The Wednesday Wire: 7.18.12: He’s Baaaaaa-aaaack! Redux

It’s Wednesday again therefore it’s time for the #WedWi! For realsies this time! In Technicolor! Dolby Digital 5.1! Closed Captioning where available!

Since I’ve been gone…

– I can’t really count my column from July 4th as any sort of return since it was more of a quick appearance than anything else. I wanted to get my late report from No Way Out done and put up some of those pictures, but I didn’t talk about anything relevant, so I can understand any frustration from people who expected my award-winning journalism two weeks ago and didn’t get it. Sorry about that.

– Holy shit, Austin Aries won the TNA World Title! I don’t think anybody saw that coming, but that’s the beauty of a well booked show. It was a surprise but it wasn’t a title change for the sake of shocking people. Aries has been booked very strong since he returned to TNA last year and has been the highlight of Impact Wrestling along with Bully Ray, so when they started pushing toward him wanting to be the main event it didn’t feel rushed or forced. Everybody has been expecting Roode to keep the title until James Storm gets his shot by winning the Bound for Glory Series, but maybe they’re going a different way with it. Maybe Storm sacrifices a series match to get his hands on Roode before Bound for Glory and then completes his quest for redemption by beating Aries at Bound for Glory. I’d be fine with that.

– Tyson Kidd is getting a push? It seemed to come absolutely out of nowhere, but maybe his great match on NXT with Michael McGillicutty finally opened some eyes. It’s a slightly bigger stage than Superstars and even the old NXT, so it’s feasible. Also, for people who are saying that his recent appearances can’t be called a push, let’s remember that before the past few weeks he never showed up on RAW or SmackDown at all and now he’s not only appearing, but he’s winning and qualified for the Money in the Bank match. It’s not a Superman push, but Kidd is not being treated like a loser no matter how little time he’s getting.

– Sara Del Rey got hired by WWE. Didn’t see that coming. The reports are saying that she’s been signed to primarily train the girls in developmental but I hope they also bring her to the main shows. Kharma may be gone from the company as well, which would be a shame. It’s a story of really bad timing and in the end nobody won. WWE didn’t get to use her for whatever they had planned, she didn’t get to be on TV for more than a cup of coffee and personal matters also took a turn for the worst.

– Hornswoggle was revealed as the Anonymous RAW General Manager. Wow.

Professional Wrestling News: ECW; Sunny; WrestleMania Weekend

ECW Has New Management
A company named “Mocker” bought the ECW brand for use in pro wrestling. There’s gotta be a “WWE owns Mocker” joke in there. I pretty much just made it, actually.

Sunny Checks In To Rehab
After ranting on Twitter like an idiot (then again, who doesn’t?) and bragging about how “hot” it was that some loser indy wrestler (presumably her boyfriend) puller her panties off at a show. And she kept them off for the rest of the match! While just standing there ringside! With a bunch of kids in the audience! I don’t know how to sympathize. I refuse to blame the wrestling industry for cases like her. There are tons of men and women who have been in and out of the business that haven’t been overtaken by addictions. Just note that I am not blaming Sunny or anybody else that has encountered problems with drugs and/or alcohol. It’s a disease, at least arguably, and it has ruined a lot of lives. My main point is that people need to stop blaming “life on the road” and the tumultuous nature of the wrestling business for the problems that so many people involved in wrestling have encountered.

WrestleMania Weekend Set!
All sorts of independent action has been scheduled for WrestleMania weekend next April. Ring of Honor has announced that they will be bringing back their Supercard of Honor show to the Hammerstein Ballroom in NYC. That was followed up by a huge announcement on behalf of EVOLVE, Dragon Gate USA, CHIKARA, SHIMMER and CZW, who will be running a number of shows over WrestleMania weekend in New Jersey as a part of the WrestleCon event at the Meadowlands Expo Center in Secaucus. And of course I moved from New Jersey to Florida last month, so I missed the WrestleMania weekend stuff this year and they’re all rubbing it in next year. Fuckers.

WWE Money In The Bank 2012: The “Shocking” Conclusion

Cena Wins Money In The Bank
In the most foregone of any foregone conclusion in the history of foregone conclusions, John Cena prevailed in his 5-man ladder match and became Mr. Money in the Bank. He has thus saved WWE from The Big Show, a man who hasn’t won a meaningful match since turning heel and whose biggest accomplishment was being the first man to hand Brodus Clay a defeat. Miz made his big return earlier in the evening, but his involvement in the match didn’t affect the outcome. Kane and Chris Jericho were there too.

CM Punk Keeps His Title, AJ Does Nothing
It was very odd to find that AJ didn’t have any influence at all in the outcome of this match. I guess when she said that she was going to make sure the best man would win she meant that she was going to let them fight it out so that the best man actually would win by way of earning a victory. Odd.

