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Submitted by Dubzilla on Wednesday, September 28, 2005 at 2:22 PM EST
Karma From The Heavenly Head So I haven't been around in awhile. For that I apologize, but life happens. I'll try my best to make it up to you. Thank you for your patronage. Breaking The Seal Yo, what do you know, it's Dubzilla and this is the Turnbuckle Tailgate, the column that has no clue what it'll be made up of or why you keep coming back for more. I blame the alcohol, but you already knew that. I've just had a lot of shit to deal with in my everyday life. Hopefully things are getting more better than they are worse. That probably was in proper grammar, but then again, you aren't the grammar police. If you are, go ahead and cuff me with a pair of curly brackets and I'll yell "Attica" in a continuous loop. This is the people's column and I thank you for all your kind words last time out many moons ago. But enough of the asskissing and ballwashing, it's time to get the show on the cul-de-sac because I mean to drive around in circles. I'll start of with a Black and Tan today, but then I'm feeling a little frisky so the round may become an open bar so there may be no need for a Monty Hall to be the exposition of a larger thought. It'll all make sense by the end of this shindig, hopefully. I've come to discover that not only in the world of professional wrestling, but in life, there are two types of people in this world: Bret Hart fans and Shawn Michaels fans. Sure you can say you are fans of both of them, but if you do that, you are probably just a fan of wrestling in general and you'd be a fan of a wrestler who wore a sea creature costume and called himself 'The Red Lobster'. He'd strut around and say he's the most valuable performer pound for pound in the business because he actually costs the most per pound. But when the chips fall and you boil the suckers in the pot, you'll know that you either side with Bret or Shawn. I already know who I am, but let's give this one some time to settle from its pour. Let's make it a double trouble and halve some beer........ Black - Bret Hart Arguably the best there is, the best there was and the best there ever will be. You can pump up all the cliches in the world, there are myriad wrestlers that have more charisma than Bret Hart. In spite of this, there weren't many men that could outwrestle Bret. His dearly departed brother was probably one of them, but he was always living in his brother's shadow. Bret would win his matches in the same rote manner. Stick to the routine and make his opponents submit to his Sharpshooter leglock. The guy wore pink before way before all these young bucks proclaim it's not pink, it's salmon. I eat it as sushi for lunch with the sticky rice and a touch of soy sauce. I could go for some sushi right now. Sushi comes from the Far East, Bret Hart comes from Canada. I just visited Montreal, the site of the infamous screwjob in 1997. All I gotta say is if Bret went to get a lapdance on St. Catherine's street at one of the contact clubs before the show, he would have been less tense later that evening. Tan - Shawn Michaels The real deal, there isn't a performer bigger or smaller that can't outperform HBK. Maybe Ric Flair in the early 1980s, but that's the type of debate that would be waged in Pro Wrestling Illustrated with the raw data being thrown into their mythical computer. One kick and you are toast. French toast, cinnamon toast, burnt toast, it don't matter, someone get out the butter and call your momma. The only drawback of Michaels is that he was undersized. Well, I don't think HBK could have achieved the platitudes and gratitudes he has in his career if he built like Lex Luger and Chris Masters. He went from living it up like Ric Flair to living his life like Sting. Speaking of Sting, where is Sting? I'll let that be rhetorical and we can start a big huge "We Want Sting" chant. I still do that at shows, I may be the only one doing it, but it's a lot of fun. Bartender's Choice - Bret or Shawn? When you hear both men's theme music, it sends a chill down your side, it makes you tingle. Your blood starts to pump and you get goose bumps. Well maybe it isn't that extreme, but you'd show more emotion than Gerald Ford in Ann Arbor, Michigan. That's a lot of moxie, folks. But with that being said, I think when I was growing up under a wee bit of discipline from my folks, I fell into the Bret Hart category. But as I grow older and become a vagrant of sorts, I more relate to the Shawn Michaels tabular column. So I'll go with HBK over Bret barely. The Pub Crawl Chock Full Of Frosty Pints, Mixed Cocktails & Sensational Shots Open Bar Yeah, so I haven't written this column in a bit and a lot of stuff has