Greetings conversationalists all across the fruited plain, it is I your personal Harvester of Sorrow the and only Phantom Lord and this is The Phantom Rant. As always I am coming to you from the urban wonderland that is Brooklyn, NY and with Labor Day coming and going, this means that summer is over. Granted the temperature outside doesn’t agree with this age-old end of summer notion, but that’s just more of me becoming a cranky old man then anything else. Well after the last couple of weeks with the WWE taking CM Punk and making him into the hottest thing in wrestling to another run of the mill guy vs. authority angle, the weather is the least of what I shall be complaining about.
Oh where do I start with this train wreck? First off I have to acknowledge that I am a huge fan of Kevin Nash’s so anything he does I will give the benefit of the doubt to. I call him “The Smartest Man In The Business” for a reason. He’s made plenty of money so it’s not like needed the headache of coming back to the WWE unless he really felt like it. What started off with so much promise has just ended in a whimper in usual WWE fashion. They had something red hot and with in the span of a month and a half it has turned ice cold. I shouldn’t be surprised because over the span of time that I have been writing this column in one form or another they have consistently dropped the ball on things that could have been huge. So to see what could have been done with CM Punk as a fan pisses me the hell off.
The problem with the WWE is the same problem that I have been talking about for years now. Everything starts and ends with Vince McMahon. It’s his direction that caused this great angle to be torpedoed like the Lusintania. We’re about a month removed from Summerslam when CM Punk was screwed (God I hate that term) out of the WWE title. They had a chance to salvage that with this mysterious “who sent the text” angle, but they managed to fuck that up as well. These angles as simple as they may be are a just a little too complex for Vince. When CM Punk said Vince could be a billionaire, but he’s not because yes men who tell him what ever he wants to hear do surround him. That is the reason why the WWE is the way that it is and that is the reason it will continue to be the way it is.
Now don’t get me wrong. I am a capitalist so just because I hate John Cena and Blandy Orton doesn’t mean I think the WWE should stop focusing on them. I mean that would be stupid considering all the money Cena merchandise makes because of little kids. But the thing they have to remember is who buys the majority of that? The kids father’s who are the ones chanting CENA SUCKS. CM Punk was a breath of fresh air to all of us men who watch the WWE and have to sit through Cena’s poop jokes. The problem with them and everything else is it has no direction what so ever and as I said the reason for that is because of the person at the wheel of the ship. The WWE is Vince’s Titanic so whether it hits the iceberg or rams right into it is because of he and he alone.
I still can’t honestly believe they fucked it up this bad. That’s the only way to really say what has happened. Oh sure they say “just keep watching, see where it goes”. Well when you’ve seen this pattern repeated over and over the years, patience is not exactly a virtue of ours. I have no faith that the WWE can salvage in any way possible. Punk has been doing the best he can, but everything is falling flat because no one cares. No one wants to see yet another Authority vs. Rebel angle. It’s McMahon/Austin all over again.
Things need to improve because we have some breaking news about RAW’s rating this past Monday night.
FIRE UP THE DRUDGE SIREN…BREAKING NOOOOZZZZ!!!!
The 9/12 edition of Raw did a 2.72 rating with 3,856,000 viewers. The first hour did a 2.72 and the second did a 2.71.
The first NFL game on ESPN did a 10.62 with 14,568,000 viewers while the second game did a 8.21 rating with 11,109,000 viewers.
Credit to PWInsider.com
I can just see Vince going apeshit after reading those numbers.
: DAMN IT ALL TO HELL. HAVE JOE MONTANA KILLED.
: But Mr. McMahon, Joe Montana hasn’t played in fifteen years.
: DO AS I COMMAND DAMN IT!!! AND WHILE YOU’RE AT IT, HAVE ELWAY’S LEGS BROKEN.
