Welcome back, kiddos, to another brand-spanking new edition of The View From The Cheap Seats. Being the big hockey fan I am, like most of you know, you’d probably be surprised that I am not paying attention to the Olympics. With Canada’s team as stacked as it is (when isn’t it) and with our country having not but a chance, it doesn’t interest me. Good luck to all the Blue Jackets though, and I heard Ryan Vyborny netted an empty netter last night for the Czecks. Good for him. By the way, Brutus won the dog competition. Isn’t that terrific.
Jed plays the mailman this week…
MAILBAG IS THE ROXOR!!1!1
Gots lots of mail, and more then a few were of the unpleasant variety, like from Larry Tenelanda, who takes issue with the ideas of Chris Jericho going to TNA, and my wondering how the Carters keep pouring money into TNA:
Garbage, Chris Jericho would never go to TNA because it would be the stupidest move for him to do financially.
Wow, what an argument there. Really put me in my place. This is an argument Scott McClellan would use for one of Bush’s many gaffes.
Jericho’s initial contract was quite generous, by most estimates. Between merchandising, and appearance fees for his now-burgeoning extra-curricular career (his many VH1 appearences, Fozzy albums, perhaps acting roles), Jericho doesn’t strictly need money to sustain himself. He does want fair market value, though, and he deserves it.
I don’t care what Jericho said, It would not make sense for him to sign with TNA. Just like Mick Foley, it just wouldn’t make sense.
Who said anything about Foley? I scoured my entry in the column, and saw no mention of Foley. Are we so desperate for points to argue against me that we’re now creating them? Come on, you can do better then that. Then again, if you’re inventing things to argue about, maybe not.
And Foley doesn’t need the money either. Or was it some other doughy, stringy-haired Long Island boy who showed up in Ring Of Honor last year?
Both Jericho and Foley need WWE to sell their music, books and other ventures and they need the WWE audience to buy it.
Foley’s fine on his own. Jericho’s getting his name out there the old fashioned way. Try again, sport.
So whenever Jericho tease a TNA logo…ignore it.
Jericho and TNA WERE IN CONTACT RECENTLY. He asked for Sting money. He was turned down. This is not about the TNA logo joke, jackass. We all know that was a stunt Jericho pulled for fun.
It tough to knock Sting when he helped, like it or not, bring TNA it’s highest rating ever. 1.1 rating on a Saturday night??? You got to be kidding me.
And imagine the kind of ratings Jericho would pull in; been on TV consistently for years, beat The Rock and Steve Austin twice apiece in three months, united the World Titles for the first time since the 1940’s … yeah, he wouldn’t draw like Sting would. Sure.
And the true measure of that 1.1 is if TNA can sustain it without Sting. If Sting’s two-month absence causes them to dip back to the .8’s, then their investment was a bomb. If they maintain the 1’s, hey, good for them. But it’s still a big waste of money to sign someone and have them spend eight weeks at home while they get paid.
It’s NOT your money. Relax. You are not paying Sting.
When I buy TNA DVD’s, when I buy TNA PPV’s, when I (eventually) buy the TNA video game, you’re goddamned right I pay for Sting. And I don’t like to pay for services not rendered (my whole issue with strip clubs, right there in a nutshell). So, I have a right to question their judgment here.
I love it when fans complain about how other people spend their money. Listen, final resolution 2006 did a good buyrate and TNA is grooving with the ratings. That’s a good thing
They haven’t even released their buyrate yet for Final Resolution; their normal is 35,000. Even if they do 50,000, that ain’t enough to justify Sting being benched for two months. And a one week jump in ratings is just that: a one week jump. Let’s see if it maintains. Then you can crow about Sting’s effect on it.
Alright, enough of that … Betty Nhgal has some thoughts on the Rey/Orton/Rumble mess:
If creative is putting Angle into Batista’s role, then he’ll face Orton at WM. Which means Rey loses his shot (at NWO) and whine to T.Lo that he should be in the main event, possibly seeing an Angle/Orton/Rey match. I’m not opposed but if their “brilliant” plan is such that only Angle/Orton is the main event, one question. What’s the purpose of the Rumble?
