In Memoriam: Genuine Risk. The lady was a champ.
Okay, let’s try doing this again…
Honestly, I want to get back on a regular schedule. SummerSlam and its aftermath seems like a good time to try. Of course, that leaves a problem for me: do I start talking about things other than wrestling again? For instance, I had two out-of-town job interviews last week, which means I spent more time at the Minneapolis airport than I did in my apartment. I have a set of airport traditions. In addition to Starbucks (venti skim latte, two extra shots, six Equals, extra foam), I always pick up Time and Newsweek for flight reading. Then I saw the cover of Time last week. I have this incredible aversion to Rick Warren thanks to an asshole ex-boss who was a disciple of his (he ended up giving us Rick Warren books as a Christmas bonus). Seeing him on the cover of Time made me want to vomit intensely. So, I ended up saving money on that.
And then there’s the wonderful little observation about the American press that I stumbled on to. I don’t have a laptop, so I travel sans Net access. Therefore, I watch a lot of CNN while on the road. Unless you’ve been in a cave lately, you’d know that one of the big stories of last week was Russia playing Rape The Dog with Georgia. A lot of the fighting was concentrated around Gori. Yet, never in any report, was the name of Gori’s most famous native son mentioned. You would have thought that Russia pounding the living crap out of the town where Stalin grew up would have been latched onto in the name of irony, wouldn’t you? But the American media has lost its sense of humor. Must be the election year.
Nor has there been any mention of the fact that the 2014 Winter Olympics will be held in Sochi, a short bombing run from Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Oh, come on, press guys. You’ve got hooks here. Use them, you boring old futzes. Does it really take someone who writes a wrestling column for a pop-culture website to point these things out to you? And if I see another Georgia (nation)/Georgia (state) editorial cartoon, I’m going to go Danish Muhammad Cartoons on some of you guys.
(Inside Pulse Seekrit History Time: At the time of the Danish Muhammad Cartoons controversy, there were a couple of us here who wanted to print them in our columns, but we decided not to because we didn’t want to get anyone pissed at Widro. See, we’re nice people at heart, aren’t we?)
Speaking of the Olympics, I will pledge to you that this column will remain a Phelps-free zone. I don’t want our international readers being alienated, after all. The sight of 150 million American males swinging their genitalia at the remainder of humanity because of one guy in a Speedo (and his million-dollar bonus from said company) is disconcerting enough.
The Chinese gymnasts? Loli fodder, nothing more. John Edwards? Who cares? Dubbaya wanting to gut the Endangered Species Act? So what else is new? Fah-vruh to the Jets? The combined rancidity is something I simply can’t do justice to…well, not in this column, ever since Wids wanted us to get “professional” and stop using random obscenities. There’s nothing else really stimulating in the news to prattle on about. So that means I actually have to talk about wrestling. Those of you who’ve been around enough know what this means: yep, I’m in full bite mode. And with a “major” PPV on tap and me not having done this in a while…duck and cover. Not even the drugs will calm this storm. Okay, maybe me replacing my water-related-kaput RAZR2 via eBay will help. But only if I get it in today, which isn’t going to happen. So off we go into Bitter-Land.
Might as well get into it. Coffee on standby, bile flowing…let’s rock.
Oh, wait. I was going to try to stretch this into an entire column for Moodspins, but I’m not stimulated enough to pundit on this. However, the prattlings of some op-ed guys about Obama picking Chuck Hagel for veep…okay, remember the ex-boss who had a man-crush on Rick Warren from above? Well, he was also a buddy of Chuck Hagel. If Obama picks Hagel, I’m sitting this one out. However, I do have a related veep pick for him which should satisfy everyone, and I’m surprised the name hasn’t been thrown around:
Kathleen Sebelius. Governor Hot For Teacher her own self.
It makes sense. True Blue who’s a popular Red-State governor, so she has proven crossover appeal. Knows how to win over the old-school Dole crowd in the GOP. Possesses a vagina, which should help calm down the HilTards. Good record keeping the religious fascists at bay. Not part of the Washington crowd, which is really going to help this year. And when it comes to getting the hell out of Topeka, her lips may say no, but every fiber of her body is screaming Yes.
