Greetings everyone. Welcome back to your weekly installment of the Internet Wrestling Community’s only happy place, Look on the Bright Side.
Our weekly diversion once again actually involves pro wrestling. I know, I’m as shocked are you are.
I actually had a few other topics I was going to cover (T.O. missing practice with the Cowboys, Daniels’ Over/Unders on the NFC (see below), Marion Jones testing positive, Snakes on a Plane, etc.). But on Tuesday morning I read Ken Anderson’s Breakdown of SummerSlam. And a single line of his, thrown innocently enough into his review of the Hogan/Orton match, inspired me. Here’s the paragraph I’m referencing, with the specific line in bold:
Though I conceded earlier that Northeast crowds are extremely intelligent, I just cannot understand how no WWE crowd yet has been willing to boo Hulk Hogan. He got a thunderous pop in Boston last night, and the crowd was alive for the entire match, but I just don’t understand it. Nostalgia is all fine and well, but this isn’t exactly the mid-to-late 80’s Hulk Hogan that set America on fire. Hell, the guy can barely move anymore. And you’ve got to think that, especially after the success of Hogan Knows Best, people are starting to catch on to the fact that Hogan is largely unwilling to give back to the industry that has provided him with the life he now enjoys.
Umm, sorry Ken – but this actually is the same mid-to-late 80’s Hogan. Name a single move that Hogan pulled off that this Hogan can’t. Can he punch? Yup. Rake his opponent’s back? Yup. Body-slam his opponent? Yup. Do the big boot? Yup. Legdrop? Yup. And, by far the most important – can he pull off the same promo he’s been doing for 20 years, which still pulls in the audience to this day? Yup, and double-yup.
In a different manner, Ken addresses this very point later on in his recap, during his review of the Batista/Booker match:
If you didn’t see this match, I can confidently state that you missed absolutely nothing. There used to be a time when a World Title match, or an in-ring appearance by someone like Batista, was special enough on its own to bring up the value of a big show, but with the WWE giving away free title matches on a weekly basis, and worse yet having their top stars wrestle for free every week, there’s just very little differentiating the free product from the PPV product anymore — and that’s a big problem.
Remember even a few years back when guys like Steve Austin, the Rock, and The Undertaker would only actually wrestle on RAW once or twice a month? I know some changes had to be made during the Monday Night Wars in order to draw ratings, but those days are over. Dead. Gone. It’s 2006, and it just doesn’t make an ounce of freakin’ sense to have John Cena, Batista, DX, Rey Mysterio, and all the other top names wrestling long matches on free TV every single week. It’s insane. Not only does it give viewers no incentive to order PPV’s, but it also effectively destroys the freshness of seeing these guys wrestle.
Excellent point, Ken – but you didn’t go far enough with it. Go back even further, to Hogan’s rise in the 80’s. At that point, a truly hardcore fan might see Hogan wrestle four times a year – in their local house show, and the big four PPVs. The great, great majority of fans probably never saw an actual Hogan match more than once in a full calendar year, if that. And that did something very important – it hid all of Hogan’s weaknesses in the ring (of which there are many). But it allowed them to focus on his strong points (his promos), and it allowed him to have the same match every single time – when people were only seeing it once, twice, maybe three times a year, it could stay “fresh”.
Nowadays, of course, the audience would never go for that. The Monday Night Wars spoiled today’s fan, and they simply wouldn’t allow Vince to get away with having Cena wrestle on TV only once a month or so. But if you dropped a wrestling fan from 1987 in front of a TV on a Monday night nowadays, they would simply be flabberghasted at the quality of matches. That’s one reason I get annoyed with members of the IWC complain incessantly about squashes on TV – none of them were even alive back in the day when everything on TV was a squash, so they have no perspective.
Please join me again next week, for a new episode of “You Damn Kids Get Off My Lawn”.
