by Rick Scaia
Exclusive to OnlineOnslaught.com

For some unknown cosmic reason, this marks the fourth week out of the last six that I have to mention "Celebrity Poker" as part of my Friday time-killing, as in this case, the line was uttered by host Dave Foley.  Penn Jillette (of Penn and Teller), had just denounced his long held atheism and praised Jesus after winning a tough pot. Then he declared that although he's never had a drink in his life, he really needed to start after that experience, so he was looking forward to heading to the loser's lounge.  Cue Foley: "Well, it looks like poker has brought Penn to his Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. But before the night is over, it will bring him to MY Lord and Savior... a Bottle of Whiskey." EVERYBODY'S STEALING MY SHIT!

Anyway, Penn (and his, the most worthy of all the five charities!) wound up being eliminated first, so boo. And NASCAR's most-punchable man, Jeff Gordon won (the official rankings: Jeff Gordon is first, then just INCHES behind, it's a massive 20 million person tie for second, with every other driver, team member, sponsor, and fan deserving punches for making NASCAR so obnoxiously ubiquitous!).  At least next week, David Cross is back! 

And at least besides Celebrity Poker, I had me some SmackDown! to watch, and it was good.  VERY good.  So let's talk some rasslin', OK?

• For the second week in a row, after how ever many interminable months of sucking, SmackDown! turned in an excellent performance.  Actually, I think it ended up easily topping itself from the week before and also would have gotten a narrow win over RAW in "Battle of the Brands," were we running the weekly contest.
   
  [As a side note: yeah, I did think about issuing a Late Breaking Call To Action last night to revive BotB... I mean, the biggest reason I hiatus'ed it was because nobody was playing and those who did did so out of obligation, and it was all because SD! sucked and there was no reason for them to feel like voting on a foregone conclusion. But if SD!'s coming back? Well, I don't know. We'll see...  last night, I finally decided AGAINST the Call To Action, though, on the grounds that 12 hours notice just don't cut it. Not with my slacker staff.  But if you want an UNofficial BotB winner this week: *I* give it to SmackDown! via a narrow 4.1 to 3.8 decision.  Hey, it's not more arbitrary than me alone deciding who is the Wrestler of the Week, right?]
   
  Obviously the big story was Kurt Angle being the masked "El Gran Luchador" who ran in and cost Eddie the main event cage match. This means a storyline in which Angle is almost CERTAIN to be ousted from the GM Office, since he's healthy enough to wrestle. It means he'll be feuding with Eddie. And it means JBL might (for reasons that baffle me) keep the WWE Title, but he'll be a second-line performer, which I think probably suits him better, but I'm not so sure it suits the title...  I think of it as not unlike RAW in May and June when Benoit was buried underneath HHH/HBK Hell in the Cell hype. Except that, of course, JBL is not Chris Benoit.
   
  I'm digressing...
   
  Angle's return is simply huge, and I'll talk more about that in a second; and it came as the climax to the easy Match of the Week, and the hands-down best of the Eddie/JBL series.  Why?  Simple, because of the cage match gimmick and the way they put together the match.  They came out very fast, and immediately set the tone with near-escapes and big bumps.  And in fact, it's the bumps that kind of let them DRASTICALLY improve the pacing of things: instead of things like 3 minute headlocks (as happened in the first JBL/Eddie match) to allow the guys (or one of the guys, let's not name names, though!) to recover, they could do a big cage bump, and then lie around on the mat for 90 seconds. Then repeat.  I know I'm being a cynical ass here, but really, that's kind of the beauty of the "escape rules" cage match.  It's maybe not a workrate fetishists dream, but the drama is ladled out in generous portions, and even the lying around is kind of exciting.  I remember after the Bret/Owen cage match at SummerSlam '94, you had one camp thinking it was absolutely awesome, and another thinking it was one of the most disappointing matches of all times, all because they played up escapes and drama instead of busting out nonstop wrestling moves.  This Eddie/JBL match was in that vein, and I say it was about as good a 25-30 minute JBL match as you'll ever see.  It was put together perfectly for him.
   
  Throughout the show, they also did a nice job of planting little things to make Angle's surprise return seem like an even bigger dick-move.  Claiming that he felt his knee pop out of place to a trainer who was TRYING to tend to Luther Reigns, making 2 or 3 non sequitur comments about how he'd probably be in this wheelchair for life, just little things that (since I knew what was coming, unfortunately) I thought were pretty funny to weave in.
   
