That leads to the Rob Van Dam debut. Yeah, this could have been better. RVD’s offense was WAY too short. If you blinked, you missed it. I wanted to see that live crowd fed on his offense and they were hungry for it. Then, he won with the rolling thunder which I thought was bizarre. Sting then beats up RVD repeatedly with the bat. Lots of criticism from fans on how this debut was booked already. I didn’t hate it as much as others cause I think they’re building to something and obviously HOPE that they’re building to something. My only problem was that RVD’s offense was way too limited for such a BIG debut. That should have played out more with more time. Too much Brooke Hogan. In fact, she was on so much that I thought she was maybe becoming a character. I was actually precicting a heel turn before the main event at the end of the show. I suddenly had comparisons of Brooke to Stephanie’s heel turn on Vince over a decade ago. Brooke turns on her dad and joins up with Flair. I really thought it was going to happen. I wasn’t cheering for it to happen obviously but there was way too much of her on the show. I liked the stuff with Angle and Anderson. I loved that Angle went right to where Anderson was immediately when he started talking. Such simple wrestling psychology there. Well, Eric Young did more for me last night than he probably ever has. I’m happy to see Daffney being used more as I liked that character back in WCW. It was one of the few things I liked about the end of WCW.
Other notes from Impact. Wow, Hogan, Sting, and Flair in the same ring on a live broadcast in 2010. Who would have thought? It was clear that RVD was the surprise opponent even more when they went to break and Tazz mentioned the old RVD ECW 4:20 line. The crowd knew too without even hearing that line. They were chanting RVD when Sting was in the ring but they tried to drowned out the crowd as it was happening. Everyone knew it was RVD. I want to know what the Impact Zone was chanting at Bubba cause they kept drowning out that crowd chant where you couldn’t hear it. I’m sure it wasn’t anything good. Whoops, did you see them cut early to back with Bischoff at the beginning of the Nash, Hall, Waltman, Young segment? Things like that are going to happen with live TV. I laughed at Hall telling Nash that he’d see him at the PPV and that he’d be “the one dressed like Elvis”. Nice throwback to the lame Elvis thing that they did years ago in TNA. New open and theme song for Impact which I thought looked good. I’m pretty sure that I saw Jesse from Big Brother in the crowd at the Impact Zone. He is a big wrestling fan.
On to the recap of WWE Raw. The match opened with Shawn and Undertaker talking about their WrestleMania match. Undertaker said that Shawn’s obsession was going to cost him the ultimate price, his career. Shawn talked of how he had seen fear in Undertaker over that his streak may be about to end. Undertaker told him to choose his next words carefully to which Shawn replied again “fear”. Shawn asked him if he really thought he’d sacrifice his career if he didn’t think he could win. Undertaker called him a man of desperation to which Shawn said no. Shawn was going right at him with what he was saying. It was a really good back and forth segment. Shawn said that he was so determined that he only wanted to win this match by pinfall or submission wanting the match to be No DQ and No CO. Undertaker agreed and said that Shawn might be the best ever that he has seen in the ring but that he will do whatever it takes to keep the streak going. Shawn told him to keep telling himself that and that the black cloud of the streak ending at WrestleMania would follow Undertaker forever. Both were really intense in their words and it was really good. Let’s get right to the main event. Yeah, this was lame. John Cena takes on Vince McMahon. Well, Vince announces that the match is a handicap gauntlet match. So, Vince keeps bringing out partners to help him. First guy is Kozlov. Kozlov does the damage and then Vince goes to pin Cena. Cena kicks out. Vince calls out Drew McIntyre. Same deal. Jack Swagger is the next guy out but Cena gets on offense with him. Swagger takes him down. Vince tries to pin. Cena kicks out. Vince brings out Mark Henry who does not look happy to be a part of this. He reluctantly hits the world’s strongest slam but Cena kicks out. Vince goes for the ring bell saying this is now a No DQ match. He tells Henry to hit Cena with the bell. Henry dumps the bell out to the floor. Batista then runs in and nails Henry. Batista had said earlier in the night that he would not get involved in the match. It should also be pointed out that Cena also said that he was not as confident against Batista cause he had never beaten him. Batista takes out Henry and then Kofi runs in for the save. Kofi gets some offense in but Batista nails him with a powerbomb out of the corner. Cena gets up and takes the fight to Batista. Vince then gets cornered by Cena. He goes for the adjustment but gets hit by a spear from Batista. After a Batista bomb, Vince pins Cena. The show goes off with a spotlight on the ring as Batista stands over Cena. Legacy took on Randy Orton. The question is how much offense will Legacy get in this week. Things looked bad when they got jumped by Orton walking down the aisle. The match went three segments and two of those had Legacy getting beaten up. Orton went for the RKO but Cody got in to stop it. Dibiase then recoved and hit dreamstreet to pin Orton. After the match, Rhodes hit crossrhodes and they mocked Orton with his old pose. Triple H did an in ring promo talking about the attack by Sheamus last week. He said that he had respect for what Sheamus did adding that he would have done the same thing in his shoes to make a statement. Sheamus did arrive and Triple H said that Sheamus had probably had the best first year ever for any superstar but that WrestleMania was a whole different ball game. Triple H talked of how he went on to win matches at WrestleMania looking to fight the biggest dogs and that his only list of defeats were Cena and Batista. Guess he forgot the Warrior. LOL. Basically, he asked Sheamus if he was willing to gamble of them going at it at WrestleMania. Sheamus ended up taking a swing and the fight was on. The fight went to the floor with them going back and forth. Sheamus ends up getting hit with a spinebuster in the ring and then bails out. The last Money In The Bank Qualifier was held with Evan Bourne defeating William Regal to get the last spot. Christian did commentary on the match. John Morrison and R Truth were set to take on ShoMiz in a preview of WrestleMania. The ref stopped it when the match got out of his control. Morrison and Truth take it to ShoMiz with them saying that they needed to now be taken seriously as contenders at WrestleMania. The team of Eve, Kelly, and Gail defeated the team of Maryse, Alicia, and Katie when Eve got Maryse to tap out to her armbar submission. Criss Angel was the guest host of the show and just basically did backstage segments with illusions and all. He did do the ring announcing for the main event.
