God, it really pisses me off. It puts me on the piss bus to Pisstown. It puts me on the piss hovercraft to Pissington Bay. It puts me on the piss plane to Pissistan in the former Soviet Republic of Pissovia. It just pisses me off. – Alexei Sayle
In Memoriam: Sir Richard Doll, who, quite frankly, hasn’t ruined the pleasures of smoking for me. You gotta die sometime.
In Memoriam II: Eugene Record, probably the sweetest voice in early 70s soul (and that’s one helluva claim). But, then again, I am prejudiced toward the Chi-Lites for obvious reasons.
In Memoriam III: Long John Baldry, without whom the 60s British blues explosion and its collection of immortal artists (Rod Stewart, Elton John, the Stones, and Zep have direct connections to him) would have never happened. Plus he was the best thing about Reboot.
I think I feel fairly confident in saying this: in 95 years, when our descendants start compiling lists of The Greatest Athletic Feats of the 21st Century, Lance Armstrong’s name will be on them. And the people of 2100 will be amazed to read his story, which they probably wouldn’t have heard of. Coming back from near-terminal cancer to win seven Tours will be as revelatory and inspiring to them as it is to us. I think that’s all that needs to be said.
By the way, Lance wasn’t the only guy celebrating a seventh on Sunday. Tom Watson snagged his seventh British Open (standard and senior combined). I’d like to say I’m surprised, but after he made the cut at St. Andrews, it was kind of expected. They’ve got ten years to start planning his celebration, so they’d better start on it (it had better be at Turnberry). By the way, congratulations to newly-minted senior Greg Norman for finishing third (and ditto to another newly-minted senior, Loren Roberts, for finishing fifth). Maybe they can bring some attention back to the Senior Tour after a few years in the doldrums.
And I’d like to congratulate the American people for finally getting some rudimentary intelligence and avoiding The Island like the plague that any Michael Bay movie is. Shame on you, Kubryk, for giving this piece of shit six and a half; my God, son, it’s a Michael Bay movie. You should resign your slot here in protest. And shame on you, Brendan Campbell, for defending him in the super-secret writers’ forum. However, there’s an actual discussion about moose f*cking taking place there (which has segued into a Tom Green discussion, all without mentioning Green’s greatest act of bestiality, f*cking Drew Barrymore), so take that for what you will.
And I’d like to get on with this, so I will…
THE PIMP SECTION
Lucard rarely eats breakfast, yet discusses breakfast cereal and waffles. And the I Ching.
Fernandez sometimes mentions musical acts that I know of, and this week he cites the group that Franz Ferdinand, whoever they are, but they seem to be popular, ripped off all their stuff from. Also, Memo to Fernandez: Even though I disagree with PETA, Oscar Meyer didn’t hire me when they had the chance to, so f*ck ’em.
Paul talks about mix tapes, whatever they are.
Misha reports on games that are being released, not being pulled off the shelves, which makes for a nice change for the Games crew considering the last week.
Basilo has to get his two cents in about The One Who Shall Not Be Mentioned.
McCullar subs for Hevia this week. However, he fails to note that masturbating with a Brillo pad isn’t actually all that bad. You’re dealing here with the one part of the male body that never gets enough exfoliation.
THE NOT-SO-GREAT AMERICAN BASH
Sorry, I don’t feel witty enough to get a better header for this section. Uninspired PPVs leave me uninspired (and “uninspiring” is mild; Milord’s reporting that Vince knew as it was going on that it sucked, and was in a foul mood all night, and speaking of Milord, honestly, I used the term “uninspired” to describe it before reading that he too used that specific word in this context). Oh, by the way, no screen caps because I got a shitty copy of this one in order to make certain that something about it would be in this column. So I’ll subsitute with this…
I came out here to let you revel in the greatness that is me! They’ve all been sent to take me down, and they’ve all failed! Just look at the list of names of those who have gone up against me and not succeeded…Plekhanov, Martov, Dan, even Trotsky, who’s stepped aside to allow you the chance to chant my name, and you know you want to…V-I-L!…V-I-L!…V-I-L!…Kerensky, you have my belt! The belt that is mine by right and mine by the dialectics! You could have faced me in February, but instead you decided to stay in Petrograd and fight the Czar instead! Well, now you’re here, in my ring, and I promise you, this will be a November To Remember! This is going to be payback for all those years I spent in exile! And I’m not going to lay down for you, just because you beat an old, tired autocracy. You’re not facing that now because I AM A BOLSHEVIK GOD!!!
