wrestling / Columns
Friendly Competition 3.3.07
What kind of world do we live in when ECW is the highlight of the Friendly Competition universe in a given week? Well, when the competition features Street Fighter 2 moves and Samoa Joe losing to TOMKO, it’s really not that surprising.
ECW On Sci Fi Results 2/27/2007
-Mr Kennedy defeated Sabu in an Extreme Rules match to qualify for Money In The Bank.
-VINCE arrives at the venue and is pissed that he didn’t get there quicker.
-Balls Mahoney and Matt Striker are in the middle of another great match when Gene Snitsky runs in and lays out Balls, giving Balls a DQ win. Then he kicks Striker, too. Hey, if they send Snitsky out to lay out both guys in every crappy match on this show, I’m all for it. If he does a run-in during Kelly Kelly and company’s dance routine one night, he could become the biggest babyface on the brand.
-Vince lays down the law to “Greenhorn” Bobby Lashley, telling him that if he doesn’t win tonight in five minutes or less, Hardcore Holly becomes the new ECW World Champion.
-Marcus Cor Von and Kevin Thorn defeat Tommy Dreamer and Rob Van Dam in a pretty entertaining tag match. Tommy looked good in the last minute or so when he was knocking Cor Von around, and the Sandman run-in was a great spot, but interference from Elijah Burke results in Thorn giving Van Dam the Tower Of Transylvania for the win.
-Hardcore Holly is certain that nobody can beat him in five minutes. Uh uh, won’t happen. No way. Bobby Lashley is definitely going to lose the ECW Title leading into a match involving Vince McMahon at Wrestlemania. That’s right. Bet on it.
-CM Punk wins a pretty good match against Stevie Richards by putting him away with Go To Sleep. I hated that move at first, but now I’m really starting to dig it.
-Hardcore Hobags come out and do their crappy dance, thankfully getting it over with quickly. Listen, I’m not a sexist person, and if women want to train and become passable wrestlers, I have no problem with it, and if they look good on top of it that that’s just a bonus. But having these three come out dressed like hookers to “dance” just for the sake of having some T&A on the show, I don’t think that has any place here.
-Bobby Lashley beats Hardcore Holly in a cage match to retain the ECW World Title by hitting him with a chair about ten times. Somehow, he was able to pull off all ten chairshots without fucking up. Following the match, Bobby Lashley of all people pulls off the biggest holy shit moment since the show was relaunched, coming off the ropes with a flying tackle into the cage, which collapses off the ring onto the ringside area and right on top of Umaga, who was at ringside yelling at Lashley through the whole match.
TNA Impact Results 3/1/2007
-Christian opens the show by telling Tomko that he needs to take out Samoa Joe for the team. Tomko isn’t sure what’s in it for him, but Christian soothes the savage beast by offering him an NWA Title shot if he wins. Tomko’s down.
-We see a video of Angle and Steiner brawling before the show went on the air, then go to Kurt Angle in Jim Cornette’s office. Cornette asks him nicely to not screw up the show, and Angle says that he’s going to do whatever he wants to do.
-Jerry Lynn, “Macho Man” Jay Lethal, and Senshi defeat Chris Sabin, Alex Shelley, and Austin Starr when Bob Backlund, who was at ringside doing commentary, distracts Starr long enough for Senshi to get a bridging sunset flip for the win. Backlund chases Starr off after the match and shares a show of respect with Senshi.
-David Von Erich, I mean, Robert Roode watches Jimmy Garvin, I mean, Eric Young, do chores for him.
-Sting says that Abyss is going to die at Destination X. Is Abyss pro-gay marriage or something? Well, at least he says he’s going to let Abyss choose how he’s going to die. That’s very nice of him. Jeremy Borash finds Abyss backstage and tries to get some answers out of him, but Abyss freaks out and runs off again and we get nothing.
-Kurt Angle jumps Scott Steiner on his way to the ring for his match, but gets pulled off and dragged to the back. Steiner squashes Chase Stevens in about thirty seconds with a belly to belly off the top rope, then starts running his mouth about Angle’s wife again. Angle comes out and attacks him AGAIN, and AGAIN they get pulled apart and in the skirmish, Angle attacks Jim Cornette and tries to get him in the anklelock. Cornette says that enough is enough and kicks Angle out of the building.
-Chris Harris tells us that his eye is only at 35% and he has not been cleared to wrestle, but he’s made sure that James Storm knows to be looking over his shoulder.
-Alex Shelley shows us a video of LAX roughing up Brother Devon’s trainer Johnny Rodz, prompting Brother Ray to come out and ask him what he was thinking. He starts to lecture him on being a bright kid who’s letting his buddies drag him down, but doesn’t get too far before LAX comes out and busts Brother Ray up, putting him through a table and everything.
-My heart is broken to discover that Ron Killings was injured during the filming of Rambuck and that filming was put on hold indefinitely. I was looking forward to that more than anything coming out of WWE Films, that’s for sure.