The You Tube Video of the Week
Since I didn’t write about T.O. in the Weekly Diversion, I’ll just remind you all the Philadelphia Eagles do have a history of ending the careers of obnoxious Dallas wide receivers. Not that I would wish that on anyone, of course. (Wow, even typing that last line with a straight face was difficult.)
The People’s Front
Eric Bonin wrote in with a fairly strongly-worded opinion about the French TNA commentators:
Good column, as always. You mentioned the french broadcast of TNA and its commentators, who are Marc Blondin ( the french equivalent of Sean Mooney, he did some WWF stuff in the 80’s) and Pierre-Carl Ouellet (former partner of Jacques Rougeau as The Quebecers). Let me assure you that those two are the worst guys I have ever seen describing a wrestling show. They make Mongo and Ernest Miller looks like Monsoon and Ventura. They’re always pushing themselves over and their stupid storylines, they don’t pay attention to the product and do “humor” that even little kids in grade school would find retarded……well, they’re not that different than current-day Ross-Lawler. They even won a “TV crap award” for being the worst show on television.
I saw, at the beginning of one Impact episode, someone who brought a sign that said “Marge d’la marde Blondin”, loosely translated as “Go eat some shit Blondin”. It should tell you an idea of what people in Quebec think of TNA broadcasting. I mean, a guy decides to make the drive from Quebec to Orlando, and THAT’s the sign he’s bringing with him, just to tell the commentators to go f*ck themselves.
Wow. A week ago I didn’t know there was a French TNA announce team. Now, it looks like there might be a smackdown about them in my own column. Kewl.
Several people, including Gino B, emailed me with the info on CM Punk’s new theme song:
The band is Killswitch Engage, and I believe the song is the one that’s supposed to be Randy Orton’s theme on that new WWE CD.
And so it is. The album is on iTunes, but unfortunately you can’t buy just the song. (Dammit, I hate when they do that.)
Tone E Atlas wrote in concerning Mick Foley:
I’m probably not the only guy that sent this email… but look at Eric S’ Wrestling, News, Opinions, Etc. column for this week. I think it sums up why Mick Foley said he’s opened up only 4 times while in the E.
Yeah, I saw Eric’s column after I submitted my own. My first thought was: “Nah, that can’t be it – too subtle.” But since then, I realize that that was exactly what Mick’s intention was. I wouldn’t believe most wrestlers could be anywhere near that clever – but Mick is an exception.
Around the Pulse
Eric S talks about Tiger, puts his own unique spin on SummerSlam and Raw, and brings back YAM (I mark out when he calls someone “oogums”).
Hatton, as usual, took half of my material for SummerSlam and Raw.
Vinny talks about how pro wrestlers are killing themselves for our entertainment. Seriously – this is an important issue, and you should read it and think about it. And please remember it the next time you feel like like being a smark and chanting “You f*cked up”, or something similarly clever. (And no, I’m not bitter simply because of my poor showing in the SummerSlam Roundtable. Nor because of the fact that Finger decided not to count the TNA roundtable results, where I went 7-1. No, not me – not bitter at all.)
Daniels laments the construction of a new Yankees stadium. However, that’s just the prelude to something I’ve been waiting a week for: his NFC over/unders. And it paid off: apparently the man’s been taking really good drugs for a while, and hasn’t shared with the rest of us. Dallas with 10 wins? Philly with 7? Seattle with 10? Arizona with just 4? Carolina with just 7? New Orleans – NEW ORLEANS – with TEN wins? WTF? (And that’s with discounting his prediction of Chicago to go 12-4, since that’s obviously his way of sucking up of Eric S.)
Hevia gives us the second movie to ever get a negative rating on InsidePulse. Go ahead, click it – you know you’re morbidly curious.
To wash out the bad taste, Travis suggests that you pick up Brick, a film noir set in high school. That’s an intriguing enough concept to make me add it to my Netflix queue.
And ROBTRAIN reviews the better of the two movies in 1995 about Scotsmen with swords (which also included the greatest swordfight of the modern era).
