Couple of quick things I’d like to say before we get rolling:
Return Note to Eric S: Well, seriously what IS wrong with a little necrophelia?
Note to Vanderhort. The Internet didn’t ruin the Giant, the WWF ruined the Giant. After booking him to lose to the entire federation, it’s nearly impossible to buy him as a serious threat for the cruiserweight belt, much less the belt off the guy who just cleanly beat the Undertaker. More on this toward the bottom.
Senator Wellstone: RIP If only Hillary had been with you.
Tuesday: Get out there and vote. All you folks who have been touting your patriotism for the last year, now it’s time to do something about it. You had time to go out and buy a flag or find an NYPD hat when it was en vogue, and now you’ll fool yourself tomorrow with “I just don’t have time.†Bullshit. I work tomorrow from 8am to 6pm, and I’ll find time.
Or just let Eric S’s 9.11.02 Column say it for me: I’m directing it at the people who didn’t think thing one about the United States a year ago, but who are now super-patriots. You don’t have to go out and join the Army or abandon your career in order to enter government service. How about being honest with your taxes for once? How about not trying to get out of jury duty? How about actually going out to vote in two months? Civic pride comes with civic duty.
And for God’s sake, don’t give Dick Gephardt more power than he already has.
For New Yorkers: If you’re a Republican George Pataki is a Democrat in the wrong party. If you’re a Democrat, your only choice is a guy who had to resort to calling Andrew Cuomo a racist (who then proceeded to drop out of the campaign, so his political was irreparable damaged by (probably) false claims) to win the party’s nomination. And if that’s the way African-Americans can go about winning campaigns, people should be afraid. Everyone else should go Independent and see what Golisano can do. Of course, I don’t think there’s any way he can actually take the NY Lotto money and guarantee free college.
Also, it’s taken me exactly a week to get sick of Nirvana fans again. Here they come, crawling out of the woodwork to say just how good Kurt was and how this retrospective CD covers their career. The Greatest Hits CD just reinforced my idea that Kurt and Nirvana are perhaps the most overrated band in history. In fact, Nirvana – Kurt with a bullet in his head = just another Seattle band. But Daniels, Nevermind ushered in a new musical era it was the best CD of the 90s. Wrong. Teen Spirit ushered in a new musical era, but don’t believe for one millisecond that, if Jeremy had been released first, that Teen Spirit would have the stigma it did. Kurt was nowhere near a Jerry Cantrell or a Mike McCready in his guitar work, and Dave Grohl writes better lyrics how many times can you say “Forever in debt to your priceless advice†in one song before it becomes repetitive? Besides, they conquered the mainstream popularity of hair bands is that really an accomplishment. If you want real talent in that band, look at Dave Grohl, who is currently featured in FOUR songs getting airplay on the radio.
Sell the kids for food–weather changes moods
Spring is here again–reproductive glands
He’s the one
Who likes all the pretty songs
And he likes to sing along
And he likes to shoot his gun
But he don’t know what it means
And I say yeaahh
We can have some more — nature is a whore
Bruises on the fruit — tender age in bloom
– In Bloom
About a person who listens to their songs and don’t know what they mean, but likes to sing along anyway. Riiiiight and those 4 other lines are really deep.
Bah. I often wonder if Nirvana’s business manager suggested Kurt kill himself when they started to slide because it’s the best business decision Grohl and Novaselic ever made
Oh and here is the e-mail. I’ll save you all the trouble of scrolling down to the bottom for it.
Raw
Show opens with HHH addressing last week and how people thought it sucked. He told us to screw off, as he will do what he wants when he wants to, and that he escaped the trunk last week (this explaining the opening trunk! Score one for the WWE!!!!). Hurricane then asks HeMan to explain the following footage. The footage shows someone with a Triple H face (with three or four priceless expressions) in an operating room getting stuff pulled out of his ass. A Gearshift, a gerbil, a hand, a sledgehammer, a string of hankies, and his head… heheh, HeMan had his head pulled out his ass. HeMan then proved how mad he was by beating up a mannequin until Kane came out to break up the vicious beating. Bischoff came out after refs unsuccessfully tried to break them up, and set up a casket match between HeMan and Kane tonight. OK.
