Wrestling News, Opinions, Etc. 6.19.02

Archive

We taught them a lesson in 1918, and they’ve hardly bothered us since then. – Tom Lehrer on Germans.  Let’s hope the World Cup team doesn’t have any Klose calls on Friday…

In Memoriam:  Jack Buck, definitely one of the great baseball announcers of all time.

And it’s another Wednesday here at 411, and that means more of my ranting.  I have a little time today to go through some stuff (I’d have had a lot more if I hadn’t been answering e-mail and going around trying to catch up on world events to see if anything out there was comment-worthy).  So let’s knock this puppy out so you can enjoy Grut.

LET’S GET THE PIMP SECTION OUT OF THE WAY FIRST…

Unca Ed (who I rarely get to pimp anymore due to the meshing of our column schedules) comes out with a sorta mea culpa, but there’s no real need for it.  Vince McMahon’s Reality Distortion Field is only second to Steve Jobs’, and it takes an incredibly twisted mind to survive being caught in the vortex.  Mine, for instance.

Case wastes more drive storage on the waste of oxygen formerly known as Jim Hellwig.

And, of course, Widro will be covering tonight’s NWA-TNA PPV live here at the site starting at 7PM CT.  I will be in bed by that time.

THE RETURN OF AN OLD FAVORITE:  YOU’RE A MORON!

Coty Long gets a little vituperative:

You stupid shit,

Good start.  That makes you an automatic qualifier.

Do you think any of us wrestling fans come to this site to read about your life? FUCK NO!

Actually, f*ck yes.  I’ve found through my mails that people actually enjoy reading about my life, and my mail’s gone more than ten to one in favor of continuing to do so.  So I will continue to do so because, hey, it’s what my readership wants.

I couldn’t give a f*ck-less whether you had a happy father’s day, or what the f*ck you bought at your daddy’s favorite flea market, all i want to know is what’s going on in wrestling.

Then you’re reading the wrong column, oogums.

That’s the only reason I come to this f*cking site, not for your f*cking A&E Biography (maybe you should give them a call, there in need of something to put on television while everyone is asleep).

There are other sources for wrestling news, you do realize, and there are other columnists at this site who will provide you with such.  May I recommend that you come here on Mondays to check out Daniels’ recap of the previous week?  It’s always a great read.

And who gives a flying f*ck about Scooby-Doo? You should be ashamed of yourself, people count on this site for wrestling news, gossip, and all that good stuff.

You’ve got a lot of nerve telling everyone what they want to read, don’t you?  How do you know that?  And, as everyone who reads me can tell you, I have no shame.

>>But since when did it become a forum for abstract-thought?<<

Every column here is abstract thought of some form or another, even the recaps.  You want news without thought, go over to the Torch.  They haven’t exhibited any evidence of conscious thought in years.

>>I know the 1st amendment and all gives you power to say what you want on the site,<<

I don’t hide behind the First Amendment.  I have a simpler explanation:  it’s my column, so I write what I want in it.

>>but when people coem for one and ONLY one reason,<<

Again, how do you know that?  I think that a lot more people come to 411 to be entertained while also being informed about what’s going on in wrestling.  The old Samuda-style news-bite presentation died a long time ago, honey.  I should know; I helped kill it.

>>you should respect that.<<

As my longtime readers start laughing their ass off, since they know that I don’t respect anyone, including the dead.

>>Ok, that ends my rant. And in conclusion, FUCK YOU, FUCK YOU DOWN & DIRTY IN YOUR LOOSE ASSHOLE!!!!<<

Gee, and most people think I’m a tight-ass.

Yet another one who doesn’t get it.  Just shake the ol’ head and get on with life, I guess…

SOME QUICK WRESTLING COMMENTS BEFORE SMACKDOWN…

Jesse Ventura, in what was considered no surprise, announced he wasn’t going to run for reelection as Governor of Minnesota.  Anyone else thinking he’s clearing the decks for a Reform Party nomination for President in 2004?  If he does so, let’s hope they don’t try to bring up his less-than-stellar record as governor.

