Falls Count Anywhere

08-26-03

I live at Lecherous and Unprofessional Manor.

Welcome to Falls Count Anywhere! My name is Chris and we'd like to thank you for choosing Fanboyplanet.com for all your geek needs.

RAW
Goldberg comes out to a good pop. HHH takes his shirt off to show that he indeed is serious. The segment isn't bad, but not great. It does set up some nice situations, but I am always skeptical that a Loser Must Retire match will ever be able to draw.

Gail Kim is good. She beat the tar out of Trish for most of their match. Brutal knee drop with Trish's head held to Gail's knee. Fit Finlay used to use that one. Trish sold well and got in her usual chops and a nearly fatal spinebuster, then won with a nice bulldog. Not a bad match, but the Molly stuff wasn't necessary. Having Molly talking about bringing in Gail adds some possibilities, though.

The Hurricane and Rosie stuff isn't great, but it does give me a bit of a laugh. I like The 'cane, but the Rosie stuff is really hit or miss.

Cade and Jindraik took on Rodney Mack and the returning Mark Henry. Let me say that they should have given the Rob Conway spot to Mark Henry and have him insist that they pronounce it "'on-ree" The best part was the intro by Theodore R. Long. I am indeed a member of the Playas Club. The next time RAW is in town, they should have Willie Brown come out and spend a little time with the Fashion Plate.

They are pushing the Coach stuff too hard. He's gonna have to bring it HUGE to make it work.

The Rob Conway stuff was awful. I think La Resistance having a turn-coat American mouthpiece is a good idea, though. It could work like the Sgt. Slaughter thing back in the day. The six-man was all action, went the right length, and ended poorly. This feud is going on too long.

Jericho looks like hell, but he uses it to make for an interesting Highlight Reel. Then again, having Linda McMahon on the segment wasn't the best way to keep the quality going. I never want to think of Bischoff acting in a "...lecherous and unprofessional manner."

Things picked up with Vince coming out. Poor Vince as a victim. It goes to show you never know where the hurt lives. I also never want to think about Linda's "Demon Infested Womb." Shane got a decent reaction, and the suckerpunch and setting up the match was good.

Orton vs. Maven. Man, how Randy has fallen from Main Event status in less than 24 hours. The match wasn't great, but it wasn't awful either. The finish was perfect in setting the feud with Shawn Michaels. I liked the set-up and the match should be good.

Doctor, I have this burning sensation...

The segment where they were pushing The Couch was not a good call. I hate where I think this is going, but they'll do it and probably long and slow.

Not the best stuff for the Christian vs. Jerry Lawler match, but it is always nice to see Lawler in the ring.

Wow, the Jericho vs. Shane match was good. I didn't expect a bad match, but this was better than my hopes. That scene of Kane flying into the dumpster was a sight that needs to be replayed over and over.

I'd say this was a good show with a few problems that could actually work themselves out in the long run booking. That ending scene was pretty sweet.

SummerSlam
Well, I had to watch it on tape, which was a good thing it turns out, and I was given almost exactly what I expected for some it, and a little disappointment mixed in.

The first disappointment was the entire first hour. I was bored and thankful for the fast forward. The RAW Tag Title match was lackluster. Le Resistance is not a great tag team, though they hold some promise. I would have much rather have seen the SmackDown! champs go in a match on the big stage.

That would be my overall complaint: too much RAW. The ending with the cameraman has been done to death, though.

The Bischoff stuff with Christian that eventually turned Coach was awful. Why do that? Why devalue your IC champ like that?

Oh, why does the WWE give us photos like these? Visual proof the match sucked ass.

A-Train and Undertaker have a match that is better left unwrestled. It was bad, slow, and I never want to see these two in the ring with each other again. Please let UT find someone to bring out his quality brawling again, like with Mick Foley back in 1996. That would be sweet. Again, too much Steph in the ring.

Shane and Bischoff have a fun little match. It wasn't classic Shane (my pick for his best match was the one with Angle, though the Blackman match was fun too) but it was fun, went the right length and pretty much ruled when Shane got to do his thing. I liked the top rope elbow through the table a lot, but he's done it so often that it is starting to become like Jeff Hardy's swanton. It's great the first few times, then it's just sorta there.

Things really picked up from there. The four way for the US title was sweet, with the WWE's four top workers working like beasts. I thought it was great the whole way through, especially the work by Eddy and Rhyno. The two of them are great together. Eddy retains, which shows that the WWE has confidence in him.

