Pro Wrestling Comments

ORIGINALLY POSTED ON THE TENTH EDITION OF "THE BEAU ZONE" ON THE HARD ROCK HEROES WEBSITE FROM JUNE 2007 TO MARCH 2008.

Remember when DX vandalized that Muscle & Fitness cover with Vince McMahon on the cover? When they were done, the pic of Vince looked just like Danny Bonaduce!

I wonder if, that time when doing play-by-play, King Booker had Vince in his headset telling him to tell stories instead of calling the holds in the match. (Only insiders will get this.)

In Torrie Wilson's recent FHM cover story interview, she says she'd like to have sex with someone under the ring. Hopefully she'll stick to Raw if she wants to do that. Hopefully she didn't try to do that at pay-per-views, 'cause does she realize there's probably that leprechaun, Hornswaggle, under the ring? Could you imagine that little bastard surprising Torrie and her companion under there? Not only that, JBL says he'd pay money to watch leprechauns copulate. I wonder if he means two leprechauns or just Hornswaggle with Torrie Wilson. The possibilities are endless.....

JBL's funniest line on Smackdown a few weeks ago, during a Miz match: "The Miz couldn't afford my escort service bills!"

Speaking of JBL, how come on Smackdown they can't promote Saturday Night's Main Event because it's on a competing network, yet JBL can talk about his Fox News appearances all the time?

Before WWE let Joey Mercury go, I was thinking: Why is MNM making Smackdown appearances? I thought Nitro and Melina were fired by Teddy Long. How is he allowing their return? Shows you why Krystal is right about him needing an assistant. Maybe they snuck on while he was watching Kane's "See No Evil" DVD. That was funny a few weeks ago: I think to myself, "Teddy Long's going to watch a DVD during Smackdown?" Then JBL said the same thing!

Pro Wrestling Comments

ORIGINALLY POSTED ON THE FIFTH EDITION OF "THE BEAU ZONE" ON THE HARD ROCK HEROES WEBSITE FROM APRIL TO AUGUST 2005.

Remember the Breakaway Club at the Polo Park Inn, when the wrestlers would go there to hang out after the card? They're just in the room, among the fans. None of this Sunfest/CITI FM VIP area crap. (God, I HATED seeing that VIP room with a roof, places to sit and fridges right there in front at Sunfest, just flaunting it right in front of the PAYING fans who have to put up with the elements - I hope that stupid VIP area was why Sunfest died - a VIP area should be ten miles from the stage so that anyone in it needs binoculars to see the band - give the PAYING FANS the damn benches, fridges, and a roof over their head. If I was invited in the VIP area during the Hard Rock Heroes years, I would have checked it out, but probably not stayed there long, as I would have been embarrased to be in there.) So when Chris Jericho's band Fozzy came to town that first time at The Colesseum in December 2003 and Joe Aiello on CITI FM's No Holds Barred said WWE wrestlers might be at the gig because it took place after that night's WWE card, I truly, sincerly thought it would be a throwback to the Breakaway Club days with the wrestlers just in the bar among the people. I never dreamed in my wildest dreams they would be sequestered into a damn upstairs VIP area. I sure felt like a peon that night, little old me, JUST A PAYING FAN. So what would it take to bring back the days of the Breakaway Club? And just where DO the wrestlers go after the card now? Is it really like the article in the WWE Mag that said Kane reads Shakespeare novels after the card, etc., and no one goes to bars anymore? I wondered to myself if the wrestlers would be going to the Tijuana Yacht Club when that place first opened, but when I went there after the first applicable WWE card, no wrestlers showed up. So where are they? DO they just go out in public anymore like they used to at the Breakaway Club? Or are they just too big for that now? And I don't mean that sarcasticly - ARE WWE superstars more like Elvis and Britney now, that they would get really hounded in public, moreso than they ever did at the Breakaway Club? I e-mailed Cyrus at the time that Fozzy gig happened to tell him maybe this would make a good future subject for his Winnipeg Sun column, but alas, he never approached it, and now he doesn't do a column anymore.

