Wrestling News, Opinions, Etc., 12.07.04

Archive

Hmmmm, he says knowingly. There ain’t jack shit out there, really. I haven’t finished downloading Turning Point at the time of writing, so I can’t comment on that (and I blew off the Round Table out of a sense of sheer exhaustion, having slept the day away on Saturday). There’s nothing major in the news to talk about other than the repeat election in Ukraine on Boxing Day (okay, so Veej won Player of the Year, but that was a given); the bombing in Jeddah was such a given that it hardly qualifies as news (just another excuse for oil prices to skyrocket again). So what’s there to…

…well, there is one thing I want to talk about, and that’s Hyatte’s “Death of the IWC” remarks yesterday. I agree with him somewhat. Truth be told, the IWC has been dying a very slow death and has been running on fumes for a while now. It’s been going on for nearly four years now. When ECW tanked and Vince bought WCW, the glory days ended for the IWC (as it did for many things). The reason for this is simple: Vince runs a very tight ship when it comes to control of information, while ECW and WCW leaked like sieves. As I’ve said before, half the locker room in both places had Keller and Meltzer on speed-dial. I remember one particular incident in 2000 where Big Sump Pump and Diamond Dallas Page got into a fight in the WCW locker room near the end of one episode of Nitro. Both Keller and Meltzer had the story up there, with copious details, within one hour of Nitro ending that evening. That kind of shit doesn’t happen anymore, because Vince keeps his locker room tighter than a drum. And no one gives a shit enough about TNA, ROH, or anyone else to care whether or not they leak, unless the story involves adolescent boys and fetishes regarding them.

There aren’t any leaks, there isn’t any inside information until long after the fact, the people who make their living (read: Meltzer) off of getting that information are regurgitating the same crap week after week, or adding more detail onto stories people didn’t care about in the first place. Witness Da Meltz bragging that he has more about the Holly/Dupree story in this week’s Observer. Who the f*ck cares?

Also, the big sites have shit in their own nests for a long while now. 1bullshit was always compromised due to Ryder’s continuing biases (first WCW, then TNA). He got together with his pal Joey Styles, who can wear down a grindstone with all of the axes he has available. Milord and his merry men at 1bullshit Junior are equally compromised with their biases (toward ECW and now toward TNA). I will never, ever forget that Scherer published that column blaming “bloodthirsty” ECW fans for a blown New Jack balcony dive that injured Vic Grimes instead of blaming New Jack for blowing the spot in the first place (the reason I started calling him “Milord” in the first place, by the way). Keller and his hacks put out absolutely nothing these days except in the pay area, and as Hyatte said, no one’s joining up.

A lot of people saw this coming and reacted. The loss of audience is the reason why this site and 411 are structured the way they are. Da Meltz has been trying to interest wrestling fans in MMA for years now, yet people aren’t following the program; I don’t know who Mirko Cro Cop is and don’t give a damn that I don’t know. I saw it coming in 2000 when WCW was visibly dying and branched out into discussing politics, TV shows, whatever struck my fancy, instead of sticking to wrestling and wrestling alone, and it garnered me an audience who was equally bored with the whole thing. Hyatte’s expanded his repertoire. So has Fleabag. So has any other wrestling writer on an independent site, since we all know that wrestling alone won’t hold an audience (and I am proud to say that a lot of people have taken their cue from me in this regard). And Hyatte’s right when he says there is no sign of a comeback and won’t be for a while, if ever.

People call me Communist? What about Billionaire Vince? He’s introduced self-competition as the cornerstone of building his audience. That’s straight out of a Five-Year Plan, and everyone knows that’s not how you build a strong economic base (witness the fact that Linda has to go out and spin the latest quarterlies to disguise the bad news). TNA is one Dixie Carter PMS outbreak from going under. ROH destroyed its own credibility by playing footsie with the Feinstein revelations instead of having the balls to either cut ties completely with him immediately or defend the guy. The Jap promotions are hurting, the indies are barely drawing a hundred a shot in the US, WWE house shows aren’t drawing flies and keep getting cancelled, Zero-One went down the shitter, PPV buyrates are sinking faster than anyone can comprehend. The news isn’t good, and anyone who says otherwise is delusional. Yet the big sites aren’t willing to say this because they’ve staked their livelihood on wrestling coming back, and delude themselves into thinking they’re providing something that people are still interested in.