Dolph Ziggler: Mr. Money in the Bank!
Of course he would loook foolish later on when he tried to cash in on Sheamus but didn’t even get a chance to have a match, but it seems like they ignored that completely the next night on RAW. I get the sinking feeling that he’s not going to cash in and win, though. My hope is that his time with the briefcase is similar to Edge’s first run as Mr. MITB. He spent the year becoming a bigger star and cashed it in after 10 months when people weren’t paying any attention. RAW saw a tease for a Jericho/Ziggler feud that promises to be fantastic.

The Rest: World Title Match and Filler
Could we call Sheamus v. Del Rio filler as well? It doesn’t seem to matter at all and I don’t see ADR being the guy to take the title from Sheamus. I would have preferred to see Ryback take out four “local talents” than defeat two jobbers under boring circumstances. I liked that there was a tag match with some build that didn’t feature the Champions, but wasn’t it pretty much heels versus heels? It was also clearly not a #1 Contendership match based on the nonsensical decision to have the losers of the match challenge for the Tag Titles the following night. Maybe I’ll talk about the actual match quality next week if I get a chance to, ya know, see the show instead of just read the results.

WWE Monday Night RAW 7.16.12: The Final Two Hours

This was the first episode of RAW that I have had the time to watch live (ish) in a while now. I missed the first 25 minutes or so but thanks to the wonders of modern television I was able to restart it from the beginning. The wonders of modern television also cost me the last 5 or so minutes of episode 999, but I have since checked it out. Not that anybody cares about any of that.

AJ and Daniel Bryan To Wed
I don’t think Cole or Lawler once mentioned that Miz and Bryan had a long standing rivalry a short while back, but I wasn’t fully paying attention. Miz looks more like a man with his different hair style and bit of facial hair growth (which totally worked for Ted DiBiase Jr) and he must think that the huge bags under the eyes look is what propelled CM Punk toward his 8-month reign as WWE Champion. The match was there only to get to the proposal, which is annoying to no end because it was a waste of Miz’ return to RAW, but the important angle here continues to develop. I wonder what role, if any, Punk is going to play next week. Are we going to chalk up his entire time as a part of the storyline as just AJ screwing with Bryan and Punk only being there because he was the WWE Champ? Granted Punk has far bigger fish to fry next week, but that’s pretty anticlimactic.

Punk v. Big Show and Cena’s Challenge
The other big development on RAW was the Show/Punk match that was followed by Cena’s announcement to cash in his Money in the Bank contract next week on RAW. Punk and Show had a very good match that captured the crowd’s attention wonderfully. The important part is that Cena will be the second man (although they will likely play it off as him being the first) to announce in advance when he will be cashing in for his opportunity at the belt. The match next week should be awesome and the crowd will be fantastic so I am definitely looking forward to it. My fear is that it’s going to end in Big show’s interference and Cena winning the belt in a triple threat at SummerSlam, but maybe they’ll surprise us and put Punk over big by having him beat cena clean to close out the big 1000th episode. That would be stellar.

Ryback Gets a Real Challenge?
It seems that the 3/4 retarded bastard child of the awesome Lesnar v. Hardys feud is officially over and Ryback will continue moving up toward real members of the WWE roster. When Ryback’s music hit while Swagger was in the ring it was certainly disheartening, but then Swagger became the first guy to make a real impact on Ryback. What I would love to see: Swagger and Ryback have a competitive match at SummerSlam that gets both men more over. What we will see: Ryback beats Swagger next week on RAW and nobody benefits from it. It would be spectacular (like Teri Hatcher’s boobs) if they could prove me wrong. Meanwhile, Brodus Clay went back to squashing on-the-roster-jobbers when he beat JTG.

The Rest: Ryder, Rikishi, wRong Challengers
Shockingly, Zack Ryder got his ass kicked by ADR. I do love when Del Rio gets extra aggressive, but it was bittersweet due to it being at the expense of LIIZ. Oh well. Not worth complaining about. Deaf ears and all. Rikishi’s return cameo was a lot of fun and the surprise appearance of his kids was great to watch. Definitely a small RAW highlight this week. Can anybody explain to me why the Prime Time Players got a shot at Kofi & Truth after losing clean last night to Primo & Epico? How do you lose a tag match on PPV to your biggest rivals and then come out the next night and come inches away from winning the tag belts while the other team is nowhere to be found? I’m glad to see more tag teams around and more than just a ‘champs v. challengers’ rivalry, but I have a feeling that the roll-up victory Primo & Epico got on the PtP on Sunday was the “big” blowoff to their short feud.

Free Pro Wrestling: NWA Hollywood and AAW

That’s going to be it. Join me next week so we can talk about Tout and Twitter and Facebook and have a social mediagasm! Or just the usual.

Next week: TNA talk? Ring of Honor frustrations? Excited chitter chatter about the new Step Up movie?

– Nicholas A. Marsico