  The opening promo with John Cena, Booker T, Rene Dupree, and Kenzo Suzuki was 100 kinds of fun, too.  I reiterate a point I ALMOST made last week: Suzuki, thanks to the use of Hiroko, may have found a hook that catapults his character to established mid-card status.  Besides Cena, that pair was the most entertaining thing in a very entertaining segment.  Their later match wasn't quite as spectacular as advertised (one reader who was at tapings says he thinks they clipped a lot from the early stages, though), and sort of boiled down to a Cena/Booker one-on-one, with Luther coming in for the cheap finish. Unless I'm missing something, the status of the vacant US Title was not ever addressed, though Cena vs. Luther coming next week probably means both will be players in whatever means of awarding the title is eventually arrived at. [Eight man tourney, maybe? Luther, Suzuki, Booker, and Dupree as the four heels; Cena, RVD, and two other babyfaces, maybe one of 'em Rey just because he's awesome?]
   
  Speaking of Rey, the opening tag with him and Spike beating Chavo and Noble was BETTER than advertised, I thought, and the night's second best match. That makes two or three weeks in a row where SD! features a match that, in some intangible way, reminded me more of a WCW Cruiserweight match (or TNA match) than of a WWE-style cruiser match. A little faster pace, a little more emphasis on highspots, at least one trainwreck spot per match... I'm not complaining: this is a good thing, and makes these matches seem even MORE like a change of pace from the rest of the show.
   
  The status of the Dudleys is another interesting issue: left to hang by Paul Heyman, they helped Spike win in that tag match (babyface move), but then were in pure asshole mode when D-Von got upset by Paul London later on (those belt shots Bubba laid on him were wicked).  Kind of an interesting little sub plot.
   
  Anyway, I don't think SD! had even one hole this week.  Certainly nothing as lame as the Diva Search bits on RAW.  Although that's probably gonna change here in a month or two when they start up "Tough Enough" as a regular weekly segment on SD!, but let's not get ahead of ourselves...  
   
  For this week, SD! was spot-on, and the way they're getting things aligned, it's looking more and more like they'll CONTINUE to roll, and that this isn't just an aberration.  You can get the full report in Big Danny T's SmackDown! Recap.
   
  
• If prelim ratings hold up, SD! was also a big winner in that category... 
   
  Preliminary numbers put SD! at a 3.4 broadcast rating, and in third place for the night among the six major networks. Usually the prelim numbers are pretty accurate, and I'd guess the final rating will come in somewhere between 3.3 and 3.6.  And no matter how you slice that, it's the closest SD! will have come to it's First Quarter 2004 average in months.
   
  That's good news on its own, and the fact that they put on a strong show so that those fans might be enticed to come back against next week is another big plus.
   
  
• On the return of Kurt Angle...
   
  I don't know if you want to peg all of my enthusiasm for SD!'s future on Angle's return to active duty. But I'd be lying if I said a majority of it wasn't because of the stylishly-coifed one's return.
   
  While Bret Hart and Ric Flair fans have been at each other's throats trying to make the case for which one of them is better and why, I'll gladly sit back and tell you that (in a perfect world) BOTH those camps would stand down and be in awe of Kurt Angle.  I honestly don't think there has ever been a more perfectly melding of the Hart/Benoit-esque in-ring LEGITIMACY with the Flair/Rock over-flowing PERSONALITY.
   
  If Brock Lesnar had stuck around (or if he comes back to wrestling), he might have developed that. Maybe we'll see one of Shelton Benjamin or Charlie Haas follow in Angle's shoes...  but for now, there is no more complete and remarkable a performer in the wrestling business than Kurt Angle.
   
  And it's kind of sad that I doubt he'll ever be mentioned in the same breaths with the Brets and Flairs. Yes, Kurt's back. But at what capacity, and for how long? Already, Angle was shut out of most major awards in 2003 for working only a half-year; a "half-year" in 2004 seems an optimistic goal, and even in that half-year, I can't see Kurt keeping anything much more strenuous than the "HBK 2003" schedule. And the thing none of us really knows: is Kurt really "healthy" at all, or is he just pushing himself because he knows the company needs him, and might he be one tough match or one bad bump away from retirement?
   
  None of that, however, should keep us from appreciating what Kurt delivers while he still can.  I just point to the half-year he had in 2003: in six months of work, Kurt was involved in half of the 10 best wrestling matches of the year, as well as the best feud.  Now, his inactivity made it hard to vote for him on "Best Wrestler" categories ahead of those who put in full years, but I was proud to make Angle the EASY call for my "Most Favorite" wrestler last year.
   
