ENTRANCE SPIEL:
Hello my baby, hello my honey, hello my ragtime gal.
Yes, it has been yet another curious week in the worrying world of wrestling so I’ve been dragged out of bed one more time to write about it. Perhaps we should form some sort of Inside Pulse Union so that we can get set guidelines about this sort of thing. We should all be guaranteed a bare minimum of seven hours sleep each night. We should not have to put up with any screaming babies that any neighbours of ours might have. We should not spend a good eight hours or so drinking Guinness. We should not order sandwiches from Subway with all the fixings when we’re quite clearly just going to spill half of them on the floor after just one bite. We should also probably not respond to the question “Do you think you’re better than me?” with “Is that a trick question?” when the person asking it is off his face and has a sharp-looking knife. Other than that, I think we’re probably doing fine as we are. Well, except for the irritating delays in between Region 1 and Region 2 DVD releases, which mean I still can’t get the Bret Hart DVD and have to wait until April for the next Simpsons collection, but not even the almighty Widro himself can do anything about that. Or can he… hmm… further investigation must be done…
Oh, and Widro? I will give you and Ultralase the Laser Eye Specialists £3000 each if they would just piss off with those bloody adverts already.
While I’m here I might as well go ahead and plug myself. If the idea of a retired superhero getting elected as the mayor of New York intrigues you, then go ahead and check out my review of Ex Machina #16. If you read comic books and want to know why people mock you for it, or if you don’t read comic books and want to know why people mock you for that, or if you just really like clicking on links, then click on this one and check out the new edition of the Anti-Nexus. It may contain traces of nuts however, so you have been warned.
One more plug of a more substantial nature before we get down to business. Amazon is still listing the Eddie Guerrero quasi-autobiography (for lack of a better term), still unfortunately called Cheating Death, Stealing Life, as being released on the 20th December. That seems to be a bit of an odd time to release a new book even under livelier circumstances but the point is that they have posted a excerpt from the book. Here’s an excerpt from the excerpt that should help convince that any urges to read a wrestling book should lead to getting this one and not the airbrushed truth of the Shawn Michaels one.
“As I was getting into my TransAm, I grabbed a bottle of Renutrient and threw it into the backseat. Renutrient was a legal form of GHB, a drug that promotes fat reduction and muscle building by stimulating growth hormone release. It also gives you a hell of a buzz and makes you pass out. Looking back, I realize I was still feeling upset from my fight with Vickie and thinking very bad thoughts. I’ll show you, I thought. I’ll hurt myself.
The store was closed, so I went ahead and drove to the next convenience store up the road. I bought some eggs and a twelve-pack of beer, and then got back in the car.
Before I drove off, I decided to take some of the Renutrient. It’s a liquid, taken by the capful. Usually one or two caps would put me down, but God help me, that night I took five good-sized shots.
I blocked that memory for so long. It wasn’t until much later that I remembered what I had done. It was a suicide attempt, plain and simple. Maybe I did it subconsciously, but no matter how you slice it, that was what I was doing. I was tired of life and wanted to die.
I had given up believing. I had tried to fill the empty place in my heart with wrestling. I tried to fill it with booze and pills. I was making good money and I was still feeling empty. I was miserable in WCW. I knew I wasn’t going to go any higher there, and jumping to WWE hadn’t even crossed my mind. I couldn’t stop wondering, Is this it? Is this what I worked my whole life for?
It didn’t help matters that I was constantly fighting with Vickie. I think that night was a culmination of all those bad feelings. The hole inside me had just gotten too large.
I took those five caps knowing that I was going to fall asleep. If I make it home, I thought, then I make it home. If I don’t, that’s okay too.
I just didn’t care anymore. I just wanted the pain to stop.
I wasn’t thinking about Vickie or the kids. I was being selfish, thinking only of myself. I wasn’t knowingly trying to commit suicide, but it was clearly going on deep inside my subconscious. Why else would I do something like that?
I started driving, heading down Highway 54. I pushed down on the gas pedal and felt the power of my TransAm — Vrooom! Here we go!”
