News to Start Your Weekend 7.27.07

I spoke with Marc Mero on Wednesday morning for my radio show, RocketBusta Radio, and he came off as a very nice guy. Myself and two other co-hosts William R. Washington and Jason Gallop interviewed him about his wrestling career as well as his current appearances in the media and weighed in with some of our thoughts as well as those of our listeners who submitted questions that Mero was more than happy to answer. He spoke about his appearances on Nancy Grace, the rant Lance Storm wrote about him and how Glenn Beck continually called him “Mike” on his show. You can check that interview out this Saturday night at 8 PM eastern as RocketBusta Radio, presents its 13th edition of BUSTAPIECE THEATRE~! with Marc Mero. Check us out. It will be our 107th episode, and last week marked the two year anniversary of our first live show.

– Praise the lord and his goodness, for the Jackass angle is no more. In fact, it is not to be at all. Apparently the guys were supposed to show up at the GAB and cost Umaga the IC Title, but obviously that didn’t happen. A bunch of guys pulled out, and Knoxville didn’t seem ever to actually be fully committed to it, and finally pulled out of it for good last week. Now Umaga will once again face Jeff Hardy. As far as I’m concerned that’s definitely a good thing. Their match at the GAB was quite good, and I enjoyed the start of the build to their SummerSlam match on Monday. It is assured to be a better match than the Jackass one would have been, too. Good.

– Speaking of celebrity involvement and ridiculousness, USA Network wants WWE to start doing more Vince Russo like angles and be more like they were in the Attitude Era, citing bringing back the McMahons to TV and Steve Austin, and somehow, more John Cena. I have long known that USA doesn’t “get it” with all of the suggestions they’ve apparently been making to WWE since they returned in 2005. The reason the Attitude Era was so great and the ratings were so good was because it was something new and different for the time. Nobody on a big national level had ever done the kind of things that the WWF did from late 1997 thru 1999-early 2000, and it caught on and people liked it. It was stuff that was shocking and new, but by 2000, it was old hat and nothing could shock and attract people any more. Since then, they’ve tried to do a lot of Attitude Era type stuff, and it hasn’t worked. The idea is that something new and different is what grabs ratings. Remember when Edge came out of nowhere and won the WWE Title? The ratings shot up and were higher than they had been for years. Because it was something new.

– Ted DiBiase, Jr has been signed to a developmental deal and is currently in Florida Championship Wrestling. He just recently completed a tour of NOAH. I’m going to have to check out some of his NOAH stuff.

– Remember when that guy filed a lawsuit on Jerry Lawler for potatoing him in a match? Yeah, he’s still a crybaby.

– Jeff Jarrett and Dixie Carter met with FOX again last week. They’re hoping to get a 2 hour deal somewhere, and apparently the meetings with FOX may get them on multiple TV networks and possibly even a live show. Also, The Ultimate Fighter will be on Wednesdays this fall on Spike, so TNA believes that they may be getting their second hour this fall.

– The Rock’s movie ‘Southland Tales’ will finally be seeing the light of day. Rock co-stars in the movie with Kevin Smith and Sarah Michelle Gellar. It comes out on November 19 of this year, even though it’s been around for at least a year and a half by this point.

– The tear in Edge’s pec is said to have been much worse than originally said, and could possibly have been career threatening if not dealt with immediately like it was. Doctor James Andrews did say that the timetable for the healing process to be done is four months, though, so in that respect the injury is no worse than we initially thought.

– DDP and Jay-Z have come to a settlement in DDP’s lawsuit over the diamond cutter hand gesture. Jay-Z has agreed to pay a settlement, and now both men will still be able to continue to use the hand signal however they want.

– It looks like WWE is going to be in HD earlier than expected. Later this year, probably this fall, the CW is going to be fully in HD. SmackDown is said to be following suit in January, which means they’ll likely start doing that for RAW as well, because I think USA already has HD.

– The new SmackDown vs. RAW (ECW Invasion) game will be coming out on November 12 of this year.

– Rene Dupree was released on Thursday. The only thing of note I can say is that there was an old picture (circa 2005) of him on the WWE main page when it was first posted, and then they changed it to a more recent, long haired picture.