Do it, Obama. And find a way to throw Marty Rathbun over the Rio Grande while you’re at it. Honestly, Barack, if you keep him around, I’m going to start putting out every bit of dirt on you that us Chicagoans know but everyone else hasn’t been exposed to yet.
Now we can move on to wrestling…
SO, ANY WRESTLING NEWS?
None that I can find. Of course, I use ad-blocking on Firefox, so I can’t access anything from 1bullshit Junior. They’ve always been complete whores, it’s just that they’re displaying it to the world nowadays. Personally, I don’t care if you don’t pull in revenue, because I’m not switching browsers, taking down ad-blocking, or gutting my hosts file just for your sakes. I’m not supporting your asses, because the only thing you’ve given me over the years is lulz from your idiot columnists and lots of material showing the world what kinds of complete ‘tards they are. As for other sites, I’m not going to them, except to Meltzer’s, and he doesn’t put out any news on there because he’s never got over the fact that the Net has replaced dead-tree dirt sheets. So we’re just going to go on to a PPV that was held on Sunday. You want news? Find it yourselves, you lazy bastards.
LACK OF HEAT IS NORMALLY A BENEFIT IN SUMMER
There’s a damn good reason why I haven’t been watching that much wrestling lately. It’s just not…well, interesting. There’s nothing compelling going on right now in the upper-card of WWE. It’s the same reason why I gave up on TNA over a year ago. TNA’s pretty much decayed into the Samoa Joe Show with Special Guest Former WWE Superstars. SummerSlam was one of the most obvious continuations of that trend. I don’t think I can remember a “major” PPV with such a vast quantity of Who Cares? surrounding it. Oh, did I pick a bad time to try to write something interesting. There wasn’t a single match on this show that pushed any buttons whatsoever. Normally at a major, they make the effort to at least produce one match with any interest. And, yes, I have to admit that the “first ever” between Wigger and DAVE might push those buttons for a casual fan. But we serious fans have seen them stink up the joint for years now. We want to see a little wrestling in between the freak show acts. SummerSlam, on paper, didn’t provide that.
I’m not sure that in my nearly thirty years of watching wrestling, I’ve ever been put into a position with a major PPV that SummerSlam put me in. Who was the first guy in? Jeffykins. Was there any sign of hope, any light at the end of the tunnel that I could grasp on to? No. I’m used to this type of situation from WWE, but it’s mostly from the Great American Bashes and No Way Outs of the world. Not SummerSlam. This wasn’t a Slit Your Wrists situation. That would have actually required some effort and motivation. SummerSlam, right off the bat, threw me into Uncomfortably Numb territory. The apathy could be cut with the knife that you would have normally used on your wrists. Honestly, I didn’t want to continue. I wanted to put this comeback off until Survivor Series, if I could have mentally recovered by then. However, I promised Fingers, and I do follow through.
Okay, Jeffykins…where’s the K-Dawgs? I still have some left, you know. Not enough to OD, but enough to make sure that the pain temporarily goes away…oh, Christ, he’s facing Porter? No, I still don’t like Porter. Never have, never will. I am consistent in this regard. People prize my consistency as much as my ability to shoot bile a world-record distance (I’ll be the favorite when it’s a demo sport here in Chi in 2016). Would it be fair to do a “Next” the first match of the first card of me being back? Yes. Yes, it would. So, next.
White guy with cornrows versus black guy with cornrows…can’t we just settle this with new hairstyles?
Please note: they’re going to be feuding over Santino Marella. Santino Marella. Why am I coming back?
And that brings us to the Intergender Double-Title Winner-Take-All Match. Now this might have actually sparked some interest, except for a few things: 1) I still remember when Santino Marella was a one-shot joke that somehow, against all odds, worked. 2) I never bought into Beth Phoenix, especially after she went out with an injury at the exact moment when she was needed the most, during the post-Stratus transition. 3) I don’t buy Kofi Kingston. They already have a flippy-yippy black guy that they’ve horribly misused, and he made a cameo during the match I ignored. I fear that what was done to Benjy will be done unto him. 4) I still call the fourth member of this match “MickieLexis LaJames” because of that damn consistency I mentioned earlier, not to mention that it flows perfectly. I’m doing this despite the fact that no one today remembers that she was Alexis Laree back in OVW. I do tend to have my pitbull moments like that, especially since I still believe to this day that Alexis Laree was a much cooler name.
