Welcome to the “Shockmaster lives” edition of The Wrestling List.
Tonight’s Raw from Detroit had Dusty Rhodes as the “guest host”. I really liked the swerve that we got at the end of this show. It didn’t happen like I expected so I’ll set it up. Dusty opened the show by announcing that he had set a main event match of Cody Rhodes challenging Randy Orton for the WWE title. He announced that he would be in Cody’s corner while John Cena would be the special referee. Orton made his way to the ring and confronted Dusty. He ended up threatening to kick Dusty once again just like two years ago. Cody made his way to the ring giving credit to his dad. Orton questioned Dusty on why he would even think that Cody would want the match. Cody said that this was a golden opportunity and he couldn’t pass it up. Cody stayed loyal to Orton but just wouldn’t pass on this match. Orton said that with all the stipulations on the match that it looked like that the fix was in to which Dusty flat out said that the fix was in on it. So, the match is set to take place. Cena starts getting ready to ref. Dusty gets on the mic and reminds us of what he said earlier with him saying that he would do anything for his son. He adds by saying “sorry John”. Orton and Cody jump on Cena and attack him. Dibiase runs in and gets involved as well. DX then runs out to make the save. They are on offense until Triple H goes for a pedigree. Dusty takes his boot off and nails Triple H with it. The beating continues from Legacy as they leave DX and Cena laying on the mat. Dusty raises the arms of all of Legacy. Then, Orton RKO’s Dusty. He turns his back on Cody while Cody is standing there fuming over what just happened. Cody restrains himself while Orton just stands there. Really cool finish to the show. My guess was that Cody and Orton would join forces and not wrestle but I didn’t expect Dusty to be a part of it. I thought it would be a deal where Cody would pull one over on his dad. In other action on Raw. Chris Jericho defeated MVP with the codebreaker. Big Show and Mark Henry had a match with Big Show being DQ’d for pulling the turnbuckle pad off of the turnbuckle. Show rammed Henry into the buckle and then landed the knockout punch. Kofi Kingston retained the US title by winning the fatal four way against Miz, Swagger, and Carlito. Finishers were hitting big time at the end of the match but Kofi hit the last one and pinned Carlito. A six diva battle royal was held to decide who would face Mickie James for the Divas championship later in the night. It was between Beth Phoenix, Rosa Mendes, Alicia Fox, Gail Kim, Kelly Kelly, and Jillian Hall. Beth ended up staying on the apron for the end of the match. Gail and Jillian went at it with Jillian being eliminated. Then, Beth got back in there and kicked Gail off the apron to the floor to win the match. Mickie defended the title against Beth later on in the show. I liked the story of this match where it really looked like that Beth was set to win the title. Mickie had her shoulder destroyed through the match. It looked like Mickie had no chance. She countered Beth’s move into a DDT to get the win. Nice booking of a champion overcoming adversity to win the match. As a Mickie fan, I was also concerned that they were taking the belt off of her. Hornswoggle and Chavo wrestled AGAIN. This time in a Texas bullrope match. Please make this stop. Please!! Finish had Evan Bourne distracting Chavo which led to Hornswoggle getting the advantage. Hornswoggle tied up Chavo (Chavo also wore a cowsuit by the way) to win the match. Chavo attacked Bourne after the match but Chavo ended up on the receiving end of a tadpole splash from Hornswoggle set up by Bourne.
Other notes from Raw. The DX stuff with them watching the WCW DVD with Dusty was pretty funny. Didn’t you just love having to relive the “fingerpoke of doom” again with Nash and Hogan? Ugh. That very well may have been the main start of the downfall of WCW. Don’t forget that the lame finish to that WCW Monday Nitro show was countered by WWF programming of Mick Foley winning the WWF title against The Rock. Interesting that they brought up Shawn starting the attitude of the attitude era but then had to sit at home. I have always talked about that with how important Shawn was to the turn of the style of WWF at the time but then after all he did, he didn’t get to enjoy the boom of the business afterwards due to his injury. I never have felt that he has gotten the credit for helping to lay the groundwork for the attitude era. With the mention of The Shockmaster, how many people that somehow haven’t seen it went to You Tube to see what all the talk was about it? I did laugh at the reenactment of it tonight. That is one of those stories that will live forever in wrestling history of that night on the Clash Of The Champions. So, what was the point of Alicia pinning Mickie James last week when she is the second out of the battle royal this week? Nice to see the Mickie James/Beth Phoenix rivalary renewed. I’ve really enjoyed their matches over the last couple of years. Wow, this Hornswoggle/Chavo series is like a visit to the dentist that never ends. The final straw for me with Michael Cole was him saying “what a moooooooove” tonight when Hornswoggle landed the splash with the cowsuit head on. Please make it stop. This has to stop. Sometime. Right? Right??!!
Bob Barker will be the guest host next week on Raw.
The Air Canada Center website is saying that Trish Stratus will be the host on September 14. Hoping that is true!! Definitely pumped to see Trish back on Raw again!!
Chris Jericho recently spoke to the Baltimore Sun about how WWE is not doing a good job building new stars. Really good comments and here they are: "We’re in a crisis period in WWE and we need to build new guys. When Shawn Michaels came back to Raw, he said, “Whose been built since I left?” On Smackdown we’ve built [John] Morrison and [Dolph] Ziggler and Cryme Tyme. The Intercontinental title has been rebuilt now with Rey Mysterio. But I can’t tell you on Raw who has been built over the last six months. They better do it soon, because when this generation of performers is gone, who will replace them?" http://weblogs.baltimoresun.com/sports/wrestling/blog/2009/08/qa_with_chris_jericho_2.html There have been other stars saying similar things to the media lately including The Miz saying how Punk vs. Hardy in the main event was a breath of fresh air instead of seeing the same five guys main eventing shows.
There was a 15 Divas Battle Royal that took place before the SummerSlam PPV. It appears that it will be an extra on the DVD when it is released.
Well, I was thankful to get the phone call on Saturday night saying that WPSD had preempted the WrestleMania NBC special. They instead decided to run a Tennessee Titans preseason game and ran the special at 1:30 in the morning. So, I adjusted and got the special recorded. Amazingly produced as expected. The segment that closed the show was fittingly enough, Shawn vs. Undertaker. What a video package they put together for that match. Even the video package that they did before it was incredible showing the buildup to the match. I will never forget watching that match. I still say that it is one of the best matches that I have ever seen in my life. I am very careful with that statement all the time so the fact that I am using it means a lot. I thought that as the match kept going. So many false finishes where you just thought this has to be the finish. Then, it would just keep going. The crowd was just eating it up. The special did a great job of capturing the emotion of that match. They did a very cool segment on Austin’s appearance at WrestleMania including superstars talking about Austin’s career and mixing in Hall Of Fame ceremony footage. Really well done!! There were a lot of songs used on that special that I was unfamiliar with but loved with the video packages. I’ve since downloaded several of them.
Big Show, Ted Dibiase, Cody Rhodes, and The Great Khali had a short comedy segment on The Tonight Show With Conan O’Brien last week. It was an all right segment which basically had Show and Khali destroying Cody and Dibiase.
WWE will be releasing another Hulk Hogan DVD set later this year. They are pushing that the set will include matches never before released on DVD. I’m very interested to see the match lineup for this set. It will be nice to see matches put on this set that aren’t as common such as PPV matches. I’m excited about it. Like I said, I want to see the lineup.
Here is the preview for WWE 24/7 Classics On Demand for September. The theme for the month is Stone Cold September. Yep, the month will focus on Stone Cold Steve Austin. Lots of Stone Cold programming to be had including: Clash Of The Champions 23 which is headlined by The Hollywood Blondes against Ric Flair and Arn Anderson; SummerSlam 1998 with Austin defending the WWF title against The Undertaker. The 2009 Hall Of Fame ceremony will be airing including bonus footage. Happy about that as I didn’t get the WrestleMania DVD as I was specifically waiting for the Hall Of Fame to air On Demand. Shorties for the month will also revolve around Austin moments over his career. TV Classics airing include: NWA (January 1987), ECW (November 1996), World Class (August 1983), Prime Time Wrestling (April-May 1988), Monday Night Wars (January 1998), Monday Night Wars: The Beginning (November 1995), Mid-Atlantic (January 1982). Old School house shows airing include MSG (September 29, 1988) and the Meadowlands (October 14, 1984). The Greatest Superstars of the 90’s DVD will be airing in September. The WWE Judgment Day 2009 PPV will air as well. The Hall Of Fame profile will be on Bret Hart including a program and lots of matches. Also airing will be the winner of the fan voting between In Your House: Revenge Of The Taker, WWF St. Valentine’s Day Massacre 1999, and WrestleMania XIX. If I had to pick, I’d vote for St. Valentine’s Day Massacre which featured the Austin/McMahon cage match from Memphis, TN.
That is it for this week. Nice to be back into the normal writing routine this week. Wishing you a great week. Take care and God bless!!
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Monday, August 31, 2009
Friday, August 28, 2009
SummerSlam Results, Raw & Smackdown Thoughts, & More - August 28, 2009
Welcome to the “better late than never” edition of The Wrestling List.
Big news out of WWE this week. Rey Mysterio has been suspended for 30 days for violating the WWE wellness policy. Look for him to probably drop the Intercontinental title next week. I’ve been talking about this for a while but the talk has been if Jeff Hardy would be sticking around with WWE. The answer is no. If you watched Smackdown, you saw him written off of TV. Jeff’s contract is up and that was his last scheduled date. He is gone from WWE as he is wanting time off to do other things.
SummerSlam was this past Sunday night and here are the results. Rey Mysterio defeated Dolph Ziggler to retain the Intercontinental title. MVP defeated Jack Swagger after pinning him with the playmaker. Chris Jericho and Big Show retained the Unified tag team titles by defeating Cryme Tyme. Jericho had the walls of Jericho on when JTG got to the ropes to break it. Show then punched out JTG from the floor allowing Jericho to get the pin. Kane defeated The Great Khali following a DDT to get the pinfall. The DX reunion was next as Shawn Michaels and Triple H took on Cody Rhodes and Ted Dibiase. DX arrived on a tank that shot out pyro from the cannon. Shawn got the win for DX when he landed a superkick on to Cody for the win. Christian retained the ECW title in a very quick match when he hit the killswitch on William Regal as Regal was still getting his robe off. Regal, Ezekiel, and Kozlov then attacked Christian after the match. John Cena and Randy Orton’s WWE title match was restarted several times due to various incidents. The finish had Cena with the STF on Orton. Just as Orton was about to tap out, a “fan” jumped in the ring stopping the count. The “fan” was dragged out by officials. Orton went to the floor and as Cena approached him, Orton nailed him on the top rope followed by a RKO for the win. The main event was the TLC match for the World title. Nasty match as expected. CM Punk won the match and won the World title. Punk was then standing over Hardy. The bell tolled and the lights went out. When the lights came back on, Undertaker was laying where Punk had been. Undertaker grabbed Punk by the throat and chokeslammed him. Undertaker then stood over Punk. Very cool way to bring back the Undertaker.
Raw opened up on Monday with Vince McMahon announcing that there would be a rematch between John Cena and Randy Orton at Breaking Point due to the controversy at SummerSlam. Breaking Point is an all submission match PPV. It will be an I Quit match and if anyone interferes on Orton’s behalf, Orton will be stripped of the championship. DX then arrived on the scene saying how they didn’t like the new “good guy” Vince McMahon with them pointing out that it is creepy. They then point out what is going on and that it is Vince’s birthday. Here comes the jokes of guessing how old that Vince is which was funny as they started at 84. Triple H would say how old and then Shawn would whisper that he was wrong. That was funny. DX then runs a tribute video which starts nice enough and then they go into Stand Back. Now, you knew that was coming!! Then, it goes into embarrassing Vince moments. What followed was DX bringing out various people including showgirls, Cirque du soleil, Elvis, and then a birthday cake. Raw was in Las Vegas by the way. Opening up out of the cake was a dancing Dick Johnson. Ugh. Please make this stop with him. Vince dumps him out of the ring. DX then sets him up for another thing but then Rhodes and Dibiase attack. Orton watches from the ramp. A match is set up with DX teaming with Vince against Legacy in a no DQ match. Randy Orton spoke later and revealed that the “fan” that helped him at SummerSlam was Brett Dibiase, which is the brother of Ted Dibiase Jr. The main event took place and DX was set to win. Orton went for the punt on Vince but Shawn tackled him to stop it. Orton bailed out and went up the aisle. Cena’s music hit and he threw Orton back to DX. Shawn hit the superkick and then Cena hit the adjustment. Vince then made the pin on Orton. In other action on Raw. Big Show and Jericho arrived on the scene and Show called out the Raw “guest host” for the night, Floyd Mayweather. Show said that they had some unfinished business. Mayweather and his crew arrived with Mayweather standing up to Show. Mayweather said that he would take him out again but that he wasn’t going to due to him having an upcoming boxing fight. Jericho stepped in and ripped on Mayweather as well. MVP arrived and stood up for Mayweather and challenged them to a match if he could find a partner. He asked Mayweather if him and a partner could beat them tonight on whether they could get a title shot at Breaking Point. Mayweather agreed. Mark Henry arrives and is MVP’s partner. Mayweather stayed at ringside to watch the match. Henry knocked Show from the ring. Mayweather gave MVP some of his jewelry and MVP used it to knock out Jericho for the win. MVP and Henry will get a tag team title shot at Breaking Point. The team of Beth Phoenix, Rosa Mendes, and Alicia Fox won the Mayweather melee match against Mickie James, Kelly Kelly, and Gail Kim. Alicia posted Mickie and then Alicia scored a scissor kick for the win on Mickie. Umm, ok??? The Miz defeated Santino Marella with Miz still targeting the U.S. title. Another Chavo/Hornswoggle match. This time it was a boxing match. Chavo ended up bodyslamming Hornswoggle for the DQ. Evan Bourne then ran out and attacked Chavo to make the save. He then hit the Air Bourne on Chavo.
Other notes from Raw. I am yet to understand the logic of booking a finish of having Vince McMahon pinning the WWE champion Randy Orton. Ok, you have to love live TV. Shawn and Triple H screaming over the noise in the background with their backstage promo was hilarious. You have to know that somebody got chewed out for that happening. I really got a laugh out of DX making fun of Vince’s age and then the crowd started chanting the number as well. You just know that WWE loves using that Stand Back footage from the 1987 Slammy Awards. I did laugh at Triple H firing up Vince and then Carlito getting knocked out. Ok, the fake laughing at the commentary table has to stop. I really like the new Jericho theme music. It just needed some updating for a while now. I still laugh at Jericho’s lines where he follows Big Show’s tough comment such as him saying “yeah, and I’m not leaving either”. LOL. Why is Alicia Fox getting a clean win on the Divas champion, Mickie James??!! Are they getting ready to push her for some reason? Just a bizarre finish to that match.
Smackdown opened with CM Punk bragging on his win on Hardy at SummerSlam. Jeff eventually walked out and did some talking back at Punk saying that he would beat him for the title in tonight’s steel cage match. Punk offered to up the stakes challenging Hardy to make the loser leave WWE. Hardy accepted and the match was on when Theodore Long arrived to make it official. Later, Matt Hardy was shown backstage talking to Jeff saying that he respected Jeff for being a gambler but respected him bottom line overall. The cage match took place. Jeff was attacked from behind by Punk as he walked to the ring. The match was a really good one. The finish had Jeff and Punk battling on top of the cage. Punk nailed Hardy into the cage and then Hardy crashed on to the ropes in the ring. Punk then drops to the floor and retains the title. Hardy’s loss means he is gone from WWE and that was how WWE wrote him off of TV. Hardy got a big ovation and “thank you Jeff” chants. He got on the mic apologizing if he let any of his fans down. He added that this isn’t goodbye forever but goodbye for now saying that if the time is right, you’ll see him again. Jeff pointed out that there is still a Hardy on the show mentioning Matt and then gave a last salute to the fans. Lots of people crying in the crowd. Jeff walked out and gave one last wave on the ramp. Punk then ran back out and nailed Jeff in the head with the belt from behind. Punk then stood over Hardy on the stage. Long also said earlier in the night that the winner would defend against The Undertaker at Breaking Point so that will now be Punk. In other action, Matt Hardy and John Morrison defeated The Hart Dynasty when Morrison pinned Smith with the starship pain. Rey Mysterio and Kane fought to a DQ when Kane was DQ’d for ramming Rey into the post repeatedly despite the ref’s warnings. Khali then arrived and dumped Kane out of the ring. Singh hit Kane with a kendo stick and then Khali continued the attack. Jericho took on Shad with JTG and Big Show at ringside. Show got involved and then Cryme Tyme both fought off Show on the floor. Long then walked out making it a tag team match. The finish had Shad taking a knockout punch from Show leading to the pin for Show and Jericho. Michelle McCool was on crutches saying that Melina’s attack last week left her unable to compete tonight. Her replacement against Melina was Layla. Melina won the match and then went outside and shoved Michelle over a ringside chair. Melina was shown backstage talking to Maria who said that she had seen Ziggler with another woman after SummerSlam. Maria said that Melina was jealous that she had a boyfriend but Maria did question Ziggler on it. He claimed that it was his sister. Drew McIntyre was set to take on R Truth but attacked Truth upon entering the ring. He put a beating on him and the match never happened.
DirecTV was having some feed problems during SummerSlam. It appeared to be a system wide problem.
The WWE WrestleMania special airs on NBC tomorrow night at 8pm central time. It will be a highlight type produced special showing WrestleMania matches set to music at times. I watched the one from last year and it was excellently produced. If you haven’t seen Shawn and Undertaker from WrestleMania, you really need to watch this special. I don’t use this comment lightly ever but that match was one of the best matches that I’ve ever seen in my life. Can’t wait to see what they do with it highlight wise.
Other major news from the wrestling world is that Brian Danielson is leaving Ring Of Honor and has signed with WWE. WOW!! That is huge news. It will be interesting to see what WWE does with Danielson. Danielson is an incredible in ring worker for sure. ROH is planning a farewell for him.
TNA has signed a new three year deal with Spike TV. The deal also includes a new original series of one hour specials.
The Rise and Fall of WCW DVD has been released. There has been a lot of talk about it so far. I have picked it up and plan on doing a recap on it. I will be VERY interested to see what kind of spin this documentary has on it. Hopefully, it has a more realistic spin than the Monday Night Wars DVD.
That is it for this Friday night edition of the List. Have a great weekend!! Take care and God bless!!
Big news out of WWE this week. Rey Mysterio has been suspended for 30 days for violating the WWE wellness policy. Look for him to probably drop the Intercontinental title next week. I’ve been talking about this for a while but the talk has been if Jeff Hardy would be sticking around with WWE. The answer is no. If you watched Smackdown, you saw him written off of TV. Jeff’s contract is up and that was his last scheduled date. He is gone from WWE as he is wanting time off to do other things.
SummerSlam was this past Sunday night and here are the results. Rey Mysterio defeated Dolph Ziggler to retain the Intercontinental title. MVP defeated Jack Swagger after pinning him with the playmaker. Chris Jericho and Big Show retained the Unified tag team titles by defeating Cryme Tyme. Jericho had the walls of Jericho on when JTG got to the ropes to break it. Show then punched out JTG from the floor allowing Jericho to get the pin. Kane defeated The Great Khali following a DDT to get the pinfall. The DX reunion was next as Shawn Michaels and Triple H took on Cody Rhodes and Ted Dibiase. DX arrived on a tank that shot out pyro from the cannon. Shawn got the win for DX when he landed a superkick on to Cody for the win. Christian retained the ECW title in a very quick match when he hit the killswitch on William Regal as Regal was still getting his robe off. Regal, Ezekiel, and Kozlov then attacked Christian after the match. John Cena and Randy Orton’s WWE title match was restarted several times due to various incidents. The finish had Cena with the STF on Orton. Just as Orton was about to tap out, a “fan” jumped in the ring stopping the count. The “fan” was dragged out by officials. Orton went to the floor and as Cena approached him, Orton nailed him on the top rope followed by a RKO for the win. The main event was the TLC match for the World title. Nasty match as expected. CM Punk won the match and won the World title. Punk was then standing over Hardy. The bell tolled and the lights went out. When the lights came back on, Undertaker was laying where Punk had been. Undertaker grabbed Punk by the throat and chokeslammed him. Undertaker then stood over Punk. Very cool way to bring back the Undertaker.