Other notes from Raw. Did you notice that Ultimate Warrior has replaced Ric Flair in the WWE open? Wow, Legacy just isn’t getting any favors done for them. You can’t have them just getting beaten up EVERY week and have them taken seriously. Yeah, Dibiase got the win but what I remember is that Orton was beating them up for most of the match. The Criss Angel stuff was just there for me. I was done with it after the eye deal in his first segment. I thought, oh ok, I’m done while cringing away from the TV. I like the new addition of pyro to Morrison’s entrance. Looks really cool with the effect. How much lamer can they have Regal’s rookie looking? He is wearing an Austin vest and a cowboy hat? Do you remember when Kozlov was a main eventer? I like Drew McIntyre’s new music even after only hearing seconds of it. The song “Be Yourself” returns to WWE after four years as a WrestleMania theme song. You may remember it being used for the Divas Search in 2005 and then became the theme song for the winner, Ashley Massaro. Where was Michael Cole at when Legacy was holding up the Orton pose? Cole says that they are taunting him with his “classic pose”. Wouldn’t that be “vintage”? It was perfect timing for it and he went for classic. I kind of laughed at Triple H completely ignoring his WrestleMania debut loss to The Ultimate Warrior. Oh, the WrestleMania Recall moment of Lesnar and Goldberg from WrestleMania XX. One of my favorite WM moments ever and that was because of the crowd reaction. The fans knew Lesnar was leaving and ripped on him through the whole thing along with Goldberg. Austin was the ref and the only one getting cheered. The Raw main event was lame. Just lame. TNA needed to take advantage of that last night for sure.
Stone Cold Steve Austin will be the guest host on Raw next week from San Diego. He will handle the contract signing next week between Bret and Vince. That should be fun with Austin helping Bret.
Hulk Hogan appeared with Jimmy Hart last week where he announced the news of the signing of Rob Van Dam to TNA wrestling. Dixie Carter announced on Twitter last week that Sting has signed a new deal to remain with TNA. Traci Brooks was let go by TNA last week and she posted a statement about the release saying that the company just had nothing for her to do. She talked about how much that she had enjoyed being a part of the company all of these years. Roxxi and Sean Morley are also gone from TNA.
Eric Bischoff has already come out firing at WWE including something about the Bret/Vince match at WrestleMania. "Allegedly WWE found out about a Lloyds of London policy that Bret had in effect AFTER setting up this match, and as a result Lloyds of London has to approve of the physical structure of the match. Can't confirm this, and perhaps WWE has "bought out" the problem, but if not..could be disappointing. Either way, I am looking forward to it and am happy for Bret. Going back to WWE in any capacity was the right thing for him to do at this stage of his life."
Mickie James posted on her Twitter about surgery that she had last week due to a staph infection in her leg. She did say that she will not be competing at WrestleMania this year due to it.
I am sad to hear the news of the passing of Angelo Poffo. He is of course the father of Randy Savage and Lanny Poffo. He passed away at the age of 84. I haven't seen much footage of his wrestling career since it was many years ago so my memories of him are mostly with his WCW run along side of Savage in the mid 90's. My thoughts and prayers go out to the family in this tough time.
The new Shawn Michaels “My Journey” DVD was released in stores today. Included on the set is a sitdown interview with Shawn talking about his career and various matches. Many great matches on the set as well. Matches on the set include:
Shawn vs. One Man Gang (World Class – 1/11/85)
Midnight Rockers vs. Buddy Rose and Doug Summers (AWA WrestleRock 1986)
Rockers vs. Brain Busters (Boston Garden – WWF – 3/18/89)
Rockers vs. Hart Foundation (WWF – MSG – 11/25/89)
Shawn vs. Bret Hart (Intercontinental title match – 6/2/92)
Shawn vs. Bulldog (Raw – 3/6/95)
Shawn vs. Sid (Raw - 9/11/95)
Shawn vs. 123 Kid (Raw – 3/4/96)
Shawn vs. Mankind (Raw – 8/11/97)
Shawn vs. Bulldog (One Night Only – 9/20/97)
Shawn vs. Undertaker (Royal Rumble 1998)
Shawn vs. Jericho (WrestleMania XIX)
Shawn vs. Flair (Bad Blood 2003)
Shawn vs. Angle (WrestleMania 21)
Shawn’s Promo on Hogan the night after SummerSlam
Shawn vs. Triple H (Raw 12/19/05)
Shawn vs. Cena vs. Edge vs. Orton (Backlash 2007)
Shawn vs. Orton (Survivor Series 2007)
Shawn vs. Jericho (Unforgiven 2008)
Shawn vs. Undertaker (WrestleMania 25)
Cue the Kane/Pete Rose stuff. Pete Rose will be the Raw guest host on the Monday before WrestleMania.
The Celebrity Apprentice premieres this Sunday night on NBC. Definite ties to wrestling with Maria and Bill Goldberg being a part of the cast.
Back to the Monday Night Wars of last night with my opinions on what I liked best.
Show Of The Night: I’m going to give it to TNA Impact. The show was more exciting and had more going on. Raw was just more of the same stuff but I did like a lot of the stuff on it.
Match Of The Night: Daniels vs. Kazarian vs. Williams in the X-Division championship match from TNA Impact.
That is it for this week. Take care and God bless!!
I’ll start with TNA Impact. I am going to recap this thing and then I’ll go into my opinions on the show. The show opened up with Hulk Hogan and Abyss coming to the ring with a very hot crowd in the Impact Zone. Hogan said that the main event was taking place right then and there to kick off the show. Ric Flair and AJ Styles made their way to the ring and the match was underway. The match gets rolling and Abyss and Flair go at it for a while. All four end up in the ring and AJ takes down Hogan with the pele kick. Hogan and Abyss are down on the mat. The lights go out and then Sting appears in the ring. He stands with Hogan and Abyss as the crowd goes crazy. Sting then turns and nails Abyss and Hogan with the baseball bat. A Sting heel turn. AJ and Flair look surprised at what is going on. AJ and Flair nail Hogan and Abyss with unprotected chair shots to the head. They leave and then a bloody Hogan gets on the mic saying that this match wasn’t over. They would finish the match later in the show and it would be No DQ. Sting was shown backstage being confronted by Dixie Carter wondering what Sting was doing. Sting pushed her against the wall and said that he owed her nothing. Borash interviewed Flair and AJ who were hyped up on what had just happened with Flair saying that FINALLY Sting had come to his senses all these years. They were pumped for the match to finish later in the night. Abyss was shown in the back yelling on why Sting did what he did. We see Brooke Hogan backstage talking to Hogan’s girlfriend, Jennifer with Jennifer saying that Hogan would be ok. Brooke said that he is not ok and that she couldn’t watch the rest of what would happen. Dixie Carter is interviewed later and the announcers put over about how Dixie has always promised to never make matches but yet she was now. She said Sting would wrestle tonight and would have a surprise opponent. Sting makes his way to the ring and Rob Van Dam makes his TNA debut. Huge pop for RVD who hits the ring. RVD pins him immediately following a rolling thunder. Match lasted probably fifteen seconds. RVD goes to celebrate but Sting nails him with the bat and takes his leg out. Officials try to stop all of this but Sting wears out RVD with the bat. A bloody Hogan makes his way back out with officials holding him back. Bubba The Love Sponge was back on the show and was holding Hogan back as well. Hogan gets to the ring and gets nailed by the bat from Sting. Sting is continuing to pound RVD at this time too. Hogan is pulled away from ringside again but Sting follows him up the