Week on January 14, 2007 - January 20, 2007

This is my first column on WrestingFigs and is basically a look at the past week in the wrestling world broken down by each brand. Each section will feature my thoughts and opinions on what's happening that week along with some insight into where that brand might be headed next. To give you all a little background information on myself I have been a life long wrestling fan since I was about 7 years old meaning that I was brought up on Hulkamania. I was the WWE Season 1 Fantasy Champion and I work for Ringside Collectibles. So here is the wrestling week in review.

RAW

According to Vince McMahon he doesn't give the fans what they want. He tells us what we want and then we learn to like it. Well that's half true. He gives us what he wants and we're forced to accept it. Some of it is good, some of it is crap and every now and then some of it is great. This week we found out that the John Cena vs Umaga rematch at the Royal Rumble will be a last man standing match. This is a decent temporary feud to get through a few PPVs until we start to focus on Wrestlemania 23. The Royal Rumble is one of the most anticipated PPVs of the year and for good reason. We'll see if this year someone is newly elevated to main event status by winning the rumble such as Chris Benoit, Batista and Rey Mysterio have been in recent years. Raw has been doing fairly well as of late by utilizing most of the mid-card talent in their own storylines. The Jeff Hardy / Johnny Nitro feud seems to be continuing and has produced some solid matches. Having Jeff as the Intercontinental Champion is a great position for him to be in right now. Hopefully they will keep the belt on him for a while. Nitro is by far the best talent to come out of the Tough Enough series. The main event of Raw pitted Rated RKO against HBK in a handicapped match. This match was given some decent time and the crowd was really into it. This was a solid main event and in the end DX is still alive. The real question now seems to be will they keep Rated RKO together now that HHH is out of the picture or will they make Rated RKO drop the titles and be split up to focus on singles competition as we get closer to Wrestlemania. Both John Cena and Shawn Michaels are going to need opponents for Wrestlemania and if you check out the Raw roster there's not too many main event guys besides Edge & Orton that can fill those spots. Something to think about post Royal Rumble.

SMACKDOWN

The past two weeks Smackdown has brought back the beat the clock sprint leading to Mr. Kennedy's title shot at the Royal Rumble against Batista. This is a great choice of an opponent for Batista right now as Kennedy has been slowly built up for the past year as a presence on Smackdown. The Road to Wrestlemania will have an extra stop for Smackdown as they have the No Way Out PPV following the Royal Rumble. Batista vs Undertaker is coming but will WWE hold that match out for Wrestlemania and put Undertaker's Wrestlemania winning streak on the line or will they use this feud for the No Way Out PPV? In past years major title changes have happened at No Way Out so anything is possible. The Hardy Boyz and MNM have been continuing their inter-promotional feud which seems to have a lot of potential behind it. Don't be surprised to see further matches between these two tag teams with some added stipulations. The Benoit / Chavo feud has been going on for a long time now but every time Benoit comes out on top. Chavo has not been able to get passed that mid-level status but giving him the US Championship would allow him to break through that barrier. Chavo is one of those consistent performers throughout the years and deserves to get to that next level in his career. One very positive move on Smackown's creative end has been allowing the tag titles and the cruiserweight title to stay on the same wrestlers for long periods of time. This really elevates those champions and at the same time raises the prestige of the title belts. I personally am a huge fan of London & Kendrick. With the in-ring limitations placed on WWE wrestlers by the higher-ups these two are the closet thing to the X-Division we'll see in WWE. Remember the days when we were at least allowed to see an occasional shooting star press or a 450 splash?

ECW

Pick any 3 initials, usually one of them being a 'W', and you have WWE's Brand 3. It's just not ECW and everyone knows it from RVD & Sabu to Tommy Dreamer & Paul Heyman. Clearly we know by now that it's not coming back in the form of its glory days so we're forced to accept the product as is but we'll watch it anyway because we are wrestling fans. WWE is treating ECW as a third brand instead of letting it be its own entity. My thinking here is that Vince wants ECW to be a mainstream brand because mainstream is more profitable and better for the bottom line. I believe he thinks ECW as it used to be was too much of a niche market and needed to be greatly toned down to appeal to the mainstream fans. The New Breed do have there extreme moments now and then but they're few and far between. It seems such a shame since there was so much potential for ECW following the One Night Stand II PPV back in June.