  Now he's back in the saddle, and ready to start making the case for winning that award again this year. At least from me.
   
  The beauty of Angle is that he has the ability to project his awesomeness outward and have it STICK to others almost instantly.  I can't explain it very clearly, but if you take as an example how it has been over a year since Evolution got the band back together, and only in the last few months has the "greatness" of HHH and Flair finally trickled down onto Randy Orton and Batista to the point where they, themselves, can go out to the ring and be treated like superstars... and then compare that to how Angle was able to introduce Benjamin/Haas in 2003 and within a few weeks, they were established enough that they held the tag titles and by mid-year were widely regarded by all fans as the best tag team in the company.  And kind of to how Angle has me thinking this Luther Reigns doesn't suck QUITE as bad as maybe I'd assumed he would.  Luther's got himself a bad-ass finisher and hasn't embarrassed himself in the ring, and in skits, seems to have enough personality that he's not a total loss there, either.  The Angle Magic: you can't deny it.
   
  There are indications that Angle realizes this about himself and wants to use it to create another faction based around him as the lead SD! heel.  Obviously Luther is his right hand man and enforcer.  I'd LOVE to see a drawn-out storyline where Angle torments Charlie Haas and makes him realize there's more to be gained by being a straight-up wrestler than a freak show with Rico and Jackie, and adds him to the fold.  [I still maintain that I think Haas could be a serious main eventer in the exact same mold as Angle, and DON'T think that there's any real reason to write him off as a loss and say only Shelton Benjamin will amount to anything; Haas has DEFINITELY impressed me more in the ring in the times he's been given a chance to shine.] This is a long shot, but I ALSO think it'd be cool if Angle decided to include a Cruiserweight in his stable: that's something that I don't think has been done (or if it has, it's only been rarely).  Instead of putting the Cruisers in their own ghetto, Angle and his focus on Great Wrestling would want to have a man on his team who could chase that title, and I think the currently-directionless Jamie Noble might be a good choice (somebody with mat skills to "fit in" with the theme of Angle's group).
   
  And that doesn't even get into how Angle is now positioned to help his opponents. I'm not as fast to "grudgingly accept" JBL as the WWE Champ; yes, he's now had two good matches and one good promo in the last month or so, but is he a draw, is he a reason to tune in to SD!?  No.  If the best thing you can say about him is that he's finally STOPPED being a reason to change the channel, that's really not much of a victory.  It kills me that Eddie may well go down as one of the lowest drawing champs in recent history, while JBL's numbers as champ will bump up... and you know why? Because Eddie DIDN'T HAVE ANY COMPELLING COMPETITION WHILE HE HELD THE TITLE.  But now he's dropped the strap, and you will see them coming back in DROVES to watch Eddie vs. Kurt with no gold on the line.  Kurt's the opponent Eddie needed while he was the champ, is what I'm saying.  Because Kurt is that damned good.
   
  And it's not just Eddie Kurt can help re-establish.  I can't imagine we get out of the year without Angle and Cena crossing paths, and if anyone is in need of a bit of resuscitation, it's Cena.  And maybe most elegant of all: you know Big Show's gonna be back at some point, and I don't think it'll take a lot for him to make that return as a babyface against a heel Angle (think about it, yes, Show was the "heel" for causing Angle's "career ending" injuries; but Angle lied about the severity, so Show's off the hook, kinda).  And what better way for Show to try to launch a new phase of his career as face than with eye-opening performances against the ultra-talented Angle?
   
  I'm really fired up for Kurt's return to action.  I hope it's the start of a long-lived stint in the ring, and not just another one of his three-months-and-gone phases... hopefully Kurt and WWE will work together and manage his schedule wisely so as to permit this to happen.
   
  
• And Angle's return to active duty? Well, it's not actually gonna be in a big TV match.  It's gonna be tomorrow (or tonight, or today, or something... DAMN YOU INTERNATIONAL DATE LINE!) as part of SD!'s on-going tour of Japan.
   
  I think the show will actually be taking place in Japan about around the time that I'll be rolling back home in the wee small hours tonight, so I guess it'll technically be July 17 in both places, but still...  I always have SO MUCH fun with verb tenses and crap when WWE goes to Asia...
   
  Anyway, it was announced at last night's (this morning's?) event in Tokyo that Angle would be teaming up with JBL to face Eddie Guerrero and the Undertaker in the main event of the 7/17 event.  In fact, Shane McMahon himself made a surprise appearance to announce the surprise return of Angle to the ring.
   
