Falls Count Anywhere

08-07-06

Falls Count Anywhere runs on Mondays and Thursdays -- finally back on track!

LL Geek C.

NEWS
On the signing front, or the no re-signing front, Lita and Trish are both expected to be going from the WWE. Trish is supposed to be getting married and Lita wants to do some acting. Trish hasn’t been a big deal of late, though she’s still involved in storylines. Lita is in the mix at the main event level, but they’ll probably write her out. The WWE isn’t negotiating with either, but they’ll probably make a gentle offer and see what happens. Neither of them is hurt for money, particularly Stratus, so we’ll have to see.

SmackDown!
Well, they’re scrambling on SmackDown! to the point where they’ve obviously either given up on the suspensions or they caught a lot of lucky breaks. They also introduced a few new people, which is actually a sign of desperation.

Regal and Finlay had a fun match that I thought was a very nice change from the regular WWE matches that I’m getting so tired of seeing. Remember that Benoit-Finlay match? This wasn’t as good, but if you sprinkle of those in every few weeks, you’ll get a more varied product that has more shelf life.

The two traded offense and eventually the Shillelagh came into play. Finlay hit Regal to get the DQ. Lashley came in to attack Finlay, but he hightailed it out of there so Lashley gave Regal a PowerSlam.

Lashley’s return is apparently legit as the levels of liver enzymes on a follow-up test came back clean. That’s the story and it seems to be true, though folks are wondering just how true.

Elijah Burke came out with Sylvester Terkay to wrestle Scott Wright. Terkay was supposed to wrestle, but he passed the job to Burke, how basically squashed Wright. He used a Cross-Armbreaker for the win, which is a move we haven’t seen much in the WWE of late. Crowd didn’t care for it.

They did a bunch of Pie in the Face Diva segments. Some of them were awful. I still like Layla and hope she wins it all. If I can’t get my picks for So You Think You Can Dance right, maybe I’ll get lucky on the Diva Search like last year.

Nice outfit.

Kristal, who shouldn’t be in the ring, pinned Ashley, who is much better than she rightly should be, in a quick match. I’m hoping that Ashley gets to work with whoever wins the Diva Search because she’s come a long way and has a great attitude. Plus, if it’s Ashley and Layla, I will finally understand the meaning of Heaven.

Tatanka beat Sylvan. This was almost a squash-type match with Tatanka getting his win back. Supposedly he’s back on SD! because he’s protesting his suspension and they’re going to be going to an arbiter to settle it. Tatanka hit an Overhead Chop off the Top and followed that with a Side-Slam for the win.

Ken Kennedy lost to Batista in a match that so easily could have been used to make Kennedy a face instead of the tweener they seem to want to push him as. Kennedy starting with a dropkick to the knee and worked from there until Big Dave turned the tables and finally hit the DemonBomb for the win. They really could have elevated Ken, but no, they gotta keep Batista strong.

Vito beat The Brooklyn Brawler. This was nowhere near as good as Brawler’s appearance on ECW but Vito won with his dress and armbar thing.

Montel Vontavious Porter debuted. Look at the initials and you’ll understand his character. He had his agent with him and he said that he wanted to be a part of the New Talent Initiative 2006. Teddy was all for it until he heard the price.

The weird thing is that this seems to be based on the Cuba Gooding, Jr. character from Jerry Maguire. What gives? Did someone watch the 10th Anniversary edition a few weeks back?

Michelle McCool, who is very hot in that Stacey Kiebler 1999 sort of way, introduced her new tag team, Idol Stevens and KC James. They took on Scotty 2 Hotty and Funaki and the crowd was not into it at all even though James and Stevens are really pretty good. They made a point of showing Kendrick and London watching from backstage.

They had a Chavo segment that I missed.

King Booker took on The Undertaker in a match that wasn’t for the title. It wasn’t very good, but it wasn’t bad either. Booker and UT do work well together, but this seemed a little slower than usual. I really think UT’s last great match was those two with Kurt earlier this year.

After hitting Snake Eyes and the Chokeslam, Khali came in and brawled with Taker, who is getting a Last Man Standing Match with Khali. Lord preserve us.

Not a bad show, but the crowd didn’t respond and there was too much new talent. They’ll work it out with them all hopefully, but things are looking better with the return of Lashley.

That’s all for today. More on Thursday.

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Chris Garcia