Counting The Lights

I have taken a bout 4 different cracks at this review so far. Nothing I write seems to fit.

There are 2 RAW matches so far for SumemrSlam. One involves 14 guys. One involves 2. Thus, from each according to his ability, to each according to his need, this whole show was almost completely devoted to the big elimination style match. Now, this is a match against rookies vs A list veterans… and Khali. No one buys that this team would lose… so you have to give them some weakness. They went with the obvious route of “dissension in the ranks.” Every guy on the team now hates another guy. Edge threatens to take out Khali because he can’t carry his weight, Morrison and R-Truth are shoving each other, and Cena and Jericho almost come to blows at the beginning.

The matches on the show to establish all of these cracks in the foundation were all decent. R-Truth tried to stop some cheating in match with Morrison v. TDII and instead cost Morrison the match. Edge did a backstage segment trashing Khali, but his little brother Ranjin heard him and ran to the temple to tell on him. Snitch. Jericho double-crosses Cena in their tag match, hitting the codebreaker on him. They all meet in the ring at the end of the show to punch things out. Good establishment of a lack of unity, even if it was heavy-handed.

In contrast, you have the Nexus go over without taking an elimination against Raw’s next 7 top… top… Lawlor? Lawlor is in the match? Who the hell refused to go on that Lawlor is lacing up? They really are all out of faces? You didn’t have anyone else to put up against the nexus? Damn… ok, Evan Borne and the bad news bears take on the Nexus and job out pretty decisively.

As a side note, I think the b-team is pretty talented. I really like everyone on that team. However, if Borne is the closest you are getting to the “A” team on that side, it loses some impact… even if they all job easily. You don’t get ready to race a rabbit by soundly defeating a turtle. Nexus gets to show off their cunning and skill. I think everyone hit a finisher (assuming Skip Sheffield’s is now a lariat.) Thus, the Nexus is strong and ready, TEAM RAW is fractured and fighting internally.

And they have Bret Hart.

The other match they are building is Sheamus vs Orton. They added a twist in that the Miz keeps threatening to cash in his MitB case as soon as Sheamus gets laid out or possilby at the end of the match at Summerslam, when the champ is drained. So… Orton squashed an Uzo. Sheamus tried to get involved and caught an RKO. Miz tried to cash in his contract, but Orton RKO’ed Miz too. It was a good little piece to show that Orton won’t let the Miz profit off of his efforts.

There was a Divas match. They turned Jillian face? Maybe? Or maybe she is future endeavored? Eh. Whatever. You can’t make fun of Brooke Hogan any more than what her dad is doing to the (fake) family name on TNA.

And that was RAW. A lot of time spent on building 2 matches… which is sooo much better than devoting it to lame backstage skits and who slept with HHH’s wife. (Hint: It was Macho Man & it was 20 years ago.)

Overall, I was happy.

It’s an odd feeling.

-Ryan

From his Twitter:

THETOMMYDREAMER: 5 hours still stuck in traffic behind a dunkin donuts truck for 2 hrs I am hungry& now I hav to poop. Ireally wish I had my towel back

**************************************************************

Shoe is on the other foot now, isn’t it Mr. Dreamer? You want to poop, but GOD won’t let you!!

This is the very first episode of Metro Pro Wrestling, based in Kansas City. Kansas City has a rich wrestling tradition, going back to Bob Geigel, Harley Race, and the NWA territory days. The first four episodes were filmed in Memorial Hall, the same building where Harley won his first title, as well as where Ric Flair beat Dusty Rhodes for his first. I have always been surprised at how sparse the indie scene is here in KC, so when I found out there was a televised indie starting up, I made a point of watching. While Metro Pro is not available outside of KC yet, they might be putting it on YouTube in the near future.

The show opens with a montage of classic Kansas City wrestling footage. This was the home of Central States Wrestling, after all. The first thing that is obvious to me is that the production standard is already higher than Chikara, Ring of Honor, and most American indies. Being the exclusive property of a cable outlet does that for you, as does having a former WWE writer and producer at the helm.