Kurt vs. Brock. If they keep giving us matches at this level, I'd love to see this become the next Steamboat vs. Flair. They were great. The match built well, didn't teeter on the brink of madness for too long, and had a nice finish that put Kurt over strong. As good as Mania? No, not quite. Better than any of the other matches on the show? Yeah. Best WWE title match since Mania? Easily. Brock is better as a heel.

Kane vs. RVD was sloppy, but full of garbagey goodness. I liked the way it moved, but the crispness was not there. RVD has some troubles on big shows. He needs to work on that.

OK, the Elimination Chamber disappointed me, but also surprised me. They did right by Goldberg, giving him the opportunity to run through people, rule the pace of the match and look like a mega-star. They pulled the rug out from under him with the finish. Having HHH win was inevitable, but they halfway buried Goldberg with the finish by having him handcuffed and looking human.

Still, he was huge over as a face and HHH looked incredibly lackluster by comparision. They need to do the title change at the next PPV or Goldberg is doomed.

I'd say it was slightly better than average, with no outright Sucktion, just a few things that didn't pan out right. The Elimination Chamber was not on the level of last year's, but it's still good stuff. I'd recommend the US Title, THE WWE Title and the Main Event, with Shane vs. Bisch if you've got more time.

FlashBack!
With another SummerSlam done come and gone, I thought it would be nice to look back at a Summer classic that is no more. I'm talking about the Great American Bash that the NWA used to do in the mid-1980s. The Bash is unlike any thing in wrestling today, but if someone picked up on the idea, I am fairly certain that it would start to turn things around.

The Bash was the idea of one Mr. Virgil Runnels, aka Dusty Rhodes. As the head booker for Jim Crockett Promotions, Dusty was always trying to come up with ideas to draw big houses. Before he ran NWA into the ground with his lame finishes, Dusty was an innovative booker with the ability to draw a big house for a single show. The Bash began in 1995, as a one night deal at a baseball stadium in Charlotte, NC. Twenty Thousand people showed up for a show that was a classic.

The featured matches went all over the place. The Road Warriors, then AWA tag team champs, took on NWA Tag champs Ivan Koloff and Krusher Kruschev in a Double DDQ finish that was a wild match. Ric Flair beat Nikita Koloff in a solid match, and the main event featured booker Dusty Rhodes beating Tully Blanchard for the NWA TV title. It was a good show, and one you can find if you search for Pro Wrestling Illustrated's classic video "Lords of the Ring".

The plan the next year was to go even bigger. First, Dusty and co. thought it wold be a good idea to expand the show into a major tour, the type they did all the time in Europe's Catch Wrestling Association, and the Japanese use for the big touring tournaments.

Coe's wrasslin' career was short-lived, as it was too easy to pull on his beard. However, Garcia just picked up a couple of grooming tips from this photo.

The concept was they do big stadiums around the country. In addition to Charlotte, Greensboro, Philly, and Atlanta, they included places where the NWA had very little presence, like LA. Dusty also made a deal to get country star David Allen Coe to appear at each show.

The combination of wrasslin' and country seemed like a natural, but folks actually hated the idea, using it either as a good time to take a concession stand trip, or to leave the show altogether. The tour itself had some large successes and some miserable failures. It certainly lost money, but they did have good matches, opened up some new areas for the product, and put out a classic Turner Home Classics video that is one of my faves.

The 1987 tour was bigger in number of stops, but smaller in venues. The Omni in Atlanta held the July 4th show, which featured the first ever War Games / The Match Beyond. It was an instant classic (which I've talked about in FlashBack! before) and the tour itself was a pretty serious flop. It did give us some great matches, though, especially since they did a ton of cage matches around the country, including Ric Flair vs. Gorgeous Jimmy Garvin and the War Games II, and the video of it, available in at least two different versions, sold very well.

After that, it became a one show a year event, but the concept of the summer tour could be huge. If the WWE thought about doing a tour of 25 cities in a month, with each show being a cross-promotional event, with the big matches taped and some shown on the big TV programs instead of doing regular tapings, that could blow things away.

Have the Late July PPV be the first show, have SummerSlam be the closer and you've got yourself a money-maker in disguise. It would actually make house shows important parts of stories and give people a real reason to go out to the shows.

That's all for Tuesday. Friday will be more, including the Brian Pillman piece.

Chris Garcia