Tag Archive: Curry

  1. Destination X- Return of six sided ring- a critique

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    The six sided ring has returned, along with Tenay and Borash on the announce team.  Instead of doing a match by match review I would like to point out what worked (for me) what was okay and what didn’t.

    First what did work.

    The match of the night. Bar none. The contract signing 4 way. Watching these men rip each other apart for a chance at a iMPACT wrestling contract was amazing, it went so fast and so furiously with all the near falls and counters that I felt that my brain melted from all the excitement. And you know its good when the crowd is hyped. The feeling was a warm one to say the least. Even the interviews leading up to the match throughout the show got me hyped. Seeing snippets of their personalities against the interviewer So Cal Val was just icing on the cake. When it was all over and the winner was announced I know along with the audience that Impact should of signed all four competitors.

    Winner Austin Aries.

    The Ultimate X: Number #1 contenders match.

     

    With the Motor city Machine Guns and Ink Inc on the shelves for the time being, we have both Shannon Moore and Alex Shelley going solo for a chance at the X division championship. The other two contenders Amazing Red and (sigh) Robbie E also came in to make an almost well rounded match. Innovative on the part of Shannon Moore toward the end on finding a way to reach the X. Amazing Red pulled a sick spot where he was tossed out the ring, corkscrewing onto Moore and Shelley on the outside. Even though I will mention him in the bad category, Robbie E pulled some decent maneuvers to keep the others away from the prize. Nothing fancy but it was better than his match against Kaz and Gen Me. But in the end Alex Shelley fulfilled his dream and won. This of course lead to Chris Sabin walking out to congratulate him to applause from the crowd.

    winner Alex Shelley

    *The return of Shark Boy

    *Brian Kendrick winning the X championship

    *Cameos by Curry Man and Suicide

    Now time for the okay.

    AJ Styles vs Daniels/ Jerry Lynn vs RVD

    I know some fans may argue but sorry these matches reminded me of Jarrett vs Angle at Slammiversary, their earlier matches were ten times better and it just seemed to planned out ring wise. Everything seemed to paint by numbers I’m trying to say. Especially when you look at RVD vs Lynn, its as if they watched videos of their earlier ECW bouts and paste and copied it into their match. All that was missing was Bill Alphonso and a Philadelphia arena. As for the Daniels/Styles match it just seemed to plodding and not innovative enough to best their earlier encounters, specifically the Iron man match. For Nostalgia purposes and to help the buy rate of the PPV this just seemed forced and lackluster.

    winner Styles/RVD

    Kazarian vs Samoa Joe

    This match seemed good on paper with the hopes of seeing past moves/finishers I was cheated out of the Reverse Flux Compassitor?! Joe put on some good spots with the suicide dive but everything was on his end was expected. Kaz who should of brought it for me to be convinced just seemed to do average work which resulted in a lame roll up pin after reversing the Samoan chokeout. Even the fans were chanting B.S. It was short and felt rushed.

    winner Kaz

    Now comes the bad. And boy was it bad.

    Douglas Williams vs Matt Haskins (who?)

    This was so out of place it was sickening watching Williams trying to hype up Haskins as a fellow Brit to which the crowd chanted (Who are You) was hysterically bad. The kid was nervous albeit he had some good spots but it didn’t excuse his slip up on the turnbuckle delaying the finish. This was essentially a dark match inserted into the PPV. No one cared to see it and the finish which came after the Kaz vs Joe match was an insult. Another roll up pin following a botched finisher?

    winner Douglas Williams

    Generation Me vs Shark boy/Eric Young

    Shark Boy’s return aside everyone could tell that due to the sidelining of MCMG this was just thrown together to give Gen Me an opponent. Failed opportunities all around. EY was still EY even though he did put his talented all in the ring. Gen Me shown brightly even though every time I watched the match (excitement of Shark Boy withstanding) I really wanted to see a rematch with the Guns. In the end EY and Shark Boy win with a double chummer/wheelbarrow.

    winner EY and Shark boy

    Oh wait I forgot, why is Eric Young looking like a rip off of Ring of Honor gimmick wrestler Grizzly Redwood? Championship beard my ass. I just thought about it why not just have the television title defended where Eric Young took on Douglas Williams saving us sans Shark Boy of two unnecessary matches?

    The over booking of the Kendrick vs Abyss Championship match.

    I knew something was up when this match preempted the Styles/Daniels. Again like Slammiversary when the championship match is before a non title match you know overbooking is looming. That aside the match was the definition of ignominious, Kendrick bounced around off Abyss like a bird hitting a sliding glass door. And when the match finally went from degrading to interesting what happens, a ref bump! And who should come out but Eric Bischoff. The man who the spotlight can never dodge, even Hogan missed it. One dress down later, Kendrick blasts Bischoff only to be attacked by Immortal, who are then attacked by the X division roster, Immortal after clearing the ring go to finish Kendrick only to be met with more X division wrestlers making them clear the ring. Then I’m treated to a repeat of the notoriously horrid Knockouts tag match finish from Victory Road where Rosita some how sat on Winter and held her down for 3 count. We see again this time with Kendrick playing the part of Rosita with Abyss as Winter just lying there while a little man pins him. This chimerical display of booking took me completely out of the match. Follow that with carnations? roses? falling from the rafters was the movie equivalent of a sappy teen romance ending.

    winner Brian Kendrick

    *Robbie E needs to stop selling like he’s having an epileptic seizure. It was distracting and you could even tell Amazing Red was bothered by it when he looked at him with a “are you serious” look after dropping him with a kick.

