stories and six talented performers (plus Randy Orton) all together inside a massive steel structure.  Nope, that's kinda something I know I won't see on a Monday night, and something I kinda suspect might be worth checking out.

Now, as for the rest of the show? Well, there really isn't anything there that doesn't seem like it'd be more at home on the aforementioned hypothetical Monday night show. Closure on Kane/Snitsky will be nice to have, I guess, but I have no illusions about the match being any good; just an excuse for (hopefully) good storytelling. At least we know that SOME of the things on the undercard is the stuff of a GOOD Monday Night Show (Lita vs. Trish).  

So basically, that's WWE's battle on Sunday night: taking one big-ass match and all its storylines and ruling the multiverse with it, but only AFTER keeping us relatively distracted and entertained for the previous two hours of fluff.

And of course, OO's battle is to predict PPVs better than the Swine at WrestleLine.  For that cross-site competition, we're instituting a new scoring system which will be overseen and audited by our very own PyroFalkon...  so keep an eye out for that. And just remember that despite the new system, there's still no scoring category for flat out being the coolest, awesomest, wittiest, and best looking Wrestling Website Staff in the world. And worse, there's nobody keeping track of the many ways that The Rick is more right than WWE even when he picks the matches wrong because his way would have made more sense!  So OO gets shafted before the predictioning even begins!  

And the predictioning for Sunday's announced six-match New Year's Revolution PPV card? It begins NOW.....
 

TRIPLE H vs. CHRIS BENOIT vs. BATISTA vs. CHRIS JERICHO vs. EDGE vs. RANDY ORTON
Elimination Chamber Match for the Vacant World Title; with Special Referee Shawn Michaels

This match is the dictionary definition of "The ends justifying the means."  Or at least coming close to it.

Look, WWE *still* deserves all due bitchslaps for badly bungling the Guest GM gimmick and the lazy and moronic way they got us to the point where the World Title was left vacant. The Guest GM thing was a cornucopia of possibilities for creative and original ways to relieve Triple H of the World Title. Not a single one of those opportunities was pursued, because as we've learned lately, WWE's creative team is not exactly a cornucopia of originality. And may even be sitting out there wondering, "What is this cornucopia of which Rick speaks? Is it perhaps some kind of light rail?"...

So instead of doing anything that'd be logical or compelling with regards to the World Title, they just forge ahead with a silly and uninspired four weeks that had the net effect of destroying Chris Jericho's main event credibility, did only slightly less damage to Chris Benoit, might have nominally helped Edge, and served mostly to protect Triple H from dropping the title in a meaningful fashion. In a three way match, Edge tapped out at the exact same time that he rolled over and pinned Benoit for a three count, all while HHH looked on from ringside. And though that'd be a "draw" in most situations, and the champ would retain, our lazy-ass storytelling meant we carted Vince McMahon out in front of the audience (the answer to a question nobody asked) to usurp the alleged power of the RAW GM and declare the title vacant. Thrilling.

And yet, now it's a month later, and guess what? I might have been able to write the past 2 months of RAW in a way that'd have been an estimated 378 times more compelling and sensible, but I'd still have had absolutely NO problem ending up at this same end point that WWE's idiot creative team did. Those seven guys, with all the storyline baggage they've got, inside the Elimination Chamber with the World Title on the line? Wow.  It's almost enough to make you forget about WHY they ended up in there.  Almost.

The one area in which WWE cannot be faulted even on bit over the past couple months has been in the slow build-up of Batista. I couldn't have improved on the Batista/HHH dynamic a bit; but I'm quite confident that I'd not have un-improved upon it, for the simple reason that the coolest thing about Batista right now is that he's the one guy on this show who seems like he's saying exactly what I'd say in any given situation. I mean, word for word in spots; in the last month, Batista stole my old stand-by, "Don't tell me, SHOW me," and I don't even know how many times I, as a pretty cool and collected cat, have had to reassure somebody that "Hey, I got feelings, I just express 'em differently."  That Batista: how can you NOT love him?