How in the hell are those sites and wrestling supposed to come back? Vince is satisfied with his 3.0 and is using that as leverage to play USA and Viacom against each other, because those are still good ratings in cable-land. TNA seems to be content with recreating the glory days of WCW and deprecating their few homegrown assets (Styles, Brown, the X Division) in favor of giving their limited camera time to guys who can barely walk, much less wrestle. ROH can’t break through because no one takes them seriously. Lucha and puro are still acquired tastes. MMA and Ultimate Fighting are bullshit. And the big sites are trying to force paid news down our throats. Meanwhile, IWC writers not connected to those sites who’ve obtained IDs through means fair or foul to those pay sections laugh their asses off every time they access. Those you-gotta-pay-for-these revelations are a bunch of crap purposely leaked to them by the management of said wrestling organizations that are totally false, or, at best, are spin jobs on stuff that these guys found out accidentally. I’ve had those IDs offered to me in the past, and I’ve declined, since I don’t feel like putting up with that kind of complete nonsense.

Thanks to restriction of information and outright greed on the part of site owners, we’re slowly reverting to a pre-RSPW existence, where everyone can get the Observer and get their fill of what little inside news there is (if they can get through the MMA crap). The IWC is only as strong as the information it receives. Otherwise, the whole thing simply reverts to whiteboards with every idiot in the known universe posting the same opinion on Trip or Randy Orton or whatever the flavor of the week is, thinking that they’re the only one saying it. And it’s boring to read in the extreme.

What we need is something to talk about. When I only have one inconsequential news item to post later in this column, that’s a problem. When the programs that are aired give us nothing to talk about, that’s a bigger problem. When wrestling organizations are perfectly content not to give us, the audience, anything to interest any audience beyond the hardcore viewers that will watch this crap unfold, that’s the biggest problem of all. And the “leading voices” of the IWC are afraid to say something about it because it will jeopardize their precious “inside connections”, which aren’t providing anything of substance to them in the first place.

There are just too many damn weeks when this column ends up being the Pimp Section, the Anti-Spyware Section, and the Short Form. You think I like that? You think I like trolling those assholes’ sites looking for something, anything to put up and finding absolutely nothing, especially on weeks like this coming off a PPV (even if it is only a TNA PPV)? No, I don’t. I want to provide my readers with interesting news and my opinions on it. But there’s no one out there who wants to take the risk to start feeding news to us, because of Vince’s unreconstructed carny attitude or Jerry Jarrett’s fear of having his house of cards fall in on him or Gabe Sapolsky not recognizing that he’s become a joke among savvy wrestling fans.

Independent sites like this one are dying from lack of nourishment, and no one in the wrestling establishment can recognize that independent sites can help them. Well, f*ck them. We’ll still be here, trying to do the best we can given what little we have. We’re not going away just yet, but when we start into our terminal death spiral, we’re gonna make one helluva cry, loud enough so that even they can hear.

THE PIMP SECTION

PK somehow links every section here to his precious dolls. Hey, better him than me.

Misha actually has PC game releases on tap this week. It’s taken a long time for this crew to recognize that PC games exist.

Chadwick discusses music that’s way out of my age range. Especially after a week and a half ago.

Hevia risks death by trying to take Trish away from Hyatte.

Stein gives out the indy results.

Urciuolo does his usual double.

Porter has the latest and greatest in anabolics.

Campbell recaps the weekend at the box office.

THE ANTI-SPYWARE SECTION

Remember, this all started because the slugs at Enigma Software dared to advertise their piece of shit SpyHunter at 411 (one of the reasons why I decided to leave, honestly). So I’m responding every single column with proper anti-spyware information. And guess what? People are actually taking this to heart. They’re asking me for help if they’re infested, or they’re writing me telling me that their browsing experience is less annoying thanks to the stuff I’ve been putting up here three times a week for a few months now.

(And as I understand it, there are some unscrupulous browser toolbar people trying to advertise here at the Pulse. Well, don’t click on that ad, whatever you do. We’ll still get the money from the impressions, and your system will stay safe.)

