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Archive for March 23rd, 2008

Eddie Graham, as well as Jack and Gerald Brisco, have been added to the 2008 WWE Hall of Fame induction ceremony scheduled for next Saturday, prior to WrestleMania. The induction ceremony, sure to be more pleasant than going through drug rehabilitation, may be a calmer, less controversial one than in recent years.

In addition to Graham and the Briscos, this year’s class includes Ric Flair, Mae Young, and The Rock’s dad and grandfather, Rocky Johnson and High Chief Peter Maivia. While Graham ran the Florida promotion that secured the Hall of Fame status of his brother, Superstar Billy Graham, as well as spawning the career of the American Dream, Dusty Rhodes, even Graham is not expected to be as controversial a choice as some recent nominees.

In recent years, WWE has thrived on inducting deserving candidates who had reason not to like McMahon or WWE, such as AWA founder Verne Gagne, Nick Bockwinkle, and Bret “the Hitman” Hart. None of this year’s nominees are expected to be McMahon-haters, which should guarantee a smoother ceremony, but also guarantee a far less interesting broadcast.

As a conept, and even to some degree in execution, last Monday Night Raw’s main event, pitting John Cena and Randy Orton against the entire Raw roster, was a fun challenge. My only complaint is the brief amount of time given for the match to develop and play out. It needed another 10 minutes, at least, to really deliver a great ring psychology payoff.

Still, the concept, delivered by Triple H as the third part of the “triple threat takeover” of Raw, part of promoting the triple-threat main event title match at WrestleMania between Orton, Cena and Triple H, is a fascinating one, and ought to be tried again sometime with more airtime given to the match. It played out like a fine bottle of Riedel, but was all-too brief.

About the only way to improve on it, in fact, would be to somehow have Jeff Hardy be one of the principals involved in facing the entire Raw roster; few people deliver better in-ring psychology in their matches than Jeff Hardy.

I haven’t been a big fan of the tired, old storyline involving WWE Diva Maria and one-time InterContinental Champ Santino Marella; the abusive. controlling boyfriend vs. compliant beauty storyline has been done to death over the years, with probably Macho Man Randy Savage/Miss Elizabeth and Marc and Rena Mero being the most successful iterations of it.

Yet I must say that it doesn’t require the services of a CAT5e to suss out the in-ring improvements Maria has shown; her recent matches finally have her pulling off enough convincing moves to rank her right up there with other battlin’ WWE divas like Candace Michelle, Mickie James and Melina. Sure, none of them really measure up to the days of Lita and Trish Stratus, but hey… those days are long gone now.

Ric Flair has been giving great matches lately, thanks to the “next time you lose, it’s your retirement match” storyline, and last Monday night’s street fight with Mr. McMahon was no exception. No one wears the crimson mask to greater effect than Flair, and although he’s ridiculously old to be winning so much, he’s been giving some of his best in-ring performances in years of late.

Although popular thought has Flair losing to Shawn Michaels at WrestleMania to put the final swan song on his career, it would be fun to push the storyline past WrestleMania, I think. It’s not like Flair is a man just out of drug rehab; he’s in top form for a many of his age, and could probably ride this storyline until SummerSlam next August.

See, thing is, Flair has now won enough that he ought really to be considered a number one contender for the WWE title, if he wins his match at WrestleMania; what better way to send Flair off into his final sunset than to have him fact whoever is champ after WrestleMania, win the title, and carry it for a few PPVs before finally losing the title and retiring at SummerSlam? The 17-time world champ deserves one final, career-capping title run, if you ask me.

Chris Jericho is one of my favorite “mic men” in the WWE. He can cut devastating promos, but is seldom well-utilized by the WWE. After a hiatus of a couple years, when it was announced that Chris would be returning to the WWE, I was hoping the absence would mean that he’d returned to become a more integral member of the Raw roster, but after an all-too-swift and minor program against WWE Champ Randy Orton, Jericho was quickly shuffled off to the second-tier of Raw superstars and, last week on Raw, was reduced to jobbing to the Big Show to advance a storyline he wasn’t even involved in, the Big Show-Mayweather clash at WrestleMania.

Seems like Y2J’s absence hasn’t resulted in better booking, despite the hype surrounding his return; at this point, Jericho would be far better off on SmackDown where he could almost immediately become a big enough draw to be the top challenger to Edge’s title, rather than continue to be lost in the shuffle on Raw, which has too many top names to accommodate them all. Sure, I didn’t expect WWE to dedicate a wall of engraved plaques to Jericho’s honor upon his return, but I was hoping he’d receive better treatment than he has thus far.

It would take a huge truck and a Jobox to come between the WrestleMania clash between the Big Show and Floyd “Money” Mayweather. With a $20 million unconditional guaranteed payday for Mayweather, and a certain amount of pride on the line for the Big Show, one might expect the clash to be epic.

Truth is, though, the match simply won’t be credible if it’s not a crush of Mayweather. With Big Show tipping the scales at 440 pounds, he’s almost three times as big as Mayweather at 156. I expect Mayweather will get his WrestleMania moment of getting in a good jaw shot on Big Show, but I think expect Show slam and sit on Mayweather for the quick win. Anything longer would be too much of a stretch.