Speaking of Cyrus, I had been drooling at the thought of upcoming stories in the Stanley Weston wrestling mags on Don Callis taking control of TNA (a cover story with Don on the cover, perhaps?), but alas, I guess that happened, along with Don suddenly quitting the company a bit later, in such a time period that allowed all of that to occur between issues. I had been hoping Don's taking control of TNA would be right before their deadline, hence all the cover stories. Since that wasn't the case, the info was just buried in their news tidbits with the addition that Don had left the company for "a full-time job in his hometown." Oh, well.

So if Lita's baby really was Kane's, but Matt Hardy had won that night's match on Raw, would the baby have been (or still have been) named Matt Hardy, Version 2?

I guess a couple of weeks after it happened, JBL got one of those photo radar tickets in the mail from Eddie Guerrero driving his limo. If that had happened here for our Smackdown taping, would he have gotten Bob Holliday to pay the ticket?

Pro Wrestling Comments

ORIGINALLY POSTED ON THE THIRD EDITION OF "THE BEAU ZONE" ON THE HARD ROCK HEROES WEBSITE FROM SEPTEMBER TO DECEMBER 2004.

Here's something I keep forgetting about: WWE did a Chris Jericho home video awhile back called "Chris Jericho: Break Down The Walls." In it is a brief clip of a Club Taboo match here in Winnipeg in 1990 or 1991 which was one of Chris' first pro matches. In the video he talked about wrestling at this bar, but he mistakenly identified the bar as "Georgie's." Why? Surely Chris hasn't forgotten the name "Club Taboo," even though today that bar is called Mardi Gras. We do have a bar called Georgie's in Winnipeg (or by now that place has changed names, too), and since that time Georgie's has held wrestling events, most notably Joe & Cyrus' No Hold Barred wrestling cards, but they didn't have wrestling back in the early 90s. Or if Chris did wrestle at Georgie's back then and I didn't know about it, well, on the video first we see him talking about how he was going to wrestle somewhere in Winnipeg but not knowing quite where yet, then talking about how he drove past the marquee at "Georgie's" that said "wrestling" and how he thought at the time that wrestling in a bar was cheesy and how he didn't realize that's the very card he was on. Then we go to a Club Taboo match from promotor Tony Condello's TV show he had on CKY at the time, which would indicate that when he mentions Georgie's, that that is what we should then be seeing - Chris at Georgie's, which is not correct. Plus I always thought that the Club Taboo matches were definitely the first time Chris wrestled professionally in Winnipeg. So does anyone know the deal on that flub? I tried e-mailing Chris through his website as well as slapping a version of this on his message board, but no response. Anyone know?

No one ever points out Kane's beginnings when they write or talk about him, as to why they kept him in the mask, why keep his gimmick, etc. (This was when he was still in the mask.) When WWF/E made the decision to go to "Attitude," they had just created Kane and his storyline with the Undertaker. To pull the plug on that would have been disastrous, since that was a major angle. WWF/E saw what changing things like that does without telling the fans a word about it before (Shawn Michaels and his "knights," anyone?). So someone said, "Okay, this angle will be our last vestibule from our former 'cartoon wrestling' stance. We'll keep this one running, and this will be that style's only hangover nto the current product." That's why Kane existed all these years in the first place. Too bad WWE couldn't come up with a reason why Kane didn't need a voice box any more. I'll be looking for how they write about that in any Kane career synopsis I read in the future. Hopefully Kane's "marriage" to Lita doesn't overshadow that little detail in the writeups.

