Falls Count Anywhere

09-02-03

My theme song is "In The Navy."

Welcome to Falls Count Anywhere! My name is Chris, and I'm the devil in disguise.

RAW
I'm a guy who watched a lot of Andy Kaufman's feud with Jerry Lawler, so I could see that the match between Lawler and The Coach was just one of the old Memphis donnybrooks, complete with the brutal back suplex and the run-in by a guy that everyone thought would be with the face. It wasn't a great segment, but it did work for me. It's always nice to see the classics brushed off every now and again.

Well, Kane is some sort of mystic who can escape a burning dumpster without anymore damage than a burned bicep. They blew what could have been a great angle by building it up and playing it like he was fried, even if they did a reveal that showed he was not injured at all later.

The destruction of the Highlight Reel set and the Austin and Jericho confrontation was well-built, but I didn't quite like it. The Christian segment was entertaining though. The match between Christian and Jericho was very nice. I've seen better between them, but for a TV match, it was nicely put together. In particular, I find that Christian's method of selling and his timing makes Jericho's move list look better. Edge is even better at making Jericho look great, but this was good.

I liked the recap of the Elimination Chamber. They should do that more often with these big gimmick matches, as it builds up not only the programs that come out of them, but allows for the gimmick itself to get over, helping to draw money down the line.

Trish and Ivory are a good team. Gail Kim and Molly are a good team. They had a fine match where everything seemed to work, even though there was a lack of crispness. Ivory looked good, which may have something to do with the fact she's been wrestling for 15 years or so. I loved the double powerbomb finish, as it felt very All Japan Women's to me.

Now, I feel a rant coming on, but I don't know if I should waste my breath. Kane clamping the jumper cables onto Shane's legacies was far from funny, impossible to believe, and worst of all, not entertaining. Shane, who is the best actor of the McMahons, couldn't pull it off. Yeah, I want Kane to be an inhuman Mad Man, but this did not work on any level until Van Dam came out and started his beat down. Sucked.

Hurricane gets an actual match on Raw! Teaming with Rosie, the two of them have an OK match with La Resistance, and it was all Hurricane, though Rosie hit that sweet swinging slam in the post-match. Hurricane did an awesome neckbreaker variant I had never seen before.

Theodore R. Long complains about getting bumped off RAW for the Christian vs. Jericho match. At least he got to talk a bit and show off the suit.

It's been too long without a gratuitous shot of Stacey.

Stacey Kiebler and Test took on Stevie Richards and Victoria in a No DQ match. The entire reason it was No DQ was so that Steiner could run in and prove that my personal Hell is eternal. Victoria was mad hot, and the fact that she hasn't been around much and isn't currently in the Woman's Title hunt bugs me.

The main event was nice, though HHH couldn't do much. Orton is going to be great. HBK tossed the guys and did his dive onto them, which I liked a lot. The match moved well and built to Goldberg doing his moves and getting the crowd into it. They are trying everything to get him back over and it's working. I think his win over HHH will be big, if HHH can do it.

I'd say that this show was nothing special, save for the really good Christian vs. Jericho match and the overall quality of the wrestling. I was very disappointed in the angles and backstage work. We are just about at the point where RAW will take the hit from Monday Night Football, but this should do an OK rating.

NEWS

Turn your head and cough.

HHH reinjured his groin over the weekend. It's said not to be serious, but HHH isn't slowing down enough to get it fully healed. He should be able to do the job to Goldberg, but you never know.

SmackDown! did a really low rating, a 2.9, this past week, mostly due to preemptions in big cities like New York and Philly. Some would cite the MTV Video Music Awards, but I would actually cite the Hot Girl on Madonna action from said VMAs.

FlashBack!
Theme music. It's hard to imagine wrestling without theme music, but there was a time when it was a novel thing. Pre-1980, you almost never had entry music. Gorgeous George did at one point, and for the big shows in Japan they would have music playing for entrances, but it was seldom specific to the wrestler. It was the late 1970s when a wrestler that you've never heard of started coming out to a song you probably would like to forget.

I'm a big Jim Croce fan from way back, and I can remember watching TV early on a Saturday morning and hearing the strains of "Bad, Bad Leroy Brown" playing as the wrestler Leroy Brown entered the ring.

Looking back, I think it's weird that Jim Croce could be credited with writing the first wrestling entrance song, but that's another thing. Brown went around the world with his act, and was pretty successful in some areas, but it was a trio of men who brought wrestling entrance music to the forefront: The Fabulous Freebirds.

Michael P.S. Hayes, Terry Bam-Bam Gordy and Buddy Jack Roberts, the original Freebirds, came into the ring to the Lynyrd Skynyrd's Freebird. Again, not my first choice for a wrestling entrance, but still. They were huge stars in the Mid-South region, and got pops every time the opening strains of Freebird would hit the arena.

About the same time, the Junkyard Dog was coming up and actually feuded with the Freebirds to huge houses in Louisiana. JYD used Queen's Another One Bites the Dust as his entrance.

I believe their matches would be the first in US history where both participants got musical ring entrances. Bill Watts, the Mid-South ring leader, was probably the first to recognize the value of ring music to a wrestler's pop, and I am fairly certain that he had most of his guys with theme songs before the WWF did the same thing.

Now, wrestling was so far under the radar at this point that they could get away with using known songs. Early on, Hulk Hogan entered to Eye of the Tiger, before taking over Barry Windham and Mike Rotunda's theme song of Real American. The Midnight Express used the them song from Midnight Express, for example, but soon as the WWF started getting hot in the mid-1980s, the music companies started asking for a slice, and most guys had to go to new songs that the promotions would pay for.

The Freebirds went from Freebird to Badstreet U.S.A. as their theme, which I always thought better fitting. The Midnight Express lucked out as Turner owned the film and could keep using the theme.

Wrestling theme music also allowed for wrestlers of a certain type to prosper. The Warriors, Road and Ultimate respectively, proved this. The opening drone of Iron Man by Black Sabbath was followed by the Legion of Doom, the Road Warriors running into the ring and devastating their opponents with clotheslines, press slams and drop kicks. They were bad workers, but with the music for the attack, they had heat through their squashes. The Ultimate Warrior was very much a copy of the LoD, but the crowd would get into the music which would often play through the entire 30 seconds of his match. He'd get his pin, the music would start over and he'd shake the ropes. Without the music, he'd have not been nearly as big as he was.

ECW made great use of popular tunes, striking deals to get chart-topping hits like Matural Born Killahs and Walk to bring out their stars too. They also would do great interview segments to Dick Dale's Miserlou. They would just have a ton of guys give small snippets with the surf rocky goodness blasting in the background. These segments, usually refered to as the Pulp Fiction interviews, were amazing and have never been duplicated.

The WWE is now large enough to make deals where they push popular tunes as the themes to PPVs or as wrestler themes. The symbiosis between the two products has resulted in elevated sales for many acts, and put a couple on the map. The WWF theme CDs have sold well, though sales have slipped the last year or so.

I'm fairly certain that there will be some form of pro wrestling available for the rest of human time, and I am also certain that there will be theme music for wrestling just as long.

That's another Falls. Friday will feature a very special look at a loss that shook wrestling, the trial that almost destroyed a territory, and the man who will forever be remembered as the prototype for the 1970s and 80s brawler: Bruiser Brody.

Chris Garcia