GRUTMAN: Welcome to an all new Grutman vs. Jennette! Congratulations on your victory last week rookie.
JENNETTE: Wow, I’ve been upgraded from NOT Daniels to Jennette, I feel so blessed!
GRUTMAN: You feel blessed because you have your name in the column? Buddy, Daniels was kissing my ass hardcore last week. You slip up even once and you’re back to being Smackdown’s not Keith.
JENNETTE: Crap.
GRUTMAN: Which reminds me, I’ve started up a new live journal thingy! Everyone go to My Live Journaland read about the details of my incredibly exciting life!
GRUTMAN: For instance, did you know I have a dog Jennette?
JENNETTE: Actually Josh, I did not know that.
GRUTMAN: I know, it’s f*cking fascinating. Anyway, since Jennette kicked my ass last week he gets to pick the topic.
JENNETTE: Hmmm…. let me think here…. how about the Holly/Dupree incident?
GRUTMAN: What are the two sides? For or against the beating of Rene by Holly?
JENNETTE: The two sides are, you are either in support of what Holly did (stiffing Dupree for screwing him over on a rental car ticket) or you are against it.
GRUTMAN: I’m against it. But in all fairness, I don’t care. So that means you’re for it. What a position that must be. So, go ahead. Defend Holly beating the hell out of a kind of rookie because he felt entitled to.
JENNETTE: The thing is with this whole incident, I can’t really defend it, but I understand why it happened and why things like it will continue to happen in the wrestling business.
GRUTMAN: Me too! Absolutely. Some people just don’t like seeing new people make money. I mean, that’s Holly’s spot! He earned it with his years of excellent matches and incredible interviews!
JENNETTE: Ok hold it right there. First off all, this had nothing to do with defending anyone’s spot. Holly was pissed off because Dupree was driving Holly’s rental car and got a ticket in it. Holly then had to fly to another city to get the ticket taken care of.
GRUTMAN: Oh! I didn’t know this much about the story.
JENNETTE: Granted, that isn’t exactly reason enough for Holly to take liberties with Dupree in front of a live audience.
GRUTMAN: No, of course it is! I was working at a 7-11 for a few months, and my friend and co-worker, Steve, he cock blocked me at a bar. So the next day at work I beat the hell out of him in front of some guy who wanted a Cherry Slurpee.
JENNETTE: Did you get a face pop for it?
GRUTMAN: Sadly enough, no. He just left. See, by dragging my personal baggage into work with me, I both lost a customer and injured an employee! Everyone won!
JENNETTE: Don’t act like this was bad for business. First of all, it took place at a house show and probably 3/4s of the people there didn’t even realize Holly was taking liberties with Dupree.
GRUTMAN: My mistake. The fact that no one knew Holly was betraying a trust that is essential in wrestling makes it all right. Man Jennette, how do you do it? You’re should be working for NASA. Or on a debate team! You’re in college, right?
JENNETTE: You want to talk about trust? Wrestling locker rooms are huge on trust, huge on respect. And yes, I am in college.
GRUTMAN: Join the debate team!
JENNETTE: Already on it.
GRUTMAN: And you’re showing it! And yes, wrestling locker rooms are full of trust and respect and steroids. But sometimes you have a jerk who routinely breaks that trust, shits on the respect and steals other people’s steroids.
JENNETTE: We don’t know the full details
GRUTMAN: I’m sure Dupree hurt Holly in a way that Holly could not let pass.
JENNETTE: Dupree might not have apologized, he might not have paid for Holly’s ticket to wherever he had to go to get the ticket taken care of.
GRUTMAN: GENIUS!
JENNETTE: Thank you.
GRUTMAN: Hey, I’ll give Holly credit. He learned his lesson. Dupree is no Brock Lesnar. At least he learned if you’re going to kill a rookie, kill one smaller than you.
JENNETTE: Look he didn’t kill the kid. He didn’t cause the kid any serious harm.
GRUTMAN: Yeah! Just a busted face! Who needs a face to be a tv personality anyway?
JENNETTE: He just went about it the normal way wrestling veterans do to wrestling rookies, and that’s going extra hard on him in the ring.
GRUTMAN: Yeah. That’s something all of the greats do. The Rock, Mick Foley, Bret Hart… wait a second. No, I think they’ve actively spoken out against this practice. Let me check…
JENNETTE: What I want to know is why is it when Bob Holly does something like this everyone is up in arms over it? Dupree disrespected him by taking his rental car and getting a ticket while driving it. Holly at least took his frustrations out on him in the ring, someplace where it wouldn’t escalate anymore than what it did.
GRUTMAN: Yeah! Had it happened at the hotel, Holly might’ve killed him! The man is unstable.
JENNETTE: Say they had a pull-apart brawl backstage, then you’re talking about this being an even bigger story then it is now. Wrestlers just don’t forget things.
GRUTMAN: And that’s fine. But this is professional wrestling. Dupree is a rookie, and Holly should be assuming a mentoring role for the younger wrestlers. Whatever the problems outside the ring, inside it should be completely professional.
