Category: Wrestling Musings

So I am currently working to restore the 2003 Bite commentaries to the archive and I came across this tidbit from the January 15th, 2003 edition of the Bite.

I’ve purchased the March 2003 issue of Pro Wrestling Illustrated. One particular piece in it is called Talkin’ Trash. Supposedly, they take the ten most talked-about things in wrestling and sum up their gut reaction. For the first time ever, I’ll put three of those topics here and follow it up with my own brief comment.

VINCE MCMAHON MENTIONS POSSIBILITY OF BRINGING BACK ECW
PWI states: Yeah, that’s exactly what we need, a third half-assed brand under the WWE banner.
Dave Says: If Vince McMahon mentions a possibility of bringing back ECW, there’s an even better possibility he’s full of shit. Remember all that talk about bringing back WCW in June 2001 before the Invasion crap?

Five years later and what do we have? A half-assed brand under the WWE banner that happens to bare the ECW initials but has nothing to do with the original ECW product, thus not bringing back anything and proving that Vince was indeed full of shit.

Bow, puny fools. Bow before me… and PWI.

(2024 Update: To be fair, the fact that ECW turned out to be less of a revival of the “original” ECW and more of a reskinned bottom-tier WWE show shouldn’t have been much of a surprise to anyone with even a quarter-functioning brain who has followed WWE on and off air for ages. Neither the Apter mags nor the Meltzer rags were required to make this prediction in the first place.)

WWE has apparently signed a deal with Mattel as far as toys are concerned. Meanwhile, Jakks Pacific, the company doing the WWE toys now, has signed a deal with TNA to do their toys. Just what we always needed; Barbie in a Diva Search contest. The sad thing is Barbie could very well be the most talented Diva of the bunch should she enter.

Sadly, both of these deals are expected to take affect in 2010.

(2024 Update: We took this piss out of this deal happening, but the WWE/Mattel relationship continues to be a beneficial one as of this brief update. The TNA/Jakks Pacific deal, on the other hand? Not so much. Oh well. Maybe they can fire that up again now that TNA is no longer a joke… or not. Whatever. I don’t care.)

You know the funny thing about hype? Chances are you’ll never live up to it.

I say this about Brock Lesnar: he had put up a good fight for a minute there, even getting a foul for a shot to the back of the head. Unfortunately, all it took was a simple little leglock from Frank Mir to put down the former WWE champion. It was a complete embarrassment of a fight and one of the reasons why I prefer watching “scripted” entertainment as opposed to a real fight.

In any event, I went past the Brock match and tried to watch the rest of the show, on which a friend of mine foolishly blew fifty bucks on and taped the event for me. Other than a few quick moments, I couldn’t really get into the show. It just seems like after watching a bunch of sports-entertainers trying to make scripted entertainment seem real for a whole bunch of years, I’d expect a real fight to even more intense, only to be sorely disappointed as I watch two grown men in their boxers swatting each other like flies with about as much ferocity as a ball of cotton. Maybe I prefer my action to be scripted.

But let’s get back to Brock for a minute. Obviously his first UFC outing didn’t turn out too well, as after a minute of solid punches, he was caught in a leglock and forced to tap out. While I mentioned this already in a previous blog post, Brock is far from the next big choke. It’s his first match and naturally, you can’t win them all. But from the short time he was offensive, he didn’t look like a complete idiot and may do very well in his new UFC career.

So best of luck, Brock.

(2011 Update: May do very well? Brock Lesnar would eventually win the UFC World championship; the only guy to hold the top championship in both WWE and UFC… I severely doubt anybody else is going to repeat that feat.)

This is a thing. Mind blown.

Don’t know if anyone realized it, but today marks the one-year anniversary of John Worthless’ reign of terror as WWE Champion. Don’t know if anyone actually cares, either.

Apparently, family emergencies doesn’t fair too well when having a career in WWE. It was recently announced that WWE had released former TNA/ECW star Marcus Cor Von (Monty Brown) and developmental talent/former TNA star Sonny Siaki. That’s just too bad.

Apparently, Eric Bischoff is back in power and I didn’t know about it.

So last night, at TNA’s Hard Justice PPV, TNA World champion Kurt Angle defeated X-Division/Tag Team champ Samoa Joe to win all the TNA Titles. This happened due to Angle’s wife pulling a swerve on Joe that was so predictable you had to be a total idiot not to see it coming.

What happened to being the wrestling alternative? The thing that was DIFFERENT from WWE, not copying the same bullshit. Instead, we’ve got a bunch of stupid storylines for the sake of being stupid. WWE’s storylines tend to be pretty moronic as well, but at least they end up producing entertaining matches even at the expense of young, fresh talent. Instead, TNA is slowly becoming a second coming of WCW. I mean, it absolutely boggles the mind how progressively bad they’re becoming.

All that talent and they have to push this shit down our throats? That’s just sad.

Then I watch their TNA Today Youtube show which took place at the tail end of their shitty PPV and you have Mike Tenay and Don West complimenting Kurt Angle on his wonderful swerve, suckering everyone into almost feeling sorry for you. Congratulations, guys. I never thought it possible, but you’ve won idiots of the year award… and the year’s not even over yet!

No wonder – Mike Tenay isn’t wearing his signature bow tie. Probably got released from its contractual obligations.

(2024 Update: I got around to watching this show recently. You can check my thoughts here.)

Anyone up for a funny story? Yeah, me neither, but here goes nothing.

So last Friday, I picked up the WWE book, Big Apple Takedown. For those who don’t know, it’s a novel about WWE Superstars as government agents to bust a drug ring. It is a concept that is absolutely absurd and can only be conceived within the somewhat delusional WWE universe that the company occupies.

So I pick up a copy of the book and gave it a quick read for a bit before dozing off to bed. Yes, the concept is as absurd as you’d think and comes off even moreso when you read the first couple chapters explaining the backstory behind this thing.

The next morning, I wake up with a goddamn flu.

It’s horrible, it lasts through the whole weekend, it keeps me in bed for a good chunk of it, and I ended up staying at home as a result… which is totally fine by me. The weather is kinda shit at the moment.

So Saturday’s sudden flu attack had consisted of lots of coughing, a slight fever, and a running nose (not that kind of running, dumbass). Despite extended hours of sleep, said flu apparently got worse the following Sunday as my slight fever became much worse and I had lost all energy to move. It was an effort to just to make it to the bathroom which is only a few feet across and it usually doesn’t take much to go there from the minute I wake up. As a result, I had to skip work yesterday… which meant another number of hours staring at a fucking ceiling.

Of course, after a while, the bedroom got too hot and it was thought it wouldn’t be a good idea to have me lay there. So I put on some warm clothes and made my way to my den (where all the computer stuff is) and just aimlessly browse the Internet. As time passed and many forms of medication were taken, the fever died down with only a sore throat and snotting nose remaining. Not much, but better compared to how I was feeling that morning.

So I went back to work. Business as usual. Now the coughing’s been  dropped down a bit thanks to some timely interference from Halls and some cough syrup. It’s still a long way to a full recover, but it shouldn’t take any longer than the end of the week to get there.