Falls Count Anywhere

06-22-04

It's My LITTLE Pony...er, not that I know...

RAW
RAW fell flat to me this week. While there were a couple of good things, it all just sorta seemed to hang there.

The Rock opened up the show by coming out. They should be hyping these appearances instead of using them as surprises, although it appears word was out and folks knew, leading to a larger crowd and lots of Rock signs. He did some jibber-jabbering about his lovely wife, his Mom and Grandma, a couple of Miami Dolphins, and then he called for Eugene.

Instead of the representative of the Short Bus, Randy Orton came out and told Rock that Eugene was with his new friends, Evolution. The crowd booed Orton and Rock said that the two of them met in the locker room back in the day and that Orton was playing with a My Pretty Pony. First thing, I don’t think Cowboy Bob and Soulman Rocky Johnson were ever in the WWF at the same time. Second, Rock’s about 8 or 10 years older than Orton. Then again, only those like me would know that. Rocky did a pretty damn good imitation of Cowboy Bob, too. Rock knocked Orton around a bit then Bischoff came out to have Rocky taken out of the arena.

Rock left, mocking the small statured security guards and took a live mic into the back. He passed a bunch of folks and did little bits with them. He left, but turned, said Randy Orton would be getting a surprise in three seconds. Rock counted it down on the screen, then Orton turned and took an Edge spear. A fun, though long, segment.

Trish Stratus defended her title against Victoria. These two probably had the best feud in the history of the WWE’s women's division, and this was a fun little match. We got to see the Jigglesault. The five year old who lurks around my house really likes Trish. Victoria controlled most of the match with various moves, including the sweet Rack into a sideslam. She then hit a stiff superkick and followed it up with a moonsault that landed her knees right into Trish’s ribs. Trish managed a roll-up after Tyson Tomko broke up the pin attempt. He was about to set to beatin’ Victoria down when a guy in drag helped Victoria out. No clue who it was, though it would make sense if it were Steven Richards.

Providing a role model for five year olds.

They built much of the night around two things: The Eugene vs. HHH match and the 250,000 dollar Diva search. They showed a bunch of vignettes from the Chicago portion, and the one who I knew was the ringer (not sure of her name, but she was the brunette wearing the awesome corsetty thing) made it through. Still, there were some hot ladies. I only hope that Australian Chick from Tough Enough casting special 2 will be back. She was full-blown hot!

They replayed all the Shawn Michaels stuff from last week. This was one of the reasons that the show felt flat to me. Too much review.

William Regal came to Bisch’s office to get him to rescind the match between Eugene and HHH. Bisch said he wouldn’t do that, then told Regal that he was no longer required to be at Eugene’s side and said that he was now an active wrestler and that he had a match next. Regal was great here, playing like the reformed scoundrel. Regal went to the ring and Kane was his opponent. Kane beat down Regal for a while, KOing him. Kane went to the back and Bischoff told him that he had a match with Benoit next week.

Edge and Jericho took on Randy Orton and Batista. The match had a good storyline, but it didn’t work as well as many of the 10pm matches have the last few weeks. They traded a while back and forth before the break, but Batista came in and gave Jericho a HUGE clothesline. This was brilliant booking and a great sell, as I really thought that the lumbering oaf had actually knocked Jericho silly. They went to commercial and when they came back, Edge was going it alone. They worked some nice spots with Edge getting come backs, but Batista gave him the Demon Bomb and Orton dragged him to his feet and then gave the seriously wobbly Edge the RKO for the pin. It was well-worked and better booked, but it still didn’t connect with me.

They talked about Kerry and Bush both responding to the WWE’s SmackDown Your Vote campaign. That shows that the WWE has some cred in Washington, which is a disturbing fact.

Stacey runs into Matt Hardy in the back and they talk about the Lita baby. Matt shows her the ring he’s about to give to Lita, and everyone is all smiley.

The Evolution Limo pulls up and Flair, HHH and Eugene get out and they tell Eugene that he’ll be dressing in the Evolution locker room. This was a nice touch, but we knew it was coming and at this point, it started to feel a little labored.

Matt went to the ring, said that Father’s Day had a special meaning to him and he called out Lita to propose. Before he could get his answer, Kane came on the screen and said that he was the one, that the kid was not Matt’s son. Lita neither confirmed nor denied the allegations, merely sat there and cried while Matt flipped out. I still think this is an awful angle, unless it’s a cover for the fact that Lita is really pregnant as there is nowhere they can go with it that isn’t either icky or lame. After the break, Lita was talking with Matt in the back, saying that she only did it so that Kane would stop hurting Matt. Still, ewwwww…

Eugene is shown doing Hindu Squats in the back with Evolution. HHH says that he’s banged up from the Hell in a Cell and that Eugene should take it easy on him. Eugene agrees and Eric Bischoff comes out and tries to wish Eugene good luck when HHH gets in his face and they have harsh words. They sent Eugene to the ring and as soon as the door closed, everyone bust out laughing. That was pretty good.

