I haven't made it a secret that I'm tired of the way TNA and WWE do things with their World Titles. One problem is that each has too many titles and the other is that there's rarely a rhyme or reason as to why a guy is getting a shot at a title in the first place. Let's take RAW for instance. Why are HHH and HBK facing John Cena in a Triple Threat at Survivor Series? Most likely because they haven't built a heel up enough to seem a threat.
But let's talk about in a kayfabe sense for our purposes, because even though Vince McMahon, Eric Bischoff, Dixie Carter, and others have already come out and more or less stated what rational people knew to begin with, the whole rationale of having a professional wrestling organization is to: 1) Make Money and 2) Do so by suspending the disbelief of fans enough for them to become enthralled in the story you're telling them.
Well, I'll let all you guys in on a little secret: for me to believe that two NASCAR drivers were debating about who should be Cena's top challenger, for them each to want a different member of Degeneration X to face Cena, and for them to listen to a little troll--who apparently can't speak, remember--in setting it up as Triple Threat match rings alarm bells in my head, like, "You have GOT to be kidding me!"
Speaking of kidding, maybe I'm missing the point, maybe the kids do buy into that. I can certainly see myself as a 10-year old looking at that and saying, "COOL! My three favorite wrestlers against each other!" It is understandable if you look at the PG way of booking things, even if it doesn't pass the smell test for adults. What about TNA where, as others have pointed out, Samoa Joe and Christopher Daniels are getting World Title shots out of nowhere after losing at Bound For Glory?
On Smackdown, similar to DX, The Big Show and Chris Jericho are separating to fight for the World Heavyweight Title in a near mirror image of the RAW main event. Only this time, one guy got his title shot for betraying his brand and the other guy got his shot because "If RAW's going to have a Triple Threat, so is Smackdown." Tuesday Christian will be defending the ECW Title--in England-- against a man he's beaten soundly twice, because Regal bullied his way into the match.
In the midst of all this chaos surrounding what is supposed to be the top prize of a promotion or brand, it's nice to see that at least one company is trying to get it right, and though I don't know if it's his idea or not, I love the fact that it's new Executive Television Producer, Jim Cornette, who has announced it. Ring of Honor is initiating a new concept called the "Pick Six."
They will be holding a series of 12 matches. The winners of those matches will be the first "Pick Six," seeded from 1-6 by ROH officials. You can lose your spot by losing to someone not in the "Pick Six," but only those members of that grouping can challenge for the ROH World Title and the higher up a wrestler is seeded, the more he has say in when his title match will be scheduled.
Is this system perfect? Is any system ever perfect? Obviously it takes away some of the unpredictability of who the next title contender will be, but it also compensates a little for injury to a top star, while making just about every match mean something. Guys are constantly fighting to make it and keep themselves in the "Pick Six," while those that are in will try to move up. Sure sounds like it's going to be awesome. Even better, it gives professional wrestling something that's been missing for a while. The feel of legitimacy.
2. I have a new plan for Monday nights.
You see, for the majority of the last umpteen years I've watched RAW on Monday nights. I no longer see the point. I know those who disagree with me are going to say I should either change with the times or just go away. I don't plan on doing either. Nor do I plan on watching the abomination that Monday Night RAW has become; not live while it happens. Those days are done. If there's any show a DVR was made for, it's this one.
RAW used to be just what it sounds like. Now it's just a name. They might as well call it The WWE Variety Show, because that's what it has become for the most part. In an interview, Stephanie McMahon stated that WWE does a focus group in every city they run RAW in to see if they're doing things right, what their fans would want to see, if there's a direction they should be going that they aren't, etc.
My question is simple. Who are the people she's polling? They clearly aren't wrestling fans, because I'll give you a big hint as to what wrestling fans want to see on Monday Night RAW: it starts with a "w," ends with "ling" and the middle is a word for allowing your body to relax. Can I say that I speak for the majority of wrestling fans? Probably not. It's a sad truth that the majority don't seek out other promotions; they watch what's always been there right in front of them.
