The Wrestling News Experience: 07.16.12

Monday, July 16th, 2012

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

Not Everything. Not Yet.

Good morning, everyone, and welcome to the Experience. I am Stephen Randle, and I wish I could get my wife my own personal action figure as a gift at Comic-Con. Somebody at Yukes want to get on that? In the meantime, here we go again. Nothing like coming home after a long day in a kitchen with a broken AC unit to get to watch WWE presents Money in the Bank. You know, I used to be able to get excited for WWE PPV’s. Seriously. I remember it like it was last year’s Money in the Bank PPV.

Moving on.

Slimmer has the live coverage, I got home in time for Sheamus-Del Rio. Despite this, I kept going.

Kofi Kingston and R-Truth defeated Hunico and Camacho to retain the WWE Tag Team Titles (Truth pinned Camacho, What’s Up)

Dolph Ziggler won the World Heavyweight Championship Money in the Bank match

Hey, look, I (and a lot of people) was right. That’s shocking enough in its own right.

And Miz inserted himself into MITB match, because there clearly wasn’t enough time on any Raw in the last three weeks to have him do that. Not like Miz is selling PPV buys, but come on, it was looking like a really sad MITB match with only four people advertised.

I really don’t think “a slightly different shade of gold” counts as totally new colours for Del Rio, guys.

So, the story out of Cole is, Sheamus got picked on for having red hair and pale skin growing up in Ireland. You know it’s hard to believe when even Lawler goes “Um…really?”

Hey, I’m not saying all Irish look that way. I’m just saying, if there’s one country you wouldn’t be out of place looking like Sheamus, that’d be the one.

Somebody stop me from trying to explain myself.

Sheamus defeated Alberto Del Rio to retain the World Heavyweight Championship (pinfall, Brogue Kick)

Well, that was a pretty decisive finish. Del Rio beats Sheamus down after the match, in frustration, likely at the fact that his spot is about to be stolen by…

Yes, Ziggler runs out to cash to a huge pop! And he flattens Del Rio with the case!

Noooo! My pick ‘em was nearly correct!

Nothing to see here, as you were.

So Cole can’t see Little Jimmy, which falls into line with the idea that only the pure of heart can see him. Which doesn’t make any sense, because I can see him just fine.

Christ. All right, you have two tag matches. One features the tag champions putting the belts on the line, and the other features the alleged #1 Contenders, who haven’t actually won a match since they became #1 Contenders, as I recall.. Which one would you show for free, and which one would you have people pay to see? If you said “I’d show the Tag Title match for free”, you, my friend, have what WWE is looking for.

On the other hand, this way we get to hear Kofi Kingston christen Titus O’Neal “Seabiscuit”.

You know, for a guy whose only value is as a mouthpiece, you’d think AW would manage to squeak out something more than variants on “come on, let’s go” every few seconds.

Primo y Epico defeated The Prime Time Players (Epico pinned Young, rollup)

I don’t think they know who they’re actually pushing anymore.

Oh for the love of…I’m not horribly shocked, but the WWE Title match, which has an actual long-running (if slightly stupid) storyline that will be getting paid off tonight (in theory), once again does not main event the PPV in favour of “The Match Containing John Cena”. You know what, I’m doing it. The “John Cena Main Event Championship” is now a real thing, which will be defended by John Cena at every PPV, even though he can never actually lose it. I’ll come up with a belt graphic once I have five seconds in Photoshop. Which is roughly how long it took them to design the spinner.

The WWE Title match is now No-DQ, No Count-out, as WWE misses another chance to cross-promote by calling it “No Holds Barred”. But then, I’m not convinced they actually want to make any money off that DVD release.

Well, the good news is, AJ is basically staying out of the way and letting them wrestle a real match. I imagine that will change for the finish, but could we get an actual good match first?

And now she bumps and gets replaced by a real ref. Excellent. Again, I imagine she’ll be back, but hey, a wrestling match is going on now!

Oh, AJ’s back, time for the finish.

CM Punk defeated Daniel Bryan to retain the WWE Championship (pinfall, Top Rope Back Suplex Through Table)

Well, that was an ending that didn’t actually answer any questions about whose side AJ is on. Joy.

I can’t believe Curt Hawkins is still using the entrance music from when he tagged with Ryder. Then again, I can’t believe Hawkins still has entrance music.

I like how they talk about Ryback’s training like every other wrestler on the roster doesn’t have similar tough regimens.

Ryback defeated Curt Hawkins and Tyler Reks (Ryback pinned Reks, Shellshock)

Seriously? It’s 10:15 and we’re putting on more filler? With intros, the WWE Title MITB match is going to be roughly ten minutes at this point.

