From The Other Side
Posted by TWV Guest Columnists
on 10/26/2006
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Guest Column By Raul Smith
Before I get started on what could very well be an emotional column for me personally, I need to clarify a couple of things very quickly.
First of all, I apologize for not writing a column for the past few weeks. I've been rehabbing a knee injury that I mysteriously suffered one night in my sleep. I don't want to go into too much detail with it because I don't want to intertwine my personal life too much into my columns. Believe me when I tell you, my friends and family will be made aware of the situation in general very soon, some of which even read this column.
Second, regarding my "future world champions list," somebody e-mailed me informing me that somebody that I've had on the bubble for the last several weeks, CM Punk, won the Ring of Honor Championship belt before appearing on ECW. Now under the current wrestling promotion format, until somebody else steps up and becomes a major promotion, the only four belts I would expect somebody to win to no longer be considered a future champion, but rather a former or current champion would be the WWE Championship (currently held by John Cena), the ECW World Championship (currently held by Big Show), the World Heavyweight Championship (currently held by King Booker), and the NWA World Heavyweight Championship (congratulations are in order to the new NWA Champion, Sting, defeating Jeff Jarrett last Sunday). And, by the way, take CM Punk off the bubble; he's in! CM Punk is now on the same list as Shelton Benjamin, Samoa Joe, Carlito, and Bobby Lashley. In fact, I may go out on a limb and say that out of those five, Samoa Joe could very well win a world championship first, especially if his impending program with Kurt Angle goes as well as everybody anticipates.
Which brings me to why I've decided to take time out of my ever-so-busy schedule to vent some steam with all of you because aside from my brother, who's having major issues of his own at the moment anyway, involving a custody battle that's getting uglier by the day, who better to do so with than all of you?
Here I was, three weeks ago, saying to all of you how badly WWE has gotten in terms of their storylines and their creative team. Well, their creative team, which really isn't a team but more or less just "yes-men" for the McMahons, just went way down in my book after watching their programming the last two weeks.
What made me sour on WWE's creative team even worse than it's already gotten, you ask?
Was it how they've been mishandling Jeff Hardy? Not really. In fact, I'm shocked and pleasantly surprised as to how they've handled Jeff Hardy. Right now, he's the Intercontinental Champion and far exceeding even my expectations.
Was it how they ended the World Heavyweight Championship match between Batista and King Booker in a disqualification win for Batista? Not really. In fact, I was expecting that. Like they're going to have any of those three championships change hands
before Cyber Sunday and the Triple-Threat "Champion of Champions" match.
Was it how they continue to make the new ECW look like a complete farce of the old ECW? All I have to say about that is for all you die-hard old-school ECW fans that read this column, take a hint from a guy who refused to partake on the new ECW, Rhino: "ECW is dead." What else is there to say but that? You had to know the minute they announced that ECW was being re-launched that it was never going to be the same company. All it was intended to be was a third brand, simple as that.
Well, what is it, Raul? Why are you so down lately on the creative team?
Well, I don't know. Why don't you go ask the boys in the locker room what they honestly felt about the Extreme Strip Poker segment on ECW? Go ask them if they were excited to see Candice and Maria wrestle around in skin-colored thongs. Oh, nice touch, WWE, by prepping that all week leading in by warning all of us several times that "parental discretion is strongly advised." Yeah, way to cover your hypocritical asses. Yeah, one minute you're saying that "nudity in any form is not okay," but you're advertising Extreme Strip Poker. Good luck with that.
Then you got some jackass on SmackDown! named Mike Mizanin hosting a dance-off in which the two judges are none other than Nick and Aaron Carter. Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't one of those two dorks, if not both of them, man-band members? Didn't one of them use to sing for the Backstreet Boys? And why, for the love of God, is "The Miz" singing? And, more importantly, why am I asking all of you? Like any of you know! I'm sorry; you already know my feeling on Mike Mizanin (just fire him now, WWE), but you could've brought back Luke Perry to judge a dance-off or better yet, brought in that one girl from Full House that has a PPV "pants-off dance-off" show of her own to judge, nobody would've cared, and I wouldn't have even brought it up! So why bring in the Carters?
Then, the coup-de-grate, the cherry on top, is this ridiculous, ludicrous, asinine idea (and those are the
nice things I can think of to describe this) to bring in Kevin Federline and to help promote his new album!
What the **** is that?!
It was bad enough that Vince McMahon suggest an incest storyline to his own daughter, just showing the type of person he is, but to bring in a wanna-be rapper, whose only claim to fame is banging Britney Spears and proving to the world just what unfit parents they both are, is nothing short of mind-numbing. I'm having difficulty understanding any of this at all. You want to promote a rap album? Fine; promote an album by Fabolous. I know he's in the hospital right now suffering from a gun shot wound caused by Boston Celtics guard Sebastian Telfair (allegedly), but I'm sure you can work something out. Or hell, maybe get on the phone with Jay-Z or, hell, I'll even take Ja Rule at this point. And, if all else fails, just get John Cena to make a second rap album. I'm sure he'll gladly do it. But Kevin Federline?
For the record, let me just say this: short of a humorous joke intended to belittle him even further,
I shouldn't be mentioning Kevin Federline in any of my columns for any reason, period! Not to mention, I shouldn't be hearing from both Jonathan Coachman and King Booker about how great his new album is. Trust me when I tell you, I'll take your word for it. I won't be buying it, I won't be listening to it, and I sure as hell won't even listen to any of his songs in any capacity. If they come on the local rap station, I will simply take the easy way out of it by changing the channel.