  It's worth noting: originally, WWE had expected to have Big Show back for this tour, but started shuffling the cards back about a month ago when it was apparent he'd be out for a bit longer than expected.
   
  
• This is VERY sketchy, but a live report I got from the 7/16 Tokyo show said that Eddie appeared to come up lame late in his main event match against JBL (the finish came shortly there after with a giant schmozz starting with an Angle run-in, then more heels, then Taker coming out for the save).
   
  And on top of that eye-witness account, there's now a minor buzz making it's way back here that Eddie may have tweaked a hamstring, and that they aren't sure how bad it is, yet.  He'll tough it out through the tag match tonight, and then we'll probably have a better idea where Eddie stands after a stateside doctor gets a look at him.
   
  I hope it's nothing to bad. The irony of Kurt getting healthy enough to pick up the program against Eddie just in time for Eddie to go down would be spirit-crushing.
   
  
• Add another "ringer" to the list of Diva Idol contestants.  After my rambling about the Playboy credentials of some of the wannabe divas, I got some mails from folks who wanted to let me know that ANOTHER one of the contestants is also semi-famous.  I don't even feel like going back and checking for the name, but I guess she was on "Survivor."  How thrilling... I guess she's jonsing for a sixteenth minute, or something.
   
  Actually, you know what?  After last night, who even knows which of the ringers is still in the contest.  They did that Diva Search special on SpikeTV, and I think the goal was to get it down to 10 finalists.
   
  I don't know if there was fan voting, or what, and I certainly didn't kill off any of my brain cells by watching the show.  And best of all: my confidence in humanity (at least, the part of it that reads OO) is restored as I've gotten a grand total of ZERO e-mail about the special, and last I checked there were ZERO threads about the diva search on the message boards.  My disinterest is your disinterest.  Good for us!
   
  Of course, with nobody kibitzing the crap for me, that also means I have no idea who "won" last night.  I'll bet you a body part that they didn't vote the Playmate off the island, though.  The one from Monday, I mean.  I still think this whole thing stinks of a set-up.
   
  I hope the show sucked ass, I hope it does crap ratings, and I hope WWE learns something from all this.  Then again, what'd they learn from the WBF? That clearly, Vince McMahon can start his own sports leagues and they will NEVER fail!  Hail XFL!  And I guess no matter how bad this thing flops, they won't undo the "Tough Enough" segments on SD! this fall....
   
  
• And when I get my jollies by writing about how I love not writing about the Diva Search thing, the irony meter goes off the charts, and it might be time to wrap it up....
   
  But first, I wanted to say a few things about the Randy Orton vs. John Cena issue that Erin Anderson discussed today.  Me being devil's advocate? Nah, more me having a few ideas go through my head as soon as Erin let me know what her topic was gonna be, and not wanting them to go to waste...
   
  In short: it's one thing to say Randy Orton's improved and John Cena's sputtered in the last six months, and I won't dispute that central element of Erin's argument. But have they completely flipped positions from where they were a year ago (Orton the over-pushed "Legend Killer," Cena the sensation the fans FORCED into a babyface turn), have they maybe pulled even with each other, or is Cena still "in the lead" in the battle of Next Generation main eventers?
   
  I'm not so sure I can dismiss Cena quite as easily as Erin did. And maybe it's just too bad that last night Cena had an "on night" that really jump-started my thinking and made me want to develop some of the Cena/Orton comparisons I'd had in my head the previous few days... I mean, if Cena cuts another poop promo (instead of hilariously accusing Michael Cole of representing the Lollipop Guild), trust me, I'm not rushing to his aid today.  I let my dissenting viewpoint sublimate and save myself the effort, probably...
   
  But it's nights like last night that remind you of a fundamental divergence between Cena and Orton at this point in their careers: John Cena IS A REASON WHY PEOPLE WATCH SMACKDOWN, but Randy Orton isn't even the main reason why people care about his faction.  Orton may have leap-frogged Ric Flair to finally be the #2 man in Evolution, but he's simply not the same kind of brand-defining staple for RAW that Cena is to SD!.
   
  To me, I would probably have couched the Cena vs. Orton debate a specific way in an attempt to arrive at a winner: Figure out which one will win a World Title First.  A year ago, no doubt EVERYbody (except cynics who might have over-estimated WWE's desire to shove Young Randall down our throats) would have said John Cena.  But after all that's happened lately, it's a much tougher call, and that's why I got my juices flowing after I found out Erin's topic.
   
