Falls Count Anywhere

01-20-04

Too ...much ...FLAIR!

Welcome to Falls Count Anywhere! My name is Chris and I watched 10 ½ hours of Ric Flair this weekend.

RAW
The Show opened with the traditional salute to Martin Luther King. It's one of the better tribute videos that we see annually at the end of the year's first three day weekend.

They then had Coach come out and say that he was the acting General Manager and would be holding advancement matches to see who would be in the final mini-rumble to determine who would get #30 in the actual Rumble. This was a good idea, giving the whole show a single thread that helped hold it together. Sometimes it backfires, but here it mostly worked.

RVD and Booker T took on Matt Hardy and Christian in a decent match to see who would go on to the mini-Rumble. Hardy looked good, Booker worked hard and RVD didn't mess up a bunch of moves. It was too short and had a little pacing problem, but still solid. The finish saw RVD hit the Five Star Frog Splash for the win.

They showed a great promo video for the Eddy vs. Chavo match. Here's the deal: the match is going to be good, but since Eddy is going to be challenging Brock for the title next month, it's not going to have enough time to build a real feud. Still, a great package.

Jericho took on Rene Dupre in the Battle for Canada. It happened to be a pretty good match, as the crowd reacted to Jericho like he was a complete face. They are doing Dupree right, as he is certainly improving and has a solid reaction for his little dance, which he used brilliantly after escaping an abdominal stretch. Jericho got the win.

Jericho and Christian then met backstage. Christian asked Jericho to use his Survivor Series favor to convince Coach to let him give up his spot in the mini-Rumble in favor of Christian so he could go on to win the Rumble. Jericho took a pass. For once the announcing put over Jericho big, saying that he had already headlined a WrestleMania, which is a fact that had escaped me. Christian was great here.

They showed another Michaels vs. HHH package that went over their history. It was a great package, as they all tend to be, and the match should be fantastic.

They were showing the Friends and Supporters of Randy Orton videos knocking Foley this week. Again, Mick is going to have to do a hell of an interview to recover.

Rico took on Mark Henry in a match that did nothing for no one. Rico worked face, as Mark Henry is the big nasty heel, and ended up taking the powerslam. Poor Rico. He's a talented bastard and he's slowly having his future drained from him with this lame push. At least he gets to look at Jacky once in a while, and she's bleeding hot.

"Admit it...you ate the last Little Debbie..."

Spike Dudley beat Kane by DQ in a very dumb ending. Spike pushed the ref from behind, the ref thought it was the belligerent Kane and DQ'd him. Lame. There is talk of sending Spike to SmackDown!, which would be a better place for him.

They did another house show recap, which is nice to see. Know that folks know that house shows are fun, they should start shooting the occasional angle at the shows and use them to advance storylines on TV.

The Triple Threat Match between Goldberg, Steiner and Test was pretty good. The crowd was really into Goldberg, which means they've been doing the right thing with him, though it appears that Goldy won't be back, so it's all kinda for naught. Steiner and Test worked hard, though Steiner's punches still do look good. It was basically treated as a handicap match for the first two-thirds, but then Steiner and Test started working each other over. Steiner seemed to have it in the bag with Goldberg in the Steiner Recliner when Test gave him a big boot. Goldberg won, which was the obvious result coming in.

The Sheriff came to the ring. Austin watched the second, and truly HI-larious Mick Foley is a Coward video and ordered Mick to come to the Rumble. He was great playing up Foley as a legend that had disgraced himself. It's obvious that this feud has its roots in old Westerns, as you had a sheriff ordering the former bad man to get back on his horse and teach the new kid a lesson.

Two to beam up...

There was an oddly edited segment where we came in at the middle of Molly telling Trish she wouldn't win her Woman's title. Then Christian came in and was talking with Trish about the end of the affair. He even went so far as to share camera phone shots of the good time they had last week. This was a nice vindictive touch to the Christian getting denied his chance angle.