Batista actually stands central to this entire match. The most compelling issue coming into the Chamber is just how loyal Batista will be to Triple H; forget HHH vs. Orton, the fans have spoken (and not just the jack-offs on the internet!), and they seem to be more into the possibility of Batista splitting from HHH than they are in seeing another chapter in the HHH/Orton feud. The last 2 months has been masterfully played in this regard: Batista, because he's smart, logical, and reasonable, hasn't done the dumb-ass Usual Pro Wrestler Thing of instigating a feud with HHH.  He might know he's a super-mega-ultra-ass-kicker, but he also knows that Membership Has Its Privileges.  So why not ride out Evolution as long as it doesn't TOTALLY cramp his style?  His newfound self-confidence has resulted in a few little digs at HHH and some good-natured friction, but at the end of the day, Batista's toeing that line, and not going over it.  Which kind of puts the ball back in HHH's court: he certainly can't LIKE Batista's behavior lately, but he also can't really do anything about it without over-reacting. Batista's always stopped short of outright insubordination, and has always rededicated himself to The Team and The Plan when asked about it, point blank. HHH may be annoyed by Batista, but he is also powerless to do much of anything except put up with it. Unless he wants to piss the Big Man off. And as we've learned, HHH might not like Big Ol' Dave when he's pissed off.

So it's an impasse. A tasty, delicious impasse.  Batista's all "Hey, I'm awesome, I don't gotta take any shit from any man, but I also think it's pretty cool having a couple guys covering my back. So look, Trips, I ain't gonna do something stupid and quit Evolution, so if you don't like what I'm saying and doing, it's up to *you* to get rid of me. If you got the balls."  And Triple H is all "Dammit, Batista, just give me ONE really good excuse and I'll do to you what I did to Orton. Except: oh shit, if I do, Evolution is just me and Ric, and frankly, I'm kind of scared of you, so... OK, I'm not gonna get rid of you. Yet."

What else we got in this match? Well, obviously, WWE would prefer if you thought that Randy Orton's Density was a particularly compelling aspect of this match. Certainly, going back to August, the Fed's been planting the seeds for Orton vs. HHH to be the "money match" at WrestleMania 21, and in the latest chapter of their "red hot" (ahem) feud Orton pinned HHH in a singles match just this past Monday (albeit after a seven-man schmozz). But the heat to that Monday night match (or more specifically, lack there of) should have been an indication to someone that HHH vs. Orton (in its current form), is NOT box office gold. The moment when HHH and Orton face off for the first time in the Chamber will probably get the Loud But Quickly Dissipating kind of heat... and then the crowd will sit down and wait for something actually interesting.

And that's where Edge might be vital. As one of only two true heels in the match, Edge needs to multi-task a bit, just like HHH. Except that instead of having issues with Batista and Orton, Edge has heat with Chris Benoit and referee Shawn Michaels.  It's actually quite elegant the way the three are interconnected, since you can basically go back to Taboo Tuesday and it all starts there. For a few weeks, these three men were jockeying for positioning in fan voting to earn a shot at Triple H's World Title. Obviously, they didn't get along... and things got worse at the PPV. Michaels won the fan voting. But per a stipulation, the two vote losers, Benoit and Edge, were forced to team up and challenge for the Tag Team Championship. After Edge walked out on the match, Benoit essentially won the titles by himself; Edge returned to the building only to burn his bridge with Michaels by screwing him out of the World Title with a main event run-in. And after a few weeks of kvetching about the tag titles being a "consolation prize," Edge flamed whatever remnants of a bridge he might have had with Benoit by costing him the tag titles in a rematch against La Resistance. [The Benoit/Edge partnership actually goes back to the summer, when the two had an entirely more cordial and civilized title reign together. And you know I loves me some of that continuity!]

