INTRODUCTION:
Remember a month ago when I said I was going to be doing this every other week? Well, I lied. And I’m about to lie again – I’m going to be doing this every week from now on. Andy’s moved back to Fridays and I’m here on Saturdays. Although it could be Sundays. What day is it anyway? Doesn’t bother me, I’ve got Monday and Tuesday off work and my clock is hiding in my underwear drawer, so I’ve kinda lost track of time. True story. I wish I was at work, actually. That’s where she is, ya see. Oh, shut up. OKAY.
I did have something proper written in the introduction, you know. Just turns out that I lost it. Ah, f*ck it. E-mail me, that way I’ll have some stuff to plug the gap with. On with your news…
ANTI-NEWS:
“Now kids, Daddy only drank so the Statue of Liberty would take her clothes off.”
The Draft Lottery details have finally been announced and, in true WWE fashion, they are going for too much of a good thing by extending the exciting format of a one-night show into a month long trading session throughout June. Every Raw and Smackdown show for the first three weeks will feature one pick, with the fourth week having two picks per show. If you’ve been paying the slightest bit of attention, you will also know that absolutely everybody is eligible for the draft, including reigning champions, announcers, General Managers, and those on the injured list. If they want to take this further then we could wind up with a Raw cameraman being swapped for a member of the Smackdown ring crew. Oh, and according to WWE.com, The Rock and Steve Austin are still members of the Raw roster. Just throwing that out there… no, biggie…
Anyway, I would like to think that the writers have something up their sleeves for doing this draft nonsense for an entire month. Sadly, as with most other things they do nowadays, it is probably just down to laziness. Hey, there’s a cat on my windowsill. Awesome. Right, uh, yeah… it would be quite easy to trade someone over on the first night and then trade them back on the final night, which would be a follow-up of sorts to Triple H’s one Smackdown match on last year’s draft show (which was, oddly enough, on Raw). C’mon, they do still have a Raw PPV for June 26th to promote (Vengeance). Why not just bite the bullet and give us Christian/Cena or Angle/Michaels II? It’s not as though there will be a whole host of other reasons for people to buy that show instead of/as well as ECW One Night Stand.
Man, I’m so bored of talking about this damn Draft Lottery already. And now I’ve gotta do it every freaking week until July!! Oh, woe is me, my life is over, take me out back and put a bullet through my brains, oh its just not worth the effort of breathing in and out anymore, that’s the man’s wife, for god’s sake you harlot, you’ll pay for this by god, you’ll pay for this, you go to hell and you die, guvmentmool pickin up bidness, stuffed crust, pepperoni feast, bottle of Beck’s and three blind mice singing the theme song from Firefly, accompanied by Richard Vranch on the piano…
Take my love, take my land
Take me where I cannot stand…
I miss that show. I’ve only just watched it for the first time, mind, but I still miss it. It numbs the dullness of the Draft Lottery. Yee-haw.
And now, a word from our sponsor…
“Pupating.”
“Ha ha ha! Oh gosh that’s funny! That’s really funny! Do you write your own material? Do you? Because that is so fresh. You are the weakest link goodbye. You know, I’ve, I’ve never heard anyone make that joke before. Hmm. You’re the first. I’ve never heard anyone reference, reference that outside the program before. Because that’s what she says on the show right? Isn’t it? You are the weakest link goodbye. And, and yet you’ve taken that and used it out of context to insult me in this everyday situation. God what a clever, smart girl you must be, to come up with a joke like that all by yourself. That’s so fresh too. Any, any Titanic jokes you want to throw at me too as long as we’re hitting these phenomena at the height of their popularity. God you’re so funny!”
