If anyone has an original opening paragraph to a pre-Wrestlemania column then email it to me because I’m convinced they’ve all been done before. ‘Eight days away from the biggest WWE night of the year...’ is a little clichéd, ‘The showcase of the immortals...’ was never that impressive anyway and don’t even get me started on that ‘The grand daddy of them all...’ crap or I’ll puke. Even at the best of times it’s egotistical to think that writing what you think justifies some sort of pseudo-journalistic pretensions but when everyone else is doing it on the same subject in 1,700 less words (but far more clearly) then you wonder if you’re wasting your time. I can’t bring myself to share with you my Wrestlemania predictions because they’re like nipples (we all have them but you seem far more keen to show them to eachother than I do) which just leaves me with analysing the individual matches and anyone who watched Wrestlemania 12 knows that a good card on paper doesn’t always equate to an enjoyable PPV. I guess I might as well do what I normally do – turn as many positives into negatives as I can and throw in a few Mark Henry jokes. Come on, you know you love it really.
Firstly, I’m hearing a lot of people saying that the WWE has missed a trick not going out of their way to get Hogan, Rock, Austin or a few others to appear in advertised matches on the card and that the event lacks a certain ‘star power’ as a result. Whilst The Rock is obviously more of a long shot as he’s not finished being a movie star yet (alright, who laughed?) I still haven’t ruled out the possibility of Hogan elbowing his shitty brown body into a spot on the PPV and Austin’s presence at the Hall of fame ceremony guarantees him suitable proximity that Vince won’t be able to resist levering him onto the show somehow. But I’m fascinated by this idea that we should worship at the feet of guys who put themselves and their wallets over the best interests of the fans, the company and their successors and dull the spotlight on performers like Orton, Mysterio or Cena because they’re names don’t carry the same weight. You can denigrate Finlay, Flair or Foley all you want because of their respective ages but their intention in remaining active or semi-active is to put over the younger talent and not turn up once a year to rekindle whatever gloss their careers once had. With the exception of Foley (who is the measuring stick of decency in wrestling) I’m glad that this year’s Wrestlemania combatants have been pooled from the active roster and it should be a chance to see what the WWE performers of 2006 can do on their biggest stage and it will be a solid start for a lot of guys who are trying to cement a strong foundation for their future pushes. Hogan deserved our respect and when he got it he used it and his own grotesque family to whore it off for even more money. As for Austin, he’s taken his ball and gone home so many times that his doorbell yells “touchdown!” when you ring it. The only real saving grace is that Scott Steiner has crawled out of his grave to resurface in TNA and Goldberg is still busy waiting for the wrestling public to want to see him win 100 plus matches using only three moves again so we’ll be spared paying good money to see their selfish asses at a major show anytime soon. Contrary to popular belief, star power isn’t a trophy that you get to keep. It should be handed down with care and consideration to those who are earning it right now and that duty falls to us fans. Celebrate Hogan and his ilk for what they were but when he asks Vince how high up the card he’ll be wrestling at Wrestlemania, remind him that his peel-off moustache has more life left in it than he does and introduce him to whichever future superstar he’ll be losing to this year.
I’m finding it difficult to take a stance on the large number of stipulation matches at Wrestlemania. The late addition of the McMahon/HBK no holds barred idea, on top of an already gimmick heavy card including a casket match, a six-man ladder match, a hardcore match, a pillow fight and an inter-gender handicap match, is a sign that Vince perceives the undercard to be a little light on substance. More worryingly, gimmick matches have been predominantly used in the past to spice up the tricky second PPV match of a three-contest feud but these are all either first meetings or isolated bouts. Big picture aside for a moment, you won’t find much opposition to the conclusion that the Undertaker/Henry match will benefit from not being a straight wrestling contest (though if I was Taker, I’d tell Henry that the casket is full of cakes and the chubby sod will throw himself through the lid just to get at all the creamy goodness). In fact, you’ll notice that the only four matches on the card not involving a quirky angle to help hold the audience’s interest are the title bouts. It is refreshing in this disposable society that fans still want to see a solid, thirty-minute pro-wrestling match and on that note the two main events shouldn’t disappoint unless your preconceptions about any of the five performers involved overrides your enjoyment of what the WWE does best. I guess the best way to determine how much the stipulations are covering for a lack of actual wrestling talent is to take them away and see how that four-hour card holds up under scrutiny. As far as I can see, all of the stipulated matches would be considered potential duds for one reason or another if wrestled as straight encounters, the only possible exception being McMahon/HBK and that would only be saved by the storyline. Also, without the crowd heat that good healthy bumps induce, the PPV would most certainly get slower and quieter as it wore on and the title matches would suffer as a result. So whilst it’s not a good sign for mat wrestling, the gimmick matches will add more to Wrestlemania than they will take and, seeing as Vince has been reluctant to sell his soul completely to the gods of crash tv at his showcase event in the past, it should make for a fast and furious 230 minutes.
