Here’s a quote from a certain highly-visible member of the IWC. Can you guess who said it?
Russo was the managing editor of Raw magazine when he got his job in WWE creative due to concepts he wrote about in his column, which got Vince McMahon’s attention. I feel that he got where he was because he watched ECW and incorporated a lot of what ECW was doing into his work. He, however, said many times he didn’t watch ECW and it had no influence on his ideas. I never bought it.
Yeah, yeah, I know, too easy. I mean, it just HAS to be Milord. To him, everything good in wrestling has to be traced back to ECW no matter how tenuous the connection may be. Five years dead and the dude’s still f*cking the corpse. How pathetic is that?
And so we reach the end of a hard weekend’s work for me writing-wise. Round Table, Triple-Threat Short Form, Music Review, and my first feature article in five years, then the usual mess. Here’s hoping for no wrestling news to come out so I can keep this short and rest my poor, aching hands. In the meantime, I didn’t follow anything over the weekend. So it was to my surprise to see Wichita State make the Sweet Sixteen (as well as Pomazak’s alma mater, Bradley; BTW, if George Mason beats the Shockers, I will have something to say about the Dubbaya Fix being in). It was a real shock to see that Rod Pampling won a golf tournament. Rod, the man who led the British Open after the first round in 1999 and proceeded to miss the cut, won at Arnie’s? T. O. signing with Dallas was no surprise, of course; Jerry Jones is f*cking nuts and Parcells has the ego to believe he can control him. Oh, yeah, I’m sure they’ll cut into the intro to his first home game at the Big Blue Toilet Bowl in Irving (yet another former residence of mine), where we can hear him pull a Cena. The WBC? Viva Fidel! Viva la Revolucion! (Now, I’m not a big fan of Fidel, but anything that pisses off a Bush family member is fine by me; I just want Cuba to win it all so that five thousand people will gather outside the barbed wire at Gitmo to rub it in.) As for free agency, the Bears haven’t made any real moves, and I don’t give a shit about the rest of football except for the FudgePackers, and they’ve only been resigning their own guys.
As for me, another slight bout of Sunday insomnia was not helped by a K-Dawg; I didn’t get to sleep until about 5:30 AM, and was woken up at 8:30 AM by a phone call to set up a phone interview for today. On went the coffee and this column got started. I just want to make sure I’m awake a little later when I’ll try to tackle V For Vendetta. Big fan of Alan Moore here (Slick Rick has a lesser opinion of him, for good reason), love Hugo Weaving to death, enjoy seeing a terrorist as the hero…yeah, I’m the target audience for this one.
Well, I didn’t bother with it today due to that insomnia. This is one that I really have to pay attention to, I think.
In fact, I’m not feeling well right now (soon-to-be-Spring cold), so I’m going to just do a quick one…
THE PIMP SECTION
Ten thousand words of me. Yes, we’re doing an entire series of “tributes” to Five Years Without WCW, but this is the only one that’s mandatory to read.
Lucard may have to make space if that new Call Of Cthulhu game that’s coming out this week (and that I’m downloading now) is as good as rumor has it.
Hevia talks bagels.
Wallace covers Brandy Alexanders, which are damn cool. I needed one after I saw him compliment Wife-Beater.
There are worse years to be stuck in than 1977, the year of Hotel California and Rumours among others, Paul. If the kid brother likes 1977 so much, how about channeling him into the Pistols and the Clash and the Ramones and early Talking Heads? If it was good enough for me, it’s good enough for him.
Kubryk panders to his natural constituency of religious assholes and gun freaks. In other words, people that I should have taken the opportunity to have run down when driving through Lake County all the time. Maybe I could have got him and saved us misery.
Cameron, Daniels, and Hulse do a baseball preview. The first two are East Coast Bias Morons (despite the fact that Cameron lives in San Diego), the latter is fine by me.
Goober summarizes an active week in sports.
Basilo has to fill space with SNME stuff.
Hatton’s comics and his idiot friends have obliterated any chance he has for a life.
