The Rant of the Week: Random Observations and Thoughts
Submitted by Phantom Lord on Saturday, November 22, 2003 at 4:16 PM EST



Greetings conversationalists all across the fruited plain, it is I your personal Harvester of Sorrow Phantom Lord and this is my Rant of the Week. I’m gonna guess here, but by the astounding lack feedback I got for both this column and Fact or Fiction I am going to just say I am right and I silenced everyone. I mean I know I’m always right even if people don’t want to admit it. Well I can at least say I have a healthy ego. I admit it, I’m full of myself at times. Speaking of people that are full of themselves, I just saw the Survivor Series thanks to my friend Anthony (Stiff Kick Productions Represent Son) and I have to admit most of the show was pretty good. I’ll get into my what worked and what sucked tirade later. But the sadistic part of me that just enjoys watching people suffer was thoroughly entertained by Vince McMahon almost bleeding to death. I’m convinced Vince said to himself before the match “I’M VINCE MCMAHON DAMN IT. MICHAELS ISN’T GONNA OUT BLADE ME TONIGHT. I mean good god all mighty that was a sick blade job. It was very old school NWA like since there were pools of blood all over the damn ring and floor. I could have done with out the ending since it was so dumb. Vince loses almost a pint of blood and he still manages to work a backhoe…whatever. In the end his match wasn’t to bad, but I hope to god it’s the last time I have to see another damn PPV centered around him.

Well I figured I would get all reflective with this column this week since on the 25th it’s my birthday. I turn 23 on Tuesday and I am convinced that this generation picked the absolute worst possible time in all of history to be born. A week after I was born, John Lennon was killed. Of course one could argue that the entire decade of the 80’s was pretty bad. All one has to do is watch “We Are the 80’s” on VH1 Classic for proof of that. The 90’s were pretty bad as well. When it came to 2001 and the official start to the millenium, and ECW and WCW folded and died with in a month I should of taken that as a sign this would be a bad year (Never mind the fact a month before Jason Newsted left Metallica and Dale Earnhardt Sr. died in a massive car wreck on the final lap of the Daytona 500). Of course during the course of that year The Invasion happened and then 9/11. I’m gonna say both were equally traumatic events for me.
The Invasion was the death of competitive wrestling and 9/11 was well…The death of life as we know it. I mean it’s all down hill from here folks. If we don’t kill each other off then nature will. If nature doesn’t do it then the Sun will. I have no hope for the future. Just looking at the wrestling that is presented from the WWE at times and you see why I have that same exact out look on the world around us.

I got up and left the room during Smackdown this week. The HOSSfest was too much for me. Rey vs. Jimmy Yang was a damn good match, but for god’s sake it was like watching an old WCW Saturday night or something. You had the squash match with Morgan vs. Moore. Then you had the Bad guy who will never go anywhere vs. the tag team wrestler who’s going it single while his partner is out with an “injury”. Then we had the Big Menacing Monster vs. the never say die face and finally we had the Big Slow vs. The new guy who is over like a mother. That was basically Smackdown this week. Not exactly the show I would book coming off a major ppv. But then again, RAW pretty much took the Survivor Series for themselves so it’s not like they had much to build on other then Team Angle vs. Team Lesnar. What is even the point of having a brand split anymore. No one buys into it. What they should do is take the best guys from both show’s and that’s the core of talent to be used on them. Of course in the eyes of the WWE the best men would mean justification for a Mark Henry World title run because as if you didn’t know, he’s the strongest BAH GAWD man that has ever lived. Somewhere in Heaven Charles Atlas is flipping off Jim Ross.