We come back from break to F-View, which is basically GTV 2k2 in color.
Bischoff was backstage chewing out the Three-Minute Warning. Bisch threatens to fire them, because they’ve been f*cking up lately. The name Three-Minute Warning, reminds me that the Giants are playing tonight and I find it necessary to punish myself by watching a possession. Three-and-out. Exactly where they were last week.
Scratch that, they played better last week… they had it off.
Stacy and Test were in a bar. Stacy is apparently Test’s business manager now. She points out that Rock has “The People,” Kane has “Kanannites,” and Hulk has “Hulkimaniacs.” What does Test have? She tells him… “Testicles.”
…
…
Do they realize that people were making that joke FOUR YEARS AGO??? Eh, who cares… having Stacy alone will make him over. He has a match with Golddust and makes the joke public. Stacy helped Test win the match with a low blow. For someone who “pissed the main office off,” Test is on top of the world right now. Gets Stacy crawling all over him and a huge push. Yeah, those “big name” websites certainly seem to know what they’re talking about all right. Christian the tag team champion and Test with a new push. Go figure.
JR informed us that Steiner has joined the company but he is, as of yet, a free agent. I assume he’ll pick a side at Survivor Series. We also get a montage and that he’s coming soon. Buildup, go figure. Score two for the WWE!
Recap of last week. Shawn Borg is feeling much better now. We break in with RNN Breaking News. Randy’s News Network! Randy tells us the real controversey surrounding last week was no mention of him, Randy Orton. Heheh. Now THIS is a fun idea. Randy will be periodically breaking into Raw to update us on his rehab… and remember to send all cards to Get Well Randy.
Coach informs Kane that the match is non-title, thus ensuring a Kane win. Wahoo, remind me to switch to Raw.
Bubba’s surprise partner is Jeff Hardy. Mmm-hmm. They lost when Rosie and Jamal brought out a beat up Spike, who Bubba went to help, and Jeff Hardy lost.
HeMan is afraid of Kane, because Kane gets aroused in coffins. He leaves coach when his cell phone rings. Back in the locker room, the F-View camera is set up again… Flair called to tell him he’s running late (I guess so, it’s 10:17 pm and he’s not there yet).
Al Snow caught up with Chris Nowinski backstage and chewed him out for being a punk. Chris said he’d have made it with or without Al (yeah, because he LOST). Anyway, Chris agrees to a match with anyone Al desires. Normally, this would be the Big Show… but it’s not anymore.
Bischoff got a bunch of talent for the Big Show… but doesn’t name any of them. The F-View cameras are Bischoff’s brainchild… and if any of the talent doesn’t like it… F-Vyoo. Heh, that’s pretty cute. He also doesn’t want to spill the beans about the Elimination Chamber until next week. But, he will tell us that it involves six Raw talents, and little bits from the Survivor Series, the Royal Rumble, and WARGAMES! Whoa, the mentioned Wargames on WWF TV. Go figure… the six talents involved will be HeMan, Jericho, Booker T, RVD, Kane, and Shawn Michaels… for the world title! Interesting.
I smell it being exactly like War Games in a one ring cage.
Booker T comes out to interrupt during this, with a really fun sign set behind him with five different guys holding up signs that say “5 time” on them… and when Booker does the “5-time” spiel, one of the guys goes down the row of signs. Booker is Chris Nowinski’s mystery opponent. Chris incited Al into attacking him during the match, thus getting Booker T disqualified and winning. He then points at his head like a good heel should before Booker toasts both Al and Chris post match and hits a spinaroonie.
Main event was a HeMan vs Kane in a casket match. It was declared non-title, thus guaranteeing a win for Kane. Match plodded along until SURPRISE! Shawn Michaels comes out of the casket and does Sweet Chin Music the right way and was practically jumping up and down as he stomped and the crowd stomped with him. Sweet Chin Music and a Chokeslam finish HeMan as he’s rolled into the casket. Match was an excuse to blowoff the HeMan/Kane feud and refocus to HeMan/HeartBorg Kid. I smell Katie Vick being never mentioned again, except in the annals of WrestleCrap. Shawn’s new shirt is very futuristic. The writing looks metallic. Coincidence? I think not. We will be assimilated.