Good question, Betty. They’ve done the “winner puts his title shot on the line” schtick several times … usually, it ended up with the status quo being maintained: see Shawn/Owen in ’96, for instance. Trips/Angle in 2002 (yes, Angle won it at NWO, but Trips won it back the next night, thus reestablishing said status quo). Rock/Big Show in 2000. Even, to an extent, Austin/McMahon in ’99. But here, they plan to totally hose the winner of the Rumble, thus invalidating over a decade’s worth of “WINNER GETS THE MAIN EVENT AT WRESTLEMANIA” stipulation that is supposed to be the cherry everyone fights for all year. So what does this mean for the Rumble? It becomes a useless appendage. It’s value becomes moot, because it’s no longer a guaranteed slot: now, it’s just a title shot, just like any other. This is a major misstep on their part, one they obviously won’t care about.
Betty then goes on with a booking scenario to keep Rey/Angle, and have Booker/Orton/Benoit involving Orton’s owed favor with Booker. It’s a good idea, Betty, but since they’re dead set on putting Orton in Rey’s spot, how about we come up with a way that saves face with Rey, Orton, Raw’s main event and the Rumble? Here we go:
Trips wins the Rumble. Make it by duplicitous means, too, so he keeps some heel heat. Have him screw Rey out of it, or better yet, have Orton screw Rey so he can get revenge on H’s, and H’s beats him. Trips is main eventing for Raw, and now you have Orton/Rey heat.
On Smackdown, we move the stupid little Gold Rush tournament over there. Semis see Orton go over Benoit with Booker’s help, while Rey goes over … whomever you want. Orton goes over with some kind of cheating tactic (if you really want to have some fun, have Chavo cause it over Rey trying to use Eddie’s death for his career, when Chavo is a blood relative and everybody is ignoring him). This way, the purity of the Rumble stays intact, Orton gets the slot, Trips gets his slot, and their precious plan continues untouched. Not that we WANT this main event, but hey … I’m just trying to minimize the damage.
Lindell Pennington hates Triple H. Join the club, Lindell, we’ve got jackets on back-order:
Triple H should stop causing all of the problems he does. Very few people actually enjoy watching him, he got the belt taken off Edge just so he could main-event WrestleMania for the 5th time in a row (6th total), and he continues to have his head so far up Vince’s ass you can see his hair hanging out of Vinnie Mac’s mouth sometimes.
And if wishes were fishes, we’d all be underwater. Although I think you may be off in your main event total run there (his match with Booker at WM19 was like third match down from the top, even beneath the Vince/Hogan match), and he’s still behind Hogan (main evented seven of the first eight WrestleManias in a row, save for 4). But yes, he should stop being a problem.
Fuck Paul Levesque. He’s never made the money that Rock, Hogan, and Austin have, and has never gotten the ratings Edge has.
Okay, here is where I take dispute. Did you just start watching, or did you develop convenient memory loss? Triple H was champion for much of the latter half of ’99 and a generous portion of 2000, when Raw was drawing 7’s and 8’s, which handily beats Edge’s 4.5. His feuds with Cactus Jack, Rock and Austin drew HUGE numbers in all the meaningful areas (buyrates, live gates and ratings).
And you’ll definitly never see an HHH match that can compare to your normal offering from Angle, Michaels, Benoit, and yes, Edge, all of whom are constantly buried anyway.
Again, I wonder if you suffered a head injury, or perhaps early onset senility. The H’s/Rock Iron Man match, or their ladder match in 1998. The H’s/Jericho Last Man Standing match. The H’s/Austin Three Stages Of Hell match. Any of the H’s/Benoit matches from 2004. The first H’s/Shawn match in 2002. Even the H’s/Taker match from WrestleMania 17. Yes, when he wants to, he dogs a match like few others. But when he laces up his work boots, he WORKS.
Hunter should be making new stars, not shitting on the entire company for his own petty ego.
I find no fault with this statement. Again, the jackets are on back-order. But we got bumper stickers available.
