The Wednesday Wire: 8.15.12: Summerfest Approaches

Good morning Mister Wednesday! It’s time for the #WedWi! I’m Nick Marsico coming to you LIVE from Florida where the stars at night are big and bright.

Wait. That’s not right.

LIVE from Florida, where all my exes…

No. Bear with me. I’ll get it.

LIVE from Florida, it’s Saturday NIIIIIIGHT!

Close enough.

– The Contentious 10 Summerslam Matches with Gavin Napier
– The Wrestling News Experience with Stephen Randle
– The Wrestling 5&1: Michelle v. Yim with Greg De Marco
– The News From Cook’s Corner with Steve Cook
– The Piledriver Report: Kevin Nash with Ronny Sarnecky

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Washington fired.
Ivelisse out of a job.
It’s not spring, is it?

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COMMENTARY DISCUSSION: SummerSlam and Commentation Station

From the mecca: “I like Striker and Mathews on SD and King/Cole on raw. Striker brings obscure trivia facts and can be the heel and put over the story, Mathews calls the action in the ring, and calls out Striker being biased. I say let the young guys have Smackdown, maybe with the occasional visit from King or Cole. Cole does one smackdown a month and King does one and then we have 2 smackdowns a month where the young guys just take it on their own. it really seems like everyone but Cole understands make the guys in the ring seem like can’t miss and people will want to watch them. Cole comes off as saying you can miss this guy, and he does it enough people will start to believe it.”

The problem with commentary in general right now is exactly that. They’re so busy talking about everything else that they ignore the wrestlers in the ring a lot of the time, which pretty much tells the audience that there’s no reason anybody needs to pay attention to the guys in the middle of the arena. Back when Gabe Sapolsky was doing commentary for ROH, even though he stunk, the one thing that he was able to do was get over the guys in the ring. Granted he was the booker and knew exactly what he wanted to do, but his focus was on making sure he talked about the motivations of the guys in the ring on top of calling the moves.

From Brad B.: “How do you arrive at that ridiculous conclusion? Michael Cole has done nothing but suck for 15 straight years – as a typical face or badly-forced heel. The only thing Cole has proven is that he’s a brilliant business man for taking Vince’s shit for 15 years and finding ways to convince WWE that he deserves his spot. This, despite not having an ounce of talent or real passion for the business. Oh, and an extra-special “FUCK YOU” to Sean Mooney for getting Cole’s foot in the door in the first place.”

I don’t agree with that. Obviously I was well aware that people were going to take issue with my statement, but that’s my opinion. Cole is definitely able to make himself better and work up to a better commentary partner. When he’s not trying to play a character I think he’s a good commentator. There have been many times in which he has been absolutely insufferable, but he has also been very strong on a number of occasions as well.

From Ryan Haseldine: “RAW: William Regal & Jim Ross
Josh Matthews – Backstage Interviewer
SmackDown: JBL & Matt Striker
Scott Stanford – Backstage Interviewer”

I think Regal and Ross are great, but Regal is too low key to do commentary on a show like RAW that too often tries to do chaotic things. He would fit in as a great commentator for SmackDown, which generally (not always, but generally) focuses more on in-ring action.

From The Great Capt. Smooth: “There’s only one man who can do commentary properly: The Boogeyman!”

YES! You think maybe he can share the duties with Heidenreich? Boogey and Heidi would be the greatest commentary team of all the times!

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PROFESSIONAL WRESTLING NEWS: Two Firings and Mixed Feelings
AW Actually Wants Tony Atlas On Tour
Look. It’s a bunch of bullshit that these two got fired. Unless AW was a real pain in the ass backstage and they were just looking for a reason to get rid of him, I see no grounds at all to let him go for the Kobe comment. In his Twitter posts and reTweets of followers he did indeed mention a lot of things that happened in the past, including Big Show making a Kobe joke 9 years ago… wait. Maybe they gave AW the boot because he’s making insanely dated references. THat would make so much more sense! There really has to be something else to his firing, though. Him being let go has kept his comment in the spotlight for a couple weeks now. If they would have just ignored it and let it go, nobody would have remembered it more than 25 seconds after he said it. I don’t have an opinion one way or the other about the guy, but his release was completely unwarranted.

“Mixed Feelings” Backstage About Cesaro?
According to whomever has gained the ability to become a fly on the wall, the feeling backstage in WWE is that there is a “shit or get off the pot” outlook on Antonio Cesaro. If he doesn’t have some sort of break out moment soon they will think of him as a wasted opportunity or something like that. This MUST be a made up news “story”, right? I mean, the dude has been given exactly zero chance to do… anything. He’s not insanely talented on the mic, as English is the language he is least fluent in, but the man is big, oozes natural charisma, has a great presence and is a fantastic wrestler. I think his longest WWE televised match to date was this past week on SD against Christian, and it was barely 4 minutes long. Very good match, too. Here’s an idea: give him the US Title and let him wrestle every week on TV and run with the ‘Very European’ gimmick. Boom. Done. If they don’t eventually turn this guy into a star, it’s their fault, not his. Which is usually the case, no matter what people will try to tell you.

