In Memoriam: Laden and Laleh Bijani. You know, I was going to make a remark about how, despite the failure of their operation, the doctors were going to move on to something even more difficult: separating the book from Trip. However, that would trivialize both their situation and the fact that they were willing to sacrifice everything to achieve their dream. Plus, they were kinda hot, in a Tod Browning sort of way.
And it’s Wednesday Boring Wednesday here at 411. You know the routine, so why should I bore you even more with preliminaries?
THE PIMP SECTION
Murphy goes negative. Welcome to the Dark Side, my son. Now get the hell out of Iowa. Trust me on this one, okay?
BRET HART, REALITY IS PAGING YOU…
A lot of people are under the impression that I don’t like Bret Hart. No, it’s just that I don’t like Bret Hart as much as his vocal partisans would like me to. He’s always been a big believer in his own hype, and I can’t really get on his side because of that. Just wanted to clear that up.
Now, let me reprint something that Ashish put in the Insta-News section from brethart.com. It’s Bret’s spin on the horrid Highlight Reel segment from Raw:
Regarding Shawn Michaels’ comments on the July 7th Raw from Montreal where he stated that he apologized to Bret Hart, brethart.com (Bret’s official web site) would like to clarify that Bret Hart has never received any apology whatsoever from Shawn Michaels. For a man who claims to have found God to outright lie to millions of people is disappointing to say the least. Then again, it really isn’t surprising when you consider that this is the same Shawn Michaels who swore to God, on video tape, right after the Survivor Series ’97 screw job, that he wasn’t in on it … only to admit, years later that he was in on it all along. If anyone is aware of any apology that Shawn ever made to Bret that was not part of an angle please send us a copy.
Now, here’s the emendations:
1) As has been pointed out, Michaels did apologize for his actions on Off The Record. However, as Milord further points out, this was not an apology personally directed to Bret. Apparently Bret wants something on official stationery, notarized, maybe with a bouquet of roses and box of chocolates to be delivered with it.
2) Regarding Michaels’ lying back in 1997…oh, come on, Bret and your flacks, get realistic. After that night, Bret no longer had to work for Vince McMahon. That was not the case with Michaels. This is obviously a “play the party line or else” thing. Michaels lied for five years for the purpose of a paycheck (and during those five years, got two more good reasons to lie, a wife and kid). Could Michaels have done an apology on a personal-phone-call basis? Not without keeping it secret. You know that Bret would have blabbed it to someone, and it would have got back to Vince damn quick. So Michaels put integrity over the ability to make a buck. Business as usual in the business.
3) Bret should know that, in this business, you check your morals at the door. Bringing up the fact that Michaels found God is disingenuous. The guy has an official WWE-logoed T-shirt with a stylized crucifix, after all. There’s enough moral ambiguity right there to satisfy a college of theologians.
Nothing much to work with there, but his statement, as Ashish said, is just a continuation of this sordid mess, nothing more.
SMACKDOWN SOMEWHAT SPOILED
Vince versus Gowen at Vengeance? Steph versus Sable? If you’re still forking out for this one, you’re pathetic.
The rest of the show is just too “bleh” to comment on. It’s Just Another Episode of Smackdown, with only one truly surreal moment involving Billy Gunn pretending to be straight. Might be worth checking out for a couple of interesting matches (Eddie/Dragon!) and the announcement of the brackets for the US Title tournament (finally).
Now on to the non-wrestling stuff…
OBLIGATORY DUBBAYA STUPIDITY
Freedom is slavery – George Orwell
Slavery is freedom – George W. Bush
My f*cking God. What kind of brain comes up with this skein of logic? Dubbaya’s speech in Senegal was a complete embarassment to the United States. Let’s go through some of the lowlights:
The stolen sons and daughters of Africa helped to awaken the conscience of America.
Really? Seems to me that the people who awoke the conscience of America on the issue of slavery were, well, white. People like John Brown and Harriet Beecher Stowe and the numerous abolitionist clergymen who took risks not only in presenting their unpopular views in public, but in also taking covert action by supporting the Underground Railroad (no insult to Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman or Sojourner Truth, but they didn’t have the same moral impact on the country as a whole because, frankly, they were black).
