Greetings, and welcome to What Were They Thinking?, where I examine the worst angles, gimmicks, matches, skits, characters, and everything else that can be bad in pro wrestling. Each entry will be ranked by a system of 'skulls' rather than 'stars'. Whereas getting several stars is a good thing, getting several skulls is a bad thing. The system works like this:
N 1 Skull = This wasn't too bad, but could have been better.
NN 2 Skulls = Step it up, people!
NNN 3 Skulls = Were you even trying with this one?
NNNN 4 Skulls = Oh, now you want us to change channels, don't you?
NNNNN 5 Skulls = Shoot me – SHOOT ME NOW!!!!!
Aside from the rankings, I'm also going to break down the item in question and give my own take on it. There will not be a set number of entries for every column; it mostly depends on what I feel deserves an entry. (Think of this as WrestleCrap without the shilling.) In this issue, we look at the October 1, 2007 edition of WWE RAW. There are quite a few reasons that I focus on this show and this show alone. First of all, I just could not wait a week to talk about it. Second, there was just so much material given that I had little choice; there's enough from this one episode to fill my column without drawing from anything else. It figures, though; the very week after I say how good things are going and that I'm expecting them to get better, BAM! Vinnie Mac pulls the ol' switcheroo. Speaking of Vince, he's pretty much the star of the column this week, so let's get started.
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RAW WARS: A New Ego
SKIT: RAW Opening
SYNOPSIS: Vince McMahon comes down to the ring where three men in singlets are already present. Two are in decent shape, the other is rather obese. We see replays of Vince "winning" the cage match against Triple H last week. Vince then tells us that the men in the ring are a multi-time amateur wrestling champion, a karate champion, and the Ohio State sumo wrestling champion, and then tells us that they are here for a demonstration of what is going to happen to Triple H later on. He removes his jacket and tie, starts to remove his shirt, then says that he won't be giving the demonstration. Out comes Umaga, greeted by enormous apathy. He waddles to the ring, then proceeds to demolish the three guys in the ring. Vince looks on sadistically.
ANALYSIS: Okay, first of all I have to point out that, while they do have amateur wrestling, Ohio State University does not have sumo wrestling. I checked their website and called a former co-worker of mine who was educated there, and he informed me that not only does OSU not have sumo wrestling, but that sumo is not practiced professionally anywhere in Ohio to his knowledge. I know the WWE isn't big on continuity, but this is unexcusable.
Secondly, this skit was so tasteless and bland that even Jim Ross and Jerry Lawler, who can normally make me feel partially excited about almost anything, were having to force themselves to sound enthusiastic about it. These men are lifelong wrestling fans, and one a former wrestler/promoter himself, and both have seen the worst that the business has to offer. So, when you manage to bore them, you've accomplished something (although not something to brag about, I assure you).
Third, this adds a completely new dimension to Vince's ego (hence the title for the entry), as now he's supposedly so good that he doesn't even have to fight and that his opponents will be defeated anyway. He's also saying that he's too good to actually dirty his hands with anyone (this was also seen in last week's cage match) and thus other people are fighting his battles. This is supposed to be a Triple H/Vince McMahon feud......and yet, Triple H is wrestling guys like Carlito and Umaga. Fight your own damned battles, Vince. You can put on a great match when you decide to; WrestleMania 19 proved that beyond any reasonable doubt. So why not actually do it? I can't begin to imagine what's going through your head most of the time (not that I'd want to, mind you), but when people watch a wrestling feud, they expect to see both parties involved actually wrestle. Hunter's done his part in that regard and if his past work rate is any indication will continue to do so, but all you've done is run your mouth and bury pushes that could have gone somewhere.
