We’re going to let this poll stay up for the entire month.

This is the biggest fight of the year and I want to know who everyone thinks will win.

Will it be the former NCAA heavyweight champion, former WWE champion, and current holder of 1/2 of the UFC heavyweight title, Brock Lesnar?

Or will it be the jiu-jitsu expert and longtime UFC main event star, and holder of the other 1/2 of the UFC heavyweight title, Frank Mir?

You can vote in the upper right hand corner of the website.

Bottom line is, from it’s onset until about six months ago, nobody knew more about FCW than yours truly. I attended the first twelve shows and some associates of mine continue to attend despite attendance being down (mainly due to the releases of so many good workers and bad booking).

Last week, WWE debuted four new talents on ECW. With the “Donald Draft” happening and ECW losing a crapload of awesome workers, the decision was made to make the brand a “Developmental #2″ sort to speak, which it sort of was before, except that now it’s cemented. As a result, I’ve decided to give a little detail on the four newbies so that you know a thing or two.

Abraham Washington. Most people know him as Obama Washingtom, FCW’s “General Manager”. FCW didn’t have a “General Manager” for a long time, but since WWE LOVES authority figures, he got a job. His gimmick is obviously influenced by current President of the United States Barack Obama. He worked OVW and Derby City for a few months before Johnny Ace signed him to FCW. If you think he was awful on ECW, you just wait - it’ll get worse. He’s green as grass and is being brought up way, way, way, way, way, way too early. If he doesn’t improve fast, I think he’ll be going the way of Scotty Goldman and Kizarny quickly.

Tyler Reks. Tyler Reks has been in the company for about a year and a half. I know him as Gabe Tuft, which is his original and real name before WWE started to go in there and chop up names for trademarks. He, like Sheamus, is a decent, but a bit green, worker who has a very good look, different from most of the FCW roster which is just buff guys with crue cuts and shoulder tattoos (and you wonder why THESE FOUR got called up first). Gabe legitimately worked his way up from working FCW opening night tag matches and whatnot against the likes of Shawn Spears until he won the FCW title. He is pretty much the top guy in FCW at the moment along with Sheamus so with them gone, there will be even MORE reason for me to stay at home on Thursdays.

In anticipation for UFC 100, I’m posting part of an article I wrote on Brock that was originally posted at Fanbase. I’ll post the first two paragraphs and then link to where you can read the rest of it.

Brock Lesnar currently has 1/2 ownership of the UFC Heavyweight Championship. Though that very well may change soon enough (he has a fight with Frank Mir in July at UFC 100 to determine the undisputed champion), what he’s done in the MMA world after his career in amateur wrestling and professional wrestling is unprecedented.

Lesnar wrestled two years at the University of Minnesota, coming in second place in the heavyweight finals to future New England Patriots offensive lineman, Stephen Neal, and then winning it all in 2000, beating Wes Hand from Iowa. Lesnar’s assistant coach at Minnesota was former two time All-American Shelton Benjamin, who he would tag team with in OVW, WWE’s minor league system.

You can read the rest of the article on Fanbase.

WWE ran a MAJOR angle on tonight’s edition of Raw (yes I know, we hear this every week). This week’s gimmick was that Donald Trump instituted some trades between the other drafts as his “final decision” as Raw owner and thus WWE was forced to switch up the roster. I don’t really understand what the point of this was other than them realizing the mistakes they made in the annual WWE Draft back in April without actually calling this an official “Draft”. Typical WWE wanting to shake things up.

In reality it’s tough to really care about these decisions, except in this case it’s a bit perplexing. My initial thoughts were that ECW got utterly molested in this draft. Not only did they lose four of the best stars on the brand, they got a bunch of bad people. Raw was strengthened legitimately this time, and although the draft in April was menat to make Raw better, it turned out that it made Smackdown a MUCH better product. Now, you’ve got better workers on Raw. Smackdown still has a horde of great workers and now a few more.

The one thing I do love about this whole situation is that the TWO BEST active workers in the company, Chris Jericho and Edge, are UNIFIED Champions. That means we’ll (hopefully) see them defend those belts on all of the shows and add more great matches. That, to me, is the best decision the company has made all month (and there have been some BAAAAD ones).

What really makes no sense to me is that with Jeff Hardy leaving, Undertaker being a part-timer and Punk turning heel, wouldn’t it have been smart to move at least ONE top babyface to Smackdown to supplement that? If you put that into perspective, the highest face on the brand is Rey Mysterio. What a fail. Who will contend for Punk’s title now? This company is so freaking weird sometimes.