The match between Eugene and HHH showed the limitations of the Eugene character. He got a decent reaction, especially for his come backs, but the heat wasn’t there when he was taking a beating. They started out doing and old school, scientific match that really worked smart. The crowd didn’t quite get it. They really started to get into it when HHH started complaining that Eugene had hurt him and then HHH slugged Eugene and started to beat on him. HHH worked Eugene over, but Eugene got a good comeback and even hit a nice Spinebuster.

Quel suprise...

After a while, Eugene gave HHH a Rock Bottom, then the People’s Elbow. HHH got saved by Flair. The match went on and eventually HHH hit the Pedigree, but Bischoff came out and said that he wouldn’t get the title shot just for beating Eugene, but only for beating the Hell out of Eugene. This was an interesting twist, and HHH went to get a chair. The rest of Evolution came out, but Benoit ran in to make the save and started knocking folks around with the chair, including hitting Eugene by accident. HHH then got a low blow in and gave Benoit the Pedigree.

Not a great show, too much of the Chicago Diva search, but I was entertained about ½ of the time.

NEWS
Injuries: Kid Kash broke his leg and is out of the TNA Anniversary show. Shelton Benjamin hurt his hand (or wrist) and is out for at least a few weeks.

FlashBack!
I used to notice something that no one else ever did: the sets for wrestling talk shows. For no good reason, once they started doing segments where an individual wrestler would act as host, they started using special sets. As time went on, they became more an more important, which also made them more and more dangerous to the product.

The 1970s really saw the perfection of wrestling as TV, products out of the SouthEast, really. Every show had a simple set, usually just a couple of pieces of board with the logo of the promotion on it. This was a big change, as 1950s and 60s shows typically never varied much from what the arena saw, meaning that you might see announcers sitting at a table watching the matches and most interviews were done in the ring. The wrestlers would typically come out and stand in front of the simple set and do their promos. Nice and simple. Some of these are imbedded on my brain forever, like the TBS set-up they used in the late 1980s. The addition of the sets really started to show the differences between federations at the times.

The first “wrestling talk show” I can think of is Roddy Piper’s Piper’s Pit. Piper’s pit is instantly recognizable. The tartan wall setting and the Piper crest logo all let you know instantly where you were. He used to dress up the set when he had a special guest, which allowed him to use special weapons, like in his famous Jimmy Snuka attack. Sometimes, Roddy would get so worked up while he was beating on his guests that he’d knock over his own set.

There were others around the same time, like Jesse Ventura’s Body Shop, Paul Heyman had the Danger Zone and Adrian Adonis did a weekly Flower Shop. The worst thing you could do to one of these guys was to destroy their set. Roddy Piper demolished the Flower Shop when he was feuding with Adrian, which I believe was the last time they did the Flower Shop. As time went on, Paul Bearer did the Funeral Parlor, which usually featured the Undertaker locking someone in a casket or a body bag, and there was Brother Love, which actually took place in the ring, but they would bring in a rug and a pulpit. This was the origin of the Highlight Reel concept that is in use today.

Eventually, the set concept got blown completely out of proportion, and by none other than Eric Bischoff. The nWo was on full tilt with Nitro beating RAW every week. They were always doing matches that got the nWo things like more time on air or their own PPV. One of those times, Bisch won the right to have his own talk show. The Eric Bischoff Show was a part of Nitro, and the debut episode featured the crew setting up the set. There were stories going around that the set cost upwards of US$100,000, though these actually turned out to be a little low. They held it and it didn’t exactly light up ratings and reviewers. Eventually, stunts like these started seriously hurting WCW, and they had such a huge budget that it started cutting into profits most seriously.

The obvious outcome of all these sets is the ramp way and TitanTron. It wasn’t until after Piper’s Pit that the WWF started to do these things. WCW followed suit fairly quickly. The concept of a wrestling show not just being an arena and a ring was changed forever once they started doing the sets. ECW had a set that actually existed in Paul Heyman’s Mom’s house where they did all their interviews. GLOW, WOW, and AWF all had extensive sets, and the cost of them helped kill the companies (though WOW is supposedly coming back). Folks have come to expect different sets and backgrounds, which is another step down the road to wrestling drawing not based on actual wrestling.

That’s all for today. More on Friday!

Chris Garcia