Finally, and this is something that Vince should have gotten by now, THE PEOPLE ARE BLOODY SICK AND TIRED OF THESE DAMNED MCMAHONS ON TV! Whenever one shows up, I just know something bad is in the works. Whether it be a terrible skit like this one, a gimmick so bad that Memphis City Wrestling would have been ashamed of it, or a match that guarantees a black mark on somebody's career, nothing good can come from a McMahon appearance, and that goes for any member of the family (I don't count Hornswaggle, as we all know he's not a real McMahon). If left to its own devices, a McMahon skit would normally give me an excuse to go make a sandwich if it didn't leave me so nauseated that I would be unable to keep said sandwich down. Now, if you get someone like Steve Austin, Mick Foley, Rob Van Dam, Shawn Michaels or Triple H involved and let them have free reign on the mic, you can salvage it and make it tolerable. But that's about the best you can do 99.999999999% of the time. This was no different. NNNNN
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More Pointless Stuff by Useless Women
LOGIC ERROR: The WWE Diva Search
SYNOPSIS: This speaks for itself; honestly.
ANALYSIS: Ah; we go through this every year. What can be said about it that hasn't already been said? Every year, there's a rash of releases as they try to compensate ahead of time for the cash they dump into promos, vignettes, stupid skits, and the paychecks for the talentless bimbos they end up using, not to mention the cost of the contract that one ends up getting signed to (and, of course, they end up signing about half the the "finalists" anyway, so they have to factor that in, as well). This year, the blow was a heavy one indeed, as the releases included a long-time fan favorite: the beer-swilling, cane-swinging, one-man wrecking crew of an ECW Original known as The Sandman. They usually do this around the beginning of the summer, so I was hoping that they'd ended it like the "Million-Dollar Tough Enough" competition, but, alas, we aren't that lucky.
Bad skits, talentless women, and releases of good wresters aside, this is worthy of mention for another reason: the main thing they try to emphasize about this years Search is that it's a WWE.Com exclusive. Yet.....what do we see every week? Several minutes of formerly-useful TV time taken up by the Diva Search. Now, I'm not expecting the WWE to be geniuses anymore (after all, these were the idiots that came up with The Condemned, the "new" ECW, The Great Khali, Jillian Hall, and everything involving John Cena), but shouldn't something that's exclusive to a website be available, I don't know, only on that website? Now, I can understand perhaps having J.R. and The King mention the Diva Search and telling you to go to the the site to check out the contestants, see their promos, cast your votes, etc, but what is the bloody point of having website-exclusive material if you're going to broadcast most of it on TV anyway? They have it right with HEAT and Velocity; those truly are web-exclusive. They don't announce them on television or show clips from them or anything. If you want to see them, you have to go to WWE.Com and look them up. It would be so simple to do this with the Diva Search. Now, rather than sound like an idiot, I actually watched the stuff on the Diva Search portion of the website, and guess what I saw? Pretty much the same stuff that I saw on RAW, only more drawn-out and even less interesting. Way to go, Creative; not only did you manage to take a bad idea and make it even worse this time around, but you also proved to us that you don't own a dictionary (what other reason could there be for not understanding what 'exclusive' means?). NNNNN
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RAW WARS: The Ego Strikes Back
MATCH: Mr. McMahon vs. Triple H
SYNOPSIS: McMahon makes his way to the ring, followed by Triple H, whose music is abruptly cut off by Vince. The Chairman then calls for a referee, and Carlito walks down wearing a ref's shirt. McMahon slaps Hunter around a bit while Carlito checks his kneepads. Trips moves in for an attack, but Carlito acts like a human shield for Vince, who ducks to the outside. Carlito then begins what must be the slowest ten-count in the history of wrestling. Hunter then chases Vince around the ring, McMahon slides in and then immediately goes out the other side. HHH catches him, smacking the billionaire's head into the announce table, then tossing him back into the ring, pushing Carlito down in the process. He goes for a Pedigree, but Carlito attacks him from behind. Vince covers, Carlito then starts one of the fastest three-counts I've ever seen, but Hunter still gets the shoulder up at two. Vince chokes out Trips in the corner; low blow, Carlito goes down, and that's it. McMahon wins by DQ.
