The Side Russian News Sweep 11.13.13

Hello and welcome to the difficult second edition of The Side Russian News Sweep! Yes, unbelievably, a sequel has been commissioned. Unfortunately, I’ve blown all the budget on blackjack and hookers, so the fireworks finale I had planned has been slightly down scaled.

A huge thanks to everybody who took the time to comment on last weeks column. I was honestly overwhelmed by the amount of support and hope you fickle bastards don’t turn on me too quickly. Remember when we all liked The Miz that time? Anyway, I really do appreciate each and every bit of feedback, good or bad. Here are a few things I picked up on.

1, The images seem to be a hit! I think @screaminpopcorn did a great job on them and I’m glad you lot agree.

2, It’s great to see some fellow Englishmen in the audience, and PCW fans to boot! I hope to see you all there this weekend for the huge Supershow. D’Lo Brown AND Bob Holly on the same card? My fourteen year old self just shat himself.

3, Who knew that the difference between US and UK English was such a hotbed of controversy? There was plenty of discussion on the merits of each and it was mostly friendly and well informed, so thanks for that. I will be sticking with US English for now though. Honestly, it’s for the best. It’d start with me dropping in a few extra U’s and before you know it I’d be talking about pavement slams and Mike Rotunda’s run as Inland Revenue.

4, Note to self: never piss off South Park fans

5, If nothing else, it seems that the column became a sordid, secret meeting place to discuss Justin Watry. I hope you all talk about me in his column too. I’m sure he gets a lot more views than I ever will.

Before we get to The Sweep, it’s time once again to welcome the best warm up man in the business. Some say he’s the reason a ducks quack doesn’t have an echo. Others say his cameo in the new Hunger Games movie was cut to help secure a PG rating. All I know is that he’s Gorilla Monsoon, and he’s here for another Gorilla Monologue.

“It’s a happenin’!

Jeff Hardy has a new CD. Makes a change from him having a new OD I guess. But seriously, I bought it and have to say, it isn’t bad. Well, the first half a song is pretty good. After that Hardy passes out so Sting has to cover and sing the rest of the album for him.

Hardy said that “The songs on my new album represent my personal therapy sessions.” Fair play to him for writing his own tunes, at least he’s not making an album of cover songs. Although if he ever does, I can’t wait to hear his version of “He aint heavy, he’s my brother.” Song titles include, “Who ate my jaffa cakes, man?” “Are those my feet?” and my personal favorite, “Whoa, my hands are huuuge!”

Meanwhile, the WWE Raw crew will be in Nashville next week and have announced a special Country edition of Raw. What they didn’t announce is that the week after will be a special Old Country edition in which The Iron Sheik makes people humble for three hours. More best for bullsheeeeeeeeet than best for business.

Speaking of big hands, how about a round of applause for The Young Bucks who had a great week over in Japan. If they truly want to get over with the lucrative Asian audience though they’re going to have to change their name. With that in mind, here are the top three alternative names for The Young Bucks

Number Three: The Yong-il Bucks

Number Two: More Wang for your Buck

Number One: Generation Miso

That’s all from me this week folks, enjoy the rest of the show!”

Thanks once again Gorilla! On with the sweep!

Chain Wrestling

First of all, I’m going to try a new feature that may or may not work as it’s going to rely on your participation. The idea is that we make a list of great wrestling matches, but each match has to somehow be connected to the previous match in the chain. For example, say we start with the Undertaker vs Bossman Hell in a Cell match, we could conceivably move from there to the Kennel in a Cell match either because of the Bossman connection, the Cell connection, or simply because they are both shit.

If this catches on then I will make an ongoing Youtube play list, so bear in mind that your suggestions can’t be too obscure. All I ask is that you leave a comment in the section below explaining which match you would like to see next in the chain and why it links to the previous match. I’ll pick my favorite and post it in next weeks column.

I’m going to start the chain with Dean Malenko vs Chris Jericho from Slamboree 1998. It’s a fantastic encounter with an insanely hot crowd. This was the culmination of a long running storyline perhaps best remembered for Jericho’s “Man of 1004 holds” claims. Anybody who thought that guys like Jericho and Malenko couldn’t draw for WCW needs to watch this video. Whatever happened to WCW anyway?

