What a crappy fricking weekend for me. Well, mostly crappy, especially if you focus on the Sports Loyalties element. Things got so bad for me that for a while last night, I was worried that I was liking New Year's Revolution a bit more than other like minded fans just because it was the happiest ending I got to enjoy all weekend long.

Then, come the e-mail deluge of the morning, and with the larger sample size came a generally positive (or at least, "interested") response to the NYR PPV, so at least I haven't lost my touch, there.
  

But honestly: the Giants get absolutely throttled and humiliated. The Bengals lose two of their top four offensive threats in the first 3 minutes of their game, and STILL find new an exciting ways for the to be the DEFENSE (or lack there of) that costs them the game.

And my Flyers. My poor UD Flyers. Just three weeks ago, we

On top of that, there's apparently some super-secret Crisis of Team Chemistry going on that resulted in our best player being benched for the last four minutes of said loss. And today? I wake up to discover that our second best player could be out for the year pending the results of an MRI on his foot. Great.

Oh, and just to make sure that the agony extends to all three mainstream American sports: the supposedly tight-fisted-and-strapped-for-cash Cincinnati Reds blew $1.5 million on signing Rich Aurelia. Aurelia?!? He's right up there with Mark Henry on the list of "Answers to Questions That Should Never Ever Be Asked." Baffling.

The Rick is not a pansy, folks. I think that's plain for all to see. But The Rick has not been so in need of a hug in a long, long time as I am after this weekend of Crippling Sports Anguish. Somebody: just hold me and tell me it'll be alright....

And although things got a little bit more interesting in the wrestling world last night on the PPV, there's still some distressingly sad news to report, too. But sooner started, sooner done... so let's shuffle up and deal:

• According to live reports and WWE.com, Dave Batista suffered a potentially serious injury in a match against Mark Henry last night on a house show in Bumblefuck, NY. The injury appeared to be to his arm, and speculation is that Batista might have been affected by over-protecting his already-injured lat/shoulder, which could have contributed to over-stressing his other arm.
   
  WWE.com's report is that it's a triceps tear. If just a small or partial tear, Batista might again be tempted to work through the injury (as he wound up doing with his torn lat).... but this time, fears are that the injury is much, much worse. Possibly a repeat of the full triceps tear that Batista suffered back in 2002. Such a tear would absolutely require surgery, no questions asked, and sideline Batista until this summer.
   
  At this point, anything less than the best possible medical news today (that Batista's injury is exceptionally minor and will allow him to compete at a reasonably effective level inside the month) probably means SD! needs to scramble for a back-up plan for the World Title. With the likelihood of Batista able to perform a competitive match at TV tapings tomorrow night, the best option (if it's believed he'll be sidelined for any substantial period of time) might even be to do something I'd find personally abhorrent: use Melina's Sexual Harassment Suit as the excuse for stripping/suspending Batista, pending further evidence. As mind-bendingly dumb as that storyline is, it now exists as the best way to write Batista out without having to put his body in harm's way again.
   
  If there's an upside to this, maybe it's that at least now WWE won't be asking us to actually buy into a fricking Mark Henry vs. Batista World Title match at the Rumble PPV....
   
  And before I go much further, I know I crap on Mark Henry, but this isn't a deal where you can blame him for doing something incompetently wrong causing the injury (as you can for, oh, let's say Chris F. Masters)... he was actually taking a bump from Batista when somethig happened. If you blame Henry for anything, it's for being 400 pounds and having to make Batista work for it.
   
  And even then, you don't really blame Henry. You gotta cast a suspicious eye towards management, who saw fit to put Batista in the ring with a guy like that when they knew his body was still not 100%. You could see the difference in Batista's work, too, just between when he'd be free-and-easy working against guys like MNM, and how he was being visibly reserved/protected in that underwhelming match against Big Show and Kane. Booking Batista against the guys they did, WWE was practically asking for something like this to happen.
   
  Then again, hell, if I'm going to stretch for blame-laying, this could even by my fault for jinxing Batista. In two separate conversations last night (during and then after the PPV), I blithely said things like "Batista's finally getting healthier and should be just about 100% soon" when talking about the SD! title picture. Come morning, it turns out I had somehow jinxed Batista.
   
