Falls Count Anywhere

11-13-08

Somebody get a paper towel.

We’re looking at Couture vs. Lesnar for this weekend. I can’t say that I’m certain who will win. There’s always the Couture spirit, which has given him wins over bigger names that were expected to win out. There’s also the fact that he’s been around since the 1990s and has more experience than just about anyone else currently in the MMA world.

There’s Brock Lesnar as the young guy who’s lost once, didn’t look perfect in his last fight, which he won, and he has never faced a guy the level of Couture. Couture is coming off a long stretch of downtime, but he’s done that before. Lesnar is the hardest trainer in the world according to those who track that sort of thing.

But none of that matters. Why? Because this has been a disaster of pre-planning.

UFC hasn’t properly promoted and there were seats available as of last week. That’s not normal for big fights, and they haven’t even managed to get enough viewership for the pre-fight promotional shows. They’ve put together the kind of fight that could set records if the PPV numbers come through, but there’s almost no way that it could do what they wanted.

I’m hoping that the buyrate is high, somewhere around a million buys, which I think is more than possible. That’s the only way this fight won’t destroy a major draw. Why? If Couture beats Lesnar, I wouldn’t expect them to keep pushing him as a star attraction, but if they do a million buys, I’m betting they’ll probably give him more matches.

If Couture falls to Brock, which is the way I’m thinking it’ll go down, then Couture will finally be seen as old, and if it fails to draw, then I doubt we’d see much more push for Couture fights.

There are folks who think this’ll do UFC’s all-time PPV record, but I’m not so sure. Money’s the matter now, but you never know. You did see a dip in the WrestleMania numbers, but not too seriously. Numbers are down only slightly, and the Lesnar fight before this one was strong, though not thrilling.

I’m still saying Brock takes him. He’s got the training, he’s got the wrestling ability and he’s a good puncher. He just has to keep from making a mistake. One mistake, like the one against Mir, and he’s gone. The ref will probably give them a lot of room, because no one wants this fight to end with an early stoppage…well, maybe Dana White so he can build a rematch.

WWE Cuts
More cuts have happened. Paul London, Kenny Dykstra, Chuck Polumbo, Elisha Burke, SuperCrazy (who according to the Observer quit), and Lena Yada all are gone. That’s a lot of talent that’s pretty young that they’re letting go.

Yeah, we're okay with it.

I’m guessing they don’t expect them to show up in TNA because they’re letting folks go (including agent Glen Gilbretti aka Disco Inferno), but I would not be surprised to see Dykstra, London or Burke end up there. London would probably have a place in Ring of Honor, but their financials aren’t the best either. Crazy can probably go back to Mexico and do OK, and I wouldn’t be shocked to see Polumbo end up in TNA as he’s got friends there. Yada can go back to bikini modeling and do just fine.

If you saw RAW this week, you were treated to a great Last Man Standing match between Shawn Michaels and Chris Jericho. It’s a great match, but I haven’t found it anywhere on-line, which is a shame as it’s well-worth watching. The biggest problem with Jericho as champ is that it devalued Batista to win the title and then lose it so quickly. Batista was nearly ready to eclipse HHH as the biggest star in the WWE, but injuries and weak booking has hurt him to the point that it’ll never happen now. He’s also over 40, which amazes me.

The DiBiase, Manu (3rd Wrestling Generation of Wild Samoan) and Cody Rhodes stable’s probably adding Randy Orton. That’s an interesting foursome, with three third generation and a second gen who probably has more talent that he’s waiting to unleash, as his career so far has been very start-stop. I think it also puts Orton a level down, which might be good as it’d give him something to do while Cena comes back and stays at the top of the card with Jericho, or so it would seem.

Jericho’s another interesting question. He’s 39 and is in the big run. He’s had a couple of them before, but this one’s the first time he’s being treated like a star and even booked like one. He’s not quite Shawn Michaels, and it’s a sad thing that Jericho’s feud with Michaels didn’t happen in full force in 1997 when it would have been the greatest feud ever, but what was Jericho’s greatest period was heavily entwined with Chris Benoit. With the near-complete wiping of Benoit’s name off every wrestling fan's mind, it’ll be hard to really get why he’s where he is and why so many people think of him as having been so good.

There’s word that Shawn Michaels has named the date of his retirement. Most folks have been saying WrestleMania 26 (that’s in 2010) as the date, and I wouldn’t’ be shocked to see them do some sort of angle at WM25 to set up a year-long run towards the finale, perhaps even setting up a series of challenges for him.

My buddy Tim Davis used to do armchair booking and put together a long run of Flair heading into retirement. I remember thinking that the WWE’s send-off for Flair wasn’t nearly as good. I think something like that for Michaels could work. The best retirement tour so far was for Terry Funk in the early 1980s, but Inoki’s in the 1990s was pretty good too, and it included the famous Vader match which was incredible.

I watched the Royal Rumble 1994. I was there live and it was a weak Rumble with a weak finish and the stupid Undertaker dies thing. It was just awful, but it reminded me that there are a bunch of people who we haven’t heard from in years.

For every Scott Hall who keeps himself in the spotlight through his sophomoric antics, there’s a Charles Wright, brought back every other year or so to play The Godfather. In 1994, he was simply Kama, the UFC-style fighter who wasn’t very good.

There’s King Kong Bundy, who was in his last run I think. He was always a symbol of the 1980s wrestling scene as a heel. His match with Hogan at WrestleMania 2 is famous, most insiders thought it sucked, but I have friends who loved it and I still consider it one of the reasons I got so into wrestling in the late 1980s. Those guys rarely show up on the radar these days and it’s kinda a shame as I always liked them. And where’s Nikita Koloff?

OK, that’s all for this week. I’ll be back next with a report on who won: Age or Power.

Chris Garcia