To, on to the PPV…
The tag title match was as atrocious as everyone thought it would be coming into it. I think that this will be the nail in the coffin of tag wrestling in WWE for the time being. These things do go in cycles, you know. Eventually we’ll find our way back to the point where a TLC Match will be a viable draw for a PPV. The pendulum will start swinging back the moment that AMW figures out how much they’re being f*cked over in TNA and decide to bolt. So just give it time, tag fans. In the meantime, we have to deal with an over-the-hill remnant of better times and a ‘roided looney with the belts. We’ve had worse, but we can’t get much lower on the food chain without invoking the name “Hardy”.
Christian and Booker couldn’t have a bad match even if they tried. This one, though, could have been a lot better than it was. If they pulled out the stops, it would blow the roof off of any arena in which they were. They were rather, well, reserved, almost as if they were consciously trying to hold back in anticipation for a future blow-off where they would pull out the stops. It was a decent match with a very hollow core to it. I’d like to see the program continue, of course. They’re both terrific on the mic and have the in-ring skills to back it up. But I’d like to see a match that would be more viscerally appealing, especially on PPV. This was nothing more than a Smackdown match. Hell, I was expecting it to be interrupted by commercials.
The US title match…oh, my God. Having to sell for Orlando Jordan is one thing. Having to lay down for him to get a clean pin, though (this is 2005, people; an exposed turnbuckle is a clean pin these days)? Memo to Pope Benedict: a videotape of this one should be on the way to the Vatican. This should convince you beyond a doubt that Chris Benoit deserves to be fast-tracked to sainthood as a Martyr To Charity.
Can someone please explain to me exactly what Orlando Jordan is doing with the US title after Sunday? Don’t they have a goddamn clue that it’s now become useless thanks to being slapped on him for the better part of half a year? Maybe they just don’t care. Look at the evidence. Both tag belts are jokes. The IC strap is around the waist of f*cking Carly, of all people (although their booking of Benjy didn’t help matters). Cena’s playing second-rate shenanigans with the WWE title. I actually had to look up the fact that Paul London still held the cruiser belt. This makes Batista the most credible champion WWE has right now.
Let me repeat that: Batista is the most credible champion WWE has right now. Isn’t that pathetic? A year ago, just before GAB started The Great Decay by planting the WWE title on High-Quality Speaker Boy, we had Benoit and Guerrero as world champs. Edge had the IC strap (he’d just won it from Orton). Booker beat Van Dam at GAB last year for the US strap; Spike Dudley beat Rey-Rey in a decent match for the cruiser strap at GAB. Kidman and London had the WWE tag straps. And, for the exception that proves the rule, La Res held the world tag titles. Fairly reeking of credibility, that list is. And one short year later, all of that’s gone to hell. Gone to hell so much that Benoit with the US strap could have done wonders, but they decided to not pull the trigger on that switch. Many people have said at many different times that a title situation is in the crapper, but I don’t think it’s been better demonstrated than today, where pretty much EVERY title is in the crapper. Something has to change, and change soon.
By the way, Memo to Michael Cole: it was really cute of you trying to pretend that GAB has some sort of continuous existence, but the moment you mentioned Sting’s name, everyone decided not to buy it. Good attempt, though.
Everyone knew that Hassan was toast the moment he said that he was going to “fulfill his destiny”. Raven already drained the “fulfilled destiny” tank, and it takes a while to get it back up to full again.
As for UT and his “Italian Take-Out”, the less said about this, the better. Everyone’s had his say on the Hassan situation, including me, and it’s over. It’s pathetic that it is over in this fashion, a character that WWE had invested a great deal of time and goodwill in establishing shot down because of UPN’s catering to the “non-controversial”. However, Fleabag said it in the best way possible in the Saturday Evening Post: Vince wussed out. The least he could do right now is to keep Daivari on SD (not really Arab, remember; he’s Iranian in ancestry, and if you don’t know the difference, you must be American) and give him a face push. One confessional promo (preferably involving the Iron Sheik to emphasize the Iranian connection) and one kick-ass match over a Mexicool of your choice, and he’s good to go.
The UT/Hassan match itself is again a situation of “the less said, the better”. But that Last Ride spot through the stage was damn nice, I have to admit.
It is just so wrong for luchadores to be wrestling in mat-based comedy matches. Please, let WWE do something different with the Mexicools, and quick. The way I figure it, Juvi’s getting the CW strap soon, and Psicosis and Super Crazy will probably end up being the number one contenders for the tag titles after they beat MNM in a match sometime within the next two weeks. At least dwelling on this possibility gets me to ignore the criminal misuse of the bWo in this match. They’re now officially tapped out, unless they can take over Epilepsy or something. Of course, it would be too much to ask for “creative” to come up with a plotline for them, like, oh, Nova going a little schizo and starting to behave like Simon Dean during bWo appearances, eventually coming to blows with Meanie over his weight.