So anyway, those three got a TON of history and stuff that I think will play well in the match.  Michaels position as a referee, instead of as a competitor, is curious. Obviously, his biggest beef is with Edge, and HBK might be in this spot for no reason more complicated that jump-starting a WM21 feud with Edge. But Michaels has a bunch of history with Evolution (back when Randy Orton was in Evolution, HBK feuded extensively with Randall; and obviously there's the 10-year-saga that is HBK/HHH; and Batista, well, he was standing around for parts of those feuds, right?), sparred more than once with Chris Benoit this past spring once Benoit inserted himself into the World Title Picture, and has a long-standing issue with Jericho that seems to have given way to Mutual Respect, but in a promo as recently as this past fall, hadn't COMPLETELY evaporated. So Michaels, he could literally do anything in this match. He could help anybody, he could screw anybody over, and that's kinda interesting.

Oh, and Jericho? Well, you've got one little trio (HHH, Batista, Orton) over here doing some interesting stuff.  You've got another little trio (Edge, Benoit, Michaels) over there doing equally interesting stuff.  And you've got Jericho stuck with no real reason to be in this match other than the fact that WWE needed six, and Jericho has the magical ability to get fans reacting to him like a main event mega-star no matter HOW shittily WWE books him. He's got tangential issues with Edge and with Evolution, but really, he's in there because he's a warm body, and one who'll get the fans into the match.  It's really quite an amazing trick he pulls.  And I'm going to keep on mentioning that I find Jericho's mind-control over the fans to be "Jedi-like" until it sticks.  Perhaps if I've fashioned myself as "The Whiskey Ninja," Jericho shall adopt the mantle of "The Promo Jedi."  Or something.  And yeah, I'm rambling because really, there's not a whole lot else to say about Jericho in this match, and even if he's not got a chance in hell to win, I wanted him to get a full paragraph like everyone else.

So that's the story of the match, but how about the STRUCTURE of the match? The chamber is a domed, steel structure encompassing not just the ring, but the entire ringside area; there's no getting in or out, but as we've learned in the past, there *is* plenty of opportunity for passing things in and out of the chamber. Ric Flair, I'm looking at you, bub. The match starts with two men in the ring, and the four other guys locked inside of "internal chambers" made of plexiglass.  After a "predetermined amount of time" (WWE's words, not mine; they are obviously hedging bets and won't set the time until Sunday night when they know how long the show is running; but in the past, I think it was five minutes both times), one of the internal chambers is opened up, and another man joins the fight. This repeats until all four internal chambers are empty and all six men have been released. Note that this does not mean that all six men will ever fight in the ring at the same time, since eliminations happen by pinfall or submission, and somebody might go down before all the internal chambers are empty.  After five eliminations, the last man standing is the winner and the new World Champ.

The order of entry is determined randomly. Except in this case, we know that Batista has earned the right to enter the match last; he'll have to stand by and watch 20 minutes of action before he comes in as the fresh man to pick apart the carcasses of those who've been hard at work since the start of the match.  I like this idea a lot. I'm just terrified that because of this, Jim Ross and Jerry Lawler will have an excuse to shoe-horn the phrase "Caged Animal" into commentary an estimated 1.48 billion times, causing my head to explode. Maybe that alone is motivation enough to watch this show at Hooters, where I normally can't make out any of the commentary? And while they're abusing the "caged animal" phrase, I bet neither of them has as awesome a call for the moment when Batista is finally loosed... for if you put me on headsets, that is when I shout, "RELEASE THE KRAKEN!". Hey sorry, I was like six when that movie was all over HBO, and I didn't know any better than to think it was awesome!

Bottom line, you got six guys in here who can take care of business, and you've got Randy Orton who can usually be counted on to be competent as long as microphones and chinlocks aren't involved. You've got tons of interesting stories.  You've got a unique gimmick match being utilized for only the third time ever.  And you've got no clear-cut favorite, just a bunch of opportunity and ambiguity. In short, you've got all the tools for an outstanding, dramatic, climactic 45-minute-plus main event match. Sign me up.
  

