This Week in Wrestling 2016 week 39

Craig Wilson & Brian Damage

It’s that time again as we look back at This Week in Wrestling. In this edition Craig talks about ‘Broken’ Matt Hardy while Brian asks ‘Whatever Happened to‘ Muffy and shares some of the more interesting pictures and videos he’s stumbled upon this week. All that and more.

Could a “Broken” Matt Fix the WWE
Craig

One of the more interesting stories to have emerged this week is that, in addition to looking to buy the company, the WWE are keen to sign TNA’s “Broken” Matt Hardy.

Hardy is, of course, an former eight-time tag champion with the WWE as well have having solo runs with the US, Cruiserweight, European and ECW championship amongst others. As part of the Hardy Boyz, he and his brother Jeff helped revolutionise tag team wrestling in the WWE in the noughties.

The tandem’s battles with the Dudley Boyz and Edge (more of that later) & Christian helped elavate the WWE tag team titles to a position not seen since the 80s in the company. For the first time in a long while the titles meant something and the matches were not only must-see but also not featuring thrown together tag teams.

But while Matt was able to gain some solo success, those accomplishments were eclipsed by his brother Jeff. To use The Rockers analogy, Jeff was Shawn while Matt had to settle for the role of Marty.

It wasn’t just in the WWE either, with both Hardy’s in TNA, despite climbing to the top of the mountain, Jeff was still seen as the star of the pair whilst Matt remained firmly in the background. That was, however, until recently…

After a recent I Quit loss to his brother, Matt vanished from TNA claiming to be broken. However, this was no end. It was merely a beginning. Matt soon mounted a comeback when his brother was being stalked.

But the stalker was in fact Matt. Matt wanted to own the Hardy legacy and would do everything to win that from his brother.

It is a ludicrous character. As ludicrous as it is mad but you can certainly not level the accusation that it is boring. Everything about it is over the top and often very confusing. But it’s made Matt Hardy hugely entertaining and who expected that?

And now there are rumours that the WWE interested in him once again. Could we see Matt Hardy – verison 3.0 I guess – return to a WWE screen near us soon?

In the post-brand split world, there’s certainly plenty of air time for the company to fill. And with Bray Wyatt over on Smackdown, Raw lacks a crazy character nowadays. Whilst it might not be the answer to all of the WWE’s problems, they have plenty of screen time to fill and if they can get a star with name recognition in, they aren’t going to turn that down.

Whatever Happened to Muffy?
Brian

Caryn Mower was a part time aerobics instructor and stunt woman at Universal Studios theme park in California. She began training to be a pro wrestler for UPW based out of California in 1999. UPW was the same wrestling school that produced John Cena among others.

By 2000, Mower was signed to the WWE and was given the gimmick of “Muffy” a psychotic personal trainer to Stephanie McMahon. Her tenure with the WWE didn’t last very long (2 weeks) and she was eventually released. Caryn Mower briefly continued to wrestle, but would soon quit the business and return to stunt work.

Mower now is an actress, stunt woman and stunt coordinator based out of California. She has appeared in numerous TV shows such as CSI, Crossing Jordan and Malcolm in the Middle.

Picture Gallery
Brian

When the IWC (Internet Wrestling Community) fell silent.

Former WWE “diva” AJ Lee Brooks has written her autobiography. AJ certainly doesn’t get enough credit for spearheading the Women’s Wrestling Revolution as she should…

Here’s a picture of Keanu Reeves with the artist formerly known as Vladimir Kozlov

A pretty cool luchador baseball cap of Blue Demon

A young man in high school who would later become one of the most popular and respected pro wrestlers around the world, Shinsuke Nakamura

The WWE is “broken” and “obsolete” and needs to be “deleted” by Matt Hardy

To think the WWE women’s division was once the Divas division and had stuff like this between Eve Torres and Maryse (who can’t hide herself from laughing) makes you truly appreciate the in ring work we have today.

At 73 years young, ‘Mean’ Gene Okerlund proves that age is but a number. A womp bomp a loo bomp a wham bam boom!

Video Gallery
Brian

Before he was the game and the cerebral assassin, Paul Levesque was Terra Rising in WCW. A superstar who had an awful French accent…

Last Week on the Blog

In last week’s Sunday Sermon we previewed the debut of the cruiserweight division; on Monday we went back in time and looked at the two firings of Bobby Heenan at the hands of Mr. Wonderful; Tuesday’s Crossfire asked whether it was Raw or Smackdown that was the better show; on Wednesday we had a special ‘The Way We Was‘ looking at WCW Fall Brawl 1996; on Thursday we had Pt. 83 of ‘Wrestling with Sin‘ and we rounded off the week looking at Raw and Nitro from 20 years ago this week.

Next Week on the Blog

Tomorrow we preview Clash of Champions; Monday we have a report from the show, a title themed Top Five and more.

And Another Thing…
Craig

This week, in my opinion, the Smackdown Live was once again a better show than Raw. Raw really needs to do work to look and feel different. I know it’ll remain 3 hours, and for many that’s the big problem, but there are still things it can do to better the show. Further to last week’s Sunday Sermon, I’m still not convinced that the cruiserweights are the answer…

The talk of a ‘shooters’ stable on Smackdown, featuring Shelton Benjamin; Dolph Ziggler and Jack Swagger, is an interesting one. The latter two need an injection of something to get them going again and this could do the trick. Based on these rumours, the pair will be hoping Benjamin recuperates quickly.

Until next week…

All previous ‘This Week in Wrestling’ pieces can be read here.