The Wednesday Wire: 1.18.12: Daniel Bryan Broke My Son’s Heart

It’s another week of the Wednesday Wire here on 411Wrestling and I think I should make up for all of the weeks I didn’t take the time to promote some of the other fantastic writers in the Wrestling section here. I wish I could say that I was yelled at and told by the “powers that be” to do this OR ELSE but I don’t check out the super secret double undercover staff forum often enough. It’s possible that I’ve been let go (again) and they lost my e-mail address (on purpose) so they can’t reach me to let me know I’m gone or enter the e-mail in to block me from the system.

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According to The Rock’s Twitter feed, he will be on tour for 25 days promoting some movie and will likely not mention WrestleMania unless some nerd bugs him about it. That puts his return around the Elimination Chamber PPV. I wonder how the final 6-weeks of build leading up to WrestleMania will play out. Does Cena go full heel on The Rock throughout February and March and then extend his hand in respect to close WrestleMania? That’s my guess. Mark it down now. John Cena will get more and more heelish (but only a teeeeeeny bit noticeable) from late January leading up to the Elimination Chamber show in February, and when Rocky shows up the bad attitude intensifies until he just goes all out asshole and says “fuck it” (likely with more PG-friendly language, maybe “dash it all to Hades” or something). He gets booed out of Florida during the match on April 1 but extends his hand after defeating The Rock and they shake and embrace. I pray that they save the happy-go-lucky Rock/Cena “I love you – no I love you – you’re schmoopie – no you’re schmoopie” crap for the following night on RAW; we don’t need a Rock promo ending back-to-back WrestleManias. In brief, it’s going to hearken back to Rock/Hogan from 10 years earlier (holy crap I can’t believe that was TEN YEARS ago) with Rock playing Hogan and Cena playing Rock. Put January 18 on your calendar as the day Marsico stated the obvious and put April 4 as the day he gloats about guessing simple logic.

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WWE’s power couple that (probably) won’t divorce on camera again Triple H and Stephanie McMahon have revealed their new year’s resolutions! Triple H says that he’s going to work hard as the new EVP of Talent Relations (isn’t that Laurinaitis’ legit job?) and that he still has “the opportunity to jump into the ring and take my aggression out on a few unsuspecting opponents”. As long as Undertaker isn’t an unsuspecting opponent at WrestleMania this year. Stephanie’s was far more company-centric and boring, yet noble as it were. She wants to help stop the bullying epidemic and launch the WWE Network with programming worthy of the WWE fans.

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Jeff Hardy recently spoke with the Miami Herald about his art and his life. In the interview he goes into how he’s feeling and where he is as a man, an artist, a son and a father. I hope his positive outlook that is displayed in the interview holds the same weight in his life. As an employer I would never have given him the myriad chances that TNA has, but as a person I believe he deserves as many chances as he has received, especially if he is working as hard as he says he is. His behavior has been reckless but he’s been more of a danger to himself than anyone else (mostly). He has always seemed contrite, and now with a wife and a child of his own Jeff has something very important to hold onto when ensuring that he takes care of himself. I have had a very on again-off again relationship with Hardy, but I really think he’s close to being there this time — I honestly don’t think we are going to be reading about him showing up at a show unable to perform, no-showing a date, getting arrested or any of that. I believe that chapter of his life has been closed. Will he flake out on something under his own poor judgment? Maybe. I don’t foresee him falling back into drugs. That is important.

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In more Stephanie McMahon news, the head of creative says that the creative team consists of 16 writers plus Vince. I assume she isn’t counted as a writer, so that’s 18 people coming up with ideas, writing show lineups and writing promos and they still came up with the shit they’re doing with Kane. How many of them teamed up to write Kane’s return promo? I want the writing team to lose that number of writers. She also said that she wants the WWE fans to take a side in the Rock/Cena rivalry and namedropped Team Edward v. Team Jacob as something to compare it to. Hasn’t that been going on the whole time? They’ve been arguing about Team Bring It versus the CeNation for months upon months. It’s not an epic new concept they have stumbled upon.

