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– Hello everybody, Mark Neeley here, and let me welcome you to a relatively new idea. It comes from my brain, so par for the course it got through. Well, I’m not completely sure how I came up with the idea, but it was one that I knew I could lift up off the ground and get it into the playing field. The idea of this “joint column” so to speak, came innocently enough from any type of “debate.” Not really a “presidential debates” or anything to that degree, but rather just two guys going at it on a various group of subjects but with not so much attitude. It’s something you rarely see anymore in professional wrestling. You may be thinking of the reference to ESPN’s PTI. Well, if you’re thinking that, then we already like you, because you are already on the same page as us. You’ll learn as you go, it’s pretty damn simple.

If you don’t know me by now, I am the author of Saturday night’s The NeelDown iMPACT Zone and The NeelDown Video Reviews, and some alternative work with that same heading on it. If you haven’t noticed yet, “The NeelDown” is a pun on my last name. I am a BIG Columbus Blue Jackets fan for all you big hockey fans out there reading this, if you’re not reading Omar’s column.

Also, I really couldn’t have asked for a better partner in this. I’m a big fan of all of Jed’s Re-views, whichever they may be, and it is a pleasure.

Well, that’s my introduction. Like I said, this is a joint process…

– Hey, folks, it’s Jed Shaffer. Okay, I know the thoughts going through all your heads right now:

“Hey, where’s that new Re-Writing The Book we were promised ages ago? Is it true you’re expecting? And what the hell are you doing in an op-ed piece?”

Second question first: yes. My wife is pregnant with twin boys, which are due April 16th (If you really like me, you’ll buy my babies stuff through our baby registry at Babies R Us). That, among a myriad of other personal reasons I won’t get into, explains the lack of RTB’s. I’d like to tell you I’m only paragraphs away from delivering a new one, but I’m not. I have two started, and they’re both stalled out quite early in their cycles. Perhaps the cork will loosen and the story will flow like wine someday … but don’t expect it soon. We’re at 27 weeks now … and twins come early, dontcha know.

So, the final question: op-ed pieces? Yup. Mark Neeley approached me and asked if I wanted to team up with him on a kind of Pardon The Interruption -style dual-points-of-view column. We discussed, we negotiated, and we ended up with what we thought was an idea with legs. Fingers liked it, so here we are. Neeley’s a good guy and a good writer. He’s got some solid opinions, opinions that don’t always run along with the pack, and that makes me extra-happy; that means he’s like me. He doesn’t kiss IWC ass.

A note of warning, though: while I can’t speak for how plainly Neeley will speak his mind, I don’t pull punches, and neither I nor the big bosses of the site practice judicious editing. If I see something I like, it gets a shiny gold star. If I see something I don’t like, I shit on it, so don’t call me out on hypocrisy charges based on my second fill-in column for Gordi. That was about persistent, mindless negativity for the sake of conformity, the kind of continual complaints that many of us are sick of, even if we don’t admit it in public (complaining about H’s, Jarrett, Stephanie, Vince, who’s being held back, etc.). While I may make mention of one or more of those old standards on occasion, never will my focus be on those issues; this is a current events column, looking at big moments in the past week or two. We’ll highlight the good and the bad, and probably disagree on a point or two to boot. If you can deal with that, then climb aboard.

Yes, as you can see, those introductions as examples, this column is indeed written by the both of us. I could explain, but it’s magic.

We really couldn’t have picked a better time for the debut column, really. Just think of what has happened taking the IWC by storm as of late. Here comes something…

Edge cashes in his MITB, beats Cena for the WWE Title

Jed : So, the long nightmare of the IWC is over, and John Cena has been kicked out of the top spot on Raw. Yippie. Like the IWC, I was not a big fan of Cena, but not for the same reasons as everyone else; I don’t mind his character. As a heel, I really enjoy his character. What I don’t like is how he was booked: as a superhero, Stone Cold-style babyface who always got the better of the heel. It burnt out the character, and the booking obviously didn’t make sense to the crowd, who turned on him en masse. So, finally, Vince used the escape valve of Edge’s Money In The Bank shot to hotshot the title off Cena.

