Professional wrestling thread

Harley Race did a great job of making himself look like a clown. When he went over to the WWF dark side and became The King, I called him King Ding Dong (Haku was the only worthy King). But he did run the Kansas City promotion for a while, and the last I knew had some podunk promotion in podunk Missouri.

 

I typically make it through RAW on my DVR in no time these days. The only thing that really caught my attention from last night's show was the Hardy-Nitro ladder match. After that, eh.

 

The Hardy-Nitro match was the goodness. It usually takes a boffo performance for a guy who I think of as a tag team wrestler to establish himself as a legit singles guy (it took me forever to get used to Booker T as a singles wrestler). I think this was the match for Nitro. Although every time Edge or Orton talked about Nitro, I kept thinking about WCW.

I liked the opening segment where everyone crowds around to set up their issues for SS. And you've got to like the brazenness of the writers who not only have a black thug tag team steal stuff every week, but had them hold a white girl (Maria) against her will this week -- and make them faces. That takes gumption. Maria is quite adorable.

I guess Ron Simmons is the replacement for Piper, though they never came out and said it. Kenny has great upside as a future top-card guy for WWE, but he looked out of place in the main event. They need to get this Spirit Squad split done with yester-fucking-day, have Kenny and Johnny do a small feud, then figure out how to repackage the other guys.

 

1) Got the TNA PPV. Liked it overall. A lot of good, very little crap, but some very odd creative choices. I'm betting Angle-Joe got trimmed a bit--the show ended way early--out of precuation for Angle's health. Yet another reason why it was a bad idea for them to rush into this feud, aside from the lack of proper hype and sizzle leading into it. And now already we've got Angle-Joe II next month. Gah!

Oh, and Charter's In Demand pay-per-view service can go straight to hell.

2) I saw the opening of Raw and didn't like it. I know it's wrestling but it seemed way too scripted. All those Survivor Series teams clumped in different parts of the arena, just happening to be ready in case someone called them out? Meh.

I did get a kick out of HHH giving Punk the rub as "the next ECW world champ."

 

I thought that was funny, too. It's been known for a while now that HHH and Michaels badmouthed Punk to Stephanie and Vince, which is why it took so long for them to call him up. In fact, if not for Heyman, Punk would probably still be in OVW. But now that Punk's probably one of the hottest young commodities they have, HHH is gonna try to latch onto him.

 

You think Heyman had any say in bringing Punk up?

 

Simmons as Piper's replacement?

DAMN.

8)

 

Simmons, a "legend"? Damn!

Kamala would have been a better choice. Heck, anyone on that fan fair convention list would have been better than Simmons.

 

First black world champion...not a bad choice.

 

He was no Sweet Daddy Siki.

 

Simmons is a good choice from an athletic standpoint -- he looks ready for another run right now -- but as a "legend?" I dunno.

Word is Ricky Steamboat was the original choice, but his ex-wife owns the rights to that name and she wouldn't let WWE use it. I would think they could just call him The Dragon, since that's what they did for a while during one of his runs, and I'd be shocked if WWE didn't have some sort of trademark on a name for him, but that's the gospel according to Brian Alvarez.

 

He should go by his real name -- isn't it Richard Blood?