So, in the aftermath of the supposedly controversial ending to that Smackdown Special this week, let me just ask you this – if you think there’s a heaven are you also foolish enough to think Eddie would be watching Randy Orton rather than his children?
In other words, or rather one word – stop.
TOP FIVE POEMS OF MINE:
1. “Chameleon”
2. “Revolution”
3. “An Acceptable Method Of Killing Time”
4. “Half-Glass”
5. “Time Returned”
SURVIVOR SERIES 2005: AFTERMATH
United States Title, Best-of-Seven Series: Match One
Booker T vs. Chris Benoit
Nigger, nigger, nigger, nigger, nigger, nigger, nigger, nigger, nigger, nigger, nigger, nigger, nigger, nigger, nigger, nigger, niggah, niggah, niggah, nigga, nigga, nigga, nigga, nigga, nygga, nygga, nygga, nygga, nygga, nygga, nygga, nyga, nyga, nyga, nyga, nyga, nyga, nyga, nyga, nyga, nygah, nygah, nygah, nygah, nygah, nygah, nygar, nygar, nygar, nygar, mygar, mygar, mygar, mycar, my car, birthday party, cheesecake, jelly bean, boom.
If you’ll pardon the expression. If not, well, patience is a virtue.
Really though, what was the big deal about that Vince/Cena/Booker skit? It was the first genuinely funny thing that either of those three have been involved in for a long, long time. It was certainly the most effective use of Booker’s “tell me he didn’t say that” catchphrase that the writers have bothered to come up with since 2001. Trust me, if they come up with a wrestler called Triple K who wears white hoods and places burning crosses at ringside during Booker T matches then your trademark over-reaction will be justified for once. In the meantime, just lighten up a little. If you want a genuinely offensive piece of racially driven wrestling then go back and watch the build to WrestleMania XIX when Triple H started talking about “you people” not being good enough to be World Champions. Even worse was the fact that the WWE bookers actually went out of their way to prove him right with the completely unfathomable outcome of their big match, complete with a marvellous twenty-second pause between Hunter hitting the Pedigree and going for the cover.
The more astute readers might have realised that I’m babbling on about something that happened nearly four years ago because there isn’t actually anything substantial to say about the Best-of-Seven Series at the moment. There are a few things that I probably should be saying about it. Things like “great job”, “thank you”, “well done”, “stop doing that flying headbutt you moron” and “could we just get Woman back on camera already?” but they’re only two matches in so the real fun won’t start until the end of the month or thereabouts. End of the year, actually… shit… that was quick… Anyway, yes, and please just ignore everyone who says the outcome of this series will determine whether or not Benoit has decided to re-sign with the company. We’ve already heard that his contract is not up until a good few months into 2006 and should he become United States Champion again then he will have plenty of time to do what we in the know like to call “losing the title” before his professional D-Day.
I still want him to go to TNA for the purely selfish reason of getting to see that match with Samoa Joe. Also, I’m curious to see if they would bill him as being from Georgia or Edmonton.
Women’s Title Match:
Trish Stratus vs. Melina
If Trish can hold onto the title until the 9th January then she’ll have been Women’s Champion for a whole year. That’s one in the eye for people who claim that lengthy title reigns help to establish the credibility of the title. Still, Moolah was the champion for a decade, technically, and if that didn’t help the title then nothing will. I’m not sure where I’m going with this. Probably something along the lines of how it wouldn’t have hurt them to shuffle the title over to Smackdown for no good reason. I mean, really, we’re talking about the Women’s Title here. Having no good reason is part and parcel of the deal. It would also have been the first real sign that they were heading towards a WrestleMania brand reunion other than floundering aimlessly with all this Raw vs. Smackdown nonsense. However, they just keep on floundering away, completely oblivious to the welcome touch of Logic, Plot and Reason, the unholy trinity of WWE. If the rumours regarding the Armageddon card are true then there’s more floundering to be done in the very near future. Maybe this means that there will be more Trish/Melina feudin’ done soon too, though if that’s the case then they’d better get a move on with the Mickie James shebongle. That’s one of my favourite words. Maybe if I got Vince McMahon to use it in a sentence then people would find it ‘offensive’. You know what offends me? No, seriously, do you? Because I’m not sure at the moment.
