Wrestling News, Opinions, Etc. 09.23.03

Archive

“Dead meat” is redundant.  Once something gets classified as meat, it hardly ever recovers. – Dilbert

Unless you manage a quality assurance department in a meat plant.  Then meat is what you say it is.

Aussie Bureau Chief Brett Wortham requests an In Memoriam for Slim Dusty, the Australian Johnny Cash, who did the same thing his American counterpart did a week earlier.  I’ve never heard his music, but granted.  Oh, and, Brett, glad you got your problem with the Medal of Honor expansion pack solved.  It’ll serve you well when you grab a copy of the new expansion pack, which I’m downloading as I write this.

Well, everything’s going okay with me.  I paid a visit to Lincoln, Nebraska last week (which is why I didn’t do anything for Fleabag; I spent the weekend recovering from the trip and the stress), and I have a place to live out there.  Phone and electric are already handled.  Cable’s carried by Time-Warner, so at least I know what I’m getting.  They also offer RoadRunner at my future address, so my Net access is solved (having had RoadRunner twice before, it doesn’t give me a nauseating feeling as it would getting DSL through HellTel).  And the apartment’s damn sweet too.  It’s an hour away from work, but it’s damn sweet.  And the movers will be coming a week from today to clear this place out of the stuff I’m not taking myself.  Plus, the FudgePackers were upset in a game that not even I thought they could have lost (thus creating some interesting questions regarding next Monday night, like “If the Cardinals can beat them, can the Bears do it too?”).  So my life is actually pretty damn good right now for a change.

And then I have to get into discussing wrestling and ruin the whole warm, fuzzy feeling…

SOME POST-MORTEM THOUGHTS ON UNFORGIVEN

Hey, be happy.  I could be starting out with a long screed about Dubbaya finally admitting that he LIED to the American public about Iraq, and then follow that up with a statement about how Chirac’s a pussy for not having France veto Dubbaya’s bullshit UN proposal about the future of said unjustly invaded country, plus whip up a little invective about the stupidity of the American public for believing that Iraq had anything to do with September 11th (and a majority apparently still think that) along with a dash of praise for Ted Kennedy for calling that hypocritical piece of shit out.  Instead, I’m talking wrestling, and isn’t that what you want me to do?

I’m asking myself one question regarding the whole tag team situation:  was Spike’s table bump really what it appeared to be?  We’ve seen the video evidence, and it’s obvious that La Res f*cked the spot up.  However, the way they were able to use that bump and the subsequent events makes me wonder if it really was as f*cked up as it appeared to be.  Look at the whole situation.  We knew that Grenier was going to be out for a month after the PPV.  That left “creative” with two choices:  1) Put the straps back on the Dudleys or 2) Weasel the situation around so that Conway could take Grenier’s spot and his half of the tag straps.  They decided on the first choice, which would be less of a strain on the low-wattage imaginations of WWE fans.  Understandable, but not very interesting.  Now, how to get the belts to Buh Buh Ray and D-Von without blowing the whole match?  Obviously, Spike had to be removed from the picture.  And isn’t it interesting that he fell victim to one of the sickest spots ever shown on Raw a couple weeks prior to the PPV, and used that injury to great effect last week?  So, was it an accident, done on purpose, or an on-purpose accident, if you catch my drift?  If I had any respect for WWE whatsoever, I wouldn’t even be thinking about stuff like this, you know.

I’m glad that they answered my question about the Spanish Announce Table.  I’ll also insist that they wouldn’t have thought about it had I not brought it up.  Gewirtz reads me, you know.

And Shane yet again outdid himself.  Goddamn, I know he’s going to own half of the company after Vince and Linda kick, but his repeated demonstrations of above-and-beyond makes me think that there’s such a thing as being too dedicated.

Would it have been a problem if the women heels had gone over so that this angle wouldn’t degenerate this quickly into the obvious Trish/Lita match at SurSer?  The way I’m reading the time scale is thus:  Molly drops the strap to Lita within three weeks, Trish says she wants a shot, and we have a face-face women’s title match.  Hopefully, Molly and Victoria will beat the crap out of both of them during it.