happened in the world of professional wrestling. I'd like to break some of it down for you in a way that only I can. I feel that the bigger picture outweighs the smaller picture, so I'm gonna try to do a state of affairs style address so bear with me. There seems to be a lot of lateral movement as far as televised wrestling programming is concerned. The major matter is that World Wrestling Entertainment is moving back to USA Network from SpikeTV. But if you live under a rock and surf the Internet, you've probably known this for months, but SpikeTV feels the need to insult your intelligence by censoring this fact on last Monday evening's RAW telecast. How is that for hard feelings? Sure you are protecting your own network and trying to dupe the handful of fans that don't already know this, but probably watch enough tv or get enough word of mouth news tidbits that they would find out about this anyways. SpikeTV, get a grip. You are just angry because you are losing the one program that are large mass of people watch on a weekly basis. You struggle to come up with original programming that lasts about a month and a half and only gets ratings because it followed RAW and people were to lazy to change the channel (i.e. Lance Krall, John Henson). The shameless self promotion didn't work, boo hoo to you. So what do you replace RAW with, UFC? Sure, people love violence and dig the realism that the Ultimate Fighting Championship provides. But how many reruns of past UFC bouts can you run like you rerun old movies people who care already own on DVD, James Bond marathons, episodes of Blind Date from 4 years ago and swimsuit model shoots devised for 12 years to pop wood? And the reality hit craze 'The Ultimate Fighter', sure it makes for great television and is probably one of the better reality shows because it is more 'real' than the other contrived ones like Real World and Surreal Life, but all reality shows fizzle. There are only so many people that would like to get a break and have the stones to become a UFC superstar. People also get hurt, there's a reason that UFC does PPVs once every two months or so because you can't run shows every week. There's no hook like there is in wrestling. Sooner or later, this new Monday Night War is gonna turn into a one-sided battle unless Spike resorts to Plan B which is TNA Wrestling. So TNA will air on Saturday nights in the old Velocity timeslot. It'll get ratings along the lines of the SmackDown B-Show if not marginally better because it's TNA's main show. But it'll get better ratings when it is reaired at midnight after The Ultimate Fighter on Monday nights/Tuesday mornings. I wouldn't be surprised if it got better ratings than The Ultimate Fighter and then get bumped up to 11pm while they try to run the reality show head to head with hour one or two of RAW. It'll get to the point where they'll have to run TNA against RAW and they'll end up deciding to let TNA go two hours and let it lead into the UFC show. Sure, it'll be months before SpikeTV gets their head out of their ass and figure this out, but it'll be good to see TNA competing with WWE. The WWE needs competition and while it is bringing back a shitload of superstars from yesteryear for RAW's Homecoming to try to get viewership up, it realizes it needs to make new stars. New stars, something they forgot to do in truckloads a couple of years back. When they thought that Stone Cold and The Rock would be around forever while they thought that HHH and Brock Lesnar could carry the load into the latter part of the decade. They were dead wrong, but they are making an effort. With Batista, Carlito, Chris Masters, John Cena, Shelton Benjamin, these are the nucleus of the future of the WWE. When you intermingle them with everybody else, the JBLs, the Ric Flairs, the Edges, the Eddie Guerreros, the Chris Benoits of the world, you may be onto something. It could be like the Attitude era, where you had some mixing of the top talent throughout the show and a sprinkling of smaller players in every segment of the show. But then again it could become like the 80s and early 90s when HHH comes back. Where you have HHH as the Hogan like figure with a couple of legitimate challengers and a bunch of silly sanguine gimmick wrestlers like Kerwin White, Eugene, Sylvain Grenier, etc. along the lines of a Duke The Dumpster Droese and Bastion Booger. TNA will be in a scenario that is similar. They are gonna need to get fans with their no limits X-Division and true athletes. You can try to use guys like Jeff Jarrett, Raven and Kevin Nash as a hook to get the naive fan to watch your show, but it'll come down to the new breed of talent that is just about ready to be prime time players. Talent like A.J. Styles, Monty