wrestling / Columns

Friendly Competition 7.28.07: The Experimental Edition!

July 28, 2007 | Posted by Sam Caplan

First I’d like to wish a very Happy Birthday to my beautiful girlfriend Katie, who I am currently spending the weekend with at Hershey Park in Pennsylvania. You rule my world, babe.

Now, we’re going to try something a little different this week. Lately, I’ve had a lot of good things to say about both the ECW and TNA products, and while I am happy to be covering a product I enjoy, it got to the point where I felt like I was repeating myself every single week. I think there’s only so many times I can say that CM Punk, Elijah Burke, and John Morrison have great futures before it’ll start boring both of us. I feel like expanding the scope of what I cover is the way to rectify this problem, so from now on I’m going to cover whatever it is I feel like covering, and we’re just going to do a stream of consciousness thing this week and see how it goes.

Stuff I’m Thinking About

Who Said There’s No More Dream Matches?

So it’s looking like the main event of Summerslam is going to be John Cena defending the WWE Title against Randy Orton. Of course this will send every IWC mark into a tizzy because Orton’s the worst thing ever (even though everyone bitched when Hogan wouldn’t put him over), but I look at it from a slightly different angle. I think it’s as good a move as they can make right now because they’re at a place where they’re not giving John Cena strong challengers who have a legitimate chance of taking the title, they’re just feeding him fresh blood every month for him to beat while building his legacy and approaching that one year mark as WWE Champion. Orton fits this bill since he’s one of the guys that a)hasn’t been injured, and b)is probably accepted by the general viewership as a top name. I think saving him for the Summerslam main event instead of some other random, meaningless PPV was a good move because Cena-Orton is a match that we’ve never seen in any meaningful way, and while I don’t think it’s the type of match that could legitimately headline Wrestlemania or anything, I do believe it’s above main eventing, say, the Great American Bash. Plus, Orton has been working hard since he got in that last little bit of trouble in the hotel room in Europe, so at the very least we might be able to expect a halfway decent match out of the two of them, especially considering the hot streak Cena’s been on all year. By the way, he really is turning into Rock 2007 in that he’s a guy that got thrust down our throat and sucked at first, but has developed into a pretty good worker who, despite his limited moveset, can pull out some pretty damn good matches when he needs to. Sure, it doesn’t hurt having him in there with guys like Shawn Michaels and Edge, but it takes two to tango and he has gotten some halfway decent matches out of some real stiffs this year as well.

But back to Orton: Like I said, I think it’s not as bad a move as you might initially be inclined to believe, but I do have to question why WWE is putting him in this position given his erratic behavioral history. Not for nothing, but I wouldn’t think that causing $50,000 worth of damage to a hotel room (I still have no idea how he could possibly cause that much damage in one room) would be something you would reward somebody for by putting them in the main event of one of the four biggest PPVs of the year. Then again, WWE has never been a company that has been known for its rational decision making. It’s interesting to follow the progression of Orton’s scheduled Summerslam opponents over the last couple of months, as he was originally supposed to be Triple H’s return victim, but then got shifted out of that and into a match with Cody Runnels before being taken out of that and slid into the main event against Cena. I’d really be interested to know the rationale behind these changes, as it might give us some insight into exactly what his standing with the company is right now. One thing I feel pretty safe in saying is that I highly doubt Orton’s getting the title at Summerslam. For one, I see him as just a statistic in Cena’s continuing title reign, but even if WWE still feels compelled to push him to the top, I have to think that they realize it would be a mistake making a ticking time bomb like him the face of the company, especially considering his connection to steroids earlier this year given the media fixation on steroids in the wake of the Benoit Incident.

Join The Club

Edge underwent surgery to repair his torn pectoral muscle earlier this week, and we found out that when the surgeon went in to perform the surgery, the damage was far worse than originally thought. I don’t have the exact diagnosis in front of me at the moment, but I believe it was something like the muscle had been completely torn off the bone, adding a couple of months to his recovery time. I don’t feel the need to dive into how badly this latest injury fucks Smackdown’s main event scene since that angle’s been done to death, but I do think it’s worth mentioning that Edge seems to be becoming a little injury prone. Putting aside the neck fusion surgery that kept him out for a year, this is like his second or third reasonably serious injury this year, and even though all the injuries he’s suffered have been in freak accidents and not the result of performing routine wrestling moves (like some others I could name), the injuries could mean more trouble for him down the line. When you injure a body part, it will usually recover, but in a lot of cases it becomes easy to reinjure that body part with less than it took to infilict the original injury. I believe his surgery was performed by Dr James Andrews, and we all know what a pro he is at patching people up, but Edge is going to have to be careful with that shoulder going forward, because another injury could mean him landing in the club of guys like Batista, Randy Orton, and maybe soon Kennedy who would probably get pushed harder if they weren’t so injury prone. For as much of an unpredictable powderkeg as Randy Orton has been known to be, I get the feeling that the frequent injuries are another big reason he’s never been given another run at the top of the company. Don’t get me wrong, I give all of these guys credit for rushing back to work (and, in Batista’s case, trying to work through the injury), but the fact is that you can only push your body so far, and eventually the injuries might just start catching up with Edge and start making WWE a little leery of putting the title on him again and risking a repeat of the situation last week.

