ECW Results again

So this week we open up with Chavo coming down to the ring complaining about how being thrown in to the gulf made him pretty damm sick. Almost as sick as it made us when he won the ECW championship? I think not. Chavo starts demanding a match with C.M Punk right now, the hopes of the viewers rose here, only to be crushed by Armando Estrada saying that match would be saved for the ppv and would be given away tonight, he announced C.M Punk vs Mark Henry tonight, im really looking forward to this, not that Mark Henry is a bad wrestler, i just think C.M Punk is a lot better and deserves better then Chavo and Henry.
On a more positive note Stevie Richards made an appearance, beating Rory Foxx, it’s always a good thing to have Richards back, shame he isn’t used more often I’d like to see him in the title picture with Punk but that’s just me. Kelly Kelly finally beat Layla after several times of trying. Mike Knox made a comeback facing and losing to the Booker T lookalike Kofi Kingston
A suprise for me was the fact that Tommy Dreamer beat John Morrison, after Morrison and Miz labelled Dreamer and Delaney losers. Dreamer ended up planting Morrison with a ddt to finish off the match as a winner. To end things off with had Punk vs Henry who is pretty much everywhere but on iMPACT nowadays. Punk won by DQ and sent a message to Chavo by sending Henry running with his tail between his legs.

Owen Hart-King of Harts

When your brother is Bret Hart and your father is Stu Hart, you know that you are gonna have to wrestle to the best of your ability and then some. It means you’re gonna have to go through severe training until you can pull off every move to perfection, Stu Hart is a harsh teacher, teaching many names such as Lance Storm, Chris Jericho,Edge,Christian and of course Chris Benoit, all of these wrestlers are known for their in ring skills, not one of them can be called green in the ring. Owen was one of 14 children 7 of the 8 brothers became wrestlers, the other became a referee.
Hart started his wrestling career through his fathers wrestling promotion Stampede wrestling, like many of Stu Harts students had done, Owen was reluctant to get in to wrestling and actually wanted to find a good job outside the ring, but being a Hart made that practically impossible. During his stint with Stampede he won the tag titles, beat Shane Douglas to PWI rookie of the year and had a feud with the legendary Dynamite kid, by 1988 Owen was leaving Stampede for Japan, however from his time in Stampede you could already tell the talent that Owen had and the potential to where he could actually get in the business
Whilst in Japan Owen adopted the Jushin Linger gimmick and won the IWGP Junior heavyweight title in the New Japan Pro wrestling promotion, the fact he was only the second Canadian to hold the title after Chris Benoit showed the faith that the bookers at New Japan had in Owens skills, as you can see even early in his career Owen was building up a positive reputation as a talented rookie. The talents of Owen Hart didn’t go unnoticed and soon the WWF came knocking at his door, here Owen debuted the Blue Blazer gimmick, during this period with the WWF he didn’t really see much popularity never rising above the Upper card the WWF had in place. Owen Hart was defeated by Mr Perfect at Wrestlemania and he then left to go work the independants, he lost the Blue Blazers mask on his tour of the indepedants basically saying goodbye to that gimmick.
Owen Hart then popped up in WCW but was never really recognised, it was when the WWF came knocking again that would see Owens career take off, he formed the new Hart Foundation with brother in law Jim Neidhart, after Neidhart left the WWF Owen set out on a singles run which was pretty much uneventful minus at match at Wrestlemania vs Skinner. Owen began to team with Koko.B.Ware, they were never pushed towards the tag titles, the team quiety faded away and Owen begun to help his brother Bret in his feud with Jerry Lawler, this feud mainly took place off WWF television. Owen would be injured in the summer of 1993 and would not be back until the fall. Tension began to rise between Bret and Owen as they crashed in to each other leading to Owen being the only Hart eliminated.
Finally the writers started to do something with Owen after making him team with Bret for a while and raising the tension between them Owen finally snapped and this begun one of his and Brets most remembered feuds. The feud saw Owen go over Bret cleanly at Wrestlemania, showing that big things were in store for him. Albeit Bret won the WWF title later the same night, it shows that Owen had the potential to be in the main event. Owen actually won the title from Bret on an occasion but the result was overturned and Bret retained. Owen rebounded from his loss to Bret by winning the tag titles with Yokozuna, Owens first taste of WWF gold, and a belt he would win many more times during his career. After he finished teaming with Yokozuna Owen began teaming with the Bulldog and again won the tag titles. Tension began to rise between Owen and the Bulldog and they faced each other in the finals for the European title, which the Bulldog won. The two would continue to feud until Bret formed the Hart foundation again.
Owen went on to beat the Rock for the intercontinental title, his first taste of single gold, it seemed that Owen had got stuck at the mid card level and would be in the shadown of his brother for a while yet. Owen and Bulldog lost their titles to Austin and Michaels, Hard and Austin started a feud that ended when Hart botched a piledriver, the botch hurt Austins neck and he never fully recovered, Austin was tripped of the intercontental title and Hart won it back during a tournament beating Faarooq.
