Post by andrew8798 on Feb 21, 2007 19:55:42 GMT -5
Some notes from Angle on Between the Ropes. He claimed Vince wouldn’t allow him to wear an American flag. That’s odd. Maybe he wanted to wear it when he was a heel and Vince put the ixnay on it. He said he stole his entrance of coming up through the ramp from Gangrel of all people.
He said he was involved in the writing process in TNA but not an actual member of the crew, and that he would be taking on a larger role in the company soon. He’s definitely an idea man, though I’m not sure about all of his ideas. He said he could have five-star matches with Chris Sabin, AJ Styles, Chris Daniels and Senshi. Two things. First off, Kurt Angle standards are pretty low because I think every major match he’s had this year and last year in TNA he has called a five-star match. Second, I REALLY want to see Angle vs. AJ.
He said part of the problem with some of the guys in TNA was that, unlike in ROH, on a national level it was characters that got over and not matches. “A lot of them will get an opportunity to go on TV but in an hour show you’ve only got 5 minutes sometimes for a match,” he said. “So, they try to put a 15 minute match into 5 minutes, so you lose the story in that match. That’s the problem. In the indies they’re taught that it’s all the moves that they do that gets them over, but on the national scene that’s not what’s going to get you over. What is going to get you over is your character and the way you sell that character and pull the audience in.
It’s so much different than an indy show. At an indy show they want to see the trademark moves and they want to pop for all the crazy spots. From a national perspective you want people to care about you, to care about everything you do, from a punch to a superplex off the top rope. But it has to be at the right time and you have to know when to do it, how to do it, and why you’re doing it.” I cannot argue with that. Obviously, it’s better if you’re a good worker than bad, but certainly the masses watch to see superstars, and they’ll watch superstars talking before they’ll watch two guys they don’t know having a great wrestling match. The problem with TNA is that they have absolutely no idea how to create superstars, and the closest to an idea that they’ve got – to make sure that nobody ever gets beaten – only results in nobody actually being seen as a superstar. He claimed Vince made him turn down 26 movies. OK.
He said the new direction of TNA would be more wrestling focused. I have heard that people have started to figure out that one of the problems with TNA is that there isn’t enough wrestling on it. Seriously, like this was a revelation. He said future episodes would feature a few 3-4 minute matches (meaning 1 minute), an 8-10 minute match (meaning 4-6 minutes), and a 12-16 minute match (meaning 8-10). And they’ll absolutely need two hours before we’ll be seeing that. He actually said they were going to focus on wrestling and not low brow comedy like what was happening “in the Northeast”. Again, the problem lately is that TNA is doing WAY more stupid comedy than WWE is doing, as evidenced by the fact that only one group is regularly using a fat oily guy, and it’s not WWE. H
e said his plans to fight in MMA were very real, and that he had turned down the biggest contract UFC ever offered after the Olympics and before going to WWE. I don’t know if that is true or not (I’ve certainly never heard it), but I can say that the “largest contract UFC ever offered” in the mid-90s (particularly 1998 and 1999) was SIGNIFICANTLY less than guys are making nowadays. I can also tell you that Kurt has been offered A LOT of money to fight and has turned all of these giant offers down, which suggests he has no plans to fight at all. He said TNA would be getting a 2-hour show by the fall. I’d actually be surprised if it took that long.
He said Spike kicked WWE off the network because Vince wouldn’t cooperate with them. Well, that’s not exactly what happened. Vince wanted more money than he got from them in 2000 when ratings were WAY higher than they are now, so Spike ceased negotiations. He said Vince wanted to set up a match between him and Mike Tyson in 2003 but it fell apart when Angle broke his neck again. Vince was very interested in doing Brock Lesnar vs. Lennox Lewis in a mixed match, but that obviously fell through. The idea was that Angle was going to fight on the undercard, but the names thrown around as his opponent never included Tyson to my knowledge (Michael Moorer and Butterbean were both talked about). Once Lewis/Brock fell through, so did the whole idea.
