Greatest Promos Ever!: "the man of 1004 holds..."

This might actually be one of my favourite promos in wrestling ever. It was from when Chris Jericho was feuding with Dean "the man of 1000 holds" Malenko on WCW.

I miss Jericho when he was like this...





















...arm bar

Promo of the week: "Stone Cold..."

This was the highlight of the wrestling promos in the last week. CM Punk really knows how to piss off a crowd. Luckily the clip cuts before Big Show came in and ruined it. Enjoy!

Promo of the week: "the quintessential stud muffin..."

I don't care what all the smark critics say, I really enjoyed TNA Hardcore Justice. This week's promo of the week award goes to Joel Gertner for his hilarious promo at the aforementioned PPV.

The video's not on YouTube, so I've uploaded it exclusively on here. Enjoy!

Promo of the week: "London Calling, wankers..."

It's been a bit quiet on here of late, you can blame summer and real-life bullshit for that. I should have my Hardcore Justice review up in the next day or so, so keep with us. For now, I'm adding a new feature to Socko's Review: Promo of the Week. It's open to all our writers, you basically choose your favourite promo of the week and share it.

In the first, we have Wolfe and Magnus speaking on Xplosion. This could be a great way for Wolfe to get some momentum back in TNA. This promo is pretty stupid, but entertaining nonetheless.



Enjoy!

Greatest Promos Ever! "You're just a poor man's JR..."

I've not said much about the ongoing rumours surrounding Danielson's exit from WWE over a month ago. I'm not really interested in the backstage politicking and bickering that goes on to be honest. At Socko's Review, I like to think that we are all fans rather than smarks, so much of the posturing and rumours are neither here or there. The promo I want to share is one of Bryan Danielson's from NXT. It's brilliant:

Greatest Promos Ever!: "The numbers don't lie..."

Well, the Sock is back again after more time away, hopefully I won’t need to do that again.

Scott Steiner’s promos in TNA were some of the strangest I think I’ve ever seen. The guy’s grasp of the English language is just beautiful.



This has made me realise that I miss Scott Steiner and I miss Petey Williams in TNA.

Greatest Promos Ever! "Oldest ride, longest line..."

This has to be the funniest promo in TNA history, I nearly wet my pants I was laughing so much. Nature Boy Jay Lethal and Flair in a war of words, it doesn't come any better than this!

Watch it once, then play it back with your eyes closed, the impression really is quite uncanny.





Fortune is a shite name for a stable though...

Greatest Promos Ever! "Assholes..."

The birth of Anderson's Assholes has to get the nomination for on of best promo of the year thus far. This was on the cusp of Anderson's face turn at Sacrifice, I alluded to it in my original review, but could not get hold of a video, so here it is:

Greatest Promos Ever!: "Oh! Speak English already..."

I was thinking the other day about how great Abdul Bashir was in TNA. Positioned primarily as the generic Arab heel, his promos and in-ring ability were completely underrated.

His promos made for uncorfortable and confrontational viewing, in which Bashir tried to challenge some of the fans' learnt assumptions... only to be drowned out by jingoistic chants of "USA USA USA". What made Bashir so interesting was by the fact that he did not profess to hate America, but hate the way in which Muslims were portrayed since 9/11. Arguably, he trod a fine line where one could argue that though he was raising some interesting points relating to the perception of Muslims with in the US, the ambivalent nature of Bashir's character only served to confound the issues.

At points he comes across as articulate and politically aware, but a moment later will resemble a rambling extremist. But I was drawn to this character primarily because of the ambivilence and inconsistancy.

I loved it when he'd go up against someone likfe Consequences Creed (with his Stars and Stripes trunks and cape) and perform moves like his 'Weapon of Mass Destruction'. Anyway, enjoy:




Oh, Mike...

NXT: The end of Daniel Bryan

Not that anyone has been watching, but Daniel Bryan has been voted off of NXT.



Classic Danielson. I hope that WWE put him on Smackdown and build him up to take a few belts, then in a year or two move him across to Raw. If he goes to Raw now, he'll be lost in the mix. Danielson is the perfect candidate for a Smackdown push.

The American Dragon returns? Lets hope so!

Review: TNA Sacrifice 2010

So, with my drunken and incoherent ramble over The Clown’s predictions late last night, I figured it was time to write a more considered review.