I’m tired of Hunter. I’m tired of his wife. I’m tired of Johnny Ass, err, Ace. I’m tired of Jarrett. And I’m especially tired of McMahon himself. Wrestling has gotten to the point where it is nearly impossible to enjoy, all because of all of the f*cking politics in both the WWE and TNA.
Politics ruled the roost when we were cutting our teeth on Hulkamania and the original Horsemen. Politics ran the place when Superstar Graham and the Briscos ran things in the 70’s. You want a wrestling organization without politics? Try the NCAA.
Graeme Barrie has a long booking scenario for WrestleMania that boils down to Edge vs. a face H’s for the WWE Title at WrestleMania after CM Punk debuts and costs Cena the WWE Title over Cena getting busy with Maria (since Maria and Punk are an item). I won’t reprint the whole thing here, cause it’s quite long. Everyone’s entitled to their fantasy booking, and while I won’t knock it directly, I don’t think it would fly in the E: it puts Punk in too high a position too soon (a problem that has caused the backlash against Cena), and it plays on a real backstage romance that most people probably don’t know about (hell, I didn’t). Plus, it means a face run for the H’s, and that’s BAD.
Finally, Craig Zeizle asks us some subjects about the nature of the column itself:
Just wondering, do you guys get along when making this column? How did you
come up with this column’s focus and idea?
Good questions, Craig. First one first: Mark and I get along pretty damn good. The opinions portion is actually done separately; we discuss what topics we want to include about 5 days before the column posts (to give as much time as possible for news stories to develop for us to talk about), and then we write out our opinions. I send ’em to Mark, he combines them into one document, and it gets posted. Even when we disagree, though, it’s nothing personal; no two fans are alike, and I think we are both mature enough to respect each other’s differences.
The general idea and focus of the column, though, was in large part Mark’s baby. He approached me about the idea of doing a wrestling column in the spirit of ESPN’s Pardon The Interruption. I liked the idea immediately, but I didn’t want it to become two guys bitching in an op-ed piece instead of one; he assured me this would be a wide-open column, given to praise as well as scorn. So we talked a bit and hammered out a gameplan and a layout. We both had input when it came to the final portions, but the genesis and the outline of the picking of topics to duel on was all Mark’s baby. And, so far, it’s been a popular baby, judging from the amount of e-mail.
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Looking back at That Phil Collins Song
Mark: I can’t give this show a better title than “mediocre.” No higher, no lower, although most people would say it deserved higher. But why? Is it because of the lukewarm feeling of the NCAA style fan ring rushing when Christian became champ? Is it because of the MOTYC?? I hope not, because that isn’t enough to save the show.
I saw the show, which was probably the first TNA PPV I have watched since Unbreakable. I was excited and anticipated a great show. I ended up being dissapointed. That’s probably for the most part because after I watched it, I thought “well, everything I predicted happened.” Come on, face the facts. Did Samoa Joe have any chance in hell of losing? No. Did Team 3D have any chance in hell of losing? No. Joe-Styles-Daniels was a MOTYC, easily. Great match. However, usually in such a high calibur match you don’t automatically know the outcome. That was its lone flaw in my book. By the way, does anyone agree with me that people may get tired of seeing this over and over? The undercard was forgettable. Let’s face it. This show WAS about people wanting to see the triple threat and Christian winning the title. But who cares? I still ain’t gonna give it sympathy for putting on a shitty card elsewhere. I really would have liked to have seen Generation NeXt win their match. Team 3D beating the jobber faction of Team Canada was even more predictable than the Joe match was. AMW had no chance of losing neither. Abyss/Rhino? A good spotfest, sure. But nothing that blew me away, really. I’m glad Jay Lethal is finally getting the x-division push he deserves, and winning the four-way is that perfect oppurtunity. What about Kenny King though? And where will Lethal’s push go with Joe dominant right now?
Oh, and people, save the shit. Don’t e-mail me saying “well you are wrong because this was good show and will blow No Way Out away, or any other WWE PPV, blah blah blah.” I’ve seen what you’ve done to Jed over little opinions like this. Just save it, for the sake of getting a rebuttle.