Stevens keeps doing what he does and doing it well.
SMACKDOWN SOMEWHAT SPOILED
So we’ve got another supershow, thus it’s worth my time to delay a bit and get the Smackdown taping results, mutilate them slightly in order not to piss off your whiners, and do a pre-comment on them before I work over the show in the Short Form.
The Last Chance Battle Royal will kick off the show. You’ll all be happy to know that Animal is eliminated first. Yes, I know, that’s a spoiler (whine whine whine), but news like this simply can’t wait until showtime on Friday. After all, we need something to keep us happy for the remainder of the week. The winner is the guy you pretty much thought would win.
Rey-Rey versus Fit Finlay also has a rather predictable ending. You can probably guess it.
Oh, yeah, in case you thought that Booker versus Boogey wasn’t special enough, it’s now a handicap match: Boogey versus Booker and Paisley. Just kill me now.
However, that mess is followed up by another Benoit/Regal match. From implications, this one’s short and Angle Advancement, though, so be forewarned.
And your main event? A non-title rematch from No Way Out, as they continue to push Mark Henry in some perverted effort to determine whether he’s worth a contract renewal (hint: no). It’ll end up being a total mess.
So, now you can avoid Smackdown. I can’t, of course. Something about a damn column.
ANYTHING ELSE?
Well, no. Okay, Chris Cage got canned from OVW, allegedly for being such an asshole that Heyman and Vince noticed (which, considering them, is really saying something). But, really, does it matter? Was he chosen as part of the Spirit Squad? No. What was he doing at the time? Teaming up with Mizanin, who’s on his way to the main roster. Welcome to Irrelevance Central, folks.
Oh, yeah, just to show you that They Can’t Let Go, 1bullshit Junior’s reporting that a match has already been set for the May 13th SD house show in El Paso. Yes, you’ve already figured it out, haven’t you? For those of you whose cognitive processes refuse to connect A to B, it’s Chavito versus Orton. Can we hope that this is the last gasp?
And since there really is nothing, I might as well just move on to the Short Form…
THE SHORT FORM
Match Results:
Kane over Carly Colon, First Of Two Tag Title Pimp Matches (Pinfall, chokeslam): Just when you think he’s turning the corner, along comes Carly The Walking Fuckup again. Blew the moonsault (but recovered well enough), and threw out a .7 Watts dropkick. When will Carlos sit him down and give him a good talking-to?
Shelton Benjamin over Ric Flair and Rob Van Dam, Intercontinental Title Triple Threat Match (Pinfall, Benjamin pins Flair, taking advantage of Flair being flat on his back for the Figure Four): No, not an Angle Advancement Match, but a PPV Pimp Match. However, unlike most of them (see above), this one had a purpose. It did prove, at least to me, that Flair can keep up with the two guys in the ring and Matt Hardy. Now they just have to make sure that Finlay and Lashley (oops) are able to do the same. Not a bad match at all here, and Benjy’s smarts got a nice little upgrade on account of the pinfall.
Chris Arrington has joined the Dark Side:
You got me on the Vidale Kool-Aid. If she ain’t back soon helping her baby boy Shelton, I’m gonna be pissed.
You’re absolutely right. Without Vidale there, Benjy’s a virtual non-entity, even in his own matches. How in the name of heaven could he have become that reliant on her so quickly? He needs her back, he needs to be weaned off of her, and she needs to become Raw General Manager. It’s the only viable option.
Victoria over the Ten-Buck Tramp (Pinfall, Widow’s Peak): Hevia must be excited that his missus finally won one for a change. For that matter, so am I. Victoria’s been treated atrociously lately.
The Big Show over Gym Bunny (DQ, Fun With Chairs): Legit or not (and they’ve kayfabed the X sign before), they finally have an excuse to throw the tag belts on Carly and Masters with TBS’s “injury”. Well, good for them. I was afraid that they were going to end that match cheaply…well, they will anyway, because there’s no way in hell anyone takes those two dodos seriously.