Raw opened up on Monday with Vince McMahon announcing that there would be a rematch between John Cena and Randy Orton at Breaking Point due to the controversy at SummerSlam. Breaking Point is an all submission match PPV. It will be an I Quit match and if anyone interferes on Orton’s behalf, Orton will be stripped of the championship. DX then arrived on the scene saying how they didn’t like the new “good guy” Vince McMahon with them pointing out that it is creepy. They then point out what is going on and that it is Vince’s birthday. Here comes the jokes of guessing how old that Vince is which was funny as they started at 84. Triple H would say how old and then Shawn would whisper that he was wrong. That was funny. DX then runs a tribute video which starts nice enough and then they go into Stand Back. Now, you knew that was coming!! Then, it goes into embarrassing Vince moments. What followed was DX bringing out various people including showgirls, Cirque du soleil, Elvis, and then a birthday cake. Raw was in Las Vegas by the way. Opening up out of the cake was a dancing Dick Johnson. Ugh. Please make this stop with him. Vince dumps him out of the ring. DX then sets him up for another thing but then Rhodes and Dibiase attack. Orton watches from the ramp. A match is set up with DX teaming with Vince against Legacy in a no DQ match. Randy Orton spoke later and revealed that the “fan” that helped him at SummerSlam was Brett Dibiase, which is the brother of Ted Dibiase Jr. The main event took place and DX was set to win. Orton went for the punt on Vince but Shawn tackled him to stop it. Orton bailed out and went up the aisle. Cena’s music hit and he threw Orton back to DX. Shawn hit the superkick and then Cena hit the adjustment. Vince then made the pin on Orton. In other action on Raw. Big Show and Jericho arrived on the scene and Show called out the Raw “guest host” for the night, Floyd Mayweather. Show said that they had some unfinished business. Mayweather and his crew arrived with Mayweather standing up to Show. Mayweather said that he would take him out again but that he wasn’t going to due to him having an upcoming boxing fight. Jericho stepped in and ripped on Mayweather as well. MVP arrived and stood up for Mayweather and challenged them to a match if he could find a partner. He asked Mayweather if him and a partner could beat them tonight on whether they could get a title shot at Breaking Point. Mayweather agreed. Mark Henry arrives and is MVP’s partner. Mayweather stayed at ringside to watch the match. Henry knocked Show from the ring. Mayweather gave MVP some of his jewelry and MVP used it to knock out Jericho for the win. MVP and Henry will get a tag team title shot at Breaking Point. The team of Beth Phoenix, Rosa Mendes, and Alicia Fox won the Mayweather melee match against Mickie James, Kelly Kelly, and Gail Kim. Alicia posted Mickie and then Alicia scored a scissor kick for the win on Mickie. Umm, ok??? The Miz defeated Santino Marella with Miz still targeting the U.S. title. Another Chavo/Hornswoggle match. This time it was a boxing match. Chavo ended up bodyslamming Hornswoggle for the DQ. Evan Bourne then ran out and attacked Chavo to make the save. He then hit the Air Bourne on Chavo.
Other notes from Raw. I am yet to understand the logic of booking a finish of having Vince McMahon pinning the WWE champion Randy Orton. Ok, you have to love live TV. Shawn and Triple H screaming over the noise in the background with their backstage promo was hilarious. You have to know that somebody got chewed out for that happening. I really got a laugh out of DX making fun of Vince’s age and then the crowd started chanting the number as well. You just know that WWE loves using that Stand Back footage from the 1987 Slammy Awards. I did laugh at Triple H firing up Vince and then Carlito getting knocked out. Ok, the fake laughing at the commentary table has to stop. I really like the new Jericho theme music. It just needed some updating for a while now. I still laugh at Jericho’s lines where he follows Big Show’s tough comment such as him saying “yeah, and I’m not leaving either”. LOL. Why is Alicia Fox getting a clean win on the Divas champion, Mickie James??!! Are they getting ready to push her for some reason? Just a bizarre finish to that match.
Smackdown opened with CM Punk bragging on his win on Hardy at SummerSlam. Jeff eventually walked out and did some talking back at Punk saying that he would beat him for the title in tonight’s steel cage match. Punk offered to up the stakes challenging Hardy to make the loser leave WWE. Hardy accepted and the match was on when Theodore Long arrived to make it official. Later, Matt Hardy was shown backstage talking to Jeff saying that he respected Jeff for being a gambler but respected him bottom line overall. The cage match took place. Jeff was attacked from behind by Punk as he walked to the ring. The match was a really good one. The finish had Jeff and Punk battling on top of the cage. Punk nailed Hardy into the cage and then Hardy crashed on to the ropes in the ring. Punk then drops to the floor and retains the title. Hardy’s loss means he is gone from WWE and that was how WWE wrote him off of TV. Hardy got a big ovation and “thank you Jeff” chants. He got on the mic apologizing if he let any of his fans down. He added that this isn’t goodbye forever but goodbye for now saying that if the time is right, you’ll see him again. Jeff pointed out that there is still a Hardy on the show mentioning Matt and then gave a last salute to the fans. Lots of people crying in the crowd. Jeff walked out and gave one last wave on the ramp. Punk then ran back out and nailed Jeff in the head with the belt from behind. Punk then stood over Hardy on the stage. Long also said earlier in the night that the winner would defend against The Undertaker at Breaking Point so that will now be Punk. In other action, Matt Hardy and John Morrison defeated The Hart Dynasty when Morrison pinned Smith with the starship pain. Rey Mysterio and Kane fought to a DQ when Kane was DQ’d for ramming Rey into the post repeatedly despite the ref’s warnings. Khali then arrived and dumped Kane out of the ring. Singh hit Kane with a kendo stick and then Khali continued the attack. Jericho took on Shad with JTG and Big Show at ringside. Show got involved and then Cryme Tyme both fought off Show on the floor. Long then walked out making it a tag team match. The finish had Shad taking a knockout punch from Show leading to the pin for Show and Jericho. Michelle McCool was on crutches saying that Melina’s attack last week left her unable to compete tonight. Her replacement against Melina was Layla. Melina won the match and then went outside and shoved Michelle over a ringside chair. Melina was shown backstage talking to Maria who said that she had seen Ziggler with another woman after SummerSlam. Maria said that Melina was jealous that she had a boyfriend but Maria did question Ziggler on it. He claimed that it was his sister. Drew McIntyre was set to take on R Truth but attacked Truth upon entering the ring. He put a beating on him and the match never happened.
DirecTV was having some feed problems during SummerSlam. It appeared to be a system wide problem.
The WWE WrestleMania special airs on NBC tomorrow night at 8pm central time. It will be a highlight type produced special showing WrestleMania matches set to music at times. I watched the one from last year and it was excellently produced. If you haven’t seen Shawn and Undertaker from WrestleMania, you really need to watch this special. I don’t use this comment lightly ever but that match was one of the best matches that I’ve ever seen in my life. Can’t wait to see what they do with it highlight wise.
Other major news from the wrestling world is that Brian Danielson is leaving Ring Of Honor and has signed with WWE. WOW!! That is huge news. It will be interesting to see what WWE does with Danielson. Danielson is an incredible in ring worker for sure. ROH is planning a farewell for him.
TNA has signed a new three year deal with Spike TV. The deal also includes a new original series of one hour specials.
The Rise and Fall of WCW DVD has been released. There has been a lot of talk about it so far. I have picked it up and plan on doing a recap on it. I will be VERY interested to see what kind of spin this documentary has on it. Hopefully, it has a more realistic spin than the Monday Night Wars DVD.
That is it for this Friday night edition of the List. Have a great weekend!! Take care and God bless!!
Monday, August 17, 2009
DX Reunites On Raw In St. Louis, Raw & Smackdown Thoughts, SummerSlam Preview, & More - August 17, 2009
Welcome to the “WWE woke up and realized that their second biggest PPV of the year is on Sunday and made tonight’s Raw better than the last month of boring Raw shows combined” edition of The Wrestling List. Shawn Michaels returns to Raw!!! Woo hoo!! DX Reunion!! HBK, HBK, HBK. Ok, just had to get all of that. LOL.
Here are the results of the WWE Raw house show in Cape Girardeau last night. I’m amazed that most of the advertised matches took place. The show opened with Santino defeating Chavo as Hornswoggle got involved. Kelly Kelly was introduced as the special guest host for the night who came out to appear for the crowd. Primo defeated Alex Riley with a rollup. The Miz defeated Jamie Noble. Evan Bourne defeated Jack Swagger with the Air Bourne finish. Kofi Kingston defeated Carlito with the trouble in paradise. I heard that was a really good match. Mickie James and Gail Kim defeatd Beth Phoenix and Rosa Mendes when Mickie pinned Rosa. Big Show defeated MVP with the chokeslam. After the match, Swagger came out and attacked MVP. The main event was John Cena, Triple H, and Mark Henry taking on Legacy of Randy Orton, Ted Dibiase, and Cody Rhodes. The finish had Henry running off Orton. Cena hit the attitude adjustment on Rhodes while Triple H hit the pedigree on Dibiase at the same time. Both made the pin and won the match. Funny story that I read about which compared to Orton cracking us up laughing at the last Cape show. One fan was giving it to Dibiase. Orton walked over and proceeded to calm things down. Orton then grabbed the guy’s hat and threw it way back into the crowd. This happened at least a couple of times. Orton was great at the Cape show back in February. He had that crowd in the palm of his hands and we were loving watching it.
Well, it looks like I should have thought about going to Raw tonight in St. Louis. Good show. The best show in many, many weeks. I really don’t have any complaints about it. The only thing that I would have complained about had a nice payoff so I’ll leave it alone. The big thing of tonight’s show was the reunion of DX. Shawn Michaels and Triple H back on Raw together. Really fun segment with them showing up. They walked through the back after getting out of a limo. They ran into Jillian Hall who started singing their theme song to them out of excitement. She got a trash can put on her head to get her to stop. Then, they run into Santino who is doing his acting rehearsal. I need to set this up. Freddie Prinze, Jr. was the “guest host” tonight. Santino wanted to get a role in one of his movies and proceeded to run through Freddie’s previous roles including him coming out dressed as the killer from I Know What You Did Last Summer. Freddie will be appearing on 24 so Santino was trying for that role. Santino jumped out behind DX holding up his weapon saying “where is the bomb?” Shawn then superkicked him. It was hilarious. They made their way to the ring to a huge pop. Lots of fun. They were about to go into their whole speech when Triple H said “are you ready?”. Then, they got attacked by Dibiase and Rhodes. Big time attack on them. They laid both out with the cowboy boot. Really convincing beating that they put on them and really built them up for the match on Sunday. Now, I expect them to get destroyed on Sunday but I’m hoping for it to be competitive. Regardless, they looked strong tonight laying out DX. As I said, Freddie Prinze, Jr. was in charge tonight. Randy Orton arrived getting a big hometown pop. Orton threatened Freddie that he wanted out of the main event match that Slaughter had set up last week. Freddie said that he wouldn’t do that and that Orton should want to wrestle in his hometown. Freddie wouldn’t back down to Orton and then Orton grabbed a hold of him. He then did that reverse neckbreaker move which left Freddie laying in the ring. The story for the rest of the night was that Freddie was taken to the hospital but returned in time for the main event. Cena and Orton teaming against Jericho and Big Show. Freddie said that he had now made this a lumberjack match with all of the lumberjacks being handpicked by him. All were enemies of Orton’s with the first being Mark Henry. Cena was thrown out at one point and they all left him alone. Jericho then landed right after him and they pounded on Jericho. Cena got in trouble early on and went for a tag but Orton wouldn’t tag him. Later, Cena made him tag and threw him in the ring. Orton got in trouble with Cena urging for Orton to make the tag. Orton did and Cena finished off the match. He won with the attitude adjustment on Jericho. Right after he got up, Orton hit him with a RKO. Henry jumped in the ring and Orton bailed. Jericho and Show then pounded on Cena and the lumberjacks. However, Cena battled back clearing the ring of Jericho and Show which ended the show. Kofi Kingston retained the US title by defeating Carlito with the trouble in paradise in a good match. Mickie James retained the Divas championship against Gail Kim when Mickie nailed a forearm for the win. After the match, Mickie looked concerned for Gail and helped her up raising Gail’s arm to the crowd. The finish was kind of odd. The Miz defeated Evan Bourne after hitting the reality check. Jack Swagger was DQ’d against MVP in a short match. Swagger wouldn’t break his kicking in the corner in time for the five count so the ref called for the DQ. MVP then jumped on him with punches after the bell and Swagger bailed. Short match. Hornswoggle took on Chavo in a falls count anywhere match. Hornwoggle took off and Chavo followed. Chavo kept trying to find where he went backstage. He opened a door and got blasted by a swinging bucket. Hornswoggle then came from the other direction and got the pin. Chavo got up and saw a smiling Mark Henry. Chavo accused him of doing it but Henry said he didn’t. Then, out of the room walks Macaulay Culkin playing off of the Home Alone bit. Ok, that was good stuff. Payoff was very nice there.
Other notes from Raw. Lots of good action tonight. Much better than recent weeks. Great crowd!! The St. Louis crowd is always awesome. That crowd made the show even better. I’m of course thrilled to have Shawn back on Raw. Wow, has he ever been missed!! I thought Freddie was good as the host. He is a lifelong WWE fan and also a former member of the WWE creative team. The stuff with Santino was funny. I figured it was either Santino or Miz under that costume. Santino saying that Freddie was married to the “werewolf killer” was funny referring to Freddie’s wife who played the “vampire slayer”. As a Buffy fan, I did like hearing that reference and hearing Seth Green’s name in the same show. Seth, of course, played a werewolf on Buffy as well. I figured that Orton would get a good pop when he came out and he did. It didn’t take long for WWE to make the mention that it was his hometown explaining the reaction. They just totally freak out when a crowd does something that they don’t want to. Hey, I’m just glad that Lawler didn’t say wow, St. Louis is bizarro land. The DX stuff was great. Definitely added a lot of fun to the show. Ok, the only thing that I was going to complain about on this show was the continued Hornswoggle/Chavo rivalry. That was until the payoff at the end with Macaulay Culkin. Now, that was funny. Funny moment when the fans started chanting “let’s go Blues” during that backstage part of the match. Did you see the guy dressed as Hogan flexing as the camera was pulled wide waiting for Hornswoggle and Chavo to return out from under the ring? That was funny. What was up with the new DX music that played during the promos? We didn’t hear it for the entrance. Maybe it will debut on Sunday at SummerSlam.
Floyd Mayweather will be the “guest host” for next week’s Raw in Las Vegas.
Last week’s Smackdown continued the Hardys/Punk saga. The show opened with CM Punk continuning to talk about the fans buying into Hardy not knowing what is good for their own good. Punk said that he had figured out that the only way to stop it was to end Jeff Hardy but said that he had heard that Jeff wouldn’t make it to SummerSlam due to the injuries from last week. Theodore Long made his way to the ring saying that Hardy would be at SummerSlam and also be there at Smackdown. He also added that Punk would once again face John Morrison on Smackdown. Jeff then came to the ring obviously showing he was hurting. Jeff said that he was hurt but was there anyway and would face him at SummerSlam. Vince McMahon gave a phone call to Long saying that he wanted Hardy back in action tonight. Long said that Hardy was in no condition to be in action but Vince added that Long is on probation. Vince wanted Jeff to face The Hart Dynasty in a handicap match so Long had to make the match. This match was in Albert, Canada so interesting that they were put in the main event. CM Punk did face John Morrison and got the win. Punk countered Morrison’s starship pain in the corner and then had Morrison hung upside down. He kicked him in the corner and then picked him right up into the GTS for the win. The main event had The Hart Dynasty getting a nice pop from the home fans. Jeff Hardy did face them but did little in the match selling the injuries from last week. Even on offense, he would end up down. The Harts ended up winning the match following the old Hart Foundation clothesline except it was hit by Kidd in a springboard fashion. Looked really sweet. Harts get the pin!! WOW. Crowd popped for it. Punk made his way to the ring and was ready to continue the assault on Hardy. Morrison ran out and attacked Punk. The Harts jumped in too and Morrison battled them as well. Punk nailed Morrison with a chair from behind. Punk then was about to do the same thing to Jeff that he did last week but was then attacked from behind by Matt Hardy. The Harts got back involved and then Matt and Morrison fought off everyone. Matt got a big pop from the crowd. Matt went over to Jeff and offered his hand. Jeff accepted and Matt helped pick him up out of the corner. They nodded at each other and then talked as well. Long was shown backstage and Vince walked in. Vince asked him what he had in store for next week with Long saying it will be Jeff and Matt Hardy teaming with Morrison to take on Punk and The Hart Dynasty. Vince was happy with the match and said that Long was still on probation though. Dolph Ziggler defeated Finlay. Mike Knox made his way to the ring during the match. Knox hit Finlay with the shillelagh in the leg. As Finlay turned his attention to Knox, Ziggler hit a reverse bulldog on Finlay for the win. After the match, Knox attacked Finlay and hit a sidewalk slam on to the steps on the floor. Big Show took on JTG. Shad was in the corner and Jericho was on commentary. During the match, Jericho ran Shad into the post. Show hit the chokeslam. Show won with the camel clutch submission. Jericho got a last kick in on Shad as he went in the ring. Shad jumped in the ring moments later and dumped Show over the top rope. Melina defeated Layla following the splits legdrop finisher. Before the match, Layla delivered a message to Melina that Michelle would be back next week. Also, she warned Maria about dating Ziggler. Khali and Kane continued their deal. They showed Kane with a camera backstage where he had captured Singh. He kept telling Khali to come and save Singh. Khali did show up and Kane ended up pounding on him. Ehh, whatever to that stuff. Big guy feuds don’t do a thing for me.
The Rise and Fall Of WCW DVD is released next week. I will be picking this up and am interested to hear the biography portion of it. I’m curious to see if and what kind of spin that WWE puts on things. I saw how they portrayed WCW on the Monday Night Wars DVD which I wasn’t crazy about so we’ll see what happens here. They did interview a lot of interesting names for it so we’ll see.
I couldn’t have been the only one that loved Freddie Prinze Jr. mentioning the old Coliseum Home Videos and then the old ice cream bars tonight on Raw. I loved those ice cream bars!!!! There was one store in town here that sold them and I would stock up on them there when I was a kid. I have heard that they still make them but they are hard to find. I would love to find some just for retros sake. Plus, I always thought they were good. Come on, you have to love hearing about Mean Gene hosting Coliseum Video tapes as well. So many great videos over the years. I would always be so excited and be at the video store on the day of releases to make sure that I got them to rent. Geez, the video store would hold them for me cause they knew I wanted to see it. When they got a new release, they expected to see me that day cause I kept up with the release dates of the Coliseum Home Videos. I still laugh at looking back on the “fan favorite matches”. Do you remember this? Fans would write in on matches that they wanted to see and then they would put them on the videos. Looking back on it is hilarious cause what fan would write in and want to see, for example, Rugged Ronnie Garvin vs. Rick The Model Martel. I doubt that was ever one but it was similar matches like that. LOL. I’m thinking that I want to see something like an all babyface match like Hogan and Savage vs. The Legion Of Doom or something like that. LOL.
Hulk Hogan has a book set to come out this fall called “My Life Outside The Ring”. The topic of the book is basically in the title. It will cover his life outside of wrestling and the troubles of recent years.
Want to know some of the future “guest hosts” appearing on Raw? Here are some confirmed names in a Variety article. Bob Barker, Rev. Al Sharpton, Nancy O’Dell of Access Hollywood, LeBron James, and Floyd Mayweather. http://www.variety.com/article/VR1118007339.html?categoryId=14&cs=1
WWE will be airing a WrestleMania 25 special on NBC on Saturday night, August 29 at 8pm central time.
Hope you got a good look at Eugene last week cause Nick Dinsmore has already been released by WWE.
This is a TNA Impact spoiler but I’ve already heard that Taz has replaced Don West on commentary on the show.
SummerSlam is this Sunday night on PPV. Here is the lineup for the show. CM Punk defends the World title against Jeff Hardy in a TLC match. Randy Orton defends the WWE title against John Cena. DX reunites to take on Cody Rhodes and Ted Dibiase. Unified Tag Team Champions, Chris Jericho and The Big Show defends against Cryme Tyme. Intercontinental Champion Rey Mysterio defends against Dolph Ziggler. Kane vs. The Great Khali.
Wishing you a great week!! Take care and God bless!!
Here are the results of the WWE Raw house show in Cape Girardeau last night. I’m amazed that most of the advertised matches took place. The show opened with Santino defeating Chavo as Hornswoggle got involved. Kelly Kelly was introduced as the special guest host for the night who came out to appear for the crowd. Primo defeated Alex Riley with a rollup. The Miz defeated Jamie Noble. Evan Bourne defeated Jack Swagger with the Air Bourne finish. Kofi Kingston defeated Carlito with the trouble in paradise. I heard that was a really good match. Mickie James and Gail Kim defeatd Beth Phoenix and Rosa Mendes when Mickie pinned Rosa. Big Show defeated MVP with the chokeslam. After the match, Swagger came out and attacked MVP. The main event was John Cena, Triple H, and Mark Henry taking on Legacy of Randy Orton, Ted Dibiase, and Cody Rhodes. The finish had Henry running off Orton. Cena hit the attitude adjustment on Rhodes while Triple H hit the pedigree on Dibiase at the same time. Both made the pin and won the match. Funny story that I read about which compared to Orton cracking us up laughing at the last Cape show. One fan was giving it to Dibiase. Orton walked over and proceeded to calm things down. Orton then grabbed the guy’s hat and threw it way back into the crowd. This happened at least a couple of times. Orton was great at the Cape show back in February. He had that crowd in the palm of his hands and we were loving watching it.