This brings us to two issues: is this a hotshot to set up Cena chasing the belt to WM?, and was Edge the right person to hotshot the title onto? Let’s tackle issue #1 first. Hate to break it to anyone who thinks so (especially Eric S, whom I respect and like), but the whole idea of “He’s their golden boy, he moves merchandise, he’s gonna get it again” is a ridiculous argument. You know who else sells truckloads of t-shirts and foam hands? Rob Van Dam. Never held the title. Rey Misterio sells a boatload of merch, with t-shirts and masks flying off the shelves, and he hasn’t even held a secondary title in the WWE (I’m not including tag titles in that), let alone the big prize. The list of swag movers is quite long, so measuring a person’s push and worth to the company just based on that alone is a specious and pointless argument. Cena was put at the top simply because he got a phenomenal crowd response that Vince hoped to use to bring the WWE out of the doldrums again; Cena is hip-hop, hip-hop culture is hot, QED. 9 months of bad booking killed the Cena character and deflated the crowd. There might be money in the chase, but the end result of rechristening Cena with the belt would put the company right back where they were before Sunday: with a champion the crowd has turned on. Vince already heard his over-valued New York crowd give Cena a tsunami of X-Pac Heat, the same kind of heat that helped kill Orton’s rocket to the top in 2004; they are his Karl Rove, and they’ve issued their demands. Getting the belt off Cena was done not to give it back to him; it was done to rescue the title from further damage while they try and figure out what to do with both Cena and the title to restore both back to their previous value.

As for Edge himself … Edge is a quandary. If you ever read my contributions to our roundtables for WWE PPVs, you’ll notice I refer to Edge as Luger 2K. When Luger arrived in the NWA, he was pushed to the moon … and he failed to capture the big prize from Ric Flair, time after time after time (especially the notorious “blood stoppage” match that killed Luger’s momentum at the time). When he finally won it, it wasn’t because he’d found the chink in Flair’s armor; it was because Flair had left the company and left a massive hole in the main event. The millstone of being a choke artist grew heavier around his neck because of this, as no one considered him a real champion (especially since his opponent in the vacancy match was Barry Windham). When he abandoned WCW and fled to the WWF, the choker label grew worse, as he failed to unseat Yokozuna on multiple occasions, and when he jumped back, his remaining 6 years in WCW would be punctuated with one more World Title reign, lasting 6 whole days. This is where Edge is now: he may have the belt, but nobody buys it. He has failed on multiple occasions to pierce the upper echelon of the WWE, and came up short in several attempts to take the title (including a clean pinfall loss on Raw to Batista that made Edge look like a jobber).

But the problem is, Edge is a heel. If we ignore Cena, we are left with a shallow pool of contenders for the title on the face side of Raw: Shawn Michaels (engaged with a slow-burn Vince feud), Big Show (no freakin’ way), Kane (keep dreaming) and … and that’s it. Shelton needs rebuilding, and RVD looks like a choke-artist too. This leaves heels, and heel-heel transitions will kill a crowd, something the WWE can’t afford to do. This makes Edge’s future look extremely murky; he’s a transition champion without a clear opponent to drop the title to, and without the credibility to be a real champion himself. It’s no better a position, really, then having the belt on Cena, because now, they have to scramble to figure out who to put the belt on next to save it. My bets are his initials start with H.

Mark : On the other hand, I certainly DID hate his character, for obvious reasons. But not only was it for the gimmick, but like you said, the booking of him as the dominant babyface, a little too “dominant” if you ask me.

I beleive this is why I have always prefered heel champs, so they don’t take away all of the face’s credibility. In recent terms, take two of the most hated icons in wrestling today. And those two would be of course TNA’s Jeff Jarrett, and WWE SmackDown’s John Bradshaw Layfield. JBL is actually for the most part off of that high pedestal now that he dropped the title and of course didn’t defeat DAVE Batista to win it back in all of his efforts after he got swapped over to SmackDown after Cena got drafted to RAW. Putting that short bit aside, having heel champs like the two, who use oodles of interference and cheap dirty tactics to win matches and retain titles for lengthy reigns, do nothing but help the face challenger. Does any of their credibility get taken away? No. When Jeff Jarrett defends his title, you usually see on average about up to seven people these days interfere, some may be faces, some may be heels, a couple guitar shots behind the knocked out referee’s back. So scoring a cheap pinfall doesn’t mean anything, because he CHEATS. The same central theme goes to my other example, the recent WWE example, JBL, who needed the Chief Of Staff and Co-Secretaries of Defense to retain.

