Falls Count Anywhere

07-02-04

Viva La Lance!

SmackDown!
The show opened with Kurt explaining the finish to the Great American Bash and then introducing JBL, who came to the ring and did a typical heel champ interview. He did a nice kissing the baby spot, which he followed up with some hand sanitizer. Things like that make me happy.

We got the Three-Way match to determine the Number One contender to the Intercontinental Title. The match was really good, with RVD, Booker and Rene Dupree taking bumps and working really hard. Dupree took a toss over the top rope that just looked great. RVD worked offense a lot early on, but things evened out and they started trading spots. RVD was thrown face first into a chair. It looked really nasty, but he wasn’t hurt. RVD hit a HUGE Five Star Frog Splash, but when he went for the pin, Booker pulled him out of the ring. Booker then got the pin himself. Nice match. I like the way they are having Dupree work these solid matches.

Luther Reigns intimidated Charles “Little Natch” Robinson for his poor calling of the Sable vs. Torrie Wilson match at The Great American Bash. It worked and they made a rematch. JBL did a little backstage segment eventually announcing that he’d be facing Spike Dudley. Why it always gotta be Spike when someone wins a new title? Line of the night, said by JBL to Rey Mysterio: ‘I love you people.’

Don't worry, Spidey, we'll never tell...

Mordecai took on Rey Mysterio in a match that was much better than I ever would have thought. Rey worked small guy spots against the bigger Mordecai, but the best part had to be the fact that Mordecai found his inner Batista and did not step on Rey’s spots. He took everything like a trooper.

Paul Heyman did a fun little interview talking about the Undertaker murdering Paul Bearer. Paul knows how to take the stupidest angles and make them have a thread of dignity. He was very funny. I always dig him in these situations. The Undertaker showed up on a screen and he talked about how Paul Bearer was his weakness. Then he threatened that if he got rid of the only guy he cared for, what would he do to a guy he hated like Paul Heyman? Good point. Bad booking, but a good point.

Sable and Torrie took each other on in a match that was not as good as their match at GAB. I do have to say that Torrie looks great in her ring outfits. Torrie isn’t good in the ring, and Sable is even worse. At least Torrie can run the ropes. Sable laid in a few kicks that worked. Torrie got the pin following a bad-looking DDT.

Kurt came on the screen and announced that calling that match hadn’t been enough and he ordered Charles Robinson to take on Luther Reigns in a match. It was pointed out on another site that Luther Reigns is a complete sentence. Charles ran away from Luther for a while until Charlie Haas ran in to make the save. He actually got something of a pop. That’s kinda nice to hear, even if it wasn’t deafening.

The Dudleys did a nice segment when they had Bubba and D-Von come to talk to Spike while he was getting ready to take on JBL. They basically tried to muscle in on Spike, saying that they were his brothers and they had his back. If Spike won the belt, he’d have to give the boys a title shot. This type of stuff needs to happen more, though no one believes that he could beat JBL. Spike said that he’d do it all on his own, which basically meant that he was going to be squashed.

I like the new SummerSlam commercial where they make fun of the Olympics. The best part was Eugene and William Regal waving from the foot of the torch. Funny stuff.

Kenzo wants Garcia dead.

Kenzo Suzuki came out and did an interview all in Japanese. This got no heat. John Cena came out and cut one of his great promos on Kenzo, which was pretty funny. Kenzo and his Geisha were all offended. I'm offended that she’s not hot enough to play a geisha on American TV. Cena claimed to have been fluent in Japanese and did a comedy interpretation of Kenzo’s orientine phrasings. It was a weird segment, but I do like the bit. The Geisha, Hiroku, was doin’ great facials the entire time. Great line: ‘This is my hermaphrodite proctologist Hiroku. We’re going on a date tonight. Maybe we’ll go see the movie White Chicks. She gets her face painted white every night.’ Cena followed that up with ‘You can find me and my crazy Japanese Mullet on a local Gay muscle beach near you.’

After they were done, Hiroku started to explain to Kenzo, who then flipped out. They’ve taken to calling him “The Bronze Warrior," which I think should be reserved for only George Hamilton.

JBL was glad-handing guys backstage and he came across a limo with fuzzy dice instead of a hood ornament. He asked a random guy whose limo it was and he told JBL that it was Eddie’s. Well, duh!

JBL came to the ring glad-handing the fans and acting like a presidential candidate. It was a really nice touch for his character. The match wasn’t very good, but I gotta give credit to Bradshaw for working the match exactly as a guy in his position should. He’s not a good choice for a champ, and it’s become obvious that his title win was strictly in response to the fact that he was fired from CNBC. Spike got a fair reaction for his comebacks.