That being said, there are two basic philosophical questions surrounding this match. First of all, is it appropriate to put two titles on the line in a comedy match? Yes, when the titles are the IC and women’s straps. They’ve been jokes for far too long, despite the efforts of Jericho to bring back some glory to the IC. But that was beyond even Jericho’s powers. The IC strap has been dead for so long that it would take something at the level of the Michaels/Hall Ladder Match to bring it back, and maybe not even then. As for the women’s title, the last time it was fun was Stratus versus Psycho Mickie. You need a woman with a strong personality and fan appeal (either way, heel or face) to give it the opening it needs to the audience, and that same woman has to have the wrestling chops necessary to provide it legitimacy. Trish Stratus was a rarity in that regard, a once-in-a-generation type. I didn’t really appreciate her at the time, since I remembered her origin as a manager who couldn’t cut a promo. Now, in hindsight, I really miss her.
The second question is a much more minor one: is Santino Marella now officially an embarrassment to the memory of Gorilla Monsoon? Again, no. Gorilla was a guy with a great sense of humor and an eye for talent. He’d get the joke and he’d appreciate it as a tribute. He’d also appreciate this kid who took this one-shot gimmick and turned it into a successful mid-card to upper-mid-card career. Marella has become a good support guy, the type of wrestler that every organization needs to succeed. Unfortunately, he’s becoming the class of a rather shoddy mid-card. Is there anyone in the mid-card you can see getting promoted to main-event any time soon? Upper-mid-card is about the limit for most of them. The last wrestler WWE had that succeeded in this regard was…oh, Christ, John Cena.
I’m thinking about this match way too much. But it’s better thinking about that than seeing Marella on the receiving end of a LaJames DDT, or thinking about the fact that there are two titles now being held hostage to a comedy gimmick (despite what I said above, it still leaves a bad taste). If we’ve learned anything since November 2000, it’s that Steph and her “creative squad” don’t know how to do comedy properly. It’s not a good sign for the future.
LaJames is the only one getting a kick out of this match
Observation: Rebecca Hickenbottom was smokin’ hot when she was a Nitro Girl. After a decade and two kids, she hasn’t lost anything. Shawn, honestly, I think any hetereosexual guy in the audience, and a good portion of the gay guys, would do her without a second’s thought. And she knows how to take a bump too. You lucky, lucky bastard, Shawn.
The question here is, can they do a slow burn on a Michaels/Jericho angle? They can’t do a slow burn on anything these days. If it lasts until Survivor Series, it’ll be a shock. It’ll also be a shame. You see, WWE, we don’t want to necessarily see a match between them. We want to see a solid angle, because we know that both of them can carry that off perfectly given a good premise. We want to see promos. We want to see lots and lots of promos. With Flair gone, Michaels and Jericho are probably the two best pure promo guys left in WWE (you can make cases for Trip, Edge, and High-Quality Speaker Boy, of course). Seeing them on the mic against each other is more fulfilling than any kind of match they can have, with the possible exception of an I Quit Match (which would be a natural given the basis of this angle). Please, play this out.
And from the sublime, we now go to the ridiculous, and “ridiculous” in WWE means ECW. Mattsy-Poo versus Fat-Ass for the title…oh, joy. Well, at least it lasted less than a minute. With a DQ ending. You know, after seven and a half years, there’s still that cognitive dissonance that goes on when I try to match “ECW” with “DQ ending”.
There are still reasons to watch ECW. I can’t come up with any in the front of my mind right now, but given time, I can think of some. The occasional Tommy Dreamer appearance, maybe. Oh, hell, maybe I’ll watch it tonight and try to remember why it isn’t a waste of 42 minutes plus download time.
