Falls Count Anywhere

03-02-04

Off on a Cinequest...

Welcome to Falls Count Anywhere! My name is Chris, and this goes out to my Mexican brethren.

RAW
La Resistance started off the show with a protest about the fact that they were cheated out of the titles since the illegal man was pinned. Austin rode up and gave a stunner to get the French guys out of the ring. He then gave a promo about calling it down the middle at the Mania match between Brock and Goldberg. Stone Cold mentioned Goldberg's spear that he had to take, and then Vince came out to jabber at him for a bit. Vince claimed Austin was a lousy referee, and accused Bischoff and Austin of teaming up against him. Vince spewed venom for a while, as the crowd let him know what body part Vince reminded them of.

Austin said that Vince had a twenty yard head start and that he should get to steppin' before he got hisself runned over by the ATV. Austin then played with Vince backstage, pretending that he was going to run over Vince. He cornered Vince, but as he tried to run him over, Vince went over a railing. He ran to his limo, but Austin drove over his limo with the ATV, which was sweet. Fun segment to start things off.

The finest in teenaged lesbian rock.

Victoria came out to the finest in Russian Teenaged Lesbian rock, and Lita follwed. Victoria was so very hot, but Lita looked even better. The two teamed against Jazz and Molly. Molly and Jazz got into a tussle early, and Victoria rolled Victoria in a school girl for a two count. As they were working, Jazz walked out on Molly, who was very quickly pinned. Victoria left the ring, but Molly followed and started beating on Victoria, trying to rip her hair out, etc. They are managing to get Molly over as crazy for her belt. Molly appeared to have pulled out a big ole clump of Victoria's hair. A nothing match, but a smart storyline is emerging.

John Hennigan came out to talk to Bischoff to offer his services. Bischoff seemed to have agreed to take on Hennigan as his apprentice. Austin came to confront Bischoff, as if he had sent Brock to attack Austin. Molly then came in asking for a match with Victoria, but Austin said she had to put something up, something like her hair. She said she couldn't get her head shaved and look like some sort of bald freak, which raised Austin's ire. She agreed and we have another match for Mania.

The Hurricane and Rosie took on Garrison Cade and Mark Jindraik for a spot in the fatal four-way for the tag titles at WrestleMania. Hurricane did a really nice Oklahoma Roll for a near fall. I think Jack Brisco used to use that quite a bit. They ran a crawl mentioning that today is Booker T's birthday. This was a pretty standard match, and there was only one cool spot, where Rosie was covering one of the boys and Hurricane used his back as a springboard to land a flying clothesline on the other. Not great, but hardly a massive failure.

Rico introduced Jacky and Stacey and made a couple of double entendres about his sexual preference. Stacey and Jacky came out in two evening gowns. He made a couple of Oscar gown references about the two of them, but he got almost no reaction. The girls got a little, but Rico seemed to retard any heat they could have been getting.

After a moment, Kane came out and came to the ring. Rico tried to defend the girls, but Kane sent him down with a single blow. Kane slowly approached the girls, but Rico recovered and took a chokeslam from Kane. Kane then took the mic and said that us fans are waiting for the return of the Dead Man, which many folks are. He said he was about to perpetrate a persecution of Biblical proportions. The lights went out and the music played, and the Undertaker's symbol started burning on either side of the walkway.

Benoit and Michaels, who have been teasing dissention, took on Batista and Randy Orton. The two faces made big Batista look real good to open the match. Michaels is a machine. He is better at making stiffs look great then almost anyone…except maybe Flair. Orton got the crowd going by stomping Michaels and posing. The crowd started chanting for Foley. This was a pretty hot crowd. The match slowed a bit, but it was solid. I really like the way Orton works. He's got a good sense of what to do when to get a good reaction. Give him time and he'll be legendary. Michaels turned a Batista Chokeslam into a DDT. I love that sort of move. Orton was using a body scissors and JR said "Who does he think he is, Joe Stecher?" If you get that joke, you might just be a wrestling historian. Benoit was getting some good chants out of the crowd. Nice to hear that. Orton was yelling at Benoit as he was pulling back on the Camel Clutch. That works to get a guy over. Terry Funk did that and it got him far.

Benoit hit a desperation suplex and ended up going to his corner, and Michaels acted like he would take the tag, but he eventually did and cleaned house. Michaels hit his awesome top rope elbow for the near-fall. Michaels started for the Sweet Chin Music, but Batista hit a clothesline to break it up. Benoit gave Orton a German and the match got faster paced and more interesting. Benoit hit a headbutt, but he ended up nailing Michaels. The two started brawling, and Orton rolled up Michaels for the pin. HHH ran out and beat on Michaels and Benoit to tremendous heat from the Atlanta crowd. Flair came out and all of Evolution started beating on Michaels and Benoit. Good match, nice post-match.

Evolution was celebrating when they saw Mick Foley on the screen. They seemed surprised. The ring was set up for Jericho's little talk segment. Christian came out and talked about turning on Trish and Jericho and how he was going to beat on Jericho. Jericho came out and the crowd went a little bit nuts for him. He got in the ring and started beating on Christian. Christian finally got a shot in on Jericho's knee and that sent him down for a bit. This was a nice segment as Christian is improving as an interview every week.

