Falls Count Anywhere

01-30-08

It was. It was.

Bobby Lashley is Outta Here!
The WWE and Bobby Lashley have parted ways. Spiritually, as of now, but the paperwork and details are being drawn up. There were a lot of problems between the two sides and the fact that he was on the shelf didn’t help matters.

The big problems with Lashley are both political and physical. He had the health scare not too long ago and then he got hurt. That sent his stock way down with the company. The guy’s look is also a problem to a degree because he exudes Steroid Chic more than anyone on the current roster. That’s a bad thing, though a lot of folks in the office seem to think that the heat’s off with regards to the roid issue now that Congress has moved on.

There were other points. There were a lot of folks who didn’t like Lashley. Some say that HHH was one of them. That’s not a certainty. Lashley was upset by the way that Krystal Marshall was fired. When your girlfriend gets fired, it’s tradition to quit alongside her (see Lawler, Jerry). The odds are he was unhappy before then because he hasn’t appeared in any vignettes to remind folks that he’s still around.

Lashley has a lot of options, but also a long-term contract that’ll muddy up his future. He was training to start in MMA when the WWE signed him. Vince was high on Lashley for his look and the fact that they’d had such great success with Kurt Angle a few years before.

Now, Lashley was no Kurt Angle when it came to the wrestling side, but he was pretty damn impressive when it came to physique. He got to work with Fit Finlay, which was the reason he managed to improve so much. By the time he was given to John Cena to feud with, he was able to carry his end of the match. Lashley never got over like they’d have liked, but his match representing Donald Trump against Vince was the big draw for WrestleMania.

What’s next for Bobby? Well, I’d expect him and the WWE to hammer out some sort of No Compete, and after the Brock Lesnar incident, they’ll probably be slightly looser, probably even letting him work PPV MMA with maybe a year wait. He’ll need that time to make himself a solid fighter anyways. I figure the WWE will want him to stay out of UFC and certainly away from TNA.

I’m betting he’ll try Japan, where he’d probably do pretty well. I don’t remember if he was really over when they did tours over there, but he’s got that Bob Sapp thing going on, so that’ll help. The biggest thing he’ll have going for him is no one testing him regularly, so he can get that freaky physique. What’s funny is that’s a terrible thing when it comes to his health (though you could point to guys like Bill Kazmier, Scott Norton, and even Rick Steiner as being guys with long roid histories that haven’t had anything bad health-wise) but it’s the reality of the situation that wrestling is in.

He wasn’t exactly something that was missing from the WWE at the moment. Yeah, they’re a little thin on upper level talent, but he wasn’t really helping them out much in that area when he was around. Lashley was nice to have around, but they’ll live. The promotion of Jeff Hardy was a good thing and gave them a little more leeway when it came to stars.

Born to Controversy: The Roddy Piper Story
Of all the WWE DVD sets, only the Hogan sets feature a bigger look at one guy. While the Eddy Guerrero DVD was more emotional and the Superstar Graham set a more important look at the ways in which wrestling changed, the Piper DVD featured everything you could have wanted to know…

The set covers Piper’s NWA years, some of his time in Los Angeles and Portland, and his entire WWF period. It seems to rush through 1983 through 1986 a bit, not really looking at the ways in which he changed wrestling. There’s a strong focus on Piper’s Pit, including a full disk just chock full of Pits.

They look a lot at the most memorable Pits ever produced (the famous Snuka one where he smashes a coconut right across his melon and the one with Frankie Williams) and there are mentions of the ones that set up the Hogan-Andre match as well as the Morton Downey Jr. at Mania match.

The weird thing is that they only pull back the curtain so far. There’s still this sheen of protection of the business which I guess the WWE needs to do to keep things seemingly legit. Piper tells stories that you know are at least slightly off, but you believe him because he tells them so sincerely. It’s actually kinda strange to see the ranting Piper of the 1980s right up alongside the family man Piper of the interviews.

The portion of Piper and Goldust at WrestleMania XI is probably the weakest of them all. They claim that they were in talks to get OJ Simpson to wrestle Piper at Mania that year. While there was that rumor bouncing around, it wasn’t what led to the match. Goldust and Razor Ramon were in the middle of a feud and it was supposed to be Goldust vs. Ramon at Mania. Then Scott Hall gave notice and was headed for WCW. The match was then changed to a match with Piper and Goldust, likely without the Simpson thing being anything more than a passing idea. Nash did a job at that Mania (I believe to The Undertaker) and Ramon did a job on the way out to Vader on the PPV where Shawn Michaels and Nash had a great brawl.

They really didn’t talk enough about the movie portion of Piper’s life. They mentioned a few of the major ones, but left out things like Body Slam and Hell Comes to Frogtown. They did talk to John Carpenter, the director of They Live!, and he gave that section some weight. Guys like Keith David are still around and would have made things even more interesting.

The matches they feature are good, though Piper was never really a great worker. He understood how to make a crowd hate him or his opponent. When he and Bret Hart worked at WrestleMania, he did really well, but that was probably his best match since the Dog Collar match at the first Starrcade (which is well-covered on the disc).

The DVD set is worth watching if you were a fan anytime between 1980 and 1998. The late-era Piper stuff, such as the coverage of him being fired in 2003, is OK, but really feels apologist. The best stuff is the stuff that came from his peak.

The Royal Rumble
I didn’t get to watch it, but the news from the various reviews and on-the-spot coverage says that it was a pretty good show and one that was surprising. Both Jimmy Superfly Snuka and the aforementioned Rowdy Roddy Piper were in for a brief bits, earning some of the Legends paycheck they’re getting.

The big shock was number 30: John Cena. The guy had talked about not being ready to return as recently as Friday night and he came back and won the Rumble! That was either a great swerve or they brought him back for one pretty safe match (hence in at 30) and then have him win! That means they think he’ll be well enough for a match at Mania. That was something that they said was impossible, but Cena is one of the hardest trainers they’ve got and a smart guy who knows when to take it easy while healing. All reports said he looked in great shape, bigger but less cut than he was when he left.

That’s all for this week. Next week: Who was the Most Important Player of Last Year?

Chris Garcia