The Wrestling News Experience: 05.14.12

Monday, May 14th, 2012

From 411Mania’s Canadian offices in Kitchener, Ontario, Canada, this is The Wrestling News Experience, with Stephen Randle!

You Know Nothing, Jon Snow

Good morning, everyone, and welcome to the Experience. I am Stephen Randle, and while Community getting renewed in the Friday night death slot for half a season may be better than nothing, it’s only just. I mean, seriously, NBC, you’re a wasteland of television beaten routinely by everyone else, you might as well just go all-on on “critically acclaimed” TV instead. But hey, I’m sure the tenth season of the Office will be just as interesting as…you know what, I can’t even finish that sentence in good conscience.

But hey, you’re not here for that, unless you are, in which case, that part’s over, now we just have wrestling. Moving on.

Rinehart had the live coverage.

Christopher Daniels and Kazarian defeated Samoa Joe and Magnus to win the TNA Tag Titles (Daniels pinned Magnus, Total Elimination variant)

Gail Kim defeated Miss Tessmacher to retain the TNA Knockouts Title (pinfall, rope-assisted rollup)

And also congratulations to Gail for marrying Robert Irvine, who Food Network aficionados might recognize as the guy behind Dinner and Restaurant: Impossible. Apparently he planned and prepared the surprise wedding himself. Hopefully it gets televised with a little countdown clock like all his other shows.

Devon defeated Robbie E and Robbie T to retain the TNA TV Title (Devon pinned Robbie E, rollup)

Ken Anderson defeated Jeff Hardy (pinfall, rollup)

Ref shenanigans in the pinfall, apparently, but neither of these guys are heels so I’m confused as to why they’d bother.

Crimson defeated Eric Young (pinfall, Red Sky)

Austin Aries defeated Bully Ray (submission, Last Chancery)

Kurt Angle defeated AJ Styles (submission, Anklelock)

Bobby Roode defeated RVD in a Ladder Match to retain the TNA World Title

Last week, Johnny Ace’s power trip appeared to start spiralling wildly out of control, as he began enacting punishments for any perceived slights, including putting WWE Champion CM Punk in a handicap match against Lord Tensai and Daniel Bryan, and repeatedly threatening to have The Big Show fired for making fun of his voice. Because that’s what fans want to see, a seven-foot tall giant being castrated by the GM’s secretary. Also, he’s clearly pushing Michael Cole to try and convince people that a guy who hasn’t wrestled in twenty years and was never more than a jobber can beat John Cena, the man who beat Brock Lesnar two weeks ago. Anyway, while John Cena may have persuaded the Board of Directors to keep Johnny employed so he can kill him at Over The Limit, until then we are forced to deal with him, and both Johnnys will be in the ring face-to-face this week to promote their match at the PPV.

Also in the ring, but not in a match (you simple fools who want wrestling on Raw, when will you learn), Triple H will be at Raw to address Brock Lesnar’s resignation, hopefully while in the presence of Lesnar’s legal counsel, Paul Heyman. Hey, since when was Heyman a lawyer? I thought that was just his parents.

And after having his one-on-one World title match switched to a Fatal Fourway at the last minute, it seems like Alberto Del Rio has made it his goal to take out all his other opponents before the PPV. Can the Mexican Aristocrat succeed in his goal to destroy the arms of Sheamus, Randy Orton, and Chris Jericho?

Plus, the new tag team champions will likely be in action, All World Enterprises continues to scout talent, and the Funkasaurus continues to look for anyone who can possibly challenge his dominance, tonight on Raw!

– No big news other than John Cena getting divorced, and like I said in the podcast, all the good jokes about that already got used up. Plus, what is there to that story, anyway? He’s getting divorced. I’ll wait until the sex tapes start leaking before I start running with this bit.

– Actually, wait, there’s one joke I can do. Apparently Vince McMahon has decided it’s time to look for the “next” John Cena. I assume he’ll do it by following Cena’s ex-wife around the country.

– WWE is moving FCW and NXT tapings to Full Sail University, which, I guess, means that NXT is going to continue until the heat-death of the universe. It’s kind of amazing that WWE came up with a unique and interesting idea in NXT and managed to run it into the ground and take away the entire original concept slowly until it became a shadow of its former self with very little interesting about it at all. Wait, replace “kind of amazing” with “not surprising at all, given that they always do this with anything that shows the slightest bit of uniqueness or creativity”.

– But hey, Jim Ross might come back to announce NXT. So clearly they aren’t even going to pretend that anyone in the WWE front office is paying attention to that show. It’s really the only way I could see him agreeing to do any regular announcing for them again. Well, that and they have to promise never to move the tapings to Oklahoma.