That's fine. I won't condemn them for it, but I also am no longer just going to go along and live with whatever Vince is throwing my way on Monday nights. To set the record straight, I don't believe I've watched RAW live since we got our DirecTV in July, because I figured I'd let it get about a half hour in, so I could fast-forward through the commercials. Let me tell you something, folks. Everything on that show is a commercial.
I should understand that, right? After all, professional wrestling is a business, television is a business, combine the two and you have two businesses, both of which are trying to make money. Good for them. I do what I can to make it, too, and I understand the advertising thing perfectly well, but when the advertising consists of selling their product to people that are already watching their product, isn't there something wrong?
Do you know what it is? Well, it's probably a variety of things, but for me, personally, the problem is that I don't tune into a wrestling show to see the celebrity du jour, Santino doing something funny, the little troll being his usual ass-clown self, watching a dance or equally ridiculous divas contest, or listening to Jillian sing (as great as I think her character is.) I flip my television to USA to watch wrestling.
More and more, lately, I don't get to do that. So from now on, I'll keep on DVRing RAW, I'll fast frame through the crap on the show and be left with something like 20-25 minutes of actual things that have the capacity to engage me. My Monday nights are free now; to watch Smackdown on my computer or to play a game with the family. Tonight we're going to sit down and watch The Taking of Pelham 1-2-3 together. And I won't care who's getting that counted down on the mat until long after it's over.
3. Save it for when it matters.
You only get one chance to make a first impression. It seems so obvious, yet it's something we take for granted every day, isn't it? Whether it's walking by on the street not saying a cordial, "Hello." or giving someone the finger when they take your parking spot, we make fools and asses of ourselves every day, and for what? So we can get to that all important place just a few seconds quicker? So we can have that spot closer to the super market door?
Life's a rush; everything is always a hurry with our society, you know? Think back to your days in junior high or high school. Do you remember when you wanted that first date, that first time holding hands, and that first time...well, you know? Of course you do. I have only had sexual intercourse with one woman in my life, so my first time was very special to me, but how many out there wish they had waited until they found "the one?"
Timing is everything and it shouldn't be wasted, but neither should an opportunity be rushed. There's a time and place for everything. It's just a matter of seeing where all the pieces fit. So it is with booking wrestling, as well. When I was at the Hall of Fame ceremony, Stone Cold Steve Austin took time out of his acceptance speech to apologize to the fans he had let down by walking out of RAW and going home in 2002.
The thing is, though, as much as I'm sure those fans in attendance were disappointed by The Rattlesnake not showing up, I think Austin was right for leaving. There was absolutely no point to hot-shotting a Brock Lesnar/Steve Austin match at that point. That could have been a real money-making feud if time and attention were given to build it into as huge an event if it was capable of being.
You know how sick we all were of the Cena/Orton rivalry? I still remember the first time the two faced each other as members of WWE. It wasn't a PPV, it wasn't even a planned match. It was part of the Eddie Guerrero tribute RAW. Did that add some importance to the event? Sure, but it was already monumental. One of the greatest ever had died. Their first meeting should've been saved to make a special moment, rather than enhance one.
Which brings me to this week's Smackdown, on which The Undertaker and Chris Jericho will be facing each other one on one for the first time. Not as part of a grudge, not as part of some long-planned and well-thought-out angle. Nope, in order to help increase interest for the next WWE PPV, Survivor Series, they are hot-shotting onto TV what should be a blockbuster PPV main event.
Now I'm sure there won't be a clean decision, as The Big Show is bound to interfere in some manner or another. Maybe even Cena and DX, since everybody can swap brands at will again, but that isn't the point. A lot of people want to see Jericho and The Dead Man clash at Wrestlemania XXVI. They have months and months to play that possible contest up. But why do that? Why do something intriguing when doing what they always do works so well?
4. Maybe I'm just a part of Generation F.
I've received two very different takes on Monday's thought, so I'll read excerpts from them to you. Well, not technically. I'll just copy and paste them here so you can see the division that exists within not just wrestling fans as a whole, but in WWE fans specifically. I'm going to go out of order here. The one I received this morning first, the one I received yesterday second.
