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Every Tuesday and Friday we give you the scoop on what's happening in and out of the wrestling ring.
Chairshots
6-04-02Raw Thoughts
Last night was the first night that the new exclusive Raw writing team had to pen their own show. You can tell they wanted to hit a home run because of the sheer amount of stuff crammed into two hours. However, rather than leave their own mark on pro-wrestling, they went back to the Vince Russo formula that made Raw popular years ago. Look at all the Russo elements that were in last night's show: two women wrestling half-naked, two men rolling in puke, one man urinating on another, one man fighting a crooked owner, security guards, and lawyers adding last minute stipulations. All are Russo trademarks. Despite my dislike of the Russo style, Raw wasn't half bad last night.The show started with some hot promo work by Benoit, Guerrero, Flair and Austin. If not for the fact that Austin pissed antifreeze (or Mountain Dew) on Arn Anderson to end it, it would
have been great. There was a logic gap in the promo, though, as Ric Flair had no reason to wrestle Austin since he's the owner and can make Austin do whatever he wants anyway.
Russo loved to have women tear each other's clothes off for the pure joy and masturbatory pleasure of young men everywhere. Frankly I'm all for it, but if you're going to have a lingerie match the women need to wear lingerie, not glorified panties. A thong is not lingerie. Don't tease me like that, damn you.
Bradshaw was made for the Hardcore championship. Bradshaw fans can run on and on about how he will be a world champion someday, but his recent singles push has failed. If you're not going to do an APA reunion, then the Hardcore title is a fine second choice.
Last week a lot of fans complained about the Tommy Dreamer/Undertaker segment where Dreamer drank Taker's chew juice. I said I had no problem with it as long as it led to a match this week. It did. I could have done without the Godwin's slop bucket, I mean Dreamer's vomit bucket, but whatever. I'm still enjoying that on Raw Undertaker fights mid-carders and on Smackdown he fights Triple H. I think it's a good way to use a heel champion like Undertaker. Next week Jeff Hardy gets EXTREME!
Hot tag match with Lesnar and Guerrero vs. Bubba and RVD. I still disagree with the way Lesnar is being booked, though. He's not ready for tag wrestling. He's ready to eat lower card wrestlers and make them bleed.
Well, that NWO is shaping up into something now, isn't it? First they start winning matches and now they have the legendary Shawn Michaels as their manager. It's good to see my favorite wrestler (I love you, Foley, but you're more of a humorous crash test dummy) of all time back. Keeping with the Russo era theme of WWE "Attitude," they have brought back the king of Attitude himself. I only pray he's at least half as good as he used to be. On a related note, from the "News I never thought I'd print" file, rumor has it that Shawn Michaels has found Jesus. The rest of us can stop looking now. Shawn will be awarded 1,000,000 dollars for finding Jesus and talk about how he found him on an upcoming CBS special hosted by Rosie O'Donnell.
Flair and Austin mixed it up and ended the show on a limp note. Something tells me we are in for a long series of "Flair serves Austin beer" sketches.
Bottom line: Trade the NWO to Smackdown for Jericho and Benoit and then have Flair reunite the Four Horsemen (Benoit, Guerrero, Jericho and Flair) on Raw. Then you've got two powerful heel factions on each show and you can focus on more wrestling and less "Attitude".
Another Job for the Bad Guy
NWA: Total Nonstop Action has announced that they have signed Scott Hall, and he will be participating in the groups debut Pay-per-view broadcast on June 19th. Hall will participate in the "Gauntlet For The Gold" match for the NWA World Heavyweight Championship along with Jeff Jarrett, Ken Shamrock, Buff Bagwell, Gran Apolo, and Brian Christopher. This will be Hall's first wrestling appearance since being released from the WWE.Ratings
Last night's edition of Raw scored a 4.1 cable rating according to Nielsen Media Research. It was a nice rise from the 3.7 that the show scored the last two weeks.Austin Gone Wild
Steve Austin was a guest on WWE Byte This last Friday and he held nothing back. Here are the highlights from his very controversial appearance.On Chris Benoit's return: "I'm glad Benoit made it back, but he's a stupid, sorry bastard to take me out first thing after he gets back. He's messing with Stone Cold and that's something he shouldn't do!" (Throughout the interview Austin seems confused about reality and wrestling.)
On the rumors that he is not happy in the WWE lately: "Damn right I'm unhappy! The writing's pretty shitty. I don't know if anything is gonna change with the creative bastards but something better and damn fast!" (You tell 'em, Austin!)
On the brand split: Austin thinks the Brand Split sucks so far, but he does like the schedule easing off. It gives him more time with Debra.
On the fan running into the ring last week during the Guerrero/RVD ladder match: "Aw hell, man, people been jumpin' in the ring since I started in this business. Hell, Earl Hebner was there, Security was there, and I was there and things got pretty, well, 'hands-on,' if you get the idea. If this guy thinks he can get in the ring, he better think about who he's getting in the ring with!"
On Brock Lesnar: Austin thinks Lesnar's got a good look and a presence about him. "His background as an athlete speaks for himself and at his age, he's real far along. He's going to have to develop some personality and charisma and that'll definitely come. Brock is a blue chipper but the 'next big thing' gimmick is pretty lame because it puts extra pressure on him." (Guess Austin was busy wrestling when that whole Goldberg phenomenon happened.)
On "The Bionic Redneck nickname: "I got no ligaments in my knees is how, ya dumb bastard. The storylines may suck, but I'm still having fun. I ain't gonna let no injury run me off. When I get done with it, fine, I'll walk away, and only I am gonna know when that is."
On "What?": Austin never would have thought it would have turned into what it did and it's changed his promos in the ring. Sometimes he likes that and sometimes he doesn't but you can't argue with success. "The 'What?' thing is a blast and we'll see how long that'll stay around."
On who he'd like to fight: He can't really answer that. In the past, one of his favorites was always Ricky "The Dragon" Steamboat, but he would like to go at it again with The Rock.
On the recent plane ride back from Europe when so many wrestlers got out of hand: "It's a lot of bullshit is what it is. That's me and my wife, thirty, forty thousand feet over the ocean, with this shit going on in the back! Nobody gets in my face doing that kind of thing. They are lucky I was up front sleeping, because if I wasn't..."
On his autobiography: Austin was supposed to be one of the first guys doing that, but he doesn't know if he'd have the attention span to "...write a damn book." When Mick Foley wrote his book, he remembers everything like it happened yesterday but Austin can't remember what happened three months ago. Maybe he'll come out with one someday, but maybe he's too lazy.
On projects outside of wrestling: "I can't do it now because of the schedule I've got. I told Vince after my neck surgery that I didn't want to do any outside projects; I just wanted to work in WWE. I'm not happy staying in one place all the time. I like being on the road, though it's good to get home once in a while. But maybe, I may just get in some outside projects if time permits. Just not right away."
That's it for today. I'm going to go work on some non-wrestling projects.
