Greetings everyone. Welcome back to your weekly installment of the Internet Wrestling Community’s only happy place, A Look on the Bright Side.
Why does this column exist? Because the Internet Wrestling Community (IWC), as a whole, is way too negative. Recappers, and columnists, and even the news guys spend a dozen words praising the good parts of pro wrestling, and 2,000 words blasting the crap that they didn’t like that week. So, to balance it all out, I present: me. I’m the guy who’ll remind you why you care about this so much in the first place. (Yes, I’m the only writer in the IWC who has never received a “If you hate this so much, why do you keep watching/writing” email.)
YouTube Video of the Week
Courtesy of Travis over in The DVD Lounge:
The Die Hard music video. This is seriously bad ass.
Around the Pulse
Eric pimped everyone I wanted to talk about. As Jules would say: “Mother f*cker.”
The Week That Was
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? ink 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.
By now, you all should have read my live Wrestlemania XXIII coverage. If not – click on that, dummy.
Wrestlemania XXIII
A small bit of bonus coverage, since I did the live recap. Overall, I tried to keep the recap objective, but I admit I failed in a few places. Eh – whatever. But hey, let’s do a quick comparison:
My live Wrestlemania recap: 4509 words.
Scott Keith’s WM rant: 2,856 words.
Who loves ya, baby? (Don’t worry – he doesn’t read this column, and he would never demean himself to email me – even if one of his sycophants alerted him to it.)
Anyway, I won’t go into great detail, since my opinion should be fairly obvious from the recap. But, here are the points that I think are going very much under-reported from the PPV:
1. As a whole, the “All Grown Up” videos are really impressive. Each one of them made me want to mark out for the upcoming match.
2. For about 8-10 seconds, I actually thought CM Punk might win the Money In The Bank match. Despite the purpose of this column, I’m actually quite cynical when it comes to WWE politics, so I really never considered that he might win. But, at the end of this match, I dared myself to believe – even for a short while.
3. Ricky Steamboat, and his wink to the camera.
4. Nobody is giving MVP the credit he deserves for his Benoit match. He was not “carried” to that match – he had to be actively involved, since it’s physically impossible for Benoit to execute a counter to his own move. MVP stepped up, and showed us something.
5. Shane’s appearance was unexpected (make no mistake: NO ONE called it), and impressive.
6. Oh, and for anyone wondering “Why was Cena in a Mustang?” Umm – it’s FORD Field. Duh.
Monday Night Raw
1. Good opening segment, carried (of course) by HBK. At this point, I’m pretty sure he could give a promo about how he likes to tear the heads off of small animals during his spare time, and still get a pop from the audience.
2. I was expecting tag teams along the lines of Cade & Murdoch, and instead the first two entrance themes are Booker T, and RVD. Wow. (And Kenny and Chris Masters are a tag team now? BWAHAHA. Oh, poor Eric.)
3. I really appreciated the site of HBK walking around the ring, thinking to himself: “Hmm, which of these guys can actually work?” It must be somewhat strange for him to be in a battle royal and not selling like a mutha.
4. Oh, for Pete’s sake. Why gang up on Viscera when throwing Val Venus over the top does the same thing?
5. A Rock ‘n’ Roll Express shout out from JR? Nice.
6. So Pathfinder gets to be the new 300? I’m cool wit dat.
7. HBK throws Cena over the top rope. Okay, seriously – NO ONE saw that coming. No one. I applaud whoever came up with that – Shawn, someone on Creative, whatever. (Honestly, I hope we eventually find out whose idea that was.) And HBK got the entire psychology across with two words: “One goal.”
8. Time for one of my dirty little secrets: I really like the Hardys. And now that Matt actually has a discernable personality, I expect to enjoy them that much more. Watching these two go against London & Kendrick would be a lot of fun.
9. Timbaland is here? Holy crap. Do the music guys know about this? No, not them, the other music guys. No, no – the OTHER music guys. Yeah – them. Do they know?
10. There were over 80,000 people at WM XXIII? Simple question – why? Do you really think you could see anything at all from the vantage point of the very, very top row of that stadium? You’d end up just watching the whole thing on the screens – and if you’re going to do that, why not just order the PPV? At home, the picture will be better, the beer is much cheaper, there’s no line at the bathroom, you don’t have to drive anywhere (and deal with the 2 hour wait to get out of the parking lot at the end of the night), and you can pause/rewind/FF as you wish. (Oh, you don’t have TiVo? What the hell is wrong with you?) Yes, I’ve been to a couple of shows live – but at Survivor Series, I was about 12 rows from the ring, and I’ve never been worse than somewhere in the midst of the first level. Really – what’s the point?
11. Okay, Vince – I will give you this: not every guy can pull off a fedora. And wow… Lillian, not too women could pull off that outfit either. Jeezus.
12. Vince should embrace the baldness. If they timed this better, they really could have played off how much he looks like Lex Luthor.
13. After Vince ducked under Lillian’s skirt, JR let loose with this zinger: “Is he in no-man’s land?” WHOA!! Way to flame those “Lillian is a lesbian” rumors, Jim! (And I do appreciate that Lawler couldn’t stop laughing for about 30 seconds.) (Oh, and a message to the Forum inhabitants: a bikini cut set of underwear is not “granny panties”. Date a few real, actual, breathing women – and you’ll learn the difference.)
14. They should definitely let Lashley smile more often. He looks way more natural in this aspect of his character that he has for the past 6 months.
15. Wow – seeing Micki James made me realize just how seldom we see any female wrestler in jeans. And then it made me realize: Micki has got one sweet ass. (Though I have to admit: seeing tight jeans triggers an automatic response in me, going back to my high school years. Y’see, back in the mid-to-late 80’s, every chick wore Jordache jeans, or something similarly tight. That made it real easy to judge who had a great ass, and who didn’t. I miss those days – every chick nowadays seems to have no ass whatsoever, or has a badookadunk bootie. There is no in between.)
ECW on Sci Fi
1. “The Colorado Spring Gazette”? Where did that come from?
2. Despite my intense hatred of Lashley’s voice, and despite Eric’s excellent point that he is just “too nice” to be ECW champ – that was a pretty effective promo. At the very least, recognizing the concept of “Vince is gonna f*ck with me now” was a welcome difference from the other babyfaces that are shocked – SHOCKED — when the evil Owner/GM/whatever decides to screw with them.
3. If you’re not watching “The Shield” – you should. If you’re thinking about going to watch The Condemned – don’t. If you ignore my advice here – you are no longer allowed to read my column. Just go away.
4. So, Timbaland is on ECW and Raw. Umm – why? Has anyone heard of the concept of “over-exposure”?
5. There’s been plenty of praise amongst the IWC for the New Breed vs. the ECW Originals match, with Extreme Rules, so I won’t go too much into it. But folks, please keep in mind – these are the same people that have slammed the ECW weekly show since it started up, and they were the same ones to bitch about everything related to Heyman’s ECW version back in the day (just google “ECW Justin Credible champion”). So – keep your large grains of salt nearby.
See ya next week, folks.
