The Rant Of The Week: ROH Strike While The Iron Is Hot
Posted by Phantom Lord
on 02/27/2008
Greetings conversationalists all across the fruited plain, it is I your personal Harvester of Sorrow Phantom Lord and this is the all mighty Rant of the Week. As always I am coming to you from my bunker in the rotten apple that is New York City and Wrestlemania is upon us and they’ve got a hell of a show stacked up. The Mayweather angle will probably be one of the biggest ones they’ve ever done, but I just have one small problem with it and I’m sure a lot of you will to considering this economy.
Times are tough and I had been wondering why in the hell Wrestlemania was gonna cost $54.95 to order. Granted unlike most boxing PPV’s for that price you’ll get 4 solid hours of entertainment. But today we found out why the price was jacked up so high (and God help you if you have HD…that’s $65).
A $20 million payday awaits the undefeated WBC welterweight champion when he takes on Big Show as part of WWE's "WrestleMania XXIV" at Citrus Bowl in Orlando, Fla., on March 30.
Credit to the Associated Press
$20 MILLION DOLLARS?
$20 MILLION DOLLARS?
WHO THE HELL DOES HE THINK HE IS? CHELSEA CLINTON?
I’m sorry when I read that earlier, the first thing that popped into my mind was that line. Now I think it’s going to be an interesting match, but $20 Million? The first number that came out was something like $5 Million for him. I mean that is reasonable compared to this. Shane McMahon must be banking his future on this because if it doesn’t pan out I would imagine it would almost guarantee that Shane O’Mac would lose the keys to the kingdom when Vince eventually retires or drops dead. Personally I still don’t see how this match can possibly work minus a HUGE run in to save Floyd’s ass. But hey I’m sure they are hard at work at that. I mean hell for $20 Million all my attention would be focused on it.
Moving along, TNA managed to do the impossible this weekend here in the NYC area and that’s look like an actual wrestling promotion that has a clue as to what it is doing with it self. TNA the television show and TNA the touring promotion are two different beasts. While their ppv’s can’t draw, some how TNA managed to have two sellouts and one really well filled building for a gate of over $100,000 this weekend. Considering TNA usually loses money on shows, actual green must have been a welcome sight for them. I don’t know what the deal is with them, but maybe they should just start taping these shows instead of Impact. It probably would be a hell of a lot better in the long run.
I could write a long winded column about TNA today but I won’t. I mean if you watch Impact then you know what you see speaks volumes more then any lowly internet critic ever could.
Today I figured I would focus my attention on the third company on the national stage, Ring Of Honor. Truth be told I am not much of an ROH fan because I don’t have the time or money to invest in DVD’s of every single show. Sure I read the results so I know who is who, but other then that I couldn’t tell you much about ROH even if you asked me. All I know about ROH is they try to be everything the WWE and TNA isn’t and that’s an honest to God wrestling promotion that promotes actual wrestling. ROH for those of you who don’t know came to prominence with the likes of Low Ki, Christopher Daniels, Bryan Danielson, Samoa Joe, Austin Aries, Homicide, and numerous others. It’s because of ROH that all of these guys are now the stars that they are right now.
The name Ring Of Honor even implies it’s something different then the norm of run of the mill professional wrestling. But that all changed this weekend as ROH did the unthinkable (for it’s fans anyway) and they dared to do SPORTS ENTERTAINMENT.
ROH has this guy named Larry Sweeney who is by far probably one of the best heels to come around in a very long time. You might even remember him appearing on RAW as Nick Hogan during the whole Randy Orton/Hogan feud in 2006. Any way Larry is a heat magnet and there are some who believe he went over that moral line of decency. Here’s the low down on what happened.
Next up was the Larry Sweeney show. Sweeney came out with Bobby Dempsey and after he saw how much the crowd liked Dempsey slapped Dempsey. He then proceeded to remind everyone how is the only undefeated wrestler in ROH by virtue of him winning his only match against Claudio Castignolli and said basically Claudio is ashamed to even show his face in this country after losing that encounter. After which he told everybody how today was Bobby’s birthday and then cut Bobby off to get even more heat. He then said he had a guest from ROH’s original days and bought out Allison Danger. He then said that Allison was the rat of all rats as the only reason she had her spot in the company is because she earned it on her knees which of course pissed Allison off who then proceeded to tell Sweeney that she was a trendsetter for ROH and helped pave the way for the women’s division in ROH to which I asked myself what women’s division?
I know the SHIMMER title is defended often but technically speaking that is another company that is as laughable as ROH calling the FIP title a second ROH title when it’s a title from another company. Anyway she told Sweeney she didn’t have to take that and proceeded to leave. Sweeney not to be embarrassed knocked her out with the mic and then positioned her in the center of the ring and told Bobby Dempsey that he was going to do him a favor and give him a great gift. He was going to let Bobby become a man. Just when I thought I had seen everything in wrestling I was going to see a simulated rape. He tells Bobby she is unconscious and his for the taking to “Squeeze her tits” and of course Bobby refuses and is knocked out with the mic and positioned on top of Danger with Sweeney stepping on his back to force Bobby to take advantage of the situation. I can’t lie this was kind of funny but also disgusting at the same time.
Credit to Jose Marrero and DOI
ROH became RAPE OF HONOR with this one and the shit hit the fan because of it.
Roh’s chief Gabe Sapolsky posted this message in response to the hate they’ve gotten over this in the last couple of days.