So from there you can take it in any direction you so desire. Another Jericho match perhaps? A bit more Malenko? Lord knows there were plenty of great Cruiser weight matches around this time in WCW. Malenko was under the mask of another wrestler so perhaps you could go for a match with a fake version of a wrestler like fake Sting or the Underfaker? Please let me know in the comments section below if you have any suggestions. Alternatively, if you think it’s a rubbish idea, please ignore it and it’ll disappear.

Tag match announced for Survivor Series

Holla and, indeed, holla. Despite the involvement of The Shield in the main event of Raw, Daniel Bryan and CM Punk seem to be focusing on The Wyatt Family at least for the time being. Punk and Bryan will face Harper and Rowan in a standard tag match at Survivor Series despite all the ingredients being in place for a big survival tag match.

Funnily enough, the tag match was announced shortly after rumors began to circulate about the possibility of a big twelve man elimination match occurring. Given those strange timings, it’s possible that the Punk/Bryan vs Wyatt Family match has been announced simply to throw us off the scent and to prove that all internet writers are big fat dumbos. Look, if we admit that we are all big fat dumbos can we please have our twelve man tag match back?

William, it was really something.

William Regal put on a one man comedy and conversation show in Manchester right after Raw! Manchester is maybe half an hour from me so I know a few people who attended and the reports have all been positive so far. He apparently talked about consoling Fred Ottman shortly after his Shockmaster debut which had to be worth the price of admission alone. I really hope he decides to do more of these as he seems like such a natural comedian.

I love the fact that things like this are becoming a viable avenue to explore for wrestling performers and personalities. Dustin Runnels, Nigel Mcguinness, DDP, Mick Foley and even Jim Ross have all performed or plan to perform similar events and it’s a great extra revenue stream for these guys.

Shoot videos, love them or hate them, have become a business in and of themselves. It makes sense to me that performers would try to maximise their potential earnings by doing something similar in front of a live, paying audience. I live in hope that “An Audience with Jim Cornette” is currently in the works and will be coming to a town near me!

Hall-ar if you hear me

Rick and Scott Steiner are to be inducted into the Hall of Fame. That’s The George Tragos/Lou Thesz Professional Wrestling Hall of Fame, not the Vince McMahon Kiss My Ass Hall of Fame. If I was a Steiner, which I’m not, I’m unsure as to whether I’d rather be in the Hall of Fame with a celebrity wing or the Hall of Fame with a midget contingent. Would you rather be in the company of Drew Carey or Fuzzy Cupid?

I shouldn’t really mock them for including midget wrestlers I suppose, but then again, they did STOP inducting midgets after three years. It’s like they got to four and thought “that’s enough now fellas, we made our point.” Surely that’s worse than having none at all. By my calculations, there should be at least eight more midgets in their Hall of Fame and I want those midgets in there damn it! Sky Low Low, Little Beaver, Lord Littlebrook and for aforementioned Fuzzy Cupid are already in there, so the next eight additions to the midget wrestler Hall of Fame are:

Tiny Tom
That bull off of Raw
Dink
The one who dressed up as Booker T
That one from TNA who was in a barrel
Fit Finlay’s son
Half Nelson
And of course Daniel Bryan

So yeah, congratulations to The Steiners.

Free (British) Wrestling

You may or may not have heard that Sheffield based wrestler Kris Travis got a try out match before Raw in Manchester this week. I’ve been lucky enough to see a good few Kris Travis matches over the last couple of years, his matches with Chris Masters being particular highlights. Take a look and see if you think he has what it takes to get a shot in WWE.Personally, I’d love to see him have a crack at it, but maybe I’m biased. That being said, Travis has really shone against guys like Masters and Kevin Steen and seemed to have genuinely made an impression on them.

How was it for you?

Well, that’s week two in the bag. And what a mixed bag it was. We had SHOCKING references to the Jeff and Matt Hardy’s addiction problems (drugs and pies), midgets, more Korea jokes, happy Vince and not a lot else. Hopefully you laughed more than you cried. Sometimes you’re a 4 out of 10, sometimes you’re a solid B+, but at the end of the day always remember that Cesaro is considerably better than you.