Falls Count Anywhere

03-23-04

I'm a fourteen-year-old boy pretending to be a troll.

Welcome to Falls Count Anywhere! My name is Chris and it's hard to be humble.

RAW
Well, I can't say that I saw it coming. I had to watch RAW in the morning on fast forward and let me say that it was a nice surprise, as far as my opinion goes. I would have liked the whole show much better had they done it more like the NBA draft, complete with teams missing their pick times. That would have been nice.

Heyman was particularly on, too. He was hilarious in his rants and raves. I loved him.

They started by teasing that Evolution had been broken by saying "A Raw group has been broken up." It turned out to be La Resistance, with Rene Dupree going to SmackDown!. He's got potential, that's for sure. Dupree then said something to the effect of "I ain't going out like that that!" referring to Austin's beat down from last week, so he issued an open challenge and Chris Jericho accepted and beat him with an enzugiri. Fun little match, though.

Bischoff's first pick for RAW was Shelton Benjamin. Breaking up the World's Greatest Tag Team is a really bad idea, but Shelton has the potential to go far if they ever do a Pure Wrestling angle, like Ring of Honor has been doing.

Rico got beat by the Kane. This was short and pointless.

They did another Evolution break-up tease with Mark Jindraik going to SmackDown!. Not a monumental move, but it does have a possible upside if they can somehow get him over as a heel. Raw drew Nidia, who said she wants to wrestle for the Woman's title, which may be helpful in freshening up that division. So far, no earth-shattering picks.

John Cena came out and made the pick for Heyman, which turned out to be HHH. This was a surprise to me, but not that much of a surprise, as you knew that one of the big heels was moving. HHH doesn't like to elevate new talent at his expense, especially when they are smaller than him. If the idea is to get HHH on SmackDown! and have him take that title as a reward for doing the right job at Mania, then it's a terrible idea. Still, they needed a heel and they got the top one to move. The RAW roster celebrated in the back, which ruled as a shoot.

Christian beat Spike Dudley in a short match that did no wrong. I like these matches, from time to time, that play out right and hit high and hard. The only complaint I have is that they need to find a better way to set up the Unprettier, because usually it just comes off as lame.

Bischoff complained to Vince about losing HHH and Vince said his hands were tied. Heyman, again being greatness, said that he wanted an Eddy vs. HHH title match for the show. Bisch, in a fit of Me Too, also arranged a match between Benoit and Rhyno for the belt.

Breaking up as they hit their stride...

The Team of Flair and Batista (Flairtista?) beat Booker T and RVD for the tag belts. This obviously meant that RVD was going, as I predicted, but it also puts the belt on a guy who shouldn't be performing full-time (Flair). Still, the match was really good and long with some nice spots by Booker and RVD, which makes it a shame they were broken up right immediately after the loss. They could add a lot to SmackDown!.

Rhyno vs. Benoit showed why Benoit is great and Rhyno is underrated. The match went fast, was too short, but gave us a solid base of wrestling that showed the talents of both men. I want to see more of Rhyno and maybe the move to RAW will help him out. Nice rolling Germans by Benoit, and the trading Sharpshooters spot was awesome too. I still think that Rhyno has the best spinebuster in the WWE.

Michaels asked to be traded to SmackDown! to continue his pursuit of HHH. Instead, Bischoff offered him the main event at the next PPV, challenging Benoit. Interesting turn of events. They finished off the picks with Theodore R. Long and Spike going to SmackDown!, both of which are good things. Spike fits in nicely with the soon-to-be stale cruisers, and Teddy can start managing on a higher level. Bischoff chose Tajiri, Edge, who came back to a good reaction, and Paul Heyman. Heyman quit instead of working for Bischoff, which sucked, but Bisch did get speared by Edge, which was the right way to get him back into the fold.

Eddy Guerrero gave a hell of a match to HHH, with an all-out brawl ending that made the whole show worthwhile for me. The match was really really good, with Eddy playing the fast little guy with all the smarts to HHH's big guy who keeps trying to hit that one big move for a win. HHH worked the back with backbreakers and even the old abdominal stretch. Eddy worked the arm, then started doing big impact moves for near falls. I love his swinging DDT. Good match with Eddy getting the win in a schmoz.

Solid show on fast forward, though a little angle heavy for my tastes. The draft wasn't terrible, as it does give SmackDown! a much needed heel and a guy who's been waiting for a push to the top. Edge going to RAW is not the best choice, as they have Benoit who they should be making a star. However, Rhyno is a nice move, as was Spike. It went well, though there are still signs that they need to work on developing new talent.

Do you follow The Code?

News
If you haven't heard about Rob Feinstein getting trapped in a sting operation, then you haven't been reading any wrestling news. Feinstein, the part-owner of Ring of Honor and whole owner of RF Video, the huge tape traders, was caught up in a sting operation supposedly involving a fourteen year old boy, who was played by someone doing a story for a site called perverted-justice.com.

A lot of talent has pulled out of ROH because of it, and some WWE wrestler, believed by many to be Val Venis, put up a note on WrestlingObserver.com saying that Rob was caught in a trap. Yeah, the dude's got problems, but this is certainly a tale of entrapment.

FlashBack!
Piledriver was mostly true crap, but the two tracks that really do work when heard today more than make up for the crap you have to wade through. I'm going to start with the greatest ring entrance song of all time: Demolition.

Demolition was one of several teams that were trying to ride the coattails of the Road Warriors, and they were easily the most successful. They were originally Axe and Smash, played at first by Bill Eady (Masked Superstar for years) and Randy Culley, one of the Moondogs. Culley was fired and replaced by Barry Darsow, who had played Krusher Kruschev of the Russians in the NWA. They were a hard hitting team and looked really good. They then got the best theme music of all time up to that point.

Just listening to the lyrics tells you that a long time musician had done the writing. "Here comes the Ax, and here comes the Smasher, the Dem-o-lition, walking disaster. The Demolition, better make an act of contrition."

Sweet Jesus, that is a great line. This was great stuff, a softer metal than Iron Man, which was still The Road Warriors theme at the time, but it was so great in that it was personalized and a hard hitting guitar line. The video, featuring buildings blowing up and bombs going off, was also brilliant.

Demolition was around for ages, feuding with other Road Warrior clones like the Powers of Pain, and adding a third member, Crush, when Eadie was having trouble going. The Road Warriors came into the WWF and they faded away, with Crush and Ax, under the name Repo Man, going on to to singles careers.

That's all for today. More on Friday.

Chris Garcia