Wrestling News June 25, 2005
There’s an excellent interview with Kurt Angle in the Miami Herald today. Angle tells a story about what happened the day he got drafted to Raw:"Vince doesn't tell anyone until the day of or the day before. I flew from New York to Syracuse and took a limo from Syracuse to Rochester. Funny thing is I ended up going into a convenience store to get something to drink.
"When I walked in, there was a fan saying, `Hey Angle, what are you doing? You're getting traded.' I said, 'No. I have an appearance up here. Then we're going up to Hershey. We have a show in Hershey tomorrow.' He's like, 'Yeah, right.' I said, `No. I'm serious.'
"Here is this guy two hours away from the city where we're in. He was going to the show that night, and I finally talked him into believing me. I thought, `Jeez. I better not get out of the limo again."
SD: This is major problem with how the draft is being conducted this year. There’s too many problems by trying to make it a surprise per show. This is one of them. Another is missing the excitement and reaction of the crowd and the wrestlers themselves as their names got read off on tv.
Angle on the difference between Raw and Smackdown: "On SmackDown! the guys were a little more like a family," said Angle, who did it all on Thursday nights including a stint as General Manager. "They helped each other out and wanted each other to excel. Everybody wanted everyone to make it to the main event level.
"On Raw there seems to be more of a competitive edge where guys are scraping, fighting and clawing there way to the top while they're trying to keep everyone else down. I think that has a lot to do with the individuals on Raw. I think it's more old school.”
From there he discusses the roles the brands played and how SmackDown stars were angry at being considered the B-show despite drawing better ratings and making more money. On his character, Angle is all for a tweaking: "I believe I have the ability to have a character that is as intriguing as Stone Cold Steve Austin," said Angle. "When I was the top good guy in the company, Vince McMahon wasn't sure what to do with me because I was kind of goofy as a bad guy.
"Therefore, when I was the top good guy he wouldn't let me cut any promos because he didn't know what to do with me. He didn't want me to be funny. He didn't want me to be goofy, but he didn't want me to be like Stone Cold…. I think now is the time to tweak my character and not push me to decide but let the fans decide. Instead of forcing me one way or another but just going with the flow and let the fans decide where they want me to be. I strongly believe I will end up being a good guy eventually.''
SD: Given that Kurt’s past interviews have tended to include some spoilers on the direction of the company, I think we can look for him to become a face in the near future. The other day I stated that Angle and Triple H could share the burdon as top heels of the Raw brand while Christian and Jericho could potentially be moving just under them. It looks like I could be wrong about Kurt’s role. This can mean good news for both Christian and/or Jericho fans but it’s still wait and see.
Depending on how the triple threat match for the WWE Championship goes and the end result of the draft lottery and trades just after it are handled we could be seeing a very different Raw main event scene. As Kurt said in the article, the SmackDown brand is about the changes and upward mobility of its stars, so the how main event looks over there is usually always changing like it would in a real sport which is a definite positive. As usual, wait and see how both brands develop. I am remaining cautiously optimistic.
One of the fastest rising stars in wrestling today, Christian, doesn’t like to say a whole lot about the company he works for. Of the infamous glass ceiling on Raw he says: “You can't worry about things you can't control. It's all hearsay anyway."
And his thoughts about Chris Jericho being added to his WWE Championship match against John Cena?
“I've always had great matches with Chris," he said. "I think this match has a good dynamic, but at some point, I would definitely like to have a singles match with John Cena."
SD: I would love to see it as well — but only if done right. Far too many of Cena’s matches lately have been nothing more than glorified squash matches. Christian deserves far better. A clean win for Christian against Cena would do wonders for both men’s careers and the company itself.
He then says about his character of recent months: "I've just tried to make the character grow up a little bit," he said. "I got an opportunity to step up and I jumped on that wave and tried to ride it. I feel like I've been in the zone, and I'm not thinking too much about what I'm doing. I'm just going out and doing it and the fans have been responsive to me."
SD: Yes, we most certainly have. There was only so much that could be done with the former overgrown child gimmick he used for so long. The new self-absorbed nerd meets Eddie Haskel routine fits him well and is a natural progression. The confidence he is exhibiting out there suggests to me that this is probably his own personality amped up for an audience. The WWE has the golden ticket in their hands. Will they use it to get back into the Chocolate Factory?