He said he was currently deciding between EliteXC and UFC. This week, his claim was that he could get down to 205 if he tried. Last week he said he couldn’t and they’d have to fight at a catch weight (actually his exact words were that they’d have to create a special weight division for him). He’s clearly studying up on it because he talked a lot about the fighting styles of different major players. He said he’d train with Randy Couture, Mark Coleman and “that black guy”, who he later remembered was Kevin Randleman. He said Couture was the smartest fighter in the world, so I guess his plan is to train with the smartest and the dumbest.
He claimed PRIDE offered him a five year, $30 million deal. At least he’s consistent as that’s the story he’s always claimed. He buried ECW, saying they were at a 2.6 the week he left and a 1.1 two weeks later. Well, that’s 100 percent not true, and even today it’s never hit 1.1 in its normal timeslot. He said he and Vince had gotten over their issues and Vince would hire him back. He said Samoa Joe was still learning but great nonetheless. He said Joe had done several tryout matches for WWE but WWE passed on him. That’s true, by the way.
This was before he made it big in Ring of Honor, while he was working in California for UPW. Long story short, WWE isn’t looking for guys who look like Samoa Joe, which is why we get guys like Nathan Jones. He said Russo had done a great job getting over individual characters. Tell that to everyone who isn’t buying PPVs.
The Sopranos dude on Impact this past Thursday was Steven Schirripa. I had no idea he was going to be there, which is sad because TNA “put out press on it” the previous Monday. Hell of a job they did of that.
Arena Coliseo on February 16th had a Los Reyes del Aire (KING OF THE AIR) tournament with a trofeo on the line that was ultimately won by Volador Jr. for the second year in a row over Sangre Azteca. Said to be an awesome match and one you should go out of your way to see. Main was Los Perros del Mal (Perro Jr. & Hector Garza & Mister Aguila) over Atlantis & Ultimo Guerrero & Tarzan Boy to win the CMLL Trios Titles. No surprise there, as it’s probably a trade-off for Perro dropping his hair to Mistico next month, and also because as hot as Los Perros are, they lose a LOT, and the feeling was that they needed to get a big win sometime soon before it started to really hurt them.
Latest on WSX. Episode four ended up being pulled because Standards and Practices weren’t happy with a fireball spot. Unlike in WCW, the Standards and Practices stories in WSX are actually funny.
In WCW, Russo claimed WCW was losing the battle because Standards and Practices wouldn’t, for example, let them refer to Rhonda Singh as a fatass, like that would have made any difference in the grand scheme of the universe. In WSX, Standards and Practices have very strange priorities, and if they’re not happy with something, the show just doesn’t air. I guess the idea is that anything a child could emulate, WSX isn’t allowed to do.
This is why stuff like shots to the head with gimmicks are banned, but Piranha death matches and explosions are OK (since piranhas and bombs are hard to come by). However, dives off high places are allowed even though you’d think that would be a very easy thing for a child to emulate. Anyway, with the fireball I guess there was concern that fireballs were easy to come by for the youth of America, so they laid the smack down.
There were rumors that the entire season had been cancelled and the show wad dead. As of press time, the belief is that the show will return to MTV in the usual timeslot next Tuesday, February 27th, and all the other episodes will continue to air as scheduled. Regarding why, if the fireball issue is cleared up, they didn’t just air the show on the 20th, well, no one knows that answer. I don’t have high hopes for the series getting renewed, as last week’s 0.47 rating was dismal (and sad), and the entire network is going through very rough times, having just laid off 250 employees. MTV just isn’t hip anymore.
Angle debuted for New Japan on February 18th in Tokyo before 11,500, teaming with Yuji Nagata to beat Giant Bernard & Travis Tomko. Turns out the decision to team Nagata and Angle up was made by Yukes, and when the parent company makes a call you go with it. Angle did say afterwards that he was the strongest wrestler in American and Nagata was the strongest wrestler in Japan, and while he’d like to team with him in the future he also wanted to wrestle him. They won with a double ankle lock/Nagata lock II finish. Main was Hiroshi Tanahashi beating Koji Kanemoto in 21:52 with a dragon suplex.
