In Memoriam: Mister James Coburn, the man who proved that tough can mix with funny.
In Memoriam II: Civil liberties in the United States after the Senate passed the Homeland Fascism Bill yesterday. How long will it be before a knock comes from my door in the dead of night and I’m hauled away to a “reeducation camp” somewhere in the middle of Kansas?
Oh, boy, it’s another Wednesday, as I scrounge around for stuff to talk about, especially after yesterday’s SurSer rant. You know what that means: Smackdown Somewhat Spoiled and Mailbag is going to dominate this one. Well, so be it.
THE PIMP SECTION
Hey, I like pimping PK. Now I have to pimp Jennette every week instead? Damn.
Apparently, everyone’s busy or something right now, since there’s nothing to pimp. Okay, fine by me.
DIALOGUE OVERHEARD INSIDE THE OFFICES OF 411…
“You posted another ratings header, didn’t you?”
“Well, people are interested in…”
SLAP!
“Now what did I tell you about ratings headers?”
“That they’re deceptive and that no one concentrates on more than two weeks at a time.”
“And what sport did I compare the ratings to?”
“Moguls skiing.”
“And what’s going to happen to the ratings?”
“They’ll stay up for another week, then go back down again.”
“And what are you NOT going to do when that happens?”
“Post another header on the main page saying that people are panicking.”
“Good, you actually read the stuff I write. Now, are you REALLY going to post another ratings header?”
“But it’s news, and we…”
SLAP! SLAP!
“Do I have to pull out the column again?”
“But you just reprinted that last week.”
“Answer me. Do I have to pull out the column again?”
(Pause)
“No, sir. You don’t.”
“Because what will happen if I have to keep pulling out that column every time you post a header like that?”
“You’ll go into Keith’s closet and pull out the red-hot pokers.”
“And do what with them?”
(Pause)
“Put them to the use that they were intended, sir?”
“Right. Now, who’s my bitch?”
“I am, sir.”
“Good. You’re dismissed.”
SMACKDOWN SOMEWHAT SPOILED
So Jamie Noble has to bring his “cousin” in because he’s lost matches to the Greasy Little Twink and Rey-Rey (so that makes him different in what way to most of the old WCW cruisers?). So, is he going to stay with Jamie and Nidia, and if so, is there more than one bed in the trailer? If so, who gets sloppy seconds?
So the Guerreros go over on Sunday to win the tag titles, then they have to face singles competition from one of the opposing teams they beat. We can see where this one is going, don’t we, folks?
You know, it’s bad enough that RTC seems to be reuniting on Raw (Jeff Hawkins reminded me that Ivory and Sean Morley have got some good camera time on Raw the past few weeks), but now the missing piece of the puzzle is on Smackdown. Yes, folks, you all wanted him, you’ve all been screaming for him, now Bull Buchanan is back! Feel the excitement!
Yep, they’re going into full gear for a Lesnar/Wight rematch at Armageddon. And this time, Steph is more involved in the process. You know, there’s something about this karma thing. Lesnar and Heyman on one hand, TBS and Steph on the other. The universe can be said to be in balance in some twisted way.
MAILBAG!
Special thanks to Big Daddy for that picture off of wwe.com which shows My Beautiful and Beloved’s best side in full focus during her match with Victoria. Yowza!
The big topic in the Mailbag this week is requests for information concerning my hatred of Scott Steiner. There’s been more than one person who wants me to elucidate my reasons for disliking Big Sump Pump like I did with Flex in Letawsky’s column back in March. Well, I always endeavor to satisfy the audience. So let’s start:
1) Walking billboard for Dianabol: Everyone’s always on Trip about the steroid use, but after the first bout of jokes with Steiner, everyone stopped because it was too easy a target. Trip’s use is less obvious than Steiner’s. Normal humans do not get physiques like that without some chemical assistance. “Well,” you say, “maybe he is a genetic freak.” Not unless he was the result of a Marvel Comics-style mutation experiment.
2) ‘Roid Rage: Somehow, he got a rep as a real-life tough guy, when in fact it was ‘roid rage that induced him to do stuff like get into the backstage brawl with DDP back in the old WCW days. He never took this as far as his running buddy Bagwell, what with beating up security guys and all, but he does exhibit the classic symptoms. Acceptable in a defensive lineman in the NFL, not acceptable in wrestling.
3) Mushmouth on the mic: I experience butchery of the English language every time I open my e-mail, but nothing as bad as a Scott Steiner promo. You ever run a paragraph through a computer translation program, and then run it through again to translate it back to English? That’s what a Scott Steiner promo transcript reads like.