Yeah so Cena is gonna feud with Vince over the coming weeks with a big match happening at the Royal Rumble. I guess they see him as the new Austin. He has the potential to be it, but I’d like to see him win the United States Championship from The Big Show so that damn belt is at least defended once in a blue moon. 2004 will be the year of John Cena. If you don’t believe me, wait till his album comes out and the WWE pushes him as if he was the new Eminem. But who on Smackdown can Cena honestly feud with? Benoit comes to mind, but it seems like they all ready have done that. I think we all agree that is the problem with the WWE. They have no credible Upper Carders. Benoit has been pissed on so many times, if he is ever blessed with a title run no one will give a shit. Kurt Angle is the closest thing American fans have to an In ring Messiah but I have doubts as to how long he can go again before he has to MacGuiver his neck again (Domo Arigato RobotJerk). Smackdown has no Main Eventers other then Brock Lesnar. Sure Eddie Guerrero could be a great main eventer, but the WWE doesn’t have the balls to pull the trigger on his main event push. Of course they are teasing a Eddie/Chavo feud and that will be the greatest thing since sliced bread number 2. If the WWE want’s to make Smackdown something worth a damn again they should do the following.

Send every damn Heavyweight to RAW in a massive swap

Mold Smackdown in the WWE version of the X Division. Have it as a crusierweight show with no weight limits. Send Tommy Dreamer, Lance Storm, Val Venis, Rico Constantino, The Hurricane, and Christian to Smackdown to carry the United States title division and push the crusiers to the moon. Move all the dead weight to RAW and things will improve vastly. But of course we know that won’t happen because Nathan Jones will be pushed instead of Benoit. Matt Morgan will continue to slaughter guys smaller then him and in the middle The Cat will dance. That might be the one bright spot in this HOSSAPALOOZA. The Cat is coming back. Damn I loved him in WCW. The Cat as Commissioner was pure gold. Him having random fights with The Jung Dragons was great stuff. Of course I give him about two weeks before he is banished to Velocity with Rhyno and Kanyon to forever put over Scott To Hotty and THE WORM OF DEATH. Kanyon and Rhyno should be on RAW…Not putting over developmental talent.

NWA-TNA is going to make a killing when a lot of those WWE contracts run out. You have to figure at least 15 to 20 highly talented wrestlers are going to walk once their contract is up. That’s the price Vince will have to pay for his refusal to push those who deserve to be pushed. RVD should have been the World Champion at least two times by now but yet he is continually buried because he gets the biggest pop of the night. Booker T is only wrestling because he feels like it and he has to put over a worthless piece of shit like Mark Henry? Chris Jericho could easily say the hell with this and focus on his music career once his contract is up. Does the WWE not see the big picture here? Do they not realize that treating their best workers like shit is going to come back and bite them in the ass come crunch time? Well we’ll find out when the reports of “so and so not resigning with the WWE” start to surface around next summer.

It’s like I always say, the WWE’s blunder is TNA’s gain. TNA took D-Lo Brown and made him into something great again. They have taken the former Jamal and made him into the dominant tag team monster he was supposed to be. Before his untimely death, Crash Holly had built himself a huge cult following as Mad Mikey. I mean I loved those Mad Mikey promo’s. I’d love to wake up and take a hammer and smash my clock for waking me. Point is TNA took people that the WWE writers couldn’t think of anything to do with and they used them for what they are good at…Wrestling. Watching RAW has been like watching Passions or something. All this love in the air. I’ll hand it to the WWE writers. For once they came up with a half way entertaining angle. Question is where does it go from here. I’d laugh if this is just an elaborate plan by Jericho and Christian to see who can nail which diva first. I saw someone say that on the LOP Message board, but I’m to lazy to find out who. RAW could learn a thing from TNA. The typical TNA ppv is about 1 hour and 50 minutes. In that 110 minutes, they cram about 85 to 90 minutes of solid wrestling action. RAW minus the commercials is about 90 minutes. In a 90 minute show they manage maybe 35 to 40 minutes of wrestling. That’s just pathetic any way you look at it. The same goes for Smackdown.

