Falls Count Anywhere

04-04-06 (Smackdown! and Hall of Fame)

And then came the sandwich...

Shawn Michaels did an impressive promo after the tag match that really set the stage for his match with Vince. He swore violence and no Five Star wrestling. This should have been the promo he did on RAW this week and not the one he actually did.

The Money in the Bank match was a fantastic piece of work. I was really impressed with the match, though they had some camera glitches. Early on they were doing big bumps which really worked the crowd into things. I loved the way they played to everyone’s strengths…or supposed strengths. They made Lashley look like a big powerful future star, especially when it took three guys to Powerbomb him off the ladder. They made Matt Hardy look like a contender, which he really isn’t but everyone thought he could be. They made Finlay look really tough. They made RVD look like he could go ahead and win the World Title.

But the real amazing thing was they made Shelton Benjamin look like a real athlete. Not like a wrestler, but like a guy who could do any physical thing he wanted to. He was on fire the entire match. He jumped from the top of the ropes to the ladder and landed dead-on. The camera missed most of it, but it was so incredible.

The end was Shelton, Matt and RVD fighting on the ladder and RVD pushed Matt and Shelton off to the floor. Matt landed hard. Great match, the first of a night with high-caliber wrestling.

JBL and Chris Benoit had a match that I thought was OK. Benoit was good, and JBL tried, but the best they got was pretty good. I did like that JBL was willing to take a bunch of suplexes. I was expecting JBL to win the US Title, and in fact he did, but Benoit looked good and probably had his worst WrestleMania match, though not his worst performance.

Time for the condiments...

In one of those matches that just had to be awesome, Edge beat Mick Foley. That doesn’t tell the whole story. It was really great and Foley had to prove that he could still go at the level he did in the old days and he certainly did. This was his best WrestleMania match. Edge’s best was probably one of the TLC matches.

They went to weapons early, going to cookie sheets and a street sign. Edge speared Foley early, but came out of it in a bad way because Foley had wrapped himself in barbed wire. Nice touch. They brawled outside and had a lot of stiff work. They set up a table on the outside.

Back inside, Edge poured lighter fluid over Mick’s back. I actually think it may have been water and they switched out the bottle of fluid later. Lots of barbed wire and then Edge brought out Thumb Tacks! He poured them onto the mat and then when he tried to suplex Foley into them, Foley turned it into a back suplex.. Tacks were stuck in Edge’s back and it was kinda grizzly.

The match had a lot of back and forth brawling, but in the end, Foley poured lighter fluid on the table, but Lita hit him with the barbed wire bat. Then she lit the table on fire and Edge gave him a spear, which sent the two of them through the table. HUGE POP! It was crazy. Edge then magnificently sold it and covered Mick. He did crazy Edge looks and that was that. Edge came out of this looking great, and Foley had his WrestleMania moment. Great stuff.

They had Booker T come face to face with all the freaks (Snitsky, Mae and Moolah, Paul Burchill, Ted DiBiase who was redoing the old 100 dribbles thing with Eugene, and finally Goldust). They said that Booker had to get freaky. That led to the match against the Boogeyman. That match was awful. The Boogeyman won the match and that wasn’t anything to say anything about.

The sandwich metaphor ends here.

In the match that was the favorite of some faithful Falls readers, Mickie James won the Women’s Title from Trish Stratus. The crowd was the story here. They were cheering the heels a lot, and they treated James like a big star. The match was uneven, but it was highly entertaining. Mickie as the crazy girl really worked. It was incredible to watch the crowd react to her. I don’t know why it happened, and it may never happen again, but it worked. She worked over Trish’s leg, and when Trish went for Stratusfaction, Mickie grabbed her crotch and then licked her fingers. That got a HUGE pop. They tried to have Mickie get the Stratusfaction on Trish, but Trish collapsed and they ended up having Mickie give Trish a Chick Kick for the pin. Amazing reaction to Mickie for little good reason.