– Matt Cappotelli was backstage at OVW a couple days ago and is said to be in good spirits. He just had another brain surgery (the report said ‘minor’, but it’s BRAIN SURGERY) and is about to start chemo therapy. I hope he beats this, and he’s still young… maybe one day he can get back into the wrestling business.

– Christian Cage is in the new movie “Dark Rising” that will be getting a limited release in September. It’s a B or C level sci-fi type movie and looks to be one of those intentionally campy movies, and I’m looking forward to eventually getting a chance to see it. You can see the trailer here. The other link on 411 is missing that second ‘i’, so it doesn’t work.

– The Judgment Day buyrate destroyed the Backlash buyrate, getting 245,000 buys, which actually makes it the biggest bought non big four show since last September’s Unforgiven. It’s kind of a shame that Backlash only got 195,000, though, since it’s the best PPV of this year and one of the best of the last couple years, in my opinion.

– Vince McMahon has now banned all chokes, saying that he doesn’t want the footage of chokes used on the media’s coverage of WWE and the Benoit story. The report I read taken from the Observer had the note:

“No word on whether he realises just how much footage already exists of choke holds in WWE.”

I find that quite funny, although I don’t think the person who wrote that thought about how the news isn’t actually going into the WWE archives to use stuff for their stories. They’re using footage of shows that have been happening recently. The reason you see stuff like the Benoit/Jericho ladder match is because it aired on the Benoit tribute show they did in place of RAW. Other than that, I’ve seen mostly stuff from the ECW episode that happened before the show they’re covering the stuff on. So in a way, it does make sense.

The semi finals have been set in the tournament for the NWA World Heavyweight Championship, and the dates are set for the matches to determine the finals. It is comprised completely of ROH guys, including the men who will getting the next three shots at the ROH World Title.

On Sunday, August 12, at Hilton University Place Hotel (629 J.M. Keynes Drive, Charlotte, NC) Brent Albright will take on Claudio Castagnoli. That show is the third night of the next NWA Legends Fanfest weekend. Visit NWA Legends dot com for more information on that show.

The following weekend on Sunday, August 18, the Squamish Recreation Center (100 Capilano Road North Vancouver, BC) will see Bryan Danielson versus Adam Pearce in the Extreme Canadian Championship Wrestling promotion. You can go to ECCW dot com.

So it’s all set, and this the brackets look as such:

Brent Albright v. Claudio Castagnoli
Bryan Danielson v. Adam Pearce

The winners will face off one on one, I assume at some point in September, to decide the new NWA World Heavyweight Champion, the winner of the vacated title.

It’s a big weekend for ROH this weekend, as the Race to the Top tournament will take place tonight and tomorrow night in Long Island and Edison. It is a 16 man tourney that will see the first 8 matches take place in Long Island and rest in Edison the following night.

Race to the Top Tournament Night One
Friday, July 27, 2007 – Deer Park, NY

– Jay & Mark Briscoe v. Bryan Danielson & Nigel McGuinness (ROH World Tag Team Titles)
– Roderick Strong v. Austin Aries v. Jimmy Rave v. Gran Akuma (Four Way Fray, FIP Heavyweight Title)

Bracket A
– BJ Whitmer vs. Pelle Primeau
– Davey Richards vs. Jigsaw

Bracket B
– Erick Stevens vs. Chris Hero
– Delirious vs. El Generico

Bracket C
– Claudio Castagnoli vs. Hallowicked
– Matt Sydal vs. Mike Quackenbush
Bracket D
– Jack Evans vs. Kevin Steen
– Brent Albright vs. Matt Cross

Race to the Top Tournament Night Two
Friday, July 28, 2007 – Edison, NJ

– $10,000 Tag Team Challenge
– Race to the Top Quarters, Semis and Finals
– 6 Man Mayhem featuring tournament losers

The tag team challenge will feature two captains who get to choose their teams, which will be four men apiece to fight in an 8 man tag team match. The captains and the men they have chosen will be announced Saturday morning in the fallout of the show the previous night. Nobody who has advanced in the tournament will be eligible to be in this challenge match. The team who comes out on top on Saturday night will be able to split 10,000 dollars in any way they choose.