  Anyway, no matter how serious this turns out to be, there's now a statistically significant chance that Batista will NOT be competing at WM22 as World Champ. Given the year he's had, this is just the final sac-punch at the end of an almost perpetual flogging. After his title reign started of farily promisingly with a three-pronged "win" of his feud over HHH, Batista's on-screen problems began with a series of less-than-well-received matches against JBL that rocked his self-confidence. When the booking finally got straightened out again and Batista was poised to regain the approval of the fans in a storyline with Eddie Guerrero, Batista got sucker-punched again by the death of his good friend. Throw in the lat injury. Now the arm injury. The man is snakebitten.
   
  We'll know a lot more about the situation based on how WWE plays things at tomorrow's TV tapings. The word is that Batista has (by the time you read this) already been examined by Dr. James Andrews, in Birmingham, AL, (where they love the guvnah, ooh, ooh). He is, as they say, the Best In The Business, and should have Batista and WWE steered towards an accurate prognosis in time for them to address the problem this week on TV.
   
  Here's wishing for the best for Batista... even as we brace for the worst.
   
  
• Another of SD!'s champions is injured: Kid Kash suffered a broken arm last week while training with some developmental wrestlers. He appeared at SD! house shows over the weekend, on at least two of the events, they did a deal where a Cruiserweight Elimination Match was booked, and Kash claimed he could not wrestle due to the injury.... so it was ruled that he was eliminated first, and the match would continue to crown a new CW Champ.
   
  Then, once it got down to the final two guys, Kash would re-appear and cause a DQ finish. And what happens on a DQ finish? A WWE Title canNOT change hands, that's what. So Kash retained his title. 
   
  What will they do about this on TV? More than likely, the (lack of) visibility of the CW Title means that they'll just work around it. Protect Kash by having him to brief promos or something on SD!, and then as soon as he's cleared to do so, he could easily resume wrestling still with a cast on his arm. 
   
  Throw in Booker T's recent injury while competing for the vacant US Title, and there seems to be something of a curse attached to anyone holding or competing for a SD! brand title. Be careful MNM, be very careful.
   
  
  
• The man Kash took the CW Title from has been released by WWE... Juventud Guerrera jobbed to Kash in a rematch last week at SD! tapings, and by Thursday had been cut loose.
   
  If the move was a surprise, it was only in that it came quite a bit faster than I would have expected. I thought Juvi would have come to his senses a bit and held on to his job for at least another few months.... but nope: either he kept on being a retard behind the scenes or if he did shape up, WWE didn't buy into it and just decided it better to be done with him sooner rather than later.
   
  For the past 4-6 weeks, Super Crazy and Psicosis had been purposely distancing themselves from Juvi, both backstage and in terms of asking to go on TV without Juvi in their corner, as Juvi's demands of management grew more and more ridiculous (including demanding that his girlfriend get a job with the company). The hope was apparently that Juvi would see the light when asked to drop the CW Title to Kash, but I guess that didn't happen.
   
  I gotta say: for as much as we all know Juvi can do in the ring (and toss in his absolutely perverse brand of almost-charisma), I would have thought Juvi would have accomplished a bit more in his 6 month run. Instead, all my memories of the Mexicools tend to focus more on the work of Crazy and Psicosis. They've had the better matches, anyway. And all joking that I've done aside, Juvi really *was* essentially their effete valet more than he was a wrestler in his own right during that time. Odd.
   
  But it won't be an issue any more. Juvi's gone.
   
  
• While sticking on the issue of SD!... this weekend's show was heavily edited in the final segment. The reason why? Well, it was Mark Henry again. But again, it's hard to say if it's really Henry's fault or not.... though it's fun to pretend.
   
  What was a 30-second bit involving the cage door and Batista in the final edit took more like 5 minutes to play out live. I put the link in with the SD! Recap, but in case you didn't see it, you can download the unedited (and hilarious) video file right here. It's about 13meg, right on the cusp of "is it worth it or not?" for you dial-up readers. It's funny enough that I'd probably vote "worth it," if you care. 
   
  What's most amazing about the clip is that Tazz and Cole actually continue calling the "action" of Henry fumbling with the cage door for the full five minutes without once laughing or breaking character, despite the fact that they HAD to know after the first minute that this was going to all be edited out. Kudos to them!
   