Decent match, though.
Last Man Standing, Perhaps Literally, Match:
Ric Flair vs. Triple H
Of course, I can bitch about the poor quality of storytelling from the writing staff and then quite happily sit back and watch a fiftysomething man getting repeatedly stabbed in the face with a screwdriver. For extra added ‘weird’ value, the guy that’s stabbing him is one of his best friends. Then there’s the added twist, where they’ve created a lifestyle that means being able to do that to the old man is actually a sign of respect and mutual admiration. As if that wasn’t enough, the feud based around forcibly retiring his friend and mentor is rapidly becoming something far more sinister and genuine as more disturbing backstage details are revealed. By this point we really shouldn’t be wondering if Flair has indeed cracked, we should be wondering why the hell it took so long to happen and exactly how cracked they all have to be to even want to be in that line of work and how cracked we have to be to enjoy it all. I’ll get into that later, for now we have yet another last-ever Ric Flair match to savour. It certainly was a good one, far superior than the limits of last month’s Cage Match. If it comes to pass then this would indeed be a fitting finale to Flair’s career. Reality has a sad tendency to be a lot dumber than that though, so he’ll be back again. His career is a perpetual motion machine and, no matter how sensible the laws of physics might be, sometimes sensible just can’t cut it. On a lighter note, for some reason I found the look on Coach’s face when Triple H was standing on the Raw announce table utterly hilarious. I half-expected his voice to crack, mutter something about his precious, and then slowly reach out with trembling hands to try and touch his beloved’s heaving bosom. They should totally turn Coach gay. They could start referring to him as ‘that nigger fag’. SMELL THE RATINGS.
WWE Championship Match:
John Cena vs. Kurt Angle
And now we move from somebody who might be having a breakdown to somebody who might have been having a breakdown but claims to be better now. I do hope you enjoyed yourselves. To be honest, I was distracted by the phone during this match and didn’t really pay it any attention. Not that evil referee angles deserve any attention. Once I seen the eight hundred and fourteenth referee lying unconscious in the ring it became apparent that there was no point in rewinding the show to watch it. I remember hearing a lot of Anti-Cena reactions from the crowd though. That put me firmly into one of my strange ‘happy’ moods. Did they manage to drown out the lamer half of the duelling “Let’s go Cena, let’s go Angle” chants and turn it into “Fuck you Cena, let’s go Angle”? If they did then I might even be moved enough to smile. Wait, no, I didn’t mean that. You can’t make me smile. You certainly can’t make me smile when you do a moonsault in this day and age, Kurt, so just cut it out you imbecile. For f*ck’s sake, if there is one wrestler on the Raw roster that doesn’t need to resort to shiny-happy top rope moves to try and make his matches interesting then it’s you, so stop it. At the very least just do a straightforward splash or something, anything, as long as it doesn’t involve such a high potential for cracking that bolted-on neck of yours. They ban the piledriver, they ban the 450 splash, they ban the shooting-star press and they still let someone in his condition get away with doing a moonsault… Great, why don’t you just hire an external agency to do random dope tests while you’re in the mood to be so playfully caring?
And still the title is on that polarising poof, John Cena. As distressing as that is, it’s worse to think that they have no better options. We all know that Triple H requires a bare minimum of six more titles but any reigns of his would bore us to tears if they lasted more than two months tops. Flair, Angle and Michaels are also better used as transitional champions for various reasons, should any of them be needed. Edge can’t even get in line to get a title shot let alone win it, plus he’d have to sleep with a whole lot more people if he wanted to be champion (and most of them would make Lita seem feminine). After that there really isn’t anybody else. Well, except for some other guys. But they’re on Smackdown. Which brings back the brand reunion idea. About which some kind soul called AngryChairr wrote…
“I don’t see why the unification match at Mania has to be Cena/Orton. Cena/Batista has a much better earning potential, and Batista should hopefully be healthy enough to wrestle at that point. It would also force WWE to finally decide who their new golden boy is going to be. Trying to sell us on both isn’t working.