ANALYSIS: Oh, puh-lease! This wasn't necessary at all. You wanna build the McMahon/Helemsley feud? Do a promo. Do a vignette. Have Hunter pulls some more DX-style pranks. Anything but this. You want a match between Hunter and Vince? Give it proper build time, then schedule a good match at a Pay-Per-View. But this is a classic example of Vince's thinking – waste valuable TV time on something nobody wants to see. Earlier in the show, he billed it as "a contest worthy of WrestleMania". I gotta tell ya – if this crapfest is a 'Mania-quality match, then the "biggest show of the year" is freakin' doomed right here and now. What this boils down to is McMahon stroking his own ego again. The difference is that now he seems to be doing twice in every show. 'Twas bad enough when he showed up just once, but now, apparently, he thinks we want to see more of him on television when the exact opposite is true. The only thing that this served to do was bury Hunter a little. Not by much, mind you, because The Game is ultra-over with the crowd, but if you've got a loss on your record to Vince, the first thing that springs to mind is "Well, Vinnie's got himself a new bitch", and HHH has accrued one for two weeks in a row now. Vince isn't even a wrestler; he's a businessman. That's like if Chuck Norris were to lose a martial arts contest to Bill Gates. It wouldn't do anything for either man, as anyone with a brain could see that Norris could literally kill Bill (pun intended) with one kick if he wanted to. Norris would be seen as a guy who deliberately lost to a weiner, and Gates would earn the hatred of every martial arts and Walker: Texas Ranger fan in the world for making Chuck job out. The situation is the same with Hunter and Vince. We've got a guy literally in the prime of his life jobbing out to a man in his sixties who obviously doesn't read, much less follow, his own so-called "Wellness Policy" (more on that in a bit). The only thing that this proves is that Vince's desire to be the center of attention knows no bounds, as now his son-in-law is being made a fool of just to make McMahon look a little better. NNNNN
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Cena Wins.....Again......Yippee
MATCH: Mr. Kennedy vs. WWE Champion John Cena (non-title match)
SYNOPSIS: Standard back-and-forth action with the fans going into dueling chants (unless I miss my guess, as usual the women were cheering for Cena while the guys cheering for the guy with the actual talent). Cena gets slammed into the steps, then, after the break, Kennedy DDTs Cena who pretty much no-sells it by kicking out of the following pin attempt, then fighting out of a rear chinlock and going for the STFU and (sadly) the win.
ANALYSIS: Ugh; I'm as sick of seeing Cena on this damned TV as I am of the McMahons. I cannot say it enough; I absolutely hate this guy. In the English language, there exist no words that adequately cover just how much I loathe the WWE's two-bit Vanilla Ice wannabe. His shtick was stale when he started as a heel on SmackDown!, it was even worse as a face on SmackDown!, and it's reached new levels of staleness on RAW. People gripe about Goldberg, Sid Vicious, Kevin Nash, and a few others as having limited movesets, but Cena's no better. I have yet to see this guy do anything truly innovative or noteworthy. Let me see him do a Swanton, or a jumping swinging DDT, or a 360° flipping piledriver, or something to give an indication that he's actually been trained because, frankly, I don't believe it for a minute. And who pays the biggest price here? Not the fans, who can change the channel or go get a snack while he's "wrestling" (note quotation marks). No, it's whoever is forced to job out to him. This week's sacrificial lamb is Mr. Kennedy, without a doubt the most talented heel on RAW right now. Kennedy could go far working matches against fan favorites like Hunter or Hardcore Holly, or he could turn face and work programs with Carlito, Shelton Banjamin, or Randy Orton. Instead, he gets his career buried a little at a time by Cena. You can forget a title push or big-time angle now, Kennedy; if the suspension wasn't a big enough clue, then this only cements it. You're being punished, and it's probably not ending any time soon.
