Falls Count Anywhere

07-17-06

Falls Count Anywhere runs on Mondays and Thursdays -- more wrestling means more Garcia...

Nor am I made of wood.

SmackDown!
I didn’t watch it all. It was Friday night, there was a girl, it was dark! What do you expect from me? Huh! What! I’m not made of stone…

Anyhow, I did watch the tape and it was an OK show, but there were some terrible bits. Wanna guess what one of the worst parts was? That’s right, the Diva Boot Camp. Seriously, the Diva search could be an entertaining thing if they did it mostly on the website and just paraded the girls out once a week to do the elimination and then have them wave a bit. That’s the way to do it. This was slow, long and annoying and Miz is awful. I just thought I’d say that.

There was some good wrestling on the show this week and even some good talking. They had King Booker on his throne with William Regal reading a proclamation. Rey Mysterio’s music hit and that led to Regal going up the ramp to try and head him off at the pass. Instead, Rey came from behind and attacked Booker and then got Regal. I liked this one much better than most of the stuff they’ve been doing with Rey lately.

Long live the Book.

Matt Hardy beat Ken Kennedy in a good match that needed a little more time, though it did get more than anything on the show except for the Diva Search. Matt was on and they were pushing him hard, harder than Kennedy which is interesting.

After a Twist of Fate, Hardy went for another, but the man held on to the ropes and sent Matt crashing into the ropes. The finish was Kennedy pulling Hardy to the center and ended up getting cradled into a pinning combination for the win. Good stuff.

In the worst segment that didn’t contain a Diva. Daivari did a good job, as always, but they had Undertaker do his thing with the lightning bolts and whatnot and I’m just sick and tired of it.

Paul London and Jamie Noble had a good little match. I’m still kinda surprised that they’re not in ECW. They’ve got CM Punk ready to explode, there’s Mike Knox, add London (who I know has worked well with Punk) and Noble and you get a better division. Add Spanky and you’re all set. This was about five minutes of wrestling that was solid and simple.

OK, a very typical contract signing between Henry and Batista. This wasn’t great, but nothing bad either. I think Batista will help SmackDown! for the next few months, and if he gets back to top ring shape, he could be very valuable. It would be nice if they had my man Benoit to work with him, but injuries and such.

Finlay beat Bobby Lashley to win the US title. This was a pretty good match, since Lashley is coming around. He did a nice Stalled Vertical Suplex on Fit. Fit started throwing chairs in the ring which led folks to chant ‘ECW!’. Now, that’s a good sign for the brand. You knew ECW was making headway in 1995 when people would chant it at WWF events.

The whole match ended when Little Bastard came from under the ring and gave Fit his stick with the hard to spell name to get the win. It’s probably not the best idea to get the belt off of Lashley unless they know he’s about to make his run for the World Title, which honestly would be too soon. There were whispers about the potential of it being a suspension due to roid use, but I kinda discount those murmurs.

You can’t say it was great, but William Regal and Rey Mysterio had a brief match with all sorts of distraction from Sharmell. Regal and Rey work really well together, but they won’t get the right amount of time to do anything cool. Regal went for a Butterfly Suplex and ended up with Rey twisting out of it. Rey got a 619 and then a Splash for the pin.

An OK show with all the things you think might be troublesome being troublesome.

Even the Hulk is smitte -- ew, gross.

Saturday Night’s Main Event
I saw most of it, but I wasn’t too impressed. The show opened with Hulk Hogan coming out with Brooke. This was a hit for Brooke, who looked very hot (and she’s legal!) and they had her do some talking. That was a nice touch. Randy Orton came out, challenged Hogan to a match and gave Brooke a rose.

They did no sort of set-up, no sort of long-run angle. True, the Hogan name will probably draw enough on its own, but still, tell a freakin’ story, will ya?

A Trios Match ended in disaster…sort of. Batista, Bobby Lashley and Rey Mysterio beat Booker T, Finlay and Mark Henry. Lashley looked good giving Fit an Overhead Belly-to-Belly, but Rey mostly played Face in Peril most of the match. Batista got a great reaction since this was his first match back. Little Bastard hit Rey with the stick at one point. He looked good. Booker had to take the DemonBomb to give the faces the win.

They should do more of these as it’s a good way to keep storylines going and give teases of big matches without ruining PPV buy-rates. Henry hurt his knee in the match and won’t be doing his match on the PPV with Batista…or will he?

Kevin Von Erich got shown to the crowd and got a good response. Not as big as Batista’s, which is good, but big enough.

A really short match between Trish/Carlito and Melina/Johnny Nitro. They had the girls start and they managed a tag. The girls kept brawling and Carlito managed to get the BackPack (trademark Lon Lopez) for the win. Not a bad match, simple and quick, and it didn’t ruin a possible match between these four (or any permutation thereof) for a paying show.

OK, I missed most of the Spirit Squad vs. DX match. I know it was a squash, which we’ve seen before. Still, they seem to be doing ratings (RAW was up last week, as was ECW both to levels that were higher than the pre-July 4th editions).

Basically Sabu squashed Stevie Richards. That was OK though, because Stevie’s best used as a pushed jobber. Sabu hit a Triple Jump Moonsault and an Arabian Face-Buster for the win. He got a good reaction and he’s one of the bright spots of ECW right now.

John Cena beat Edge via DQ in a pretty good match. Edge deserves a lot of credit for making John Cena a better worker. Edge got a Superplex at one point where they both landed very odd. I’m betting they’re both hurt from it. Cena managed the FU, but Lita pulled the ref out so he couldn’t count. Cena got the STFU on Edge, but Lita kept him out, which forced the ref to end the match with a DQ. Edge managed to spear Cena, but Cena made a great comeback, hit Edge with a monitor and then gave him an FU…off of the ringsteps…through the announcers table. Holy Crap, that was awesome.

That’s all for today. More on Thursday!

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Chris Garcia