by Rick Scaia
Exclusive to OnlineOnslaught.com

Personally, I'm mostly put out because "Curb Your Enthusiasm" (once I finally found a convenient time to watch it) turned out to be the best comedy on all of TV in the last year, and its new season starts after the Sopranos.  But knowing HBO, I won't have to worry; they repeat everything about a billion times... 

What?!?  You DON'T care about my weekend routine?  OK, so here's some rasslin' stuff to entertain you:

• Well, well well...
   
  For as awful as SmackDown! could have been -- for as terrible as I was expecting it to be -- that turned out to be an alright show.
   
  Weddings and wrestling don't mix well, historically.  But this one came off really well.  I'm not so sure the positive press that came out of the thing (including a Stamp of Approval from the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, and appearances yesterday on Howard Stern and the Today Show) will hold up now that they've turned things around by having Billy and Chuck announce they're not gay, but as a wrestling angle, this thing clicked.
   
  I watched with a couple of people who don't read spoilers, and it went over gangbusters with them.  For me, it was a rare situation where I REALLY wished I didn't know what was coming.  The ancient-looking Justice of the Peace guy was sketchy from the get-go, but especially after the carted the Godfather out there, you figured they'd blown their swerve-related wad...  so when he issued the Three Minute Warning, you had to have been shocked if you hadn't already done the spoiler thing.
   
  Going back a month, I'd been publicly trying to rally support for giving Steph a Three Minute Warning as a way of building the RAW/SD hostilities.  I'm glad they took the time to find an angle like this to do it:  I know the idea was good, that's why I was proposing it... but this is a case of sitting on a good idea until it can have maximum impact.  Good stuff.
   
  I'm not sure where you go from here...  obviously, I think, you gotta send Rico to RAW.  But an Island Boyz/Billy&Chuck inter-promotional match, is that the only fruit we pick from this tree?  It'd be a waste if it was... so I think this has got to be phase one of a new era of screwing with the other show, courtesy of Eric Bischoff and Stephanie McMahon.
   
  You take the effective wedding storyline, and then you add in an awesome Angle/Mysterio match, and buddy, you got yourself the easy winner of this week's RAW vs. SmackDown! battle.  I haven't done the main page update, yet, but I'm assuming I'm making Angle/Mysterio the OO Match of the Week and the wedding the Angle of the Week...  pretty nice job by the SD! crew.
   
  In addition to Angle/Mysterio kicking a dozen kinds of ass, the Matt Hardy/Undertaker main event was OK (both guys looked good, though ultimately, it was just a backdrop so they could do the Lesnar/Heyman/Sara thing), the Lesnar/Holly opener was stiff and kind of intriguing in a different sort of way, the Eddie/Chavo/Edge/Cena match was just a taste of what those four could do (but if it leads to Eddie vs. Chavo, it's all worth it), and the announcement of Benoit vs. Angle for the PPV has already got smark mouths (including my own) watering from coast to coast.
   
  An incredibly strong show... full details are right here.
   
  
• The overnight rating for last night's SD! was a 4.9, which is significantly higher than the overnight numbers the show has been drawing recently (over a half-a-point difference, actually).  Though it won't really matter till we see if that translates into a higher final rating, it's telling that they were able to boost at least the overnight numbers with the gay wedding publicity stunt.
   
  
• WWE has announced a press conference for Tuesday, September 24, in Seattle, WA.  Though no official topic has been publicized, the copious rumors about 2003's WrestleMania venue have centered on Seattle...
   
  That leads on to believe that the Fed is going to make the official announcement that WrestleMania 19 will take place in Seattle, possibly at Safeco Field (or at the new Seahawks stadium).
   
  
• The Fed has got to deal with another unfortunate injury:  one week after dealing Bradshaw into the four-pronged mix against the UnAmericans, he's facing a 4 to 6 month lay-off with a biceps tear.
   
  The biceps injury is the third such injury I can think of in recent memory (Undertaker and Kane have both had to deal with the same thing)...  the spat of muscle tears (don't forget Triple H's quad) has prompted many to theorize that steroids or performance enhancers are to blame.  True or not, that speculation probably doesn't hold much water in the case of Bradshaw, who has a physique that genuinely looks sculpted by beer and not much else.
   