The first thing I need to say about Sacrifice is that two things completely sucked: the crowd and Tazz’s announcing. I’m usually a fan of Tazz’s commentaries, but, man, he was seriously off his game this time. For most of the PPV, the crowd were flat; they didn’t seem to give a shit about the matches. Maybe this is because the PPV was in the Impact Zone, or maybe it’s because TNA management hadn’t spent much time building up any of the matches for people to really give a shit about who wins or loses. Also, it seems that JB has been promoted to ring announcer...

First up we had the number one contenders’ match for the tag team titles between Motor City Machine Guns, Beer Money and 3D. It wasn’t the greatest match I’ve seen these guys in, the Dudleys were kept out of it for most the match so it seemed like MCMG versus Beer Money. The crowd were flat until the final moment of the match when Sabin got the pin on Brother Ray.

Next up was the Global Championship between Roid Terry and Orlando Jordan. The build up to this match was centred around that bi-sexual gimmick, which as The Clown pointed out, is just daft. What came out of this match was the real feeling that Terry really can’t wrestle for shit and that Jordan is actually a decent performer and doesn’t need to go for the Goldust angle. Terry won with what Tazz described as “a spine-buster like move” – looked like a choke slam to me. Considering Terry is basically a crapper version of Batista, this match wasn’t that bad. Jordan’s move-set is pretty old-skool and it’s nice to see a good old fashioned leg-drop every now and again. TNA really need to get rid of Rob Terry; the guy’s a fucking joke. It’s probably for the best that TNA did away with the ‘gay’ angle, but if you’re going to build up a storyline into a match you should at least carry it on. Knowing TNA, the O-Zone will be back on Thursday and Jordan will come out looking like he’s been the spunk mop in a brothel.

After the match, we cut to a backstage promo which shows the Dudleys in their locker room licking their wounds. Ink Inc. (eugh, that name) go in and the Dudleys wish them luck and warn them that the Band might take their gripe with the Dudleys out on them. Neal say that they don’t need luck and they’ll take care of the Band for them. This pisses of Bubba, and after Ink Inc. leaves he rants to Devon about lack of respect, blah blah.

The third match of the evening was Kazarian versus Doug Williams for the X-Division title. I love the fact that this angle was written by an Icelandic volcano, but it was a pretty decent angle nonetheless. I was looking forward to this match because not only are Kazarian and Williams two of TNA’s most underrated stars, they also have two of the best finishers in the company. The match was pretty decent but was spoilt by a flat crowd and poor commentary; Tazz’s piss-poor announcing was saved by Taney’s wit, when he said something like “Kaz took a year out of the business and everyone thought it would be career suicide” – geddit? Suicide? Kaz was Suicide, he didn’t really leave. Geddit? The match worked really well with the angle of Williams hating the high-risk style of the X-Division and saw Kazarian going to work with some good, solid, technical wrestling. It was Williams who resorted to a high-risk move, going of the top rope and smacking Kaz’s face into the entrance ramp. I don’t know if this was done on purpose, but this was a nice subtle tough which added some complexity and hypocrisy to Williams’ character. There were some pretty cool moves in the match including a brain-buster variation and of course his Chaos Theory for the win. I would have liked to have seen Kaz’s fucked up backwards piledriver thing, but no such luck. I think Kazarian may be the only X-Division title holder to not actually have possession of the belt.

Next up was for the Knockout’s Championship between Tara and Madison Rayne, with Tara putting her career on the line if she didn’t win. It was no secret that her contract was up, so it was a bit of a pointless match. The Knockout division used to be pretty interesting as far as women’s wrestling goes. With characters like Hamada, Roxxi, Awesome Kong, Alisa Flash, etc. The Knockouts Division wasn’t the joke it is today. To my reckoning, this may have been Madison’s first one-on-one match on TV in TNA (which is a good feat for a single’s title holder!) The match stunk, and you could see that Tara was trying to make it look like a good match. Poor Tara. The crowd were in particularly bad form, especially for a career match; they didn’t seem to give a shit when she was pinned. It was only when Tara was being escorted away by security that a few chants of “thank you Tara” started up. Poor Tara; her last match and it was awful.

Next we had a short promo of Eric Young with Band. It seems that Eric Young may have his tongue firmly embedded into his cheek in this promo. He says something along the lines of “look at the players in TNA, nothing but wannabes and has-beens. I am the only one cool enough to hang out with the Band.” This made me laugh so hard I nearly popped a shit. Eric Young sounds like some geeky kid in primary school who’s been allowed to hang out with the cool kids... hahahaha! Because Hall and Nash are pretty old and can either, hardly walk, or are too fat to do much cardio-vascular stuff, Nash announced that the Band held the title, not just Hall and Nash. So, like the Fabulous Freebirds, any combination could defend the title at any given time. I glad that go cleared up.