All Japan on February 17th in Tokyo saw Katsuhiko Nakajima, 16, beat Shuji Kondo with a German suplex to become not only the 24th champion, but the youngest man in the history of Japan to win a major title. Provided the Japanese wrestling business doesn’t utterly collapse, he’s a future superstar. Taiyo Kea & Toshiaki Kawada also beat Suwama & RO’Z (Rosey of WWE fame – get it?) to win the All Japan World Tag Team Titles when Kea pinned RO’Z. Main was Minoru Suzuki retaining the Triple Crown over Satoshi Kojima in 23:58 with a choke sleeper.
The magazine business in Japan continues to collapse at a devastating rate. Weekly Gong Magazine is history after 39 years as the long-time president and founder Taisaku Maeda, 51, was arrested on the 19th due to alleged Yakuza ties. His long-time partner Yoshio Shimomura was also arrested and revealed to be a Yakuza boss. They were the president and vice president respectively of Nippon Sports Publishing. This is following in the footsteps of the demise of Weekly Fight this past September.
Yoshihiro Takayama is going to Mexico. Really. He’ll be working the annual DRAGONMANIA show at Arena Mexico on May 12th. It’ll be his first time ever working the country. It’s the 10th anniversary of Toryumon and Dragon’s 20th anniversary as a pro-wrestler. Takayama said he was excited to work in Mexico because it gave him a chance to eat real Mexican food, unlike the fake stuff he gets in Japan. He said he plans to work lucha style and surprise everyone. Well, him just working lucha style will be a surprise.
Chris Hero missed a few Japanese dates after his flight got cancelled.
The HUSTLE show on March 18th features Tiger Jeet Singh vs. Hard Gay, which is impossible. Tajiri vs. Naoya Ogawa is also on the show.
There is talk that Yuji Nagata will be heading to TNA. I guess it’s probably likely to happen since Kurt Angle worked the New Japan dates teaming with him.
credit F4W newsletter
He said he was involved in the writing process in TNA but not an actual member of the crew, and that he would be taking on a larger role in the company soon. He’s definitely an idea man, though I’m not sure about all of his ideas. He said he could have five-star matches with Chris Sabin, AJ Styles, Chris Daniels and Senshi. Two things. First off, Kurt Angle standards are pretty low because I think every major match he’s had this year and last year in TNA he has called a five-star match. Second, I REALLY want to see Angle vs. AJ.
He said part of the problem with some of the guys in TNA was that, unlike in ROH, on a national level it was characters that got over and not matches. “A lot of them will get an opportunity to go on TV but in an hour show you’ve only got 5 minutes sometimes for a match,” he said. “So, they try to put a 15 minute match into 5 minutes, so you lose the story in that match. That’s the problem. In the indies they’re taught that it’s all the moves that they do that gets them over, but on the national scene that’s not what’s going to get you over. What is going to get you over is your character and the way you sell that character and pull the audience in.
It’s so much different than an indy show. At an indy show they want to see the trademark moves and they want to pop for all the crazy spots. From a national perspective you want people to care about you, to care about everything you do, from a punch to a superplex off the top rope. But it has to be at the right time and you have to know when to do it, how to do it, and why you’re doing it.” I cannot argue with that. Obviously, it’s better if you’re a good worker than bad, but certainly the masses watch to see superstars, and they’ll watch superstars talking before they’ll watch two guys they don’t know having a great wrestling match. The problem with TNA is that they have absolutely no idea how to create superstars, and the closest to an idea that they’ve got – to make sure that nobody ever gets beaten – only results in nobody actually being seen as a superstar. He claimed Vince made him turn down 26 movies. OK.