Well, it looks like I should have thought about going to Raw tonight in St. Louis. Good show. The best show in many, many weeks. I really don’t have any complaints about it. The only thing that I would have complained about had a nice payoff so I’ll leave it alone. The big thing of tonight’s show was the reunion of DX. Shawn Michaels and Triple H back on Raw together. Really fun segment with them showing up. They walked through the back after getting out of a limo. They ran into Jillian Hall who started singing their theme song to them out of excitement. She got a trash can put on her head to get her to stop. Then, they run into Santino who is doing his acting rehearsal. I need to set this up. Freddie Prinze, Jr. was the “guest host” tonight. Santino wanted to get a role in one of his movies and proceeded to run through Freddie’s previous roles including him coming out dressed as the killer from I Know What You Did Last Summer. Freddie will be appearing on 24 so Santino was trying for that role. Santino jumped out behind DX holding up his weapon saying “where is the bomb?” Shawn then superkicked him. It was hilarious. They made their way to the ring to a huge pop. Lots of fun. They were about to go into their whole speech when Triple H said “are you ready?”. Then, they got attacked by Dibiase and Rhodes. Big time attack on them. They laid both out with the cowboy boot. Really convincing beating that they put on them and really built them up for the match on Sunday. Now, I expect them to get destroyed on Sunday but I’m hoping for it to be competitive. Regardless, they looked strong tonight laying out DX. As I said, Freddie Prinze, Jr. was in charge tonight. Randy Orton arrived getting a big hometown pop. Orton threatened Freddie that he wanted out of the main event match that Slaughter had set up last week. Freddie said that he wouldn’t do that and that Orton should want to wrestle in his hometown. Freddie wouldn’t back down to Orton and then Orton grabbed a hold of him. He then did that reverse neckbreaker move which left Freddie laying in the ring. The story for the rest of the night was that Freddie was taken to the hospital but returned in time for the main event. Cena and Orton teaming against Jericho and Big Show. Freddie said that he had now made this a lumberjack match with all of the lumberjacks being handpicked by him. All were enemies of Orton’s with the first being Mark Henry. Cena was thrown out at one point and they all left him alone. Jericho then landed right after him and they pounded on Jericho. Cena got in trouble early on and went for a tag but Orton wouldn’t tag him. Later, Cena made him tag and threw him in the ring. Orton got in trouble with Cena urging for Orton to make the tag. Orton did and Cena finished off the match. He won with the attitude adjustment on Jericho. Right after he got up, Orton hit him with a RKO. Henry jumped in the ring and Orton bailed. Jericho and Show then pounded on Cena and the lumberjacks. However, Cena battled back clearing the ring of Jericho and Show which ended the show. Kofi Kingston retained the US title by defeating Carlito with the trouble in paradise in a good match. Mickie James retained the Divas championship against Gail Kim when Mickie nailed a forearm for the win. After the match, Mickie looked concerned for Gail and helped her up raising Gail’s arm to the crowd. The finish was kind of odd. The Miz defeated Evan Bourne after hitting the reality check. Jack Swagger was DQ’d against MVP in a short match. Swagger wouldn’t break his kicking in the corner in time for the five count so the ref called for the DQ. MVP then jumped on him with punches after the bell and Swagger bailed. Short match. Hornswoggle took on Chavo in a falls count anywhere match. Hornwoggle took off and Chavo followed. Chavo kept trying to find where he went backstage. He opened a door and got blasted by a swinging bucket. Hornswoggle then came from the other direction and got the pin. Chavo got up and saw a smiling Mark Henry. Chavo accused him of doing it but Henry said he didn’t. Then, out of the room walks Macaulay Culkin playing off of the Home Alone bit. Ok, that was good stuff. Payoff was very nice there.
Other notes from Raw. Lots of good action tonight. Much better than recent weeks. Great crowd!! The St. Louis crowd is always awesome. That crowd made the show even better. I’m of course thrilled to have Shawn back on Raw. Wow, has he ever been missed!! I thought Freddie was good as the host. He is a lifelong WWE fan and also a former member of the WWE creative team. The stuff with Santino was funny. I figured it was either Santino or Miz under that costume. Santino saying that Freddie was married to the “werewolf killer” was funny referring to Freddie’s wife who played the “vampire slayer”. As a Buffy fan, I did like hearing that reference and hearing Seth Green’s name in the same show. Seth, of course, played a werewolf on Buffy as well. I figured that Orton would get a good pop when he came out and he did. It didn’t take long for WWE to make the mention that it was his hometown explaining the reaction. They just totally freak out when a crowd does something that they don’t want to. Hey, I’m just glad that Lawler didn’t say wow, St. Louis is bizarro land. The DX stuff was great. Definitely added a lot of fun to the show. Ok, the only thing that I was going to complain about on this show was the continued Hornswoggle/Chavo rivalry. That was until the payoff at the end with Macaulay Culkin. Now, that was funny. Funny moment when the fans started chanting “let’s go Blues” during that backstage part of the match. Did you see the guy dressed as Hogan flexing as the camera was pulled wide waiting for Hornswoggle and Chavo to return out from under the ring? That was funny. What was up with the new DX music that played during the promos? We didn’t hear it for the entrance. Maybe it will debut on Sunday at SummerSlam.
Floyd Mayweather will be the “guest host” for next week’s Raw in Las Vegas.
Last week’s Smackdown continued the Hardys/Punk saga. The show opened with CM Punk continuning to talk about the fans buying into Hardy not knowing what is good for their own good. Punk said that he had figured out that the only way to stop it was to end Jeff Hardy but said that he had heard that Jeff wouldn’t make it to SummerSlam due to the injuries from last week. Theodore Long made his way to the ring saying that Hardy would be at SummerSlam and also be there at Smackdown. He also added that Punk would once again face John Morrison on Smackdown. Jeff then came to the ring obviously showing he was hurting. Jeff said that he was hurt but was there anyway and would face him at SummerSlam. Vince McMahon gave a phone call to Long saying that he wanted Hardy back in action tonight. Long said that Hardy was in no condition to be in action but Vince added that Long is on probation. Vince wanted Jeff to face The Hart Dynasty in a handicap match so Long had to make the match. This match was in Albert, Canada so interesting that they were put in the main event. CM Punk did face John Morrison and got the win. Punk countered Morrison’s starship pain in the corner and then had Morrison hung upside down. He kicked him in the corner and then picked him right up into the GTS for the win. The main event had The Hart Dynasty getting a nice pop from the home fans. Jeff Hardy did face them but did little in the match selling the injuries from last week. Even on offense, he would end up down. The Harts ended up winning the match following the old Hart Foundation clothesline except it was hit by Kidd in a springboard fashion. Looked really sweet. Harts get the pin!! WOW. Crowd popped for it. Punk made his way to the ring and was ready to continue the assault on Hardy. Morrison ran out and attacked Punk. The Harts jumped in too and Morrison battled them as well. Punk nailed Morrison with a chair from behind. Punk then was about to do the same thing to Jeff that he did last week but was then attacked from behind by Matt Hardy. The Harts got back involved and then Matt and Morrison fought off everyone. Matt got a big pop from the crowd. Matt went over to Jeff and offered his hand. Jeff accepted and Matt helped pick him up out of the corner. They nodded at each other and then talked as well. Long was shown backstage and Vince walked in. Vince asked him what he had in store for next week with Long saying it will be Jeff and Matt Hardy teaming with Morrison to take on Punk and The Hart Dynasty. Vince was happy with the match and said that Long was still on probation though. Dolph Ziggler defeated Finlay. Mike Knox made his way to the ring during the match. Knox hit Finlay with the shillelagh in the leg. As Finlay turned his attention to Knox, Ziggler hit a reverse bulldog on Finlay for the win. After the match, Knox attacked Finlay and hit a sidewalk slam on to the steps on the floor. Big Show took on JTG. Shad was in the corner and Jericho was on commentary. During the match, Jericho ran Shad into the post. Show hit the chokeslam. Show won with the camel clutch submission. Jericho got a last kick in on Shad as he went in the ring. Shad jumped in the ring moments later and dumped Show over the top rope. Melina defeated Layla following the splits legdrop finisher. Before the match, Layla delivered a message to Melina that Michelle would be back next week. Also, she warned Maria about dating Ziggler. Khali and Kane continued their deal. They showed Kane with a camera backstage where he had captured Singh. He kept telling Khali to come and save Singh. Khali did show up and Kane ended up pounding on him. Ehh, whatever to that stuff. Big guy feuds don’t do a thing for me.
The Rise and Fall Of WCW DVD is released next week. I will be picking this up and am interested to hear the biography portion of it. I’m curious to see if and what kind of spin that WWE puts on things. I saw how they portrayed WCW on the Monday Night Wars DVD which I wasn’t crazy about so we’ll see what happens here. They did interview a lot of interesting names for it so we’ll see.
I couldn’t have been the only one that loved Freddie Prinze Jr. mentioning the old Coliseum Home Videos and then the old ice cream bars tonight on Raw. I loved those ice cream bars!!!! There was one store in town here that sold them and I would stock up on them there when I was a kid. I have heard that they still make them but they are hard to find. I would love to find some just for retros sake. Plus, I always thought they were good. Come on, you have to love hearing about Mean Gene hosting Coliseum Video tapes as well. So many great videos over the years. I would always be so excited and be at the video store on the day of releases to make sure that I got them to rent. Geez, the video store would hold them for me cause they knew I wanted to see it. When they got a new release, they expected to see me that day cause I kept up with the release dates of the Coliseum Home Videos. I still laugh at looking back on the “fan favorite matches”. Do you remember this? Fans would write in on matches that they wanted to see and then they would put them on the videos. Looking back on it is hilarious cause what fan would write in and want to see, for example, Rugged Ronnie Garvin vs. Rick The Model Martel. I doubt that was ever one but it was similar matches like that. LOL. I’m thinking that I want to see something like an all babyface match like Hogan and Savage vs. The Legion Of Doom or something like that. LOL.
Hulk Hogan has a book set to come out this fall called “My Life Outside The Ring”. The topic of the book is basically in the title. It will cover his life outside of wrestling and the troubles of recent years.
Want to know some of the future “guest hosts” appearing on Raw? Here are some confirmed names in a Variety article. Bob Barker, Rev. Al Sharpton, Nancy O’Dell of Access Hollywood, LeBron James, and Floyd Mayweather. http://www.variety.com/article/VR1118007339.html?categoryId=14&cs=1
WWE will be airing a WrestleMania 25 special on NBC on Saturday night, August 29 at 8pm central time.
Hope you got a good look at Eugene last week cause Nick Dinsmore has already been released by WWE.
This is a TNA Impact spoiler but I’ve already heard that Taz has replaced Don West on commentary on the show.
SummerSlam is this Sunday night on PPV. Here is the lineup for the show. CM Punk defends the World title against Jeff Hardy in a TLC match. Randy Orton defends the WWE title against John Cena. DX reunites to take on Cody Rhodes and Ted Dibiase. Unified Tag Team Champions, Chris Jericho and The Big Show defends against Cryme Tyme. Intercontinental Champion Rey Mysterio defends against Dolph Ziggler. Kane vs. The Great Khali.
Wishing you a great week!! Take care and God bless!!
Monday, August 10, 2009
Raw & Smackdown Thoughts & More - August 10, 2009
Welcome to the “Jerry Lawler had to have beat his own record tonight by saying ‘bizarro land’ only one minute and fifteen seconds into tonight’s Raw in Calgary” edition of The Wrestling List. What I love about tonight’s Raw is that it gave me a lot to discuss. Always fun. Seriously, I get so tired of WWE getting all bent out of shape about the fans when they aren’t reacting like they’re “supposed” to. Just let the fans cheer and boo who they want. It makes the show more fun. That is why I love the Canadian crowds and love the MSG crowds.
WWE released their quarter numbers last week. Their overall numbers were better than the last quarter. WrestleMania was in this quarter so that is obviously going to help out. WrestleMania did 960,000 PPV buys which is definitely very good. I think it is VERY fair to say that Shawn and Undertaker were responsible for a lot of those buys. Backlash had 182,000 buys compared to last year’s 200,000 buys. Judgment Day had 228,000 buys compared to last year’s 252,000 buys. Extreme Rules did 213,000 buys compared to last year’s One Night Stand which did 194,000 buys. The Bash did 178,000 buys. DVD sales are down in the quarter with them pointing out that they haven’t had as strong of titles in that quarter. I expect it to rebound a bit in the next quarter with the Randy Savage DVD. Vince McMahon did speak during the conference call about needing to address the drop in PPV buys and the DVD sales.
Moving on to tonight’s Raw from Calgary. Ok, seriously, what is WWE’s obsession with messing with the Canadian fans? The thing that I noticed is that they never get the upper hand either. It’s like WWE messes with them through an entire show and then the Canadians get no sort of payoff. Sgt. Slaughter was the “guest host” tonight and he got some boos at first but talked of the respect he had for Canada. He turned on them and then demanded they say the pledge to the American flag. Slaughter returned later and messed with them some more. This time he brings out Jillian Hall to sing their national anthem. Now, comes the big part which I just don’t get and I’m glad that Canada is smarting up to it. Slaughter walks out and apologizes. He brings out a Canadian hero, the best there is, the best there was, the best there ever will be. Bret Hart’s music plays and I was happy to see that the fans didn’t pop. They knew they were about to get played. The music stops and out walks Hacksaw Jim Duggan with an American flag. What is WWE’s obsession with always playing the Bret Hart card? You aren’t fooling the fans anymore there. It doesn’t even draw heat anymore from the fans which is what I find funny. You can only cry wolf so many times. The fans are just bored of it. When his music hit, I just thought please fans, just sit down and ignore it. Now, Canada did have something going for them in the first segment. A pro Canada Chris Jericho promo. I was thinking, oh good, they’re going to actually let the fans just do what they want and cheer Jericho. Then, we had the segment later where Jericho was “caught” on camera bashing on Canada. Why can’t WWE just let the fans cheer who they want? Jericho is Canadian and they love him there. Just acknowledge it and move on. Say that Jericho is from there and the fans are going to get behind him and leave it there. You don’t have to say well, this is bizarro land, when they don’t cheer who they want you to cheer. For example, see The Hart Foundation vs. Austin/Shawn Michaels and company from 1997. That was incredible with how the fans would react differently in the U.S. and Canada. It made for amazing TV. I love crowds that just cheer who they like and boo who they don’t. Some of the most fun I’ve had at live shows is when you have a split crowd. I think shows come across better on TV and more fun when you have a split crowd. It brings the atmosphere up. I just don’t get why WWE always has to do this kind of stuff when they go to Canada especially with Bret Hart. It appears that the fans are over it. Like I said, they don’t react anymore to it. WWE on the other hand is the one that appears to not be able to get over it. Anyway, just thought that stuff was annoying. I was just hoping that a superstar was going to come out and get a “home town” pop and save the day for Canada. Just so they would get a payoff but nope, they got nothing.
On to the action. The show opened with Randy Orton in the ring talking about how he wasn’t a bully but also didn’t want to do anything for the fans. John Cena came out and said the opposite and the two went nose to nose. Big Show and Chris Jericho arrived. Big Y2J chant from the crowd. Jericho played to the Canadian crowd. Jericho announced that he had gotten himself a match with Cena for tonight from Slaughter. Show also announced that he got a match as well against Orton. Show wrestled Orton first. Orton got on offense hitting the big DDT off the middle rope but Show did the power kick out. Orton went for a RKO but Show threw him off. Show nailed a chokeslam but Orton got his leg on the rope to stop the count. Show went for the knockout punch but Orton ducked it and took off. He took the countout loss and the match was over. Jericho took on Cena in the main event. The finish had Jericho stuck in the STF. Orton arrived and got in the ring causing the DQ. As Cena was watching Orton, Jericho hit the codebreaker from behind. Jericho then attacked Orton but Orton got rid of him. Show arrived and chokeslammed Orton once again. Slaughter walked out and then said that he had one more thing to do as host for the night. He was making a match for next week with Orton and Cena taking on Show and Jericho. The other big thing on the show was the DX reunion. These segments were fun and I found myself laughing quite a bit at the last one. Basically, the concept was that Triple H went looking for Shawn Michaels to talk to him. He meets him in an office building and finds Shawn arguing with a little girl over her food. He’s working as a chef. The little girl was the daughter of the boss. I think I got that right. Anyway, Shawn was sick of her. Shawn told Triple H that he was done after WrestleMania saying that he had a job where everyone liked and respected him now. This cued the girl to walk up and throw tater tots in his face telling him how bad that they were. Shawn said that he was good and happy with what he is doing now. About that time, the grill goes up in flames and he runs back to put it out. Shawn returns saying “ok, I’ll listen”. Triple H ends up working behind the counter with Shawn and they put on the aprons. Kind of reminded me of their chef gear segment from back in 1997. Triple H said that Shawn belonged back in WWE with him. The boss shows up yelling at Shawn over the grill and that he is yelling at little kids. This was when the segment got really funny. You could see where it was building and I thought this guy is about to get tuned up. Superkick to the boss. Shawn tells Triple H “I’m in”. You can still hear the little girl complaining in the background and Shawn tells Triple H that he has to take care of something. He goes over and goes face to face with the little girl. They pull the camera back where all you see is a superkick and food going flying teasing that he had superkicked the little girl. When these segments started, I thought that I wasn’t sure how they were going to end up but the payoff was funny. Typical DX comedy segments. Jack Swagger defeated Evan Bourne following the gut wrench. MVP came out and challenged Swagger for tonight but Swagger said next week. MVP shoved him down. Later, MVP took on Masters and MVP won with the playmaker. Swagger got involved. Masters hooked the masterlock from behind on MVP and then Swagger hit the gut wrench on MVP. Gail Kim defeated Kelly Kelly, Alicia Fox, and Beth Phoenix in a four way match where she won a future Divas championship match. I would like to point out that this one women’s match was better than ALL of last week’s Raw. Really good match. There was a contract on a pole match (who let Vince Russo in?) between Eugene and a new star, The Calgary Kid. Who was under this mask? That was my question. Kid won and the mask was pulled off. It was The Miz. Nice swerve but it was just kind of strange. They do that booking last week so he can return this week. Just bizarre or as Lawler would say, bizarro. LOL. Hornswoggle and Henry are set to take on Chavo and an opponent. Chavo says he can’t wrestle due to still recovering from his injuries. His replacement team is Priceless. They take out Henry momentarily and then Dibiase hits dreamstreet on Hornswoggle for the win. Afterwards, they said that they were ready for DX at SummerSlam.
Other notes from Raw. If I could take one word out of Jerry Lawler’s vocabulary, it would be bizarre, bizarro, or anything associated with it. Make it stop. You just get the feeling that Vince is in Lawler’s ears with the way he stumbles trying to come up with reasons on why the fans are reacting the way that they are. Ok, you can’t make matches for next week, Sgt. Slaughter. I thought that was lame. Why do the storyline of guest hosts if the person in control next week has already lost his main event? Ok, I liked the DX lines tonight with Shawn saying that he thought SummerSlam was “Summer Fest” referring to Piven messing it up last week. Did you catch the boss calling Shawn by his real name followed by Triple H saying “what kind of a name is that?” I couldn’t believe that only 51% of the people on that poll got the question right on who did Slaughter defeat for the WWF championship? I figured people would google it if they didn’t know it. Ahh, memories of watching that PPV live that night. Did you see the “The House That Hart Built” sign? How cool was Beth Phoenix picking up Gail and Kelly in that submission hold? Seriously, that match was better than all of last week’s Raw. I just laughed when I heard that there was a contract on a pole match. Somebody has been watching their TNA Impact. I was about to rant tonight if Priceless had gotten beaten by a tadpole splash. LOL.
Freddie Prinze Jr. will be the “guest host” on next week’s Raw from St. Louis.
