wrestling / Columns
Friendly Competition 2.10.07
Kind of a quiet week on the Friendly Competition front, but we have a few things to talk about. Let’s get right to it.
ECW On Sci Fi Results 2/6/2007
-Vince McMahon summons the ECW Originals to the ring to insult the bunch of them, then tells them that some of them will be in action tonight, and there better not be any interference and they’d better not touch any of the officials, or he’ll tell them that…YOU’RE FIRED!
-Gene Snitsky is COMING TO ECW!!!
-Kevin Thorn defeated Tommy Dreamer. Dreamer had Thorn beaten, but referee Matt Striker hurt his knee and couldn’t make the count. Thankfully, he recovered in time to count Thorn’s fall on Dreamer.
-Hardcore Holly tells The Useless Interview Chick that tonight, he’s going to prove why he should be the ECW World Champion.
-Hardcore Holly carried Greenhorn to probably his best match since coming to ECW and winning the title, but after Lashley won, Gene Snitsky rushes the ring and attacks the champ and then he and Holly doubleteam Lashley. You know, with the shaved head, no beard, and pimple-ridden complexion, Snitsky looks like a penis with herpes.
-Marcus Cor Von squashes Balls Mahoney and puts him away with his new cobra clutch finisher. Your special timekeeper for this contest was Matt Striker.
–SAVIOR OF THE WEEK ALERT!!! Matt Striker interrupts Hardcore Hobags and introduces himself as guest ring announcer, Marcus Cor Von as guest commentator, and Kevin Thorn as guest timekeeper for our main event of Rob Van Dam vs Elijah Burke. Van Dam hit the Five Star Notebook Splash, but Kevin Thorn rang the bell because he thought that the time ran out. Turns out it hadn’t, but in the confusion Burke suckerpunched RVD in the balls and covered him for the win. The New Breed all ran in and attacked Van Dam, but the ECW Originals ran out and cleared the ring.
TNA Impact Results 2/8/2007
-Abyss squashes Chase Stevens, and then messes up Andy Douglas for kicks as well. After this little display of manliness, Sting comes on the video screen and tells Abyss that it is time that he be freed of the mask. Jeez, I hope not. Abyss looks way too friendly without it.
-Tomko is pissed backstage because he has to watch “him”, and Christian tells him it’ll all be cool after the PPV, then gives Tomko the night off.
-Brother Ray is pissed that LAX beat up his uncle, and tells us that he is half Italian, hence the Little Italy Street Fight. Well, Homicide is from Brooklyn, why not make it a Bed Stuy Do Or Die Street Fight? Konnan comes out and babbles at Team 3D, followed by Brother Runt who babbles in a drunken fashion. All this is followed by LAX coming out and beating down Team 3D, complete with Homicide choking out Brother Ray with a coat hanger.
-Speaking of people familiar with coat hangers, Christy is out to tell us how proud she is of being a chick, and Kip James asks her for a lap dance for five bucks. BG doesn’t approve of Kip’s sexist demeanor and leaves.
-Backstage with Jeremy Borash, AJ Styles and his superiority complex run down Kurt Angle and Samoa Joe, and by the way, he’s going to beat Rhino again. Christian Cage shows up and says he likes AJ’s style and tells us how great they’re going to do tonight. Backlund shows up and is weird.
-Chris Sabin, James Storm, and Austin Starr beat Senshi, Jerry Lynn and Rhino when Starr pins Senshi.
-Eric Young and Trac(i/y) Brooks are backstage making a date, and Eric puts over JB for getting him condoms.
-Sting comes out and shows us the cage they’re going to use for the Prison Rape Match, and Sting says it is living hell. I would have thought living through the main event of Starrcade 97 would have been worse, but what do I know? Sting shows what a great Christian he is by beating the crap out of Abyss with a chair before the poor guy and his unassuming manager turn the tables, choking him out through the cage and killing him with a chair.
