The dinosaurs got cocky. They made enemies. – Manny, Ice Age 2
Analogize all you will to WWE. It’s only appropriate after this nightmare.
I’d like to ignore it. I really would. I’d like to think about nicer things, like Karrie Webb’s hole-out eagle that put the first women’s major of the year into a playoff (and Michelle Wie’s terrific performance, and Lorena Ochoa’s phenomenal round on Thursday, despite the fact that she played the last 54 holes in one over). Or maybe Lefty’s rape of the entire field at the BellSouth, thus putting a little mystery into the Masters (Jesus Fucking Christ, he came within four feet of getting a hole-in-one on a par 4). Or even the NCAA Finals (congrats to Florida). Or my wanting to throttle Peter Gammons and the other so-called baseball experts who aren’t giving the World Champion Sox their due. But I can’t.
I write about wrestling, and therefore I must write about Wrestlemania. It would be like a priest ignoring Christmas…no, after that pic up there, I shouldn’t use that analogy, should I? A hillbilly miner ignoring that one of his daughters has sprouted breasts, maybe? Why not? After all, incest is a minor crime compared to the First-Degree Booking committed on the audience Sunday. I’ll be going over this match-by-match, of course. I do this so that you may be properly informed. Hell, I even showed up in the chat here to educate and inform the Unwashed. Of course, since most of it was IP staff…no, some of them count too. So, I have to throw myself into the deep end, throwing a perfectly good entertaining experience of watching Ice Age 2 while this aspect of the Theater Of The Ridiculous that Tony Ingrassia would have bodily thrown out into the streets of the Village played.
It just can’t be avoided. It’s the stinking, smelly roadkill on the Highway Of Wrestling, Loudon Wainwright’s Dead Skunk personified. It’s creating a stench that’s threatening to ruin Masters Week for me. Well, consider this column a big-ass can of Lysol, which I’ll be spraying directly up my nose to get the optimal effect.
I could discuss the new Fortune 500 (corporate variant). After all, we’ve got a new Number One as Exxon Mobil used consumer raping to surpass Wally World. The Top 25 is a very interesting list:
1 Exxon Mobil
2 Wal-Mart
3 General Motors
4 Chevron
5 Ford
6 ConocoPhillips
7 General Electric
8 Citigroup
9 AIG
10 IBM
11 H-P
12 Bank of America
13 Berkshire Hathaway
14 Home Depot
15 Valero Energy
16 McKesson
17 J.P. Morgan Chase
18 Verizon
19 Cardinal Health
20 Altria
21 Kroger
22 State Farm
23 Marathon Oil
24 Procter & Gamble
25 Dell
Pretty weird if you think about it. I mean, what are the most basic needs of humankind? Food and shelter, right? Well, the highest-ranking food company is sitting there at #20 (and their most profitable product is tobacco, not food). Only two in the Top 25. Just to show you where food ranks on, ahem, the food chain, Albertson’s and Safeway are the two largest grocery chains in the US. They’re sitting at #47 and #50 respectively. The two companies they bracket? You may have heard of them: Microsoft and Intel. In terms of agribusiness companies, Archer Daniels Midland is the tops at #56; Tyson is #80. Of course, I would be interested in this from personal inclination. After all, they’ve interviewed me six f*cking times yet haven’t hired me, so f*ck ’em.
Shelter? Well, can you really count Home Depot? Guess you can. Lowe’s is also pretty high up at #42. And you could probably include insurance as part of the whole shelter concept, which includes AIG and State Farm. So, if you stretch that definition, that means that there are three oil companies, two automobile manufacturers, a retailer, a defense contractor, and a bank more important than food and shelter on the most basic scale imaginable.
(Where’s those omnipresent multimedia companies? Time-Warner’s tops at #40. Disney comes in at #63. News Corp is at #86. Comcast at #94. “Money is power” is a slight lie in this case.)
Do I have personal involvement with any of these? Well, I shop at Wal-Mart. I own a Ford. My printer’s an HP. I get lightbulbs at Home Depot. I bank at Chase. I eat products from a number of Altria’s divisions. I used to have State Farm for my auto insurance. I clean with Procter and Gamble products. And my monitor’s a Dell. So those of you who call me a communist, please note that I make my contributions to American capitalism.
