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Submitted by Randomguy#5 on Sunday, August 19, 2007 at 11:37 PM EST
Joe‘s Gonna Kill Himself Welcome back to the column that‘s not paralyzed but seems to be struck by you The Nosebleed Section. I am your host through wrestling’s whims, The One Called Random, and I wanna make you move because you’re standing still. We got a lot to talk about today including a lot of TNA (that’s a polarizing statement, I know) and a host of other topics. I’ll skip the razzle dazzle intro for this week and let you guys get right to the good stuff! --I love that TNA is entering negations with Brock Lesnar. I was a big Brock fan before he wigged out on Vince and the WWE but in a lot of ways I feel for him. Brock was a fairly young guy who just never really figured out what he wanted to do in life, and I think a lot of us 20-something’s around the world can related to that. Money be damned, it can’t buy happiness. Unfortunately for Brock he seems to be having a tough time figuring out what exactly does make him happy. His wrestling talents are immense, but after foregoing them for a failed NFL career, briefly getting back into the wrestling game, and then into MMA, Brock seems to be trying his hand at everything his physical gifts would qualify him for. IF (and it’s a big IF) Brock is committed to the wrestling business, he can offer the world to TNA, IF they use him right. Unfortunately that’s an even bigger if. Other than Chris Jericho, Brock’s the biggest “free agent” out there who seems to have any interest in wrestling (thus discounting The Rock ya dumb marks) and I’d love to see him F-5ing suckers all over the Impact Zone. --Randy Orton vs. John Cena is a feud that has my interest. I’m a bit disheartened by internet reports that Cena is going to drop the strap so quickly to Orton, only because I’d prefer this set up as a sort of “best of three” series between the two where Cena wins the first match, Orton wins the belt in a rematch and Cena loses violently in the third installment. I do not hate John Cena, and I think the guy is immensely talented, but I think it’s time for somebody else to run with the belt and Orton may be that guy. But don’t just throw out a dominant title reign that’s lasted for the better part of two years on a one-off match before launching into a program with Triple H. The idea that Cena could “chase” Orton and the belt after losing the initial contest is flawed. Cena needs to win controversially at SummerSlam before dropping the title and having the blow off match of the feud at Survivor Series. Book it. --Is it just me or has the WWE managed to job out CM Punk in this feud with Morrison? I know he got a lot of heat back with his win in 15 Minutes of Fame, and it’s a damned good thing because otherwise he was looking about as likely to beat Morrison as Balls Mahoney, and I was starting to wish Balls was the one with the next Title Shot. I realize Punk is the darling of ECW, and rightfully so, but if Morrison drops the belt to him, I’m not sure who he’s going to feud with short of his ten-millionth feud with Elijah Burke or Kevin Thorn, who is himself jobbing like mad lately. ECW is improving no doubt, but there is still no long term plan for the franchise, that is evident. Joe‘s Gonna Kill Himself Time was in wrestling where the crowd chants were at one time almost as entertaining as the shows themselves. ECW would not have the legacy that it does were it not for the ruckus crowds, and the brand would certainly have never been revived were it not for the actions a few thousand people inside the Hammerstein Ballroom for the first ECW One Night Stand. Certain events in wrestling’s history, which may have been nothing more than an afterthought, have grown to legendary status as a result of crowd involvement. The Montreal Screwjob would be little known to anyone outside the business were it not for the “You Screwed Brett” chants that followed around Shawn Michaels, Vince McMahon and especially poor Earl Hebnar. Meanwhile other chants have become almost boring. “Let’s Go [x] “ seems to be the only chant that readily catches on with seemingly apathetic wrestling crowds these days and crowd chants that were once awesome to be a part of as well as view from TV such as “Holy Shit” have become almost clichéd. There is in my opinion no cooler crowd chant in wrestling today than the epic, rhythmic bellowing of “Joe’s Gonna Kill You!” that can upon occasion be heard echoing throughout the Impact Zone in Orlando, Florida. It is eerily reminiscent of the “Goldberg” chants that could be heard in WCW’s later years and briefly in the WWE, the major difference of course being that in the case of Joe those chants are genuine and not piped in. In both cases, the crowd chant lifted the entire persona to another level of awesome, though I’m sure many TNA and ROH fans would agree with me that the catchphrase and crowd chant are not even the biggest reason to like Samoa Joe. Yet, I would suggest that if TNA continues along its current course of action the uber-cool catchphrase and crowd chant of “Joe’s Gonna Kill You” may be more accurate if said “Joe’s Gonna Kill Himself”. I know many visitors of this site consider themselves wrestling fans. In reality, they are just WWE fans. No matter what anybody tells you, there’s nothing wrong with this, I myself am a WWE fan first and foremost. But for those of you who may not watch much wrestling outside the WWE (you’re likely groaning or you’ve already skipped this as you don’t care to read anything about TNA) allow me to introduce you to Samoa Joe.  