-AJ Pierzynski and Dale Torborg cut a promo on Lance Hoyt, but since David Eckstein isn’t around, Johnny Damon lays Torborg out with a chair. I cannot believe I just typed that sentence.
-Samoa Joe & Kurt Angle defeat AJ Styles & Christian Cage after Rhino-ference leads to an Angle Slam off the top! Unbeknownst to Rhino, Joe and Angle, a masked Scott Steiner comes to the ring and lays Joe and Rhino out with a pipe. He removes the mask to reveal himself to be…Scott Steiner! Well, I know I’m blown away. The heels triple team Angle and fuck him up, too.
Wrestling Society X Results 2/6/2007
-This week’s music act is Three Six Mafia, who keep it short and then hop on commentary.
-Human Tornado (w/ Balls Of Steel) defeated Luke Hawx. After the match, Aaron Aguilera and Kaos run in and attack Luke Hawx and his partner Alcatraz (who also runs in), but when they try to put Alcatraz through a table, Hawx kicks Kaos off the top rope and he goes through the table instead.
-Teddy Hart & Matt Cross (aka The Filth And The Furious) cut a promo and challenge any team to show up and face them next week.
-That 70s Team defeats Team Dragon Gate, but TDG gets the last laugh by smashing Disco Machine’s disco ball.
-The Trailer Park Boys talk trash with us (ha ha ha) outside their trailer, and then we discover that they accepted The Filth And The Furious’s challenge for next week.
-Vampiro defeats 6-Pac to win the WSX Title after giving him a Tombstone into an exploding casket and pinning him there. We also discover that all matches in WSX are Falls Count Anywhere. That sounds like it’s going to give us some interesting possibilities.
Overall Top Ten Ranking
As voted by me. This ranking includes wrestlers from all three groups and is entirely subjective.
ECW World Champion: Bobby Lashley (Champion Since 12/3/2006)
NWA World Champion: Christian Cage (Champion Since 1/14/2007)
WSX Champion: Vampiro (Champion Since 2/6/2007)
1)Kurt Angle
2)Samoa Joe
3)Elijah Burke
4)Marcus Cor Von
5)Abyss
6)6-Pac
7)Austin Starr
8)Jack Evans
9)Human Tornado
10)Kevin Thorn
Dickhead Of The Week: Christy Hemme
We get our first female dickhead of the week this week, as Christy Hemme comes in head and shoulders above the rest. After spending over a year being an overpriced segue artist, Hemme interjected herself in an angle that had nothing to do with her, through incredibly contrived means, and is now stuck in a storyline where she gets made to look like an idiot week after week. As if all that was bad enough, she’s got a match at the PPV that nobody expects her to win despite the fact that we have no idea who her opponent is going to be. She must really be desperate to stay out of porno.
Vital Social Issues N’ Stuff With Stuart
I wanted to chime in on this whole ECW Originals vs The New Breed angle they’ve got going in ECW right now. While I don’t think it’s going to amount to much for hte ECW Originals in the end, I do think it’s a great opportunity to create a long-running storyline with multiple match possibilities and clearly drawn face/heel lines. I look at it as being similar to the old Dallas territory occupied by World Class and, later, USWA Texas. You had your group of good guys (the Von Erichs, Chris Adams, whoever else) and on the other side you had the bad guys (the Freebirds, Devastation Inc, etc). They always kept four or five guys on each side of the face/heel line so that, even though they were featuring the same eight or ten guys on TV week after week, you didn’t have the SAME matches and the SAME one-on-one feud boring us to tears every week, and it made their one hour of television interesting. By rotating which ECW Originals face which New Breed guys each week, you can stretch the angle out for quite some time. As long as they keep trading wins and losses and make periodic advancements in the storyline, they can probably stretch this out for at least the rest of the year if they want. Here’s another added benefit: if they keep this feud separate from the World Title situation (as it seems they’re doing now by sticking Lashley with Holly and Snitsky), then when it comes PPV time at One Night Stand, they’ve already got like five one-on-one matches ready to go, or at least they will if they don’t repeat the mistake they made at December To Dismember by cramming everyone important into one match. Given how few guys they have time to work with, I think this will be a great way to maximize everyone’s TV time without necessarily having them all wrestle each week.
