Falls Count Anywhere

01-21-03

I'm walkin' in Memphis.

Welcome to Falls Count Anywhere. My name is Chris and at the end of this column, you see the Ring.

Royal Rumble
Yep, the Rumble is in the books and let me tell you, if you came in halfway through, you were most pleased. If not, then it was saved by the last half.

The opening match, the Brock vs. Big Show, was a better match than I had hoped for, even without the high concept shenanigans. The Dudleys vs. Regal/Storm match didn't suck. Though it had some low points, they ended up giving the belts to the Dudleys (and blowing my prediction) just to turn around and give them back to Regal and Storm the next night. Dawn Marie vs Torrie was as bad as I expected, and still it was better than watching a roided-out boiler pot like HHH take a DQ loss to roided-out boiler head Scott Steiner.

The good started right where I expected, with Kurt Angle. Kurt vs Benoit was an amazing match, better than any of the others I have seen from these two. The end sequence, with the reversals and crowd heat for everything these guys did, made it a match I will think about when the second annual Christopher J. Garcia Awards for Outstanding Achievement in the Field of Wrestling Excellence come around.

This is where we should have come in...

The actual Rumble was good, start to finish. The opening with Shawn Michaels and Chris Jericho worked, allowing them to build a feud off the results, which is a must for the first pay-per-view of the year. People didn't seem very interested in the Undertaker, proving that he's not what the WWE needs right now.

No surprises this year, but plenty of good work in the ring. Rey's big huracanranas, Eddy (Guerrero is my favorite wrestler) giving the big Senton, Shannon Moore saving Matt Hardy from touching the floor, and the great Brock Lesner eliminating Mattitude with the F5 over the top rope. Brock winning was a definite coming in, but the way they presented it made it work. A good rumble, probably in the 62nd percentile of all Rumbles.

RAW
Well, Raw, eh?

Yeah. I was little moved by RAW this week, though moments and a match or two came through. The Tag Team Championship angle where Chief Morley screwed the Dudleys out of the belts basically proved that my prediction of the Commonwealth Society winning at the Rumble should have come true. It also went way too long, and there is something about using refs in this way that has always bothered me. The D-Lo match was fair, and the MLK stuff was in poor taste, but funny.

Then they took Jericho down by the river and told him about the rabbits.

The biggest downer had to be Stacey Kiebler getting wailed with the chair by Jericho. Yes, they sold it as legit, and I, at times, questioned wether or not it had really happened. After a minute or so, I realized what they were doing, and after a few minutes, it had gone on far too long. The match ended, which was a plus, as even the generally hot Providence crowd didn't care.

On the other side, Booker T and Goldust had an average match with Three Minute Warning that had the crowd all into it. It was easily the best Three Minute Warning match, but the crowd should not have been interested. It reminded me of the old days when Butch Reed would come out and have completely unremarkable matches with Don Muraco and the crowd would go nuts. Booker just has huge charisma, I guess.

The good? Perennial Christopher J. Garcia whipping boy Jeff Hardy pulled a good match out with the help of RVD. Looks like Jeff is going heel, as he threatened RVD with a chair after sending him over the top with a clothesline. The thing I really liked about it, the fact that with all the highspots, the big bumps, the great swanton that RVD kicked out of, the great spin kicks and all of that, still the finish was a backslide. An old school, Dusty Rhodes backslide. I really dug it.

As has been talked about, the ending featured a bad match between Steiner and Batista, but the real news had to be that Flair may have his other three Horsemen in HHH, Batista, and Randy Orton. The Four Horsemen, the greatest four man team of all time, in a new incarnation could be gold.

And of course, as I reported a couple of weeks back, Stone Cold is coming back, supposedly as part of Eric Bischoff turning things around. It'll be interesting to see how they bring him back, and if they can bring back the classic energy that Austin always brought to the WWE. Add the Rock back into the mix and it's a good time to be a WWE fan.

News
Well, the Wrestling Observer Newsletter came out with their awards issue, and Kurt Angle was the big winner, winning best wrestler, most outstanding wrestler, best technical wrestler, best on interviews, readers' favorite wrestler, and shared best match for the October 20th tag match.

Los Guerreros took tag team of the year, and Rock won most charismatic. Typically, Japanese wrestlers dominate these awards, but in recent years, the US has been making a comeback. The WON awards are considered to be the most prestigious awards in international wrestling, and have been given out over the last 23 years.

Injuries: Bill DeMott hurt his arm in the Rumble, but shouldn't miss too much time. Angle banged his knee up, but won't miss any time. Eddy's back is still a little messed up from SmackDown!, but as always, he'll work through the pain.

Nothing new on Goldberg, and it looks like the Bret talks didn't go as planned. The Rock will be back, but not for a few more weeks, as I believe he wraps filming today, and some time with the lovely Mrs. The Rock is in order.

FlashBack!
Today, we look to our Southern Brethren for their style of 'rasslin'. Yep, the tradition of brawling really started with Memphis, the classic southern violence that would come from the Mid-South Coliseum. No one better exemplified this than Jerry "The King" Lawler, and no feud could have been better than Lawler vs. Austin Idol/Tommy Rich.

I hear you asking 'Lawler versus who?' And you should hear me saying 'Austin Idol and Tommy Rich, dumbass.' Austin Idol was the prototype Southern heel for more than a decade, blonde and good on the mic. Tommy Rich briefly held the NWA heavyweight title in the earliest moments of the 1980s, and some say there were peculiar circumstances surrounding his win. The dastards had Mr. Paul E. Dangerously (WWE's Paul Heyman) as their manager.

The feud started with Austin Idol challenging for Lawler's Southern Championship, frequently being assisted by villains from the locker room. The big match was set, Mid-South Coliseum, a Hair vs. Belt cage match, the only way a Memphis match could be settled without interference. Now, Austin and Lawler wrestled a fine match, but as Lawler seemed to have it won, Tommy Rich came from under the ring, having been under there for more than five hours, and climbed the cage, attacking Lawler, and giving Idol the win.

This was a huge moment, and one of the last great moments in Memphis wrestling. Lawler, the biggest hero in Memphis, a legitimate local celebrity, had lost his hair for the first time. The nearly sold out Coliseum rioted as Lawler got shaved in the center of the ring. The heels had to wait for the crowd to calm down before leaving the cage, and then had to wait at the arena until the crowd waiting outside would let them leave. The heat was on and the feud took off.

Lawler played a ton of tricks: throwing fire at Paul E, dressing as a woman, then getting an autograph from Rich, who he then attacked. The matches were bloody, violent and great, with heat you really don't see anymore. The feud was great, launched Paul Heyman into a national spotlight, and helped get Tommy a job in the AWA. Before Tommy left, he had a match with Lawler where Eddie Gilbert ran in to throw a fireball at Lawler, launching that classic feud.

Looking back, this was much more 1997 than 1987. These brawls were everything ECW became a decade later, with better audiences, bigger impact, and better storytelling. I've always said that to truly understand where wrestling came from, you had to understand Memphis, and to truly understand the hard-core feud; you have to understand 1987 Lawler vs. Idol/Rich. It was perfect, genius booking, with finishes that made you want to watch the next match, angles that made you shout approval, and interviews that made you think all this bad blood was real. The feud won feud of the year in the WON and taught a generation of bookers how to make a villainous duo. If you have the chance, find these tapes, watch them and learn why folks like me got hooked so deep.

That's all for this edition. Friday, I'll talk SmackDown!, Tough Enough, news, and a FlashBack! to Bret Hart and Shawn Michaels that will explain why I side with Vince.

Chris Garcia