  
• Another edit from SD!: they apparently decided to remove a skit involving Tim White. In it, he claimed to have accidentally shot himself in the foot before he was able to commit suicide on the PPV a few weeks ago. But this time, he's gonna do it right by eating rat poison. So of course, he falls and spills the rat poison, or something, and he's failed yet again to kill himself. 
   
  I'm actually shocked this wasn't allowed to air. Somebody at WWE exercising judgment? And good judgment at that? Wow. Except: not so much. The rat poison incident still made it onto WWE.com, I gather, either as a video clip or as a text report.
   
  Whatever. I just hope that they let this fade quietly into the past with nary another public mention of it. Though I do want somebody to give me my cookie: I was right about WWE feeling the need to back-peddle and un-kill White so they'd be in accordance with their own stated rules and guidelines about acceptable storyline material.
   
  
• And for the record: this weekend's SD! did a 3.1 broadcast rating. That's a huge bump back up to pre-holiday levels for SD!, so that's good news for WWE. Now, they've gotta hope for the same for RAW tonight, as Monday night ratings have been sub-par the past 3 straight weeks.
   
  I can't say that this weekend's show was a SD! that did a whole lot for me. Then again, I watched it on heavy FF late on Saturday night... something annoying: Ken Kennedy returns to TV, but instead of doing anything interesting, he's basically Network Tool #2, behind Carson Palmer on the depth chart? So lame. 
   
  Also annoying: the way they've proceeded with the US Title Series, essentially making Randy Orton into Booker T's fulltime surrogate. They've already made it official that Orton will get another shot at putting Benoit away next week, which means when all is said and done, Orton will have wrestled practically half this series despite having nothing on the line to make him do so. Except that he keeps saying "Booker T, you will owe me one." Why am I having visions of Horny Randy suddenly wanting to have the Animal Sex with Booker T's wife, just like Kurt Angle did last year?
   
  None of which will be a problem as long as Benoit wins. But I begin to suspect that he won't, since they wouldn't have bothered setting up an Orton/Booker story thread if they didn't intend to follow through on it. Sorry, Benoit...
   
  I can only assume the reason they're rushing this thing through, instead of dragging it out and maybe allowing Booker to get back into the game (at least for the final, deciding match) has GOT to have something to do with Benoit's contract status. Goddammit, WWE: just give the guy whatever he wants, and move forward, secure in the knowledge that this is the first negotiation in god knows how long that you didn't let Johnny Ace fuck up royally.
   
  Anyway, full results from this weekend's show can be found in the SmackDown! Recap. Enjoy.
   
  
• I guess we ought to briefly touch on TNA. At least, it's nice to touch on TNA on a Monday for once, after a few weeks of me not even seeing the show till the Monday night replay...
   
  A definite mixed bag, and a show that couldn't seem to go more than 5 minutes without doing something to annoy me.
   
  For instance: the Dudleys got a very convincing squash match and started in on some intense mic work, promising naughty things will be done to AMW at the PPV. But then, they go completely off the map with a rant about how they will trade all their 18 WWE, ECW, and WCW Tag Titles in a heartbeat for just one TNA Title reign, because they are the most prestigious tag team titles in the history of time and space.
   
  Give. Me. A. Break. The idea here should be to entice casual/marginal fans to become TNA fans and view them as equals with WWE. The idea is NOT to say things so inane that casual fans will listen and roll their eyeballs and determine that maybe the Dudleys really are washed up if their idea of a prestigious title is an ugly piece of tinfoil costume jewelry being defended in front of 800 non-paying fans in a TV studio while Fricking Laser Beams are shooting off all over the place.
   
  Maybe to some, it's a minor thing. But to me, this is the exact kind of Demonstrably False Gibberish that not only alienates fans who want to take the TNA product serious, but also begins the process of eroding the Dudleys' own legacy if they can't find a more reasonable way to proclaim their lust for a fourth different tag team title without out-right lying to fans. 
   
  So annoying. And so counter-productive. Making viewers howl with laughter at the absurdity of something said by your ostensible Lead Babyface Tag Team is NOT a good idea. It's almost kind of sad, like if Johnny Ace got hired as the Yankees' General Manager, and somehow Derek Jeter ended up playing for the Yankees Triple-A affiliate in Columbus, and instead of just working his hardest to make the team the best it could be, Jeter actually went on TV and declared "Screw my major league resume, and forget all my World Series Rings! My life will not be complete until I win an International League Title with the Columbus Clippers!"....
   