Even if you’re only a fan of the WWE however, you’d have to have been living under a rock the last few years to have no idea who this man is. TNA’s official website lists him at 6’2” and 290lbs (or 132 kilos for my overseas readers) and he moves as well as if not better than any performer I’ve ever seen at his size. Stylistically he’s a power/technical wrestler, but he brawls as well as anybody. He’s scary intense, his mic skills are very good, fans adore him and by most accounts he’s liked backstage. He works extremely stiff at times, which I suppose could be a problem for co-workers but makes for very believable television. He’s CM Punk with more size, he’s Kurt Angle without the baggage, and he’s Chris Benoit with better mic skills, though he does lack Benoit’s “killer instinct”. He’s been on the cover of Pro-Wrestling Illustrated twice and ranked 4th in their annual “PWI 500” list of the greatest wrestlers in the world in 2006. Upon debuting in TNA, the biggest acquisition in the company’s history Kurt Angle was immediately thrust into a feud with Joe because as the announcers told us -Kurt didn’t come to TNA to fight just anybody, he came to fight the best. TNA’s official website calls him “the new face of TNA wrestling” and he’s a former 3x X-Division champion and a former Tag-Team Champion. Yet, he’s not a former World Heavyweight Champion. Now as my Monday Night Countdown co-host Morpheus will tell you, this is a travesty of justice, no doubt. Joe is far and away the most “over” performer in TNA and if he’s not the most gifted performer, he’s damn close. He is quite literally the total package as far as professional wrestlers go, yet despite being with the company for three years, Joe has not held the top strap in the company. Instead perennial megalomaniac Jeff Jarrett has held the belt, as has Abyss and Sting (both briefly) and WWE defectors Christian Cage and Kurt Angle. Despite being admittedly the face of the company’s future, Joe has not held the honor. Part of me would like to look at this and say “So what?” I mean really, what’s the rush? It’s always a special moment in this bussiness when a deserving performer and crowd favorite finally achieves the top honor in the company and TNA is in desperate need of some “special moments in company history”. For the love of God this is the company that is putting out a “Best of Christian Cage” DVD when the guy has only been with the company two years. And it’s not as if those who’ve held the belt have been largely undeserving. While this has at times been the case with Jarrett he’s been the most over heel in the company since it’s inception, bar none, and all of the others were deserving as well, over with the fans, and boasted powerful reasons to put the belt on each. It will no doubt be a great moment for TNA when Samoa Joe finally overcomes the mega heel (whether it be the white-hot Kurt Angle or the currently face Jeff Jarrett) and wins the Heavyweight Title. And what better stage to do it on than at TNA’s version of “Wrestlemania” the upcoming October Pay-Per-View “Bound For Glory”? Which is where the story really gets interesting. Reports have been surfacing for quite some time now that Joe has been unhappy with his TNA contract. Consider this post taken from the Lop main page in December of 2005. -- Samoa Joe and TNA are in the process of renegotiating the financial end of his contract. Although he's signed to a one-year deal, his agreement was drawn in a way that allowed him to command more money if his initial run with the company took off. Since it unequivocally has been a big success so far, the feeling is that he definitely should be entitled to a raise. That was nearly two years ago. Folks TNA is on the verge of completely dropping the ball with the most promising asset in their company. Samoa Joe probably isn’t the next Hogan, the next Rock, or the next Austin. He’s not a guy who’ll launch the entire industry into a boom period again He might however be the next Undertaker or the next Triple H, a guy who can be a main-event player and a cornerstone for your company for years and years. Yet TNA continues to jerk-around with his contract as they have for two years now. Rumors suggest that the current contract he’s working under expires in January of 2008, and that would seem to coincide with the one-year deals he’s been signing near the end of every calendar year. Yet, other rumors insist that Joe’s contract actually expires in October, which would be right around the time of Bound For Glory. TNA doesn’t want to push Joe into a major storyline for their biggest show of the year, just to have him leave the company, and they certainly don’t want that to happen with him holding the World Title. Still, if TNA doesn’t put the strap on Joe and pony up the money to keep him around, what’s to keep him from leaving? TNA has worked themselves into quite the pickle here. They may not be able to risk putting the strap on Joe, but they definitely can’t risk having him walk away. The logical answer here is for TNA to just pay the man the money that he’s going to make at some point anyway. Presumably Joe isn’t dumb and he sees his stock rising throughout the wrestling world. He could make good money working the indie scene and with Ring of Honor, not to mention New Japan. Or… What if Joe were to end up in WWE? I know that there are people who maintain that Vince McMahon has no desire to push anybody that’s not “homegrown” talent but one could make the argument that Joe is. He got his start in wrestling in 1999 in UPW, a former developmental territory of the WWE and is said to be great friends with current WWE