In Memoriam: Lew Wasserman, the man who gave “agent” and “studio head” a good name. I’d give him ten percent any day.
You know, you officially have no life if you can say “I overslept” and still woke up at 1:30 in the morning…
So I was trashed from yesterday’s continual activity during the It Keeps A Roof Over My Head portion of my life. Add that to a rainstorm in the Chicago area that required Mickey Spillane to give it literary justice, and sleep was definitely an option that needed to be taken. So I’ll get something out relatively quick, if you don’t mind.
THE PIMP SECTION
Bower does his usual decent job on news stories.
Baisden submits a terrific reflection on what life is like from the perspective of an indy wrestler. It’s definitely an eye-opener.
Morse gives Jim Hellwig a lot more space than he deserves, but it’s still a good lesson.
SMACKDOWN AND VELOCITY SPOILERS/KIBITZING
Courtesy of Rajah, of course.
You know, I’ve been getting more and more mails asking me to stop putting spoilers in my alleged news column. To those people, I’d like to inform them that there are these things called scroll bars and Back buttons. I’m doing a public service here. I’m spoiling Smackdown and Velocity in order for you to determine if you want to waste three hours of your life putting up with it or if it’s worth watching. Look, there aren’t any “surprises” anymore coming from WWE (Monday night’s reintroduction was not a surprise, considering everyone’s been waiting for that since the moment they announced Hall and Nash were back), nothing on the must-see list unless they give us a Smackdown that consisted of an Angle/Benoit 60-minute Iron Man Match with Jericho as Special Guest Ref, a Cruiserweight Royal Rumble Match, and the public disemboweling of Hulk Hogan. Personally, my time is a lot more valuable than my sense of wounded pride at knowing what is going to be on television tomorrow night. So on with the fun.
Velocity:
Test over Randy Orton: Said to be a good match, but it’s nothing that I’d turn on Epilepsy just to see.
Chavo Guerrero over Sho Funaki: Apparently, no one Cheated To Win, so there was no crowd interest. Of course, this is taking place in Oklahoma, The Land That Good Taste Forgot.
The Godfather over Hugh Morrus: No tits (except on the competitors), so no crowd interest. The Godfather attempted refocus continues, I guess. Look, just have him go batshit and start mixing up his old personae. I’d personally love to see Papa Shango come out to the ring escorted by the Hos.
Ivory over Linda: The pimping of TE2 continues as Special Guest Ref Jackie gets to give Linda a little lesson in what the industry is all about.
Okay, now is this worth blowing an hour of your Saturday night to see, or even tape? Thought not.
Smackdown:
The big event for the night is a twenty-man Battle Royale to determine the Number One Contender. So we know going in who’s winning, because we’re a bunch of NetSmarks who’ve been certain since the moment UT got the strap that he’d be facing Trip at KOTR for the title. But we get a minor-league swerve when, indeed, Hogan and Trip are the last two men in the ring and they fall out simultaneously, thus necessitating a match later in the night for the slot.
The Gay Boys over Rikisho, Tag Titles Match (New Tag Champions): And now we get the screwing over of Rikishi by Rico that we expected. Of course, Rico also threatened to leave the Gay Boys if they didn’t win the titles back, so that one was telegraphed.
Skit of the Night is probably Torrie’s visit to Maven in the hospital, culminating in some rather suggestive acts involving a banana and the Revenge of the Puro Scorned. However, Line of the Night has to go to Lance Storm, who accuses Billy Kidman of having no charisma. Personally, I would have gone for the “no masculinity” line, but I’m a cruel, vicious bastard.
Val Venis over Christian, KOTR Qualifying Match: Now this is a moment when I wish that they’d do brackets like the old days. I’d like to know going in who Val is going to lose to…uh, facing.
Due to Edge’s injury, he has to forfeit his KOTR Qualifier against Jericho, who proceeds to attack him anyway, only to be fended off by that threat to all cocky heels everywhere, Val Venis. So now we have our Final Four for KOTR set: Venis, Jericho, X-Suck, and Booker. More on that later.
Faarooq over D-Von Dudley: D-Von gets promo time to call the audience a bunch of masturbators. Faarooq responds that he’s proud of being a masturbator and proceeds to kick D-Von’s ass in. Hey, puke and piss on Monday nights, semen on Thursdays. What will next week’s bodily excretion be? May I suggest pus?