ramp. Sting nails him with the bat again and also takes out some officials. Later in the show, Hogan is confronted by Earl Hebner who wants a second chance. Bubba talks about second chances and Hogan is talked into it. Hogan makes him the ref in the main event saying that he needed someone to control the match and someone he could trust because his family was freaking out over this match. Brooke was shown backstage crying to Hogan about not wanting him to get hurt out there while Hogan was saying that the fans were calling him and he had to answer the call. He said that Abyss had his back but she demanded that this be his last match. The main event takes place again. Hogan and Abyss taking on AJ and Flair. Hogan and Flair went at it for a bit with Flair being bloodied along with Hogan. Abyss gets the hot tag and we end up with a double hulk up with Abyss and Hogan hulking up. Double fists, double big boots, and then Hogan whipped AJ into Abyss for a black hole slam for the pinfall. Desmond Wolfe then attacked both of them with a chair. His match with the Pope was canceled for earlier in the show as Wolfe had attacked Pope and his injured ankle. Hogan and Abyss start to get beat down and then Pope runs out to help. The odds still are stacked in the favor of AJ, Flair, and Wolfe. Jeff Hardy’s music hits and he runs to the ring. Hardy cleans house and nails multiple twist of fates on the heels. The show ends with Hardy still doing damage. Kurt Angle did an in ring promo with the Army surrounding the ring. They’re playing the storyline of that Anderson bashed on the military while Angle is standing up for them. He said that Anderson spit on them two weeks ago and he wasn’t going to take it. Anderson appears on the screen with the warrior medal while calling the military “high school dropouts”. Angle left the ring immediately while Anderson kept talking. Angle walks in and nails Anderson with them playing up that Angle knew exactly where he was in the building. The fight ends up back in the ring. Angle keeps throwing him to the floor to the Army guys who pound on him. Anderson ends up nailing Angle with the medal and goes to walk out. He backs into the Army who back him to the ring. Angle then gets back on the attack hitting the Angle slam. Angle is then lifted up on the shoulders of the Army crew. Kevin Nash and Eric Young had a segment with Hall and Waltman where they said that Bischoff had agreed to let Hall and Waltman wrestle for one night. Hall and Waltman made their way out with Hall calling Nash a sellout and saying that 2/3 of the Wolfpack were there which was a rip on Nash. Hall pointed out that the attack by Sting showed that Hogan wasn’t running this show. Hall says that they want their match to include the stipulation that if they win, they get a “fat money” contract and calls out Bischoff. Bischoff appears on screen and agrees to it. If they lose, they’re gone for good. That was Bischoff’s added stipulation. Waltman slapped Young and the fight was on between those two. Bischoff then said that he was tired of paying security extra money to take care of Hall and Waltman every week and had the two of them go at it in a match. Waltman misses the broncobuster and then Young nails a piledriver to win the match. The X-Division was featured on the show with Kazarian saying that he had proudly returned to TNA seeing how they were about to take off. Daniels made his way out saying that he had been there the whole time and had built the X-Division. Current champion Doug Williams makes his way to the ring and gets involved in the discussion. Both say that Williams is just the current champion while Daniels and Kazarian argue over the X-Division history. Bischoff makes his way out and says that he loves the X-Division and doesn’t just see it as the heart of the company but the adrenaline of the company. He has the three go at it in a three way for the belt. This was a fun match. Williams wins the match to retain after hitting the chaos theory on Daniels. Shannon Moore hits the ring and hammers on Williams. Bischoff then announces that Moore is Doug’s opponent for the title at Destination X. The Beautiful People defeated the teams of Angelina & Tara and Taylor & Sarita to win the knockouts tag team titles. Daffney got involved nailing Tara with the Knockouts title as Tara was about to hit the widow’s peak. That cost them the match. Beer Money was put in a match with Jeff Jarrett by Bischoff with Foley as the special referee. Jarrett was mad at Storm for agreeing to the match cause of Jarrett hand picking him to join the company. Storm basically said “what have you done for me lately?” Foley tried to help Jarrett out by giving Jarrett a barbed wire bat from under the ring. Referee Slick Johnson ran out and pulled the bat away which led to Beer Money finishing off Jarrett.
Ok, thoughts on the overall show. Not a lot of wrestling on the show obviously. The wrestling that was on it was really good. X-Division match was good and I enjoyed the knockouts tag match too. The Sting heel turn did not sit well with me at first. I just kept thinking that this never works out. The fans won’t boo him. However, I started to get won over as the show continued. They just had him as a mean, nasty heel beating everyone with a bat. That leads to the Rob Van Dam debut. Yeah, this could have been better. RVD’s offense was WAY too short. If you blinked, you missed it. I wanted to see that live crowd fed on his offense and they were hungry for it. Then, he won with the rolling thunder which I thought was bizarre. Sting then beats up RVD repeatedly with the bat. Lots of criticism from fans on how this debut was booked already. I didn’t hate it as much as others cause I think they’re building to something and obviously HOPE that they’re building to something. My only problem was that RVD’s offense was way too limited for such a BIG debut. That should have played out more with more time. Too much Brooke Hogan. In fact, she was on so much that I thought she was maybe becoming a character. I was actually precicting a heel turn before the main event at the end of the show. I suddenly had comparisons of Brooke to Stephanie’s heel turn on Vince over a decade ago. Brooke turns on her dad and joins up with Flair. I really thought it was going to happen. I wasn’t cheering for it to happen obviously but there was way too much of her on the show. I liked the stuff with Angle and Anderson. I loved that Angle went right to where Anderson was immediately when he started talking. Such simple wrestling psychology there. Well, Eric Young did more for me last night than he probably ever has. I’m happy to see Daffney being used more as I liked that character back in WCW. It was one of the few things I liked about the end of WCW.
Other notes from Impact. Wow, Hogan, Sting, and Flair in the same ring on a live broadcast in 2010. Who would have thought? It was clear that RVD was the surprise opponent even more when they went to break and Tazz mentioned the old RVD ECW 4:20 line. The crowd knew too without even hearing that line. They were chanting RVD when Sting was in the ring but they tried to drowned out the crowd as it was happening. Everyone knew it was RVD. I want to know what the Impact Zone was chanting at Bubba cause they kept drowning out that crowd chant where you couldn’t hear it. I’m sure it wasn’t anything good. Whoops, did you see them cut early to back with Bischoff at the beginning of the Nash, Hall, Waltman, Young segment? Things like that are going to happen with live TV. I laughed at Hall telling Nash that he’d see him at the PPV and that he’d be “the one dressed like Elvis”. Nice throwback to the lame Elvis thing that they did years ago in TNA. New open and theme song for Impact which I thought looked good. I’m pretty sure that I saw Jesse from Big Brother in the crowd at the Impact Zone. He is a big wrestling fan.