Over in Music, Gloomchen goes off on the music industry and the Unholy Trinity of Xtina, Paris, and Jessica, and also has the guts to say that Nickleback doesn’t necessarily suck (honestly, I thought everybody who listened to music felt compelled to share that oh-so-original idea at all times).
The Happy Fifteen (or so)
And now, we get to the meat of the column. The idea is fairly simple: I point out (at least) 5 things from each major show that should be getting more attention, but aren’t. (And occasionally, I just point out some absurdity just to tweak the rest of the IWC.) There’s way too much negativity infused into columnists who write about pro wrestling: this is just my little attempt to balance it out a bit.
Love the concept? Hate it? Think I missed something important from last week? See something this week that you think should be here? Email me by Sunday evening.
Yes, I promised TNA this week. But, A) it started late, and my TiVo didn’t catch the last 5 minutes of the show, B) there really wasn’t anything outstanding on it that wasn’t mentioned in one of our 3 recaps, C) I’m covering SummerSlam, and most importantly, D) they’re going with a Sting/Jarrett rematch at Bound for Glory, a PPV that is TWO MONTHS AWAY, instead of Jarrett/Joe and Sting/Christian. Idiots. So, we’ll revisit next week, and I’ll make up my mind then.
Friday Night Smackdown
Damn, but I feel like a slacker. Unfortunately, the video on the DVR-recorded Smackdown in my area is totally screwed up – I can’t hear anything other than crowd noise. Weird, huh? And without JBL, this show really isn’t worth going through. Besides, I put out 40 bucks for…
Summerslam
1. During the opening match, JBL decided that “This is an old-fashioned street fight.” Immediately after he says that, Rey flips over the top rope. Then Chavo tried to go for a top-rope powerbomb. This is an MMA style I’m not familiar with.
2. This was a strange, strange crowd tonight. It seemed at times incredibly markish (the pops for Hogan, the total disinterest in the ECW title match), and other time showed a lot of smark tendency. The opening match was a good example: Vicki shows up, and the crowd boos. (Actually, I was happy to hear that – the match has already started, and the crowd paid to see the match. Why wouldn’t they be annoyed at her attempts to stop it from happening?) Then, when Rey went for The Three Amigos – the crowd booed again? Huh? Even Rey appeared confused. But really, if this was the crowd’s way of saying “We hate this entire angle”, good for them.
3. Layla: “My first Summer-Slahm as a WWE Diva.” What the hell kinda accent is that? And does it just come and go as she pleases? Actually, the Diva snubbing of the newbie was kinda interesting, especially after they all had fun in the water fight last week on Raw. Trish’s speech was amusing, especially when she got to Ashley – nice reaction by both of them. And I definitely appreciated the fact that the initiation in the shower started to turn into a women’s prison movie there.
4. The Pre-Summerslam Blowout footage was actually not a waste of time. Wow! Hey, Farooq in the house! And Mr. Kennedy had a good bit about WWE 24/7: “I can watch myself 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. I can pause, I can rewind – never fast-forward though!” This guy is gonna be big. He’s going to give Eric material until Mr. Szulczewski turns 50.
5. During the Foley/Melina bit backstage, my thought was: “Melina pulling a reverse psychology ploy? on Mick Foley? Wow – very smart.” However, after the ending of Raw the next night, I’m not sure what to think about it.
6. During the “I Quit” match, Foley actually broke the mic over Flair’s head – damn. And man, talk about shooting your load early: Mr. Socko with barbed wire, a shot into the stairs, a board with barbed wire, thumbtacks, a barbed wire baseball bat – and all of that, what, 5 minutes in? Geezus.
7. Flair’s “This isn’t a “lay down on your ass’ match, it’s an ‘I Quit’ match!” line was genius. And discounting Melina throwing in the towel? Wow – it’s almost like they said, “Let’s take all the lame ways this match might have ended, and tease them – then give the crowd something they didn’t see coming.” Good job laying that out, guys – you managed to keep me interested.
