Wrestling News, Opinions, Etc., 04.05.05

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First order of business: I’ve received a lot of mail over the past week or so wondering exactly what K-Dawgs are. K-Dawg is my nickname for Klonopin, which is the tranquilizer I take. It’s a chemical cousin to Valium, although Klonopin is helluva lot more powerful than it. It has the benefit of being able to knock me off my ass with a full dose and mellow me out with a half dose. Last week, my shrink said to take a half dose before I go to work, and it doesn’t impair my functions while lessening the amount of stress and paranoia that I experience. Plus it comes in generic, which is cool.

Second order of business: On Friday night, I’m leaving for Chicago since I’m on vacation next week. Thus, there will be no Short Form this weekend or columns on Tuesday and Wednesday next week. Fleabag said he might do something, but then again, he was loaded when he said it. So I don’t know what’s going to happen. All I know is that I’m getting out of this pissant town for a few days and back home, which should straighten me out a bit.

Now, on to the fallout from the High Holy Days, but not without getting those pimps in first…

THE PIMP SECTION

Lucard goes Mailbag and still entertains.

Hevia did already watch Wrestlemania. I’ll have my excuses for not doing so by this point later.

So did Anderson. Remember, said excuses later.

Price talks about the Pope and left turns.

Porter has the inside on a soccer fight between two players. The twist on this: they’re teammates.

PRELUDE

One huge advantage to Wrestlemania Weekend is the fact that encoders and uploaders get the PPV and assorted other stuff up fast. That was the case with the Hall of Fame ceremony, which, let’s admit it, I watched because I was waiting for the latest episode of Doctor Who to finish downloading. I’d rather have an electric cattle prod repeatedly striking my genitals than watch an hour dedicated to Piper and Hogan.

The most fun during ceremonies like this is trying to figure out who’s drunk or not. Orndorff was definitely in the bag. Piper was buzzed if not all the way into loaded. Out in the audience, there’s no way Cena would have chosen that level of bling on an occasion like this unless he was on something. The guys wearing sunglasses indoors like Edge were either trying to hide bloodshot eyes or trying to be “too cool for the room”, either of which is a negative statement. Personally, if all those pill bottles didn’t say “Don’t consume alcohol with this medication”, I’d be tempted to see if I could consume a full bottle of Jack in one hour while watching this crap.

A lot of the IWC will probably make something of Shane McMahon sitting next to Wife-Beater during the ceremony. They’re going to say that there’s a full reconciliation going on and that Wife-Beater’s going to be a regular on the shows again. Bullshit. Wife-Beater’s actions during his last full year with WWE have not been forgotten by Vince. Wife-Beater screwed them over a number of times, and since they had so much invested in him (both monetarily and in audience goodwill), that will be a major factor over whether or not he’s let back in. And I don’t see that. Good for us.

(Note: the following paragraph was written on Sunday morning.)

They’ll probably also make a federal case for Cena getting a front-row seat while High-Quality Speaker Boy was in the third row, thus pointing out who was going to win. Well, shit, I was already on record saying that Cena will win the match in the Round Table, so it didn’t matter to me what the seating arrangements were. Of course, you could say the same about Trip being in the front row while Batista was also in the third row. Uh, hello, morons of the IWC, Trip was sitting with his wife, mother-in-law, brother-in-law, and sister-in-law, who had to be in the front row considering that they’re McMahons (by the way, Marissa looked good in that quasi-peasant dress). Ditto Angle and Michaels. So you shouldn’t have read anything into this.

All that being said, Piper was on his game, although incoherent at times. Decaying skills and the need for a spotlight notwithstanding, he’s one of the greatest promo guys in the history of the business, and somehow he was able to pull off outrageousness and humility simultaneously. That’s effective work. Stallone kept it short, thank God. As for Hogan coming out in a tux and schmatte, it just didn’t work. It didn’t work for Ventura last year, and it still didn’t work. Jesus, everyone knows that you’re bald, Terry. Just admit it to yourself. He also kept it short, too, but that was because of the goddamn audience giving him a five-minute ovation and kept crying “One more match” during his attempts at a speech. I’ve made a case before for mandatory castration of marks, and this audience bolstered that conviction. Geez.

All in all, it wasn’t too painful, but, shit, I’d taken my medication before watching this, so there must have been some chemically-induced tolerance for this level of bullshit.

THE MAIN EVENT

I’ll admit the fact that I downloaded it. In fact, I had to start downloading it on Monday afternoon for the same reason I didn’t order it: it was past my bedtime. Working day shift sometimes sucks. The reason I had to wait until Monday afternoon to start downloading it (and thus not being able to get it into this column) is that PWTorrents went down (great timing, guys) and my Usenet feed was incomplete at the time I checked. Surprisingly, The Pirate Bay had a torrent for it, so I did a simultaneous download just in case Usenet decided to go tits up on this as per what usually happens. So I did what anyone in my position would do due to lack of this to watch: I took a nap. So therefore no Wrestlemania comments. Maybe tomorrow.