Owen again started to feud with Austin and lost the title back to him, he then went on to watch the Monteal screwjob at the same time, this seemed to end any hopes of Hart ever reaching main event status in the WWF, although they released Bulldog and Neidhart after the screwjob but refused to release Owen showing maybe they had big plans for him. Owen was kept off t.v for a while, when he came back he went after Michaels and Triple H, and he began to feud with Triple H for the European title, Owen would go on to win the title. Owen los tthe title back to Triple H a few weeks later and he later joined the nation of domination to feud with DX. After the feud with Dx had finished, OWen briefly feuded with Shamrock who wa sout for revenge after Owen injured him, Hart then went on to form the popular tag team of him and Jeff Jarrett, during this tag team Owen revived the blue blazer gimmick, this would lead to his death, the storyline was hillarious with Owen having ‘retired’ trying to prove neither he or Jarrett were the Blue Blazer, with both showing up next to the Blue Blazer to prove their innocence.
Owen was scheduled to beat the Godfather for the intercontinental title at the over the edge ppv, the plan was for Owen to be lowered in for his entrance from the rafters, like Sting did in WCW, however Owen was released to early and fell 78 feet to his death landing dead on the turnbuckles. Just like that one of the most under rated wrestlers was dead, no world title reign no major main event feud, one of the most talented wrestlers was a legend at mid card level, i have no doubt in my mind that if Owen were still alive today he’d be a world champion by now, he should of been a world champion back then, he was without a doubt one of the best wrestlers and deserved to be above mid card level.
I know most people reading this will think whats the point of this blog, it doesn’t tell me anything that wikipedia couldn’t, well im about to give you something wikipedia doesn’t have, my opinion. If Owen hadn’t died when he did, it hink there is little doubt that with his talent he could have gone on to be WWF champion before he retired, however the only thing that might have been in his way would have been Vince, maybe he would have been to bitter to give the title to Hart after the Montreal screwjob in fear of Owen defecting with the belt at some point, we all know how paranoid Vince gets, the only thing holidng back Owen would of been backstage politics because based on talent he should have been a multi time world champion before he retired if it weren’t for his death. So heres to the king of Harts a respectable man who didn’t want to do Vinces crappy love storylines (who does) who only wanted to spend time with his family, he didn’t even really wanna be in the business, but being a Hart he could escape it, he was under used and unfortunatly the world lost a great person that day a great wrestler, friend and family man

ECW Results

So the show opens with Punk talking about how he ruined Chavos Mariachi Fiesta last week and goes on to state he wants to invoke his rematch clause later in the night. However our ‘respectable’ champion comes out and states no rematch will take place till No Way Out, so at least we have that to look forward to! This leads to Armando Estrada to come out and say Chavo will indeed face Punk tonight, but not in any match…a gulf of Mexico match, the point of this match folks is to throw your opponent in to the Gulf of Mexico to gain the win, this however won’t be for the title.
We’ll start the matches with the divas tag match between Victoria and Layla facing Kelly Kelly and Michelle McCool, what a way to start the matches this week? Thats what i thought,i feel sorry for the divas really all of them are going to be humiliated by that horny devil of a chairman the WWE has. Well Victoria and Layla got the win over the Kelly and McCool and seem to have the edge to this rivalry having drafted Lena Yadas services and she proved the difference tripping Kelly so Victoria got the pin, what a finish to that match.
So things are looking optimistic for this show so on to the next match and we have John Morrison facing the ECW Innovator of violence himself Tommy Dreamer, this match saw Dreamer pretty much dominate Morrison for most of the match, until the Miz (probably still annoyed about being eliminated from the Rumble by Hornswoggle) dsitracted Dreamer from outside allowing Morrison to get the pinfall over Dreamer. Dreamer wasn’t alone folks he had Colin Delaney with him, doesn’t he just reak of Mickey Whipwreck?
Kofi Kingston wrestled against this week against James Curtis, this match was pretty much a replica of Kingstons previous ECW matches and yes he ended up with the win with a pin fall over Mr Curtis.
The main event has arrived,C.M Punk and Chavo is up next in the Gulf of Mexico match. The match pretty much starts off outside the ring and eventually ends up in the crowd and starts to lead outside the arena. The ending came when Punk hit the Go to sleep on Chavo sending him in to the Gulf giving Punk the win.
To be fair this weeks viewing of ECW was not to bad minus the divas match which you know if just there as a filler really, as are most of the divas matches. I quite liked the idea of Dreamer vs Morrison and although i was first skeptical about the Gulf of Mexico match it turned out to make the show better then expected in my eyes.