  It's tough, cuz you know that the Dudleys are saying these things willingly and because they think it's the right thing to do by the company (almost the opposite of how -- oh, let's say -- Kevin Nash usually came across in promos)... but it just doesn't quite work that way in real life. Saying something doesn't make it true. And I was left wishing the Dudleys were just a bit more selfish, and had cut that promo without losing some tiny part of their credibility. If they had, I think the end result would actually have been MORE beneficial to TNA, as well, since more fans would have believed in the promo, too.
   
  Same started-good-ended-lame thing in the night's best match, the X Division 6-Way. I was greatly enjoying the action, but in the back of my mind, I just knew that Chris Sabin was out of place on the "superstar" babyface team (with Styles and Daniels), which meant that in the name of giving the upset win to the trio of identical no-name heels, Sabin had just been thrown out there as the lamb. Sho 'nuff, after 10 minutes of appreciating the action, I was disappointed in the predictable finish, which had the net effect of accomplishing nothing (other than reinforcing the notion that Sabin is a jobber); the no-name heels didn't beat Styles/Daniels, they didn't prove anything, they just beat Sabin. Which lately, it seems like anybody can do. Whee?
   
  Middle of the show bogged down for me, what with Gonnad and Ron Killings getting segments, and not exactly being high on my list of Guys I Like To Watch.
   
  But then that was also off-set by the end of the show, which I thought was another deal with TNA effectively tackled a WWE-style "Entertainment Segment" by doing an Homage to Sting, led by Jeff Jarrett. They hauled out Sting Imitators, representing the different phases of Sting's career. For some reason a guy in a chicken suit was hanging around, ostensibly because he was representative of the turkey vulture that Crow-Era Sting sometimes sent to haunt Hulk Hogan. Odd. But sorta funny in an absolutely retarded way. Christian eventually broke it up, and the thing degenerated into a brawl. Seemingly involving just about every single PPV-caliber performer on the TNA roster. 
   
  In practice, probably not much different than the random, ring-filling-way WWE ended RAW last week, but actually, it seemed to flow better and more logically. Christian attacking Jarrett begat Jarrett's buddies AMW joining in, which logically begat the Dudleys showing up, and it escalated from there. Nice finish for the mixed bag show.
   
  You can get much more detailed results and analysis in Jason Longshore's TNA Impact Recap. 
   
  
  
• And in our travails among the three nationally-televised Wrestling Brands, I guess that brings us to RAW.
   
  Coming off last night's surprising New Year's Revolution PPV, there are certainly lots of questions to be answered. RAW has, at the very least, got our attentions in a way that it hasn't in a good long time. Having a man not even scheduled to compete for the WWE Title walk out of a PPV with said belt is a good way to accomplish that.
   
  Then again, WWE.com's early preview actually goes a long way to killing off my sense of anticipation. For they quote Edge as saying that he will celebrate his title win by having sex with Lita in the ring, live on RAW. Oh sweet fancy Moses.
   
  You know that stuff I said above about how the Dudleys' rant insults and offends the fans because they are saying things that the fans know to be false? Well, the same basic thing goes here. Because not one single person who reads the WWE.com preview or who tunes into RAW and is exposed to 90 minutes of hype before the eventual segment is gonna believe it for a second. They're going to be annoyed that WWE is promoting something impossible to deliver (and which is also so mind-blowingly stupid). They're already going to be wondering "what's the Out?" instead of giving a shit about Edge's first night as champ.
   
  The only thing I can figure is that with all the hype surrounding Howard Stern's debut on Satellite Radio and how he's back to being the cutting-edge filthy Stern, WWE somehow thinks that they can piggyback off this by promoting a shock-jock style night of anticlimaxery. The thing is, the content that was cutting edge 20 years ago when Stern did it the first time is boring and passe now to all but the most easily-amused (or easily-offended) of people. WWE fails to realize this every time they go to press a "hot" button (and hit a lukewarm one), instead of actually presenting content that fits into the big picture of over-riding storylines and character development.
   
