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Submitted by Randomguy#5 on Saturday, May 13, 2006 at 12:50 PM EST
Second Quarter Title Report “Get over your eyes-can‘t you see?” Welcome back to the column that reads like the Giant Kahli The Nosebleed Section. I am your mentally damaged host, Randomguy#5. In the time since I last typed at you I‘ve had an interesting development or two. For starters, I graduated college which is always a plus, and I‘m also well on my way to getting a new vehicle sometime in the next few weeks. The big news however is that the radio show I co-host on Project Radio has done its first ever pod cast edition. Now, it‘s not a true pod cast as yet, as I‘ve not quite managed to learn enough to make it subscribable and such (the whole XML/RSS thing is a bit alien to me) but for now you are more than welcome to download the file and have a listen. We are desperate for feedback, so if anybody cares to offer any it would be much appreciated, you can email it to my normal email address here. The show itself is only about an hour and features some great Indie Rock music, so if you‘re into this sort of thing, give us a listen. The Cooler, Episode 5-Featuring Randomguy#5 and Jukebox Hero. Click Here to download!! --Main-eventing Hell this month: Mark Henry vs. The Giant Kahli in a 60-Minute Iron Man match! --The DX reunion officially has my attention. I’m not entirely sure what will become of it, and I can’t decide if it will be really awesome or be really suck. Nonetheless, I’m excited to see it go down, as anything that makes me look forward to Raw every week has got to be a good thing. I hope people don’t give up on this too early, it could work, much like another idea that’s being brought back to mixed reactions. -- “E-see-dub! E-see-dub! E-see-dub!” --Sting and Joe!?!? So, is Joe going face then? Wait-what if he swerves Sting? Wouldn’t that make him incredibly over as a heel? Isn’t that what TNA has wanted all along? What if he aligns with Jarrett? Nooooo!!!! --I mark hard for Spike TV’s “Thursday Night Knockouts.” I love having Impact on in a timeslot I can watch, and The Ultimate Fighter has become the first (and only) reality show that I’ve ever watched on a regular basis. What’s up with no fight this week though? Wasn’t that a shitty let down…. I once wrote a column dedicated to the championships used in professional wrestling and all of the wonder that is associated with them. Admittedly, such a discussion could in reality be a thesis. Never before has the entertainment world seen such a mysterious and misunderstood phenomenon as the championships of professional wrestling. They are props-designed and created to do little more than provide incentive for the storyline to keep going. But they are much more than that, in that they are the pinnacles of industry-stepping stones by which a performers career will be judged. This inspired my Quarterly Title Report idea. The premise is simple. I will attempt to rank the Championships and their respective “divisions”. Keep in mind that I am only focusing on Total Non-stop Action and World Wrestling Entertainment. I’ve heard tale of the great things being done by Ring of Honor and New Japan, but sadly I am not educated enough in their goings on to include them in this list. Perhaps someday, but not today. Click HERE to read the First Quarter Title Report, written weeks before the Royal Rumble, if you’d like to see how things may have changed between now and then. Admittedly I’m running a little behind. I intended to originally do this about two or three weeks after Wrestlemania, but some more pressing ideas took hold and I went with them, so its possible that if and when I do the third quarter report it will seem like its right around the corner. Damn this year is flying bye… Anyway, without further ado: #11 WWE Raw-World Tag Team Championships Current Champions: The Spirit Squad No movement here, as for the second time this year I’ve ranked Raw’s World Tag Team Championships as the most meaningless in all of professional wrestling. I suppose the Spirit Squad is entertaining enough though to me, they’re already growing stale and a bit annoying. The “division” if you can call it that is non-existent beyond whatever thrown together tag team creative throws together that week. The DX rumors make things interesting, but that’s not a solution to this problem. The “freak coalition” could make things interesting enough but this title is the closest thing to a meaningless prop in the business. It’s about as valuable as the cookie sheet used in hardcore matches, and I’d wager you could place the belts on E-bay and they’d sell for less than a grilled cheese sandwich. #10 WWE Smackdown: WWE Cruiserweight Championship Current Champion: Gregory Helms So, Kash randomly wins it from Juventud only to get hurt and job it to Helms who is brought over from Raw and promptly gets hurt. After spending a month or more rehabbing a busted nose (and man does Helms have a lot of nose to break) he’s entering into a program with the Mexicools. Well, I guess that’s something. This division needs airtime and a major push, not to mention a monster face that people can get behind. London never really accomplished that, and with Rey doing bigger and better things, I’m not entirely sure what’s next for this division. The talent