I was disappointed both WWE and Dave Meltzer's Wrestling Observer Newsletter said piss-all about Miss Elizabeth's tenure in WCW in her death coverage. Liz became a heel in WCW, and showed us a "good girl gone bad" routine I thoroughly enjoyed. Her peak was when she was in the NWO, paired up with Savage again, but this time both as heels, making them the Bonnie and Clyde of the NWO. Who can forget Liz spray painting "NWO" on Kimberly's back, placing her foot on a prone Disco Inferno while Savage counted the 1-2-3, or slamming a steel chair over Sting's head? Plus her leather outfits. I was in ecstasy at that - Liz as a bad girl - YEAH!!! All she was missing was the four-letter words and the cigarettes. Her crowning moment was in that Savage/DDP match at Halloween Havoc (forgot what year) when she smashed a "glass" candy tray over referee Mickey Jay's head and then strangled a prone DDP with the television cord before Kimberly ran out and grabbed Liz and ran her to the back. And in the description of that match, Meltzer LEFT THAT OUT!!!!! I never got around to writing him about that one. That's the Observer's figgest faux-pas. Then later on when the roles were sort of reversed and Kimberly was a heel and Liz was kidnapped and Kimberly was making Liz her slave, the stuff between the two of them was FUCKING HILARIOUS!!!!! Well, mainly because of Kim, but she was just hilarious as the hot babe that's full of herself. I miss that character so much and it's too bad Kim didn't come back as a heel with DDP when DDP went to WWE. Kim could still come back now as Bischoff's assistant. She was also hilarious in that role in WCW when Bischoff (in the gray hair) and Russo would talk about their matters and Kim would interrupt to talk about her career or her nails or whatever. HILARIOUS!!!

Pro Wrestling Comments

ORIGINALLY POSTED ON THE FIRST EDITION OF "THE BEAU ZONE" ON THE HARD ROCK HEROES WEBSITE FROM APRIL TO JUNE 2004.

If Hulk Hogan didn't walk away from WWE, I'd say Vince should have proved Hogan and Mr. America were the same person by signing a match between the two at the next PPV. Of couse, that would be too easy, and how does WWE get out of that one? I'll tell you how - by putting Dave "The Equalizer" Sullivan in the Mr. America costume. Hogan unmasks him, and they celebrate in the ring together to Dave's WCW "I want to be a Hulkamaniac" music. WWE could also have Vince call Hogan on his cell phone while Mr. America is in the ring in a match, but there's too many things wrong with that scenerio, both in reality and in storyline, that you can just guess.

If I were a WWE superstar and I were asked to intro a "From The Vault" match on WWE Confidential, I'd pick a WCW match that originally aired opposite a Wrestlemania on a Clash Of the Champions, and I'd identify it as such, especially if it got higher viewership than the Wrestlemania (I have a feeling that happened, which is why I say that). How well do you think that would go over with the office? Too bad Confidential isn't live.

Remember the 2003 Backlash PPV? A big reason Goldberg got no heat at Backlash is because WWE changed his music that night. I still believe to this day WWE should never have changed his music at all. Sometimes changing music works, and other times it's so disastrous they just have to go back to the old music, as in the cases of Steve Austin and Kurt Angle. There is really no good time to change a wrestler's music, unless you tell the fans you're doing it first. Fans feel helpless when they hear new music, because it smacks of the product not belonging to the fans, that it belongs to the office, and to management personnel backstage, where the fans cannot go because the security guards won't let them. Wrestling fans like to believe this is "their" product and "their" world. Actually, WWE could make a decent effort at telling fans now in the computer age. On their website, or in their e-mail newsletter, if they have one, they could say something like, "Watch for new Goldberg music in coming weeks....." Then fans would at least expect it. Don't know if that would still result in less heat or not.

So let me get this straight - Eric Bischoff says he can't wrestle Shane McMahon because Linda McMahon's rule that both he and Austin can't lay a hand on a WWE superstar unless physically provoked means Bischoff and Austin can't wrestle in an actual match as well. Austin asks Shane in the ring if he's a contracted WWE superstar. Shane says no. So the match is on. Then next week Bischoff is forced into a match against Kane. Huh? I thought Kane IS a contracted WWE superstar?!?! Huh? What?