Wrestling News, Opinions, Etc. 11.11.03

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Nothing about Crash Holly, I promise.  The saddest thing is that he provided Confidential with another week of programming.

Weird column construction this week.  I couldn’t do my normal Sunday prep work due to another Migraine From Hell (I didn’t miss much by spending Sunday in bed; the Bears lost another game in the last minute and Chad Campbell made Sunday at the Tour Championship an anticlimax…goddamn, was that one helluva round by him on Saturday).  Fortunately, I went to bed so early that I ended up waking up very early on Monday morning, crammed in a bunch of stuff, and still got to work earlier than I usually do.  Sometimes, life works out well, which is such a rare occasion for me that I’m actually going to celebrate my head splitting open.

Let’s move on and consider the historic importance of this particular day…

HAPPY ANNIVERSARY

Eighty-five years ago today, World War I officially ended.  You remember, “eleventh hour of eleventh day of eleventh month” and all that.  Over four years of mass slaughter conducted under some of the most inhumane conditions ever created by humankind (trench warfare, poison gas, machine guns, tanks, etc.), caused for no reason other than that governments en masse decided that going to war would be cool.  So what lessons have humankind learned over the past eight and a half decades?

1) If you have a proximate cause for war, at least make sure that it’s something people can get behind:  Archduke Franz Ferdinand?  Talk about a horrid casting choice.  He was heir to the Imperial Throne of Austria-Hungary only because Emperor Franz Joseph outlived the rest of the more direct heirs.  His own family didn’t like him because they decided that his wife wasn’t “royal” enough (they got the marriage declared morganatic, wouldn’t give Sophie the title of Archduchess, and then dissed her at her own funeral in a way that made the Windsors’ treatment of both Princess Diana and the Duchess of Windsor look like the highest of honors).  He decided it was a spiffy-neato idea to go into Bosnia only a few years after the territory was forcibly annexed, and visit on the Serbian equivalent of Independence Day (and decided to take the unliked wife with him).  So, tens of millions of people were sent into the meat grinder because of a member of the Lucky Sperm Club who thought with his dick decided to put himself into a position to get blown up by some nineteen-year-old with a bomb.  At the very least, the salutary lesson learned should have been “Don’t go into Bosnia if you’re not wanted there”, something not learned by NATO in the late nineties.  Comparisons to Vietnam (by the French and the US), Afghanistan (by the Soviets and by the US), and Iraq can be made at your convenience.

2) Make sure your military battle plans keep up with technology:  Static trench warfare?  Good idea if you were fighting a war in the Nineteenth Century.  Not such a good idea if everyone’s armed with semi-automatic rifles with long range, machine guns, and poison gas.  So, after lessons like the Somme, what was the French reaction to future planning in this regard?  “Let’s make the trenches more high-tech.”  Yeah, the Maginot Line was a really great idea, huh?  Meanwhile, on the German side, there was this lieutenant named Guderian who realized what these new-fangled tanks could do to speed up the pace of battle…

3) Don’t f*ck with the Middle East unless you really know what you’re doing:  A great many of the political conflicts taking place today in the Middle East are a direct result of what the French and (especially) the British did when they decided to play Thanksgiving Turkey with the Arab portions of the Ottoman Empire after WWI.  Let’s take a direct chain of events as one example:

a) There was a conflict within the British Foreign Office over who should take control of the Arabian Peninsula.  T. E. Lawrence pimped for his pal Faisal.  St. John Philby (father of my hero Kim) went to bat for his pal Ibn Saud.  The Foreign Office went with Lawrence’s opinion; the war between the two factions went on the side was won by Ibn Saud.  So, Faisal’s family was given the thrones of Jordan and Iraq as recompense.

b) The fact that the British wouldn’t support him turned Ibn Saud anti-British.  It also ended up turning St. John anti-British, which was what initially prompted the NKVD to recruit Kim and eventually turn him into the greatest spy of the 20th Century.  When oil was discovered on the Peninsula, in great quantities, St. John’s guidance turned Ibn Saud away from a British offer and into the arms of the Americans.  Aramco was created, and Americans still have a presence in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

c) Because of that presence, and because of the oil, when the Kuwait situation erupted in 1990, a deal was quickly reached to have American troops stationed in the Kingdom.  The “defiling” of the holy lands upset a rich Saudi indirectly connected with the Royal Family named Osama bin Laden.

d) September 11th, 2001, plus the attacks over the last week inside the Kingdom itself.

It’s just a matter of connecting the dots.