Oh, but that diversion still doesn’t get my mind off of Wrestlemania. It has to be discussed. But after the Pimps…
…wait a second. What do you mean DeLay’s resigning? No, can’t be. The country’s finally rid of that cocksucker? Good. Now get him indicted for his shenanigans and make sure he spends lots and lots of time in one of those wonderful Texas prisons where the Mexican inmates can take out their frustrations over his party’s immigration stand on him in their own interesting way. If it was up to me, he’d be up for High Treason, but campaign finance abuse will do quite well, thank you. Of course, he’d never get there, not with Dubbaya having had all this time to f*ck with the judiciary. Oh, well, bullet through the head, I guess. But it’s just so unsatisfying.
THE PIMP SECTION
GRUT free-associates. He hasn’t learned that nothing in life is free.
Lucard never explained what he did with the other six guests.
Hevia is finally starting to come to my side about Overrated. Good for him.
Vin-man can’t seem to understand the concept of ten fingers, two feet.
Goober blows off the Masters in favor of sports that no one watches, like baseball and college basketball.
Pomazak previews the AFC Division With The Patriots And No One Else, Or At Least That’s What The National Media Thinks. We’ll have to wait until next week for him to discuss real football.
Gloomie discusses loudmouthed assholes in the music industry, yet somehow manages to keep the article short.
Pandich understands the trauma of idiotic e-mailers.
Paul comments on the only song of which I have four different versions on my hard drive.
Wallace is a fine girl, what a good wife he’d be.
Hatton goes solo with his Marvel stuff. Comics and friends do not mix. Yet he still insists on hanging out with them, despite there not being an active brain cell in the bunch.
HOW TO INSULT CHICAGOANS FOR FUN AND PROFIT
How to start this? Well, maybe I’ll just mention the conclusion. There are three moments of specific Abortion in this show. They’re so atrocious that they kill any good feelings one might have about the rest of the contents. But I’ll get to them individually. I might as well just go through match-by-match and try to pick out the good moments from the mere dross and the cataclysmic.
The dark match and DVD extra was a battle royal won by Viscera. You could kind of tell from that moment that WWE was going to be giving a pair of middle fingers to Chicago all night. From what I heard, this did not set up the audience in a good frame of mind. It wasn’t because Big Vis got the win, necessarily. It’s just that it was dull.
Get out of my city, you over-the-hill hick
And right out of the box, we have our first questionable booking decision of the night in the Tag Title match. Fingers and I spent a lot of time on Sunday night trying to figure out exactly why Kane and TBS still hold the tag belts and who can eventually get them. The second question was answered on Raw. The first question will probably never be answered. I cannot and will not accept that they retained the belts at Wrestlemania only in order to drop them to the f*cking Spirit Squad. Not even my mind is that demented. Of course, there was another option. Conway and Dupree reunited for the dark match on Raw. And jobbed.
This match was obviously done to prompt Carly’s face turn and feud with Masters. Why bother? I don’t like either of them, and I don’t care if you like Carly or not. Remember, only my opinion counts. So, the tag belts, which needed to change hands in order to give them any sort of life, don’t get switched, and in return for the tag scene completely dying, we get a Carly/Gym Bunny feud. Color me f*ckin’ enthused. What a crock of shit.
Such an incredible offense move deserves special lighting
Okay, MITB was great. The reason is simple: it was well-booked and well-calculated. Do you really think it was an accident that it was Van Dam, Benjy, and Hardy up there at the end fighting on the tops of those ladders? The result was, as I said in the Round Table, The Fucking Obvious, so I have no complaints about that. It was just a matter of getting there, and they did a good job. The quality of this one will be enough to cement it as an institution from now on. As long as it remains a well-booked match, we’ll be seeing it the next time WM comes to Chicago in nine to ten years.
The one thing people are blathering about was whether it was “as good as” last year. The thing that people who are asking that question aren’t thinking about is the fact that last year’s and this year’s match had a different focus. Last year, it was an untried property. This year, the groundwork was already laid. Last year’s match overdid the spots in order to gain attention to the match. This year’s had the advantage of cutting down on the spots to focus on match flow, and the way all six men were involved heavily and with near-equal proportion, you could say this year’s match was better booked. However, trying to compare the two is trying to compare Royal Rumbles of different vintage, and is disingenuous and futile. So don’t bother saying “X is better”. Unless you mean X Division, of course.
By the way, Cole, watch out what you say. There’s a lot of people in my town who would take the phrase “Lashley, the dark horse in the match” to have a meaning entirely different from the one you intended. And they tend to carry weapons.
Okay, he likes running up ladders and doing weird shit. We get the point.
Bitch, please. Be Fair To Flair and don’t put him in situations where he has to touch Matt Hardy.