-Joe tries to cut a promo on Tomko, but catches Abyss roughing a stagehand up backstage. He grabs Abyss and tells him to stop being a pussy because Mitchell’s not around, and to face up to what he is and what he’s done for once in his life.
-The stupid move of the century occurs in the main event when, following a chairshot from Christian Cage, Tomko pins Samoa Joe in the middle of the ring. Another 3-on-1 beatdown ensues until Abyss runs in and chases off Team Christian, then gives Joe the Black Hole Slam, which I’m sure none of us saw coming a mile away. Way to kill your #1 guy going into the biggest match of his TNA career.
Wrestling Society X Results 2/27/2007
-Matt Sydal defeated Scorpio Sky despite the guest rapper of the week picking Scorpio because he’s black and stuff. Was that disclaimer there before this week? Lizzy shows how smart blonds are by writing “H8R” on Scorpio’s back.
-Some mark loiters around outside the WSX Bunker waiting for Jack Evans. When Jack comes out, the mark, whose name is Marcus Riot, tells him that he’s Jack’s biggest fan and gives him a tape in hopes that Jack will get him some work. Jack takes the tape, kicks him in the nuts, and walks away. Geez, remind me never to bug Jack when I see him playing arcade games at ROH shows.
-A second rate, dollar store version of Cryme Tyme (who I will heretofore refer to as Copyright Infringement) challenges anyone to come out and face them. That 70s Team comes out and gets messed up. In all fairness, Ruckus looked good, but does every energetic black wrestler on the planet have to use the ax kick and scissor kick? Copyright Infringement wins when…get this…Ruckus does a double somersault off the bling ladder (complete with special computer effects to make the ladder glitter) and Van Terminators the disco ball into one of Those 70s Guys’ face. Every time I think I’ve typed the dumbest sentence this show can possibly drag out of me, I’m always proven wrong.
-“The Anarchist” Arik Cannon beats up his friends because he got work in WSX. These WSX guys are real dicks to people who are friendly to them.
-El Hombre was supposed to face the Human Tornado in the main event, but Tornado was laid out in the back and X-Pac comes to the ring and kicks Hombre’s ass. He calls Vampiro out. Vampiro comes to the ring, but some steroid freak burn victim comes out and beats Vampiro up. He tosses Vampiro out of the ring and into the guardrail which, strangely, is blocking another guardrail. Finally, to close the show, we get the fabled fireball spot, except that they edited it so that it looked like he gave Vampiro a Hadoken. The burn victim yells at him and then his eyes glow. Remember what I said like two paragraphs ago about every time I think I’ve typed the dumbest sentence possible?
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)CM Punk
2)Ken Kennedy
3)FUCKING TOMKO
4)Samoa Joe
5)Scott Steiner
6)Kevin Thorn
7)Marcus Cor Von
8)Senshi
9)Matt Sydal
10)Balls Mahoney
Dickhead Of The Week: Test
Don’t get me wrong, we all knew Test was on serious steroids all along, but after he fails Wellness, officially labeling him as expendable, he does a bunch of jobs to the overpushed ECW Champion and disappears on a Wellness suspension. Maybe a week or two later, he crashes his Vette into a parked car. Mere days later, he gets his release. But the real icing on the cake is that when he gets released, he goes on MySpace and claims that it was his decision to leave because he wasn’t enjoying himself anymore, and he swore that when it no longer was something he enjoyed, he’d get out. It’s ridiculous that he’d actually try to spin this in such a way as to make it appear that he’d give up the only job willing to pay him halfway decent money after only eight months, coincidentally while he was on a Wellness suspension. Riiiiiiiiiight.
Vital Social Issues N’ Stuff With Stuart
I seriously can’t emphasize what a bad idea it was having Joe lose to Tomko. I cannot think of any possible upside to that happening. It’s not like Tomko is going to be main eventing anytime soon. We’re not going to have Tomkomania running wild. He’s the NWA Champion’s crony, by the very nature of his role he’s the guy who’s supposed to get his ass kicked by the challenger leading into the PPV, not beating him and making him look like a chump. If Joe can’t beat Tomko, how can we expect him to beat Christian Cage? And then to top it off, Steiner comes out and makes it a party as all three men gang up on Joe. As if that wasn’t enough, here comes Abyss who runs into the ring and lays Joe out, too. I’d really like to know what’s going through the booking team’s mind here. What could they possibly envision as the benefit of doing any of this? Joe spent eighteen months as the unbeatable badass monster, and now here he is getting treated like a bitch by every sucker who is even peripherally involved in the main event scene. There’s not a lot of times I directly bash on creative teams for anything they do, but TNA’s team really, really fucked up this week and made Joe look like an idiot in the process. I know he’s got bills to pay and all, but as a fan I’d much rather watch him in ROH fighting Danielson, Homicide, and Morishima than getting killed in crap like this.