Saba Simba beating the crap out of a skinny white guy wouldn’t have even made Superstars back in the day, much less ECW
Okay, World Championship Match next. I can watch Punk wrestle all day. I can watch High-Quality Speaker Boy cut promos all day. However, Punk isn’t that great at promos (he was much better in ROH, of course, but they allow an open mic in ROH). And I still have memories of Justin Hawk Bradshaw. There’s no Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup here. These are two great tastes that do not taste great together. They blew the chance for a truly great match here two weeks ago. They should have pulled the trigger on the Triple Threat by having that match on Raw end in a time-limit draw. Together, Punk and Jericho could have disguised High-Quality Speaker Boy’s in-ring deficiencies. “But, Eric,” I hear you bleat, “they had to start the Michaels/Jericho program!” STFU, n00b. Jericho can multi-task for one night. He’s Jericho. He can do that. It wouldn’t have required much. Reschedule the Michaels announcement to after this match, and use Jericho being upset at not cashing in his title shot as part of the promo between him and Michaels. Simple adjustment, but something that’s beyond the abilities of “creative”.
So, we got stuck with a mammoth stylistic mismatch. I know that WWE has to feed egos, and that’s always hazardous, but they had a winning announce team on Smackdown with Cole and High-Quality Speaker Boy, one of the few they’ve had over the past, oh, decade and a half that wouldn’t have made Gordon Solie projectile vomit. It’s a shame to see High-Quality Speaker Boy actually wrestling again full-time in programs that aren’t amenable to his limited skill set (which is declining even further with age). John, please, listen to me: you have a hot, successful wife. You have a side job that’s going to give you dicking-around money at a level which most of us can only dream of. You had a great gig behind the mic where you were respected and, dare I say it, loved by fans. Why are you in the damn ring? Be happy with what you have.
You can do your own “flight out of Chicago” joke. I had too many of the real things last week.
Now, that brings us to the other world strap. I haven’t watched Smackdown in a helluva long time, really. Given this match, I think there’s a good reason why not to, especially given our new Smackdown recapper, Sassy or whatever…dear God, what a no-talent he/she/it is. Just shows you how much respect that Inside Pulse has for Smackdown. We gave the recapping job over to…look, when you see the name “Sassy”, what do you think of? A cute little puppy who invariably becomes annoying and yappy and starts pissing all over the place. And the puppy could turn out a better recap in between acts of micturition than Sassy did. Get off my site. Daddy’s home.
What was I talking about? Oh, yeah, Trip/Khali. Huzzah.
No, I don’t have a mad-on for Trip. I never did back in the day, really. I actually admired him for doing the out-of-control ego thing. Hell, he had all the trump cards, so all he could do was play them. Besides, I knew where the blame really belonged and assigned it appropriately. He’s also done some successful reassessments of his life, a lot like his buddy Michaels. It took hard-core Christianity for Michaels to turn his life around. Trip needed less, which is the sign of a guy who just let it get out of control a bit and reined it in through his own willpower. By all indications, he’s been a good husband to Steph (has there been one story about him cheating on her?). He’s fathered two daughters (just like Michaels), which always provides you with a new perspective on life. Any kind of apprehension that Vince had about a wrestler marrying into the family has long since been expunged. He’s thrown away his aversion to working on tape-delay in order to give himself more of a family life, something always difficult in this business. He’s turned out to be a good citizen. And he’s been able to maintain the talent that was left to him after the injuries at a level acceptable to the audience, which makes him a credible champion.
And then there’s Khali. Let’s face it, any Khali match automatically triggers a “Next” with me. What the hell is up with these repeated pushes? Did he sign one of those ridiculous Big Show/Mark Henry contracts? There is a limit to Vince Hearts Big Guys. Even Vince understands when a big guy is a joke. Khali’s been a joke since moment one. Hell, we did our part here to make him that way. The problem is, no one’s laughing anymore. The joke’s dead. Just get rid of this guy and come up with something better…oh, wait, their idea of something better will be another Trip/Batista program, or, even worse, Trip/Cena. Khali’s the lesser of evils in this case, since we can more easily write the program off.
