Falls Count Anywhere

02-14-08

I'm talkin' pancakes, people.

The Story of the Week
In RAW’s Main Event, Shawn Michaels jobbed clean for Jeff Hardy. All reports I’ve heard say it was a really good match (the pieces of it I’ve seen on YouTube support that statement) and that really does say something.

Of all the attempts to get new top stars over, they’ve often gone through Michaels without him doing a real clean job. This is the clearest statement that Jeff is being looked at as a real Main Event quality wrestler and will be in the mix up top for a while. This is a good thing, especially if they go to HHH as the champ at Mania, which will allow Hardy to be a regular challenger.

Who’s Left?
The World of Wrestling has lost a lot of the big names of the past. There are some folks from the 1950s scene still around, but mostly they’re all gone. The oldest former NWA Champ right now is Gene Kiniski and he’s in pretty good shape, all things considered. We’ve lost most of the big stars of the early era. Édouard Carpentier is still alive, and he was a big star in the 1950s, as was Verne Gagne (and you could say he was the number one guy in many parts of the US). The rest of the real money players have gone.

Which got me thinking: what have we got left from the glory days of the 1980s? With all the deaths from drugs and so on, who will be left to act as Gagne and Kinisky as the long memory of the time? Here’s a list of folks who mattered (ie. drew money) who are still alive from the various 1980s territories.

World Class- Kevin Von Erich. Al Madril. Al Perez. Gary Hart (manager). Michael Hayes. Gorgeous Jimmy Garvin. Buddy Jack Roberts.

AWA- Verne Gagne. Greg Gagne. Jim Brunzell. Michael Hayes. Road Warrior Animal. Nick Bockwinkle. Stan The Lariat Hansen. Hulk Hogan. Mean Gene Okerlund. Rick Martel.

NWA/WCW- Ric Flair. Dusty Rhodes. Tully Blanchard. Arn Anderson. The Rock ‘n Roll Express. Road Warrior Animal. Nikita Koloff. Ivan Koloff. Ricky The Dragon Steamboat. Michael Hayes. Harley Race. Greg The Hammer Valentine. Roddy Piper. Barry Windham. Sting. Lex Luger.

WWF- Hulk Hogan. Roddy Piper. The Ultimate Warrior. Randy Macho Man Savage. Mr. Wonderful Paul Orndorf. King Kong Bundy. George The Animal Steele. Tito Santana. Greg The Hammer Valentine.

OK, that list is of the folks who were really players at the time. If you look at the list of the folks from the 1950s who were still around in the 1980s, it’s a much bigger list. The old days used to have the guys pass down the real stories from one to another; now we’ve got the net and so forth and the sheets for capturing and reliving the stories of the past. The loss of so many so young is a sad thing and we’ll be dealing with it for generations as the 1980s could become wrestling’s Lost Decade.

Hulk Hogan vs. The Iron Sheik and Passing of the Torch
I recently rewatched the Hogan-Sheik title change from 1984 in Madison Square Garden. It’s not a great match, a simple match, a story that Hogan would tell over and over again. He was selling, got caught in the Camel Clutch, got out and hit the Leg Drop for the win. It was a fast match and the roof blew off the place. It was an amazing moment. Folks loved Hogan, they had since he first came as a heel in the late 1970s, but here he was the star that was going to carry the WWF for years. There aren’t a lot of moments like that in the history of wrestling.

One that springs to mind was Flair vs. Kerry Von Erich. Kerry got the pin, and everyone knew that it was only going to be a short run, but Flair came up and said that Kerry was the better man and that he’d be back to win the belt again. That’s exactly the kind of thing that should have been saved for the time when the torch was really being passed. You saw the ECW concept come to life with Sabu vs. Shane Douglas vs Terry Funk, but it wasn’t a passing of the torch.

The WWE needs to do one of the real passings, and there’s only one guy that can do it: The Rock. Regardless of who held the belt more or drew more money (for the record, it was probably Austin), The Rock is the person that most folks associate with the 1990s boom. If he came and worked one match, saying that he was going to lay it all down, and then did the job to someone, most likely John Cena, then that would really end the 1990s and pass the torch. Cena would probably be booed mercilessly, but what do you expect?

It’s something that needs to happen, and I think that’s one of the big problems that Cena is having. He’s never had the torch passed to him by one of the people who the audience believes is the real deal. Yeah, HHH did the job that was supposed to signify the New Era, but the audience still believes that the ones who can do that are Austin and The Rock.

A couple of news notes
Bobby Lashley is officially gone. He got his release and details are kinda sketchy, but it seems to leave him the option of Japan and MMA that isn’t PPV. No word on how long restrictions hold.

The WWE closed up the Ohio Valley Wrestling territory that it had been using as training. Everyone’s going down to Florida. I’m not 100%, but I think that Steve Keirn (Skinner) is one of the main guys down there. OVW has had a good record of getting guys ready, but the WWE has called a lot of folks up too fast. Still, Cena and Lashley and Melina and John Morrison and so many others went through, that it’s kinda sad to see it go.

Is it just me, or has the WWE buried Harry Smith’s son? They had such high hopes for the New Hart Foundation and now, nothing! I’m still hoping Natty Neidhart gets a turn because she’s really good.

Dave Lagana, ECW’s head writer, was fired a couple of weeks back. Dave, if you’re reading this, get over to TNA and give them a make-over! They could use it and there are guys there I’d love to see get real storylines! One of the reasons folks have stated for his being fired was for leaking storylines, supposedly to Dave Meltzer. The Observer reports that Steph ordered every company cell phone checked for calls to Dave, which is the most paranoid thing I can think of. I’ll admit it, he gave me a thing or two over the years, but nothing that would get Stephanie McMahon so mad as to fire him. The word is she didn’t like him (and there were others in the company that felt the same way, apparently) and found a miniscule reason to get rid of him. She actually did the firing while he was on vacation! Go figure.

That’s all for this week!

Chris Garcia