The Week In Wrestling 11.18.02

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I took last week off just because I was WAY too tired to write. I finally (about a month ago) got one of those “real jobs” where people expect you to go more than 20 hours a week.

Saw the Al Gore interview this past weekend. Will he run again? I don’t think the party can get behind him. Will he run with Hillary? God, I hope so… get her the hell out of here. Also, I found it very amusing that Al gave us the picture of a family who moved here from Mexico to live the American Dream. But, Al says, that success comes with a price. Dad has to be on call 24/7 and never sees his family. Hey, I got an idea… DON’T BE A SYS ADMIN? Al sitting there and, basically, saying that “people have to work too hard to live the American Dream” is gross. And he wants to be president. Oh my.

Also, for any of you who read Eric S to get his side of the political game… read Flea, too. His Saturday Matinee from Two weeks ago is possibly the most inspiring thing I’ve ever read. Much like “Success is my only motherf*cking option, failure is not.”

And the Giants have totally turned into their stretch version. Meaning, they are a different team in late November/early December then the rest of the year. I wish they could play like this all year.

Also, who is this douche from The Prick’s site who thinks he can talk down to 411 writers? Jealousy is an awful thing. Maybe Widro will be nice enough to let some OO writers stay around when the site goes under.

Survivor Series and Super Tuesday this week means an extra long column, so lets roll.

Raw

Most of the matches on Raw this week were throwaway hype for Survivor Series where nothing was going to happen. The opening match was the Frizzy Blonde Champions vs Kane and RVD… a match that had no chance of a title change. It was a showcase of three of the guys in the elimination chamber and Christian, who is somehow the first alternate if someone can’t compete in the Chamber. Normal shows would give you this tidbit of information and do something with it… like have Christian attacking people with chairs all night and trying to injure people, and pissing as many people off as he can to give issues to the Frizzy Blonde Canadians… AND to himself personally. In WWE Writing, though, it was just something fun for Christian to say so Jericho can hit him with a chair and be done with it.

Gregory Helms interviewed Booker T about the chamber. Booker says he’s going to win. Golddust was also involved in the interview as they set up the Golden Hurricanes… as a new tag team. Again, I have no problem with this tag team, but they seem determined to do as many random things as possible with the Hurricane so NO ONE likes him anymore. They need to stabalize Hurricane and Golddust in a long tag program with eachother… then turn ONE of them heel. Either will work. The Golden Hurricanes then went out and lost their debut match. Actually… Hurricanes = Rain. Rain = Showers. THE GOLDEN SHOWERS!!!!

I smell merchendising rights!!!!

Speaking of guys who no one cares about anymore. Jeff Hardy wrestled Lance Storm. Jeff Hardy has a very Steve Blackman push. He constantly wins, but doesn’t go anywhere… then, over on Smackdown, you have possibly the most innovative character the WWE has created in recent memory with Matt Hardy. People used to call Jeff the next Shawn Michaels… I’m starting to think he’s the next Marty Jannetty.

Victoria and Terri wrestled, just to make sure no one starts taking the WWF Women’s Division TOO seriously. Trish makes the save. Also, I know acting in wrestling is usually bad, but don’t make a bad actor try to do something that needs a good actor to do. A psycho isn’t the easiest thing in the world to play… and Victoria is not all that good an actress to be given the assignment. It’s embarassing to all parties involved.

Flair met Bautista in the back… and let him know that Flair is watching him and he’s the next NEXT big thing. Bautista then went on to squash D-Lo Brown. If they didn’t just do this with Brock six months ago, this would be hot. Bautista seems to have a very Goldberg-ish charisma about him, though, so who knows. Note to WWE Creative… Drop the “Dave.” Using last names only is HOT.

