Falls Count Anywhere

07-30-04

Voting for Dewey.

SmackDown!
They opened up the show by recapping last week when Vince fired and then rehired Angle as an active competitor (in actuality, he simply optioned him for reassignment). Cole then announced that Vince had retracted all the firings that Angle had laid down. Good move, but they should have done it in the promo last week instead of having Michael Cole announce it a week later.

Booker T came out and said that he wanted his belt like in the deal he made with Kurt Angle. This brought out Kenzo Suzuki. Booker then had a great line about wanting the guy in charge of SmackDown!, not the guy in charge of the sushi bar at the Tokyo Inn. That said, I’ve been to the Tokyo Inn in Vegas and the sushi is highly acceptable. Rob Van Dam, Luther Reigns, Rene Dupree, Charlie Haas and Billy Gunn all came out to lay their claim on the US Title. John Cena also came out to a good pop. Four separate fights came out and so did Vince McMahon. Vince walked through the chaos, grabbed a mic and introduced Theodore R. Long as the new GM.

Oh YEAH!!!!!!!

Booker tried to get Teddy to give him the belt, but Theo pointed out that Booker has been bitching about SmackDown! ever since he came, so there would be an Eight Man Elimination Match to decide the new champ.

Defeat from the jaws of victory...

Rey Mysterio lost the Cruiserweight Title to Spike Dudley in a match that I thought was only pretty good, but that played very well with the current Dudley storyline. They were having a pretty physical match early on, which did not sit well with Rey. The two of them even brawled on the floor before they were ordered back in. Spike moved when Rey went for a moonsault and then used an Oklahoma Roll for a near fall. The match continued, but as Rey had Spike set for the 619, D-Von distracted the ref and Bubba tripped Rey. Spike recovered and hit the Dudley Dawg to win the match. Spike was not happy that his brothers interfered and he tried to talk to Rey about it after the match.

Theodore R. Long had a nice segment with Kurt Angle backstage. Kurt said he came to pack up his stuff, but that Luther must have already done it since it was all gone. Kurt pointed out that Teddy was the first Black GM, to which Long replied ‘That first black stuff went out in 1985’. Teddy then said that Kurt must be hiding and he was going to make a match for him tonight. Kurt said he forgot his trunks, which led Theo to fine him One Large and say that he had a match next week. Good interaction.

I didn’t get to see all of the Dudleys vs. London and Kidman, but what I did see was very good. There were some very nice exchanges, including London doing his flip kicks to D-Von. I really like the London/Kidman tag team, and I keep hoping that they finally push the tag team division as something special like they did a couple of years ago. This is a step in the right direction. London did a roll-up on D-Von for the win.

At this point, I noticed that there was no Diva search and automatically added two points to the show’s score.

Ivory talked to Mick Foley at the Democratic Convention. Mick said that he changed out of the flannel to get the young vote out. The Observer this week made a good point that almost every one in the WWE falls on the Republican side, most notably Val Venis (who used to write a very conservative, even by my standards, weekly article) and Vince McMahon. The only known Demos are Mick, Albert (who may have switched sides after debates with Val) and Spike Dudley.

Hmm...the Olympic Committee might want to talk to Angle after this...

Eddie Guerrero got a strong pop coming out for his segment. With his hamstring in bad shape, Eddie gets to do a lot of talking, which will only get him hotter. He called out Kurt, and when Kurt didn’t show, he revealed that he had taken all the stuff from Angle’s office and was auctioning it off. He talked about the selling all the stuff, but when he was about to sell the Gold Medals, Kurt came out. Kurt said that since Eddie stole his stuff, Kurt would steal Eddie’s car. Eddie warned him not to, but Kurt turned the key and got a face-full of powder for his efforts. Good segment.

They did a great fake political ad for John Bradshaw Layfield. They reviewed his life like he was running for president. This was well-done, but it went too long.

The Eight Man match was strong, though far from the level that we got from RAW. Haas and RVD worked together to open. It’s so obvious that they’ve missed the boat on Haas. He could be the next Kurt Angle if they gave him the chance. Haas eventually gave Rene Dupree a T-Bone Suplex, which was pretty sweet. Of course, immediately afterwards, Billy Gunn hit the FamAsser for the pin to eliminate Haas. Dupree followed up by giving Gunn a face plant, but when he did the French Tickler dance, Gunn got up and beat on him for a bit until Luther Reigns got a blind tag, came in and hit his neckbreaker to eliminate Dupree. Luther moved very well all night. He’s not technically sound, but I buy him as a bone breaking tough. Cena came in at that point and the crowd popped big, and he worked with Luther for a while. Suzuki came in eventually, and the two ended up on the outside. Hiroko tried to interfere, but Cena kissed her, leading Kenzo to nail Cena with the title belt for the DQ elimination.

