It’s either get a quote from some source or actually eat something today, and my stomach’s telling me to eat, so you go quoteless again.
A SLIGHT ERRATUM
When I said that I started going after Steph’s writing in November 1999, I meant November 2000. November 1999 is when I started to publicly go after Flex. It’s easy to mix them up; they’ve both had breast surgery, after all. My apologies for any confusion out there.
(And irony strikes yet another blow upon me. That was written before Letawsky’s column was posted.)
THE PIMP SECTION
Memo to Flea: Poolside in January is cool. Golf in January is even better.
I’m starting to worry about you, Grut.
I’m also starting to worry about me as, slowly but surely, Scott Keith and I start having the same opinion about things in wrestling. Soon, critical mass will be reached.
Tap into the brain of Letawsky while he still lets you. Oh, yeah, you did forget to mention that a lot of the Clique/Kliq confusion is due to the fact that certain people like Meltzer and Powell are using them interchangably now.
I screwed up on the link to my non-wrestling material yesterday. Let’s try this again: Reality News Online.
And a major pimp goes out to Sid Meier’s SimGolf. Sid Meier hooking up with Will Wright to produce a country club simulation? Oh, I’m so there it’s ridiculous. I’ve been playing it today, and it’s as addictive as The Sims.
SMACKDOWN SPOILERS, OTHER THAN THE ONE THAT SUCK WOODHEAD POSTED AND ASHISH GOBBLED UP…
Chris Jericho over Tazz, Jackie as Special Guest Ref (Pinfall, Lionsault): The Lionsault gets the pin because Jericho reserves use of the Walls for Jackie. The champ jerks the curtain, huh? Don’t look good for No Way Out, now, does it?
Obligatory Rollerball pimp (remember, Heyman’s in it) with special celebrity appearances. LL Cool J came within a moment of verifying that, yes, indeed, Bradshaw helped him out on certain lyrics.
Flair makes the announcement that Ashish alluded to in his update.
Diamond Dallas Page over Christian, European Title Match (Pinfall, Diamond Cutter, New European Champion): To those of you writing me defending the WWF and saying how good it is, defend DDP holding gold. I dare you.
Vince is smiling as he exits his fashionably-late limo, and will make Flair go through a public humiliation by signing the papers on taped national television, tonight, in that very ring. Meanwhile, on Raw, Goldust will reveal who the object of his strange affection is.
Oh, Christ, JR has a long-form interview with Steph. Look into other viewing options at the top of the hour.
Booker butts in on the APA/Rollerball party, demanding to know why he wasn’t the lead in the film. That pisses off everyone, and it’s going to be Booker in a tag match against Faarooq and LL. The mystery partner of Booker is revealed to be Test, who’s doing it for the chicks, one chick in particular (despite the fact that she’s married to a former star of Full House). But before that can get done, we have other tag team business to take care of…
Rob Van Dam and Edge versus Buh Buh Ray and D-Von Dudley (Pinfall, Edge pins Buh Buh Ray, Edgecutioner): Well, I called it yesterday. Of course, Regal gets involved and causes the pin to take place.
Vince tries to have a quiet moment alone backstage, but gets approached by Finkel, Lombardi, and Wippleman, who get their obligatory camera time for the month. In the meantime, Flair says a tearful goodbye to Earl Hebner.
Angle sets up half of tonight’s main with Trip courtesy of the auspices of Lilian Garcia, while Flair has another tearful goodbye with Flex, setting up the other half of the main.
Another “alternate viewing available” moment happens when Chuck and Billy demand and get a posedown contest with Trish and Torrie. My head’s already beginning to hurt just from reading that.
Bradshaw graciously takes LL’s place in the tag match, thus sparing us from celebrities wrestling again. So we get Bradshaw and Faarooq over Test and Booker T (Pinfall, Bradshaw pins Test, Clothesline From Hell): Minimal involvement from the Rollerball cast, thank goodness.
Trip and Flex over UT and Angle (DQ, a little UT chair action): Pretty much everyone goes batshit after the DQ. Flex gets his shitty uranage on UT through a table, while the AngleLock gets applied to Trip in the ring.
And our festivities end with Vince and Ric. Essentially, the deal goes this way: Flair leaves wrestling, but Vince cannot sign the NWO, and the papers are already drawn up and waiting for Flair’s signature. Vince agrees, even though he’s already signed them (and the faces are seen and names heard of Scott Hall, Kevin Nash, and Hulk Hogan). Vince then does an intense “shame that everyone can’t see them back in the WWF” routine while Flair enters the ring with legal representation. Vince rides Flair down in front of the Norfolk crowd (ooh, Norfolk is Flair Country, you know), and Flair hesitates signing. Then cover your ass, it’s broken glass, to be followed by the obligatory “What?”s. Austin then does what Austin normally does to Vince, as Flair…well, hell, the WWF signed HallNashHogan, so what do you think Flair does?