RVD expressed his thoughts on ways to improve the state of wrestling today while on Off the Record. Taken from PWInsider: “He says that wrestling needs to go back to enhancement matches. He says they have gone away from them during the Monday night wars, where now, every match on the card is a main event. He states that the current matches hurt one main eventer as much as it helps another, plus it always become political & complicated in how the match ends. He said that with enhancement matches, even if fans know who is going to win, the superstar gets to put on an exhibition to the fans and show them everything they can do, against someone who doesn’t want to get themselves over. He says that if those matches are meant to feature RVD and all his ‘kick ass’ moves, then maybe you’ll want to buy a ticket to see RVD fight another established main eventer. He says that the business needs to go back and showcase the wrestlers as the big superstars they are.”
SD: All I can argue with is that “all the matches are now main events.” Some most definitely aren’t but I definitely agree with the sentiment. Witness Smackdown’s forays into enhancement talent recently: the Kurt Angle Invitational doe exactly as RVD says. Heidenreich and Matt Morgan facing enhancement talent put over their new characters in a huge way. They are now in major feuds. And Eddie Guererro’s DQ loss to ROH star Jimmy Jacobs recently really put his heel persona over big. It works and keeps WWE workers healthier.
It continues: “Micheal Landsberg asks that if RVD was to book a match for himself on Monday night, what he would do. He said that he would fight a television matches against a ‘Bill Jones’, a local enhancement talent and would come out ‘smokin’” & get to show off all of his moves. He then mentioned Paul London, who he called ‘really good’ and said that he would build to a match with Paul London because while Van Dam gets to show what he could do, he would also bring the best out of London, at the same time.”
SD: Who wouldn’t want to see that? It has potential to be the next RVD/Jerry Lynn series. One problem with the current direction is exactly what RVD is saying here. All the big matches are being given away for free when they don’t have to be. If they are given to the house shows and ppvs only suddenly revenue dramatically increases in both. Now, for television not every match has to be this way. The “bigger” matches can be scattershot throughout the show. Since nobody expects the enhancement matches to last as long as the superstar matches you suddenly have a little more time to advance angles for ppvs and to get talent over via promos, video packages, whatever. It’s win/win.
In TNA news, Bill Banks had some injuries to report in his column: There were several injuries at Tuesday’s TV tapings, including Michael Shane and James Storm (both hyper-extended knees suffered during their Impact match airing this week), Alex Shelley and Petey Williams (busted noses) and The Outlaw, who suffered a nasty cut on the top of his head. None of the above are expected to miss any ring time.
On a side note, the injuries to Shane and Shelley forced them out of a match later on that night against AJ Styles and Sean Waltman, with Canada’s A1 and Bobby Roode taking their place in the bout.
SD: Two injuries in the opening match of the taping? Then more after? I’m getting flashbacks to WWE New Year’s Revolution. Good to know that the injuries won’t miss ring time. Hopefully the changed match won’t be too damaging to the storylines.
Later on he hints: “On this week’s Impact, Championship Committee member Larry Zbyszko informed Jeff Jarrett that “new talent” were on their way to TNA Wrestling. I wonder who Larry Z was referring to? July should be an interesting month for sure, especially “No Surrender”…”
SD: Most likely it is Matt Hardy which wouldn’t be a shock to anybody. He also discusses returns to the company both in production and talent, clearances, merchandising and that they are finalizing a deal for Video On-Demand with Adelphia and Cox. Finally, he announces that the September 11 ppv will be called “Unbreakable”. I’m hoping that they use a green motif for the faces’ ramp and purple for the heels’.
Ed Ferrara comments on the pitfalls of being a WCW writer:“…we had a major angle planned for Sid that spanned the entire show. Sid flatly refused to do what we had planned (which I felt was odd, because I had never had any problems with Sid prior to that, and he was usually quite reasonable). Sid left in the late afternoon, and I was literally re-writing the ENTIRE show on the fly as it was progressing... when we went live at 8 p.m. EST. I only had the first three segments written and booked out. I was desperately trying to keep the show going, booking matches and writing segments for the boys that they were getting literally two or three segments before they had to go on.”
SD: Remember, WCW was the home of guaranteed contracts or as Aleister Crowley put it "Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law". But if you think having to rewrite a television show almost as it is happening was bad enough, he continues:
“… halfway through the show, as I was desperately trying to figure out what should happen next, I look up from my seat at Gorilla position, and there I see Scotty and Page rolling around on the floor in the dark, looking like they were trying to kill each other. It was the perfect crescendo for one of the most f---ed-up days I ever spent in WCW... and that's saying a LOT.”
SD: Scotty and Page being, obviously, Scott Steiner and DDP who had been kept apart from each other for weeks. I really think the WCW situation needs to be given another look over. The Death of WCW book by Bryan Alvarez and R.D. Reynolds got into a lot of it but they also glossed over a hell of a lot more which was disappointing to me. I think a tabloid style book with similar stories as told by Ferrara here would be extremely enjoyable. Out of the two paragraphs Ferrara uses to discuss WCW I got a hell of a lot more sense of how horrible it really was than from Death of WCW.
