Greetings everyone. Welcome back to your weekly installment of the Internet Wrestling Community’s only happy place, A Look on the Bright Side.
Nothing much for the weekly diversion, since I’m trying to be understated in my joy over the Eagles’ win on Sunday. Let me just state for the record: this is the 2nd most satisfying win in the past 25 years (#1, of course, being the NFC Conference Championship win over Atlanta in 2004). But as always, it has to be kept in perspective: losing that game did not knock anybody out of the playoffs, and winning did not gain anybody a first round bye. Besides, everybody in the NFC has to get past Chicago: which appears to be damn near impossible. Guess I’m stuck hoping for an injury to Rex Grossman somewhere around week 16.
Around the Pulse
Obviously, Eric felt somewhat threatened by my random and wide-spread pimps last week, and made up for it this week. Well, good for him.
I’ll just pimp the two things you really HAVE to read this week:
The Monday Night Rabble brings the goodness as always.
The best reporting on the Kurt Angle story is being done by Jeremy Botter. His insight and analysis is simply top-notch. Want to know what’s really going on in the world of pro wrestling each week? Then you have to read The Botterm Dollar regularly.
The You Tube Video of the Week
Somebody put the entire South Park episode that covered World of Warcraft online. And somehow, it’s stayed online. So, go watch it. Seriously, if you know any serious online gamers, this is some funny shit. And if you are a serious online gamer – suck it up, kiddo, the truth hurts.
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 Tuesday evening.
And be sure to take part in the Insidepulse Forum for A Look on the Bright Side thread too.
Friday Night Smackdown
1. JBL: “It will not be long before [Vicki] takes Chavo to gold.” Hmm – I’ll be really curious to see the IWC trip over themselves explaining their feelings if Chavo (a longtime IWC favorite) manages to win a heavyweight singles title, while riding the Eddie nostalgia train. (Hey, it wasn’t that long ago that it was nearly impossible to imagine Eddie as World Champion.)
2. JBL: “Rey Mysterio, a guy who moved from the cruiserweight division to the World Champion. I’m tellin’ ya, won’t be too far fetched to see Gregory Helms one day as the champion on Smackdown.” My cynical response: sorry, John, only if Matt Hardy is found dead in a hotel room. (Although reading Eric’s first column after that happened would definitely be the highlight of my year.)
3. Eric does make an excellent point in his Smackdown Short Form – the age of these competitors is really getting up there, but the quality of the matches has been staying very, very high (in complete contrast to the heyday of WCW). I mean, I’m 36 – I’m the second oldest columnist here at IP – and there are four guys competing tonight older than me.
4. JBL: “[Tatanka] oughta be fired up – he’s lost the last five weeks.” Cole: “Well, he lost to Miz last week.” JBL: “That – he should retire.” Preach it, John.
5. I’m glad they finally let Burke show some of his amateur boxing skills – letting him just haul off and throw haymakers to an opponent in the corner makes a lot of sense for his character.
6. Could someone please get Finlay to try and spell the word “Citizens”? Please?
7. Kennedy: “Last week, I came face-to-face with the hocus pocus, abra-cadabra Houdini garbage that you do. And you know what? I wasn’t impressed. It didn’t scare me.”
No, I didn’t get No Mercy – just wasn’t that interested in it, honestly.
Monday Night Raw
A three hour Raw? Jeezus. We’re definitely setting a record on Bright Side items tonight. (And I’m probably waking up for work tomorrow at 9am, with a massive hangover. Ah well – suffer for your art, they say.)
1. Nice job to not let the crowd’s boos for Cena come through until the very end of is entrance. And then, Booker shows up? Guess Big Show is next. Yup.
2. Cena said “rapscallions”! Yup, that proves, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that he reads this column. Man, I freakin’ rule. But really, he shouldn’t said he was kicking King Booker’s “arse”, not ass – I would’ve written 3 paragraphs just on that.
3. Cena: “This ain’t no friggin’ Renaissance Faire.” No, they would have charged more for beer, if it was.
4. Cena: “Andre comma The”. Oh, so his name was “The Andre”? Or “The Andre Giant?”
5. TBS: “Andre’s not here. And if he was, I’d kick his ass too.” BOOM – hello, Heeltown, population: Paul Wright.
6. Cena vs. The Undertaker? On free TV? Are you freakin’ kidding me? Oh, you are killing Iain’s plans for Survivor Series now. (And hey, Survivor Series is in Philly? Well, I may just have to go see that one live. Drop me a line if you’re thinking about going too.
7. A D/X press conference? Well, these always have promise. Ok, rip on Raw’s tag team situation – check. The Spirit Squad stuff was too easy. Coach – ditto. Masterpiece – honestly, they should’ve let a line get out about that – but not doing it was probably funnier.
8. D-X’s promo after their announcement in the street fight: this is the kind of thing that convinces me that Shawn Michaels, for all of his flaws as a human being, is The Greatest Pro Wrestler Ever. First off, I’d put his career of matches against anyone – the ladder matches, the street fight with HHH a few years ago, the first Hell in a Cell against UT, the iron man against Bret. And then add in his promos over the years. Then, add the fact that he’s one of the very, VERY few performers in the entire industry that can add something to a promo while not being the main focus: just the peripheral stuff he does speaks volumes for his value as an entertainer.