Back to TNA since that is something I enjoy. This week they had two amazing matches. First off was X vs. Christopher Daniels vs. Sonjay Dutt. Everyone is pretty certain that X is Carl Roulette. He is in amazing shape and he does some of the damndest moves you will ever see a 250 pound man do. During the middle of the match he nailed a running senton to the floor. He looked like a guided missile coming down…it was that cool. He also hit a sweet tornado chokeslam and a cool double backdrop. Christopher Daniels not to be out done nailed 3 BME’s in a row. That’s The Best Moonsalt Ever for those of you not in the know. But in the end, Sonjay Dutt despite being used as a human battering ram at one point, won the match with a Spring Board Ranna off the top rope. All of this was for a shot at Michael Shane and the X Division Title. I’m pretty sure Michael Shane is the new Franchise that Shane Douglas is talking about. Shawn Michaels trained his cousin well as Shane is pretty much Shawn crica 1992.

The other great match was A.J. Styles vs. Abyss. Now we all know A.J. is the NWA’s Chosen One. He will lead them back to the promise land. It’s almost his destiny. Ok, maybe it’s not that dramatic but he wisely told Vince McMahon to piss off after Vince thought a joke of a developmental deal would be enough to get him out of any up and coming company. A.J. is the wave of the future and his match with Abyss is how all Small man vs. Big man matches should be booked from this point on. Abyss reminds me very much of Kane before Triple H single handedly killed his career with the Katie Vick incident. He has “the look”, he’s an amazingly agile and quick big man, and he has a variety of devastating finishers. I love his finisher The Black Hole Slam so much that I’ve made it one of my own in the PWA. If you had to build a company around a big man, Abyss would be the one to do it around. He is the proverbial Unstoppable Object and Irresistible force rolled into one. A word of advice to TNA…sign Abyss to a long term deal. You wouldn’t want McMahon getting his hands on a wrestler like him.

Well as I said earlier in the column, I saw the survivor series last night. My official rating is 7 thumbs up. Basically half the show was good and half of it sucked. I really enjoyed Lita vs. Molly Holly. I’ve been a huge fan of Lita’s since her days in ECW and I thought she did pretty well in this match with Molly. Ok so Lita has some pretty weak punches. But so does RVD and he seem’s to pretty well for himself. I liked how this match was and the ending to it was great. But the one thing that confused me was Lil Nat’ch saw Molly take the turnbuckle pad off. He even gave her a warning. About 15 seconds later she delibertly sent Lita face first into the unexposed steel and he counted the 1 2 3. Am I the only one who thought that should have been a DQ? Ah well you know the WWE. When do they ever stick to the rules. But in any event I really liked this match. Kudo’s to both women for a fine job. You have to hand it to the WWE on this one. They have Lita come back and make it like she’s gonna win the title to complete her journey back and then BOOM everything in her life falls to shit. Now that’s great booking. It just will make it extra sweet when she finally does win the title.

Oh, before I go I guess I should comment on Michael Jackson. Well here is my official statement on this issue. He’s a sicko and I hope they lock him away so that he may never see the light of day again. That’s all I’m going to say on the issue. You know Michael Savage said it best the other night on his show “The Savage Nation”. Islamo-Facist’s are blowing people up in Turkey. We are in the middle of a war and all people want to talk about is Michael Jackson. Well fuck Michael Jackson. If you saw his mug shot, I find it hard to believe that is the face of a human being. It looked like someone who was dipped in Embalming fluid. All I’m saying is pay attention to the world around you. September 11th was the worst day I have ever lived through and I don't want to ever have to deal with a day like that again, but I know I will because the vast majority of people have forgotten about that horror and it’s only a matter of time before we live that horror again.

Sorry, I got off into a bit of a real rant there. Ah well, that’s it for this week. If you like what you just read or if you think I am a moron feel free to send me some Feedback. It would be nice to see some feedback in my in box rather then spam mail for viagra and porn.

That’s it for this week. Someone had to tell you this information, so it might as well be me.

Until next time, Take care.

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