    There is no scintilla of a doubt that the X division will continue, with the additions of Haskins,Aries and Shelley now the number one contender we should see where this botched opportunity leads iMPACT Wrestling. Hopefully this is the sign that Dixie and Co have plans to furnish the Division with well rounded competitors who will wow us with their personalities and dare I say mic skills non gimmicky talk withstanding-looking at you, Kendrick-But we will have to wait. Until then I have to say Destination X was a “C” effort at best and C- at worst. Just average. Considering all the misused talent we could of seen better.

    *And the commentary was average, we needed Don West. West and Tenay would have elevated this to a B. Just saying.

     

     

  2. No Touching!!!

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    (Bonus points to anyone who knows where the title came from.)

    Wrestling fans can’t whine and moan about the lack of respect shown to the industry by the rest of the world when some amongst them don’t respect it either. To quote Christopher Titus, that’s right, I said it, who wants some??? Wrestling fans not respecting wrestling and wrestlers seems to be impossible, but it happens all the time. The most grievous offenders are the ones with the least excuse for doing so – the supposed “smart” fans. If you’re actually reading this, that label probably applies to you, but there is a sub-group of “smart” fans. You know the type. The ones who want everyone else to know how cool they are and how much they know. The ones who couldn’t just sit back and enjoy the show if their pathetic, meaningless, wretched little lives depended on it. The ones who chanted “Fallen Angel!” at Curry Man. The ones who constantly refer to wrestlers by their real names. The ones who continue to chant “You fucked up!” during matches, even if the wrestler recovers in mid-move. The ones who are there to make themselves a part of the show, even if it isn’t called for. The ones who talk as if they have inside information on all aspects of the business, even though what they spew is utter nonsense. The ones who make the rest of us hang our collective wrestling fan heads in shame and cringe. Those people.

    Some of “those people” have the twisted idea that since they paid for a ticket to the show, since they are so much “in the know” about all things wrestling, or since they are in a way the customer and the customer is always right, that they are entitled to say and do whatever they like with no consequences. Little kids are even taught that this is acceptable. I live in an area with multiple independent wrestling companies, and the major ones come through fairly regularly. I attend a good number of shows. It’s quite disheartening when, at more and more of these shows, regardless of who puts it on, children who haven’t entered their teens are screaming obscenities and insults at wrestlers, giving them the finger, and challenging them to do anything about it because they will sue. The adults who teach and encourage this behavior are no better. To them, it’s funny when a nine-year-old yells that a wrestler sucks and is gay and a variety of other things that would generally not be appropriate in public. Funny really isn’t the right word to describe it.

    The leap from verbal assaults to physical ones is small. Any wrestler going into the crowd suddenly has hands all over them. This has always made me very uncomfortable, and while I’m probably in the minority, touching the wrestlers is not necessary to enjoy the show. It’s a different thing entirely to slap hands with someone entering or exiting the ring area, or high-fiving with a wrestler who has jumped into the crowd from the ring or enters from the audience. Those things are fine. Anything else involving touching the wrestlers while the show (not just the match) is going on really isn’t fine, and those of us who claim to be fans need to take a collective step back and remember where we are.

    I come from a theatre and performing arts background. If I were at a performance of “Romeo and Juliet,” and the brawl between Tybalt and Mercutio spilled off of the stage and into the crowd (which HAS been done before), the last thing I would do would be to touch the actors who were fighting. It has nothing to do with high-brow theatre versus low-brow wrestling. The concept is the same. The actors in a play have lines, blocking, and fight choreography to follow. They want to put on the best possible show, and get those elements right. They have to be able to pay very close attention to one another because in stage combat, armed or unarmed, so many variables could change in an instant, and the performers must be able to compensate. Distance apart, placement of blows, reaction, environmental changes, and so on require actors, even highly skilled fighters, to concentrate on the action at hand, not the behavior of the audience. I once got my forehead sliced open in a rapier fight because something went wrong. It takes considerable effort to pull off a good fight. The same is true in wrestling.

    The more perceptive of you probably realize that the incident at Ring of Honor’s “Final Battle 2008” where Austin Aries punched a fan kickstarted this article. I wasn’t there. I didn’t see it. Very little is being said about it at all, which is probably good. The little bit that I have been able to read from people who were actually there indicates that the “fan” brought it on himself through a series of verbal and physical attacks on Aries. Why is anyone surprised? In any other location, a total stranger yelling at you about wanting to get with your girlfriend, then grabbing you by the shoulder and spinning you around as though he were going to throw a punch would result in the afore-mentioned total stranger getting his teeth knocked down his throat. Why should someone be able to get away with the same behavior at a wrestling show? The fact that it happened doesn’t surprise or bother me nearly as much as the attitude that it’s acceptable for fans to treat wrestlers that way, that people need to just lighten up and get a life instead of being bothered by it, and that since it’s just a fake wrestling show, people in attendance are free to shed all vestiges of decorum, dignity, and class. If you really love wrestling and appreciate what the wrestlers are doing, show them by suspending your disbelief, living in the moment that they create, and understanding that while it may be FOR you, it isn’t ABOUT you.

    In Chris Jericho’s autobiography, “A Lion’s Tale: Around the World in Spandex,” he writes about a Japanese wrestler punching a fan in the face who had touched him. The wrestler then chased the fan through the stands and threw him out of the building. “In the States, if you even look in a fan’s general direction, you can be sued. In Japan, to be attacked and beaten by your favorite wrestler was a badge of honor, something to brag about to your friends.” It’s easy to act like the guy at “Final Battle” when you imagine that you’re safe behind the threat of lawsuits and a sense of entitlement. I’m certainly not encouraging wrestlers to declare open season on annoying fans (we’d be destroyed, admit it), but any performer is a human being first, and shouldn’t be expected to endure out-of-line behavior. Believe me, I know what it’s like. I teach public school.