Wrestling News, Opinions, Etc. 04.09.03

Archive

In Memoriam:  Jim Boeheim’s blue balls.  Apparently he’s going to sell them to Roy Williams.

In Memoriam II:  Jerry Krause’s tenure with the Bulls.  He left due to “illness”, which is only appropriate, because we Chicagoans were sick of his f*cking antics years ago.  Buh-bye, and don’t let the door hit your fat ass on the way out.

Hopefully Not An In Memoriam III:  Rodney, let’s hope they don’t screw either operation up.  It’s great to see an octogenerian still doing movies.

The one thing that sucks about being a contractor is when there’s no work to do.  The advantage is that I get a lot of stress-relieving days at home.  Wake up at ten in the morning, make some French Roast, sit down, and take your time on the column.  This does cut down on the One-Hour Specials ™ and actually lets me concentrate on wrestling moreso than the other stuff.  However, let’s do that…

GLAD TO SEE THIS TRADITION CONTINUING

As of 10:41 CST, CNN’s front page reads “Fall of Saddam”.  This is a little deceptive.  I remember when I was in Germany fourteen years ago that statues of Lenin were being toppled while the regimes were still in place (especially in the Soviet Union).  So let’s not count the chickenshits before they’re hatched.

I do love this line from Junta spokesbeings:  “As long as the Iraqis thought there were death squads, they did not feel free to cheer their liberation.”  I wish that the Iraqi government had disbanded those on their own, though.  That’s what the Eastern Europeans did.  The KGB-surrogates in each country essentially said “We’re not going to f*ck around with this one, folks.  Instead, we’ll disband and become normal security services.”  And they ended up treating the dissidents who defected in a polite fashion.  Another thing that may be a problem is that these suckers may have already gone underground, another situation that should be a big, big problem.

Here’s what the main thing is:  all of the Eastern European governments knew that NATO troops were ready to go right on their borders, and the last thing they wanted was an invasion (ditto American involvement in the two world wars).  That isn’t true about Iraq, where it took an invasion to get rid of the strongmen.  Also, let’s be frank:  an invasion by NATO was going to be white guys against white guys.  Arab countries resent people from foreign parts with lighter skin going in and screwing with their governments, no matter how much electric shock was applied to their genitals by said governments.  It doesn’t matter about the bordering countries being the same, despite the fact that they’re US allies (witness Turkey (a NATO member), Jordan and Saudi Arabia, in the last case, sort of).  This is an invasion, pure and simple.

There’s a good reason why no one bitched and moaned when Iraq and Iran went at each other for eight years, using stuff that was banned in the West after World War I becuase it was too damn cruel to use.  It was simply Sunni versus Shi’ite, and no one’s going to screw with a religious war down there (consider the involvement in Northern Ireland, where it’s white Protestants versus white Catholics; we’ll interfere in that with no problem).  The US government doesn’t understand Muslims anyway, and this was a continuation of shit that’s been going around since Mohammed died.  So no interference with the wogs at that time (and, please remember that Reagan was in the White House while this was going on).

(Remember the old English saying:  “South of Calais, there’s nothing but wogs”.  That’s pretty much a true attitude with the English and US governments.  The farther south you go, the less you want to interfere, especially when religion comes into play.)

(Also, continuing the parentheticals, I wonder what would have happened with our Special Relationship Allies if England had given in and become part of the EU’s economic structure.  Would they have helped?  We’ll never know.  For that matter, if countries were at the same technological level as they are today, would the US have interfered in the religious wars that took place in Europe during the final stages of the Reformation?  I think so.)

And, bringing up a topic from above, what about Iran?  They’ve been doing the Great Satan routine since 1979.  They’ve got to be scared as shit that massive amounts of US troops are right next door.  The only ones that can stop an invasion from happening are the Russians.  If Dubbaya talks Putin into thinking that NATO membership is a spiffy-neato idea and they want to recover from Post-Vietnam Syndrome due to the Afghanistan debacle, holy shit (no pun intended).  The US troops already are dealing with the neighbor on the other side.  Flood that area with troops (ostensibly because bin Laden is still seeking refuge there), and the mullahs are going to have a massive case of brown-trousers.  Can they con the US into peace talks and mutual understanding, along with a huge mea culpa?  We should see that happen by the end of the year.