  Think about it: it's not just annoying and patronizing to fans to promote something like this, but it actually makes Edge's character into a fucking retard if he thinks a plot to get Live Sex Acts on TV is gonna work. Even if he's the "Rated-R" superstar, and his idea of sex involves awkward gyrating and no penetration, it ain't gonna fly on a TV-14 show. I think it's safe to say that we, as fans, don't like the idea of our wrestling characters being retards, so this really hamstrings Edge. Not only does it hurt his character for even proposing the idea, but then, at the other end of the night, when he fails to follow through with any kind of compelling "out," he loses face that way, too.
   
  It's an unwinnable situation in any kind of meaningful, long term context. But who cares about that, right, WWE? As long as for one night, the promise of Live Sex Acts attracts a slightly-larger-than-average audience of teenagers of subnormal intelligence to watch your show, right?
   
  Anyway, I think I might have jinxed us on this one, too. Since just last night I was bouncing ideas around about what could happen with Edge's title reign, and eventually settled on how it might be a cool counterpoint to have Edge's first WWE Title Reign last one day. Because Edge's first singles title was a One Day IC Title Reign in 1999, a completely unexpected and surprise win that came at a time when Edge was viewed primarily as a tag team wrestler. He won the title for the cheap hometown pop on a house show in Toronto, and lost it back to Jeff Jarrett the next night on PPV.
   
  So it wasn't that complicated of a brainstorming process to have Edge's first night on RAW as the WWE Champ (which, appropriately enough, came as a completely unexpected surprise when Edge was viewed primarily as a mid-card singles wrestler) be a haunting (and compelling) call-back of that incident. Have him drop the WWE Title (sadly, probably back to Cena, since that's the only logical guy who could stake a rematch claim on such short notice), and have the Story Of His One Night IC Title Reign at the ready, too. And then, when Edge loses his first WWE Title after only one day, too, it drives him to all new levels of intensity and assholitude and he feels the world is out to get him and he must prove to us that he is NOT a One Night Charlie when it comes to breakthrough title wins. It could be the return of whiny, bitchy, conspiracy-theory Edge from a year ago... an Edge who was rather an entertaining chap.
   
  But nope: even as this scenario is coalescing in the aether, WWE was putting together the Live Sex Act scenario, instead, for Edge's all-important first night as champ. Brilliant.
   
  However that goes, it'll also be interesting to see where WWE goes with John Cena and Kurt Angle... last night, Angle had the night's second biggest highlight with his spot-on promo in which he teasingly said he doesn't like "the black people" and wants to make Jesus Christ tap out to the ankle lock as evidence that fans respect his ability so much at this point that he can say any damned stupid thing he wants, and they'll still cheer for him. Prophesy was fulfilled 2 hours later in the Elimination Chamber Match, when Angle's segments with John Cena resulted in the loudest reactions of the night... and which made the too-soon elimination of Angle (he was the first man out) all the more baffling and energy-sapping. The Chamber match never got back on track after the halfway point when Angle was eliminated.
   
  It seems that WWE simply HAS to do something about this, now. There's no longer any point to them denying it. And they were in denial so long that there's really no way to just "fix" it, either. The past three weeks took WWE firmly past the point of no return, I think: fans want to cheer Angle. At least against Cena. Which means that after Angle's spot-on promo last night, Cena's next address is going to be quite an important one, too...
   
  The key, in my mind, is that if WWE is giving up and just doing a double turn with Angle and Cena, you do NOT have Cena change much of anything about his act. He should not resort to cheap heat tactics like ripping into the fans. That would actually rob him of part of what makes his character such a dislikeable choade. What's fun about booing Cena is that he keeps shouting out to his "Chain Gang," oblivious to the fact that at least as many people hate him as love him. And retaining some percentage of those fans (all poser teenage boys and clueless fangirls) is actually a GOOD thing for Heel Cena: they're part of what makes it fun for the rest of us grown-ups to boo Cena, too. It's hard to explain, but I really want WWE to have the savvy and understanding to realize that if they're double-turning these two, they don't have to do hardly ANYTHING at all to make it work. The fans already made their choices, and the two characters should largely behave the same way so we stand behind those choices.
   
