Wrestling News, Opinions, Etc., 05.17.05

Archive

No ideas. No leadership. No agenda. And, just in the last week, we can now add to that list, no class. – The Scumbag Tom DeLay, who apparently is also a Star Trek fan.

Everyone’s into retractions these days. Newsweek’s retracting its story from a couple weeks ago on Qu’ran abuse at Gitmo. President Fox of Mexico is retracting his allegedly racist statement about African-Americans by phoning up Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton and apologizing (although he’s right; Mexicans are coming into this country to do jobs that blacks won’t do, like work in the meat industry, something I know from first-hand experience). Kylie Minogue is retracting her Australian tour because she has breast cancer (get well, Kylie). But I don’t retract stuff. I admit it straight out…

Yeah, yeah, yeah, no Short Form again this weekend. Well, let me tell you why, sisters and brothers. I had Smackdown all downloaded and everything and it was all ready to go. Then I woke up on Saturday morning at about 9AM with a cluster headache from Hell. Being the well-educated and well-supplied pill junkie that I am, I popped a Vicodin and a Soma. The next thing I knew, it was four in the afternoon and my head was still hurting a little. So, in order to wait and see if the second Vike would take effect, I decided to watch the final episode of Enterprise. Know what? Somehow, my headache didn’t seem to go away. I wonder why?

As wrestling fans, we have seen a lot of things insulting to our intelligence and just plain, well, suckish over the years. We’ve had the Black Scorpion, the Summer of Suck, Katie Vick, and other things that R. D. Reynolds has made an actual monetary living describing. But I’ve never seen such disregard for any measure of quality and such total contempt for an audience as with These Are The Voyages. I’m in the meat industry, so I definitely know something about disregard for quality and contempt for an audience/customer(/inspector, but that’s to be assumed; Stuart Alexander had so much disregard for quality and contempt for an inspector that he’s now on Death Row at San Quentin). You would have thought by now that Kevin Nash had discarded the Ego Dildo ™ and it would never be used again, but apparently Berman and Braga found one of his spares and not only used it on national television (well, national for those people who get UPN, of which I’m not one*), but then decided to show their audience the shit stains that came from using it. My God…that was just…an experience I don’t want to repeat. Over the last four months, I’ve had a complete panic attack, two near ones, two nasty drug interactions (including last Wednesday, which explains the absence of said; I asked my shrink about that yesterday, and, yes, there are some contraindications with Vicodin and Trileptal), a near-ulcer, and the threat of my job being taken from me being hung over my head. Yet somehow all of those faded into a pleasant memory compared to those forty-three minutes of intense agony described by Berman and Braga as a “valentine to the fans” and by one of the victims, Jolene Blalock, as “f*cking appalling”. It was like hearing bagpipes being played by someone using a full colostomy bag as the bladder. It was like a Tabasco enema with a nitric acid flush afterward. It was like having your dick chewed off by flesh-eating bacteria. Hell, it was worse; it was like being an on-line meat inspector.

* – Memo To Dan Glickman: Now here’s a reason why some people pirate TV programs: because they can’t get them any other way. I don’t have UPN or a syndicated station on my cable that carried Enterprise, so I downloaded it. Nor am I British or Canadian, but my standing as a Doctor Who fan since 1979 requires that I find some other way to watch one of my favorite shows. Just because you’re a former Secretary of Agriculture doesn’t cut you any slack; in fact, it increases the pressure. It was under your watch that you decided to give the meat industry the biggest blowjob it’s ever been given and implement HACCP as law, turning meat inspectors into paper checkers and jeopardizing the quality of the meat sold in this country beyond repair. In other words, f*ck you. Trying to take down TV torrent sites will end up being like your efforts to do the same to movie sites, i.e. a complete laugher. You may consider it only a minor victory that I haven’t downloaded a copy of Revenge of the Sith yet. But you have to realize by now that if you cut one head off, ten more will appear. Hail Hydra!

