The 411 Wrestling Hot or Not: 02.10.12: Blowing Spots, Busting Heads and New Signings

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?!?”

Hot

1) Troll! : So Jericho finally had a lot to say this week. He publicly admitted to trolling the WWE audience into cheering for him during the first few weeks of his debut, and then revealed what the whole end of the world business was all about. Y2J began to list each of the men he would be facing at Elimination Chamber and how they ripped off his character in some form. He went with the obvious choices such as The Miz wearing a suit and talking in a monotone voice and maintaining a serious look on his face, to some of the obscure things like Kofi Kingston displaying a large level of athletic ability and R Truth saying a sort of but not really similar catch phrase as Jericho. But the crown jewel was CM Punk. As myself and others here at 411 believed he would, Jericho proclaimed that CM Punk ripped off everything about Jericho and sold it as his own creation. In particular, the line “I didn’t need to put Best in the World on a t-shirt in order to make people believe it” was pure gold. The icing on the cake of the whole promo though was CM Punk’s rebuttal. He came out, dropped his mic, said nothing, and walked away. This got to Chris as he began to demand that Punk talk to him and answer to his claims. It was a perfect way to keep everything moving and is setting us up for Wrestlemania perfectly. It sort of makes the Elimination Chamber match result a given but it doesn’t really matter. We are on course for CM Punk and Chris Jericho to face each other in one of the main events at Wrestlemania, and the thought of that match excites me a lot more than any other match over the past few years.

Damnit, can’t it be April now?

2) Damn: Ron Simmons is the latest man to find himself inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame for 2012. Simmons has been a name that has been thrown around a lot in recent years, and is one that rightly deserves his spot. To a lot of young fans, he is only known as the man who says “Damn” a lot. But for a different generation, Simmons was an accomplished wrestler and a very important one in the history of the sport. He was the first African American to hold a world title in wrestling, and the first to win the WCW World Heavyweight Championship (With Booker T being the only other African American to do so).
Simmons was a joy to watch in the ring, and his early years with WCW are a joy to watch, in particular with his series with Cactus Jack. Then of course he joined the WWF, and let’s forget about that first year, it never happened. When he formed The Nation of Domination, with was a very different and unique group that pushed a lot of buttons, and showcased what The Rock could do in a more serious role. My personal favorite time, and a lot of other people’s I’m sure, is his tag team with Bradshaw; The Acolytes. These two were just a rough tag team that were always guaranteed to deliver an ass kicking. There are few tag teams like them today but they certainly inspired the likes of The Briscoe Brothers and America’s Most Wanted. Simmons is a worthy entrant into his year’s group and I’m looking forward to hearing JBL’s induction speech.

3) I Need A Hero: After months of back and forth rumors, Chris Hero has finally joined his tag team partner Claudio Castagnoli and has been signed to the WWE. The apparent delay to Hero signing a contract was on medical grounds, but everything has come back all clear and Hero passed those tests. Chris and Claudio, better known as The Kings of Wrestling, were rumored to be signed as a part of the WWEs revamped focus on tag teams in the company. But like every other time this new found interest in tag teams comes around it lasted all of two weeks. Now Hero and Castagnoli will remain apart, which will not harm either man. While the mark inside me would prefer to see them come up as the tag team that they were, both men are accomplished singles wrestlers that are more than able to deliver both in the ring and on the mic. Hero in particular has something very special around him, and could find himself rising through the ranks with relative ease. Out of all the current “Big Indie Names” currently signed to FCW, only Dean `Jon Moxley’ Ambrose has a better shot than Hero at making a name for himself in the WWE. Well done Chris, you deserve your spot.

Not

1) The Miz Messes Up: Mistakes happen in Wrestling. Every wrestler messes up a move, a line or a spot several times in their careers. It can be an important learning curve and can help a wrestler learn and smooth out his routine. It’s expected that when someone makes it to the main event scene at the WWE that they have learned how to avoid making rookie mistakes and prevent injury on themselves and their fellow wrestlers. A big spot being blown is fine, but not the simple stuff that guys learn when they begin. That’s why I cannot understand how The Miz could have made such a basic mistake this Monday on Raw in the six man main event. The spot involved R Truth flipping over the top rope onto Miz on the outside. It’s not a dive, so it’s very simple to be in the right place to catch R Truth. Instead, The Miz looks like he makes a side step and does not catch R Truth at all, and he lands onto the floor outside. R Truth took a very nasty bump to his head and is thankfully not badly hurt. But this could have ended very differently very easily. Taking such a hard bump to the back of the head from that height, there is no safe way to take that. Unless the wrestler that is receiving the move is in the right spot and ready to catch the wrestler. But watch the footage, The Miz is standing in the correct position, and then moves to the side half way through R Truth’s flip.

