Grow­ing up I watched a lot of wrestling. Over the past ten years or so I’d drift in and out of it, watch­ing for sev­eral weeks in a row and then not, mostly because the prod­uct was not con­sis­tent. Clearly, dif­fer­ent peo­ple watch wrestling for dif­fer­ent rea­sons. Some watch for a cer­tain wrestler, oth­ers love the amaz­ing high-risk moves, and peo­ple like me enjoy a good story mixed with good performances.

(con­tinue reading…)

ECW broad­cast it’s last show tonight, and while I was sad­dened at the end of an era for extreme wrestling, I was glad to see it end. ECW was the antithe­sis of WWE and WCW. ECW gave us some very mem­o­rable and his­toric moments - such as invad­ing WWF the first time, Shane Dou­glas toss­ing the NWA belt in the trash, The Mass Tran­sit inci­dent and many oth­ers. ECW also intro­duced many of the iconic and leg­endary super­stars of today. Super­stars like Rey Mys­te­rio, Chris Jeri­cho, Chris Benoit, Eddie Guer­rero, Dean Malenko, Tazz, Mike Awe­some, Raven, Sand­man, Sabu and of course The “Whole Fuckin’ Show” Rob Van Dam. But after ECW went under, many of these super­stars went to the remain­ing 2 pro­mo­tions. Some flour­ished and oth­ers didn’t get far enough to make sig­nif­i­cant impact. However, their matches and mem­o­ries lived on as the var­i­ous pro­mo­tions heard that iconic chant “E-C-Dub, E-C-Dub,E-C-Dub” in every arena- keep­ing ECW alive amongst fans.

The sum­mer of 2005 saw a resur­gence of ECW, thanks in part to WWE cre­at­ing the One Night Stand PPV, which besides bring­ing nos­tal­gia to fans showed WWE that ECW was still alive but with a faint pulse. WWE saw dol­lar signs and in June of 2006 decided to hold another One Night Stand, but this time, it would lead to the rebirth of ECW on the SciFi chan­nel. For­mer ECW owner Paul Hey­man was put in charge of this new/old upstart brand and with that WWE’s ver­sion of ECW was born. Com­ing off the his vic­tory over John Cena at One Night Stand 2, it was a no brainer that The “Whole Dam Show” Rob Van Dam would be the re-launched brands’ Cham­pion.  Alas, the magic of One Night Stand slowly faded and WWECW became more and more preva­lent with each pass­ing week. Slowly but surely ECW Orig­i­nals quit or were released, and the mem­o­ries and super­stars of old were replaced with young WWE new­com­ers that needed a place to hone their craft. This was by many con­sid­ered the end, but to me this paved the way for a new gen­er­a­tion of wrestlers such as Monty Brown, Eli­jah Burke, Evan Bourne, CM Punk, Zack Ryder and Ezekiel Jack­son that would carry the flag of ECW in it’s final days with Tommy Dreamer still there as the last sol­dier fight­ing the good fight. Tommy Dreamer recently left the WWE and while he did say his good­byes, the fans knew that Tommy couldn’t carry this torch any further.

To me, ECW should have ended with Tommy Dreamer win­ning the belt one last time and retir­ing with the belt to put a happy end­ing on this leg­endary brand. But sadly that was wish­ful think­ing. ECW ended with it’s last cham­pion Chris­t­ian being defeated by Ezekiel Jack­son in an “extreme rules” match leav­ing Ezekiel as your last ECW cham­pion. I believe ECW died the day Tommy Dreamer left the WWE and what ended tonight was just another WWE brand.

Shed no tears for ECW wrestling fans, because the mem­o­ries we have can never be taken away. You can change the logo, the style and the wrestlers, but at the end of the day there was and will always be one ECW. The ECW that was owned by Paul Hey­man and had wrestlers like Dreamer, Sand­man, Funk, Cac­tus Jack, New Jack, Raven, Sabu and many oth­ers bleed­ing and wrestling for our entertainment.

Rest In Peace ECW.

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (ver­sion 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Down­load the lat­est ver­sion here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Too often I com­plain about the things I dis­like in pro­fes­sional wrestling, but instead of rant­ing and rav­ing about these things, I decided to write about how I would fix some things. Some of you may agree or dis­agree with my sce­nar­ios and are wel­come to comment.

Wel­come to the first col­umn of The Arm­chair Booker!

Let’s start with the num­ber one WWE show:

RAW

• Do away with the guest host­ing and either intro­duce a GM or some author­ity fig­ure to run the show.

• John Cena-Needs a heel turn to freshen up his char­ac­ter. Bring back the freestyles and street swag. Fans will enjoy the turn I’m sure. I would have also aligned him with Cryme Tyme for a solid faction.