About the main event…
Jed: As I write this, I got the PPV waiting for me at home to watch, so all opinions here are based strictly on the written reports. For all I know, the in-ring quality was Flair/Steamboat all night. I seriously doubt it; there WAS a match with Konnan, Road Dogg and Billy Gunn all in the ring at the same time. That’s gotta violate some Newtonian law of physics right there about too many things sucking in the same place at the same time.
Anyway … some things about this PPV really puzzled me. No Monty Brown? Ron Killings in a pre-show match? Shannon Moore in the pre-show after beating AJ Styles on Impact? Weird.
Having The Naturals against Generation NeXt was a losing proposition; you could bitch no matter who jobbed, so going down that alley is senseless. Both teams need the heat of a win. GN doesn’t need a negative push, and The Naturals have been buried so deep, they’re looking up at the earth’s core. Hopefully, the match will be good, but the whole concept of booking them against each other … meh. The same goes for the four-way X-Division match. Shelley needs the heat … Petey’s one of the most dominant former X-Division champs, with the most recognizable and jaw-dropping finisher known to man … Bentley is give or take, but hey, he’s an former X Champ too … and you put Jay Lethal over? Are none of these former champs worthy of being built up to face Joe?
The Neo-Modern Scofflaws and LAXative (I decided to mutate their name into this because, well, watching Konnan is the shits … not the most clever, I know, but I don’t see you doing better, jackass) is barely worth mentioning. Break away Homicide, let him go X, and keep this circle jerk in the pre-show.
Equally worth forgetting is the Tag Title match. Unless Sabin/Dutt get to stay a tag team, this was a waste of time, obviously filler since the fans screwed with the gameplan and put Team 3D against Team Canada in the internet poll. Couldn’t it have been The Naturals here?
Rhino and Abyss looks like a nice, bloody catastrophe. Just what we expect. I just pray it doesn’t go to a scaffolding match or a High Incident match from here. I pray it doesn’t. Even TNA’s Grievous Bodily Harm division couldn’t save one of those crappy stipulations.
The three-way looks good, if predictable. We knew Joe would win. It was as obvious as all hell. Ditto the former Dudleys/Canada match. I doubt that match was as good as the three-way, though.
Well, as for the main event …
Hold up … Jarrett LOST a match?!?
Mark: Okay, Jarrett lost, now can we have Cena? Please?
Am I the only one who expected a better match? I know, I just said I expected a “better” match out of Jarrett. Notice I didn’t say “good.” I said “better.” Wasn’t this capable of being better than what it was? Instead, we got the 3032 KO’ed ref spots with all the unbelievable kickouts. Oh, and as if it wasn’t blatantly obvious that Christian had it won when Jarrett missed a SUPER STROKE early! And the kick out of the GUITAR SHOT OF DOOM to top it off! Then a bunch of other stuff happened, ref is KO’ed, Kim gets involved, whatever. Who cares. I think this was a sign that TNA doesn’t think Jarrett is even capable of carrying a regular match.
Anyway, the case in point here was that Jeff Jarrett has been dethrowned, and TNA finally has a babyface who is capable of carrying the NWA Heavyweight Championship and actually forumlate a long reign. A lot of people are expecting Jarrett to win it back soon, but I think those people need a reality check. TNA isn’t in its same state as it was before, when Jarrett regains the title with fluke transitional champions like Rhino where Jarrett won it right back going into the Spike debut. Anyone seen that crowd lately?
Looking ahead at the future, all signs are pointing to Christian’s feud with Monty Brown. Could be good, could not. We’ll see.
Jed: So, Christian Cage has dethroned perma-champ Jeff Jarrett. Good for him. The naysayers are all bitching because Jarrett didn’t win with a move and a pinfall, and there was a ref bump and a run-in. Man, you complain that he has the belt, and you complain about how he loses it? Do you even acknowledge there’s liquid in the glass, or is it a drought in your world? Jarrett lost. Take it and run with it. The how shouldn’t be the focus. If you wanna nitpick, look at the why.
