The Issue #23
By: Bryon Frazier
March 18, 2005
Raw Is 1987! I always love it when they do this in television shows. Confidentially, time travel is my favorite plot device in order to spice up an otherwise dying program. I personally loved how Vince and company were able to visually represent the transport back to yesteryear by first throwing Chris Jericho at us, who comes from 2000, or at least this particular version did. You can tell the difference between 2000 Jericho and 1998 Jericho because 2000 Jericho isn't funny. Anyway, at this point the time machine had a fluctuation and threw Bob Orton's son at us rather than the Cowboy himself. The space-time continuum got really weird when the young Orton started cutting a face promo fit for a heel, but our journey to another era was completed and out came Jake "the Snake" Roberts.
Okay, enough of that time travel stuff. The reality of the situation was that the WWE searched every alley in America and England and was able to dig up Jake "the Snake," who from this moment forth shall be referred to as Jack "the Snack" for obvious reasons. Hell, he may very well have had cupcakes and doughnuts in his sack since we never actually saw any rope-shaped reptiles. No doubt the pastries were his appearance fee. Nevertheless, I marked out for Jack Roberts' entrance as much as anyone. It caught me completely off guard and in a good way, not in a "Mae Young bares her fake breasts at a pay-per-view" way. Jack looked withered and weathered, and I had to turn on the captions to be able to understand what he was saying half the time, but he still delivered a better interview than Randy Orton is even capable. This is very unflattering for Randy as I'm pretty sure he hasn't been on crack for the past 10 years. Once Roberts clotheslined him, I knew that as badly as I wanted to see the DDT next it wasn't going to happen. It's all about equality in the WWE: if you hit a clothesline, then you eat an RKO.
As everyone knows, hitting your finisher on a crackhead is the work of a heel which is why it's getting pretty obnoxious of the WWE if they don't make it official for Randy Orton soon. His actions on Jack weren't totally heelish since he was technically defending himself. Besides, the live audiences obviously don't like him, but more importantly than that I don't like him. This isn't like Smilin' Brock Lesnar where I at least enjoyed him because he truly seemed to have no clue how to play a face, and that innocence gave his character some charm. Orton is playing a weird cross between a face Triple H and classic Stone Cold Steve Austin, and it's killing him with the audiences. It's produced a repeat of the blue-chipper Rocky Maivia, which is any face who remains one despite the fact that the fans can't stand him. Maybe Orton will indeed turn heel and become a major superstar a few years from now, but the first step is that turn.
Getting back to Jericho, it seemed like he vanished from this segment as soon as "the Snack" hit the ring but that was only physically. Spiritually, he hasn't been the same since he debuted in the WWF. He had a brief period of the old magic from his WCW days, but it faded away and never returned. I guess the six months that he had to sit out for his no-compete clause must've destroyed his rhythm. It's too bad really, because I was a huge fan of his when he was with WCW, but today I'm done with him. He's run his course and has nothing to offer any more. To me these days the only difference between him and Bob Holly is that at one time Jericho was great. Just to be clear, I'm not suggesting that he be cut from the roster, but I do believe his persistent fans need to realize that he's not the man he used to be, so quit complaining that he's in the mid-card because that's where he belongs.
Christian, on the other hand, still deserves a shot at the main event because he's still firing on all six cylinders. Of course, it's an impossibility (and quite frankly, a gross impropriety) to promote him to that level as long as he's jobbing to Kane every week. When the Pigeonhole Classic was announced I had some hope that Christian would be the surprise winner, but the brain rust at Raw quickly killed it with repeated clean losses. Nothing says a main-eventer like jobbing cleanly every week! It's not like Kane needs the wins anyway. Kane's career has been so perfectly booked to establish his place in the company that no particular win or loss now will change how he's regarded by the fans, so why can't we get an upset victory by the former 47-time Tag Champion?
Moving on, the comedy that is the women's title match practically writes itself. First, let me cover the positive aspects of the upcoming contest. Most notably is the fact that it will be a match we've never seen before, which is always a good thing. The fact that it's a new match because one of the participants isn't a wrestler is a bad thing, but as I said I'm covering the positives now. Another mark in the plus column is that overall the whole thing has been fairly well-booked. The cocky champion picking on the weakling who seeks guidance from the champion's arch-nemesis is a pretty good basic storyline. Now here comes the comedy. We start with last week's announcement that Lita is training Christy Hemme to wrestle. This means that we can expect Christy to perform a truly suicidal dive with perfection. It will be heartbreaking because Christy's face isn't made out of granite like Lita's, so she will suffer severe pain and damage from the collision with the ringside floor.
This week Lita hired the tag champions (I'll let you guess who they are) to teach Christy how to throw and defend kicks. When it predictably resulted in Christy kicking Tag Champ #1 in the balls, Lita approved. This is probably because she is unaware that normal women like Trish don't have balls, unlike herself. Of course, normal men like me usually don't realize that it still hurts women to get kicked between the legs, and if there are any readers out there unsure of this, my advice is to punt the first woman you see right between the goal posts and see what kind of reaction you get. If the girl no-sells it then I'll pay for your legal counsel in your ensuing assault and battery trial.
