FLEA: WWE’s really trying hard to make Cena sympathetic…
EJS: It worked. He’s a simp, and he’s certainly pathetic. – a phone conversation last Friday
Yeah, Fleabag was trying to put a case together for Van Dam/Cena at ONS. I was trying to defend my position regarding Van Dam/High-Quality Speaker Boy as the better match. We ended up not convincing each other of a damn thing, but at least we understand each others’ points, I think. That’s how a conversation between us normally turns out. That’s why we’re friends.
The Weird is making a strong stab for attention. This, folks, is real life:
Iran’s fiery president wrote to President Bush proposing “new solutions” to rising international tensions, a move announced Monday in an abrupt about-face apparently timed to blunt the possibility of eventual sanctions over Tehran’s nuclear ambitions. – AP wires
Rock recluse Axl Rose made a surprise radio appearance to proclaim that Guns N’ Roses’ 10-years-in-the-making “Chinese Democracy” album will finally hit store shelves this fall. – AP wires
Lesbians’ brains react differently to sex hormones than those of heterosexual women. – AP wires (hopefully this, plus a similar study on gay men that was published last year, will finally convince the religious freaks that it’s biological and not learned; fat chance, but one can always hope)
Apple Computer won its courtroom battle against the Beatles on Monday when a judge ruled the company’s iTunes Music Store did not infringe on the trademark of Apple Corps, which represents the band’s interests. – Reuters
Combine those with the Porter Goss resignation and the confirmation fight over General Hayden and the general batshit next-gen console environment at E3 this week, and we’ve got enough of the Weird to counteract such mundane things as Barbaro’s victory at the Derby and Jim Furyk winning the Wachovia (although Jimmy’s win got him enough World Ranking points to not only vault over Sergio but Boring Ol’ Ernie and into the Top Five; seeing the Big Five hegemony broken might be classified as Weird).
I’m not going to bother with any of this. I’m really that apathetic right now. I mean, we’ve got a PPV coming up this weekend. Yes, we do. It surprised me as well. Sacrifice, though, has another card on paper that instills feelings of not giving a shit. This might mean we may not land up with a Round Table this weekend, since myself and Brashear were the only ones to contribute to the previous one, and neither of us may be caring enough to do it this time around. The Dog Days are upon us, and it takes a lot to counter them.
And, thus, you see how much I give a shit when I don’t have the energy or desire to come up with a good lead for this one. Thus, we will move on to the Pimps…
THE PIMP SECTION
BlueSecurity. After last week’s assault by a scumbag Russian spammer, something became instantly clear: their approach to spam reduction works. If someone’s taking the trouble to DDOS them, then they’re causing trouble for the shitbags. I downloaded the BlueFrog client, which covers my GMail account (works for Yahoo and Hotmail as well), as well as the Firefox and Thunderbird extensions; it’s all free and Open Source, so if you get it from a legit downloader, there’s nothing to worry about. Now all I’m waiting for is their validation e-mail system to come back up in order to incorporate my IP e-mail address into it. You guys do the same, then start striking back at the f*ckers and their Make Penis Now shit. Make spam unprofitable for them.
(Hell, between the BlueSecurity situation and the $4M fine laid down on Spamford Wallace for his spyware scams, last week was a good week for those of us who consider those people forms of life lower than Randy Orton.)
Lucard is back from his cheap holiday in other people’s misery with more games on tap.
Memo To Murray: I saw the Colbert routine at the WH Press shindig and didn’t think it was funny. Ballsy, but not funny. He just doesn’t do good political stand-up. But I don’t like The Daily Show either. Or Family Guy.
Now that Hatton and his idiot friends are syndicated, and may be getting their own site, can they leave here and not bore me anymore?
Zarur agrees with me as per Ross.
Memo To Goober: Sports rivalries that are bigger than Yankers/Dead Sux:
Bears/Packers: Here’s the acid test: if the Yankers finished 19-143, yet all nineteen wins were against the Dead Sux, would fans regard it as a good season? Both sides here say they wouldn’t mind finishing 2-14 as long as the two wins were against the other team.
Gayboys/Foreskins: It’s NFC East Coast Bias, but it has to be acknowledged.
Alabama/Auburn: They have to share a state with no pro teams and where football is god.
Texas/Oklahoma: Macho cowboys save up their supply of gay jokes for one week a year to use on their opponents.
Now for the rivalries in a sport where you yourself put paint drying as a higher priority:
Rangers/Celtic: Not only Glaswegian pride on the line, but Catholic/Protestant divisions add to the bloodshed.
Manchester United/Arsenal-Liverpool-Chelsea (take your pick): Karma’s a bitch, ain’t it?