Why? Well, there’s a multitude of possible reasons here. Maybe it’s the negative crowd reaction to Jarrett finally piercing the levels of corporate ownership. Maybe the Panda wants an instant return on their money spent for Cage. Or maybe (and this is my preferred line of thinking) they, honest to god, are looking at a World Title scene with some new players. Think about it: Monty’s next in line. Jarrett costs him the shot because HE’S the King Of The Mountian, the title belongs to him. Sting ends up coming back to screw Jarrett out of the shot, Monty turns on Jarrett. Suddenly, Jarrett’s got a lot of people targeting him WITHOUT the belt. Meanwhile, Christian now has Monty as a legit face contender, Jarrett can still claim champion’s-right-of-rematch at some point, Abyss is waiting in the wings, and someday Raven will come back and demand his shot. This might seem a tad optimistic, and I’m sure there are doubters among you who are automatically assuming this is a hotshot and Jarrett will get the belt back before the
Thursday show starts. I present to you this: if their argument for putting the belt on Jarrett was name value, whose name is worth more, Jarrett’s or Christian’s? Who recently defected in a highly publicized jump from the largest global wrestling promotion to come to TNA? This was not only a good move, this is a smart move … and, likely a move that’ll last a while (until Monty takes it from Christian sometime this summer).
Fool’s Gold Rush
Mark: If you haven’t read the RAW spoilers, and don’t want to now, don’t read this section. There, I warned you. So, WWE made it a triple threat with the H’s, RVD, and the Big Slow. We all know who is going to win, there’s no other way out of it.
Jed makes a valid point below in saying that this way, the H’s prevailing and moving onto WrestleMania (floored?) won’t take any of comeback heat from RVD. Hasn’t that sort of already happened though by allowing both Calrito and Snitsky to open up their whole move vocabulary on him in earlier matches on RAW? So what else is there to cover here? The H’s will win the Gold Rush Tournament. Canada will win the gold medal in men’s hockey. John Cena sucks.
Jed: There’s not a whole lot I can say about this that my idea above didn’t cover. Like last year’s tourney, the outcome of this year’s Gold Rush tournament to fill the other World Title slot at WrestleMania is as transparent as Saran Wrap. The E has his cruise control for WM booking, squandering the opportunity to make some great strides in making new stars for the sake of name-value booking. It’s pathetic, lazy, and as I illustrated above, all of this could have been avoided by giving Triple H the Rumble victory and using the Gold Rush to do the Rey/Orton match at NWO instead.
If you’ve read the spoilers, you also have seen the little “curveball” they threw by having the finals become a Triple Threat. Anybody who can’t see where this is headed might be better served laying off the drugs: your brain is already toast. Since the WWE doesn’t know how to do the Three-Way Dance, the whole purpose of a Triple Threat here is not to create intrigue or speculation … it’s so RVD doesn’t have to take the loss to HHHead
Of Creative. Simple as that. They want H’s in the main event, but they want RVD to stay hot from his comeback. Easiest way to do that is to have this lame Triple Threat where Big Slow loses, General Of Many H’s gets his victory and RVD gets out without looking like a TOTAL loser. Of course, since RVD has already been made to look like a choke-artist in big-time matches over the past 4 or so years, protecting RVD right now is like hosing down the barn after it’s burnt to ashes. But hey, I don’t have a bachelor’s in writing or 5 years of episodic television writing experience, so I must not have any clue how to write a wrestling angle.
The locker room doesn’t like using Eddie as a plot point? Shut up!
Jed: Again, what can you say about it? It’s tasteless and offensive. Randy Orton can get heat without this kind of crap; his RNN updates got him heat. His Legend Killer schtick got him PLENTY of heat. This is the kind of gimmick/angle that can derail a wrestler for a long time, not that they haven’t seemingly gone out of their way to kill Orton’s heat on multiple occasions. All I know is … well … just scroll down to this week’s Grade Sheet. This whole topic comes up there too. Bottom line: Vince ought to be ashamed of himself for this. But this is Vince McMahon; he feels no shame. Hence, this repugnant angle.