Lance Storm over Billy Kidman: Consensus is “not enough time given to them”. That’s always the case, but, hell, we’ve still got to see how Trip’s going to go over Hogan.
Trip over Hogan: Told you so. Lots of crowd heat for some unknown reason (apparently there aren’t a lot of NetSmarks in OKCity who knew the result of this one coming in). Since this is a face/face match, we have to have a beatdown at some point, and Undertweener and Angle provide that afterward.
End of show. No real reason to watch.
FUN WITH NUMBERS
Please, please, please, don’t let the creative team see the ratings and believe that the audience was responding to this. I admit that there’s such a thing as the lowest common denominator, and there may be more urine and vomit fetishists out there than anyone would like to admit, but if they’re going to interpret hitting a 4.1 as thinking they’ve found a successful formula, we’re in very, very big trouble. And speaking of that…
KING OF THE RING PRE-MUSINGS
I’ve already talked about Trip/UT. For those of you who weren’t here, let me summarize my feelings by saying that if they throw the title back on Trip, then the whole Hogan and UT things were a complete waste of time, theirs and ours. I have absolutely no idea what possessed them to think that Hogan could bring in an audience again. I have absolutely no idea what possessed them to think that Undertweener could do the same. They’re fishing for ideas, and nothing’s working. What about putting a new person in? They’ll tell you they tried that with Jericho and it didn’t work.
They’re in a major spot of hurt right now. All their upper-card performers are stale (and that definitely includes the one who’s on hiatus to shoot a film), they’re afraid of putting over the upper-mid-card for fear of alienating said upper-carders, and they seem to be content with going from one ratings pop stunt to another without any connecting tissue to hold them together. The one fear we all had at the time Vince purchased WCW was that the lack of competition would hurt the creative end. Fourteen months later, we can see clearly that that’s exactly what happened.
So what’s next? Let’s say that Trip does win the title back at KOTR (I’m saying he will, and I’ll stick by that). The competition for the belt keeps swapping shows, so that means it’s Raw’s turn. The top heel on Raw is Ric Flair. Flair/Trip would actually be a pretty good match if given enough time, but that leave us with the spectre of a man in his early fifties being WWE champion, and totally destroying the lit-match-in-a-windstorm equivalent to a firewall that separates Raw from Smackdown. Or…will they throw the belt on Trip and let him hold it until Flex comes back, so they can turn Trip? I have a feeling that it’s in the works already.
Now, as for the KOTR match itself, it doesn’t matter how they structure the matches (Raw bracket and Smackdown bracket or just throw the names into a hat), we’re headed for a Jericho/Booker final. Okay, great match to be certain, and there’s actual face/heel dynamic now that they’ve finally turned Booker face (something I’ve been begging for for a year). But what’s in it for the competitors? They’ve proven unable to capitalize on KOTR for the past few years (you can make a case that KOTR didn’t help Edge in the least, and care to look at what Billy Gunn’s doing right now?). May I suggest a simple stip that would allow for a possible solution to a number of problems they have right now? KOTR winner gets to appear on both shows. Now something’s on the line, namely camera time. If Jericho wins, you have your Fourth Horseman (assuming that Benoit stays on Raw, which is the current plan according to Milord). If Booker wins, it helps expand the SD upper-mid-card, which is suffering from a case of sclerosis right now. It would be a great solution. I wonder if they’ll stumble across that on their own, since, as everyone knows, they don’t read me (suuuuure they don’t).
Speaking of appearing on both shows, why isn’t Test doing so? If you remember, he can’t be fired until next year due to him winning the Immunity Battle Royale. Why can’t he just show up on Raw one night, then have Vince attempt to fire him for appearing on the other show, only to have Test go “Nope, sorry, can’t do that”? Test/Lesnar has the potential to be a break-out match for both guys, no matter who goes over.
Sorry, gotta cut it short due to me having very little time to shit/shower/shave. I’ll try to get back to your mail to me instead of doing Mailbag (honestly, I will try to do so). In the meantime, Ashish will keep you refreshed on all the comings and goings, and we’ve got Grut, the aforementioned boss, and Hyatte prior to my return next Tuesday. Until then, please hope for all our sakes that War Emblem doesn’t win the Belmont. Ta ta.
About Eric Szulczewski