Shawn said that, basically, he doesn’t care who wins the match as long as HHH doesn’t. He did all sorts of happy praise God stuff… and that he is the innovator of new WWF matches. He was in the first WWF ladder match, the first Hell in the Cell, and the first Iron Man, and he won them all. Now, he’s in the first Elimination Chamber. Regardless, HeMan comes out to remind us all that, in this arena, he is God. Now, is this only in Cincinatti, OH that he is God? I mean, that’s believable… is that why they Bengals suck so much?

Bischoff described the Elimination Chamber and, sadly, it really was a bathroom. It’s a backstage match in the showers. The women’s showers might help to boost ratings, however.

Golden Showers…. Heheh.

HeMan and Booker T had a match in the main event to pimp part of the Elimination Chamber. The cooles thing they could have done is have Booker T win, but lose in a screwjob… like the ref counts the pinfall, sees a sledgehammer in the ring, and reverses his decision. Make people think Book has a shot in hell of winning. Of course, I picked him for the roundtable, so who’s the freak now?

All in all, though, Raw was a huge improvement this week over the previous couple weeks.

Super Tuesday

This is actually an hour of my life I wish I could have back.

Steph turns the Smackdown Tag Match at Survivor Series into a 3-way dance under gay WWF rules where first pinfall wins. To pimp this, we get one member of each team in a 3-way dance. Edge v Chris Benoit v Eddy Guerrero. If the match these guys proceeded to have was supposed to impress me to want to see the full version, it didn’t work.

We then go into a half hour of video promotion, which is all recaps, broken up by the Trish vs Torrie bikini contest, which gets broken up by Nidia. We can’t even have a clean finish in a bikini match???

The 10-man match was designed to remind us that it was, in fact, Survivor Series even though we don’t get any more Survivor Series matches… even though THE FUCKING SPLIT PERFECTLY LENDS ITSELF TO THE FORMAT. The 10-man match was less than ten minutes long, which just about gave everyone time to do their finisher before HeMan pinned Kane to put an exclamation point on the fact that their feud is over.

Smackdown

Hot opener with Chavo vs Edge to pimp the tag team main… although they could have picked a guy who at least had a shot against the Juggernaut that is edge.

Torrie won’t come to Al and Dawn’s wedding. Time to press the Eject button on this storyline. Tell us they got married in Vegas and get over it already. Do it so it means something… hook one of the wrestlers up with another wrestler’s mother. At least you get a feud out of that.

Matt Hardy likes Guacamole, in case you didn’t know. He tagged with John Cena to take on Rikishi and Tajiri. This match existed only to add John Cena into the ranks of Mfers.

Benoit and Angle had a hilarious segment where they tried to 1-up each other using lame insults. Angle won with “I’m an Olympic Gold Medalist.”

Rey and Eddy had the commercial-spanning match of the week which, as usual, was worth the price of admission to Smackdown. Eventually, they’re going to have to move outside of these six guys so it doesn’t get boring.

Like: Jamie Noble or Kidman, who also wrestled in a CW non-title match, which Kidman won. These guys can work in the good matches of the week.

Angle had the line of the week, where he apologized for his matches being so predictable, because he’s so much better than everyone else. His match with Benoit barely got started before the Guerreros ended it by running in. This served no other purpose than to pimp the big tag match.

And Brock beat up the Big Show in the final segment. Normally, the heel gets the phatty beat down on the face going into the big match, so the face can come back big in the actual match. I’m interested to see where they go with it.

Survivor Series

Well, in fairness, at least most matches were elimination style. That’s kinda Survivor Series-ish.

Well, I’ll be dipped in shit.

Daniels: BWWAAAAHAHAHAHAAHAHA

Winner – Big Show


Me: The Roundtable

Big Show beat Brock in what was, basically, a squash match. I will note, however, that Brock got Big Show up in a perfect F5, which is the most impressive thing I’ve seen since Mr Perfect Perfectplexed him on Nitro back in 1997. Paul E turned on Brock, and you have a NEW Smackdown Champion. Now, before the match, Steph told Bischoff that he made a big mistake trading him to Smackdown. I’m interested to see if that was a tidbit of information that means something, or if it’s just another tossaway comment.