Now, let’s take a look at the individual trades and briefly analyze them:

Gail Kim (From Smackdown to Raw): Awesome female worker who really hasn’t gotten the spotlight put on herself since returning to WWE. With the lack of real challengers to Maryse on Raw other than Mickie and Beth, Gail will fit in nicely and strengthen that division. Smackdown on the other hand will be loaded with more crappy Michelle McCool matches. Gail is a good looking asian, and I think we need more of those on the A-show. Continue Reading »

After several really good PPVs, the WWE came back to earth a bit. I think I liked the show a bit more than the other guys, but I will admit, it was below their recent efforts.

Here’s the feedback from the FGB crew:

Alan

Show overall rating: Thumbs In The Middle

Best Match: Chris Jericho vs. Rey Mysterio
Worst Match: Triple H vs. Randy Orton Continue Reading »

ESPN put up a video interview where Brock Lesnar says that he gave Frank Mir the knee bar, he wants revenge, and that Mir wins by luck. Classic Brock.

I didn’t get to watch this on Saturday night, but I still wanted to have a record of it on the site.

R1
Both guys came out throwing big punches. Ortiz knocked Maidana down to a knee with a counter right hook. Maidana got back up to knock Ortiz down immediately with a nice shot. Ortiz had the rubber legs going and seemed to be more hurt from the knock down.

R2
This round was all Ortiz. He knocked Maidana down twice in the round and is throwing huge shots. Maidana hit him good a few times too. These guys are just throwing big shots. No jabbing here.

R3
Ortiz controlled the round a bit better. However, he got hit and decided to slug it out again. Emmanuel Steward says that Maidana’s punches are slower and wider and Ortiz can see them coming.

R4
Maidana has a cut underneath his left eye now. The best punch of the round was a straight left hand by Ortiz that hit Maidana flush. Ortiz’s round again. Maidana is still trying to land big shots.

R5
Maidana’s lunging shots and aggressive shots are predictable, but his counter right is sneaky. Ortiz is now bleeding from his right eyebrow. Maidana ended the round with a huge loopy right hand that scored.. He took that round.

R6
Wow. Maidana came out throwing huge shots again and knocked Ortiz down to a knee. Ortiz had a big bruise under his left eye to go along with the cut. For some reason, when Maidana was on the offensive, instead of holding up his hands, Ortiz was trying to make him miss and set up his own shots and he was getting hit. It looks like he’s quit and the fight is over.

Winner: Marcos Maidana by way of 6th round TKO

The official decision is that the doctor stopped the fight. But you didn’t see Ortiz upset by the decision at all.

In between the 5th and 6th round, Ortiz’s corner was yelling at him to get his hands up and saying that he would stop the fight unless Ortiz defended better. He must’ve seen something in Ortiz that he didn’t like because at that point, Ortiz was clearly winning.

It will be interesting to see where Ortiz goes from here.

Ortiz said that he fought dumb and he was trying to knock him out for the fans.

This show used to be called “The Great American Bash”, but is now simply called “The Bash”. It’s also now in June rather than in July. Like the past few months of shows, there’s no real money match on the show, but it should be an entertaining evening because of good wrestling matches.

It looks like the ECW Championship scramble match is first.

1. ECW Championship Scramble

Christian and Jack Swagger are in first. It was a very slow first three minutes with Swagger working him over.

Finlay came out next and the match picked up. Swagger rolled Finlay up and is now the current ECW champion.

Dreamer came in and this match is pretty much a cluster. Finlay hit his finisher on Swagger and is now the current champ. Usually 4 way matches like this work because they can work out some fun multiple man spots. But these guys are off tonight. Working hard, but off.

I had no clue that Mark Henry was in the match. He’s the fifth guy. They did a stack superplex with Dreamer getting suplexed on. Best spot of the match. Henry powerslammed Dreamer and won the fall. He’s the current champ with about 4 1/2 minutes left.

Finlay jumped though the top and middle rope and out to the floor. Dreamer did his somersault from the apron. Christian jumped from the second rope to the floor. Then Mark Henry threatened jumping out to the floor, but Swagger saved him by undercutting him and then Vader Bombing him and pinning him.

Henry put Swagger in the 619 position, but jumped on the back of his head and through the ropes and to the floor.

Christian hit the Unprettier on Swagger, but Dreamer broke up the pin and pinned him with the DDT. There’s a little over a minute left in the match.

Dreamer snuck out of the match as the champ. Everyone tried to pin him at the end, but failed. Dreamer is still (or once again) the ECW champ. They tried to be innovative and worked hard, but the match just didn’t completely work. It had some fun spots, but overall, was just ok.