Layla, Kaitlyn, and Tamina Snuka defeated Beth Phoenix, Natalya, and Eve (Layla pinned Beth, neckbreaker)

Well, that certainly passed some time. It didn’t feature a big return or create a new challenger for Layla, but it definitely existed.

It’s nice of Jerry to pretend that the ladders burying Show actually weigh anything, but 700 pounds is a bit of a stretch.

Well, I can’t imagine that’s exactly how it was supposed to end, but it really doesn’t matter if he gets the case while beating up Show, or afterwards, I guess.

John Cena won the WWE Championship Money in the Bank Match

You know, I know we say “nothing ever changes”, but it’s nice to know that now Cena’s holding a briefcase that guarantees that nothing will change. Sorry, not nice. Some other word that’s not suitable for mixed company.

Tonight, it’s the lamest of lame-duck Raws, as we’ll get fallout from Money in the Bank, but with everything important set to happen on next week’s Raw 1000, I can’t imagine they’ll be too concerned about filling tonight’s show with “must-see” moments. But let’s see what happens in between the dozen or so promos for Raw 1000.

Anyway, last night, CM Punk managed to hold off Daniel Bryan and the threat of AJ as referee to come away with the WWE Title safely in his possession. However, having retained the title without any real help from AJ didn’t seem to satisfy the WWE’s smallest Diva, so one has to wonder what she might try tonight to make Punk’s life much more…interesting.

Plus, Punk has a new threat to worry about, as John Cena has come out of Money in the Bank with the eponymous briefcase containing a guaranteed title shot. One has to wonder if Cena will actually allow himself to take advantage of the…um…advantage that the briefcase offers, or if he will force himself to go the honourable route, but one thing is for sure, sooner or later, John Cena is going to cash in.

Meanwhile, Sheamus retained the World Heavyweight Title decisively against Alberto Del Rio, but very nearly fell prey to an opportunistic Dolph Ziggler, who nearly cashed in on the champion, but was fought off by the Celtic Warrior before he could actually do the deed. Still, Sheamus must be worried that Ziggler will always be on the lookout for his best chance.

And The Prime Time Players were embarrassed, both by their opponents at the PPV and by the tag champions, and maybe that will give them motivation to finally have their shot at the WWE Tag Team titles.

All this and whatever else they can throw into two hours, as it’s the last Raw before it goes three hours long permanently (or, you know, whatever) next week!

How To Fail While Trying Really Hard

Well, we’re a week out from Raw 1000, which I may have mentioned somewhere in the Raw preview, and everyone backstage is really excited for the expansion to three hours and new “Raw Active” features that look to be a big part of WWE’s future. No, I’m just kidding, everyone’s pretty sure it’s going to be a dismal failure and we’ll be back to two hour Raws before 2013. And I think it takes a special level of “not giving a shit what anyone else says, I’m going to do it anyway” to go through with expanding Raw to three hours when everyone and their dog can see the big ol’ pile of failure it’s pretty much assured to be from miles and miles away. Hell, modern pro wrestling history has plenty of examples of why three hour shows are a Bad Idea, capital letters intentional. And not just Monday Nitro, there’s also the myriad of “death march Raws”, once they stopped bothering to have three hour shows for any particular reason and just running longer shows with the same old content. But, dammit, Vince and USA want three hours of Raw, and we’re going to get it, come hell or a group of people who can’t even write two decent hours of Raw on a weekly basis.

And just to dissuade you of the belief that we might get interesting and/or original content with another sixty minutes of Raw every week, think again. What you’re about to be looking at it a whole load of…Tout.

Yes, Tout, the basically unheard-of bastard stepchild of YouTube, which will allow people to make fifteen second videos and upload them to the Internet. And, thanks to WWE bankrolling a significant portion of the company who developed Tout, they’re calling on WWE fans everywhere to upload their own videos so that WWE can put them on Raw and Smackdown and thereby get out of writing ten to fifteen minutes worth of actual content every week. And judging by the insipid early videos that aired on last Friday’s Smackdown, it’s going to be very, very annoying.

Man, I know TNA’s not perfect (oh Lord, how I know this), even now that they’re on an actual hot streak, and things like the AJ Soap Opera are pretty bad, but at least I don’t have to tune into Impact and hear a dozen blurry fifteen second videos from random people telling me why they think AJ is awesome and Daniels is poopy.

Kharmic Backlash

So, a strange story circulated last week, as Kharma’s profile was moved to the Alumni section of WWE.com, suggesting that she might have been released. The profile then bounced back and forth a bit, but has settled back into Alumni, and the questions continue. Speculation is that Kharma was set to be released, but due to WWE.com essentially leaking it early, WWE may have decided against doing so right away.