Brian writes, "I HATE that WWE has 12 PPVS a year and I am supposed to invest interest in a 3 week feud. I miss the old days when I actually was excited for Summerslam or Survivor Series because they meant something. Maybe we are just getting older, but WWE has hit a terrible low point I didn’t think was possible."
while Brandon says, "With PPVs, you get non-stop wrestling. But with RAWs, you cannot expect the same thing. Can you? The shows have a purpose, and its not just to put on lots of wrestling matches. I'm just confused why you're so bitter."
Brian may have hit it on the head when he said maybe we are just getting older. When I was growing up, the home run king was Roger Maris, though the name from the past I always heard about was Babe Ruth. Now those men are history, with Sammy Sosa, Mark McGwire, and Barry Bonds all hitting more than the magical number of 61 from the summer of '61. Those three men probably used performance enhancers, but their stats are still in the books.
As I said a few weeks ago, I still think Joe Montana is the best quarterback who ever played; I believe John Elway to be #2, but people are gaga over what Peyton Manning brings to the table and Brett Favre is hyped and hyped and hyped over whether he will play or not, where he will play, if he'll stay healthy, if he's just statistically the greatest qb of all time, or if he actually is the best. He'll go away eventually. As Michael Wilbon is wont to say, "Father time is undefeated."
When I look today, though, I don't see a comparison between the wrestlers the WWF had and the ones WWE has now. Are John Cena and Randy Orton as big of stars now as Hulk Hogan or Randy Savage were? Absolutely not. They're not over-the-top characters that a mass public can fall in love with. Despite Legacy's existence, John Cena doesn't face seemingly insurmountable odds the way Hogan did.
It's a different type of storytelling than what I watched during my formative years, and for my money--and really, that's the only thing WWE is after--it's a worse form of it. Do I understand that now the PPV's is where we see most of the big matches? Of course, I'm not an idiot. Do I think there should be backstage angles and promos to further storylines, as well as matches? Absolutely.
However, I don't see how having celebrity guest hosts take up roughly 1/3 of RAW weekly helps that. Nor do I see how Santino coming out and turning himself into more and more of a joke, Hornswoggle being in a segment week after irritating week, or how jobbing Chavo to the troll for weeks on end accomplishes any of that. Were they actually leading up to a Chavo/Hornswoggle PPV bout? If so, who would make a purchase just to see that?
I'd be more likely to say, "Fuck you. I'm not paying for this shit," which is the point. Instead of doing stupid comedy angles, playing up the divas so much, and doing a hard sell of the PPV every week, they should be running angles that would encourage a wrestling fan to spend money for which they'd see a resolution or furthering of the feud. Even lower and midcard matches should have this ultimate goal.
There was a time when every or nearly every match on a PPV had a well-told story behind it, where we were drooling with anticipation over seeing the two men lock up. That time no longer exists; WWE always has to keep raising the stakes higher, because they don't do what the WWF did. They don't keep wrestlers separated from each other, they don't run long enough feuds, and they treat Saturday Night's Main Event like it's a joke when it was once a joy to watch every six weeks.
Plain and simple, WWE markets RAW too much to the casual fan and not enough to the wrestling fan. I watched ECW last night. There were three matches in just over 60 minutes, including commercials; the main event of which was a terrific match between two great workers, William Regal and Christian, yet there was still time for them to get other angles over. Is it so wrong to ask the same of "the flagship?"
5. Maybe he should've wrestled in Van Damsterdam.
I've had a long and frustrating day, so this will likely be short and sweet, though every time I say that it doesn't end up to be so. One of these times, though, that's going to be a self-fulfilling prophesy. It may or may not be today. Who can tell? Anyway, today I was driving to work wondering what I was going to write about. I always stumble upon something, so I wasn't too worried. Then I got sent home and the frustration began.
See, my daughter's been sick, my son's been sick, my wife's been sick, my niece has been sick, I've been sick and now my wife's sick again. It's a whole lot of damn fun living in this National Emergency, H1N1 stricken country right now, let me tell you. Who knows what the boy had? He stayed home from school on a Thursday, drank five cans of Hawaiian punch, and was back at school before the weekend, lucky kid.
