by Erin Anderson
Exclusive to OnlineOnslaught.com

WWE is on a mission to prove me wrong.

Last week, the hot topic among Internet wrestling fans was the "who will be Brock's new WrestleMania opponent now that Angle is out?" debate. Just take a gander at the OO Message Boards; the IWC went apeshit over the news that Kurt needs neck surgery. Well, Angle obviously isn't out just yet, and it looks as if he's going through with his title match with Brock. Very slick work by WWE on the Kurt Angle-Eric Angle switch; I read the spoilers, but those stated that Eric was the one to pin Brock, not Kurt. I honestly believed that the first man to walk down the ramp was Kurt.

Even so, I do not like the decision to go through with the match for two reasons:

1) I wrote a 1,600 word column last week examining the possibilities for Angle's replacement at WrestleMania, and got hyped up at the prospect of a Lesnar-Benoit match. How dare the booking committee mess with my head like this? Rat bastards.

2) We will not get the best possible match out of Lesnar and Angle if Kurt is not 100%.

Angle-Lesnar is a bad idea right now. It's a pretty safe bet to assume that we're not going to see Angle bump all over the place for his larger opponent, given his physical condition right now. On some level, Angle's neck will be protected in this match, and a wrong move could result in an even more serious injury than what he's already sustained. I'll have a horrible mental image of Kurt being wheeled out of the ring on a stretcher for the duration of that match.

I realize that most wrestling fans aren't even aware of the IWC's existence beyond wwe.com, and the vast majority of them do not know about Angle's need for neck surgery. But for the small portion of us who do know, the Angle-Lesnar match will be painful to watch. Remember the feeling you got in the pit of your stomach when you watched Triple H give Shawn Michaels a couple of vicious backbreakers at last year's Summerslam? It made you cringe, didn't it?

But there is a difference between watching good ring psychology (working on a body part that was previously injured but now healed) and watching a man with a serious neck condition take bumps from various suplexes. It is not the same thing as watching Team Angle work on Rhyno's neck last week; Rhyno had ample time to heal before he stepped back in a wrestling ring. I get the feeling that The Powers that Be in WWE have decided to go on with the Angle-Lesnar contest against their better judgment.

A smarter move would be to hold off on the match until Angle can come back from neck surgery. Kurt can return as a face (a lá Triple H) and go toe-to-toe with a monster heel in Brock Lesnar while completely healthy. Give us the big blow-off match then, and move Angle on to other feuds, hopefully with new main-eventers who were built up in his absence.

Then again, the way thing are going right now, Angle's injury may not even be real. Then we'll all feel really stupid.

The rest of SmackDown!'s matches for WrestleMania are shaping up, and the card looks to be fairly strong. Hulk Hogan's "fight" with Vince originally looked dismal after the screening of Screwjob 2: Sequels Suck at No Way Out, but their shoot-style war of words last week heated things up quite nicely. Hogan's history with McMahon alone is enough to base a match on, and while their verbal spat did little more than rehash all of it, it was a smart way to remind the fans exactly why these two should hate each other. Their pay-per-view contest won't necessarily be workrate classic, but it should be fun to watch.

The battle for the Cruiserweight title has the potential to be the most exciting match on the card, but potential doesn't make money for WWE. Putting the title on Matt Hardy was a smart move, elevating the belt with a wrestler who is more over than anyone in the cruiserweight division, with the possible exception of Rey Mysterio. Putting those two together can create an interesting and high-profile cruiserweight feud, something the company sorely needs right now.

But WWE missed a huge opportunity last night when Matt Hardy issued a challenge to anyone in the locker room except Rey-Rey; the stipulation should not have been there in the first place, and Mysterio should have been the one to walk down the ramp. That said, I loved the way in which Brian Kendrick was introduced. Sure, it was a cheap pop, but it worked and got the crowd solidly behind the new guy. Brian Kendrick impressed the hell out of me, and looks to have a good future as a cruiserweight, but the weeks leading up to WrestleMania are not the time to try and build new stars. Cruiserweight matches, while usually exciting, do not typically get much of a response from the crowd: even Hardy and Mysterio will need a lot of build-up for their match to make the fans truly care about the outcome.

The three-way tag match should be fun to watch, although I still stand by my suggestion that Benoit face Lesnar for the title. This match has the same problem as Hardy-Mysterio: while the wrestling itself should be solid (hell, considering the guys involved in this, the mat wrestling could be downright breathtaking), the crowd might not be behind it as much as they could be. WWE has two weeks to build this up into something special; they have a chance to deliver on this, and I'm hoping they don't waste it. Judging from the Rhyno/Benoit v. Los Guerreros contest last night, it should be a good show either way. WrestleMania is a perfect time to take the titles off of Benjamin and Haas; Team Angle will be pretty pointless if Angle himself needs to leave for neck surgery.

Random thought from SmackDown! last night: when did Chavo turn into a complete lunatic? He plays that role better than Nathan Jones did last week.

Unfortunately, not all of the WrestleMania card has a promising outlook: Limp Bizkit is set to perform not once, but twice. Well whoopty-shit. I'd rather hand a quartet of baboons some instruments and see what they can do.

"Musical" performances aside, one match sticks out like a sore thumb: Nathan Jones and the Undertaker v. Big Show and A-train. This looks to be the sports-entertainment equivalent of a pair of three-toed sloths facing off against a giant slug and a tranquilized elephant. I don't see Taker's undefeated WrestleMania streak being ended by Show and A-train; it's pretty much a given that he and Jones will end up victorious. Whether or not Jones turns on Taker at the pay-per-view, however, is debatable. Turning on Taker at the biggest stage of the year would be a hell of a start to a long-term feud, that would most likely mean that Taker would get screwed out of the victory. Is Nathan Jones really the man who should end that streak?

The one ray of hope for us in this contest is the fact that Undertaker has had two surprisingly good matches with Show and A-train recently. He should make the match watchable, but Nathan Jones is a complete wild card in all of this. I've never actually seen the man wrestle, and house show reports on his performances have been less than favorable. Hopefully, all four men will step up their game and give us an enjoyable contest.

And there you have it… SmackDown!'s bestial contributions to WrestleMania: the Vanilla Gorilla facing an injured Olympian, two old fogies in a fun grudge match, a couple of cruiserweights, a Rabid Wolverine teaming up with a Rhyno, some sloths, a slug, a drugged-up elephant, and baboons with instruments. And a partridge in a pear tree.

E-MAIL ERIN
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Erin Anderson is an Atlanta native and a student at Georgia State University. Since writing about wrestling didn't go over too well with her English professors, she vents here at Online Onslaught.

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