Anyway, as a lot of people know (that is, if you can call the number of people who read my material "a lot"), I am a fan of women's wrestling. If people are looking for an explanation, it's this simple: I'd rather watch sweaty, oily women rolling around on the mat than sweaty, oily men. However, I'd also rather watch good wrestling than bad wrestling and the men generally have the monopoly on the good stuff. Therefore, I have to watch them for that, but if I could combine the good wrestling with the women, I'd never watch the men again. Having said all that, the women's division is hurting, as it's currently made up of three members. Sure, there's the hope that Christy will grow and mature as a performer and could become another Trish, but if that were to happen it won't be for a few more years. As of right now, there's nothing. The WWE made a ridiculous mistake in cutting the few extra female grapplers they had around and signing the useless pieces of eye candy from the Diva Contest, but then again I'm not a former billionaire like Vince so what do I know?
The real shame of this is that Trish may very well be the most capable heel on Raw not named Levesque, and that's as close to a compliment as I can bring myself to give Triple H. Of course, since everyone who talks about him on a live mic has to talk about how great and awesome he is, he doesn't exactly need my praise. Trish however is being wasted because she has no one to compete against. She's so awesome that this feud with Christy is actually going to get Christy over with the fans, which is something she hasn't yet been. Unlike Rey Mysterio, who has the same kind of problem with the cruiserweight division, Trish can't just switch to wrestling the rest of the roster because A) the fans would never believe she could win a match against a man and B) no man would be willing to test that to find out for sure.
Now that I've gotten my required four paragraphs about women's wrestling out of the way, it's time to discuss Shawn Michaels. I know, I said I was done with the topic of women, but Shawn's tag match with that hobo as his partner was a tremendous act of charity and he deserves to be commended. The way he even tried to make the homeless man feel included by performing stereo kip-ups (a nip-up is what happens when one of the women forgets to use the double-sided tape) even though the drifter wasn't actually able to perform the maneuver and looked like an out-of-water fish while trying it. In the end, he even allowed the panhandler to hit a finisher and score the pin. Jesus will surely love Shawn after this!
. . . I just received an e-mail stating that the homeless man from the previous paragraph was in fact Marty Jannetty, whom I hadn't seen in seven years, and that was in WCW. I hadn't seen him in a WWF ring in about fifteen years or so. Taking that into consideration, I must say that Jannetty appeared to be in fantastic shape and really worked a good match. By the standards of your average human I thought that he was a hobo, but by Jannetty's standards he looked like a million bowls of soup. Seriously though, I was indeed ecstatic over his appearance on Raw and even got to see a good tag match out of it. On Thursday, or Tuesday for those who attend the show, or Wednesday for those who read spoilers, he'll take on Kurt Angle in a Loser Gets Superkicked Through The Barbershop Window Match. We can expect Brutus Beefcake to be on hand to continue the nostalgia trip. I'm personally fearful that the gimmick of the match tips the hand as to who will lose. It's the same way how the Undertaker always loses Buried Alive matches, the Hardyz always lost ladder matches, and the Dudleyz always lost table matches. Having said that, here's hoping that ol' Marty gets to keep the clothes that he was allowed to wear on Monday, and that there's free catering at the Smackdown! taping.
My personal pick to win the Pigeonhole Classic, besides Christian who is my personal pick to win every match including ones he's not in, is Shelton Benjamin. My personal pick to not win that match is Edge. What were the chances that they'd face off? Well, considering that the build-up to the six-man bout seems to be having each of the participants face off with each other with ladders nearby, I'd say the chances were quite high. The good news to come out of this bout was that Benjamin did in fact win, but Chris Jericho's involvement doesn't bode well. Having him run in and cost Edge this match draws focus to those two as Wrestlemania draws near, which suggests to me that the winner will be one of them. I'd prefer Benjamin or Christian to win because it'd result in something we haven't already seen. I've seen Edge in the main event. I've seen Jericho and Ben Wah too. Yes, I've even seen Kane up there. I've never seen Shelton or Christian in that spotlight. Granted, Shelton had that brief run where he kept beating Triple H, but it didn't amount to anything. Shelton wasn't in the Elimination Chamber match; Edge, Jericho, and Wah were though. Every now and then we need to be thrown a curveball to shake things up. If we stay with the status quo week in and week out then things stagnate, and I'm pretty sure I read somewhere that stagnation is bad. Oh yeah, I believe I found it here.
After watching Raw, I quickly learned who Muhammad Hassan's opponent would be at Wrestlemania, and it won't be Hulk Hogan. Nope, it will be Charlie Haas. It was a subtle but effective hint dropped by Vince when they played the first few notes of Haas's theme music at the end of Muhammad's promo. People complain that wrestling is too low-brow, but moments like that tell me that there's a cerebral side to this stuff. I think the complainers are just too dumb to pick up on these nuances. It's the same reason why people are slowly turning on Gene Snitsky. They don't realize that he is the greatest man alive because they're all superficial and only pick up on his horrible mic work and embarrassingly bad in-ring effort. If they were more aware on a deeper level they'd realize his superiority over everyone else on the Raw roster, but that's life. People don't get it until it's explained to them, then they act like experts.
Quick question: why did everyone pan Scott Steiner for using ten belly-to-belly suplexes against Triple H a few years ago, but everyone is giving Ben Wah head for using nine German suplexes? Is that one suplex really that much of a difference? Is it that German's are better than belly-to-belly's? No and no, I'll tell you what it is: prejudice. People just hated Steiner because he was a genetic freak, and they feel sorry for Ben Wah because he's short, broken, and deformed.
You people make me sick.