My daughter was sent home from school with a 102.5 fever at about the same time my wife had a cold, subsequently went to the clinic to find out she tested positive for Influenza A. A week and a Z-pac later, and she's back to being healthy as a horse. Same with my niece, except she had H1N1, the afflicition that I've just recovered from after 5 days of two lovely antivirals. Hopefully my stomach will recover from the Tamiflu soon. My wife? Oh, she's just got the bronchitis she gets every year.
Anyway, since I couldn't work, I came home, played Burnout for about an hour, started cleaning the house, went online, came across a story on Rob Van Dam, had a snack, read a chapter of Mistborn by Brandon Sanderson, watched ROH, took a nap, did some laundry, threw dinner in the oven--seasoned chicken, cross-cut potatoes, and peas if you're interested--and now here I am. Guess this won't be so short after all, huh?
Good. I needed to get some frustrations out; and apparently Rob Van Dam did, too. I'm a big fan of Rob Van Dam. I don't consider him the repetitive spot monkey with no mic skills that a lot of people do; I actually think he is/was a five-tool professional wrestler, but lately he seems to be in the news almost as much as Hulk Hogan ad Ric Flair. What the fuck gives? From what I understand, the guy's been staying home while his wife recovers from a serious illness--cancer, I believe.
I commend him for that; just as I support the fact that Phil Mickelson stopped playing golf for a while to give moral support to his wife. But now it seems like everybody wants to know when he's coming back, what his opinion is on this and that, and he decides to take a little nibble at the hand that fed him for years. RVD has the distinction of being the only man to hold the WWE Grand Slam and the ECW Triple Crown, so for him to say Vince McMahon stomped on his heart is ridiculous.
Yeah, I don't like that Vince calls the Tuesday night brand ECW, when the only thing extreme about it is the name, but even when its an old wound you can laugh about today, it seems a bit hypocritical when Van Dam probably did about the same thing to Vince when he was given the WWE Title to run with and was stupid enough to speed while smoking marijuana. Sure seems to me that Rob's complaint went up in smoke around the same time his main event career did.
6. Bell's Palsy shot JR. Now we know.
I don't mean to make fun. Really, I don't. What he has is a serious affliction that apparently could have cost him at least part of his vision. That's nothing to joke about, but I really don't know what the hell's wrong with him mentally. Maybe his mind his overtaxed and overstressed because of his current medical condition along with the status of his contract, I don't know. What I do know is that he's never been a corporate shill on the air, but his blogs more and more seem to tote the company line. That's irritating.
Yeah, it's his job to be a mouthpiece for WWE, but he doesn't have to be so damned blatant or smug about it. He isn't aware of any backlash regarding Michael Cole? Are you serious? Does he think the emailer was talking about his RAW counterpart competing at the event following Wrestlemania or is he purposely being obtuse? Michael Cole may be beloved within the corporation, but he is almost universally despised by the IWC from what I've seen. The guy fucking sucks at his job and can--in character, at least--barely relay his thoughts in english.
Yet, Ross has no knowledge of any backlash regarding Michael Cole. Yeah, right. Give me a break. I suppose it's just coincidence that Cole started spouting out his trademark "vintage" bullshit more often once there were fans on the internet criticizing and mocking him for it, right? I suppose Jerry Lawler makes fun of him openly on the air just because Lawler's a prick, right? Well, actually, that last isn't too hard to believe, but I loved it when Lawler said once to him, "Cole, tell me, do you ever just sit back and watch a match?"
To me, there's absolutely no question that of the announcers I've seen broadcast for WWE, Michael Cole is one of the two worst--the other being Lord Alfred Hayes--and at least Hayes could do funny well. All Michael Cole can do well is sit there, look and sound like a jackass, and be a little pussy boy shill. And, you know what, he looks even more like a jackass now that he shaved off his mustache. I know that isn't exactly fair, but I can't help how I feel. If he shaved his head, he'd now look like an erect penis with ears, which, I guess, is better than just being a limp dick, which he has been for years.