So I did what any other intelligent science fiction fan would do: put on my laundry and watch Doctor Who. As for the laundry part, I was still so shaken by what I had seen on Enterprise that I forgot to put bleach in with my whites (necessary for how disgustingly grungy they get at work; my socks are so yech that I’m going to literally have to dump all of them before I move and buy out Wal-Mart to restock). But the Doctor and Rose didn’t even help get the bad taste out of my mouth, or my ass for that matter. And why is that? Because Paul Fucking Cornell wrote the script. I’ve never met the asshole, but I’ve known about Cornell from people who have known him for over a decade. He’s the Fanboy Who Made Good. Imagine some guy on a whiteboard who’s into fantasy booking and does some of the worst booking you’ve ever seen (an unrestrained Vince Russo without any crack for an excuse). Now imagine that WWE hires this guy and makes him Steph’s chief booking assistant. That’s what Paul Cornell writing actual televised Doctor Who is like. The books I can ignore; shit, they’re not canon. But this? Absof*ckinglutely not can I excuse this. It was exactly what I thought it’d be like when I found out he was doing the script: an “aren’t I clever?” jackoff that disrespected everything. Thanks, Paul. And I still remember exactly who you slept with to get your inside info and the ear of the publishers, although how you attracted him with those teeth is beyond me.

All of this really didn’t put me in the mood to watch any wrestling this weekend. So off the HD went SD and Impact. Sorry, folks, but even I have my limit of tolerance.

Oh, geez, five K bytes of raw text and a purloined quote from the Minister of Unethical Behavior just to get that shit off of my chest.

“And what about your life, Eric?”, you ask. “We can’t live until we find out what’s f*cking your life up.” Well, I saw the shrink yesterday. Up goes the anti-psychotic again, and since I appear to be becoming habituated to the K-Dawgs, I’m switching over to Xanax instead for a while. Just gotta survive the next few weeks, then everything should be fine. Of course, that’s if renovating my computer doesn’t drive me batshit first. I’m doing the final renovations on a gut rehab I started about eight months ago. New mobo, processor, and RAM. Or so I thought. I got those about two weeks ago (yes, there is a shitty little computer store here in this dump of a town, but they had to special-order it since, like, the parts I were getting were too new for them). Problem Number One then cropped up: no AGP slot. PCI Express only. So I got online and ordered the PCI Express version of the video card that I have in here. US$520. The one I got seven months ago for US$400 is going up on Ebay, thank you, in order to get a little cash back out of this mess. So I got that yesterday (in fact, FedEx woke me up). Disassembly in progress, and then…the mobo has the new 24-pin ATX power plug instead of the older 20-pin, like my power supply has. Reassemble the computer again, then back online. Fortunately, there are adapters for that sort of thing, which is good because, frankly, I didn’t want to spend another US$80 on a power supply. The adapters were four bucks a pop, so I ordered two (since I refuse to buy something where the shipping costs more than the goddamn part; therefore order another). I should get those either Friday or Saturday. So, one of these days, this computer’s going to be renovated. Of course, there’s one more little surprise that can crop up, and that’s if Windows XP 64-Bit decides to bork on me during installation (or if it won’t do an upgrade on my current version of XP). God knows with my luck, that’ll happen.

Enough of me, enough of SF, on to the Pimps…

THE PIMP SECTION

Lucard‘s column: where Ouija boards are debunked.

Misha discusses what’s getting released on the cusp of E3. In other words, jack shit.

Hatton and his pals get nasty about Raw. But not as nasty as I normally get.

Hevia joins me in bitching and moaning about lack of material to work with.\

Maillaro suffers from lack of Marvel news as well.

Stevens, however, does have DC news.

Zarur is doing a good job on Heat recaps. Read him.

Ditto with Leeman‘s Epilepsy reports.

Aulbrook sliced three fingers at work and can’t type his columns. Boy, can I relate to that one.

Cameron gets more of that useless baseball stuff in print.

Nguyen dissects the Glazer takeover of ManU. ManU deserves it.

DAMMIT, NO SUBSTANTIVE NEWS AGAIN

So I’ll try some minis, if Hevia will forgive me for Gimmick Theft…

From Big Johnson over at 1bullshit Junior:

Variety reported today that WWE Films has acquired John Heffernan’s script “A Chance for Both Barrels”, and an action film about a mercenary’s quest to bring a killer to justice. The film will be used as a starring vehicle for a WWE star to be announced.

