411 Fact or Fiction 6.11.09: Batista Winning, Slammiversary, Punk Cashing In, More

1. CM Punk cashing in and winning the World Title at Extreme Rules was the right call.

John Meehan : FACT: Last time CM Punk cashed in his guaranteed title shot, his championship run was forced to fight an uphill battle as the Straightedge Superstar attempted to transition his “opportunistic cheapskate” momentum into an improbable “fighting champion” role that nobody except Jim Ross actually seemed to buy. The result? An underwhelming run as a babyface champion, and a quick demotion back to the midcard. THIS time around, however, it seems as if WWE is actually going to stick with their decision to put CM Punk into an infinitely more credible role as a heel World Champion, and that should serve Punk *and* the WWE Universe much more effectively in the long run. The nature of the briefcase pretty much dictates that EVERY time it’s cashed in, it will either be done so in a cheap manner (see: Edge, Edge, Punk, Punk), or in a fashion that strips it of any spontaneity whatsoever — so why not throw the template for a loop and use it to springboard what could amount to one of the biggest heel turns WWE has seen in years?

Stephen Randle: FACT: Frankly, the Smackdown main event picture has never been more right for a guy like CM Punk to hold the World Title. Unlike when Punk held the title on Raw, where WWE seemed afraid to put him over any of their “chosen ones” cleanly, there is a long list of guys who a) can have great matches with Punk and b) can elevate each other through good feuds c) won’t mind/WWE doesn’t mind having them lose cleanly to him (probably). The list is obvious: Edge, Jeff Hardy, Chris Jericho, Rey Mysterio, John Morrison, Shelton Benjamin, all of whom have worked well with or against Punk in the past. That’s a long list of potential **** matches. Plus, since Punk’s only addiction is competition, he can face anyone, face or heel, without truly having to turn, which puts to rest all those issues people seem to have with turning the Straight Edge guy heel against Jeff Hardy. If done correctly, Punk can use this summer title reign to truly establish himself as a main eventer for the future.

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2. Batista winning the WWE Title at Extreme Rules was the wrong call.

John Meehan : FACT: “Working the smarts” I can understand. But giving the belt to an injured performer only to have him (forfeit? vacate? etc.) the belt the following night just reeks of “surprise simply for surprise’s sake” — which in turn smells an awful lot like one big honkin’ pile of Vince Russonomics. And when you throw in the fact that a) BOTH of the company’s other belts likewise changed hands on the same night, b) Randy Orton and The Legacy are even WORSE off than they were before WrestleMania, and c) the WWE Championship has now changed hands nearly a dozen times in as many months, you can pretty much tell that this title swap was both wholly unnecessary and altogether pointless.

Stephen Randle: FACT: You can make all the storyline justifications you want after last night’s Raw, but the bottom line is, you just put the WWE Title on a guy who you KNEW had a severe muscle tear that, as of last notice, will require four months of recuperation, in a match that had to be severely cut down because he was injured, and which has resulted in an angle where it seems likely that he will lose the belt without wrestling a match (on a guess, it’ll be vacated and Orton and Triple H will fight for it on the 3-hour Raw). Vacating titles is always the worst way to have them change hands, and when you consider the entire “Batista injury/Triple H return” Raw angle could have still been done without Orton losing the title (Batista loses at Extreme Rules, demands rematch, Legacy injures him, then grant rematch, end plays out the same…ooh, rocket surgery!), it makes things even sillier. Plus, it cut the legs off of Orton AGAIN, just in time for them to cut them off even further by having Triple H destroy Legacy and Orton without raising a sweat in his return (hey, have Rhodes and Dibiase woken up yet from being tapped with the hammer?). But hey, at least Batista gets another title reign and a reason to continue to be back in the title picture whenever he returns, which seems to be a running theme for the last three or four years.

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3. Tommy Dreamer winning the ECW Title was a great, feel good moment.

John Meehan : FACT: This one is a no-brainer. Since Dreamer had always prided himself in being pro wrestling’s answer to a “Real Life Rocky Balboa,” there’s little to complain about to see the guy defy the odds and come out on top, for a change — even if the match was nothing to write home about. Regardless of whether or not Tommy is long for the championship ranks, it’s nice to see him rewarded for all of his years of company loyalty with a brief moment in the sun as the champion of the brand that (nominally) bears his “ECW” legacy.