Brown, Abyss, Christopher Daniels, America's Most Wanted and Samoa Joe. TNA has prided itself on catering to the internet fan, airing a webcast of its weekly program Impact! after it stopped airing on Fox Sports Net. TNA should be able to perservere in the wrestling climate on today's SpikeTV not the old TNN that blackballed ECW by not letting them promote their Friday night program 6-7 years ago. As silly as it sounds, I think TNA should try to go after Macho Man Randy Savage even though he had a falling out with them in their last get together as TNA made the leap into monthly 3 hour Sunday Night PPVs instead of weekly 2 hour Wednesday Night PPVs. They could use him in limited appearances to help promote their programs. Wrestling fans are fascinated by Macho Man. Hell, you could even make a move to get Ultimate Warrior for one appearance on a PPV and let him air his dirty laundry in a public forum that isn't his website. That would garner some attention to the wrestling promotion. Speaking of promoting your product, Friday Night SmackDown apparently has been airing on Friday Nights on the UPN for like a month or so now. I wouldn't know this because my local UPN affiliate airs Boston Red Sox games on Friday Nights which then leads to a postgame show then to the 10pm news late then a replay of the game early Saturday morning. They don't bother airing Friday Night SmackDown until Saturday Nights I believe. This should end after next week's game as the baseball season ends. But if I didn't pay attention to this stuff, I would never know that Friday Night SmackDown didn't air on Friday Nights. Needless to say, I haven't had a chance to watch the program in a bit. Apparently, Batista is part of Eddie Guerrero's latest lie, cheat and steal ploy and he ain't buying it and Chris Benoit is squashing Orlando Jordan in US Title defenses in under a minute. And there's some guy named Ken Kennedy that's mocking the ring announcer. Yeah, they should have just left SD on Thursday Nights. Yeah, I hate Chris just like everybody else. I thought that this would have been a good idea since you can capitalize on young kids having sleepovers on Friday Nights. Getting together, ordering a pizza, having a bunch of sodas and watching FSD before they sneak out and pull pranks on the neighbors. Then you got the older teen/20 something crowd that is getting ready to go out to the movies/clubs/barrooms for a night of debauchery. Most of the jetset doesn't go out until 10pm or later anyway so you can capitalize on this by having that crowd watch FSD. Especially dudes in relationships can occupy their time while their girlfriend is trying to determine if that lipstick goes with her hair and that top and bottom. Drown In Denouement Yeah, I had to mention broads getting ready. Before I start going into all the stuff they have in the bags/purses that they carry, I'll stop. It is quite the sobering experience. Thank you for joining me on this wild and crazy ride down the hatch. Guess what, Johntober is almost here. We are days away from my crazy month long social drinking holiday. You don't have to drink to have fun, hell I don't even have to be there, just think of Johntober when you are having fun during this everythingfest. I even went as far as making T-Shirts for this 2nd annual Johntoberfest. Let's hope the debauchery of JTBFest 2K5 will surpass its predecessor, but let's hope I don't get kicked out of too many family restaurants this time. That's all I got, time to shout it out, baby, yeah, wrestling and ahhhhhh, bermulloch! P.S. - And I forgot to mention, big ups to Bryan Danielson for winning the ROH title 2 weeks or so ago from James Gibson. Gibson like CM Punk, the two previous ROH Champions, won the title in the wake of getting signed by the WWE. That's another development to factor into the new Monday Night War, who's gonna get gobbled up by TNA and the WWE. Indy wrestling is a hotbed of a bumper crop of talent, an excellent feeder system for big time wrestling in the USA. Danielson may become the hottest prospect on the indy scene, he's got the skill of a Benoit/Guerrero and he's got a bit until he hits age 25. Watch out for American Dragon, he's on the rise. Send Feedback to john.d.donaldson@gmail.com If you'd like a Google e-mail account (also known as Gmail), holla at your boy. I've got like 100 invites or so. I like Gmail, I think you would too. Get To Know The Real Me Yeah, that's me, this is just another way besides e-mail to get in touch with me. It's a great way to waste time and interact with people you really know, you really think you do and you really don't. Check it out, if you'd like. *NEW GALLERY* Must See! Torrie Wilson Out PARTYING HARD in the Clubs!
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