Falls Count Anywhere

04-01-03

Still recovering from goosebumps. I mean the book series by R.L. Stine.

Welcome to Falls Count Anywhere. My name is Chris. April Fools.

RAW
Well, I was happy with most of it, but there was certainly a flat tone coming off such a hot PPV. I think the SmackDown! taping will be much bigger, as there was more to work with coming out of Mania. Still, the wrestling was good, but most of the other stuff was just blah.

The Good
The WrestleMania review video was great. That is what the WWE does best. The whole thing gave me goosebumps.

HHH and Hurricane had a fine match that almost reeked of H's classic run in late 2000 with TAKA and Rikishi. He worked much better than he has on free TV in ages, and the crowd was really into the match, and in particular, the Hurricane's near falls. I thought this was the match of the night.

The Three-way Tag Title match was a nice piece of business, especially with the unique booking. RVD looked good, and the storyline the Dudleys are riding is solid, with plenty of twists and turns. D-Von is playing a semi-face, while Buhbuh is playing a semi-heel. I like it.

King got to shoot a CyberGirl for Playboy, and the segment they showed I really liked. He's a great character, and when they put him in situation like this, Lawler always seems to shine.

Booker T and Jericho had a nice little match with a strong storyline. The way they advanced the Jericho/Michaels feud and the Booker/HHH goings on was nice, and should carry them into the next PPV. By the way, Flair was bumping like a coldcut last night. He looked like Bobby Heenan circa 1983.

The interview The Rock did was good, in line with his recent interviews, but the line, when the crowd was chanting "Goldberg", "Don't think you're cool just because you know the Rock's accountant, Ira Goldberg!" just kilt me dead.

The Average
Goldberg entering was only OK. He did a weak spear, didn't get the monster pop, and overall, just came off as any entering guy. Steiner's return was better. I hope they know what they are doing.

The Bischoff/Austin segments were average, though Bisch reading off the list of injuries was kinda cool. I like the concept, but it didn't run the way I would have liked. Austin seems to have lost a little of his TV presence.

Jeff Hardy and Steven Richards had a match. It was very average, didn't build much, had Victoria blow a spot, and did little else. Still, nothing really terrible about it.

The Bad
Steiner vs. Nowinski was an awful match, mostly due to Steiner being allowed to do more than flex, but Harvard Chris had a great pre-match promo. The return of the face mask, a classic that never goes out of style.

With heavy heart, we admit that Stacy cannot act.

Stacey and Test's little bit was bad, since Stacey is about the worst woman in the WWE for these sorts of things.

The Maven vs. Rosie match was bad, so bad it made me wanna see Nidia and Torrie wrestle again. Maven should be in with good workers like Hurricane, or RVD, who can make him look good and teach him how to work the crowd. He's a big thing they can build on, and they are fouling it all up.

All in all, In ring: Good, for the most part. Out of Ring: Bad.

News
Lesnar has a concussion, but that's good news. He's still a little sore and stiff, and the thought is that he'll do an angle at SmackDown!, but not a match for a while.

FlashBack!
Ron Simmons.

The first real wrestler I ever met in the real world was Ron Simmons, in 1986, at Marine World. The Man is huge…no, gigantic. Seriously, he sat in front of me at the Ski show, and even though I was a row up, he still managed to completely block my view.

Chris Garcia? Never heard of him.

Simmons started in football, gaining great fame at Florida State University. He has returned a few times over the years to great fanfare, and has even been included on the College Football Hall of Fame ballot. He went into wrestling in 1986, I believe starting out in Florida about the same time as Lex Luger.

Eventually brought into the Mid-South territory run by Cowboy Bill Watts, Simmons received a decent push, partly due to his connection to "Dr. Death," Steve Williams. He worked his way around, eventually coming to Jim Crockett's NWA on TBS shows in 1987. He got another fairly good push, again doing a lot of work with Steve "Dr. Death" Williams when he was around. He gained a reputation for being tough as nails, which is true from everything I've ever heard or seen.

After a couple of years in the middle of the card, including a couple of runs at the old NWA US Tag Team titles, Ron was put into a new gimmick.

Under a mask, Ron teamed with Butch Reed as Doom. This gave Ron his first big stage push. The pair of Simmons and Reed, and perhaps the late Larry Cameron, though I never remember seeing him, were brutal. They were managed by Woman (aka Kevin Sullivan's Ex and Chris Benoit's current wife) and had some great matches with the Steiner brother. The Steiners beat Doom and took the masks, which only helped the push the guys got. They went on to win the NWA tag team titles and become the #1 tag team in the US.

They wrestled for a while, then broke up, ended up in a feud that featured a "ThunderDoom" cage match, and that was that. Ron rode high out of that feud, even getting a run at Lex Luger's world heavyweight title. Things were looking up, but it was a fortunate management change that brought Simmons his greatest claim to fame.

In the early 1980s, Bill Watts had the Junkyard Dog as his #1 guy in Louisiana. He would draw huge crowds to battle various heels. Watts was considered a ground-breaking booker because he was using a black wrestler to draw multi-racial crowds.

Well, old habits died hard and Watts had inherited the WCW and Vader as a champ. Ron had everything JYD had, except he was a hundred times better in the ring. Simmons beat Vader for the belt, had a few months to run with the title, and then dropped it back. He has the distinction of being the first African-American World Heavyweight Champion on a truly national scale.

Simmons spent several a little more time in WCW, then left, going to ECW and having a little feud with the Franchise Shane Douglas. He was one of many guys who used ECW as a way station on the way to the WWF.

Arriving in the WWF with a lame gimmick, Simmons was Farooq Asad, a gladiator-type, managed by Sunny. He was supposed to feud with Ahmed Johnson, but Ahmed got seriously injured right at the start of the feud and they eventually did the feud, but it was very poor. Eventually, as the WWF was looking to notch up the edginess, Farooq got his best gimmick yet.

The Nation of Domination, a militant ground of ethnic wrestlers who brawled, had white-boy rappers (Memphis' PG-13) doing the entrance rap live. They were led by Farooq, and managed by Clarence Mason, one of the most underrated managers of all time. The Nation helped launch Rocky as a star, briefly made D'Lo Brown a star, and produced a fine gimmick-laden brawl at WrestleMania 13 with the Legion of Doom.

Simmons had his ups and down once the group broke up. His only major success was as a cult tag team figure in the APA, with Bradshaw. When they were broken up for the Roster Split, Simmons spent a little time on SmackDown! and didn't really do much. He is thinking of a comeback when Bradshaw returns from his injury, hopefully getting one last run at the top.

That's all for Falls Count Anywhere this week. More stuff on Friday.

Chris Garcia