OH, WHAT A SURPRISE

WWE finally announced its deal with NBC Universal for Raw to return to the USA Network in October. The deal includes things like Raw broadcast on Telemundo in Spanish, two 90-minute Raw specials per year on NBC in the Saturday night slot, and the fact that NBC Universal will be selling ad time on the shows, so WWE loses the ad revenue that was a little bit of a boost to their bottom line.

I don’t even know why I’m bothering to talk about this. It’s been a fait accompli for so long that the announcement is sort of a damp squib. Of course, there are still questions to be asked:

Where’s Smackdown going?: Unknown at this point, because it’s sure as hell that Viacom won’t keep it around. I don’t think USA will burn another two hours of WWE programming. WWE was lucky to get Raw over there, frankly. If Smackdown does survive, at this point, I’d bet Bravo. It’s a weird fit, but it should work. At the very least, the cross-promotion will be fun. Imagine Trip on Queer Eye For the Straight Guy.

Does the ad revenue loss mean anything?: You bet it does. Thanks to Spike’s premature announcement that they were getting rid of WWE programming, WWE became the beggar in this negotiation. They’d lost all of their leverage with NBC Universal when there was still perceived competition for Viacom to keep them around. Knowing Vince and Linda, they would have fought like hell to keep it, as they do with every dime they make, but this was the compromise they had to give into.

Three-year contract?: Neither side is taking chances. NBC Universal knows all about Vince’s chicanery with USA in 1999/2000 (although they didn’t own USA at the time). Vince could be betting on the business rising again back to the level where he was able to play Viacom against USA back then, when they were still riding high, in which case he could troll around again for a better deal. So both sides are hedging their bets and going for the minimum that this deal would really allow. You wanna bet that Vince originally asked for five years?

Those NBC Saturday night specials?: Hey, it’s going to be great to get Saturday Night’s Main Event back. If you weren’t around during the Eighties, you don’t know what you missed.

(By the way, Spike’s timing absolutely sucks. The time to have put on The Lance Krall Show was right after Joe Schmo 1, when Krall became a hot property. Viacom needs an enema.)

That’s all I have to say about this right now. On to the Short Form…

THE SHORT FORM

Match Results:

Shelton Benjamin over Christian and Chris Jericho, Triple Threat Intercontinental Title Match (Pinfall, Benjamin pins Jericho, top-rope bulldog): You know, if they’re going to book these damn Triple Threats to the same f*cking formula every single time, why bother having them in the first place? It’s the same match with different people substituted and the spots geared toward their specialties. Triple Threats have become the Art of Lazy Booking for WWE “creative”. How about a moratorium on them for the time being?

Chris Benoit over Edge (Pinfall, rollup): Fantastic example of mat wrestling, excellent use of psychology, just what we’d expect from these two. That being said, I have a bit of a complaint. Benoit was really overselling that arm. Benoit overselling anything is a shock in and of itself. But the way in it was done…it was done to make Edge look more dangerous. Did they really need to do that? Hasn’t their booking of Edge ever since the heel turn emphasized that? Why make Benoit oversell? It’s only going to backfire and make Benoit look ridiculous. However, somehow, Benoit was able to stop that by sheer force of will and all of those years of experience. They dodged a bullet here.

DAVE over Randy Orton (Pinfall, DAVEBomb): Hooray, another content-free main event. Absolutely nothing in it, and a complete anti-climax after Benoit/Edge.

Angle Developments:

Excuses, Excuses…: Well, my computer decided to go tits up a little twenty minutes prior to Raw, so I spent a little time jiggering it and pokering it and, gosh darn, I missed most of Trip’s promo. Like any of us couldn’t have scripted it ourselves. So no big loss there, just some bitching, moaning, and complaining that he actually had to sell for someone on Sunday night. Nothing we haven’t seen before, so move on.

And Speaking Of Excuses…: The reason that I kept saying that Randy Orton was better as a face than a heel was because he tended to cut dull promos as a face, but absolutely lousy promos on his own as a heel. His “UT beating me was a fluke/I want Batista” oration was an example of that. Boring as shit, with no real payoff except for a rematch we didn’t want to see.

No Excuses: Contrast both of them to Shawn Michaels. During a promo, nothing is forced, everything is natural. During Daivari’s tirade while he and Hassan were entering, Shawn just got up on the ropes like he was going to take a nap. He told everyone perfectly, “Am I as bored with this shit as you are?” Seeing how long Shawn and Trip have been buddies, why hasn’t Trip picked up more of Michaels’ nuances? And why couldn’t he convey those to Orton? Orton had an inside track on both this and Flair, and he still couldn’t learn how to cut a promo?

Death Is An Option: Wife-Beater interrupting a Simon Dean promo…I think I’d rather have an enema from a fire hydrant. God knows I’d feel cleaner after that than I did after watching this.

And it’s almost time for me to get dirty again, so I’m getting to sleep and pushing this thing off. Hopefully I can do better tomorrow.