  Screwing with Cena by having him change his act to be more "like a heel" (in WWE Think), risks losing all the things that made him so fun to cheer against to begin with. So I say Cena's first promo? Should be a supremely confident freestyle about how he knows he let all his peeps down, but he'll go out there and fight for his Chain Gang and win back the WWE Title for them, because John Cena is from the streets, yo, and he's Just A Regular Guy Like All His Homeys Out There In The Crowd. And if he does that, trust me, the boos will flow like wine. And will continue to do so for as long as he keeps striking that self-confident, coolest-cat-in-the-world vibe.
   
  Michaels would be the fourth potential player in all this WWE Title mess... and his little thing with Vince seemed to cool off last night at the PPV. Less concern over "screwing," and more just Vince being confident that the deck was stacked against Michaels and everything would work itself out. This could be the by-product of Vince realizing that he's not gonna get Bret Hart to come in and be the referee for a Vince/Shawn Match at WM22, so they're having to back down. If so: thank you, Bret. I'd normally like to see you come on back to WWE to get the send-off you deserve, but if you're staying away from that pile of dung, you're doing a service for fans everywhere.
   
  But anyway: Michaels could have a beef with Cena, and certainly will with Angle, too, since he eliminated Angle from the Chamber.
   
  And you now officially can't discount Triple H from the title picture. His win over Big Show puts him back on the Main Event Map for the first time since last May.
   
  It's a big ol' chaotic mess, where until we see who's face and who's heel, and who's feuding with whom, you kind of have to cool your jets. Speculation is pointless at this time. But these five are your Main Players, now, for the next 3 months. Oughta be interesting...
   
  Other stuff for tonight: 
   
  The RAW GM Situation is just hanging out there, having not been seriously addressed in about a month, as Vince McMahon's one-man-power-trip has sort of taken over. I hope we get some resolution on this, and soon. Obviously, Shane seems a favorite, if only because he hasn't been mentioned in over a month as a possibility, which is usually WWE's reverse psychology way of trying to make the one-time-obvious choice back into a surprise. Foley could work, too, given his cooperation with Vince during the Trial Of Eric Bischoff. But to be honest, I won't really be blown away and satisfied by much of anything less than the return of Chris Jericho, replacing the man what fired him.
   
  Even if I know that won't actually happen, I'd still rather have closure on this sooner than later.
   
  The Shelton/Mama thing is not going anywhere. Suddenly, I have this sinking feeling that this thing will be essentially a replay of the Booker/Sharmell thing (from all of 3 months ago) where Mama helps Shelton win matches, but Shelton doesn't know it. Just as Booker backed into winning a title, I have to assume that we could be looking at Mama cheating to make Shelton the IC Champ again with a win over Flair. Boo? I dunno... I just know it doesn't do anything for me.
   
  There are chapters yet to go between Trish Stratus and Mickie James. I hope we glimpse a taste of that tonight. If we just leave the past 2 weeks alone and move forward with last night as a new starting point, I'd say things have been sufficiently un-fucked-up that we can rebuild the storyline the way it should have been done from the start: with Mickie as a total psycho who slowly starts to reveal her violent tendencies and mood swings to Trish, en route to going 100% nutso and brutally beating Trish and taking her title in an upcoming rematch. Then setting Trish up for the heroic comeback and title shot at WM22. 
   
  Kane and Big Show are still tag champs. And both probably don't have anything left on their plates from a singles perspective. Given how Carlito and Chris F. Masters teamed up in the Elimination Chamber to take out Kane, it'd be logical as hell to have them be next in line for tag title shots, no? I'd be OK with that. It relegates CFM to a tag team role, where (especially after the promo last night on the PPV) he's purposely presented as Carlito's dim-witted bodyguard more than anything.
   
  And I think that's most of the big stuff... I'm sure we shan't escape without Useless Diva Content, or an appearance by at least one of WWE's pet projects (like Murdoch or Striker or somebody). But if I get a vote for something to be thrown in to fill up time, I cast it for Chavo, instead. We'll see.
   
  Check out RAW tonight. It's certainly got the makings of an interesting show. But that can swing either way: it could be flat-out really entertaining, or it could devolve into the kind of trainwreck you just can't stop watching. Who knows?
   
  And as if I need to say it: regardless of whether you watch the show or not, get yer ass back here to OO on Tuesday for the finest and best RAW Recap in all the land. You have my word on that, or I'll refund your purchase price personally.
   
  See you tomorrow, kids....