Dynamo/Spartak: Multiple-sport activity here on a long-term scale, and the only sports rivalry ever to involve the secret police and coaches getting put into gulag.
AC/Inter: When they’re both good, and they always are, Milan is a city divided.
England/Argentina: They and their fans both crank it up whenever and wherever they should meet, and Maradona finally admitting to the Hand of God has just ratcheted anticipation for their expected meeting in Germany this summer.
And a Special Acknowledgement:
Sox/Cubs: You have to live it to understand it. Here’s the dialogue: “We won the World Series last.” “Then you threw one.” “We made the World Series last.” “Couldn’t do dick against the Dodgers.” “1969.” “Got punked by the Orioles in ’83.” “Leon Durham.” “You gave us Sammy for George Bell.” “Couldn’t do dick in ’98.” “Couldn’t do dick in 2000, and we won a playoff series before you did.” “Steve Bartman. And, oh, by the way, ace of trumps, bitch. We win.” That pretty well sums up ninety years right there.
Perspective, dear boy, perspective.
Ciprotti is still coming off the contact high from the NBA Playoffs’ magnificent first round.
Daniels had another Derby pay off for him financially. He has to, since Wids won’t pay him either.
What is this “AFC” Pomazak speaks of? Oh, yes, it’s where four of the teams the Bears play each year reside.
Basilo got carded for buying Claritin and Sudafed. I know from personal experience what Wal-Mart did to counter the “meth threat”: they first put limits on how much stuff with pseudoephedrine you could buy, then they eliminated all of them in favor of phenylephedrine-based products. Bastards.
Stevens caught something from his girlfriend and didn’t even have any fun in the process. This is why I live alone, people.
IS THERE ANYTHING OUT THERE?
Hmmmm, let’s see. Cornette moving to TNA? That’s a good move. It supports the differentiation that they’ve been trying to establish between themselves and WWE. Corny is the personification of old-school values in wrestling, and we know how consistently great he is on the mic. Let’s see what kind of persona they’ll give him, and how much leeway he’ll have to work-shoot.
A documentary on WCCW being released on DVD next month? I’ll probably end up pirating it; if I had money, I’d buy it.
Todd Grisham possibly being moved up to first-team duty after Vince loved his work during last week’s Raw’s main? We’ve been through this before, and so has WWE. They failed miserably with Todd Pettingill (and ended up scarring Shane’s wife so much that she won’t come back on camera ever again). They learned from their mistakes with Michael Cole and stuck with him despite his taking some of the worst shit the IWC has dished out. Now they think they can do it again with Grisham. They’re going to do it anyway, no matter what we say. So he’ll stink up the airwaves for a while, then improve, everyone will comment on the improvement and conveniently forget all of the criticism. Big f*ckin’ deal.
DX returning at Vengeance? You kinda suspected that they’d run out of things for Michaels and Trip to do, other than getting them involved in the title chase again. I don’t care. I really don’t. That’s probably because of my age. For many of the younger set, DX has the cachet of youth about it and can trigger nostalgia of times when hormones were running wild and wrestling was something cool to watch in between popping zits and masturbating. I have to go all the way back to disco for that. So let them do it. Hell, it might be distracting and fun for a bit.
Batista and Booker getting into a fight on the set of a SummerSlam pimp? If it wasn’t reported by wwe.com, back into safe kayfabe hands under Cole, I’d read more into it than what it is, namely a pimp for a possible title match. It wouldn’t be a bad match, either, as long as the Paisley-ference was kept to a minimum. And if it was real, hell, it’s nothing compared to the Page-Steiner imbroglios near the end of WCW. If it is real, I’d put it down to itchy feet on Batista’s part. He wants to come back so badly it hurts.
Cade and Murdoch officially reunited? Well, that’s what sorta happened during the Heat tapings before Raw. If it’s true, they’ll be feuding with Goldust and Snitsky in a confrontation so dynamic that it might actually get some play on Raw. No, you can’t count that as real tag teams on Raw, unfortunately, since this is between two singles guys who have nothing better to do right now and two guys who were a tag team, broken up, had their singles runs neutered, and put back together because they also have nothing better to do.
Victoria and Rob Conway in a match together? Yeah, that’s on Heat as well. Unfortunately, there’s another dimension to that that most of you don’t know about. One of the worst wrestling fanfics of the past year or so was a little effort starring…yes, Victoria and Rob Conway. From what I remember of it (well, from what I’ve been unable to block out of my mind), it started out with them working out, and that eventually led to…no, I refuse to describe any of it. Let’s just say that it involved a number of sex toys, Conway being hung decently above average, and lots of uses of the phrase “man-ass”. As a consequence of just having heard about this (not reading it), I never wanted to see Victoria and Conway teamed in a ring, ever. Now it’s happened. You bastards.
