The Nosebleed Section: Randy Orton- The Face of the Asshole Era
    Submitted by Randomguy#5 on Saturday, February 11, 2006 at 5:55 PM EST



    The Nosebleed Section 72: Randy Orton-The Face of the Asshole Era


    “God sent me to piss the world off.”

    Welcome back to the column that got its fingers in too many pies, got slippery, and dropped the “You be the Booker” title,The Nosebleed Section I am your former champ, Randomguy#5. I would like to take this opportunity to congratulate BC on not only his main page promotion but his defeating of The Immortal Randomguy#5 in Pt2’s “You be the Booker” competition. I’ve held that belt long enough anyway, best I let someone else where it for a while. What the hell do I know about Roh scenarios anyway?

    On tap today we have the return of the Random Acts of Wrestling Top 10, the usual fare of awards and such, plus a lengthy piece on that son of a bitch Randy Orton. Grab a beer, this will be a long but hopefully enjoyable effort. Plus, if you make it to the end, there's boobies!

    I beg forgiveness from my female readers who may be offended by boobies, or my extremely sexist and sterotypical use of such pigheadedness.

    Arbitrary Observations


    --For the first time in a long, long time, it looks (judging by what I’ve got prepared right now) that I’m going to be able to really start cranking out some columns in the coming weeks. Possibly three columns in the next two weeks. Woo for you huh?

    --HBK v McMahon is already wearing thin on my patience. This is a mistake, and has no bussiness developing into a Wrestlemania match. I hope this is realized soon, and the Vince pulls the plug on this idea, but it ain’t gonna happen is it?

    --For those who are interested in such things, I recently recorded an audio promo for lopforums.com’s Pyschotic Wrestling Alliance. It’s the best e-fed on the planet, and I wanted to try and do something a bit different. If anybody is bored as hell, and would like to hear me pretend to be a wrestler and cut a promo on Zuma’s dirty Mexican character, click the link below.

    PWA‘s Pyromania presents Prevelance! Click here to hear Random’s Audio promo!

    --Congratualations to TNA for landing a primetime spot on Thrusday night for Impact. This is a move that I am amped up about, as I still terribly miss wrestling on Thursday nights. Thrusday is a night that is almost weekend, but with Friday’s work still looming, I can’t get too crazy, but its nice to be able to celebrate the weekend quietly with a little wrestling. Impact should see great success there.

    Arbitraries End: The Asshole Era


    As it has been for some time now, the wrestling world is in a state of transition. For those of us who buy into the “cyclical nature of the business” theory, this is what we might call a “down” period. I’ve never been one to buy into that theory too hard but I see enough validity in it to justify its existence.

    As a result of this, we who consider ourselves to be the most die hard of fans are in a constant race to discover “the next big thing,” that wrestler who will catapult business to heights unknown, a time when wrestlers will become rich, columnists will become paid, and readers will no longer be embarrassed to call themselves fans.

    I am not claiming to have found that performer with that particular “it” factor. However, sometimes these decisions are made for us. Hate on Cena all you want, but swallow the fact that he’ll be a big part of that next generation. Sorry. Shit happens. You don’t like? Impact’s moving to Thursday’s in April, watch that instead. Or email BC and ask him where you can illegally download some Roh shit. The WWE has made things extremely clear to us who they intend to push in the near future in an effort to recreate the Attitude Era. It won’t be Hardy. It won’t be RVD. It will likely be Carlito, Masters, Cena, and my boy, Randy Orton.

    I’m Pro-Orton. I’ve been this way for a long time. When he debuted, I wasn’t an insta-fan but I didn’t hate the guy. Even as a budding columnist still writing columns entitled “Austin and the Bandit,” I knew that Randy Orton had the look that would propel him into the main event of the WWE. Maybe I just recognized the build. Good looking kid, girls pop for him, third generation, blah blah blah. Any idiot who devoted significant thought to the topic could tell you-this was the type of guy that the WWE was going to push to the moon.

    To their credit, I think they did a fair enough job of slow rolling Orton. His debut on Smackdown wasn’t overly memorable, but upon moving to Raw Orton’s meteoric rise to the top began. He joined Evolution and took off as an in ring performer, learning his heel ring tactics from two of the greats in Ric Flair and Triple H. Forcing Batista to the back burner, Orton had one of the most impressive runs with the Intercontinental title in the last decade, including some awesome feuds with Booker T and Rob Van Dam.