Smackdown opened with CM Punk talking about the differences between him and Jeff Hardy. He said that he tried to get the fans to not love Hardy but it just made them love him more. He added that the fans went to Hardy cause it was easy instead of being a strong person like himself. Jeff arrived and their match was set to start the show. Instead, a brawl erupted with Jeff and Punk having to be pulled apart. Long walked out too trying to get control. Vince McMahon arrived on the stage reminding Long that he was on probation and couldn’t get control of his own superstars. McMahon said he’d get someone that could keep control and there would be a special enforcer in the World title match later in the night. The two then went back to brawling. So, the match happens and the special enforcer is the returning Matt Hardy. Matt would not look Jeff in the face when Jeff walked into the ring. Matt didn’t get involved for a while. Punk went for a diving kick but it missed and caught Matt instead. Punk countered the swanton and went for the pin. As the ref went to make the count, Matt pulled the ref out stopping the count. Punk was upset but Matt said that he was the official. Then Jeff rolled up Punk with Matt making the three count. Matt then walked off and left. Punk went up on the stage mad over the loss but returned. He attacked Jeff in the ring. Punk threw Hardy into the announce table repeatedly and then used a chair. Punk then wrapped Jeff’s neck in the chair and rammed him right into the post. Jeff was then out of it laying on the floor as a stretcher arrived. Long then walked out on the stage as Punk proclaimed that he wanted a rematch. Long announced that there would be a rematch announcing a TLC match for the World title at SummerSlam. Punk was not happy with that announcement. Other action on the show. John Morrison defeated Tyson Kidd following the starship pain. Chris Jericho took on JTG with Show and Shad at ringside. Jericho hit the codebreaker but the ref wouldn’t start the count for a pin because JTG was under the ropes. As Jericho pulled him to the middle, JTG rolled up Jericho in a small package to get the win. Dolph Ziggler defeated Finlay, Knox, and R Truth in a four way when he pinned Finlay. Ziggler will face Rey for the Intercontinental title at SummerSlam. Rey was doing commentary on the match and the two faced off. Rey jumped off and hit a senton on to Ziggler. Khali won a squash match on Ricky Ortiz. Afterwards, Kane’s pyro went off. Kane snuck in from behind knocking Khali over the top. Kane then left through the crowd with Singh. Slam Master J defeated Charlie Haas following a top rope splash. Cryme Tyme and Eve watched the match from backstage.
Wow, did anyone like Raw last week? I have listened to audio show after audio show of everyone ripping last week’s show. No, it wasn’t good at all. I listened to one rant last week that had me laughing from start to finish.
TNA Impact and ECW continue to go neck and neck with the ratings. Impact is averaging about a 1.3 now with ECW around a 1.2.
That is all I have for this week. Wishing all of you a great week!! Take care and God bless!!
WWE released their quarter numbers last week. Their overall numbers were better than the last quarter. WrestleMania was in this quarter so that is obviously going to help out. WrestleMania did 960,000 PPV buys which is definitely very good. I think it is VERY fair to say that Shawn and Undertaker were responsible for a lot of those buys. Backlash had 182,000 buys compared to last year’s 200,000 buys. Judgment Day had 228,000 buys compared to last year’s 252,000 buys. Extreme Rules did 213,000 buys compared to last year’s One Night Stand which did 194,000 buys. The Bash did 178,000 buys. DVD sales are down in the quarter with them pointing out that they haven’t had as strong of titles in that quarter. I expect it to rebound a bit in the next quarter with the Randy Savage DVD. Vince McMahon did speak during the conference call about needing to address the drop in PPV buys and the DVD sales.
Moving on to tonight’s Raw from Calgary. Ok, seriously, what is WWE’s obsession with messing with the Canadian fans? The thing that I noticed is that they never get the upper hand either. It’s like WWE messes with them through an entire show and then the Canadians get no sort of payoff. Sgt. Slaughter was the “guest host” tonight and he got some boos at first but talked of the respect he had for Canada. He turned on them and then demanded they say the pledge to the American flag. Slaughter returned later and messed with them some more. This time he brings out Jillian Hall to sing their national anthem. Now, comes the big part which I just don’t get and I’m glad that Canada is smarting up to it. Slaughter walks out and apologizes. He brings out a Canadian hero, the best there is, the best there was, the best there ever will be. Bret Hart’s music plays and I was happy to see that the fans didn’t pop. They knew they were about to get played. The music stops and out walks Hacksaw Jim Duggan with an American flag. What is WWE’s obsession with always playing the Bret Hart card? You aren’t fooling the fans anymore there. It doesn’t even draw heat anymore from the fans which is what I find funny. You can only cry wolf so many times. The fans are just bored of it. When his music hit, I just thought please fans, just sit down and ignore it. Now, Canada did have something going for them in the first segment. A pro Canada Chris Jericho promo. I was thinking, oh good, they’re going to actually let the fans just do what they want and cheer Jericho. Then, we had the segment later where Jericho was “caught” on camera bashing on Canada. Why can’t WWE just let the fans cheer who they want? Jericho is Canadian and they love him there. Just acknowledge it and move on. Say that Jericho is from there and the fans are going to get behind him and leave it there. You don’t have to say well, this is bizarro land, when they don’t cheer who they want you to cheer. For example, see The Hart Foundation vs. Austin/Shawn Michaels and company from 1997. That was incredible with how the fans would react differently in the U.S. and Canada. It made for amazing TV. I love crowds that just cheer who they like and boo who they don’t. Some of the most fun I’ve had at live shows is when you have a split crowd. I think shows come across better on TV and more fun when you have a split crowd. It brings the atmosphere up. I just don’t get why WWE always has to do this kind of stuff when they go to Canada especially with Bret Hart. It appears that the fans are over it. Like I said, they don’t react anymore to it. WWE on the other hand is the one that appears to not be able to get over it. Anyway, just thought that stuff was annoying. I was just hoping that a superstar was going to come out and get a “home town” pop and save the day for Canada. Just so they would get a payoff but nope, they got nothing.
On to the action. The show opened with Randy Orton in the ring talking about how he wasn’t a bully but also didn’t want to do anything for the fans. John Cena came out and said the opposite and the two went nose to nose. Big Show and Chris Jericho arrived. Big Y2J chant from the crowd. Jericho played to the Canadian crowd. Jericho announced that he had gotten himself a match with Cena for tonight from Slaughter. Show also announced that he got a match as well against Orton. Show wrestled Orton first. Orton got on offense hitting the big DDT off the middle rope but Show did the power kick out. Orton went for a RKO but Show threw him off. Show nailed a chokeslam but Orton got his leg on the rope to stop the count. Show went for the knockout punch but Orton ducked it and took off. He took the countout loss and the match was over. Jericho took on Cena in the main event. The finish had Jericho stuck in the STF. Orton arrived and got in the ring causing the DQ. As Cena was watching Orton, Jericho hit the codebreaker from behind. Jericho then attacked Orton but Orton got rid of him. Show arrived and chokeslammed Orton once again. Slaughter walked out and then said that he had one more thing to do as host for the night. He was making a match for next week with Orton and Cena taking on Show and Jericho. The other big thing on the show was the DX reunion. These segments were fun and I found myself laughing quite a bit at the last one. Basically, the concept was that Triple H went looking for Shawn Michaels to talk to him. He meets him in an office building and finds Shawn arguing with a little girl over her food. He’s working as a chef. The little girl was the daughter of the boss. I think I got that right. Anyway, Shawn was sick of her. Shawn told Triple H that he was done after WrestleMania saying that he had a job where everyone liked and respected him now. This cued the girl to walk up and throw tater tots in his face telling him how bad that they were. Shawn said that he was good and happy with what he is doing now. About that time, the grill goes up in flames and he runs back to put it out. Shawn returns saying “ok, I’ll listen”. Triple H ends up working behind the counter with Shawn and they put on the aprons. Kind of reminded me of their chef gear segment from back in 1997. Triple H said that Shawn belonged back in WWE with him. The boss shows up yelling at Shawn over the grill and that he is yelling at little kids. This was when the segment got really funny. You could see where it was building and I thought this guy is about to get tuned up. Superkick to the boss. Shawn tells Triple H “I’m in”. You can still hear the little girl complaining in the background and Shawn tells Triple H that he has to take care of something. He goes over and goes face to face with the little girl. They pull the camera back where all you see is a superkick and food going flying teasing that he had superkicked the little girl. When these segments started, I thought that I wasn’t sure how they were going to end up but the payoff was funny. Typical DX comedy segments. Jack Swagger defeated Evan Bourne following the gut wrench. MVP came out and challenged Swagger for tonight but Swagger said next week. MVP shoved him down. Later, MVP took on Masters and MVP won with the playmaker. Swagger got involved. Masters hooked the masterlock from behind on MVP and then Swagger hit the gut wrench on MVP. Gail Kim defeated Kelly Kelly, Alicia Fox, and Beth Phoenix in a four way match where she won a future Divas championship match. I would like to point out that this one women’s match was better than ALL of last week’s Raw. Really good match. There was a contract on a pole match (who let Vince Russo in?) between Eugene and a new star, The Calgary Kid. Who was under this mask? That was my question. Kid won and the mask was pulled off. It was The Miz. Nice swerve but it was just kind of strange. They do that booking last week so he can return this week. Just bizarre or as Lawler would say, bizarro. LOL. Hornswoggle and Henry are set to take on Chavo and an opponent. Chavo says he can’t wrestle due to still recovering from his injuries. His replacement team is Priceless. They take out Henry momentarily and then Dibiase hits dreamstreet on Hornswoggle for the win. Afterwards, they said that they were ready for DX at SummerSlam.
Other notes from Raw. If I could take one word out of Jerry Lawler’s vocabulary, it would be bizarre, bizarro, or anything associated with it. Make it stop. You just get the feeling that Vince is in Lawler’s ears with the way he stumbles trying to come up with reasons on why the fans are reacting the way that they are. Ok, you can’t make matches for next week, Sgt. Slaughter. I thought that was lame. Why do the storyline of guest hosts if the person in control next week has already lost his main event? Ok, I liked the DX lines tonight with Shawn saying that he thought SummerSlam was “Summer Fest” referring to Piven messing it up last week. Did you catch the boss calling Shawn by his real name followed by Triple H saying “what kind of a name is that?” I couldn’t believe that only 51% of the people on that poll got the question right on who did Slaughter defeat for the WWF championship? I figured people would google it if they didn’t know it. Ahh, memories of watching that PPV live that night. Did you see the “The House That Hart Built” sign? How cool was Beth Phoenix picking up Gail and Kelly in that submission hold? Seriously, that match was better than all of last week’s Raw. I just laughed when I heard that there was a contract on a pole match. Somebody has been watching their TNA Impact. I was about to rant tonight if Priceless had gotten beaten by a tadpole splash. LOL.
Freddie Prinze Jr. will be the “guest host” on next week’s Raw from St. Louis.
Smackdown opened with CM Punk talking about the differences between him and Jeff Hardy. He said that he tried to get the fans to not love Hardy but it just made them love him more. He added that the fans went to Hardy cause it was easy instead of being a strong person like himself. Jeff arrived and their match was set to start the show. Instead, a brawl erupted with Jeff and Punk having to be pulled apart. Long walked out too trying to get control. Vince McMahon arrived on the stage reminding Long that he was on probation and couldn’t get control of his own superstars. McMahon said he’d get someone that could keep control and there would be a special enforcer in the World title match later in the night. The two then went back to brawling. So, the match happens and the special enforcer is the returning Matt Hardy. Matt would not look Jeff in the face when Jeff walked into the ring. Matt didn’t get involved for a while. Punk went for a diving kick but it missed and caught Matt instead. Punk countered the swanton and went for the pin. As the ref went to make the count, Matt pulled the ref out stopping the count. Punk was upset but Matt said that he was the official. Then Jeff rolled up Punk with Matt making the three count. Matt then walked off and left. Punk went up on the stage mad over the loss but returned. He attacked Jeff in the ring. Punk threw Hardy into the announce table repeatedly and then used a chair. Punk then wrapped Jeff’s neck in the chair and rammed him right into the post. Jeff was then out of it laying on the floor as a stretcher arrived. Long then walked out on the stage as Punk proclaimed that he wanted a rematch. Long announced that there would be a rematch announcing a TLC match for the World title at SummerSlam. Punk was not happy with that announcement. Other action on the show. John Morrison defeated Tyson Kidd following the starship pain. Chris Jericho took on JTG with Show and Shad at ringside. Jericho hit the codebreaker but the ref wouldn’t start the count for a pin because JTG was under the ropes. As Jericho pulled him to the middle, JTG rolled up Jericho in a small package to get the win. Dolph Ziggler defeated Finlay, Knox, and R Truth in a four way when he pinned Finlay. Ziggler will face Rey for the Intercontinental title at SummerSlam. Rey was doing commentary on the match and the two faced off. Rey jumped off and hit a senton on to Ziggler. Khali won a squash match on Ricky Ortiz. Afterwards, Kane’s pyro went off. Kane snuck in from behind knocking Khali over the top. Kane then left through the crowd with Singh. Slam Master J defeated Charlie Haas following a top rope splash. Cryme Tyme and Eve watched the match from backstage.
Wow, did anyone like Raw last week? I have listened to audio show after audio show of everyone ripping last week’s show. No, it wasn’t good at all. I listened to one rant last week that had me laughing from start to finish.
TNA Impact and ECW continue to go neck and neck with the ratings. Impact is averaging about a 1.3 now with ECW around a 1.2.
That is all I have for this week. Wishing all of you a great week!! Take care and God bless!!
Tuesday, August 4, 2009
Raw Thoughts & More - August 3, 2009
Welcome to the “I hope the build to SummerSlam gets better” edition of The Wrestling List. Yeah, not a very exciting night of Raw tonight. I just thought it was rather boring. Obviously, the “one phone call” thing will lead to excitement but the rest of Raw is just really stale right now. I have not gotten to watch Smackdown as of yet so this List will be without a Smackdown recap.
Tonight’s Raw had Jeremy Piven as the “guest host”. He had Dr. Ken with him which is someone that I have no clue who is. They promoted their new movie which then had The Miz interrupting. They all exchanged words with Cena then arriving on the scene. Miz wanted a rematch but Cena said that he had already beaten him in two minutes last week. Then, Piven started adding stipulations on the match happening. If Miz lost, he would be banned from “Summer Fest”. Yeah, Piven messed up on that one. LOL. He would be banned from SummerSlam, never be allowed in Staples Center again, and never be allowed to compete on Raw ever again. Miz wasn’t happy with the stipulations. Well, the main event happens as Cena vs. Miz was a lumberjack match but then Piven and Dr. Ken turned heel. The lumberjacks were all heels including Legacy. Cena was put in the masterlock by Masters at one point on the floor. Legacy put a big beating on him. Dr. Ken handed Miz a cane at one point but Cena picked up Miz for the adjustment to get the win. Afterwards, Piven jumped off the top rope but was caught by Cena. Cena used him as a battering ram (not a barbed wire battering ram to quote Joey Styles about the Sandman years ago LOL) and hit some of the lumberjacks. Dr. Ken then hit Cena with the cane and got caught. He tried to make friends with Cena. Cena then picked him up and threw him over the top in a press slam type throw on to some lumberjacks on the floor as Legacy watched from the stage. Triple H took on Priceless in a handicap match. Well, I was very happy with how this turned out. I get tired of the one guy beating up a tag team kind of matches. Just makes the tag teams look weak. Triple H went for the pedigree on Rhodes but Dibiase hit the dream street from behind. Cody tried to get the pin but Triple H kicked out. Rhodes then hit the crossroads for the win. After the match, Triple H laid on the ropes saying that he just wasn’t as good at these group battles like he used to be. He then talked about making “one phone call” and made a DX reference. Later, he was shown making the phone call making a proposition to someone but the person wasn’t interested. He ended up hanging up on him afterwards after Triple H asked him “are you ready?” This is obviously leading up to the return of Shawn Michaels. Big Show and Kofi Kingston went at it with Show getting DQ’d for not stepping back from Kofi in the corner as he continued the punishment. Jericho was on commentary and got in the ring furious over the DQ. They both taunted Kofi. Jack Swagger defeated Evan Bourne and then continued the assault after the match. MVP made the save and Swagger left. Beth Phoenix and Jillian Hall defeated Mickie James and Gail Kim when Beth made a blind tag into the ring. She then ended up pinning Gail. Carlito pinned Primo following the backstabber. Piven made a match with Chavo against Hornswoggle. However, he said that Hornswoggle wasn’t there and had made a match with his cousin, Mark Swoggle. So, out walks Mark Henry with Hornswoggle’s hat on. Squash match as Chavo quickly gets finished off with the world’s strongest slam. Henry then pulled up the ring apron and Hornswoggle ran out. Henry set up Chavo and then Hornswoggle hit the tadpole splash. Henry and Hornswoggle danced and then Henry did the jumping kick that Hornswoggle always does.
Other thoughts from Raw. Ok, I am very excited to have Shawn Michaels coming back soon. Anyone surprised? If you are surprised, in other news the sun will rise tomorrow as usual. Chris Jericho was great on commentary tonight!! He was ripping on Lawler saying that Jerry’s championship wins at a bowling alley doesn’t count. I loved his line after Show’s spear to Kofi saying that Show was like a subway clearing the track. Funny that WWE showed all of that ESPN footage of the Raw coverage on Shaq last week but conveniently left out the part where ESPN was making fun of them for stealing their Shaq scrabble commercial. Well, we had a lot of nice little comments from Triple H including him talking about putting Evolution back together when talking about bringing back one of his groups of the past. He said that he couldn’t because “Orton’s a jerk, Batista is hurt all the time, and Flair is signing autographs at a VFW somewhere”. Did you also catch the little jab reference when he said to Shawn “I didn’t think you did jobs”? Please WWE, stop with the Hornswoggle/Chavo stuff. It is getting beyond tiring. I have to admit that I laughed out loud when Henry came out with a big grin on his face while having the little hat on it. Cracked me up. I also did laugh at the line of Chavo’s at Dr. Ken saying “I love you in Heroes”. I was begging for Chavo to yell, “I did it!!!!”. Yet another combo theme music deal with Jericho and Big Show. I think that is the first time it has been done since Rated RKO. It works for me. So, what is up with The Miz now? Not sure what that was all about.
Sgt. Slaughter will be next week’s “guest host” on Raw.
Triple H got a surprise birthday bash last week after Raw went off the air with everyone breaking character. It was Triple H’s 40th birthday. Vince McMahon, John Cena, and Big Show were involved to start it off. At first, Triple H was hesitant coming to the ring. Vince sang happy birthday to him along with the rest of the roster. This is when the cake throwing begins. The show was in DC so that brought out Batista to take part in it. Lots of hilarity with the cake throwing. Vince faked a throw at Triple H which had a big smile on Show's face. Vince then turned and blasted Show in the face with the cake and took off running. Really fun moment.
7-Eleven has limited edition WWE cups for their SummerSlam promotion. They include Cena, Triple H, Undertaker, Edge, and Kelly Kelly.
Wishing all of you a great week!! Take care and God bless!!
Tonight’s Raw had Jeremy Piven as the “guest host”. He had Dr. Ken with him which is someone that I have no clue who is. They promoted their new movie which then had The Miz interrupting. They all exchanged words with Cena then arriving on the scene. Miz wanted a rematch but Cena said that he had already beaten him in two minutes last week. Then, Piven started adding stipulations on the match happening. If Miz lost, he would be banned from “Summer Fest”. Yeah, Piven messed up on that one. LOL. He would be banned from SummerSlam, never be allowed in Staples Center again, and never be allowed to compete on Raw ever again. Miz wasn’t happy with the stipulations. Well, the main event happens as Cena vs. Miz was a lumberjack match but then Piven and Dr. Ken turned heel. The lumberjacks were all heels including Legacy. Cena was put in the masterlock by Masters at one point on the floor. Legacy put a big beating on him. Dr. Ken handed Miz a cane at one point but Cena picked up Miz for the adjustment to get the win. Afterwards, Piven jumped off the top rope but was caught by Cena. Cena used him as a battering ram (not a barbed wire battering ram to quote Joey Styles about the Sandman years ago LOL) and hit some of the lumberjacks. Dr. Ken then hit Cena with the cane and got caught. He tried to make friends with Cena. Cena then picked him up and threw him over the top in a press slam type throw on to some lumberjacks on the floor as Legacy watched from the stage. Triple H took on Priceless in a handicap match. Well, I was very happy with how this turned out. I get tired of the one guy beating up a tag team kind of matches. Just makes the tag teams look weak. Triple H went for the pedigree on Rhodes but Dibiase hit the dream street from behind. Cody tried to get the pin but Triple H kicked out. Rhodes then hit the crossroads for the win. After the match, Triple H laid on the ropes saying that he just wasn’t as good at these group battles like he used to be. He then talked about making “one phone call” and made a DX reference. Later, he was shown making the phone call making a proposition to someone but the person wasn’t interested. He ended up hanging up on him afterwards after Triple H asked him “are you ready?” This is obviously leading up to the return of Shawn Michaels. Big Show and Kofi Kingston went at it with Show getting DQ’d for not stepping back from Kofi in the corner as he continued the punishment. Jericho was on commentary and got in the ring furious over the DQ. They both taunted Kofi. Jack Swagger defeated Evan Bourne and then continued the assault after the match. MVP made the save and Swagger left. Beth Phoenix and Jillian Hall defeated Mickie James and Gail Kim when Beth made a blind tag into the ring. She then ended up pinning Gail. Carlito pinned Primo following the backstabber. Piven made a match with Chavo against Hornswoggle. However, he said that Hornswoggle wasn’t there and had made a match with his cousin, Mark Swoggle. So, out walks Mark Henry with Hornswoggle’s hat on. Squash match as Chavo quickly gets finished off with the world’s strongest slam. Henry then pulled up the ring apron and Hornswoggle ran out. Henry set up Chavo and then Hornswoggle hit the tadpole splash. Henry and Hornswoggle danced and then Henry did the jumping kick that Hornswoggle always does.