I didn’t think that there was anything more ridiculous than Mexican women who would dye their hair blonde. Then I saw Dominic and I realized that abuse of Clairol products must be more endemic among Mexicans than I thought. Do they really start them that young? And there’s something else that I really pity Dominic about. He has to go back to San Diego and back to school in a little over a month. He’s going to be stuck with doing a “How I Spent My Summer Vacation” report. Everyone will be talking about trips to Disneyland and such. And he’ll have to tell all of his classmates, “On my summer vacation, I went to Buffalo to watch my dad work.” The kid can’t catch a break, can he?
So, “Dominic is numb watching this match”, Cole? I’d say the expression on his face was more like “I hope Uncle Eddy doesn’t beat Dad up too badly, because then he’ll be too sore to take me to Niagara Falls tomorrow like he promised.”
Considering that the match was a “seen it” type of thing, a lot of people are concentrating on Creepy Eddy and his Dominic fondling. The first time, yeah, it was creepy, especially since Eddy had Dominic in a hold that just screamed “One step closer and I break his neck!”. After that, it was actually more comedic than anything else. I’ll join in with everyone and say that I’d like to see more of Creepy Eddy. However, let’s not take it too far. Otherwise we end up with Kurt Angle in the Booker feud, and we don’t want that again, do we?
Just one more thing about Eddy/Rey-Rey: Didn’t I tell you that they didn’t know what the secret was, and that they’d do something like this to prevent a reveal?
Skipped over the Bra and Panties match. I suspect most of us did. Except for the more stupid among you who actually consider this entertainment.
Batista/High-Quality Speaker Boy was as atrocious as I expected (well, as atrocious as everyone expected, really). Most people are bitching about the ending, including Milord, who doesn’t seem to comprehend anything (again, as expected). There was a very, very simple reason for the ending, folks. The Hassan situation f*cked them up beyond belief. Everything was set: Hassan would face Batista at SummerSlam. That was thrown up in the air at very short notice. As usual, “creative” choked when it came to Plan B. The best they could do given the limited amount of time (and the even more limited amount of clues possessed by them) was to set up a situation where the outcome of the title match would be in doubt. UT is definitely the number one contender based on his win. But we can’t have a face/face title match at a major PPV, because they’re already in that territory with Hogan and Michaels (no matter how much Michaels tries to portray himself as a heel, the audience isn’t buying it). So, give Teddy Long an excuse, after a High-Quality Speaker Boy bitch-fest, to say that the title match at SummerSlam will be a Triple Threat, Batista/UT/High-Quality Speaker Boy. Situation solved. Solved in a sucky fashion, but solved nonetheless.
“In a sucky fashion” was sort of a motif for the whole PPV, wasn’t it? Better luck next time, guys, because at this point, you’re going to need it.
MILORD GETS INTO A TIFF
Here’s a hysterical quote from 1bullshit Junior over the weekend from Dave Scherer:
WWE really needs to decide if they want to use the web to do shoot stories or these worked ones. They can’t do both and expect people to believe their “shoot” stories.
What Milord re
ally means is, of course, “Stop doing shoot stories, because I don’t want any competition. Besides, it’s going to destroy my site’s reputation for ‘real’ wrestling news if unknowing smark wannabes can just to go wwe.com for that kind of stuff.”
What a self-serving little bitch he is. Of course, we all knew that, but this just goes to demonstrate the fact in a much clearer manner. The fact is, he’s pissed off that he got worked over the whole Matt Hardy situation, as did most of the IWC. But Milord’s ego can’t stand it. He, after all, is the bastion of “real journalism” in the IWC, much more willing to put out to his audience than Da Meltz, who just wants to sell subs to his dirt sheet because even after all these years, he can’t get a handle on this “Internet stuff”. He can’t allow himself to get worked because any chink in the armor to him is fatal. It would have a major impact on his “elite memberships” where he’s gathered information that essentially says nothing anyway. He’s got everything to lose by WWE going to a work-shoot focus on its website.
And so he cries about it and couches it inside of a bullshit reason like “WWE will ruin their reputation by doing this”. It’s this kind of smarmy attitude that led me to dub him “Milord” five years ago. Why can’t he just cut the bullshit and not say stuff like this? It just places him in the line of ridicule even more than he has been.