I sense High-Quality Speaker Boy or Angle for some reason. Cena’s getting his turn, so they seem to be the obvious candidates.

Again, from Big Johnson:

Lance Storm announced on his official website StormWrestling.com that he has given notice to World Wrestling Entertainment and will be leaving the company in July when his current deal expires…Storm, who had been working as a trainer for Ohio Valley Wrestling in recent months but was still under a wrestler contract, noted that he made the decision to pull himself off the road completely and spend more time with his family. Storm noted he would be working the ECW One Night Stand PPV on 6/12, which looks to be his final WWE commitment. He then intends to open a wrestling school in his hometown of Calgary, Alberta Canada.

Shouldn’t that be Calgary…Alberta, Canada? Well, all I have to say is this: Lance is doing stuff for the right reasons. His family comes first, he wants to train the next generation of guys (presumably Dungeon-style), and he’s willing to go out on a high note, giving his all in the ring for one final shot in tribute to the company that first brought him to stardom (and with Justin Asshole already signed, he’s probably going to do it in an Impact Players reunion). Mistah Evers is a class act all the way, and I think everyone involved in the business and the IWC wishes him well. He’s just that kind of guy.

Again, Big Johnson:

There was a lot of stress for Bob Ryder last night as the task to track down Jeff Hardy fell upon him. A number of people, none of whom were surprised by Hardy’s actions, wondered if he was going to get dropped for this latest antic but since there’s an offer on the table for Matt Hardy to sign once he’s legally able to (July 11th), I don’t see that as likely since they can put together the Hardy Boyz reunion as a big deal for PPV.

Gee, Mikey, haven’t I been saying that Hardy’s going to TNA to do the Hardy Boys Reunion angle since before Hardy got dropped by WWE, when he started being petulant about Lita’s affair with Edge? Someone at TNA is reading me. As for Ryder, glad he gets stuck with the shit jobs. Just shows where he’s at in the TNA food chain. And for those of you still defending Jeff Hardy in e-mails to me, I want apologies, like, right now.

More Big Johnson, for those of you who can’t get enough of him (and thank you to Hyatte for not discussing this shit in his Monday column, thus giving me material):

(Jeff) Hardy is known as something of a space cadet when it comes to arriving on time, although he had been turning over a new leaf in that regard in recent months. Hardy did arrive after the PPV, which I’m hoping means he won’t be late for TV on Tuesday.

Any wonder why WWE wanted him to take a f*cking drug test as a condition of bringing him back? Yes, he’s a space cadet, but it’s artificially induced.

I hate quoting Big Johnson all the goddamn time, but here he is, yet again…

The reason for the nonsensical appearance by Phi-Delta Slam during Diamond Dallas Page and Ron Killings vs. The Outlaw and Monty Brown last night was Page requested interference to set up the finish, so he wasn’t doing a clean job.

Anyone who knows anything about Page isn’t surprised about this one. He’s been doing his “big swinging dick” routine ever since he got some stroke in WCW, and Jarrett’s willing to play on those terms in order to have Page in there due to his status as fan favorite. The real sad part about this is that Page probably is hung like a moose, and therefore the swinging dick really is big. It would explain Kimberly’s attraction to him.

Guess who?:

A few readers sent word that a pre-taped Hard Justice rundown that ran on Direct TV was hosted by Jeremy Borash and Chris Candido. That tape really should have been pulled if TNA was able to do that, and I’m guessing it was an oversight as TNA has tried very hard to treat Candido with dignity after his death.

Bullshit they have. If they had, they would have blurred the signs, like I said. And Fleabag mentioned to me that the “Get Well, Candido” sign made yet another appearance during the pretaped Shocker promo during Hard Justice. Guess that someone of importance in the TNA post-production department doesn’t read me. Shit, I should be mandatory to read, not optional.

Dammit, I loathe doing all those quotes from him, but he does have the news to comment on:

American Dragon Bryan Danielson is gone from Ring of Honor, as he is taking time off to evaluate his career options and may end up leaving professional wrestling. Danielson, a superb in-ring performer, is said to
have become increasingly frustrated with the business and is going to travel in Europe for the summer. It’s possible he may end up working some shows from Brian Dixon’s All Star Wrestling, which runs small shows in the UK, but beyond that he has no real intentions of working. By all accounts, he’s burned out on the business right now as he hasn’t worked for New Japan for some time, there isn’t any real WWE interest and you can only get so far working independent dates, even as high profile a performer as he is on that level.