If not, do the US and Britain go in?  They’ve already shown willingness to invade a Sunni country and cut deals with the Wahhab.  Eliminating the core of Shi’ism doesn’t seem to matter to the West.  Iran’s government doesn’t have the tradition of religious freedom, so there’s a gulf of understanding.  All Iran will see is revenge by the US for what happened when the Shah (propped up by the CIA) was overthrown.  There’s already a liberal presence there, though.  If there’s an invasion, the US may find allies in the government, something that wasn’t present in Iraq.  A coup would make it easier on everybody.

(Notice I haven’t talked about oil or terrorist reaction from extremists.  Both are so obvious that I feel they don’t need to be mentioned.  Maybe the terrorists can isolate themselves by blowing up BP and Exxon stations, just like McDonalds is the main target for protesters in European countries.)

All of this is, of course, speculation.  Looking to the future is hazardous to everyone who tries.  But I think it should be talked about.  If you want a wrestling connection, maybe Vince can bring back the Iron Sheik for a managerial role.  There.

THE PIMP SECTION

Rivett quotes Motley Crue (I’m using a plain text editor, so no umlauts).  I think quoting “Dr. Feelgood” would have been more appropriate, since no one can get through WWE programming without heroin these days.

Haley pimped me, which is always cool, and he also makes some great points.  Read him.

Nason reviews Keith’s book, which provides a nice closure of a weird circle.  He also gets the Indy Update in.

Daniels wanted me to pimp his latest article in the music section.  I owe Daniels a lot, so this pimp is worth every penny.  You know, I’m even considering doing an article for the music section.  It’s just a matter of making time available.

Alex Boothroyd comes through again!  The inveterate Amazon watcher gave that wonderful link to Trip’s DVD and additional buying options that cracked everyone up a number of months ago.  Now he does the same for Jerry Lawler and his book.  This one’s even better than the Trip one, and goes nasty in more ways.  My only problem with the list is that Foley’s books are on it.  However, we can’t have it both ways.

Hey!  No adjectives!  Enough said on that one.

SMACKDOWN SOMEWHAT SPOILED

First of all, you rat bastards didn’t comp me to go to the Rosemont Horiz…Allstate Arena.  That curses you.

I may dislike Jeff Hardy, but the opposite is true of his brother.  It’s great to see Matt Hardy v1.1 (bugfixes to get him a major push) get a lot of airtime, extension of his gimmick, and general presence.

Speaking of airtime, Vince gets a helluva lot this week.  We bitch and moan about Raw doing flashbacks to 1998.  What about Smackdown doing the same thing?

(Once upon a time, I accused the Bitch of the Baskervilles of considering the mid-90s as her Platonic Ideal of wrestling.  I think it started to move forward from that point, and it’s now 1998, which meshes with Vince’s ideal, thus forming a creative unification between the two people who can override anyone.  Now THAT’S a problem.)

Oh boy.  The exception proves the rule.  I mention the coconut last week vis-a-vis Piper’s Pit, and they do it.  Why couldn’t the exception be Benoit winning the title?

Next week should prove to be an interesting final to the tournament.  This week’s a must-miss, but I’m definitely tuning in a week from today.

HOW TO AVOID BREACH OF CONTRACT

So the Observer is reporting that Goldberg’s deal with WWE isn’t exclusive, since he has some dates for Pride over in the Land of the Rising Yen to do.  So why and how do they do this?

The “why” is easy.  WWE is publicly traded.  The second thing that publicly traded companies would like to avoid is a lawsuit, which Pride would definitely file (the first thing that publicly traded companies like to avoid is an announcement that earnings are less than the Street predicted).  Lawsuits brought by foreign companies are commonplace these days (look at what’s happening with the semiconductor companies in the US and South Korea viz. computer RAM).  Pride would see a good opportunity to grab some greenmail from Vince before this stuff goes to court.  Vince knows this, hence the non-exclusivity of Goldie’s contract.