LITA vs. TRISH STRATUS
Women's Title Match

I'd be super-fired-up to explain to you how awesome it is to see a feud that's genesis dates back about 14 months FINALLY coming to PPV fruition... except that then I stop and think and realize there's nothing particularly surprising that Lita and Trish are still going strong over a year since they got hooked up in storylines: because they are essentially the entire Women's Division.  That's it: it's them, and that's so wrong for so many reasons, but it also explains why this feud has lasted so long.  Because WWE are a bunch of retards, and there's simply nothing that could take it's place at this point in time.

Still, whatever the reasons for the extensive history between these two, it's still laid the foundation for a storyline that fans seem to really enjoy, and if you've got a women's division storyline fans are into, that's cool with me. I'll try to repress my rage long enough to accentuate the positive elements of this rivalry, while ignoring the underlying negative elements.

Basically, Lita and Trish were the best of friends, and a little over a year ago, were pursued by Christian and Chris Jericho, respectively, in what became known as the Love Rhombus. One thing led to another, and Trish turned on Jericho and ended up with Christian (the slimeball whom Lita had kicked to the curb months before). At first, Trish's changing taste in men didn't really seem to affect her relationship with Lita, but once Lita found herself involved in all manner of idiotic trailer park drama, Trish decided there was no point being diplomatic about it, and began mocking Lita to no end.

And she was right to do it. For here is Lita's tale, in roughly chronological order: Lita falls for her old boyfriend, Matt Hardy, and the two are on the cusp of getting back together.  Kane's biological clock starts ticking and he decides he wants an offspring.  For reasons never adequately explained, Kane can't find a receptacle for his man juice the other six days of the week, and decides seducing Lita on Mondays is the Most Logical Course of Action. Kane's advances only bring Lita and Matt closer together, as Matt steps in to defend Lita at every turn. But Matt's defense is pretty pathetic compared to a Big Red Monster like Kane, and he frequently gets his ass kicked. So Lita, displaying a grasp on illogic that trumped even Kane's initial motivations, agrees to a weekend of hot, sweaty monkey sex with Kane if Kane will promise to leave Matt Hardy alone. The romantic weekend getaway passes, and Kane quits nagging the couple; Matt and Lita seem happy, finally. Until the OMG SHOCKING REVELATION~! that Lita's even DUMBER than we'd previously been led to believe, since she somehow managed to GET PREGNANT BY KANE.  Jesus, Lita, it's the 21st Century; when packing a bag for a weekend of forced sex with a man you despise, a girl of even Orton-caliber intellect should have had a half-dozen of the latest and greatest redundant birth control measures in place. But not Lita!  

So anyway, as all this idiocy is playing out, Trish Stratus is finding her Comfort Zone as a heel, and spends the month of May pretty much mocking the hell out of Lita, and in so doing, rendering herself infinitely more likeable than the ostensible babyface.  To this day, I don't understand how people can watch this feud and cheer for Lita; in terms of on-screen characters, it seems pretty cut and dry, Lita's really dumb and laden with drama, while Trish is clever and thinks Springer-esque drama is to be made fun of.  This isn't even anything to do with my ManCrush; I just can't imagine anybody (guy or girl) of minimal intelligence and rationality who'd think anything besides, "I'd rather hang out with Trish."  

But that's not how it goes, and I gather some people out there just can't stand Trish being all bitchy and awesome (including more than a few female readers who find my stances on Lita's behavior and unlikeability to be evidence for my misogynistic hatred of all women, if I can't bring myself to sympathize with Lita and her Terrible Plight; which struck me as very funny, for two reasons... first, anybody who knows me knows that I am a gentleman, almost to a fault; and second, I didn't know they had the internet in trailer parks now!). So Trish and Lita seemed on a collision course... and then, BAM, Lita found out she was pregnant, and there was to be no extended feud over Trish's newly won women's title.

But during Lita's absence from the ring, she was still showing up on TV and getting in the middle of all kinds of stupid shit (alienating Matt Hardy, her true soulmate, while ending up getting married to Kane, who just wanted her as property), and Trish was still there to mock her at every turn. There was the memorable baby shower incident. There was the less memorable wedding to Kane in which Trish showed up to hit just about the only funny line of the entire atrocity when she said, "I'm sure your love for Kane will blossom, Lita. All you have to do is open your heart.  Just like you opened your legs." WHEE~!

