Falls Count Anywhere

09-14-04

I would lie 4 U.

RAW
Good Show, sort of. They opened with Flair and Batista in the ring with a bunch of girls whose age might add up to Flair’s. Flair introduced HHH to the folks and he came out to huge heel heat. He talked about spitting in the face of all the fans and there was a giant fake cake in the ring. There was no other possibility for that cake than to contain Randy Orton, who came out and cleared the ring. Really transparent, but Randy actually got a good pop when he jumped out. H did some funny flopping around when he got knocked into the cake.

Backstage they made a match where Randy Orton would take on Evolution in a handicapped match. Hmmmmmm…

Benoit took on Rob Conway. They gave this a lot of time, which Benoit used well, but you can kinda tell that he’s down now that he’s out of the title picture. It’s a shame too, as he was a good champ. They traded a bunch of chops. Benoit carried the bulk of the match, which is a good idea. The match went pretty well and Benoit got the tap out win with the Crossface. Fairly good stuff, but it’s sad that Benoit has fallen this far.

Stacy Kiebler came out to introduce the Diva segments, but alas, Molly Holly came out instead and challenged Stacy to any sort of physical contest. Stacy chose dancing. Molly did the worst fake ballet possible, which makes me think that she studied dance and was trying to look bad. Stacy bumped and grinded for a while. Molly attacked from behind. Nidia made the save, which brought in Gail Kim, which brought in Victoria.

Once that chum was in the water, Trish came to the feeding frenzy. Bisch came off on the Titantron and said that they’d do a six-woman tag team match. The match actually must have done most of its building during the break, because Trish was going to her big spots when we came back. The match was pretty good, and Molly actually landed the handspring elbow, which I believe is the first time that she’s landed one of those as a heel. Stacy got the roll-up pin for her team.

mmmm...cake.

Kane was talking with Bischoff backstage about Lita cheating him out of his win. He wants a rematch, but Bischoff lets him have a No DQ match with anyone he wants. Kane likes that idea.

Shawn Michaels appeared on the Highlight Reel. They put each other over as 7 time IC champs. Christian came out and talked about the comparisons between Shawn and himself. Jericho took to calling Tyson Tomko Goat-boy, which may have been a reference to my former facial hair nickname.

They set up a tag team match between the four of them, and let me tell you, it was fairly good, even with Tomko in the ring. Shawn isn’t all the way back, but he did pretty well. There was a great spot right before a commercial where Jericho and Michaels did side-by-side planchas. Christian got a nice Stungun during the break, which they replayed. It ended up with Shawn hitting his Sweet Chin Music for the pin. Good enough match.

Simon Dean, a rib on Dean Malenko’s real name of Dean Simon, was shown in a weird promo talking about his weight-loss line. Problem: They’ve done this gimmick before (Caryn Mauer and DDP for example) and it’s never worked. They also made no reference to wrestling at all. Still, Mike Bucci (formerly Super Nova) did a great job.

They tossed Joy, which means that neither of my favorites will be in the finals, and they were about to do the big gloves boxing when Vincent Kennedy McMahon came to the ring. HE said that next week he’ll have big news for Eric Bischoff and the entire RAW lockerroom. No clue what it is, unless it’s an on-screen role for Paul E.. Then he said that the girls got to wail on The Coach for 20 seconds. Christie beat on him a little, and he didn’t sell at all, though he did go down when she climbed onto his back. He then sold everything for Carmella. Tell me they’re not fixing it. My Playboy guys sent me IMs that the voting is fixed and that Amy actually had more votes than Carmella. Not surprised.

Bye bye, Joy. You leave behind a bitter Garcia.

Someday it will be a trivia question: who caused Kane to kill Lita’s baby? The answer will almost certainly be Gene Snitsky. Kane got a No DQ match with the guy and he did an OK job as a jobber. Kane decided to try to Pillmanize the guy’s head, but Lita came in and pulled the chair off of his head. Kane then confronted his wife, but Snitzky hit him with the chair and sent him falling onto Lita. Anyone think they were actually gonna let Lita go full term?

Triple FlairTista took on Randy Orton in a nothing match, really. It was just like last week’s SD! main event, more to reintroduce Shelton than to actually be a match. Evolution got DQ’d when Batista came in with a huge clothersline. Orton didn’t get much of an ovation when he came out. They did a couple of minutes to little crowd reaction and then the ending, but then Benjamin came in, which means that he’s a face, which will be nice.

They managed a comeback, but Benoit came out and cleaned house. Batista took the Stinger Splash, then got hit with the Swan Dive Headbutt and then the RKO. That led to the ending of the good guys in the ring.

Well, they’re reaping what they sowed last night and last month by not having smartly done programs. There’s a lot of bad situations in this set-up, and they are going to have to make the most out of Shelton Benjamin.