Stephen Randle: FACT: I had to turn this over in my head a bit, because I don’t think it was the right decision, but that’s not the question. For anyone who has followed the career of Tommy Dreamer, the ultimate company man, a wrestler who made his life’s work by putting other people over, who used his intelligence and mind for wrestling to teach the newer generation both in and out of the ring, this was a great moment. Actually, winning the belt wasn’t the best moment, it was the fact that he got to celebrate, even deliver a victory speech (boy, he’s probably been sitting on that for years), and didn’t get attacked, laid out, or otherwise screwed, and made it out of the arena still the ECW champion. Sure, it’s no Mick Foley in Worchester moment (and the ensuing title reign will likely be about the same length), but for a man who never wins, this was everything.

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4. While he doesn’t have the pedigree of DH Smith, Ted DiBiase or Cody Rhodes, Tyson Kidd will be the stand out performer of these four men.

John Meehan : FICTION: While I’ll be the first to admit that Tyson Kidd most definitely appears to be the most promising of the aforementioned lot of performers TODAY, it is still simply WAAAAY too early to go right out and start proclaiming him as the standout star of the “legacy” (lower-case “L”) generation. Plus — and not to pick a fight here, but — he’s still got a long way to go behind a microphone if he’s going to lay claim to any real sort of “standout” staying power on his own merits. As of today? Sure he’s the hottest prospect of the five. But in a year or two? Absolutely no guarantees.

Stephen Randle: FACT: Now, a lot of this depends on Kidd not allowing himself to be overshadowed by three men who are obviously larger and have the whole “genetic” advantage that practically ensures them spots on WWE TV unless they screw up massively. But from what I’ve seen of all four men, Kidd has the more complete wrestling ability and, more importantly, the charisma that the other three lack. Obviously, Dibiase has been rumored to be the one set for future singles pushes, and I don’t see the Hart Dynasty breaking up until far in the future anyway, so Dibiase might make it to the top of the mountain first, but unless Rhodes, Smith, or Dibiase start showing that they are more than solid but bland carbon copy wrestlers, I feel safe saying that Kidd has the ability to be the best overall performer.

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5. You are excited for the TNA Slammiversary PPV.

Stephen Randle: FICTION: But that shouldn’t really come as a surprise. Ever since the Main Event Mafia storyline began to degenerate into madness, my personal interest in TNA has waned to pretty much its lowest point. Now, you need a map and a timeline to remember who is feuding with whom, and who we’re supposed to be cheering for. In addition, I won’t make many friends for this, but I feel that the King of the Mountain match is a horribly over-gimmicky mess that makes no logical sense. Okay, so it usually offers an entertaining trainwreck match, and I can accept that, but now we’re going to have two King of the Mountain matches on the same show? In addition, we have an undercard consisting of…um…nothing. Okay, that’s not true, there’s a Beer Money-Team 3D match that will be enjoyable, and a Knockouts title match. Seriously, I give WWE crap for not booking the entire card until the week before the show, so TNA gets the same, especially for a PPV that’s supposed to be one of their “Big” ones.

John Meehan : FACT: TNA has done a whole lot of things wrong in their time, but one of the few things that they have actually done *right* in recent weeks is use their free shows as an incentive to go out and buy the pay per view. With not one but TWO King of the Mountain matches on the show (hey look, gimmick matches on a PPV *THAT ACTUALLY MAKE SENSE*), plus a strong slate of storylines that seem destined for a PPV payoff, Slammiversary actually looks like a show that will bear some serious and lasting consequences for the company’s long-term picture on the whole. While it might not be *quite* enough to get me to purchase the thing (what can I say? We’re in a recession!), it’s certainly done more than enough to get me excited about it.

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6. The recent injury to Samoa Joe is proof that TNA taping all of their TV in one week before the next PPV, while a smart cost cutting idea, could cause them way too many problems.