Eventually, Lita got unpregnant (hey, I gotta save PART of this story for the Kane/Snitsky preview!), and after some recovery time, was ready to step back in the ring. Lita proved herself worthy of a title shot against her rival Trish, and got it at Survivor Series. Except Lita, that psycho wench, she didn't care about the title in that match, all she cared about was making Trish bleed. I say BOO ON YOU, you imbalanced drama queen! But Lita's cruel and unprovoked attack did give us Trish In A Facemask for about a month, so that was pretty cool... and then came Lita's rematch, in the main event to RAW one month ago, Trish and Lita had about as fine a women's match as has been seen in WWE since... well in a long time.  It was easily the most fun I've had watching a WWE women's match since that sweet Ivory vs. I Don't Even Remember Who hardcore rules match back about 5 or 6 years ago. In an action-packed 8 minute match, Lita won the title from Trish.

And on Sunday, Trish is coming for her rematch. Without any idiotic outside issues, these two really did have a cool match a month ago on RAW. By necessity, they are the two strongest (perhaps ONLY) personalities in the women's division, and so you can actually have match psychology and stuff that fans'll get into. And action-wise, they can bring it; although, maybe Lita should bring less of it, just so I can sit back and enjoy this match without fearing for the lives of either woman...  there are any number of outside factors that might come into play here, and any number of possibilities that they could either be very cool and interesting or could also suck as badly as all of Lita's drama over the summer did. But even if they just tell Trish and Lita, "Hey, no extracurriculars, and this time, you got 12 minutes instead of 8," I'm confident the results will be dandy.
  

SHELTON BENJAMIN vs. MAVEN
InterContinental Title Match

The story here? Well, it was kind of crappily told, but it's an old standard, so it's not like you fine fans couldn't fill in some of the blanks for yourself.

Shelton Benjamin's the easy break-out star of 2004, going from tag team wrestler to guy who beat HHH a few times to the IC Champ; everything just seems to come up roses for Shelton, who has only been with the company for 2 years.

And then there's Maven, the erstwhile babyface who just doesn't seem to get any of those breaks, even 4 years after winning the initial Tough Enough contest. Cue the jealously and the heel turn, cuz it's all by the numbers.

Maven actually started out more jealous of Eugene winning tag team gold after only six months in WWE, and tried commiserating with Shelton about this. But Shelton felt happy for Eugene, so no sale.  So Maven just waited till there was no Shelton around, and attacked Eugene in the middle of a match. From there, came a match in which Maven teamed up with Christian and The Lovely Miss Tomko to face Shelton, Eugene, and William Regal.  In that six man match, Maven got a cheap pinfall win over Shelton.

Of course, the follow-up to that pin was underwhelming due to WWE's need to suspend undercard storylines for the Beat The Clock gimmick. But this past Monday, Maven issued his challenge for an IC Title match, and Shelton accepted. And so, it's on...
  

EUGENE/WILLIAM REGAL vs. CHRISTIAN/THE LOVELY MISS TOMKO
Tag Team Title Match

You know what? This is pretty much the same deal as the IC Title match: a pretty formulaic "feud" that really never had a chance to develop or shine, but which fans should be able to grasp in a subconscious sort of way.  And unlike the IC match, the personalities involved here (Tomko excepted) are strong enough that even if it is a sort of tossed-together bit of fluffery, I think fans'll dig it and it'll be really fun.

The genesis of this feud was actually a backstage run-in between Eugene and Christian (with an assist from Mick Foley), in which Christian thought he'd been besmirched. So that set up the aforementioned six-man tag match that ALSO played a part in the IC Title feud.  Coming out of that match, things were again put on hold for a week for Beat the Clock, but ramped up again with the most basic and standard of tactics: the dueling singles matches!

On Heat, I gather Tomko beat Regal (and people wonder why I don't watch the show!)... then the next night on RAW, Christian beat Eugene, giving them the clean sweep over the tag champs.  Of course, this can only logically lead to a PPV showdown with the belts on the line.  And like I said, the "fun factor" of Eugene, Regal, and Christian should mean this is a pretty good one, even if it's nothing really PPV worthy.... should make a fun opener. 
  

KANE vs. GENE SNITSKY

OK, so the Lita/Trish drama really stems from a portion of the Kane/Lita relationship that was so dumb and uninteresting, it'd make your head explode if you weren't careful. But then things did kind of take a turn for the better when SNITSKY~! showed up.

For as much as Lita's pregnancy sent this story careening at high speeds towards Uncharted Regions of Awful, the night of her unpregntizing was when they slowed the ship down and started steering it back to less retarded waters.  I say that with with the full knowledge of how awful it must sound; some of the ladies out there already think I'm an evil misogynist, and now I hate babies, too! Who the hell cares... the smart folks know what I mean.

Basically, after Gene Snitsky showed up as an unknown jobber and "accidentally" caused Lita to have a miscarriage when she got in the ring during a match, everybody started acting a little more normally. You still had to kind of ignore how terribly moronic the backstory was, but with "lost their baby" as a starting point, one could feel a bit more for Kane and Lita than you could when the entire relationship was predicated on "Lita deciding to have unprotected sex with her boyfriends worst enemy."  One of those things actually happens in the real world (although, not usual due to steel chairs and guys named Snitsky), and the other is just too dumb for words.

Kane's anguish over losing his son and the pretty expertly just-over-the-top-enough way he played it had the net effect of turning him babyface.  It was Erin who talked a lot about this in her awards column, and back about 18 months ago, it was actually I who made some observations about Glen Jacob's remarkable ability to make the most out of WWE's absolutely worst-conceived storylines (in a column that I just re-read today and which is as pertinent now as it was then), and trust me, nobody was happier than me to see the suck ebbing away, replaced by a story that, while still soap-opera-y in nature, had some relatable and compelling elements to it.

Kane's simple desire to make Snitsky "a dead man," was understandable and cheerable. Snitsky, as the sort of dumb-seeming guy who didn't fully comprehend what he'd gotten himself into, and thus kept making it worse (by punting baby dolls, for instance), claimed he was "just doing a job" (an interesting line that could have just meant he was out there in the capacity of Pro Wrestling, trying to have a match, when Lita got in the ring unexpectedly; but could also have more nefarious meanings) and thus decided that "It wasn't my fault." And then you had the changing dynamic between Kane and Lita; Lita was clearly no longer terrified or disgusted by Kane, and might even have respected how he took care of her after the miscarriage. You got a hint of where things might be headed right before Taboo Tuesday, when Lita cut a promo in which she borrowed her husband's catchphrase, "Snitsky is a dead man." Kane and Lita had never been more on the same page, and couples using each other's catchphrases, that's true love, baby!

Of course, at this point, there was probably more evidence for my woman-hating, since I was getting behind a consensual relationship between Lita and the man who was a hairsbreadth away from raping her, depending on how you want to play with semantics. Except like I said: to me, the story reset, and I was trying to forget the earlier things. You gotta grade Kane on how he's behaving NOW, which is pretty cool.  And just like that I think we've found The Rick's High Water Mark for how much illogic and camp I can handle in wrestling; it'd never happen in real life, but Lita falling for the asshole who impregnated her against her will? I can force myself to buy that. In a way I canNOT force myself to buy godawful weddings.

But in anycase, it didn't matter. Cuz a week after Lita cut that promo and seemed to be warming to Kane, Kane was destroyed by Snitksy in a Taboo Tuesday match and disappeared for three months. It was actually not pretty at all, the PPV match; just mostly awkward brawling, and then an even more awkward closing bit in which I guess fan voting screwed things up, since they wrestled a chain match, but needed to use a steel chair for the final spot (the Pillmanization of Kane's neck by Snitsky).  Snitsky won the match by pinfall after that, and Kane did a stretcher job (Snitsky even attacked him further as he was on the stretcher) while his wife Lita looked on in concern.

So Kane's been recovering for 3 months while Lita's life has gone on; we're not sure what's up between those two kids, other than they're obviously keeping in touch, since Lita brought Snitsky a message from Kane a few weeks ago. Just four days ago on RAW, Kane made a surprise appearance to save Lita from Snitsky, and when he helped her up from the mat, the two shared... well, eye contact. And maybe a couple of smiles.  What's up with that?

I'm not sure, but I'm guessing we'll find out soon enough. And it's telling that I'm more concerned over that than I am with the actual Kane/Snitsky wrestling match.  Let's just say that I'm not expecting a whole lot.  A 5 minute slobberknocker would be fine with me, but maybe this was a case where the hardcore rules of the last match handcuffed them, and doing a more straight-up brawl will actually make for a better contest?  We'll see...
  

MUHAMMAD HASSAN vs. JERRY LAWLER
In a Very Special "Please Note WWE's Preferred Spelling for Muhammad, People" Match

I apologize to everybody: for two months, he's been "Mohammed" Hassan here at OO.  I've made the adjustment, though....

Here's the deal: Hassan and his manager, Khosrow Daivari, hail from Michigan, but they are of Arab descent. They believe that they are unfairly persecuted by whitey because of their beliefs and heritage. They spent about 2 months of vignettes explaining that point, and since showing up live on RAW, have continued hammering the point home. To be honest, it's not like they aren't speaking the truth. But I also gotta grant that the methodical jack-hammering of the same basic point, over and over again, combined with the not-insignificant charisma of Hassan and Daivari, has been effective in taking a pretty sensible stance and making it seem secondary to the simple fact that these two guys seem like jerks.

Again, I point to the promo work down with Mick Foley, and beg for just a TINCH more restraint in terms of going into topics like our troops overseas, and if you work with that, what you'll have is a road map to building up these characters in a way that they aren't booed for being Ay-rab. They're booed for being Ay-holes. And for the second time this document, I put in a line just because I'm gonna beat this dead horse until it catches on, dammit!

This precise match exists because Hassan and Daivari accused Jim Ross and Jerry Lawler as being the media mouthpieces who encourage Americans to crap all over their Arab-American brothers. It led to a "debate" pitting Ross/Lawler against Hassan/Daivari (consisting of one questions, and then nobody actually talking about any issues). And the debate, predictably, led to fisticuffs.  Lawler was bloodied and Ross was choked out.  In the aftermath, Lawler demanded this match, and got it.

In the past week, I've gotten some interesting intelligence reports that indicate that for as much cheap heat as Hassan is getting domestically, he is being received very positively in Canada and the UK (and thus, presumably, everywhere overseas).  I don't know if this is something WWE was crafty enough to INTEND for (if they are, well, good for them, since I hadn't really thought that far through), nor do I know that if it was NOT intentional if they'll still take advantage of the unique opportunity to do a Bret Hart 1997 type vibe with Hassan in which the US is the only place he's a heel. All that said, Puerto Rico (site of Sunday's PPV) is probably NOT a genuinely "international" venue, and might not be place to test the theory. Then again, Canada is basically the 51st state, and those wacky sumbitches manage to create some kind of bizarro land everytime WWE visits, so who knows how Puerto Rico fans will react...  just something to think about.

As cheap and one-dimensional as Hassan's gimmick is, and as old timey as Lawler's tactics are, I don't expect anything even remotely fancy here. But if they press the right buttons, it could go over well and get Hassan off to a good start in WWE. To bad that no matter what happens, we probably get stuck with Coach calling about half the show with JR... and I'm sure he'll be back to his more obnoxious ways after a solid outing on Monday night.
  

EXTRAS/CLOSING THOUGHTS

Six matches? That can't be EVERYTHING, can it?  And so the trOOps offer up some additional thoughts on how the New Year's Revolution PPV might play out.... 
  

So check out New Year's Revolution on Sunday night, if you're so inclined. Or if you must take a pass, I'll be posting my immediate post-show PPV Recap sometime proximate to midnight!  See you then....