The tables match was notable only in that it saw the reunion of the Dudley Boys. I guess the Reverened D-Von experiement is over and will probably never be mentioned again (except on Wrestlecrap). That seems to be going around these days. Now, I know Steph threatened to fire D-Von from Smackdown, but did she ever actually follow through? Or, is this another person who is part of that mysterious “Big Show Trade”

Kidman finally got the CW belt of Jamie Noble.

The official Hardcore Fire Extinguisher won Victoria the Women’s title.

The Guerreros are YOUR new Smackdown Tag Team Champs. I’d like to point out that Edge is apparently a superhero now, as he had his spear reversed into the Anklelock AND the Crossface, and didn’t tap out.

Steiner made his big debut which actually kinda sucked. Nowinski and Matt Hardy Version 1.0 (who keeps his house at a toasty 75 degrees) came out to put down New York (for real heat, they should have made World Trade Center jokes it’s been a year, they’re fair game). Matt could have pointed out that the Yankees are some dumb, they had to elect a Southerner to be their Senator, but that would have went over the head of most fans. It was all cheap boos to get Steiner a pop when he came out to throw some suplexes and beat the two of them up. Overall, it was a very dry debut and he also beat up someone from Smackdown and someone from Raw, so we still don’t know where he’s going to end up.

The Elimination chamber was an interesting idea, though it made for some difficult camera work. I also thing it would have been much more interesting if the locked chambers were slowly filled with pudding while the wrestlers were waiting to enter. You must eat or drown in pudding. Give the guys something to do while they’re waiting.

RVD went out first possibly because he legit injured his knee on a frog splash. Booker T would go out next on a Pedigree, then Kane would get a Pedigree, a Chin Music, AND a Lionsault to go next. Jericho had HHH in the Walls and ate a Chin Music. We were down to HeMan and Michaels. HHH would reverse the Chin Music into a Pedigree, but be unable to cover. A second Pedigree was reversed into a backdrop, and Michaels popped up in time to deliver a Sweet Chin Music. JR was baffled, as if he’d never seen a Michaels match before. Your NEW WWF World Champion, Shawn F’n Michaels.

All in all, a reasonably good show. I don’t even have a problem with Michaels winning the belt, as he’s been gone for so long, he’s somewhat new again. Big Show becoming champ, though I’m interested to see where they go with this.

The Week In Wrestling

With the slump Raw is currently in, the talk of Austin making a return is stepping up. With Austin starting to develop somewhat of a He-va attitude, this might not be a good idea on the WWF’s part. They can throw the whole roster back on raw, and it’s not going to help until they fix the root of the problem that being Raw is just a bad television show. The writing is sloppy, the matches are non-existant, and the talent doesn’t even look like they want to be there. The thing that NO ONE realizes is the rating of a show isn’t a reflection on the quality of that week’s program it’s a reflection on the quality of the PREVIOUS week’s show. Raw banged a 3.1 last week, because the previous FOUR weeks had been the most awful two hours of television in a long, long time. Last week was a good show, and with the possibility of Steiner they will do good. BUT IF THEY DON’T GIVE SOMEONE A REASON TO TUNE IN NEXT WEEK, NO ONE WILL.

I don’t know how many times this can be said and beaten into the ground. Give people a reason to watch next week, and they will. The whole show can be utter crap, but the last half hour of the show NEEDS to be the hard sell for last week. Leave the viewers with something good in their heads, and they’ll want to see how it resolves.

It seems as if the only people who don’t know what’s wrong with the program is the WWF itself. They keep throwing crap at the screen hoping someone will watch it. Well, people are watching it but less and less people are. Last time Vince was going through this, he fired the office and started over. It’s looking more and more like he needs to do this again. Fresh ideas this is what the WWF needs.

Not status quo.

Cuz the status quo sucks.

End Transmission.