It’s rare to see cross-promotional kayfabe. And since we’ve all figured out the “X” sign for legit injury, what have they replaced it with?
Ironically, the Irish and Polish have always got along well in Chicago until this
Now, blacks and Irish, that’s a different story
Oh, my f*cking God, Cole called the Triple Germans. Of course, he did it after the second one, but that’s still an improvement over his usual lack of effort. Color me surprised.
You do not, though, have to color me surprised as to the winner of the US title match. It’s like Murray said during the live recap: all of the marks were shocked, while everyone in the IWC yawned. We saw this coming from a light-year away. The thing is, most of us support it. High-Quality Speaker Boy has had a fire lit up his ass recently. Maybe that feud with Boogey made him realize what his fate was likely to be if he didn’t have something good to follow. But he’s going to get a lot more mileage out of the title than Benoit did. We’ve all been bemoaning the fates of the secondary belts recently. Could it be that it might end up being High-Quality Speaker Boy that can bring one of them back to glory? Now you can color us surprised.
Oh, why did everyone else use the man-titties line with High-Quality Speaker Boy? I mean, they were sagging when he was on all fours and everything. It hurts not being able to mention them without seeming like a copycat.
As for the match itself, well, it wasn’t as good, supposedly, as the house show matches they had last week, and I have no idea why. They had the perfect opportunity to build on the momentum of MITB and really get the crowd fired up. Instead, the most exciting thing about the match was the limo entrance. And as for the supposed “mocking” of Eddy, thank God someone finally did that. I heartily approve. Maybe that was the nice bath of ice water on the audience to stop dwelling on this shit and move on…oh, wait, even if the audience is ready to move on, “creative” isn’t. That, after all, was the cause of one of the Three Abortions of Wrestlemania.
You’d better be from out of town, you cocksucker
Everyone wants to be like Eddy. Only alive.
One of these things just doesn’t belong. Namely the one in the middle.
“Slice skin, mutilate muscle, and tear tendons”? Joey’s a master of alliteration, isn’t he? Ah, yes, the Hardcore Match. Missing in action for so long in WWE, it came back for one glorious moment, prompted by a master of the genre and a willing neophyte, albeit one who’s spent years doing refined, violent high spots. So, was it up to ECW standards? Well, it definitely used a great many elements from the ECW Playbook (not to mention the Foley playbook). Unfortunately, it sorta ruined One-Night Stand. There has to be a flaming table involved in that, and if you see something like that too frequently, it ruins the effect. Even the Dudleys knew that, which is why they used it sparingly.
Despite those considerations, this was one quality piece of mayhem. However, it still doesn’t give Foley his “Wrestlemania Moment”. This means that we’ll get some cocked-up feud for next year that may provide the opportunity for him to do so. He’s signed for what, another two years? So we can start gearing up now. Maybe since WM23’s in Detroit, he can specialize in doing things with auto parts or have the match on an assembly line. Look, if other people can stereotype Chicago without a twinge of conscience, I can do the same with Detroit.
Well, that’s not the normal location he does it from, but it’s acceptable
Lita shouldn’t leave her “lonely woman’s helper” where other people can find it…hey, she’s had worse up her
And she’s had worse in her mouth too. Hey, Balls Mahoney alone…
Why You Should Always Wear A Shirt In The Ring, Reason #4742
This was one of the early Christians’ proposals for crucifixion iconography, but it didn’t test-market well
Oh, come on, you know this one had to go in here
Time for the Freak Show promo…
Don’t insult him, Booker; he’s probably your next feud after what happened on Smackdown last week.
Back in the day, he’d hire the retard first, then torture him. A million bucks isn’t what it used to be.
Yes, I am throwing this in on purpose, and, yes, I am a sociopath
So why is Booker shocked? They’re former tag partners. And kudos to Dustin for going to the HoF in full makeup.
Tod Browning is rolling over in his grave
And here’s the biggest freak of all
Booker/Boogey…no, I’m not talking about that one. Thank God for Booker that this is finally blown off so he can go on to better things. Not necessarily bigger ones, but definitely better ones.
Booker’s trying to get O. J.’s role in the remake of The Towering Inferno
What does it say about the world when we have three African-Americans and a white guy in the ring, and the white guy’s the coolest of the bunch?
