Greetings, fellow Bored Wrestling Fans! ThinkSoJoE, JT, G, and Jorge bring you another great episode of BWF Radio! This week, we rant about The Rock! All of the wrestling television from the week is discussed, as well as Superstar Billy Graham’s reaction to CM Punk’s RAW promo. Zack Ryder’s YouTube show is history, is his career next? WHERE’S TRENT? Unemployed. We talk about the new TNA PPV structure, and propose six PPVs that WWE should keep on their calendar if they decide to follow in the trend of dropping events. Joe and Jorge vehemently defend ECW’s production values in comparison to ROH’s, and we send our congratulations to Mick Foley for being the first inductee into the 2013 class of the WWE Hall of Fame!
TNA’s “Victory Road” pay-per-view of 2008 took place in my city, Houston, Texas, and was a rather awesome show. “Victory Road” of 2009 was quite possibly the worst wrestling ppv in the history of wrestling ppvs, with the possible exception of “Halloween Havoc.” At which end of the ppv quality spectrum will the 2010 version of “Victory Road” prove to be? Find out for yourselves on the night of Sunday, July 11th. In the meantime, let’s take a look at what several of our Bored Wrestling Fans think! (more…)
Gail Kim gets the win in this random divas match that nobody really cares about.
Co-Women’s Champion Michelle McCool vs Tiffany
McCool gets the win here in yet another divas match on Superstars.
Chavo Guerrero vs Christian
This match was halted mid match by Vickie, who restarted this as a handicap match.
Chavo Guerrero and Dolph Ziggler vs Christian
Dolph gets the pin after he hit the Zig Zag on Christian. Christian is doing a great job of building Ziggler, but he should be headlining PPVs by now. Come on, Vince! Give Captain Charisma a title run.
Twitter’s @DCsPeoplesChamp is in the Verizon Center as I type this, and tweeting from the show. I’m not watching, actually, but that’s because The Simpsons are on. Why can’t these companies have their PPVs on a night when nothing else is on, like a Saturday? Anyways, I digress…
Holy Crap! We have a Jimmy Wang Yang sighting. Kane totally destroys him, but he got tv time.
Match 2: Yoshi Tatsu vs Shaemus
Shaemus is becoming one of my favorites! This guy is huge and good, which usually doesn’t happen. Sheamus gets the win.
Match 3: Katie Lea vs Nikki Bella…or is it Bre?
The Bella’s use the ole switcharoo and Bre ends up pinning Katie Lea.
Match 4: Dolph Ziggler vs Slam Master J
Dolph gets the win here. Slam Master J would have been great in 2 Cool, but now his gimmick is terrible. He needs to restart the Freebirds. Why did the IC Title match get scrapped for Breaking Point?
Main Event: The Miz and Jack Swagger vs Kofi Kingston and Primo
The Miz gets the pin in this one. The Miz and Swagger should be main eventing PPVs by now.
Well, well, well. Here we are at another Wednesday, which normally means you’d read about my views about the week that was in professional wrestling. But this week, I’d thought I’d try something different. I dont know how this will turn out, but here goes.
The View of the Non-Wrestling Fan
James Guttman said it best in his book, World Wrestling Insanity: the Fall and Decline of a Family Empire, when he quoted the adage “For those who enjoy it, no explanation is needed. For those who don’t, no explanation will do”. I can sit here for hours, trying to explain to you why exactly I an a fan of the business this website is based on, but to be honest, I cant. What I can tell you, is that there were three things that got me going, my second eldest brother, some WWF Steel Cage wrestling game for the SEGA Mega Drive, and Shawn Michaels. Infact, Michaels and Bret Hart were my Tag Team Champions on that game. This was 1993. Little did I know of the future these two would have. But moving on, the reason this column is being written as you see it, is because of work, and my lunch breaks.
In the past couple of days, I have been taking in some PPVs to watch during my 30-minute break. Which normally means I get a full match in. However, what I have found, is that there people in my workplace, who cannot stand the sight of wrestling. They are the type who say ‘it’s fake’ or ‘they know what’s gonna happen, don’t they’? This is where the old adage I mentioned earlier comes in. No matter what I say, I cannot and will not change their minds about what they think.
The following is from the point-of-view of the non-wrestling fan. The PPV in question, is Judgment Day 2000. The match was the first on the card. A six-man tag between Edge, Christian and Kurt Angle versus Too Cool and Rikishi.
There was a time in this match where, I think it was Rikishi was in the ring, and he was beating up all three of his opponents. Now, rather than ganging up for a 3-on-1 assault, they attacked him individually. Infact, one waited for the other to be knocked down, before making his move. Now, common sense will tell you that, if you have three guys, against one, then the three should attack all at once, thus increasing their chances of beating down the one. I decided not to argue, and infact listen to their opinions of the action. Here’s some questions that arose, other than the one I just mentioned:
What is the point of that (Scotty 2 Hotty’s worm) when all that happens is a chop to the throat that misses by three inches?
They wouldnt be able to do this as much as they do if they actually connected?
and one that I came up with …
What was everyone’s fascination with Too Cool? They sucked!