That being said, I do have to give him points on being consistent. And, frankly, he’s more entertaining being a f*ckstick. Gives me something to talk about.
OH, FUCK, HE MIGHT BE BACK
On Monday, 1bullshit Junior printed an open letter from…oh, shit, Tommy Fierro. Remember him? He was writing for 1bullshit on a virtual daily basis for a few years, turning out the most low-quality, purile, sycophantic, psychologically-disturbing columns ever seen by the IWC, and that’s really saying a lot. I mean, he outdid most of the guys on whiteboards in those categories. He was a complete joke. When I was still at The Shooters, Luke Johnston used to e-mail me all the time about a Tommy column saying “Jesus, Eric, you have to write something about this.” Most of the time, I did, because what was presented in those columns ranged from outright moronic at the best to the ravings of a schizophrenic at worst. It was just too difficult for me to pass up. I wasn’t the only one to not pass it up either. Hyatte put Fierro in his sites more than once.
This was a couple years before I started doing You’re A Moron. Today, I consider what I did to Fierro as good preparation for that. This guy was the patron saint of You’re A Moron. Everything that came from his f*cking keyboard had to be responded to with a double-take, because you couldn’t believe what this stupid shit had written.
But being a highly-visible idiot/albatross for Bob Ryder wasn’t enough for him. He started promoting wrestling-related events and suckering paying customers into them. He had grandiose plans, wanted to do them all over the country, started pimping them everywhere on the Net. Then he cancelled all of them and vanished. Fierro in his open letter admitted that it was because he was a major boozer. That hasn’t stopped certain columnists on the Net before from doing things, but Fleabag is a productive boozer with a sharp brain who knows when not to cross the line. Fierro was a self-destructive boozer. One of his “heart-wrenching” admittances in the open letter was that he went down to the Bahamas with the money he’d made from one of his schmooze-fests, got shit-faced, and gambled his entire bank account away. Aw, poor baby.
But now he’s admitted to his problems, he’s in recovery, so what does he want to do? Make a comeback. Here’s one of his statements:
I know I should be involved on the Internet with wrestling, like back when I was writing my columns for 1Wrestling.com for such a long time, which I really loved doing. I use to write columns every day for them about ideas of what I’d do booking for WWE. It was great.
It was great for us too. We laughed our asses off and went into discussion competitions about how much time it would take a brain-damaged chimp to come up with something better. The times in question were usually in the fractions of seconds.
There were many times that I’d write about an idea and a few weeks later I’d see WWE doing them on their shows.
Insert joke about WWE “creative” here.
I used to get E-mailed by one of the people on their writing team on a regular basis putting over my ideas, who still works for the company today. It use to make me feel so good because I think this guy is the biggest genius in the wrestling world and he changed the way wrestling is today.
Ah, the patented Fierro Suckup. He kissed so much ass in his columns that Carmex used to send him Christmas cards. And he always did it in the most grandiose of terms. Nobody could be just a “nice guy”, they had to be presented in such hyperbolic terms as to be compared with Dr. King or Einstein or someone of that particular ilk. Take any of Eric Idle’s compere characters from Monty Python and multiply by ten. That’s how bad he was.
He suggested I try and get a job on their writing team. I did just that and was in touch with Stephanie McMahon for a few months.
Until Steph got one of her two functioning brain cells active and realized what a pathetic twit he was.
The bottom line is that I love this business. No amount of Coors Lights can’t beat the rush I get when I see thousands of fans walking around my events with huge smiles on their faces. No Coors Light beats the rush of putting an idea down on paper and seeing it come off to perfection. No amount of Coors Lights can replace the empty feeling I have of not being in the wrestling business right now.
How can you be a serious drunk on Coors Light? If he actually pulled that one off, he has 1) no tolerance for alcohol whatsoever, 2) no taste in beer, and 3) not enough cash in his pocket to get blitzed on good stuff. Just the fact that he admitted that his alcohol addiction was based on drinking Coors Light shows you the staggering levels of self-delusion that he possesses. Either that, or he’s name-dropping Coors Light hoping that someone in Golden will send him a free case.
Jesus, Coors Light…
Now, you know me. Normally, I don’t go after mental midgets like this. That’s why there hasn’t been a YAM for a while in here. All of my hate mail hasn’t been good enough to be included in one. However, Fierro is, for me, an open target. He manages to get published on major websites and he honestly thinks his ideas are the greatest thing since sliced you-know-what. His ego and self-delusion definitely deserve to be popped at every opportunity. So I go after him, and all’s right with the world, since the discerning reader, who already reads me, knows that I’m on the alert for imbeciles like this.
