wrestling / Columns
The Cheers ‘n Jeers of Wrestling 9.14.08
Greetings and salutations once again, or for the first time (choose whichever applies), I’m Michael O and this is The CHEERS and JEERS of Wrestling, keepin’ it the fuck real for 5 whole installments now. Yes siree, it’s the one month anniversary!
Gosh, it feels like it was only four weeks ago that I was cheering Orton for the Summerslam run in he never wound up making and Killer Kowalski for still being alive. I could reminisce all day. What’s the significance of a one-month anniversary you ask? Nothing, really, but Lansdell just got to celebrate his one year mark and I wanted to get in on the fun.
Anyways, I’d like to hand out an honorary one month anniversary CHEERS to MVP, who may still be in the WWE doghouse, but whose future has never looked brighter with an upcoming biopic starring Will Smith. With the critical acclaim already piling up for The Wrestler, studios have been quick to create and cast another film about our favorite fake sport and early word has it that next year’s M.V.P. might finally give Will Smith the Oscar that’s eluded him thus far.
On with the cheers…
CHEERS
to Matt Hardy on becoming the new ECW champion at Unforgiven. I consider it a stretch to call it a “world” title, but nonetheless the ECW championship is the top belt of the WWE’s third brand and a definite milestone in the career of Matt. It could be for ECW as well, which has really gotten it’s act together as a whole in the last year, consistently churning out quality matches and solid storylines after a fairly rocky first 18 months or so, and having a man as popular as Matt Hardy at the helm is a definite plus.
The fledgling brand seems to have finally found it’s niche as the televised breeding ground for tomorrow’s stars (as well as a testing ground for future “super”stars) and Matt, who has had his own share of ups and downs, seems to have finally found his chance to run at the top the WWE. Or at least pretty damn close to it.
Make no mistake, both V.3.0 (right?) and ECW as a whole have the chance to be taken a lot more seriously in 2009 and it’s fitting that Hardy has gone from dating the third biggest slut ever in wrestling (I think Missy Hyatt and Triple H retain their ill repute) to holding the third biggest championship in the WWE.
JEERS
to getting a black eye in a fist fight with your daughter’s boyfriend, which is what happened to Ric Flair last week. I don’t know all the details, but I do know his daughter was tasered and arrested and that the boyfriend is lucky Hunter wasn’t with Ric or he’d still be picking his teeth out of a sledgehammer. I highly doubt this incident will be a black eye on Ric’s legacy (get it?), but this is hardly the sort of thing a retired “Nature Boy” would want to have his name in the papers for.
CHEERS
to Manu (for long time ask 411 readers, no, not that one) and “The All-American, American” Jack Swagger (no, that’s not a typo) for making impressive debuts in the WWE, which is becoming an increasingly difficult thing to pull off. For reasons I haven’t quite been able to figure out yet, we’ve seen a lot of newcomers lately with bland names, sporting jobber chic attire and more often than not doing the big “J” in their world premiers.
Manu made a sudden impact when he showed up at Unforgiven and I didn’t actually see Swagger’s debut, but he has a name that isn’t evocative of “journeymen”, as they used to be called, and he actually won his match so he’s got that going for him too. Maybe the WWE realized that colorful names and winning streaks might make people care more about new wrestlers.
Who’d a thunk it?
JEERS
to Hurricane Ike for stickin’ it to Reliant Stadium in Houston, which is of course home to next year’s Wrestlemania. Apparently some structural damage was caused, forcing a delay to tomorrow’s, uh, I mean, today’s football game but the venue should have no problems hosting the Grandest Daddy of them all come next spring. Of course, should that change (or should WWE see sluggish ticket sales, unlikely as that may be) and Wrestlemania must be held elsewhere, at least we’ve got a better excuse handy than a fuckin’ bomb scare. It should be noted that the author, though quite young at the time, did totally buy that bomb scare excuse.
CHEERS
to Monday Night RAW for having Chris Jericho take on CM Punk in cage match, providing me with a “big-time” match that I’ve been able to look forward to all week. Unless we find ourselves masterfully bait-and-switched right out of it, in which case, JEERS.
JEERS
to the WWE for canceling the three disc Starrcade set that was meant for shelves later this year, alternatively supplying us with 3 discs of Kane. So, basically, instead of getting to add stuff like Ric Flair vs. Harley Race, Sting and Vader to your DVD collection, you’ll be able to get the 2001 Royal Rumble (I’m assuming that’s here and accounting for the third disc as Kane once said that was his favorite match and he hasn’t had a ton of what I would call “must-have classics” in the interim) and 18 or 19 Undertaker matches. I like Kane, and I’d probably even pick up his DVD if I saw it somewhere sometime and it was cheap and I felt like buying it, but the “Best of Starrcade” set was something I was actually looking forward to, being that I was weaned on WWF and have plenty of never-before-seen Starrcade action to look forward to.
No word yet on whether the Starrcade DVD has been postponed or scrapped altogether.
I was going to give a CHEERS to Kurt Angle for dodging a DUI bullet, but then I realized that would just be further adding to, in Kurt’s words, society’s problem of perceiving Kurt as having been driving under the influence whether he was or not, and I don’t want to do that.
JEERS
to Impact, the new TNA video game that apparently does an even worse job of competing with the Smackdown series than TNA does with the WWE. To be fair, I have yet to play the game myself but the reviews have been overwhelmingly negative and unlike movies or music where taste is a lot more subjective, I find video game reviews to be fairly universal and a decent barometer of whether a game is good or not. As I always say to the ladies… by all means, go ahead and try it out, but from what I understand you’ll be in for a pretty under whelming experience.
to Chris fuckin’ Jericho for leaving Unforgiven as the new World Heavyweight champion. In spectacularly cheap fashion, Y2J appeared in the final five minutes of the Scramble match and stole a quick pinfall at the last second, sav.ing us from CM Punk‘s already tired reign and all the tiresome IWC bitching about how poorly it’s been booked in one fell swoop. Jericho hasn’t rocked a World title reign since Wrestlemania 18 and in my opinion could’ve been in danger of receiving a pretty decent pop had he won the title in an actual match against the champ, which would have done Punk less favors than his “concussion” and subsequent removal from the Scramble.
to ME for not having anything to give the JEERS of the week to. Or maybe I should JEER the fact that nothing that happened in the past week struck me as egregious enough to warrant such a severe sentence. Better luck next time.
What’s good in the hood or this is what I read on 411 today:
THE ONLY NEWS REPORT FOCUSED SOLELY ON THE BUSINESS OF WRESTLING
That just about brings this little party to an end. Sir Stephen Randle will be by later with the news sexperience and while you wait for that, uh, I don’t know. Call your Mom and tell her you love her. Or something. Toodles.
