The Bell To Bell News Report 01.04.09

After many more drinks and many more New Year’s parties than should probably be allowed, we’re back to cover another week of wrestling from front to back and side to side as it’s time once again to go Bell to Bell. There’s lots to cover this week as we look at Chyna’s latest trip down the road to ruin, Ric Flair’s possible reality show prospects, Gabe Sapolsky’s sour grapes over how things went down with Ring of Honor, and the government’s thoughts on steroid use in the professional wrestling industry. All of that, and there’s still my thoughts on all of the wrestling that made television in the past week as well. Chock full of opinions and whatever home hangover remedies I could find on the internet, let’s ring the bell!!

Sunday

The Stories

— The only Sunday news was Joanie Laurer (the artist formerly known as Chyna) and her I Can Haz Cheezburger meltdown. Apparently, she went to a birthday party for a friend and got a little boozed-up. Next thing you know, she’s passed out with cuts on her arms and on her way to a psychiatric hospital. When she got to the hospital they couldn’t even do any tests on her because her blood alchol level was too high. There’s drunk and then there’s stupid drunk and Laurer was into the RETARDED drunk category. It’s safe to say that she was retarded and even moreso when you find out that she “made an error” in taking a new prescription medicine and then drank heavily afterwards before passing out and crashing into a mirror. There’s now conflicting reports about whether or not Laurer will be entering a rehab facility, but if she’s smart she will. If she decides to not bother with rehab, all of you in the IWC that have your Chyna obituaries pre-written might want to dust off that file folder.

Monday

The Show

Raw Results:

Cody Rhodes vs. CM Punk – Winner: Cody Rhodes (countout)
#1 Contender Diva Battle Royal – Winner: Melina
Sim Snuka vs. SuperHaas Charlie Snuka – Winner: Sim Snuka (pinfall, jumping kick to the face)
John Cena, Rey Mysterio, Kofi Kingston & Cryme Tyme vs. Kane, Miz, John Morrison, Dolph Ziggler & Mike Knox – Winners: John Cena, Rey Mysterio, Kofi Kingston, Cryme Tyme (pinfall, Mysterio splash on Knox)
Manu vs. Matt Hardy – Winner: Matt Hardy (pinfall, Twist of Fate)
Race To The Rumble Final: JBL vs Shawn Michaels vs. Chris Jericho vs. Randy Orton – Winner: JBL (pinfall, Clothesline From Hell on Michaels)

This show ended up dominated by two storylines with Randy Orton determining who will stay and who will go in The Legacy, while JBL and Shawn Michaels continued their struggle for Shawn’s soul during the main event. Touching on The Legacy situation first, Orton laid out an ultimatum that Rhodes, Snuka and Manu would all take part in matches tonight with only the winners being allowed to remain members of Orton’s faction. Rhodes and Snuka won, while Manu took the loss and is ostensibly on the outs now. Rhodes sticking with the group was a no-brainer as he’s proven to be a hundred times better as a heel than he was when he debuted as an incredibly bland babyface. When it comes to Manu/Snuka, they made the right choice as although Snuka is untested, he’s got some decent skills on the stick and seems like he can put on passable matches in the ring. Manu has shown next to nothing in his time with the group and honestly I wouldn’t be surprised if he ends up being dropped back down to developmental after this. He hasn’t brought anything to the table that should make Vince want to keep him on the roster and if the WWE insists on going with the usual rule of having a heel faction feature four members, Ted Dibiase should be back soon to round out the foursome.

In the main event, JBL defeated Chris Jericho, Randy Orton and finally Shawn Michaels to earn a shot at John Cena at the Royal Rumble. I had a feeling going into the show that JBL would win the title shot for two reasons. One, the angle is the biggest one going into the four-way, or at least the one that’s been getting the most focus on television recently. Two, Royal Rumble title shots are usually fairly meaningless and Jericho, Michaels and Orton could all have matches with Cena that could solidly headline a pay-per-view on their own. JBL, not so much. This way, Cena gets a new challenger, JBL gets a title shot and a “main event” paycheck, and the show is still carried by the Royal Rumble match so the WWE won’t have to be concerned about JBL/Cena tanking the buyrates even worse.