Look, until given a moral impetus, the argument against slavery was twofold: 1) It isn’t economically viable for our area of the country and 2) It’s a little embarassing when seen from a foreign policy standpoint. You could say the same thing about Microsoft’s World Domination Program, except that no one’s calling for the abolition of Microsoft except for dirty commie braindead hippies like Richard Stallman.
(By the way, this non-victim popularization phenomenon isn’t restricted to the US. Take Russia’s serfs, for example. It took a nobleman like Ivan Turgenev (in Notes of a Hunstman) to make Russians aware of the fact that serfs were human beings.)
The very people traded into slavery helped to set America free.
In what way? We already discounted the moral impetus part. They sure didn’t have any economic power (and many people say still don’t). Maybe he’s talking about Chuck Berry, Little Richard, and our hips. But without Elvis…
My nation’s journey toward justice has not been easy and it is not over.
In no small part due to the efforts of the Republican Party in not supporting counterdiscrimination measures, providing regressive solutions to the problems facing African-American communities, and in general treating African-Americans as invisible because, gosharoonie, they don’t vote GOP.
Small men took on the powers and airs of tyrants and masters. Years of unpunished brutality and bullying and rape produced a dullness and hardness of conscience. Christian men and women became blind to the clearest commands of their faith and added hypocrisy to injustice. A republic founded on equality for all became a prison for millions.
Now try applying those words to neoconservative commentators and functionaries since The Old Senile Bastard was elected and see how well they fit. Judging from the complaints about Mister Savage’s firing over the weekend for telling a caller on his show to go out and get AIDS, it’s apparent the Christian message is still blinded when convenient for the neocons. And given Ann “Congenital Liar” Coulter’s feelings about certain messages protected by free speech being treason, a prison for millions would seem to be ideal. Maybe Halliburton could run it.
All of the generations oppressed under the laws of man could not crush the hope of freedom and defeat the purposes of God.
So he presumes to know the purpose of God. What do you do, call Him up on a 900 number or something?
In America, enslaved Africans learned the story of the exodus from Egypt and set their own hearts on a promised land of freedom. Enslaved Africans discovered a suffering savior and found he was more like themselves than their masters.
Yet not a word is spoken about the fact that slaves were forced to convert to Christianity under threat of punishment. Those slaves didn’t “discover” anything. They had their noses shoved into it like a dog being paper-trained.
With the power and resources given to us, the United States seeks to bring peace where there is conflict, hope where there’s suffering, and liberty where there’s tyranny.
And if we have to shoot up an entire country to do it, then so be it.
In the process, Africa has produced heroes of liberation, leaders like Mandela, Senghor, Nkrumah, Kenyatta, Selassie and Sadat.
Okay, let’s go one by one and see what kind of message his pan-African sucking-up says:
0) I am NOT touching Nelson Mandela. The guy may have done a lot of things wrong in his time, but he’s untouchable, period. One of my true heroes.
1) The speech was in Senegal, so Leopold Senghor has to be brought up. President and poet, of recent memory. Let’s give a pertinent example of his poetry, “Elegy for Martin Luther King Number Four” (a terrific translation that I found on a University of Florida website):
It was the fourth of April, nineteen hundred and sixty-eight,
A spring evening in a grey neighborhood, a district smelling
Of garbage mud where children played in the streets in spring,
And spring blossomed in the dark courtyards where blue murmuring
Streams played, a song of nightingales in the ghetto night of hearts.
Martin Luther King chose them, the motel, the district,
The garbage and the street sweepers, with the eyes of his heart in those
Spring days, those days of passion wherever the mud of flesh
Would have been glorified in the light of Christ.
It was the evening when light is clearest and air sweetest,
Dusk at the heart’s hour, and its flowering of secrets
Mouth to mouth, of organ and of hymns and incense.
On the balcony now haloed in crimson where the air
Is more limpid, Martin Luther stands speaking pastor to pastor:
“My Brother, do not forget to praise Christ in his resurrection
And let his name be praised!”
And now opposite him, in a house of prostitution, profanation,
And perdition, yes, in the Lorraine Motel – Ah, Lorraine, ah
Joan, the white and blue woman, let our mouths purify you
Like rising incense!–In that evil house of tomcats and pimps
A man stands up, a Remington rifle in his hands.
James Earl Ray sees the Reverend Martin Luther King,
Through his telescopic sight, sees the death of Christ: “My brother,
Do not forget to magnify Christ in his resurrection this evening!”