Sometimes I amuse even myself. Now me personally I can multitask so I had RAW on the tv and the Pats/Dolphins massacre on elsewhere. The WWE (as much as I hate him) just cannot compete with Jesus Brady. Seriously though if this trend continues and I suspect it will, we are going to see the WWE go into panic mode very quickly. Now what panic mode means is Cena will get the belt back and it will be another six months of the same old stuff until the football season is over. Everything is in a damn holding pattern till then. In the mean time we can continue to look forward to listless episodes of RAW as they go through the motions.
A couple weeks ago after Kevin Nash made his return, I remember reading some news bit about how the WWE felt they had to reintroduce Kevin Nash to the audience because all the kids in the crowd have no idea who he is. If this doesn’t prove my theory about not hot shotting someone onto television with out build up then I don’t know what will. Kevin Nash really doesn’t need an introduction, but they could have saved themselves this trouble by bringing him back in some capacity say as a color commentator for RAW. Between his Grand Wizard impersonations and his Sauvé alter ego Chet Lemon, Nash could have been a commentator for a few weeks to get back into the swing of things. But no it was the usual stuff of “Oh hey look its (insert name)…what’s he doing here?”
Supposedly Nash is indeed booked for the Night Of Champions PPV this weekend since the firing was a very dumb aspect of the angle. I’ve always been a huge fan of Kevin Nash’s ever since the night I was part of the 29,000 who witnessed him win the WWF Title at Madison Square Garden.
You say MSG doesn’t hold 29,000? Well it did that night.
But because of the half assed rush approach of all of this, Nash came in looking way out of place. Not even giving him the n.W.o. theme helped as most people watching it were befuddled as to what exactly was going on. They tried to make it seem current, as it was the “who sent the text angle”, but that fell flat when it was revealed that Nash sent himself the text. When the WWE does something that bad that usually means Vince said fuck it.
Now because of all of this we are stuck with Triple H vs. CM Punk in a No DQ match at the PPV. If Punk wins then Triple H resigns as C.O.O. of the WWE. You can smell the screw job coming a mile away as it’s pretty obvious that Triple H will lose in screwy fashion thus costing him his job. Will be Johnny Ace, Vince McMahon, or someone else who does the screwing. It will probably be a combination of the three as this is revealed to have been an “elaborate” plan by Vince to get back the company. Only question in all of this is will CM Punk have been in on it? He wants change, but he also has an ego to feed so will he sell his soul and become the next corporate star? Hell if I know. At this point this whole sloppy mess needs a conclusion. It’s all going to lead back to Punk vs. Cena at some point anyway where SuperCena gets his revenge once and for all.
As an aspiring screen writer in school right now, just looking at this angle from start to finish makes my head hurt. There was a good rising action, but the middle, and final act just fell apart. This is the main problem of the WWE as they condense things that should be spread out over months. For a company that wants to be more like an action soap opera, they sure as hell don’t know how to do even a traditional soap angle arc much less a complex one.
Before I go I just want to say I’m going to do my damndest to start writing on a regular basis again. I need to get my brain back into a creative mindset and it helps to write in general.
It should be an interesting month and a half at least in the WWE with Night Of Champions and then two weeks later the Hell In A Cell PPV and then I believe two or three weeks after that the Vengeance PPV. The murderous September-October stretch for the WWE where they cram three months of programming into essentially a month’s worth of shows. It’s no wonder these guys are all burned out.
Hey WWE if you are reading this can you do me a small favor. Phantom Classic (my father) really likes Bryan Danielson. He sees him as the new Bob Backlund, so would it kill you to book him as such? He won the Money In The Bank match. Granted it was Smackdown’s match, but he won it nonetheless. Why is he floundering at the bottom of things? Also stop dicking around Wade Barrett. He’s one of the most decent heels on the roster and John Cena destroyed him in like five minutes a week or so ago. Oh yeah give William Regal at shot at the title in Liverpool. Regal is awesome and he deserves a big main event like that.
Well on that note I am done for this week. I made it a whole column with out bashing TNA. But at this point what fun is it to shoot a dead horse. So until next time take care and remember someone has to give you this information and it DAMN well has got to be me.
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