On to the recap of WWE Raw. The match opened with Shawn and Undertaker talking about their WrestleMania match. Undertaker said that Shawn’s obsession was going to cost him the ultimate price, his career. Shawn talked of how he had seen fear in Undertaker over that his streak may be about to end. Undertaker told him to choose his next words carefully to which Shawn replied again “fear”. Shawn asked him if he really thought he’d sacrifice his career if he didn’t think he could win. Undertaker called him a man of desperation to which Shawn said no. Shawn was going right at him with what he was saying. It was a really good back and forth segment. Shawn said that he was so determined that he only wanted to win this match by pinfall or submission wanting the match to be No DQ and No CO. Undertaker agreed and said that Shawn might be the best ever that he has seen in the ring but that he will do whatever it takes to keep the streak going. Shawn told him to keep telling himself that and that the black cloud of the streak ending at WrestleMania would follow Undertaker forever. Both were really intense in their words and it was really good. Let’s get right to the main event. Yeah, this was lame. John Cena takes on Vince McMahon. Well, Vince announces that the match is a handicap gauntlet match. So, Vince keeps bringing out partners to help him. First guy is Kozlov. Kozlov does the damage and then Vince goes to pin Cena. Cena kicks out. Vince calls out Drew McIntyre. Same deal. Jack Swagger is the next guy out but Cena gets on offense with him. Swagger takes him down. Vince tries to pin. Cena kicks out. Vince brings out Mark Henry who does not look happy to be a part of this. He reluctantly hits the world’s strongest slam but Cena kicks out. Vince goes for the ring bell saying this is now a No DQ match. He tells Henry to hit Cena with the bell. Henry dumps the bell out to the floor. Batista then runs in and nails Henry. Batista had said earlier in the night that he would not get involved in the match. It should also be pointed out that Cena also said that he was not as confident against Batista cause he had never beaten him. Batista takes out Henry and then Kofi runs in for the save. Kofi gets some offense in but Batista nails him with a powerbomb out of the corner. Cena gets up and takes the fight to Batista. Vince then gets cornered by Cena. He goes for the adjustment but gets hit by a spear from Batista. After a Batista bomb, Vince pins Cena. The show goes off with a spotlight on the ring as Batista stands over Cena. Legacy took on Randy Orton. The question is how much offense will Legacy get in this week. Things looked bad when they got jumped by Orton walking down the aisle. The match went three segments and two of those had Legacy getting beaten up. Orton went for the RKO but Cody got in to stop it. Dibiase then recoved and hit dreamstreet to pin Orton. After the match, Rhodes hit crossrhodes and they mocked Orton with his old pose. Triple H did an in ring promo talking about the attack by Sheamus last week. He said that he had respect for what Sheamus did adding that he would have done the same thing in his shoes to make a statement. Sheamus did arrive and Triple H said that Sheamus had probably had the best first year ever for any superstar but that WrestleMania was a whole different ball game. Triple H talked of how he went on to win matches at WrestleMania looking to fight the biggest dogs and that his only list of defeats were Cena and Batista. Guess he forgot the Warrior. LOL. Basically, he asked Sheamus if he was willing to gamble of them going at it at WrestleMania. Sheamus ended up taking a swing and the fight was on. The fight went to the floor with them going back and forth. Sheamus ends up getting hit with a spinebuster in the ring and then bails out. The last Money In The Bank Qualifier was held with Evan Bourne defeating William Regal to get the last spot. Christian did commentary on the match. John Morrison and R Truth were set to take on ShoMiz in a preview of WrestleMania. The ref stopped it when the match got out of his control. Morrison and Truth take it to ShoMiz with them saying that they needed to now be taken seriously as contenders at WrestleMania. The team of Eve, Kelly, and Gail defeated the team of Maryse, Alicia, and Katie when Eve got Maryse to tap out to her armbar submission. Criss Angel was the guest host of the show and just basically did backstage segments with illusions and all. He did do the ring announcing for the main event.
Other notes from Raw. Did you notice that Ultimate Warrior has replaced Ric Flair in the WWE open? Wow, Legacy just isn’t getting any favors done for them. You can’t have them just getting beaten up EVERY week and have them taken seriously. Yeah, Dibiase got the win but what I remember is that Orton was beating them up for most of the match. The Criss Angel stuff was just there for me. I was done with it after the eye deal in his first segment. I thought, oh ok, I’m done while cringing away from the TV. I like the new addition of pyro to Morrison’s entrance. Looks really cool with the effect. How much lamer can they have Regal’s rookie looking? He is wearing an Austin vest and a cowboy hat? Do you remember when Kozlov was a main eventer? I like Drew McIntyre’s new music even after only hearing seconds of it. The song “Be Yourself” returns to WWE after four years as a WrestleMania theme song. You may remember it being used for the Divas Search in 2005 and then became the theme song for the winner, Ashley Massaro. Where was Michael Cole at when Legacy was holding up the Orton pose? Cole says that they are taunting him with his “classic pose”. Wouldn’t that be “vintage”? It was perfect timing for it and he went for classic. I kind of laughed at Triple H completely ignoring his WrestleMania debut loss to The Ultimate Warrior. Oh, the WrestleMania Recall moment of Lesnar and Goldberg from WrestleMania XX. One of my favorite WM moments ever and that was because of the crowd reaction. The fans knew Lesnar was leaving and ripped on him through the whole thing along with Goldberg. Austin was the ref and the only one getting cheered. The Raw main event was lame. Just lame. TNA needed to take advantage of that last night for sure.
Stone Cold Steve Austin will be the guest host on Raw next week from San Diego. He will handle the contract signing next week between Bret and Vince. That should be fun with Austin helping Bret.
Hulk Hogan appeared with Jimmy Hart last week where he announced the news of the signing of Rob Van Dam to TNA wrestling. Dixie Carter announced on Twitter last week that Sting has signed a new deal to remain with TNA. Traci Brooks was let go by TNA last week and she posted a statement about the release saying that the company just had nothing for her to do. She talked about how much that she had enjoyed being a part of the company all of these years. Roxxi and Sean Morley are also gone from TNA.
Eric Bischoff has already come out firing at WWE including something about the Bret/Vince match at WrestleMania. "Allegedly WWE found out about a Lloyds of London policy that Bret had in effect AFTER setting up this match, and as a result Lloyds of London has to approve of the physical structure of the match. Can't confirm this, and perhaps WWE has "bought out" the problem, but if not..could be disappointing. Either way, I am looking forward to it and am happy for Bret. Going back to WWE in any capacity was the right thing for him to do at this stage of his life."