Sent by Judas, he watches him, for we have made the poor into wolves
Of the poor. He looks through his telescopic sight, sees only the tender
Neck so black and beautiful. He hates that golden voice modulating
The angels’ flutes, the voice of bronze trombone that thunders on terrible
Sodom and on Adama. Martin looks ahead at the house in front, he sees
The skyscrapers of light and glass, He sees curly, blond heads, dark,
Kinky heads full of dreams like mysterious orchids, and the blue lips
And the roses sing in a chorus like a harmonious organ.
The white man looks hard and precise as steel. James Earl aims
And hits the mark, shoots Martin, who withers like a fragrant flower
And falls. “My brother, praise His Name clearly, may our bones
Exult in the Resurrection!”
And you thought that Bono was pretentious on “Pride”.
2) Kwame Nkrumah…People think that Marxism is a Utopian pipe dream. Check out Nkrumah’s works on Pan-Africanism sometime. They make Marxism look downright realistic.
3) Jomo Kenyatta…Tried to spin that the Mau Mau didn’t exist (imagine Arafat saying that the PLO didn’t exist, that’s what this is like) and, gosh, even if they did, they didn’t commit acts of atrocity against whites. Turned Kenya into a one-party dictatorship. Another Pan-Africanist freak, but not as bad as Nkrumah. Stood up to Idi Amin, though.
4) Haile Selassie…Tossed Mussolini out, then proved to be a more incompetent version of il Duce. Was so stupid he couldn’t overcome a Marxist coup. Despite trying as hard as they could, the Marxists couldn’t f*ck up Ethiopia worse that it already was. But without him, we wouldn’t have Rasta.
5) Anwar Sadat…Yeah, people remember him going to Jerusalem, Camp David, and being assassinated. People don’t remember that his assassination was due to internal problems in Egypt rather than his making nice-nice with Israel, or that he decided to make peace with Israel to get in bed with the US because the Soviets weren’t giving him enough to be anti-US anymore, or that he started the friggin’ Yom Kippur War.
Some heroes of liberation, huh?
We know that these challenges can be overcome because history moves in the direction of justice.
And if there’s any justice, Dubbaya, you’ll be out on your ass next November and just be an unhappy grease stain on the Road of American Progress.
OBLIGATORY DUBBAYA PUPPET STUPIDITY
Nice interview with Michael Powell, head of the FCC, in the Washington Times yesterday. Son Of General was kind enough to open his fat yap and talk about the abominable relaxation of restrictions ruling. Let’s listen in, shall we?
You can’t have the NRA in the debate saying there are gun-hating media liberals, and at the same time, I’ve got Code Pink screaming about the conservative prowar bias of the media. And then I’m supposed to somehow reconcile that?
Uh, no, you’re not. That’s the job of the news media, to present a fair and balanced portrait of issues. Too bad that some of the biggest outlets are anything but fair and balanced. And speaking of the worst offender…
viz. Rupert Murdoch:
It’s easy to vilify a corporate mogul. But when you understand you make money producing what interests the public, the argument becomes quite a bit more queasy, doesn’t it? Are you really indicting the mogul, or what your countrymen like to watch? The media companies, if they have one sin, is that they’re too responsive.
Yeah, Fox News is very responsive. They immediately become the attack kittens on any issue in which liberals just might be correct and get their ratings by pandering to fear. They’ve certainly learned the old lesson about the Big Lie: repeat it long enough and loud enough and it becomes the truth. Death To O’Reilly.
Eighty percent of this debate often is about either not enough content that some community would prefer to see or too much of something that a community does not want to see. And it wants the government’s aid in having that come out more like they want. And this starts to make me queasy.
So therefore you ensured that the figure will increase from eighty percent to ninety percent by relaxing the ownership rules. Wouldn’t the solution be, oh, more diversity in opinion rather than creating the conditions for less diversity and more overt propaganda? Or was that too obvious for you, Mike?
I’m almost to the view that one day there’s going to be serious questions about whether one institution can have such a wide and deep portfolio without some rethinking of how these functions are handled and to what extent and by whom. I don’t think that day’s here, but I do think it will happen, and it will happen faster than people think.
So you decided to accelerate the process? What a yutz.
A lot of TV is bland. I don’t know what you want a government official to do to spice it up for you.