The Miz rightly received a mouthful from HHH backstage over this and is firmly in the dog house. As I said, mistakes can happen, but the very basic things should be as easy as hell to avoid. R Truth could have found himself missing time and being left with a very serious injury because of this botch. The Miz looks to be in the dog house now for quite some time, and hopefully this kind of stupid mistake will never happen again.

2) New Jack: One complaint I hate seeing in a post-Benoit world is people complaining that chair shots to the head are not what they used to be. We have learned so much about the potential damage that comes from these spots that it makes no sense to go ahead with them. Putting your hands up may not have the same effect, but it is a worthy substitute. Saying that, if a wrestler armed with all this knowledge still tells the other guy to go ahead and hit him the hard way, then let the idiot do it. If he wants to put himself at risk like then let him. But that’s not what happened with New Jack recently. A video has begun to do the round of New Jack performing at a small indie show, which I have linked below. The story goes that New Jack told the short haired wrestler to go home and call the match. The guy must have misheard, because he kicked out of the finish. Well, instead of doing the mature thing and call the end to the rookie again and hit him with another move, New Jack decided to do what he does best. You know, being a brain dead idiot. New Jack tells the long haired wrestler to hold the victim back as he grabs a chair. Then New Jack, without holding back at all, drills the poor guy across the head with a shocking amount of force that causes him to fall straight out of the ring. The fans cheer at first, but it becomes clear very quickly that the guy was hurt, bad. He seemed to be completely knocked out and a pool of blood had begun to emerge from under his head. In the tape you can clearly hear fans begin to ask for the match to be stopped and the other wrestler break kayfabe very quickly to help him out. So what does New Jack do? He picks the guy up and starts leading him backstage with stiff shots to the back.

The video displays why New Jack is everything wrong with wrestling today. I’m a fan of death match style wrestling and I consider Necro Butcher to be one of my favorite wrestlers globally today. But New Jack is not a wrestler. He is a thug, plain and simple. This young guy did not ask for that chair shot, and he did not deserve that kind of abuse. I hope this video is seen by a lot of people, because hopefully it will wake people up to how dangerous these spots can be and hopefully it will make promoters think twice before hiring New Jack for their show. Hardcore wrestling is fine; being a dangerous thug that has no regard for the other men he shares a ring with is wrong and an insult to wrestling.

3) The Great Debate: I know HHH isn’t exactly the most popular guy on the internet, but even I wasn’t expecting so much backlash to the thought of him going one on one with Undertaker at WrestleMania this year. Did I watch a different match to everyone than last year? It was brilliant! These two guys will no doubt put on a stellar effort again this year, and from a storyline point of view it is the most logical match for Undertaker to have this year.

Yes, that’s right. This match makes ten times more sense than having ‘Taker give someone like Wade Barrett the rub or go against someone different. You see, the ending of the match last year showcased a very fragile and broken Undertaker. We have not seen the man in over a year. So when he does come back, surely he only wants to take on the man that put him in that position. What sense would it make for him to come out and say “last year I came closer to losing than ever before, but forget that I don’t want to prove to myself that it was just a fluke and I want to face someone else instead?” This is the freakin’ Undertaker! No way in hell would he look so weak and not want to prove himself to everyone. Plus, it is the perfect way to continue the excellent Wrestlemania storyline that begun all those years ago when Ric Flair lost to Shawn Michaels. I don’t think this will be ‘Takers final ‘Mania match, and can see him go for one more next year, and this match sets it up nicely. Undertaker wins, and he goes away again for the year. Then John Cena beats The Rock at Wrestlemania and feels more confident in himself than he ever has. But he still has to prove himself, and show that he is one of the best in the WWE. So he wants to do what no one has ever done before, and that’s beat the streak. Undertaker will talk about those who tried to face him and how he proved to himself this year that he is unbeatable. Cue John trying to convince Undertaker to take on the match and then, somehow, we reach the logical end and have Wrestlemania 29 feature The Undertaker vs. John Cena. That’s a match I’d love to see and it wouldn’t have the same build if Undertaker just ignored HHH this year and went to face a young guy instead.

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!