ECW One Night Stand continues its half-assed march into the Irony Hall of Fame by rapidly becoming the single most anticipated ECW event ever (well, except perhaps for Barely Legal ’97) despite having, well, f*ck all to actually do with ECW. Then there’s the fact that it will probably wind up out-grossing every other single-brand WWE PPV this year despite being based on the memory of a company that went bankrupt even with substantial grants from the McMahons… Oh, or the fact that Mister WCW himself, Eric Bischoff, is now slated to appear with a group of Hired Goons from the ‘flagship of WWE’, Monday Night Raw, to try and disrupt the whole thing… Oh, or the fact that Rob Van Dam is apparently the cooky little culprit behind all of this and, once again, will be injured when ECW needs him the most… And anyway, we all know that it was really Nova’s idea…
You know what, this makes my head hurt even more than the plot holes in Dr. Who. Really, what difference does it make whether or not Rose saved her dad’s life in the past? How does changing the outcome of that event in the past matter when the Doctor constantly changing the outcome of events in the future and/or present seemingly doesn’t? For that matter, they DID change events in the past when they went back to fight Welsh ghosts with Charles Dickens or whatever the dickens that episode was all about. So what’s his story? Is there meant to be one single, unbreakable timeline that everyone and everything must adhere to? If so, doesn’t that mean that as a Time Lord he would automatically know everything, or at least all of the significant events? If so, why was he so surprised to find the last Dalek when that happened? Surely he must have known? Or is he not actually merely moving through time, but also moving across it into parallel universes and suchlike? In which case, how can he possibly act like he knows what’s going to happen at any point in time? He’s just going around forcing things to adhere to his ideological single timeline and to hell with the rest of you. What a bastard. And if he’s so obsessed about not changing the past, why did he leave that kid from the Simon Pegg episode stranded in the past (present) with that weird chip in his brain that will automatically give him away every time he listens to “Fever” by Madonna? Or is he just grumpy because he is the only one that is allowed to change things due to being some sort of a glory dog? And above all else, if Rose’s mum actually met her time-travelling in the past, why is she so surprised and agitated by Rose’s actions in the present?
Uh, I have a real allergic reaction to time-travel. Thankfully, on a whole, the new Dr. Who stories are very well written and acted. It’s certainly the best time-travel show since Quantum Leap (not that there has ever been much competition in that regard). And it’s too good for American audiences as well, apparently. Ha!
But anyway, back to RVD and his little ECW show.
So far, we have absolutely no confirmed matches and only an unofficial guess as to exactly who is going to be there. All they have done on the shows prior to last week’s Raw was to put on some random, old-school, ECW adverts with Paul Heyman screaming his greasy little head off, and if you want a really troubling thought, just imagine him screaming away like that during sex. And yet, the event is gathering huge levels of support from the old ECW fanatics that still feeling the need to yell “eeezydub!” with all the style and grace of Jake Roberts on a bad acid trip and no recollection of where the toilet paper might have gotten to. It is, frankly, bloody great to see. I’ve never been a particularly big fan of ECW and, frankly, everything that happened there from about 1998 onwards bored me immensely. Still, it warms my heart to see WWE doing something for the fans…. Hahahahahahahahahahahaahahahahahahahahahahaahahahahahahahahahahaaaa….
Sorry, I mean, it warms my heart to see WWE trying to do something slightly out of the ordinary that they can then make a huge profit from. You can just picture RVD on the phone to Vince now. “Dude, ECW totally ruled… You should bring it back… Yeah, man… With, like, free biscuits at the door. Oh, man, biscuits totally rule… I want some biscuits, later dude…” However, throwing this Bischoff thing into the mix at this stage is rather odd. It is in keeping with Bischoff’s character since his time on Raw began (he’s always been against anything vaguely ‘hardcore’ in Raw matches, ever since he refused to sanction HHH/HBK at SummerSlam 2002) but it’s almost like they’re panicking and losing faith in the drawing power of the ECW brand name and the gullibility of the people drawn by it. Guys, face it, even if you let Spike Dudley and the Fat Chick Thriller headline the PPV, they’d still buy it at these inflated prices. It is possible that they have a larger story to tell here involving the MOTHERFUCKING DRAFT LOTTERY and Chris Benoit’s fierce pride in ECW leading up to him quitting Raw or something, but I doubt it. More than likely they are just leading up to Bischoff getting the shit kicked out of him on an ECW show. That’s fine and all, but at least get it out of the way early so Raw doesn’t dominate the PPV. Start the show off with Heyman in the ring, screaming himself hoarse (you’re picturing the sex now, aren’t you… you filthy pigs…), then have Bischoff and all the Raw members of the ECW alumni (minus Benoit) come out to put a stop to things… THEN have Bischoff get battered by them all… THEN have Benoit come out to finish the job… THEN have the opening credits… THEN get on with things without mentioning the rest of WWE for the rest of the night… THEN dredge up the Crippler angle and pretend Bischoff has a broken neck as a result of Benoit’s actions… THEN follow that one up on Raw for the next few months.