All of this, of course, makes it unfortunate that Ross further says "For the record, I don't have a burning desire right now to get back on weekly TV whatsoever." This is very disappointing, because as aggravating as Ross' mistakes of a wrestler's name or miscalling of a move can be, he's still the best there is at getting a wrestler or an angle over; maybe the best there's ever been, though some swear by Gordon Solie. I don't know, I only saw Solie at the twilight of his career.
I'd really love him to be paired with Matt Stryker, and maybe it'll happen soon because in the very next sentence he says, "Yes sir, I'm ready for this little journey to end and to be 100% ready to rock....and that will happen." Huh? C'mon JR, make up your mind! Either you are eager to return, or you're not. It can't possibly be both. As befuddling as these two statements are, however, they can't hold a candle to the lunacy that the next part of his blog was regarding; which is actually something I touched on last week.
I won't print the whole thing for space reasons, but basically he says that The Ultimate Warrior should get in based on his accomplishments, whether he's controversial or not, and it would make for a "classic Wrestlemania moment." Huh? Did they all of a sudden add the Hall of Fame onto the 'Mania broadcast? Even assuming that's not what he meant, "accomplishments?" Really? Hellwig had a great 3 years, but they made a dvd making fun of the man! And now he should be in the Hall of Fame? Really, JR, next time you post a blog, make sure it's not when you're drunk.
7. TNA scored some knockouts with an Awesome decision.
In a lot of ways, this has been a great four weeks for Total Nonstop Action Wrestling. They signed Nigel McGuinness and entered him into what, so far, has been an amazing program with Kurt Angle. They signed Hulk Hogan and Eric Bischoff, significantly raising their profile and word of mouth with the all-important casual fan and giving themselves the potential sign other big names such as Ric Flair and Rob Van Dam.
Sure, they've also made their mistakes in the same time-frame. Unless you believe Big Poppa Pump, they had the Main Event Mafia dissolve with nothing more than a whimper, renamed the Legends Championship into the Global Championship (which I count as a mistake because it sounds about the same as "World" and too much like WWE's Intercontinental,) turned Angle in a senseless way, and just threw Daniels and Samoa Joe into the World Title picture.
I think these are all long-term moves. Do I think Hulk Hogan is going to stick around for a long time? No, at least not as an active wrestler--if he even becomes an active wrestler at all-- but he'll be there for at least a couple of years. Kurt Angle is a fantastic heel when he's got the strap and a dynamic face is chasing him, but that's grown old over the last couple of years, so I expect that he'll remain a top babyface for two more.
I don't expect that Scott Steiner is going to reform the Main Event Mafia--either the old one or another version of it--so the purpose for which it was initiated is not going to come to fruition, which is unfortunate. However, Joe, Daniels, and Styles are all now in the main event, so maybe it's for the best. I may not like the way that the former two were put there, but I do believe it's time for the future and they, along with Matt Morgan and Hernandez, belong there for the long haul.
In the short term, though, I think the most significant change is something I haven't really seen anybody talking about. Have you ever been playing chess where you glimpse the opportunity for a move that has ramifications for the remainder of the game? I think TNA made such a move a few weeks ago that went pretty much unnoticed. Even more amazing, this happened in the Knockouts division, which means it's a move WWE doesn't even have available to them. Score one for TNA.
I know you're probably wondering what the hell I'm talking about, so I want you to think back about 18 months to when Taylor Wilde debuted in TNA. Gail Kim was the first ever Knockouts Champ, but it was really the dominant Awesome Kong that put the division on the map. However, when Wilde came in, she got fluke win after fluke win on Kong, making her awesome no longer. Suddenly a monstrous force wasn't a threat.
Despite her size, weight, and strength advantage over everyone else in the division, no one feared Kong any longer. That all changed on the October 22 edition of Impact! when Kong powerbombed Raisha Saeed into oblivion. In the process, she freed Alissa Flash's free time up so she could focus on her wrestling character and provided a way for she and Tara to continue their feud in Six Sides of Steel. In one brilliant stroke, a division that had begun to sag was rejuvenated.