The moral of this story is I tune into a wrestling program to watch wrestling. I don't tune in to see girls strip each other to nothing more than skin-colored thongs and wrestle each other, I don't tune in to see reality show losers hosting dance-offs judged by more reality show losers, and I sure as hell don't tune in to see wanna-be jerk-off rappers hype themselves.
If I wanted to see women wrestle in skin-colored thongs and nothing more, trust me, I'm all over Showtime, HBO, or Cinemax, or hell, I'll just skip all of that and just go to the Playboy Channel. If I wanted to see reality show losers, I'll just watch Nashville Star, American Idol, The Bachelor, or any number of other crap-infested reality shows out there. If I wanted to see wanna-be jerk-off rappers, I'll just tune into MTV which clearly has a love affair for K-Fed and Justin Timberlake, who was seen getting just a little too friendly with his former band mate Lance Bass just the other day or so I've been told.
This right here is another perfect example of what Kurt Angle said at Bound for Glory this past Sunday:
"TNA is the best; screw the rest and you know who I'm talking about!"
In fact, come to think about it, maybe this is Vince McMahon taking his son-in-law's patented sledgehammer and hitting the panic button with it. This almost sounds to me a lot like Vince knows TNA is starting to gain serious ground on WWE and he doesn't want to lose any more ground, so as a desperation move, he seeks publicity in the form of K-Fed getting F-U'd by John Cena. That's what it sounds like to me. But as I said, there was a number of ways to gain such publicity. You don't need K-Fed to do it.
I mean, if that's his answer to Kurt Angle signing with TNA, I almost dread to see what his answer is to Chris Jericho signing with TNA. And no, don't e-mail me saying, "Oh, that'll never happen." You can put the Kool-Aid down and rest assured that if Fozzy's "Enemy" is the official theme song for TNA Bound for Glory, when before last week TNA only offered musical pieces from bands nobody has ever even heard of, Dixie Carter is in negotiations to bring Chris Jericho into TNA or she may have already struck a deal and Y2J's TNA debut is imminent. I mean, what would happen if Jericho did sign with TNA? Would Vince bring in the dirty crack-whore wife of K-Fed, the once-talented Britney Spears herself?
And people wonder why I was on here, as confident and as passionate about this as I was about anything in a long time, saying how TNA will eventually catch up with WWE and if WWE wasn't careful, TNA would pass them right by. Well, WWE is making the exact same type of mistakes that I had a feeling they would make and it's costing them dearly. It's practically turning the entire locker room on them and I would just laugh my ass off if at least two more big-name guys left WWE for TNA before the end of 2007. That would just make my day right there. Just say yes to Jeff Jarrett, Bret Hart. Give Vince a little payback.
Call me a TNA fan all you want, but I'll say to that now what I've always said: I am a wrestling fan first. I am not a fan of these types of publicity stunts used as desperation moves by Vince McMahon to counteract the signing of Kurt Angle to TNA. Vince McMahon and WWE are getting exactly what they deserve right now and trust me when I tell you they'll get more of that in the coming months. After what I heard about Vince from his DVD "McMahon," what I read about Vince from Kurt Angle talking about what really put Angle on the anonymous "death watch" (remember that?), and now this publicity stunt with K-Fed, I've lost all respect for Vince McMahon as a human being and as a promoter.
To make matters worse, now comes word that WWE is bringing in none other than "The Alpha Male" Monty Brown. Yeah, that'll show TNA! I'm sure Dixie Carter is having cold sweats at night now. Yeah, either that or she's on the phone with Trish Stratus, one of the two. If Monty Brown couldn't amount to much in TNA, what makes him or anybody else think that he'll amount to much in WWE? You know it's a bad sign when he walks right out of the arena last night in Chicago and only one fan noticed who he was. Not exactly the "big signing" to counteract Kurt Angle or Chris Jericho, now is it?
As for last Sunday's Bound for Glory PPV, quickly, top to bottom, one of the best PPVs I've ever seen. I've only seen two, maybe three TNA PPVs in the now-five-year history of the promotion, and this by far was the best out of all of them. Sure, there were some minor sound issues and cameras were acting a little funny during the pre-event show, but overall it was a great PPV, and not to pimp a replay in my column, but I highly recommend it for any true
wrestling fan to order the replay. You won't be disappointed.
Now, with all of that said, feel free to send me your questions, your comments, your concerns, your complaints, your compliments, and your emails, no matter how sour or sweet. Remember, I may not be able to write that many columns for now, as I'm rehabbing my knee, but that doesn't mean I won't respond to your emails. In the meantime, you are still encouraged to read, to learn, and to try TNA out one of these days. You never know who or what you'll see.
I'm taking this time to congratulate Kurt Angle in advance on becoming the soon-to be seven-time World Heavyweight Champion because the way TNA is building him up, he's bound to win the championship unless they give it to Chris Jericho first. I haven't seen this much build-up for a wrestler in TNA since Christian Cage.
If K-Fed can rap, hell, why can't I?
Eddie Guerrero 1967-2005
May you rest in peace, but never rest in our hearts
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RaulCBK@comcast.net.
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