Gabe Sapolsky (whose name I can never remember) of ROH said recently to the PWTorch Newsletter: "I thought that Samoa Joe's TNA debut was perfectly booked and then perfectly executed by Joe and Sonjay Dutt. It was the perfect introduction of Joe to a new product and I'm sure TNA will do some great business with him and they really have people hungry to see more of him. It was very nice of them to mention ROH and Joe's history in ROH and I'm glad they could use it to give Joe some accolades in his debut."
SD: It’s good to see the two feds on working terms again. That can only be good for the sake of the industry. I haven’t watched the Slammiversary yet so I can’t comment on the match and Samoa Joe’s debut but judging by how great Joe and Dutt are as performers I can’t see it being bad at all.
Rumor has it that Ted DiBiase’s sons, Ted Jr. and Michael, will be joining the WWE as a tag team sometime in 2006. The rumored tag team name will the “The Million Dollar Brothers”. Will they be they first third generation tag team in WWE history?
"When I walked in, there was a fan saying, `Hey Angle, what are you doing? You're getting traded.' I said, 'No. I have an appearance up here. Then we're going up to Hershey. We have a show in Hershey tomorrow.' He's like, 'Yeah, right.' I said, `No. I'm serious.'
"Here is this guy two hours away from the city where we're in. He was going to the show that night, and I finally talked him into believing me. I thought, `Jeez. I better not get out of the limo again."
SD: This is major problem with how the draft is being conducted this year. There’s too many problems by trying to make it a surprise per show. This is one of them. Another is missing the excitement and reaction of the crowd and the wrestlers themselves as their names got read off on tv.
Angle on the difference between Raw and Smackdown: "On SmackDown! the guys were a little more like a family," said Angle, who did it all on Thursday nights including a stint as General Manager. "They helped each other out and wanted each other to excel. Everybody wanted everyone to make it to the main event level.
"On Raw there seems to be more of a competitive edge where guys are scraping, fighting and clawing there way to the top while they're trying to keep everyone else down. I think that has a lot to do with the individuals on Raw. I think it's more old school.”
From there he discusses the roles the brands played and how SmackDown stars were angry at being considered the B-show despite drawing better ratings and making more money. On his character, Angle is all for a tweaking: "I believe I have the ability to have a character that is as intriguing as Stone Cold Steve Austin," said Angle. "When I was the top good guy in the company, Vince McMahon wasn't sure what to do with me because I was kind of goofy as a bad guy.
"Therefore, when I was the top good guy he wouldn't let me cut any promos because he didn't know what to do with me. He didn't want me to be funny. He didn't want me to be goofy, but he didn't want me to be like Stone Cold…. I think now is the time to tweak my character and not push me to decide but let the fans decide. Instead of forcing me one way or another but just going with the flow and let the fans decide where they want me to be. I strongly believe I will end up being a good guy eventually.''
SD: Given that Kurt’s past interviews have tended to include some spoilers on the direction of the company, I think we can look for him to become a face in the near future. The other day I stated that Angle and Triple H could share the burdon as top heels of the Raw brand while Christian and Jericho could potentially be moving just under them. It looks like I could be wrong about Kurt’s role. This can mean good news for both Christian and/or Jericho fans but it’s still wait and see.
Depending on how the triple threat match for the WWE Championship goes and the end result of the draft lottery and trades just after it are handled we could be seeing a very different Raw main event scene. As Kurt said in the article, the SmackDown brand is about the changes and upward mobility of its stars, so the how main event looks over there is usually always changing like it would in a real sport which is a definite positive. As usual, wait and see how both brands develop. I am remaining cautiously optimistic.
One of the fastest rising stars in wrestling today, Christian, doesn’t like to say a whole lot about the company he works for. Of the infamous glass ceiling on Raw he says: “You can't worry about things you can't control. It's all hearsay anyway."
And his thoughts about Chris Jericho being added to his WWE Championship match against John Cena?
“I've always had great matches with Chris," he said. "I think this match has a good dynamic, but at some point, I would definitely like to have a singles match with John Cena."
SD: I would love to see it as well — but only if done right. Far too many of Cena’s matches lately have been nothing more than glorified squash matches. Christian deserves far better. A clean win for Christian against Cena would do wonders for both men’s careers and the company itself.
He then says about his character of recent months: "I've just tried to make the character grow up a little bit," he said. "I got an opportunity to step up and I jumped on that wave and tried to ride it. I feel like I've been in the zone, and I'm not thinking too much about what I'm doing. I'm just going out and doing it and the fans have been responsive to me."