So the XWF is “close” to a television deal with either Fox Sports or Tribune Media, huh?  Weren’t they close to a TV deal with Clear Channel a few months ago?  What happened to that?  And does anyone care about the XWF anymore?  Any “alternative to WWE” momentum they might have had has been stolen by the Jarretts.  They’re a non-issue, with most of their “draws” either with WWE or with NWA-TNA.

SMACKDOWN REFLECTIONS…NOT SPOILERS PER SE BUT IT WILL REVEAL INFO

Angle/Hogan is such a natural feud that I’m surprised it’s taken them this long to crank it into high gear.  That opening promo between them should be entertaining.

I’ve received a lot of mail recently about why WWE hasn’t tried to revive the Team Canada concept with Storm.  Looks like those people are going to get their wish starting on SD, and Whiny Bitch Christian will definitely be a part of it.  Hey, they need something for Christian to do with Edge being out, since they can’t extend The Feud That Will Never Die.

I don’t like WWE’s approach to pushing cruiserweights, which is one reason I don’t bother with SD.  It’s not the cruiser who gets the push, it’s the cruiser’s valet.  You’ll see what I mean on Thursday.

Given the quarterfinal matchups, I don’t think it’s any surprise to reveal that it’s Jericho and Test moving on to the semis at KOTR.  So it’s them, Van Dam, and Lesnar.  You can make a case for all of them to win, even Test.  They’re putting a very, very attractive match package together for KOTR with Test/Lesnar and Jericho/Van Dam as anchors.  My biggest problem with the card is that UT/Trip won’t be as good as their WM17 match.

Main event’s another mess, though.  I wouldn’t go looking heavily into it to figure out who’s going to job at KOTR.  Trying to predict WWE activities right now is a futile gesture.  Since I tend to enjoy futile gestures, I’ll be participating in the Round Table.

MAILBAG!

With nothing going on outside of l’affaire Austin, and I wasted so much space on that yesterday that I feel no need to comment any further, I thought I’d open the ol’ mailbag again.  So bear with me.

Jed S asks the following:

Don’t know if you’ve seen a lot of it, but what’s the quality of RF Video’s tapes? Any of them, I mean…the comp tapes, I imagine they’re in decent shape, as they have source video to pull from. But, like the 2000 Pillman Memorial Show…it says “professionally shot” in the teaser on the website. What is “professional”? Hope you can help.

I’ve never ordered from RF Video, but their quality is said to be very good.  As per Pillman 2000, even if it’s a fancam, get it.  I will never vary from my opinion that Benoit/Regal is one of the greatest matches I’ve ever seen, live or otherwise, and everyone deserves to see it.

The Priz is a regular in Mailbag.  He asks me how the Bulls will do if they get Jay Williams.  A lot better, but they’re still young and green.  They’ll get up to the 30 win level with him the first year, and Bill Cartwright is a great person to follow up the lessons that Coach K taught Williams.  However, the problem with that team is still Jerry Krause.  He’s going to end up doing another bonehead deal like the Elton Brand trade, probably involving Eddy Curry.  Speaking of stupid bosses, he’s got a great comment on Austin:

I think every working stiff like you and me has been put in a position like Mr. Williams, and I think most of us handle our situations much better than he did. In fact, considering some of the stunts my boss has pulled (I work for a newspaper, my boss is the publisher/editor-in-chief), the entire rest of the staff has to be ultra-professional and responsible and communicative just to break even as a whole.

We all have to suffer through PHBs at some point or another.  The difference lies in learning how to deal with them and being able to adapt to the situation.  Austin, I think, doesn’t want to be seen as a falling star only fit for nostalgic exploitation viz. Hogan, and he’s getting more and more paranoid as the days go by that this is exactly what’s happening.  By the way, I hope your mom’s okay, and nothing would please me more than Miami/Chicago in the Super Bowl.  Payback’s a bitch, Wannie.

