Falls Count Anywhere

09-03-08

Coherency is for suckers.

I watched WrestleMania 21 again this weekend. It was a good time. Why’d I watch it again? Because I thought that it was the one where Brock Lesnar took on Goldberg in the hottest match of all-time.

Of course, it wasn’t. It was the one with Shawn Michaels vs. Kurt Angle, which was one of the best matches of either man’s WWE careers. But I was thinking of Brock and his recent win over Heath Herring.

Heath made it to the finish and it was a unanimous decision. It was a decent match. Not great, but certainly not bad. I’d say that Brock dominated him, but just couldn’t finish Heath, which is his super-power. Heath has always been known for the fact that he has no give in him and it’s hard to make him tap and it’s hard to outlast him.

Brock gave it his damnedest, but he didn’t manage. With some more time, he’ll get over it and will manage to submit the various opponents he’s fed. They’re being a lot smarter with Brock than they were with Mirko Cro Cop, and Brock’s still hugely over. I haven’t heard early numbers on the buy for Brock’s shop, but I’m imagining that’ll surprise me when we get it.

One thing is for sure: the last time we saw Goldberg wrestling, in that match with Brock, he looked OK. It was the worst situation for having your big match, but it’s what we remember. The funny thing, Goldberg’s back training to make a comeback, though he’s said that it’s not for WWE nor TNA.

That means one of three things. The first could be that he’s part of Jimmy Hart/Hulk Hogan’s plan to start a new fed, though this one’s not that likely because of Hogan’s current financial problems because of his divorce and the lawsuit from the guy who’s in the coma because of his son Nick’s reckless driving.

The second is for one of the Japanese companies, which would be interesting as that’s where Brock made his comeback and faced Kurt Angle. It’s kinda likely because they still pay big money for big names to come over occasionally (as Kurt Angle still shows up once in a while).

The other one is that he’ll go to Spain and work for Nu Revolution Wrestling. Wrestling is hot in Spain and they paid big money to get The Ultimate Warrior out to have his first match in years (and he looked weird wrestling). It would be the likely one because they pay big and they would draw a big house for it and they’ve even sold a lot of videos of Warrior’s comeback.

The weird thing is that the guys I’m talking about here were the basis for much of the drawing of the last decade. Ten years ago, Goldberg was the big name in WCW, still having most of his drawing power and still the most feared guy in wrestling. He was making big money and his matches with guys like Hogan on Nitro and DDP on PPV were memorable affairs.

Shawn Michaels only carried the business in the WWF for a year or so in 1996 and 97, but he was a top of the card guy until he left in early 1998, only to return in 2002. He was a big star and the main attraction for several shows when he was finally back full-time.

Brock was the guy they turned to in the 2001-2 timeframe, and he did pretty good. HHH was still around, but Brock was obviously the guy they were pushing for the future. Too bad it didn’t work out and now he’s one of the three top draws for the UFC.

Kurt Angle is certainly the top draw for TNA, and though he was never the top draw for the WWE, he was a big reason their shows were well-recieved in the peak period from 2001 to 2004.

Other than John Cena, there hasn’t been a big drawing star built since Brock. Samoa Joe should have been one, but they failed to make him into one because TNA doesn’t understand booking. The star that WWE wanted to be their future may end up being the star that carries the UFC to the future. The only way that he’ll not be the star of the next five years or so is if he gets seriously hurt or he never learns to finish and tries to mix it with characters like Cro Cop or Emilianenko. I’d love to see him destroy Kimbo Slice (and there’s no way that he could compete with Brock because he can punch and he can take-down) and I’d love to see him go into bigger names, but he’s not ready, though he improves with every fight.

Brock will never get to face Kurt Angle. That’s a shame because these are the two that I want to see fight. The guys are proably the best matches fighters int he world in every way...except for size. They could fight in Japan, if Brock wasn’t signed to UFC. It would be great to see if Brock could hang with Kurt, but it’d also be interesting to see if Kurt could overcome Brock’s striking. It’d just be the fight of the century...or a one punch and she’s over situation.

I also say you should go out of your way to see Shawn Michaels and Chris Jericho’s angle from SummerSlam. It ends with Rebecca, the former Nitro Girl Whisper, getting clocked in the mouth by Jericho when Shawn ducks.

Here’s the awesome thing: I think he really did clock her and I think she sold it exactly right. She came up with a fat lip and a little blood. They then had Shawn stand over her, but not go after Jericho. Then, in the ultimate understated moment, they had her get up and then walk out on her own power. No stretcher job, nothing. It was awesome. It didn’t get the kind of heat you want an angle like this to get, but it was pretty good.

The next big thing might be the fight between the WWE and the Lawsuit. Raven, Scott Levy in real life, is one of the guys in the class action lawsuit about wrestlers being contractors. The word going around is that the WWE is simply trying to come up with a good figure to make it go away.

Konnan’s lawsuit against TNA is interesting. He’s saying that he was being asked to do characters that were going through with racist angles, even though he was the one who came up with the LAX angle, which is one of the best things that TNA has managed to put out over the last decade.

He’s also saying that he was being pressured to use performance enhancing drugs. He was in both the WWF and WCW, not to mention Mexico which all tend to encourage ‘roids through who they tend to push. It’s not looking good for Konnan, but the idea is that they may prefer to give Konnan a buy-out instead of being forced to take it through the courts.

OK, that’s all for this week. Next week’ll be weird and I’ll try and get a special edition of Falls out on Friday all about a plan to make an unauthorized Steve Austin movie!

Chris Garcia