Just for kicks, I took the above paragraph and ran it through the ‘Fish (even though I have Systran already installed on my system; it was just easier to use the ‘Fish’s interface to Systran), going from English to Spanish and back. Here’s what I got:
Experiment the slaughter the English language of whenever I open my email, only nothing as bad as promo of Scott Steiner. You always work a paragraph with a program of the translation by computer, and later she works it to traverse again to translate it to English again? That one is as one what transcription of promo of Scott Steiner reads.
Now English to German to English, which points out a real weakness of Systran: its inability to correctly translate German polynouns into English…
I experience schlaechterei of the English language, every time I mean email open, but nothing, which is so bad like a Scott Steiner Promo. They let one point run and leave at all by a translation program it then through again to run, in order to translate it back to English? How that is, one which Scott Steiner Promoabschrift reads.
“schlaechterei” technically means “slaughterhouse”, and “Promoabschrift” is “promo transcript”. Thank God I still know a lot of the language.
So, anyway, you can experiment yourself to find out if it works in reverse. Transcribe a Scott Steiner promo, run it through a translation program and then back to English, and see if you can get coherent English with some combination. Russian might work.
3a) Idiotic catchphrase stolen from Master P: Virginia Bureau Chief Phil Watts informs me that his catchphrase is stolen from Master P’s “I Got The Hookup”. I’ll believe Phil on this one since my knowledge of the work of Master P is abysmally low. Of all people to steal a catchphrase from…must we drag up memories of Swoll?
3b) Appealing to the marks through sexual innuendo: I’ll give this to Flex: he didn’t start the “Pie” shit until he was well-established. Steiner relied on blatant sexual remarks from day one to appeal to the fourteen-year-olds of all ages in the audience. It did help having someone as hot as Midajah by his side, though. He doesn’t have Midajah anymore, so he has to rely on the innuendo more than before. Those words are some of the few that are clear and unambiguous in his promos. That leads to:
3c) Pushed only because he pops a crowd: And you know how I feel about the lack of taste exhibited by marks.
4) Traded his talent to the needle: Back in the day, Scott Steiner was one of the most exciting wrestlers in the business. Every tag match that the Steiner Brothers were involved in, he’d pull out some amazing spots. He was the early 90s equivalent of Rob Van Dam in that regard. But during his recovery from injuries, he decided that 1) he needed to heal faster and 2) that he couldn’t pull off those spots again (which was debatable). So he did both at the same time by shooting ‘roids up his ass and becoming so musclebound that he couldn’t do those spots even if he tried. He’s become a horrible wrestler due to that. I deride Flex’s lack of talent in this area all the time; Steiner is even worse.
5) Represented everything that was wrong with WCW at the end: It was a sure sign that WCW was going down for the third time when they put Steiner at the top of the card. If you’re that desperate, a mercy killing is the only answer. This is more of a symptom of the terminal illness than a cause, though. But was WCW terminal enough to make Steiner the leader of an NWO faction, then give him the World title umpteen times? Remember, as a Tuesday news columnist, I had to cover Nitro at the end, and having to listen and watch Scott Steiner get a blowjob push was one of the most painful elements of the whole situation. The best thing to happen to WCW at the end was for that bitch to lay down to Booker on the last Nitro.
I think that just about covers it. Not entertaining from a wrestling aspect, not entertaining from an SE aspect. Don’t write in to me saying that I could say the same thing about (fill in the blank), because I have, especially in regards to one Goldberg, William.
Big Daddy can summarize this as well as anyone:
And Big Booty Porta Potty is now well-rested, refocused and ready to be involved in the upper eschelon of wrestling again. Yay. I don’t think I know what’s worse: Steiner going out and doing his traditional unintelligible “mouthful of marbles” promo, or the crowd popping like spoon-fed sheep at him. I’m setting the over/under at seven weeks before he implodes. Any takers?
I’ll take five weeks in the pool, just long enough for WWE to get one PPV out of him. Maybe if he behaves himself, he might get to Royal Rumble, but I’m not sure at this point.
Jim Patton asks this:
Just out of curiosity, do you know if Rico at least got a fine for the crap he pulled in the PPV match? It may just be my opinion, but yelling “God damnit Jeff! Hurry up!” seems to break character, and the whole illusion of the match.