Trip ‘n Shane over Shawn Michaels and John Cena (DQ, Vince Does Angle Advancement; devolves to Trip ‘n Shane versus Shawn Michaels, Handicrap Match (ND)): All I have to ask is this: who is the cliched Useless Brother-In-Law in this relationship, Trip or Shane? In this mess, both of them qualified. I really have nothing to say about this one, mostly because I was pretty much asleep for it. That shows you how much respect I have for Raw these days. I wasn’t alone in that. KC Evers (no relation) felt the same way. Maybe it’s Raw, maybe it’s the weather…hell, I’m not going to try to figure it out.
Speaking of the dynamics of the McMahon Family, Slick Rick has an observation concerning the Bitch of the Baskervilles:
“One happy family” clearly they’re going to slip-stream Steph’s unholy pregnancy and her kayfabe marriage into the storyline without a legit explaination.
Be happy. Knowing Vince and Steph, they would consider an incestuous pregnancy acceptable TV fodder.
The Proud Graduate Of Dartmouth His Own Self wants to take this in a different direction altogether:
How does neither Styles nor Lawler comment on all the clenched fists being used in the handicap match after he banished Cena? Especially with Lawler cheerleading the way he did.
This is what happened to Lawler: he was so good as a heel commentator, that, combined with his days as a face in the USWA, it made him into a face in WWE. Even when he was cheering heels, he was a face when he got in the ring. That will never happen to Coach, because he’s not cool enough, plus, he was put into a certain character thanks to his interactions with Flex. Of course, that’s not a bad thing. It’s good to have a heel commentator who’s almost entirely consistent as a heel.
Yeah, El, but you and I both know the reason behind the reason you’re complimenting Coachman, so I really can’t consider you an unbiased source on this matter. It’s understandable, though, so I forgive you, although I can’t grant you back what you’ve lost.
Angle Developments:
High Endurance: Fifteen minutes of Vince and Cena blathering just to find out a main event. Yeesh. But it was worth it to find out exactly how desperate they are to give Cena some credibility. Vince, Shane, and Michaels all have to give him rubs? Ladies and gentlemen, we’ve struck Hard Sell. Too bad it’s not going to work when they get to my city.
Twenty-One: Well, we all heard the rumors about the Blackjacks going into the HoF, and, yes, they’re deserving. However, we all assumed that the entire purpose behind that was to get Barry Windham to sign a Legends contract and be the presenter. Well, the Legends contract may come to pass, but it now seems that the only purpose of the induction was to get Bobby Heenan back to Chicago, where he will be honored by everyone moreso than anywhere else. So, why? Is Bobby’s health that bad? This might be worth a selection in Fleabag’s Dead Pool, folks.
Another Acidosis Flashback: Steve Murray, he of the many columns here, decided to contribute an observation:
The most amusing bit of the night, for me, was the “This Week in Wrestling” segment, since they decided to go with the Stone Cold/Bret Hart submission match from 3/23/1997. It’s almost like they’re refusing to recognize the Night Hell Froze Over. Personally, I blame you — if you hadn’t written 10,000 words on that subject, Shane appearing on Nitro would’ve been our big reminder of the night. Even retrospectively, WWE refuses to put angles on TV that you write about.
That’s why I begged off describing my ideas for Burchill’s future booking in the Short Form this weekend. I know that the only time they put stuff on that I write about in here is when they know it’ll piss me off to no end (viz. the Michaels drug test). So, by throwing in those remarks, I know I’d hurt Burchill. Well, Fingers got me to spill the beans in the Super-Secret Writers’ Forum, which they haven’t penetrated yet, and everyone seemed to like them, so I know I made the right decision by Pirate Paul. You know, if they hated me so much, why not hire me? That way they could be sure to make my life miserable.
Yeah, nothing much. But, Jesus, I just did a ten-thousand word feature. If you want a whole chunk of me, read that, will you? You’ll enjoy yourselves.