The current state of ECW has Bobby Lashley as its one and only champion. Lashley is an impressive big man with a legit wrestling background and seems like a genuinely nice guy but he was in ECW for all of two weeks and was given the ECW World Championship. If that does not tell you that the old ECW is not coming back then nothing will. We saw the debut of Monty Brown under the new persona of Marquis Cor'Von. There was no build up for his debut, no mention of his NFL background and his first opponent was Cassidey Riley. If I didn't know any better I'd think I was watching an episode of Impact from 2005. At least WWE is still using 'The Alpha Male' moniker. Look for Marquis Cor'Von to be pushed in the upper tier of ECW fairly quickly because of the current lack of star power. For the new-comers ECW is a land of opportunity to become major superstars with worldwide recognition. CM Punk is at the head of the pack here and I believe he will one day be a World Champion. If you've never seen him prior to ECW I highly suggest you check out some of his old Ring Of Honor matches. His trilogy of matches with Samoa Joe are classics and he actually has three best of DVDs available from Ring of Honor.

TNA

We have a new NWA World Heavyweight Champion in Christian Cage. It's been about a year since Christian made the jump to TNA and he's already a 2-time world champion so I'm betting he's pretty happy about his decision to leave WWE. Christian Cage vs Kurt Angle is up next in the main event picture with Samoa Joe mixed in there somewhere. Look for this feud to stretch out for 2 to 3 PPVs most likely ending in a 3-Way match down the road. Let's see if TNA does another title change which seems to be happening fairly frequently in the X-Division and NWA title scene in the past few months. It looks like TNA is establishing a Woman's division which is a great long term move for the company and will allow female wrestlers (keyword here is wrestlers) a place to earn a living and not just be a valet or interviewer / eye candy. The X-Division as of late seems to be a series of Kevin Nash comedy skits. A little bit of comedy mixed in is always ok but TNA's X-Division is what sets it apart from the competition. Don't forget to let them have quality wrestling matches every once and a while. We're getting a little back story about Abyss which is great for character development and makes us care about the wrestler a little more. When the audience cares about a wrestler there's potential for them to become a superstar. In what should have been a purist's dream match Kurt Angle vs AJ Styles was quite a let down. This match had such potential to be phenomenal (pun intended) but instead ended in predictable interference to further an upcoming PPV storyline. PPV storyline building is incredibly important and should be done but this match should have been given the time it deserved to be great as it could have easily stood on its own.

TNA truly is an alternative to WWE and it will continue to grow in popularity because it fills a void in wrestling that WWE's three brands do not offer. Today's X-Division is new and exciting much like the Cruiserweight division of the 90's that helped to energize WCW. TNA definitely needs a two hour timeslot but they are still growing and they'll get there eventually.

FINAL THOUGHTS

Recently we've heard "We Want Wrestling" & "TNA" chants on Raw as well as "RVD" chants on Impact. If you believe the Internet rumors, and this one seems pretty obvious, then RVD might be looking to jump to TNA once his contract is up. RVD vs AJ Styles for the X-Division Title at Bound For Glory 2007 sounds pretty good to me. After years of having their announce tables broken, Moody Jack finally extracted some revenge by leaving the Spanish announce table and saving the NWA Tag Titles for LAX. Don't forget to check out Wrestling Society X on MTV on Tuesday January 30th at 10:30PM. This show will feature Teddy Hart & Jack Evans who are by far the greatest high-flyers on the independent scene today. If you've never seem them before make sure you check it out and you'll be amazed at what they pull off in and out of the ring.

- Trevor Potter