So, good, Tommy, you announced yourself to the world again and are ready to come back. Please do. If you should, then I’ll have a new weekly feature available citing your most imbecilic ravings of the week, just to make sure that more people can laugh your ass all the way back to the drunk tank and then back under the rock you never should have emerged from.
Nothing else in the actual wrestling world, except that WWE is turning Hassan’s Last Ride into a work rather than a shoot. Like we care. We know the whole story anyway. And if you don’t, David Bailey, who wrote to me under the pseudonym “David Konamii”, put up a website featuring the whole Hassan Story So Far: http://www.peopleforhassan.com/. So in order to avoid thinking about that, and in order to avoid thinking in general, let’s head to Raw…
THE SHORT FORM
Match Results:
Nick Dinsmore over Kurt Angle, Kurt Angle Invitational (Clock ran out): All those months away and yet they decided not to think of a new gimmick. And now Angle’s involved in a program with him. Please excuse me while I BLAUUUGGGGHHHHHHHHH…thank you.
Viscera and Cloacas over Romeo, Antonio, and A Midget Whose Name I Didn’t Catch, Handicap Midget Match (Pinfall, Viscera pins Antonio in a very embarassing fashion that I will not specify to save Antonio misery): First the retard. Then midgets. And a stretcher match later. People think that I’m deluded for believing that WWE “creative” specifically develops certain shows to piss me off. Think that I’m deluded for thinking that now?
Chris Masters and Gene Snitsky over Shelton Benjamin, Handicrap Match (Submission, Benjamin submits to Masters, MasterLock): You know, I’ve watched wrestling for almost a quarter century now. I figured I must have seen enough to become immune to anything. But this episode of Raw has really done it. I can actually feel my brain start to melt. I think I’d better avoid the Diva segment, although I do have to check to see whether it’s ended…no, it isn’t ended, and they’re eating hot dogs. Why do I have this sudden urge to go to the IP Forums, register an account, and start posting? My brain can’t be that thoroughly destroyed, can it?
Edge over Kane, Stretcher Match (Duh, how do you think one wins a stretcher match?): You know, maybe I could have, note could have, enjoyed this match if Jacobs and Copeland were visibly enjoying themselves. But it’s obvious from their body language that they weren’t. They want this bullshit to end too. I don’t blame them one bit. And, of course, He Who Will Not Be Named showed up, but thank God it was after the match was finished and the denoument was going down (and how nice for everyone involved that Lita was up at the top of the ramp getting attended to, so to speak, while he swains were down below fighting for her lack of honor).
Carly Colon over John Cena, Non-Title But If Carly Wins He Gets A Title Shot Match, Chris Jericho As Special Guest Ref (Pinfall, All Of Jericho’s Set-up Moves): Yet another low-rent entry into the low-rent version of Wife-Beater/McMahon being played out by Cena and Bisch. Nothing is stopping my brain from leaking out my ear canals at this point. And we get the rematch we’ve all wanted next week. Jesus Fucking Christ.
Angle Developments:
His Lordship’s Gone: Very sweet tribute to Lord Alfred Hayes. Considering they could have gone comedy with it very, very easily, it was a bit surprising they went sentimental. My favorite Lord Alfred moment happened on one of the Saturday shows in the mid-80s. Occasionally, they’d end up doing a promo for a wrestler by showing highlights of said wrestler with narration by the in-studio talking head. In this case, the head was Alfred and the wrestler in question was David Sammartino, whom Alfred was pumping up to the sky as being the Next Big Thing. Alfred closed the promo with a pat statement about Sammartino’s ability et al, but the expression on his face was absolutely clear. He wasn’t buying any of this bullshit for a moment, and he was telling the audience that they shouldn’t either. It’s subtleties like that (doing what the company wanted but making his views clear, if you knew how to look) that allowed him to keep his job for so long. Farewell, my lord, and safe journey.
Clown College Of Musical Knowledge: Well, the good news is that we didn’t have to hear Fozzy play. The bad news is that we had to hear Cena try (and painfully fail) to rap. I will give some credit, though, to Cena’s rapper support in the doo-rag. He actually had some good skills. Too bad he’s stuck with Cena.
How Not To Create A Heel: Hogan’s rep is overblown. Hogan’s ego is out of control. Hogan has too much stroke backstage. Fans are complete idiots for buying into Hogan. Uh, Shawn, when are you going to tell us stuff that we don’t already know?
After this episode of Raw, I only have one thing to say: I’m going to lay down until the pain stops. If it stops by tomorrow, I’ll see you then.