Here’s a good idea: ban all Standards and Practices departments. Anything goes within the bounds of taste and plotline. That includes full-frontal nudity and swearing on broadcast networks. European countries have no problem with this. Why should the US? Oh, that’s right, we have to “protect the children”. Bullshit. Kids these days know ten times as much about stuff as I did when I was their age, and that’s after fourteen years of Reagan/Bush/Bush with eight years of sanity between.
And speaking of sanity and lack thereof…
YOU’RE A MORON I: THERE ARE NO LOSERS IN THE IWC 100
Ken From Philadelphia decided to send me a mail entitled “You Lost To Scaia” in order to try to get my goat. There are better ways to do that, you know. However, his imbecilic comments were perfect for YAM:
Man, that IWC 100 list rated you below Rick Scaia!
Yeah, and so did the January 1st edition. Consider this: Rick Scaia was ranked at #12 in both. I moved up from #15 to #13, and this was taking my month-and-a-half leave of absence into account (which Fleabag said counted against me). So, therefore, all things being considered, the Gooney Bird gets buried on New Years’ Day.
That’s classic. The big condescending, too-good-to-write-about-wrestling smark loses to the man he makes fun of for writing bland news reports.
Yeah, he does write bland news reports, and, no, I’m not condescending.
You can probably justify losing to some of the big writers you hate, like Meltzer and Scherer, because they have actual news sources that guarantee a top position.
“Lose”? What is the IWC 100, a contest? Did I put a bet on myself to “win”?
But Scaia doesn’t have that. All he does is gather information and put together a news report.
And put everyone to sleep in the process.
Initially you would have been a lot higher than him. You were putting up brutal, controversial stuff regularly, tearing up the WWF, Bush, and everyone else. But now? You phone it in.
And I am still doing that (see above viz. Dubbaya’s Senegal speech). As for phoning it in, I at least admit it to the audience when I am doing it. I don’t feel the need to create an atmosphere of false enthusiasm for a product that isn’t yanking my crank right now, like some wrestling news columnists out there. Really, if you’re enjoying WWE product right now, you’ve got a severe problem with taste.
You fill columns with your mail,
Because those mails are intelligent, provocative, and bring out good points that I can work off of. Some of them inspire great thoughts and responses. You notice that I respond to those mails in detail in the column, or if they’re good enough to sit without comment, let them do so, don’t you?
you do editorials without actually mentioning the news it’s based on,
Not true. There’s no context behind my editorializing if I don’t mention the subject. That’s Basic Writing Skills 101.
and all that hate you showed is now just the standard bitching about main eventers that everyone else on the IWC has.
You make it seem like this is a sudden transition. You do know that I’ve been bitching about Flex since late 1999. You do know that I was one of the first people in the IWC to get on Steph’s case, going all the way back to November 2000. Austin and Trip are more recent. So maybe, just maybe, I’m more in the “progenitor” category of bitching about main-eventers than I am a follower.
You rip off Hyatte’s schtick, say what you thought of Raw, and call it a day.
I am sick and tired of people saying I rip off Hyatte. Hyatte and I have completely different styles, which would be obvious if you actually read our columns. This is something that Hyatte’s acknowledged as well. Let me tell you this: if I ripped off Hyatte, there’s no way in hell that he would have recommended that Widro snag me up (and this was before the Babs Olsen incident, when The Smarks was about one day from going offline permanently), or that he would have sold me on coming to 411.
Also, as to why Raw gets pretty high profile in Tuesday’s column, it’s because it’s the biggest news on Monday in the wrestling world. I like to work off of fresh material, not go over the same old shit that’s been out since the previous Thursday that’s been covered to death by Hyatte, Grut, Bower, Daniels, Ashish, and whoever else. I owe it to my readers not to bore them with endless rehashes of the same things they’ve been hearing, which is why the Short Form is designed to be the way it is (opinion only, no blow-by-blow). The only time I go back to touch on old news is when I have a unique slant on a situation that I haven’t seen mentioned, or if I want to get my own opinion out there (viz. my recent screed about Trip).
You’re like Triple H, a once great heel now watered down and still hanging on to his spot by being the only main eventer that can work every week.
Except that my nose is much smaller. And I have better taste than to f*ck the Bitch of the Baskervilles.
At least Scaia writes three actual new reports a week, summarizes the news pretty well, and supports a site by himself, also helping out a couple good columnists on online onslaught as well.