The actual execution of the main event match and angle were both pitch-perfect in my eyes. Shawn Michaels has been on the roll of a lifetime and I’d be hard-pressed to remember when he’s been this consistently entertaining for this long a period of time. His initial DX run with Triple H might be close, but that situation was mainly wanting to see what crazy pilled-up Shawn was going to say next. This situation sees you genuinely interested in what’s going to happen to Michaels next and feeling emotionally invested in the story. Michaels has spent the past twenty-plus years learning the craft of professional wrestling and he’s essentially teaching a master’s class with his performances since 2008 began. The finish was as expected with JBL trying to force HBK to lay down and take the pin to let JBL win the title shot, but they added a nice little twist to it with HBK refusing. Instead, Michaels allowed JBL to nearly behead him with a clothesline from Hell to “earn” the title shot. That was fantastic work from Michaels as you could see every layer of his fragile psyche exposed with his facial expressions and actions.

While I would be inclined to agree with the people who felt like the pause at the end of the match went on a little long and killed the impact of Michaels’ martyrdom, for once I think that it was timed out perfectly. There was just enough going on with both men’s movements and expressions to keep people’s attention, while building the tension between JBL and Michaels to a nearly-fever pitch without saying a word. You can tell that the people in the crowd bought it hook, line, and sinker because they were practically BEGGING Michaels to lay out JBL. I can bet that a fair amount of folks at home were feeling the same way and doing the same thing. Great job by the writing team to add another layer of depth to the story and great job by both JBL and Michaels to sell it and get it over like gangbusters. A slow end, but a great end to a semi-decent show.

The Stories

— Monday was a much bigger day for news than we’ve seen in recent weeks, with lots of interesting tidbits and injury news coming out during the course of the day. The most serious news of the day was the injury suffered by current WWE Divas Champion Maryse. After just winning the belt from Michelle McCool, Maryse dislocated her kneecap over the weekend at a house show in Raleigh, NC. According to reports, she was tagging with Natalya against The Bella Twins and after an Irish whip, Maryse collapsed to the mat screaming in pain. There’s no word on how long she’ll be out for, but it’s a shame that she dropped at such a crucial point in her career. As I said, she had just won the championship from McCool and she was running as one of the most entertaining Divas on Smackdown. Granted that’s not saying much, but she was making strides and improving week to week and I hope that she doesn’t regress much if she’s out for an extended period of time.

— The WWE also announced that Summerslam 2009 will be taking place at the Staples Center in Los Angeles, CA on August 23rd. Being that I live near the area, that would mean that I could consider going to check it out live. I’m not going to, but I suppose I could. This should be a big show as Batista will likely be making his return from the hamstring surgery, which means that there will be at least one monster pop for the night. Outside of that, we’re still way too far out to have any idea what’s going to happen so speculating would be kind of fruitless. In terms of the big events, this will be the first event in LA since WrestleMania 21, which will be most fondly remembered by me for the movie parody commercials including Booker T as Samuel L. Jackson in Pulp Fiction and Ric Flair dragging the donkey around in the Braveheart parody with Triple H.

— Speaking of Ric Flair, he was in the news multiple times on Monday as he’s got a reality show he’s pitching, he’s coming closer to a possible agreement to work with the NWA again as a figurehead and he’s back to doing motivational speaking for Wal-Mart and Coca-Cola after losing some of those dates when he got involved in a fistfight with her daughter’s friend. All three of those sound like incredibly entertaining ideas, mainly because they involve Flair talking, something he does very well. I’m not sure what he’d be able to do in terms of motivational speaking, but it would still be a tremendous speech because it’s Ric Flair. Flair as the figurehead for the NWA would be pretty cool and might actually convince me to check out their show. If it would convince me, I’d bet it would convince a few others as well, which would get some good exposure going for their product. The only thing I’d be a little leery on is a Flair reality show as I think that most of the reality shows that have been oriented around a family have done more harm than good. While some of them are alright, the majority are just drivel and I wouldn’t want to have Flair end up dragged down into that abyss.