The Rob Van Dam Contract Watch
With the knowledge that the ECW Revival wouldn’t be faithful to the original, Rob Van Dam has been open about the fact that he’ll be exploring his options when his contract comes up in late 2007/early 2008. Each week, I will give expert analysis on Van Dam’s activity in WWE/ECW in what may be his final year with the company.
This is not a good time to be Rob Van Dam. You might have noticed him getting jobbed out pretty badly the last few weeks. Well, apparently the reason for this was because he smarted off to Johnny Ace at a backstage talent meeting. Ace said that once you get to the building and check in for the show, you’re not allowed to go back out to go to the gym. Van Dam asked him if they could go to the gym before getting to the building, and Ace got pissed and booted him out of the meeting. In large part because of this incident, management is very down on Van Dam at the moment, so I wouldn’t expect to see him winning the ECW World Title anytime soon.
Links To Stuff You Can Read
John Gregory has the Wrestling Society X Report, while Ryan Byers has the WSXtra Report.
Michael Bauer has the ECW On Sci-Fi Report, JD Dunn has The ECW eXperience, and Larry Csonka has the TNA Impact Report.
Andy Clark sets his Wrestlemania predictions in stone in The Shimmy.
Samuel Berman comes at us with Joe vs Gibson in The Independent Mid-Card.
Scott Slimmer subs in at The Top Ten, bringing us his favorite Shawn Michaels matches of all time, although I have to totally disagree with his top choice. Hell In A Cell 97 was better.
Mat Sforcina KILLS THE EVOLUTION SCHEMATIC AND SENDS IT STRAIGHT TO HELL!!!
Ryan Byers finishes up his overseas tour in Ask 411.
Michael Weyer discusses the touchy subject of racism in wrestling in this week’s edition of Shining A Spotlight.
BIG self pimping, as I was all over the site this week, starting Monday in the special Samoa Joe Roundtable Retrospective with Ari, Jake, Brad, Theo Fraser, and Sam.
Also, I was in week ONE HUNDRED AND SIXTEEN of Fact Or Fiction, as Justin Pelletier of 411 Sports and I go head to head.
Next up, I come to you in the latest edition of That Was Then, where I take a look at more of Hulk Hogan’s best buddies.
Finally, I join the rest of the 411 panel as we take a look at this weekend’s PPV in the Against All Odds Roundtable.
What Did We Learn This Week?
In all things, there is at least one lesson to be learned. Here I will impart upon you what I took away from the weekly television of ECW, TNA, and WSX. You too can learn important life lessons from Kevin Thorn and Maverick Matt, and are encouraged to send in your own revalations.
This week on ECW On Sci-Fi, I learned that…
-Being the ECW World Champion means defending your title against only the finest castoff jobbers from the other brands.
-Guys with little or no hair are perfect ECW main event material.
-The key to an undefeated record in ECW is to just face Tommy Dreamer every week.
This week on TNA Impact, I learned that…
-A PPV match can get its gimmick from one half of the ethnicity of one of its four participants, especially if it’s never, ever been part of their gimmick before.
-Being a good Christian and helping someone means beating the shit out of them week after week.
-Being the lackey of a pro baseball player will get you more TV time than pretending to be a member of KISS.
This week on Wrestling Society X, I learned that…
-The best way to beat somebody in WSX is to find something that explodes and throw them into it.
-Human Tornado has harder balls than Rob Van Dam.
-Disco always gets over on MTV. ALWAYS.
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That’s it for this week. I’ll be back tomorrow with The Ominous Thoughts News Report, and then don’t forget to check back tomorrow night for 411’s live coverage of Against All Odds. See you tomorrow!
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