The Royal Jumble-Pretty much another let down

Heres my take on the Royal Rumble 2008

So i really was looking forward to the royal rumble, i mean i do every year from the random spots that happen within the rumble, to who’s going to eliminate who this year. Will we actually get a suprise this year rather than the obvious winner? Well this year we did, and what a big disapointment that was. John freaking Cena winning the damm rumble! Now the reason i hate Cena is because when he’s around we get him shoved down our throat, whether it be as the unstoppable WWE champion, or the challenger that you knows going to get the title back within a month of losing it, if we and the new champ are lucky. It just gets really bland and boring like Triple H when he dominated everything, Cena is basically the new Triple H except this time the writers are at fault rather than Cena just using politics backstage to get the title like Triple H does. I mean Edge was made to look like crap compared to Cena and Edge is a damm good wrestler and i happen to preferEdge and i think it was really bad that he never got a title reign longer than a month on Raw, yet he goes to Smackdown (the minor league of the WWE) and he gets a title reign of a few months straight away. What does that say about Batista compared to Cena, if Edge can hold the title for months on Smackdown but can struggle to keep it for a month on Raw you know Smackdowns obviously gotts be the minor leagues and that means ECW might aswell be OVW.
Anyway back to the rumble i felt that the overall feel of the ppv was quite rubbish to be honest, i mean the best match to me was Orton vs Hardy, to be fair i like both of these wrestlers and a win either way would have kept me happy. I would ghave slightly prefered Hardy to win, but with Cena back and winning the rumble he wouldn’t have made it to mania with the title especially now Cenas cashed in his match for No Way Out, which is a massive slap in the face to the tradition of winning the Rumble by the way. Ric Flair and MVP was disapointing as i thought it was a title match aswell as a career on the line match, however it turnt out not to be and i suppose that was for the best as i would definatly prefer MVP to be the U.S champ compared to Ric ’saggy boobs’ Flair. JBL vs Jericho should enver ever ever happen, im sorry but this really is wasting Jerichos time, he should be in the main event scene instead of Cena just bursting straight back on to it, but instead hes stuck in a feud with the former smackdown commentator. I really do question the writing of the WWE sometimes, im sure most of us do.
Im really glad Rey mysterio did not beat Edge, although i thought C.M punk would cost Edge the title to seek his revenge. However the writing here saved us the horror of having another Rey Rey title reign so kudos to them for that, but that’s just about all the kudos they’re getting from me! Another blatent show of disrespect to ECw was the fact they never had a title match on the show, they even shoved the champion in the royal rumble the first time a Heavyweight champion has been in the rumble i believe, can the writers show anymore disrespect to ECW, i shouldn’t really ask they’ll find a way won’t they. ECw is pratically OVW but on television really, i had high hopes that it would at least stay partially the same when it started again, those hopes have been dashed and dashed over and over again.
The actual rumble i guess wasn’t so bad, Batista stumbling before trying to eliminate Umage was a really bad bad spot of the rumble. Apart from that Shelton Benjamin should have been in for longer. I really hated the way when Cena came down he basically cleaned the ring, see what i mean about being the unstoppable champion i really hate that. Overall the engatives really did outweigh the positives again at the rumble, so last year we had a really bad Mania and Summerslam and this year we get a really bad Rumble, its really not looknig good for the WWE when they can’t even pull out a decent show at 3 of their top 4 ppvs. As Ron Simmons would say DAMM!

Matt