• Bret Hart– Should have had the Hart Dynasty with him when he appeared on Raw and align DX with Vince. Would have ele­vated The Hart Dynasty and taken advan­tage of exist­ing beef between Bret,HBK & HHH.
• Bring in the other Dib­i­ase brother and make a Tag Team in Legacy. That way you could have the Dib­i­ase broth­ers for the tag belts, Cody for IC/US title, and Orton for the World Title. I’d call the Dib­i­ase broth­ers Money Inc. as an homage to their dad.
• Reunite the Colon Boithers, Car­l­ito & Primo, since solo they are struggling.
• Ele­vate Evan Bourne into a stronger mid-card feud with Swag­ger and MVP as your core guys.
• No more Hornswoggle!
• Would make San­tino a legit threat and cap­i­tal­ize on his pop­u­lar­ity by putting him in the IC/US title hunt as well.

Smack­down

• Cre­ate a sta­ble with Finlay,Drew McIn­tyre and Shea­mus. Have a vet­eran work with both of these young tal­ents and also cre­ate a tag team as well.
• Push Edge as your num­ber one heel.

• Con­tinue build­ing CM Punk’s Straight Edge Society.
• Move Khali to an enforcer role and limit his ring work.
• Build you Women’s Divi­sion around Beth Phoenix.
• Make Dolph Zig­gler, John Mor­ri­son and Matt Hardy your main mid-card guys for the US title, but ele­vate them into the main event often. This will allow you to both gauge crowd response and inject new blood into the main event scene.
• Chris Jeri­cho & Rey Mys­te­rio need to feud at the main event level.
• Keep and Kane & The Under­taker together and have them be the cen­ter of your Tag Team Division.

ECW

• Bring back the Hard­core Matches.
• Intro­duce a TV Title to give the mid-card guys a title to feud over.
• Shel­ton Ben­jamin needs some sort of mouth piece that can help him get over as a heel. I’d go with him, Zeke and Regal.
• Koslov needs to work on not look­ing so robotic in the ring.
• Align Baretta & Croft with Zack Ryder.
• Chris­t­ian needs to leave ECW in the Draft. Bring in a new vet­eran to carry the brand.
• I would move Char­lie Haas to ECW.
• Con­tinue push­ing Yoshi Tatsu.
• Use ECW to build new tal­ent and keep call­ing up new ros­ter mem­bers to keep the brand fresh.

This is just a sam­pling of how I’d change things. I am sure many of  you will have thoughts and sug­ges­tions of your own. Feel free to share them.

As much as I love wrestling and their spin-off prod­ucts, there are times that you really need to go “What The Fuck”!!!! My dear read­ers - this is one of those times. WWE has decided to launch a series of comic books enti­tled “WWE Heroes” which cen­ters around the WWE ros­ter and their adven­tures. The back­story for the series cen­ters around an age-old feud between “The Shadow King” and “The King Of Kings” (which prob­a­bly means HHH and The Under­taker or some­thing along those lines).

While I appre­ci­ate cre­ativ­ity and inno­va­tion, WWE Heroes to me is just another WWE attempt to cash in on a new medium. Not to be a total douche but are any comic fans really read­ing this? Do they even care?

I admire what WWE is try­ing to do but I feel that they are spread­ing them­selves thin with so many projects. Between films and comics and poor attempts at main­stream­ing (Raw guest hosts I am look­ing at you), WWE is pro­vid­ing var­ied prod­ucts but none are par­tic­u­larly inno­v­a­tive or engag­ing. I think that the most suc­cess­ful thing that they have done thus far in terms of new projects was the flick “See No Evil” and while it was orig­i­nal, at least used a gen­uine scary lead char­ac­ter in the form of Kane.

I really would like WWE to reach that pin­na­cle of pop­u­lar­ity, but with all these hokey attempts at main­stream­ing they are tak­ing three steps back instead of mov­ing for­ward. That’s my take! What’s yours?

(con­tinue reading…)

WWE has decided to release a DVD with some of the best moments from RAW in 2009. As a life­long WWE fan I will always have good and bad things to say about the direc­tion of their flag­ship show. This DVD looks like a solid col­lec­tion of great raw moments but I feel that these releases need to be avail­able in Hi-Def sim­ply because USA is in HD and Raw is taped in HD as well.

I am not going to use this post to vent about my dis­plea­sure regard­ing the cur­rent state of RAW. On the con­trary I will instead post some of my favorite 2009 Raw Moments

• CM Punk win­ning the IC Belt from William Regal in Chicago
• Orton and Triple H Feud– Orton attack­ing Stephanie McMa­hon ele­vated that feud from good to great in fell swoop
• Ricky Steam­boat wrestling bet­ter than most of the RAW roster
• Kofi Kingston get­ting a solid push
• Batista turn­ing on Rey Mysterio
• Trish Stra­tus return­ing to Mon­day Night RAW
• CM Punk’s World & Heavy­weight Champ title reigns
• San­tino Marella– Almost every seg­ment he was in was fuck­ing gold
• RAW Being com­mer­cial free-I did not enjoy all the Trump BS

I am sure I left out tons of other moments. I hope WWE does with all their flag­ship shows and hope­fully tran­si­tions to HD in the near future.

Enjoy the trailer