Welcome, one and all, to yet another edition of everyone’s favorite weekly slapfest known as The Rager. My name is Chris and I serve as your Gondolier, to woefully guide (or gondo, I’m assume that’s 100% right in the same sense that “burglar” means “one who burgles”) you, my dearest and yet still sticky Rageans through this chalky rage full of broken dreams, sorrow and future endeavors.
This week, I break down my thoughts on the firing of 5 WWE Superstars/Entertainers/Independent Contractors within the past week, presumably to make room for more over-hyped NXT rejects (lookin’ at you, Heath). Some of them took me by surprise, some I probably should’ve seen coming, and some I really could care less about. So lets start this off and yes, they are in order starting from the ones I care least about:
Melina
I wasn’t surprised at all about this one and quite honestly, I’m more surprised this didn’t happen much sooner. Melina is injury prone, for one, which you can never fault someone for, its just the luck of the draw sort of thing. She just never gained much traction after her last injury, she wasn’t used much in the main shows except to be a tag partner of whichever heel Diva was in the spotlight at the moment and she had her horrible shrieking thing going on which probably didn’t help with anyone wanting to stick around for one of her matches. Also, I think her entrance should’ve been retooled once TV-G went into full affect because once it did, they always cut away to a different camera angle anyway so it really didn’t make much sense to someone that recently started tuning in…and yes, you all know of the original camera angle from her entrance that I’m talking about and I couldn’t’ve (embrace the double contraction like a boss!) been the only warm-blooded organism that was sad to see it go. In the end, some part of me wants to say this move was possibly in part a political one. We all heard about her and JoMo’s vocal displeasure about not being in Wrestlemania while Snooki got to do her flips and whatnot in front of the millions (and millions). But of course, that’s just my speculation and even if that were true, why would they wait till now to do it? Either way, I’m not affected one way or another by her departure. I’m more interested to see if JoMo now gets the Drew McIntyre treatment.
D.H. Smith
I really don’t understand this move or why he wasn’t given more of a chance after the breakup of The Hart Dynasty especially with his father being such a legend. The only time they ever really played that up was on Smith’s debut which was for one night only and probably way before the kid was ready for WWE and yet he still looked impressive. I still considered him to be the better wrestler compared to Tyson Kidd and that’s saying a lot because Kidd is no slouch. In the end, I believe Smith was just a victim of lazy post-tag character development exactly like Shad Gaspard after Cryme Time dissolved and we were stuck with the horrific stylings of JTG. I could see Smith getting better (in-ring and out) elsewhere and returning at some point in his career.
Vladimir Kozlov
Again, not horribly shocked but unlike others that were fired this week, he was given a shot right out the gate. Vlad came out and demolished everything in his path until it became painfully obvious that he really didn’t have much of personality, which makes being a heel quite challenging because the whole “quiet monster” thing last only so long. That’s why him and Santino made such sense to me because, as I’ve stated in the past, that those two brought together two extremes, someone with a lot of personality and no wrestling ability and someone with a lot of wrestling ability and no personality. But ultimately, as the nature of a company that puts more emphasis on the ‘E’ than the ‘W’ (you guess which one) it was just a matter of time that this happened. I will say that of all the wrestling moves and holds, Valdimir’s headbutt to the chest was one of the few that looked like it legitimately hurt his opponent.
Gail Kim
Gail is very much a different story because she wasn’t really fired but more quit and, to be honest, I couldn’t blame her. Gail is much better than she was booked and way over her competition. In an entertainment company based on wrestling and with a Divas division severely suffering, there’s no explanation worthy to justify why Gail wasn’t used more and booked properly based merely on talent. She had a chance when she was paired with Daniel Bryan but the ball was dropped and the story just went away. She had every right to do what she did when we have jokes like your “champ” Kelly Kelly stink-facing people while The Arm-Candy Twins blow their collective noses with the WWE’s anti-bullying campaign. As much as I hate TNA, WWE deserves to lose business to them just for this alone.
Chris Masters
I know this isn’t as a big of a deal to most but for those than can remember back in the day (February) when I made the plea for Masters to get a decent push and every now and then I would bring up the issue once again, I even did so last week. Here’s a guy that was given a push in his original push probably before he was ready and it kinda flopped after a while and was released. He came back after some time with a new aura as well as obviously improving in the ring and for what? For a winning streak on Superstars, a decent showing at the last Royal Rumble but still jobbing to other wrestlers on the mains shows. I’m no expert on judging ring ability, persona or charisma, all I know is that when Masters came back, he made me take notice and I was impressed with what he was bringing to the table (minus the dancing pecks, of course). WWE could’ve had a big-guy face with talent and charisma, at least within the midcard ranks, but instead we’re seeing the heels face Kofi Kingston for the millionth time and it goes nowhere and the midcard titles are pretty much worthless. I blame Vince, I blame Laurinaitis, I blame HHH, I blame Kofi Kingston, I blame Chavo, I blame Santino, I blame the writers, camera crew, Michael Cole, Justin Roberts, Rey Mysterio, Bruce Springstein, Jay Leno, you, myself, and lets throw in the Gobbledy Gooker for kicks and giggles.
Whew, well I feel a little better after all that. Anyways, I hope nothing but the best for these 5 individuals and brace myself for the possibility of more roster trimmings to come.
Last Week…
I made the comment that my wonderful, gorgeous and amazing girlfriend wouldn’t read this column due to her lack of interest in wrestling and I, obviously, was wrong in that assumption. However, that led to a discussion betwixt the fair lady and myself and she has decided that she will watch wrestling for the first time with me for Summerslam and the following Raw. I will give my report on her reactions in the next Rager for your reading enjoyment and out of my own sheer interest of an outsider’s perspective on the wrestling world.
Well this ran kinda long so I won’t do my movie/anti-movie of the week segment this time, although I do have a nice rant in the chamber about a certain cancelled TV show that I might share soon. Anywhom, this was fun as always and I hope you enjoyed it as well. If you’d like to rage with me, leave a comment below about anything I touched on or if you wanna bring up a subject of your very own.
Be sure to follow me on Twitter and join myself and fellow Rageans in a little thing I like to call “Live Rager” during Raw every week. Also be sure to check back on Pulse Wrestling for columns by our top notch staff of Insiders, we’re bound to tickle your fancy at some point.
I hope you all have a great week and I’ll catch you next time!
Chris
The Answer is: Vince McMahon would be that creepy, handsy grandpa you would never want your girlfriend to meet at thanksgiving