Smackdown!
Smackdown keeps up with their tradition of a couple great matches per week. The first one is Edge vs Benoit in a commercial spanning match. Finish was a great little thing which saw Edge try to roll out of the Crossface, but Benoit keeping it locked in. Angle broke up the hold and eventually gave Edge the win.
The costume party really took the cake though. John “Yogurt†Cena was dressed up as Vanilla Ice and droppin some ol’ skool rhymes on our crackasses. Cena made a better Vanilla Ice than Vanilla Ice does anymore. I didn’t think you could make hair like that anymore. A couple minutes later, Benoit crashes the party looking for Angle. After Benoit leaves, Angle turns out to have been wearing a Scream mask. I think the Scream mask is the coolest thing since the Michael Myers mask such a good set of movies well, two out of three are good.
Show wrestled Rikishi and squashed the hell out of him, with Tazz and Cole pimping the HELL out of Big Show, using the word “monster†approximately one-hundred thirty-seven times. My take on Show is still coming, just hang with me a bit longer. Show cut a promo after the match, which Brock interrupted and then they worked the mic against each other. This was forgettable
Matt Hardy walks around with portable entrance music. Some people might think this is silly, but I think we should all walk around with entrance music. Every time I enter my office, I start up “I’m Coming Out†by Pink.
Actually, if you want to have a really fun time create entrance music for your roommate and play it every time they enter a room. If you’re real creative, turn it into a .WAV and make his computer play it on startup and shutdown. See how long it takes for them to snap and start punching you. It took my college roommate about two weeks. His theme was Golddust’s. I think it was forcing him to wait for a three minute sound file to play every time he started up his computer sent him over the Edge.
Mattitude Fun Fact of the week: Matt Hardy always got more candy on Halloween than Jeff.
In an effort to get Katie Vick out of everyone’s mind, Steph and Eric made out backstage during Smackdown. Neither seemed to hate it. Right, this is just what we need to make all our lives better. Steph in a relationship with someone nearly old enough to be her father. This will CERTAINLY make the GM feud better. For shit’s sake, what are they thinking?
Second good match of the night was Kurt Angle vs Eddy Guerrero. Chavo and Benoit helped Eddy win. When Kurt went looking around for Angle backstage, there was someone in a giant teddy bear outfit, which is who I thought was Benoit. Angle found someone in a Scream mask and unmasked him. It wasn’t Benoit, but it was BROTHER F’N LOVE!!!! “I LOOOOOOOVE YEEEEEW!†Why the christ hasn’t THIS become a normal segment again! About 96% of the people in the crowd had no idea who it was, but it was made up for by the loud-ass 24 year old guys like me who knew just who the hell it was. If I was there, I would have possibly climbed the guy next to me just so I could shout “IT’S BROTHER F’N LOVE YOU MINDLESS FREAKS!†Benoit turned out not to be masked and just attacked Angle in the back until an Olympic Slam through a table put both guys out.
Rey had a match with Brock Lesnar. To outline half of the WWF’s problem with booking Big Show/Lesnar for a main event, people buy REY more than they buy Big Show as a main event threat so much so that Brock didn’t even get to BEAT Rey, but rather Show interfered in the match and tossed Rey into the tenth row (!) literally. I had minor ECW flashbacks. Brock ends up chokeslammed through a table to close the show. Rey got tossed around the ring by Lesnar, but made a decent looking comeback with his mini-mexican maneuvers.
Tough Enough
I was disappointed in this. I wanted more footage of the yak who went crazy. I’m guessing for the DVD.
Scott is my favorite, without question. All the others are just annoying muscleheads.
