As if I needed another reason to hate the Nuggets right now
The big story in the wrestling world this week was a scheduling snafu of the highest caliber. With the NBA’s Western Conference finals underway, the Denver Nuggets will host game four against the Lakers this coming Monday; the problem is that The E had the Pepsi Center booked for Raw since last August and now has had to relocate the show to L.A.’s Staples Center on short notice. In short, there were plenty of fireworks during the week when this came to light and while Vince may have lost, he certainly got the better of the war of the words.
Quick note: I would’ve had this article out earlier in the week, but I did want to see how this would play out and wait until the new location was made official for next Monday’s RAW.
P.C. Says: The E is the victim in this case
I am what Hunter Thompson would’ve called a “sports junkie†as well as an L.A. Lakers fan since the last days of Magic Johnson’s first run. And while I’m psyched for the Lakers/Nuggets series—in which Game One was very, very exciting—this story did top the series itself as the big story of the week. When I first heard the story, I was surprised to say the least. Then I kept asking the same question, one that really doesn’t have a clear-cut answer: why did something like this happen?
Real sport will trump fake sport every time; that’s the message that people, including Vince, should take away from this. While UFC would’ve probably suffered the same fate as The E—if it happened in a state where MMA is legalized—Vince’s media attack was probably his way of getting his shots in before he inevitably had to give in and move his show; it was going to happen, he knew it, but that didn’t mean he had to be nice about it (and I’m glad he wasn’t). Hockey and MMA are the only real sports that are immune to the rule I listed above, as UFC would not be able to convince an arena to give Vince the boot since they’re on a basically even playing ground as far as prestige goes, and hockey almost got the boot from Vince this past Sunday. The Anaheim Ducks losing the seventh game of their series to the defending Stanley Cup Champion Detroit Red Wings last week saved Chicago from having to choose between their Blackhawks and The E. Had Anaheim, the eight seed in the Western conference, beaten Detroit, Chicago would’ve hosted game one of the western finals against Anaheim, a game that took place Sunday afternoon. The E ran their Judgment Day pay-per-view that same night in the same arena that the Chicago/Anaheim game would’ve been played in had Anaheim won. If Anaheim had won, they would’ve likely moved the game to Monday night as The E already had a sell-out long clinched for their pay-per-view whereas the Denver RAW show was going to be a sell-out, but was only a T.V. show and not one where people would’ve had to pay $40 to view.
However, since the Denver issue is about basketball, there was no way Vince was going to win this battle. Yes, he had more than 10,000 tickets sold and yes it would’ve been a sell-out come Monday, but that is all irrelevant. It’s irrelevant because the Nuggets being in their first conference final in twenty-four years means that they could’ve put tickets on sale the day of the game and would’ve gotten at least near a sell-out if not a sell-out. Had this been a regular season game, there’d be no issue as Denver would’ve more than likely rescheduled the game for an open date and RAW would’ve went off without a hitch. But, since this is the playoffs and the stakes are higher, that means that the schedule is tighter—both for the team and for TNT, the network broadcasting the conference finals—to the point where rescheduling is impossible.
In the end, Vince’s comments, loud and vicious at times, were right on the mark in this case. When Vince noted that the owner of the Nuggets and the Pepsi Center didn’t have faith that his team would make it this far in the playoffs, he was absolutely right. The fact that The E booked the date and the arena for Raw back late last August—during the off-season, but during preseason—would indicate a possible lack of faith on his part. Of course when Vince stated later that the Nuggets’ owner should be “arrested…for impersonating a good businessman†he may have been right on the mark too. The fact is that any owner of a basketball team that has a puncher’s chance of making it to the post-season in the preseason analysis should leave the month of May and most of June open just in case. And with the Nuggets, this should’ve been a definite as they won fifty games last season and would’ve made it further in the playoffs had they not ran into L.A. in the first round. While the Billups trade happened months after The E booked next Monday for RAW, the Nuggets still had enough of a team where everyone had them pegged as a playoff team for this season right after they were eliminated last season. Not only that, but the Western Conference has been so competitive a conference in the last few years that the notion of a top team like San Antonio or my Lakers getting shocked in the early rounds—something that almost happened to L.A.—shouldn’t have been lost on the Nuggets brass like it apparently was. Taking all of that into account, it does seem that the Nuggets’ owner didn’t have much faith in his team’s postseason chances.
And while the sports media is still pretty ignorant towards wrestling as a business, citing wrestlers from twenty and thirty years ago and thinking it witty or funny instead of sad, this is one of the few instances where Vince McMahon is able to take the position of victim and not look either hypocritical or like a total asshole. I just hope the people who bought those tickets in Denver get refunds, or at least can use them to get into the next Denver show The E runs.
The Reality is…the Nuggets fucked up here. Yeah, the F-bomb might have the asterisks to block some of the letters or whatever, but what other way is there to describe how this issue even came about? It’s unbelievable that such a hubbub took place over a weekly installment of a show that The E has been running for over sixteen years. But the hubbub did happen and Denver would appear to be adding to it by claiming Vince said yes to move the show to Sunday, but how is that better than making a scheduling mess-up nearly a year ago? And how often is RAW taped these days? Unless it’s a supershow where all three shows are taped the same night, RAW is rarely ever taped. Plus, Vince has never struck me as the kind of guy to compromise when he’s been done wrong, so it seems more like a P.R. save attempt by the Nuggets’ owner than something that actually happened. But maybe it did, as Vince is the only person other than Antonio Inoki who has been able to understand as well as manipulate reality and fiction when it involves his wrestling promotion.
This week’s “FUCK YOU!†goes to:
THE DENVER NUGGETS
It may be overkill, but I’m a die-hard Lakers fan, the Nuggets are the hurdle between the Lakers and the finals, The E did everything right in this case, and the Nuggets owner is the one who screwed the proverbial pooch on this one. After you’ve read this part, read the article again, and ask yourself if overkill shouldn’t be out of the question, at least on my part.