— The last bit of news I wanted to touch on during a very busy Monday was the story reported about the director of The Wrestler, Darren Aronofsky calling for wrestlers to be able to join the Screen Actors Guild, the union that serves actors in Hollywood. Aronofsky was quoted as saying the following recently:

“There’s really no reason why these guys are not in SAG, they’re in front of a camera performing and doing stunts, and they should have that protection. They should have health insurance and they should be protected. When I won the Golden Lion, I dedicated the film to all the wrestlers; I kind of shared their stories. They’re a unique lot. They’re not organized, they have no pension, no health care, so many of them are tragically dying at a young age. I was talking to Mickey, ‘Why aren’t wrestlers in SAG?’ If you really think about it, the Screen Actors Guild should organize them…they’re performing in front of a camera, and stuntmen are SAG.”

I’ll say that I agree completely that wrestlers should have some sort of union umbrella to protect them and that they deserve to have some type of medical insurance and coverage, but I will also say that it’s about as likely as Vince McMahon winning the ROH Championship. Wrestling has been such a seedy business behind the scenes for decades and nothing has been able to clean it up before now. I highly doubt that one movie would somehow be the impetus for industry-wide changes. Aronofsky makes a very good point, but it’s also a point that a lot of people have been making for years and years now with little to no effect. I appreciate that his heart is in the right place, but I also know that for all that everyone hopes for to change, very little ultimately will.

Tuesday

The Show

ECW on Sci-Fi Results:

Mark Henry w/Tony Atlas vs. Matt Hardy – Winner: Matt Hardy (disqualification, Swagger-ference)
Paul Burchill w/ Katie Lea vs. DJ Gabriel w/ Alicia Fox – Winner: DJ Gabriel (pinfall, roll-up)
Finlay and The Boogeyman vs. John Morrison and The Miz – Winners: John Morrison and The Miz (pinfall, Morrison roll-up on Finlay)

Yuck. Why couldn’t ECW have taken the week off again this week? After their “Best of” show last week, they really dropped the ball with this past Tuesday’s show. No solid wrestling, lots of boring action (I’m looking at you Burchill/Gabriel), and no real advancement of anything. It felt like a wasted hour by the time everything was done with, and was a real step back from most of the ECW shows which have been very entertaining inside the ring and out for the past few months. As I said before, the Burchill/Gabriel match was death and it’s sad to see Burchill dying on the vine in ECW after coming in with such promise. If they had gone with making him a Regal disciple and tried for a new-age version of The Blue Bloods or something like that, he could have at least had a chance as he has shown flashes of charisma and ring savvy in the past. However, his current gimmick is just a boots and tights guy that doesn’t have anything remotely interesting about him outside of the skank on his arm and even that doesn’t help him very much. Out of the two of them, I’d expect Katie Lea to hang on with the company a little longer than Burchill, just because she’s got tits.

The Henry/Hardy match was simply there to fill ten minutes and to give Jack Swagger a reason to interfere in the bout and lay out Matt Hardy in advance of their title match. I don’t know why they felt to do this one again, especially as a non-title match, but I think that I could live for a long while without being subjected to another match between those two. It’s not that it was actively bad, it’s just that it’s been done to death and everything that Hardy and Henry could do to be entertaining with each other has pretty much run its course. They’re certainly not like a Flair/Steamboat rivalry where they can keep adding layers and play off of previous matches. They have what they have and that’s basically a less-entertaining variation of the same match every time they’re in the ring together. They got a decent amount of time, but again it all felt like filler until Swagger came in for his swank-ass powerbomb finish.

The highlight of the show for me, as usual, was Morrison and Miz in the Dirt Sheet. The main event match was pretty much pointless, heatless and terrible, but the opening segment with Miz and Morrison hosting another live edition of their Slammy Award-winning talk show was fantastic. I loved they play off of Oprah’s deal and it’s hard to believe that two of the most entertaining guys in WWE today are both former reality show castoffs. I also love that they’re going to play that Slammy gimmick to the hilt, much like the late, great Owen Hart. I honestly wouldn’t be surprised if they brought back the Slammy Awards just to let Miz and Morrison use them for props. It’s not like they served any real purpose for anyone else. “What are you going to do, go to the Royal Rumble and bedazzle your abs?” They waited until the last day of the year in ECW, but they got in the absolute line of the year with that one. That cracked me up. Anyhow, the Dirt Sheet led to the main event between Mizzorrison and Finlay, Hornswoggle and The Boogeyman. Meh. It was short, but that was about the only thing going for it. Outside of that it was

Again, outside of The Dirt Sheet, nothing much was worth noting on this show, which makes it kind of sad to see how hot and cold this show can run from week to week.