In all honesty, I’d go with Batista based on the fact that while he doesn’t offer what Cena offers mic-wise, he’s still better in the ring, and he still has more credibility with both the male and female fans. Just turn him into Hogan 2K6 and there you go.”
I don’t think the world needs to see DAVE in red and yellow, and the hair certainly wouldn’t suit him, but you are of course right to choose him over Orton. At his age, however, he’s not going to be the new golden boy for very long in comparison to Cena and Orton. Then there’s the current roidphobia that would make their marginally more natural physiques seem far safer to market as the future of the company… Fuck, the future of the company? That’s just depressing. Then again, look at the career paths of Flex Kavana and Tera Ryzin. Of course, Cena and Orton should probably have grown out of that phase before becoming champions but hindsight is 20/20. Unless you have my magic told-you-so lenses of clarity that said all this many times before. At any rate, one brand or at least one champion would be a nice vision.
Homercutio chimed in with the following…
“The only argument I can put forth against the roster reunification is the thing about underused wrestlers being totally marginalized, but you make a pretty decent argument against that. It’s not as if guys like Shelton Benjamin haven’t slipped through the cracks already. I’d put forth that, with only show, we’d have to endure one of HHH’s six month long title reigns with no WWE alternative, but you know if they want to do that it’ll happen. I certainly think the split was worth maintaining. I’d wager we never would have had Eddie Guerrero’s WWE title reign, for one thing, but I can’t really argue for its continued existence, especially since they’ve wasted the Raw vs. Smackdown angle.”
Again, this is all true. Yes, there have been some good moments in wrestling since the brand split. Yes, there would be many bad moments after reuniting the rosters. Nothing is perfect but we can make perfection closer to home if we try.
“Now There’s A Good Reason To Go Urinate” Match:
Eric Bischoff vs. Teddy Long
Exhibit A – no brand split means no feuding General Managers. There’s nothing much to say other than I told you so. The Boogeyman came in his inept splendour. How fitting that he’s using the pumphandle slam, the wrestling moveset equivalent of a Michael Bay movie. Still, as long as he’s making The Transformers then I’m happy.
“The Same, But Different” Match:
Team Raw vs. Team Smackdown
Exhibit B – Batista is better than Orton because he can get between the ropes and into the ring without falling, as Orton did twice here. The argument against pushing younger wrestlers too far too soon is really pretty accurate when they can’t even manage that. I’ll give the devil his due though, he does have the best tunes. Orton doesn’t have one (HEY!) but he did do a good job at the end of this match. Good, not great. Certainly not legendary. Perhaps if we could take his facial expressions and give them to Chris Benoit then the world would be a better place. Not that it’s truly terrible at the moment. Not with Tazz completely flipping out on commentary. Sweet Jeebus, that was fun. I swear that if the show had gone just ten minutes longer then he’d have punked out Coach, Tazplexed Lawler and then stuck Styles with the Tazmission. Actually, how cool would it have been had this match happened a few months earlier and ended with Team ECW turning up to beat the piss out of the lot of them? Now that would have been a sensible way to do a brand feud and promote One Night Stand. Unfortunately, they took one good idea and splintered it into two fairly lame ideas instead. As a standalone match this was still quite enjoyable – and another reminder of what they could do with a combined roster. Anyway, we now have a new Thanksgiving tradition to look forward to/dread – Randy Orton, Sole Survivor. Yup, he’s the only one. And after the bombs have fallen he’ll be there, shitting in Keith Richards’ gym bag and banging the cockroach ringrats.
Oh, and memo to Kane – you shouldn’t flinch in sympathy pains when someone on your team takes a harsh chop. I know you might not be quite as into the character as Undertaker but there are limits. What’s next? Tapping out because, oh darn, you broke a nail? Shove it, Emo Boy.
TOP FIVE TV PROGRAMS:
1. Lost
2. Family Guy
3. Peep Show
4. Smallville
5. South Park
ANTI-NEWS:
So who knows where this week’s quotes come from then? Come on, impress me…
“No three things go quite as well together as a trio.”
