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Falls Count Anywhere

04-22-03

Like Indiana Jones, only larger and with much scarier facial hair.

Welcome to Falls Count Anywhere. My name is Chris, and LA was very good to me.

RAW
Raw was no better than fair. It told some stories that needed to be told before Backlash, but it didn't do enough. That, and at times, it was just dull.

Bischoff and Flair open with the "I'll explain my entire scheme before I kill you." Flair is great, Bischoff isn't bad, but it's a little too "Let's give it away for the slow folks at home."

Hurricane. Jericho. Jericho seems to have been slowed by some nagging injury, since he seemed a step off. Hurricane had his timing on. Jericho still plays the heel well, though. OK match, the crowd found themselves into it, but far from the level these two are capable of. Ric Flair beating down Hurricane was OK.

Rodney Mack gets a squash. How weird is that? Teddy Long was the best thing, again.

The Michaels/HHH/Booker/Flair/Nash stuff was fairly standard. I just hope that they pull this together right by the end.

Lita comes back to a rather disappointing pop. But the crowd does give her a chant, which is nice to hear. Lita looks good, and Bischoff manages to get her a better pop. Who didn't see the firing coming down the pipe?

Not a fan of Three Minute Warning, but I'm a big fan of Chris Nowinski on the mic. The match was lame. Steiner is actually getting a little mobility back.

Another Rock Concert! Yippee!

Ready for The O'Reilly Factor.
Actually, I've been dreading this, but the entrance was really good, since he knows exactly how to bring a crowd into anything. The actual concert portion was lame, but then…GILLBERG! GILLBERG! I was wondering how long it would take the Powers The Be to bring him back. It turned out that this was better than the previous, and entertaining. Let me also say that is one SWEET 'cuda that Goldberg was drivin'.

Les Vichy is back. I am not afraid. I should do a write up on the classic blunders and the few successes when it comes to introducing new wrestlers.

Hey, a match! I'm not happy with the amount of wrestling, and even less of the amount of good wrestling. Trish and Spike vs. The Dudleys. Well, let me say that it did keep the whole storyline going, which I guess is good.

More Rock singing. I like the fact that the WWE is trying to tie some of the mid-card folks into the upper card angles, and Christian works in the role. Sweet chairshots. The match on Sunday should be good.

The card for Sunday isn't looking great, but I am interested enough in some of the matches, specifically Team Angle vs. Los Guerreros, Jazz vs. Trish, and the Rey vs. Big Show, if only to see how brutally bad that last one will be.

Main event and it doesn't really work for me at all. The work's not too bad, but I'd rather not have had a schmoz at this point in the show. I really like Booker, and I want him to play the champion soon. HHH is OK, but nothing special right now.

All in all, I am not convinced that this was a good show to put on the Monday before a pay-per-view.

NEWS
Not much lately. There are still injuries, and the entire roster is getting banged up. I'll have to do another rant on that in the coming months.

There's a growing resentment toward Goldberg, and it has helped to make Jericho even more popular in the locker room since he stood up to him. Goldberg will be on Wayne Brady on Friday and Jimmy Kimmel this Tuesday.

No word if Gillberg will appear on The O'Reilly Factor.

FlashBack! (Kinda)
I went to LA to visit some friends from Cinequest, college, and generally to bum around in a part of the world that I just don't get out to enough. As always, I scour the shops on Hollywood looking for movie posters, props, or the occasional autograph.

I've usually come across some good stuff to feed my movie stuff addiction, and even found a few things that have helped me pay rent on those tight months. This go-round, in a small shop that didn't even have a sign, I came across a box: a completely nondescript banker box.

And I'm guessing that the feeling I got when I lifted that lid was probably the same as Howard Carter when he opened King Tut's tomb. Wonderful Things.

Going to the Hall of Fame...
In that box were at least 200 pages of old wrestling newsletters, posters, post cards announcing matches, programs from shows in San Bernadino, Los Angeles, and Fresno.

I had never seen anything like it: a Southern California Wrestling Museum in a box, in a movie store, in Hollywood. Just by rifling through the classics, I learned everything I would ever need to know about wrestling around LA from 1964 to 1982. Posters with Blassie, Jack Brisco, Mils Mascaras, and even Exotic Arian Street, all posing triumphant.

Most of the items had three of four copies in the box, so I pulled about one of each, took them to the counter, and paid 16 bucks for the whole thing. The owner said he just wanted to get rid of them, and I gladly paid. He said he got them with a lot of posters that some old timer sold to him back in 1989, and not a single copy had left the box since. I told him that if he ever found anything like those priceless pieces of history, to immediately call me. He laughed, took my card, and went back to his business.

The highlights? A 1964/5 mimeographed newsletter for members of The Mummy fan club. It talks about a very famous Mummy vs. Freddy Blassie match that I have seen on old videos. Another gem was the Christmas 1969 program, featuring "Big" (better known as Giant) Baba taking on Fritz Von Erich, Mil Mascaras in the main event, and a tag match featuring Don Curtis and Freddie Blassie which was reffed by Joe Louis. Yes…that Joe Louis.

I've written about some of these matches, talked about these names over and over, and now I get to touch a few pieces of that era. As a historian, I love this stuff, and I hope that in the future, even bigger wrestling geeks will be able to revel in the glow. In the end, I'm giving most of this stuff to the pro-wrestling Hall of Fame in Schenectady, N.Y. They've been trying to gather materials like this for the last couple of years, and they haven't been able to get much stuff from Cali. If you've got things like this around your place, swing by http://www.pwhf.org/ and see if they would like it. We gotta support 'em or we may lose it all.

So, once again, I end up in the exact right place and find the magic. I'm just glad this stuff still exists, and the fact that I get to play with it for a while is even better.

That's another Falls Count Anywhere. Friday, hopefully, will feature the Paul Hough interview, and the regular stuff you've come to expect from me.


Chris Garcia

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