The “how” is a lot more interesting.  Goldberg is booked as an indestructible monster.  The standard kayfabe way of giving a wrestler a little time is to injure them.  How do you injure Goldberg and make it convincing to the marks?  They can’t do that, pure and simple.  So how about a little bit of honesty combined with a bit of distraction?  Extend the feud with The Rock, have Ross/Lawler/Schiavone admit that Goldberg’s in Japan, and have The Rock cut promos saying that Goldberg’s a coward because he’s putting an ocean between himself and Goldie.  Then when Goldie gets back, let him beat the crap out of Mister Johnson for daring to call him a coward.  It’s a win-win situation.  Goldie gets a major face push, The Rock gets to concentrate on promos (which he’s much better at than ring action), and there’s a mixture of kayfabe and breaking kayfabe that WWE is expert at.  Of course, this having been said, it’ll never happen.  You know me.  Except when it deals with tropical flora.

MAILBAG!

Let’s go through what I got, shall we?

I’d like to print this long one by Charles Wooding because of the e-mail SNAFU last week (the weird part is that my account was in cancellation, but my e-mail was in suspension status):

I tried to send the thoughts below regarding Booker T’s Wrestlemania match to you before ‘Mania, but you’re already aware of the issues your ISP was having. You said something in your most recent column about the racist overtones of the HHH/Booker T. feud being downplayed due to a rare happenstance of common sense by creative; I submit that common sense had nothing to do with the decision. My own thoughts on the matter appear below.

I’m actually not watching the WWE right now, partly because of my unwillingness to watch the same old stars recycled for runs at the top (at least Jericho got in a couple of long-overdue shots at Bill–I still read the news), and partly because watching Rena and Piper coming back in is too much of a reminder of the fact that McMahon really will put anyone on
television if he thinks they’ll make him some money, especially if he can act out his personal revenge fantasies in public. If a woman tried to slap me with a multimillion-dollar lawsuit after I made her famous, and then came crawling back for a job after her complete lack of talent failed to get her any meaningful work in showbiz, I personally would be content with kicking the bitch out of my office, and giggling myself to sleep thinking about her having to live off ramen noodles with Marc for the next decade. Hey, maybe that’s why I’m not a billionaire…as for Piper, I can’t even go there after his Owen comments–I’m just going to leave that alone.  Some days I regret my “smarkdom”, even though I know I wouldn’t have been satisfied to just be a mark forever–I’m just too nosy…but now I know too much. I’ll just have to start getting Ring of Honor tapes; at least those guys seem to be interested in entertaining the audience, as opposed to jerking themselves off on cable TV and hoping they can draw a buyrate. If you’d care for an analogy explaining what I’m feeling, Fuck Lucas–I’ll just throw my money at Peter Jackson, thank you.

Hey, while I’m thinking about it, maybe Scooter or one of those other crazy kids could hook you up with some ROH tapes…I know you don’t do tape reviews, but I respect your opinion, and I’d love to know what you think about the shows they’re putting on. (No, I’m not a shill for ROH–Justin’s reviews have me interested, though. Pimp the dude if he puts more stuff
out…his enthusiasm for wrestling really comes out in his reviews, even when he’s being critical. He never sounds like he thinks he’s “above” the material he’s critiquing, even when it’s crap.)

Remember when Steiner debuted with the Fed, and got a huge audience reaction, right up until he actually wrestled and stunk up the arena so badly that he damn near turned Hunter face? Well, Steiner may be physically incapable of matching up to his earlier moveset due to immobility, but this is a guy who’s been in untold matches, was once regarded as one of the best tag-team wrestlers in the world, and has a background of amateur wrestling in college…and yet he was unable to improvise anything that could maintain his in-ring credibility.

There’s somebody else debuting huge right now, who’s being built up as a physical beast, but who hasn’t wrestled a match in, what, two or three years now? Moreover he has never had the  largest moveset in the world; there’s a reason whyn he’s only remembered for two moves. I don’t want to come off as one of those smarkity-smark negative people, and it would be great if the Rock could carry him to a great match (I think Rocky’s got a better chance of doing that that, say, Trip), but isn’t there a distinct possibility that Goldberg will lose what little value he has as soon as he actually has to wrestle??


