Falls Count Anywhere

08-01-03

Prior to sex, I become a horny Mortimer Snerd.

Welcome to Falls Count Anywhere! My name is Chris, and I have a highly developed sense of smell.

SmackDown!
Big pop for Kurt coming out to open the show. I figured he'd get a good reaction, as people love Kurt. Even when they have booked him to be the geek, the heel, to be the underdog, he is always huge in the eyes of the fans. He gave a pretty good interview that got various reactions and chants. Brock and Angle work so well together, but there is too much Vince on the show. I still maintain that if they brought in Dr. Tom and Bruce "Brother Love" Pritchard to feud with the McMahons, that would be great!

Rey Mysterio got a great entry pop, and the match itself was the reason that The World's Greatest Tag Team is going to be huge in a little while. Shelton worked a style that combined unique submissions and almost no high angle moves. It was exciting, lower risk, entertaining and exactly what WWE wants its guys to be doing. I loved that leg lace arm bar which I will hereby name The BenjaLock. Mark it, Dude.

The Torrie is hot. The Torrie can't act. The angle wasn't great, but Jamie Noble is good at this stuff. I love the fact that prior to sex, Jamie Noble becomes a horny Yosemite Sam.

Chris Benoit vs. Rhyno can be a fine match, though Rhyno is not great on the mic. Just let him be a bad ass in the ring and keep him from talking.

Man, Doink the Clown vs. Chris Benoit. What IN THE BLUE HELL have we come to? Still, it was a great squash. They are using this more often which I like, giving guys squashes that don't feel like squashes. It can work.

The second Torrie/Noble skit was slightly better with Nidia and her coat involved. Nidia did this great hand motion that seemed to be borrowed from Rosie Perez. Not funny, but I'm still giving it a chance at this point.

Sweet God, Eddy had a sweet sweet coupe for his entrance. Great bit having Tajiri hiding in the trunk to mist Guerrero when he took him out. Eddy is having a great push as U.S. Champ, and he is being funny, but in a way that isn't goofy.

Best line: "Would you tell him that I can't see the three fingers he's holding up, homes?"

The match with Tajiri was very good, with Tajiri working extra stiff and brutal. Eddy was extra over, and I am betting he'll keep getting face reactions the bigger they push him as a heel. I am glad to see Tajiri on Smackdown, as he always gives matches, and Eddy Guerrero continures to be my favorite wrestler.

Zach Gowen used to wrestle his couch. I used to do that. It should be noted that the couch is at least twice the worker that Big Show is. The segment about Zach will help get him over, though he's already on the way on his own. It ate up a lot of time, but it was worth it.

There are two reasons that this type of thing needs to happen. First it helps get over the new personae. Second, it helps push Confidential as a not to be missed show. These types of segments are really special.

Zach Gowen and Shannon Moore have a fun little match. Taz's best call: "Zach favoring that leg that Mister McMahon worked over at Vengeance." What other leg was he gonna work over? Zach's repertoire is stronger than Goodson expected, and I hope he feels bad for mocking such a legend! Shannon getting the win was surprising, but I'd say it was a fun match. I wanna see the Matt vs. Zach match, but Zach needs a win and soon.

John Cena's rap was pretty weak after a couple of classics on the previous two shows. Orlando Jordan is a talent, but they can't keep using him in this way and hope to get him over. Match isn't good, but it wasn't terrible. I like Cena and he needs a big win soon.

The goat is just off-camera.

Hey, there's a little something funny about the third edition of Jamie and Torrie's little adventure. I really don't like it when they add music over these things. The end with the four of them in bed was expected, and got over to the crowd, but not so much on TV.

Sable is out and does some talking that doesn't suck so much as annoy. The main event with A-Train, Big Show taking on Lesnar and Angle was slow and not very good. Angle and Lesnar both managed to get a little something out of th eLugs, but really, they should be working better programs.

The show was solid, but slowed after the Gowen bit. Now, I think it's important to keep these things around every now and again, but it did slow things a bit. The matches were for the most part good, and Eddy is the MVP for SmackDown! right now. Next week with Cena vs. Undertaker and Vince losing to Brock should be great.

News
HHH is hurt. He seemed to have injured his groin in a dark match against Goldberg this past week. They are fairly certain that the injury is legit, as he's had groin troubles over the last few months. They are fairly sure that he'll still work SummerSlam.

Finland is getting a tour of wrestling promoted by a local. Sting is coming in for the tour, and there is a lot of talk of the bigger indy US names going over. These tours can work for short runs, as they have in Australia in the recent age, but they frequently kill off local feds without that level of talent available.

FlashBack!
Heading into 1997, The WWF was about to go on a huge run and they knew it. Austin was starting to heat up, Bret Hart had returned and Shawn Michaels had been working great matches for the previous year. The WWF decided to add a show to its syndication schedule. They called it Shotgun Saturday Night.

The concept was pretty cool: hold the taping in a nightclub in the New York area, and since it was shown after midnight, they could be more violent and sexual. Pretty much they were going head to head with ECW, which also showed late night Saturday in many areas. The first show took place on January 4th, 2003 from the Mirage nightclub in NYC.

Yeah, you know, some days it's just about the hot chicks for us.

First thing was the appearance of Goldust, then still a hot gimmick that was loved and hated. Marlena, aka Teri Runnels, was Goldust's manager at the time. The Goldust match with The Sultan was really standard, but at the end, Marlena popped up on the ring apron and removed her top away from the camera. The crowd at the club popped big, even though she had pasties over the nipples, but it really showed the direction they were going with the show.

The only other memorable thing was the appearance of The Sisters of Love. They were the Headbangers under nuns' habits. They had appeared a few other times on WWF TV as the Spiders, but this concept, which some say was planned to be a regular team just for Shotgun Saturday Night, died immediately. They never appeared again, thank God.

The concept eventually killed the specialness of the show. They had to keep a set of folks off the road to work the shows in New York, which meant that the bigger names did not appear on the show, which meant poor ratings. They soon realized this and took the show on the road, first trying small clubs like they had worked in NYC, and then just taping before RAW every week.

This killed Shotgun as anything different, and made it just another WWF show. Also, ECW's shows were getting good ratings and in the cities where ECW was strong head to head, like Boston, the Shotgun ratings were weak. Shotgun folded for good in August 1999.

That's all for this week. Next Week, we'll have more.

Chris Garcia