Pro Wrestling Chronicle

A letter from Staff writer Brian Hansley before he wrote his own stuff (or we had the site up), TNA does right by Samoa Joe (what was I thinking?), and some praise for a well decorated lucha tag team in this Monday May 15, 2006 edition of Four For The Road.

Let’s start off the new week and a new format with some reader feedback. This comes by way of Brian Hansley, a great guy to get your Mr. Ohh La La comp. tapes from. He writes:

I’ve enjoyed your columns so far so keep them coming. As far as the ECW angle I see where you’re coming from but I think they are wrong doing it the way they are and even trying to re-start ECW. The whole point of ECW was it provided an alternative to the slickly produced wrestling in the mid 90′s. It was counter-culture. It is now going to be WWE produced ECW and I think a majority of the fans who can make or break the product will know the difference.

The most important problem I think though will be, there is no way the ego of Stephanie, Vince, and Triple H allow ECW wrestlers to bash the WWE product week in and week out which would cheapen the credibility of ECW.

Hansley, a completely valid point and one that we may see the WWE (and we know who’s who in the usual suspects) foolishly fulfill this arguement of there own stupidity. Thanks for the feed back, people keep it coming, and did you see Jim Kettner book Ohh La La vs. Low Ki over the weekend? Somebody get me the tape of the match. No, somebody get me a tape of Ki going over the match with the middle age comedy act. I just had a thought. When we get the message board up Hansley and Tommy Murph. can start a thread on their favorite Ohh La La moments. You guys are a match made in heaven! This column is bringing fans together.

–TNA does right by Samoa Joe and business. For the first time since early pushes of signature X-Division star A.J. Styles in ’02-’03, TNA has had the epiphany that-surprise- those fans were chanting Joe, not Sting or Poppa Pump, all along. Part two of the wake of from dream scenario revolves around the fact that they didn’t just acknowledge it inside the board room brain trust, but they actually put Joe over two old stars while giving him the rub from a third. Welcome to the fold, TNA.

On Sunday’s TNA PPV broadcast TNA allowed Samoa Joe, one of its most popular younger wrestlers, to be positioned to hang with Scott Steiner and Jeff Jarrett. Not only did Joe pin Jarrett clean, but he walked out on Sting after shaking his hand, allowing a post-match beat down by the heels to continue.

Let me count the ways why I love this. Joe got to do strong style with Scott Steiner, get put over by Jerry’s son, get the recognition from an aging Stinger, and still carry on his gimmick as a man of no loyalties. Perhaps we’ll see singles matches with Jarrett, Steiner, and Sting in main or semi-main event positions on PPV cards. This is a huge step in the right direction, and I’ll be the first to say I didn’t think TNA would go this far. I’ll also be among the first to say the second and third steps are much harder on a follow through like this. I wish them luck. Now, if they could only find this much genius within themselves when it comes to the other eight or ten feuds they write. As one noted wrestling writer recently wrote, sometimes I think I’m watch WWE 24/7 programming from the mid-90s. If Cornette is stuck in the 1970s, then Jerry Jarrett is stuck in 1982 (just a few years/prison cells away from Bill Watts. He’s stuck in 1986). It’s funny to see Jeff Jarrett stuck in 1995-99 and feel pride for being the most modern of the bunch.

–A follow up to last week’s bullet point on Lucha Libre and Mistico. The real backbone, both in ring work and for star power, of CMLL are perennial heels Ultimo Guerrero and Rey Bucanero. I’d feel bad not highlighting their respective talents in making the younger Mistico into a great babyface after putting only Mistico over in last weeks Four for the Road.

Bucanero and Guerrero have all the tools to get over with out a single moment on the mic, much like Super Crazy or Tajari did in ECW. Charisma is the great equalizer to speech when trying to get over to a crowd despite language barriers. If ROH, TNA, or the new ECW were smart, they’d be well served to grab these guys now. Don’t take my word for it, look them up on Youtube.com. Watch them, get a feel for their talents within the product, and judge for yourself if they would translate to a smaller American company. I’ll bet you a steak dinner they can.

I’ll be back tomorrow with a quick thought on RAW and some thoughts on this weekend’s progression of the CZW/ROH feud. Check out Paul Siegfried’s excellent column, Sunday Morning Musings, which was came out last night. This week Paul takes a look at the career path of Brock Lensar, his future, and Paul’s opinions on “the Next Big Thing”. Also, look for Paul’s Raw Ramblings after RAW this week. We’ll be rotating duties on a new experiment we like to call the Book your own Smackdown-review. We give you the results, and then we tell you what we would have liked to have booked. That’s what flies for weekend content from us. We’ve got a lot planned for the coming months. Finally, I’m working on a big op-ed feature column for this coming weekend. Fans of the hit show Lost will be happy with this one.