‘Man in the Box’ plays and Tommy Dreamer comes to the ring. There are E-C-Dub chants and Dreamer gives a pretty decent promo. He hits on the history of Kansas City wrestling, a running theme, and he mentions the Fed to garner some boos. He says there were 17 people at the first ECW taping and that there are more here. By more, he means about 40. Local wrestler Michael Strider is called to the ring, reeking of failed indie guy. He looks just like half the crowd, skinny white guy in a black t-shirt and camo shorts with short hair and a goatee. I have
never seen him work, but I bet there is a side Russian legsweep involved. Strider and Dreamer give some verbal fellatio until they call Trevor Murdoch out. Trevor has lost some serious weight and looks about ready to get called back up. Trevor gives some more verbal fellatio, though his is more polished, and they are interrupted by Superstar Steve Fender. I am automatically inclined to like anyone called ‘Superstar’ that I have never heard of. Fender is aligned with the Barrio Boys, Angel and Domino. Angel is the same Angel from ECW and Domino
is not the same Domino from the Fed. Or X-Force, for that matter. There is some back and forth and a six man tag is booked for next week.

We are 15 minutes in and no one has wrestled yet. Yup, this is modern American wrestling. Mark Sterling, no doubt one of the centerpieces of the company, gives a promo. He is in great shape, but his thinning long hair and Dr. Venture voice make him hard to take seriously. He is a heel champion with a relatively hot female manager so, of course, he is a raging misogynist. Still no wrestling.

The first match is Tony Morales vs. Primetime Paul Diamond. Ever wonder what would happen if John Cena and Evan Bourne had a baby? Primetime Paul Diamond is the answer. With his Capri pants and eyeblack, I find it really hard to take him seriously, but at least he is not wearing jean shorts and a wifebeater. Match is fairly rote, with Morales using cheapshots and Diamond using high flying hijinks to counter attack. Morales is the smartest indie heel ever, working the gut of a high flyer. Morales catches a top rope crossbody and lays down a
pretty nasty gutbuster. Dean Malenko would be proud. Diamond gets the win with a Contra Code/ Sliced Bread #2 off the ropes.

A fat dude introduces himself as Steve Girthy and gives a promo about discovering talent before he goes back to looking at porn on his laptop. Managers with no charisma, no look, and no mic skill are so indie. I pity the worker so bad on the mic they need this dude to step in for them.

Midwest Ground and Air give a promo and declare themselves American Ground and Air. Okay then.

The aforementioned American Ground and Air, Nate Bash and Benjamin Sailer vs. the New School, Jack Mecidol and Dustin Uhrich. Bash is the dreadlocked Air part of AG&A and Sailer is the pasty Ground. Jack Mecidol looks like Kid Romeo and has allegedly been given a tryout by the Fed. Uhrich has the build for his designated hitter gimmick, and by that I mean he has a gut. Both teams are pretty solid, though AG&A have obviously been teaming longer. Things go well until the Barrio Boys take out Sailer and the New School get the pin. Metro Pro is said to be
focusing on tag team wrestling and I could abide with more like this.

The AG&A give another brief promo and threaten the Barrio Boys. Can I just say that this is better paced than most wrestling I watch these days? Also, more logical. Wow.

The Main Event is Viking Warrior vs. Mark Sterling, Central States Champion. Viking Warrior is a pretty meh babyface, but Sterling comes to life in the ring. His promos are bad, but his ringwork is very nice. Dude works the fish hook and the neckbreaker like it is 1973. Viking Warrior has some limp offense, but Sterling is crisp and entertaining enough for two. No, really. A top rope thing fails and Sterling locks on the Sharpshooter to finish. Solid main event and I am now a believer in Mark Sterling.

A special shoutout goes to the announce team. The heel/face work was solid and I really dug how each guy brings a little flavor to the largely thankless job of face announcer and heel color guy. The mutual bagging on Iowa was a highlight of the show.

So last week I took the creative minions to task for just up and unmasking CM Punk with no build, no eyes toward a money PPV match, no nothing. Just blamo! Unmasked. Well, according to the Observer, it was by plan so they could just get rid of the damn mask and not have to program Punk into some sort of pesky match that gets build and draws fan interest. My bad. I totally see the logic in that.

This week, they did it again. Luke Gallows was supposed to face the Big Show, the guy who unmasked Punk. Yet it was a clever ruse! Instead Punk inserted the Masked Guy into the match instead, who was just up and unmasked like that. They got to work on getting some better masks, these guys. Todd Grisham and the fucking Teacher were like, “Hey everyone, it’s Joey Mercury! He used to work here!” Uh, what a dud this was. I mean, it’s not like last week’s thing because no one’s paying shit to see Mercury. But it’s another example of WWE creative (or more likely Vince McMahon) thinking you’re really fucking stupid and can’t handle having multiple masked guys on a roster without you getting them all confused. You know, it’s a bitch telling Rey Jr. and Punk apart with those damn hoods on their heads. And can you imagine if Alberto Del Esse Rios HAD come in as Dos Caras and had the mask?! Pandemonium, I tell you! Who’s who? What’s up? What’s down? Can you imagine if Epico and Hunico get called up? It’ll be a living nightmare. Or they’ll just be unmasked.

