This Week in Wrestling 2019 Week 2

Brian Damage

It’s Saturday so time for the latest installment of ’This Week in Wrestling’, the 2nd of 2019. Today, Brian asks if David Arquette has finally atoned for his sins and shares all the best wrestling content of the week.

Has David Arquette Finally Atoned For His Sins?
Brian

In April of 2000, WCW management had an idea to market a movie and garner new viewers to WCW programming. The movie was entitled ‘Ready to Rumble’ and starred B-list actor David Arquette, also known as Mr. Courtney Cox, his wife at the time. It was a film that was in part funded by WCW. The idea was to have Arquette become WCW World Champion as a way to both hype the movie and get people to tune into WCW Nitro and Thunder respectively.

The plan infamously backfired and is considered by many as one of WCW’s darkest days. Here was an actor whose name would be forever linked to other greats like Ric Flair, Sting, Hulk Hogan and Big Van Vader. Ratings and buy rates plummeted and ultimately WCW went out of business. Granted, it wasn’t solely because of Arquette’s title win, but it certainly did help in speeding up its demise.

To be fair, while David Arquette was a life long wrestling fan, he never wanted to be WCW World Champion. He, at first, refused the idea and felt extremely uncomfortable about doing it. Business is business though and the movie, which bombed at the box office, needed all the help it could get.

Arquette wound up taking the money he made from WCW and donating it to the families of fallen wrestlers Owen Hart, Brian Pillman and paralyzed wrestler Darren Drozdov. That in itself should have been good enough, but fans wanted to crucify Arquette for going along with the publicity stunt. He was called names, received threats and was just generally hated.

Fast forward 10 years later and Arquette is on WWE’s Monday Night Raw and in a match against Randy Orton. You would think that that would be the end of Arquette’s pro wrestling venture, but 8 years later, he decided he still has something to prove.

In 2018, David Arquette enrolled at a legitimate wrestling school and got actual training in how to wrestle. He has since wrestled several matches on the independent scene including a Deathmatch in which he was deeply cut on his neck and lost a lot of blood and a hair versus hair match.

Personally, I have gained a tremendous amount of respect for Arquette for not only going to a wrestling school and getting properly trained but also appearing on these small shows and just earning his stripes like any other wrestler. At 47 years old, Arquette shouldn’t be doing what he is doing to himself physically. He is simply passionate about the business of professional wrestling and is now contributing to it in his own way.

I realize that no matter what Arquette does inside the ring now will never atone for the actions of winning the WCW title for some fans. I think that Arquette has more than proven himself as a stand-up guy and was simply in a bad situation when WCW management asked him to do what he did. WCW was already too far gone by the time he won the world title and would have folded with or without his help.

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Picture Gallery
Brian

A very cool pic

Self-explanatory

Scott Seiner with his “freak”…his wife

Kenny Omega eyeing AJ Styles in New Japan

Do you remember Wally Yamaguchi the manager of Kaientai in the WWF? He recently suffered a stroke and is on the road to recovery.

A young Tammy Sytch during her high school days

Nothing to see here….just Harley Race giving Ted Dibiase a back massage

Babe Watch: Charly Caruso

This guy obviously loves his Canadian wrestlers…

Congratulations to Pete Dunne on holding the NXT UK title for over 600 days!

Impact Wrestling’s Taya Valkyrie (Mrs. Johnny Nitro/Mundo/Morrison/Impact etc, etc)

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Video Gallery
Brian

Before there was the RKO…there was the BKO from daddy Bob Orton

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

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