The reason I printed this in full was that Charles made some great points.  I’d like to put my opinion on some of them on the record:

I have no damn clue why they brought back Sable except to extend their acid flashbacks.  She behaved like a prima donna while she was there the first time.  If she’s been humbled by the failure of her lawsuit and career, it still doesn’t matter.  Remember when I talked about Goldberg’s fight or flight reaction last week?  There’s no reason that Rena Mero’s going to be any different.  The only reason why her behavior might be dampened is that she now has major competition in the diva area.  She’s old news, and simply old, period.  When you have the general mangler of Smackdown getting a tit job in order to keep up with the great-looking women (including a few who can actually try to wrestler), you know you’re outdone.  Pairing her up with Wilson (who may be a skank, but she’s younger and much better looking) just exacerbates the situation.

ROH tapes…good idea, but I’d like to see what the Jarretts’ fed is doing first.  WWE’s forte is Sports Entertainment, and if there’s going to be competition in that area, it’s going to be them.  ROH is great for satisfying the wrestling smark in me, but they’re going to occupy a niche, kinda like puro does in the US.  I’d prefer seeing a fed that is attempting to compete with WWE on their own ground to see if they can at least bitch-slap them a bit to improve the quality of SE.

Big Sump Pump had no in-ring cred during the final days of WCW, so what happened with Trip was no surprise.  Trip is unable to carry wrestlers to great matches these days, unlike the pre-injury Trip, so this one was destined to fail.  No one knew that it would fail this badly, though.  That’s why Steiner’s wrestling mid-card these days.  No one believes in him anymore.

Good point about Goldie being in the same boat, though.  The Rock can carry him to a better match than Trip (as long as he avoids the obvious no-selling and overselling; if WWE tells him to no-sell, Goldie’s in big, big trouble).  The problem with WWE right now is that there’s no one who can sell a broomstick this big, with a few exceptions like Jericho, Benoit, a healthy Angle, and Undertweener (now that one might sell some mark cred; two big guys kicking the shit out of each other, with the one person who can dent Goldie’s image in there and is experienced enough to sell the SE aspect of it; that last condition is what eliminates Brock Lesnar and Nathan Jones).  Maybe an inter-show match with Undertweener might be a good main for SummerSlam.

Louis Jones brings up what he thinks is a decent point:

Your comment about Jericho calling HHH “Trip”. Hasn’t Flair been doing that for months???

Yeah, but I’ve been doing it for years.

John Keane brings up the main point about the Ross thing:

Think you may have nailed it on the Schiavone reference.

NOW I’m starting to worry.


The only person who’s not worrying about this is Hyatte, who’s been getting a lot of mileage with Schiavone for years.  As long as he doesn’t have someone whispering in his ear, he’s pretty good…actually, that might be a good idea if it’s made public.  It’ll expand Bisch’s evil manipulator personality.

Mumbles895 states something that a lot of people may have been worried about:

“Here’s a scarier one:  Missy and Albert.  “Oh, honey, I just LOVE guys with lots of back hair.”…”

I’ve never complained about anything in your columns before, but that was completely uncalled for. At least you didn’t mention Nicole Bass…


Sorry if you were eating at the time, but Missy’s backstage rep makes that extremely possible.  As for Nicole Bass, no way am I ever going to bring her up.  That alone is scary.

Paul Garnher provides me with some inside info about My Beautiful and Beloved:

I’m just writing to tell you about your beloved.  I live in her home town.  She has come into the restaurant that I manage.  I will leave the name out for obvious reasons.  She has come in several times; once with David Flair and several times with her family.  First, Flair is a prick.  Second she is the sweetest thing on earth.  Every time I worked when she
was there, I asked the server to f*ck up her order so I could go and apologize to her.  She is absolutely as nice as she seems, and even hotter in sweat shorts and a tank than she is on TV.


You know, it’s nice to know things like that, but she didn’t show up at my apartment after Monday’s show, and I’m a little depressed about that (well, as much as the medication allows me to be).  I blame Test.