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Well, it looks like Friendly Competition is about to permanently get one-third shorter after this week. I can’t say this comes as any big shock to me, as the ratings has steadily slipped since the first episode, and the trouble with episode four, especially in light of the recent shakeups at MTV, really sealed WSX’s fate. I was really happy at first to see indy-style wrestling getting a national showcase, but all the goofy effects really killed it for me, especially this week. I know what they were trying to do, but the glowing eyes, bling ladder, and electrocutions were too much even by wrestling’s standards. I guess I should have known what I was in for when we heard that it was being run by former XPW personnel, but WSX came off more as a parody of wrestling than a wrestling show in its own right. It did have one beneficial effect, though: it helped push Vince McMahon to start working on improving ECW On Sci-Fi to the point of being watchable again. Granted, the build to Wrestlemania is also a part of it, but direct competition always fuels Vince’s fire, especially from competition which is ostensibly as formidable as MTV. As for the talent, while I do believe that they’re going to miss out big time on the TV exposure, it depends whether the talent thinks the TV exposure is worth being forever known as “the guy that threw the Hadoken.”
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The Ken Kennedy vs Sabu match from this week’s ECW On Sci-Fi got me thinking, I really don’t like it when Raw or Smackdown guys show up on ECW and start beating the ECW guys. It makes the ECW guys look second-rate, and reminds me of when the Undertaker was Hardcore Champion. He was a division killer, meaning that he was portrayed as so far out of the class of everyone else in the division that nobody has a realistic chance of beating him without some contrived storytelling mechanism. I realize that Kennedy’s not going to be on ECW every week, but that makes it worse. At least if he stuck around he could get integrated into storylines, but by doing it this way it’s like he’s saying “Hi, I just squashed a top ECW guy and boy was it fun. Maybe I’ll do this again sometime. Well, see you later!” One of the great things about the first couple of months of the ECW revival is that every week, Big Show would have a different challenger from Raw or Smackdown and none of them were able to beat him for the title. That raised the credibility of both the title and the man holding it, credibility which quickly disappeared when the title moved onto you-know-who and he began making a living beating up Test and Hardcore Holly, who do not compare very favorably with the competition the Big Show faced.
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. 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.
Well, he lost again, but at least he didn’t look like a complete tool this week. Besides, the heels do have to go over once in a while to make it any kind of feud. I don’t think that anyone expects the Originals to win this feud, especially that given the knowledge that WWE is now treating Van Dam as if he’s not renewing his contract this summer.
This Week’s Adjustment: -1
Overall Contract Renewal Score: -2
Links To Stuff You Can Read
Andy Clark has a really complicated title for this week’s edition of The Shimmy, but it’s about the Undertaker.
My ROH cohort Sam Berman talks about the Colt Cabana vs Jimmy Jacobs match from this past weekend in The Independent Mid-Card.
Julian lays down the law on The Top Ten big men of all time.
Daniel Wilcox is a writing machine, and this week he writes about the Rated R Screwjob in Schmozzes And Screwjobs. Sadly, it does not involve Lita.
O’Dog pays homage to one of my favorite wrestlers, Curt Hennig, in The Goodness.
Steve Cook answers YOUR questions in Ask 411 Wrestling.
In week ONE HUNDRED AND EIGHTEEN of Fact Or Fiction, Stephen Randle and Brad Borchardt go head to head on the biggest stage of them all…411Mania.
Michael Bauer has the ECW On Sci-Fi Report, and Dunn has the ECW eXperience.
We get a double shot of Ryan Byers in the Impact Crater and the WSXtra Report.
Speaking of double shots, Larry kicks your teeth in with The WSX Report and the Impact Report.
Finally, Sam Berman gets me and the rest of the ROH crew together for the Roundtable Preview of ROH’s Fifth Year Festival Nights Five and Six this weekend in England.
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…
-Stevie Richards is still employed.
-Endless chairshots are the secret to protecting horribly limited wrestlers.
-The only words in English that Umaga knows are “OH, SHIT!”
This week on TNA Impact, I learned that…
-TNA’s booking committee seriously didn’t think we’d expect Abyss to turn on Joe even though he does it to everybody he “saves”.
-Vince Russo has no concept of protecting his top guys.
-Sting is about three steps away from firebombing an abortion clinic.
This week on Wrestling Society X, I learned that…
-While some wrestlers are influenced by people like Ric Flair, Roddy Piper, and Ricky Steamboat, others are influenced by Ryu, Ken, and Sagat.
-With friends like WSX wrestlers, you don’t need any enemies.
-The WSX talent are probably better off getting cancelled than continuing to be associated with this mess.
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While ECW was a lot of fun, watching Impact was depressing and WSX was one of the most excruciating experiences of my writing career. I don’t think we’re going to be suffering a great deal by living life without WSX. I’m going to go watch ROH and drink heavily now. I’ll see you tomorrow for the news.