Can we still anticipate a match regardless of the fact that we all knew how they’d book it?  That question was answered with Orton/Michaels.  We knew that Michaels wouldn’t do a clean job.  We knew that Orton had to have Flair’s help to win, thus making Orton look weak.  Yet the match was still anticipated and, I guess, enjoyed.  Well, we all know how the next Star Wars is going to end too, and people still want to see that, so I guess it’s okay in some quarters.

The fact that they kept the IC strap on Christian shows what little they have in reserve in that level of the card.  So they’ve decided to wait until Booker comes back…okay, no problem.  I’ll just continue to ignore the whole thing like I normally do, and leave the room when Christian calls for attention to himself.  No, I don’t like that catchphrase either.  Live with it, Austin freaks.

Goldberg no-sold a sledgehammer.  Dear God, I’m glad someone finally did.

THE PIMP SECTION

Jesus, Pankonin, stop pimping Nebraska and let me ease into the situation, okay?  At least you’re in Omaha.  I have to live at Ground Zero.  So give me a bit of a break.  Just for that, you’re getting a game review (I should have it done by sometime tomorrow).

Frazier is our latest noob on the scene here.  Fortunately, he wants La Parka back as much as everyone else does.

Nute does a column whose tagline could have been written the moment they announced that the Trip/Goldie match was going to be with retirement stips.

Carless does some of that post-mortem thing regarding Unforgiven, but I’m more popular and, let’s face it, cuter, so we can all ignore him.  And, as we all know, Vince McMahon jerks off to his quarterly financials.

Memo to Laflin:  1) There’s still a team betwixt the Twins and Royals in the AL Central.  You know, the team that’s treated the Royals like their bitches all season.  They may have screwed the pooch in Minneapolis last week, but that was expected.  2) I’ve yet to try the Halo beta for the PC, but it’s on my “install this next” pile.  Of course, I’m drowning in actual releases to try and another beta I’ve been waiting for in Lords of the Realm III, so who knows if it’ll get installed.  3) Gates and Ballmer take lessons from me, and don’t you forget it.

And, of course, let us not forget Bower and his semi-retirement farewell column.  The events of next week, though, will test the “Eric doesn’t miss a column” hypothesis.

YOU’VE UNLEASHED THE FOOKIN’ FURY

So Doctor D, Dave Schultz, is going to make his first wrestling-related appearance in over a decade and a half at a fan festival in December in Noo Joisey.  I thought I’d never see that name again.

For those of you who weren’t born at the time, which is a lot of you, Dave Schultz is best known for one thing:  he punked out John Stossel of 20/20 on network television.  Schultz was a mid-card heel in the WWF at the time, and ABC was doing the first major national story on “rock ‘n wrestling”.  Vince was as big a publicity whore then as he is now, and this was going to be a major coup for him.  Then Stossel asked Schultz a rather…impertinent question:  “Is wrestling real?”  This being the pre-kayfabe-is-dead days, Schultz took exception to the question and conveyed his displeasure by attempting to make Stossel into a corpse.  Of course, the cameras were rolling.  For his stupidity, Vince not only fired Schultz, but got him blackballed.  The only people who would hire him were rinky-dink promoters who felt they could use the publicity from having the “notorious Doctor D” on their cards to their benefit.  That eventually faded, and Schultz turned away from wrestling, forever or so it was thought.

But the world has changed from those halcyon days of twenty years ago, and now it’s safe for Schultz to come out from the woodwork, or from behind the wheel of his truck.  You know what?  Vince should give him a call.  He could get mileage from Schultz in a couple of different ways.  Put his ass on Confidential and have him come out and admit what an asshole he was for going thermo on Stossel, then blame it on the ‘roids, for instance.  Or give him a bad-ass manager’s role and stick him with Happy Fun Brock (hell, anything to get Vince off camera for a while).  Vince has never been averse to reassembling burnt bridges before (look how many times Piper’s been back).  So give us our Doctor D quotient.

THE RICH GET RICHER, EXCEPT FOR VINCE

This year’s Forbes 400 has come out, and yet again Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, and Paul Allen occupy the top three slots, followed by five Waltons, Larry Ellison, and Michael Dell.  I pirate my Microsoft software, don’t use anything from Oracle, have no Berkshire Hathaway stock, bought my Dell monitor used at a clearance sale, and don’t shop at Wal-Mart, so I’m not contributing to any of their pocketbooks.  That means that you people out there aren’t doing your jobs.  They must be driven broke, so start picking up the slack, losers.