Of course WWE has no room for him. Their midcard is chock-full of guys on Smackdown, which is where he’d go right now. The only possibilities for him are feuds against London or Chavito, and they’re occupied with each other right now. But this is a big blow to ROH, since Danielson was one of their bigger attractions. After his burnout goes away, TNA might be looking for him on a non-exclusive so he can go back to work with ROH for occasional appearances. They have a bunch of guys in the X Division that Danielson could work with and produce superb matches. So expect that within the next few months.

That’s it, because Da Meltz has complete shit this week in the online edition. So on to Raw…

THE SHORT FORM

Match Results:

Muhammad Hassan and Khosrow Daivari over Shelton Benjamin and Chris Jericho (Pinfall, Hassan pins Jericho, face-first plant): Fast-paced and well-booked. That’s normally reserved for Smackdown. Well-done, guys, with the right ending, without the stupid “everyone hits his finisher” bullshit that’s normally reserved for this type of match. Nice little opener.

Ric Flair over Christian (Pinfall, rollup): Again, another well-booked match. Christian was dominant, so he doesn’t lose any heat, and Flair’s victory keeps this angle going until a PPV matchup between the two.. Plus Flair plays face again. Nice little match between these two. They seem to work well together. And Christian doing the Flair Flop…terrific. Again, bravo to “creative”. They seem to be on target for a change.

Chris Benoit versus Yoshihiro Tajiri, ECW-Style Match (ND, Bisch-ference): Well, it was fun while it lasted. Of course, I absolutely love Our Lord and Savior and Tajiri, so I may be a little biased.

Christy Hemme over Candice Michelle, Lingerie Pillow Fight: Only including this because I’m a completist.

Novocaine Helms and His Pet Fat Fuck over Simon Dean and Maven (Pinfall, Rosey pins Maven, double-team face-first slam): Sorry, I was nodding out during the Lingerie Pillow Fight and this one. Xanax sure works pretty well. However, My Beautiful and Beloved can definitely wear the mask when she visits me next time. I like it a little kinky.

Edge over Kane, Gold Rush Tournament Finals (Pinfall, Greco-Roman briefcase shot): Well, this one was telegraphed from the start of the tournament, really. I did enjoy Kane (mostly) playing into the psychology of the knee shots, though. That was really unexpected given Kane’s apparent reluctance to go with psychological matches. I’ve got more about the Lita turn in Angle Developments, but I do have to say this: it was unnecessary considering the fact that the result of the match was a given. However, after Edge loses next week, at least he has a feud to occupy him.

Angle Developments:

A Drafty June: So, one pick per week in June per show, ending with two picks the last week of the month. Good format, actually. Produces a lot of suspense, and may up the ratings a little during what’s a pretty dead month for TV. This will be interesting. Wonder if the draft picks go immediately to the new show, or have to wait until the draft is finished before making their debuts?

To Everything, Turn, Turn, Turn: Along with a lot of the IWC, I’m pretty apprehensive about Lita’s turn. Putting her together with the guy she’s f*cking backstage…well, it really didn’t work in reverse for the Runnelles when they divorced. It absolutely killed Goldust and Marlena, who never got better reactions when they were together rather than separate entities. This relationship between Edge and Lita sounds doomed from the start (especially if Edge makes up with the spouse). If Lita doesn’t recover from surgery soon…wait a second, this essentially leaves two heels as the only two performers in the women’s division (unless they bring Victoria back from exile or try to turn Stratus, which will definitely kill her heat). So this turn essentially sacrifices the women’s division in favor of Lita. Talk about favoritism.

And that’ll be it for today. Gotta get to work and all that. Hopefully, I’ll do something tomorrow. Hopefully, I’ll have time to do the Short Form this weekend, even if I’m concentrating on getting the computer reassembled (I can do a motherboard swap in about a half hour, so that should be no real problem). Until whenever I show up next time, enjoy.