What a surprise: the Simmons-tard likes Flex as an alleged actor and liked him as an alleged wrestler. Well, what else can you say other than “Birds of a feather”…
So what happened to Tuesday’s column? People are reading motives into this. Am I upset about V3? No, it wasn’t that. Lack of time compounded by lack of sleep compounded by lack of will to live caused me to push the abort button. In fact, my time’s been so limited lately that it’s now late Wednesday afternoon, and I haven’t watched Unforgiven yet, much less Raw…
…and I just took another nap, which means it’s now Wednesday night, and I have just enough time to watch this, write this up, and grab a shower before leaving. That’s the problem with having a freeform schedule. Sometimes it’s a little too freeform. Although there are unusual advantages. For instance, being in the car at 12:37AM CT on Wednesday morning when Jack FM, our local equally freeform rock station, ended up playing “I Wanna Be Sedated” and “Rag Doll” (Aerosmith, not the Four Seasons, but still indescribably cool) back-to-back. Gotta love it.
Just to show you exactly how cool that station is, 4:55AM Thursday (which also gives you an indicator that I ran out of time on Wednesday evening, went to work, and came back and finished this on Thursday morning), here’s the playlist: “Smells Like Teen Spirit”, “You’re So Vain”, “Rocket”, “All I Need Is A Miracle”, “Nothin’ But A Good Time”. Tell me one thing that Nirvana, Carly Simon, Def Leppard, Mike and the Mechanics, and Poison have in common other than the fact that they recorded music. Please, do so.
(Yes, is that a hand in the back?…Mathan, is that you?…what’s that?…”They’re all white”…yeah, that’s what I thought you’d say. Well, smarty-britches, the next song that the station played was “Boogie Oogie Oogie”. No shit. So that shuts you up, huh?)
Speaking of “Smells Like Teen Spirit”…it’s been fifteen years since that song was on the charts. Seems like only yesterday, huh? What I’d like to know is this: do you youngsters listen to the music of 2006 and say to yourself, “You know, this isn’t ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit'” the way I listened to Nirvana in 1991 and said, “You know, this isn’t ‘Anarchy In The UK'”?
Right now, the one thing that’s really got me thrown for a loop is the new summary teasers for V3. A witty one-liner, no problem, but how do you put in a summary for a Short Form? Throw in one match entirely as part of the summary? Hope that I have something in Angle Developments that would cause an interesting spark? It’s a bit of a challenge. Of course, I’ve got this column covered in that respect because I’m going to use this paragraph as my summary teaser. Meta-textual analyzers will have a field day with that one.
Might as well get on with this show…
Match Results:
Tommy Dreamer, Sandman, and Sabu over Mike Knox, Test, and Matt Striker (DQ, Don’t Piss Off Scott Armstrong, Or Else He’ll Invite The Rest Of His Family Back To WWE): Okay, the obvious initial statement to make about this match is that you can’t expect very much about a match where the best wrestler is Matt Striker. However, this match does serve an important purpose. WWE thinks it can make money off of Knox’s misogyny, Test’s repackaging, and Striker’s…sadistic schoolteacher act? But they need to learn how to properly behave like ECW wrestlers in order to make this work. Therefore, team them up with these three, who know how to do that better than anyone alive, except for a certain guy down in Orlando right now. And it’s working, definitely in the case of Knox. The pair of feuds that are going to come out of this are going to be entertaining at the very least, and have the potential of being surprisingly good.
God, I must be exhausted and mentally drained when I leave open the possibility of a feud involving Test being “surprisingly good”. And I thought I was only this way when I was on the drugs.
(By the way, Memo To The Other ECW Guys Here: yeah, I can understand why you’d be incredulous about something as wimpy as a guard rail spot taking out Sandman given the amount of crainial trauma he’s suffered over the years, but maybe, just maybe, the shot hit the one remaining nerve pathway from Sandman’s head to his brain, thus causing him to be knocked loopy. It’s a stretch, yes, but they did need to do the isolation shot in order to advance the Sandman/Striker feud, which could really be the making of Striker as a heel for the next few years. It’s a gamble worth taking.)
Oh, my God…he’s making Rene Dupree look butch
Kevin Fertig over Balls Mahoney (Pinfall, crucifix powerbomb): When the history of wrestling in 2006 is written, the story of ECW’s revival will be at the top, obviously. One of the main sidebars to that story, though, will be the case history of Kevin Fertig. Had potential in the minors, sent up to the majors and given a dead-end gimmick which failed within weeks, fired, rehired, and shoehorned into a gimmick that was obvious pandering to the new network they were on, whether or not they were serious or what. And guess what? He’s over. Yes, Ariel and her pneumatic tits have something to do with that, but he’s over, and he’s performing well with his designated competition. Balls is a pretty tough opponent to get a handle on, because he’s got a style which isn’t designed to make others look good, but Fertig had a highly watchable match with him. So when will the Mordecai jokes stop? Probably never, but he’s not doing anything to encourage them.
Fertig goes Balls-out in his matches these days
CM Fuckin’ Punk over Shannon Moore, Repeat Of Last Week’s Fiasco (Submission, Anaconda Vise): Yeah, like we needed to see this again. But at least Moore got in a little offense this time. Not enough, of course, but it’s nice to know the burial’s still on. And it’s nicer to know that Punk’s elevation is still on. The only thing that can stop Punk from being in the ECW title match at Wrestlemania is a Wellness Program problem, which would definitely blow his image to hell and gone. Of course, Wrestlemania may be an overestimate. If he’s not in a title match by Royal Rumble, I’ll be surprised.