Winner: Tommy Dreamer Continue Reading »

Earlier tonight at the Ultimate Chaos PPV, former WWE Superstar Bobby Lashley (no relation to the Robert Lashley that writes for this site) defeated former New Japan and PRIDE/K-1 fighter Bob “The Beast” Sapp in a legitimate MMA contest in the main event of the broadcast.

I remember reading that Lashley wanted to keep the fight standing and to trade with Sapp, but it is obvious that he either had doubts about that strategy or worked us all as it took no time for the former wrestling champ to score a takedown in the opening moments of the fight. He then began to strike at Sapp with elbows and punches. Sapp attempted to defend but it was futile and tapped out due to strikes. Apparently Sapp had tapped out prior to then, but the referee did not see it. Sapp tapped and the fight was stopped at around 3:17 of round 1. As a result, Lashley’s MMA record rises to 4-0.

While Bob Sapp hasn’t been a force in Mixed Martial Arts for about half a decade, this is Lashley’s first defeat of somebody with name value. Is he ready for the UFC? Probably not yet, but I find it interesting that he is taking a different road than the OTHER WWE star to jump to MMA - Brock Lesnar. Brock wanted top flight competition from the onset and fought in the biggest MMA company in the world after just one fight, while Lashley is slowly earning wins and climbing up the ranks.

I wonder if this means Bobby goes back to TNA?

At long last we conclude Misawa Week here on FightGameBlog. Today we present one of the biggest matches in Japanese Puro history. This match is regarded as one of Misawa’s finest moments.

On May 2nd, 1999, All Japan Pro Wrestling ran the world famous Tokyo Dome in a tribute to the founder of the company and it’s primary mentor - Shohei “Giant” Baba, who passed away earlier in the year. A sell-out crowd of 55,000 fans witnessed history in the making. In the highly anticipated main event, the most feared gaijin, perhaps of all time, Super Vader, would defend his AJPW Triple Crown Title. Vader was a feared monster in Japan and the fans had seen him throughout the years lay waste to their grandest heroes. In his debut, Vader annihilated Antonio Inoki in seconds, something that had never been done. Then in the mid 90s, Vader defeated Nobuhiko Takada to win the UWFI’s “Original Pro Wrestling World Title”. Vader was unbeatable. On this day, he faced Mitsuharu Misawa, the other hero. Misawa was competing for his unprecedented FIFTH AJPW Triple Crown Championship. Could Misawa fight for his fallen mentor, vanquish the beast, and bring the AJPW Triple Crown back into Japanese hands?

WWE has changed the names of two more of their upcoming PPVs.

As was reported by the various news sites, this Sunday’s PPV, now titled “The Bash” was originally titled “The Great American Bash” and was in July. In addition we learned that September’s “Unforgiven” PPV has been changed to “WWE Breaking Point” and is now a submission-themed PPV where we assume that the matches can only be won via submission (which will likely blow chunks).

We’ve learned today from wwe.com that two more PPVs are undergoing a name change. Early October’s No Mercy PPV (scheduled for October 4th) has now become “WWE Hell In A Cell” and yes, it is as we feared - an all Hell In A Cell PPV. Let’s just kill THIS gimmick match like we did our regular cage match why don’t we! WWE planned a Randy Orton vs. Triple H (groan) Hell In a Cell match as one of the main events of this year’s Summerslam show, but will they still do it now that they’re going to have an ALL HIAC show?

In addition, the October 25th Cyber Sunday PPV is apparently done-for. Now the show will be called “WWE Annihilation”. One can assume the voting gimmick has been put to rest.

While I am happy to see some of these changes, some just make my head ache. Cyber Sunday was a failed concept that should’ve been dumped years ago, and if you look at the dwindling buyrates for that show, you’d agree. WWE Annihilation sounds like a regular run-of-the-mill B-PPV show, which is really no different than Cyber Sunday except that it won’t have the “interactive” gimmick.

The Hell in A Cell show will excite some fans, but to me, it’s a horrible idea. It’s bad enough that WWE has a no blood policy currently in effect, but how often can you do a Hell in a Cell match where you don’t start reusing spots until they become played out? Foley fell off the top and through the cage, Edge went through the side door, Batista used a chain on Triple H, what ELSE can you possibly do inside of that structure that hasn’t been done? So we may have to sit through Maryse inside the Cell on PPV? This is a ridiculous idea that will kill the gimmick. Sure, skeptics will say “but D, TNA does an all cage PPV”. Yeah, and since when has TNA had a good idea? Then there’s the “UFC takes place in a cage” argument, which is laughable in every sense of the word. Will the show do good business? I’m going to assume that it will, but I think it will hurt WWE in the long run.

Maybe they should change Armageddon’s name to WWE No Buys.