Falls Count Anywhere

07-01-03

I jump off the couch a LOT.

Welcome to Falls Count Anywhere! My name is Chris, and I am putting my money on Kobayashi in this year's Coney Island Eat-Off

RAW
RAW both impressed and annoyed me this week. Austin, who has done some good stuff of late mixed in with amazingly awful, wasn't around. As a result, we got Bischoff living out his evil dreams. The matches tended to be longer, but the entire show seemed stuck in neutral waiting for the build-up to their next PPV.

The Highlight Reel was lame, but what do you expect with Freakzilla and Stacey Wooden as Howdy Doody out there? Jericho tried to make it fun, but couldn't carry them.

Lance Storm played into the boring gimmick again, which brought out Goldberg. Thankfully, GB didn't get to besmirch Storm as Rodney Mack came out and got beat down. They're trying to save Goldberg, and it may just work. A few more weeks of Bill as an undestroyable monster (I'm think Ghidra) and he may be able to put some butts in seats.

Gail Kim won the woman's belt in a battle royal. Unlike other reviewers on the net, I thought it was a solid way to do the switch, with the injury angle taking out Jazz, and Kim eliminating the woman who took out the champ to win the belt. Yeah, they eliminated Ivory first, which some would say devalued her wins over Jazz, but that is best left to a singles feud that can get heat on it's own (likely on Heat) and didn't need the belt. Oh yeah, Victoria was super HOT in red.

A decent little match between Christian and Booker T. Not super long, but a good five minute match that had proper amounts of everything. They did the classic Dusty finish where the face seemed to have the title won, but Bischoff came out and declared the match a draw, allowing Christian to keep his title.

Steiner and Stacey took on Jericho and Test in a match that was better than it could have been. It was a longish match which saw Test knock down the ref, which led to Bisch calling for the match to continue as a No DQ match, which led to Stacey taking the pumphandle slam from Test. Test is getting better, and I wasn't as bothered by Steiner as I usually am.

Rico continued the run as the man with the least crowd reaction for his match against Maven. Why pin Maven the week after giving him a little bit of a push? There's money in Maven! Doesn't anyone hear me?

Randy Orton beat Tommy Dreamer in a match with little heat. I think Orton would be better served in matches against high caliber opponents and getting wins. It's obvious that they are banking on him as the next Next Big Thing, but they need to get him into the fans eyes as something special before he loses is all in these middle of the card matches.

"Hello, girls, my name's June...what's YOURS?"

The main event saw HHH beat RVD in a match that was pretty good. I think that HHH is back enough where we can count on a decent match every time he steps through, as he has gotten much better after working with Flair and co. Bischoff made it a No DQ, Falls Count Anywhere match, which led to a hot segment brawling outside the ring. HHH got the win, Kane came out and though you thought he was gonna chokeslam RVD, he took out Bisch. Not the exact right thing, but it was a good way to go out.

The big problem for me was that the crowd was dead, and even really good matches with no heat can fall dead on a TV audience. They didn't really build anything new, and took a slight step back with Kane, but the matches were longer and had some fairly good wrestling, which is what I have been asking for.

News
Hogan is gone. Yep, after Roddy Piper got dropped last week, Hogan announced on Bubba the Love Sponge that he had quit the WWE over creative differences.

Now we'll never know...

This is huge, as it sort of leaves things in the air for Zach Gowen, though he has proven that he doesn't need Mr. America to get crowd reaction. Vince has lost a major draw, but I don't think it will hurt SmackDown! as much as people are thinking that it will. It all means more time for Angle on screen.

Jamal, of Three Minute Warning, was released, though his brother, Rosey, is still well-liked and on payroll. Not sure what they're gonna do with him. Jamal was supposedly in a fight with the cops over an incident with his wife. Not sure on more info.

The house cleaning also included the Bay Area's Own Crash Holly. It's likely that these are not the last of the letting, so we will see what comes next.

There is word that Brother Love may be coming back. I for one am all for it, as the honorable Brother Love is actually Bruce Pritchard, the brother of the Patron Saint of Falls Count Anywhere, Dr. Tom Pritchard.

The Judgement Day buy-rate seems to have been around 450,000, which is successful for a recent PPV, though we may not know about Bad Blood for another month or so.

FlashBack!
The Powerbomb. Back in 1996, everybody was doing powerbombs to finish their matches. Though we tend to associate the powerbomb as a part of 1990s wrestling, the origin goes back into the dark days of carnies and shooters.

In the 1930s and 40s, the over-the-shoulder vice, sometimes called the standing backbreaker, was a popular finishing submission maneuver. Several strong men used it, starting by either gut-wrenching the opponent up to shoulder level, or by setting them up for a piledriver, then swinging them into position. A few must have turned the move into a drop over the years, as it is quite easy to lose grip and drop the guy into what we would call a powerbomb.

Probably the first time a "powerbomb" was used as a move in an American match was in the late 1950s, when Lou Thesz took on Rikidozan in Honolulu. The match was fair, as most of Rikidozan's were, but about 2/3, Thesz looked to be setting the Japanese legend up for a piledriver, but swung him up farther and dropped him onto his back. The announcers called it a piledriver, and that was probably the last powerbomb in the us for nearly 30 years.

In Japan, Terry Bam-Bam Gordy became a very popular act for All-Japan over the years, and he used the powerbomb as a finisher in the 1980s. The Japanese, who like to keep track of these things, have always considered Gordy as the father of the powerbomb. A few Japanese wrestlers quickly picked it up as their move as well, notably Tenryu. Big Van Vader also used it when he started working Japan, and was one of the first to bring it over as a killer move to the US. The juniors, like Jushin Liger and Eddy "Black Tiger" Guerrero began to use it as a popular feature in their classic matches. In many ways, it was moves like the powerbomb and the moonsault that set Japanese wrestling apart from US wrestling at the time.

When guys like Vader, 2 Cold Scorpio, and Chris Benoit came into WCW, they brought the powerbomb to the big stage. ECW had several wrestlers who used it early on, including Benoit, Scorpio, and Terry Funk. Stan Hansen brought it with him during his short tenure in WCW as well. The powerbomb got huge pops when it was first used. The first time I saw one in WCW, I jumped off the couch.

People being powerbombed through things also started in Japan, mostly with FMW and Atsushi Onita, though just about everywhere picked it up. One of the classic moments was Kanemura getting powerbombed on a torch, which then exploded, causing serious burns to his back.

ECW made getting powerbombed through a table a regular event. One of the classic Mick Foley moments as Cactus Jack was Vader powerbombing him on the cement at CentreStage in 1993. By this time, the move was over huge.

In 1995, with a number of guys leaving ECW for WCW and the WWF, the powerbomb came to the main stage, with guys like Sycho Sid, Dielsel, and Ahmed Johnson all using it regularly. It became over-exposed, and nowadays means little to a match, though it is having something of a comeback now that the mat style is being pushed, and every high-angle move is considered important.

I have always been a fan of the move, and especially the variant used by guys like Mitsuharu Misawa, Kenta Kobashi (who invented the powerbomb into the turnbuckle as far as I know) and especially the Splash Mountain of Eddy Guerrero and Konnan. I think that discouraging the powerbomb will bring it back a bit, but its days as the killer move world-wide are over.

That's all. I am off to Seattle, so a guest will be in Monday (Friday is a holiday), probably to make fun of me while I am away.

(editor's note: DEFINITELY to make fun of Garcia while he is away.)

Chris Garcia