He said the new direction of TNA would be more wrestling focused. I have heard that people have started to figure out that one of the problems with TNA is that there isn’t enough wrestling on it. Seriously, like this was a revelation. He said future episodes would feature a few 3-4 minute matches (meaning 1 minute), an 8-10 minute match (meaning 4-6 minutes), and a 12-16 minute match (meaning 8-10). And they’ll absolutely need two hours before we’ll be seeing that. He actually said they were going to focus on wrestling and not low brow comedy like what was happening “in the Northeast”. Again, the problem lately is that TNA is doing WAY more stupid comedy than WWE is doing, as evidenced by the fact that only one group is regularly using a fat oily guy, and it’s not WWE. H
e said his plans to fight in MMA were very real, and that he had turned down the biggest contract UFC ever offered after the Olympics and before going to WWE. I don’t know if that is true or not (I’ve certainly never heard it), but I can say that the “largest contract UFC ever offered” in the mid-90s (particularly 1998 and 1999) was SIGNIFICANTLY less than guys are making nowadays. I can also tell you that Kurt has been offered A LOT of money to fight and has turned all of these giant offers down, which suggests he has no plans to fight at all. He said TNA would be getting a 2-hour show by the fall. I’d actually be surprised if it took that long.
He said Spike kicked WWE off the network because Vince wouldn’t cooperate with them. Well, that’s not exactly what happened. Vince wanted more money than he got from them in 2000 when ratings were WAY higher than they are now, so Spike ceased negotiations. He said Vince wanted to set up a match between him and Mike Tyson in 2003 but it fell apart when Angle broke his neck again. Vince was very interested in doing Brock Lesnar vs. Lennox Lewis in a mixed match, but that obviously fell through. The idea was that Angle was going to fight on the undercard, but the names thrown around as his opponent never included Tyson to my knowledge (Michael Moorer and Butterbean were both talked about). Once Lewis/Brock fell through, so did the whole idea.
He said he was currently deciding between EliteXC and UFC. This week, his claim was that he could get down to 205 if he tried. Last week he said he couldn’t and they’d have to fight at a catch weight (actually his exact words were that they’d have to create a special weight division for him). He’s clearly studying up on it because he talked a lot about the fighting styles of different major players. He said he’d train with Randy Couture, Mark Coleman and “that black guy”, who he later remembered was Kevin Randleman. He said Couture was the smartest fighter in the world, so I guess his plan is to train with the smartest and the dumbest.
He claimed PRIDE offered him a five year, $30 million deal. At least he’s consistent as that’s the story he’s always claimed. He buried ECW, saying they were at a 2.6 the week he left and a 1.1 two weeks later. Well, that’s 100 percent not true, and even today it’s never hit 1.1 in its normal timeslot. He said he and Vince had gotten over their issues and Vince would hire him back. He said Samoa Joe was still learning but great nonetheless. He said Joe had done several tryout matches for WWE but WWE passed on him. That’s true, by the way.
This was before he made it big in Ring of Honor, while he was working in California for UPW. Long story short, WWE isn’t looking for guys who look like Samoa Joe, which is why we get guys like Nathan Jones. He said Russo had done a great job getting over individual characters. Tell that to everyone who isn’t buying PPVs.
The Sopranos dude on Impact this past Thursday was Steven Schirripa. I had no idea he was going to be there, which is sad because TNA “put out press on it” the previous Monday. Hell of a job they did of that.
Arena Coliseo on February 16th had a Los Reyes del Aire (KING OF THE AIR) tournament with a trofeo on the line that was ultimately won by Volador Jr. for the second year in a row over Sangre Azteca. Said to be an awesome match and one you should go out of your way to see. Main was Los Perros del Mal (Perro Jr. & Hector Garza & Mister Aguila) over Atlantis & Ultimo Guerrero & Tarzan Boy to win the CMLL Trios Titles. No surprise there, as it’s probably a trade-off for Perro dropping his hair to Mistico next month, and also because as hot as Los Perros are, they lose a LOT, and the feeling was that they needed to get a big win sometime soon before it started to really hurt them.