The Stories

— Not a lot of happenings on Tuesday to make up for the busier-than-usual Monday, though we did get a blog update from former ROH booker Gape Sapolsky regarding the Wrestling Observer Year End Awards ballot. There seemed to be a little bit of sour grapes/playful prodding when he remarked on the Best Booker and Best Promotion categories as Gabe mentioned that Pearce needed to thank him for the house on Saturday when addressing Best Booker and that the best promotion couldn’t be ROH because if it was so good they wouldn’t have fired their booker. Ouch. Part of me thinks that this is Gabe just having some fun and poking at his former employers with a wink and a nod, but then the other part of me remembers that this is the wrestling business. It’s far more likely that he phrased it in such a way that he might have been able to fool some people into thinking it was all in jest, but in reality I’d wager that there’s a good-sized kernel of truth in those comments. There’s probably a lot that we’ll never know about the situation that saw Sapolsky outed from ROH, but with it happening as out of the blue and suddenly as it did, I would bet that there’s some bad blood between the two sides. Shame that Gabe couldn’t have taken the high road, but I’ll reserve judgment until I hear both sides of the situation.

— The other story from Tuesday saw the WWE’s official reaction to The Wrestler, which was as follows:

“While ‘The Wrestler’ is a very engaging movie, it portrays how wrestling was conducted in some independent wrestling circuits, unlike WWE, which is a global brand with millions of fans.”

This comes after Vince seemed very negative in his thoughts on the movie and has actually blocked Fox from advertising for the movie during WWE programming, when they’d be hitting the wheelhouse for the demographic they’re trying to get to see the film. Remember when Beyond The Mat came out and Vince hated that movie too? He did the same thing to try to get people to not see that movie because it exposed the seemy underbelly of what the professional wrestling business can really be about. Vince has spent the past twenty-five years trying to sanitize the business and its reputation in the mainstream and he sees movies like Beyond The Mat and The Wrestler as a threat to all of that hard work. I do think he’s being a little megalomaniacal in his feelings of ultimate control in anything that even remotely affects or involves wrestling, but I do agree that he has the right to decide who or what advertises on his programming. It almost makes you wonder if he really was in on Wrestling With Shadows since that’s the only behind the scenes wrestling movie that he hasn’t hated mercilessly.

Wednesday

The Stories

— New Year’s Eve was an incredibly SLOOOOOOOOOOOW day for news as the only thing that really jumped out was the WWE letting Barry Windham go from his position as an agent/producer. There’s not a lot to this other than that it was a cost-cutting measure during the tough economic climate in the United States at the moment. Barry signed on before his father, Blackjack Mulligan, was inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame and was sidelined for a long period of time with a back surgery before he officially started. Sounds like it was as amicable as it could have been with no real ill will, so if the money is there in the future and the business turns around, look for Windham to be hired back on if he wants to take the jump again.

Thursday

The Show

TNA Impact Results:

Beer Money Inc. w/Jacqueline vs. LAX – Winners: Beer Money Inc. (pinfall, Jacqueline-ference)

TNA featured their look back at the Best of 2008 this past week, so there were a lot of repeat matches and only the one new bout between LAX and Beer Money. This particular episode showcased not only the best, but the worst of TNA as well. The best of TNA was that we got to see some of the best matches of the year including Jarrett/Angle I and the Samoa Joe/Kurt Angle MMA-style match from Lockdown where Joe finally won the title. I realize that a lot of people pissed on that match, calling it slow and plodding, but I was in the exact opposite camp as I thought it was a great old-school match that built slowly and incorporated both MMA and pro-wrestling nearly seamlessly. The best of TNA portion of Impact showed that when they try they can put on wrestling that is just as good or likely better than most of what can be pumped out weekly by the WWE.

