25th January

The other day, during a quiet moment, I found myself just wondering what was the biggest mistake a professional wrestling booker has ever made. There's been some good examples over the past few years, such as Kensuke Sasaki's recent IWGP title victory, or the Katie Vick saga, or the Al Wilson/Dawn Marie romance. But I quickly dismissed all of these and went back to April 25th, 2000, and a night in the history of World Championship Wrestling that will always send a shudder through the spines of wrestling fans.

Does anyone remember the film Ready To Rumble? Sadly, this wasn't a biography of legendary boxing ring announcer Michael Buffer. This was a film, sponsored by the once mighty WCW and starring David Arquette as a nerdish wrestling fan intent on helping his hero regain the World title.

Now that you've heard the name of David Arquette you'll know what I'm about to write about. But please, read on.

In an attempt to promote the film, Arquette began to appear on various WCW programmes. Vince Russo, the man in charge of booking WCW at the time, in his infinite wisdom decided to use Arquette more, despite the reservations of the rest of the booking team, and of Arquette himself.

On April 25th, 2000, on an edition of WCW Thunder, Arquette teamed with World Champion Diamond Dallas Page, against Eric Bischoff and Jeff Jarrett. However, this wasn't a normal tag match. The stipulation was that whoever got the winning pinfall would be crowned WCW World Champion.

So you can imagine how wrestling fans around the world felt when Arquette pinned Bischoff and was crowned champion. Although this news got tons of publicity in the mainstream press, those familiar with the wrestling business saw this as another example of just how bad WCW was getting, and what made matters worse was that Arquette began defending the title on television. Anyone remember his classic bout on Nitro against Tank Abbott? I remember hearing stories at the time that Russo wanted to put the World title on Abbott. That surely would have been better than putting the belt on a D-list actor.

Thankfully, Arquette's reign of terror only lasted a few weeks, as he turned on his buddy Page during a cage match at the Slamboree pay-per-view, helping Jarrett win the title. He was hardly seen in WCW afterwards.

The decision to make David Arquette WCW World Heavyweight Champion has to be the worst booking decision in the history of professional wrestling. Vince Russo is credited with many things, and you have to wonder what he and his fellow writers were thinking, or smoking, when they came up with this idea.

And the film that inspired this decision? When it was shown on Sky Movies, I switched off after half an hour, it was that bad.

Now on to this week's television.

The Wrestling Channel's new agreement with TNA saw the debut of new Xplosion and Impact shows, as well as the first showing of the recent Turning Point pay-per-view. While some of the action was good, the arrival of Scott Hall and Kevin Nash on the scene was certainly similar to their arrival in WCW in 1996. As for Turning Point itself, I'll be reviewing the show in more detail at a later date.

FWA Classics gave us a couple of gems, in the form of the Zebra Kid v Jonny Storm and Christopher Daniels v Jody Fleisch. Sadly though, not much else of note as far as TWC is concerned. How many more times will we see the IWW show in the Spotlight segment? It's getting really boring now.

WWE continues to move towards the Royal Rumble, although the situation on Smackdown leaves me wondering if the creatives are smoking the same thing that Russo was five years ago. The three way feud between JBL, Big Show and Kurt Angle is becoming a mess.

The Raw team is still teasing us with a possible Batista turn. The big guy is certainly getting good reactions from the fans at the moment, and I wouldn't be surprised if we saw him take on The Game at the big one in Los Angeles.

And Raw once again showed that Canadian fans have very long memories. Witness the reaction Shawn Michaels received. Imagine what would have happened to a certain Mr. Hebner.

Finally, news reached me of ITV's Celebrity Wrestling programme, to be co-hosted by Roddy Piper, and featuring Joe E. Legend and D'Lo Brown. Sadly, because the so-called celebrities are only people who became famous on other reality shows, or became famous for sleeping with other celebrities, we won't be seeing Ainsley Harriott or Jeremy "F***ing"  getting the crap kicked out of them for saying that all wrestling is fake.

I'll be back next week, hopefully with a look at what happened at the Rumble.