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Falls
Count Anywhere
04-22-03
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Like Indiana
Jones, only larger and with much scarier facial hair.
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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!
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Ready
for The O'Reilly Factor.
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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.
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Going
to the Hall of Fame...
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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.
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