Mickie James posted on her Twitter about surgery that she had last week due to a staph infection in her leg. She did say that she will not be competing at WrestleMania this year due to it.
I am sad to hear the news of the passing of Angelo Poffo. He is of course the father of Randy Savage and Lanny Poffo. He passed away at the age of 84. I haven't seen much footage of his wrestling career since it was many years ago so my memories of him are mostly with his WCW run along side of Savage in the mid 90's. My thoughts and prayers go out to the family in this tough time.
The new Shawn Michaels “My Journey” DVD was released in stores today. Included on the set is a sitdown interview with Shawn talking about his career and various matches. Many great matches on the set as well. Matches on the set include:
Shawn vs. One Man Gang (World Class – 1/11/85)
Midnight Rockers vs. Buddy Rose and Doug Summers (AWA WrestleRock 1986)
Rockers vs. Brain Busters (Boston Garden – WWF – 3/18/89)
Rockers vs. Hart Foundation (WWF – MSG – 11/25/89)
Shawn vs. Bret Hart (Intercontinental title match – 6/2/92)
Shawn vs. Bulldog (Raw – 3/6/95)
Shawn vs. Sid (Raw - 9/11/95)
Shawn vs. 123 Kid (Raw – 3/4/96)
Shawn vs. Mankind (Raw – 8/11/97)
Shawn vs. Bulldog (One Night Only – 9/20/97)
Shawn vs. Undertaker (Royal Rumble 1998)
Shawn vs. Jericho (WrestleMania XIX)
Shawn vs. Flair (Bad Blood 2003)
Shawn vs. Angle (WrestleMania 21)
Shawn’s Promo on Hogan the night after SummerSlam
Shawn vs. Triple H (Raw 12/19/05)
Shawn vs. Cena vs. Edge vs. Orton (Backlash 2007)
Shawn vs. Orton (Survivor Series 2007)
Shawn vs. Jericho (Unforgiven 2008)
Shawn vs. Undertaker (WrestleMania 25)
Cue the Kane/Pete Rose stuff. Pete Rose will be the Raw guest host on the Monday before WrestleMania.
The Celebrity Apprentice premieres this Sunday night on NBC. Definite ties to wrestling with Maria and Bill Goldberg being a part of the cast.
Back to the Monday Night Wars of last night with my opinions on what I liked best.
Show Of The Night: I’m going to give it to TNA Impact. The show was more exciting and had more going on. Raw was just more of the same stuff but I did like a lot of the stuff on it.
Match Of The Night: Daniels vs. Kazarian vs. Williams in the X-Division championship match from TNA Impact.
That is it for this week. Take care and God bless!!
Monday, March 1, 2010
Raw & NXT Recap & Thoughts, & More - March 1, 2010
Welcome to the “was I watching Money In The Bank qualifying matches or squash matches?” edition of The Wrestling List.
Tonight is the last night that WWE will go unopposed on Monday nights. TNA Impact starts their Monday run next week on Spike TV. TNA will go head to head against Raw from 8-10pm. The main event of the show will see Hulk Hogan and Ric Flair returning to the ring as Hogan teams with Abyss to take on AJ Styles and Flair. TNA is going to run three hours of programming on March 15. Their TNA Epics series will air at 7pm running an hour before Impact goes on the air. In case you didn't know, Stone Cold Steve Austin will be the guest host on that night on Raw. So, it looks like TNA is looking at pulling some viewers in before Impact goes on the air.
Tonight’s WWE Raw was the last Raw to go unopposed. Shawn Michaels opened the show talking about the buzz in the locker room of his peers feeling that he couldn’t end the streak and how he was crazy for putting his career on the line. Shawn called out anyone that felt that he couldn’t beat Taker so they could tell it to his face. Triple H walked out and Shawn was surprised asking him if he really didn’t think that he could beat him. Triple H replied that he knew Shawn could beat Undertaker saying that Shawn is the best that he had ever been in the ring with. He wanted to reunite DX for the night so they could win the tag titles back despite being on separate paths. Triple H’s point was that they wouldn’t have to defend the titles for 30 days. 28 days would be the night after WrestleMania. The tag title win tonight would be a vote of confidence and part of the celebration that they would have the night after WrestleMania on Raw. Shawn accepted and the story of that first segment was Triple H pumping up Shawn. So, the main event takes place with DX against ShoMiz. Shawn lays out Show with a superkick. Triple H and Show both make tags. Shawn and Miz go at it and Shawn is on a major roll. He starts to tune up the band in the corner and then Undertaker appears on the screen. Just a staring look. It distracts Shawn and then Taker rolls his eyes. Shawn turns to Miz looking for the kick but Miz rolls him up for the win. Shawn again looks completely focused about Taker. Triple H looks frustrated and goes over to Shawn and puts his hand on his shoulder. Shawn yells for him to not touch him and walks out. Sheamus then enters the ring and attacks Triple H. He ends up giving Triple H the kick over the announce table. The show ends with Sheamus standing on the table looking at the fallen Triple H. We also had the farewell to Bret Hart segment tonight. Vince arrived first and then introduced Bret who had his leg in a cast and was walking on one crutch. Vince started the segment saying great things about Bret. Bret fired back at Vince saying that ever since he had come back that Vince had treated him like garbage. Vince then went on to say that he had lied again and that this wasn’t a grand farewell. Vince talked of Bret’s challenge for WrestleMania trying to get Bret to follow through on it. Vince continued to talk of all the bad things he had done to Bret to get him fired up. Bret had a good line as a comeback saying “I can’t wrestle. I have a broken leg, idiot”. Vince continued to fire saying that Bret was a coward and had no heart. Vince then kicked Bret’s crutch out from under him and Bret crashed to the mat. Vince left the ring continuing to call Bret a coward. Bret then got up and said that the match was on for WrestleMania. Another interview segment to hype another WrestleMania match which was between John Cena and Batista. Cena talked of how he had moved on from the PPV saying that what Batista did was business to further himself. The next night on Raw was personal and he wanted to know why. Batista arrived with security guards to which he said was to protect Cena. Batista talked of how they were the two biggest stars since the attitude era and that he was mad that the torch from Austin got passed to Cena instead of him. He said that the attack last week was just because he wanted to beat him up and because he wanted to show that he was better. Cena talked of how he had given his life to this business and worked harder than anyone while adding that Batista wanted everything given to him. Cena was shocked that Batista cared enough about some invisible torch. Batista said that he was in WWE to win titles and make money while Cena was there to please the people and kiss babies. Batista then mentioned Cena’s broken neck in one of their encounters while adding that Cena knew deep down that he couldn’t beat him. The segment ended with that as Cena looked intently at Batista as Batista walked off. Two Money In The Bank qualifying matches were held. Both squash matches. Jack Swagger squashed Santino. MVP squashed Zack Ryder. Randy Orton took on Ted Dibiase. The finish had Cody jumping up on the apron as Orton was going for the RKO. Orton took a swing at him but Cody avoided it. As Orton went back to Dibiase, Cody attacked Orton causing the DQ. The doubleteam was on but then Orton fought back. Orton dropkicked Dibiase out of the ring and then the backbreaker on Cody. As he was about to hit the DDT on Cody, Dibiase pulled Cody out of there. Cheech and Chong were the guest hosts. Fairly pointless segments. They had the running joke of the magical Lucky Charms all night as Hornswoggle brought them cereal. It caused them to hallucinate. Yep, PG rating here people. LOL. They booked a pajama pillow fight with the divas. PG. Kelly, Eve, Gail, Maryse, Jillian, and Alicia. Eve pinned Alicia.