SD: Yes, we most certainly have. There was only so much that could be done with the former overgrown child gimmick he used for so long. The new self-absorbed nerd meets Eddie Haskel routine fits him well and is a natural progression. The confidence he is exhibiting out there suggests to me that this is probably his own personality amped up for an audience. The WWE has the golden ticket in their hands. Will they use it to get back into the Chocolate Factory?
RVD expressed his thoughts on ways to improve the state of wrestling today while on Off the Record. Taken from PWInsider: “He says that wrestling needs to go back to enhancement matches. He says they have gone away from them during the Monday night wars, where now, every match on the card is a main event. He states that the current matches hurt one main eventer as much as it helps another, plus it always become political & complicated in how the match ends. He said that with enhancement matches, even if fans know who is going to win, the superstar gets to put on an exhibition to the fans and show them everything they can do, against someone who doesn’t want to get themselves over. He says that if those matches are meant to feature RVD and all his ‘kick ass’ moves, then maybe you’ll want to buy a ticket to see RVD fight another established main eventer. He says that the business needs to go back and showcase the wrestlers as the big superstars they are.”
SD: All I can argue with is that “all the matches are now main events.” Some most definitely aren’t but I definitely agree with the sentiment. Witness Smackdown’s forays into enhancement talent recently: the Kurt Angle Invitational doe exactly as RVD says. Heidenreich and Matt Morgan facing enhancement talent put over their new characters in a huge way. They are now in major feuds. And Eddie Guererro’s DQ loss to ROH star Jimmy Jacobs recently really put his heel persona over big. It works and keeps WWE workers healthier.
It continues: “Micheal Landsberg asks that if RVD was to book a match for himself on Monday night, what he would do. He said that he would fight a television matches against a ‘Bill Jones’, a local enhancement talent and would come out ‘smokin’” & get to show off all of his moves. He then mentioned Paul London, who he called ‘really good’ and said that he would build to a match with Paul London because while Van Dam gets to show what he could do, he would also bring the best out of London, at the same time.”
SD: Who wouldn’t want to see that? It has potential to be the next RVD/Jerry Lynn series. One problem with the current direction is exactly what RVD is saying here. All the big matches are being given away for free when they don’t have to be. If they are given to the house shows and ppvs only suddenly revenue dramatically increases in both. Now, for television not every match has to be this way. The “bigger” matches can be scattershot throughout the show. Since nobody expects the enhancement matches to last as long as the superstar matches you suddenly have a little more time to advance angles for ppvs and to get talent over via promos, video packages, whatever. It’s win/win.
In TNA news, Bill Banks had some injuries to report in his column: There were several injuries at Tuesday’s TV tapings, including Michael Shane and James Storm (both hyper-extended knees suffered during their Impact match airing this week), Alex Shelley and Petey Williams (busted noses) and The Outlaw, who suffered a nasty cut on the top of his head. None of the above are expected to miss any ring time.
On a side note, the injuries to Shane and Shelley forced them out of a match later on that night against AJ Styles and Sean Waltman, with Canada’s A1 and Bobby Roode taking their place in the bout.
SD: Two injuries in the opening match of the taping? Then more after? I’m getting flashbacks to WWE New Year’s Revolution. Good to know that the injuries won’t miss ring time. Hopefully the changed match won’t be too damaging to the storylines.
Later on he hints: “On this week’s Impact, Championship Committee member Larry Zbyszko informed Jeff Jarrett that “new talent” were on their way to TNA Wrestling. I wonder who Larry Z was referring to? July should be an interesting month for sure, especially “No Surrender”…”
SD: Most likely it is Matt Hardy which wouldn’t be a shock to anybody. He also discusses returns to the company both in production and talent, clearances, merchandising and that they are finalizing a deal for Video On-Demand with Adelphia and Cox. Finally, he announces that the September 11 ppv will be called “Unbreakable”. I’m hoping that they use a green motif for the faces’ ramp and purple for the heels’.
Ed Ferrara comments on the pitfalls of being a WCW writer:“…we had a major angle planned for Sid that spanned the entire show. Sid flatly refused to do what we had planned (which I felt was odd, because I had never had any problems with Sid prior to that, and he was usually quite reasonable). Sid left in the late afternoon, and I was literally re-writing the ENTIRE show on the fly as it was progressing... when we went live at 8 p.m. EST. I only had the first three segments written and booked out. I was desperately trying to keep the show going, booking matches and writing segments for the boys that they were getting literally two or three segments before they had to go on.”