I wouldn’t say that Trish/LaJames was unexpectedly good. We’ve become accustomed to any combination of Trish, Victoria, and LaJames to be high-workrate in nature, and their match certainly was that. A lot of people are marking this down because of the finish. Yeah, they blew the Stratusfaction, and Ross and the competitors didn’t cover it well (LaJames was visibly confused after the Stratusfaction collapsed), and that’s a bit of a reason to downgrade it, but they executed the rest of the match perfectly. So I’ll give credit where it’s due.
By the way, Ross, lithium won’t help. LaJames is definitely not a Type I Bipolar. I’d personally try Risperdal and Lamictal before lithium chloride. If they help me, they’d help her. Trust me on that.
It’s standard procedure for dealing with a stalker to beat the living shit out of her
Does that make you deves happy?
Wrestlemania is a time for family. Especially if you own the company making it.
UT/Henry…uh, no, that was FF time, thank you. Hell, I didn’t even bother with a screen cap from the match. UT’s entrance was even underwhelming, and they usually pull out all the stops for that. But, hey, 14-0. Like we didn’t know it would happen. I think he goes for fifteen and retires.
All right, all you indy freaks, you can spooge because Colt Cabana made an appearance at Wrestlemania
Okay, so I had to get a screen cap of the plancha. That was cool.
Shawn/Vince was the ultimate Wish Fulfillment Match. Every single employee in history has always wanted to beat the crap out of his boss. Every boss in history has always wanted to beat the crap out of at least one of his subordinates. I’ve wanted to do both at the same time. Yeah, handicap match if necessary. Being this, it makes the match pretty hard to judge objectively. You can just write this off and say that it wasn’t the best bloody brawl of the night (and Raw made doing that rather easy). However, it was more satisfying than Edge/Foley, and not because it was Vince getting the shit beat out of him. It was because it appealed to something baser in the human instinct. And because Shawn, Vince, and Shane were all visibly having fun out there.
Shane can’t take many more of those beatings. He has a necessary function to fulfill in the future, and not as Vince’s heir. In about fifteen years, he has to be the one to give the Sprog the Anti-Drug Lecture, because Grandpa, Dad, and Uncle Shawn sure as hell can’t.
A picture-perfect brawl
Ken Doane proves that some people will bend backwards for a Wrestlemania Moment
Ah, being whipped with a belt…that brings back some memories for me. All bad.
Freud would have had a field day with this one
Well, shit
P.O.D. = Pounds On Dick?
Okay, here comes the first of the three Abortions of the night. If you’ve been reading me, you know what I mean. Since shortly after the Eddy Tribute Shows, I’ve been stating that utilizing Eddy as a push for Rey-Rey is an abomination. I went into overdrive after Royal Rumble on this theme. The necrophilia is sickening enough. The bad-taste manner in which they’ve been using Orton to advance this drives it further down the barrel. And now…Rey-Rey, World Champion. You know, I wouldn’t mind it at all if he’d earned it on merit. I’ve enjoyed seeing him for a long time now, and I think he deserves a shot with the strap. But being the default choice because of the following reasons?
1) Eddy died, and Rey-Rey was his best friend.
2) DAVE got hurt.
3) They can’t figure out a way to do an Orton title run and break away from the Eddy necro-push at the same time.
4) They don’t trust Angle enough to have a long title run (although that’s at least a bit justifiable considering the wrecked condition of his body).
No. I’m sorry, but, no. That is simply not acceptable. It’s tasteless, it’s ludicrous, it’s…it’s worthy of consulting Messers Churchill and Chaplin:
It’s disturbing, it’s disgusting, it’s insulting to Rey-Rey, it’s insulting to Eddy, it’s insulting to Angle, it’s even insulting to Orton. And it’s sure as hell insulting to the audience. If you actually approve of Rey-Rey getting the title in the manner in which he did, then you might as well get out the razor blades right now and remember that it’s up and down, not left and right. You don’t deserve to live. And if you don’t want to do that, you’ll be rounded up and forcibly castrated, because I sure as hell don’t want you to breed.
You know what? This is the last I’m going to say on this subject. If I haven’t convinced you by now, you’re completely insensate. I’m sick and tired with pounding my head against the wall trying to make you people understand. And the sad part is that he’s going to get one helluva pop on Smackdown. He deserves that pop, but not for these reasons.
I just hope that someone backstage is losing sleep over this. There’s got to be one person there with something resembling a conscience.
Oh, yeah, Cole, the area code for Downtown is 312. The area code for Rosemont is 847. Get it right.
They disrupted the landing pattern at O’Hare
Chicagoans know better than anyone about flying United
Nightmares do come true
Frank Gotch and *KARL* Hackenschmidt, Lawler? Jesus, Ross comes back and you have to get stupid too. Yeesh.