The problems for TNA come from the same things that have plagued them from the beginning including horrendous over-booking. The Sting vs. Styles match from November was a good match, but as I said in the Impact report, you knew that the MEM were going to show up and take out Styles before it was all said and done. Having that in the back of your mind the entire time took me out of the match a little as a fan and kept me from enjoying Styles on offense because it felt meaningless and pointless. The problems cropped up the same way in the main event between LAX and Beer Money for the TNA Tag Team Championship. I get that they couldn’t have a clean finish on TV because those hardly ever happen in TNA, but that chairshot that Jackie “hit” to help Beer Money get the win was possibly the weakest thing I’ve ever seen. That includes the godawful chairshot on Austin at Survivor Series ’98, which is really saying something. Now up to that point, all four men had been working their asses off and I was thoroughly entertained, but that finish left me with a bad taste in my mouth and soured me on the match quite a bit.

I guess, if anything, that match was a mircrocosm for TNA in 2008 and from the promotion’s debut. Treat the opening of the match like the first hour and a half of the show, where TNA talent are busting their asses in the ring and showcasing their skills in an incredibly entertaining fashion. Now fast forward to the finish, which can be equated to the finish of most TNA main events where they’re over-booked ten ways from Sunday and usually feature about four different kinds of run-ins and interference. If TNA could get over themselves with all of the “inside” crap and all of the convoluted and just focus on solid, old-school booking and their in-ring product, I think that they’d be in position for a serious up-turn in 2009. I don’t hold out much hope, but I would really like to see it.

The Stories

— Remember how slow the news was on New Year’s Eve? Well everyone must have been hungover after the holiday parties because there was even LESS news on Thursday. When I say that this is the only bit of news, I nearly literally mean the ONLY bit of news. TNA released a statement on Thursday with their opinions on The Wrestler, and since TNA and WWE are like night and day, you can imagine that their statement was quite a bit different than the one that came out from Stamford.

“We’re happy to see professional wrestling in the mainstream spotlight through the movie ‘The Wrestler.’ Mickey Rourke’s performance is nothing short of sensational; Mickey Rourke is the movie. His portrayal of an over-the-hill wrestler struggling to find his own meaning in life has already been talked about as Oscar-worthy, and rightfully so.”

I guess when you’re number two, you’ll try to attach yourself to anything that can get you attention, even if it portrays your business in a less than attractive light in certain instances. TNA also knows that they could gain a little bit of buzz or possibly even some fans out of standing beside The Wrestler. At this point even the hint of expanding the fan base is worth it for them to try to reach out to those people and by being honest in their appraisal of the film, sprinkled with a little good old fashioned ass-kissing, they’re doing just that.

— There was one other story that was worth mentioning, but it only peripherally involved wrestling as Viacom reached a deal with Time Warner to allow their channels, including Spike TV, to stay on the air for Time Warner customers. This was big for TNA as 13% of the country is serviced by Time Warner and that kind of loss of viewership even for a week or two, would have been a huge loss for them and could have had the potential to snowball into disaster. Sure, it’s one of those “if a butterfly flapped its wings in Asia it could cause a hurricane in Florida” kind of stories, but it’s still big for TNA to not lose any more viewers than they could afford as the truth of it is that they can’t afford to lose any.

Friday

The Show

Smackdown Results:

Curt Hawkins and Zack Ryder vs. Finlay and The Great Khali – Winners: Finlay and The Great Khali (pinfall, Khali hits Punjabi Plunge on Ryder)
Jesse and Festus vs. THE Brian Kendrick and Ezekiel Jackson – Winners: THE Brian Kendrick and Ezekiel Jackson (pinfall, Ezekiel Uranage slam on Jesse)
Vladimir Kozlov vs. Hurricane Helms – Winner: Vladimir Kozlov (pinfall, spinebuster)
Kizarny vs. MVP – Winner: Kizarny (pinfall, rolling double underhook DDT)
Jeff Hardy and Matt Hardy vs. Edge and The Big Show – Winners: Jeff Hardy and Matt Hardy (pinfall, Jeff hits Swanton on Edge)