AND IN OTHER WRESTLING NEWS…
Ashish put up the XWF News while I was writing this. In case you didn’t know, Clear Channel really is one of the biggest media companies in the US (they own hundreds of TV and radio stations). Now the press release isn’t saying much. It sounds like some sort of strategic partnership rather than a broadcast deal for, say, syndication over Clear Channel’s TV stations. So XWF doesn’t have a TV contract, but they do have a sugar daddy to help them get one.
As for their house shows, given the locales, it’s sensible for them to promote Konnan, Rey-Rey, and Terry Funk like they’re doing (Konnan and Mysterio will be teaming up against the Nasty Boys, while Funk takes on Greg Valentine). Vampiro’s place in pub is also a given due to his popularity in that area of the country, and he’ll be taking on Hail (whether or not Jimmy Hart will be managing him depends on whether Hogan gets Vince drunk enough). Of course, all card announcements can change at any time depending on who gets signed by the WWF in preparation for the split.
Everything else that’s happened today, Ashish has covered well, and I have nothing to add for comment at this point.
YOU’RE A MORON: WEAR GREEN, SEE RED
Specialist Keith Krider, who’s stationed at Fort Bliss (where yours truly did his Basic), screams:
For the love of God please stick to wrestling!
No. You’re new to the column, right? People who’ve been here know the rules: I talk about what I want to talk about, and I don’t have to stick to any topic. In fact, people want me to talk about this stuff. You should see the mail I get asking me to keep it up.
If we wanted to hear your opinions on the political world then we would tune into Fox News.
No, if you wanted to hear my opinions on the political world, the last place you’d tune in would be Fox News, the biggest bunch of right-wing loonies collected under one roof.
I want to read about wrestling not your liberal views on politics.
Then read someone else. That’s what I tell everyone who bitches and moans about this.
You are a typical Democratic baby, still whining about the elections from over a year ago.
Yeah, because I saw a criminal act being performed in December 2000.
Move on with your life and try to stick to wrestling. LOSER!
At least I’m not stationed at Bliss. What a f*cking dump. Say Hi to the Hill for me, okay? Now piss off and stop being such a whiny bitch.
And in that same vein, we have Michael Griffin, who joyously titled his missive “Screw You” and thus made himself an automatic candidate for this:
I thought you were supposed to be writing about Wrestling and not your leftist politics. No one gives a damn about liberals like you. To say that the President of the United States had something to do with a murder, that wasn’t, and your only proof being your own hatred is too strong. Give it a break!
See above viz. politics. Surprising you say that no one gives a damn about liberals, because I sure hear a lot of invective out there about liberals and saw a lot of acts of vengeance prompted by the right wing between 1993 and 2001. And as for your assertion about Dubbaya, I’ve got two words for you: Vince. Foster. Good for the goose and all that.
BTW, the GOP seems to specialize in conveniently-timed deaths in relation to scandals. Witness Bill Casey.
(Gamble, being an intelligent man, immediately knew where I was going with that line yesterday, God bless his rancid little Doctor Frankenstein heart.)
The truth is, conservatives believe that the only people who have valid political opinions and the right to express them are other conservatives. Well, I’m a liberal with balls. I can make Carville look like a poodle if I have to. Are you afraid, conservatives? Afraid that someone’s going to come out, be tough, and tell the world that you’re lying? You should be.
MAILBAG TIME!
Memo to James Drake: The Supreme Court decision wasn’t based on Fourteenth Amendment issues in the largest measure. It was based on an interpretation of 3 U.S.C. 5, a section that was never referenced in the Florida election statutes. In fact, the Supremes weakened their case by directly stating the two conditions under which Fourteenth Amendment issues could be resolved. The fact is that the Supremes violated the Tenth Amendment with that decision, since there were no specific rights enumerated by the Constitution to the federal government involved in this issue. The number of cases where the Supremes told a state supreme court how to interpret the laws of their state can be counted on one hand (Ruth Bader Ginsburg, no dash, BTW, said that she could only think of three in the entire history of the US). By all rights, the Florida Supreme Court’s word should have been final. BTW, the Article VI argument doesn’t hold water.
Another thing that doesn’t hold water is your “Enron is a Texas company and Bush was governor of Texas and that’s all there was” statement. Enron is a Texas energy company, and the Bush family is in the energy business in Texas. A lot more gets done with that set of cronies than is ever put on paper.