poster boy John Cena. Now I’m not proposing that the WWE is “afraid” of TNA, and I think it would be awful bussiness sense for the WWE to use their bigger checkbooks to start purging TNA talent as some have suggested. Doing so would simply acknowledge that the company is a thread (which I don’t believe they are at this point) and might make TNA look like a viable option for more WWE defectors. Yet it’s not as if the WWE is pulling of some dirty corporate politics or breaching a contract to hire Joe, thanks to TNA’s unwillingness to open their purses. Joe’s not one of the TNA’s high-wire circus acts that the WWE has no use for. He’s a bit short by their main event standards, but relatively the same height as John Cena. Joe certainly doesn’t have the “model” look for a WWE champion, he’s a bit on the heavy side for a non-freak sort of character (Kahli, Big Show, etc) but he has every other tool that the WWE would look for. He’s got the history, the skills, and the friends in high places to succeed in World Wrestling Entertainment. As a WWE-first fan, TNA-second, I for one grow a big rubbery one at the prospects of Joe vs. Cena, Joe vs. Edge, Joe vs. Undertaker, Joe vs. Triple H, or any other WWE main eventer. Having seen TNA squander Joe in seemingly twelve matchups with Angle, having seen every mid-card feud imaginable with stars like Styles and Daniels, and having watched TNA balk at the idea of Joe vs. Jarrett, I think a jump to the WWE would be AWESOME! I know as I type that TNA fans are crying in their MySpace pages. And in the end I’m willing to bet that TNA will come through and pay Joe the kind of money that he’s deserving of as a true main-event talent. I still believe that come Bound for Glory, Joe will be ascending to the next level of wrestling stardom in TNA. If not, come April, he may be taking that next step with another, more profitable company. Either that, or Joe’s gonna kill himself. Sanctimonious Son of a Bitch Pacman Jones is a damned fool. He’s not quite as stupid as Michael Vick, but he’s close. Every appearance I’ve heard from Jones lately he’s come off as an uneducated thug and done nothing to revamp his image and get himself back in the NFL. Now, it royally pisses me off the way Sportscenter and other networks are covering his role in TNA, as if somehow his working in a professional wrestling promotion is “another step” in his degenerative fall from grace. On the contrary, I think a significant role in TNA would actually help Pacman keep his dumb ass out of the strip clubs, but it disgusts me the way the media has covered it, and further disgusts me that Pacman continues to get airtime making himself look even stupider, thus justifying the negative media swarm. Moron. Cannon Fodder All who fall victim to Kahli‘s Claw are officially fodder. Now, I get that Kahli is an old-school heel and a side-show freak sort of role on TV, that’s fine. It’s a matter of suspending disbelief however, it’s distracting when he does this move. Yes, I’m sure it would hurt like hell if a man with his build clamped hands that size around my temples. I can’t imagine however that it hurts to the point that I wouldn’t simply turn the other way and run out of the move, or kick him in the king-size beanbag forcing him to break the hold. How awful was it watching Kahli cripple Kane with claw TO THE RIBS! It did look devastating when done from behind the opponent with two hands (like he did to Batista on the recent edition of Smackdown) so I’d suggest they use it that way permanently. Otherwise I don’t like it bleeder readers, I don’t like it at all. Cheap Pop If you fancy yourself a poker player (and I know a bunch of you do) I encourage you to check out a new columnist in the Lop Columns Forum who goes by the moniker Jetsetpoker. His column Shuffle Up and Deal is a great wrestling column with a poker theme an the gimmick is such that Jetset uses poker hands to illustrate lessons learned in the wrestling industry. His latest effort (linked above) is a look at the career of Randy Orton and a damn fine read. Check it out if you get a chance, leave him some feedback, and tell him Random sent you. I always have a good time writing these and tonight was no exception. Hopefully you enjoyed it. If you care to, my email address is linked below, feel free to drop me a line and shre your thoughts with me, I’d love to hear them and I’ll do what I can to write you back. Check out some of the links below for more stuff from the Random one and I’ll catch you guys next week. Until then, thanks for visiting The Nosebleed Section-but next time, get better seats. Click here to Email Randomguy#5!  Check out MondayNightCountdown.net for all the latest downloads and updates on the best wrestling-pod cast on the Internet!  Visit TheProjectLives.com and check out some great creative writing, social commentary, music downloads and pod casting including some familiar names you may recognize from Lop. Do some writing yourself? Jump in and give it a shot! Know somebody else who’d be better? Spread the word!  Free internet radio station ran by yours truly featuring all the best in hard rock and mainstream metal. If it seems like anything you’d be interested in listening to, give it a spin while you’re reading through some columns on Lop or The Project. We internet radio junkies may be in trouble so if you’ve got a few minutes to spare visit Live365.com and click on the “call your representative” link and try and help save Internet Radio. I’d appreciate it. *NEW GALLERY* New AMAZING Candid Photos of Karen Angle on BLTS! WOW!
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