Oh, and even though they don’t have to mention the rest of WWE during One Night Stand, it would be quite nice if they at least remembered it. For instance – having Eddie Guerrero and Rey Mysterio on the show would be a good thing, but not if they are suddenly good friends again.
“Here’s to our wives! They may not be as hot as the women you see on TV, or as entertaining, but, um … y’know, I don’t know where I’m going with this, but thanks anyway.”
Edge and Lita have been given freedom to mount one another and exchange bodily fluids on screen nowadays, after Lita’s turn on Kane at the end of the Gold Rush Tournament. I’m still trying to figure out whether or not it was an actual heel turn. If I gave a shit then I’d probably write more about this, but then I’d turn into the Matt Hardy possessed voodoo monster that JR became at the end of Raw, harping on about this being the end of days and suchlike. Either that, or I’d be as bad as these guys. Don’t you know that you’re exploiting a ‘real life tragedy’ or whatever the f*ck Hardy started blathering on about this week? Shut the f*ck up, Matt.
Real life tragedy… C’mon, give me a break. I don’t believe in tragedies. Sometimes, some things just happen that really f*ck you up emotionally/physically/financially/mentally/socially/whatever-lly, but if you choose to act like a self-righteous prick and then subsequently let it eat you up then the hell with you. These bad things just happen. It’s in our nature to want what we can’t have and to subsequently decide to just take it anyway, especially if we perceive it as being something that belongs to a weaker person in the first place. This should be no surprise to anyone… Well, unless you happen to be in love, then all traces of sense and reason are thrown out the door and kept at bay by a dozen very disgruntled large Samoan gentlemen. So yes, I can see where Matt’s constant whining is coming from. Been in similar situations myself, as have we all. But if this is the worst thing that’s ever happened to you in your life… If this is the single best example that you can think of for having a ‘tragedy’ unfold before your very eyes… If that is the case then, well, you are one very fortunate individual indeed and you should do well to remember that silver lining rather than bathing in shit-angst.
And moving the soapbox along to face another irritating audience… All of those people out there whining about this Edge/Lita onscreen pairing being a bad idea? Um, stupid.
“Oh, but there’s only a small bit of the audience that knows about the Matt Hardy thing!!”
No, there’s a pretty f*cking sizeable audience that knows about it. Those that don’t keep even vaguely in touch with non-WWE.com wrestling websites might, somehow, not have known what happened but even if they are dumb enough to have not cottoned onto it by the “You screwed Matt” and “We want Matt” chants and signs on Raw over the past month or from people they talk to about wrestling not filling them in on it… Well, f*ck ’em for being so ignorant. They can just focus on the Lita betraying Kane aspect, which is what they are going to do on Raw anyway. Those of us that know the behind-the-scenes nonsense will be able to appreciate the full extent of this storyline, those that don’t still have something to go by. If this was a Vince Russo show then Lita would have just come out for an interview, slagged off Matt and then brought out Edge for a make-out session and that would have been that. WWE has been a bit smarter and oh f*ck I just said they were doing something smart… Um, moving swiftly on… They simply couldn’t ignore the chants and signs in the audience and continue to try and use Lita as a face, even if she was allied with an undead monster that forced her into marriage. They also saw this as their one opportunity to actually get Edge legitimately over as a main-event heel at long last. He’s been treading water ever since the Royal Rumble, now he could conceivably end up as a more hated heel than Triple H. Hell, depending on how far they want to take this it could be him that takes the belt from DAVE at SummerSlam and not Hunter or Orton. It’s all good. So who cares what we are told REALLY happened? Don’t believe the truth. It worked wonders for Hogan, Savage and Liz…
“The deep south? Isn’t that the place where the black guys are really lazy and all the white guys are just as lazy but they’re mad at the black guys for being so lazy?”
