Falls Count Anywhere

07-17-08

Blame Derek.

Griffin vs. Jackson
I was in Vegas from July 3rd through the 8th. The big UFC Main Event of Forrest Griffin vs. Rampage Jackson was on the 5th. I couldn’t go. It was all over town, and the next morning was the cover of the Vegas paper. That’s right: MMA was the lead story for the entire paper and a significant portion of the sports sections. That’s good coverage.

The match was excellent and could have gone either way. I think that Forrest winning was a good call and Rampage could have easily taken it. If there’s a rematch in the soon (and Jackson’s leg was pretty beat up so who knows how long that’s gonna take to heal), I’d probably put both guys at even money. I think it was probably the match of the year so far (though there’ve been some great matches, including the Shamrock-Le match from San Jose), and it certainly did make for a big change in UFC.

Royal Rumble Redux
I rewatched the first Royal Rumble this weekend. It was the definition of a good TV show. Not a great PPV, as about ½ of it was angles that didn’t really mean much, but it was perfect for what a TV special should do. On PPV, you’re paying for the while thing, but on TV, you’ve got more leeway and the WWF used it just right.

The opener was a long match between Rick Rude and Ricky Steamboat. Those two had some really good matches in WCW about 5 years later, but this was at least good. That was followed by a very long angle with Dino Bravo attempting to set the World Bench Press record. It was all worked, though Dino could push nearly 600 lbs of plate, and with all the stalling it was very much a heel-builder, though it didn’t work perfectly. The crowd was very hostile to Bravo, and not just to the angle. A shame he never really made it.

That was followed by the Jumping Bomb Angels and The Glamour Girls having a good, long match. I absolutely adored the way they went through it. Then, there was the Hogan-Andre rematch signing. Seldom are signings entertaining, but this was pretty darn good and good TV. That was followed by the long and decent Rumble, though it wasn’t the best there’s ever been. The show closed with The Young Stallions vs. The Islanders in a match that was good and told an interesting story. I’m happy to report that all the Rumbles are available on Netflix.

ECW
I used to watch a lot of ECW. It was a great promotion and had a serious amount of talent just begging to be snapped up by the Big Two at that time. ECW was ½ way between Japan and the US at the time. A lot of the guys Paul Heyman went after were stars in Japan who couldn’t catch a break, like Chris Jericho, Chris Benoit, Dean Malenko and Eddy Guerrero.

The style was both Garbagey, like the stuff IWA Japan and FMW were up to, and slick US style. The Guerrero vs. Malenko feud was the best US scientific feud in years and had one of the most emotional endings of any feud ever.

Paul was a smart guy who was in over his head when it came to the matter of running a business, and he was steeped in wrestling tradition enough to get the guys to work when he couldn’t provide the payment for their services at times.

The funny thing is, as rabid as the ECW fanbase was, no matter how much they made on PPVs, through selling their tapes and DVDs, they could never turn a profit. In fact, it was through settlements with WCW and help from the outside that they managed to stay afloat.

That’s a bad thing, but there’s more to it. Groups like Ring of Honor have made it based on less. They spend less on talent, don’t have TV, sell tons of DVDs and make houseshows pay for themselves. A fraction of the people who bought the ECW PPVs buy RoH’s PPVs and they still manage to be at least slightly profitable. It’s weird.

One thing that ECW had that no other promotion in the US has had is innovation buzz. Ring of Honor comes close, but when you went to an ECW show, you knew you were going to see something new, something cutting edge. The pop for spots like Benoit powerbombing Rocco Rock off the top rope onto Johnny Grunge who was laid-out on another table were huge. New Jack’s dives, the barbed wire shots, the work in the crowd all felt new.

So what if it had been done in Memphis as early as the 1960s, it was new to TV, new to the fans who weren’t used to Joel Goodhart’s shows or Lawler’s brawls. This was honest to goodness innovation in wrestling and every show seemed important.

The WWE can’t be that company right now. Between the injury rate that racked up when they were doing innovative stuff with the Hardys or the Dudleys and the painkiller problem that stemmed from them, the WWE had to pull back. TNA could have been that, and when the Styles-Joe-Daniels feud was on it almost pulled it off, but they got caught up in crappy booking and trying to focus on investments like Kurt Angle and Sting. That killed them cold.

ECW today is just a training spot for RAW and SmackDown!. There’s no innovation. I doubt they could innovate and not fall back on old habits. TNA is probably going to be gone before they can get to the point where they’re the ECW for the modern age. Can Ring of Honor do it? I dunno. I’m thinking they wouldn’t want to expose themselves to the losses that come with the level of expansion required to really make that sort of splash. They’d need a national TV deal, or at least large syndication, and they’d need to tour more.

The internet was always ECW’s strength, and they used it far better than the WWF or WCW did, but it’s harder to make an impression when the WWE website is considerably better now and even some of the super-small groups have great web presence.

Wrestling was at its peak in the 1997-2000 period when there was a WWF doing big business on the backs of Steve Austin, the Rock and Mick Foley, and you had WCW doing well with Goldberg and Hogan, though by late 1998 you were seeing a lot of cracks in WCW that made it obvious they weren’t going to make it. There was ECW, just starting on PPV and losing lots of talent, but still doing some innovative stuff. They were an important part of the equation. Even though they were a very distant third, they provided both a training ground and truthfully, giving the Bigs ideas to steal. That’s what’s missing.

That’s another edition of Falls Count Anywhere. Next week: a look at a Hogan you might not know.

Chris Garcia