Other thoughts from Raw. Ok, I am very excited to have Shawn Michaels coming back soon. Anyone surprised? If you are surprised, in other news the sun will rise tomorrow as usual. Chris Jericho was great on commentary tonight!! He was ripping on Lawler saying that Jerry’s championship wins at a bowling alley doesn’t count. I loved his line after Show’s spear to Kofi saying that Show was like a subway clearing the track. Funny that WWE showed all of that ESPN footage of the Raw coverage on Shaq last week but conveniently left out the part where ESPN was making fun of them for stealing their Shaq scrabble commercial. Well, we had a lot of nice little comments from Triple H including him talking about putting Evolution back together when talking about bringing back one of his groups of the past. He said that he couldn’t because “Orton’s a jerk, Batista is hurt all the time, and Flair is signing autographs at a VFW somewhere”. Did you also catch the little jab reference when he said to Shawn “I didn’t think you did jobs”? Please WWE, stop with the Hornswoggle/Chavo stuff. It is getting beyond tiring. I have to admit that I laughed out loud when Henry came out with a big grin on his face while having the little hat on it. Cracked me up. I also did laugh at the line of Chavo’s at Dr. Ken saying “I love you in Heroes”. I was begging for Chavo to yell, “I did it!!!!”. Yet another combo theme music deal with Jericho and Big Show. I think that is the first time it has been done since Rated RKO. It works for me. So, what is up with The Miz now? Not sure what that was all about.
Sgt. Slaughter will be next week’s “guest host” on Raw.
Triple H got a surprise birthday bash last week after Raw went off the air with everyone breaking character. It was Triple H’s 40th birthday. Vince McMahon, John Cena, and Big Show were involved to start it off. At first, Triple H was hesitant coming to the ring. Vince sang happy birthday to him along with the rest of the roster. This is when the cake throwing begins. The show was in DC so that brought out Batista to take part in it. Lots of hilarity with the cake throwing. Vince faked a throw at Triple H which had a big smile on Show's face. Vince then turned and blasted Show in the face with the cake and took off running. Really fun moment.
7-Eleven has limited edition WWE cups for their SummerSlam promotion. They include Cena, Triple H, Undertaker, Edge, and Kelly Kelly.
Wishing all of you a great week!! Take care and God bless!!
Monday, July 27, 2009
Night Of Champions Results, Raw Is Shaq, WWE 24/7 Classics On Demand, & More - July 27, 2009
Welcome to the “doesn’t a DQ take place if you get hit BY the person trying to interfere and not the other way around?” edition of The Wrestling List.
The WWE Night Of Champions PPV was last night and here are the results and happenings. Who would be Chris Jericho's partner? It wouldn't take long for us to find out as the tag team title match opened the show. Jericho announced his new partner, The Big Show. Jericho and Show defeated Cody Rhodes and Ted Dibiase to retain the titles when Show got the submission win on Dibiase. CM Punk was interviewed and ended up walking out into the arena ripping on the parents in attendance for letting their kids look up to Jeff Hardy. The ECW title match was next with Christian defeating Tommy Dreamer to win the belt when Christian reversed a DDT to hit the killswitch for the win. With Big Show as a tag team champion, he was replaced in the US title match by Primo. So, it was Kofi defending against Primo, Carlito, Swagger, Miz, and MVP. Kofi retained the title by hitting Carlito with the trouble in paradise for the win. Michelle McCool retained the Women's title by defeating Melina. Next was the triple threat for the WWE title with Randy Orton defending against Triple H and John Cena. Orton was put in a sharpshooter by Triple H while Cena had the STF on him. Orton was tapping but the ref didn't know what to do since both guys had a submission on him. Rhodes and Dibiase got involved attacking both Triple H and Cena. This was a no DQ match so the match went on. Triple H and Dibiase battled out to the floor while Cena picked up Rhodes for the adjustment. Orton then hit Cena with a RKO to get the pinfall and retained the title. Mickie James defeated Maryse to win the Divas champion when she hit a DDT for the win. Very happy with this win as a Mickie fan. She becomes the second woman to have held both the Women's and Divas titles. Rey Mysterio defeated Dolph Ziggler to retain the Intercontinental title after he hit the 619 and splash for t he win. The main event was CM Punk defending the World title against Jeff Hardy. The finish was Hardy going for the twist of fate but it was countered into a GTS. Hardy was able to kick out. As Punk continued to try and get pins, Hardy kept kicking out. Punk then got up and took the belt walking away from the ring. Hardy ran after him and brought him back to the ring. Hardy hammered on him and then hit the twist of fate. The swanton followed and Hardy got the pin. Jeff Hardy is once again the World champion.
Raw opened with Jerry Lawler introducing tonight’s “guest host”, Shaquille O’Neal. He got a good ovation but also did get some boos as well considering that Washington DC is a NBA town. Plus, he is going to be playing for a rival of Washington’s and that is Cleveland. Lawler and Shaq discussed the plans for the night including the beat the clock challenge to determine the opponent for Orton at SummerSlam. Jericho interrupted and said that when he heard that the most dominant player in NBA history was going to be the “guest host” that he was expecting Kobe Bryant. Shaq then called him “Christina” and gave him a kiss on the forehead. Jericho’s reaction was priceless. It almost looked like he was trying to keep from laughing. Jericho demanded to be catered to by everyone and said that if Shaq didn’t cater to him, there would be problems. If he didn’t agree, he’d have to introduce his tag team partner which he did, The Big Show. Show arrives and he and Shaq stare off nose to nose. Show told him that he had a better chance of hitting two free throws in a row than intimidating him. Shaq called him fat boy and challenged him to a match right then. Show backed down saying that he’d cripple and hurt him so then the NBA would breathing down his neck over taking out their superstar. Shaq said that he knew that would be the response so he had hired two people to take them on. He brought out Cryme Tyme adding that the match would take place tonight and that Shaq would be the special enforcer. The show closed with that very match. The match was stopped by a DQ when Big Show came in the ring without a tag and started hammering Cryme Tyme. He nailed the double chokeslam on them and then stared off with Shaq. Shaq took off his ref shirt and jumped in the ring. The two faced off and shoved each other. Show hooked a choke and then Shaq did the same. They choked each other and Cryme Tyme attacked Show. Shaq then hit a football tackle to knock Show from the ring. The Beat The Clock Challenge took place. Participants were John Cena, Triple H, Mark Henry, Jack Swagger, and MVP. The first match had Mark Henry taking on Carlito. Carlito stalled for time for a while but got in quite a bit of offense. Henry finally won with the slam at 6:49. I thought that was way too long for that win to take. Next was MVP taking on the back on TV, Chris Masters. They signed him a while back but he hasn’t been back on TV yet. Masters is still doing the Masterlock gimmick. The fight ended up on the floor. Masters wouldn’t let him back in the ring and hooked the masterlock. The result was a double countout with the story being that Masters had played spoiler to MVP’s chances. Triple H was shown walking through the back and was attacked by Dibiase with a club to the leg. The match was next and Triple H was favoring the leg in the match. Triple H took on Cody Rhodes. Cody worked on the leg a lot. Dibiase showed up jumping on the apron with about 30 seconds to go. Triple H went to punch him but it was played up that he was afraid to do it and get DQ’d. Cody runs and Triple H moves. The shot knocks Dibiase off the apron. Triple H then hits the pedigree on Cody with one second left but can’t make the pinfall in time. So, Triple H is out and Henry still holds the top time. Jack Swagger lost his match when he lost to Evan Bourne with a little over three minutes left in the match. Swagger went for the gut wrench but it was countered into a small package for the win. The last match was Cena vs. The Miz. Randy Orton was at ringside watching the match. Cena won with the STF with 2:22 left on the clock meaning that he will face Orton at SummerSlam for the belt. Orton walked in the ring after the match and the two faced off with Orton holding the belt for Cena to see. Mickie James, Kelly Kelly, and Gail Kim defeated the team of Beth Phoenix, Alicia Fox, and Rosa Mendes. Gail tagged herself in on Mickie and then got the pin on Alicia. I could not tell if Mickie was upset with Gail over it or not. The ending of the match was just very scrambled directing wise. The pin didn’t get shown cause the camera was focused on the Kelly clothesline to stop the pin from being broken up. Mickie gave a look at Gail but the announcers didn’t play it up. I couldn’t tell if they were setting up a Mickie/Gail rivalry or not. Here comes the odd booking moments of the night. Well, a couple of them anyway. LOL. Kendrick was ready for his match with Kofi and mouthed at Lawler that he would be destroying him after the match. Kofi nailed Kendrick with the trouble in paradise and the quick win. Then, Hornswoggle wrestled Chavo AGAIN!! This time, Chavo was blindfolded. He went for the frog splash but Hornswoggle was long gone at that point watching him miss the move from the apron. Hornswoggle hit the tadpole splash for the win.
Other notes from Raw. Was anyone else wanting to hear a song off of the Shaq Diesel CD for Shaq’s entrance? Maybe to “I’m Outstanding”. Did you hear Lawler call Shaq a 15 time MVP? Umm, no. LOL. That would be quite the accomplishment though!! I think he was going for 15 time All Star. Ok, since when can you get DQ’d for knocking the interfering person off the apron? How often does that happen? Plus, if he hits you, you win by DQ. Rarely is there a DQ for hitting someone that tries to get involved unless they punch back. Just a weird booking thing that got on my nerves a bit tonight. Who is the person that continues to punish us with Hornswoggle vs. Chavo matches every week? Make it stop. Wow, they didn’t even repackage Masters. I thought for sure that they would. Well, Big Show’s new gear is going to take some getting used to. It reminds me of a combination of Andre The Giant’s old Colossal Connection gear and Earthquake’s early 90’s gear. Lots of Shaq segments including him playing scrabble with Santino which included all the words that included the word Shaq in it. He played b-ball with Hornswoggle on a mini goal saying that they went to high school together. Hornswoggle bricked the dunk. Speaking of that segment, they had Cole leave the announce booth just so he could go and say Shaqalicious and offer a fist bump??!! LOL. Who was playing NBA Jam backstage and fed the boomshackalaka line to Michael Cole when Shaq knocked Show down from the ring??!!
Jeremy Piven will be the guest host next week on Raw.
The advertising is out for SummerSlam and Shawn Michaels is being advertsied so take that for what you will.
Ring Of Honor will be moving their HD Net show to Monday nights beginning August 17. The show will air at 7pm central time with them looking to get a viewer boost from fans waiting for WWE Raw to go on the air. I say sure, give it a shot. Sounds like a plan to me.
The 1988 Great American Bash PPV was the fan vote winner for July and is currently airing on WWE 24/7 Classics On Demand. I always remember this being a great show. This was the one of the many Lex Luger was that close to beating Ric Flair for the title moments. If they black and white over the finish of this match, I will be annoyed since it is crucial to the finish of it.
I watched the Patriotism themed episode of The Legends Of Wrestling roundtable show over the weekend. Really fun show. The subject was talking about wrestlers and angles centered around patriotism over the years. Some more good Iron Sheik stories. Interesting that Michael Hayes put the blame of a lot of heel angles not working now on the talent saying that they are afraid to get major heat. They all talked about how back in the day if you caused a riot, that was a good night. Sgt. Slaughter told a couple of really good stories talking about meeting two presidents. One was President Reagan while he was in office and being invited to a function. The other was Nixon who was out of office when he met him on an airplane. They were really great stories!!
Here is the preview for August programming on WWE 24/7 Classics On Demand. I am really liking the lineup for this upcoming month. The theme for the month is "Heatwave". Big Ones airing include WCW Beach Blast 1992, WWF Saturday Night's Main Event (January 4, 1986), WWF The Big Event (Hogan vs. Orndorff), and WWE Backlash 2009. Old School house shows include: Los Angeles (July 15, 1988) and St. Louis (August 10, 1984). TV classics: NWA (December 1986-January 1987), ECW (November 1996), World Class (May 1985), Prime Time Wrestling (April 1988), Monday Night Wars (Raw and Nitro - January 1998), Monday Night Wars: The Beginning (Raw and Nitro from November 1995), Mid-Atlantic (December 1981). The Hall Of Fame will focus on The Blackjacks. Shorties will all be matches from SummerSlam over the years. The Viva Las Divas special will be airing which was a WWE DVD release years ago. The fan voting for August will be between SummerSlam 1988, 1990, and 1995. I would vote for either SummerSlam 1988 or 1990. 1995 was a one match show with Shawn and Razor in their ladder rematch. I'm going to vote for 1988 as I haven't seen a complete version of that show since the night that it aired live on PPV. The Coliseum Video release was cut down to 2 hours of course.
That is it for this week. Have a great week!! Take care and God bless!!
The WWE Night Of Champions PPV was last night and here are the results and happenings. Who would be Chris Jericho's partner? It wouldn't take long for us to find out as the tag team title match opened the show. Jericho announced his new partner, The Big Show. Jericho and Show defeated Cody Rhodes and Ted Dibiase to retain the titles when Show got the submission win on Dibiase. CM Punk was interviewed and ended up walking out into the arena ripping on the parents in attendance for letting their kids look up to Jeff Hardy. The ECW title match was next with Christian defeating Tommy Dreamer to win the belt when Christian reversed a DDT to hit the killswitch for the win. With Big Show as a tag team champion, he was replaced in the US title match by Primo. So, it was Kofi defending against Primo, Carlito, Swagger, Miz, and MVP. Kofi retained the title by hitting Carlito with the trouble in paradise for the win. Michelle McCool retained the Women's title by defeating Melina. Next was the triple threat for the WWE title with Randy Orton defending against Triple H and John Cena. Orton was put in a sharpshooter by Triple H while Cena had the STF on him. Orton was tapping but the ref didn't know what to do since both guys had a submission on him. Rhodes and Dibiase got involved attacking both Triple H and Cena. This was a no DQ match so the match went on. Triple H and Dibiase battled out to the floor while Cena picked up Rhodes for the adjustment. Orton then hit Cena with a RKO to get the pinfall and retained the title. Mickie James defeated Maryse to win the Divas champion when she hit a DDT for the win. Very happy with this win as a Mickie fan. She becomes the second woman to have held both the Women's and Divas titles. Rey Mysterio defeated Dolph Ziggler to retain the Intercontinental title after he hit the 619 and splash for t he win. The main event was CM Punk defending the World title against Jeff Hardy. The finish was Hardy going for the twist of fate but it was countered into a GTS. Hardy was able to kick out. As Punk continued to try and get pins, Hardy kept kicking out. Punk then got up and took the belt walking away from the ring. Hardy ran after him and brought him back to the ring. Hardy hammered on him and then hit the twist of fate. The swanton followed and Hardy got the pin. Jeff Hardy is once again the World champion.
Raw opened with Jerry Lawler introducing tonight’s “guest host”, Shaquille O’Neal. He got a good ovation but also did get some boos as well considering that Washington DC is a NBA town. Plus, he is going to be playing for a rival of Washington’s and that is Cleveland. Lawler and Shaq discussed the plans for the night including the beat the clock challenge to determine the opponent for Orton at SummerSlam. Jericho interrupted and said that when he heard that the most dominant player in NBA history was going to be the “guest host” that he was expecting Kobe Bryant. Shaq then called him “Christina” and gave him a kiss on the forehead. Jericho’s reaction was priceless. It almost looked like he was trying to keep from laughing. Jericho demanded to be catered to by everyone and said that if Shaq didn’t cater to him, there would be problems. If he didn’t agree, he’d have to introduce his tag team partner which he did, The Big Show. Show arrives and he and Shaq stare off nose to nose. Show told him that he had a better chance of hitting two free throws in a row than intimidating him. Shaq called him fat boy and challenged him to a match right then. Show backed down saying that he’d cripple and hurt him so then the NBA would breathing down his neck over taking out their superstar. Shaq said that he knew that would be the response so he had hired two people to take them on. He brought out Cryme Tyme adding that the match would take place tonight and that Shaq would be the special enforcer. The show closed with that very match. The match was stopped by a DQ when Big Show came in the ring without a tag and started hammering Cryme Tyme. He nailed the double chokeslam on them and then stared off with Shaq. Shaq took off his ref shirt and jumped in the ring. The two faced off and shoved each other. Show hooked a choke and then Shaq did the same. They choked each other and Cryme Tyme attacked Show. Shaq then hit a football tackle to knock Show from the ring. The Beat The Clock Challenge took place. Participants were John Cena, Triple H, Mark Henry, Jack Swagger, and MVP. The first match had Mark Henry taking on Carlito. Carlito stalled for time for a while but got in quite a bit of offense. Henry finally won with the slam at 6:49. I thought that was way too long for that win to take. Next was MVP taking on the back on TV, Chris Masters. They signed him a while back but he hasn’t been back on TV yet. Masters is still doing the Masterlock gimmick. The fight ended up on the floor. Masters wouldn’t let him back in the ring and hooked the masterlock. The result was a double countout with the story being that Masters had played spoiler to MVP’s chances. Triple H was shown walking through the back and was attacked by Dibiase with a club to the leg. The match was next and Triple H was favoring the leg in the match. Triple H took on Cody Rhodes. Cody worked on the leg a lot. Dibiase showed up jumping on the apron with about 30 seconds to go. Triple H went to punch him but it was played up that he was afraid to do it and get DQ’d. Cody runs and Triple H moves. The shot knocks Dibiase off the apron. Triple H then hits the pedigree on Cody with one second left but can’t make the pinfall in time. So, Triple H is out and Henry still holds the top time. Jack Swagger lost his match when he lost to Evan Bourne with a little over three minutes left in the match. Swagger went for the gut wrench but it was countered into a small package for the win. The last match was Cena vs. The Miz. Randy Orton was at ringside watching the match. Cena won with the STF with 2:22 left on the clock meaning that he will face Orton at SummerSlam for the belt. Orton walked in the ring after the match and the two faced off with Orton holding the belt for Cena to see. Mickie James, Kelly Kelly, and Gail Kim defeated the team of Beth Phoenix, Alicia Fox, and Rosa Mendes. Gail tagged herself in on Mickie and then got the pin on Alicia. I could not tell if Mickie was upset with Gail over it or not. The ending of the match was just very scrambled directing wise. The pin didn’t get shown cause the camera was focused on the Kelly clothesline to stop the pin from being broken up. Mickie gave a look at Gail but the announcers didn’t play it up. I couldn’t tell if they were setting up a Mickie/Gail rivalry or not. Here comes the odd booking moments of the night. Well, a couple of them anyway. LOL. Kendrick was ready for his match with Kofi and mouthed at Lawler that he would be destroying him after the match. Kofi nailed Kendrick with the trouble in paradise and the quick win. Then, Hornswoggle wrestled Chavo AGAIN!! This time, Chavo was blindfolded. He went for the frog splash but Hornswoggle was long gone at that point watching him miss the move from the apron. Hornswoggle hit the tadpole splash for the win.
Other notes from Raw. Was anyone else wanting to hear a song off of the Shaq Diesel CD for Shaq’s entrance? Maybe to “I’m Outstanding”. Did you hear Lawler call Shaq a 15 time MVP? Umm, no. LOL. That would be quite the accomplishment though!! I think he was going for 15 time All Star. Ok, since when can you get DQ’d for knocking the interfering person off the apron? How often does that happen? Plus, if he hits you, you win by DQ. Rarely is there a DQ for hitting someone that tries to get involved unless they punch back. Just a weird booking thing that got on my nerves a bit tonight. Who is the person that continues to punish us with Hornswoggle vs. Chavo matches every week? Make it stop. Wow, they didn’t even repackage Masters. I thought for sure that they would. Well, Big Show’s new gear is going to take some getting used to. It reminds me of a combination of Andre The Giant’s old Colossal Connection gear and Earthquake’s early 90’s gear. Lots of Shaq segments including him playing scrabble with Santino which included all the words that included the word Shaq in it. He played b-ball with Hornswoggle on a mini goal saying that they went to high school together. Hornswoggle bricked the dunk. Speaking of that segment, they had Cole leave the announce booth just so he could go and say Shaqalicious and offer a fist bump??!! LOL. Who was playing NBA Jam backstage and fed the boomshackalaka line to Michael Cole when Shaq knocked Show down from the ring??!!
Jeremy Piven will be the guest host next week on Raw.
The advertising is out for SummerSlam and Shawn Michaels is being advertsied so take that for what you will.
Ring Of Honor will be moving their HD Net show to Monday nights beginning August 17. The show will air at 7pm central time with them looking to get a viewer boost from fans waiting for WWE Raw to go on the air. I say sure, give it a shot. Sounds like a plan to me.
The 1988 Great American Bash PPV was the fan vote winner for July and is currently airing on WWE 24/7 Classics On Demand. I always remember this being a great show. This was the one of the many Lex Luger was that close to beating Ric Flair for the title moments. If they black and white over the finish of this match, I will be annoyed since it is crucial to the finish of it.