    His ring style began to develop, the RKO made its debut, and Orton was starting to come into his own. Many bitched that he was too vanilla, used too many rest holds, and lacked natural charisma. A couple of botched mic moments didn’t help matters. Still, Orton was growing, and by the time he exited Backlash ’04 following a BRILLIANT Hardcore match against Mick Foley (in Cactus Jack form no less) he looked primed for a main event sort of run.

    And then the unthinkable happened.

    They threw him in the main event.

    Now, I didn’t like the move at the time, and I’m not terribly high on it now. However, my gripe with Orton’s World title win had much less to do with Orton and much more to do with the completely unnecessary decision to take the title off of Chris Benoit. Benoit was on fire for that entire six month stretch, and taking the title off of him should have been done in by a loss to a well built monstrous heel. Orton was probably not ready for the sort of pressure that would have came with that build, or the sort of “bad heat” backlash he got when he was the one ordained worthy of taking Chris Benoit’s title. Perhaps that was meant to be the final rub that would push Randy over the mid-card cusp and into the main event, but that never truly materialized. If taking the title off Benoit was a idiot move, than Orton’s face turn was approaching Stephanie McMahon levels of stupidity. I realize that the money feud was Orton v HHH, and the entire Evolution split was done relatively well. Still, letting that simmer for a while, and having the crowd beg for the turn (you know, the push they gave Batista?) would have done wonders. Looking back, the face turn may have just had to happen, after the screw up title win, which seems much worse now to me than it did then. I suppose they just had to get Lesnar’s name off the books as “youngest champ ever” but it sure did hurt poor little Wandy. He was caught in character limbo, a tailspin that he has never really recovered from.

    Fast forward to the present after yet another injury to his already brittle career, Orton is coming off the heels of a fairly solid feud with the Undertaker. He finds himself yet again on the cusp of the main event scene, sort of stuck in that upper-midcard rut that Chris Jericho and Chris Benoit seem to have spent most of their careers in. If he is to ever break out of this, and become a legit, established main eventer, Orton will need to find something that will help him get over the proverbial hump, in much the same way Mick Foley did the first time.

    As a heel, he’s quickly becoming quite threatening. He may not have the hardcore legacy of a Mick Foley, Undertaker, or even a Triple H, but Orton has shown a willingness to mix is up and get a little vicious at times, an essential component of a main event heel. His mic skills are extremely solid, and probably still improving. Admit it, there’s something about that guy that makes you hate him on a mic. Especially given some of the material he is given to work with.

    Such is the case with his latest feud, involving Rey Mysterio. Now, there are two major components to this if we are to consider the situation as it pertains to Randy Orton. One, is the looming and very distinct possibility that he is preparing to go over Rey for the #1 contendership. This is a very real possibility, and depending on which report you want to believe, is already a foregone conclusion. I’m far from a major news source, in fact I typically try to avoid dirt sheets and spoilers as I find they enhance my own enjoyment of the product. But it is starting to look like the possibility of Orton winning, only to jump to Raw and feud with Cena for the title is a very real possibility.

    Yet, his still developing feud with Mysterio has given us more to talk about concerning Randy than just the possibility of what I’m already calling the “The Travesty of the Rumble”, a decision that will destroy the aurora surrounding the WWE’s most magical, legendary match. No, perhaps even more substantial than that will be the story that motivated Rey to even accept this match, that being Orton’s words regarding the deceased Eddie Guerrero. Of course I am referring to the comments Orton made two weeks ago, when he declared “Eddie’s in Hell” in an effort to motivate Rey into putting his #1 contender spot on the line.

    Something about that whole thing just burns me. I wish I could say I’m surprised, but I don’t know that I really am. On one hand, there’s the obvious disrespect that seems to be being flaunted, and on the other, the performer Eddie Guerrero may have passed on, but the character he played did as well, which is really what Orton is chirping about. How can we easily differentiate between the two? It’s so hard to tell the difference between real and storyline when its ECW shoot interviews or Matt Hardy’s sex life, why should this be any different?

    As I’m sure I’ve demonstrated today, and in the past for long time readers, I’m a huge fan of Mick Foley not only as a performer but as an author, and near as I can tell, as a person. I don’t claim to know any more about him than anyone else, but his words upon meeting him and his writings have always struck me as very genuine. So consider the following piece, taken from his Foley is Blog article, written on WWE.com on February 8th.