Jeff Hardy got suspended for missing a TNA PPV but not the post-show recreational drugs expo or, as they like to call it in the business, ‘party’.
Words cannot even begin to describe how sick it is of me to point and laugh at an obviously troubled individual. Therefore, I have invented a new emoticon for it. I dub it, the Nerocon. Here it is:
&-j
OH YEAH! DUFFMAN IS THRUSTING HIS HIPS IN THE DIRECTION OF THE MORON!
Oh, and you gotta go here and scroll down to the last question… It can’t just be a coincidink…
Meanwhile, in other TNA news, they fired the head booker and had Jarrett drop the title to Styles, much like they did every other time they promised to go in a new direction. Only now, they can look forward to Matt Hardy coming in with his Punisher Lite antics in a couple of months. And people actually believe this promotion could legitimately thrive and challenge WWE if only they got a better TV deal? See, its things like that which &-j was invented for…
“Lois, brothers and sisters fighting is as natural as a white man’s dialogue in a Spike Lee movie.”
John Cena sold a shitload of albums and made it to #15 on one of the three hundred and fifty-seven different music charts in the USA. We are also now defining ‘shitload’ as 43,000, so someone please inform Dictionary.com. Somewhere, Chris Jericho is weeping into his last bowl of Lucky Charms…
In all fairness to Cena though, congratulations. He went out and had a far more successful rap album than any wrestler has any right to have. From all accounts, it’s also firmly in the ‘not bad’ quality range too, which is frankly amazing. It’ll be interesting to see just how his music career develops from here, if indeed it goes anywhere.
“Kids, we just have to learn to accept this. Like one of those stories on Dateline where a family member suffers a horrible accident and becomes a burden on everybody. Sure, they pretend to be happy, but they’re dead inside, they’re dead. And that’ll be our lives.”
Smackdown is getting shafted over to Friday nights next season on UPN to make way for some Chris Rock sitcom or something. Well, why not? UPN made it perfectly clear that they don’t give a flying f*ck about the show anymore. Hell, so did WWE. Now UPN will point out the ratings decrease when it comes time to renew the contract, Smackdown will be temporarily homeless, then USA Network will come along and pick it up and put it on a more suitable timeslot. Throughout all of this, Eric S and I will shrug nonchalantly and just download the show to watch at any particular time anyway. Hell, since I got wireless in I could just go and sit on the toilet and download it there. But I won’t. I won’t.
In all fairness, Smackdown has clearly been the better show in the post-Mania slump, thanks mainly to the outstanding work done by all involved in the Guerrero/Mysterio and Booker/Angle feuds. For, as Tenacious D are not believed to have wrote in the liner notes to the long-forgotten and invented limited edition EP entitled “I Can’t Believe It’s My Midichlorian” – “When the time comes for our revolution, we shall play on the highest swings with the smallest children and smile… and smile…” None of which has anything remotely relevant to what I may have been saying earlier, but I went away for a bit to get some jellybeans and have only just returned with a sugar high, so in that instance of being irrelevant it is actually relevant to me. Don’t worry, it’s not as bad as the Doctor making it up as he goes along.
Idiot.
Judgement Day 2005
Or, for the more old-fashioned of us – Judgement Day VII
Or, for the more incorrect of us – Judgment Day
Get the E in, people.