So onto the tag team title match between the Band and Ink Inc. Contrary to what Nash had hinted at only moments before, it was actually Hall and Nash who waddled and limped to the ring, leaving EY backstage presumably to look after Hall and Nash’s grandkids or something. Unsurprisingly, this match was another stinker. Both Nash and Hall look so slow and bumbly in the ring, it’s not even funny anymore. The ref got knocked out, EY came out with a kendo stick. There was a bit of a kerfuffle. Brother Ray came out and interfered, beating on Jesse Neal. The Band retained the titles. Yawn.

Next we had the Ring vs Chelsea match between Abyssmal (geddit?) and Desmond Wolfe. Now, I didn’t realise that TNA condone white slavery, but clearly they do, as the stipulation if Wolfe lost was that Chelsea would become Abyss’s slave for 30 days in a boring Beauty and the Beast style set-up. Abyss looked pretty funny waddling around the ring with Wolfe. It must have been difficult for Wolfe going up against such a lame competitor. The match began with Wolfe being attacked on the ramp by Abyss while Chelsea sat watching from a throne (don’t ask, I don’t know). Again Tazz was coming out this some lame lines, though I nearly wet myself when he said that Chelsea “probably wants to throw up in her own mouth” – seriously, Tazz, what the fuck? So with Chelsea tasting bile in the back of her throat, Abyss choke slams Wolfe. Chelsea distracted Abyss and threw some brass knuckles into the ring. Wolfe smacked Abyss in the head and he goes down quicker than your mother for a can of cider. Wolfe goes in for the pin and Abyss gets up. This is where the match got fucking stupid. Abyss started Hulking up, Wolfe kept hitting Abyss, but for some reason he was immune to its effects. Abyss took Wolfe up for a Black Hole Slam for the pin. Victorious, Abyss spoke to Chelsea and spit went flying from his mouth onto her face and onto the camera lens; it was fucking disgusting. Poor Chelsea.

Next up we have Anderson and Hardy. I can’t actually remember what these guys are feuding about, but Anderson cut one of the best promos I’ve seen all year. I was literally laughing out loud, lol. I love it when small things in promos catch on. Getting the crowd chanting “I’m an asshole” was brilliant. I’m looking forward to seeing how this will work on TV. Will Spike censor the crowd every time this chant starts? I hope so, it will be like listing to the audio equivalent of a strobe light. This was probably the first time in the evening that the crowd started to get into the show, which made for better viewing and made for better in-ring performances. The match started with Anderson grounding Hardy for the first few minutes; there’s some pretty decent wrestling going on, but nothing even close to the level of Anderson and Angle at Lockdown. The match starts to step up when Hardy uses a chair to catapult himself towards Anderson in a textbook Sabu style dive over the top rope. Both competitors pulled out their usual signature moves, with Hardy doing a Swanton Bomb from the top rope for the win. The match ended with what could possibly be a double turn: Anderson held offered a handshake to Hardy, who refused and left him standing in centre of the ring.

We then cut to a promo with AJ Styles, who tells Christie that “these are dark times for TNA” – indeed they are, indeed they are. Poignantly we are now ready for one of the most pointless matches of the evening. I didn’t give a shit about this match, TNA hadn’t even bothered to build it up and the announcing was just awful throughout. “Why Sting? Why?” The match itself lasted for less than a minute and was really just a pre-match brawl in which Jarrett showed us his best Ric Flair impression by bleeding everywhere with that crazy bright red blood that only wrestlers seem to have running through their veins. Once they finally get in the ring, Sting does a Scorpion Death Drop and gets the pin-fall. Why Sting? Why? Sting continues his beat down and puts Jarrett’s shoulders between the ring steps and a baseball bat and stomps a couple of times. It is at this point that Hogan rushes out and, erm, does fuck all, but this ends the beat down. Why Sting? Why? Why didn’t Sting end on a high at Bound for Glory? Why Sting? Why?

Finally, we come to the main event. On paper, this is a dream match for me: AJ Styles versus Rob Van Dam. This match had some great moments, but I found it quite boring on the whole. The match was very slow to start with lots of posturing and stalling by both parties. At every opportunity during the match, RVD stood in the ring doing that arm thing in time with his name. Enough already! Flair came down to ringside only to be flanked by Lethal who gets him with some chops and a Figure Four Leglock. This was the best bit of the match. RVD did his Frog Splash and won, retaining the title and being a boring champion for at least another month... good to see Lethal in a main event though!