For Khali, this is foreplay
Oh, I had to mention those two, didn’t I? Wigger/DAVE in a fifteen-minute bore-fest…does anyone care about these guys anymore? Their perpetual pushes were something that helped me justify my decision to not watch for a while. I was really, really sick of both of them. Even in wrestling, there is a limit to how much charisma can compensate for a lack of talent. Batista is just a generic big guy with a good look, with a limited moveset to match (again, age plays a factor here; he’s almost as old as I am). As for Cena…well, I’m going to remind you in case you’ve forgotten. There’s a reason why I became Flex’s biggest detractor on the Net and received thousands of incoherent e-mails in re “how can u say taht bout TEH ROCK!!11!1!eleventy-one hes teh gratest evah no ur role!!111!!” It’s because the guy tossed away his wrestling talent when he discovered it was easier to get over by cutting supposedly witty promos (which were never funny or amusing; if you think so, please bump yourself off and/or castrate yourself so you don’t breed), then proceeded to dog-ass it through all of his matches in a manner which quickly became formula. Now fast-forward to John Cena. As Prototype, he showed a lot of potential as a technical wrestler. Then he got promoted to WWE and became the Wigger. His little unfunny raps got him over with the Tasteless Unwashed Masses and adolescents of indiscriminate gender and actual biological age. He then followed said already-blazed career path to success.
The truly successful wrestlers, the ones we respect, are those who balance their charisma with their talent and utilize both in an effective manner, the Michaelses and Jerichos and Trips and Savages of the world. We even compensate for those who are deficient technically, but get everything they can out of it in support of that charisma. That’s why Foley and UT are loved (by a good proportion of the audience). The cardinal sin here is either throwing away talent that you had to get over on charisma alone, or pretending that you have talent that you don’t, then hoping the charisma covers it up (hello, Hogan and Goldberg). This is why Batista is much easier to digest than Cena. Batista never really had talent, and he never pretended he did. Cena, once upon a time, did have talent and threw it in the toilet. Then, when his charisma started to fade, the audience rejected him. But enough of that audience was brainwashed into liking him to tide him over until the backlash faded away.
(Please note that I wrote this before I read Aaron’s column on a similar subject. I stand by what I write here, and Aaron does so as well. Not his column, mine. Aaron’s always been my bitch.)
What am I getting at here? Cena sucks. Cena’s always sucked in WWE. You’re an idiot if you think otherwise. To hell with this match. Not interested. Never will be.
That being said…who let Michael Cole into the medicine cabinet? Batista a “loner”? Oh, yeah, Evolution never existed. Batista a “man of few words”? I seem to remember him cutting some very good extended promos over the years. You know, WWE’s games with continuity and history are like stepping into a hot tub: it burns like hell at first, but then you get comfortable and relaxed and it becomes soothing and familiar.
No, wrestling’s not homoerotic
Forty minutes left in the show, and the Cell comes down…okay, can UT do a half-hour match anymore, even with someone like Edge? The last time he did something this extended, it was with Angle a year and a half ago. However, this is Hell In A Cell. We get to have lots of extraneous stuff going on and loads of pauses. I have full confidence in Edge. He knows how to play rag doll and get ultra-violent.
And that’s pretty much what this match amounted to. Slow-paced, insufficiently violent, Edge going into his tables/ladders/chairs comfort zone. Nothing we haven’t seen before. There have been great HITCs. There have been horrid ones. This one committed the greatest sin of all: it was mediocre. These guys should have done a better job. God knows they were both capable of doing that. You can’t end a major PPV with something this extended and dull. I mentioned earlier that I was excited about no match on this card. That included this one. I have absolutely zero confidence in their match-booking ability these days. They seem to have a fear of letting wrestlers cut loose, even in situations where it would be appropriate. I can understand their rationale: cutting loose leads to injury. Injury leads to time off and pill-popping. Pill-popping leads to death. But to quote the great Super Chicken, you knew the job was dangerous when you took it.
