Falls Count Anywhere

07-08-08

What happens in Vegas stays in my pants...

The Draft happened in the WWE and Jim Ross ended up leaving RAW, which led him to almost quit. Vince has been doin’ stuff like this to him for years and someday, probably soon, he’ll be gone. But the biggest thing is that Ross is the greatest announcer ever, and yes, I know about Gordon Solie and no, he wasn’t as good. Ross’ calls made the modern era what it was and gave the best sense of what a good wrestling story should be.

Vince keeps demoting JR and then the new guy doesn’t manage to live up to the expectations. Now, I think he’ll actually do pretty well with SmackDown! because they’ve got some real stars and with the switch to MyNetworkTV, he could certainly be a signature star.

Or he could just up and quit. He does have a restaurant and is opening another. He’s doing pretty well financially, so that’ll be a factor, but really, he’s been jerked around. Now, he might have been jerked around for the better because he could be all the difference between MNTV making it for SmackDown!, but still, it sucks for him.

I also think that Kofi Kingston is destined for good things. I’ve seen him a couple of times on ECW and he was on RAW taking on JBL and did a good job, though the two of them didn’t really mesh. He’s looked good and he beat Jericho for the IC title at Night of Champions with help from Shawn Michaels.

The fact that he’s a really solid athlete and has an OK amount of charisma means that he’ll probably be stuck in exactly the same position as Carlito has been for the last two years. I’d love to see him break out, but I don’t think they see main event for him because he’s not big enough. Then again, he did get traded to RAW, so it’s obvious they see something in him.

There was a weird moment at the Waterloo Iowa Wrestling Hall of Fame that was broken in The Observer but has gone wider with tons of folks who were there talking about it. Now, there are two wrestling Hall of Fames, one in Iowa which is for both pro and amateur wrestling and one in Upstate New York. The Iowa one was having their big induction weekend and Stu Hart was one of the inductees. They had Bret accepting the award and he did a nice little speech, but then started burning on one of the journalists, Greg Oliver, who is a great writer and reporter.

Hart said that either Oliver left or he did. Oliver didn’t and Bret left and a few folks, old timers mostly, followed him. There’s a natural tension between wrestling journalists and wrestlers, and Hart has been buried by many of the writers, though Oliver did rank Bret as number 14 of the greatest Canadian wrestlers of all-time. I’ve got him at four behind Chris Benoit, Don Leo Johnathan and Pat Patterson, but I could see why people might rank guys like Edouard Carpentier, Owen Hart, Yvon Robert or Whipper Billy Watson ahead of him.

Hey, kids, remember me?

The situation was strange, but it’s hardly the first time something like that has happened. Bret has gotten a little bit bitter in recent years due to the fact that he’s out of the limelight and since he refuses to do much business with Vince McMahon, he’s sorta shut out of the reminders of greatness that guys like Piper, Superstar Billy Graham and others get. It’s also been said that he’s not happy that Shawn Michaels has gotten so much of the attention as the greatest worker of the modern era, which Bret thinks is a distinction he deserves.

I watched a bit of FMW from Yokohama in 1995. It was an interesting era for Japanese Garbage Wrestling. There was Masato Tanaka, who would go on to become a big deal in ECW just a couple of years later. There was Horace Boulder, who would be Horace Hogan and later just Horace in WCW.

The big star, since Atsushi Onita wasn’t on the show, was Hayabusa, the highflying masked man who was everything Sabu ever was, plus a few extra flippy-twists while he was at it. I always thought he’d be a bigger deal than he ended up being (although he was a major star and had a decent run doing spots in All Japan) but he also ended up paralyzed after botching an Asai Moonsault in 2001.

There was also an appearance of The Great Sasuke, who was a bigger deal after a while and ended up in the Diet, the Japanese Parliament. The six-man featured Sasuke, Hayabusa and Koji Nakagawa (A Bret Hart rip-off, ironically enough) against Super Delfin, Ricky Fuji (sort of a Shawn Michaels circa 1993 rip-off who was actually from Canada) and TAKA Michinoku. It was a good flying match and one of the last great Delfin matches where he was a heel.

I have to say that I thought that this would have been a bigger deal match with Michinoku Pro (which Sasuke owned) being involved, but it was mostly ignored at the time and hasn’t been well-remembered, placing only 47th on the Top 100 FMW matches ever. I’m trying to get a tape of match #1: Hayabusa and Jinsei Shinzaki vs. Manukea Mossman and Kenta Kobashi.

I’m heading to Vegas for Westercon and won’t have an article next week, but look for a big edition focusing on old ECW the following week!

Chris Garcia