If I’ve ever put together some splattered babblings…this is it! So now that the first ever live Smackdown! is over, let’s get down to the fundamentals. After that, we’ll give ourselves a gander at Tough Enough and what’s left of a once, semi-decent prospect crew.
I don’t know what is worse with the WWF right now. The fact that I still have to watch guys like Palumbo and O’Haire or the fact that I have to watch guys like Raven, Regal, Jericho, and Rhyno settle for second and third rate places on the card. Let’s get something straight about Palumbo, O’Haire, Sanders, Jindrak, etc. They are probably the best young group of prospects that the WWF has ever had (I think that they might have an edge over the Venis, Christian, Edge, etc crop that the WWF Talent Relations crew cranked out a few years ago). However, not only are they lacking in personality, but I’ll be honest – I didn’t like watching these guys on Turner-WCW and I didn’t tune in because of it. Ratings dropped because Russo and the like just took these rookies with incredible physiques and pushed them down our throats…not a good thing to do. No, I’m not the only one out there who matters when it comes to their opinion, but it seems like a whole legion of WCW fans felt somewhat the same way – I mean since the new age wrestlers were introduced in the Turner-WCW, ratings went straight to hell and they folded. Now take our friends Edge, Christian, and Val Venis (among others). All of them are past multiple champions in different categories, but they have a huge difference over the WCW crew that is getting TV time as we speak. They were all given a chance to develop and perfect their personas. How long did it take Edge and Christian to come up with the dorky brothers type of gimmick? Exactly.
I’m straying from my initial point in this part of the column…I watched the much hyped Smackdown! Live show on UPN and I was impressed. Very impressed. That is until the main event came about. What type of world is it when the main event of a show that is hyped by weeks of promos, numerous press releases, and the superstars themselves can’t even hold a stick to the ass of the curtain jerker? Did you watch the opening tag team match between Regal/Tajiri and X-Factor? It was a great match! Not only did it have a little switch in the end (where Tajiri got the Baldo Bomb instead of kicking X-Pac in the face), but also it told a pretty decent story with a big man and a little man on each team. Not a bad match at all for guys who are being held down because of the WCW “invasion”. And hey, while I’m on it, Edge and Christian put on a decent match as well as guys like Van Dam and Rhyno and the rest of the undercard. But what was that main event?
How can you hype a live show on the radio, with media press releases, with superstar interviews, with weeks and weeks worth of “The Beautiful People” promos and give out a piece of garbage main event like that? Everyone who is a diehard Rock fan, a diehard Booker T. fan, or a diehard WWF fan – you need to look at this rationally. The WWF took this opportunity to bring in new viewers (and I bet that they brought in a good deal of new ones) and they took this opportunity and threw it in the garbage. By no rational means can anyone defend that main event on Smackdown! at all. All of these new viewers, all of these people who heard about Smackdown! Live on the radio, all of these people who heard “The Beautiful People” and looked at their televisions and saw shades of WWF superstars, all of these high brows who saw the press releases, all of these people who have been hearing about someone named “The Rock” in Hollywood…they were all potential new fans. And what’s more important to the WWFE and their goals is that they were all a prospective jump in the ratings. Put all of the hype together in a live show and you have a great undercard (where even William Regal shined) and you have some semi-good promos and in the end, you have one of the most pathetic main events I’ve ever seen.
How can you give away half of your double main event three days before the PPV and basically end this “giant” main event match with the same ending that was on RAW? How do you do that? Or better yet? Who does that? You wanna know who? Complacent people – people who are resting on their laurels. Now the average internet smark may just look at this as another show while the average Rock fanatic will hail it as a huge success. However look at it all rationally and you have one of the biggest blunders that the WWF has done all year. Vince McMahon and company blew yet ANOTHER giant opportunity to bring in new viewers (and hey, I’m a big Vince McMahon supporter).
Honestly, as someone who was once planning on investing a good deal of money in WWF stock, seeing the powers that be in the WWFE pull a stunt like that makes me rethink my pending investment. But enough of Smackdown because I’m getting sick thinking about what happened.
I want to touch on Tough Enough very briefly. This is going to be heralded as a big success for the WWFE because it IS the highest rated show on Thursday night cable television. While the rational investor in me is appalled at Smackdown, the wrestling fan in me looks at Tough Enough like this: Jason was the best thing that the WWF had going for their prospects – he had the body, the look, the overall conditioning. He wimped out for a girlfriend at home. Fine. That was his decision. Greg was the odds on favorite to win the whole thing after Jason left…and now he is gone because of previous injuries sustained that were aggravated through training in the ring with the WWF. Ok, I mean when you get right down to it – one’s health is what really matters and if the kid has three wrecked vertebrate, then he really can’t go on. So now all signs are pointing towards Harvard (Chris) winning the whole thing (who I’m not a big fan of). Josh has made a good point in the past few episodes…his height is going to hurt him in the long run. Tazz can preach all he wants about height not mattering, but just look at the list of WWF World Champions. Hey, the shortest WCW World Champion was David Arquette…but we don’t want to go there!
The thing that I want to touch on with Tough Enough is about Josh, though. The bond between Josh and Greg really was rather touching. Anyone who has ever had a big brother figure (not an actual big brother, but someone who you look up to and looks out for you) knows that you develop a special bond with someone like that. What gets me is what is going to happen after Tough Enough. Because you see…this big brother bond didn’t just go from Greg to Josh. If you’ve been watching closely, Al Snow has developed a very similar bond with Greg. And I think it’s very fair to say that the group of Al Snow, Greg, and Josh had built up a little bond between them all. I think it is going to be interesting to see how Greg and Josh interact after this show is over. If Josh doesn’t win, then I think that he and Greg could make a terrific pairing as a tag team.
You’ll notice on the previews for the next show that Josh says he doesn’t want to be there anymore…that’s not because of his girlfriend bitching – that’s because his big brother isn’t there to support him.
Thanks again for reading,
Joe
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