Stephen Randle: FICTION: This question actually arose a while back when Scott Steiner had that injury that scuttled the expected Team 3D-Steiners match that TNA continued to promote right up to the PPV, and I have the same answer now. Even if TNA adopts the same weekly taping schedule as WWE, Samoa Joe could have fallen down a stairway on the Saturday night before Slammiversary and suffered the same injury, putting TNA in the same boat. Hell, it happened all the time back in the old WCW Disney tapings, as I recall. Sure, having weeks of tape with Joe competing, and promoting matches when he’s known to be injured and possibly unable to be available for the PPV (although Joe has said that he will compete) is a bit of bait-and-switch in the end, but since when has wrestling been above that? Freak injuries changing the course of booking have been a part of wrestling as long as there has been professional wrestling, and it falls on the shoulders of the booking committee to take those injuries and make sure that they put something on TV to work around it, explain it, or at least make a viable substitution for what was planned. If they can’t do that, then maybe that’s where the real problem lies.

John Meehan : FICTION: Batista seems mighty injured over on the WWE side of the fence, and WWE rarely ever tapes so much as two shows in quick succession. Moral of the story? Accidents can happen at ANY time, and it doesn’t really matter *when* you’re rolling those cameras. If Joe’s injury was just the latest in a long line of TNA foul-ups resulting from a roster of overworked performers whose bodies are simply giving out after too many bumps in a single night’s time, then *maybe* there’s an argument to be made that their taping schedule needs changing. But if Joe is only pulling 15 minutes of ACTUAL IN-RING WRESTLING duty on any given night? Then it’s mighty weak sauce to blame “the taping schedule” for the health problems of a guy who’s put on like 40 pounds since January.

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7. You expect the TNA Tour of the UK in 2010 to be just as successful as their 2009 tour of the UK.

Stephen Randle: FACT: Because world tours by American wrestling companies always do well. Hell, WCW ran in Australia a few months before they were sold, and even at that nadir point for the company in every aspect of the product, still essentially sold out every show they did and should have made loads of money (they didn’t, but that’s another story). WWE, WCW, and TNA have all figured out that running tours in Europe, Asia, Mexico, and other foreign regions once or twice a year is a great way to inflate revenue figures, because there are wrestling fans all over the world, and having limited “special live events”, where they can actually see their favorite wrestlers live and up close, will always draw full arenas, because it doesn’t happen that often.

John Meehan : FACT: The economy may indeed be struggling, but TNA’s tours across the pond are so infrequent that I really can’t see people steering clear of a ‘rasslin show simply to save themselves a few Euros. Moreover, in a crap economy, many families skip out on larger vacation plans (“holidays,” as the Limeys call ’em) in favor of a few smaller (and less expensive) day outings instead. As such (and since TNA tickets are even cheaper than WWE’s), there’s really no reason to believe that the company won’t be able to duplicate the same level of success that they saw with their last UK tour — especially now that their television ratings are (slightly) up, and endorsement deals and cross-promotion seems to have raised their “mainstream” visibility to a considerable degree.

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8. While many have a problem with the TNA TV product, the company continues to make good business moves (New Stacker 2 Deal, TNA Video Vault, the Launch on the Playstation network).

Stephen Randle: FACT: There is no doubt that whomever is running TNA’s business and marketing affairs is working their ass off in an attempt to expand TNA’s influence and fanbase. The flip side, of course, is that TNA needs to take this publicity, access to their product, and sponsorship money, and use it to put on shows that make full use of this exposure. Because sponsors don’t keep paying for stuff that doesn’t show benefits for themselves, and fans don’t digitally download wrestling that they don’t want to see. So while business-wise, TNA is steadily gaining the tools to be a true force in pro wrestling, it’s still going to rest on the on-air product to use those tools correctly, and they’re still dropping the ball more often than carrying it.

John Meehan : FACT: One need look no further than TNA’s recent foray into the cell phone gaming market to see that this is a company that’s making for themselves some really smart business decisions — well, OUTSIDE of their new hires of onscreen talent, of course (Shane Douglas, Raven, Bobby Lashley, etc.). As a smaller company, TNA has the “independent” spirit working in their favor. This means that they have the freedom to throw themselves at just about every new technology or business proposal that might come their way (after all, no pre-existing corporate sponsorships mean that anything goes). And every now and again? A handful of these business moves actually pay off in their favor.

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