SD: Remember, WCW was the home of guaranteed contracts or as Aleister Crowley put it "Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law". But if you think having to rewrite a television show almost as it is happening was bad enough, he continues:
“… halfway through the show, as I was desperately trying to figure out what should happen next, I look up from my seat at Gorilla position, and there I see Scotty and Page rolling around on the floor in the dark, looking like they were trying to kill each other. It was the perfect crescendo for one of the most f---ed-up days I ever spent in WCW... and that's saying a LOT.”
SD: Scotty and Page being, obviously, Scott Steiner and DDP who had been kept apart from each other for weeks. I really think the WCW situation needs to be given another look over. The Death of WCW book by Bryan Alvarez and R.D. Reynolds got into a lot of it but they also glossed over a hell of a lot more which was disappointing to me. I think a tabloid style book with similar stories as told by Ferrara here would be extremely enjoyable. Out of the two paragraphs Ferrara uses to discuss WCW I got a hell of a lot more sense of how horrible it really was than from Death of WCW.
Gabe Sapolsky (whose name I can never remember) of ROH said recently to the PWTorch Newsletter: "I thought that Samoa Joe's TNA debut was perfectly booked and then perfectly executed by Joe and Sonjay Dutt. It was the perfect introduction of Joe to a new product and I'm sure TNA will do some great business with him and they really have people hungry to see more of him. It was very nice of them to mention ROH and Joe's history in ROH and I'm glad they could use it to give Joe some accolades in his debut."
SD: It’s good to see the two feds on working terms again. That can only be good for the sake of the industry. I haven’t watched the Slammiversary yet so I can’t comment on the match and Samoa Joe’s debut but judging by how great Joe and Dutt are as performers I can’t see it being bad at all.
Rumor has it that Ted DiBiase’s sons, Ted Jr. and Michael, will be joining the WWE as a tag team sometime in 2006. The rumored tag team name will the “The Million Dollar Brothers”. Will they be they first third generation tag team in WWE history?
posted by Stefan at 4:05 PM
3 Comments:
You type too much LOL It's a very big problem given the nature of the beast. Should Give the bigger stories their own posts throughout the day and collect the smalelr ones for a seperate post at evening time? Or should I keep this format. Vote on this people. We want PTP to serve you.
Onto the discussions:
S1: I think that's why it worked better. It was more "real" because it was real. It also allowed the workers the chance to say their goodbyes something the current model doesn't allow.
S3: I think the time is right for it. Right now we already ahve enhancement talents of a sort in people like the Heart Throbs and Funaki. We know who will win their matches 90% of the time. It's been a slow process but I think they are moving back in this direction. As I said, it can be done in such a way to keep fan interest high.
S4: I think they see TNa as a potential threat but they look at it like any other indy fed: someplace where future stars are groomed. They've signed quite a few of their guys recently and are looking at others. All indy feds get "former stars". The WWE doesn't see that as a problem.
S5: I just think that a "tabloid" style assessment of the situation can be far more true than an "in-depth account" which repeats the same principle 30 times per page.
Wait, wait, wait. TNA has a PPV on September 11th??
Anyways, thanks for the link for the Ferrera interview. We've all read the rumors about how fucked up the company was, and that was just awesome. I wish Scotty would have shot on HHH (even if it would have gotten him blackballed 4 lyfe).
While I hate Ed and Ru's booking style, they did something that other writers/bookers don't do enough of; push the mid-card talent. Because of them, the Hardys, Edge, Christian, Venis, Test, New Age Outlaws, etc... all became big names (for some, a short period). Even in WCW, once they came in, they gave everybody a gimmick and a chance to get over; sure they failed greatly most of the time, but at least Booker T became a main eventer in Russo's last days. I don't think they get enough credit for at least TRYING to the young guys (or even the older veterans like Brad Armstrong and Big Boss Man) a chance to go out there and prove themselves to the crowd. And if they clicked with the audience, their push would continue, unlike today when new characters are pushed strongly the first few weeks, and then they are relegated to the mid-card (Eugene, Zach Gowen, heck even Cena went nowhere after upsetting Jericho) for a long time.
Oh yeah, I don't like this format, especially when there is no 'reply with quote' function here. I think it might be better to couple two or three newstories together.
They do have enhancement talent right now, basically... okay, okay, maybe not in the traditional sense of faceless jobbers, but they have lower tier workers who job 99% of the time (Val Venis, Funaki, etc..)
If they are to move back into using full time enhancement talent, they'll need to try and give them distinct personalities to keep the fan interest. All the oldschool enhancement talent had this... Barry Horowitz, Iron Mike Sharpe, guys like them prove that even enhancement wrestlers can be memorable.
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