Apparently WWE has re-signed JAMAL and he will be back in the company shortly after finishing booking commitments in Japan. MM seems to be inexplicably excited about this news. Is the potential return of 3 Minute Warning really a “huge shake-up” for the Raw tag team division? Of course not. They were the Bootleg Dudleys. Short of just scrapping the World Tag Team Titles altogether, the only “huge shake-up” they could achieve at this stage would be to hire America’s Most Wanted. If they were to do that it might also explain why they split up Cade & Murdoch off-camera. As it stands, that will have to remain one of life’s little mysteries alongside gravity, raisins and Jim Carrey turning out to be a decent actor.
And I would just like to point out again that a recombined roster could have a dozen teams in the division, easy. Okay, yes, a lot of them would be released (bye bye, Scotty) but there would still be a greater potential of something more exciting than recycling a gimmick from 2002 that had a popularity defect in the first place.
***
“Now that is, I’m afraid, what we doctors call ‘bollocks'”
KURT ANGLE is not dead! Shock! He’s not planning on dying anytime soon either, having released this press release to his fans…
“To all my fans, I’m in perfect health.”
Perfect health does not include having sustained numbness in your hands.
“Thank you for your many kind comments, prayers and concern about me, but, again, I am healthy and in great shape.”
You’re welcome, but, again, you are not in great shape.
“Yes, naturally I have a few minor aches and pains due to bumps and bruises but certainly nothing at all life-threatening or anything that will keep me from participating in the ring.”
Nothing short of a bullet to the brain would stop you from participating in the ring but that doesn’t make either a particularly viable long-term plan.
“Also, I DO NOT nor would I EVER do anything that would jeopardize my health or my life, as has been fabricated on many website chat rooms.”
One word – moonsault.
“This great outpouring of concern for me demonstrates that my fans appreciate my hard work and dedication to be best.”
We certainly do. We love you. We would hate anybody that did anything to hurt you. Thus, we hate you.
“I have the greatest respect for all my fans, my family and everyone at WWE. I will never let you guys down. God bless you and thank you for your support.”
Thank you for the memories. Please just don’t give us any new tragic ones.
***
“I never make stupid mistakes. Only very, very clever ones.”
RIC FLAIR took a trip up shit creek this week.
The Nature Boy. Slick Ric. Space Mountain. The man. Limousine rider. Jet flyer. Kiss stealer. Wheeler-dealer. Son of a gun. Kissed the girls. Made them cry. The dirtiest player in the game. Flair country. Diamonds are forever. The Real World’s Champion, emeritus.
56 year-old male. Fragile. Lonely. Addict. Father. Chemically self-harming. Unstable. Financially removed. Lived in the fake world far longer than the real world. Kayfabe is a way of life. Beaten man. Beaten wife. Steroids. Diamond in a pawn shop. Has to be helped off the top rope. Flip. Flop.
All of which begs the question – what did you expect? The one thing that they will always have to job to is time. Nobody could have achieved was Flair has in such a fully dedicated manner and come out the other side unscathed. Flair seems to be struggling to even find the exit on the other side at the moment. He’s lost and doesn’t know where to go or what to do. Even though millions of people all over the world would help him if they could, they don’t know how they can and that just makes it even harsher. Now he’s in the midst of a bitter divorce with some horrible accusations flying around in messages between the lawyers. Now he has to pay the lawyers and, win, lose or draw, he has to pay his ex-wife something too. Now he can’t because Irwin R. Schyster is taking both his salary and a long, hard look at his assets. Now he’s wandering around in a daze under all this pressure and the only thing he can do to alleviate it is wrestle, but he can’t do that unless he keeps up with the physical toll, which means a little chemical assistance, and he has to keep up with the mental toll, which means even more chemical assistance, and nobody can really tell him off about it because he’s been doing it far longer than anybody else in the company so obviously he knows what he’s doing, but he’s doing it for all the wrong reasons. So they try to tell him through wrestling. They get Triple H to tell him to go home in the only setting where he might actually listen – the ring. Except it’s just more pressure. He’s got a title. He’s got a feud. He’s got so many fans. He can’t lose them, he’s already lost so much. But he’s getting on in life and it’s such a different place now and it’s such a different style and they need more, now, quickly. So he drops random elbows and chats up the interviewer girl but even then they need to give him pills to make that believable. Even through the looking glass he’s falling apart. It needs to be better. It used to be so easy. He was the Sixty Minute Man. So he works even harder and he pays an even greater toll until he snaps and bashes somebody’s car and gets arrested and pays the lawyers even more money and then he’s right back where he started.