Short Form: The Rest of the News
– Ivelisse Velez, who wrestled as Sofia Cortez in FCW and the new NXT, was fired over the weekend. She was allegedly a pain in the ass backstage and complained about being stuck in developmental when she should have been on the main WWE roster. Well… she’s 100% right about that. She’s good-looking and she could wrestle. Oh, she can wrestle. That’s why she wasn’t on the main roster. Nothing to see here.

– Yoshi Tatsu may have been injured in a match against Jinder Mahal last week in China. Nobody will notice.

– Steve Blackman and Ken Shamrock are going to be in WWE ’13. That seals the deal for me.

– The new WWE Saturday morning show will premiere on August 25 on the CW. The 30-minute show will feature one exclusive match and some magazine-show style stuff. I’ll check it out. There’s also going to be a one hour show on Wednesday nights on Ion TV. Why not just use that spot for NXT or Superstars?

– CM Punk made a joke about TNA being an indy at Comic Con or something and a bunch of idiots got upset about it. That includes Kurt Angle, who, because he apparently knows nothing but mindless violence, threatened to kick Punk’s ass for making the comment.

– Apparently Vampiro was part of Milli Vanilli’s entourage.

– Kurt Angle claims that he’s going to run for office! First the mayor, then governor, then ruler of the universe!

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WWE RAW 8.13.2012: SummerSlam Bound

Opening Match! Refreshing
Punk v. Big Show had an odd dynamic because both guys are heels. Punk got a face reaction to open the show and was clearly playing the face role, but I don’t know why they did this match. The newly heel-turned Punk playing the face still got a face reaction during the match but it was weak since he’s, ya know, not a face. They used this match to set up a Teddy Long Special for later on in the evening, and I’ll take anything over a 20-minute promo to start the show. Not a bad match. Let’s start every RAW with a match!

– The crowd went NUTS for Bryan’s appearance!

– Holy shit a JTG sighting! And he got to speak! And he’s in a match!

– Against Ryback. Oops. New music for Ryback. I dig.

– It’s the ONE MAN RATINGS JUGGERNAUT!

– Look out Little Jimmy!

– Too bad AW got fired. I was looking forward to the epic 6-man encounter of AW & PTP against Truth, Kofi and Little Jimmy. It would have rivaled that time HBK teamed with God.

– Hey! Joseph Gordon-Levitt in The Bike Messenger!

– Mark Henry face turn?

– Oh PLEASE Tensai just kick the shit out of Sin Cara.

– Wow.

Triple Threat: That’s Wrestling!
The Jericho/Ziggler/Miz match was darn good. It started off being pretty okay but ended up getting HOT and the crowd matched the action. I had a ton of fun watching this and I would give credit to the extra hour for this match getting some time to develop. This is the kind of thing I would be very excited to see more of now that they have an extra hour to work with. Of course somehow we ended up getting a women’s match that was no good and seemed way longer than it surely was.

– Good tag match. Cena’s high knee and bulldog were pretty miserable, but god damn does that man have a helluva vertical leap.

Contract Signing And More
I don’t think anybody likes when RAW ends with a contract signing, but it happened, so whatever. I just can’t believe they stretched it out the way they did. Why not toss in another match or give one of the others more time? Did they really have to give it two segments? Oy. I mean, it felt kinda cool and chaotic, but it just looked like they were going to end the show with Matt Striker interviewing Big Show. Poor planning. Also, how many times is Michaels going to get his head put through a car window? That was the same way Triple H almost got away with taking Michaels out before SummerSlam 2002. Triple H and Brock Lesnar are in cahoots!

– RAW was good based on the Punk/Show/Cena stuff and the Miz/Jericho/Ziggler triple threat match. The closing angle really was pretty good, but they could have come up with a better way of making it look like they had something planned to close the show. As far as being the ‘go home’ to SummerSlam this gets a thumbs up.

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Free Pro Wrestling: New Japan Pro Wrestling

Hirooki Goto v. Shinsuke Nakamura || New Japan Cup 2009 – March 15, 2009
From Lee Goodfellow: “What a match! Nakamura and Goto are arguably New Japan’s best heavyweights. They have a lot of chemistry together, which was demonstrated best in several smoothly executed sequences throughout. Masterfully laid out, this was a gripping contest without a wasted moment.”

For More, Please Visit FreeProWrestling.com

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SummerSlam gets the quick ‘n dirty predictions: Triple H, CM Punk, Chris Jericho, Daniel Bryan, The Miz, Prime Time Players, Antonio Cesaro. Sheamus will win whatever match he has if he gets one and if they do Sandow v. Clay I think Brodus picks up the win.

Next week: TNA talk? Ring of Honor frustrations? Excited chitter chatter about the leaked Iron Man plot?

– Nicholas A. Marsico