Other notes from Raw. Wow, I just realized how little wrestling there was on this show after I recapped it. The talking segments were fine. I thought the opening segment was the best of the three with Shawn and Triple H. Seeing Bret with the cast and the crutch reminded me of early 1997 with the Hart Foundation against Austin. Geez, Dibiase and Rhodes can’t even beat up Orton two on one. WWE is really doing those guys no favors at all. It’s really hard to take them seriously when they get beat up EVERY week. They have to get an advantage sometime to make this feud believable. Batista said that he and Cena were the top two stars since the attitude era. Oh, there are so many jokes that I could say to Batista’s name. LOL. Squash matches for MITB qualifiers? Really? I laughed at Lawler saying that Swagger had home field advantage there in Oklahoma City to make him get the win. Come on, it’s Santino!! LOL. Watching that pillow fight, I just had to think how far that Gail Kim has fallen. She was on top there at TNA and now she barely gets to win. I forgot to mention this last week but all the DX related stuff in the Raw open has been removed and replaced with other superstars. That Shawn/Undertaker WrestleMania promo commercial set to Johnny Cash was really good. It can’t top that amazing video package from last week though. Cheech and Chong, PJ pillow fights with the divas on a PG rated show. What does it say that I didn’t even realize that one half of Cheech and Chong was on Lost until he made that finale reference tonight? LOL. I did not even know that was him but knew he looked familiar.
It was announced that Mad Dog Vachon will go into the Hall Of Fame this year and will be inducted by Pat Patterson.
Next week’s Raw will have Criss Angel as the guest host. John Cena will take on Vince McMahon. Vince set that match up on his way out as he left Bret tonight. Randy Orton will take on Rhodes and Dibiase in a handicap match. That will go up against TNA Impact’s live show with Hogan and Abyss taking on AJ and Flair.
Maria did a XM Radio interview over the weekend talking about her release. She seemed to hint that she thought that her release was due to WWE’s concern over her job interests outside of the company and that they wanted control of it. She did say there were things that WWE wanted her to do that she didn’t and the other way around. She was in negotiations with the company over dealing with her outside interests. She made sure to say again that she did not ask for her release. I still say that this was a big mistake by WWE to let her go. One of the divas that stands out from the others and you let her go. Just makes no sense to me but it is WWE.
I watched the premiere of WWE NXT last week and I’ve got to say that I enjoyed it. The show has a fun concept to it and it’s just a matter of whether WWE sticks to it. They made a star out of Bryan Danielson in one night. That was the big attention getter for me going into the show to see how they used him. His name is Daniel Bryan on there which is going to take some getting used to but I thought they did a great job with him. The show opened with him and The Miz talking in the ring. Basically, Bryan had to cut a promo in the ring and then Miz interrupted him. The two had a nice exchange which resulted in The Miz slapping him with Bryan promising that he would pay him back sometime. The first match had Carlito and Michael Tarver taking on Christian and Heath Slater. First impressions on Heath Slater is that he has potential. I think he could be a much better heel than a face. Yeah, the dance is annoying which could really work to his advantage as a heel. It reminds me of the Brian Kendrick dance from recent years. Slater helped Christian on offense which led to Christian pinning Carlito with the killswitch. I loved the CM Punk promo where he just basically was saying I don’t want to be here and want nothing to do it. I cracked up at it. Darren Young was paired up with Punk. Young is basically a party guy and it is completely opposite of Punk’s gimmick. We had a one on one match with Young taking on David Otunga who is the fiancée of Jennifer Hudson. Otunga was accompanied by his pro, R Truth. Otunga won a quick match against Young with Punk and his crew walking off not caring. LOL. Next was a match that I was very much looking forward to and that was Bryan getting in the ring with the new World champion, Chris Jericho. My thinking was that they needed to make Bryan look good but not make the champ look bad either. They accomplished it. Jericho was accompanied by his rookie, Wade Barrett. Funny moment when Jericho had him introduce him but Barrett went on too long. Jericho told him that he just wanted him to introduce him. Miz was at ringside for this match as well. Really fun match between the two. The nasty spot that everyone is talking about is Bryan diving out of the ring on to Jericho. Jericho caught him and swung him rib first into the announce table. It looked nasty. Bryan got a lot of good offense on Jericho where he had Jericho in trouble for a bit. Jericho did end up winning with the liontamer. That was not a walls of Jericho. That was an old school liontamer with the knee to back of the head. After the match, Miz got in and attacked Bryan. That is the recap of the episode and now into my thoughts. Like I said, I thought they made Bryan look great in that match with Jericho where they showed the potential of what he could be. I’m just hoping that they eventually turn him loose with what we’ve seen from him in Ring Of Honor. I like the idea of having matches where you have the rookies against each other but also having matches that include the pros and rookies teaming together. Good way to balance the talent out and make the fans get into the match. WWE did some very good promo packages on the rookies to give us a background on them. I liked the change of look with as far as how they shoot the matches. They used the crane cam to get close ups on the action in the ring. Something very different as far as style of WWE production. Michael Cole was definitely getting on everyone’s nerves with his comments on Bryan with how he had never competed anywhere including TV. I guess PPV doesn’t count as TV? LOL. The Cole thing is definitely storyline with his heel comments based on how WWE is playing it up on the website including them pulling his WWE Universe profile because he doesn’t want to associate himself with internet fans. Josh Mathews going back at him was fun TV though. It is going to be Mathews pushing the young guys while Cole is against them.