I watched the Patriotism themed episode of The Legends Of Wrestling roundtable show over the weekend. Really fun show. The subject was talking about wrestlers and angles centered around patriotism over the years. Some more good Iron Sheik stories. Interesting that Michael Hayes put the blame of a lot of heel angles not working now on the talent saying that they are afraid to get major heat. They all talked about how back in the day if you caused a riot, that was a good night. Sgt. Slaughter told a couple of really good stories talking about meeting two presidents. One was President Reagan while he was in office and being invited to a function. The other was Nixon who was out of office when he met him on an airplane. They were really great stories!!
Here is the preview for August programming on WWE 24/7 Classics On Demand. I am really liking the lineup for this upcoming month. The theme for the month is "Heatwave". Big Ones airing include WCW Beach Blast 1992, WWF Saturday Night's Main Event (January 4, 1986), WWF The Big Event (Hogan vs. Orndorff), and WWE Backlash 2009. Old School house shows include: Los Angeles (July 15, 1988) and St. Louis (August 10, 1984). TV classics: NWA (December 1986-January 1987), ECW (November 1996), World Class (May 1985), Prime Time Wrestling (April 1988), Monday Night Wars (Raw and Nitro - January 1998), Monday Night Wars: The Beginning (Raw and Nitro from November 1995), Mid-Atlantic (December 1981). The Hall Of Fame will focus on The Blackjacks. Shorties will all be matches from SummerSlam over the years. The Viva Las Divas special will be airing which was a WWE DVD release years ago. The fan voting for August will be between SummerSlam 1988, 1990, and 1995. I would vote for either SummerSlam 1988 or 1990. 1995 was a one match show with Shawn and Razor in their ladder rematch. I'm going to vote for 1988 as I haven't seen a complete version of that show since the night that it aired live on PPV. The Coliseum Video release was cut down to 2 hours of course.
That is it for this week. Have a great week!! Take care and God bless!!
Monday, July 20, 2009
Raw/Smackdown Thoughts, WWE 24/7 Editing, Night Of Champions Preview, & More - July 20, 2009
Welcome to the “did that Mickie James interview segment with Josh Mathews scream retro 1980’s WWF Superstars Saturday mornings or what?” edition of The Wrestling List.
Tonight’s Raw was “guest hosted” by ZZ Top. Yeah, that wasn’t near as entertaining as Seth Green last week. The main event was John Cena teaming with Triple H against all three members of Legacy. Orton went for the punt on Cena but he avoided it. Cena then rolled up Orton to get the pin. Cena and Triple H then shook hands after the match. In other action. Kofi Kingston, MVP, and Primo defeated the team of Jack Swagger, Carlito, and Big Show. Primo and Carlito did go at it for a bit in the match. Show accidentally speared Carlito and then Kofi took Show out of the ring. Primo then pinned Carlito with a springboard legdrop. Show then came back into the ring and attacked everyone including Swagger. Show picked Kofi up by one hand and lifted him into the ring and left him laying. Mark Henry got his rematch with Chris Jericho. Jericho ended up nailing Henry with a couple chair shots on the floor causing the DQ. Henry caught the third attempt and shoved Jericho over the table. The fight ended up in the ring again and Jericho’s codebreaker attempt was countered into the world’s strongest slam. Later, Jericho ran into Priceless as he left the building. They mocked him over having to find a partner and the beating that he taken. Jericho then messed with their heads leaving them worried about who he might choose for Sunday. Mickie James was interviewed by Josh Mathews. Good promo by Mickie where she talked about how the only win that Maryse had on her was a silly swimsuit match. Miz interrupted ripping on Mickie and talking big on Maryse. Mickie hit him with a line of that she had scored a pinfall on Maryse while Miz hasn’t been able to score at all. Maryse then walked up on the set and sprayed Mickie in the eyes with some sort of spray leaving Mickie hurting. The ZZ Top legs match took place with Alicia Fox and Rosa Mendes getting a win on Kelly Kelly and Gail Kim when Alicia pinned Kelly despite her legs being in the ropes. Jerry Lawler took on Brian Kendrick and defeated him with a punch. Yep, the punch took out Kendrick. A sharp dressed man match took place with Hornswoggle against Chavo Guerrero. It was a ZZ Top theme named tuxedo match. Chavo ended up with a tux where the pants were sewed together making him have a hard time moving. Hornswoggle got the win. Santino Marella hung out performing with ZZ Top backstage all night including him wearing a beard. The segments were just kind of ehhh.
Other notes from Raw. Wow, did anyone have flashbacks to Superstars and Wrestling Challenge from the 80’s watching Josh Mathews interview Mickie James on the podium? That brought back memories. Yeah, I don’t think that fans of the Jim Cornette/Paul E. Dangerously tuxedo match from the 1989 Great American Bash have anything to be concerned about with tonight’s tuxedo match topping that one. LOL. Not a chance. By the way, that 1989 match has to be the best tuxedo match of all time. So, WWE is now selling advertising of matches now. Dave and Busters were the sponsor of the six man tag team match with the logo being on the screen at times including for the match graphics.
Last week’s Smackdown had a main event of Jeff Hardy and Rey Mysterio taking on Chris Jericho and Dolph Ziggler. CM Punk was on commentary. Earlier in the night, Punk and Hardy had words over their different lifestyle choices with Punk taking shots at Hardy’s. The finish of this match had Hardy throwing Jericho toward Punk. Punk moved and then shoved Jericho into Hardy knocking Hardy into the steps. That caused the DQ. Jericho then hooked on the walls of Jericho on Hardy as Punk looked on. John Morrison got a pinfall victory on CM Punk earlier in the night. Morrison offered a handshake after the match but Punk didn’t accept it and walked out. Edge was interviewed about his surgery. He talked of his accomplishments and how he always rose above challenges. However, he said that he wasn’t sure he’d be able to come back from this one and said that his career might be over. He said that this was the hardest injury to come back from and he was going to fight to come back. Jericho walked to the ring stopping the interview up on the screen. Jericho said that he was tired of hearing Edge sounding pathetic and that Edge didn’t care about WWE or about him. Jericho said that Edge’s only accomplishments were a bunch of injuries while he had never been injured. Edge was annoyed throughout much of Jericho’s comments and then said that he didn’t need the attack on his character or his accomplishments but said he will use those words as motivation to come back. Edge said he will prove everyone wrong when he returns. The Hart Dynasty won a six person tag match against Cryme Tyme and Eve when Natalya pinned Eve following a nasty spinning clothesline. Kane defeated R Truth when Truth jumped off the top turnbuckle only to catch a boot in the face from Kane leading to the win for Kane. Khali arrived afterwards and Kane was hit from behind by Truth. Kane did make it out of there before Khali got to him though. Layla came to the ring in a Dwayne Wade jersey dancing for the Miami crowd. She has a NBA championship ring as being part of the team as a dancer. Ricky Ortiz made his way to the ring with rally towels giving her inspiration for the dance. She wasn’t having any of it. I thought this segment was kind of odd cause Layla has been a heel.
Shaquille O’Neal will be the “guest host” of Raw next week. Ok, this should be fun. Shaq is a long time fan and it should be good.
WWE is stepping things up for SummerSlam adding a Fan Axxess to the weekend. Axxess has always just been done for WrestleMania but now SummerSlam will get one as well. I’m all for it as I think fans need to have extra stuff like that to attend especially when SummerSlam is such a huge event.
Taz finally debuted last night for TNA at the Victory Road PPV. This wasn’t a surprise to anyone that has been following the storyline. He got involved in the Sting/Samoa Joe match. The Main Event Mafia held all the titles at the end of the night last night. Well, except for the X-Division title which wasn’t defended.
Bobby Lashley was interviewed on ESPN Radio last week by Brandon Tierney where he announced that he has signed with TNA.
Big win for Brock Lesnar at UFC 100. He defeated Frank Mir to become the undisputed UFC champion in the second round by TKO. Afterwards, he stirred some controversy by telling the fans they were number one. Brings back memories of WrestleMania XX, doesn’t it? LOL. He ripped on the fans too when he was interviewed and UFC sponsors. Lesnar is really getting all kinds of attention in UFC and the PPV was said to do something around 1.2 million buys. That is a BIG number.
Guns N’ Roses song for Seth Green’s entrance from last week didn’t make it to WWE AM Raw on Saturday night. The song was replaced by some generic music. Guess they didn’t want to pay the money for it twice.
The editing on WWE 24/7 Classics On Demand is starting to get to be too much. I get that they are marketing more toward kids again but the editing on blood is too much. What am I talking about? I’m sure you’ve seen clips on TV on current WWE programming where they’ll be replaying an attack or something that resulted in blood. The screen goes black and white so they don’t show the blood. They are now doing this on WWE 24/7 Classic On Demand. Old footage has been edited to go black and white when showing a bloody camera angle of a match. I have noticed this happening from time to time but my breaking point with it was that they did this on the 1989 Great American Bash that is currently airing on the service. There are parts of the Flair/Funk match where the screen goes black and white to not show the blood. This is ridiculous. They were marketing to kids when I was little at the time when this match happened. I never thought anything of it. It is wrestling. What do you expect? It happens. Here is my problem with it as I just say if there is something in a show On Demand that had a big amount of blood, put a graphic at the beginning to warn of it. They do it with the ECW shows mentioning viewer discretion in watching it. Why don’t you do that with the others as well instead of going black and white and ruining the original footage? I’m big on wanting to leave original footage as it is. I want to see old shows in their original form. I don’t like music edits but I, of course, understand why they have to be done. However, I don’t understand why music is ok in one show but it is edited in another one. That’s a different story though. Turning moments of matches to black and white is very annoying. Put up a viewer discretion graphic and let the footage go.
The PPV name changing continues. Cyber Sunday changed to Annihilation and then back to Cyber Sunday. Now, it has been changed to WWE Bragging Rights.
The WWE Night Of Champions PPV is this Sunday night and here is the lineup. Randy Orton defends the WWE title against Triple H and John Cena. CM Punk defends the World title against Jeff Hardy. Intercontinental Champion Rey Mysterio defends against Dolph Ziggler. ECW Champion Tommy Dreamer defends against Christian. Unified Tag Team Champion Chris Jericho will pick a partner and they’ll defend the belts against Ted Dibiase and Cody Rhodes. Maryse defends the Divas championship against Mickie James. Six pack challenge for the US title with Kofi Kingston defending against Big Show, Carlito, Jack Swagger, MVP, and The Miz.
Have a great week!! Take care and God bless!!!
Tonight’s Raw was “guest hosted” by ZZ Top. Yeah, that wasn’t near as entertaining as Seth Green last week. The main event was John Cena teaming with Triple H against all three members of Legacy. Orton went for the punt on Cena but he avoided it. Cena then rolled up Orton to get the pin. Cena and Triple H then shook hands after the match. In other action. Kofi Kingston, MVP, and Primo defeated the team of Jack Swagger, Carlito, and Big Show. Primo and Carlito did go at it for a bit in the match. Show accidentally speared Carlito and then Kofi took Show out of the ring. Primo then pinned Carlito with a springboard legdrop. Show then came back into the ring and attacked everyone including Swagger. Show picked Kofi up by one hand and lifted him into the ring and left him laying. Mark Henry got his rematch with Chris Jericho. Jericho ended up nailing Henry with a couple chair shots on the floor causing the DQ. Henry caught the third attempt and shoved Jericho over the table. The fight ended up in the ring again and Jericho’s codebreaker attempt was countered into the world’s strongest slam. Later, Jericho ran into Priceless as he left the building. They mocked him over having to find a partner and the beating that he taken. Jericho then messed with their heads leaving them worried about who he might choose for Sunday. Mickie James was interviewed by Josh Mathews. Good promo by Mickie where she talked about how the only win that Maryse had on her was a silly swimsuit match. Miz interrupted ripping on Mickie and talking big on Maryse. Mickie hit him with a line of that she had scored a pinfall on Maryse while Miz hasn’t been able to score at all. Maryse then walked up on the set and sprayed Mickie in the eyes with some sort of spray leaving Mickie hurting. The ZZ Top legs match took place with Alicia Fox and Rosa Mendes getting a win on Kelly Kelly and Gail Kim when Alicia pinned Kelly despite her legs being in the ropes. Jerry Lawler took on Brian Kendrick and defeated him with a punch. Yep, the punch took out Kendrick. A sharp dressed man match took place with Hornswoggle against Chavo Guerrero. It was a ZZ Top theme named tuxedo match. Chavo ended up with a tux where the pants were sewed together making him have a hard time moving. Hornswoggle got the win. Santino Marella hung out performing with ZZ Top backstage all night including him wearing a beard. The segments were just kind of ehhh.
Other notes from Raw. Wow, did anyone have flashbacks to Superstars and Wrestling Challenge from the 80’s watching Josh Mathews interview Mickie James on the podium? That brought back memories. Yeah, I don’t think that fans of the Jim Cornette/Paul E. Dangerously tuxedo match from the 1989 Great American Bash have anything to be concerned about with tonight’s tuxedo match topping that one. LOL. Not a chance. By the way, that 1989 match has to be the best tuxedo match of all time. So, WWE is now selling advertising of matches now. Dave and Busters were the sponsor of the six man tag team match with the logo being on the screen at times including for the match graphics.
Last week’s Smackdown had a main event of Jeff Hardy and Rey Mysterio taking on Chris Jericho and Dolph Ziggler. CM Punk was on commentary. Earlier in the night, Punk and Hardy had words over their different lifestyle choices with Punk taking shots at Hardy’s. The finish of this match had Hardy throwing Jericho toward Punk. Punk moved and then shoved Jericho into Hardy knocking Hardy into the steps. That caused the DQ. Jericho then hooked on the walls of Jericho on Hardy as Punk looked on. John Morrison got a pinfall victory on CM Punk earlier in the night. Morrison offered a handshake after the match but Punk didn’t accept it and walked out. Edge was interviewed about his surgery. He talked of his accomplishments and how he always rose above challenges. However, he said that he wasn’t sure he’d be able to come back from this one and said that his career might be over. He said that this was the hardest injury to come back from and he was going to fight to come back. Jericho walked to the ring stopping the interview up on the screen. Jericho said that he was tired of hearing Edge sounding pathetic and that Edge didn’t care about WWE or about him. Jericho said that Edge’s only accomplishments were a bunch of injuries while he had never been injured. Edge was annoyed throughout much of Jericho’s comments and then said that he didn’t need the attack on his character or his accomplishments but said he will use those words as motivation to come back. Edge said he will prove everyone wrong when he returns. The Hart Dynasty won a six person tag match against Cryme Tyme and Eve when Natalya pinned Eve following a nasty spinning clothesline. Kane defeated R Truth when Truth jumped off the top turnbuckle only to catch a boot in the face from Kane leading to the win for Kane. Khali arrived afterwards and Kane was hit from behind by Truth. Kane did make it out of there before Khali got to him though. Layla came to the ring in a Dwayne Wade jersey dancing for the Miami crowd. She has a NBA championship ring as being part of the team as a dancer. Ricky Ortiz made his way to the ring with rally towels giving her inspiration for the dance. She wasn’t having any of it. I thought this segment was kind of odd cause Layla has been a heel.
Shaquille O’Neal will be the “guest host” of Raw next week. Ok, this should be fun. Shaq is a long time fan and it should be good.
WWE is stepping things up for SummerSlam adding a Fan Axxess to the weekend. Axxess has always just been done for WrestleMania but now SummerSlam will get one as well. I’m all for it as I think fans need to have extra stuff like that to attend especially when SummerSlam is such a huge event.
Taz finally debuted last night for TNA at the Victory Road PPV. This wasn’t a surprise to anyone that has been following the storyline. He got involved in the Sting/Samoa Joe match. The Main Event Mafia held all the titles at the end of the night last night. Well, except for the X-Division title which wasn’t defended.
Bobby Lashley was interviewed on ESPN Radio last week by Brandon Tierney where he announced that he has signed with TNA.
Big win for Brock Lesnar at UFC 100. He defeated Frank Mir to become the undisputed UFC champion in the second round by TKO. Afterwards, he stirred some controversy by telling the fans they were number one. Brings back memories of WrestleMania XX, doesn’t it? LOL. He ripped on the fans too when he was interviewed and UFC sponsors. Lesnar is really getting all kinds of attention in UFC and the PPV was said to do something around 1.2 million buys. That is a BIG number.
Guns N’ Roses song for Seth Green’s entrance from last week didn’t make it to WWE AM Raw on Saturday night. The song was replaced by some generic music. Guess they didn’t want to pay the money for it twice.
The editing on WWE 24/7 Classics On Demand is starting to get to be too much. I get that they are marketing more toward kids again but the editing on blood is too much. What am I talking about? I’m sure you’ve seen clips on TV on current WWE programming where they’ll be replaying an attack or something that resulted in blood. The screen goes black and white so they don’t show the blood. They are now doing this on WWE 24/7 Classic On Demand. Old footage has been edited to go black and white when showing a bloody camera angle of a match. I have noticed this happening from time to time but my breaking point with it was that they did this on the 1989 Great American Bash that is currently airing on the service. There are parts of the Flair/Funk match where the screen goes black and white to not show the blood. This is ridiculous. They were marketing to kids when I was little at the time when this match happened. I never thought anything of it. It is wrestling. What do you expect? It happens. Here is my problem with it as I just say if there is something in a show On Demand that had a big amount of blood, put a graphic at the beginning to warn of it. They do it with the ECW shows mentioning viewer discretion in watching it. Why don’t you do that with the others as well instead of going black and white and ruining the original footage? I’m big on wanting to leave original footage as it is. I want to see old shows in their original form. I don’t like music edits but I, of course, understand why they have to be done. However, I don’t understand why music is ok in one show but it is edited in another one. That’s a different story though. Turning moments of matches to black and white is very annoying. Put up a viewer discretion graphic and let the footage go.
The PPV name changing continues. Cyber Sunday changed to Annihilation and then back to Cyber Sunday. Now, it has been changed to WWE Bragging Rights.
The WWE Night Of Champions PPV is this Sunday night and here is the lineup. Randy Orton defends the WWE title against Triple H and John Cena. CM Punk defends the World title against Jeff Hardy. Intercontinental Champion Rey Mysterio defends against Dolph Ziggler. ECW Champion Tommy Dreamer defends against Christian. Unified Tag Team Champion Chris Jericho will pick a partner and they’ll defend the belts against Ted Dibiase and Cody Rhodes. Maryse defends the Divas championship against Mickie James. Six pack challenge for the US title with Kofi Kingston defending against Big Show, Carlito, Jack Swagger, MVP, and The Miz.
Have a great week!! Take care and God bless!!!
Monday, July 13, 2009
Raw & Smackdown Thoughts & More - July 13, 2009
Welcome to the “that has to be the biggest babyface reaction that I can remember a celebrity getting in quite some time” edition of The Wrestling List.
Here is the recap of last week's Smackdown. Rey Mysterio defended the Intercontinental title against Chris Jericho. It took up the last half hour of the show. Rey won with the 619 and splash. After the match, Edge showed up and was about to go for Rey. Rey saw him and avoided him. As Rey backed up the aisle, he was hit from behind by Dolph Ziggler. Dolph attacked him and then threw him to Edge for a spear. Edge set up Jericho to hit the codebreaker on Rey. Edge and Jericho left leaving Dolph to land another move on Rey to make his impact. Earlier in the night, Dolph had gotten a win on John Morrison with a hand full of tights. Jeff Hardy and CM Punk continued their war of words. Hardy opened the show talking about how he was upset that Punk didn't check on him with his eye injury last week. He pointed out that it was almost like Punk thinks he was faking it but that his eye injury was just as bad as Punk's. Hardy took on Kane following his comments. As Hardy was going for the swanton, Punk's music hit. Hardy was distracted on the top rope watching Punk which gave time for Kane to grab Hardy. He chokeslammed Hardy off the top rope for the win. Later in the night, Punk wrestled The Great Khali with Jeff on commentary. Punk showed Hardy his prescription eye medication to prove the injury while continuing to talk about the difference in their lifestyles. Hardy eventually got up to confront him but then Khali's music hit to start the match. As the match went on, Khali hit the Punjabi plunge. Kane's music hit and he walked out with a chair. Singh threw a chair to Khali and the two faced off with chairs. Kane dropped his momentarily which led to Khali doing the same. Kane then hit Khali with the chair. On the next attempt, Khali punched the chair out of Kane's hands. Kane tried to beg off from th e chair but Khali hit him with it anyway which then led to Kane leaving the ring. Melina and Eve defeated Michelle McCool and Layla. Melina landed a shot on Michelle on the apron. Layla went to nail Melina from behind but Melina moved. Layla ended up catching Michelle with it. Melina then rolled up Layla for the win. Michelle attacked Melina after the match and the fight went to the floor. Melina got back on offense clotheslining Michelle into the crowd. The two would fight more around ringside before Michelle bailed out of there. The Hart Dynasty evened up with Cryme Tyme this week by defeating them. Natalya was the distraction getting the attention of JTG. The Hart Dynasty then hit the high/low on Shad for the win. Other happenings on the show had Maria and Dolph apparently becoming a new romance. R Truth is now doing a new comedy type character that was just kind of out of nowhere. I guess WWE is trying to come up with something to freshen up the character a bit.