One thing in an HITC match that I always remain skeptical about is breaking the Cell. I approve when it serves a purpose. This time, it didn’t. If you’re going to do an outside tour during the match, don’t bother making it HITC. Just do No DQ and have fun. You don’t have to lug around ten thousand pounds of chain-link to do an outside tour spot. Efficiency and economy, those are the watch-words for 2008.
And there was no kind of angle resolution in re Edge/Vicki. That feels like a bit of a cheat. That means we’re forced to watch Smackdown in order to find out what’s going to happen. God knows we’re not going to read Sissy’s recap, not if we want to remain sane and/or feel like we need to take a shower afterward.
This isn’t going to end well
And you can insert your own Large Hadron Collider joke here. I can’t do everything for you.
Now they can do camera shots in 1080p
So, how can one deliver judgment on this? I went in not expecting anything big. I got exactly that. Does that mean it meets expectations? No. If WWE insists on categorizing PPVs as “major”, then it has to deliver. Twenty SummerSlams requires a certain level of expectations. This did not come close to meeting that level. So what can we do about it? Not buy them. Of course, I already do that. Not cover them? We have an obligation to our audience to do so. Roll our eyes and comment sarcastically about everything they do? No. The only person allowed to do that is me.
You know what’s up next. You want the Short Form, and I’m giving it to you. That way, you don’t have to read Marshall either. Thanks to a nap I took during the day, I pushed my schedule back enough to download it instead of watching it live (or attending it live, for that matter; well, they don’t comp me for WWE shows, so to hell with them). So, you get screen caps of Raw too. Aren’t you people special? Shady’s back…
THE SHORT FORM
Match Results:
DAVE over Paul Burchill (Pinfall, rather sloppy DAVEBomb): Please note that one of the dark matches before this show was Charlie Haas facing Takeshi Morishima. Please note that ROH was in town over the weekend (did not attend; exhaustion). Please note that that match would have been the first-half closer of the ROH show. Please note that that match, either as presented by ROH or as a WWE dark match, would have been a thousand times better than this one. You want incentives to attend a live show, that’s one of them.
Hiccups can be a bitch to get rid of sometimes
MickieLexis LaJames and Kelly Kelly over Jillian Hall and Katie Lea Burchill (Pinfall, LaJames pins Burchill, DDT): The measure of the strength of any tag match is how the weakest performer does. With a women’s match in WWE, it’s more obvious, because there is usually someone who doesn’t belong in there. Normally, this person is Maria Kanelis. The candidate in this match for that dubious honor was obvious. However, Kelly did a surprisingly strong job. She’s been obviously working at her wrestling and definitely kept up with the rest of them. The result was a surprisingly strong match. Of course, as the weak link, Kelly had to play Ricky Morton. I just wonder if she plays Ricky Morton outside the ring too. The thought of Kelly Kelly being coked-up and humping everything in sight…excuse me for a moment, please.
Well, that’s mildly stimulating. But only mildly.
High-Quality Speaker Boy over Jamie Noble (Pinfall, Short Clothesline From Hell): You want something to do with Jamie Noble, WWE? Well, here’s a free one: hook him up with High-Quality Speaker Boy. Have High-Quality Speaker Boy recognize something in Noble from his own past: poor white trash, only interested in booze and broads, a little awkward. He realizes that he can “save” and “improve” Noble, bringing him out from the mud and turning him into an Master of the Universe like him. Come on, it’s a simple little Pygmalion plot, with the benefits of an Apprentice parody. We know that High-Quality Speaker Boy could pull that one off in his sleep, and Noble’s game for anything (and very capable). It’d also give Raw a credible tag team of reasonable quality, which they need right now. Let’s face it, that’s a better utilization of Noble than as a JTTS. What the hell else is Noble going to do? There’s no cruiser division anymore. They released Trevor Murdoch, so Vince can’t have another one of his Hillbilly Tag Teams that he loves so much.
I like Jamie Noble. I liked him back when he was Jamie-San. I want the best for him. Right now, turning him into High-Quality Mini-Speaker Boy is the best thing he can get.