And he did the same shit at Wrestleline, where it was All Scaia, All The Time (no insult to Keith intended). And name me one good columnist at OO. Those guys wouldn’t have made it to the first cut in Bower’s contest.
He’s not phoning it in regularly.
Oh, yes, he is. He’s just not telling you because it doesn’t fit into his style. He is not open with his opinions anymore, nor is honest with his own feelings about the product. He’s running on momentum as much as any of us are.
Hopefully you’ll take this as a wake-up call and write like you used to, instead of like everyone else.
Name one columnist who writes like me, and if you do, I was probably there first. I haven’t changed my style one iota. What’s changed is the fact that WWE has numbed me to such an extent that it takes a lot to get me worked up over wrestling.
But probably you’ll just ignore this and only respond to criticism from idiots who can’t spell so you can feel superior.
That’s a difference to feeling superior and being superior. I’m the latter, and I’m not ashamed to say it. So go back to OO and jack off over Scaia’s thrice-weekly borefests.
YOU’RE A MORON II: SPIN IT ANY WAY YOU LIKE, BITCH
Ah, another AOLuser, ForceMaster56, and he decides to defend the undefendable:
Dude, what the hell is your problem with Austin. When he walked out he did it so that managment would get their heads out of their asses, now all you do is bash him. Its f*cking bullshit that you comparea Austin to the likes of Steiner, and HHH when he is obviously better at making the crowd care. It seems to me that the person who should get their head out of their ass is you.
I’ve explained numerous times what my problem with Austin is: the wife-beating, the boozing, the walk-outs, “What?”, and the fact that he hasn’t been entertaining since the weird-ass moments during his heel turn. So, with rational explanations for all of those, I can’t criticize him? No one is immune, shithead.
He walked because he was trying to get managements’ heads out of their collective asses? Uh, no, sorry. We don’t buy that from Hogan, we shouldn’t buy it from Austin. Get realistic. He walked the first time because he objected to his wife’s booking (yeah, the same wife he ended up beating). He walked the second time because he wouldn’t job to Lesnar, because Lesnar was a threat to his position (now that’s a Hogan move if there ever was one). Rational, intelligent adults would have presented an objection in such a way that there was room for discussion and compromise. They don’t walk out and leave a company high and dry.
Please find where I ever compared Austin to Steiner and let me verify the quotes. Big Sump Pump is a talentless, ‘roided-up lump of shit who’s never been entertaining in the least. Austin is in a whole different set of categories.
The comparisons to Trip are valid. Both have exercised their stroke backstage for their own benefit and to the detriment of others. The difference here is that Trip is more connivingly intelligent. He put himself in a position where he doesn’t have to use walk-outs or threats to get what he wants. Trip is smart, and as much as I criticize him for jeopardizing the product for his own selfish desires, I admire his brains and social engineering skills.
I don’t care about what the marks think. Everyone should know that by now as well. If they want to cheer him and ignore the fact that he’s a disgusting human being, that’s their option, and it’s my option to look down on them for doing so and use this situation as yet more proof that marks are idiots. They are the Kingdom of the Blind, and I’m the one-eyed man who is king.
So get your head out of your ass and stop rationalizing him just because you may be entertained by what you see on screen.
MAILBAG!
Just when we had this whole Jerry Lynn thing buried, PK comes out of the woodwork and reminds me about Mike Awesome and the Hardcore Title at the kickoff of the Invasion. Gee, thanks. You’ll get yours at the next Round Table for this one, bucko.
BFM’s pal Dale, author of six published books, was jazzed that I played off Fernandez’s column and mentioned Siouxie and the Banshees. He’s got a terrific book about the most influential women in rock history that’s still available from Amazon. BTW: Personally, I love Kate Bush’s work. One of my roommates in the Army was a huge Kate Bush fan, and he was shocked that I’d even heard of her, which bolsters your conclusion about some women being lost on the US consciousness unjustifiably. And I think that it’s utterly cool that Cherie Currie considers you her favorite author.
Memo to Horde Prime: Wonderfully eloquent and passionate argument supporting Flex. But what was great about your letter was the fact that the light switched on, and you put in this PS:
Despite all the tired, repetitive, and usually irrational criticism of The Rock, I think I finally understand the distinction between Rock and Flex. The Rock was the guy who called Ken Shamrock a pussy, usurped the N.O.D., and relied on himself and his balls. As opposed to Flex who, as seen in his last cameo, is the Smilin’ Jack, syrupy, sucks up the crowd, “I love this town” character. Despite my praise of D. Johnson the performer, I now understand why people have become sick of the latter character. I have too.