Tonight’s Raw was all about the guest host of the week, Seth Green. I really enjoyed him as guest host. The fans loved him. I’m a Seth Green fan anyway and it’s nice to see a celebrity who is a fan get to be involved in such a role. Triple H opened the show and introduced Seth Green as the guest host. Seth started making matches and they promoted his new Robot Chicken episode which will feature Triple H. They started running down Randy Orton which brought him out. Triple H and Orton talked some trash back and forth. Orton was sick of Seth already but Seth made a six man tag main event. Seth Green teaming with Triple H and John Cena against Legacy. Funny segment later where Seth was in his office looking very nervous. Cena and Triple H walked in trying to pump him up a bit. They then started to argue with each other. The decision was then made to quit arguing cause they both knew that “Seth was going to get killed anyway”. Seth had really good timing tonight in every segment that he was in. The main event took place. Seth did get tagged into the match. Cena held Cody while Seth landed a punch. Seth started to show boat until he realized that Cody had recovered. Seth ran around the ring with Cody right behind him. Triple H then hid and nailed Cody with a clothesline. The finish had Triple H going for the pedigree but Priceless stopped it. Cena stopped the double team. Orton hit a RKO to Triple H and went for the pin. Seth jumped in and broke the count. Orton went for Seth and had him down in the corner. He went for the punt but Cena tackled him to stop it. Legacy all piled on Cena and went to grab a chair. The chair was countered by Triple H grabbing the sledgehammer. He swung around a bunch and then took a wild swing which almost landed on Cena. The two stopped and just looked at each other. Things were all right between them and the two posed with Seth. BIG Seth chants during this match. Other action had Chris Jericho talking about how he had put a clause in the contract allowing him to pick a new tag team partner for Night Of Champions and allowing him to remain tag team champions. His reasoning was that he knew Edge was injury prone and put that in the contract adding that Edge was the weak link of the team. Mark Henry came to the ring and Jericho thought that Henry would be his tag partner but Henry was there to wrestle him instead. He ripped Jericho’s clothes off of him and then Seth made the match official between them. Jericho had words with Seth earlier in the night which was the reason why Jericho was put in the match. Henry put a beating on Jericho and then Jericho bailed taking the countout loss. Jack Swagger defeated MVP after hitting him with the gut wrench power bomb. Maryse, Alicia, and Rosa defeated Mickie, Kelly, and Gail in a swimsuit six diva match. Maryse put Mickie into the post and then hit a DDT for the win. The story was pushing how Maryse was finally able to beat Mickie James. Primo called out Carlito over what occurred last week but instead got The Miz. The two went at it in a match. Carlito’s music hit and Carlito then caused a distraction. Miz nailed a knee to the back of Primo and the reality check for the win. After the match, Carlito kicked Primo and spit an apple in his face. Hornswoggle defeated Chavo Guerrero in a match where Seth had ruled that Chavo had to wrestle with one arm tied behind his back. Hornswoggle pinned Chavo with a small package with the story being that he couldn’t kick out due to his arm being tied. Big Show took on Evan Bourne with Kofi at ringside doing commentary. Show nailed a NASTY spear on Bourne which had Bourne landing on his neck. Show then hooked the camel clutch for the win but wouldn’t let go of the hold. Kofi got in the ring and stopped it. Show was knocked from the ring. It was announced that ZZ Top will be the guest host for Raw next week.
Other notes from Raw. Like I said, I thought Seth Green was fanastic tonight. That Robot Chicken episode looked really funny. It is a funny show if you’ve never seen it especially the Star Wars episodes. Did I really hear Buffy The Vampire Slayer get a plug on Raw? Loved that!! How much did it cost WWE to get to use Welcome To The Jungle for Seth Green’s theme music? I thought the action figure segment was funny with Santino imitating himself running off The Iron Sheik. Then, the Trish Stratus figure walked in and he made out with her. It was really funny. Why does WWE always have to book the quicker guys against the big monsters to where they can’t work like they should be able to? What a bummer to see the Edge surgery footage knowing that he is out for a while.
Edge had surgery done last week as expected and will be out of action for several months. He is going to be missed big time!!
Ted Dibiase has gotten rave reviews for his appearance last week as the “guest host” of Raw. He was great and his promos were great as well. He just made everything look so easy. The roster and the entire WWE needs to look at what he was able to do and take notes.
Ricky Steamboat wrestled recently overseas against Chris Jericho at a house show. Isn’t it amazing just how good that Steamboat is after retirement? Some guys just never lose it. The fans over there got a treat for sure.
The WWE: Allied Powers – The World’s Greatest Tag Teams DVD will be released in stores tomorrow. I’ll get a preview lineup in next week’s List. It is a strong one though.
I mentioned last week about the WWE name changes for PPV’s. Well, WWE brought the Cyber Sunday name back instead of Annihilation and have it back on their schedule. That is until today. WWE has now changed the name to WWE Bragging Rights. They are really having trouble picking a name.
Jerry Lawler is once again talking about throwing his hat into the political ring. He is considering running for Mayor of Memphis. He has run before back in 1999 and lost to who is the current Mayor of Memphis. The current Mayor is about to retire.
Have a great week!! Take care and God bless!!
Here is the recap of last week's Smackdown. Rey Mysterio defended the Intercontinental title against Chris Jericho. It took up the last half hour of the show. Rey won with the 619 and splash. After the match, Edge showed up and was about to go for Rey. Rey saw him and avoided him. As Rey backed up the aisle, he was hit from behind by Dolph Ziggler. Dolph attacked him and then threw him to Edge for a spear. Edge set up Jericho to hit the codebreaker on Rey. Edge and Jericho left leaving Dolph to land another move on Rey to make his impact. Earlier in the night, Dolph had gotten a win on John Morrison with a hand full of tights. Jeff Hardy and CM Punk continued their war of words. Hardy opened the show talking about how he was upset that Punk didn't check on him with his eye injury last week. He pointed out that it was almost like Punk thinks he was faking it but that his eye injury was just as bad as Punk's. Hardy took on Kane following his comments. As Hardy was going for the swanton, Punk's music hit. Hardy was distracted on the top rope watching Punk which gave time for Kane to grab Hardy. He chokeslammed Hardy off the top rope for the win. Later in the night, Punk wrestled The Great Khali with Jeff on commentary. Punk showed Hardy his prescription eye medication to prove the injury while continuing to talk about the difference in their lifestyles. Hardy eventually got up to confront him but then Khali's music hit to start the match. As the match went on, Khali hit the Punjabi plunge. Kane's music hit and he walked out with a chair. Singh threw a chair to Khali and the two faced off with chairs. Kane dropped his momentarily which led to Khali doing the same. Kane then hit Khali with the chair. On the next attempt, Khali punched the chair out of Kane's hands. Kane tried to beg off from th e chair but Khali hit him with it anyway which then led to Kane leaving the ring. Melina and Eve defeated Michelle McCool and Layla. Melina landed a shot on Michelle on the apron. Layla went to nail Melina from behind but Melina moved. Layla ended up catching Michelle with it. Melina then rolled up Layla for the win. Michelle attacked Melina after the match and the fight went to the floor. Melina got back on offense clotheslining Michelle into the crowd. The two would fight more around ringside before Michelle bailed out of there. The Hart Dynasty evened up with Cryme Tyme this week by defeating them. Natalya was the distraction getting the attention of JTG. The Hart Dynasty then hit the high/low on Shad for the win. Other happenings on the show had Maria and Dolph apparently becoming a new romance. R Truth is now doing a new comedy type character that was just kind of out of nowhere. I guess WWE is trying to come up with something to freshen up the character a bit.
Tonight’s Raw was all about the guest host of the week, Seth Green. I really enjoyed him as guest host. The fans loved him. I’m a Seth Green fan anyway and it’s nice to see a celebrity who is a fan get to be involved in such a role. Triple H opened the show and introduced Seth Green as the guest host. Seth started making matches and they promoted his new Robot Chicken episode which will feature Triple H. They started running down Randy Orton which brought him out. Triple H and Orton talked some trash back and forth. Orton was sick of Seth already but Seth made a six man tag main event. Seth Green teaming with Triple H and John Cena against Legacy. Funny segment later where Seth was in his office looking very nervous. Cena and Triple H walked in trying to pump him up a bit. They then started to argue with each other. The decision was then made to quit arguing cause they both knew that “Seth was going to get killed anyway”. Seth had really good timing tonight in every segment that he was in. The main event took place. Seth did get tagged into the match. Cena held Cody while Seth landed a punch. Seth started to show boat until he realized that Cody had recovered. Seth ran around the ring with Cody right behind him. Triple H then hid and nailed Cody with a clothesline. The finish had Triple H going for the pedigree but Priceless stopped it. Cena stopped the double team. Orton hit a RKO to Triple H and went for the pin. Seth jumped in and broke the count. Orton went for Seth and had him down in the corner. He went for the punt but Cena tackled him to stop it. Legacy all piled on Cena and went to grab a chair. The chair was countered by Triple H grabbing the sledgehammer. He swung around a bunch and then took a wild swing which almost landed on Cena. The two stopped and just looked at each other. Things were all right between them and the two posed with Seth. BIG Seth chants during this match. Other action had Chris Jericho talking about how he had put a clause in the contract allowing him to pick a new tag team partner for Night Of Champions and allowing him to remain tag team champions. His reasoning was that he knew Edge was injury prone and put that in the contract adding that Edge was the weak link of the team. Mark Henry came to the ring and Jericho thought that Henry would be his tag partner but Henry was there to wrestle him instead. He ripped Jericho’s clothes off of him and then Seth made the match official between them. Jericho had words with Seth earlier in the night which was the reason why Jericho was put in the match. Henry put a beating on Jericho and then Jericho bailed taking the countout loss. Jack Swagger defeated MVP after hitting him with the gut wrench power bomb. Maryse, Alicia, and Rosa defeated Mickie, Kelly, and Gail in a swimsuit six diva match. Maryse put Mickie into the post and then hit a DDT for the win. The story was pushing how Maryse was finally able to beat Mickie James. Primo called out Carlito over what occurred last week but instead got The Miz. The two went at it in a match. Carlito’s music hit and Carlito then caused a distraction. Miz nailed a knee to the back of Primo and the reality check for the win. After the match, Carlito kicked Primo and spit an apple in his face. Hornswoggle defeated Chavo Guerrero in a match where Seth had ruled that Chavo had to wrestle with one arm tied behind his back. Hornswoggle pinned Chavo with a small package with the story being that he couldn’t kick out due to his arm being tied. Big Show took on Evan Bourne with Kofi at ringside doing commentary. Show nailed a NASTY spear on Bourne which had Bourne landing on his neck. Show then hooked the camel clutch for the win but wouldn’t let go of the hold. Kofi got in the ring and stopped it. Show was knocked from the ring. It was announced that ZZ Top will be the guest host for Raw next week.
Other notes from Raw. Like I said, I thought Seth Green was fanastic tonight. That Robot Chicken episode looked really funny. It is a funny show if you’ve never seen it especially the Star Wars episodes. Did I really hear Buffy The Vampire Slayer get a plug on Raw? Loved that!! How much did it cost WWE to get to use Welcome To The Jungle for Seth Green’s theme music? I thought the action figure segment was funny with Santino imitating himself running off The Iron Sheik. Then, the Trish Stratus figure walked in and he made out with her. It was really funny. Why does WWE always have to book the quicker guys against the big monsters to where they can’t work like they should be able to? What a bummer to see the Edge surgery footage knowing that he is out for a while.
Edge had surgery done last week as expected and will be out of action for several months. He is going to be missed big time!!
Ted Dibiase has gotten rave reviews for his appearance last week as the “guest host” of Raw. He was great and his promos were great as well. He just made everything look so easy. The roster and the entire WWE needs to look at what he was able to do and take notes.
Ricky Steamboat wrestled recently overseas against Chris Jericho at a house show. Isn’t it amazing just how good that Steamboat is after retirement? Some guys just never lose it. The fans over there got a treat for sure.
The WWE: Allied Powers – The World’s Greatest Tag Teams DVD will be released in stores tomorrow. I’ll get a preview lineup in next week’s List. It is a strong one though.
I mentioned last week about the WWE name changes for PPV’s. Well, WWE brought the Cyber Sunday name back instead of Annihilation and have it back on their schedule. That is until today. WWE has now changed the name to WWE Bragging Rights. They are really having trouble picking a name.
Jerry Lawler is once again talking about throwing his hat into the political ring. He is considering running for Mayor of Memphis. He has run before back in 1999 and lost to who is the current Mayor of Memphis. The current Mayor is about to retire.
Have a great week!! Take care and God bless!!
Saturday, July 11, 2009
Macho Madness: The Randy Savage Ultimate Collection Review - July 11, 2009
WWE recently released Macho Madness: The Randy Savage Ultimate Collection and I have gotten it all watched. I’ll go in depth about what is on each disc including any edits that I noticed from the original footage. I have been a Randy Savage fan since I started watching wrestling over twenty years ago. When I heard that WWE was FINALLY going to release this long talked about Randy Savage set, I knew that I had to pick it up. There is of course no biography type program and there is no Randy Savage involvement in it or any interviews. This is a collection of matches hosted by Matt Striker and Maria. I thought they did a good job of hosting it. Striker is a long time fan so he was able to add a lot of details to the building of the matches that we were about to see. Maria was also fun and played well off of Striker. Miss Elizabeth is of course featured a lot in this DVD set. You can’t think about Randy Savage without thinking about Elizabeth. The two of them will forever be united in wrestling history. I often think that if Savage goes into the Hall Of Fame (if McMahon and Savage can work out what ever differences that they have) that Elizabeth should go into the Hall Of Fame in the same year. Same year but induct them separately. The DVD covers Savage’s career from 1985 up to 1999 spanning from WWE to WCW. I had seen most of the stuff on this DVD set but there were three matches that I hadn’t seen. Big kudos to WWE for putting a couple of rare matches on the set along with the usual matches that we see on these sets.
Disc one starts with his early career in WWE and runs from 1985-1988. Savage’s WWE debut is shown which is against Rick McGraw at Madison Square Garden. This is a must see match as Savage was a heat magnet on his first night. He was doing a lot of talking while getting stuff thrown at him. He had a drink hurled at him at one point that got Savage over to the rail to confront the fan. Just a great debut and you just knew this guy was going to be big. The introduction of Elizabeth as Savage’s manager is shown. You’ll remember that there was a major competition between the managers at the time to get Savage but then he named Elizabeth as the manager. Next is a nice bonus for all of us fans that have loved the Savage/Steamboat match from WrestleMania III. They give us a rarely seen match which is one that I had never seen as it was Steamboat vs. Savage from Boston Garden in 1986. I just loved seeing a different Savage/Steamboat match. Fun match and the crowd was loving it. You know that there has to be Hogan/Savage matches on this set and I’m glad that a match from 1985 was put on this set which took place from MSG. Because of their feud later on getting so much attention, their matches from the mid 80’s are often overlooked. Their matches had a ton of heat cause Savage was such a big heel even so early in his WWE run. Hogan was red hot at that time and you had the usual moments of Savage hiding behind Elizabeth. One moment had Hogan picking Elizabeth up and then putting her to the side. I have always enjoyed the Hogan/Savage matches from 1985-1986 so this was a real treat to have on this set. Savage’s Intercontinental championship win is featured on this disc with the match against Tito Santana from Boston Garden. I’ve seen this match many times over the years but it is still fun to watch with the controversial finish involving referee Danny Davis. Ok, I admit that I’ve never been really big into watching Bruno Sammartino matches but his match against Savage on this first disc was a match that I really enjoyed. Nothing against Bruno obviously but I just liked other wrestlers instead. The Boston Garden crowd was big time behind Bruno. Like I said, WrestleMania III is there with Savage and Steamboat which is still one of the best matches in WrestleMania history. Just an incredible match that inspired many of the current talent of wrestlers to get where they are in the business. Savage’s face turn was after that which led us up to 1988 with Savage trying to recapture the Intercontinental title against The Honky Tonk Man. Savage faced him on The Main Event in February 1988 which was on the same show as the Hogan/Andre WrestleMania III rematch. That show did a HUGE rating. It had been a while since I had seen this Savage/Honky Tonk Man match and it was a lot of fun. Crowd was fantastic during this!!! Disc one finishes off with the Ted Dibiase feud. Speaking of the Dibiase feud, I would have liked to have seen the Saturday Night’s Main Event match with Savage and Dibiase added to this set as it helped set up where the story would go leading into WrestleMania IV. The DVD picks up at WrestleMania IV showing highlights of Savage’s first three victories in the championship tournament. We see the Dibiase match in the finals which is still fantastic to me to watch. I have seen WrestleMania IV so many times, especially when I was a kid, that I can recall a ton of the commentary. Andre accompanied Dibiase to ringside and Savage calls for reinforcements. Elizabeth is sent back and she returns with Hogan to even up the odds. Savage wins his first WWE championship by winning the tournament. I was thrilled of the match that followed on this set as they put a cage match with Dibiase from that summer of 1988 on there. This is a rarely seen match as well and one that I haven’t seen in many years. They had some great cage matches. I had completely forgotten about the fan that climbed the cage trying to get Virgil to quit interfering!! That was a funny moment. Another funny moment was Superstar Billy Graham on commentary saying that he had told Elizabeth that she needed to eat more and get bigger. My first thought was how would that go over saying something like that??!!! What a goofy comment. LOL. You never could go wrong with Savage/Dibiase matches especially from that time period.
Disc two covers 1988-1992 with a lot of classics with them being matches that are commonly featured on DVD sets. The disc opens with the first SummerSlam as The Megapowers took on The Megabucks. This match has a good memory with me cause it was the first PPV that I ever got live. What I loved seeing at the end was what I often talk about with the building of feuds way in advance. They planted that little seed of trouble with Hogan and Savage at the end of the match. The DVD moves right on to WrestleMania V where The Megapowers exploded. They do a quick overview focusing on the troubles of The Megapowers mostly showing the 1989 Royal Rumble where Savage got eliminated along with others at the time by Hogan. The elimination isn’t actually shown but they show the words being said afterwards. Of course, The Main Event special on NBC is shown as that was where the heel turn by Savage happened. Never forget watching that on TV when it aired!! One negative on this was that I would have liked to have seen some of Savage’s segments where he dissected moments from the past year on how Hogan had turned on him and working on stealing Elizabeth from him. Those were really good segments and I haven’t seen them in years. Too bad that at least one couldn’t be added as an extra. Also, the Saturday Night’s Main Event segment wasn’t shown where Elizabeth made her decision on whose corner that she would be in. Savage/Hogan from WrestleMania V is one of my favorite matches in WrestleMania history. Big one year build for this match from WrestleMania IV right up to V. The match delivered and then we go into the talk of Savage winning the right to be called King. They unfortunately don’t show footage of the match where Savage beat Duggan or don’t show the coronation either. However, the coronation is shown on the extras which I’ll get to momentarily. The Hogan/Savage rematch from The Main Event NBC special is included on this set from February 1990. Originally, Mike Tyson was set to be the special enforcer for this match but Buster Douglas knocked out Tyson just before this was set to happen. Douglas was put into the spot instead. I’ve always liked this match and thought it was fun. WrestleMania VI and VII are covered next. First, the mixed tag of Savage and Sherri against Dusty Rhodes and Sapphire with Elizabeth in their corner. Very fun match. Fun booking. WrestleMania VII was the career match between Savage and The Ultimate Warrior. You’ll remember that a couple of months earlier that Savage had cost Warrior the championship against Sgt. Slaughter. This match has always been a thorn in my side with Savage and Warrior so it was interesting to watch it again. Me and my friends often joke and get annoyed with the fact that Savage hit FIVE big elbow drops on the Warrior which should have been career ending but Warrior kicks out. We just always thought it was ridiculous from a story point of view. The finish of this match makes it all worthwhile and I LOVED seeing the reunion of Savage and Elizabeth again. It really was a HUGE moment and it provided the face turn for Savage. Classic, classic moment which had fans in the crowd crying. The wedding of Savage and Elizabeth is covered and is also an extra. The wedding reception provided the storyline of how the nasty feud with Savage and Jake The Snake Roberts got going. Who can ever forget the feud that Savage and Roberts had? The feud started while Savage was “retired” due to his loss and he had to battle to get reinstated. One of the more scarier moments in wrestling that I remember watching as a kid was when Jake had the cobra biting Savage. It still isn’t that fun to watch now. LOL. This led to their match at the This Tuesday In Texas PPV. I always loved the start of the match with Savage running down the aisle and nailing Jake from behind cause that is how logic would be that you wouldn’t be waiting for ring introductions if he did that to you. It had been a while since I had seen this match too so it was fun to get refreshed on this match. The story was the post match though with Jake continuing to assault Savage while Elizabeth begged and pleaded for him to stop. Interesting that the match stops before Jake hit Elizabeth and I wonder if they left it off of there due to the targeting kids deal that they are back to now. Disc two concludes with Savage and Flair going at it at WrestleMania VIII for the championship. She was mine before she was yours. That is what I always think when I remember back at this match. Great match!! Savage’s second reign as champion happens at the Hoosier Dome in Indianapolis as he defeats Flair. Lots of wild action in this one.