Another problem I have with Cena is his "promos" (again, note quotation marks). There have been very few times he's said anything worth hearing, much less entertaining. He pretty much recycles the same stuff that's been done since the 50's; "I'm the greatest", "Nobody can beat me", "This was just business but you made it personal", yadda yadda yadda. But this latest one was the worst; the last time I saw anyone's face distorted that much was either with a broken limb or extremely bad constipation. Between the yelling and the scrunched-up face, I half-expected his hair to become yellow and spiky and his eyes to turn blue. Here's a tip, Cena: get some freaking acting lessons and watch the promos of guys that can actually, you know, pull them off. Seeing a no-talent hack like this every week just reinforces my view that the WWE is on the slow train to Hell. I saw this exact same stuff in WCW while they were on their way out. Don't believe me? Look at some of the stuff they wrote in that era. They had guys like Lance Storm and Mike Awesome who were magic with a microphone, yet they wrote the worst stuff for them to say. And they gave an open mic to guys that could barely string together the words to make an order at McDonald's, much less make for riveting TV (case in point, the Harris Brothers). They also pushed those with little to no talent into title pictures while those who were either proven Champions or up-and-comers that could have taken the mantle languished in Jobberland. I see no viable future for a WWE where Cena is a top guy, and, in all honesty, I hope that this does make them fail. 'Course, they probably won't realize that it was their fault and blame it on the fans for "not getting it". Also, according to the latest news reports, Cena may have been legitimately torn his right pectoral muscle. All I can say is that, if this is true, he could be out for weeks, which is potentially the best news to come out of Stamford that I can ever remember hearing. This may sound cold, but I'm frankly beyond caring; if he is hurt, then I hope that it's much worse than they think and that, with this, his career is over, as I'm sick of seeing that hack on my TV. The longer he's on the air, the less hope I have that the WWE will ever improve. NNNNN
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RAW WARS: Return of the Ego
LOGIC ERROR: The Steroid Suspensions
SYNOPSIS: As we all know, last month Vince suspended several wrestlers for either thirty- or sixty-day periods, depending on how many previous infractions they had incurred, due to them being named in the Signature Pharmacy scandal. These included (but were not limited to) William Regal King Booker, Chavo Guerrero, Mr. Kennedy, Chris Masters, and Umaga.
ANALYSIS: This is all fine and dandy, but, Vinnie, I think you missed a few things here. Orton, first of all. He was on the Signature Pharmacy list and is more jacked than Regal's been in years. Yet, not only is he not getting suspended, he's getting multiple WWE Championship shots. Booker and Masters I can get, but Chavo? On steroids? Get outta here. If he's doing 'roids, then I'm a frilled lizard. This is another case of Vince panicking, but it's compounded by the fact that he conveniently overlooked someone who clearly violates the "Wellness Policy".
Himself. Yeah; I said it. Vince is a hypocrite. I doubt he's even read the damned policy, and he sure as Hell doesn't follow it. I don't care how much you work out, nobody in his sixties is gonna get that much muscle just from exercise. At best, you might be able to keep from getting flabby, but that's about it. To get that kind of look at that age, you're either on steroids, having cosmetic surgery, or both. Take a look at him; sure, his arms and torso might be ripped, but his legs are more or less normal; exactly the look a 'roid-popper gets. For comparison, I give you Exhibits A and B: Randy Savage and Scott Steiner. Both of these guys used to look natural and it would have been believable that they worked out worked out a lot, but now nothing on them is proportional. They look so bloody top-heavy that you wonder how long they'll be able to stay balanced. Vince has this same look to him. Albeit he's not as bad as those two, but it's enough to tell the difference.
The message this sends is clear: Vince is the boss, so he can get away with whatever he damned well pleases. He's the owner, the chairman, and is apparently not subject to his own regulations. Steph may have gotten a boobjob and Linda most likely has had at least one facelift and a few Botox injections, but those are minor things. And I might give Shane a hard time, but at least he doesn't look like he stuck an air hose in his torso and turned on a pump. No, Vince is the worst kind of hypocrite; not only does he not practice what he preaches, but he does it so blatantly that everyone knows about it. He does this because he's egotisical and self-absorbed enough to believe that he's above any sort of reproach or penalty. Keep telling yourself that, Vince, because eventually, you're going to get nailed and maybe, just maybe, if you practice saying it enough, you might convince a lawyer or judge. But you'll never convince me. NNNNN
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And there you have it; my most negative column ever about one of the worst shows I've seen in a long time. There was just so much wrong here that it took almost ten pages to cover it all. I could have had a decent column just with the McMahon stuff alone, but I couldn't let the Diva Search or Cena situations slip by. As always, feedback is appreciated and I'll try to answer within 24 hours of receiving your e-mail.