Someone drove off with Austin's ATV. Evolution was backstage talking about what they were going to be doing with Foley. HHH said they needed to give Mick a beating he'll never remember. HHH then headed off to the Cheetah to get the girls ready. Nice.

RVD and birthday boy Booker T took on Test and Matt Hardy. This was another case of a team that has been thrown together taking on another team that was thrown together. They took the titles off Flair and Batista due to Flair's injuries, but they really need to start building teams again. Booker held Hardy up for a back suplex as RVD gave Hardy a Splash at the some time. Nice move. RVD took some punishment on the outside, leading to test getting a bearhug on the outside. RVD and Booker were really over with the crowd. If they keep building RVD and Booker, they could be an important team. Not a great match, but better than most these four have been in lately.

Walking Tall with Rock and Sock.

Foley came out and got a great response from the Atlanta crowd. He did a cheap pop moment to open, and before he could get any more good stuff out, Evolution's music hit. Orton did some good mic work, which shows that Randy is learning from the time spent working with Mick. Orton challenges Mick to a one on one, but Mick claims it will never be one on one with Evolution, so he makes a counter offer: Evolution vs. Mick and a partner of his choice. Orton said that he had heard the rumors about Mr. Hollywood, Mr Walking Tall. Mick then confirmed everything by calling out the Rock. The Rock ran in and Foley and Rocky cleared the ring to huge heat. Mick gave socko to Orton and the Rock gave him a Spinebuster and the People's Elbow. The Rock did some talking, which was nice. A huge way to end a solid show.

News
Angle is still hurting, and the company isn't sure how much longer he can keep going. I think he'll last another year or so.

Flair is big time hurt, with some saying that he's looking at retiring for good. He is having serious trouble with one side of his body, with serious weakness in his arm.

There is bad news for lovers of Latino Heat. The No Way Out buyrate isn't looking promising. Though numbers can change, they are looking at 250,000 buys, which is quite low. Still, I think his numbers will get better.

SmackDown! has done two consecutive 3.5s in the ratings. RAW did a 3.9. I think that's just about even in the number of people who watched each show.

Bret Hart has said that he's not going to do WrestleMania. It's probably for the best. They eventually need to do the passing of the torch as Canada's greatest wrestler to Chris Benoit. The Edmonton PPV in April is a good time.

FlashBack!
WCW, January, 2000. Bret Hart had held the World Title, and he had also suffered a serious concussion, which caused him to have terrible migraines and memory troubles. The injury would eventually cause Bret to have to retire.

Going into the January 16th pay-per-view, which was supposed to feature Bret defending against Sid Vicious, there was a big stink going on in the backstage world of booking, with Vince Russo having the book taken away from him. Bob Mould, of the band Sugar, had quit earlier in the month, but came back to be a part of the booking committee, along with JJ Dillion, Terry Taylor, and Kevin Sullivan. Sullivan was the sticking point, it turned out, hated by a lot of folks backstage, most notably Chris Benoit. This led to the famous walk out of Benoit, Guerrero, Saturn and Malenko. But why all the hate for Sullivan from Benoit? It all goes back to 1996.

Benoit had been in WCW for a few yearswhen he started a program with Sullivan. Sullivan had been doing his classic demon spawn gimmick again, and he was a fantastic brawler. The two faced off in a series of matches that became increasingly violent. It was this series of matches that got Benoit on the map as a top-notch brawler. Matches throughout the Summer of 1996 were great, including a bunch of matches that roamed throughout the arena. They brawled into a bathroom, which was cool.

The Sullivans in happier (?) times...

Nancy Sullivan was Kevin's wife dating back to the 1980s. Nancy was known as Woman, and she had been a hanger-on for ages, dating back to the days of Mark Lewin as Purple Haze in Florida. She and Sullivan were an interesting couple, and the two of them went a lot of territories together. She actually worked apart from Sullivan a bit, I believe managing the Steiner Bros. for a while. She was managing Sullivan at the time, and they brought her into the angle and had her turn on Sullivan and go to Benoit.

This is where it gets interesting.

You see, Benoit and Nancy were together in the storyline, and in an attempt to give the angle some reality, they started traveling together and spending a bunch of time together. As often happens when they do these angles, the two of them started having an affair. Sullivan didn't take it well, but he stayed professional. They were working stiff matches, but they were still working. The Sullivans got a divorce and Nancy later married Benoit.

Sullivan got to be the booker in late 1997. During this period, he had a long-standing concept: make Benoit pay. For almost a year Benoit had to job at every pay-per-view. He lost to everyone at every ppv. It was sad to see so much talent wasted due to a personal vendetta.

So, when they made the decision to go with Benoit winning the belt, it was to make him think that Sullivan was going to be a fair booker. Benoit would have none of it and walked with his friends to the WWF.

Things like this are kind of sad, when personal issues over-shadow what's business. Benoit ended up toiling for ages until he got his big chance recently. Sullivan is out of wrestling. Nancy has had a couple of kids. I'll let you figure out who came out on top.

That's all for me for this week. I'm off at the Cinequest Film Festival until next week's RAW, but you can read my reports from the fest. I'll finally do the Piledriver FlashBack! in my next column, thanks to the generous video supplied by The God of SciFi Metal Madness Prof. Jake Stratton. See ya then.

Chris Garcia