Sexton Hardcastle (which is a terrific reference) chimes in with this:

Very long time reader. First time writing in. Needless to say your prose is phenomenal!, and I have to say that you not only are a great internet columnist, but a great writer as well.

Thank you for that; I always love compliments.

Well, enough verbal felating, on to my question. Did you reference the Necronomicon on the Rena Mero intro? Just wondering didn’t know many people read Lovecraft these days.  Despite Faarooq and Bradshaw sporting the Sigil’s on their tights.

Oh, very much so.  It was the first thought that popped in my head, for some reason.

Anyway keep your head up with the moving drama. I know what a nightmare that can be. I was a transplant from Orlando to Bum f*cked Michigan. You have no idea how sick I got of being asked; “Why the f*ck did you move here?” Anyway look forward to your next column. Oh, and I always wanted to know something. Is there any link to the article that got you kicked off the smarks? I never got to read it, but was always curious to see what all the hubbub was all about. Not like it matters, and I hope i didn’t hit a sore spot. Oh, and you’re better than Hyatte.

To bring up the three points in that graph:

1) The nightmare’s over, so I’m happy.

2) There’s no link to the column that got me kicked off of the Smarks, but I still have it on file in my personal archives, so if you want the quote, please tell me.

3) I don’t think I’m “better” than Hyatte, because we work from different perspectives.  I think that he’s the best at what he does in his milleu, and you have to ask him if I’m the best at what he does in mine.

Now, as per my request yesterday about “She’s a crack whore”, my readers came through again.  Let’s start with Sexton Hardcastle continuing for Spanish:

That would be “Esta un crack whore” dont think I know a slang for “crack whore” in Spanish.

That’s close enough for a chant.

The Fallen Angel tries a little French:

From a French guy, “She’s a crack whore” is translated into “C’est une pute à crack” in French.

We still have to get the “clap clap, clap clap clap” in there, though.  It’s expected.

There’s someone who does understand the importance of that, and that’s 411’s resident obscurantist Sylvain Parent concentrates on:

Seeing as I’m a native French speaker and currently reside in Montréal, I
thought I’d help you in your quest to find a French alternative to “She’s a
Crack Whore!”.

Crack is crack and whore translates to salope or to pute if you wish to put an
emphasis on the actual “oldest profession in the world” instead of the more
generic  easy/perverted aspect (salope could be used as a translation for slut
as well).

Thus, we’d have “C’est une salope à crack!” which makes a horrid chant. Taking out “à crack” gives it more or less the same flow as “She’s a crack whore!”.

There are no really popular idioms or slang terms equivalent to crack whore in Québec French; salope usually does the trick, though I’ve heard pétasse used in the same context before. Bear in mind that pétasse is more or less the same as bimbo, thus this usage of the term is slightly inappropriate.

This said, my suggestion has the advantage of being “international” – it can be easily said by any and all French speaking individual, be he or she a Marseillais(e), a Montréalais(e) or what you have.


Very, very exceptional.  I think we’re prepared if the one Keith refuses to mention comes back.  Also, it’ll confuse all of the commentators until someone backstage tells them what’s going on, and that’s always a plus considering Cole, since he always seems confused anyway.

And that brings us to the regulars.  Big Daddy is the best place to start:

Being from Chicago, you should remember Rule #1: what organized crime?
Mafia? There’s no mafia.


I’ve been given an exemption.

And forget wrestling. I think I’ve officially had enough with the “product” that’s been thrown out there of late. A women’s match opening the fiasco (complete with Trish telling Jazz to watch her mouth on the STF, to the botched Stratisfaction, to the camera angle of Jazz’s foot on the rope that I definitely do NOT need to see again) to a dick-argument precipitating a match between Rock and Jeff Hardy (who, if he applies any more paint to himself, ought to start wrestling as The Dutch Boy). After that, I stopped watching. The only good that came out of those 22 minutes was that the Rock-to-Trip ratio at that point was 2:0.

Man, if you’re giving up, there’s a major problem with WWE.  As if we didn’t know that already.