The Pillow Fight…who cares? Ignored completely.
Okay, they’re both in their undies. Satisfied?
Now for Abortion Number Two. Before I get to it, though, Trip’s entrance has to be mentioned. Oh, did the Conan jokes fly on Sunday night. I, though, attempted to think of reasons why he would agree with doing it. The only thing I can think of is that Steph’s cut him off completely during the pregnancy, and all the built-up testosterone, whether generated naturally or taken intravenously, has built up to such an extent in his brain that his normally impeccable judgment has been compromised. That would also explain that new theme. No, it’s not as bad as the one they tried to foist on Orton, but Trip’s themes have been getting progressively worse since he gave up “My Time”. Something has to be done about that. Breaking his mouth away from Lemmy’s ass is just the first step.
Get the expression. Somewhere in his brain, he knows that he looks like a complete idiot.
Now, to the abortion itself. That would be Cena’s entrance. When Anderson praised this utter piece of dog crap on Sunday, I had to write him a little note about it. Here’s the meat of the gist:
I keep saying to myself, “He’s not a Chicagoan. He doesn’t understand.” Maybe if you did, you’d realize exactly how insulting Cena’s entrance was, and how your statements approving of this…display offended me.
Chicago is a world-class city, and not only because it produced me. We’ve produced noteworthy accomplishments in numerous fields. To see your city’s history boiled down to one sordid little episode like in Cena’s entrance is a horrible experience. We also, somewhat contradictorily, take a strange sort of pride in the Outfit. They’re uniquely ours. To see some wigger from Bahstun trivialize them is a slap in the face, especially if you’re someone like me who knows a few people in the Outfit, one of them a close relative of Mister Alfonse himself. I’m about to invoke Godwin’s Law, but the comparison is apt. How would you have felt if Wrestlemania had taken place in Berlin and Cena came out in an SS uniform? And if Cena could come out dressed as a stereotypical mobster, why the hell not go all the way and bring a cow out on stage to kick a lantern to light off Trip’s pyro?
If you’re wondering why the crowd rejected him, it’s because the Chicagoans in the crowd were pissed off at the entrance, and rightfully so. It’s perfectly acceptable for us to use that iconography, because we deal with it from a standpoint of respect and honor. But outsiders like WWE are not allowed to do so, because they don’t treat it with the respect it deserves, and they showed that tonight.
Well, Anderson wrote me back and asked me a few questions. Since I had this damn column to do, I thought I might as well incorporate an answer in here. He’ll be in italics, I’ll be in plain text:
To be fair, don’t you think the crowd had decided to reject Cena, regardless of his entrance, far, far before the main event even started? That reception he got at the Hall of Fame was just downright brutal.
There’s also the concept of picking at the scab. It only made the wound worse. And this was picking at the scab with shit-encrusted hands and watching as the infection and gangrene spread up the limb. Did you hear the complete silence coming from the audience during this entrance?
Chalk it up to ignorance on my behalf, but every person from Chicago that I’ve heard speak of Capone (which admittedly isn’t that many) has spoken of the guy as sort of a Prohibition-era folk hero. None seemed particularly ashamed of the guy because the common person probably only knows of the flowing booze, the wars with George Moran, and of course the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre. In order for (Henry) Godwin’s law to be applicable, as in the case of the SS uniform in Berlin, I think that the city of Chicago, on a whole, would have to be deeply ashamed of Capone. Again, chalk it up to being a Florida resident who spends, at most, a week in Chicago every year or two, but don’t Chicago resident, as you say, take a strange sort of pride in the Outfit?
Yes, we do. We do regard Mister Alfonse as a sort of folk hero. We do the same thing with other members of the Outfit and, going further back, the Everleigh sisters, Hinky Dink McKenna, and even the Haymarket anarchists. The problem here is that we can’t admit it anymore. We are a world-class city, after all, and taking pride in wickedness and vice isn’t acceptable in this country. It’d be different if Chicago was in Europe. It’s no problem for, say, Amsterdam or Berlin to do so. But America still has that puritan psychology running through it. It’s a “don’t scare the horses” situation. So, inwardly, we admire them and honor them, but outwardly we have to express disapproval.
There’s also a sort of double standard here, but it’s justifiable. As I said, it’s perfectly fine for Chicagoans to utilize the iconography inherent in our gangster past, but we sure as hell won’t allow any outsiders to do it. We do make exceptions if their CVs warrant it. For instance, Brian De Palma wasn’t criticized for doing The Untouchables because 1) he filmed it in Chicago and 2) he’s from Joisey, and if anyone knows as much about the Outfit as people from Chicago, it’s them. Cena’s entrance, however, was not an exception.
