April 28, 2012

Home Schooling No.14

What's up everyone, I'm the Aussie Mouthpiece and once again it's time for another dose of home schooling, my weekly discussion about all things wrestling. This week as usual, will be about Monday night Raw, and there is a lot to cover, because of the extra hour. Also this week, I will be taking a look at some recent news items, and also Impact wrestling. This week's episode was the apparent 'beginning of the new era' with the first Open fight night, so I thought it would be worth checking out. Was I right? Only way to find out is to read on.

So let's get down to business.

As I said, this week was a special 3 hour edition of Monday Night Raw. I'm assuming originally that this week was supposed to be the annual draft, but, to quote Magnum TA, as plans will be, plans will go awry, and I guess what with John Laurinitis now being the GM of both shows, and with Raw already featuring Smackdown talent weekly, the draft is a little redundant.

Having said that, I've always enjoyed the draft episodes. Anything that deviates from the norm is interesting, and especially something that's unpredictable. I'm sure a lot of you read the same sites as I read, and I can distinctly remember reading that, at least a few years ago, the draftees did not know that they were being drafted until their name was called, like the whole situation with Jim Ross being moved to Smackdown.

The idea of something "real" happening is always exciting in wrestling.

But this year, at least for now, it seems that there won't be a draft. There are apparently going to be a number of talent releases coming in the near future. We've seen the first of these already with Tough Enough winner Andy Leavine being released this week, apparently because of a lack of improvement.  Now... maybe it's just me, but it just seems like if the guy was the winner of your "find a wrestler" competition, part of the idea was that he was ready to wrestle right? It's been over a year since the guy won, and he's not improving?

I know that it's impossible for Stone Cold and the WWE in general to have predicted this, but surely they could have seen that (as much of an Ass as he is) Luke seemed to be more ready. Not to mention AJ, and the guy who injured his ankle, Martin I think his name was. It's a shame that big Andy didn't get a chance to have even one match on the main stage, but really, in the end he has no-one to blame but himself it seems. Silent Rage will really be silent, at least until the dude shows up in TNA or something.


Let's move on to Raw.

I actually really enjoyed Raw this week. From the opening segment with Edge making a complete surprise appearance (I'm not even sure that the dirt sheets caught wind of it, though I could be wrong). It's definitely still a weird thing to see Edge with short hair though. Other than that, it's great to see him. One of my favourite things about Edge is how much he loves the business. I mean, most people who are involved in wrestling are there because they love it, but there's a few guys who you can just tell, there's nothing more special to them than wrestling. Edge is one of those guys.

So Edge is back, blurring the lines of reality and storyline talking about his contract expiring, and also with a message for Cena. The segment reminded me of when Edge was preparing for his Hell in a Cell match with Undertaker, where he asked Mick Foley for advice, and Mick talked about their hardcore match at Wrestlemania 22, and that Edge needed to "find that Edge, because this version of Edge has no chance to beat Undertaker". Edge basically said the same thing to Cena, in that he needed to find the John Cena that was feuding with Edge in 2006.

In a weird way that again blurs fact and fiction, he is completely right. 2006 was a big year for the John Cena character. That was the year he had the title match with Rob Van Dam at ECW One Night Stand, and really, the first time I can remember him being booed out of the arena. There was a little of it at Wrestlemania 22, some fans cheered for the (then) heel Triple H, and I remember wanting Triple H to win as well. But that night in the Manhattan Center was like nothing I'd ever seen before. It's almost iconic, especially that sign.. "If Cena wins, we riot".

And at the same time as all that was happening, he had an intense feud going with Edge. He was still edgy, he hadn't morphed into the kid-friendly pg Cena that we know today. The problem today is that he's had this reaction from fans for so long, that I think it would take a major re-invention of his character for any of those fans to even think twice about changing their opinion.

Maybe that's what they are finally going for though. I mean let's face it, the underlying theme surrounding Cena for the last 6 months or so has been about his character, and the fan reaction to him. What if this sunday, Lesnar destroys Cena, and takes him out for say.. the next 3 months? Cena comes back about a month before Summerslam with a new look or something, a new edge to his character, and gets a return match with Brock at Summerslam. That could be good, but let's face it, the WWE will never do something like that will they? What do you guys think? Does Cena need a re-invention?


I did like Cena's silent reaction to Edge though after all that. It worked well, and continued at the end of the show, when the contract signing took place. But I'll get to that in a little bit.

Another part of Raw I really liked this week was the Kane segments. Once again we got another surprise appearance, this time by Paul Bearer. Kane's promo skills are severely underrated in my opinion, he delivers so well, and has his character's nuances completely nailed. Just quietly too, Paul Bearer got a really decent pop from the crowd as well. I'm not so sure about Kane eventually putting Paul back into the freezer, once again it's something that's been done before, in the sense of "killing" Paul Bearer. Undertaker did it back in 2004 in that Concrete Crypt match.