I foresee a “best of luck in your future endeavors” for Mr. Mercury this week or so, by the way.

So there was that, and then there was the stuff with Kane, your new world champ. I don’t really have a problem with this because that fucker’s been around for so long, done all this ridiculous shit, and suddenly started to put forth some of the most inspired work he’s done in some time the past few months. The guy deserves this. But I don’t see him or his reign being even a minor reason why people buy Summerslam (that would be the Nexus vs. Cena’s crew as your drawing card). No offense, but I just don’t see it. Had Undertaker been ready for Summerslam and came back to face Kane for the belt, yeah, people would have bought that. But I won’t hold that against him. He cut an opening promo (with that wacky horror movie music in the background, which is cheesy as all fuck) that actually sounded good. I bought into it, and he’s been really strong on the stick as of late. He promised to kill whatever fucker beat up Taker (which probably will still end up being Kane, though this is the perfect spot to build a new monster heel … which means it’ll end up being Kane for sure) and it was pretty certain he’d somehow work his way into our main event, a Jack Swagger/Rey Jr. best of three falls match. Can you imagine them booking something like this on Raw? Haw haw. Too Southern. Or something.

The Swagger/Rey match wasn’t too bad. Too bad they’ve really fucked with Swagger, because he should be a sure-fire top guy now, and he’s just kind of there instead. Swagger got DQ’d on the first fall when he refused to release the ankle lock after Rey made it to the ropes, so it’s 1-0 Rey. Eventually, Swagger did catch Rey in the middle of the ring and made him tap quickly to the ankle lock, making it 1-1. Man, imagine how fucked Swagger’s gimmick will be if Kurt Angle comes back. Of course, they also probably would have a strong program too. Yeah, so Rey, who actually remembered to sell the ankle (note to John Cena), won the thing with some flippy shit roll-up to get the win, 2 falls to 1. After the match, Swagger attacked Rey again, only to have Kane come to the rescue. Kane raised Rey’s hand instead of eating him, and so the match is on for Summerslam. Had someone told you last year at this time that one of the main events for this year’s Summerslam would be Rey vs. Kane for the title, wouldn’t you be a little worried?

I just realized, had they not totally fucked him up (and subsequently released him), Mike Knox would have been a good choice as Undertaker’s attacker. Would have made perfect sense character-wise.

Other shit! Looks like Dolph Ziggler will be getting an IC title program with Kofi Kingston, whose new ring gear is McDonald’s red and yellow. Ziggler won via sleeper after Vickie Guerrero interfered to end what was a bit of a disappointing match. That aside, I like this feud idea, and it looks like this could end up on Summerslam, or perhaps Night of Champions in September. Or maybe Survivor Series. Or whenever they get around to it.

Both of Del Rio’s taped promo were so fucking long. That’s the only negative going with these right now is they’re just too damn long. Still, good idea to bring these back. The next ones will be to build A.J. Lee, Ric Flair’s latest … wait, sorry, she’s a lady. See, can’t keep her and A.J. Styles apart. Too dumb, I guess. No, but WWE wants to wait until Del Rio’s promos run their course before hers begin. Probably wise. We’re all too stupid to keep them apart. I mean, a tall Mexican and a small lady? I’d have them mixed up within seconds.

Also, we might be getting a Matt Hardy/Christian feud, we might not. They tagged up and lost to Drew McIntyre and Cody Rhodes, a natural pairing if there ever was one. Oh, they did have an ultra-gay taped promo for Cody, so now I have him, Del Rio and that girl all confused. How am I supposed to keep this straight?! Yeah, Hardy accidentally hit Christian then fucking ate a kick from McIntyre to lose. There was peace this week between Hardy and Christian, but who knows where this is going? My guess is creative doesn’t even know. Maybe they’ll come back under masks.