Booker T then swooped in and beat on Cena. After a while, Billy Gunn took over on Cena, but Cena came back to use the FU to pin Gunn. This left Cena, Booker T, Luther and RVD. After The Book got a couple of near falls, Luther came in and when he tried for a powerslam, Cena turned it into an FU for the elimination. RVD and Cena then worked for a while, using a Northern Lights Suplex and a Split-Legged Moonsault for near-falls. RVD got the Frog Splash, but hurt himself enough to let Booker get the pin on Cena and then use the scissors kick on RVD for the pin and the win.

A good show. This is what an average SmackDown! should be like. They need to bring the rest of the shows up to this level and then give us blow away shows once every other month or so. Things are looking majorly up for SmackDown! now that Kurt is ready to come back. Now all we need is Eddie to be healthy.

NEWS
Well, the Iron Man Match didn’t light up the ratings. The show, as a whole, did a 3.6, slightly below the last couple of weeks. The Iron Man Match lost a bunch of viewers after the first ten minutes and then gained a bunch as the last ten minutes came. The same pattern as the Angle vs. Lesnar, though since Benoit and HHH don’t move ratings as much as Lesnar and Angle were moving them at that point, the swing wasn’t as big.

Brock got signed by the Vikings. He very much impressed the coaches after his second workout. He may make the starting line-up, or he may end up on the development squad. The Training Camp will tell.

Apparently, the Flair book and the way it’s being pushed have seriously damaged the WWE’s attempts to get Bret Hart to do some work with them. According to the Observer, Shane McMahon had been negotiating with Bret about doing a DVD, a book, and using him as an Ambassador to Europe and Canada. The blow back from the Flair stuff was so bad that the negotiations were broken off then and there. The DVD will probably still happen, as long as Hart gets reasonable creative control. You know, like he had when he refused to do his job to Michaels in 1997.

Flashback
SummerSlam is the home of the hot summer feuds. Since 1987, there’s been some great action leading up to the end of summer and the return to school. Most of the SummerSlams have been of high quality, but others, not so much. One of my all-time favorite matches took place at SummerSlam 1999. It was a battle between Ken Shamrock and Steve Blackman in a Lion’s Den Weapons Match.

Let us be ready by looking back...

The Lion’s Den match had been created to give guys like Blackman, Shamrock and Dan Severn a touch of the rub from UFC. The ring was octagon (or maybe six-sided, I didn’t bother counting) and made of chain link fencing. The cool part was the sides were angled, so that they could be used as a ramp. They had used it a number of times, for the tough guys feuding with the likes of Owen Hart. This was a Lion’s Den Weapons match, meaning that weapons were scattered about the cage. This was a recipe for fun in my book.

While most folks know at least a little about Ken Shamrock, Steve Blackman has sort of fallen out of memory. Steve was a strong kid, even winning weight lifting contests back in his youth. He also studied shotokan karate, which awarded him a third degree black belt. Blackman was a solid, if mostly uncharismatic, wrestler who started wrestling in the late 1980s. The story goes that the WWF signed him in 1989, but he contracted malaria while touring South Africa and had to bow out of wrestling for a number of years. He worked indies after he recovered and then came back to Titan rings in 1997, replacing the Patriot at the 1997 Survivor Series. His tough guy rep was played up, but he seldom went very far due to his lack of charisma.

The match itself was very solid. Blackman started off using his nunchucks, which was his gimmick at the time. Shamrock took them away and used them himself. The rest of the match was pretty simple: either hit a guy with a weapon or toss him into the cage. Lots of kendo sticks used, and Shamrock did the beautiful spot where he would be whipped into the cage, then come off with a nice back elbow. The match ended with Shamrock flipping out and creaming Blackman with a Kendo Stick in a little over nine minutes.

The WWF at the time was trying to seriously cash in on the UFC audience. They were also seriously failing. It made sense, at the time, as Japan, particularly New Japan, was making a killing using shoot fighters and pseudo-shoot matches. The one thing the WWE did right was not to build their promotion around those types of match-ups, as that’s what’s caused the Japanese traditional product to become so weak. The WWF tried, failed, and walked away.

That’s all for this week. Next week will be a look at Mexico!

Chris Garcia