Thank sweet Jesus that the hockey playoffs are starting. That’ll what I’m doing – no WWE TV until after Lord Stan gets awarded two months hence. I’ll read you and Gamble to keep up on things, but no spoilers or anything else until June. We’ll see if shit improves by then.

Doubtful, but you never know.

Jack Bartram goes into a large discussion about sexual discrimination vis-a-vis the Masters, and I do love his counters (which include not only sexual identity, but race and religion).  I’d like to add one more that seems important at this point:  the prohibition of women in combat roles.  A lot of the women I knew in the Army were a lot tougher than some of the men.  It shouldn’t matter if you have a pussy or are a pussy.  If you’re capable, you should be able to get involved.

I’ll try to pare down The Priz’s(!) stuff to the wrestling material:

Has anyone started a pool on when Nash will hurt himself again and be out for 9 months again? I’ll take two weeks if no one has that.

I’ve got two months if he gets into in-ring action.  He’ll probably stay on the sidelines and be Michaels’ bitch again for a while.

Jesus, y’all had to remind me that the Clique is now 3/5 back, and all on the Raw side of things. That show’s destined for the crapper now. Okay, it wasn’t exactly winning Emmys the way it was going, but now it’s set back a few thousand years. Just think, now they have Vince’s ear AND Steph’s pink clam. I guess we can only hope that all the ‘roids are causing Trip to shoot blanks. I don’t wanna even think of that progeny ever being near the WWE.

Sorry about that, but it has to be brought up.  Prospective control by the Clique is just another event of history repeating itself, and this one only known to the smarks in the audience.  The worst part is that they’re all at the top card again.  When does the battle for control start?

NOW Booker goes over? On a f*cking roll-up?? PLEASE let Goldberg miss Rocky next time and kick Trip in the head… Okay, have him do it twice and hit both of them.

Cruel, but a good idea.  I’d prefer shocks to the genitals using Iraqi surplus equipment, but you can’t kayfabe that.

Okay, the locker-room is mad at UT for going over strong on… Albert and Big Show? And they’re SD’s top heels?????? Hold a tick…. Angle’s out… Eddie’s a quasi-face… so’s Chavo… the FBI sucks, and they’re new anyway… Wait a minute, what about Cena? Oh wait, that’s this week’s episode.

No comment, because that verges on spoiling Smackdown, and I get bitched at enough for that.

Man the lockerroom is really off their rocker if they’re complaining about UT going over those two useless f*cks, and Rock saying he’s beaten everyone in the WWE. Outside of Goldberg and Steiner, he probably has. Then again, the way they’re booking Nowitski…

I’m all in favor of an upper-mid-card push for Harvard.  He’s one of the most entertaining promo guys on the Raw side, and he can already wrestle better than half the guys there.  He deserves it.

I just got a brilliant idea… That can’t be used until Orton and Batista get back, but here’s a thought: When they come back, have Trip all egotistical about having his running buddies back to make sure he never loses again, and have them turn on him vicious, claiming that he caused their injuries because he was worried that they would take his spot, but now they’re taking it by force. Boom, instant feud for the young returning stars, instant face heat for beating the snot out of Trip, and you got two new stars in the making.

Not that it would happen or anything.


Especially now that I’ve printed it.  Great idea, though.  Team them up as tag guys, let Orton cut the promos and Batista kick ass, and you’ve got some cred to the Raw tag side.

Wait, what’s with all the wrestling talk?

Probably boredom.  I don’t know my own mind anymore.

Okay, so now Bret wants back in the WWE. WTF? Obviously, Goldberg did some more permanent brain damage than we originally thought. Bret was a great wrestler, but his style is nowhere near suited for today, even if he was just a few months removed. But a few years, post-concussion syndrome and a stroke later? Do we have to sit through another parody like performance by a former great trying to grasp the spotlight one last time?

No, we don’t, and that’s why I’m against it.  Bret shouldn’t piss away his legacy like that.  I prefer to remember him when he was one of the best in the world, not trying for one last grab at the brass ring.  That’s why I was sorta in favor of Hogan coming back; he didn’t have any talent to begin with.