Maybe the reason I wasn’t even phased by it was because Vince has already offended nearly every one else there is out there. I don’t think it’s necessarily fair to be selectively offended by his constant offensiveness. Personally, it doesn’t make much sense to me. If the crowd was sensitive enough to be massively turned off by Cena’s entrance, it seems to me like that sensitivity would have caused them to stop watching long ago. Maybe when Vince aired that horrible terrorist martyrdom angle in London the night of the attacks. Or when Randy Orton said that Eddie Guerrero was burning in hell. Or to a much greater extent, when Vince McMahon pigeon-holed all Latinos as liars, cheaters, and stealers. Or when Vince McMahon started dropping “hip” racial slurs on televison (which probably fits what you said about it being “perfectly acceptable for (blacks) to use that iconography, because we deal with it from a standpoint of respect and honor,” but Vince totally crossing the line in doing so. Or by Stephanie McMahon comparing the attacks of 9/11 to her Father’s steroid trial.
I guess what I’m trying to say is that, while I totally agree with the way you feel, you couldn’t have been that surprised by what happened? He’s been pigeon-holing entire cities, cultures, and ethnic groups for almost ten years. It’s Attitude! Ha.
This one, however, was personal. You tend to get more offended the closer it gets to you, you know. That’s why Noo Yawkers get pissed off when I dismiss September 11th. It meant nothing to me, after all, but it apparently did to them.
That, in a nutshell, is why Cena’s entrance was an abortion. It insulted me, my family, and all Chicagoans by portraying us in a stereotypical manner. I’ve fought hard to get beyond that for a long time. It was a real bitch in Germany, trust me. All the Germans knew about my city was Mister Alfonse, Dillinger’s murder, and dirty politicians (that was before Michael was Michael, though). Hell, the same holds true for most of this country too. I got the same shit here in Kansas, for instance.
Look at the first image WWE used in that little intro film:
That’s the Biograph Theater, where Dillinger was killed. That happened in 1934. In fact, the whole film was bullshit. Most of the major mob wars happened before the Depression. The St. Valentine’s Day Massacre was months before the Crash.
I am sick and tired of having my city portrayed in this fashion in such slapdash ways as WWE did on Sunday. That shit happened between seven and eight decades ago. Find something else to harp on.
Opinion, please?
Thank you, sir.
And the third abortion also dealt with the final match. That, of course, was the ending. As the phrase goes, who booked this crap? No, “creative”, Cena is not getting heel heat. He’s getting X-Pac Heat. His act has worn off. People are bored of him. Yes, he gets girls’ panties wet, and he’s able to relate to ten-year-olds on their level, but they’re not the core audience. That’s 18-34 Males, and they’re booing him out of buildings because they’re sick and tired of him. How many people have to mention this how many times? How long will it take before you get it through your f*cking skulls? How many columnists on this site alone have said that they should have rebooked this on the fly on hearing the audience response? What were they afraid of, that people would go after them for Reign Number Eleven? That’s what most people were wanting out of this match. We didn’t want to see Cena get the title back from Edge. We didn’t want to see him hold on to it after Sunday night. When the best Lawler can do is to use the old “love me, hate me, but don’t ignore me” reason (oh, the apathy will come, Jerry, believe you me), and the crowd starts up with “Fuck You, Cena” and “Cena Sucks” chants, and Trip gets cheered with every offensive move he does, and the crowd goes silent when Cena’s on offense, and the crowd’s ready to sing “Sha Na Hey Hey Kiss Him Goodbye” when Cena takes the Pedigree…
And think of the booking. Okay, they’re fine for Backlash. After Raw, it’s obvious it’ll be a Triple Threat. Cena now HAS to drop the belt. Backlash is the only Raw PPV between WM and One-Night Stand, and after last night, they’ve made it obvious what’s going to happen there. But what do you do with Cena after he’s dropped the belt? He sure as hell can’t stay in the title hunt, not after the audience reaction over the past few months. But the IC scene is a little uncertain right now. Cena can only go after Benjy if he’s still a face, and if he’s not turned, the X-Pac Heat will just get worse. Either he does a total reversion of character, back to the free-styling and such, or he gets repackaged. That’s the only way he can stay a face. And they want him to stay a face because he moves merch. Other people have pooh-poohed this proposition, but why are they continually expanding the Cena Collection if it isn’t a reason?