4) Don’t go to war unless you’re psychologically ready to do so, and are on the same page:  And so we come to the Russians, who, nine years earlier, got the shit beat out of them by the Japanese, of all people.  Since then, they were incredibly gun-shy about getting into any sort of conflict in the first place.  But, they got stuck in this particular quagmire, so they decided to make the best of it and cast the war as a redemptive action (sorta like what Bush did concerning Kuwait as per Vietnam).  Because of this, their generals ended up playing petty power games with each other for purposes of glory (which killed their first and best offensive against the Germans) and pissed away any chance they might have had to actually gain some sort of victory, or at least part of it.  This, of course, led to the events of February/March 1917, and we all know what happened after that.

Plus, there were games going on within the Romanov family that affected the course of world history.  WWI almost started in 1912, when one of the numerous shooting matches in the Balkans flared up, with various and sundry Christian countries going to war against the infidel Turks.  Montenegro got involved in this, and one of the most influential members of the Romanov family, Grand Duke Nikolai Nikolaevich, was married to one of the daughters of the King of Montenegro (his brother, Grand Duke Pyotr Nikolaveich, was married to another daughter of the King).  In the name of family and of pan-Slavism, Nikolai almost pushed the Czar, who was heavily influence by him, into declaring war against the Turks.  Austria said, “If you decide to play in our backyard, we’re going to declare war against you.”  This made Germany say “Hey, if the Austrians declare war against you, so will we.”  This made the Czarina, who was absolutely terrified of the prospect of going to war against her home country of Germany, panic, and she decided to use her influence to keep Russia out of the war.  Since the Czarina wore the pants in that family, she got her way, especially after she influenced her pal Rasputin into putting the situation into apocalyptic terms.  Naturally, Rasputin got the blame for keeping Russia out of a “just” war.  Of course, the fact that he was right in this case was only calculated historically.  The Czarina and Rasputin tried doing that again in 1914, but this time it didn’t work.

5) Don’t take out your family squabbles on a worldwide stage:  There are two people to blame for this:  Queen Victoria of England and King Christian IX of Denmark.  If they weren’t so judicious in reproduction…look at a family tree of Victoria and parse the relations.  The Czar of Russia was allied with his cousin the King of England (their mothers were sisters, both daughters of Christian IX), but he was going to war with his cousin the Kaiser of Germany (the Czar’s aunt Grand Duchess Marie married Queen Vic’s son Prince Alfred of Edinburgh, who was the brother of the Kaiser’s mother Princess Victoria).  The Czarina, meanwhile, was also allied with her cousin the King (King’s father and Czarina’s mother both children of Queen Vic), but she was also going to war with her cousin the Kaiser (mothers of both children of Queen Vic).  This, of course, made the King and the Kaiser cousins as well (father and mother, respectively, children of Queen Vic).  The Queen of Norway was an aunt to the King, Kaiser, Czar, and Czarina (daughter of King Edward VII of England).  The Queen of Romania* was a cousin to the King, Kaiser, Czar, and Czarina (her father was the aforementioned Prince Alfred of Edinburgh).  The King of Greece was a cousin to the King and Czar (father was a son of Christian IX).  Ditto the King of Denmark for the same reason.  The King of Bulgaria was a first cousin once removed of Queen Vic, which makes all of the above some relation.  Plus, there’s a weird link to the Belgian Royal Family that’s tough to explain (the King of Belgium was the grandson of Queen Vic’s favorite uncle, but there’s no genetic connection).

In this light, if you ignore the Austrians and the Ottomans, WWI could have been solved with a volleyball game at the family reunion.

* – You ever want to meet a fun royal?  Queen Marie of Romania was the ultimate party girl of her time.  Oversexed, egotistical to the point that she literally believed the sun rose and set on her command…oooh boy.  And she passed it on to her son King Carol, who is said to have been one of the most well-hung royals in history, and who apparently knew how to use it well enough that an official court abortionist had to be appointed in order to prevent bastard Romanian royals from overrunning Eastern Europe.  So f*ck Princess Diana’s handlers’ books; read some history for the really good stuff.

So, let’s celebrate the end of the War To End All Wars, and hope that the wars going on right now can also be ended.  But not until after the American public fully sees the bullshit of what’s going on right now and chucks Dubbaya out on his ass next year at this time.  According to CNN polls, it’s happening now, so we’re good to go on this issue.

THE PIMP SECTION

I had no idea which move Nute was talking about in his blurb, so I decided to read it, only to find out it was about Novocaine Helms’ finisher.  I have to admit, though, it is a truly great finisher.