Whoo.
***
“People ask me, ‘what was the best year for the music?’ I always say, this year is the best year for music. Prior to that it was the previous year.”
As you have probably heard SATURDAY NIGHT’S MAIN EVENT is returning to NBC in March. This is in line with the company policy of looking backwards, not forwards, yet people seem to be excited by the news. I’m just confusion about the excitement. In the glory days of SNME there were only a maximum of four PPVs a year and the only other TV exposure to the WWF was Superstars, which was largely just nothing matches involving a lot of jobbers and the occasional excruciating interview segment. Basically, if you wanted to see big-name matches involving big-name wrestlers then you had to find a local house show. Then along came SNME and suddenly there were some of those very same matches on TV for free. Now we take it for granted. The company has plans for 16 PPVs in 2006, we get four hours of Raw and Smackdown each and every week, we get bonues matches on WWE.com, we get a steady supply of DVD releases, and we get readily available archive footage on WWE 24/7. SNME is as irrelevant as Clash Of The Champions became and as house shows will become. Still, this is as good a way as any to try and hoodwink TV networks into coming along and offering Smackdown a new home before it goes the way of Joey, so these specials will probably be co-branded. It’s probably the only way they can make them actually seem ‘special’ but with Kane and The Big Show getting ready to appear on yet another Smackdown PPV it’s all just rather confusing.
One more thing you can count on – Hulk Hogan will be on the first SNME of 2006.
***
“I know a lot of people say, ‘I’m not interested in politics’, but to them I reply, ‘Possibly not, but politics is very interested in you.'”
A.J. PIERZYNSKI is some baseball player doing something with some people in TNA and some people might find this interesting but I am not one of them and if any of them are coerced into ordering Turning Point because of this then I will be very surprised and their wives will be very confused when the cable bill arrives.
***
“If hero worship were sex, they’d all be carrying my babies.”
There are some more WWE DVD RELEASES on the way. There’s Superstar Billy Graham: 20 Years Too Soon on the 17th January and ECW’s Most Violent Matches on the 7th February. All that’s known about the ECW one so far is that it will include introductions to each match by Paul Heyman and the Terry Funk vs. Sabu Barbed Wire Match. It certainly won’t include anything from One Night Stand, that’s for damn sure (though they should put the JBL/Meanie match from Smackdown on as an easter egg). It can’t possibly live up to the title unless it includes the Mass Transit incident. Easily amused of the world, unite! Now is the winter of your malcontent!
Wait, why the hell did someone just send me an e-mail about buying Chinese baby shoes?
TOP FIVE WRESTLERS WHO NEED THEIR OWN DVD PACKAGE:
1. Randy Savage
2. Sting
3. Roddy Piper
4. Ted Dibiase
5. The Von Erichs
EXIT SPIEL:
– JEREMY LAMBERT should know better than trying to rap…
– DAVID BRASHEAR researches the prospects of Christian Cage’s career move…
– VINNY TRUNCELLITO asks the question and the answer is no, they would just be in the way…
– THE CUBAN BOYS have some wonderful MP3s on their website for you to nab, legally free of charge and light of heart…
– THE STROKES *cough*
– MANOLIS VAMVOUNIS returns to interview the persistent talent that is Mike “X-Statix” Allred…
– JAMIE HATTON spreads his genius over a brand new webcomic for “y’all”…
AIM: KingKongBurnside
MSN: Zomig
IAIN BURNSIDE is currently going to scramble some eggs… with salsa!
