Falls Count Anywhere

06-17-03

If you can't rule The World, rent it.

Welcome to Falls Count Anywhere! My name is Chris, and it's about to get good.

RAW
My biggest problem with the new division of pay-per-views is that you pretty much automatically enter into a holding pattern. SmackDown! did rather well with this period over the last month, but I fear RAW will fall easily into the trap.

That said, I enjoyed this show to a fair degree, though I definitely see the signs that the creative team on RAW needs to be turned over.

The opening Foley and Evolution segment started slow, as Foley seemed a little lost at first. Once he got into the cheap pop, the cheap plug, and then the face-off with HHH, Flair, and Orton, things picked up big. Orton has obviously been watching Rick Rude tapes, as his promo was straight out of 1988. When Al Snow and Maven came out, I was hooked. HUGE, followed by the clothesline over the top from Maven to Orton.

Bischoff may be the best guy in the world to have flip out on screen. Mae and Moolah looked genuinely afraid at his tirade.

Um, that's not exactly good camouflage...

By the way, that is my favorite of Lillian Garcia's outfits.

Dudleys and Ivory vs. Chris Nowinski, Rodney Mack, and Jazz was entertaining. Sweet suit on Teddy Long, but he should have been doing mic duty, as he is the best talker out there right now. Hey, another roll-up for the finish. The trend continues.

There are some segments that are just too soap opera for me, one of which being the first RVD/Kane seg. Actual line delivered by RVD: "Kane, I know you're hiding something. Besides your face, I mean."

The video package for Bad Blood made it look like a really good event. After sleeping on it a couple of nights now, I'd say it was a slight thumbs up.

I am pretty sure that Evolution was watching an old tape of Jeff Jarrett backstage. Weird.

Austin coming out and yelling boring during Lance Storm's match with Garrison Kane was disgraceful, and tells you how much the creative team just doesn't get it. Lance Storm is one of the three best wrestlers on the RAW roster, and to go out there and destroy what was a solid match in the ring with all his talking was awful. It's this sort of thing that kills careers, as every time he comes out now they'll chant "Boring!" How can a company that wants its workers to hit the mat more expect that style to work when the audience is told that the guy who is best at that is boring? Awful, awful stuff.

Y2J and Christian vs. Booker T and Goldberg was a strong match for Goldberg, as it appears that Linda McMahon saying that Goldberg was a failure so far may have actually motivated him to put on strong performances. The pop he got was good, there were a couple of Goldberg chants, and he looked strong in the match itself. Maybe there is hope. Sling him over to SmackDown! and set up the Brock vs. Goldberg match that Brock wins and you've got money all around.

That pie-eating segment should be destroyed. This should not stand in the annals of wrestling history. That, and eech!

Test vs. Mae Young was short enough, and the Pumphandle Slam was brutal. Man, Mae Young is the toughest 80 year old in the world!

Jacky Gayda is awesome HOT! I used to love Exotic Adrian Street, and Rico is just about perfect for the role. Too bad the crowd slept through it and gave the match with Spike negative heat. It wasn't a great match, but it worked. If the WWE can't get a solid match like this over with the crowd, how do they expect ground-based wrestling to catch on at all?

Orton vs. Maven was a pretty basic affair, but it did have a strong build. Both guys have talent, they just need to get in the ring with talented people for a year or two and learn. The obvious thing, with Foley at ringside, would have been to have Maven turn on him and join Evolution. Well…at least they weren't obvious.

The RVD/Kane match wasn't good. The team is done, thankfully, and it looks like Kane will do the rest of the turn next week, and will probably be unmasking too.

The show did feel a little special with Foley there, but it also felt like they were going into a holding pattern. I hate the Austin stuff during the Storm match, and it's obvious that the new emphasis on mat wrestling will never work as long as they keep giving it no respect.

"It's my fault RAW sucks?"

News
Quarterly report time for WWE, and the big thing was they blew off the guy who keeps asking when the creative team is going to address the current problems. It should also be noted that Linda said that the loss on The World was 8 mil for the year and it would probably be a year before they rented it out.

She also said that Goldberg has been a failure so far, and he was on the warpath about it at Bad Blood.

FlashBack!
The collapsing of the ring on Thursday's SmackDown! was a great visual, done at the end of the show to send the crowd away with a big moment. That's the right way to do it, but sometimes it doesn't happen that way. A moment that a lot of folks who watched ECW will always remember is the match between Taz and Bam-Bam Bigelow where wise planning went out the window in order to get a moment over as legit.

Sunday, March 1st, 1998. The event was ECW's PPV Living Dangerously from Asbury Park, NJ, the home of Bam-Bam, and I believe DDP as well. The match was for Taz's ECW TV championship, which he had held for nine months. The match was typical Taz, tons of throws, and Bam-Bam doing all his required spots. After 20 or so minutes, Taz locks on the Tazmission, the kata-hajime, his finisher that had been put over as unbeatable for more than 3 years. Bam-Bam stands with Taz on his back and falls to the mat in one of the corners.

And the mat gives way.

The ring breaks, both men go through, landing under the ring. After a few minutes where the crowd is going crazy, Bam-Bam emerges and drags Taz out, gets the pinfall, the first job Taz had done in months. But even though it was the match that got most people talking, it was not the main event.

There were two matches following the TV title match. Paul E. and Joey Styles did a bit where they fought for a couple of minutes to buy some time for a fix to be done to the ring.

Now I'm not sure if they had planned it this way all along, or if they just couldn't do as good a job as they had hoped, because all they did was put "Caution" tape around the hole. Seriously, the next two matches were held in the uncollapsed 2/3 of the ring. It was an amazing spot, but the matches from that point on were seriously hindered.

They did a rematch where Taz put Bam-Bam through the ramp, I believe with a T-Bone Suplex. Still neither of these had the impact with the crowd that The Suplex Felt 'Round the World had on WWE fans. I would be surprised to see this fade from memory any time soon.

That's all from me this week. There'll be a special guest reporter on Friday, so you'll wanna be around for that. Next week, that Ricky Steamboat article I promised for this week.

Chris Garcia