That seems to be the theme this week. Repetition. I got the same feeling with the Brock Lesnar list of demands. Lesnar's live promo work is nowhere near the same standard as his pre-taped promo from last week, but it was still entertaining at least. But the list of demands was eerily reminiscent of a certain segment from last year. CM Punk had been suspended and re-instated, and Vince McMahon was trying to get him to sign a contract. I'm sure you all remember it. Punk got Vince to apologise, Punk called himself the "voice of the voiceless". But he also demanded things. Cups, plates, knives, forks, spoons, Ice cream bars.. CM Punk the movie even. He demanded to use McMahon's jet. And then, this week on Raw, Lesnar demanded to use Vince's jet.

I don't think it was done intentionally, but it's still repetitive, and especially in the Lesnar case, way too recent to be re-hashing the same idea. Also the other difference is that CM Punk was being cheered for his list of demands, and yet Lesnar, even though he had been cheered the previous two weeks, he was getting nothing but boos this week, and even some chants like "Lesnar is a bitch". Sure, he'll get cheered sunday, because he's wrestling Cena. But if they were trying to bring him in as a badass who the Anti-Cena fans cheer for, they're going about it the wrong way.

Very quickly I want to mention the Diva's title situation. Well done to Beth Phoenix, because I think she worked everybody, including some people in the back apparently. It's a shame that it had to be a Bella that won, but the news is that their contracts are up at the end of this month, so hopefully it is a transitional thing. I've read that the idea is to have Kharma come back and destroy the Bella/s, and then eventually that will lead into a Kharma/Phoenix feud. Which would be amazing. Especially compared to anything else that's happened diva's wise for a long time.

Let's move on to CM Punk and Chris Jericho though, because for me, that was the best part of the episode.
It starts with Jericho telling us that he gave CM Punk a gift. Then, in a backstage segment, Punk show's us a basket of alcohol, which he gave to Josh Matthews, with the exception of that one bottle of Jack Daniels. I really liked how they did that, Punk didn't make a big deal of holding on to it, but it was still clear enough that if you were paying attention, you knew he kept it. To me it was like "why didn't he put that back?" Which immediately made things interesting. Initially I thought he was going to find Jericho and smash it on his head or something. I was wrong though, as I'd find out a bit later on.

So the public field sobriety test is announced, and then Teddy Long finds Punk, who seems to be acting a little different. Now straight away I'm thinking "oh he's acting drunk for some reason". And I continued to think that way for a while. Now admittedly in terms of reality I knew that they wouldn't actually have made him drink anything, regardless of what the outcome of this segment was, but in terms of storyline and working, they got me. I'll admit it. When Punk failed the alphabet thing the first time, I was convinced they were going to go with a storyline of him becoming a drinker. Which would have annoyed me, and probably a lot of other people as well. I'm really glad they didn't go that direction.

But the segment as a whole was amazing. Punk was believable as a drunk, his quick witty one liners were great, and something that's been missing from his promos for some time now. It's a shame he had to be pretend drunk to be able to get that funny stuff in, but in the end it was entertaining, and that's the most important thing. And he's right, it's insanely hard to recite the alphabet backwards.

It also worked in the sense that Jericho had kind of been getting one over on CM Punk for a few weeks, and then finally this week Punk got at least back on level terms. I'm not going to do any predictions right now, but I'll probably post something the day before Extreme Rules.

So overall, I think they did really well this week. The wrestling was good, I enjoyed the Brodus Clay match, although I think Ziggler needs to get away from Vickie and Swagger, otherwise he's not going to jump from that mid card status. But overall it was a decent show, and a good way to lead into the Pay per view.


So very quickly about Impact this week, I was curious about the open fight night concept and how it would work. Also it was Eric Bischoff's last night on Impact.

I didn't mind the concept, I think the best thing it could be used for is to give people match-ups that they hadn't seen before, especially if it's only a once a month show, which is what Hogan said it would be. I did sort of skip through the show, honestly I'm just not that big of a fan of TNA at the moment, it just seems like it keeps trying to compete too much with the WWE. TNA made it's own mark, but now most of that originality is gone, and the biggest part of that was the very first night Hogan was there, they got rid of the 6 sided ring.

But, TNA is now (hopefully) one step closer to getting some originality back, with Bischoff being gone. Again though, repetition. Remember when he was fired from WWE? Vince threw him into a garbage truck. A dirty stinky place. On Impact he was thrown into a portable toilet. Yes, it's not the same thing, but it's still sending him off in a humiliating way. Which I'm ok with.

So that's about it for this week, I hope you enjoyed reading this. Remember if you're not already, you can follow me on twitter @TheOZMouthpiece and also, recently I've started writing articles for some other websites. So far it's just the one article on these sites, but I'm really proud of it. The article is called "it's the best thing going", and it's all about why we, as wrestling fans, truly love wrestling, and what makes wrestling so great to us. You can find it on either http://sltdwrestling.blogspot.com.au/ , http://www.wrestlingheads.com/ , or http://pwjournal.wordpress.com/ 
and while you're there, check out all the other fine articles and posts on these sites, because they're all awesome.

Until next time, I'm the Aussie Mouthpiece and now, my business is concluded.

1 comment:

  1. Good post dude, I agree with what you said about Cena. Would be good to see him come back with at least a re-hash of his existing character. As long as they dont turn him heel. would also be good to see what the WWE does without Cena for at least a few months. who would step up etc...

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