Big, big Kudos to the guys at the Spyware Warrior Forum for pointing out to everyone the extent of criminal activity participated in by Enigma Software, makers of the bane of advertising on that site, SpyHunter. Slimeballs extraordinare, aren’t they? And in case you need more info about what flaming bags of shit they are, try here. Suzi’s Blog has a great list of other flaming bags of shit that promote anti-spyware programs that are spyware themselves. Consult it if you have questions.

(On a side note, those SpyHunter ads started over at Reality News Online, and BFM, a contributor there, spotted them. He told the webmaster, gave him those links that I cited above, the webmaster read them, the blood drained out of his face, and he contacted his ad provider. No more ads for Enigma products on RNO, thank you. So guess what? If you provide the info, there are sites who will listen.)

One of the leading vectors for spyware is so-called free programs that contain this shit in order to “pay the bills”. No one deserves that kind of treatment. If you’ve got a question about whether or not a certain program contains spyware, head over here. It’s a nice alphabetized list of programs that do contain spyware and should be avoided at all costs.

Here’s a list of the programs you really need to help you get rid of menaces, and, more importantly, prevent them from occurring in the first place:

Spybot and AdAware. The ONLY two spyware removal tools to trust. Do NOT buy any spyware removal tools, because none of them work better than these two, and all of them except these two are suspect.

SpywareBlaster. Will nuke thousands of different potentially malicious ActiveX controls, and now has the ability to prevent a number of non-ActiveX methods of installing spyware for people who use Mozilla/Firefox.

SpywareGuard. From Javacool, like SpywareBlaster. It’s a real-time scanner for spyware. A decent first line of defense.

IE-SpyAd. Throws numerous ad-related URLs into IE’s Restricted Zone, where they won’t display or affect your system. Bookmark this one, since it’s the only one that doesn’t have an in-program update.

A few people have recommended also installing the Sun Java Virtual Machine, since it’s Windows’ buggy, half-assed implementation of the JVM that allows a lot of spyware to install (less so within the past month and a half than before). I STRONGLY recommend that you visit here and update your version of Java.

So many people have asked about a free anti-virus program that I’m also going to recommend AVG. Totally free, and works really, really well, as well as commercial anti-virus programs. Frequent database updates, good heuristic detection, everything you want in an anti-virus package.

Another program that I’d like to add here is a little tough to work with for noobs if i
t goes buggy (you need to know a little something about your Networking settings in order to debug if something should go wrong). Protowall is a supplement to your firewall or NAT system. It hooks directly into XP’s networking system to block any and all traffic that comes from URLs on a list maintained by the program (all protocols, not just TCP/UDP). It’s mainly designed for anti-P2P purposes (which will appeal to a great many of my readers), but it contains lists to block spyware and ads. Its blocklist can easily be updated using its supplementary program, Blocklist Manager. I have Protowall running and a Blocklist Manager icon on my desktop, and I use Blocklist Manager to update the blocklist every couple of days. You will have problems getting to some sites unless you shut down Protowall temporarily, like ESPN or Sports Illustrated, but it does have a tray icon you can right-click and shut down in a few seconds. It’s the third layer of anti-ad material for me, with IE-SpyAd and AdSubtract running alongside it. Warning, though: it only works with XP. I’d recommend its predecessor, Peer Guardian, for other MS OSes, but it isn’t being developed anymore, and there were still bugs in it when development stopped. You can get Protowall and the Blocklist Manager (which will also work with Peer Guardian) at Bluetack’s site.

Of course, only download them from the links provided above. And only download those programs; don’t fall for the ads that are shown at various websites.

With AdAware and Spybot, check for updates using their internal update function at least once a week. Run them at least once a week or whenever you think you might have problems. Remember, the new version of Spybot has browser protection capabilities, so have that run at startup and leave it running. Check for updates to SpywareBlaster once a week. It only needs to be run once initially in order to establish protection. Then, after it downloads updates, just click on the line that says “Enable Protection For All Unprotected Items” and kill it. It doesn’t need to be active. For IE-SpyAd, bookmark the site and check for updates twice a week, since it has no kind of internal updater. Since all it does is add Registry entries, it doesn’t eat up anything. Run the Blocklist Manager every couple of days to make sure that you keep up on the latest banned URLs.