Lita and Jazz had a match with a strong storyline. Jazz kept working on Lita's "surgically repaired neck" with all sorts of fun little violences. Jazz rolled Lita up when she went after Theodore R. Long. Lita is catching up to the other ladies, as she did a great single-legged monkey flip which she floated over with to start pounding on Jazz. It was quite cool.

Hurricane gave a helluva promo talking about how he could beat Randy Orton. He switched from his character voice to his natural voice and I had the feeling that they were going to do a 1-2-3 Kid thing, but alas, no, as they had Randy pin him with the RKO in relatively short order. Shame, there was a great story waiting to happen. The Dudleys came out to brawl with Evolution. After the ring mostly cleared, Coach came out and tried to get the Dudleys to leave, but ended up 3D'd through the table they had set up to another great "Coach got punk'd" pop.

They had Cole and Tazz on Satellite talking about the SD! matches for the Rumble. I always like this for the split PPVs, as it makes it seem like a really big deal and that we'll be seeing a real cross-over event.

Goldberg won a rather lethargic 6 man battle royal to get Number 30. They tossed Booker and RVD very fast, but Jericho did the Skin the Cat to avoid elimination. Orton did the same thing later in the match. The crowd wasn't as much into this one, as they'd seen all these guys in matches before, but Goldberg's win went over very well.

Not a fantastic RAW, but strong enough going into a PPV. We should have seen more Shawn Michaels. They are building the whole thing very well on both sides and I can't wait to see what they do on SmackDown! to finish the build.

Reports of my death are grossly exaggerated...

NEWS
A reporter for the Toronto Sun was writing a story about Pete Rose and mentioned that, like the late Ted DiBiase, everyone's got a price. Now, Ted DiBiase is not late, he's alive and well and still touring with his religious wrestling thing. A bunch of folks picked up on it and the writer has been informed of his mistake.

By the way, I saw copies of Smashing Machine at Blockbuster. From what I've heard, it's a great documentary on the late 1990s UFC and also serves as a tale of two friends who have to fight. Take a look if you get a chance.

FlashBack!
The Royal Rumble has given birth to a lot of things: Main Event pushes for guys like Kevin Nash, some classic feuds, some great Mania matches. My favorite thing that it gave birth to has to be the 1994 pinball game WWF Royal Rumble.

I'm a huge pinball fan, and I remember going down to the Keystone to give this one a bunch of my money. It turned out to be one of those fast ramp games that started popping up following the success of Funhouse. The long ramp made the game fast on a crowded playing field. The electronic marquee was the typical topical wrestling images for traps and so on, and the sound featured all sorts of wrestler catch phrases and snipits of theme songs. It was a very sound pinball game, but the backglass told a more interesting story.

There's ...just ...so ...much ...DOINK!

You see, Bret Hart was the WWF champion when it came out and the Undertaker was the top gimmick in the business, so naturally they were both put on the top of the backglass…along with Hulk Hogan. Hulk had ended his tenure with the WWF with the King of the Ring 1993. Vince knew he wasn't going to be coming back, but he kept him all over the machine anyhow. Vince was milking the Hogan image for all it was worth.

This machine was also the first time I realized that the WWF had a serious star problem. Lex Luger had his star deflated at WrestleMania X while being depushed in favor of Bret Hart. Randy Savage was still around, but was almost a Superstar Emeritus. The Steiners were there, though they too were on the way out. Then there was Hacksaw Jim Duggan? The Bushwhackers? Tatanka? All of these guys with outdated gimmicks that didn't work well were on the pinball machine.

The WWF was showing what they though kids would respond to while at the same time showing the real fans that would play who they thought were the top stars. Clearly, the promotion was in a bad way and it was just about ready to blow up with the terrible 1995 period.

Still, worth sinking a few quarters into if you can find one around.

That's all for today. Funk vs. Flair for Friday.

Chris Garcia