Falls Count Anywhere

10-12-04

Actually, I favour the British spellinge whenever I canne gette awaye with itte.

RAW
With Raw from England, I’m tempted to spell things the way those crumpet-eating monarch-lovers do, but alas, I shan't. The show opened with a fine match between the ladies Stacey and Trish. It wasn’t very good since Stacey has no credibility in the ring, but Trish tried. It wasn’t awful, but there were moments ...yuck. Afterwards, they had the brawl with Gail Kim, Molly, Nidia and the loverly Victoria all fightin’ and scrappin’ until the good girls won.

Another Simon Dean commercial. He’ll probably get a fair amount of heat once he starts actually wrestling, as these commercial segments are very well done. I think they need to pull back on the gimmick a bit, but I doubt they will until it’s time to repackage him. Anyone else remember Caryn Muffy Mauer?

Steve Regal and Eugene appeared to have won the World Tag Team Titles from La Resistance in a match that would have easily been my favorite in recent months. Smartly worked, well-paced, funny when it had to be, and most of all, exceptionally hot crowd reactions.

Unfortunately, after Regal got the pin using the brass knux, Bischoff overturned the pinfall and ordered the match to continue. There was some great stuff in the first section, including Regal working way stiff and getting cheers every time he landed a punch or elbow. Eugene did a few things, and broke up a pin after Regal took the Au Revoir.

After the restart, the crowd was a little out of it, but they did a great spot. They had Eugene use a Rock Bottom and then set Sylvan Grenier for the People’s Elbow, but he then had Regal deliver the actual elbow. That was good. La Res got the pin when they used the flag. Not smart, but they can do a rematch on another tour and have them win it.

A savant unsure of what to do...

After their match, Bisch complained that La Resistance didn’t soften Eugene up enough for him, so he made a match where the two guys who don’t get chosen to face HHH will team for the World Tag Titles. I know they are hoping for Edge and Chris Benoit to team so that they can pull off the turn of Edge once and for all.

Gene Snitsky just got a tongue stud put in, and it messed up his interviewing voice to where it was almost comical. He did a traditional interview saying that it wasn’t his fault and that he wasn’t going to stand around and wait for Kane to attack him; he was gonna make the first move. Kane was watching from the UK and seemed full of rage. Before the Hurricane and Rosie vs. Steve Richards and Val Venis, Kane attacked and nailed Venis with a bunch of chair shots to send him out on a stretcher. Pretty typical Kane reaction.

Randy Orton and Ric Flair had another great square-off interview. I’m pretty sure that the Orton bit of calling Flair a lap dog will eventually lead to him turning and guiding Orton. That would make sense. Flair got the total face reaction, though Orton wasn’t far off. When he made mention of the ladies, they gave him a nice reaction. They talked about suits, they talked about limos, they talked about kissing the girls and makin’ ‘em cry. This was what would have happened if Flair 2004 had feuded with Flair 1984. Great stuff.

Chris Jericho and Rhyno had a match stemming from their lumberjack match incident last week. Rhyno is good. Jericho is great. This match was decent, but ended with Christian and Tomko coming out and attacking, leading to the No Contest. Bischoff then turned it into a tag match, and Rhyno gored Tomko, allowing Jericho to hit the Lionsault for the pin. Batista then attacked and gave Jericho the Sit-out Power Bomb.

A moment of monetary triumph...

Edge, Shawn Michaels and Chris Benoit took down Evolution in a match that I rather enjoyed, but couldn’t bring my enthusiasm much beyond that. Edge was getting heel reactions, and Michaels was getting the big time face reaction. The finish was great, as Edge had walked into a Pedigree attempt after arguing with Michaels. Michaels with gave HHH the Sweet Chin Music allowing Edge to get the pin. After the match, Edge took the mic and said that he was the guy to vote for at Taboo Tuesday. I concur. They did one of those polls with Michaels taking the lead. Benoit got a good pop. Edge got boos. When Michaels was about to propose himself, Edge gave him a spear.

Solid, though it was missing a Tag Title change that would have made it spectacular.

NEWS
John Tenta is getting better, and staying the same. They said that one of his trouble spots was showing great improvement, and the other was the same. Still, the big guy keeps fightin’.

For those of you who like a) Lucha Libre, and b) hot chicks, there is an up-coming slate of Lucha Va Voom shows, including an October 27th date in San Francisco. Make it!

Karlstern.com is selling a DVD featuring a ton of old footage, including a match from 1935 between Man Mountain Dean and Vincent Lopez. This is the only known footage of Lopez, though I am certain there’s a fair amount of Dean footage out there.

FlashBack!
What is the best catchphrase ever in the history of pro wrestling? That’s a tough one for me.

There are those who would say it had to be one of the Rock’s many classics, my personal fave being ‘If you smell…’ you know the rest. Austin’s ‘and that’s the bottom line, ‘cause Stone Cold said so.’ is right up there too. Flair’s ‘to be the man you’ve got to beat the man’ is also in the running. All of these have been popular, been mentioned in sports other than wrestling, and have been used on Saturday Night Live, which is a requirement for true Pop Culture value. Then again, there’s one that goes even further than any of these, and it was coined by a guy you’ve probably never heard of named Dick Lane.

Dick Lane was the voice of the Roller Games out of Southern California dating back to the early 1950s. At the same time, he was announcing pro wrestling, typically out of the Olympic Auditorium. He was a horse guy; his voice always sounded like he had just smoked a pack of Lucky Strikes and chased it with a Dutch Masters. He had been a college football radio announcer, I believe doing UCLA games in the 1940s, which made him popular in the area. But in the early days of TV wrestling, he coined a phrase which made it all the way around the world.

That's MISTER Whoa Nellie to you.

"Whoa Nellie."

That’s right. Out of wrestling comes one of those phrases that we use a lot and never think about. Whoa Nellie was used all the time in wrestling and Roller Derby. Even TNN’s RollerJam (which I seriously miss) had the announcers call it once in a while. The phrase started showing up in all sorts of sports broadcasting in the 1970s, with Al Michaels, now of ABC Sports, using it; the Giants won big games while he was KNBR’s play-by-play guy. I can remember it on Wide World of Sports and Monday Night Football back in the day. When Nitro would originate from LA, one of the guys would always make a point of saying Whoa Nellie, probably prompted by the fact that Mike Tennay grew up in LA during the 1960s.

When the Hernandez boys of Love and Rockets fame did a woman’s wrestling comic, they called it Whoa Nellie, which is not at all surprising considering they grew up in LA during Lane’s reign of terror.

It’s the phrases that manage to lose all their connections to their origins but still go through the populace that are the best and most important ones. Whoa Nellie has become a part of the American Lexicon far deeper than almost any other sporting phrase. Odd, me praising something that grew out of LA. Except, of course, for Fred Blassie.

That’s all for today. More on Friday!

Chris Garcia