Well, thanks to a temporary change in work schedule, I can do Raw live once again and not lose too much sleep. I’m sure that all of you are giving huzzahs for that. However, it does leave me with one glaring weakness: no ability to FF through the crapola. Yikes.
Speaking of Yikes…
NORTH KOREA’S GOT THE BOMB, DOO DAH, DOO DAH…
No, that isn’t enough to cut a Yikes from me. But I couldn’t resist the header. Instead, let us turn to this Yikes…
SURVIVOR MSG
I have five words concerning the results of Survivor Series:
I don’t understand. Please explain.
You know, we all should be used to the Bizarro World booking of WWE by now. However, what they did with SurSer defies logic, and perhaps even cause and effect. That’s appropriate, because cause and effect does break down at quantum scale, which is approximately the combined sizes of the brains of Steph and Gewirtz. Now, I’m not talking here about the undercard, especially the Triple Threat tag match (hell, I could have lived with any of those teams winning, and congrats to Eddy and Chavito; I will note, however, viz. the Dudley Reunion: I f*cking told you so, WWE, and you paid the price for not listening to me). I’m just talking about the main events. Let’s deal with each of them:
After months and months of booking Brock Lesnar as an indestructible force, now all of a sudden we’re supposed to buy him as the plucky face underdog, fighting against an unstoppable foe controlled by a manager who knows his every move? Well…if you put it that way, maybe. If this was 1987, that is, and the plucky face underdog was named Hogan. It’s 2002, folks, and we’ve been through enough of this particular shaggy dog story over the past fifteen years to fantasy book it in our sleep (which puts us one up on the WWE bookers, since we at least have some brain activity). The guy being used as an unstoppable force is Paul Wight, someone we collectively gave up on years ago. No one ever wanted this feud in the first place (except for Vanderhorst), and now we get another month of it.
So who’s behind this decision? Heyman, undoubtedly, or someone who believes that Heyman is an absolute necessary presence in the upper-card of Smackdown. Lesnar had to be turned face courtesy of the audience (and damn their eyes for influencing WWE booking yet again). Heyman couldn’t be turned face if Flex came into the ring and kissed him on both cheeks. As said, though, WWE needs his presence in the upper-card of Smackdown (and they do; right now, they have what can charitably termed a promo-deficient upper card, Angle notwithstanding). Hence, Paul Heyman, manager of TBS, and another month of this ridiculousness. And the “winner” of this feud gets Big Sump Pump at Royal Rumble. God help all of us.
Now let’s turn to the Elimination Chamber. I guess that after the bummer of seeing Lesnar get punked, WWE felt they needed to pull out the “happy ending” card, and what happier ending than Shawn Michaels, World Champion? Oh, what a crock. Does anyone believe the guy is fit enough to wrestle a schedule befitting someone carrying the world title?
Or are the conspiracy theorists right on this one? You know what they’re saying: “Trip had to drop the title but he said he’d only drop it to his pal Shawn so they could continue their feud and Trip could still get main-event attention”. I don’t know what to think about the “Trip’s Reponsible For Everything Bad” crowd. We’ve got enough evidence to know that Trip’s done enough to be declared a scapegoat, but for everything? This would make Trip’s penis/ego (and don’t let anyone tell you they’re two different things when it comes to the male of H. sapiens sapiens) the most powerful thing in wrestling other than Vince. I’m not going to blame Trip until the evidence comes in (and if it’s next month, and the title goes back to him, then I will).
However, you have to ask yourself this question: Does WWE have so little faith in Booker or Van Dam that a title run, even as short a run as a month, seems unjustifiable? Look, ratings are in the toilet. We all know that. Hell, I rant about it every Wednesday like clockwork. Something new had to be done. At least they picked up on that and somehow convinced Trip to drop the title. But to Michaels? Van Dam I can understand about the lack of faith. He doesn’t fit into the standard mold of WWE champion (although neither does a certain Mister Hickenbottom). But Booker does, and he’s got everything you think WWE would be looking for in a face champion, including some ability to put asses into seats, whether in the arena or at home. He’s even got the idiotic audience-pop move with the Spinaroonie. Why the hell not give him a chance? It can’t be worse than what they’re stuck with now, and what they’re stuck with is a champion who can’t wrestle a full schedule, with the obvious challenger probably out for a while due to Van Dam having a mild brainfart. Is he going to get depushed a little for that? Worse yet, can we tell if he’s getting depushed?
