The Wednesday Wire News Report: 4.11.12: Hashtag WedWi

Welcome one, welcome all to another edition of The Wednesday Wire! I am your host, also known as the incomparable Nick Marsico, and I have everything you need right here. You don’t need all of that other stuff, but I like to provide options.

New banner! Like it! I’m going to try this look for a while. As always there are some kinks to work out, but I am a fan of what I have. I’m always working on making it look better. To be honest, it’s to sate my own perfectionist slant, but hopefully you enjoy it too. I’m just trying to fill some space. I hate when I have two pictures so close to each other.

NEWS WIRE: Brock Lesnar

Everything has been coming up Brock this week. Let’s >see what the “news” sheets are reporting about the former WWE and UFC Heavyweight Champion.

Instead of feuding with Lord Tensai, John Cena will be feuding with Brock Lesnar. According to whoever comes up with this stuff, Lesnar’s signing changed a lot of post-WrestleMania plans. Not only is Cena’s first feud out of ‘Mania with Lesnar instead of Tensai, but it is reported that the “outcome specifics” of the Hell in a Cell match were changed “quite a bit”. Whatever that means. I guess instead of announcing Triple H v. Shawn Michaels for WrestleMania next year (wow, really?) they had Brock return to attack Cena.

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Will Brock be content with his return to the ring or will he get bored and walk away? Someone that apparently worked with Brock during his original WWE run allegedly said that he thinks Lesnar will last about 4 months before he “cracks”. I personally don’t expect that to happen for a number of reasons. Reason one is that his role will be significantly different. He won’t be appearing on house shows and chances are that he will only be wrestling on PPVs. Another reason is that he will be able to just be Brock Lesnar instead of a more limited character facsimile of “angry Brock”. He’s pretty much going to be doing exactly what he did in MMA except he will be fake fighting. This run is a completely different beast than his first stint in the company. Bob Holly shouldn’t be making these baseless statements.

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In more speculatory rumor-type gossippery, some wrestlers backstage are saying that Brock looks “soft” and are concerned that he’s going to be out of shape and that his in-ring work will suffer for it. I’m betting that A)nobody said that or B)whoever said it never saw how he looked when he was with UFC. Brock has looked “soft” ever since he stopped training like a bodybuilding pro-wrestler and started training to fight for real. He lost 30 pounds of muscle (before the diverticulitis) and stopped focusing on looking the part, which was a big factor for his WWE character. Just because he doesn’t look like the ripped, oily 295-pounds-of-muscle Brock Lesnar from 2002 doesn’t mean he’s out of shape or soft. I personally am questioning what his stamina/in-ring ability will be when he gets back in the ring on the 29th, but that’s 18 days away from now and he’s going to be in a no-rules type of match. Going forward I doubt he’ll have issues.

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It is being alledged that “management” may consider CM Punk to be too small to be a future opponent for Brock Lesnar. He’s also apparently too low on the pecking order, behind 3 part-time (at best) wrestlers and the biggest star of the past decade. It is also being said that his demeanor backstage is off and that he seems like he just wandered off from being in a car accident or some stupid shit. Punk’s response came via Twitter:

“Dirt sheets can call me small, skinny, beat up, road-tired, fat, ugly, no friends etc…everyone else calls me champ. Everyone.”

That pretty much sums it up.

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Michael Cole mentioned Lesnar being a former UFC Heavyweight Champion a number of times on RAW. This was apparently a big no-no just a week ago. Or maybe it wasn’t. Who even knows any more?

From Guest#9499: “The Sheamus squash of Bryan has totally backfired on WWE, at least in Miami. It will certainly be interesting to see if Bryan continues to receive support from the fans.”

Based on the fact that his new “Yes!” shirt is already on backorder from WWE.com, I’d say that the support, at least in that manner, is continuing.

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From Candy Bottocks: “I don’t expect Bryan to continue getting that much support. The crowd on RAW obviously consisted of a lot of “smarks” who I assume stayed one day more for RAW after Mania. Same people who I assume were pissed off at the “match” they were given on Sunday. It was hilarious though.”

Agreed on that front… people were definitely not happy that they didn’t get a true match between Sheamus and Bryan and many of them were likely in the crowd at both WrestleMania and RAW the following night. At the same time, though, crowds have been chanting for Bryan and doing the “Yes!” chant during matches he hasn’t been in for a while. The guy is popular and he’s over, and it’s not just with those of us know fell in love with him before he made it to WWE.

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From Guest#5503: “I think Sheamus will be fine once they get away from 10’s of thousands of Bryan fans that all happened to be in Miami at WrestleMania and Raw. Also I believe that Cena was probably planned as the original winner of the Rock-Cena match but that was way to predictable so the WWE went with the Rock instead. I don’t know where they go from there but that is not for me to decide.”

The speculatron of dirt sheets are saying that a lot of WrestleMania outcomes, including Rock v. Cena (though not necessarily the outcome) were changed once Brock signed his deal. Maybe that’s why Rocky won. Stranger things have happened. As far as Sheamus is concerned, he took out a ref last week on purpose… this isn’t a knee-jerk reaction by WWE to the negative reaction he received in Miami, is it?

