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Falls
Count Anywhere
07-11-03
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I think
I'm British. Or worse, Canadian.
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Welcome
to Falls Count Anywhere! My name is Chris, and I haven't mentioned
Tom Pritchard, My Local Emmy, Free Mumia, or Eddy Guererro
is my favorite wrestling in far too long.
SmackDown!
SmackDown! was not a top show, but good enough for me to enjoy
it for what it was.
Cena and
Angle face off, and Kurt gets to give good mic as usual. Cena
is getting better all the time, and Hebner the Lesser has
mad beatbox skills. The audience seemed to like it too. Best
line: "Hey, you remind of that guy in Police Academy."
Somewhere, Michael Winslow is smiling…while he waits
for residual checks that will never arrive.
Kidman
is back, and teaming with Rey is a great way to get back into
things. The Bashem Bros., the APA And the FBI make for a fun
little match. I could have done without the classic "two
teams eliminating each other leaving the two guys we really
wanna see to wrestle a full match," but what are you
gonna do? The Bashems are good, but have yet to learn that
you can't powerbomb Kidman. By the way, Kidman looked much
thicker this go 'round.
I don't
know how I feel about all the recaps they've been doing on
each show, as it would be better saved for the B-shows, but
I guess that it's a good lead-in to the signing of Zach.
Man, Steph
looks hot in her little shorts and tank top.
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That's
right, Steph...loosen that throat.
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My guess is, once Zach is given the opportunity to cut promos
in real programs against real adversaries, he'll be even better.
Sable looked good walking in with Vince. Vinny had a little
swagger going as he gave one of his classic interviews. The
match will likely be nice. Nice shot from Sable to Steph, who
looked to be wearing 1.2 Depps of black eye make-up.
Steph
somehow manages to channel Luna Vachon for her attack on Sable.
Vince has a whole Tom Jones thing going on tonight.
Hey, Matt
Hardy lost his virginity at seventeen. Good to know. The Matt
and Shannon Moore vs. Rhyno and Chris Benoit match was fast.
Not a great match, but solid the whole way with Matt looking
real good. Benoit should be working with the light guys more
often, as they can really pull off an awesome belly-to-back
suplex. Sweet gore from Rhyno too. I'd say the best match
of the night.
Eddy rolling
in the sweet Impala. Eddy on the mic, sending his love to
Tajiri, acting all the way the heel, and still getting an
Eddy chant. The man is a god. Eddy and Ultimo Dragon. I think
I saw this in WCW, but it is still one of my dream matches.
The match was very good, though not up to the level it would
have been in 1998. Eddy looked great, and the two had a wonderful
little match that I would say was a step or two back from
their best. The ending was slightly amiss, but they pulled
a decent cradle out of it.
The Torrie
and Billy Gunn backstage stuff is lame, though I must admit
that the match had moments. Man, Nidia sold the hell out of
that DDT. Nidia also looked hellafied in that fur coat when
she came in. Wow, an Indecent Proposal moment on SmackDown!
I wasn't quite expecting that…then again, after you read
News, nothing that happens in the WWE will shock you.
Hey, a
Falls Count Anywhere match. Big show and the Best Damn Tag
Team Period..I mean the World Greatest Tag Team vs. Brock
is not my idea of a great main event, but Brock is the only
one who can bring good stuff out of Big Show, and the Tag
Champs are really good. The portion in the middle was slow
and dull, but the beginning and the end were strong. I like
Brock's ability to drag something fair out of Big Show, though
I still think he should have looked stronger in the match.
I'd give
this a thumbs up, but not a large one. I think that they are
about to turn it up as they shift more focus to SmackDown!
to try and save a buyrate.
News
According to the Observer, Vince has an idea where he will
be using Stephanie as a tool to get things done by having
her do sexual favors. First off, wow, they're going into dark
territory. It's not that I didn't think it would show up eventually,
but still. Someone backstage, and I think I know who, was
quoted as saying the McMahons are "seriously weird people."
I agree.