Mark: Ditto.
The Grade Book
Jed gives an A to: Various WWE employees, for making their displeasure over the tasteless inclusion of Eddie’s death in the Rey/Orton feud. These guys have families to feed and mortgages to pay, so I can’t expect an en masse walk-out (TNA can’t hire everyone, folks). And while I doubt many have gone up to Vince himself and said “this story sucks”, he knows what’s printed in the dirt sheets. Word has gotten back to him how fond the boys are of this storyline. It takes a lot of guts to take a stance that contradicts your employer, especially in the cut-throat, unforgiving world of professional wrestling.
Mark gives an A to: TNA, for countering WWE’s previous early MOTYC with one of their own in the X-division triple threat at Against All Odds, and for Jarrett finally becoming dethrowned by someone who is a wothy babyface of actually carrying the title to a reign. I bashed the event earlier, but looking at those two accomplishments indivdually, easily deserves an A. A match of the year always does.
Jed gives a B to:Vince McMahon, much as I hate to give him anything lately except grief (and $30.00 when another DVD comes out), for swallowing his pride and doing whatever it took to get Bret to accept a Hall Of Fame induction. Sure, the WWE HoF is largely a myopic institution, excluding virtually anyone who didn’t compete in the WWE, but the business doesn’t have an independent or unified hall of fame (don’t bother telling me about the Wrestling Observer’s HoF; it’s a bigger joke then the WWE’s. Their induction standards are wildly arbitrary to the point of headache-inducing), it’s the best we got. But Bret deserves the spot, and that Vince finally bent over backwards and did whatever it took to get him there means something. Now, what’ll really be scary is if he can get Bruno Sammartino in there.
Mark gives a B to:All of the WWE employees who had the courage to speak out about the Eddie Guerrero situation. All of us in the IWC already hated it. We knew the wrestlers and other workers did. And this time they spoke up to Vince, rightfully so. Good for them. Now, could they speak up to Vince and have them fire John Cena? That way, they would be killing two birds with one stone, and eliminating two horribly stupid WWE decisions.
Jed gives a C to: RoH, for bringing in CM Punk to substitute for Low Ki over the weekend after Ki’s departure from the company. Before you set to scourging me with email about how Punk rules, blah blah blah, let me say this: I got no problems with Punk. I’ve never seen him wrestle, but I understand he’s marvelous. My problem is that, after Low Ki left, and RoH announced they’d have a substitute, the language and the build-up made it seem so awesome, so earth-shattering, so amazing. Earth-shattering would’ve been to get someone totally unexpected, someone who’d never been in the promotion: Yoshihiro Tajiri, or Chavo Guerrero Jr., or Charlie Haas, or (yeah, I’m dreaming here, bite me) Chris Jericho. CM Punk puts on a good match, this I’m sure of; but for all the build-up and the way RoH acted in the wake of Low Ki’s departure, they had a chance here to give the fans something really unique and special, and they dropped the ball. Nice try, RoH. Next time, try harder.
Mark gives a C to: TNA for finally getting their big primetime spot they’ve been thriving on. I know this isn’t exactly brand-new, but it needs to get mention here, from me even so. All the trouble after going on TV… the FSN era with the Friday afternoon Timeslot From Hell… moving to spike after the Velocity kick and having to deal with another bad timeslot… but it brought in enough ratings, at least to a limit that they wanted, with the Monday night replay helping a lot in part of that.
