Falls Count Anywhere

05-09-03

Inside Garcia, there's a 165 pound twelve year old, but he's almost done digesting.

Welcome to Falls Count Anywhere. My name is Chris, and here is my handle…here is my spout.

SmackDown!
A lot of the good for SmackDown!, which is pretty weird since I had heard that the taping was booty from folks who were there live. Even if it was done with editing, it entertained me a ton.

The Good
I gotta say, Vince is great at opening a show. He gets the crowd riled up somethin' fierce. The whole thing ran long, felt like 1998 again, and it heated the crowd. That's the formula that worked back in the day.

Eddy has been off for a while. Not bad, but a step or two off. Matt Hardy is great, but he hasn't been himself, either. This was a good match, with a couple of missed spots, but still makes it better than average. I loved the Leg Drop off the Top to the back of Eddy's head. Nice cross-up roll finish out of nowhere.

Brian "Spanky" Kendrick comes out to a fair nice mid-card pop. I still love his theme song. Bringing out Noble is a good start too, though he gets no reaction on the coming out. Kendrick makes everything seem so sudden that it seems desperate, like he's actually trying to keep from getting a real beating. BRUTAL backsuplex from Noble, into a very nice reinforced nelson.

I appreciate the new emphasis on submissions. This is a really solid middle of the show match. Spanky is getting to be one of my faves in short order. By the way, Nidia is perfect as the Trailer Park slut…and she's HOT this week.

The replay of the Mysterio angle from Backlash is still good.

Mr. America's reaction was great, better than his first time out. I still like the original Midnight Rider angle better, but that may have something to do with the fact that I love the Allman Brothers' tune.

Hey, Mr. America was a 165 lb accountant from Hoboken, NJ, before his life was touched by WrestleMania. I was a 165 lb 12 year old in the living room of the apartment in Santa Clara. I also appreciate that Mr. America was "Americaning-up"

Heading for a difficult 2004?

I really like this Kurt stuff. It reminds me of old NFL Films. I like NFL films. And I agree, they should bring back those old "IBM presents: You Make the Call" commercials.

The Team Angle match was good, but it was great when Tajiri was in, fair when Rikishi was in with Benjamin. For some reason, Rikishi is still over.

I don't like the way they are programming Team Angle, as they are getting the same treatment that Kurt got in 2000, and that led to a difficult 2001. They should just make them the unbeatable team, like a modern day Midnight Express. Los Guerreros take the photo and the medals, and that makes me smile.

I must say, the Cena pre-show entertainment was really good, not to mention the old school Milwaukee Brewers grab. I really like Rhyno, and the match was fast to open, and Rhyno made something of Cena, though he did look a little tentative. I loved the spinebuster that Rhyno delivered. It wasn't pretty, but it looked serious. The ending was weakfish, but Spanky and Cena are gonna have a nice little feud.

The Average
I like Funaki, but the Vince/Funaki stuff wasn't very good. Still, not as bad as some of the other stuff I've seen them do with the Japanese Mitre Saw.

"Tastes great." "Less filling."

The Torrie vs. Dawn Marie match was kinda interesting. A little more interesting. VERY INTERESTING. I suddenly lost interest. The only thing to keep this from the bad: The fact that Torrie looked so "Cut your own arm off and mail it to her" HOT.

The beatdown after the main event was only OK, but it did start to heat things up for the main of the next PPV. Not great, but it'll do.

The Bad
Vince McMahon gave the worst nutshot in the history of mankind. It was as if he were giving Hulk a pat on the ass from the front.

Big Show vs. Benoit. Go figure.

News
Nathan Jones is being considered for reassignment to Ohio Valley Wrestling. He was kept out of the WrestleMania match after the practices the boys went through did not manage to improve Jones' performance. Jim Ross is supposedly the guy who pushed for Jones to be brought up, and it may be effecting the way Ross is being looked at by the company.

Luger claims that Elizabeth choked to death on pills after she had been drinking. This could easily be true, but we won't know for a few weeks. There have been some nice tributes on the web, but no one has heard anything from her former husband, Randy Savage, nor from the McMahons.

SmackDown! will be getting Ultimo Dragon on the roster shortly. For those of you who weren't watching WCW in the day, UD was a great flyer, and a Lucha-infused legend in Japan. Heyman wanted him, and they signed him since he would work well with Rey and Matt Hardy. He has had injury problems, even being retired for several years. I still wanna see Rey vs. Ultimo.

Bruce Pritchard, one of the head writers for SmackDown! and the brother of Dr. Tom Pritchard, was hurt during an FBI angle this week. He'll be gone for three weeks. An injury problem is obvious when your writers are on the DL.

FlashBack!
Bad matches. They usually are a good reason to not watch wrestling. Then there are the matches that become to wrestling what Desperate Living is to film.

My favorite of these matches has to be from 1996. Not only would I say the match sat among the worst of all-time, but the feud is up there as well. The participants: Big Bubba Rogers (Ray Traylor aka Big Bossman) and John Tenta (aka Earthquake). The match: The Carson City Silver Dollar Match.

That's no moon...

How does the Carson City Silver Dollar Match work? Easy, you have a sock - yes, a sock - on top of a pole, full of silver dollars that whoever climbs the pole can use on their opponent.

Neither of these dudes are the type who should be climbing a pole to grab silver dollars. Hell, they are both the kind who would be more likely to devour a sock full of silver dollar pancakes than anything else. The pole is about 20 feet high. Those are the conditions, but what of the match?

Tenta tries to pull the pole down, but Bubba stops him. Tenta is then taped to the ropes, as if the former Earthquake is going to jet up the pole. Bubba then whips Tenta, instead of even trying to climb the pole.

At this point, while sitting on the floor of Tim Davis' flat in Jamaica Plain, Ma, I am laughing my ass off. I had never seen stupider booking, stupider selling, or just a plain stupider idea.

Bubba then comes out with a pair of scissors and tries to cut Bubba's hair, but Tenta comes up with the shears and cuts himself free. He then tries to cut the pole from the ringpost, but that too fails. Bubba then sends his manager, the Mouth of the South Jimmy Hart, to climb the pole and grab the sock. Hey, that actually works! Tenta then grabs Hart, knocks him down, gets the sock - yes, a regular sock full of coins - and nails Rogers with it for the pin.

The whole thing took almost ten minutes. I was in hysterics for the last five. The whole scenario was idiotic. The execution was hideous. The wrestlers were terrible. And worst of all, it was stupid time taken from an otherwise fantastic PPV.

I got the tape from Tim a day or two later and I watched it over a dozen times in the years since. It still sucks, but it still amuses. Much like Mick Foley feels of the Kennel From Hell Match, I love to watch it as a sort of "There but for the Grace of God go I."

Just remember: no matter how bad Raw was this week, it will not be that bad.

Another week of Falls Count Anywhere is done. Next Week, more of the same, and hopefully an interview with The Lizard, one of the stars of The Backyard.

Chris Garcia