Welcome to the "we got got by Little Jimmy's fan voting" edition of The Wrestling List. Wow, some of those voting results just made me scratch my head last night. I think I only predicted one of those things. Some of them even seemed easy on what the majority of fans would pick.
Let's get right into last night's three hour "power to the people" edition of Raw. There were bizarre picks and booking going on. The booking one really left me thinking what in the world but I'll get there. Fans were able to vote by text on opponents and stipulations throughout the night. The only one that I got right on predicting was Kelly Kelly being picked as the opponent in the Divas title match. I wanted Beth Phoenix but I knew Kelly would get the pick. I like Kelly and congrats to her on winning the Divas title last night. I was surprised to see Eve as such a distant third in the voting. I'm assuming her recent kind of heelish actions played a role in that? Then, I knew things were about to go off the rails when we got to the next pick which was an opponent for Evan Bourne. The picks were between Jack Swagger, Mason Ryah, and Sin Cara. I'm thinking how it will be great to get a battle between the high flyers with Bourne and Cara. Cara is way over with the crowd and he'll get the vote especially with him being the only babyface as well. Wrong. Ryan gets the pick and beats Bourne. Just bizarre. He also won by 51% of the vote to Cara's 30% and Swagger's 19%. Next is Kane and Mark Henry with the fans picking the stipulation. The winner is an arm wrestling match getting 52% of the vote. What was kind of telling to me at this moment was the crowd in Baltimore all groaning at this result. Now, I kind of used that as a barometer on what fans were going to pick. It just didn't add up with that reaction and what the audience picked at home. Fans were chanting during this one and not good things. This crowd also chanted "Batista" at Mason Ryan which was pretty funny too. The next crowd pick shocked me pick wise and booking wise. Dolph Zigger and Kofi Kingston for the U.S. title. Choices are 2 out of 3 falls, submission match, or a Vickie is banned from ringside match. The fans can't stand Vickie and the logical prediction is that it will be the win. Wrong again. 2 out of 3 falls wins by a large margin! Couldn't believe it. I'm not disappointed though with the pick though. I was disappointed to see them come back from commercial and realize we had missed the first fall. We go into the third fall tied. This is where the booking makes no sense to me. The two end up on the floor battling it out. The announcers start rambling about how if the match ends in a countout that the belt won't change hands. Umm, why??!! That is the rule in a one fall match but this is a two out of three fall match. Kofi gets hit by the mic by Dolph which gets the DQ. Kofi wins by DQ. No title changes hands. Why? Yes, there was a DQ finish in the third fall which would normally make the title change hands. However, we're counting falls here. Kofi won two out of three falls which should make him U.S. champion. Booking didn't make any sense there. CM Punk was put in a triple threat match against Rey Mysterio and Albert Del Rio after Punk's standoff to open the show against the Raw General Manager. The winner of the stipulation was a falls count anywhere match. I didn't have any opinion on that one and there didn't seem to be a clear favorite there. Punk gets the win in sneaky heel fashion which I loved. Afterwards, Punk announced that his contract is up at the Money In The Bank PPV and that he is leaving. He plans on winning the title and taking it with him. This plays off of the rumor that we've been hearing for a while now that Punk was leaving the company. I'll speak more about this in a moment. Daniel Bryan defeated Cody Rhodes in a no count out match. I thought the fans would vote for the sillier gimmick with the bag match. Dibiase came out afterwards and he and Cody doubleteamed Bryan. Next was the dance competition. Name Vickie Guerrero's dance opponent which was Michael Cole. Ok, I expected that one with the choices being Cole, Lawler, or Booker T. The main event had a six man tag with Cena, Riley, and Orton taking on Miz, Truth, and Christian. The winning stipulation was an elimination match. It came down to Truth, Christian, Cena, and Orton. Truth was pinned following a RKO. Christian then hit a spear on to Orton and eliminated him. It came down to Cena and Christian and I knew immediately how this match was going to end. Orton hits Christian with a RKO which sets him right up for Cena. Cena finishes off Christian and stands tall at the end of Raw again. Just seen this way too many times.
Other notes from Raw. WWE has just released this news as I have been typing this. WWE has apologized for a "technical issue" with the Mason Ryan vote. They said that a "voting backlog" from the previous vote of Kelly Kelly carried over to Ryan. That explains the vote there. I still want to know the reason for some of the rest of the voting. LOL. Two lines of the night were Punk's I'm going to make snow angels over here until you name me number one contender and then Truth's I got got by Little Jimmy line. Loved both of those lines.
Curious to see how this all plays out with CM Punk. Interesting twist with Punk saying he is leaving and taking the title. That is going to be a great crowd environment. Why do I say that? Well, the PPV is being held in Chicago. This is the hometown of CM Punk who always gets a big reaction there. Chicago is also a very anti-Cena town. They have booed him bad for MANY years now. Add those two together and the crowd should take that match to another level. I'm looking forward to it.
Shane McMahon did an interview with the Los Angeles Times talking about leaving WWE. Shane did say that there was still tension between the two of them over his exit from the company. You can read the interview here: http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/entertainmentnewsbuzz/2011/06/shane-mcmahon-is-his-own-man.html
Paul Heyman recently did an interview with 1130AM The Fan where he spoke about what his plans were for TNA. It was definitely an interesting look at what could happen. First, he said that Dixie Carter was absolutely somebody that was so extremely nice and had trouble firing anybody. Just goes to show that he is very loyal. That actually was one thing that worked against Heyman coming in. Heyman's plan was to build the company against all the young talent. His big push was to get rid of all the legends. Well, not all the legends. Leave one legend around. Let him be the standout personality with all the young guys. That way all the focus is on the young talent and the one legend that they do have gets to stand out instead of having twenty legends all in the same company that all feel the same. He had other ideas as well including music but it really makes you wonder what things would be like now in the company. He did say that he was not going to take it over with what was being talked about. He thought it was doomed to fail from the start and was not about to jump into something that he didn't feel could be successful. I'm not a fan of what the company is right now and that bums me out. I want to be a fan. I say that over and over. Here is the link to the interview:
With me making that last statement, there is a bit of interest with the build to the Destination X PPV. Talent from the past is being brought back to build around the focus of the X-Division style of the show. This may be a SPOILER ALERT cause I don't know if this has been announced on TV yet. So, if you don't want to know the main event, skip the rest of this paragraph. Ok, you've been warned. The main event is going to be a rematch of what many people consider to be the greatest match in the history of the company and that is AJ Styles vs. Samoa Joe vs. Christopher Daniels. So, that is a good start for the show. Several talent is showing back up including Austin Aries, Jimmy Rave, and Kid Kash who had a match on last week's Impact.
TNA has released Desmond Wolfe or as you may know him, Nigel McGuinness. No word on why he has been released but there are rumors. No idea though and a bummer to see him gone from the company.
One thing that I like that WWE Classics On Demand is doing now is that they have a Rewind section. Basically, it is a section for repeat programming on the service. For me, it is good cause they show some stuff that was shown before I had access to the service. An example is the fact that they've started airing the TNT shows from the beginning again. When I finally had the service, they were probably a year into it time wise on the shows so I missed the first year of the TNT shows. I've enjoyed a lot of it especially the Adrian Adonis/Dick Murdoch on location stuff which has been funny. If you missed any of the early roundtable shows, those are being aired in that section as well. Thankfully, I have seen all of those.
That is all for today. Wishing all of you a great rest of the week!! Take care and God bless!!
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