I watched the Monday Night Wars episode currently airing on WWE Classics On Demand which is from February 1996. I really enjoyed watching it and reliving a lot of this stuff. That month of WCW programing was one of my favorite months of the early Monday Nitro episodes with the build to SuperBrawl VI. The focus was around Hogan's upcoming match with The Giant in the cage along with Savage defending the title against Flair in a different cage match. This Nitro episode started off hot with the attack by Flair and Anderson on Savage. Hogan made the save but was then attacked by Flair who returned to continue the attack. Funny to watch Savage question Elizabeth, who had just returned, on why she didn't alert Hogan better that Flair was behind him. If you remember, Elizabeth turned heel at SuperBrawl turning on Savage and joining up with Flair. I was blindsided by the turn at the time cause who would have seen that coming??!! This Nitro also featured the Road Warriors continued return to the company as they took on Sting and Luger. Brian Pillman was really getting rolling on his loose cannon character. Over on Raw, there was a fun Shawn Michaels and Diesel match with them against Yokozuna and The British Bulldog. Yokozuna ended up getting superkicked out of the ring by Shawn causing his team to be counted out. This led to Cornette blaming Yokozuna for the loss and then him turning face and going nuts on his team. The main event of the show was a Bret Hart/Undertaker match. This was back during the Bret/Undertaker/Diesel triangle feud. I enjoyed it at the time and still enjoyed watching it over the weekend. Diesel gets involved and attacks everyone. He was of course getting the title match at the upcoming In Your House PPV in a cage. Undertaker would get the payback coming up through the ring to cost Diesel the title. This was a very fun episode of the Monday Night Wars to watch. It brought back so many great memories as I liked what both companies were doing at the time. It doesn’t even seem that long ago that I was sitting there and watching these original broadcasts.
I’ll be back next week as we go back into the Monday Night Wars round two. I’ll be covering both Raw and Impact. It will be fun to have competition again every week. Take care and God bless!!
Tonight is the last night that WWE will go unopposed on Monday nights. TNA Impact starts their Monday run next week on Spike TV. TNA will go head to head against Raw from 8-10pm. The main event of the show will see Hulk Hogan and Ric Flair returning to the ring as Hogan teams with Abyss to take on AJ Styles and Flair. TNA is going to run three hours of programming on March 15. Their TNA Epics series will air at 7pm running an hour before Impact goes on the air. In case you didn't know, Stone Cold Steve Austin will be the guest host on that night on Raw. So, it looks like TNA is looking at pulling some viewers in before Impact goes on the air.
Tonight’s WWE Raw was the last Raw to go unopposed. Shawn Michaels opened the show talking about the buzz in the locker room of his peers feeling that he couldn’t end the streak and how he was crazy for putting his career on the line. Shawn called out anyone that felt that he couldn’t beat Taker so they could tell it to his face. Triple H walked out and Shawn was surprised asking him if he really didn’t think that he could beat him. Triple H replied that he knew Shawn could beat Undertaker saying that Shawn is the best that he had ever been in the ring with. He wanted to reunite DX for the night so they could win the tag titles back despite being on separate paths. Triple H’s point was that they wouldn’t have to defend the titles for 30 days. 28 days would be the night after WrestleMania. The tag title win tonight would be a vote of confidence and part of the celebration that they would have the night after WrestleMania on Raw. Shawn accepted and the story of that first segment was Triple H pumping up Shawn. So, the main event takes place with DX against ShoMiz. Shawn lays out Show with a superkick. Triple H and Show both make tags. Shawn and Miz go at it and Shawn is on a major roll. He starts to tune up the band in the corner and then Undertaker appears on the screen. Just a staring look. It distracts Shawn and then Taker rolls his eyes. Shawn turns to Miz looking for the kick but Miz rolls him up for the win. Shawn again looks completely focused about Taker. Triple H looks frustrated and goes over to Shawn and puts his hand on his shoulder. Shawn yells for him to not touch him and walks out. Sheamus then enters the ring and attacks Triple H. He ends up giving Triple H the kick over the announce table. The show ends with Sheamus standing on the table looking at the fallen Triple H. We also had the farewell to Bret Hart segment tonight. Vince arrived first and then introduced Bret who had his leg in a cast and was walking on one crutch. Vince started the segment saying great things about Bret. Bret fired back at Vince saying that ever since he had come back that Vince had treated him like garbage. Vince then went on to say that he had lied again and that this wasn’t a grand farewell. Vince talked of Bret’s challenge for WrestleMania trying to get Bret to follow through on it. Vince continued to talk of all the bad things he had done to Bret to get him fired up. Bret had a good line as a comeback saying “I can’t wrestle. I have a broken leg, idiot”. Vince continued to fire saying that Bret was a coward and had no heart. Vince then kicked Bret’s crutch out from under him and Bret crashed to the mat. Vince left the ring continuing to call Bret a coward. Bret then got up and said that the match was on for WrestleMania. Another interview segment to hype another WrestleMania match which was between John Cena and Batista. Cena talked of how he had moved on from the PPV saying that what Batista did was business to further himself. The next night on Raw was personal and he wanted to know why. Batista arrived with security guards to which he said was to protect Cena. Batista talked of how they were the two biggest stars since the attitude era and that he was mad that the torch from Austin got passed to Cena instead of him. He said that the attack last week was just because he wanted to beat him up and because he wanted to show that he was better. Cena talked of how he had given his life to this business and worked harder than anyone while adding that Batista wanted everything given to him. Cena was shocked that Batista cared enough about some invisible torch. Batista said that he was in WWE to win titles and make money while Cena was there to please the people and kiss babies. Batista then mentioned Cena’s broken neck in one of their encounters while adding that Cena knew deep down that he couldn’t beat him. The segment ended with that as Cena looked intently at Batista as Batista walked off. Two Money In The Bank qualifying matches were held. Both squash matches. Jack Swagger squashed Santino. MVP squashed Zack Ryder. Randy Orton took on Ted Dibiase. The finish had Cody jumping up on the apron as Orton was going for the RKO. Orton took a swing at him but Cody avoided it. As Orton went back to Dibiase, Cody attacked Orton causing the DQ. The doubleteam was on but then Orton fought back. Orton dropkicked Dibiase out of the ring and then the backbreaker on Cody. As he was about to hit the DDT on Cody, Dibiase pulled Cody out of there. Cheech and Chong were the guest hosts. Fairly pointless segments. They had the running joke of the magical Lucky Charms all night as Hornswoggle brought them cereal. It caused them to hallucinate. Yep, PG rating here people. LOL. They booked a pajama pillow fight with the divas. PG. Kelly, Eve, Gail, Maryse, Jillian, and Alicia. Eve pinned Alicia.