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Coming off a surprise appearance at this past Saturday’s EVOLVE 10 event, Low Ki will be joining the EVOLVE roster full time. He will also be working the Dragon Gate shows in Florida on WrestleMania weekend. I was hoping to see him pop up in ROH, especially since he’s had issues in the past with Gabe, and Mr. Sapolsky is one of the top men in the office in DGUSA/EVOLVE. I wonder if Low Ki is past his ego issues and can put together some interesting matches and moments in his newest endeavor.

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Since nobody else wants anything to do with him, Shane Douglas is putting together ANOTHER ECW-centric reunion show. Like the shyster he has become, he has the show billed as “one night only” even though there are already plans to do a run of shows and storylines. Steve O’Neill is in charge of the project. O’Neill is the head of production/creative for the Urban Wrestling Federation, which has become such a smashing success that even their first champion couldn’t handle the pressure of being the top guy and had to leave. Either that or he was treated shitty by management. More production will be handled by Kevin Klinerock, who is notable for his work with the much lauded Wrestling Society X series, the never controversial and much-loved XPW promotion, the aforementioned UWF and Eric Bischoff/Jason Hervey’s midget wrestling show. What a group of shitheads.

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The Stephanie McMahon interview with Entertainment Weekly also included the bit of information that WWE will be present in Park City, Utah for the Sundance Film Festival. They will be looking for movies to pick up and distribute. They recently snagged a movie called “The Day” at the Toronto Film Festival. On top of that, WWE is also currently in post-production for their new “hardcore horror” film entitled “No One Lives.” One can only assume that it will be a sequel (maybe a prequel) to Kane’s masterpiece “See No Evil.” This is the movie that Brodus Clay was filming in 2011. His character’s name is Ethan, and unlike Kane he will not be playing the scary killer guy.

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Dusty Rhodes, Roddy Piper and The Iron Sheik have been confirmed for WWE’s “Legends House” show for the new WWE Network. Mean Gene better be on that. He’s in the commercial.

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Kris Kristofferson’s son has been signed to a WWE developmental contract. That’s interesting. His name is Jody Kristofferson and he goes by “Big Country,” which certainly isn’t a name that has already been used for years in MMA.

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Epico and Primo won the WWE Tag Team Titles at a house show in Oakland on Sunday. Random. Here’s a video:

Turns out this happened because as of yesterday (Tuesday 1/17) Evan Bourne began his 60-day suspension for his second offense in accordance to the Wellness Policy. Reports also claim that Triple H doesn’t like Bourne while Stephanie does, but at this point I doubt her support is going to save his job if he doesn’t stop it already. Look, he may not be doing something illegal if it is indeed the synthetic ‘not actually weed’ weed, but it’s against the policy. If whatever he’s using is more important than a WWE paycheque he should just hand in his resignation. He can find plenty of work on the indies and Japan. Before anybody misunderstands me, I have no problem with him smoking weed or the like. Do as you will — it’s not going to hurt him, but his contract states that he can’t do that and continue working for the company. Instead of wasting everybody’s time and money, either abide by the rules or move on.

The person Bourne is hurting the most is Kofi Kingston, who has now lost his tag partner TWICE in a short span of time, and this time it cost him the tag titles and thus it cost him money. That’s pretty shitty. If Kofi is innocent and hasn’t taken part in the policy-breaking activities he’s probably not happy with Bourne right now.

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Kurt Angle is claiming that WWE has been “knocking on [his] door” but he won’t answer. He says that WWE is trying to get him to come back for the Royal Rumble match. I’m fairly confident in saying that nobody, including Kurt himself, believes this.

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Speaking of the Royal Rumble, it seems that Christian may be cleared from his injury in time to compete in the match! I assume that he’ll either return on TV right beforehand so he doesn’t get the return pop at the Rumble or they’ll wait until after the PPV to bring him back to TV.

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Dragon Gate USA’s Open the Freedom Gate Champion Johnny Gargano suffered a back injury at this past Saturday’s EVOLVE 10. The extent and seriousness of the injury is not known at this time, however he was carted off to the hospital after the show and he is presently convalescing at home. He finally was able to make some contact with the fans via his Twitter. Gargano revealed that the doctors have still not diagnosed his problem and that it occurred originally at a show on January 1. The first spot of his title match with Ricochet on the 14th aggravated the injury, therefore he worked the entire 25-minute match hurt. He didn’t want to let down the fans and is very sorry that the match wasn’t near up to the standard he holds himself to. You can read the entire message by clicking here.