NEWS
Well, there was a ton of heat on Eric Bischoff, but it was all explained away. He left about 2/3 of the way through the show last night, thinking that he wasn’t going to be used. They forgot to tell him that he was going to be a part of the main event, so he left. They talked before RAW and everything was cool.

No major injuries of late.

Scott Hall is still alive and talking about going with Kevin Nash to TNA. This is an on-going project and the money won’t be there anytime soon.

Like I said, if you are in Elizabeth, New Jersey or Beantown, MA, get yourself to the Ring of Honor shows in the first week of November when Jushin ‘Thunder’ Liger will be making his US return. Should be great, even though he’s a little over the hill.

Unforgiven
Some really strange booking, but I liked the matches a fair deal. They have a lot going for them in the talent department, but by booking with little thought beyond what number they are gonna pull and how to keep HHH happy, they’ve really painted themselves into a corner.

William Regal and Chris Benoit beat FlairTista. No question, Flair is over the hill, but he can still make a match seem important. Batista and Benoit work well together, and when he took the German Suplexes, he did so like a champ. Benoit got the win for his team, which is good since he had gone from Champion to opening match in less than a month. They did give this fifteen plus minutes, which is about as short as I like to see Benoit go. Regal is such a good wrestler, but he needs more ringtime to not only get back into the rhythm, but to educate the fans to his style. There was some OK heat here at times.

Victoria got pinned by Trish in her Woman’s Title challenge. It was a solid match, though they may end up describing the Trish vs. Victoria feud as the Hundred Years War. Victoria was an offensive machine. She’s been working with Dean Malenko, it seems, as she did the Press Slam into the Gutbuster. She also hit her JiggleSault and her swinging Sidewalk Slam thing. Trish did a sitting abdominal stretch while Victoria was on the mat. Victoria went for a clothesline, but Trish did her backbend. Crowd gave a fair response to this, which is nice to see. Victoria then hit a plancha on Tyson Tomko. She got back in the ring, but Trish got some Strat-us-fac-tion for the pin.

After the match, Tomko went on to beat on Victoria, but the ‘Mystery Woman’, aka Stevie Richards, came out to make the save. The announcers said that the identity of the Mystery Woman is the worst kept secret in wrestling. I was kinda hoping that would be a reference to the upcoming Sky Captain and The World of Tomorrow film, which also has a mannish Mystery Woman. The two of them then had a terrible match that killed the crowd. They basically designed it to humiliate Stevie by having him wrestle in bra and panties. Terrible match and it wasn’t all Tyson Tomko’s fault.

The IC Title Ladder match between Chris Jericho and Christian showed us why we shouldn’t do these stunt show matches at a time like this. They need everyone to stay healthy and doing these isn’t the way to make that happen. They did a bunch of stunts, though, thankfully, not at the level of the TLC matches in 1999 and 2000. I’ve seen some folks complain that it was a stunt show with no transitions. I thought it was better than that. The two of them make a good match and it told a story. They did the spot where they bulldog one guy into the ladder. Jericho fell off the ladder and landed on his ass on a ladder. Ouch. Jericho and Christian both fell from different height ladders, and since Jericho went to the lower ladder, he recovered and got the belt to win.

Before Lita lost her baby, she caused her husband to lose his match with Shawn Michaels. Shawn looked pretty good, doing most of his big moves, especially the Flying Forearm and the elbow. Shawn, needing to prove that he’s really back, got slammed on the Spanish Announce Table, but it didn’t break. Kane acted like he was glad and then suplexed HBK on the table which broke it. Kane tossed Michaels head first into the ring steps, which allowed Shawn to do his King-sized blade job. Kane goes for a Chokeslam, but Michaels kicked him in the Creflo to get out of it. Michaels hit Sweet Chin Music for the win. Good stuff, much better than I expected.

Tajiri and Rhyno didn’t win the Tag Team titles from La Resistance. The match was OK, with Rhyno working above himself and Rob Conway looking really good. Tajiri is always Tajiri, which is kind of a matter of personal taste. They did a bunch of gore and gore missing spots, which is what they seem to do with Rhyno all the time. Seriously, he chose the wrong time to get on Vince’s bad side, since he has the talent to be a solid mid-card heel. La Rez won following the flag shot.

The Main Event showed what was wrong and what was right in the WWE right now. They had a match that was played out properly in the style of a significant World Title match, but they also got very little heat for their work until the interference started coming. Oh yeah, they buried Randy Orton by giving him such a short title reign. The match was really entertaining.

I should also mention the boss white boots that HHH was wearing. He’ll be dancing in the far cage in twenty minutes.

The match basically broke down into the two trading advantage until the boys from Evolution started interfering. Probably my favorite spot in ages was after Coach had come in after a ref bump. HHH set it up for the Pedigree, but Randy backdropped him and at the same time gave Coach the RKO. Great spot. Another ref bump and H got a Pedigree on Orton onto a chair, which just proved that HHH can get it his way.

That’s all for now. More on Friday.

Chris Garcia