    “I do not believe that Randy Orton needs this type of cheap heat to be effective. No one knows better than I that Randy is an incredible talent. He can wrestle, he can talk, and he exudes an extreme brand of cockiness in the ring that makes him a natural bad guy. He doesn’t need this.

    But the recent Smackdown episode did not honor his legacy, it exploited his death. I hope it will end, and the sooner the better. For by exploiting his death we achieve what I thought wouldn’t be possible: We cheapen his life.”





    Well put by a very knowledgeable man. Still, I can’t help but believe that in a storyline involving one of Eddie’s closest friends in the wrestling business (Rey Mysterio) there must be a strong sentiment from those closest to the deceased wrestler in order for this storyline to continue. Perhaps if things like this make the rest of us uneasy, they are wrong sure. However, if those closest to Eddie, those with the most invested emotionally feel this is an acceptable course of action, I can only trust their judgment. I shutter to think that this is an example of the WWE brass dangling the carrot of a Royal Rumble win and possible main event at Wrestlemania at Mysterio, or even worse, forcing Rey into this sort of position politically. Yet having their golden boy, Randy Orton seemingly take advantage of Eddie’s death and the heat it has provided (remember it was Orton who crashed his low rider in a feud with The Undertaker) would seem to imply a certain amount of backstage influence in the direction of this angle. It frightens me, truly, what will come of having Eddie’s widow and possibly children at ringside next week. I fear a reaction and fallout similar to that of having Foley’s family at ringside many years ago, watching his infamous “I Quit” match with The Rock, when Rocky lost his mind and Foley’s family watched as he was bludgeoned in on of the most brutal matches I’ve ever seen from the WWE.

    Orton is, in my opinion, a very entertaining professional wrestler. His ring skills are above average though not revolutionary, but the WWE simply does not want revolutionary. Orton may not be innovative, but what he does he does very, very well. He has shown the willingness to ply his trade, showing marked improvement in the ring over the course of his career. His move set is varied enough that he doesn’t seem overly stale in the ring.

    The heat that he could possibly stand to gain from this feud with Rey, both by tarnishing not only the legacy of the Royal Rumble but that of Eddie Guerrero is immense. Were he to somehow desecrate the likeness of Eddie, with his (still mourning) family at ringside, this would likely propel Orton into the stratosphere of heeldom, reaching heights not seen in quite some time by a professional wrestler. Orton will likely receive Hitler-like hate for this.

    One is forced to ask themselves however, what price is the WWE willing to pay to truly establish Orton as a figurehead for the next generation?

    And do we really want to find out?

    Awards


    Sanctimonious Son of a Bitch

    Randy Orton, for all the above reasons.

    Cannon Fodder

    Adios to Romeo and Antonio, better known as The Heartthrobs. Your gimmick never really had a chance since it got watered down from shit to diarrhea upon your OVW call up. You are now fodder for the double-dub-E checkbook. Good luck, because I’m fairly certain TNA wants nothing to do with you.

    Cheap Pop

    Unless I overlooked it somehow (which is possible, I got a ton of email after bitching about not getting any last column) I don’t think anybody got last column’s quote from the movie Boondock Saints. Shame really, it’s a funny line from a hilarious movie. Oh well, the award’s gotta go to somebody, so I'm handing out a freebie today.

    The Lop Columns Forum is starting to revive itself after a number of really down months. It's the place in which all Lop main page authors begin their careers, and if you jump down there now, you can check out the work of Main Page hopefulls like RipBossman, Jules, J-man, Jigga the God, and Mike from Jersey. Show them some love, I'm sure they'll appreciate it.



    Outta Left Field

    Wow. I asked for feedback on rather or not you guys thought this segment should live or die, and you all answered. Problem is, most of you didn’t bother to give lists, and the verdict was about 50/50 anyway. For now, this segment lives on, though I’m contemplating moving it to a weekly audio show, what would you say about that? Let me know……

    Random Acts of Wrestling

    Counting down the top ten stories in wrestling in recent weeks….

    10) Big Mama Shelton

    Just about the time the character had started to show signs of suck, she “has a heart attack” to cover the actresses legit health concerns. I wish her luck, but in spite of some entertaining spots, the character can stay of TV.

    9) The return of Sting

    Well, I suppose being the #9 story in wrestling isn’t much what TNA had in mind, but that’s what happens when you hype a guys return for a month, then bring him in to announce he’ll be off TV for another month. What shitty writing.