Let’s all cross our fingers that the next update is a positive one.

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Update: Mean Gene has been confirmed for Legends House! Finkel better get in too. And Mr. Fuji!

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I have officially decided to follow Sting on Twitter. When asked about rumors regarding his retirement, Sting tweeted: “Rumors of my demise have been greatly exaggerated.” He’s my hero.

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RAW this week is a beast similar to last week. I was underwhelmed while watching it live but in retrospect it was a good enough show on the way toward the Royal Rumble. I think my disconnect is that the show feels very disjointed. There are good segments but it’s put together in a very choppy way that takes away from the flow of the show and hinders the ability to build momentum.

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Foley and Ace collide!

I missed the opening segment and haven’t had the chance to Youtube it, but the sentiment was that Foley wants a spot in the Rumble match so his younger kids can see their dad in action. Ziggler was against it and Punk was for it and Big Johnny took Mick’s request under consideration… for about 35 seconds. The Micker received a resounding “NO” from Laurinaitis. I think Mick is going to end up finding a spot in the match, although with Laurinaitis attacking him (I did not see that coming) maybe he’ll have something else to do. What could a feud between Foley and Laurinaitis lead to, anyway? Maybe they could do something similar to the McMahon/Trump angle in 2007, and that could eventually lead to Foley and Laurinaitis teaming with their respective wrestlers to blow off the feud. I dunno. Laurinaitis was pretty awesome in the final segment, though. Punk making him flinch was great too.

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Punk does himself no favors with Laurnitis

So what do we think… does Punk get screwed out of the title at the Rumble? I think he will, and then he will either enter the Rumble match and win it, then follow up by beating Ziggler for the belt at ‘Mania or he will win an Elimination Chamber match to get the shot that way. I would love to see Ziggler carry the belt until WrestleMania and have Punk unseat him there and then hold the belt through the summer and beyond.

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Primo & Epico keep the Tag straps

It was short, but Primo and Epico put on a good show in retaining their titles against the former darlings of the tag team division. I already expressed my opinion on Bourne above. Since I wrote that I saw that he apologized on Twitter, but unless he’s on something hard then he only has himself to blame. You can’t get addicted to pot. I appreciate the fact that he’s owning up to it and is indeed taking the blame. That is respectable.

What’s next for the new Tag champs? Are there any other tag teams?

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Eve backs her man but it’s not enough

Ryder refused to relinquish his title or to back out of the match with Swagger, so he defiantly went down to the ring to defend his United States title for the first time. It looked like Eve was digging Ryder’s toughness, which I liked to see. Monday night may have been the beginning of Ryder becoming a more serious competitor. Kicking out of the gutwrench powerbomb twice was great, but the crowd didn’t really get into it, which is a shame. I was also hoping Ryder would defy the odds and get the victory with a quick small package after the second powerbomb, but alas it was not to be.

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R-Truth goes to Disneyland

Crazy face Truth is even better than crazy heel Truth! The guy is a maniac and it’s hilarious. He may be the only man who could possibly pull this gimmick off and he’s doing a damn good job at it. I liked the nod to his former hatred of the “What?” chants. Last week I think he ignored them (I could be wrong) but this past Monday night he told the crowd “Don’t what me! (pause) Okay you can what me.” Gold. His Disney slideshow was random but awesome and the Miz attack and following over-the-top rules match were fine enough television. So are they saving Truth v. Miz for WrestleMania?

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John Cena embraces the hate

Cena has been the number one Zack Ryder supporter, and after seeing what Swagger did to Ryder as well as finding out that Ryder was not cleared to compete and that it was John Laurinaitis’ negligence that allowed it to happen in the first place, he was not a happy man. Cena showed more intensity beating the crap out of Swagger than he has shown in YEARS and it was a pleasure to be able to see that out of him again. I don’t expect to see another violent outburst from him in the very near future, but he will begin to doubt that he can control himself. I wonder what Cena we will be seeing in his match with Kane. Will it be the usual Cena just without the smiles or will he be all business and extra intense?