– There were apparently a lot of problems with ROH’s iPPV last night, which angered a lot of people who were surprised that something on the Internet was not exactly as promised. You can replace “the Internet” with “pro wrestling” and still have the same joke! But to their credit, ROH has promised to make good to everyone, which is more than I’d expect if the same thing ever happened to WWE. Hell, they’d probably charge you extra for their special “enhanced PPV”, where not being forced to watch Lord Tensai matches due to network issues is totally worth an extra five bucks.

– By the way, I know there’s suddenly a bunch of Tensai apologists out there, and before you start telling me that he’s not so bad and we should see where this goes and every other clichéd statement that people use when they don’t want to admit that something sucks, I think it’s very important that you realize I don’t care. Maybe he will improve in six months or so (although he has been wrestling for over a decade, I’m not sure he’s suddenly going to “get it” in a few weeks), but at this instant where I’m making a statement about what I feel he is right now, he sucks. You’ll just have to live with the fact that I have an opinion that is not yours. And once the Internet has come to terms with the idea of accepting other peoples’ opinions, it is my understanding that we’ll all be able to go ice skating in Hell.

– Some rapper is challenging Chris Jericho over an incident where Jericho took his cellphone away for taking Jericho’s picture at a nightclub without asking, and apparently this is junior year at high school all over again. Plus, the lights from Jericho’s flashy jacket made the picture look all blurry anyway.

– MMA fighter “King Mo” has reportedly signed with TNA and Bellator for a joint wrestling/fighting contract. Mo made headlines for getting suspended for nine months for doing a whole whack of drugs, then getting fired by Zuffa after he called someone in the Nevada State Athletic Commission a “racist bitch”. How could this possibly not backfire horribly for anyone? I mean, anyone besides people like me who will be waiting for the inevitable explosion with at least sixteen jokes on the line.

– Vince McMahon is listed as a donor for Mitt Romney. So the five million for Lesnar wasn’t the biggest waste of money he’s made lately.

– Steve Austin will be hosting a reality show on CMT, because it was that or the network would be forced to officially change their slogan to “24 hours of Reba episodes”.

– Former Miss USA and Tough Enough contestant Rima Fakih was sentenced to probation for her DUI and will also be appearing on new Fox reality show “The Choice” where minor celebrities get set up on blind dates. I swear they create reality shows by pulling words out of hats at this point.

– There may be heat on Triple H for getting to accompany Floyd Mayweather to the ring when CM Punk was denied a similar opportunity with Chael Sonnen, but anyone angry at him should probably take heart in the fact that he played second fiddle to Justin Bieber and was largely ignored by the media in attendance, and you just know it’s killing him inside.

– Meanwhile, Punk got to sing “Take Me Out To The Ballgame” at Wrigley and was quite well received. Although apparently WWE was going to send Lillian Garcia as well, but she couldn’t remember the words and had to bow out.

– Paul Heyman spent some time since his WWE return talking about who his favourite tag team and female wrestlers are, thus ensuring that they’ll never get a push ever again.

1. Daniel Bryan Bryan is steamrolling into Over The Limit, already with a win in a handicap match over Punk, plus he totally made the Big Show submit, really and for true, on Smackdown. Just because AJ can’t get over him shouldn’t be held against him, right?

2. Alberto Del Rio I’m pretty sure he’s not winning the title, but he’s currently the most dominant and least injured of the four men in the upcoming title match, if only because he keeps injuring the other three. Actually solid booking, too, because he was screwed out of his one-on-one match and put into something that lowers his odds of winning. Plus, you know, it almost makes the World title mean something, if only a little.

3. CM Punk HE didn’t win against all odds, but really, that’s why people prefer Punk over Cena in the first place. Also, he spent about ten minutes making fun of Johnny Ace and all of it gold, Jerry, gold!

4. Ryback Pulling away from fellow “undefeated” Lord Tensai if only due to the fact that his matches are so short that they can’t be boring. It’s worrisome that they haven’t come up with a feud for him yet, but then, the endgame of what to do with Goldberg once you had to do more with him that beat jobbers was always the problem that they tried to avoid in WCW too.

5. Chris Jericho Del Rio earned his spot a month ago and Orton is Orton so he’s going to get in there anyway, but kudos to Jericho for managing to sneak into the World title match as well, when a lot of people were worried that he’d have nothing to do after Punk. I mean, this is only slightly better than nothing, and his entire return has been essentially a waste of time, but hey, World title matches on PPV aren’t a bad way to spend your free time.

6. AJ Styles Hey, way to go, AJ, you’re allegedly nailing the owner of TNA. Allegedly. The downside, of course, is that Dixie’s going to end up back on TV attempting to “act”.