Other notes from Raw. Wow, I just realized how little wrestling there was on this show after I recapped it. The talking segments were fine. I thought the opening segment was the best of the three with Shawn and Triple H. Seeing Bret with the cast and the crutch reminded me of early 1997 with the Hart Foundation against Austin. Geez, Dibiase and Rhodes can’t even beat up Orton two on one. WWE is really doing those guys no favors at all. It’s really hard to take them seriously when they get beat up EVERY week. They have to get an advantage sometime to make this feud believable. Batista said that he and Cena were the top two stars since the attitude era. Oh, there are so many jokes that I could say to Batista’s name. LOL. Squash matches for MITB qualifiers? Really? I laughed at Lawler saying that Swagger had home field advantage there in Oklahoma City to make him get the win. Come on, it’s Santino!! LOL. Watching that pillow fight, I just had to think how far that Gail Kim has fallen. She was on top there at TNA and now she barely gets to win. I forgot to mention this last week but all the DX related stuff in the Raw open has been removed and replaced with other superstars. That Shawn/Undertaker WrestleMania promo commercial set to Johnny Cash was really good. It can’t top that amazing video package from last week though. Cheech and Chong, PJ pillow fights with the divas on a PG rated show. What does it say that I didn’t even realize that one half of Cheech and Chong was on Lost until he made that finale reference tonight? LOL. I did not even know that was him but knew he looked familiar.
It was announced that Mad Dog Vachon will go into the Hall Of Fame this year and will be inducted by Pat Patterson.
Next week’s Raw will have Criss Angel as the guest host. John Cena will take on Vince McMahon. Vince set that match up on his way out as he left Bret tonight. Randy Orton will take on Rhodes and Dibiase in a handicap match. That will go up against TNA Impact’s live show with Hogan and Abyss taking on AJ and Flair.
Maria did a XM Radio interview over the weekend talking about her release. She seemed to hint that she thought that her release was due to WWE’s concern over her job interests outside of the company and that they wanted control of it. She did say there were things that WWE wanted her to do that she didn’t and the other way around. She was in negotiations with the company over dealing with her outside interests. She made sure to say again that she did not ask for her release. I still say that this was a big mistake by WWE to let her go. One of the divas that stands out from the others and you let her go. Just makes no sense to me but it is WWE.
I watched the premiere of WWE NXT last week and I’ve got to say that I enjoyed it. The show has a fun concept to it and it’s just a matter of whether WWE sticks to it. They made a star out of Bryan Danielson in one night. That was the big attention getter for me going into the show to see how they used him. His name is Daniel Bryan on there which is going to take some getting used to but I thought they did a great job with him. The show opened with him and The Miz talking in the ring. Basically, Bryan had to cut a promo in the ring and then Miz interrupted him. The two had a nice exchange which resulted in The Miz slapping him with Bryan promising that he would pay him back sometime. The first match had Carlito and Michael Tarver taking on Christian and Heath Slater. First impressions on Heath Slater is that he has potential. I think he could be a much better heel than a face. Yeah, the dance is annoying which could really work to his advantage as a heel. It reminds me of the Brian Kendrick dance from recent years. Slater helped Christian on offense which led to Christian pinning Carlito with the killswitch. I loved the CM Punk promo where he just basically was saying I don’t want to be here and want nothing to do it. I cracked up at it. Darren Young was paired up with Punk. Young is basically a party guy and it is completely opposite of Punk’s gimmick. We had a one on one match with Young taking on David Otunga who is the fiancée of Jennifer Hudson. Otunga was accompanied by his pro, R Truth. Otunga won a quick match against Young with Punk and his crew walking off not caring. LOL. Next was a match that I was very much looking forward to and that was Bryan getting in the ring with the new World champion, Chris Jericho. My thinking was that they needed to make Bryan look good but not make the champ look bad either. They accomplished it. Jericho was accompanied by his rookie, Wade Barrett. Funny moment when Jericho had him introduce him but Barrett went on too long. Jericho told him that he just wanted him to introduce him. Miz was at ringside for this match as well. Really fun match between the two. The nasty spot that everyone is talking about is Bryan diving out of the ring on to Jericho. Jericho caught him and swung him rib first into the announce table. It looked nasty. Bryan got a lot of good offense on Jericho where he had Jericho in trouble for a bit. Jericho did end up winning with the liontamer. That was not a walls of Jericho. That was an old school liontamer with the knee to back of the head. After the match, Miz got in and attacked Bryan. That is the recap of the episode and now into my thoughts. Like I said, I thought they made Bryan look great in that match with Jericho where they showed the potential of what he could be. I’m just hoping that they eventually turn him loose with what we’ve seen from him in Ring Of Honor. I like the idea of having matches where you have the rookies against each other but also having matches that include the pros and rookies teaming together. Good way to balance the talent out and make the fans get into the match. WWE did some very good promo packages on the rookies to give us a background on them. I liked the change of look with as far as how they shoot the matches. They used the crane cam to get close ups on the action in the ring. Something very different as far as style of WWE production. Michael Cole was definitely getting on everyone’s nerves with his comments on Bryan with how he had never competed anywhere including TV. I guess PPV doesn’t count as TV? LOL. The Cole thing is definitely storyline with his heel comments based on how WWE is playing it up on the website including them pulling his WWE Universe profile because he doesn’t want to associate himself with internet fans. Josh Mathews going back at him was fun TV though. It is going to be Mathews pushing the young guys while Cole is against them.
I watched the Monday Night Wars episode currently airing on WWE Classics On Demand which is from February 1996. I really enjoyed watching it and reliving a lot of this stuff. That month of WCW programing was one of my favorite months of the early Monday Nitro episodes with the build to SuperBrawl VI. The focus was around Hogan's upcoming match with The Giant in the cage along with Savage defending the title against Flair in a different cage match. This Nitro episode started off hot with the attack by Flair and Anderson on Savage. Hogan made the save but was then attacked by Flair who returned to continue the attack. Funny to watch Savage question Elizabeth, who had just returned, on why she didn't alert Hogan better that Flair was behind him. If you remember, Elizabeth turned heel at SuperBrawl turning on Savage and joining up with Flair. I was blindsided by the turn at the time cause who would have seen that coming??!! This Nitro also featured the Road Warriors continued return to the company as they took on Sting and Luger. Brian Pillman was really getting rolling on his loose cannon character. Over on Raw, there was a fun Shawn Michaels and Diesel match with them against Yokozuna and The British Bulldog. Yokozuna ended up getting superkicked out of the ring by Shawn causing his team to be counted out. This led to Cornette blaming Yokozuna for the loss and then him turning face and going nuts on his team. The main event of the show was a Bret Hart/Undertaker match. This was back during the Bret/Undertaker/Diesel triangle feud. I enjoyed it at the time and still enjoyed watching it over the weekend. Diesel gets involved and attacks everyone. He was of course getting the title match at the upcoming In Your House PPV in a cage. Undertaker would get the payback coming up through the ring to cost Diesel the title. This was a very fun episode of the Monday Night Wars to watch. It brought back so many great memories as I liked what both companies were doing at the time. It doesn’t even seem that long ago that I was sitting there and watching these original broadcasts.
I’ll be back next week as we go back into the Monday Night Wars round two. I’ll be covering both Raw and Impact. It will be fun to have competition again every week. Take care and God bless!!
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