Greatest Promos Ever! ECW: "Dewey Foley is a three year old boy... you sick sons of bitches!"

I've realised this isn't the first time Mr Foley has appeared in the greatest promos section. Maybe this is because Micky boy is one of my favourite wrestlers of all time, or maybe it's simply because the guy can cut a great promo.
After my last post I was thinking about how great the Cactus Jack character was and how Mick would bring a real sense of intensity, frustration and craziness to his promos. I saw an interview a while back where Foley said that for a lot of his Cactus Jack promos he would be as honest as possible whilst pulling his delivery from "some dark place".
It seems that Foley was pissed off with some fans who had bought a "Cane Dewey" sign to a match. Well if you insist on naming your kid after a character from Ducktales...

Greatest Matches Ever! WWE: Cactus Jack vs Triple H

Mick Foley in one of his many guises had some pretty intense matches with Mr Helmsley during his time in WWE/F. The Hell in a Cell and Boiler Room Brawl matches spring to mind. Perhaps my favourite bout between themm was the Street Fight at Royal Rumble 2000. The match is awesome and it was when JR was announcing with Jerry Lawler (before Lawler went shit). Here's the promo just to get you in the mood....






They don't make 'em like that no more!

Speaking of CM Punk...

Socko,

Every time you post clips of Punk, it reminds me of this...



Classic.

- Clown

Greatest Promos Ever! "Awww, did you expect somebody else?"

This has to be one of CM Punk's finest moments since moving to WWE. After he retired Jeff Hardy on Smackdown the previous week, who should enter the arena...



I was reminded of this promo because of Jeff Hardy himself. In the recent Pro Wrestling Observer Newsletter it seems that Hardy was a little pissed by this promo:

"WWE's last unofficial offer to Jeff Hardy before he went to TNA had a $750,000 downside where he would only have to work 65 dates a year, giving him the biggest break on the schedule out of any WWE stars, including Shawn Michaels.

Obviously Hardy turned the deal down as he was upset that nobody backed him after his drug arrest and he was upset over the promos that WWE had CM Punk cut on him after he left the company. The feeling was that Hardy wasn't with the company at the time and the promos from Punk weren't business as they weren't used to build a match."

This just makes me love the promo even more.

Review: WWE Raw, 10th May

This week's Raw was a lot more entertaining than it has been of late, but the in-ring stuff, on the whole, still falls into the bracket of what I've been calling 'wrestling-lite'.

Raw opened with ol' snake eyes Randy Orton calling Edge out for a mic wrestle... But wait, that's not Edge's music, that's a Meatloaf song. So Meatloaf came out out to plug his new album, which no one under the age of 45 is likely to buy (it has a song written by Bon Jovi on it, hell yeah!). It's weird, when Meatloaf's not singing, the guy can be pretty entertaining. He was in the ring dancing round Orton trying to get Orton to have one of his songs as his theme song. Orton just stood there. Meatloaf then started singing in Orton's face. Orton just stood there. Meatloaf continues to piss Orton off. Orton's so wooden he makes Mokujin from Tekken seem like a viable alternative for spooning at bed time. The wooden man starts to move; it's a bit like that uncanny moment in the Wizard of Oz when Dorothy realises that the scarecrow is alive. Orton then goes for his trademark RKO. With Orton's relationship with guest hosts, RKOing them at every opportunity, you can't help but think that Orton is a poor man's Stone Cold and the RKO is a cheap facsimile of the Stunner.



With Meatloaf out cold, Edge makes his appearence with Vicky Guerrero in tow, standing there like some greedy girl who's eaten the last block of butter. It seems that Edge has convinced WWE management to bring her in as General Manager. It's not great, but it's better than the guest host bullshit. There's a bit of a microphone exchange. Vicky puts Orton in a handicap match, which is quite appropriate as he looks a bit simple.

Next we have a pretty mediocre match between Mini-Bulldog and Jericho for a chance for Jiz to have a title shot at Over the Limit. He wins, the match is pretty uneventful.