Jed gives a D to: the WWE’s “creative” department for not knowing the difference between patience and dragging it out. Lately, they seem to be striving for some kind of slow burn, but Vince’s television writers, who wouldn’t know subtlety if it clouted them in the head, are tripping over themselves trying to use the time factor to create intrigue in a storyline. Mickie James’ long-overdue heel turn is one of them; they’ve tried to drag this thing out, and they’ve tried to hold their wad, but even a brain-dead infant can see this heel turn coming … and yet, they don’t pull the trigger, thus turning the slow burn into a barely-smouldering pile of ashes. And if it isn’t an unnecessarily slow storyline, it’s one they’ve dragged out to the point of forgetting entirely. Who’s the GM of Raw again? Oh yeah, they’re “searching” for Eric Bischoff’s replacement. I understand wanting to find the right person for the job, but this is a storyline position to begin with, not a real executive; they shouldn’t have launched this whole storyline until they had their replacement candidate lined up. And let’s not discuss the terminally long and equally dull Booker/Benoit rivalry; at least the other two previously mentioned angles have some kind of obvious resolution point. Booker/Benoit has NOTHING going for it. Then again, asking for smart writing from the E is like asking for the Final Jeopardy answer from Paris Hilton, so I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised.
Mark gives a D to:WWE, for their booking of No Way Out thus far. I am disgusted by yet another Undertaker comeback where he’s striving for the title. It kind of reminds me of the Pink Floyd song, Yet Another Movie. In WWE, it’s Random SmackDown PPV- Yet another Undertaker appearence. I have no interest in another Angle-Taker match. It’s a considerable step above Mizark, but still, that was a time wasting joke spot to even begin with. JBL is just being used to put over the undefeated new guys. Booker-Benoit is STALE as hell. Memo to SmackDown’s creative team: NO ONE CARES. MNM has no one formidable to compete with. Gregory Helms is going to be taking on every cruiserweight. Why don’t they just transform that title into the Junior title, since it’s clear that they’d rather push that division?
Jed gives an F to: Vince McMahon, for being so far out of whack on this Rey/Orton/Eddie thing, it makes me wonder if he’s starting to go senile. If there’s a single fan this is entertaining, if there’s one viewer who doesn’t see anything distasteful about the references to Eddie burning in hell and having Vickie present at No Way Out, please write us; we want to know who the sick freaks are who are getting a kick out of this blasphemous, insensitive storyline, so we can isolate you from the rest of society. That he’s not only okaying this angle, but insisting on it over the protests of many employees, is beyond words. People still call up Katie Vick as a shining example of what you find under the bottom of the barrel. Using Eddie to get Orton cheap heat is digging under the dirt under the bottom of said barrel. And it especially smacks of stupidity when we saw
Orton at the tribute shows, at the 10-bell salute at the beginning, looking quite mournful. So we’re supposed to now make the leap that that was all a show? Or is his “glad your buddy’s dead” act all a put-on? All I know is, I owe Vince McMahon congratulations: because of his inappropriate zeal in pursuing this tasteless angle, it’s finally put me in a position where I am ashamed to watch wrestling.
Mark gives an F to: TNA, for punishing Austin Aries and Rodersick Strong for being loyal to Ring of Honor and showing up there instead of some TNA tapings, thus putting the great Generation NeXt storyline at a roadblock and months of delay. Here is the article, if you haven’t seen:
“TNA has removed Austin Aries and Roderick Strong from their upcoming tapings and cut their TNA storylines short for the next several tapings, possibly for the next few months. TNA is making an example out of Aries and Strong, both of whom were told to skip the ROH show on Saturday night to fly to Orlando, FL early for the Against All Odds PPV on Sunday. Because of bad weather in the Northeast, TNA feared that talent could miss the PPV which is why all TNA wrestlers who were scheduled to work the ROH show were told to skip it and fly to Orlando. Jay Lethal, Alex Shelley, and Homicide listened. Aries and Strong did not, deciding to work the ROH show then fly to Orlando. While they did make the PPV on time, TNA has decided to show that not listening to them will not be tolerated.”
OFF TOPIC!
The olympics mean nothing to me. Watching the Winter Olympics, or even attempting to for that matter, is like watching a bunch of people from different countries slide across ice and seeing who crosses the finish line in the fasted time. Does it make me not patriotic for not enjoying watching luge and downhill swimming?
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And that does it. Hope all of you had a great Valentine’s Day.
TheViewFromTheCheapSeats@gmail.com
Closing Statement: If ignorance is bliss, why aren’t we all more happy people?