Bingo. And that’s the character I rail about. You may remember that I always said that I’d revert to call Mister Johnson “The Rock” if he was turned heel. He was, and I did, and if you notice, my level of criticism of him dropped (I still don’t like the character and never will again, but it’s infinitely superior as a heel). However, the face character, Flex, is the subject of my rantings against him and what he’s done and had done for his benefit. I’m glad you figured out the difference. God knows too many other people haven’t.
Paul Van Someren asks me for my opinion regarding WinMX as a file-sharing network, saying that I’ve never brought that one up. I’ve never been excited by WinMX. It’s a good protocol and good front-end, but it never seemed to find its niche. Remember, your results on P2P networks depend on what you’re looking for. For software, especially large programs, I like eDonkey. Ditto for full movies. For music, Gnutella has higher-quality files but FastTrack has a greater selection. So tailor your P2P choice on what you’re looking for. If WinMX gives you satisfactory results, then that’s cool. It just hasn’t made a strong impression on me.
Follow-up to Will Pleas: I dealt with Windows Messenger pop-ups on June 4th. Here’s what I wrote back then regarding hot to get rid of them:
1) Steve Gibson has put out a free program called Shoot The Messenger, which will disable Windows Messenger. No matter what you might think about Gibson, and he does have a way of polarizing opinion in the Windows security field about his occasional paranoid rantings, he writes good, small programs that help secure gaps in Windows, and they’re all free. Definitely check out the rest of his site while you’re over there to increase the security of your machine.
2) Disable Windows Messenger manually if you don’t trust Gibson’s program. Here’s how to do it courtesy of the SpywareInfo Support Forums:
For Windows 2000 and XP
* Go to start and click Run
* Type services.msc
* Double-click on Messenger.
* In the Messenger Properties window, select Stop, then choose Disable as the Startup Type.
* Click OK.
For Windows 95, 98, and ME
* Under Control Panel, select Add/Remove.
* Select Windows Setup.
* Select System Tools.
* Click Details.
* Uncheck WinPopUp.
* Click OK.
3) Set your firewall to block inbound traffic on TCP and UDP ports 135, 137, 138, 139, and 445 (at the very least, set it to block inbound traffic on TCP and UDP port 135). ZoneAlarm even has pre-sets for some of those (look for something like “block NetBIOS ports”).
4) Pirate a copy of Pop-Up Stopper Professional (not Companion, but Professional). It’ll also cover you for browser pop-ups and for pop-ups from programs that throw open browser windows for ads (hello, BearShare, are you listening?).
5) All of the above, which is the best way to go.
The only reason you should be running Windows Messenger is if you absolutely have to, and virtually every home user doesn’t have to have it running.
PLEASE NOTE: Windows Messenger is not the same as MSN Messenger, the instant-messaging program. So if you’re on MSN Messenger with folks, don’t worry about losing that capability while doing this.
Memo to Scott Wood: We Bears fans loved what we saw out of Adrian Peterson last year, and we’re glad he’s on our side. I don’t think he’s on the trading block right now, because he’s the safety valve for the team when (not if) Anthony Thomas gets hurt, and nobody trusts Leon Johnson to shoulder the load in the backfield, Kordell or not. So expect him to get some time this year as well.
Brendon Slee throws this one out at me concerning the ending of Raw:
I was surprised to see you describe the Austin/Kane confrontation that way. I didn’t see Raw but I read a couple of recaps (including Keiths) that said Kane no sold the stunner and delivered a chokeslam to end the show. That hardly sounds like an ass kicking to me. Would you say the other recappers exaggerated or did you turn it off a bit too quickly?
First of all, I’m not a recapper, but that’s neither here nor there.
As to the main issue, you didn’t see Raw, so you didn’t see how the whole thing went down. Kane didn’t no-sell the Stunner; he did the zombie sit-up, which, as we all know, is not a no-sell, but a trademark move for him and UT to demonstrate imperviousness to pain. Nothing we haven’t seen a million times before from both Kane and UT. So no-selling is a dead issue.