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From Guest#3225: “i think lesnar will bring new fans to WWE that are UFC fans. and i think lesnar is gonna get back in shape before he wrestles.”

One would have to ask… who says Lesnar ever got out of shape in the first place?

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From Super Blizzard: “Did anyone in the booking committee for Wrestlemania stop to think that they were going to make 3 of their top full-time babyfaces look like chumps at the event? I am talking about Orton and Cena being jobbed out clean and Seamus going over in record time against an opponent WWE didn’t consider ‘over’. Oh dear. I still marked out like a 5 year old when Lesnar’s music hit though, Awesome.”

I don’t think Orton looked like a chump at all. It was a hard-fought (and surprisingly good) match that Orton lost to a guy who is perpetually over with every vocal member of the audience. Plus, it took a chokeslam off the ropes to pin him.

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From Guest#6345: “Why would they want to bestow anyone with ‘shortest wrestlemania match ever’? That’s like openly devaluing an investment. Why? It was a crime when they did it with Chavo for the ECW title, it’s a downright travesty they did it with Danielson.”

Yeah, I don’t get it. If it was an attempt to make D-Bryan look like a loser, it’s going to be a complete failure. That ain’t happening. At least not from one match, one that was completly overshadowed by almost everything else on the entire card that night. In the end it’s going to go down as just another stupid booking decision that won’t end up mattering even a little bit in the long run.

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I would personally buy this one, though.

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From APrince66: “One of 3 matches my friends and I paid for to watch (yes, some people still get together and actually PAY for a PPV), gets f’d in an 18 second f job. Thanks Vince, way to reinforce why people pirate your crap.”

Like I said last week, the fuckers bilked me out of my money 2 years in a row. Granted I enjoyed this year’s show, but what kind of sucker am I that to this day I still have a sour taste in my mouth for spending $55 on 4 hours of horseshit yet still shilled another $55 out to them less than a year later?

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From d0ubled1amond: “Y2J is the best in the world at what he does! The beauty of wrestling is that if you do things right you can elevate yourself by losing. (Yes, Yes, Yes)”

A complete truth has been spoken here. Jericho is a perfect example of the fact that you don’t have to be on the winning side on a regular basis to stay over and relevant and still be considered a threat to beat every guy you step in the ring with.

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From Guest#9399: “With Kane, Show, Rock, and HHH/Taker hogging the most time for themselves, the WWE is not so subtly telling us the current roster of young guys is complete shit and that the old attitude era guys are the true stars. Way to build your business!”

They’ve been telling us that for years. The perfect example is that they brought The Rock in to team with Cena at Survivor Series in New York City and when the show falls flat money-wise they blame The Miz, even though he was far from the focus. Yet months earlier when both Miz and Rock were involved in the main event of the best-selling WrestleMania ever, Rock gets all the credit and Miz is an afterthought.

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From the mecca: “arm chair booking. Brock comes in and crushes Cena. ok that happened on monday. to play off it Brock goes undefeated and beating legit challengers. Cena on the other hand can’t buy a win. Extreme Rules Brock crushes Cena in an actual match based on he never liked Cena and apparently no one else does either so he’s doing something about it. Cena feels bad and Johnny in a rare moment of niceness books Cena vs Miz #1 contender match the monday after Raw. Miz wins CLEAN!! can’t stress that enough. he just fights out of the AA and hits his 3rd SCF of the match and Cena is done. Punk is still feuding with Jericho so Jericho is announced as Punk’s opponent for over the limit. Cena is just depressed. He finally regains some momentum by scoring wins over the Uso’s and Mcyntire, maybe even Otunga and challenges Miz to a rematch at Over the Limit. Miz pulls out a win again. end of the night Punk retains over Jericho, but Johnny has Miz cash in his title shot right then and Miz manages to pull out the win and is the new WWE Champion. Cena spends the year trying to recapture wins but it just isn’t happening. finally we get to summerslam and Brock vs Miz for the WWE championship. Brock takes the title defends against Miz, Cena, Punk, and finally Wrestlemania rolls around Rock vs Brock for the title.”

I don’t think that’s the way to rebuild Miz. Personally I’d like to see him get rebuilt in a way in which he stays very, very far away from the whole mess with Rock, Brock and Cena. My way, in a nutshell: Miz gets a tag partner. The tag division heats up, Miz and partner get the belts. They carry them for a while in some hot feuds. Eventually they lose them. They can’t win them back and begin to worhrough other teams to get another shot. Out of nowhere (with no foreshadowing or teasing of dissention) Miz turns on his parner, beats him in a well-built revenge match and moves on toward singles feuds higher on the card.

NEWS WIRE: New DVDs, iPPV announcements and Upcoming talent

CHIKARA has announced their second iPPV offering, which will run live on GFL.tv on June 2, 2012 at 7PM. There are no matches announced at this time, however Colt Cabana will be the special guest on the show.

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Speaking of Cabana, he and Davey Richards will be competing together as a tag team in this year’s NOAH Global Tag League (4/11 thru 4/29). The ROH and NWA Champs teaming with be an interesting combination.