Smackdown rang in the New Year from New Jersey and featured a show with one of their stronger main events in quite some time. The Hardys reunited for the fifteenth time for “one night only” and took down Edge and The Big Show in a tag bout that showed that while Jeff and Matt still have it as a team, they’re much better suited to their singles roles at this time. Big Show walking off and leaving Edge to take the finish was like watching Strike Force at WrestleMania V all over again, although there wasn’t really any miscommunication or conflict between the two which was slightly confusing. I mean yeah realistically they’re both looking for a shot at the WWE Champion and they had their little spat earlier in the show, but outside of that I didn’t quite get why Show just walked off like he did. All in all it was a very solid main event and it shouldn’t hurt Edge at all that he took the pinfall in this one because he did it while “handicapped” after Show left.

The rest of the show was kind of there, though there were some big developments in terms of Smackdown’s involvement in the Royal Rumble match. We found out that unless Triple H wins a Triple Jeopardy match (Tables, Handicap, Last Man Standing matches) next week with his opponents chosen by Vickie Guerrero, he can kiss his entry into the Royal Rumble goodbye. I get that they have to do things like this to try to build some interest, but it honestly seems like they have Triple H fighting the same kind of odds every year. It’d be a fun change to just have one year where no one had to “beat the odds” to earn their way into the Rumble. It’s starting to become incredibly cliched. Also on the Rumble front, The Undertaker announced his entry into the bout in a BIG way, dropping Shelton Benjamin with a huge chokeslam as Benjamin was proclaiming his brilliance and predicting his Royal Rumble win. Afterwards, I saw people going haywire in the comments section of the Smackdown report, making some of the most bizarre fantasy booking decisions I’ve seen in a long time based off of the Benjamin/Undertaker interaction.

I’m not going to suggest that the people that think Benjamin is going to win the Rumble or that he’s going to end The Undertaker’s streak are delusional, but they need to stop in for a check-up at their nearest mental health facility. Granted this is the first push that Benjamin has received where he’s actually got some personality going for him, but this is also someone who has no proven track record in the main event and no experience in taking on top-shelf talent outside of his couple of bouts with Triple H a few years back when The Game was on top of the WWE world. To me, this was more of a case of Undertaker using someone below him like Shelton to make a statement to the real challengers like Big Show, Triple H and Kozlov. As much as I would like to see someone as athletically gifted as Shelton in the main event picture, it’s too soon for that kind of talk and it’s FAR too soon to talk about him in terms of possibly ending The Streak. That’s just insanity.

The show also saw the debut of Kizarny, with his first bout coming against the hapless MVP. Kizarny picked up the win, but I doubt he’s going to go anywhere with it. His in-ring work was adequate at best and the crowd shit all over it by going mute. No one cares about some guy who works a carnival and talks in funny “carny-talk”. I get that it’s Smackdown and things can be a little more cartoonish on the blue brand, but no one wants to see that kind of crap week-in and week-out. I give him until May before they bury the wrestler and the gimmick and he’s all but forgotten. I’d say that I’m being generous with May because based on the first impression I got from him, he’ll be lucky to last through February. I mean they pulled Hade Vansen’s gimmick after one promo video, so we’ll see if they want to bother with giving up TV time to someone who killed his debut segment with a very capable worker in MVP.

The Stories

— The biggest and likely the only story from Friday that could possibly have an impact long-term on the wrestling industry is the news that Representative Henry Waxman released his official report on steroids in pro wrestling in the form of a letter to John Walters, Director of the Office for National Drug Control Policy. There’s nothing particularly shocking in the letter if you’re a long-time fan of pro wrestling or you’re aware of the inner-workings of the sport as we found out that the WWE’s testing policy is something, but not enough, while TNA’s policy isn’t really a policy more than a random drug test here and there with no oversight.