Vince McMahon dropped out of the 400 this year.  That may have been a surprise to Forbes, but not to us.  We’ve been covering the beat full-time, baby, so we know about the stock price being in a torpor, the lost house show business, the ratings decrease which slashed their share of the ad revenue, the still-continuing losses on the XFL, etc.  And now Vince, as father of the succubus, has to shell out for the wedding/unholy union.  Too bad, Vince.  Better luck next year.

And speaking of better luck, here’s hoping that a change of announcers can bring better luck to Raw…

THE SHORT FORM

Match Results:

Rob Van Dam over Christian, Intercontinental Title Match (DQ, Greco-Roman belt shot):  Big f*cking deal, like we haven’t seen this before.  Nice frog splash by Christian, though, which encourages me for the ladder match between these two that we’ll have within the next few weeks…next week?  Doesn’t anyone have an attention span anymore?

Donald Rumsfeld over Tommy Dreamer, White Boy Challenge (Pinfall, fat-f*ck slam):  So, would I vote for Teddy Long for President?  Hell, yeah, I would.  If nothing else, it’d guarantee us four of the funkiest State of the Union Addresses you’d ever hear.  Belee that.  Better to think of that than the match.  Quoth The Joe In Me:

…when he “pinned” Tommy Dreamer, his dumb ass pulled Dreamer’s left shoulder up, thereby blocking his own pin attempt. GAIL KIM hasn’t even made THAT mistake. Hell, JACKIE GAYDA didn’t even do that. I’m sorry, but even if I was a new fan, never before familiar with Mark Henry, I’d already be unable to take him seriously. What a goof, that guy really needs to go.

Trish Stratus and Lita over Gail Kim and Molly Holly, Harmless PPV Rematch (Pinfall, Lita pins Kim, Twist of Fate):  And the bad booking of the women’s division continues.  Cut the bullshit and give the heels the win for once, will you?  They deserve a break once in a while.  And the faces owe them a job too.

Novocaine Helms and His Pet Bitch over Rob Conway and Rene Dupree (Pinfall, Helms pins Conway…hmmm, what to call this?  A twisting 3-D?):  Okay, Grenier’s going to spend a month on the sidelines interfering.  That gives them a little time to think about what to do with Conway and Dupree.  Dupree deserves a singles shot, or at least a shot to work on the Rick Martel mannerisms.  But that would leave Conway stuck with teaming with Grenier when he comes back.  Conway deserves better than that, though.  Maybe they can bring Nick Dinsmore up full time, stick him with Grenier until he proves himself, and let Conway and Dupree both work singles, or tag with each other.  But does Nick Dinsmore deserve that?  You can see where this line of thought is going.  No one deserves to be stuck with that albatross, but someone has to be until his ass is sent to OVW.  God help everyone involved.

Trip, Ric, ‘n Randy over Mark Jindrak, Garrison Cade, and (yuck) Maven, You Call This A Rub? Match (Pinfall, Flair pins Maven, Trip pedigree):  So what exactly was the purpose of this match?  Can anyone tell me?  I have zero f*cking clue here.  However, since I like four of the six guys involved, I’ll give it a break and be nice.  And, Josh, the answer to your question about the RKO should have been presented.

Bill Goldberg over Chris Jericho, World Title Match (Pinfall, duh):  Coachman had a point:  Austin put his hands on Bisch without being provoked.  His ass should be fired next week for that.  His ass should have been fired a long time ago for various other reasons, of course, but apparently the WWE (and far too many retarded fans…yes, that means you, retards) need something kayfabe.

Angle Developments:

Disrespecting the Armed Forces:  I am a veteran of the US Army.  I am proud to have served my country.  That being said, the presence of the propagandistic bullshit that WWE was putting out there was nauseating.  Legitimizing the disgusting actions of the Junta toward Iraq through use of the troops is something I won’t stand for; it’s even more repulsive than doing the same thing using Big Sump Pump.  They deserve to not be treated that way, and neither does the audience.  Remember this next November.

Disrespecting the Movie-Going Audience:  This f*cker’s going to bomb, and bomb hard.  You all know it.  Now just admit it to yourselves.  Admitting it will set you free.  Give in to the hate.  You know you want to.  Flex, and anything he touches, must die.