The Week In Wrestling
So, Big Show is in the midst of a Big Push again. He’s gone from losing to Jeff Hardy, to being a legit threat for the world title in the span of two weeks. Vanderhort wrote a whole column about how the Internet ruined the Big Show, which I made reference to above, but I disagree. I disagree whole heartedly. The WWF has booked the Big Show to be everyone’s bitch since losing the title at Wrestlemania. He hasn’t had a high profile feuds and has been used specifically to get people over. He’s been used as a tool in getting others over, and not had any marketing put behind him.
If they took the Big Show, and gave him a reason for having sucked for the last two years, maybe it would have been a little more reasonable. Tough to do, granted, while still having him be a heel, but not really. Think about it like this:
Week 1: Bischoff fires Big Show from Raw because he’s not worth the money Bischoff is paying him because he sucks and isn’t getting the job done.
Week 2: Big Show makes his big first appearance on Smackdown. After being traded by Bischoff, he tells us why he’s been sucking. He hasn’t been the same since his father died and the torture he had to endure during that ordeal. The Big Bossman really messed with him and he never got over it. But being fired from Raw finally snapped him out of it. This needs to be designed as a particularly boring interview to have the fans be against the promo and bored and booing him. Or send someone out, Edge for instance, to verbally run him down because he sucks so much preferably a face. At the end of the show, have Big Show backstage talking to someone and saying that next week, he’ll show Edge just how much he sucks.
Week 3: During Edge’s match, have Big Show come out and destroy him. Chokeslam everyone in the ring ref and all and have him chokeslam everyone ELSE that comes to the ring to break them up. I’m talking bodies strewn like the end of a Meng match. Edge needs to go through a table. Show just leaves.
Week 4: Show gets promo time running down the fans and how they didn’t care about his pain and what he was going through. Edge made fun of him for trying to be honest, and if there’s one thing Big Show doesn’t do, it’s suck. He’s had enough of people dissing him (my god, I just used the word diss in sentence that F*CKING EMINEM). To quote a past wrestler: “Enough is Enough, and it’s time for a change.†In fact, he doesn’t even want to be called the Big Show anymore he’s now The Giant again.
Week 5: Big Show squashes Rikishi Edge makes his big return. Big Show squashes Edge.
Week 6: Big Show squashes Rey Mysterio.
Week 7: Show begins messing with Lesnar, not just made the number one contender. A slowly face turning Lesnar gets face pops for messing with someone who’s been pissing off the fans for weeks now.
Of course, the WWF doesn’t really have the option of trying to build these storylines when they just try to hot-shot everything. The problem with this is: there really isn’t a quick fix for them right now. They need to just take a month or two and set up storylines maybe they’ll take a hit on a couple of PPVs sucking as things get rolling, but it can only help them in the long run. But even still don’t you buy Big Show a little more even just using what I said in Week 1 and Week 2, then all of the sudden having him the number one contender, after having been everyone in the fed’s bitch for the last two years?
But then again, what do I know about writing?
Vince was reportedly shocked SHOCKED this week that people stopped watching Raw. He, apparently, was the only one. When something has been continually sucking week after week, it doesn’t take much of a straw to break the camel’s back ESCPECIALLY when the target demographic has a football game to watch. The drop spread into Smackdown, which also suffered a 0.4 drop. We’re basically back to the number of people who were watching Raw at the beginning of the Monday Night Wars.
Just in time for NWA:TMJ to make a deal with Turner. If you haven’t heard, TNA has been bought by an investor and, if you can imagine, the investor wants a real TV deal preferably a deal where THEY get money. The market is ripe for a second wrestling promotion right now and Vince needs the competition badly.
And then you have Survivor Series, one of the big PPVs of the year, not even selling out yet. Well, I can tell you one thing. I went to SummerSlam in August and spent around $100 on seats that weren’t really all that close. SummerSlam was great but with the quality of the last TWO PPVs I am certainly not going to drop $100 on Survivor Series. Considering I know a guy who knows a guy who knows a guy, I might be willing to drop $50 when they start trying to fill the arena, but not full price not even close.
So expect another new direction from the company sometime soon and another one that won’t work, because until there’s a change in the structure of the writing staff, nothing is going to change. A leopard can’t change his spot, and once a writer’s well of ideas is dry, there’s no creating more. See also: Russo, Vince.
End Transmission.