Now for the guest host, who enters with R Truth: the one and only Flava Flav (who's on plugging some reality show or something). For those not familiar with Flava Flav, he was basically the talentless one from Public Enemy who would wear the big clock and stupid hats and whose ability on the mic went as far as him saying 'yeah, boiiiieee'. He didn't disappoint. Flava Flav entered looking like he'd just stepped off of the set for the Don't Believe the Hype' video shoot. Stupid hat, big clock and 'yeah, boiiiieee'. Like the Bez of hip-hop, Flava Flav had exhausted all of his gimmicks. With the match between Regal and Truth it was only a matter of time before something heel happened. And boom! Not one, but two Virgils come in the ring end the match in the form of Carlito and Primo. Dibiase comes out onto the ramp and pays them for their Virgilious services.

Next there was Divas promo spot. Now, I think that the Divas thing is a joke. Just a bit of wank fodder for teenage boys. WWE don't make any effort to take women's wrestling seriously, so I don't take the Divas seriously. Sorry ladies. In a promo spot, Maryse is showing that she does have some genuine athletic ability by showing her training with a martial arts coach. Just check out the bitch slap she gives this guy, it must have smarted like crazy.



With a pointless match with Jack Rider out of the way, we move onto Tyson Kid versus the Miz, if the Miz lost he would have to defend his American Championship title against a member of the Hart Family of his choosing. The match was over in a few seconds with Tyson Kid getting a quick pin. Tyson Kid has the most stupid hair in the WW; I imagine that this is how Tin Tin would do his hair if he got a job as a rent boy. So Miz chose to defend his title against Bret Hart, presumably so Bret can leave the WWE with some dignity this time.

Next up was a match with the NXT 'rookies' facing a team of John Morrison, Goldust and a couple of jobbers whose names escape me. The match was pretty poor except for the fact the Brian Danielson got the pin meaning his first WWE victory was on Raw. It's about time he started getting some heat, he should be on Raw already, not on some bullshit let-down of a reality show.

We then cut to one of the most entertaining promos of the night, featuring none other than, Cannock's finest, William Regal. As a mic wrestler, Regal's still got it, it's just a shame that WWE see fit to put him in the role of jobber on Raw, teaming him up with the token Russian heel guy, Boris whatever. In the promo Regal essentially lets Flava Flav know what time it is (geddit? Flava Flav wears a clock, geddit?), by letting him know that he is a talentless fuck who rides on the coatails of the infinitely more talented Chuck D. Okay, maybe he didn't quite go that far, but it's still funny... and topical!



Next we see Mark Henry getting choked out by Batista in a match that didn't happen. I was glad to see Mark Henry being done over in such a way. Yeah, he might be the world's strongest man, but he can't wrestle for shit and he looks like a fat bastard.

Then we have the spaz match with Randolf, Edge and Dibiase. Again, the match is pretty dull and Orton wins. By the end of the match he attacks Vicky G with the RKO after she pleads and offers her resignation. What a bastard.



Thank fuck that screeching bint has been let go.

In summary: another episode of wrestling lite with some pretty funny promos. Still, it's better than Smackdown.

Bring on Sacrifice!

Greatest Promos Ever! WWE: "I've got you some female entertainment, and I think you know what I mean..."

A lot of people bitch about Russo, but when he was at his peak he wrote some hilarious promos for WWF/E. I'd not seen this promo in years and remembered how funny it was when I saw it back in the day.
In this promo, Mankind pays Vince McMahon a visit in the hospital afte Vince had been injured at the hands of Stone Cold Steve Austin. Mankind tries to cheer Vince up and chaos ensues. I don't know which bit is funniest, the bit which is meant to be funny, or the bit that follows...
...oh and this promo (I think) is the premier of Mr Socko. Bang bang.

Greatest Matches Ever! ECW: Tajiri & Mikey Whipwreck vs Super Crazy & Kid Kash, December 3rd, 2000

No explanations necessary. Just watch and enjoy.







- Clown

Greatest Promos Ever! "It's a hybrid dolphin..."

This is great. Paul London & Bryan Danielson promoting the PWG One Hundred show. Every time I watch it, I crack up. Every time.



- Clown

Greatest promos ever! "Milkamania is running wild..."

Go on any internet wrestling forum and there will be some fanboys banging on about how great the Attitude era was, how great it was when Steve Austin would come to the ring in various modes of transport. "Oh look, mummy, the bad man's in a beer truck", they write, without any sense of guilt or shame. Personally, I thought Austin was a one trick pony, which I why I've chosen this promo to share. As a parody of Austin's beer truck shananigans, Kurt Angle brings out a milk truck and covers Austin and his pals with some milky goodness.
I think what makes this clip particular awesome is JR's commentary; no one calls it like JR.



- Socko