is there, but the characters are not, which is the reason why it is once again the second most meaningless title in The Big 3. #9 WWE Smackdown: United States Championship Current Champion: John Bradshaw Layfield This represents the furthest fall from the first quarter report where this division was ranked 4th. I’m sure some will tell me I’m being too hard on this division, but those people are usually in love with JBL. I’m not exactly a Bradshaw hater, but I have seen this shtick before. His ascension has left Benoit lost, along with Booker T, and now we’re busy wondering what will happen with the JBL/RVD ECW rumors. I’m not overly keen on all of this as it all seems a bit congested with no real order, rhyme or reason. The whole division seems to be put on hold as if it were stuck in the mud, and I suppose if you need to put a division on standby, JBL is the right guy to get heat with a title while you decide what to do next. Still, it’s not as entertaining as it was three months ago, or some of the divisions I’ve ranked higher, particularly when you consider that this belt now has NO real purpose as JBL is feuding with Rey for the World Title. In defense of the Smackdown’s bookers, with the Kotr tournament going on, they have a reason to put this on hold as most of the upper-midcard is wrapped up in that. Still, if you ask me to rank the divisions as they sit now, the justification for it is meaningless, and the US Title is as well. #8 WWE Raw: WWE Intercontinental Championship Current Champion: RVD Speaking of divisions put on hold while we await bigger things: The Raw Intercontinental Title has provided for some interesting matches and I suppose it’s elevating RVD in the eyes of some. Yet, there are those of us who would have rather seen Shelton hold on to the title and mix it up with Carlito, maybe even mix Master’s up in it as well. In a strange way, RVD seems to have fallen on the card since winning this title, and with ECW looming, I’m not entirely sure what’s going on here. Bah, I’m probably over thinking it. Raw’s entire roster seems to be beyond this title, with entirely too many people on the fringe of main eventing and Shelton, Carlito, RVD, and Masters being left behind. Like the US division, this one needs some sort of stability, and a way of making the belt seem like something more other than the “kids table,” even if that’s what it really is. This entire division has all of the talent in the world lurking around the strap, and its exactly the reason that the WWE should be using the IC strap to elevate all of its youngerters now, yet it seems to be monopolized by people who have something better going on. Everybody from Striker and Goldust through Shelton and Carlito on up to Big Show and Kane could be in the running for this belt right now, but nobody really cares. This is the most confusing division because of all of its possibilities, but then again, I’m a dreamer, and if I were a realist this would be depressing. #7 WWE Raw: WWE Women’s Championship Current Champion: Mickie James When I originally started to post this column about a month ago, I had this division ranked as high as third in multiple drafts. Trish’s injury slowed things a bit and I know some people are viewing this feud as dead and beyond stale. Yet to me, it’s the best booked long-term feud in the WWE in over a year. It seems to be taking yet another turn with another new character running to freshen things just as it started to slow down. I’d really like to see Mickie develop a stronger heel persona that doesn’t entirely revolve around Trish, so that when this feud dies, it has somewhere to turn. Lita is looming on the horizon and could provide a shot of energy if need be, though there are some heel/face issues to be worked out there before that happens. I am happy with this division right now, though it’s times like this that make me wish they’d never dropped Gail Kim because the division really can be entertaining when creative treats it right. #6 NWA-TNA: X-Division Championship Current Holder: Samoa Joe Much like the US Title division (though to a lesser extent) this division has fallen off in quality in my opinion from where it was several months ago. In reality, even as I type this I can’t decide how I feel about this division. Joe is still an awesome talent that I still enjoy watching him, even if he has shown as much character as Perry Saturn’s mop. Still, he’s way beyond this division and appears to be moving up to feud with Jarrett with Sting. This leaves the belt forgotten about, except now Daniels and Styles are both mixing in the tag ranks so it falls down the card even further. This would drop it off into the ranks of Sabin, Williams, etc. except they’re in the highly entertaining world X-cup. The only people left appear to be lining up to either be put over or squashed by Kevin Nash (who? Why?). The belt is dead weight and the rest of the division is busy, so I’m confused on this one. Lets just keep our hopes up that Nash’s assumption of the X-D as “little men” who will lose to an “average big man” is correct, and that after he mows down a couple of them, Joe comes out to finish off his face turn by smiting Nash, proving that the X-D isn’t about weight limits after all. #5 WWE Smackdown: WWE Tag Team Championship Current Champions: MNM- Joey Mercury and Johnny