  You can talk all day about Cena's loss of "cool" with poop promos and really juvenile rhymes that have plauged him for much of the past four or five months.  And "dese nuts"?  It's enough to make me think Erin was wrong to completely write off the Cena/Rock comparisons in her column!  Anybody remember 2002, when Rock was trying SO VERY HARD to be funny and cool, and it was just obnoxious as all hell to the point that heel Brock Lesnar got more cheers at SummerSlam?  Fans can smell that kind of desperation, and Cena has reeked of it at times in since turning face.
   
  But just as Rock came back as a heel, regained his edginess, and is now living off that goodwill to this day when he appears as a fan favorite again, I think it'd be pretty easy for Cena to re-establish his "cool" by just relaxing and not pushign the gimmick ahead of his natural charisma.  Don't have any rhymes above the third-grade level? Well, then what the hell's wrong with just, you know, TALKING? Like last night, when he did a "Wizard of Oz" themed promo with nary a couplet? There's a fricking reason why I hate musical theater, and it's because NORMAL PEOPLE DON'T SING ALL THE TIME.  And John Cena shouldn't rap all the time.  And should never speak of poop again, for that matter.
   
  And once Cena rehabilitates his "cool," he is a HUGE beneficiary of circumstance.  He's already a staple of SD!, gets the biggest pops, has the most signs in the crowd, and all that.  Remember the lottery, when the only SD! guy it seemed the RAW fans really wanted to jump was Cena?  That's what I'm talking about, and THAT is what Orton does not have and might not have for a long time to come.
   
  Maybe it's just because SD! is the weaker roster and so therefore Cena shines brighter... but whatever the underlying reasons, Cena is just more central to his brand than Orton is to his.  In the "who wins a world title first" debate, this is a MAJOR consideration.  I think Cena is easily one of SD!'s "top four" (along with Angle, Eddie, and Taker).  Maybe the fact that there are two other faces on that list means there are road blocks ahead of him, but still...
   
  Meantime, Orton's not thought of the same way by RAW fans, simply because of the talent that surrounds him.  Orton's the #2 man in his own faction. And besides HHH, you've got Benoits and Michaelses and Jerichos and Kanes and arguably even Eugenes who are the core stars of the show.  Orton has made huge strides, and flipped some kind of switch late in that Foley feud; he's now deserving of his spot on the card, I must grant. But I don't think you'll find many who consider Randy the reason to watch on Monday nights, I think whatever passes for Randy's "cool" is by association at this point, and I think that unlike Cena, he's got bigger names and stronger performers ahead of him on the roster.  Randy's a major player on RAW, but it'll take something major before you could ask a Man on the Street to name the brand's "top four" and have Orton be on just about every list.
   
  Performance-wise: hell yeah, Orton has caught up in a big way over the last year. I usually talk about it in terms of "flipping a switch," because I'm not sure Randall has gotten any more intelligent or added to his moveset in that time, but he's learned how to put it all together on promos and in the ring.  He BELIEVES what he's saying and doing, I think, and that's huge: it makes everything he does a bit more intense and a bit more plausible.  
   
  But on the other side: I don't think Cena's necessarily slid that far as a performer. Yes, he's had awful promos and rhymes foisted upon him by Vince McMahon's hired sitcom jack-offs, but unless you want to accuse Eddie Guerrero of being guilty of a noticeable decline in the last few months (instead of acknowledging he's not had the most compelling of opposition), then you gotta give Cena the same benefit of the doubt.  Of course he's kicked ass with Taker and Angle, and could again tomorrow.  But how's a crowd supposed to really care about a one-on-one feud with Rene Dupree the same way?  It's not Cena's fault that SD! didn't have someone strong to program against him...
   
  So, when I was putting it all together in my head, I was willing to grant that we now have ourselves a virtual tie between Orton and Cena in terms of what each is doing in the ring and on the stick.  That represents a major shift from a year ago, when Cena was blowing Orton away.  But when I consider circumstances related to each's brand, and when I use my "which wins a world title first," I think the edge goes back to Cena.
   
  Unless something goes horribly awry, both John Cena and Randy Orton should be multi-time champions by 2010. But today, Orton's commendable improvement to adequacy aside, I think the man who gets to the top of the mountain first will be the Doctor of Thuganomics. 
   
  
• And that is all, now.  Enjoy the weekend, and I'll see you again on Monday, kids.
   

E-MAIL RICK SCAIA
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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.

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