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Daniel Bryan gives us a special AJNN report

I am absolutely loving Daniel Bryan’s change in character. He plays the role so well and the crowd is loving to boo him. When he finally goes completely to the dark side I think he will be able to get some fantastic reactions from the crowd and he will thrive as a top-level heel. If they give him the ball, for real, he WILL carry it in for a touchdown. He is not the kind of guy who settles for a field goal. I haven’t read the spoilers at this time, so I don’t know what will go down on the Sin City SmackDown show this week but I’m expecting them to find the gap in the line and run through it.

The football references weren’t too bad until the last one.

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Did anybody expect Jericho to wrestle?

Chris Jericho continued his tour-de-force performance as the mouthiest mime this week on RAW. The bit where he turns out the lights and turns on his coat are funny and his over-the-top proud/content look as he walked up the ramp was great. I was surprised that he even got tagged into the match. I was expecting him to get knocked off the apron right before a tag could be made or something of that nature, but looking back it wouldn’t work out as well as the direct approach that they took with it. He gets tagged in, the crowd goes bat guano crazy, he in turn goes bat guano crazy and then he tags out and walks away. Awesome.

How long do you think they’ll keep this up? Is Jericho alone or did those mysterious vignettes have more meaning than we have been lead to believe? Who will Jericho feud with? What kind of batteries does his jacket run on?

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gpjunk starts us off with love for the Funkasaurus:

“I’m glad someone on this site sees the potential of the Funkasaurus. If, as you say, Brodius remains as committed to the gimmick as he was this week he will get over big as a comedy midcard act that unlike Santino can also be a serious threat in the ring. Then as the other monsters in the WWE retire over the next few years he can be forced in storyline into becoming a monster.”

This seems to have become the general concensus of most of the IWC over the past week. I think it was the initial confusion and shock that is what drove people to immediately crap on the gimmick, but once it settled in we’ve all realized that this can be pretty entertaining. Now I’m looking forward to when they start putting him in real matches and when he gets into an actual storyline. Wouldn’t interactions between him and Zack Ryder be awesome?

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ShadowMaster was not happy with the finish of Roode/Hardy at Genesis:

“i hate how that main event match between roode and jeff hardy ended at the last PPV.. a DQ finish? really? why TNA have PPV’s to build their impact wrestling shows?????”

I understand the frustration, but the idea is to get Roode over as a shit-talker that can back it up for the most part, but can’t necessarily get the job done by working his ass off because he’s frustrated with the system. To accomplish that they either need to finish matches with DQs (or count-outs, etc) or by having him cheat and get a quick roll-up victory. Is a pinfall really much different than a DQ in that situation? This is a complaint that has bothered me for a long time — people don’t throw a fit when a champion wins a match by knocking the challenger out with his belt or some other nefarious means and gets the pin to retain, but as soon as he blatantly cheats to get DQ’d somehow it’s a bullcrap finish that screws fans out of their money. Blatant cheating will get a guy more heat than sneaking in a weapon behind the ref’s back in a situation like Roode’s. The fans will hate him even more because he’s screwing a hard-working good guy out of the title and not even putting any effort into it. Jeff Hardy worked his ass off to get that belt and Roode took the easy way out and took a lazy DQ.

On top of that, the idea of “using a PPV to build to TV” is also kind of a cop-out complaint. The whole thing is episodic. That includes the pay-per-views. The draw of a PPV should be getting to see two rivals go at it in a match that gets some time to develop. If the feud is going to continue, what sense would it make to not use the PPV match to build toward the next episode of TV? That episode builds to the next, which builds to the next and so on and so forth, and that all builds to the next PPV. That’s how it works. My favourite match of all time is Steve Austin v. Kurt Angle for the WWF Title at SummerSlam 2001. It ended in a DQ with Angle winning and Austin keeping the title. Austin realized that he couldn’t beat Angle on that night, and instead of digging down deeper and fighting and thus possibly taking the loss, he took the easy way out and beat up a bunch of referees until Nick Patrick showed up and called for the bell.

Complain when a DQ finish is illogical, not when it makes perfect sense and just doesn’t fit your taste.

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Ice Dagger shares my fond memories of Chris Kreski:

“A reference to Chris Kreski automatically makes this the best column ever. It’s too bad his [correct] approach towards booking was roundly mocked by Vince & Steffo.”