9. Okay. so Shelton Benjamin is in the ring – the guy that I consider to be the best athlete, and the most under-utilized character, in the entire WWE schema. And who gets pulled out to be his partner, but my favorite technical wrestler in the entire world, Chris Benoit. Here’s an approximation of the sound I made when Benoit’s music hit: “AAEEEHHHEIIIAAHH!!!” I don’t even care that Shelton is going to lose this match – just being in the ring with Benoit will raise his stature.
10. JBL: “That thing on the bottom of your lip – it’s not a growth, it’s not herpes, it’s your BBQ sauce that’s infected ya.” JR: “Ya reckon?” JBL: “I do reckon!” JR: “Ya mean, like jrbbq.com?” JBL: “Okay, anyhow… there’ll be no gratuitous plugs on this show! Ya ever seen me on Fox News?” Joey: “I have nothing to plug!” JBL: “That’s what your wife said.”
11. Wait – 3 minutes? Benoit vs. Benjamin? Okay, I’m going to now turn into the typical IWC columnist, and find minutes from all of the following segments that could have been sacrificed in order to add time to this match. (No, I’m not going to publish them, of course – what the hell would that add to the discourse?)
12. The bit with Super Crazy was cute. But it was totally made by Teddy’s line of: “Supe, y-y-you, speak English?” That was freaking classic.
13: Taz: “You’re only in that chair because I opted to go in this chair.” JBL: “You’re only in the announcing chair, period, because you couldn’t wrestle. I’m here – y’know, it’s better to be a has-been then a never-was.”
14. Flair comes down – ok, cool that he can still go. Then Piper appears – nice surprise, but we did just see him a couple weeks ago. But then, Money Inc. – oh HELL yes, gimme my nostalgia, baby! And then… double A, Arn Anderson? Getting announced on Monday Night Raw? Are you freakin’ kidding me? Well, good night Mitch, nice knowing you.
15. Putting Edge and Orton together was a truly good idea on the part of Creative. (Okay, kinda obvious yeah – but how many “obvious” moves have they ignored over the years now?) I don’t know how far it’ll go – honestly, it should, IMO, go as far as getting a new Four Horsemen, with Edge as WWE Champ, Orton as Intl Champ, and the other two (ideally somebody like James and Stevens from Smackdown) occasionally holding the tag titles. But the main focus should be: always keep the World title on whoever the top guy is (in this case, Edge). I think that method of old-school booking would go over HUGE with this generation of fans. Evolution was close to that idea, but broke up too soon.
16. In case you were wondering – according to the Monday Night Rabble forum, the official name for this pairing is “Ordge”. I like it. (And not that I can blame him, but Orton seems physically incapable of not staring Lita’s breasts whenever possible.)
17. Yes, I know it’s for promotional purposes and all – but putting up those Marines in the front row was a pretty cool move. A lot of those guys might never be able to afford tickets that nice on their own.
18. Cena missed an opportunity to add just a little bit to his character when the first *bong* went off in Undertaker’s entrance. Everybody – everybody – shows at least a little fear/hesitation when that goes off: hell, even The Big Show, who’s been pushed as an unbeatable monster in ECW, showed fear when it happened a couple months ago. But Cena never even changes the look on his face? C’mon, John – I want to like you, but you’re going to have to work with me here.
ECW on Sci Fi
1. “Tonight’s ECW program contains sexually explicitly material intended for adult audiences. Viewer discretion is advised.” Well to channel Wooderson, “alright alright alright”.
2. I’ve seen quite a few leg lariats in my day – but the one CM Punk threw on Dupree was especially vicious. I’m beginning to see why the IWC creams over this guy.
3. They could show 60 straight minutes of Ashley spanking Kristal’s ass, and I would tune in non-stop.
4. To quote the forum’s Capt Spaulding, “the cool looking Rock Bottom/Spinebuster that Thorn did” was an excellent move. I honestly expected that to be a 3-count. And I am shocked that Dreamer was the one to end Thorn’s unbeaten streak, considering that Dreamer usually prefers to lose his matches.
5. I just noticed that Trinity sounds like all of the mob wives in Goodfellas, in the scenes where Dr. Melfi talks about how poorly dressed they are, and how much they hate their kids, etc. (And in case you’re wondering – no, that takes nothing away from how hot I think she is.)
6. Good job giving a convincing win to a set of ECW Originals. Letting Test and Striker take the brunt of the punishment was obvious – but we’ve already covered how often WWE Creative misses the “obvious” stuff. Test, especially, as been impressing me the past couple of weeks – he’s been keeping all of his heel heat, and maintaining his character, while not being afraid to take serious punishment in a couple of main event matches. If they’re fighting to establish the “In ECW, we have pinfall decisions” mindset, you need to have guys that aren’t afraid to lose by pinfall every so often, even if they’re in the middle of a push. So, kudos to you, Andrew.
And that’s it for this week. See you next Wednesday