Let me stop this right here. Does that even make any sense at all? WWE decided not to release someone because their release was leaked before they could announce it? If anything, usually they’ll just confirm releases, not decide to keep that person on the roster. What, do you think they’re worried that the surprise was ruined? No, they moved Kharma to Alumni because she’s been out of real action for over a year and they tend to move people who aren’t on TV for a while off the “Active Roster” list. Hell, they put Show in the Alumni section when Johnny Ace “fired” him, and everyone knew that wasn’t real. Also, the possibility exists that Kharma is being prepped for a return shortly (as we all know she’s been getting ready), and WWE.com decided it’d be more “shocking” if she was quietly removed from the active roster so that people wouldn’t expect her to come back. Of course, this is the Internet, so nothing gets done quietly, and now here we are.

Frankly, I don’t expect Kharma to get released, and in fact I was even expecting her to return in that useless Divas match on the PPV last night. Until I see that release notice on WWE.com, this news is just a whole bunch of speculation and rumour, which, hey, we’re good at, but apparently nobody has noticed, even though I’ve pointed it out a lot lately, that WWE has been leaking clearly false news and stirring up rumours in a clear attempt to “work the Internet”. And yet people keep biting. So, I guess they should go with what works. Or, you know, they could stop spending their time tweaking the Internet and pay more attention to their declining product. But hey, who am I to tell them how to waste their afternoons.

From the “Ridiculous Stats That Crazy People Pay Attention To” department, John Cena won his 100th match of 2012 last week, giving him a record for the year thus far of..100-4, with 4 Draws/No Contests. I’m hoping that counts house shows, but now the idiot in me wants to figure out what those four losses were. Well, one was The Rock, obviously. Did Kane manage to ever beat him during their insipid feud? Somebody find out for me so I can talk about it on the podcast

– For more fun, Daniel Bryan, who has wrestled the most matches this year in WWE with 113, is 35-74, also with 4 Draws/NC. And yet, he’s still over. Hey, maybe wins and losses don’t matter! Maybe John Cena could actually lose more than 4 matches in six months and still be popular! Nah…

– Former WWE Superstar Carlito mentioned on Twitter that he doesn’t “get” Zack Ryder, so for his benefit I’ll explain it here. He’s a guy who didn’t noticeably slack off just because he wasn’t getting a push on TV and tried to earn one instead, and got to keep his job rather than get shit-canned during a random firing spree because they “had nothing for him”. Wait, now I know why you don’t understand.

– It seems like more Knockouts may follow Angelina Love out the door of TNA, mostly due to TNA not paying them very much and wanting to shift most of the lower-paid talent to “pay per use” deals instead of contracts. I guess that will make predicting who will win the Knockouts title every match pretty easy. Assuming they learned from the Kenny King-ROH deal that they took advantage of.

– On the other side, WWE has signed long-time indy sensation Sara Del Ray to a contract, with plans to have her both wrestle and help train new Divas. Apparently WWE may have decided that, in the wake of their current crop of “models turned wrestlers” realizing that they can make more money for less effort and without getting the crap kicked out of them in other areas, it might be a good idea to focus on women who actually got into wrestling to wrestle. A shocking concept, I know, but as with anything involving WWE pushing someone who isn’t John Cena or Randy Orton, I’ll believe it when I see it on TV for more than two weeks.

– And next year’s Royal Rumble will be in Phoenix, which, like many WWE PPV’s, is a funny way to spell “Toronto, so I can actually go see one live”. Hell, even the next Raw-Smackdown tapings in Eastern Canada are skipping Toronto, so I guess I’ll take my money elsewhere. I could use another ivory backscratcher…

1. CM Punk Retaining the WWE Title in a No DQ match against one of your biggest rivals in history is hard enough, and even worse is not knowing whose side the referee may come down on. The answer, of course, was “nobody, she called the pinfalls fairly”, but that works for the guy who turned down her marriage proposal last week.

2. John Cena Hey, good news, now that Cena has a guaranteed title shot, there’s a chance that the WWE Title could actually main event a PPV! Oh, wait, SummerSlam is getting headlined by Brock and Triple H. Never mind, then. One assumes the John Cena Main Event Title isn’t defended in such a situation, of course.

3. Dolph Ziggler The fear will always be there until it happens for the first time that Ziggler might be the one to cash in and lose, but until that day, he holds a case that means it’s only a matter of time before Dolph Ziggler will legitimately be a World Champion. No, the goddamned phantom title reign still doesn’t count to me.

4. Ryback Laugh, but at this point, with Punk and Bryan mired in AJ-land, he’s the only WWE Superstar besides Cena who isn’t being booked like a chump under the albatross known as “50/50 booking”. Sometimes, some people just plain win all of the time. Plus, we learned he does know how to sell…somewhat.