Yeah, he delivered the chokeslam, but, again, it’s trademark Kane and something we all expect. It was diluted, by the way, by Ross going off like it was the end of the world, as he is wont to do. Pretty weak chokeslam too.
Before the Stunner, though, Austin was kicking the living shit out of Kane, with Kane doing absolutely nothing to fight back. Please note, this was not an Austin “tough-love” motivation thing. Kane was the one who initiated the violence by going off on Austin. Between Kane going off and the chokeslam, it was all Austin offense. After that, the chokeslam was a pretty weak response. They need to make Kane into an out-of-control monster, and Austin beating him up to the point where self-defense is no longer an excuse doesn’t help the situation. Dumbass booking done simply to protect Austin’s image, nothing else.
I didn’t turn it off too soon. The recappers didn’t bother to relay the whole situation.
DX goes in the same vein:
…it might not have been as impressive without the Austin beatdown on Kane. If Kane just dominated him… hell, he can do that to
anybody. He did it to Bischoff just last week. I was with you, watching Kane’s push get flushed, right up to the point he sat up. So rather than just beating the hell out of Austin, he’s now taken an Austin-brand beating, got right up, and laid Austin out.
The line of thinking you brought up is the exact reason why Kane should have pummeled the shit out of Austin: Kane can do it to anybody. Not in a “big deal, he can do this to anybody” sense, but in a “Oh, shit, if he can do this to Austin, who’s safe?” way. “Out Of Control” should mean “out of control”, which could lead to some great storyline play. Imagine if Austin had been thoroughly beaten, and it forced him into a temporarily alliance with Bisch over the Kane issue. I have this feeling they’ll try it anyway, but there’s no poignancy to it without Austin being beaten, and no real motivation for a modus vivendi.
To close, Roger Johnson has a pretty good one that I want to lay out to you as well:
I know it wasn’t mentioned in today’s column, but I’ve been a short-time fan, and was wondering if, along with the concept of Mount Perpetually Over, there’s also a Mount Perpetually Unover, topped with all the “stars” that have been pushed time and time again with absolutely zero success rate. Examples would include the likes of Test, Albert and Big Show, although those are easy names off the IWC hit list… I would like to see what names you could come up with as well.
I haven’t thought of doing something like that because, really, it’s kinda sad to see guys who can be good workers stuck into that sort of position, although with your examples, “good workers” aren’t the first things to come to mind. There are some ground rules, though: anyone who was over but got derailed due to acts of gross stupidity not of their own doing is absolved, so Terry Taylor, who was over until he came to the WWF and got stuck with the Red Rooster, doesn’t count. Neither does David Flair, who got put in a horrible situation that he’s going to take years to recover from.
Okay, here’s a short list of people in that boat, mostly from the past:
Greg Gagne: Poster boy for nepotism.
Erik Watts: See above, although he’s coming close to actually getting over with TNA. Who would have ever thought that? If TNA had a brain, they’d cut a deal with Vince to get footage of TeknoTeam 2000 matches and have a face use those to get at him.
Any Von Erich not named David or Kerry (or Fritz in his day): See above.
Dustin Runnels without a gold bodysuit: See above.
Paul Roma: Couldn’t get over as a Horseman. That’s bad.
Steve McMichael: See above viz. Roma, and add the key fact that his then-wife couldn’t help him get over, and she had more hopeless situations on her platter that she was able to pull off (see Jarrett, Jeff).
Mark Canterbury: Not able to get over as a solo Henry Godwinn, not able to get over in any tag team he was in, not able to get over even when he had Sytch at her hottest. His regular partner gets a pass for Naked Mideon, which actually got him over for a bit.
Mike Rotundo: Yeah, maybe he was over when he was in Japan, but that was about it. Couldn’t get over in the Varsity Club angle. Couldn’t get over in a cheap-heat heel tag team with DiBiase, for God’s sake, and then refused to realize that the character he was playing just didn’t f*cking work and kept playing it. Couldn’t get over in the NWO.
Nathan Jones: Premature, but the writing’s on the wall on this one.
Shannon Moore: Ditto, and he’s had the opportunity to leech off of Novocaine Helms and Matt Hardy.
I’m sure all of you can think of bunches more.
I’m outta here for this week. Grut probably won’t be in tomorrow, so I have no clue as to what’s happening with that. Well, enjoy it anyway.
About Eric Szulczewski