Work It, Baby

It seems that Sal Corrente is taking this assault case against Jerry Lawler very seriously, and he’s not shy about telling us that. Lawler, for his part, does not seem to be taking the situation very seriously at all, and Corrente has even accused Lawler of using the case to try and draw fans to Memphis shows by playing it off as a work. I’m sure that the case is very real, because even people in wrestling know better than to try and work the legal system. However, can you blame us if we think it’s a work? For as much as we want to be marks for whatever promotion we watch, we’ve become conditioned to believe that everything we hear about wrestling is a work, especially for us internet-savvy fans. We’ve seen some pretty realistic things turn out to be works, such as the Brian Pillman Bookerman Incident, the original nWo Invasion (no matter what you say now, you were all shocked when it happened and deep down WANTED that to be a shoot), and by the way, the Jerry Lawler-Andy Kaufmann feud. Never for a moment doubt that Jerry Lawler is a guy who knows how to work people, and he uses that perception by those smart to the business and combines it with the generally markish nature of your average fan to his advantage. Whether the Corrente fight was real or not (and all accounts indicate that it was), Lawler knows that if he wants to use it to his financial advantage, he can and will, and he’ll probably let us work ourselves without ever having to do anything himself. Let Corrente get as pissed off as he wants, Lawler’s going to profit from the situation, and I wouldn’t be surprised if he uses the worked nature of the business to his advantage when this goes to court, because he can just claim that he was working. Isn’t this a great business to be in?

Yes, I’m A ROHbot. Sue Me.

In case you haven’t noticed, I’ve been a bit short on time for a lot of the last few months. It would explain why I dropped two of my three columns and most of the side work I’ve done on this site. But another thing I haven’t had much time to do as a result of the vile Real Life is catch up on my ROH DVDs. I’m only up to Fifth Anniversary Festival: Liverpool right now, and I only watched the last three or so in the last two or three weeks. However, I’ve still been going to as many shows as I can given my time constraints, but since I haven’t been keeping up on the DVDs, I’m not able to follow a lot of the storyline elements that I’m seeing. I have a general idea of the big stuff that’s happening, but even then there’s some holes in the stories for me. The obvious conclusion would be that because of this, I’m not getting the full experience of live ROH shows, but I actually feel the opposite. Since I’m not emotionally swayed one way or the other by a storyline or attachment to any of the wrestlers I don’t know, I’m able to appreciate the ringwork for what it is, and that reminded me of why I became an ROH fan in the first place. At the beginning, I had no idea who Low Ki, Bryan Danielson, or Spanky were, I just knew they were having better matches than anything I’d seen in too long, and that’s what drew me in. The beginning ROH shows were also very light on storylines as they were, so there wasn’t a lot of that to get bogged down with anyway. Right now, when I go to an ROH show I’m able to just sit back and enjoy what drew me into ROH to begin with: the in-ring product. While I won’t go so far as to say that ROH is having its best year in any sense (ROH in 2006 will be a hard year for any promotion to top), they’re certainly far ahead of WWE in terms of workrate, and I’m getting to watch ROH go through a phase where all their top stars of recent years are gone, and now have to go through a building phase much like they did when they opened their doors in 2002. I missed out on the chance to be there for those first few shows, but now I’ve got the chance to go to these shows this year and later look back and say “I was there when ROH’s main eventers and the guys getting signed away by WWE were getting tryout matches and doing jobs to Nigel McGuinness and the Briscoes.”

Of Course, There Are Always Some Drawbacks.

But that said, there are some of these young prospects that don’t quite agree with me. For example, I could do without Jason Blade and Eddie Edwards. While they have shown a lot of potential, I can’t take them seriously as anything other than the smiling babyface underdog who gives 110%, but always loses in the end to the REAL wrestlers. Besides, they both look like dumbasses, and every time I see Jason Blade come out wearing that chain, I want to see somebody hang him over the top rope by it. They’re an interchangeable, New England version of Irish Airborne and Dunn & Marcos before them, the jobber team that never goes anywhere. One other thing: they both need personalities, and pronto. And will somebody PLEASE stomp the crap out of Matt Cross and send him home in a box? I know he’s another young guy who’s “got potential”, but I hate having to sit through every one of his matches. For one, he blows nearly every spot he attempts, and even the best ring generals in ROH have a tough time covering for him. He also has a real bad habit of forgetting his next spot and either doing something his opponent isn’t expecting or just standing there like a moron. The only move he can do with any degree of competence is that stupid fakeout bounce off the top rope, and I thought it was cool at first but he does it EVERY MATCH, and now we all know it’s coming before he even starts running. It doesn’t help that the guy’s like four feet tall, and I don’t care how jacked he is, a guy who is about six inches taller than Hornswoggle is not somebody I can accept as a credible threat to anybody, much less the No Remorse Corps. And there’s another problem with the way he’s being handled: while this isn’t entirely his fault, he’s been booked to look like a total jobber, I think I’ve seen him win one match the entire time he’s been in ROH. You’ve taken a “promising” youngster and turned him I have a hard time accepting him as any kind of competition to Strong, Richards, and Romero, especially since they’ve taken turns kicking his ass and making him look like a total pussy show after show. If he were to score a win over any of them, would anybody consider it believable?

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And that’s it for me this week, it’s back to the land of Kisses and Hugs…of course I’m referring to the tasty chocolate treats. Hit me up at [email protected] and let me know what you think of this week’s little experiment, and I’ll be back in seven days with MORE MORE MORE!! Take care, and thanks for reading.

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Sam Caplan

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