WWE Championship “I Quit” Match
John Cena vs. JBL
Yes, well, this match is certainly… here. The most likely way for it to be any good in any sense of the word is to channel the patented Austin ’98 main-event brawl technique. I just hope they have a wireless microphone ready to trail all over the arena with them, that there is lots and lots of blood on a par with JBL’s battles with Eddie a year ago, that Cena can be arsed to put a bit more effort into making his offence look even vaguely threatening, and that it doesn’t get stretched out beyond the 15-minute mark.
Winner: J-B-L! Honestly!!
Eddie Guerrero vs. Rey Mysterio
The most original and well-paced storyline that they have done in a long, long time has been a breath of fresh air for Smackdown these past four months. In particular, let us all bow down and worship at the altar of Eddie. Rey’s not really had a whole lot more to do than usual considering that most of his feuds revolve around him getting the shit kicked out of him before he comes back and wins. Eddie’s been the one that has managed to completely turn the previous rabid Latino Heat audience against him in the space of a month with two of the best examples of character-driven promo-cutting since Foley’s glory years. I just hope that they give them a bare minimum of 20-minutes, that Rey remembers to wear a sensible mask this time, and that Eddie’s new character doesn’t mean he has to resort to a basic brawling style rather than his usual technical abilities. The winner of this one should be interesting too… If Rey wins, it furthers Eddie’s mental breakdown and self-doubt and presumably leads to one more match where he can finally prove himself capable of beating Rey. If Eddie wins, it won’t do much to harm Rey’s status but it will mean that Eddie will be at a loose end for things to do unless they decide to move him up to challenge Cena straight away, which is a match that I would rather keep free until SummerSlam. Either way, you know Eddie’s getting that belt back at some point this year.
Winner: Oh, hell, let’s just go for Rey
Booker T vs. Kurt Angle
Isn’t Kurt married to a stripper or something? Anyway, this has led to some good TV over the past few weeks, and it’s far too early to blow such an intense storyline off once and for all, so there’s no way Kurt’s jobbing here… Well, there’s no way that he’s not going to wind up leaving with Sharmell and having some intimacy with her at a nearby hotel… willingly or otherwise… It’s controversial, alright. Kurt’s certainly changed a lot since his sweet little crush on Stephanie back in the day. Then again, Booker wound up in bed with Goldust back in the day, so things have certainly improved for him… I think?
Winner: Kurt Angle
United States Title Match
Orlando Jordan vs. Heidenreich
Crap match, crap champion, crap (but oddly amusing) challenger, crap title reign, crap title. We’re firmly in the making-it-up-for-no-reason half of the card now, but at least they can further the Cabinet tension angle from here.
Winner: Sid
WWE Tag Team Titles Match
MNM vs. Bob Holly & Charlie Haas
Oh, f*ck off.
Winner: Moron Numpty Moron
The Big Show vs. Carlito
Is this the first time Carlito’s had a PPV match that didn’t involve John Cena? Bless his fuzzy locks… I’m dreading the possibility of a Carlito/Heidenreich match for the US title down the road, but at least it should make for some entertaining Cabana segments…
Winner: Carlito
RANDOM STUFF:
Nick Piers is back with a special look at the City of Heroes comic book courtesy of Doug the Troll…
Jamie Hatton continues his inevitable cool existence by looking at the new Bruce Campbell comic book…
Everyone takes a look at Judgement Day in the Roundtable… and by everyone, I mean 5 guys…
Andy Campbell is now on Fridays and has far more to say about TNA than I could ever pretend to want to write…
Grutman has left the building…
Matt Basilo is doing a bang-up job with his Smallville recaps, check out his season finale recap…
Here be the Forums. Go nuts.
There were more links I had to put in but I had to go and get my pizza. Domino’s Deluxe, man… Nothing else like it… Next week – more words! Less hunger!
END CREDITS:
This column has been brought to you in conjunction with…
– Garth Ennis’ Preacher
– Not going to see Revenge of the Sith
– Lovely, lovely, lovely ladies…
AOL IM: KingKongBurnside
Iain Burnside is ten out of ten all night