5. RVD Van Dam scores a BFG win over the current frontrunner Samoa Joe, which also serves as to why the Series is so interesting: on any given night, due to the high level of talent in the Series (and Robbie E), anyone can beat anyone and get points.

6. Bobby Roode Aries is awesome, of course, but credit must go to the former champion, who, possibly for the first time in the history of angry displaced champs, didn’t have a prepared speech ready to go and instead just fumed angrily, unable to form even the simplest sentence. The anger was palpable, and just as good as if he’d waxed eloquent about how angry he was.

7. Layla With half the roster vanished and the other half on the losing side last night, is there anyone realistically left to challenge Layla in some sort of actual feud?

8. Chris Jericho Don’t worry, Chris. You may just be an inconvenient piggybacker to John Cena, but the rest of us still respect you for what you did last night.

9. Kingston/Truth A pre-show win, plus they did entertaining commentary during the PPV and finished up by getting one-up on their closest competitors. I want to see the match where AW fights Little Jimmy.

10. The Miz Hey, he’s back. I mean, he was a non-factor in the MITB match, but that doesn’t mean his future can’t be bright, right?

Inactive List as of 07.09.12

WWE Raw

– Evan Bourne, out indefinitely as of March 19th (foot)
– Kelly Kelly, out indefinitely as of June 5th (R&R)
– Kharma, out indefinitely as of January 2012 (personal)

WWE SmackDown

– Mark Henry, out indefinitely as of May 1st (surgery)
– Randy Orton, out 60 days as of May 31st (Wellness)
– Ted Dibiase, out indefinitely as of March 7th (ankle)
– Wade Barrett, out 3-4 months as of Februrary 20th (dislocated elbow)

WWE NXT

– Bray Wyatt, out six months as of July 4th (torn pectoral)

TNA

– Chris Sabin, out 6-9 months as of June 14th (ACL)
– Eric Young, day-to-day as of June 14th (throat surgery)
– Jesse Sorenson, out at least one year as of February 12th (spine)

Transactions

– David Otunga, RAW, out indefinitely as of July 7th (movie)

– Kharma, RAW, moved to WWE Alumni section (status uncertain)

– PAC, signed to a WWE contract

– Sara Del Ray, signed to a WWE contract

– The Miz, RAW, returned to action at Money in the Bank PPV

WWE

WWE Champion: CM Punk
– 239 day reign, defeated Alberto Del Rio on November 20th (Survivor Series PPV)

World Heavyweight Champion: Sheamus
– 106 day reign, defeated Daniel Bryan on April 1st (WrestleMania XXVIII)

WWE Intercontinental Champion: Christian
– 57 day reign, defeated Cody Rhodes on May 20th (Over The Limit PPV)

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

WWE Tag Team Champions: Kofi Kingston and R-Truth
– 77 day reign, defeated Epico and Primo on April 30th (Raw)
– Next title defense: vs The Prime Time Players, date undetermined

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

TNA

TNA Heavyweight Champion: Austin Aries
– 8 day reign, defeated Bobby Roode on July 8th (Destination X PPV)
– Next title defense: vs Bobby Roode, Hardcore Justice PPV

TNA Tag Team Champions: Christopher Daniels and Kazarian
– 18 day reign, defeated Kurt Angle and AJ Styles on June 28th Impact

TNA X-Division Champion: Zema Ion
– 8 day reign, defeated Kenny King, Mason Andrews, and Sonjay Dutt in an Ultimate X Match on July 8th to claim the vacant title (Destination X PPV)

TNA Knockouts Champion: Miss Tessmacher
– 36 day reign, defeated Gail Kim on June 9th (Slammiversary PPV)

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

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

De Marco has The Wrestling 5&1.

Sarnecky has The Piledriver Report.

Acero has The Triumverate of Truth.

And the latest TWNE After Dark went from one extreme to the other, as I ranted about Raw and WWE’s inability to follow through on their storylines and deliver payoffs, then raved about the Bound For Glory series and the things TNA is actually doing right that gives me hope for wrestling.

Also, don’t forget to join the TWNE After Dark a Facebook group. And, after checking said group, it looks like TWNE After Dark may be moving to Wednesdays if my new work schedule holds. Everything is still in a bit of flux, so we’ll do a trial run this week, as TWNE After Dark will go live Wednesday night at about 10 pm, and we’ll see how that goes.

411 will have live coverage of the last two-hour Raw (oh boy) 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 10 pm EDT this Thursday!

Here it is, your Moment of Buddy

Buddy Is So Money, Baby, He Don’t Even Know It.

Have a good one, and always be a fan.