I’ll do the same thing with the Pride of Dartmouth, Elliot Olshansky:

Will Goldberg help?  Yes and no.  No, he won’t bring the ratings back to those magical levels of 99-2001.  Nothing will at the moment, because wrestling stopped being the “in” thing sometime in 2002, and no one who was a major figure of the last “Golden Age” is going to be the one to usher in the next “Golden Age” unless it’s a completely different character (a la Hogan and McMahon, whose new roles were significantly different from the ones they played in the 80s).  The real “Next Big Thing” is going to be someone who either just debuted (making Brock a potential candidate) or someone who we haven’t seen yet.

That said, in terms of entertaining the core audience, the real wrestling fans, Goldberg does have a lot to offer.  Match him up with Rock or Hunter, it’s a mid-level “dream match.”  Put him with Austin, and it’s a top-level “dream match.”  Feud him with Jericho, and you have a chance to succeed where WCW flat-out refused to try.  Let him wrestle Brock, and you have something interesting, just based on the similar characters.  Put him with Benoit or Angle, and you can call him “broomstick.”  Put him with Undertaker, and…oops, never mind.

As long as they don’t get lazy and throw Goldberg up against Nash, Undertaker, Hogan, and Big Show, they’ll get some pretty good matches built up with very solid feuds.


Agreed totally, except for the UT thing.  They can get one halfway decent mark-oriented match out of it.  I think that UT can carry Goldie enough in a big man’s match (which the IWC will bitch about, but the marks won’t) to make it satisfactory to them, especially with a good buildup.  Then again, they tried with Trip and Steiner and failed.  However, the booking and buildup on that one was horrid.  I don’t think they could screw this up that much.

I hope Ashish gets a well-deserved verbal SMACK for writing about the RAW Rating “continuing to fall” when he acknowledged on Monday that the rating could fall because of Kansas beating itself out of the NCAA title on CBS.  “Despite the Goldberg factor” my ass!  The Goldberg Factor was no match for the Carmelo Factor.  And as far as cable is concerned the only *Factor* you need to worry about it the O’Reilly Factor, which is the number one show on cable, having recently beaten out Spongebob Squarepants.

I’m going to give Ashish a break this week, especially after the anal sex stuff.  We all knew that the finals was going to be used as an excuse; they’ll take it anywhere they can get it these days.  As for the highest-rated shows on cable, you don’t know how much that scares the hell out of me.

Aussie Bureau Chief Brett Wortham sent me two long ones to make up for lack of mail, and a great commentary about WM.  Thank you, Brett, and sorry I couldn’t print them, but this sucker’s already over thirty thousand bytes.

And let’s close with BFM, who had to do a quick one due to job pressures:

Raul D. Dice?  Is he trying to insinuate that he’s Reno?  Looking forward to next week, as I’m sure you are too.

No, I think that Matt said it was a quasi-wrestling source that was giving this stuff away.  However, given Reno’s lack of talent, you may be dead-on.  And I am waiting for his/her/its reaction to Trip next week.

And how many people have asked you to explain the Oedipus joke?  Personally, I think the Trish/Jeff relationship is bordering on Kiddie P*rn.  Or, as my buddy Dale said, “Nice to see Jeff finally find the right beard…er, girl…”

Dale, as usual, comes out with a good one.  I’d say that Trish/Jeff is more lesbian porn than kiddie.  And one other person did get the Oedipus joke, and that was the Ravin’ Cajun:

Given that Oedipus poked out his eyeballs after finding the woman he was intimate with and who also happened to give birth to him hanging from the rafters by her own sash after killing his father (the only family I can think of more screwed up than the McMahons by the way), I think watching Jeff Hardy wrestle is slightly less painful and wouldn’t require the visual skewering. Not much, but slightly. Besides, it beats watching Scott Steiner suplex his way to victories over jobbers.

Oh, so true, Beau.  But I do prefer gouging my eyes out.  The only thing that stopped me was realizing how much I spent on LASIK.

I’d better close this out right now, since it’s already bigger than I anticipated.  I’ll see you next week, when we’ll end up having more Fun With WWE.  Also, if you’re in the US, be sure to file your taxes if you haven’t already done so.  So, enjoy everything that 411 gives you.