Professional wrestling is a dirty business, tracing all the way back to its roots and this report comes as no surprise. The only thing that could be considered disconcerting is how naive or just plain stupid most wrestlers would seem to be. When addressing a baseline test that TNA conducted before their policy was put into effect, Waxman noted that 25% of the wrestlers under contract tested positive for steroids. This was a test that all of the wrestlers had advance warning for. I will repeat, all wrestlers had advance warning of the test and yet 25% of them still failed. I’m not going to rag on that too much because there are probably instances where guys got off of the gas and tested positive for trace amounts still left in their systems, but it looks incredibly negative when you’re reading it in black and white. On the WWE side of things, it looks a lot worse for them as their baseline testing was no better with 40% of their larger workforce testing positive in the initial batch of testing before the implentation of the Wellness Policy in 2006.

Waxman also blasted the WWE for their ability to carry out the suspensions for Wellness violations, citing the WWE’s own amendment to the Wellness suspensions that could allow for suspended wrestlers who had tested positive for steroids or drugs to still compete on WWE TV and at Pay-Per-View shows. I may be mistaken, but I believe that that amendment was made after the debacle that was the Great American Bash show in 2006 that saw the card decimated by changes at the last moment. While none of those were ever acknowledged as official Wellness violations, when it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck and shits like a duck, it’s a duck. Since that amendment was made, there’s also been a real decline in seeing bigger-name stars testing positive or being suspended for any violations, though that could also be attributed to them being allowed on TV despite positive tests.

The only thing I don’t agree with in Waxman’s report was his use of Chris Benoit’s death and the deaths of his family as the reason why wrestling and the use of steroids within the industry needed to be curbed. I’ll give him the fact that Benoit’s testosterone level at the time of his death was three or four times above the normal levels, but there have been numerous sources that have maintained that the manner in which Nancy and Daniel were killed weren’t consistent with so-called “roid rage” and that the cause was far more likely to be the myriad of brain injuries Benoit suffered with his high-impact style. If Waxman had avoided trying to attach to the topic of Benoit, I would have been a lot happier because it would have meant that instead of just trying to prevent another Benoit, he would have actually been looking out for the wrestler’s health and well-being as well. I don’t doubt that he’s worried about it, it just would have been more apparent if he hadn’t hitched his wagon to the Benoit tragedy as well.

Saturday

The Stories

— Saturday saw a couple of stories featuring former wrestling superstars who have moved on to ply their trade in Mixed Martial Arts. Brock Lesnar is appearing at an Ohio Valley Wrestling event on January 7th in Louisville, KY to do an autograph signing in a very cool story that shows how important it is when people remember their roots. Lesnar got his first break in the sports world when he began training in Ohio Valley Wrestling after his collegiate career came to an end. Soon after, he got the call up to the WWE and from there we all know the rest of the story. Despite seeming like a dick at times during and after his WWE tenure, Lesnar has shown on numerous occasions that he has class as well and this is one of those rare instances where someone does something to help a person that’s helped them immensely. Good on you Brock.

— Also making news is a man looking to follow in Lesnar’s footsteps, former WWE superstar Bobby Lashley. After making his MMA debut in December with a 41-second TKO victory over Joshua Franklin, Lashley has signed a two-fight agreement with the Central California-based Palace Fighting Championships. Lashley’s first fight for the promotion is expected to be at their next show on February 6th in Lemoore, CA but his opponent is unknown at this time. While Lashley looked impressive in his debut and he has a solid fight camp behind him with his training at American Top Team, one of the best MMA camps in the United States, he’s also going to have a much harder road to follow than Lesnar as to my naked eye Lesnar has a lot more natural athletic ability which has helped him advance in the sport by leaps and bounds. Lashley could go ahead and prove me wrong with his performances in the future, but for now I’m not expecting him to take the same quick path to success that Lesnar did.

That brings us to the end of the final days of 2008 and the early days of 2009 and all of the events and news that broke in the past seven days. I’ll be back next week for the first full slate of new shows in 2009, as well as a look at the Final Resolution pay-per-view which takes place next Sunday. I’m not very good at closings, so I’ll just see you when I see you the next time we all go Bell to Bell.

If you’re a fan of MMA, be sure to check out Nokaut.com for more of my work.