OK, it’s time to go spend money and drink heavily. This week’s report was brought to you by Blood Revolt’s “Indoctrine,” possibly one of the most confusing albums of all time. It sounds like a total fucking mess, yet it’s awesome. Go get it when it comes out. And happy birthday to Sam, who I imagine will be in top fucking form when CTL does a mammoth taping in the hell box (that I hear now has A/C).

– Brian

So I am a member of Nexus. I am standing in the ring watching the WWE superstars that are coming out to stand in opposition to us. There are some pretty big names, but we have the numbers on them. Also, one is the Great Khali, who moves like one of those walking tress from the Lord of the Rings, but less graceful. Still, I know that we have the numbers on them, and that is always the big decider. With six guys out there, Cena indicates there is one more, and my heart sinks.

Who could it be? Orton? It’s probably Orton. He hates us. Maybe a returning HHH. That would be fucking disastrous for us. Perhaps a returning Undertaker? I mean, we might have been the ones to put him into his vegetative state. Maybe those suck ups from NTX v2.0 joined the crusade against us? that would mean we are way out manned. This could be real trouble.

Now, imagine the wave of euphoric relief when Bret Hart’s music plays.

The final guy to oppose our Jingoistic consolidation of power is a 50 year old lesbian that had a stroke. To give you an idea of how little of a threat he is, when they all charge to the ring, Khali gets there before him. We all retreat, knowing the battle will be ours, just on another day.

Also, Edge will probably betray them and come over to our side.

In all honesty, it wasn’t a bad spot. Revealing the opposition is one of those times when I think you can burn some TV minutes to sell teh story. The biggest issue was how slow the reveal itself was. Everyone got a few seconds of intro music and pose time. Were this a posse looking for revenge, it would have seemed that they would have charged the ring en masse, angry and looking for blood. Instead they all slowly coalesced into a well blocked stage shot before the big moment.

Also, Bret Hart can be hidden in a match like this… but that doesn’t mean you use him in ring. He is over… but this angle is as well. It doesn’t need Brett. Give the rub to a guy who need sit and let Bret manage the Hart Dynasty.

Barrett had a solo match. The worlds strongest man put him over, and Barrett got Henry up for that back-killing slam he does. I hope he had some Aleve backstage. It wasn’t a good match, but it got the Nexus some in ring time, which i think is necessary to establish them as actual threats. Show that they can work in the ring.. and what they do outside of it seems even more heel and heinous. Also, I can’t hate Mark Henry because he is what he is: a big slow mound of big man spots. He isn’t trying topes (unless Noah has him on Raw v. Smackdown. Then he flies like an enormous black angel.)

The evening was kind of imbalanced. It would go from a pretty good TV match to something that bored be from the get go almost without rhyme or reason. I really liked the Edge/Jericho/Orton match and the mic work with it. I really liked Sheamus and Evan Borne. I liked the Miz’s promo and attack. I didn’t get why there are stips like “he has to be awake” when no one has ever cared about that before, but that is fine as long as those rules are obeyed later. I thought these were all bright spots within the show. This was even more surprising to me as I don’t normally like the work of at least 2 of the participants.

But all of these bangers were encased in the Yorkshire pudding of matches like Eve vs Maryse and Santino/Koslov v. Regal/Ryder. Man, just let Regal have a match with Santino. Give them 10 minutes. Let everyone know what they are capable of, then the comedy matches have a little more prospect of hope and reason to tune in.

So yeah, this was a RAW of no gray. It was all black or white. Some really good stuff sandwiched in between what clearly looked like filler.

-Ryan

My loyal readers, I apologize. I have RAW on my DVR, but I have only had time to watch an hour of it. I promise I will get the review up tomorrow, so you don’t have waste your days wondering about how i feel about it all.

In the mean time, I do want to say this: I love that they gave Kane the belt at the PPV. I have always said that no one ever expects the big man to win the ladder match, and using that pre-conceived bias to give everyone an ending they didn’t expect was good booking. I especially liked that they had Kane do a save for Rey, and then turn around and seize his opportunity. Admittedly, it looks like they gave him the belt just so he can drop it to the returning UT, but I am in favor of this decision.

While I wish they would have just kept the MitB at Mania, I was glad to hear that the PPV was well-received and showed an upswing in buys. What got people to buy this wasn’t the interviews or the pre-taped spots, it was that the WWE made them want to see what was going to happen in the ring. Just don’t rely on gimmick matches and the Fed can do well off of this.

Ok, more tomorrow
-Ryan