The Truth Hurts:  Hey, Eric Bischoff DID make Goldberg.  So what’s everyone so upset about?  Why was Bisch being booed for simply telling the truth?  Highly disrespectful to Bischoff, let me tell you.  The guy deserves some props for some of the stuff he did, especially for turning Goldberg from a stiff into a phenomenon.  So I’ll give him props for doing it.

The Wonderful World of Karo Syrup:  I’m sorry, a skit with a McMahon in a hospital is nothing without Yurple, defibrillation paddles, and an enema.  Kane is simply a poor substitute.  However, if you set a skit inside of a hospital, please remember this:  after the beating is over, the nurses would NOT, repeat would NOT, just stand around and yell for help.  Nurses are not ninnies.  The WWE camera people are, but not nurses.  They’d rush over and start preliminary treatment while one of them pages a goddamn doctor.  It’s normal trauma conditions for them, period.  Nurses don’t lose their f*cking heads like that, period.  It’s just one bit of disrespect after another, isn’t it?

Quoth the Ravin’ Cajun:  Call me crazy, but am I missing some kind of obvious logic of Kane wearing his gear into a hospital in a location other than the closest one to the arena? Is there something I’m missing here? Because otherwise it looks to me like Security should have really taken notice of a 7 foot tall man wearing no shirt, walking into a hospital in wrestling gear and with a pissed-off look on his face looking for the scion of a wrestling magnate who was admitted the night before after facing said shirtless man in a wrestling match. Or, is this the same hospital that treated Kane for what should have been in-depth burns over a large portion of his body after being thrown into a flaming dumpster full of gasoline?

You Disappoint Me:  Luggage?  Big Sump Pump is your slave and all you can think of is luggage, Mister Martin?  What about my idea last week concerning the burro and Ass Cream ™?  How about an idea that Big Daddy put forward to me involving him and a French maid’s outfit?  We want humiliation, not skycap duties.

A Performance Review:  Listening to Coachman and Snow was like a roller-coaster ride.  The parts of the show where they remained objective were like a breath of fresh air compared to the smell of fetid dungheap engendered by Ross and Lawler (especially Ross).

Again with the Quoth from the Ravin’ Cajun:  We get a producer error announcing a worst case scenario, and this is only a few seconds before Austin comes on?  Eric, did you take over RAW for a moment there?

If I’d have taken over Raw, it would have been for long enough to make sure that Austin was ejected from the building, and if he’d shown up next week…well, he’d quickly learn that Chicago was MY FUCKING TOWN.  But, back to what we were discussing…when they broke into heel announcer team mode, it was too excessive.  A reminder here and there that they 1) support Bischoff and 2) support Jericho would have been enough.

Michaelangelo McCullar agrees with me:

Dear God, could someone explain to Coach and Al that they’re supposed to be HEEL commentators?  They kept waffling back and forth.  One minute, they’re cheering on Lita and putting down La Res, the next they’re cheering on Bischoff and Jericho.  My head hurts from all the flip-flopping they were doing.

If they’re given a chance after next week (and now I definitely need a ticket; a sniper rifle might be the only way to stop Ross and Lawler from coming back…that is, if I still have ammo after blowing Austin’s head off), they should emphasize the objective part and eliminate their need to kiss up to Bisch (do it relatively slowly, so as to allow Coachman to keep his edge, which is pretty much his entire personality).  It’d be wonderful having a down-the-middle team without the face pretentions of a Cole and Tazz or an over-the-top maniac attitude like Don West.

But the final judgment must, as usual, go to Slick Rick:  Regarding the new announcers: Unless Coach is shilling the next pay per view
the night after Unforgiven like Fat Tony on crack, I’m not sure I want to know about them…


Well, I’m off to do something weird today:  I’m actually interviewing for a job.  Yes, I know.  But, I feel that until I’m actually living in Nebraska, the game’s still on, and these guys do pay more.  So I’ll start in with tomorrow’s column after I get back.  Until then, in honor of Slick Rick, tell Drew Curtis and his little bitches over at Fark to go cram their piece of shit site so far up their ass that it comes out their throat.  And their little faggot brothers in butt-munching over at Something Awful can join them.  All of you stick to 411; it’s the only site you’ll need.