Joe Morgante brings up a decent point about Watergate:

Why didn’t the media jump on the 25th anniversary of Watergate rather than the 30th, which seems a less obvious marker for media celebration?  My guess is that it had to do with who was in the White House, what was going on, and the media’s reluctance to breed public cynicism about the executive branch at a time when their boy might suffer for it.

I think that everyone would agree that the then occupant of the White House was doing perfectly fine breeding public cynicism about the executive branch on his own, with or without media help (I know that my fascist bud John King and I agree on that).  If memory serves, there was a lot of focus on the 25th anniversary in the media, but definitely not as much as the 30th.  I think a lot of this has to do with the passing of certain key figures in the last five years, especially Haldeman.  Everyone’s getting a little less afraid to speak out now.  More revelations equals more media coverage.  I wouldn’t look at it in the context of a “liberal media conspiracy”.

My old colleague Elliot Olshansky brings up the fact that Kennedy contributed more loss of respect for the Oval Office than Nixon by screwing East German spies.  Yeah, but that wasn’t publicized at the time.  Watergate was a Public Shock To The System Happening In Real-Time.  And that line you wrote about Kennedy being elected by dead people?  Elliot, you’re writing to a Chicago Democrat here.  I know about what happened on Election Night in 1960, and let me just say that the river wards in Chicago weren’t the only places in Illinois that dead people were voting.  A lot of Republicans were exhumed downstate for balloting purposes, and there was massive vote fraud going on on both sides that night, pretty much balancing out.  It was the strategy of the Greatest Fucking Mayor Who Ever Lived that won Illinois for Kennedy, taking a big risk in revealing massive Chicago returns early.  And don’t just concentrate on Illinois.  The shenanigans going on in Texas were just as bad and just as favorable to the Demos.

Jskelton8 was a finalist for You’re A Moron with this statement:

By the way, why do you think West Germany became just Germany?   Ronald Wilson Reagan Pussy Boy!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I’d say that Mikhail Gorbachev had a lot more to do with that than the old senile bastard did, and to his eternal credit.  And, by the way, yes, it is Hazeltine that will host the PGA, not Hazelden as I said yesterday.  Considering the number of pills I pop, it’s a simple and easily-explained typo.

Memo to Dino Zucconi:  Yeah, it does feel great to win one, and it’s even better to hold it over the Mexicans.  I just hope you weren’t too disappointed by the Ancestral Homeland taking the gas pipe against the Koreans.

Ditto to Jayson Haynes:  I’m pretty sure it’s the oxygen sensor too.  It’s just a matter of finding time to take the sucker into a repair shop and get it fixed.

I’ll close off with Phil Watts, who dittoes what a lot of people are thinking about the Molly Holly situation:

This ‘Molly’s got a big butt’ angle makes me sick. This is a clear cut example as to why the current creative team is incompetent and needs to be fired. Playboy bimbos bore the hell out of me, and Ultra-thin supermodels nauseate me. The fact that people are being conditioned by pop culture to think that this is the standard of ‘Beauty’ is sick. Girls are so insecure about their looks that they would go to the nearest plastic surgeon for a boob job or induce vomiting after every meal, just to look like the make-up-caked ‘hot-chicks’ blazoned on the covers of magazines everywhere. Never mind the fact that they are RISKING THEIR HEALTH just to get a bunch of idiots to notice them. Do you notice those veins popping out of Trish’s cleavage? One day, she will take a massive bump in one of her matches, causing one of those silicone pouches to rupture. When that happens, I will have a very hard time finding a single ounce of sympathy for her. Molly and Stacy Keibler are two of the best looking women in the WWE, and they didn’t even need any surgery!

Well said.

I’ll sign off right here after yet another content-free effort, and let you enjoy the rest of the site.  Grut will be in tomorrow, followed by Ashish over the weekend and Monday.  Hyatte’s got the Mop-Up for KOTR, and I’ll be back later this week for the Round Table.  Enjoy your week.