John Cena is the most charismatic wrestler in WWE. He performs in front of tens of thousands of fans every week wrestling in the ring, talking on the microphone, and sometimes doing horrendous skits written by WWE writers whose sense of comedy is geared towards making five-year-olds laugh.

Thus, if anyone could follow in The Rock’s footsteps into Hollywood, it would probably be John Cena. However, there’s a difference between Cena and Rock. The Rock tried to stay in wrestling while working a light Hollywood schedule, but once Rock started to get bigger parts and Hollywood people gave him the good advice that he should get far away from WWE so that whenever something bad happened to the company his name wouldn’t linked, his appearances became few and far between. Now? He may make one appearance for the company a year. It’s still in his blood, but business-wise, it was the right move to completely leave them behind.

Cena is different. Cena doesn’t want to leave wrestling. He actually has used Rock’s decision as a way to show how much he still loves wrestling. He could try his hand at Hollywood full time and make a go of it, but he’d rather continue doing what he’s doing. I’m sure that makes Vince McMahon happy.

But part of what made Rock’s transition work so well is that he put all of his effort into acting. Cena won’t do that, and that’s probably the reason he’ll never be a big movie star. He’s has a pretty good look, a good name, and realistically comes across as a possible action star, but his acting skills haven’t improved much since his first movie, The Marine, which came out a couple of years ago. And the fact of the matter is (I’m channeling my inner WWE cliche phrasing here), it won’t unless he gives up more time in the ring for being in front of the camera.

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IBF super bantamweight champion, Steve Molitor (33-1), made it four wins from four in the UK after successfully defending his title with a majority decision over Jason “2 Smooth” Booth (35-6). The three judges scored the fight 116-112, 116-113 and 114-114. I gave it to Moitor by 2 points.
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In a sensational start to the new Boxing Season, 3/1 outsider Ricky Burns pulled off one of the shock upsets of the year scoring a unanimous decision victory over Roman Martinez. The fight will go down as a certain contender for fight of the year.
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Don Cameron may start writing here at FGB and he sent me some feedback on last night’s SummerSlam, which pretty much mirrors mine. You may be seeing more of Don around here.

Thumbs in the middle, leaning down

Best match — What 95% of everybody else is going to say: Team Raw… er, I mean Team WWE vs. Team Nexus.

Worst match — From what I saw, none really.

I missed the first two matches — Ziggler/Kofi and Melina/Fox, but I was really looking forward to the Ziggler/Kofi match. Yeah, that was me. After showing some fire lately, two things may have happened with Kofi. Either he was going to lose it and start pounding his opponent (face or heel) to the point where the crowd would turn on him, or he would do something extraordinary, like leaping off a balcony or jumbotron in order to exact some kind of revenge for a huge pop. We got neither.

Wrestlemania is there to end feuds. Summerslam is to end the monthly feuds that have started since Wrestlemania, and set up new feuds for Survivor Series, or whatever the next big PPV is going to be.

This show, starting with the recap I read of this match, didn’t do that. They didn’t have a blow-away match, but at least they put the high-flying Kofi in the opener to get the crowd pumped for the rest of the show.

I’m still trying to figure out how Melina got a title shot this quickly… did I miss something?

Big Show vs. MEM… erm, I mean SES, was what it was supposed to be. End a feud and start another. Natch.

The Miz promo spoke for itself. The folks I was watching it with didn’t want him to give a yea or nay to joining Team WWE, but it all worked out in the end. This guy is the best crowd promo since The Rock.
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Many promotions in the wrestling and MMA industries accomplished many great things last year. UFC 100 broke buyrate records, WWE drew over 50,000 people to Houston for Wrestlemania, New Japan successfully ran the Tokyo Dome, Dragon Gate expanded their company in a great variety of ways and there are probably several other examples I could name. However there was one accomplishment last year which stands out to me head and shoulders above the rest. This is one accomplishment that on the surface looks like a complete miracle but when you move the magnifying glass a little closer, you can see that it was no miracle but purely the product of hard work, solidarity and ambition.

Ryōgoku Kokugikan, or as it’s more commonly known – “Sumo Hall” is a venue steeped in tradition, both in the pro wrestling and sumo industries. It is a venue for big companies to run and it is a venue which is hard to sell out unless you really have you have a pretty good sized following in Tokyo. So when the Dramatic Dream Team promotion (DDT) announced that they were venturing into Sumo Hall on August 23rd of last year, many eyebrows were raised. DDT is your prototypical Japanese indy promotion. They don’t have a big TV deal, their wrestlers are by no means household names and they usually don’t run buildings much bigger than the 2,000 seat Korakuen Hall (which they would very rarely sell out). However, in Sanshiro Takagi, they have a president who really believes in his company and has an unyielding faith in his wrestlers. Takagi felt his little company could march into the big boys playground and hold their own.

Let’s be honest, everyone thought he was Antonio Inoki level insane. People looked at what Masahiro Chono’s two day “extravaganza” at Sumo Hall just a few months prior was able to draw (barely over a 1,000, and heavily papered) and understandably felt DDT with hardly any big names (except Chono himself in a midcard quasi-comedy match) would crash and burn in the same spectacular fashion. They were wrong. So very, very wrong.
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This past weekend I celebrated my 24^th birthday which was followed by Sacrifice! Seeing so many TNA PPVs (every one since Slammiversary 2006), I was pretty numb to what I would get. I ended up watching it again this morning to a much better conclusion.

The Motor City Machine Guns defeated Team 3D and Beer Money to become #1 Contenders to the World Tag Team Titles

This was a good opener! The Machine Guns gained the much needed win as the “best tag team never to hold the titles.” There were some good spots but nothing that stood out.

“The Freak” Rob Terry defeated Orlando Jordan to retain the Global Title

People constantly criticize Terry, but I think he is underrated. There were rumors that Orlando Jordan would be doing something controversial, but other than his somewhat flamboyant entrance, I don’t know what it could be. The beginning was good with Terry smashing through Jordan but when Jordan worked the leg for way too long, it really hurt the battle.

Douglas Williams defeated Kazarian to “win” the X Division Title

Another good match which was a lot more mat based than I would have figured. The crowd was not into it. The big reaction was when Douglas powerbombed Kazarian into the corner and looked like he hit his head on the turnbuckle. Williams won with the Chaos Theory in a pretty good match. Kazarian officially was champion for around a month but never physically held the belt.

Madison Rayne defeated Tara to retain the Knockouts Title. Tara is gone from TNA

This was a rather mediocre contest. This would also be Tara’s final TNA match as she was on her way out. It was very sloppy and I couldn’t get into it in any way. Rayne picked up the win with her version of Matt Striker’s “Golden Rule” maneuver. Out came the Rayne and washed the Spider out!

The Band defeated Ink Inc to retain the TNA Tag Team Titles
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