Undertaker and Mark Henry had a long match that wasn’t really good, but it was better than it could have been. Far better. The big reason it didn’t suck was that The Undertaker really pushed forward his talents. He’s now 14-0 in Mania matches. The move of the night was The Undertaker doing the running plancha over the top rope, OVER THE CASKET and onto Henry. That was nice. Taker gave Henry the Tombstone and then put him into the casket to get the win. Not bad.

Biggest brawl of the year was Shawn Michaels vs. Vince McMahon. This was a nuts match with a strong story and Shawn Michaels putting out one of the great performances of his career. I can favorably compare it to his performance against Diesel in 1996 where he used Mad Dog Vachon’s leg. The brawl was huge, with interference from the Spirit Squad and from Shane McMahon. Shawn managed to handcuff Shane to the ropes outside and beat on him a little. Shawn beat Vince bad, and he bladed, but when he rammed him with the ladder, Vince was cut on the top of his head and that poured blood onto the canvas. The finish was Shawn tossing out an eight or ten foot ladder and picking up a fifteen or so foot ladder to deliver a Flying Elbow onto Vince.

When the medics came to try and drag Vince off, Shawn went all DX and kept them away before giving Vince the Crotch Chop followed by the Sweet Chin Music for the win. Great scene, probably better than Edge-Foley, but not by much. The storyline is the difference.

They were rushed a bit for matches in this portion of the show. They ended up giving the SmackDown! Title match only 9 minutes. It was a good match, it would have made a very strong SD! Main Event on free TV, but as a Mania match, it was too short and the ending just happened too fast. Kurt Angle looked good as always, especially early on in an exchange that just made me go ‘Whoa!’. Kurt tried to German Suplex Randy Orton, but he blocked it and gave Kurt an elbow. Rey came at Randy to give him the wheelbarrow Bulldog, but Kurt caught them both and gave the pair a German Suplex. Randy tossed Rey, who went flying. Along with Shelton’s leap onto the ladder and Mickie James’ crotch grab, that’s the lasting image of WrestleMania for me.

The match rolled along and was good, but then Rey sent Kurt out of the ring and Randy took a 619 allowing for Rey to hit the West Coast Pop for the pin. Then he celebrated with Chavo and Vikki Guerrero. I’m happy for Rey and the pop he got was OK, bit nothing super special.

They had Candice Michelle and Torrie Wilson in the Pillow Fight as a sorbet between the World Title Matches. It sucked, of course, but at least Candice looked hot.

Try and guess what movie role HHH is stumping for...

The Main Event was HHH vs. John Cena. I still think they should have put Rey-Kurt-Orton on last (because it was Rey who won the Rumble and that’s the deal) but they had a huge match with these two and I was so glad they did things the way they did. The match was so hot, but not in the way that you’d figure.

Well, it was exactly in the way you’d figure with the crowd they had.

It was HHH getting the huge babyface reaction and Cena getting mercilessly booed. But Cena also had his supporters and they were loud at times. There were deuling chants of ‘Let’s Go Cena/!@#$% You Cena’ that were louder than any chant I’ve heard in years. The heat was unbelievable. They did some stalling and almost nothing happened in the first five minutes, but the crowd was insane. They were yelling and chanting and it all added up to an incredible scene. Cena worked hard, but he’s just not that good. HHH worked hard too.

As soon as I heard JR talking about H being the better technical wrestler and that he was the favorite, I thought that Cena was going to win. It turned out that he did with the best moment I’ve seen from him as far as wrestling. Cena had earlier gone for the STFU, but H made the ropes. He put it on again after a ref bump and a very close near-fall and it ended up with H close to the ropes, so Cena tied up the arm closest to the rope so that H couldn’t reach it. It was so subtle but it was priceless. I can say that it was a shock, unless you caught on to the way they were pushing H in the announcing, and it looks like we’re getting more Cena in the future (and perhaps they’ll go to Edge instead of H, which I think is a better move)

All in all, it was a great show, with a weird crowd that reminded me of a New York PPV crowd. Let’s hope that they can get some momentum out of things and keep it goin.'

RAW

Talk about today's column in the forums!

Chris Garcia