    8) Matt Morgan arrested for impersonating a cop

    Who? Need proof I don’t rig the votes? Apparently his arrest peaked the intrest of my readers…why I’ll never know.

    7) John Cena’s fan rollercoaster

    Dropping the title seems to have refreshed him a bit, as the boos aren’t quite as loud as they were before. How long that’ll last, I’m really not sure. His embracing the mixed reaction, and having the announcers akwnoldge it is brilliant, it shows he doesn’t care and is just being himself. The WWE needs more characters that aren’t necessarily heel or face, but are rather just themselves. Gee, where have I heard that before?

    6) Christian Un-Caged

    Here’s a guy who’s just starting to get rolling, and now it looks like he may be caught in limbo again. Rather than just push him independently, and see what he can do in the main event scene, his push is getting overshadowed by Sting-shit. I’d be curious to see what he could do with the title, but I don’t see it happening, though it wouldn’t be a bad idea just to sort of reward somebody for jumping from WWE and put a thought in the back of the minds of say, oh, I don’t know, Chris Benoit?

    5) Samoa Joe and the X-Division

    Is there anything better in this world than the rhythmic chant like singing of “Joe’s gonna kill you!” by fans in the Impact zone? I don’t think so. His run has been impressive, though already growing stale on long time fans of his. For those of us who have never seen him before though, this is a lot of fun to watch, as is the X-D overall these days.

    4) Royal Rumble FALL-out

    Was it really that bad? Why all the hate? I thought it was enjoyable, but hey I’m a dumb mark. Rey’s winning was a total shocker, but I’m gonna be pissed if he doesn’t face Angle at ‘Mania. People need to have a few drinks while watching wrestling, maybe order a pizza and chill with some friends. When you don’t watch wrestling with a notebook and score card, its much more entertaining.

    3) Kurt Angle

    People love this guy like he just cured Cancer. Hell, maybe he did, Cancer deaths fell last year for the first time in 70 years. Anyway, he carried Mark Henry and I’m looking forward to the rest of The Undertaker feud, though I’d kinda prefer there wasn’t quite so much theatrics involved. Still, I enjoy both men, and this feud should be very good. The unexplained sudden face turn still kinda pisses me off though. Actually, a lot, but I’m not in a bitching mood today.

    2) Edge

    Now, a lot of his placement this high has to do with the fact that when most of the votes were cast, he was still white-hot as World Heaveyweight Champion. His sleezeball character is one that I’m a huge fan of. I wasn’t for a long time, but something about watching him with the title bending over Lita just screams sleezeball. My dad (who’s now watching Raw because of my younger brother) cannot stand the guy, and he just seems to embody the modern heel. I need to shut up, I’m giving away next week’s column.

    1) Ric Flair

    Woooo..oo….o….huh? Now, I know his ladder match was amazing, and most votes were cast shortly after that match. And, I know his legal troubles have kept him in the news, and I’m looking forward to a potential showdown with Shelton at Wrestlemania too. But still…I can’t quite explain Flair at the top. Oh well, its you guys’ list, not mine.

    The Uncalled for Ending


    Wow, I told you that was gonna be a long one. I owed you guys a long outing after taking some extra time off. By the way, that extra time off was to finish a small site overhaul for The Project, as well as getting some new columns out from some long time supports, including Lop‘s own Xanman. Click the boobies below to have a look, and while you’re there browse around and check out some other stuff including radio station and forums (join damnit!).

    Also, I‘m considering branching out my writing career a bit to help promote my website, so if anybody knows any good E-zines or other writing websites taking submissions, send me some links would ya? One other note, if you are a Indy Rock band looking for some promotion, drop me an email and we may be able to help each other out.

    Ok, I‘ve whored myself much more than usual today and I‘m feeling dirty. Sorry, I gave you 8 pages of wrestling content, you can give me two paragraphs of selfishness, right? I‘ll be back next weekend, probably with a look at Edge‘s current situation though I‘ve got some other ideas that may jump up there depending on how things go. I‘m out until then, so I bid thee farewell. Thanks for visiting The Nosebleed Section but next time, get better seats.

    Click here to Email Randomguy#5! All email will be replied to (eventually).


    New stuff from Xan and Dark Reverend currently up, and the merger of the two sites is complete. Join the forums or check out some our music downloads, with new stuff coming soon from Dirt, Illusoria, and others! Click the boobies to see!







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