Nitro, with manager Melina. Since I did the first one of these some four months ago, MNM is one of only two champions to still hold the belts, the other being AMW. Melina continues to impress with her ability to advance a storyline and in some cases carry multiple stories at a time, and Nitro and Mercury are both improving in the ring. Neither does anything that really stands out, which is a bit of shame, but neither one does anything that makes you cringe either. London & Kendrick are an entertaining duo and the feud between they and MNM could just be heating up (I’m waiting to see Melina fall for Kendrick). The Mexicools are on the outside looking in, as are any number of other possible tag teams. I hold out hope that this division could make a huge comeback sometime very, very soon. #4 TNA: NWA Tag Team Champions Current Champions: America’s Most Wanted- “Wildcat” Chris Harris and “The Tennessee Cowboy” James Storm I’d have to think about it a little harder, but I’m fairly certain that America’s Most Wanted has the longest lasting title reign in the US’s big three promotions. I’m glad they’ve gotten away from Jarrett as I never felt Jarrett and AMW mixed well, but I think they mix even worse with Team Canada, so its out of the frying pan and into the fire. Still, AMW is the best tag team in the world right now for my money, and their heel characters are gaining momentum and highly entertaining. LAX seems to have disappeared, but The James Gang is watchable if not great. Hopefully some of the teams from the X-Cup will stick around to bolster this division even more. Team 3D is still fantastic in my eyes, with their characters having been refreshed a bit of late, the Naturals could be making a comeback soon and I love Team Canada (sans AMW). As if all of this wasn’t good enough, Styles and Daniels have been paired and appear to be there fore a while. Everything surrounding this title is interesting and reasonably fresh now all we need is to shift focus to the belts themselves (which seems to be happening) and wait on some 5-star matches, which we could see this Sunday. #3 WWE Smackdown: World Heavyweight Championship Current Holder: Rey Mysterio Why? Why, why, why, why WHHHYYYY? If you read my column at all, ever, even once, you know that I cannot stand the idea of pushing Henry anywhere near the main event so mixing him up with Rey is a total mistake, particularly given that Henry and Rey have no real heat. JBL is in the mix as well, for reasons that are beyond me unless its to win the title to feud with RVD over it, all of which again makes me stare out at the stars at night and scream WHY!!!! Rey had a chance, he really did. With a bit of build up and a decent run of opponents (Angle, Orton, maybe even Benoit) Rey could have had one hell of a title reign and become a solid fixture in the upper echelon of Smackdown. Instead its now a total clusterfuck with the awful Henry and the mediocre Bradshaw and poor Ray caught in the middle. How the hell does JBL leap frog over Henry anyway? Shouldn’t Henry be pissed about this? Why does Bradshaw control him? Thanks to the suspension of Orton, the injury of Angle, ‘Taker’s perpetual hiatus and involvement with jobbers, and some terrible decisions creatively, what was a very promising division that had really righted itself a few months ago is now back into the state of purgatory that it’s been in since Batista’s injury and Eddie’s death. #2 TNA: NWA World Heavyweight Champion Current Champion: Christian Cage To TNA management: Now you’re making progress. Christian has all the character in the world, and what he lacks (a solid offense) he can more than make up for with grit and a willingness to mix it up in hardcore environments. Enter Abyss and James Mitchell, who are starting to move out of the cartoonish stage and actually make progress toward “evil monster” and this division is heating up. Jarrett and Sting on the outside cusp of the main event, and promoting Joe will do wonders if it happens, though I hope he stays heel somehow. Monty Brown is on rehab and The Truth could get into the mix here as well. I’d like to see Christian retain against Abyss in what should be a great hardcore match (I respect Abyss’ willingness in these, he’s phenomenal in that environment) before moving onto hopefully a heel Joe. Actually, what I’d really want is Styles to turn heel and go after Christian and have them mix it up for a few months before dropping the title to either a heel Styles or a heel Joe. There you go, now that would be a main event scene. #1 WWE Raw: WWE Heavyweight Championship Current Champion: John Cena The next few months are a pivotal time in the career of John Cena. It’s starting to look like maybe booing Cena is no longer the cool and trendy thing to do now that the crowd has realized that they can’t just manipulate things at their whim because they think going against the grain is cool. So now the mixed reaction excitement of Cena may be starting to die down, and we’re left with the crowd holding their collective breath. Ideally, I’d still really like to see the WWE play this out a little longer. Give him the few things he needs (mic time and some cutting edge raps) to get back over as a full blown face before milking it into him feuding with RVD at ECW. The other option is to drop the title to Edge and take some