Man, the WWF had a fantastic run for the first 9+ months of 2000. Good times.

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Guest#6026 has the best idea of all time:

“Show vs Mayweather was good because Mayweather played such an over the top heel. Stopping the match to take a sip out of his pimp goblet? Mayweather was awesome. Akebono vs Show sucked because they insisted on a SUMO match. those last seconds if we’re lucky and there’s rarely enough leeway to do anything fun with it. They should have had the Akebono from HUSTLE fight Big Show. Shaq vs Show only works if Show is a heel. Shaq as a heel doesn’t make sense, unless he’s crazy over the top SHAZZAM Shaq.”

Truly not the best moment of his career.

I would personally love to see him bust out some SHAQ-FU!

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Jlevysan doesn’t have high hopes for a John Morrison run in ROH:

“Morrison would probably have some good matches in ROH, i just see it turning out like Matt Hardy’s run with the company. The fans are going to shit all over it.”

I don’t think he’d get a bad reaction by any means. If the ROH forum had not been shut down I would be able to better gauge what the reaction to Morrison would be, but I don’t think it would be bad, especially if he didn’t botch anything. The crowd didn’t shit on Matt Hardy. He was only on a couple shows and he was okay, then he attacked “Adam” on RAW and gave ROH the worst promotion ever. If you didn’t know what ROH was already, you didn’t learn about the company by hearing an out-of-breath Matt Hardy being carted away by security yelling “Awr ow ech” half-into and half away from the microphone. It was Jeff who got booed out of the building in his first and only appearance in 2003. I like to try to forget that.

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Scotty has a thought about Daniel Bryan:

“There’s no way Daniel Bryan will still be champion by WrestleMania, and I can’t see WWE being willing to give a small, new guy like Bryan one of the title matches at their biggest show of the year – the show where they always try to attract back the “casual” fans.”

Bryan’s not new by now. By the time WrestleMania rolls around he’ll have been on WWE TV for almost 26 months. The first NXT began back in February 2010, and that was back when they tried to make us care about the show and the guys on it. His new direction character-wise is drawing good heat and with the right opponent he will be just fine at WrestleMania. Plus, with Undertaker v. whomever (PLEASE not Triple H), Punk defending the WWE Title and Cena v. Rock, D-Bryan’s match is slated to be, at best, the 4th most important match on the card. And if they do end up getting together a Shaq v. Big Show match, that will get a ton of promotion, shunting Bryan and the WHC down to 5th most important match. The attraction of casual fans doesn’t factor into his championship match, and they do celebrity stuff to make the show seem more grandiose, not to attract PPV buys. Snooki didn’t get anybody to shell out 50+ bucks for WrestleMania.

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I’ll be honest, this section is here only so I could post that picture of Gail Kim. My wife is beyond sick (between you and me I think she has the plague) and I have spent almost no time in front of the computer since last Thursday or so. I was able to catch SmackDown this past week and obviously I saw RAW, but Impact Wrestling is not a high enough priority for me to have tried to find some time to catch some of it.

I did read the report here on 411 though, and it looked like a pretty good show. I like the Storm/Angle stuff and the Roode/Hardy stuff, I am very interested in Bully Ray and the team of Joe & Magnus seems like it has some real potential. I am bothered that there was no Austin Aries or any other X Division stuff on the show since they just had to have Eric Bischoff and his son bitch at each other. I don’t give a fuck.

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In response to the WrestleMania match comments, I will hold onto them and check back in a couple weeks to see what looks feasible and to analyze some stuff if I see fit.

Your homework assignment from now until forever is to look for the best (clothed) picture of Gail Kim you can find. Post the URL in the comments.

Read this stuff elsewhere on 411Wrestling:

– Aaron Frame has The Wrestling Framework!
– Nick Bazar brings us another edition of The Contentious Ten!
– Stephen Randle had The Wrestling News Experience on Monday!
– Steve Cook brought us News from Cook’s Corner yesterday!

I’ll be back next Wednesday and I think our next fresh news report column will be Greg DeMarco with the Wrestling 5&1 on Saturday. I could be wrong, though.

Next week: TNA?

– Nicholas A. Marsico