Cena, on the other hand, besides what I said before, in my opinion an awful drawn out gimmick and a babyface, was put on such a high ladder that he could never step down. I did not like his title reign, I didn’t like how everyone else was treated. I didn’t like Angle having to do the job time after time after time. You know what also might help? If he learned how to wrestle. Yeah, I know I’m going to catch flack for this, but how many times have you seen Cena carry one of his own matches? His limiations were exposed when he won the title at WrestleMania against JBL, in which JBL had to use his whole move vocabulary (mostly some slighty different variatons of swinging neckbreakers for the match) to make Cena look tough by kicking out of the pins, then Cena comes back with his normal couple of moves, finisher, pin. It certainly set a pattern, didn’t it? But he DOES sell merchandise, and the crowd DOES love him. That’s what seperates the average wrestling fan and the “smark” wrestling fans.

Need further evidence? Take what many people would call his best match as champion, against Jericho, and ask who CARRIED that match. Or how about Cena retaining against Angle and Michaels, where he gets dumped through a table a whole match so we get to see HBK-Angle (which we actually like seeing), and then Cena wakes up at the end to get the FU for the win.

Agreeing with Jed, I think he is 100% better as a heel. I still don’t think the guy is all he’s hyped up to be, however. One moment that sticks out to me from when he was a heel was when he beat Orlando Jordan and Undertaker actually came out to help OJ up and shake his hand. Why does that stick out, you ask? I don’t know, I guess it was the only time Jordan got any credibility at all.

So yes, while I’m not exactly “thrilled” to have Edge as the replacement, I am beyond happy to have Cena off the strap. Like Jed said, there aren’t enough other faces on RAW right now that they would actually put the belt on, so it will be an interesting play out from here.

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Angle wins the World Heavyweight Title, jumps to Smackdown

Jed: Um … yeah. This is still kinda weird. Okay, Batista had to forfeit the belt, there’s no two ways around that. Fine and dandy (especially for me, a well-known Batista-hater). But regardless of who you’re a fan of, you can’t deny that Smackdown is in dire straits indeed. With Batista out for an indefinite period of time, Eddie Guerrero passed on, and The Undertaker (not that anyone’s clamoring for his return) on leave once again, the main event scene on Smackdown looks like New Orleans the day after Katrina: pure devastation. It’s nobody’s fault but WWE Creative for neglecting their “second tier” show and squandering their bigger names (Benoit, Orton, Booker — who is injured– Rey and JBL) to the point where all of them would need some rebuilding before being credible main event threats again.

But the problem here is that the move of Angle to win the title and jump shows is a tacit public admission that Smackdown’s talent vault is as empty as a Nazi rally in Israel. What a vote of confidence in Orton (the supposed golden boy), Benoit (a loyal and dedicated employee) and JBL (behind only Hardcore Holly, HBK and UT in terms of longevity with the company), huh? “You guys are good, TV good, but you’re just not right for the top of the mountain right now, kid.” So they bring in Angle to be the white knight and save Smackdown.

Not only does this send the wrong message to the boys, but to the fans as well: the show you like is inferior. This Raw guy beat 19 of your favorite Smackdown guys. I know Raw is the WWE flagship, and occasionally they even admit it in public, but there’s no need to reinforce Smackdown being a B-show to the fans of the product. It makes them feel like losers for following the product. WCW did this a lot in the dying days, saying “I know it wasn’t great last week, but this week will be the better!”; that makes fans feel like they’ve wasted their time, and so does having a Raw guy go through half the Smackdown roster.