I’m still a little concerned that some fans are putting two and two together to make five, especially with regard to something like the pillow fight. Whilst it is a disappointment that MNM, the cruiserweights or Regal and Burchill won’t be wrestling on the show, this idea that they have been bumped for Candice and Torrie lightly hitting eachother with soft cushions just doesn’t make sense. The spot occupied by the divas is a break from the wrestling, a chance for guys to stretch out and relieve any stiffness (I mean from sitting for so long but you can take it to mean what you want). Unless your desire is to see Chavo and Snitsky strolling around in bras and thongs (hey, whatever raises your flag, son) then this bit of the show was never meant for them and the reason for most of the absenteeism from the PPV is down to a lack of interest in their division by management or a lack of favourable crowd reaction to their performances on television. The same, although slightly differently, applies to The Boogeyman. Considering the guy has barely wrestled on Smackdown you could question whether his place at Wrestlemania has been earned or not. But he’s not there because he can out wrestle London or Helms (which he can’t). He’s there because he’s over like Stacey Keibler’s WWE career and if the fans tell Vince that they want to see something, he has a nasty little habit of showing it to them (in both senses of the word). Protest with purity all you want but ratings don’t lie and sex/violence/horror sell better than technical matches any night of the week. As long as one doesn’t replace the other completely then I can allow other people their enjoyment. Plus, I can always polish my rod while the pillow fight is going on (no seriously, I haven’t cleaned it since I last went fishing).
I know that I said in the opening paragraph that I wasn’t going to make any result predictions (and I’ll stand by that promise) but I can’t resist making some predictions at things I think definitely WON’T happen at Wrestlemania this year. Might as well start with the obvious, I don’t think Mark Henry is going to end Undertaker’s win streak. And nor should he. I don’t think Bret Hart is going to interfere in the McMahon/HBK match and ring the bell on Vince while he’s in the sharpshooter. The irony would be nice but I think Bret has way too much invested in this wounded soldier thing he’s got going. Flair won’t take a bump off a ladder, but he could potentially get a nasty blanket burn during his chair-lift ride to the ring. I don’t think the pre-PPV warm up bout will be Stephanie McMahon against Angelina Jolie in a ‘Foetus on a pole’ match (though I do think Stephanie will go into labour during the show and she’ll give birth to Test who amazingly has been stuck inside her for a year trying to tunnel his way out with his chipmunk-like overbite). I don’t think Palumbo will be a surprise entrant into the ‘Money in the bank’ match, even though he wrongly thinks it’s a euphemism for anal. I have a strange feeling that Eugene won’t gatecrash the main event accompanied by Perry Saturn and George Steele to form the RWO (Retard World Order). And before this gets stupid (before?) I think that, halfway through his match with Vince, Michaels WILL be arrested for showing traces of a substance which is banned in the WWE. Polyester.
Before I get any (more) complaints, I’ll concede that I’ve been a little childish today. Maybe I’m tired or stressed out. It could be that cocktail of prescription drugs and mug of HBK’s piss I took earlier. Either way, I think the point is in there somewhere. Right now, this is the best it’s going to get from the WWE and, rather than wishing it could be different, we should give it the chance to excite or disappoint as it happens. Despite the fact that the lucky bitch is going to the actual event, Linda Robin (of the eponymous ‘Linda’s Thoughts’) has deigned fit to allow me my twice yearly PPV discussion with her, which I will be posting as a column sometime in the week after the show. US/UK spellcheckers at the ready kids, it could be a bumpy ride.
Lee
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