Falls Count Anywhere

03-25-03

I read all the Sweet Valley High books.

RAW
Well, I liked most of it. Can't say it was the best show in a long time, but fun, well thought out and a couple of decent matches. But to end a show with clips from another show doesn't help their cause.

Trish and Jeff Hardy had a fairly blah match with Victoria and Steven Richards. The finish with Trish dropkicking Richards and doing the Stratusfaction on Victoria was pretty cool, if highly tentative.

Booker and Goldust had a very fun match with HHH and Flair. It had old school moments, some fun tags, and Goldust cracks me up. There was intensity in ten cities when Booker and HHH faced off. I think they'll have a decent match at Mania, but this show needed to be built around that match, and nothing else, to get the title over.

Steiner vs. Christian happened. I am not sure what Steiner did to deserve such a demotion. Actually, I am.

The Michaels vs. Jericho segment was awesome. There is nothing like an angle where they let the facts (Jericho patterning his style after Michaels) play a role. It was intense, well done, and made me want to see this match.

RVD/Kane beat the Dudleys, and it was fairly good. The fact that they stripped the titles from Regal and Storm and gave them to Morley and Storm basically says that Regal is out for the long run. Get well soon, Darren.

The Rock Concert had a few good moments, but having the Hurricane arrested wasn't a good plot point. I do like the rub that the Hurricane is getting, but the fact that Austin only ruined Rock's guitar and traded a couple of punches was lame. They needed to push this harder (though not as hard as the title match) to get it over.

Bringing out Vince = Good. Bringing him out as the closer segment = Bad.

Add to that Lillian Garcia (No relation, so she can still be mine) singing a HUGE rendition of America the Beautiful, and it worked as a show for me, though not to the level that I would have liked.

News
Not too much.

Angle will have his surgery in April.

Edge is recovering.

Goldberg has signed, and should debut either at Mania or the day after on Raw, since the plan is for him to be on RAW.

Sycho Sid announced that he is done with wrestling for good.

Just solving crimes in Bayport...

The Hardys' book, appropriately called The Hardy Boyz, is doing well in sales, though I just ordered it yesterday.

And the Pride 25 show that aired last week is amazing. I got it off the web…I mean through completely legal means, and have to say that the main event alone was worth every second. The only MMA match that comes close would be the Frank Shamrock vs. Tito Ortiz match in 1999.

FlashBack!
1993 was a dark time for the WWF. Vince was under investigation for the steroid scandal. Hogan was back, but would be gone by the end of the year. Ludvig Borga (I'm sorry, Rep. Ludwig Borga) was a main eventer. Sad times indeed.

WrestleMania IX took place at Caesar's Palace in Vegas, the first outdoors Mania, and was a giant failure, just the first step in a long line of bad shows the WWF would do as its popularity started to slide.

You can usually tell by the opening when something is going to suck . If you ever see Jim Ross come out in a toga with Bobby Heenan riding a camel backwards, take cover, 'cause it's about to hit the fan. This was Ross' first big show, and from the start, they treated him like a clown.

Most of the matches were awful. Giant Gonzales wrestled the Undertaker in a body suit with Sasquatch hair and airbrushed muscles on it. Let me say, that was the lamest thing ever, and I've read every Sweet Valley High book. The Steiner brothers, in their only Mania appearance, managed to have a bad match with the Headshrinkers, who were usually very good together. Money Inc. took on Brutus Beefcake and Hogan. You can imagine how that turned out.

There was one bright spot: Shawn Michaels. Defending his IC title, Michaels took on Tatanka in a decent little match that really showed that Shawn could carry anyone to the best match on the card.

The worst thing: after Bret Hart lost his title to Yokozuna (rest in peace, big man), Hogan got Bret's permission to challenge Yoko, who he then beat for the title. Hogan leaves Mania with the belt around his waist.

It's not that Hogan wasn't still over, but the fans had been getting used to seeing guys like Hart, Michaels, and Flair wrestling good main events. The old Hogan formula wouldn't cut it anymore, and he only defended the belt a few times.

This is where Mania can go wrong. By not building to the money matches, by giving away matches that could draw really big money, and by just letting the spectacle overshadow the matches. It also didn't help that WWF was in the middle of a trough of the talent cycle.

WCW would start breathing down their neck in a little more than a year, but you could see that the WWF was slipping, and that the WCW was starting to build up. This show did some pretty serious damage, but not nearly as much as the shows later in the year.

That's all for Falls Count Anywhere. We'll have a special look at WrestleMania XIX in a day or so, and a special report on how SmackDown! went live.

Chris Garcia