Why not pull the trigger on a title switch? Were they actually deluded enough to believe the audience would “go home happy” with a Cena win? I don’t understand this at all. And making Trip tap? Well, it worked two years ago, so why not now? You know that’s what they were thinking. There’s a little bit of a difference here. Chris Benoit is Our Lord and Savior and is one of the greatest submission wrestlers that WWE’s ever had. John Cena is…not. After fighting like hell through numerous Crossfaces and AngleLocks over the years, Trip suddenly gives way in seconds to a shitty version of the STF, inches from the ropes, and after a raised arm on the third time down from the ref? If this was virtually anyone else (with the possible exception of Michaels), there would have been root damage done.
Maybe they’ve learned, though. Maybe Backlash will correct this. But if Cena’s still holding the belt after Backlash, and he’s still being sold to the audience as a face…there have been lots of feds that have died because of a bad choice of champion. With the AWA, it took years, but Verne still paid for not putting the belt on Hogan. Let’s hope that Vince doesn’t end up a sour old bastard, getting inducted by Shane into the TNA Hall Of Fame.
This is the look of a man trying to figure out a way out of town, quick
You have got to be f*cking kidding me
Saddam, did you want to say something?
Thank you. That summarizes Wrestlemania perfectly.
No, there isn’t any other news out there. It’s all WM Aftermath, and that includes Raw. You know what that means…
THE SHORT FORM
The Proud Graduate Of Dartmouth His Own Self claims that this is the most important Short Form of the year, since there’s so much else going on like the beginning of the baseball season and the NCAA title game. I don’t think so, not this year. No one’s enthused about Florida/UCLA, and most of the baseball games today were day games, as they should properly be (except when it inconveniences me traffic-wise).
Match Results:
Ken Doane and Mike Mondo over Kane and The Big Show, Tag Title Match (Pinfall, Doane pins TBS, top-rope leg drop, New Tag Champions): As people know, I rarely edit anything out after it’s written. This column was an exception. This is what I excised from the discussion of the tag titles match at Wrestlemania:
Despite the upcoming Raw match with the Spirit Squad, the boys are not a fit group for the tag titles. For one thing, there’s five of them and only two belts. It’s perfectly fine to give them the straps if you’re going to do a Spirit Squad break-up angle, but that’s impossible right now, since none of them have any sort of individual persona. It’s also impossible to choose which two would get the straps (my guess would be Jeter and Doane). But there’s no one else.
Well, I had the Doane part right. And I need to find some combination of drugs to deal with this. Jesus.
Chris Masters over An Unidentified Jobber, Let’s Turn Carly Face Match (Submission, MasterLock): Okay, now it’s done. So feud them with each other and let me not give a shit at all. At least there’s one match for Backlash already certain.
MickieLexis LaJames and Candice Michelle over Trish Stratus and the Ten-Buck Tramp (Pinfall, LaJames pins Wilson, Chick Kick): Very bizarre booking for an Angle Advancement Match. The Trish/LaJames angle was advanced perfectly (and LaJames looks much better as a blonde). However, the coda for the Wilson/Michelle feud wasn’t dealt with at all. If you’re doing a Combined PPV Rematch Match, you should give emphasis to both angles being covered.
Shelton Benjamin over Chavito, Intercontinental Title Match (Pinfall, Exploder): Well, they had to do an IC defense sometime. Certainly Wrestlemania wasn’t the place for it, right? But it exposed yet another problem. Benjy’s completely angle-less while they’re deciding whether to continue with Mamma, so now he’s a catalyst to begin angles for other people. The “Chavito quits” angle may just be continued on Smackdown this week, since that’s where his main angst enablers, Rey-Rey and Benoit, reside. If that gets Chavito back to SD, good. Let him take the Cruiser belt off of Helms when Helms recovers. Too bad it was too late to be used as a Nitro Remembrance Match (they did fight the last CW title match on Nitro), but it should happen, if only to correct another of the Abortion Mistakes from Wrestlemania and get the world title onto Orton without anyone complaining.
Serge Levesque (no relation, but I can’t use that quip for him since I reserve that for KC Evers) makes a query:
After you had clearly stated your thoughts about the possibility of Rey winning the title, seing that not only did THAT happen, but that they just can’t stop these Eddie tribute moments, tonight with Chavo dedicating his match… damn you’ve gotta be belching your guts out by this point! Godamnit, is this thing ever gonna stop?