  Like I said, the pulled William Regal in the mix this week, no doubt heading to a 4-on-4 feud with the UnAmericans against Bradshaw, Kane, Booker T, and Goldust.  It'll be interesting to see how they deal with things now that Bradshaw's on the shelf...
   
  
• NWA-TNA is trying to spin next week's return to live action as a bit of a "comeback" show.  The company has simply not performed, financially, as they had hoped... and at times, it's shown in the on-air product.
   
  In 13 weeks of shows, it's telling that I was only inspired to check out TNA 2 or 3 times...  the $10 per week price tag isn't really that big a deal when you think about it, but it's enough to give most fans pause for thought.  "Don't I get 4 hours of WWE for FREE every week?" they'll think.  And then it's not too much of a leap to "So why am I paying for this?" from there...
   
  But next Wednesday, TNA's bringing back Scott Hall, who has been absent since the opening weeks of the project (likely due to the cost of flying him in).  Rumors continue to abound that TNA would like to secure Sean "X-Pac" Waltman, too...  obviously, there would be value in having the two work together, if possible.
   
  We'll have more TNA preview next week...
   
  
• I made an aside comment in Wednesday's column about how TNN could "kiss my ass" if they were really pissed about the Hot Lesbian Action on RAW...  and boy did I hear about it from some of you!
   
  My premise that the lesbians were actually quite tepid and TV-PG went mostly unchallenged (though one or two of you somehow equated awkward groping with "porn," which makes me wonder...).  But many suggested that TNN issued their stern warning not because of the lesbianism, but because of the subsequent squashing of the lesbians.  The man-on-woman violence was the problem, you posited.
   
  Well, if I missed the point, I missed it on purpose.  I briefly entertained that same notion myself, but then I remembered Moolah and Mae Young from a few weeks ago.  And that situation was a lot more distressing.  Not only women, but elderly women were the victims of that Three Minute Warning.
   
  In this case, young, healthy women, obviously in their primes were the target.  It was less uncomfortable for me to watch, at least.  It was -- you know? -- a wrestling angle.
   
  So if TNN didn't get all pissy a month about about old women getting squashed, it stands to reason that it wasn't the man-on-woman violence that angered them on Monday.  That leaves TV-PG lesbianism as the only reason for their public statement.
   
  And as such, my public stance on the issue remains:  TNN can kiss my ass.
   
  Unless...  hey, does anybody have Cyrus' phone number handy?  The Network may need a public spokesperson, and I can think of no one better.  "Eric, we at the Network have a few ideas about the creative direction here on RAW."
   
  Come to think of it, if Cyrus also installed himself as Jerry Lawler's replacement, I don't think anyone would be too upset.
   
  
• So, hey, did you hear Billy and Chuck aren't really gay?  Oh, wait....
   
  Anyway, given the publicity that their "wedding" received, the always-vigilant crew over at The Smoking Gun have published papers that prove that Billy Gunn (a/k/a Monty Kip Sopp) is -- or at least WAS -- a stark raving heterosexual.  They've got his divorce papers from last year online, if you're interested.
   
  They've also got audio from Billy's answering machine.  It's all at www.TheSmokingGun.com.  As always, I also give my strongest recommendation to the "Backstage" section, where they've got contract riders of a shitload of touring music acts.  The categorization of Luciano Pavarotti never fails to slay me! [Come to think of it, his riders never fail to slay me, either!]
   
  
• Sorry about the no updates yesterday...  it wasn't some twisted on-going observation of 9/11, or anything.  It was just that none of the other guys on the site wrote anything, and I didn't have anything to say worth doing a "special edition" of OO.  So we just had nothing.
   
  Somehow, I figure you folks still made it through the day!
   
  By the way, a total non sequitur: of all the 9/11 observations, the one that really struck me was that New York's lottery number for Wednesday was 911.  Creepy.
   
  
• OK, kids, time for me to wrap it up.  Enjoy your weekend, and then come on back to OO for RAW preview and the usual what-not on Monday! 

E-MAIL RICK SCAIA
BROWSE THE OO ARCHIVES

Rick Scaia is a wrestling fan from Dayton, OH.  He's been doing this since 1995, but enjoyed it best when the suckers from SportsLine were actually PAYING him to be a fan.

All contents are Copyright 1995-2014 by OOWrestling.com.  All rights reserved.
This website is not affiliated with WWE or any other professional wrestling organization.  Privacy Statement.