If you’re having trouble with spyware or a browser hijacker, or think that you do, head over to the SpywareInfo Forums, where the pros there can help you diagnose and get rid of stuff. I was promoted to Full Helper status there and ended up joining ASAP, the Alliance of Security Analysis Professionals. Look for their symbol.

The Ravin’ Cajun asks me to recommend a good client-side spam filter for MS mail programs running under Windows. Now, this is something I don’t have experience with because my ISPs have always had good spam filtering, plus, I use Thunderbird, which handles the remainder quite nicely, thank you. Some readers wrote in and recommended SpamBayes, which is totally free and supposedly works very well, so I’ll add it on to the anti-annoyance list that we’re building up here.

Now that 1.0 has been released, I feel good in recommending Firefox as an alternative to IE. Go grab a copy and see what you’re missing.

JUST ONE NEWS ITEM OF ANY IMPORT THAT NO ONE’S COVERED YET

According to a radio interview that he did on Monday, Ric Flair says that he’s about to re-up with WWE for three years. That’ll make him…oh, fifty-seven or so at the end of the contract, give or take a year or two. The thing is, though, he can still go. He can still cut promos like no one can, and he can still do it in the ring as well when need be (witness that wonderful little old-school match he did with Lawler on last week’s Raw), unlike his fellow fiftysomethings Page and Savage. With the security of a contract, if he feels that he can’t do it in the ring anymore, I believe that he’ll gracefully transition into the manager/mouthpiece role. That might not happen soon, though, because he has the Power of Trip to fall back on.

All I know is, if Ric Flair stays on our screens for three more years, that’s a good thing, no matter what capacity it’s in. So more power to him and good for him.

And let’s deal now with the show Flair’s on…

THE SHORT FORM

Match Results:

Nick Dinsmore over Maven (DQ, Count Of Five Exceeded): Okay, the Maven heel turn was bought. But I’m still going to be very, very skeptical on whether or not they can give him an actual personality to go along with it. I’ll reserve judgment on this for now.

Simon Dean over Novocaine Helms (Pinfall, rollup): Gee, one guy who used to dress like a superhero over one guy who currently does. Exactly in what manner should I care about this? None, cries everyone. And I shall obey.

Shelton Benjamin over Christian, Intercontinental Title Match (Pinfall, t-bone suplex): Remember what I was talking about above? The part about them giving us total crap? Dressing Christian up like a superhero and turning the IC strap contest into a comedy match is a great example of it. Fortunately, Christian’s too much of a pro to disappoint, even in a humiliating position (and knowing him, it was probably his idea to begin with). It still was a little disconcerting to watch, though.

Chris Benoit and Chris Jericho over Trip and DAVE (DQ, Greco-Roman chair shot): Guess doing a DQ was just about the best way to end this thing given the “We Want Flair” chants from everywhere in the damn building. Should have been a lot better than it was.

Lita over Trish Stratus, Women’s Title Match (Pinfall, moonsault, New Women’s Champion): I did just about the only thing I could do under these dire circumstances, namely the women in the main event and specifically Lita in a main event: I fell asleep. Hey, I do have to wake up early, you know.

Angle Developments:

Down In Limbo: Gee, what a surprise that Christy Hemme has incredible flexibility. Now you know how she “won” the Diva Search, folks. But let’s turn our attention to Mohammed Hassan. I’ve been avoiding talking about him until I could tell what approach “creative” was going to take to him. I’ve had a lot of mail stating that, on the basis of his early promos, he should have been booked as a face. I have to agree with that. If they wanted to send a message of tolerance and understanding to everyone, that would have been the way to go. However, they always go for the knee-jerk bullshit, and believed that since US troops were over there fighting towelheads, that a face Arab-American would have been a hard sell. Well, no one ever lost money overestimating the intelligence of the wrestling audience, but this approach is just plain wrong. It isn’t as bad as taking advantage of the Gulf War, but it’s almost equally as offensive. Let’s hope that his appearance next week shows that he can do a convincing heel act without reverting to overt racism.

And that’s it for today’s opus. Honestly, I’ll try to have something tomorrow. There should be some interesting things out there. If I can get Turning Point downloaded and watched, maybe I’ll comment on that. A writer is only as good as the material he has to work with, after all.