JENNETTE: You would be surprised how many wrestlers do actually take liberties with the younger wrestlers. The APA were notorious for stiffing the shit out of various local talent. Saturn had a run in with a particularly uncooperative opponent. These things happen. Are they 100% justified? No. Are they a part of the wrestling world? Very much so.
GRUTMAN: Should they be? These men are not fighters anymore. They are entertainers. They wrestle without health insurance.
JENNETTE: These sort of incidents aren’t isolated to wrestling locker rooms. Football locker rooms have a similar “code” if it makes sense. You simply don’t screw people others in the business, ESPECIALLY if you’re a young rookie and they are a respected veteran. Football also doesn’t have a huge internet community that is able to report every little detail that goes on in the clubhouse. Anything that happens in a wrestling locker room we know about within hours. Football keeps their business in house.
GRUTMAN: Oh yeah! Great point. Hey, can you bring up Internet Explorer right now?
JENNETTE: Sure can, why?
GRUTMAN: Great. There’s a little site you might have heard of. www.google.com. Go to it.
JENNETTE: All right…. lets see where this is going….
GRUTMAN: Now type into the search box: WWE rumors. No “”.
GRUTMAN: How many results?
JENNETTE: 78,600
GRUTMAN: WOW! You got 200 more than me for some reason. Still, that’s A LOT!
GRUTMAN: Now type into the search box NFL rumors.
JENNETTE: 230,000, but this is a poor example.
GRUTMAN: WOW! That’s 3 times as many! So go on about the Internet community caring so much more about wrestling.
JENNETTE: NFL rumors have to do with personnel decisions, strategies, and such. Rumors about wrestling get into the nitty gritty of what’s going backstage. You will RARELY read a report about how the players of a football team hate a particular player and wish he would quit hogging the spotlight.
GRUTMAN: Now Mr. Debate Team, why would one community care so much about personnel decisions and strategies and one cares about petty bullshit?
JENNETTE: Because that is all that gets reported from the internet wrestling community! The only thing we ever read about on wrestling websites are how bad the ratings are, how low the morale is backstage, how poorly the writing teams are right now.
GRUTMAN: I JUST FIGURED IT OUT!
JENNETTE: That you’re losing? I knew that 3 paragraphs ago….
GRUTMAN: No! See, you’re so ugly because your parents are so ugly! This had been bothering me for a while. I just didn’t get it, but the whole human genetics thing suddenly occurred to me. Anyway, the reason NFL nerds don’t care about the bullshit is because it’s a SPORT! See, people are trying to hurt one another. It’s unscripted. You can bet on it.
JENNETTE: Cute. True beauty? I think not. Evidently, you can bet on the WWE now with its new “fantasy game”
GRUTMAN: Yeah, but there’s no way to figure out who’ll win. You’re at the whim of the writer. In an unscripted sport you can try to figure out who’ll win before the game. Now back to the public beating of Rene Dupree.
JENNETTE: Can we really even call this a public beating? Dupree acted like an idiot and Holly took a couple of shots at him in the ring that went unnoticed to 80% of the paying crowd. It actually probably saved Dupree from REALLY catching as ass kicking backstage.
GRUTMAN: No.
GRUTMAN: That’s stupid.
JENNETTE: Good argument. Your stupid and I don’t like you! Editor’s note. That’s it Jennette. I’ve edited the last “your/you’re” for you. Now you have the public humiliation.
GRUTMAN: I’m sorry, but you don’t beat up someone you don’t like at work. It’s the height of being unprofessional. That’s a dumb argument, and you’re a dumb person. Which college do you go to?
JENNETTE: Does it matter?
GRUTMAN: Don’t worry, no one will come after you. You might even meet some readers.
JENNETTE: For reference sake, I go to the University of West Florida in Pensacola, Florida.
GRUTMAN: Yeah, that sounds about right. So tell me more about how the public beating at the work place which left Rene a mess helped save him from further injury?
JENNETTE: Holly could have attacked him from behind backstage, or with a weapon.
GRUTMAN: Like a scale!
JENNETTE: He’s a big shot you know….
GRUTMAN: Okay. Final argument time. Try to sum up the brilliance.
JENNETTE: Look, I’m not saying what Holly did was right. My point is that in the wrestling world, you HAVE to show respect to veterans, ESPECIALLY if you are a rookie. Dupree was a total jerk and apparently didn’t care what he did to Holly and Holly simply handled it in a way that is very common in the wrestling business.
GRUTMAN: Holly is a jerk off. We all know this. We all know he’s wrong to beat up people in the ring? Who gives a crap?
JENNETTE: Strangely, not me.
GRUTMAN: And that’s that! Send your votes to VPJG@aol.com. Jennette, I’ll check the ratings and see if you deserve another week.
GRUTMAN: Good job.
GRUTMAN: I feel deeply towards you.
JENNETTE: Same to you.
JENNETTE: Well…. not that part.
GRUTMAN: For Bart Jennette, this is Joshua Grutman sending our love to the world.
JENNETTE: Goodnight!
Editor’s note: Also, special contest this week! Come up with the most creative way of differentiating between your and you’re and have it appear in next week’s column! The boy has to learn sometime.
