Falls Count Anywhere

08-02-07

Meet me there.

RAW
Didn’t see it. I had a meeting, so I missed it. I do know that they’ve been building to SummerSlam with Cena vs. Randy Orton as the big match. There’s no idea of what this match is going to be like. The concept of Orton as champ is what the WWE wants because they see him as a big talent that they can work with for a number of years down the road.

The problem is he’s not nearly over enough to get the push and Cena’s hot even if he does get that strange mixed reaction. Still, this could be a very good match.

Also, the SmackDown! Main Event is Batista vs. Khali. I expect that to suck hard. Batista isn’t the wrestler who can carry Khali to a decent match. Cena did it (and anyone who still doubts that Cena will never amount to anything as a wrestler just needs to look at the job he did with Khali in their two matches), but I’m almost certain this will be a Worst Match of the Year contender.

They continue to push that HHH is returning at SummerSlam, but I haven’t heard what the real plan is (facing Booker would make sense, but Booker’s got good heat right now, so I wouldn’t put him in that position). I think he should ref the Khali-Batista match because that would at least give us some storyline.

RAW Ratings Nose-Dive
So, that RAW episode that I missed earned a 2.5 rating. That’s the lowest since before the Austin explosion in late 1996. To compare, there were dozens of episodes of RAW during the time when WCW’s NwO angle was hotter than anything that actually beat out the rating of this show. How much of this is attributable to the Benoit situation is hard to say, but certainly some of it is that. The lucky thing is that RAW is patched into USA for two more years, if I’m remembering correctly, so there’s time to build the numbers back.

This is a huge problem and it’s not likely to be the end of it. I’m betting we’ll see some hot-shot angles soon. PPV numbers are far more important than ratings, so we have to see where those go before the full panic sets in.

Bobby Lashley
Lashley tore his rotator cuff and will be out for a while. If he needs surgery, I wouldn’t expect him back until after the new year. He was hurt around WrestleMania, according to the Observer, and there’s word that it got worse and there was an incident this weekend that made it obvious that he needed to get time off. They did an angle with Mr. Kennedy to give him a storyline out. Kennedy is due a big push, though he’s seen as something of a fragile competitor because of his frequency of injury.

RVD News
He was at Comic-Con, and according to one person who ran into him, he was talking about getting back into things around the first of 2008 after having some time to recover. He’s burnt out, hated working the bastardized ECW and just needed time with his family. He’s got a lot of outside interests, too, which help him make more money. He’s comin’ up on 40 and with his style, he’s probably not got too long. Then again, they said that about Sabu and he’s still crazy. The WWE thinks RVD will re-sign once he’s recouped and TNA still thinks they’ve got a shot at him.

TNA
Negotiations with Fox are going ahead, though I’ve not heard what station (Maybe FX, maybe Fox Sports Net) and TNA is worried that they’ll get dumped by Spike in favor of more UFC (something like a 100 Million dollar offer to UFC for a year’s worth of programming). TNA is still not making money, and they need to be soon.

I would think that TNA’s best bet would be the get a two hour slot somewhere and make that happen. It would be a good idea to get more money, but that might not be possible. Ratings are steady, which is OK, but even big moves haven’t popped higher ratings, which is bad. We’ll see how this plays.

Starrcade 1986 and the Greatest Tag Team Ever
If you’ve got the chance, find a copy of Starrcade 1986: Night of the Skywalkers. I just rewatched it for the first time in ages and it’s an amazing card that shows how much things have changed. The crowd heat is excellent, the matches are great, and the way the show proves that old school wrestling holds up better than most of what we see today.

It’s not flashier, but the way they tell the stories, especially in the matches with Flair and Koloff and Bubba Rogers vs. Ron Garvin in their streetfight. The matches are nowhere near as flashy, there’s blood in many matches, and the crowds are hot. The Main Event of the Scaffold Match isn’t great, but it’s incredible to watch the way the crowd reacts.

While I was looking up info on Starrcade 1986, I ran across info on The New Breed. I totally forgot that they had one of the best bits in history. I’ve written about them before, claiming that they were from the year 2002 (this was back in 1987) and were back to change history and win the Tag Titles. I forgot that one of their bits was they kept calling Dusty Rhodes ‘Mr. President’. I looked it up and even found one of my old tapes where they claimed that Dusty had won the election in 2000 to become President of The United States. Now that’s a great gag, and it’s certainly no worse than what we got! They also thought that Lazer-Tron, aka Hector Guerrero in some Lazer Tag get-up, was an actual robot. It was a great gag!

OK, that’s this edition. No Monday edition since I’ll be in St. Louis for NASFiC, but I’ll have a special look at a couple of different things, including a taste of the Wrestling Observer Hall of Fame.

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Chris Garcia