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Scott Hall was arrested again in Florida last week after being accused of battering his girlfriend. He was alleged to be under the influence of alcohol and had to be taken to a hospital before being cleared to be brought into jail. No matter how much help he’s given, sadly Hall will likely die after living the rest of his years like this.

He actually looks better here than the last time he wrestled.

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Much to my chagrin, the Bella Twins will be leaving World Wrestling Entertainment when their contract expires on April 30.

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On top of that news, it is apparent that spring cleaning is coming again in WWE land. There is no news on which talent is set for the chopping block, but the time seems to be nigh for many guys that we don’t see on TV much. I’m betting that Drew McIntyre is one of the many that get the boot.

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The opposite end of the spectrum holds good news for guys like Dean Ambrose, Ryback (formerly Skip Sheffield) and Damien Sandow. Ryback and Sandow both debuted on SmackDown last week, with the former squashing a local talent and the latter in a condescending promo. Well, the reports said that nobody is going to be called up without a 6-month plan in mind, so we’ll see what happens with these two.

This reminds me a lot of the gimmick that Sean O’Haire was given 10 years ago. That’s a bad thing, by the way, since it was something with a lot of potential that was a complete dead end. Then again, another gimmick that seemed like it would be a complete dead end (and showed little potential) was the one given to Del Rio, and we know how that turned out. Time will tell, as they always say.

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The feud that began on WrestleMania weekend between Mick Foley and Dean Ambrose has continued on Twitter. I hope they bring Dean Ambrose up to TV in conjunction with his budding feud with Foley. Maybe they did it last night on SmackDown. If that happened it was probably pretty sweet.

From Foley: “Having a blast with my kids at Disney. Not really concerned about some guy I’ve never heard of.”

“Three months ago, people asked me about facing TAKER at Mania – now, it’s a guy from FCW. TITANIC 3D isn’t the only ship sinking this week.”

From Ambrose: “Must be nice to be so arrogant and oblivious. Guilt free family funtime. Just great. Good for you. @realMickFoley”

“Btw..I have zero fear of reprisals from the office for wat ive said about mick foley cuz nobody high up in #wwe has any respect for him”

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In DVD release news, WWE and ROH have new offerings in the form of Edge’s latest DVD and Nigel McGuinness’ career retrospective, both of which were released yesterday. Edge’s DVD is set in the same vein as the recent career DVDs, with old matches (Adam Impact v. Christian Cage from 1995), his life story and some matches beginning in 2000, many of which have not been released on DVD before. Nigel’s disc set is different from many ROH DVDs, as not only does it contain matches (13 full, 6 in highlights) but also a sit-down interview with the man, which is similar to the “Straight Shootin'” concept that ROH used to do.

WWE RAW Supershow: April 9, 2012

John Cena v. Brock Lesnar: Extreme Rules
It was made official on RAW this week that the main event of the next PPV will be Brock Lesnar versus John Cena. This came after Cena interupted Brock, who, in an attempt to receive at least one boo from the crowd, was praising the genius of John Laurinitis. Cena slapped Brock in the mouth and Brock retaliated by bloodying Cena’s mouth as the two men engaged in a massive pull-apart brawl. The question is, will a stipulation be added? If so, what?

CM Punk v. Chris Jericho: Even More Personal
Before his scheduled rematch with Mark Henry for the WWE Title, CM Punk cut a promo on Chris Jericho. He held the crowd in his hands even though he didn’t once acknowledge them or verbally jerk them off (take notes, Rocky) while delivering a powerful speech against Chris Jericho, who appeared on the screen and further took his mind off of Mark Henry. Once he got himself disqualified, Punk got attacked by Henry which led to him again being doused in alcohol by Chris Jericho. This week was even better than last, as Punk tried to fight back a couple of times just to be hit with the Codebreaker and taken back down into the stink of the beer.

Everything Else
This show was pretty focused and straight-forward. They concentrated on building Brock v. Cena (chances are Brock won’t be there live next week) and the WWE Title feud. We saw Santino and Brodus Clay team up against ZigSwag in a continuation of last week’s confrontation (two great teams for the tag division… hint hint). Cody Rhodes was again interrupted by Big Show in a carbon copy of what happened last week. Does anybody see Rhodes actually winning this feud? Me neither. Lord Tensai had another squash that included the entire crowd chanting “Albert!”, though more than half of them likely had no idea why. Mark Henry is getting a No DQ, No Countout match against Punk next week, which will hopefully be even better than their stellar match on RAW a week and a half ago. And hey, Zack Ryder got squashed! Was Miz even on the show?

So… Twitter. I know some of you don’t like Twitter being used on wrestling TV, but it’s still a great tool to keep in touch with people, discuss things shortly and make knee-jerk reactions (my favourite!). I’ve had Twitter for a couple years now, but I let it sit for a while until just recently. Now I’ve been using it more often and I’d love it if you joined me. Tweet me @nickmarsico and use #WedWi to join the discussion. Go for it!

Next week: Knee-jerk reactions!

– Nicholas A. Marsico