Let’s analyze as the wrestling fan. Scotty’s worm is purely for show. Much like Rock’s ‘People’s Elbow’, or Hogan’s ‘Leg Drop’. They’re basic moves done in a way to make it look like it would have more effect on their opponent, when really, it wouldnt do much to them at all.
If they actually connected, you would only see a guy wrestle every few months. You don’t see the same guy fight at a UFC PPV 3,4,5 months running, because it would be almost physically impossible to not only compete, but to be able to recover enough from the beating they received in their last bout. Also, they are entertainers. I was told something which struck a cord with me. “That’s why wrestlers become good actors, because they need to act in order to do this (wrestle)”. I agree with this statement. Would the Rock, or Steve Austin, or John Cena be as good as what they in the movies, without performing in a wrestling ring? We cannot answer that, with a definite answer, but being involved with ‘Sports Entertainment’ has helped, and thats all the wrestling business is now. It’s ‘Sports Entertainment’, not ‘professional wrestling’.
I think the point I’m trying to make is, we all know we know it. Some of us can explain why we like this guy, or boo that guy, but some of us don’t understand why others don’t like it as much. My advice is, chances are your not going to change someones mind about it, but listen to their thoughts. Look at things from another perspective, a non-wrestling fan’s perspective. You might just learn a thing or two, but most of all, realize, that Too Cool really did suck.
When I was younger, I used to manage to catch every pay per view. Used to be, we’d buy them – back when there weren’t so many of them anyway. Eventually, the PPV schedule got too expensive for regular fans like me, so we’d end up missing PPVs here or there. I’m not sure why, but I somehow wound up watching “WWF: Over The Edge” on May 23, 1999. I may not remember where I watched the show, or how I got to watch it, but I’ll never forget it. It’s stuck in my memory and will never go away.
It’s not that there was a spectacular main event. Without looking it up, I couldn’t even tell you what it was. What I can tell you is that there was a match scheduled featuring the Godfather defending the Intercontinental Championship against the Blue Blazer. If you don’t know what happened at this particular event, it may just sound like another wacky Attitude Era match between a pimp and a superhero. Sadly, the match never took place.
The promo video for the match aired, as it normally would, but instead of coming out of the promo and straight into the entrances, an obviously thrown off JR shoots us to an interview conducted earlier in the day by Kevin Kelly with The Blazer, concluding his statement with “we’ve got big problems out here.”
When the interview was over, a wide shot of the Kemper Arena crowd followed, with the voice of JR.
“Ladies and gentlemen, when you’re doing live television a lot of, uh, things can happen, and sometimes they are not good. The Blue Blazer, who we know is Owen Hart, was gonna make a very spectacular super hero like entrance from the rafters, and something went terribly wrong here,” explained JR. “Certainly, Owen Hart… Blue Blazer – very serious situation here at this point in time, is being attended to by the EMTs. This is not a part of the entertainment here tonight. We are as… This is as real as real can be here. And uh, the EMTs are tending to Owen in the ring now. And we are, again, at a little bit of a loss in this situation. I’ve been doing this for more years than I’d like to admit, and this is the… well, it’s one of the most shocking things I’ve ever seen. This is not your typical wrestling storyline. This is a real situation. Owen Hart was to ascend in a super-hero like entrance from the ceiling of this arena, and something terribly, terribly went wrong. I don’t know if the harness broke, or what the malfunction was, and, uh, we are going to keep our cameras on this crowd at this point in time…”
JR continued to reiterate that Owen Hart had an accident, and that it was not a part of the show. He tells us the show will go on, but that the bigger issue is that Owen Hart has been seriously, seriously inured. Jerry Lawler rejoins him at the broadcast booth and says that it “doesn’t look good at all.”
An interview with a very somber Jeff Jarrett and Debra followed. They put over their match, and mentioned that Owen was in their prayers.
In true showbiz fashion, after the EMTs managed to get Owen out of the arena and to a nearby hospital, the WWF’s show went on. Three matches followed Owen’s fall, with very somber performers working them, some of whom – namely Jeff Jarrett, Debra, and The Road Dogg – saying that Owen was in their prayers in their pre-match promos.
Following a tag team elimination match between The Union and The Corporate Ministry, the camera went right back to JR and The King at ringside, with some terrible news.
“Ladies and gentleman,” began JR. “Earlier tonight here in Kansas City, tragedy befell the World Wrestling Federation and all of us. Owen Hart was set to make an entrance from the ceiling and he fell from the ceiling. I have the unfortunate responsibility to let everyone know that Owen Hart has died. Owen Hart has tragically died from that accident here tonight.”
That was a decade ago tonight. It was a very sad night indeed for everybody involved in professional wrestling, be in the performers, the promoters, or, of course, the fans. Allegedly, Owen was supposed to fly in from the rafters, press a quick release trigger on his harness, and fall flat on his face. Apparently, he’d inadvertantly triggered the mechanism, and wound up falling 50 feet (some reports say 78 feet) to his death.
The following night on RAW, the storylines were dropped, the wrestlers weren’t forced to work, and several of them told stories about their fallen friend. They all talked about how much Owen loved his wife and his children, and how he was a legendary prankster backstage. Those are two nights that I’ll never forget for as long as I live. They say only the good die young – Owen was 34. We’ll never forget you, Owen!
