Chair Shots

9-17-02

Chris Garcia once wrestled professionally as "The Care Bear"

Raw Report
OK, my first Tuesday Chairshots and I am already gonna lose all my cred by announcing that I liked Raw. Not perfect by any means, but they told some good stories in the ring, set up matches for the PPV and did a few decent angles.

The show opened with a review of the Wedding, or at least Bischoff's role in breaking it up. This makes sense, unlike most of the Smackdown replays, because it showed Raw guys on Smackdown making an impact. The whole night folks were capping on Smackdown, which helps to keep the brands separate in our heads, but can get annoying.

After the intro, we were treated to the Judy Garland show, starring Eric Bischoff. Seriously, the guy sat on a stool, in a darkened arena, with a spotlight on him. I half-expected/half-wanted him to break into "Send in the Clowns." He brings out Rico and rewards him for his treachery by giving him a match with Flair.

And then we are treated to the opening, followed by Triple H coming to the ring with the Bling Bling belt. H rips on RVD and wastes 5 minutes until RVD comes out to talk a little Stoner to Trip. Seriously, it must be 420 all night long in VanDamia. The Battle of the Pony Tails ends with RVD blocking a kick and giving one of his own.

Flair vs. Rico was an old school affair. Not a great match, but solid in the old school martial artist guy taking on the wrestler. And the crowd earned my wrath by not enjoying it for its 1986 goodness. Flair does a great "Don't bring that chair into my house." Spot by standing on the chair Rico tries to slide in. Rico wins when Flair decides against using the chair on Rico. He should have learned from Piper's 1992 Rumble mistake.

Booker talks to Teri, at her skankarific best, and then goes to his match with Test. A sloppy match, but the crowd loves it, which continues to earn them my hatred. We do get to see a Bookercanrana, and of course, T wins. Exactly as good as it was bad.

HHH is in the building, so of course he inserts himself into every storyline. He calls Flair washed up, mocks Spike's pain and just makes an ass of himself. If this were Murder, She Wrote, H would be the one about to buy the farm.

The International Organization for Women (IOW) pickets throughout the night. Never in the history of any political movement have there been that many attractive and semi-attractive protestors.

The Un-Americans defend the tag titles against Buh-buh and Spike. A solid match, with some very nice back and forth and a segment where Spike gets to play Face In Peril until the hot tag to Buh-buh. The Un-Americans win after Spike takes a huge double power bomb from inside the ring through a table on the outside and Buh-buh gets all concerned and then rolled-up. A decent match.

Bischoff talks with Jericho before his match with RVD. This is completely unremarkable, except for the fact that Jericho and I had the same goatee.

Jericho vs. RVD for the IC title starts out good, though exactly what you would expect from these two, and then just keeps getting better. This pairing has had some good matches and this was one of the better ones. HHH comes down to ringside and RVD decides to take off from the top, but overshoots (or H missed catching him) and lands face first on the ramp. This looked really bad at first, but RVD got up and went on.

Jericho gets the walls and the tap out from RVD to win the belt. HHH comes out and gives a pedigree to RVD because he needs more airtime. After the break, Jericho self-celebrates by double fisting champagne and getting Bisch to make a rematch for him against Flair at the PPV. These are the type of backstage vignettes that I like.

Regal takes on Kane and it's all of what I expected, Regal being as awesome as Kane is useless. The real reason for the match was for an Un-Americans against Buh-buh, Kane, Goldust and Booker T brawl, leading to Booker calling for an 8-man match at Unforgiven this Sunday. It did what it had to do and that was all.

Now the IOW comes to the ring, led by a chick in glasses that I find strangely HOTHOTHOT. They run down Bischoff for being a smut peddler and he retorts that he is surrounded by lesbians looking for a public outlet. I am on the floor at this point, because Bischoff is so good at playing the jerk that it comes off brilliantly.

The Bisch says that they've had their 15 minutes, but before he can cut that in fifth, one of the Lesbian Horde makes like Janikowski on the Bisch, loses the wig and reveals Stephanie McMahon! She then brings out Billy and Chuck to a big pop, they give Bisch the Doomsday Device and then mix it up with Rosie and Jamal for a bit. This was a hot segment, though the protestors were visibly breaking up at times.

Finally, HHH is supposed to have a match, but no one knows with whom. As soon as H is in the ring, RVD slides in and they brawl, with RVD busting Trip open with the bling bling and then we get folks to pull Van Dam off of H (including Fit Finlay!) and then we go to commercial to await the real match, which turns out to be Jeff Hardy.