But that’s another argument entirely. This is about Angle winning the title. Good move? Well, they needed someone to build Smackdown around, and if nobody on Smackdown fits their ideals, then you could do a lot worse then Angle. He’s a proven performer, and will fill the role nicely until they find someone who’s, you know, been with Smackdown for a while to transition the title to. Angle cannot be a long-term champion, period. Now to WrestleMania, that’s it and no further. A sustained, dominant run will kill the credibility of every performer on the show, because Angle will go through all of them, thus repeating the problem they had with Batista as champion. Now would be the time to build up the contender to take it off him, and simultaneously, build up a few more people (NOT Mizark … ship him back down to OVW to let his contract run out) to be credible challengers, because that’s still a lingering problem, but asking the WWE to do that many things at once is probably asking a one-legged man to win a ballroom dancing competition: just beyond their scope of abilities. Hell, all we need to do to see that is look at their logic for moving Angle: his contract with Raw ran out. Of all the lame excuses, that’s probably the worst, a deus ex machina if I ever heard one. And they had a week to come up with something, mind you, and “his Raw contract ran out” was the best they could do. Why would his Raw contract only be 6 months long? Why haven’t we seen the other people who were moved to Raw jumping to Smackdown, or holding up Vince for title shots or some other concessions to stay with Raw? Then again, this is the WWE, Land Of Huge Plot Holes. Why start applying logic now?

I guess the big upside to all this is we’ll get another Benoit/Angle match out of it at some point. Hopefully. Assuming Benoit doesn’t leave the WWE. Then we’re right back where we started: with Smackdown getting the shaft again.

Mark: There are many, many questions to be answered, but my enitial idea is that this is a good idea. With DAVE out, who else could you turn to and build SmackDown around?

My first though, when hearing the live spoilers that there would be a new champion, of course before knowing about Angle and thinking it would be all SmackDown guys, was that it would be Mark Henry. I was thinking though, “Is WWE THAT stupid?” Thinking ratings-wise, I tried to switch it up to please all, but I couldn’t come up with anything else. Will they stick with two heel champs since Cena dropped the WWE title to Edge? I would think so, so besides Henry you have… well JBL. Orton, Benoit, and Booker are all non-candidates. Finlay? No. Mr. Kennedey? Announcing. Boogeyman? Not quite. Rey? Not a chance. Any other cruiser? Better chance of the sun crashing into the sun.

JBL was just a one-time deal, so they couldn’t possibly put it back on him. So it was back to the World’s Strongest Man philosphy, with him being dominant until Batista comes back and fulfills his “promise” of regaining the title, and being the only person capable of taking the big man down.

So all in all (besides it being another brick in the wall), it is very interesting to see Angle step of RAW after the numerous jobbing to Cena and simply win the “secondary” title. So what will happen? Will he go off and flash the title around on RAW? Who will he face on SmackDown?

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Live sex on Raw!!!

Jed: The spirit of HLA is alive and well, much to everyone’s chagrin. Sadly, I don’t think I can even manage to be witty about this. As tiresome and derivative as the segment was, any comments I can make would wind up being so as well. This could’ve been replaced with a celebration ceremony, a promo, virtually anything, and they could’ve achieved the same effect as they got (minus a glimpse of Amy Dumas’ breast).

My main problem isn’t so much the content or the necessity of it, but that the E forced these two people to do this segment. Recent reports say Edge is trying to patch things up with his wife, while Lita is uncomfortable in the “slut” role and is regretful in her role in Matt Hardy’s dismissal in 2005. And yet, the WWE wrote this little scene for these two performers. Say what you want about Edge being a “company man”, but keep in mind how big a pile of horseshit that is; if Edge and Lita want paychecks, they do what’s written for them. End of story. Edge and Lita don’t have the longevity of Undertaker or the political stroke of Triple H or the history of marquee value like Steve Austin and The Rock; they’re expendable. Purely and utterly expendable. It could be Chris Masters in that role, or Carlito, or Hardcore Holly, or freaking Viscera. Edge and Lita are worth just that much. If they balk, they get their walking papers. And you know Vince knows the personal situations of the players in this sordid drama … and yet, he put them through the motions of reliving their carnal escapades. This is grotesque, even by the WWE’s standards.

