The 411 Wrestling Hot or Not: 12.24.11: Winning The Big One, Loosing Your Job and New Grounds

Hello and welcome to the 411 Wrestling Hot or Not! My name is Seán Reid, and at times I love wrestling. I love the in ring action, the over the top characters and the drama it brings. But I hate when they get things wrong. I hate when egos ruin the product, when guys don’t bring it in the ring and when they make me scream “Who is booking this crap?!?”

1) The Ryder Effect: Zack Ryder has to be a great lesson for anyone trying to make it within the wrestling world. Ryder, a man who was barely featured on any WWE programme, is now the United States Champion and one of the biggest merchandise shifters in the company. And as I said in my last column, he has himself to thank. He got to this position through his own hard work, and deserves this run with the belt. But Zack hasn’t just got himself over. A strong argument can be made has shown people how great of a promo made Dolph Ziggler is. Yes, Ziggler has been giving us great performances since this time last year, but some critics have claimed that the only reason he gets the heat he does is through Vicky Guerrero. But his promos on Z! True Long Island Story has shown that he is more than able to carry a promo. Now that Ziggler has lost his belt to Zack Ryder, it’s time for him to move up the card and into the main event scene. Ziggler is destined to huge things, and is my current pick to win this year’s Royal Rumble.

2) Kevin Nash Takes a Bow: I’ll admit it, I was wrong. When Kevin Nash returned to start a programme with CM Punk, I told everyone that Nash could help give Punk that extra little push. He could have been used as a great positive and help get someone on the midcard over or push someone closer to the main event scene like Ziggler or Rhodes. Instead we had the “pleasure” of watching him stroll around the ring and make an embarrassment of himself. It all cumulated to an awful match with HHH this past Sunday. It went on for longer than it needed to and sucked so much life out of a great crowd. So why is this hot? Well, quite simply, because we don’t have to watch him any more! Nash has been written out with a fake injury from the match with Hunter. Afterwards, Kevin more or less confirmed that he was finished when he tweeted about it being a pleasure for him to finish up in a match with HHH. The experiment failed, and thank God it’s over.

3) Physical Hall of Fame: Ever since the WWE brought the Hall of Fame back and made it a yearly tradition, there have been rumours about the WWE making an actual building dedicated to the Hall of Fame. It seemed like an inevitability, and would serve as a better money generator than some of the WWEs past experiments such as WWE New York and the XFL. This year, the rumour mill begun churning faster than ever, with the WWE looking at different cities to hold the building. Florida seemed like the fore runner, and this week it has become closer to becoming a reality. What’s really giving it the push is the debut of the WWE Network. The Hall of Fame would be something that they could promote daily on the network while also being a venue to film a number of shows for the WWE Network. I think every fan, regardless of age, would love to see this come to life. Being able to see all that wrestling history would be a dream come true, and an excellent way to pay tribute to those legends that helped shape the business today.

4) Fruity Pebbles! : At first glance, it quite easy to put this down as a joke. Fruity Pebbles and the WWE have joined forces, with the popular cereal featuring John Cena on the front of their boxes. That’s right; the insult thrown at Cena by The Rock is now being used as an advertising campaign. But after some thought, this is actually a really clever advertising tool. The constant name dropping by The Rock over the past few months will be implanted in the young kids’ heads, and spotting it in shops with Cena’s face on the front will make them put two and two together. Cheap marketing for the WWE, great advertising for Fruity Pebbles and a cheap laugh for everyone else.

Daniel Bryan: I can already hear the IWC typing in disgust with this not being hot in my eyes. Anyone who knows me and has read this column knows I’m a massive supporter of Daniel Bryan. I waited for the day when I’d see him holding the World Championship. I marked out the moment he cashed in that briefcase and took the belt from The Big Show. As soon as it happened I though “This is going to be a hot moment for my column”. But after my initial excitement died down, I started to wonder how his title reign would be handled by the WWE. I know this week’s Raw made it look like the WWE will handle this reign better than expected, but the figures from Raw show that the main event was one of the lowest watched in a few years. I hope the WWE won’t panic and blame this drop on Bryan, but I have very little hope in that happening. So while Bryan winning the belt was a hot moment, the thoughts of how the WWE will handle this reign makes me think it could be a not. And that’s without taking into account how Bryan has been booked since Money in the Bank. The casual fan has no reason to get behind Bryan. This is no fault of Dragons at all, but how he is being booked. Perhaps if he becomes heel then it will allow him to show the personality that Vince McMahon believes isn’t there. So I open the floor to you; Daniel Bryan as champion at this stage of his career; hot or not?

1) Alberto Del Rio Injured: The injury bug is rearing its ugly head in the WWE. Beth Phoenix suffered a badly bruised and swollen face from her match on Raw, while Mark Henry has damaged his groin. But the biggest one came from the end of Raw this week, when Alberto Del Rio suffered a shoulder injury. Alberto damaged his shoulder when he fell to the outside near the end of the match. We soon spotted the referee throwing up the X to the monitors, signalling that something has indeed gone wrong. There is no word on how serious the injury is, but shoulder injuries are never an easy fix solution. Del Rio has been enjoying a great run, and hopefully he won’t loose any momentum from this. Get well soon Alberto!

2) Overtime: Last week TNA carried on the feud between AJ Styles and Bobby Roode. They had a great Iron Man contest for the TNA World Title two weeks ago on PPV that ended in a draw. A lot of people have complained about this decision, but I saw no issue with it ending in a draw. It gives AJ a perfect excuse to challenge Roode again and also gets Roode over more as a hell. So how do carry on the feud? By giving everyone the rest of the match for free the following week, instantly making that brilliant match pointless. Why didn’t they make the over time happen at the PPV instead? And this wasn’t even a case of the PPV advertising for TV, because they didn’t even mention that it would be happening! I understand that some of you will put this down to nit picking, but it doesn’t make these moments irritate me any less. Now the match on Impact was up to the high standard that they had set, but it could have been delivered in a less frustrating manor.

3) India, Why? : TNA’s Indian project is coming closer and closer to fruition. We don’t know a large amount about it, other than some of the talent associated with it. TNA is putting a lot of effort into this new project and expansion into a new market and I have one question about the whole process: What’s the point? Honestly, what is the point in the whole thing? This just looks like another ill-fated and misguided venture by the company. TNA is always very eager to try new things as a way of saying “Look at the new ground we are breaking” only to fall flat as quickly as it begun. Instead of focusing it energy on all these projects, why not work on your main programme? Why not see what you really need in order to Impact be as good as it can? Why not try bringing the show back to its glory days? When you have Impact at a high level, then go and try new horizons.

4) Kamala Needs More Surgery: A few weeks ago, wrestling legend Kamala had to have his foot amputated due to his battle with diabetes. It brought his wrestling career to a very immediate halt. But he isn’t out of the woods yet unfortunately. His son this week told the press that Kamala needs to return to the surgery table, this time to have upper section of the same leg removed. No matter what you thought about his character or his abilities in the ring, you have to feel for the man being forced to give up doing the thing he loved that was also his main source of income. I hope this will be the last surgery that he needs and he can get on with recovering and trying to enjoy the rest of his life.

That’s me for this week, if you have any stories that you feel should make it into next week’s list then fire me an email or leave a comment below. Take it easy and I’ll see you next week!