That’s all there is, really. Anything that happens on Raw, I always discuss in the Short Form. So if things happen like the spoilers said they would, I’ll comment there. In fact, I’ll start commenting now…
THE SHORT FORM
Match Results:
Rob Van Dam over Shelton Benjamin, Charlie Haas, and Gym Bunny, Intercontinental Title Fatal Four-Way (Pinfall, Van Dam pins Masters, flying kick): Well, you know what this means when they front-load the program with the upper-mid-carders: Sports Entertainment, big-time. As for this match, it was definitely “one of these things is not like the other” with Gym Bunny in there. He didn’t embarass himself, though, preferring to defer to the three guys who can wrestle. But, there was something out of place…oh, yeah, how long has it been since Gym Bunny was involved in something that didn’t involve Carly as well? Long time, huh? It’s actually weird to not see Carly out there. No, that doesn’t mean I’m warming up to him. I’m noting his absence, that’s all. Decent match here, although the result was obvious from the start.
Matt Striker over Carly Colon (DQ, retard-ference): Ah, here’s Carly, fiddling with his latest obsession. And he beat up the retard. I hate Carly. But he beat up the retard. I hate Carly. But he beat up the retard. I hate Car…
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Mick Foley and Edge over Tommy Dreamer, Hardcore Bullshit Excuse For A Heel Turn Match (Pinfall, stupidity): If they’re really serious about a Foley heel turn, it was horribly botched. In fact, it was horribly botched from Dreamer’s introduction, which was completely generic and bland (something that Foley’s far beyond these days); thanks to the screwed-up intro, Dreamer had no heat, and since Dreamer had no heat, the turn had no impact. Everything was so badly done that I can only make one conclusion: Foley’s faked the heel turn, and the payoff with Edge will take place at One-Night Stand. It had better.
Slick Rick, though, takes the opposite tack:
The Foley heel turn makes perfect sense to me. His whole schtick through a good chunk of his ECW run was being the anti-hardcore. I don’t think this is his first swerve on Dreamer either, but it’s been quite a while.
Yeah, but the ECW anti-hardcore thing had good build-up and execution. It may make sense in that type of meta-context, but not in this, and certainly not in the way it was done here. I think it’s a swerve, but not the type you think it is.
MickieLexis La James over, playing the role of Trish Stratus’ surrogate, Maria Kanelis, Non-Title Match (Pinfall, DDT): Angle Advancement Match, so I don’t give a shit. Nice to have Beth Phoenix on board, though. She’ll be jobbing to LaJames within two weeks.
Jamalga over Charlie Wilson and Kevin Martinson, Handicrap Squash (Pinfall, Martinson as the victim, Samoan Spike): So, exactly when is this guy going to get something resembling a program? Now people are going to charge me with collective hypocrisy. Aren’t we in the IWC always saying that, sometimes, it’s good to build people up with squash matches? Yes, sometimes it is good. It’s good for guys who are going to be pushed for months or years as unstoppable beasts (the Abyss/Joe/Dalip Singh types). But not for guys like Jamalga. Let’s face it, the audience is split in two on him. There are those of us who’ve seen the YouTube video and those who haven’t. The first can’t take him seriously, and the second aren’t buying this bullshit one bit. So get him an actual feud, okay?
Slick Rick was upset by the third thing in the match that did the job:
If that was an actual Cuban that Osama Estrada (or whatever) broke, I’d have to stab him in the face. Haven’t had one of those in years. Fortunately I know Vince is too cheap, so that was an El Disgusto dipped in water to make it look like proper dark tobacco I’m sure.
I don’t smoke that many cigars (I prefer the taste of cigs, actually), but from what I’ve heard, thanks to Castro, the quality of Cuban tobacco has sunk. The good ones these days are supposed to come from the Dominican (I’ll have to find somewhere in this shithole that sells Uppmanns).
The Big Show over Kane, or perhaps The Big Show versus Kane (if the former, DQ, Fun With Chairs; if the latter, ND): Oh, I’m sick of these two. May 19th can’t come soon enough.
KC Evers (no relation) gets Snark of the Night for this one:
Christ, this Big Show vs Kane match is like watching a real life simulation of WCW Vs. NWO World Tour.