Mark: This was just a trainwreck, simply put. Edge wins the title and the first think that pops into the creative team’s head is “alright, now that he has the title tommorow night he needs to have live sex in the ring with his girlfriend to celebrate!” To put it into perspetive, even in a recent interview, Torrie said she wouldn’t have took part in that. And SHE’s a Playboy cover girl!

I don’t know what was more stupid, the whole idea of coming up with it, or how far they went with it. I know most of it was done under the covers, but come on, probably half of the people in attendance are young kids. And then think of the kids watching it on Monday night with their parents, with the constant advertisement flashing “Live sex tonight! Woo can’t wait!” Is this Vince Russo booking all over again? And, like said before, due to the booking they couldn’t do anything about it, despite how uncomfortable Lita might have felt.

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Grades Of The Week

A

Jed : The TNA creative team, for the smart booking of the X-Division lately. The three primary stories — Joe’s bullying dominance, the Code Of The X-Division, and the Generation Next rebellion — have all been booked in top form, both as standalone programs and, amazingly, when they cross paths. The excellent booking of the Daniels/Joe match at Final Resolution, with AJ Styles throwing in the towel for Christopher Daniels, gives even more credence to Joe’s dominance, gives a little extra pepper to the Styles/Daniels rivalry, keeps the Code of the X-Division storyline going in an interesting way, and can be woven into the Generation Next storyline with some clever writing (one of the three demands a shot since Styles and Daniels couldn’t get it done against Joe). If only they could book the rest of the card this cohesively, TNA would be set for life.

Mark : My token A this week also goes out to TNA, first and foremost for answering my request and Jerry finally putting together a solid show of Impact. For a while there I was getting utterly disgusted with Impact. It was Rhino squash, Joe squash. And what’s up with Jay Lethal and Kenny King? Were they SIGNED to be the token jobbers? They blended more solid six-man X-divsion tag action with Team Canada for a decent match, and to my recent wishes, gave Team Canada a win! It was also nice seeing one of my favorite wrestlers on TNA’s roster, Petey Williams, return to action. I love the whole Generation NeXt storyline. It gives them a chance to display them off now as a team, where as before they would maybe get on bi-weekly, or even bi-monthly at times. This buys them time with the one hour show to get more talent on the air every week.

B

Jed: TNA, for making 2006 the year they left Orlando. For too long, they’ve isolated themselves in Universal Studios, giving the promotion a small-time feel. Now, they’re ready to take on the country by doing full-blown house shows, including one here in Michigan (which I may be going to). They’d get an A, but with only three house shows on the schedule, the “tour” is the equivalent to driving through a town without stopping and saying you’ve been there. And they’re blowing a golden opportunity to show a national fanbase by not turning any of these into televised events. Still, it’s a crucial step forward.

Mark: WWE, for getting fresh champions. I’m not thrilled about Edge, but it is nice to see a fresh RAW (when it is sex-less) without Cena as champ. Now, a lot of people think Cena is automatically going to win the gold back at the Royal Rumble. I, however, am going in the minority and saying that it won’t happen. If they are going to work him back up and have him capture the spinning belt back, it will be at WrestleMania. A lot of other buzz is that Triple H is set to win the Rumble and go on to face Cena, but that storyline just leaves me with a bad taste. While Angle jumping ship over to the brand B show and winning the title is a bit… “badly booked” if you will, I like the idea. Look at it this way, despite all the talent surrounding, you can have Angle as champ, or you can have Henry. Take your pick.

C

Jed: The outside marketing arm of the WWE and how they push their Divas. Stacy Kiebler is poised to become a crossover star with her stint on Dancing With The Stars , and that’s good for the WWE. The Rock’s breakout success gave them a lot of ink they wouldn’t have gotten otherwise, and this can only do the same. What isn’t so good is the upcoming Candice Michelle Playboy layout in a couple months. Yeah, we all want to see a few of the Divas get naked (although Candice has already done this, for the very same magazine no less), but Vince still harbors delusions that the WWE can be taken seriously as an entertainment company beyond its wrestling product. He’ll never achieve that if his female employees are marketed primarily as tits & ass.