Disc three picks up in 1992 and carries into his WCW career with the matches finishing in 1999. A couple of real treats right off the bat on this disc. When I saw Savage vs. Shawn Michaels from the UK in 1992 listed on the set, I thought it would be the match from the Coliseum Video release that I had seen. When Elizabeth was introduced with Savage, I perked up realizing that I had never seen this match. This was a lot of fun and much better than their other match I had seen. Really fun finish to the match. Next was another rarity that is great for history’s sake. Savage teams up with Bret Hart taking on Shawn Michaels and Ric Flair. Wow is all that can be said for this one. Loved this match as well. Two matches in a row that I hadn’t seen. Loving that!! The last match from Savage’s WWE run that is shown on this set is him taking on Yokozuna for the title from Raw in February 1994. I have to mention something on commentary that just made me laugh. Savage is walking to the ring and Vince McMahon says on commentary that Savage was, no doubt, Hall Of Fame bound. Just kind of ironic considering that Savage is asked about every year when it comes to Hall Of Fame nominees. That bad blood between the two just doesn’t make that seem guaranteed now. We move on to his WCW career from here as Striker and Maria discuss the Monday Night Wars. We pick up with Savage taking on Flair from WCW Bash At The Beach 1995. This was one of the better matches of their feud in my opinion and I liked the outside venue for the match. Another Savage/Flair match after this one from WCW Monday Nitro in February 1996 which features another Savage championship win. I had forgotten that this was the match where Savage won the belt until I neared the finish of it. Savage vs. Diamond Dallas Page was one of the best feuds in WCW in the late 90’s. The build was great and their matches delivered. This DVD has the match from the 1997 Great American Bash shown on it. I loved watching this one again. I have no idea how long it has been since I had seen this one. Brutal falls count anywhere match with the action all over the building. I had to laugh at Dusty Rhodes on commentary yelling for DDP to use the BBQ pit. LOL. Last match on the set skips ahead to Savage’s return to WCW in 1999 where he teamed with Sid Vicious to take on Kevin Nash and Sting with the WCW title being on the line. If anyone pinned Nash, they could win the title. Savage did win the WCW title again and this was the match where they teased that Gorgeous George had had enough of Savage and went with Nash. I had forgotten just how physically involved in matches that Team Madness used to be. Team Madness was of course George, Medusa, and Miss Madness, who would later go on to be Molly Holly.
DVD extras. Lots to be had. The wedding of Savage and Elizabeth from SummerSlam 1991 is shown including the pre-wedding music video. Piper going off on Heenan at the beginning of the wedding telling him to keep quiet and not ruin it is great stuff. Elizabeth’s managerial debut from 1985 is shown along with many interview segments. Definitely check out the Savage interviews. So many of them feature some funny stuff with Savage, Elizabeth, and Mean Gene. Most of them are from 1985-1987. However, there is one of the old “the following announcement has been paid for by the New World Order” black and white promos which features Savage and Elizabeth. I always liked the style of those promos especially when they first started doing them in 1996. The one extra that I liked to see for sure was the Macho King Randy Savage coronation ceremony from Superstars back in 1989. I bet that I have not seen this since it has aired. I never could find it on a Coliseum Video release back in the day or it was put on a video that the local video stores didn’t get. I didn’t remember that Dibiase was the one that gave Savage the scepter. Glad to have that footage in my hands now.
What has been edited from its original form? Anything with the letters WWF being said obviously has the audio drop out but it doesn’t happen very often. I can only think of twice. There is a spot at the beginning of the WrestleMania V match where a whole line that Gorilla said about the “WWF” championship is just removed. If you didn’t know it was there, you wouldn’t even realize it was gone so that was a nice edit. Quite a bit of music replacements. Hogan’s music is of course changed in their match from 1985 and changed to Real American. The Flair music replacement was puzzling to me. In the WrestleMania VIII match, his music is changed to his current theme song. However, during the Savage/Hart vs. Flair/Michaels match, Flair’s original music is back in there. Dusty Rhodes’s “common man” theme song is replaced for WrestleMania VI which hurt the match some especially with the dancing at the end. That generic music that they replaced it with just didn’t work. I’m curious as to why they didn’t use it since they have started using the music again. The Buster Douglas theme music has been replaced for his entrance during The Main Event match with Savage and Hogan. The Vanna White entrance music from WrestleMania IV was replaced but we just hear about ten seconds of it anyway for the introductions.
Ok, I think it is safe to assume that we’ll probably see another Randy Savage set released in the future. Hopefully, Savage and WWE can come together and do a biography style release and include more matches. I just thought I’d go over some matches that I’d like to see included on a future set. I would love to see the match where The Megapowers formed on Saturday Night’s Main Event where Elizabeth pulled Hogan to the ring to save Savage. The bottom line is that I’d love to see more matches featured from Savage’s first championship reign in 1988. Maybe some SNME matches. How about some more rare Hogan/Savage matches? Some of their rematches from 1989. Another match from 1985 or 1986. Savage vs. DDP from Halloween Havoc 1997. Savage vs. Duggan where Savage wins the right to be named King. Savage winning the World War 3 battle royal to win the WCW championship in 1995. Yeah, it’s a long match and I don’t remember just how good that the match was but it would be something for history’s sake with Savage’s title win. Maybe put the heel turn on there with Savage turning on Hogan from The Main Event in 1989. Definitely show some of the Savage promos from 1989 leading up to WrestleMania V where he uses the footage to prove his point of how Hogan had done him wrong. Savage vs. Dibiase from Saturday Night’s Main Event in March 1988. Something from the Savage/George The Animal Steele feud. You could use the Saturday Night’s Main Event match where the winner would get Elizabeth or maybe find a different match from that feud. There are really a lot of choices to go with but my preference of time period would be between 1985 and 1989.
So there you go. There are my thoughts on the Randy Savage DVD set. It really is well done and I enjoyed it a lot. Yeah, I had seen most of these matches many times but they were a lot of fun to watch again and it made me feel like a kid again. I was happy to see three matches though that I had never seen which was the Savage/Steamboat match from Boston Garden in 1986, Savage vs. Michaels from the UK in 1992, and Savage/Hart vs. Michaels/Flair from 1992. I’m just glad that this set finally got released after years and years of talk about it. Savage is one of my all time favorites and it was amazing how he could be such a good face and a good heel. He could do either role with ease. If you’re a Savage and/or Elizabeth fan, you’ll want to pick up this set. Elizabeth was such a big part of his career and it shows on this set. She was what class was all about with her appearance and style. She opened a lot of doors for women in wrestling and she deserves to be in the Hall Of Fame one day. The Savage DVD set gets a big thumbs up from me!!
Disc one starts with his early career in WWE and runs from 1985-1988. Savage’s WWE debut is shown which is against Rick McGraw at Madison Square Garden. This is a must see match as Savage was a heat magnet on his first night. He was doing a lot of talking while getting stuff thrown at him. He had a drink hurled at him at one point that got Savage over to the rail to confront the fan. Just a great debut and you just knew this guy was going to be big. The introduction of Elizabeth as Savage’s manager is shown. You’ll remember that there was a major competition between the managers at the time to get Savage but then he named Elizabeth as the manager. Next is a nice bonus for all of us fans that have loved the Savage/Steamboat match from WrestleMania III. They give us a rarely seen match which is one that I had never seen as it was Steamboat vs. Savage from Boston Garden in 1986. I just loved seeing a different Savage/Steamboat match. Fun match and the crowd was loving it. You know that there has to be Hogan/Savage matches on this set and I’m glad that a match from 1985 was put on this set which took place from MSG. Because of their feud later on getting so much attention, their matches from the mid 80’s are often overlooked. Their matches had a ton of heat cause Savage was such a big heel even so early in his WWE run. Hogan was red hot at that time and you had the usual moments of Savage hiding behind Elizabeth. One moment had Hogan picking Elizabeth up and then putting her to the side. I have always enjoyed the Hogan/Savage matches from 1985-1986 so this was a real treat to have on this set. Savage’s Intercontinental championship win is featured on this disc with the match against Tito Santana from Boston Garden. I’ve seen this match many times over the years but it is still fun to watch with the controversial finish involving referee Danny Davis. Ok, I admit that I’ve never been really big into watching Bruno Sammartino matches but his match against Savage on this first disc was a match that I really enjoyed. Nothing against Bruno obviously but I just liked other wrestlers instead. The Boston Garden crowd was big time behind Bruno. Like I said, WrestleMania III is there with Savage and Steamboat which is still one of the best matches in WrestleMania history. Just an incredible match that inspired many of the current talent of wrestlers to get where they are in the business. Savage’s face turn was after that which led us up to 1988 with Savage trying to recapture the Intercontinental title against The Honky Tonk Man. Savage faced him on The Main Event in February 1988 which was on the same show as the Hogan/Andre WrestleMania III rematch. That show did a HUGE rating. It had been a while since I had seen this Savage/Honky Tonk Man match and it was a lot of fun. Crowd was fantastic during this!!! Disc one finishes off with the Ted Dibiase feud. Speaking of the Dibiase feud, I would have liked to have seen the Saturday Night’s Main Event match with Savage and Dibiase added to this set as it helped set up where the story would go leading into WrestleMania IV. The DVD picks up at WrestleMania IV showing highlights of Savage’s first three victories in the championship tournament. We see the Dibiase match in the finals which is still fantastic to me to watch. I have seen WrestleMania IV so many times, especially when I was a kid, that I can recall a ton of the commentary. Andre accompanied Dibiase to ringside and Savage calls for reinforcements. Elizabeth is sent back and she returns with Hogan to even up the odds. Savage wins his first WWE championship by winning the tournament. I was thrilled of the match that followed on this set as they put a cage match with Dibiase from that summer of 1988 on there. This is a rarely seen match as well and one that I haven’t seen in many years. They had some great cage matches. I had completely forgotten about the fan that climbed the cage trying to get Virgil to quit interfering!! That was a funny moment. Another funny moment was Superstar Billy Graham on commentary saying that he had told Elizabeth that she needed to eat more and get bigger. My first thought was how would that go over saying something like that??!!! What a goofy comment. LOL. You never could go wrong with Savage/Dibiase matches especially from that time period.
Disc two covers 1988-1992 with a lot of classics with them being matches that are commonly featured on DVD sets. The disc opens with the first SummerSlam as The Megapowers took on The Megabucks. This match has a good memory with me cause it was the first PPV that I ever got live. What I loved seeing at the end was what I often talk about with the building of feuds way in advance. They planted that little seed of trouble with Hogan and Savage at the end of the match. The DVD moves right on to WrestleMania V where The Megapowers exploded. They do a quick overview focusing on the troubles of The Megapowers mostly showing the 1989 Royal Rumble where Savage got eliminated along with others at the time by Hogan. The elimination isn’t actually shown but they show the words being said afterwards. Of course, The Main Event special on NBC is shown as that was where the heel turn by Savage happened. Never forget watching that on TV when it aired!! One negative on this was that I would have liked to have seen some of Savage’s segments where he dissected moments from the past year on how Hogan had turned on him and working on stealing Elizabeth from him. Those were really good segments and I haven’t seen them in years. Too bad that at least one couldn’t be added as an extra. Also, the Saturday Night’s Main Event segment wasn’t shown where Elizabeth made her decision on whose corner that she would be in. Savage/Hogan from WrestleMania V is one of my favorite matches in WrestleMania history. Big one year build for this match from WrestleMania IV right up to V. The match delivered and then we go into the talk of Savage winning the right to be called King. They unfortunately don’t show footage of the match where Savage beat Duggan or don’t show the coronation either. However, the coronation is shown on the extras which I’ll get to momentarily. The Hogan/Savage rematch from The Main Event NBC special is included on this set from February 1990. Originally, Mike Tyson was set to be the special enforcer for this match but Buster Douglas knocked out Tyson just before this was set to happen. Douglas was put into the spot instead. I’ve always liked this match and thought it was fun. WrestleMania VI and VII are covered next. First, the mixed tag of Savage and Sherri against Dusty Rhodes and Sapphire with Elizabeth in their corner. Very fun match. Fun booking. WrestleMania VII was the career match between Savage and The Ultimate Warrior. You’ll remember that a couple of months earlier that Savage had cost Warrior the championship against Sgt. Slaughter. This match has always been a thorn in my side with Savage and Warrior so it was interesting to watch it again. Me and my friends often joke and get annoyed with the fact that Savage hit FIVE big elbow drops on the Warrior which should have been career ending but Warrior kicks out. We just always thought it was ridiculous from a story point of view. The finish of this match makes it all worthwhile and I LOVED seeing the reunion of Savage and Elizabeth again. It really was a HUGE moment and it provided the face turn for Savage. Classic, classic moment which had fans in the crowd crying. The wedding of Savage and Elizabeth is covered and is also an extra. The wedding reception provided the storyline of how the nasty feud with Savage and Jake The Snake Roberts got going. Who can ever forget the feud that Savage and Roberts had? The feud started while Savage was “retired” due to his loss and he had to battle to get reinstated. One of the more scarier moments in wrestling that I remember watching as a kid was when Jake had the cobra biting Savage. It still isn’t that fun to watch now. LOL. This led to their match at the This Tuesday In Texas PPV. I always loved the start of the match with Savage running down the aisle and nailing Jake from behind cause that is how logic would be that you wouldn’t be waiting for ring introductions if he did that to you. It had been a while since I had seen this match too so it was fun to get refreshed on this match. The story was the post match though with Jake continuing to assault Savage while Elizabeth begged and pleaded for him to stop. Interesting that the match stops before Jake hit Elizabeth and I wonder if they left it off of there due to the targeting kids deal that they are back to now. Disc two concludes with Savage and Flair going at it at WrestleMania VIII for the championship. She was mine before she was yours. That is what I always think when I remember back at this match. Great match!! Savage’s second reign as champion happens at the Hoosier Dome in Indianapolis as he defeats Flair. Lots of wild action in this one.
Disc three picks up in 1992 and carries into his WCW career with the matches finishing in 1999. A couple of real treats right off the bat on this disc. When I saw Savage vs. Shawn Michaels from the UK in 1992 listed on the set, I thought it would be the match from the Coliseum Video release that I had seen. When Elizabeth was introduced with Savage, I perked up realizing that I had never seen this match. This was a lot of fun and much better than their other match I had seen. Really fun finish to the match. Next was another rarity that is great for history’s sake. Savage teams up with Bret Hart taking on Shawn Michaels and Ric Flair. Wow is all that can be said for this one. Loved this match as well. Two matches in a row that I hadn’t seen. Loving that!! The last match from Savage’s WWE run that is shown on this set is him taking on Yokozuna for the title from Raw in February 1994. I have to mention something on commentary that just made me laugh. Savage is walking to the ring and Vince McMahon says on commentary that Savage was, no doubt, Hall Of Fame bound. Just kind of ironic considering that Savage is asked about every year when it comes to Hall Of Fame nominees. That bad blood between the two just doesn’t make that seem guaranteed now. We move on to his WCW career from here as Striker and Maria discuss the Monday Night Wars. We pick up with Savage taking on Flair from WCW Bash At The Beach 1995. This was one of the better matches of their feud in my opinion and I liked the outside venue for the match. Another Savage/Flair match after this one from WCW Monday Nitro in February 1996 which features another Savage championship win. I had forgotten that this was the match where Savage won the belt until I neared the finish of it. Savage vs. Diamond Dallas Page was one of the best feuds in WCW in the late 90’s. The build was great and their matches delivered. This DVD has the match from the 1997 Great American Bash shown on it. I loved watching this one again. I have no idea how long it has been since I had seen this one. Brutal falls count anywhere match with the action all over the building. I had to laugh at Dusty Rhodes on commentary yelling for DDP to use the BBQ pit. LOL. Last match on the set skips ahead to Savage’s return to WCW in 1999 where he teamed with Sid Vicious to take on Kevin Nash and Sting with the WCW title being on the line. If anyone pinned Nash, they could win the title. Savage did win the WCW title again and this was the match where they teased that Gorgeous George had had enough of Savage and went with Nash. I had forgotten just how physically involved in matches that Team Madness used to be. Team Madness was of course George, Medusa, and Miss Madness, who would later go on to be Molly Holly.
DVD extras. Lots to be had. The wedding of Savage and Elizabeth from SummerSlam 1991 is shown including the pre-wedding music video. Piper going off on Heenan at the beginning of the wedding telling him to keep quiet and not ruin it is great stuff. Elizabeth’s managerial debut from 1985 is shown along with many interview segments. Definitely check out the Savage interviews. So many of them feature some funny stuff with Savage, Elizabeth, and Mean Gene. Most of them are from 1985-1987. However, there is one of the old “the following announcement has been paid for by the New World Order” black and white promos which features Savage and Elizabeth. I always liked the style of those promos especially when they first started doing them in 1996. The one extra that I liked to see for sure was the Macho King Randy Savage coronation ceremony from Superstars back in 1989. I bet that I have not seen this since it has aired. I never could find it on a Coliseum Video release back in the day or it was put on a video that the local video stores didn’t get. I didn’t remember that Dibiase was the one that gave Savage the scepter. Glad to have that footage in my hands now.
What has been edited from its original form? Anything with the letters WWF being said obviously has the audio drop out but it doesn’t happen very often. I can only think of twice. There is a spot at the beginning of the WrestleMania V match where a whole line that Gorilla said about the “WWF” championship is just removed. If you didn’t know it was there, you wouldn’t even realize it was gone so that was a nice edit. Quite a bit of music replacements. Hogan’s music is of course changed in their match from 1985 and changed to Real American. The Flair music replacement was puzzling to me. In the WrestleMania VIII match, his music is changed to his current theme song. However, during the Savage/Hart vs. Flair/Michaels match, Flair’s original music is back in there. Dusty Rhodes’s “common man” theme song is replaced for WrestleMania VI which hurt the match some especially with the dancing at the end. That generic music that they replaced it with just didn’t work. I’m curious as to why they didn’t use it since they have started using the music again. The Buster Douglas theme music has been replaced for his entrance during The Main Event match with Savage and Hogan. The Vanna White entrance music from WrestleMania IV was replaced but we just hear about ten seconds of it anyway for the introductions.
Ok, I think it is safe to assume that we’ll probably see another Randy Savage set released in the future. Hopefully, Savage and WWE can come together and do a biography style release and include more matches. I just thought I’d go over some matches that I’d like to see included on a future set. I would love to see the match where The Megapowers formed on Saturday Night’s Main Event where Elizabeth pulled Hogan to the ring to save Savage. The bottom line is that I’d love to see more matches featured from Savage’s first championship reign in 1988. Maybe some SNME matches. How about some more rare Hogan/Savage matches? Some of their rematches from 1989. Another match from 1985 or 1986. Savage vs. DDP from Halloween Havoc 1997. Savage vs. Duggan where Savage wins the right to be named King. Savage winning the World War 3 battle royal to win the WCW championship in 1995. Yeah, it’s a long match and I don’t remember just how good that the match was but it would be something for history’s sake with Savage’s title win. Maybe put the heel turn on there with Savage turning on Hogan from The Main Event in 1989. Definitely show some of the Savage promos from 1989 leading up to WrestleMania V where he uses the footage to prove his point of how Hogan had done him wrong. Savage vs. Dibiase from Saturday Night’s Main Event in March 1988. Something from the Savage/George The Animal Steele feud. You could use the Saturday Night’s Main Event match where the winner would get Elizabeth or maybe find a different match from that feud. There are really a lot of choices to go with but my preference of time period would be between 1985 and 1989.
So there you go. There are my thoughts on the Randy Savage DVD set. It really is well done and I enjoyed it a lot. Yeah, I had seen most of these matches many times but they were a lot of fun to watch again and it made me feel like a kid again. I was happy to see three matches though that I had never seen which was the Savage/Steamboat match from Boston Garden in 1986, Savage vs. Michaels from the UK in 1992, and Savage/Hart vs. Michaels/Flair from 1992. I’m just glad that this set finally got released after years and years of talk about it. Savage is one of my all time favorites and it was amazing how he could be such a good face and a good heel. He could do either role with ease. If you’re a Savage and/or Elizabeth fan, you’ll want to pick up this set. Elizabeth was such a big part of his career and it shows on this set. She was what class was all about with her appearance and style. She opened a lot of doors for women in wrestling and she deserves to be in the Hall Of Fame one day. The Savage DVD set gets a big thumbs up from me!!
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