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Falls
Count Anywhere
07-30-07
Welcome to Falls Count Anywhere! My name
is Chris and her name is Linda.
The
Simpsons Movie
OK, I missed SmackDown! so I could see The
Simpsons Movie. There is no way SD! was as good
as watching 87 minutes of Simpsons. Just plain funny. But
I’m the wrestling reviewer, so let’s get back
on topic. I do hear that MVP and Chris Masters had a good
match with Flair and Matt Hardy. I’d still like to
see them push Hardy more.
Last
Week’s RAW in brief
They’re building to SummerSlam very smartly and should
be ready with a realistic card in the next week or two.
My thoughts are the Jackass deal is dead, though there are
those who say it’s coming along. The main event of
Candice Michelle and John Cena vs. Umaga, Cade and Murdoch
wasn’t much, but the wrestling as a whole on the show
was pretty good. I think we need a big new top of the card
program because I’m doubting that Cena vs. Orton,
which is probably going to lead to an Orton title reign
that’s unadvised, will bring in the numbers.
Stupidest
Signing
TNA is bringing Pacman Jones, the guy that’s been
arrested for his part in the shooting in Vegas of a guy
who happened to be a former wrestler. This is bad news for
TNA which should not be playing in this game right now.
Wrestling ain’t exactly in the best of lights right
now, so we need to keep things cleaner and bringing in a
guy who is up on charges isn’t a good idea.
Karl
Gotch passes away
You hear a lot of names thrown around as to who the toughest
man in the history of wrestling is. Bert Asserti gets a
lot of votes because he bullied English wrestlers and was
as tough as they come. The legendary Dr. Ben Roller was
one of the baddest men of his time, one of the few folks
believed could injure Frank Gotch. In the modern era we’ve
had Haku (aka Meng) who was one of the toughest men who
ever lived according to folks backstage, and Paul Orndorff
who beat Vader up pretty bad.
And there was always Karl Gotch.
Karl Charles Istaz wrestled in the 1948
Olympics, so he had cred before getting into the game. He
followed that up and trained at the Wigan School where he
learned the art of hooking and pro wrestling. He had studied
various Indian fight arts and other systems and worked a
realistic and tough style. Sadly, he never held the World
Title, partly because his style wasn’t the flashy
American style and he wouldn’t always cooperate.
In Japan,
he was a legend. He had some great matches and drew some
good money, but mostly he was known for being the guy who
trained the generation of wrestlers that would change all
of wrestling.
He trained
Tiger Mask, Akira Maeda and Fujiwara who would go on to
make shoot-fighting match far more popular. He also trained
and inspired the various shoot-like organizations like UWF
that brought more realism to wrestling, especially Japanese
wrestling. The current world of MMA has roots with Kotch’s
ideas of what wrestling should be.
He was almost 83 years old.
That’s
all for today. A short one for a long day!
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about today's column in the forums!
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