Mark: WWE RAW. They needed something to compete with the viewers of 24, and I think with Angle-Michaels as an opener and the Flair-Edge TLC for the title that exceeded expectations, while the show is still majorly dragging, it was an above average show put together. As for what Jed said, while it is nice that Vince is promoting his women for more things besides T&A, the T&A is still there and isn’t going to slow down. Rememeber on RAW we are dealing with the whole Vince-Candice deal so Vince can say he banged another diva, and the sole purpose Candice and Torrie are even on that show is for eye candy. We always have the Skankateers vs good girls tag matches, but how much time do Candice and Torrie actually spend in the ring? They come out, strip, and let Victoria bully the faces. We also have the randomly thrown out lesbian angle now with Trish-Mickie.

D

Jed: TNA, for bringing in Waltman again. How many times do you have to put your hand on the burner before you realize the stove can scorch you? Waltman’s numerous stints in TNA (and I do mean numerous) have been marred with no-shows, call-ins, spotty performances and lofty demands. You mean to tell me you couldn’t hire Sandman for a keg of beer and a carton of Luckys to come in and wallop Raven with a Singapore cane? Stop going to bed with these losers who take more money then The Naturals earn in a year, do a quarter of the work (and have even less of a workrate), then take off in 4 weeks.

Mark: Amen, brother. I have to concur with you on this one, but not only for bringing in “Sixxx-Pac” again, but Sting. Am I the only one who isn’t excited to see Sting make another watered down comeback? I mean, it isn’t like we’ve never seen Sting “make a big appearence” in TNA and go after Jarrett. And it isn’t like Jarrett has never defeated Sting. I know some people think he is “good recycled talent”, and he is for the fans who want to see him. It was a good move by TNA, they even had to turn around 300-400 fans from the doors in Orlando for the PPV. I just don’t like seeing it happen, yet again. Sue me. As for Waltman… man, not only is that angle drawn out, but shouldn’t they have learned from their mistakes on that last little “stunt” he pulled off?

F

Jed: The WWE’s creative team, for even grosser displays of disregard to their own continuity then normal. First, we get Kurt Angle jumping ship on a magic, expiring contract that all but invalidates the Draft Lottery’s relevance. Then, we get Vince getting all horny for Candice Michelle. Didn’t the McMahons finally reunite happily back at WWE Homecoming, which was all of four months ago?!? What happened to the one big, happy family? And haven’t we been promised updates and clues to the search for a new Raw GM? The WWE has never been known for being a stickler for continuity, but their leaps and holes are so enormous, it’s hard to believe they only hire experienced television writers with bachelor’s degrees.

Mark: WWE, for the booking of the Royal Rumble thus far. They have already made it blatant that the Rumble winner has been narrowed down to a slim margin of superstars, like HHH, Cena, or possibly RVD with the big return, from the fans’ point of view. They have also booked the predictable Angle-Henry match for the Rumble, for the usual Rumble sleeper. I really don’t see why they’re not moving Benoit up after losing the whole US title best of series bouts, or Orton, or really anybody besides the sexual chocolate. Is he even still calling himself that? I think on his time off Big Vic really stole most of his thunder. You also have the Edge-Cena rematch, which most people think Cena will win but I’m saying no way. But if he doesn’t, will he enter the Rumble match? It’s hard to tell. So what other matches will be at the Rumble? The RAW tag champs are in the Rumble. Not like they have any other team on that show that is capable of taking them. The same goes for SmackDown’s champs right now, with the many failed attempts at new tag teams, like The Dicks, Nova’s new guys, ect. And what’s up with Spanky and London? Do they really have no regard for them anymore that they are just used as a tag team for Velocity and such? Plastic tiger masks with gym shorts?

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Well everybody, that does it for the first edition of TVFTCS.

Feedback (much requested) should be promptly sent to TheViewFromTheCheapSeats@gmail.com

We hope in the future to incorporate your mail into the columns, so keep it flowing.

Hope everyone enjoyed it, and we’ll be back in a week or two.

– Mark & Jed