By the way, Mistah Evers (no relation) had the opportunity to conduct an audio interview with, of all people, Jeffykins over the weekend when the Fruit Loop did an in-store at a comic shop. Haven’t had the chance to listen to it, but KC insists that I’m name-checked in it (which he knows is the only way that I’ll ever get to listen to an interview with Jeffykins). Give a listen to his Kace Versus The World show at http://kace.neptune.com.
Ken Doane, Nick Mitchell, Mike Mondo, Nick Nemeth, and Johnny Jeter over Shawn Michaels and John Cena, Non-Title Match…non-title match? I can’t believe I just wrote that for this combo…(Pinfall, Mondo pins Michaels, Greco-Roman belt shot): Since I care naught about anyone involved other than Michaels, Jeter, and my illegitimate son Ken Doane, I ignored this and read a book. However, I will say this: it was quite a night for people involved in face turns to go beating up other faces. First Carly, then Trip. Of course, it is 2006, although there are some columnists, including ones at this site, who don’t seem to recognize that fact.
There’s a type of Faustian deal that Steve Murray and I have. In his column here, he only concentrates on the good things. However, I allow him a forum to achieve karmic balance. Never say that I’m not a nice guy:
So, you have a “face” champion, who is getting booed by every crowd he sees. To combat that, you put him against a group of guys that the crowd just really, really wants to hate: male cheerleaders, representing the entire class of guys who bullied the current IWC. So, why do you then put him in the ring with a guy who actually has a good grasp of mat wrestling, and can embarrass your champ? Honestly, I started to get a “Regal/Goldberg” feel during Cena’s first extended sequence: he just had no idea what to do. Sad, actually.
Not when it’s Cena. Quite frankly, this is WWE’s perpetual mistakes coming home to roost. Cena was pushed too far and too fast. He won the audience over with the SE portion of his ability, but, like Flex before him, let whatever wrestling talent he had wither on the vine. Now, the SE stuff has grown stale, and he has no wrestling ability to fall back on. In this match, he has the spectres of what could have been biting him on the ass from every direction, teamed up with a guy who’s a grandmaster at mixing wrestling and SE and facing at least two guys, maybe more, who outclass him big-time in the wrestling ability department and were more over in OVW than Cena was when he was there. It’s a demonstration of how inferior he really is, and how stupid the audience is for buying into him for so long. I want this to be demonstrated more often. Whatever heat he has left has to be killed, and killed now.
That actually links into the conversation I had with Fleabag last Friday. He’s pushing for Cena to go up against Van Dam at ONS because he believes that the heel heat from the ECW manque audience will be incredible for Cena. What I tried to tell him was that the heat will be incredible for Cena, but it’ll be X-Pac Heat, not heel heat. ECW audiences don’t have the tolerance for someone who’s pretending to be a great wrestler but manifestly isn’t, which is exactly what Cena’s doing within the confines of WWE Main Event Style. They can tell when someone’s living up to his potential or, worse, not trying to do so. This isn’t the case with High-Quality Speaker Boy. He knows, and more importantly, the ECW-type audience knows he knows, his deficiencies in the ring and sticks to what he does best, which is brawling (and, admittedly, he’s damn good at that). The heat for High-Quality Speaker Boy at ONS would be legitimate heel heat, something he knows how to milk. That match would be an acceptable, old-fashioned, face versus heel match between two guys who’d mesh decently. Cena/Van Dam would be a complete farce, not as bad as Brock/Goldberg, but almost. Yeah, Flea, if Cena wins that one, the audience will riot, but not because it’s a heel winning. It’s because the entire PPV will be ruined because a guy they regard as a complete piece of shit as a wrestler and as a sports entertainer went over.
I wrote that mainly because, when Flea called, I was dead on my feet. I had woken up at 2AM that day, drove five hundred miles round-trip to and from Missouri (yes, this time I made it), and had finally had a chance to eat, so I was nodding off and wasn’t my normal coherent self. Hope you understand a little better now where I’m coming from on this, Flea.
Angle Developments:
The Return Of The Guy Who Sits Next To The King: Ross on the mic, Trip coming out to yammer, Cena coming out to bore us, Vince coming out to wave his dick…you really didn’t have enough of this crap, week in, week out, did you? You wanted Ross back. Yes, I may be making a connection here that might not necessarily be logically true, but you can’t put aside the coincidence that an intro segment from the Bad Old Days was with us. Fuck that shit, folks. Joey should have stuck around until the ECW angle was in progress (and, no, Van Dam cutting a promo wanting ECW chants is not “in progress”) and saved us from that senile Okie.
Yeah, wasn’t much, I admit. But at least I’ll have a PPV to comment about next week, and as far as I know at time of writing, the Short Form will return as well. So until I see you next, make sure I don’t see you.