This may be a new way of making someone your bitch
Booker T over Rob Van Dam, Extreme Rules But Not A Title Match (Pinfall, scissors kick): I can’t decide which abomination this was. Was it an Angle Advancement Match because of Holly’s involvement? Was it a Pimp Match due to the start of the CW Network and Booker’s status as de facto figurehead of Smackdown (if so, as someone very dear to me once said, our figurehead is not what he seems)? Was it a Stupid Attempt At Cross-Promotion Because These Guys Have Been Linked In The Past Match? Well, it’s only an abomination due to categorization. They’ve always worked well together, they kept the Extreme stuff to a minimum (not Booker’s forte), and it was a decent main. So it’s not appropriate to complain very much. Besides, if I do, it may jeopardize me getting the noble status that I so rightly deserve.
An uranage of regal proportions
Angle Developments:
Chicks and Other Forms Of Life: Well, well, here’s Francine making a long-awaited appearance (and I’m not being sarcastic; I wanted to see her back on a weekly basis). Her appearance underscores a big problem that ECW has right now, namely the lack of ladies who can get involved in action. Ariel and Kelly Kelly are eye candy, and meant to be. But if they really want an ECW feel to ECW Mark Two, they need women who can, you know, catfight. And I mean a real catfight, not the one they had on Tuesday night. Francine was the master of that activity, but where’s her partner in hot woman-on-woman action? The two mentioned above would be a joke (although you never know with Ariel). Jazz is a serious wrestler, and is dying for a little competition, right now relegated to house shows where they can find someone local for her to beat up on. Trinity’s just coming back from injury, although she was known to enjoy a good scrap now and then in TNA. Native options are few.
Even if you tap into ECW Classic, there’s not many options there. Beulah’s at home with the mini-Dreamers and only does relatively local appearances at house shows (which Tommy probably counts as “spending a night out without the kids”). Lita’s busy on Raw, and she’s about to leave the business anyway. Kimona’s retired, and although she probably could be lured out, if WWE signed her, they’d send her to become Jimmy Yang’s manager (if she could pull off Leia Meow, she could do that). They don’t even have the option of bringing anyone over from Raw or Smackdown, since all the women there are pretty much settled (although I wouldn’t be surprised to see Leyla transferred to ECW now that Vince has supposedly cooled on her). Where’s what’s-her-name, the woman on Raw who got injured after about two weeks and who’s still rehabbing? Can she be sent over, or do they regard her as a serious competitor who they’ll need for the Women’s strap once she’s healthy again?
Here’s an idea: sign Lacey from ROH. That woman can draw heel heat just by walking into the room. Do a Queen of the Lot angle with her, offending Francine in the process (after all, she’s the True Queen Of Extreme), and listen as Joey shatters his vocal cords. Do it, guys. We other guys need this.
(Just a little author’s note here: we were trying to get together a launch feature for Wrestling with V3, which may still come off if people could get their acts together and participate, and PK could get a little time to organize things. In it, I do mention the possibility of accentuating the position of women in ECW and how to do it. Of course, since I submitted my ideas a month ago, it might be a little dated now, and I kinda hope it doesn’t see print, although I was my usual smarky great comedic self in it. So if it comes out, I’m not ashamed, even though the words “Kurt” and “Angle” are used in a wrestling context, not an MMA one.)
Okay, Francine looks great. But those things are going to pop out in a catfight…wait, am I complaining about that?
Trinity tries to win one for the home team in the Slutty Outfit contest
Faux royalty meets real royalty
Ratings and Spin-Jobs: ECW’s rating was its lowest yet on Sci-Lie, a 1.6/2 if you want to be exact. Here’s Milord’s spin on that: They can take solace in the fact that there was increased competition last night. In addition to the debut of the new fall lineups on the broadcast network, there was a lot of competition on cable as well. Nip/Tuck on FX did a 3.0 cable rating while they also went against the Dog Bounty Hunter special on A & E, which talked about his arrest and did their best number ever, a 3.3 cable rating. Both Raw and ECW will be affected by the return of first run programming on both broadcast TV and cable.
Oh, is that a crock of shit or what? Although it’s awfully nice to see Scherer defending ECW to his dying breath again. It’s like stepping into a well-worn pair of slippers. Plus la change and all that. Notice that he’s eliminated Smackdown from this equation. Why is that? Is he actually expecting that the CW Network is going to make some kind of a difference with Smackdown’s ratings? Here’s the spin that’s going to be put on those numbers: the last month was down due to the transition between the end of UPN and the beginning of the CW, so numbers are now up thanks to the return of normalcy. If they have any balls, they’ll compare the numbers this week to the numbers of the final month of full UPN coverage and compare those. Of course, they won’t, especially if this week’s numbers are lower. This is why you should turn to me for information, because I won’t bullshit you or try to spin shit based on particular bias. And if I do attempt to do that, I at least make my biases clear, unlike certain disreputable walking flaming sacks of crap like Milord.
Another great piece of appropriate irony for this show: under V3, we have to cut our photos down to 420 pixels in width. For some reason, I have a feeling that certain people in the ECW locker room would approve. Back later this week for the remainder of the Short Forms, so stay tuned…
