Falls Count Anywhere

12-05-03

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Welcome to Falls Count Anywhere! My name is Chris and I can not do the Smurf.

SmackDown!
SmackDown! on TV was not as good a show as it was live, which is often true. The show came off a little flat until the Cena / Benoit match where it picked up.

They pared down Brock Lesnar's opening tirade and it was a better segment for it. He gets across intensity, which is important with characters like Brock. Still, he's not the best promo in the company, though he's getting better.

Rikishi and Scotty 2 Hotty took on the Bashems and you still saw the full on Assplant onto Danny's face that Rikishi did. It wasn't a great match, but it moved and it was watchable. The Bashems doing the switch is a good gimmick, and the post-match walk-out by Shaniqua is a nice touch that came across well on TV.

The Hardcore Holly suspension segment worked well on TV, as these backstage vignettes almost always do. Dawn Marie is so hot and so underused, except when they need someone to get all greasy or somethin'. Seriously, she should be doing what Torrie Wilson and Sable are doin', getting all sorts of air time and making strides into the mainstream. (aka Nudin' Up!)

Yeah, The Shannon Moore stuff is just another way of devaluing the Cruiserweights, but the bumps that Shannon takes make the matches a sort of punishment spectacle. I've enjoyed this angle when they've done it in the past, and this will likely lead to some sort of Title match where Shannon comes close to beating Brock.

The Tale of the Tape graphics they make are great, adding a level of importance when they are done seriously, like with Angle vs. Brock, and they are entertaining, like when they list Cena as having a PhD in Thuganomics.

Noble vs. Sakoda was a match that got a little bit of sweetening, and wasn't all together. There were some rough spots, but that's expected with these two. The ending with Nidia and Noble was well-done, even though it took two takes.

The Cena vs. Benoit match got the crowd into it, as they really want to cheer Cena and Benoit managed to bring this audience to him. Best line in the rap tonight: "Me and Chris fightin' tonight, that's awkward at first glance. That's like a third grade dance over at Never Land ranch."

This match was improved by camerawork, something that gets over looked a lot. Cena was wearing Atari wristbands, and at one point, pumped his shoes. Details like that are lost on the live audience. The false finish came off well, and the second half was very solid. You know you are with a good crowd when they get excited about submissions being attempted, not just applied. This match on TV was 3 ¾ Stars, while live it was maybe 3 ¼. It was a really good TV match and the story that Cena sold of his arm worked very nicely.

Yeah, that's not distracting at all...

Eddy did not wrestle on the show, but did play a big part in Chavo's match. On TV, Eddy was less distracting than live. Chavo has added that spinning headscissors to his repetoire and it looks awesome. This was a good match from two underrated workers.

The Brock video package was great on TV, though the Arena play was only good. They do these packages so well. The Segment where everyone was betting came off strong, too.

The match between Brock and Benoit was great. No question in my mind that this will be the WWE's TV match of the year. I actually enjoyed it better than the Iron Man match because this was more compact and moved better throughout. Brock was great playing the cocky heel, and Benoit had real fire in his comebacks. No question that this match was helped by TV because you saw the bloody nose, the impact of the slaps. This was a great match that should get strong consideration for WWE match of the year.

This was an average show that had two really good matches. The lack of McMahons has been helping SmackDown! of late, and I hope it continues.

NEWS
As it stands currently, the plan for the next SmackDown! brand pay-per-view, No Way Out, is for Brock Lesnar to take on Eddy Guerrero for the World's Heavyweight Title. This has a lot of important meaning since it means that they will either hold off on the Chavo turn until Late February, or they'll wrap up the feud by that point. This will also mean that I'll get to see it LIVE since it's taking place in the Cow Palace in San Francisco. WCW used to do February PPVs from the Bay Area, so at least there is some continuity.

Mortal Kombaaaaa -- uh, what were we saying?

Trish Stratus has been pegged to play Sonya in the next Mortal Kombat film. It's not quite a done deal, but hell, she already does one of Sonya's finishers in every match!

FlashBack!
The AWA did another big stadium show in 1986. It was the last big AWA draw, the last time they ever drew more than 10,000 for a show. They were a dying fed, being handed their hats by the WWF, but they managed to stay afloat due to the fact that they had the Noon slot on ESPN. They held WrestleRock, a huge multi-promotion show, in Minneapolis at the MetroDome and managed to bring 22,00 to the arena.