Latest on WSX. Episode four ended up being pulled because Standards and Practices weren’t happy with a fireball spot. Unlike in WCW, the Standards and Practices stories in WSX are actually funny.
In WCW, Russo claimed WCW was losing the battle because Standards and Practices wouldn’t, for example, let them refer to Rhonda Singh as a fatass, like that would have made any difference in the grand scheme of the universe. In WSX, Standards and Practices have very strange priorities, and if they’re not happy with something, the show just doesn’t air. I guess the idea is that anything a child could emulate, WSX isn’t allowed to do.
This is why stuff like shots to the head with gimmicks are banned, but Piranha death matches and explosions are OK (since piranhas and bombs are hard to come by). However, dives off high places are allowed even though you’d think that would be a very easy thing for a child to emulate. Anyway, with the fireball I guess there was concern that fireballs were easy to come by for the youth of America, so they laid the smack down.
There were rumors that the entire season had been cancelled and the show wad dead. As of press time, the belief is that the show will return to MTV in the usual timeslot next Tuesday, February 27th, and all the other episodes will continue to air as scheduled. Regarding why, if the fireball issue is cleared up, they didn’t just air the show on the 20th, well, no one knows that answer. I don’t have high hopes for the series getting renewed, as last week’s 0.47 rating was dismal (and sad), and the entire network is going through very rough times, having just laid off 250 employees. MTV just isn’t hip anymore.
Angle debuted for New Japan on February 18th in Tokyo before 11,500, teaming with Yuji Nagata to beat Giant Bernard & Travis Tomko. Turns out the decision to team Nagata and Angle up was made by Yukes, and when the parent company makes a call you go with it. Angle did say afterwards that he was the strongest wrestler in American and Nagata was the strongest wrestler in Japan, and while he’d like to team with him in the future he also wanted to wrestle him. They won with a double ankle lock/Nagata lock II finish. Main was Hiroshi Tanahashi beating Koji Kanemoto in 21:52 with a dragon suplex.
All Japan on February 17th in Tokyo saw Katsuhiko Nakajima, 16, beat Shuji Kondo with a German suplex to become not only the 24th champion, but the youngest man in the history of Japan to win a major title. Provided the Japanese wrestling business doesn’t utterly collapse, he’s a future superstar. Taiyo Kea & Toshiaki Kawada also beat Suwama & RO’Z (Rosey of WWE fame – get it?) to win the All Japan World Tag Team Titles when Kea pinned RO’Z. Main was Minoru Suzuki retaining the Triple Crown over Satoshi Kojima in 23:58 with a choke sleeper.
The magazine business in Japan continues to collapse at a devastating rate. Weekly Gong Magazine is history after 39 years as the long-time president and founder Taisaku Maeda, 51, was arrested on the 19th due to alleged Yakuza ties. His long-time partner Yoshio Shimomura was also arrested and revealed to be a Yakuza boss. They were the president and vice president respectively of Nippon Sports Publishing. This is following in the footsteps of the demise of Weekly Fight this past September.
Yoshihiro Takayama is going to Mexico. Really. He’ll be working the annual DRAGONMANIA show at Arena Mexico on May 12th. It’ll be his first time ever working the country. It’s the 10th anniversary of Toryumon and Dragon’s 20th anniversary as a pro-wrestler. Takayama said he was excited to work in Mexico because it gave him a chance to eat real Mexican food, unlike the fake stuff he gets in Japan. He said he plans to work lucha style and surprise everyone. Well, him just working lucha style will be a surprise.
Chris Hero missed a few Japanese dates after his flight got cancelled.
The HUSTLE show on March 18th features Tiger Jeet Singh vs. Hard Gay, which is impossible. Tajiri vs. Naoya Ogawa is also on the show.
There is talk that Yuji Nagata will be heading to TNA. I guess it’s probably likely to happen since Kurt Angle worked the New Japan dates teaming with him.
credit F4W newsletter