ROH officials are embarrassed and apologetic over the actions of Larry Sweeney last Saturday at the Manhattan Center. We won't go into details here, but Sweeney proved to be an absolutely reprehensible and despicable individual. Sweeney has stated that he will lead Sweet & Sour Inc. to a "hostile takeover" of ROH. Sweeney was bragging to ROH officials that he will personally change the face of ROH. We have seen that there is nothing too disgusting for Larry Sweeney. ROH officials are definitely on edge with Sweeney's recent "hostile takeover" statement.
I am sorry if you are offended by this. I can assure you that this will never happen in ROH again. Thank you for all your support.
Now I’m going to assume that this was a bit of good old kayfabe and sincerity. Basically it’s a page out of the Vince Russo playbook only Russo never had the balls to go this far (all though there was an episode of RAW where it ended where it looked like Billy Gunn and X-Pac were going to rape Stephanie McMahon in a locker room but they claimed it was just a hoax and never spoke of it again). Before anyone says anything and accuses me of supporting rape, I think that part of the angle was stupid and disgusting. I mean stuff like that really has no place in wrestling. Granted ROH is in desperate shape at the moment as expenses are getting big, guys aren’t being booked, and many say Gabe is in over his head as booker of Ring of Honor.
Personally I don’t care about that kind of stuff. All I know is right now ROH has in front of them in my opinion an angle that could do some good business for them. Right now ROH is building to this huge show at the Hammerstein Ballroom here in New York City. ROH right now couldn’t fill all 3,500 seats even if they brought in the biggest stars they could afford. The way I see it even though the angle they did on Saturday night was horrible, they have something in front of them they need to run with.
My theory has always been if you’re going to start something don’t be a pussy and chicken out just because some people bitch about it. Wrestling at it’s heart has been about taking something and running with it. Some of the biggest and most violent feuds in history all started because someone did something deplorable. Granted no one ever tried something like this before, but there have been some dicey angles that were the talk of the business.
On youtube there’s video floating around from 1988 of an angle from Georgia Championship Wrestling between Dr. Tom Prichard and The Dirty White Boy. It starts with The Whiteboy’s valet The Dirty White Girl coming out in sunglasses and she pleads with Gordon Solie to have Tom come out so she can talk to him. Gordon keeps blowing her off and finally after a break he brings him out and a bombshell is dropped. She takes off the glasses and she has a nasty black eye and says The WhiteBoy did it. Of course it turned out to be the mother of all swerves as The Whiteboy comes out from behind and Pearl Harbor’s Tom and proceeds to beat the ever living shit out of him and drags him around the studio with a noose and actually tries to hang him in the ring.
It drew huge outrage for the time but it also became one of the most sought after pieces of video. Amazing considering all there was back then was tape trading and the Apter magazines.
Most of us probably remember the Randy Savage/Jake The Snake feud where Roberts got Savage back into the ring after he beat him senseless and had his cobra bite him. At the Tuesday In Texas PPV, Jake The Snake slapped Miss Elizabeth. To say the heat was nuclear would be an understatement.
In 1996 there was the Pillman 9MM incident where Stone Cold Steve Austin was hounding him and he showed up at his house and Pillman pulled a gun on him. I’m sure there are a few more that I can’t remember at the moment, but the point is this isn’t the first time the moral line has been crossed and it won’t be the last.
So if I were in a position of power in Ring Of Honor I’d go full steam ahead with an Allison Danger/Larry Sweeney feud. Sweeney humiliated her and she deserves her revenge.
Allison by all accounts is a decent female wrestler. She’s Steve Corino’s sister so I would imagine she knows how work an angle. The way I would do this is I would have Allison go after Larry leading up to the big Hammerstein Ballroom show where it would be a Steel Cage match to culminate the feud. The show is in May so there’s plenty of time to build up the hate and heat in this one. Larry has this stable called Sweet N’ Sour Incorporated. What I would do with this is have Allison bring in some outside help as Larry would say “if you want me you have to go through SNS Inc”. It’s been done a billion times in wrestling where someone has to run the gauntlet and it almost always works.
Sweeney is such a cocky prick that this could work. He can play up the fact that her man can not beat the entire SNS roster. Eventually it leads to Sweeney and her guy and he gets the win and the match is then made official. Danger vs. Sweeney at ROH’s biggest show in history. Shows this big need a gimmick to lure people in and some stiff fest between a couple of Japanese guys is not going to cut it. I know ROH fans are not exactly the easiest people in the wrestling world to please. But I think an angle like this deserves to be played out. I mean you can’t do something like this and just say “Oh well we’re sorry if we offended you…forget it ever happened”.
It did happen and if Gabe had any damn sense he will charge ahead with this feud. As it is Sweeney is doing an angle where he’s trying to take over ROH. Obviously doing something like this is part of his plan to make ROH in his vision. In the end it can be a battle for honor or what ever ROH calls a respect match. The loser has to get down on their knees and say “so and so is better then me and I respect you”.
ROH whether they like it or not opened up this bag of worms and now they have to go with it.
So I hope ROH takes this bit of free booking that I just gave them. It’s not often I do this, but when I read the results and saw the ensuing shitfest it dug up the gears in my head started turning and like I said if I had a position of power this is what I would be doing leading to this huge show.
Think about it this way; if they do this show at The Hammerstein and it’s only half full how will that reflect on Ring Of Honor if they can’t fill up a modest sized theater.
Of course it could be worse. It could be like the Cow Palace show they had at that Wrestling convention that only drew 300 people in San Francisco. Good thing for them the house lights weren’t up for that abortion of a show.
On that note I believe I am done for this week. Like I said I normally don’t look at ROH, but with a topic this hot I couldn’t resist.
Hopefully I’ll be back next week and I’m sure I’ll a lot of feedback to sort through on this one.
So until next time take care and remember someone has to give you this information and it DAMN well has got to be me.
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