FlashBack!
It's not just us here rattling around in the Fanboyplanet.com
office. Wrestling and comic books seem to go together. Bane,
Sonambulo, Big Daddy Danger and the Mucha Lucha crew have
been in graphic form for years, and on the indy press level,
the Brothers Hernandez have done the near miraculous with
Whoa Nellie!. But before these, there were three great comics
that started things moving: Mat Tales, Santa: El Enmascarado
de Plata, and Tiger Mask.
I am rather
amused that the fact that Mat Tales is known about
at all is because one issue, #7, was seen at a comic show
back in 1999. Mat Tales started in 1939 or so, as the
issue was dated June 1940 and likely ended by the start of
the war. The publisher mark was GCW, which could have been
Gulf Coast Wrestling, though I think they formed under that
name much later.
The book
seemed to be formatted along the lines of the later Strange
Sports Stories, with a few short tales that mix fantasy
and sports. The issue my friends pointed me to had three stories
mentioned on the front page: The Match that Never Ended, with
the underline that read "What will stop these two???",
The Invisible Wrestler, likely a ghost story since the illustration
showed a man being bodyslammed by an invisible opponent with
the thought bubble "I thought it was a myth!" and
What if the Greatest of Today wrestled the greatest of yesterday.
The illustration showed a young wrestler, likely Lou Thesz,
and an old timey looking gentleman, obviously based on Ed
"Strangler" Louis.
I never
got to look at the inside, as the price tag was 300 bones
on the no touch wall. Still, I think that has to be the earliest
wrestling comic I have heard of. I've also never found another
issue, despite looking at every auction site on Earth. If
you've got one, I'll pay whatever you want for it.
Not long
after that in Mexico, Lucha comics were starting to come out.
I've only owned three in my life: two Blue Demons issues
and a Los Campeonis de Justicio issue that seemed to
have been made out of stills from the film. Santo was the
favorite, as expected. The comics, from what I understand,
were usually made up of photos with thought bubbles and word
balloons.
The effect
is a little strange to the normal readers, but they are like
watching old Luchadore movies, as many of them were made of
stills from films, but some were just photo shoots. Jose G.
Cruz did amazing painted covers, some of which were also sold
as prints that I have seen in the houses of my relatives.
These are classics, and kinda hard to come by in the States.
Tiger
Mask went about it the other way. Tiger Mask was a manga
first, and a wrestler second. The Tiger Mask comic, which
I believe started in the late 1960s in the large anthology
books that were and still are popular in Japan, featured Tiger
Mask, a street tough orphan who is a brutal and popular wrestler
in the ring. Shades of Rollerball there, which is odd since
one of Tiger Mask's big opponents in the early 1980s was Marc
"Rollerball" Rocco.
I got
my hands on a few volumes from my friend Ryuhei when I was
at Emerson. I couldn't read them, but it was obvious that
a lot of the guys that took on Tiger Mask were American wrestlers
that were big time heels in Japan. Dick the Bruiser (David
Letterman's favorite wrestler), Fred Blassie (tap-tap-kiss-point)
and The Sheik all show up.
It's really
worth the effort to go and find them, as they are reprinted
every now and again. Tiger Mask has been reborn several
times over the years, as a cartoon in the 70s, and of course,
as the wrestler in the eighties.
Sayama-san
played the original TM for a couple of years before retiring,
allowing Mitsuharu Misawa to take over the hood in All Japan
for several years. The third, Koji Kanemoto, quickly unmasked
and become a big time J-star in New Japan. The current Tiger
Mask has worked for various feds, starting in Michinoku Pro,
and has been great at times. The cartoons and the rehashings
for TV movies and so forth have been 'eh' at best. Still,
the comics are fun.
Comics
and wrestling have great cross-over. If I can ever get an
interview with Al Snow or Hurricane to set out why wrestlers
seem to be big comic fans, I'll finally have my PhD thesis.
That's
another week of Falls Count Anywhere! Next week, probably
an interview, and a special look at England.
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