Memo to Baxley:  Exactly what did Square Enix mean by “defective”?  I’ll lay you odds the “defect” is the same one that’s plagued a number of games coming out for PC lately, especially Temple of Elemental Evil:  they went bonzo on the copy protection.  Those allegedly effective copy protection schemes prevent more people from installing the damn things by bollixing up your CD/DVD drive than prevent people from pirating it.  I’ve seen a number of people on message boards post that they could only run ToEE by using a no-CD crack.

I should have pimped The A List last week, but forgot, stupid me.  Of course, there is a new wrestling-related entry, someone who shall remain Flex listed as being bisexual.  No surprise here…oh, sorry, there’s another one here:  David Arquette, “Annoying freak. Recovering drug user.”  Again, no surprise…oh, a third:  Jerry Lawler, “Super nice to his fans”.  Again, no surprise, especially if the fans in question are nubile post-pubescent females.

Enough gossip.  Let’s get on to the sniping about Raw…

THE SHORT FORM

Match Results:

Rob Van Dam over Christian, Inter-curtain-jerking Title Match (Pinfall, Five-Star Frog Splash):  The booking of Van Dam’s matches is getting lazier by the week.  Christian wasn’t allowed to do anything other than to provide something resembling transitions between Van Dam’s normal batch of spots.  I’m glad that Ross reminded me that they had that great ladder match a number of weeks ago, because I sure as hell couldn’t tell from this mess that they’d ever worked together at a high level.  Considering everything surrounding Van Dam right now, including and perhaps especially the same-old-faces-and-heels logjam at the IC level, I’m glad there’s not going to be an IC defense at SurSer.

Rob Conway and Rene Dupree over Novocaine Helms and His Big-Boned Bitch (Pinfall, Conway pins Helms, swinging neckbreaker):  Did my eyes deceive me, or did Helms attempt to hit the move that Nute discussed in his column this week?  Kinda blew Nute’s whole thesis there about the Vertebreaker being a killer finisher.  Too bad.

Molly Holly and Gail Kim over Lita and Terri Runnels (Pinfall, Molly pins Lita, rollup):  Well, the result here isn’t a surprise.  Lita gets the job back on Sunday, which we all knew would happen anyway because they’ve been wanting to put the strap on Lita since she came back.  All I can say is that they never gave Molly a chance to do anything with the belt, but that’s been true with the women’s division for years now.

Shawn Michaels over Randy Orton (Pinfall, superkick):  Talk about returning a job.  And why is everyone so down on Randy Orton?  Are people complaining about the overpush?  Well, think about it this way:  WWE has a template for Randy Orton’s push.  Third-generation wrestler.  Position in an important heel stable.  Natural charisma.  High-profile feuds.  Gee, can you possibly, oh, smell what they’re cooking with him?  For that reason, the only person who has a right to bitch about Orton is me, since all of you hypocritical pieces of shit fell all over the template like the bitches you are.  And I’m not going after Orton, because I think that he has more natural wrestling talent that the bisexual movie star.

Buh Buh Ray and D’Von Dudley over Mark Henry and Big Sump Pump (DQ, Fun With Folding Chairs):  Next.

Booker T over Chris Jericho (Pinfall, I wasn’t paying attention):  Sorry, but if you want me to pay attention when this kind of match is the main event, make sure that the rest of the show doesn’t put me to sleep.  However, I wasn’t asleep at the point when Ross said “Lance Cade” again.

Angle Developments:

For Openers…:  Let’s see.  Lita comes out and does a promo, and gets interrupted by Trip.  Trip does a promo, and gets interrupted by Austin.  Are you really trying to make me switch channels or what?

Scenes From A Chinese Restaurant:  Give both Shane and Kane credit for a helluva promo sequence in an interesting venue.  It’s probably the most interesting thing in this episode of Raw, other than Bisch’s rare moments on screen.  And I’m not the only one who believes this.  Quoth the Ravin’ Cajun:

Damn near perfectly done. The acting was subtle enough to be believable given the surroundings, Glen Jacobs shows once again how damn good he is at delivering a line when given a chance, and Shane was pretty good too.

Now, I only have one question. Why the hell was I watching a dramatic production during the opening segment of the hour? Wasn’t there SOME kind of match that would have been better served in that spot?


Well, Michaels/Orton was the transition match, but that did end a little early, didn’t it?  The whole episode seemed to have a really weird pace, with them directly avoiding a lot of SE in favor of matches involving guys in the SurSer match.  Very strange to watch.

Tomorrow…God knows.  I’ll throw something together.  I always do.  It’ll be Mailbag, Smackdown Somewhat Spoiled, and other stuff.  Typical Wednesday Before PPV material.  So don’t run away in fear just yet.  Until tomorrow, tah.