What could possibly have followed this squash? Why, a brawl, of course. As soon as JBL got the pin, Latino Heat’s music hit and they started brawling. It’s pretty clear that Eddie is getting the belt back pretty quick. The crowd really came alive for the post-match. Eddie Guerrero announced that he would be getting his rematch stip and it was a steel cage match.

This wasn’t a bad show, but SmackDown! has been floundering since Brock left and Kurt stopped wrestling. The word on Brock says that he’s not really at the level to play in the NFL, so maybe Vince could get him back. There’s no question that there’s no one currently working for SD! who can draw ratings like Brock did last year.

NEWS
Jeff Hardy is most likely going to be signing with TNA. This will be a big deal for them, as the WWE has been wanting to re-sign him for use in the Matt Hardy angle.

RAW went back to its recent levels of ratings. No surprise, as that rating was really because of the Rock.

Ring of Honor finally got separated from RF Video. The whoel Rob Feirstein situation has not led to any arrest, but there are still dozens of guys who refuse to work for RF because of the incident on-line with a supposed 14 year old. Rob says that he wants to get back into promoting very soon.

Vince is doing much better. He’s supposed to be back on the road in the next few days .

Jacqueline was released. I’m not surprised.

Hey, Vince, I've got your title right here!

Eddie wasn’t pleased he had to drop the title. The entire staff hasn’t been happy with SmackDown! of late due to the fact that guys are getting PPV time when they are clearly not ready. This is most likely due to Vince calling for them to be called up and not the fault of the writers. Some folks think that it might be time for Vince to butt out. I’d tend to agree.

No solid word, but I’ve been hearing that Ernie Ladd, legendary footballer turned wrestler has been in a very bad state. Like I said, this is rumor, but I had read that he had been diagnosed with cancer a while back.

FlashBack!
In the 1960s, 70s, and into the 1980s, The Sheik was the most violent brawler of his day, being famous for his feuds with Bobo Brazil, Abdullah the Butcher, and Freddie Blassie. He would throw fire, hit guys with chairs, use swords, all the dirty tactics that caused guys to get booed back then. He was working around the world until he slowed down and stopped working every week. He started training a bunch of guys, like Rob Van Dam and Sabu, and lived off of his real estate investments and wrestling earnings. Japan was still a good source of work for older guys that fans remembered from the days of Giant Baba and Antonio Inoki.

Frontier Martial-Arts Wrestling (FMW) needed to get butts in seats. While they we’re doing pretty good business, they needed more to survive. They had Sabu, the biggest crazy spot wrestler in the world, and guys like Atsushi Onita, Tarzan Goto, and occasionally Mr. Pogo, guys who would do terrible things to their bodies for the delight of their fans.

The Sheik was an old old man by 1992. The man could barely move, but alas, he was still allowed to wrestle in FMW. They were doing a big stadium show on May 5th (or 6th, according to a few sources) and booked Sabu and his mentor (and uncle) taking on Onita and Goto. The match was a fire match, not unheard of in Japan, but still rare enough to sell a bunch of tickets.

FMW was always trying to out-do everyone on the violence and spectacle. Puerto Rico used to put a few flaming rags on strands of barbed wire and let that stand for the fire match. Fire of any type on the island was a big deal. The first Japanese fire matches were really big deals, but they were still pretty tame, with only a few burning sites. The 1992 version was much different.

The ring had two or three times as many rags as any I’ve seen before or since. The combatants entered the ring and then the ring crew started to light the rags. At first, they just worked a few simple spots, which was all that The Sheik could do, as the rags were lit. As they kept going, the ring got amazingly hot. You could see on the handhelds that the guys were sweating and having trouble breathing. The ring mat caught fire after about 2 minutes. It’s quite a sight to see a mat burning. Everyone ran for the hills.

Except the Sheik couldn’t get out in time. He got some serious burns, and the story goes that the Sheik spent several days in a coma. He was certainly in the hospital for more than a week, but I’m not sure that he was in a coma. It was serious, and a lot of folks thought that he’d be dead by the end of the year. He pulled through and did a few more matches before he retired.

There haven’t been a bunch of fire matches since. FMW learned its lesson, and though they did a few fire matches, they found that using simple fireworks as “Exploding Ring Barbed Wire Death Matches” was just as effective. They actually did huge business doing those matches for years, and they led to some of the most classic scenes in the history of wrestling

That’s all for this week. We’ll be back on Tuesday to talk more about RAW and start in on talkin’ about the classic Exploding Ring Matches!

Chris Garcia