time off, before a face Triple H wins the belt. Speaking of Triple H, the entire DX business is going to play heavily into the main event scene. Either that, or it will be a great way of keeping HHH (and to a lesser degree Michaels) out of the main event while some of the less established guys try their hand. The ECW storyline is going to mix in this scene hard as well, with the aforementioned RVD/Cena situation, and the possibility of moving Edge into the role of premier heel in the new ECW (along with his new buddy Foley). It is because of all of the options in front of it, a strong character as champion, and the most star power of any division, that for the second straight quarter, the WWE Championship on Raw is the highest rated division in this Title Report. Sanctimonious Son of a Bitch To Mick Foley: What are you doing to me man? I’ve been a Foley mark for years so a part of me died when you went heel. Yet, I’m extremely excited, because I know that heels don’t work nearly as well for one time special appearances, which means hopefully by going heel you’re assuring me that you’ll be around on TV for a while, and that makes me a very happy little Random. The question is: Where’s this going Mickles? You going to ECW? You taking Edge with you? Hhmmmmm…… Cannon Fodder Perhaps I‘m a bit premature with this one but The X-Division looks as though it could be heading toward permanent fuckage with this Kevin Nash storyline. Surely they aren’t really going to let Nash mow down every lower-tier X-D guy are they? Doing so will only widen the gap between the upper-level X guys like Styles and Daniels and the lower level like Shelley and Dutt. This storyline has a very short leash with me, so I’m hoping it doesn’t insta-suck. Cheap Pop Wow! Last column I quoted one of my favorite heavy metal acts, Tool, from the song “10,000 Days (Wings pt. 2)” off their new album. It was the most responded to quote I’ve ever had, having gotten literally twenty or so emails regarding the quote alone. The first one however came from Bleeder Reader Dennis, whom also runs about in the lop forums under then moniker intermilan7. Dennis thanks for reading mi amigo, your patronage is much appreciated. Random Acts of Wrestling Well as regular readers will note, this is the part of the column where I usually do something called “Random Acts of Wrestling” and present Top 10 list of the hottest stories in wrestling as voted on by my readers. Sadly, as I’ve mentioned before, reader participation in that has dwindled substantially even when my column had become much more regular for the last couple of months. (By regular I mean somewhere around bi-weekly). I consider that failure to be mostly my own fault and as a result of that, I am discontinuing that section of my column for the time being, with the disclaimer that I may bring it back later. In it’s place, I am going to begin what I hope will become a weekly podcast entitled “Monday Night Countdown” in which I will do about an hour long audio show and rundown that list. This show will become available for the first time before Raw every week. Listener/reader participation will still be considered, so please send in your votes as you see fit via email. I’ve yet to decide what will become of the vacancy in my column. This segment has always been a bit of an uncertainty (hence the “out of left field” name) so I may bring back an older section (Mysteries of the Universe, or perhaps Random spoilers) or I may just drop this section entirely as the column tends to run a bit long as it is. Let me know what you guys think, hell I may just turn it into a feedback reply section, akin to J-Train’s old “Letters” segment. Anyway, all of that is up to you guys so let me know what you think. Be sure to stay tuned next week, as I’ll have download instructions for anybody interested in “Monday Night Countdown,” which will begin for the first time prior to Raw, May 22nd. This is the longest column I’ve done in a long, long time. Forgive me for that, I know all you wanted to do was kill a few minutes before the next “Enter The Dream Realm” gets posted. So I helped you kill……a lot……of minutes. Still, Xan’s got a new column out on the main page too, so that should help you ease the pain while you wait on your Morpheus fix. Next week I’m finally going after the ECW topic that I’ve been wanting to for a long time and I should have directions for you on how you can catch the first edition of Monday Night Countdown (hopefully by then I’ll have figured out this whole pod casting business). I look forward to doing this again and I thank you for visiting The Nosebleed Section but next time, get better seats. Send‘Em Feedback, Make your Local Random Happy  The first ever episode of The Cooler on pod cast, along with upcoming new works from Pt2 and Randomguy#5. Check out The Project and see what all the fuss is about.  If you dig hard rock or perhaps a bit of metal in your music, why not have a listen to Project Radio? It’s a free internet radio station owned and operated by yours truly featuring Metallica, Tool, Disturbed, System of a Down and a host of indie rock artists like Wombraider and Illusoria. Give it a listen and let me know what you think. *NEW GALLERY* Exclusive! The WWE Superstars and Divas Out PARTYING HARD!
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