Alright, quick and dirty this week, as I’m getting ready to make a four-hour drive back to my hometown for the weekend. We’ll hit some quick newsbites up front, watch as I try to avoid talking about Smackdown, and then we’re out.
HUSTLE BILL
Bill Goldberg will make his return to the ring at the next HUSTLE event promoted by Dream Stage Entertainment. If you’re not familiar with DSE, then you owe it to yourself to go and get a copy of one of the many PRIDE DVD’s that DSE has produced over the past year. PRIDE has the best production values of any single sporting event in the world — they are literally on par with something you’d see at a Super Bown halftime. I don’t know HOW DSE makes money doing what they do, but somehow they seem to pull it off.
HUSTLE is the pro wrestling show promoted by DSE, and it has the same production qualities as it’s legitimate partner. DSE is trying to get a deal done with Steve Austin for a match with Goldberg, but if it falls through, you can expect him to fight Toshiaki Kawada. Yeah, I don’t see THAT going real well for Bill, either. It might as WELL be PRIDE when you’re in the ring with Kawada.
ANGLE GOES DOWN
Kurt’s going to have another neck surgery, his third. Now, I’m no doctor (I’m close, but not quite), but I’m going to play one for the purposes of this column and ASSUME that having three major neck surgeries is NOT a good thing. On top of that, Kurt claims that he wants to wrestle at SUMMERSLAM, just a mere few months after having the surgery completed. Kurt, you are my Olympic and American Hero, and I love watching you in the ring because you might just be the absolute best EVER — but please, don’t rush coming back from this neck surgery. Wrestling fans aren’t worth it and wrestling isn’t worth the damage you could do to yourself.
BYE BYE LANCE
Yeah, it’s old news, but I wanted to wish a formal goodbye to my friend, Lance Storm. As many bad things as I’ve said about Lance in this column, it still sucks to see a guy pack his bags and go home so early.
Well, not really.
I’m not sure how I feel about Lance becoming an OVW trainer. Yes, when Lance was in ECW, his motivation level was high and he did some MERELY OKAY matches with guys who could carry him — like Jerry Lynn, for example. But Lance hasn’t been good for bunches of years now, and he’s going to be directly influencing the people that will make up the WWE’s future. This could be a really good thing or a really BAD thing — and it all depends on Lance. That’s a pretty scary prospect.
SMACKDOWN
Yeah, Smackdown was last night. I wouldn’t even be putting this up if I weren’t required to by Widro, because the show was THAT awful and retarded (and not in the Eugene way, because he’s awesome) that I don’t feel like wasting any of my time to recap it. Smackdown has literally gotten to the point where it can legitimately be compared to WCW Thunder, and that’s not a good thing. Yeah, I like the JBL character because I’m a sucker for old school gimmicks, but even I realize that it’s not a main even character. Mid-card comedy, perhaps, but not fighting for one of the two big belts.
It’s time for WWE to go on a panty raid of TNA and pick up ever single young prospect that isn’t under written contract to Panda. It’s the only real way to breathe some freaking life into this program, because guys like Luther Rains aren’t going to cut it. Mordecai might be another undertaker, but we have no idea because we don’t know when he’s going to debut.
I’m sick of Smackdown and how much worse it is than Raw. I never thought I’d say it, but give me Triple H and Michaels and Benoit over ANYTHING Smackdown produces these days.
PLUGGAGE
>> If you want the real Smackdown results, go read Scott’s Rant.
>> Here is a list of the movies opening this weekend. I might make it a point to catch Envy, but it depends on how much time I spend in the studio.
>> Nason presents the Opposite end of the spectrum when it comes to Lance Storm.
>> Blender Magazine is retarded, and this article proves it.
SAYANORA
That is IT for this week. Good luck to Eric on his 3,113th move (that I’ve read about) and I hope everyone has a good weekend. Ross is in on Saturday for more talking about me and then you have a WHOLE WEEKEND CREW that’ll be posting good stuff, so be here or be a trapezoid.