– The Big 10 sale is back on at ROH Wrestling dot com. This means there are many DVDs on sale for only 10 dollars, as well as a 10% off sale and 10 dollar tickets. It ends a week from yesterday (Thursday, August at 10 PM eastern).

– The new video wire is up, and it chronicles the big tour of Japan. I’ve already seen the Danielson v. Shiozaki match, and it is a really great match. I’m looking forward to these DVDs coming out. The Japan shows are up now for pre-order, and you can see the newest video wire here.

– The Briscoes v. Steen & Generico feud will continue in a big way in the upcoming weeks, with many big matches signed to take place:

August 10 in Roxbury, MA – Non-Sanctioned Boston Street Fight
August 11 in Philadelphia, PA – Singles bouts between the teams
August 24 in Hartford, CT – Cage match
August 25 in New York, NY – 2/3 Falls match

If the Briscoes retain their titles against Danielson and McGuinness tonight, one of or both of the matches in late August (24th and 25th) will be made into title matches. The combinations of the singles matches on August 11 (the first night of Death Before Dishonor V weekend) will be announced, as well as the possibly stipulations of those matches. The cage match in Hartford is one of the two cage matches of the night, and the stipulations of the tag match will be announced when the date draws closer.

– I very much enjoyed the Great American Bash. Honestly, I would put it only behind the Rumble and Backlash this year for WWE PPVs, and about on par with WrestleMania, because I really wasn’t crazy about that show. MVP v. Hardy was decent, but not up to what they’ve done on SmackDown. The Cruiserweight match was going along quite well until the finish, but whatever. I will note that the crowd was definitely alive for the match, and it looked like they were very much behind Yang. That’s mostly why the result annoys me, but whatever.

– Umaga and Jeff Hardy had a very fun match that the crowd was all over. They loved it and were ready to die for Hardy, who I’m continually getting more and more into as his most recent stint in WWE continues. I’d say that this match was better than anything he did in TNA. The finish of this match was swank, too. Very cool.

– I dug most of the Bullrope match. It ended prematurely and kind of out of nowhere, but up until that point it was going along quite smoothly. Dusty looked great when he was just toying with Orton and showing off his experience in the Bullrope match.

– A bunch of people seem to have been pleasantly surprised with the World Title triple threat match with Khali, Batista and Kane. I was kind of looking forward to it going in, and I had a fun time watching it. I think the amount of bumps Khali took and him actually having to go to the mat to make the pin cover for the first time will go a long way in beginning to make him losing to other guys seem feasible. I don’t think the Cena losses did that, since first of all it’s Cena, and secondly they’re making believe that none of the Cena/Khali stuff ever happened now that he’s working Tuesdays.

– I enjoyed Lashley/Cena as well. The build was a lot of fun and I was definitely excited for it, as they gave it a definite big, important match feel leading up to it and it continued that way into the match proper. They lived up to it and JR did a great job of selling it during the contest. It was a good match event to top off what turned out to be an overachiever as a PPV. I didn’t think much of the card of this one, but it surprised me, and I liked it.

– Speaking of liking things, I was a fan of RAW. The Orton/Rhodes family feud came to a nice close, at least of the current chapter, as I’m sure Cody will be back at some point for his revenge. Man, Randy’s got a lot of people after him right now, with Triple H, Shawn Michaels, Cody Runnels and now John Cena who he has started issues with.

– Kennedy and Hardy had a good match, but I wonder where they’re going with Kennedy now. Jeff is getting into a program with Umaga, and I thought his run-in during the main event was great, and the crowd reaction was immense.

– ECW was fun, and Stevie got a win! The main event was a really good tag match, and Morrison and Burke showed the best display of a heel team controlling a match in an interesting way in a very long time. I was surprised at how into this match the crowd was, too. They were on fire, especially when Punk FINALLY got the hot tag. Check this one out if you can.

This be all I gots this week. Check out my radio show tomorrow night at 8 PM eastern. We have an interview with Marc Mero on the show this week, and it’s a good listen. RocketBusta Radio dot com.

SEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEYA