NOTE FROM TITO: This column was posted since it won November's on the LoP Columns board, which anyone can join. Each month, message board posters vote on which column is their favorite, and the winner will have their column posted on the LoP Main Page, for one time only, as a reward for winning.

The Cerebral Assassin won in November, and here is his column, "That Damn Good". Please do NOT send Mr. Tito e-mail or feedback about this column, but instead, let the writer of the column have it at tlombard@ufl.edu.

Welcome everyone, to this week’s edition of That Damn Good.
Those of you that are longtime readers may have noticed that this column did not spear last week. That was due to some unavoidable and unforeseen circumstances that have since been cleared up, and so I am back for my first official appearance here on the LOP main page. For those of you that are wondering who I am and why I’m here, allow me to introduce myself. My name is Travis Lombard, also known as "The Cerebral Assassin", and author of That Damn Good, which is now in its 13th edition. I started this column on the LOP Columns Forum about three months ago for two reasons: I like wrestling, and I like writing, so it seemed natural to combine the two.

As far as why I am on the main page, it is because the other columnists have graciously voted me as the first-ever winner of the LOP Columnist Of The Month contest. I consider it to be a great honor, and I really appreciate it, though I think as a writer, I can always get better. There are several excellent columns (and a few really bad ones) on the Columns Forum, so if you haven’t already taken a look, I suggest you do so. I will be on the main page
until the end of December, and then I’ll head back down to the depths and pray that one day I’ll get to come back again. I pride myself on working extremely hard to put out a good column each and every week, but any feedback, positive or negative, from first-time readers will be welcome. I try to include something for everyone. This column tends to get rather lengthy, but I try to break it up with plenty of graphics so that it doesn’t get tough to read.

For those of you that have been reading my column for a long time, you will notice a bit of a change in this week’s edition. LOP rules forbid main page columnists to use any WWF images in their graphics, so several of the graphics that you normally see will not be on here. I will however, post a separate copy of my column with the missing graphics included in the Columns Forum, for those
of you that wish to take a look. Anyhow, this is probably the longest
intro that I’ve ever done, and I’m itching to get started, so let’s get down to business, shall we?

Thoughts on RAW

I have decided to shorten the length of my RAW thoughts, so as not to
approach a full recap of the show, since most of you have probably already seen it. As a whole, the show was pretty good. Not great, but it did have its high points. Starting things off with a match was good, starting things off with the Undertaker, however, was bad. Especially since it seems as if the WWF is just going to line up as many squashes as possible for Taker to try to get him over as a heel. I wish they wouldn’t do it that way, as it hurts the little credibility the Hardcore belt has left if Taker can just walk through
people that have held the belt before. Also, it did nothing to further the Hardys feud, since Matt looked concerned instead of pleased. If they really wanted this thing to work, they would have had Matt smile and keep eating and having fun.

Too many Vince McMahon segments on yet another show. While I enjoy
Austin’s audience participation segments, that doesn’t help the fact that the McMahons are still on television way too much. After that, we get a surprisingly decent match between the Dudleys and Albert and Scotty. I liked the use of the giant swing, a little old school is always good. I think Albert is hilarious when paired up with Scotty, and I actually enjoyed this one.

I was SO tired of the stupid cell phone shit that Vince and Booker T
were doing. That’s ridiculous. The church segments were funny as hell, but it’s just a slightly different version of stuff we’ve already seen, and it takes up TV time. It was funny, though, I gotta admit.

Christian vs. Tazz was about what I expected, as it was Just Another
Loss for the Red Hook Brawler. I hate seeing Tazz jobbing to everyone. Then we got to see Lance Storm, in a decent match against the Rock, and he finally go his job back. Thank God, since it means we’ll get to see more of him on TV. Loved seeing the Rock talk smack at the broadcast booth during the match-that’s
something he hasn’t done in a while. Test was involved yet again. Did I miss something here? When did THAT feud start?

I always like when Jericho and Flair are in the ring together, and is
it just me, or does Flair look in much better shape than he was a few weeks ago? After that, we get an OK match with Edge and Rikishi against Angle and Test. It was decent, but the Stinkface needs to be banned, it’s the most disgusting thing I’ve ever seen. This was followed by a HORRIBLE interview by Test. “You need a
beating. You know what? I am going to give it to you." What the hell?

Great. The team of Ass Chuck against the Big Show and Tajiri. Yay. Gunn and Palumbo need to stay on Heat where they belong. I liked the finish, however, as Tajiri hit Torrie by accident. Torrie was looking great, as usual. So was Stacy Keibler earlier, for that matter. Finally, we got RVD vs. Y2J, in a very enjoyable match. I liked the involvement of both McMahon and Flair in this case, and I always love to see the figure-four. It’s so rarely used nowadays that seeing RVD and Flair both use it was a mark-out moment for me. Overall, a pretty good show. Not great, but not bad at all. Let’s hope Smackdown is as good.

SlobberTrakker 2000

Those of you that are familiar with my column know that one of my trademarks is to put up a graphic keeping track of the annoying things that certain WWF individuals do on television, two examples of which are the Rocky SmackTrak, which tracks the Rock’s right hands, and the Stone Cold Steve Austin Whatmeter, which tracks how many times he says "What". This week, since I found J.R. to be getting on my nerves, I have decided to debut a new graphic, the
SlobberTrakker 2000, which will keep track of all the annoying
things that he says during RAW. So without any further ado, here is the official debut of the SlobberTrakker 2000.

Weekly Bitch Session

This section, for those of you that couldn’t tell, is my little midweek stress relief, where I pick one or two topics related to wrestling that irritate me and bitch about them at length. If I didn’t have this section, there’s no way I could do this column, because by Wednesday, I usually have to blow off a little steam. For this week’s rant-fest, I’m going to talk about the man that since Vengeance has been talked about more than anyone else: Chris Jericho.

It seems like right now, half the world is either rejoicing or bitching about the fact that Jericho won the undisputed championship at Vengeance. While I personally was glad to see him win, much of what I am hearing from these ecstatic people irritates me as well. I take great offense at people who are making a huge deal out of the fact that Jericho has won every belt in the WWF except the light-heavyweight belt, and is therefore statistically the greatest the WWF has ever had. Already people are calling him a Five-Star Champion or a Golden Five Winner. He may have won all five of those titles, but to say that statistically he is the greatest the WWF has ever had is ridiculous.

Until the mid-1990s, there were only three available titles in the WWF: the World title, the Intercontinental title, and the Tag straps. For any one man to hold all three was considered incredible. The first man to do it was Pedro Morales, followed by Bret Hart, Kevin Nash, and Shawn Michaels, who later won the European title to become the first Grand Slam winner. My point is that becoming a Grand Slam winner or a Triple Crown winner doesn’t mean as much now as it did then. Back then, the distinction was reserved for very few just because there were only three belts, so to get in the Triple Crown club, you had to win every belt in the WWF. The same held true to become a Grand Slam winner, after the WWF debuted the Euro title. The criteria wasn’t how many belts you held, it was whether or not you had held them all.

Now that Jericho has won all five major titles, people are going nuts
over the fact that he’s a "Five Star" Champion. To me, it’s a big accomplishment, but no bigger than Hart, Nash, Morales, and HBK’s accomplishments. More titles held doesn’t mean he is better than they were, which seems to be what I’m hearing a lot now. Let’s look at facts: title changes occur easily and often in the WWF today, making it much easier to win multiple titles. It took Morales nine years after winning his first WWF belt to complete the Triple Crown, and he only had three belts to win. It took Hart six years, and it took HBK four, and all of them only had to win three belts. Jericho won all five in just under three years.

That just tells me that titles mean much less than they did before, and therefore, his accomplishment, while no small feat, shouldn’t be rated higher than the Triple Crown wins of the men I already mentioned, or HBK’s Grand Slam. Because nobody’s going to tell me that just because Jericho had a
day-long reign as European Champ and a minute-long reign as Hardcore champ, that he’s better than Hart, HBK or Morales, because I aint gonna buy it. It was a big accomplishment, no doubt, but let’s not make this out to be bigger than what it is.

Thoughts on Vengeance

Well, since there was no column last week, I’ll just make this quick. Vengeance is finally in the books, and there is one champion at last, and I am quite glad it turned out to be Jericho, since it made m predictions correct. As a whole, I enjoyed the PPV a great deal. I was disappointed by not getting to see Triple H, but I’ll get over it. For my predictions, I went 6-2, missing only the Hardys matchup and the Hardcore title match. That’s the best I’ve done since Wrestlemania, when I went 8-1. Since I started counting three months ago, this brings my current record to 15-7 for PPV predictions.

As expected, the women’s title match was decent at best, with a lousy ending. The Hardys matchup was OK, but nothing worth raving over. I enjoyed the ending though, since it keeps the feud alive. The IC match was all right, again, I liked the ending, but Regal’s style just doesn’t seem to mesh well with most guys. The tag title match was about what I expected, considering it was the Dudleys vs. Two Big Guys Who Got Thrown Together For No Reason.

The Hardcore title match REALLY pissed me off. Not because I’m some diehard RVD mark, but because giving Taker the Hardcore title is basically flushing it down the drain. He’s so NOT hardcore its ridiculous. It was a decent match, though, as RVD really bumped for the boxing biker.

The final three matches were all solid, and made for good entertainment. I would have really preferred that the final match ended with a clean win, because that’s the only way you could truly call the winner the undisputable champion. A controversial win is disputable and probably will be disputed, so expect Jericho’s undisputability to be tested within the next few weeks. As for who won, it seems like half the world is rejoicing, and half the world is bitching about it. Personally, I believe that Jericho deserves this opportunity to see what he can do as champion, and that the WWF ought to give him at least until the Royal Rumble before he drops the belt. I wouldn’t complain about him
not being deserving of the title until he’s had it for a few weeks. Overall, I enjoyed the show a great deal, as it was probably one of the WWF’s better PPVs in a while.

This Week In Wrestling History

December 16th, 1990, in what would be the culmination of one of the worst angles in wrestling history, Sting successfully defended his WCW Championship against the Black Scorpion at Starrcade 1990. The Black Scorpion had been irritating people with magic tricks for weeks, and nobody, including the WCW creative staff, could figure out who he was (This was because they hadn’t decided yet). At Starrcade, the
Scorpion was unmasked to reveal Ric Flair, who had been put under the mask as a last resort and only agreed to do it if he could beat Sting for the belt a few weeks later, which he did.

This is a segment that has become quite popular in recent weeks. I
originally debuted it as an experiment, but it has become a permanent part of the column. We all know that both the WWF and the WCW have done some amazing things, with the NOW and Austin/McMahon angles being some of the highlights. But they have also managed to come up with some of the most ridiculous gimmicks you will ever see. Each week, in honor of the now-defunct Wrestlecrap website, I
choose one such gimmick, and spotlight it thoroughly for your entertainment. This week, in honor of my first appearance on the main page, I’m going to re-spotlight a gimmick that I took a look at a few months ago, in what turned out to be one of my favorite columns. This week, we take a look back at a man who was part of
one of the worst WCW gimmicks ever. This week, we take a look at the
Zodiac, one of the members of the ill-fated Dungeon Of Doom.

Poor Ed Leslie. He just never could get a really good gimmick. He began in the WWF as Brutus "The Barber" Beefcake (not a great way to start off), where he had a good deal of success, but it would eventually all go downhill from there. Leslie jumped with Hulk Hogan to the WCW in 1994, and turned heel shortly after, becoming the Butcher. Again, another ill-advised gimmick. However, that was nothing compared to the monstrosity that he would become later.

In 1995, Kevin Sullivan formed the now-infamous Dungeon Of Doom, for
the expressed purpose of basically harassing Hulk Hogan. I guess the WCW wanted to feed Hogan some monster heels in order to get him over or something. The Dungeon Of Doom consisted of Kamala, the Shark (John Tenta, also known as Earthquake or Golga), and Leslie as the Zodiac, with Sullivan managing. It would later also contain the Yeti.

By far, the lamest of the Dungeon Of Doom was the Zodiac. Basically,
his job was to run out to the ring whenever Hogan wrestled, and generally act annoying. He always had his arm cocked at a 90-degree angle, for reasons that are still a mystery to me. He would go out there during matches and yell Yes! No! Yes! Yes! No! Yes!, and so on, and basically make himself look like as big of an ass as possible. That was all he would ever say. Mean Gene would try to interview him and it would be No! Yes! No! Yes! Yes! Very annoying. Unfortunately, in professional wrestling, or at least in the old WCW, you play the cards you’re dealt with.

It is little wonder that the Dungeon Of Doom angle fell flat and no one took it seriously. It was this angle that made me decide that perhaps I should go back to watching the WWF. Leslie never had much luck after that with his gimmicks. He did a short stint as the Booty Man, and also as the Disciple, and I’m not really sure where he went after that. Last I heard of him, he was out there somewhere on the indy circuit. He may have retired by now. It’s a shame,
though. You get right down to it, he was a decent wrestler. Not great, but not bad, and surely the WCW could have found a better way to use him. Then again, that’s pretty much the case with all these bad gimmicks. Decent or good wrestlers who get handed an impossibly stupid gimmick and told to make it work, and then their careers get flushed down the toilet. Unfortunately, it happens
way too often, even today.

This is another extremely popular segment that I do, called Bitch Of The Week. Basically, the way it works is every week, I pick five women of wrestling. The readers rank them 1-5, with one being the best, and either email me or reply in the thread with their results. The next week, I announce the winner, who gets her picture posted in my column. Since there was no column last week, there was also no contest. I will, however, announce the results of the previous week’s contest, which was won by the lovely Torrie
Wilson. Torrie, who also won the inaugural Bitch Of The Week contest, is now the first-ever multiple winner of the award.

The last week of every month, all that month’s weekly winners square off in a Bitch Of The Month contest, with the winner getting her picture in the column for the entire next month. The current Bitch Of The Month is Trish Stratus, who won an EXTREMELY tight race, beating out Stacy Keibler by only three points to win the November BOTM title. You will notice that neither woman’s picture appears here, due to LOP rules. If you want to view the winners, you need to check out the copy in the Columns Forum. Believe me, it is well worth it.

So now it’s on to this week’s Bitch Of The Week contest. The five choices you have are:

Lita
Stacy Keibler
Francine
Stephanie McMahon
Kimberly Page

Rank them 1-5, with one being the best, and the winner will be posted
next week. You can either email me your votes, or you can reply in the thread in the Columns Form. Please remember that you cannot just vote for one girl, you have to actually rank them-this is for the purpose of breaking ties, which tend to happen frequently in this contest. The winner will be entered into the December Bitch Of The Month contest, but cannot win another Bitch Of The Week until one month has passed. My apologies to anyone who feels that this contest
is objectifying women. To be honest, I really don’t care, since anyone who would take things that seriously needs to get a life. This column is basically my own little testosterone tantrum, and it is an extremely popular segment, so it ain’t going nowhere.

Well, that’s it for this week’s edition of That Damn Good. Once again, I’d like to thank my fellow columnists for giving me the opportunity to spend a little time on the main page, and I’d like to thank all the first-time readers
who stuck it out through this column. I know it’s rather lengthy, but I have a lot to say, and I enjoy saying it. It was tough to squeeze this one in between shifts at work, but somehow I managed, and I hope you enjoyed it. Any and all feedback is welcome, feel free to email me or reply to the copy of this column that is located on the Columns section of the message board. You guys all have a great week, and remember that yes, I am THAT DAMN GOOD.

-The Cerebral Assassin
tlombard@ufl.edu

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