Like that’ll do any damage to Jamie Noble
John Cena over Cody Rhodes and Ted DiBiase, Non-Title Handicrap Match (Submission, Rhodes submits to Cena, STFU): And you’re wondering why the tag titles on Raw need some credibility. Cena gets his pop, Hall Of Fame The Next Generation gets their next feud with Cryme Tyme, and we get a crappy transition match. Yay.
Give him a great big kiss
D-Lo Brown (?!) over Santino Marella, Intercontinental Title Match (DQ, Phoenix-ference): Okay, I’m back. Scooter’s back doing PPV reports. Hyatte’s coming back (but not here). Hell, why not D-Lo? 2001 was a pretty good year unless you were a Noo Yawk skyscraper, after all. And speaking of tag teams…oops, I forgot. This is Raw. We can’t have more than one black tag team. But D-Lo and Kofi Kingston would fit together great, you’ve got to admit that.
Not the first time I’ve seen black guys fight Italians in Chicago
Chris Jericho over CM Punk, Non-Title Match, Thank God, Because If It Had Been, Someone Would Have Died (Pinfall, Codebreaker): Apparently WWE wants me to stick around a while longer. They should know better than that. Finally, a match that interested me. Of course, I love Jericho to bits, and Punk’s from Chicago and sits at the right hand of God. They turned in a great main, a match they could have done last night (either with or without High-Quality Speaker Boy), which might have made the PPV worthwhile. But, no, we get it for free. WWE’s great business sense strikes again. Unfortunately, Punk’s match for Unforgiven is set, and Jericho’s not involved with it. So, this was a one-shot. But it was a damn nice one-shot, one that definitely leaves people salivating for more.
So why aren’t they pulling the trigger on an extended Jericho/Punk feud? Fear that it’d be too damn awesome for words or what? Silly people.
Ride the wild Jericho
Angle Developments:
The Concept Of The Garment Bag: Was Jericho wearing the same suit that he wore at SummerSlam? Yep, same one. Different tie, but same suit. It also looks like he didn’t wash his hair. He definitely didn’t shave. Maybe my standards are a little too high, but isn’t that rather unhygenic? Also, here’s another tip for you: try the button-collar shirts. They look neater. And pull up your tie. If you’re going to wear a suit, make sure the tie knot makes contact with the top of the shirt. Way to set an example for the kids, Chris.
Slob! Is! Jericho!
You think that the fact that it’s still pre-season might have something to do with that?
Twenty Minutes Of Stupidity: Championship Scramble? Yeah, this’ll do for the championship what scrambling does for eggs. We old-timers have been through this before. The Hardcore Title was contested this way more than once back then, and it was fun to watch. But the reason it was fun was that falls could happen anywhere at any time, and it was mostly the mid-carders who were getting the spotlight for once, and they busted their ass. In this match, we’ve got three relatively useless slugs in Batista, Kane, and High-Quality Speaker Boy, a totally useless slug in Cena, and poor, poor Punk, who’s stuck in this for the reason that he’s holding the strap right now. Let’s book this thing right now, shall we? The only people in there who are smart enough to realize that the guy at the end of the twenty minutes will walk out with the strap are Punk and High-Quality Speaker Boy. We just saw that match on Sunday night, and Punk won. So, Punk comes out of this with the strap. Hmmmmm, maybe I’ll come back to the Round Table for Unforgiven. Depending on the rest of the card, of course.
A Professional Question: How does one “figuratively eviscerate” someone, Kane? The removal of internal organs is not something you do figuratively. I should know. Considering the nature of the mask to Mexican wrestlers (which, by the way, Rey-Rey can’t wear in Mexico anymore because he lost a mask match), wouldn’t “emasculate” have been better? Well, no, given the intelligence of the Raw audience, it wouldn’t have been, because they’d think that you removed his testicles. Nope, no removal of testicles, but a Kane/Batista feud should remove some brain cells from the viewers.
Yeah, that’ll cover it for now. Hmmm, it’s good to be back, actually. You don’t deserve me, of course, but it’s still good to be here. Now whether I’ll be here next week is a question that can only be answered given time. No PPV, no house shows…well, I’ll come up with something anyway. Until then, keep fighting the injustice and cruelty of the world, and remember that this world is mine, and you’re only here at my sufferance.