This match is sloppy, and it's not even H's fault. The crowd is into it, again, proving that I am off better stuff than they. Jeff blows spots left and right and looks completely out of it.

This is what the current wrestling fan wants: huge, body shattering spots that end up with guys either too toasted to know who's President or too broke down to work in the ring. I'd much rather watch guys like Angle or Orton who are solid but never reckless. Jeff is on his way to Donesville, since on his big chance he put up a performance that made me very, very sad.

All in all, a good little show.

Velocity
I figured, if I am going to report on Raw, I may as well watch Velocity. As I watched some early and mid-80s wrestling this weekend, I realized that shows like this back then would have been big show caliber, and there was some really good stuff.

D'Von beating Shannon Moore was a solid affair. I don't really like D'von much, though I do love the gimmick. In a world where talent is turned into titles, Shannon Moore has the World Title. He is amazing and should be pushed as a legit threat to the Cruiserweight title. He and Rey would have some classics.

Randy Orton took on Billy Kidman in a solid match. The WWE has dropped the ball on Orton. This match was great, solid and fast the whole way through. Kidman is a big talent, but Orton looked great and should be up around the Edge level by now. The push they gave Brock should have gone to the more talented Orton.

Orton won with the Move With No Name (Elix Skipper used to use it, and I think in Japan it's something like the Unbelievably Dark Crystal Doom Buster, but I may have just made that up). Seriously WWE, PUSH ORTON!

Albert beat Funaki. Now, let me say that I like Funaki, and in 1985, Albert would have been a monster who came in, challenged Hogan and drawn good money for a few months. This was bad. Funaki tried, sold his ass off and made me laugh with the old "You can't spell Funaki without FUN" line. All in all, not a good match, but it's nice to see Funaki getting match time.

They showed the Billy/Chuck wedding material here. GLAAD must be hitting themselves right about now.

Crash Holly/The Hurricane defeated Jamie Noble/Tajiri in a match that felt like a 1997 Nitro opener. These guys were great, pulling solid moves, covering up some sloppiness, and telling a good in-ring story. The Shining Wizard that Hurricane throws is rad; I just wish he could use it for a win every now and again. This match deserved the extra time it got and these guys and Rey are the best reasons to watch Smackdown.

Confidential
OK, first I should say I love this format. I used to watch Pro Wrestling This Week where Gordon Solie and folks would talk about various matches that happened outside of the WWF, and I always like stuff that is meant for the small insider community. This week, though, I was very disappointed, not in the format but the material.

So here I am, the guy who loves wrestling history, and they talk about doing the history of the WCW belt. I am psyched and hunker down hard into the couch. It starts well enough, mentioning that the belt's roots came from a series of wins by George Hackenschmidt, but then after that become cloudy until Lou Thesz was awarded the title by the NWA board of directors in 1948. WHAT THE HELL?

Maybe it's the fact that I am the only one who gives a damn about history, but they ignored about 40 title changes between about 25 different legends, including names that mean something like Frank Gotch, Stanislaus Zbyszko, Ed Strangler Lewis and Bronko Nagurski.

I'm not saying that they have to do an hour long piece on the history of the belt, but covering the names that made the belt mean something would have made the belt seem even more important. Instead of mentioning the legends, they talked about and showed clips from DDP, Booker T, Flair, and the like. DDP is a good talker, but compared to the stories they could have covered from Dick Shikat? Booker T was fine, but I'd rather hear from Ron Simmons or even Kevin Nash. The segment wasn't bad for what it was, but come on, throw a history nut a bone.

Next, an in-depth interview with Vince McMahon on HLA, Gay Weddings, and generally being distasteful. I've heard it a hundred times before, but this time I felt like he was just covering his ass. Brent Bozell must be shaking in anger over the settlement that prevents him from bugging the WWE when there are things like this going on.

Later, we got a bit on some magician who performs at The World and who was in a Houdini Water Chamber for 24 hours. Well, it did happen at The World, but a 10 minute segment it did not deserve.

The show ended with Miss Wilson goes to England. Torrie's all pretty and what-not. That was the show. Not a bad show, but they have done better.

That's all from me. Read yourself a little bit of Sarah on Friday and my DVD review of Hulk Still Rules. Here's a preview: Hulk sucked in 1980.

Chris Garcia