Not until people start booing the Eddy tributes. Usually, when people start booing, that means they’ll end things off…oh, wait. Sorry, I forgot, this is “creative” we’re talking about. And, yes, I was retching during Chavito’s promo.
Trip ‘n Edge over John Cena, Handicap Angle Advancement (You Can’t Really Call It A Match) (Pinfall, Trip pins Cena, Pedigree): Uh, inadvertantly, I already wrote up everything I want to say about this right after the opening promo, so go down to Angle Developments. Fortunately, that’s right after this entry, so you don’t have to go far.
KC Evers (no relation) summarizes that whole seven-minute mess quite well:
This Main Event makes me feel like I’m watching some weird experiment.
You should be able to get credit in Abnormal Psychology for watching.
Angle Developments:
To The Victor, Spoiled: Okay, so what exactly is the positioning here? Is Trip a tweener? Is Cena a tweener? Edge, at least, we know isn’t; he’s heel all the way. I’m not talking about from the audience standpoint, of course. To my people, Trip is a face, Edge is a tweener, and Cena’s the heel. At least to those with taste and brain cells. So, in other words, we have a face and a guy who might be a face in a handicap match over a heel who’s smaller than either of them. That’s…interesting. Well, at least it’s not as cliched as a Triple Threat for the title, although with that one, at least they could correct the mistakes of Sunday night. Given that clusterf*ck at the end, I presume we’re headed for that Triple Threat at Backlash.
Chris Arrington has a good theory on where those results Sunday night came from:
Did anybody know that Vince and HHH was in those pictures with Paul Heyman and the donkey and how much did John Cena give to Justin Credible for access to them? It couldn’t have been more than the price for a month’s lounging at Motel 6 and a happy meal considering Justin’s situation. But that said it would be retarded if you don’t change Cena now. At least you don’t look like a fool having your champion booed.
I have the feeling they’re going to play this out. They’re coming up with some justification for this, like it’s only certain cities that Cena’s booed in or something like that. Well, they’re running out of cities that haven’t booed him quicker than they thought.
The Joe In Me expands on this issue:
After the opening promo tonight, did Cena retain because that was the plan, or did he retain only to spite everyone who predicted he’d lose? And which is the more justifiable reason?
Both, actually, and neither is justifiable, especially the way in which he won.
Dazed And Confused: We’re all used to the WWE Sledgehammer Of Plot by now. But I have to question whether “creative” knows this. Van Dam’s promo made it so obvious that he was going to cash in Money In The Bank at One-Night Stand that it might have been, well, too obvious (“I’m not going to wait as long as Edge”; “The timing is…Extreme”). Is this just another example of blatant foreshadowing by “creative”, or do they know this and are trying to swerve us? Well, it’s only two months to One-Night Stand, so we’ll just wait and see.
Is Backlash In Providence?: Ah, so many questions that need to be answered before the “tag” match at Backlash. Will it be the Christian God who shows up in Michaels’s corner, or are we going to get a guest appearance? If it is (and I’m not sure if Michaels is on a first-name basis with any other manifestation of the Deity), are we going to see the Old Testament brawler God or the New Testament technician? Does God have any experience in tag matches? Most importantly, will he job to Shane? All questions that we cannot answer since, as science has now proved, intercessory prayer doesn’t work. In fact, God doesn’t exist, which leaves Michaels with a blank spot. Perhaps High-Quality Speaker Boy?
Pulling The Trigger, Right Into Someone’s Temple: What exactly was wrong with “Osama Alejandro Rodriguez”? Were people offended by the first name? If you really wanted to offend intelligent people, then rename him “George”. So, we’ve got Armando Alejandro Estrada (and, yes, I get the Jerry Estrada reference), and in tow…oh, poor Jamal. First they entice him from Japan, where he was getting a good push. Then they destroy any plans for him by firing Rosey. Now they repackage him as Umanga (my best guess; it could be Humanga), a fusion between the Wild Samoans and Kamala. Sadly, this is not the most miscalculated, misfiring debut in this particular arena. Remember August 9th, 1999? Some guy named…oh, what was his name…oh, yeah, Jericho. Now that was miscalculated.
Note to Slick Rick: He said “pendejo”, and your translation is incorrect; the actual term you’re looking for is “culo”. I may not know much Spanish, but the Spanish I know is all obscene.
I’ll close this puppy off, I guess, and start prepping for Thursday. I might be making an appearance on IPSR this week, depending on what Pat’s balls are like, but if I don’t, I’ll be back for the Short Form as we start to return to a state of normalcy.
