Salutations, one and all. My name is Chris and I am your indubitable gondolier whose sole purpose is to sift through the murky, sometimes stagnant and nonsensical pond that is the WWE and present to you a bucket of insight that makes a little bit more sense and attempts to distinguish the line betwixt WWE and the WEE (for those just tuning in, that stands for World Entertainment Entertainment, witty I know).
This week we begin with a journey. And just for those who enjoy visuals, I’m sitting in my roommates old armchair that he just brought to our apartment as I type on my laptop, so lets imagine I’m sitting in an armchair, maybe wearing a smoking jacket with a pipe (even though I don’t spoke so naturally bubbles come out of the pipe) and telling you all a fun story. I prefer this method of story telling rather than sitting in a chair backwards and beginning the talk with “lets rap.” But let us begin…
This past week, I found myself rewatching Wrestlemania 27 out of boredom and it made me contemplate how things have progressed since April, even in that short of time. Following the conclusion of WM 27, I took to the series of tubes and began watching every episode of Raw since then. Now, to those about to exclaim that I have no life, I’ve only watched 2 but I plan to watch another one whenever I have some sort of free time. I thought back to my reactions over the past 6ish months and remembered that for the majority of the time, my reaction has been pretty “meh” with the exception for the lead up to MitB as well as MitB itself. Of course, I’m still giving WWE the ol’ wait and see in good faith that they’ll make things a little more interesting in the build up to Survivor Series but, to be honest, they’ve got me walking a fine line between “waiting and seeing” and “screw this noise, I’m watching MNF.” And that all comes down to what I’ve said before and its true more and more each week and that is Raw adding some new wrinkle in this power-struggle story that’s already more wrinkled than the cast of Sex and the City (my apologies to any wrinkles offended by me associating them with that god-awful show/movies).
And then there’s Smackdown, I’ve excluded this show in my review of the past 6 months because I don’t want to see the exact same matches week after week after week and so on. Lets take this past episode for example. I do love me some Randy Orton, I’ll admit it but Smackdown is trying to turn him into Super Cena with a dark twist and it just isn’t working for me. The episode began with a ridiculously big battle royal that featured just about everybody and everything, even a crafty Miz but the now-all-powerful Randy Orton didn’t “fall” for it (see what I did there?). Orton has gotten all the Cena-like booking for Smackdown and of course the exception for the whole “invincible-Orton” thing is that Mark Henry has been beating Orton pretty cleanly for the most part, lately. But my main aggravation over all this was the big battle royal. The stipulation for it was that the winner got a title opportunity at the end of Smackdown, not a PPV but Smackdown. They could’ve so easily had an underdog win out of nowhere and at least make things somewhat interesting at the end instead of just giving it to Orton so we can see the same match we’ve seen over and over again. And the sad thing for all of this is the fact that this is nothing new at all for SD. Before this, I was complaining that we kept seeing Ortan and Christian all summer. Before that we saw the ever-so-painful Edge and Kane story line that featured the totally believable Paul Bearer dolls getting tossed over ledges and stairways (just thinking about it reminds we of Paul shrieking “KAAAANE” helplessly and I’m rolling my eyes at the thought). And before that we got the slow-paced installment of Kane vs. Undertaker. All of that going on while Nexus was taking over Raw, The Miz’s rise to be a believable heel, the “summer” of Punk and the HHH power struggle. When you put all of that and weigh it against Smackdown, it doesn’t really surprise me that there really isn’t a brand split anymore because its obvious WWE creative has thrown in the towel long ago.
So that pretty much does it for me. I sort of feel bad because there wasn’t really so much of a point or story to this week’s edition but rather it was just me getting my frustrations off my chest. Hopefully it makes sense on here because it sure doesn’t in my head right now. But if you have anything you’d like to add to what I’ve discussed or even something not discussed, be sure to comment below.
I’d like to congratulate my colleague, known to the unwashed masses around here as Jonah Kue, and him getting married this weekend and from the looks of what came across my facebook feed as a very beautiful ceremony. I wish you both the absolute best. Huzzah!
As always, I can be found on Twitter and Facebook if you wanna discuss wrestling things that may happen over the upcoming week and I promise I’ll find some time to respond between work and starting my 2nd job this week, this should be fun! Be sure to check back here at Pulse Wrestling throughout the week as I’m sure there will be plenty of fantastic articles that’ll get us all through. So until next time…
Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do twice,
Chris
The Answer: Turkey legs are yummy in me tummy