8. I only saw two “If Edge Wins, We Riot” signs on camera, but that was made up for by the “If King Booker wins, the peasants revolt” sign. That was pretty clever.
And.. well… that’s about it. I was very underwhelmed by this PPV. (The McMahons re-enacting the famous tag-team finishers was fun, but everybody and their brother have already mentioned it.) And coming from the positive guy on the site, that should say something.
Monday Night Raw
So, I’m sitting on my couch, thinking: “You know, this Guinness Draught is awful tasty, but I really wish I had some kind of ice cream to go with it.” And lo and behold, Ben & Jerry’s come out with Black & Tan – cream stout ice cream swirled with chocolate ice cream. If you’ve ever wondered what cream stout ice cream tastes like – wonder no more.
1. Edge asking a kid in the audience about “your hero, John Cena” was inspired. And the kid’s father, standing right next to him, was cracking up – that’s funny on a couple of levels.
2. So, Lita throws the spinning belt in the water two weeks after I mentioned the Stone Cold/Rock angle. Yup – I am totally taking claim for that. (I’m delusional, but makes me happy.)
3. The McMahon DVD actually looks like it might be worth the money (if I didn’t have three TV shows and a movie waiting to be reviewed, that is). But if that “incest angle” rumor is true, then… I am totally not sure how to react, honestly. I mean, it’s one thing for Vince to suggest it. It’s another for Steph to talk about it. But it’s a totally new level of illness to actually leave it on the DVD.
4. So, Duggan gets a “USA” chant started, while his partner is in the ring against American kids, with the Highlanders standing next to him. Man, nostalgia is just a powerful force, ain’t it?
5. So, they’re moving to a Carlito/Orton storyline? Ohhhh… I’m so down with that.
6. HHH: “When the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor..” Obviously, that was HHH’s way of letting everyone know he thought Animal House got robbed in the Funniest Movie of Our Generation tournament. Man, I’m surprised the WWE writers have time to put together their shows, when they’re obviously reading IP all week for inspiration.
7. Shane completely cracked me up with his “He also called you a son of a bitch!” line while Vince was yelling at Mick. Eric wrote a nice piece about him this week, but it bears repeating – we’re going to miss Shane if he leaves the business.
8. I really do appreciate it, I do – but does anyone on the planet think that Lillian Garcia dresses like that outside of the ring? She just doesn’t strike me as the type to go food shopping in a mini-skirt and halter top. Eh – maybe just me.
9. And yes, I called Layla as the most deserving contestant in the Diva Search the very week it debuted.
Otherwise, I’m joining the rest of the IWC in saying that the second half of the show left a lot to be desired.
ECW on Sci Fi
1. A vertical duplex, a swanton bomb, and a top-rope legdrop. And this was while The Sandman was in the ring? And the Tommy Dreamer gets a clean pinfall? My God, how much have I had to drink tonight?
2. Oh, they really are putting Matt Striker on the ECW show? They weren’t just teasing me with the house show results? Oh. My. God. The wealth of material he can have with a true ECW crowd is truly awe-inspiring. I can’t wait for his first promo in Philly or the Hammerstein.
3. Yup, it’s official – Ariel’s entrance has overtaken Melina’s as the best in the business, with the addition of her “spreading her wings”, so to speak.
4. I forgot to mention last week how much I like Kevin Thorne’s outfit, especially the cane. Honestly, more people should take advantage of the cane as a fashion accessory. And then, as if to prove my point, Kevin decided to use it as a weapon in his match (including that awesome shot into the throat).
5. I don’t give a f*ck where they go with the character, or what they do with him (and that’s ignoring the fact that I really enjoyed most of his run through WWE): the fact that Hardcore Holly was fit enough to make an appearance on TV is something to be celebrated. Anyone that says anything different is a self-centered, inconsiderate prick.
And that’s it for this week. See you next Wednesday.