Normally, I go for storyline factor over everything except pure wrestling featuring someone named Benoit. However, the feud between Michaels and Trip didn’t push my buttons, mostly due to the fact that Michaels isn’t and can’t be a full-timer anymore (you don’t f*ck with back injuries, folks). He’s been in two matches since his “comeback” (not counting his match for his own fed down in Texas). One has been a gimmick match against the man who’s probably his real-life best friend, and someone he implicitly trusts. The other has been a gimmick match with five other guys in the ring who have enough spots between them to cover any deficiencies he might have. We haven’t seen him go one-on-one in a straight wrestling match. I doubt he has the ability to do that anymore. This isn’t the same Shawn Michaels who was in the Iron Man Match with Bret or in the Cell with the Undertweener (speaking of gimmick matches). Three words: Two. Week. Pop.
You know what Bad Movie Amnesia Syndrome is? Someone gets a blow to the noggin, wakes up, can’t remember who he is, but suddenly he’s a much more charming, vivacious, and all-around great person than he was before he got clobbered. If there’s a version restricted only to the throat, will Trip now start cutting promos that we actually would want to listen to?
SACHER-MASOCH WOULD BE PROUD OF THIS ONE
Hmmmm…Bears…Raw…Bears…Raw…this is a tough one. Both are incredibly painful to watch. Gotta decide…Bears…Raw…oh, f*ck it. I can’t stand to watch the Bears lose to someone named Bulger. Raw it is.
THE SHORT FORM
And since I’m going live, there’s no Keith or PK plug involved here. Hell, look for them on the main page.
Match Results:
The Law Firm of Dudley, Dudley, and Dudley over Three-Moron Warning (Pinfall, D-Von pins Rico, 3-D): God, it’s weird to be writing “D-Von” again. Bleh, but maybe it’ll blow this thing off so that the Fat Samoans can go to hell or something. Just go somewhere else, off my screen.
The Commonwealth Connection over Tommy Dreamer and Jeff Hardy (Pinfall, Storm pins Dreamer, Regal Boot to the mush): Nothing match, but it does give us the ol’ ECW drop toehold to the chair spot, and that’s always fun to see…well, it’d be more fun if it was Raven doing it to Dreamer, but Storm’s a good enough substitute.
Victoria over My Beautiful and Beloved, Women’s Title Match (Pinfall, uh…well, was that a Kryptonite Krunch or some kind of Gory Special variant?): Okay, did anyone else think that with the promo earlier plus this, Stevie Richards was about the revive the RTC?
Rob Van Dam over Chris Jericho and Booker T, Number One Contender’s Match (Pinfall, Van Dam pins Jericho, Steiner-ference): Well, that seemed like a good time to take a nap. Trust your instincts, folks.
Angle Developments:
Conspiracy Theorists, Get Our Your Notebooks: So, let’s see. In the show’s intro, we have Eric Bischoff and Ric Flair. Two guys who have a great deal of past animosity toward each other, one which erupted in a real-life lawsuit. Two guys whose hatred for each other is evident every time they’re on camera together. So what do they end up talking about? Trip. Okay, who borrowed the Ego Dildo from Kevin Nash?
This Whole Show Offends Me As A Wrestling Fan: Kudos to Michaels for kicking out the “necrophilia offends me” line. However, the rest of the promo was HBK 101, and not very enthusiastic to boot. It could have used a little bit of DX 1.0 smarm or Sherri-era egotism to spice it up.
My Poor Beautiful and Beloved: Verbally harassed by Stevie Richards, man-handled by Victoria…you know there’s always a sanctuary from the cruel world in my loving arms, Stacy. Forget your Testicles and concentrate on mine, and everything will be fine. Who’s your daddy, Stacy? Who’s your daddy?
Subtitles, Please: It’s been a long time since I was forced to listen to a Scott Steiner promo. It’s nice to see that the projectile vomit reflex still works, though. Kinda like riding a bike: I hear Steiner, I puke in any general direction I want. As for the interruption, the check is in the mail, Mister Irvine. And there’s a little something extra in there for shooting as well as you did. However, it would have been a lot more if you’d made an allusion to steroid use.
That’ll be it for me for today, since Ashish and Widro have everything else tight as a drum for the moment. Tomorrow, it’s more of the usual and I hope a little more of the unusual. I’m gonna hit the sack and pray that we get that something unusual.