7. Titus/D.Young Do these guys just make up chants and dances for every situation in their spare time? Hey, at least it’s got people forgetting that Young’s old claim to fame was looking strangely like John Cena’s alternate universe counterpart.

8. Antonio Cesaro I feel like they’re going to have to drop the whole “rugby” thing if they every plan to make him more than a midcarder, and I suspect after Kidd nearly got decapitated in his debut we’ve seen the last of the Swiss Death uppercut (he used a standard European one this week), but for those who didn’t see Cesaro in ROH, the talent is clearly there for him to excel on the larger stage.

9. The Big Show Poor Show. Yelled at by Eve and belittled by Johnny. Maybe he should take some inspiration from the Hulk (the green one, not the orange guy) and remember that while there’s not much call for giants outside of wrestling, inside of wrestling, he can pretty much destroy anything he wants to, including pesky annoying GM’s who keep poking him in the chest.

10. The Avengers So powerful and awesome they defy genres. If you haven’t seen it, why do you even have the ability to watch movies? You’re clearly just wasting it.

Inactive List as of 05.07.12

WWE Raw

– Evan Bourne, out indefinitely as of March 19th (foot)
– Kharma, out indefinitely as of January 2012 (personal)
– Rey Mysterio, out 60 days as of April 19th (Wellness)

WWE SmackDown

– Christian, day-to-day as of March 26th (not medically cleared for competition)
– Justin Gabriel, day-to-day as of April 2nd (forearm)
– Sin Cara, out 6-9 months as of November 20th (ruptured patella)
– Wade Barrett, out 3-4 months as of Februrary 20th (dislocated elbow)

TNA

– James Storm, out 3-4 weeks as of April 20th (R&R)
– Jesse Sorenson, out at least one year as of February 12th (spine)
– Ric Flair, out 4-6 months as of September 14th (tricep)

Transactions

– Matt Morgan, TNA, fulfilled all contracted appearances, removed from TV

– Paul Heyman, made WWE TV return on May 7th Raw

WWE

WWE Champion: CM Punk
– 176 day reign, defeated Alberto Del Rio on November 20th (Survivor Series PPV)
– Next title defense: vs Daniel Bryan, Over The Limit PPV

World Heavyweight Champion: Sheamus
– 43 day reign, defeated Daniel Bryan on April 1st (WrestleMania XXVIII)
– Next title defense: vs Alberto Del Rio, Randy Orton, and Chris Jericho, Fatal Four-Way Match, Over The Limit PPV

WWE Intercontinental Champion: Cody Rhodes
– 15 day reign, defeated The Big Show on April 29th (Extreme Rules PPV)

WWE United States Champion: Santino Marella
– 70 day reign, defeated Jack Swagger on March 5th (Raw)

WWE Tag Team Champions: Kofi Kingston and R-Truth
– 14 day reign, defeated Epico and Primo on April 30th (Raw)
– Next title defense: vs Dolph Ziggler and Jack Swagger, Over The Limit PPV

WWE Divas’ Champion: Layla
– 15 day reign, defeated Nikki Bella on April 29th (Extreme Rules PPV)

TNA

TNA Heavyweight Champion: Bobby Roode
– 193 day reign, defeated James Storm on November 3rd (Impact)

**NEW** TNA Tag Team Champions: Christopher Daniels and Kazarian
– 1 day reign, defeated Samoa Joe and Magnus on May 13th (Sacrifice PPV)

TNA X-Division Champion: Austin Aries
– 240 day reign, defeated Brian Kendrick on September 11th (No Surrender PPV)

TNA Knockouts Champion: Gail Kim
– 183 day reign, defeated Velvet Sky on November 13th (Turning Point PPV)

TNA Knockouts Tag Team Champions: ODB and Eric Young
– 67 day reign, defeated Gail Kim and Madison Rayne on March 8th (Impact)

TNA Television Champion: Devon
– 57 day reign, defeated Robbie E on March 18th (Victory Road PPV)

De Marco has The Wrestling 5&1.

Frame has The Wrestling Framework.

Rutherford has The Wrestling Sandwich.

And this week’s TWNE After Dark is online at Spreaker.com, wherein I continue to rant about things that annoy me, but also look at John Cena’s divorce and my favourite announce team of all time! Click on the banner already!

411 will have live coverage of three hours of Raw tonight starting at 9 pm EDT.

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That’s our show, That Damned Cook is in tomorrow, I will be back next week. Plus, don’t forget to look for me this Wednesday in the Games Zone for Four Player Co-op, and the TWNE After Dark podcast at around 10 pm EDT this Thursday!

Here it is, your Moment of Buddy

Buddy Has Not Seen The Avengers.
He Has Lived It.

Have a good one, and always be a fan.