I’ll tell you who I think the real loser is in this whole situation. Kane. Vince doesn’t lose. You could duct tape Vince to a chair and read out to him all of the instances where he has made poor business decisions that have cost him and his company millions of dollars and he’d still have the satisfaction of silently nodding you in the direction of his billion dollar franchise and incredible accumulated wealth. Edge doesn’t lose. He’s currently experiencing his biggest push to date and, knowing Vince’s love of converting real heat into pantomime jeers, he’ll be the blue-eyed, big chinned boy on the block for a while to come yet. Lita doesn’t lose. Even if she is uncomfortable with her new gimmick, the fact that she’s playing along with slutty buckets full of enthusiasm will only put her in better standing with the WWE and nudges her further up the card even if she isn’t wearing the women’s title to deserve it. Not even Matt Hardy loses. Sure, he writes sad thoughts in his journal and cries himself to sleep on the ample breasts of his new girlfriend but not even the greatest advertising minds in the world could have intentionally engineered a situation where hard-nosed ECW fans were chanting his name at their reunion PPV when he never wrestled for the company. But Kane? He’s reduced to playing a Hardy substitute in an angle where most fans rarely if ever reference him in terms of the segment. Rather than battling for titles or trading victories with a main eventer he’s restricted to popping his head up through the canvas like a stray testicle and attacking an ageing member of the clergy. As an act of evidence that he’s a force to be reckoned with in the ring, this rates just below beating up women, children and Eugene. Is anyone keeping count how many times it is now that Kane has claimed after a period of sluggishness and amicability that “he’s back” and we can all expect a resurgence of demonic atrocities? Just like most self-professed studs standing in front of a whorishly attired woman, he’ll swear to be hard only to go soft again when it really matters. The sooner someone throws a scalding hot container of McDonald’s coffee over him and he retreats back into the mask the better.
As for what I will from hereon in be referring to as the ‘really funny Hardy moment’, I think it’s safe to say that it didn’t bother me too much. I don’t mind that literally dozens of Matt fans thought that Hardy was returning to Raw to take revenge on Edge and Lita only to feel disgusted and swerved at the prank. As before, my only complaint with the spot is that it allows the fallout from the ‘private’ matter to overshadow and ultimately shape the output of WWE writing and involves a performer who is currently no longer with the company, which obviously leads to no satisfactory conclusion to the angle and only satiates those sad ‘marks’ who write Internet columns for their own amusement (oh wait, that’s me). The worst thing about sitting on the fence is that the mud that is slung back and forward between warring neighbours tends to whack me in the head occasionally. All those involved in the situation should either move on, grow up or piss off. And I should talk about something else.
I’m going to take the matches in order today, so that means I begin with Shelton Benjamin’s attempt to spread himself over as wide an area as possible at ringside. As first botched moves go, catching your knee on the top rope and landing head first on the floor is a pretty good effort. But not even this attempted suicide could cover the fact that the match between Benjamin and the latest Raw draft pick, Carlito, was a stop-start affair which never really clicked into top gear. I hope that Carlito’s lackadaisical approach to ring craft is a suggestion from the bookers that he should wrestle in a laid-back, nonchalant style or he is going to have to pick up his work rate if he wants to join the main event scene one day. That being said, I think it’s a good move to put the IC title on Carlito at this time because he garners heel heat for fun and is far more effective in the superior position of a feud, something he proved with Cena on Smackdown.
Viscera and Simon Dean were up next. Nuff said.
It took me quite a long time to weigh up the pros and cons of John Cena’s quickfire pinfall victory over Mohammed Hassan when preparing for this column (yes, I do think about it before I start writing). On the minus side, losing your winning streak to a wrestler who already has a belt and a strong following in just three or four minutes of television time could be taken as a sign that Hassan’s push is over and he can look forward to jobbing on Heat in the not so distant future. Especially when you consider that Hassan barely got an offensive move in during the entire contest. But I chose to settle on this conclusion. Hassan is a rookie performer who has received a massive push since his debut based on his emotive gimmick and his improving wrestling talent. He’s not a monster heel so he has no reputation to protect. He’s not a psycho so a humiliating loss won’t render his future rhetoric ineffectual. His streak wasn’t going to lead to a title win (like Goldberg’s in WCW) so a bump in the road and a resetting of his character’s motivations won’t hurt his position in the roster or his spot on the card. On the plus side, what little action there was came across as strong and full of impact which should put a seed in the minds of WWE creative that a feud and PPV match between these two would be to everyone’s benefit somewhere down the line. Having Christian and Jericho fight over the scraps after the match may have been a useful way of protecting the investment in their upcoming PPV bout, but it’s hard to ignore that once again their abilities weren’t used to the fullest potential on Raw and that’s something that has been happening just a bit too much for my liking over the last few months.
Our main event this week came in two halves and added up to a damn good finish to the show. The match that started off as Batista against Kurt Angle fell apart due to the interference of HHH, Flair and HBK and was restarted by Eric Bischoff as a tag team match. I thought everyone did what they do best in the second half with Shawn striving for the hot tag, Batista clearing house with power moves and Angle and HHH working the technical control of the match. I felt the end was a bit of an anti-climax seeing as we’re approaching a ‘Hell in a cell’ match between HHH and Batista so the ‘pedigree is the truth’ aspect seems a little redundant now. But still a good match (or matches) and the best use of the talent available.
I enjoyed the small segment involving Christy/Victoria and the competition to ‘out-psycho’ eachother is an interesting twist to what could have been a predictable feud but I’ll need to see more and it wasn’t forthcoming this week. Even though most fans will have misgivings about their match at Vengeance, both women seem very comfortable with the roles they have been given and should be afforded every chance to shine. How else is Vince going to rebuild the women’s division? Slut chants? Weddings? Didn’t think so.
I haven’t made up my mind yet whether to ignore, denigrate or reluctantly indulge in the impossible critiquing of something as patently superficial as the Diva Search contest. I’ll come back to that one next week.
With the exception of the main event on Raw this week, I feel the WWE missed several opportunities to give us a memorable show and ultimately sacrificed some of its recent hard work just to pander to the lowest common denominator. But the two hours did contain some moments of quality and a few interesting talking points, which I guess is the desired effect. My only annoyance about Raw is that the balance has tipped too far to the side of shock tactics and ‘water-cooler’ moments to the point where the wrestling is merely an afterthought. I appreciate that Vince has long declared the WWE to be ‘sports-entertainment’ as a defence for his childish, tasteless booking concepts but, if the ECW PPV taught him anything, let’s hope it was that fans want wrestling action to be the primary reason for the show. Or at least on a par with the whores and the fake weddings.
Lee