I don’t think he was punished for this. It’s 2002, and kayfabe is pretty much dead. Besides, even if Vince was enforcing kayfabe like he used to, this wasn’t the MSG Incident, which involved top-carders and a up-and-comer like Trip. This is Rico, for God’s sake. How can you depush him more than to have him involved with the Fat Samoans?
Ivy League Legend Elliot Olshanky asks me if I’m pissed that Illinois blew it against Ohio State on Saturday. Nah, not really. After all, I’m a graduate of a school that left the Big Ten in 1938, so I don’t really give a damn what happens in that conference. Besides, except during elections, Chicago is its own separate state, and we care not what occurs downstate. That being said, Illinois alums are some of the most annoying to be found, and there’s tons of them around here. So, no, no rant. Besides, Michigan will get the job done. They always do.
Elliot and a couple other correspondents brought up a good point about SurSer’s sub-main: Lesnar needed to separate from Heyman and drop the title more than prove himself against the Giant Stiff in order to build up a reason for him to pull out the wrestling moves we know he can do. I can accept that, but Wight? Yeah, there’s no one else on the roster who can “dominate” Lesnar, but it’s more an acceptance of fate than a legit reason, if you know where I’m coming from.
The ‘Ravin Cajun, Beau Landaiche, chimes in with a shorty but goody:
Do you think they were playing to the Smarks just a little bit much on RAW’s opening last night?
No, not really. In fact, they soft-soaped, not only in the opening, but during the Steiner promo as well. Bischoff has done material more oriented toward the smarks in his promos before (remember the “What happened, Sid, forget your scissors?” line?). Bringing up “losing your smile” isn’t really considered playing to the smarks, because the incident is well-known among marks too. However, they don’t have the context behind it that we smarks do (namely that Michaels is infamous for finding ways to drop titles without actually participating in matches).
Bryan Lazores has become the first person to officially reform from You’re A Moron status by bringing up the ConAgra Greeley, CO plant’s shutdown by USDA. Yeah, we knew that this one was coming, mostly because of our inside connections to ConAgra. What they were shut down for was repeated violations of sanitation regulations (9 CFR 308.4, in case you care) after their mandated recall of E. coli-contaminated beef. Here’s the kicker: ConAgra is trying to divest themselves of all their slaughter operations, which they mostly obtained by buying Swift (Greeley is an old Swift plant and does slaughter). Now, with this incident, the chances of finding a buyer for all those plants have become nil. So they’re stuck with the slaughter plants for the time being, until the heat dies down. My sympathy for them is, kinda, zero.
Let’s close with a rather controversial assertion from Chris Sperry:
This is a question I have been pondering for a few months now. I mean, it is the only reasonable explanation for Books lack of serious push into a contender role. Outside of Angle he has the best balance of ring work and charisma on the roster, he has the ability to pop the crowd, (mark and smart), and a couple of believable finishers.
The only reason I can see for his lack of a serious push is that he is too afro-centric for the lily whites in charge of the WWE. I know Flex could be considered a counter to this argument but his blackness is more on par with Tigger and Bryant Gumble, and thus more acceptable in the eyes of the WWE to be a representative of their organization to the mainstream.
I don’t think so, really. I believe it’s more to the effect that he wasn’t homegrown talent than anything else. He not only wasn’t homegrown, but he was the symbol of WCW at the end and during the Invasion. He has to rid himself of that stigma before Vince will give him a chance. Remember, it took Jericho more than two years of hard work and overcoming obstacles like the ones put in Booker’s way for Vince to hand him the title. Let’s give it a little more time before pulling out the race card.
Besides, Vince doesn’t really concentrate on ethnicity per se, but on SE value (Flex’s cafe au lait coloration is way down on the list of priorities for Vince; the fact that he pops the crowd, has skill with a mic, and can pass as a wrestler on occasion is far more important). This isn’t Bill Watts cynically putting the title on Ron Simmons to deflect charges that he was a racist (and that didn’t work). He sees talent in Booker and has kept him in the upper-mid-card, mainly due to his SE value and his visibility by being the WCW standard-bearer before he came to WWE. But then you have the human logjam known as Trip up at the top. It’s the old “glass ceiling” thing, but the ceiling’s been raised thanks to the Brand Extension.
Booker will eventually get his turn, like Jericho, as a reward for his hard work. Now is just not the time for it. If I had a guess, he’s going to walk away with the title at King of the Ring.
And speaking of hard work, that’s where I’m headed now. Have a good week, be safe, and if you’re a religious type, shoot a prayer Gamble’s way, okay?
About Eric Szulczewski