As to L. D. Beaumont’s assertion that I’m mad at Dubbaya because “he’s succeeding”, how is he succeeding? The economy’s in the toilet, the “economic stimulus packages” aren’t working, KMart was an even bigger bankrupty than Enron, and in the meantime he’s playing Wag the Dog with bin Laden, just like the GOP claimed Clinton was doing to get minds off of Monicagate. He is not a successful president.
Another AOLuser decides to take a different tack on attempting to assault my integrity by bringing up the topic of abortion: hmm… so then you’d be opposed to Roe v. Wade, since the Supreme Court overstepped state courts in making that ruling. Right? Or are you a hypocrite, too? Wrong. Roe v. Wade dealt with the fact that state laws prohibiting abortion were unconstitutional based on the Right To Privacy implications in the Fourteenth Amendment (not the Equal Protection implications that were used by Team Dubbaya). Those implications were established by precedent in 1965 in Griswold v. Connecticut and extended to the issues at question in Roe. There was no precedent in Gore v. Bush to base a decision upon. I’m completely in favor of abortion, by the way, especially if it’s made retroactive for idiots who make stupid analogies.
That’s enough of politics for now. Let’s move on to wrestling.
Simon Wright thanks me for being right about Stephanie, but says that the money match for WM would be Trip/Jericho. For any other PPV, I’d agree that it’s a money match. But WM is still considered “special”, and the WWF wants the biggest it can get. The biggest right now is Trip/Austin. Trip/Jericho as the WM main would be the biggest indicator yet that the WWF feels that the Unified Title has zero value, and that isn’t something they can afford to let people think. The thing that no one has bothered to think about is that a Trip/Austin match gives the WM main event a good feeling of uncertainty. Do you leave Austin with a one-month reign, or is Trip over enough that he doesn’t have to hold the title? I think if he’s going to be the NWO’s main opponent, you leave the title on Austin via screwjob and do a “you were our friend and didn’t help us” type of thing with them.
Speaking of Trip, Nunya Business believes that Steph won’t be the face in their breakup no matter what due to the fact that the audience hates her guts so much. I agree totally, except that what I was trying to get at was the fact that, given her position, she’s going to attempt to make herself the face out of pure ego. There’s something I said about Royal Rumble 2001 that still applies almost thirteen months later: The WWF is a well-oiled machine working in synch for one purpose. That purpose is to get Stephanie McMahon over. Nice ideas about a Steph/Jericho alliance, though. I can’t see how they could pull that off without ignoring two years of continuity, but it’s still worth thinking about.
Quickie answers to Kurt Dieckmann: not really (although Palumbo has bigger tits than Trish), not really (since the former two were so good that they made up for the latter four), very much so (she can induce tinnitus now), and Hell No. As for the pic, that’s sick.
Rob Bemis is back, and he’s pimping his Pats for Sunday. Arguments accepted, and it is ridiculous that the line in Vegas opened at 16 (and dropped quickly thereafter; the money on the Pats must have been tremendous, and I’m really jealous of anyone who got 16). However, I just think the Rams have too much going for them. Midnight must strike for all Cinderellas sometime, you know.
Josh Van Gibson loves Baldur’s Gate, but hates Minsc. Don’t worry, everyone who loves BG hates Minsc, especially in BG2, where every line of his seems to have a secondary meaning relating to gerbil stuffing. By the way, Minsc is voice by Jim Cummings, who happens to be Disney’s current voice for Winnie the Pooh. There’s something very disturbing about that.
Michael Cavenaugh reminds me that there was a reason for the Dudz interfering on Raw, and it stems from Van Dam hitting the FSFS on Buh Buh Ray the week before. Just goes to show you how memorable Raw has become when I’ve forgotten something like that, huh?
Jesus Morales comes to us from the “Internet Usage Should Be Licensed” file:
Hogan is and always will be one of the greatest wrestlers ever he made wrestling what it is today and therfore anything that includes the greatest moments should include Hulk Hogan if not it is an insult.Nash, and Hall with the nWo were one of the best angles in wrestling and the hype continues to this day.
Tell me one thing that Hogan has done that’s relevant and important to wrestling as a whole instead of his own ego since his match with Warrior at WM6 (other than the turn at BATB ’96, which was self-serving and just happened to have good consequences), then I’ll listen to you.
So long, farewell, auf wiedersehen, goodbye. Next Tuesday’s column might be a little late due to that trip to Tampa that I was talking about, but I’ll try my damndest to get it in ASAP. Have a good one, and stay tuned for the Grut Show, next on most of these stations.