This was not a blow away show where everything was perfect. Sgt. Slaughter and Kamala had a terrible match. Larry Zybysko and Scott LeDoux had a boxing match which of course, ended in a DQ for wrestling interjecting itself. Wahoo McDaniel and Col. DeBeers had a short and not good match that led to a post-match brawl that is to be appreciated. DeBeers, playing the South African Army Guy, sort of like the Truth Commission in the WWF, was a great heel and was about to start a feud with Jimmy Snuka that would go around and around. The rest of the show was much better.

Outside talent helped this show a lot, as the AWA was losing folks to the WWF and NWA on a daily basis. Harley Race, long-time NWA Champ, had a match with Rick Martel, the former AWA Champ. This match was kinda slow, but well-worked. I believe these two would meet again less than a year later in the WWF, and they were both on their way out. The highlight for me was to see Tiger Mask, Mitsuharu Misawa this time, taking on Rock 'n Roll Buck Zumhoffe. The match was shortish, but featured Misawa doing a flipping body block off the top rope, something that almost no North American wrestling fan, and certainly not regular watchers of the AWA's brand of slow-moving old-timer wrasslin' had seen.

Barry Windham and Mike Rotundo, former WWF tag champs who were the first folks to use Real American as a theme song, took on The Fabulous Ones, Stan Lane and Steve Keirn. The match was solid, and it was the only time I can think of that these two teams met. Add a woman's battle royal to the mix, a rare 1980s US appearance by Giant Baba and you've got a big ole event.

Oh, what the hell...you've been good boys...

The AWA folks who had been around also brought some good stuff. Playboy Buddy Rose and Pretty Boy Doug Summers took on The Midnight Express in a part of their long and varied feud. The match was really good, and showed off the talents of Playboy, who was a pudgy guy, and why he was one of the biggest stars ever in Oregon in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Michaels also showed flashes of what he was about to become. The AWA Tag Team Titles were on the line and the Long Riders, Scott and Wild Bill Irwin, took on Curt Hennig and Starship Coyote Scott Hall. Hennig worked most of the way for his team and they had a very good match. I was most impressed with this one.

AWA champ Stan The Lariat Hansen took on Nick Bockwinkle in a match that you knew Bock was going to win, but you also knew he wasn't gonna get the World Title. Hansen Backdropped Nick over the top, which in the AWA, earned you a DQ. The match had been fairly good and afterwards the legend gave a promo that was really solid. He was one of the best interviews of the 1960s and 70s, and here it showed. Not too long after this, Hansen would walk out on the AWA and Bockwinkle would be awarded the belt.

Probably the main focus of the show were the steel cage matches they had set up. The Road Warriors, former tag champs who had been in and out of the AWA, came in for a one shot against Gorgeous Jimmy Garvin and Freebird Michael Hayes. The match was really good for a Warriors match, as the guys were huge over and gave a lot to Garvin and Hayes. At one point, they pressed Garvin overhead for 7 reps, which no one did back in those days. I'd say this was one of the ten best matches the Warriors ever had. Jimmy Superfly Snuka teamed with Greg Gagne, the son of AWA promoter Verne Gagne, to take on Nord the Barbarian, better known as the WWF's Bezerker, and Bruiser Brody. This match had the stip that if Snuka and Greg won, then Verne got 5 minutes in the cage with Sheik Adnan El-Kassie, his hated rival. Snuka won and the match and Verne bloodied up the Sheik, who had been doing great color commentary on the earlier match.

Shows like this are important to understand the history of a federation's lifecycle. When things are good, for the AWA during the 1970s, then you can do shows that are hit and miss and fans will still come back . After a lot of these, fans begin to go away. The AWA had done that several times, and WrestleRock, while it drew a ton of people, wasn't the huge event it would have been even 3 years before. This was a very good show, and if this had been done in the middle of the all the crap shows, and had Gagne not gone with all the old time wrestlers he loved, the AWA might still be around today.

That's another week of Falls Count Anywhere. Next week, I continue the look at the AWA and talk about RAW, SmackDown! and whatever else comes to mind.

Chris Garcia