So here I come, checking out OO on Wednesday to make sure I don’t repeat anything Rick said in his Wednesday news in my Byte This! recap. And he busts out this rant about Matt Hardy’s and Molly Holly’s releases and why they suck, and I just feel like I have to reply.

Because, damn it, I agree with him.

Allow me to elaborate a bit from my opening, so you can see that these words do not come from someone who just automatically takes Rick’s side on everything (because we all know there are those OO fans out there who will agree automatically with their favorite columnist, simply because there are people like that in EVERY profession). On Wednesday, Rick went into a long diatribe about why the Diva Search blew, and that Diva Search 2005 is already a failure to him.

I strongly disagree, and I’m extremely annoyed whenever anyone prejudges anyone or anything. I’m not blind: I assume it’s going to suck. Probably worse than 2004, because the WWE will try to do this one “bigger.” But my personal goodwill reservoir is pretty damn deep, and I will at least give DS2005 some semblance of a chance when it starts. I mean sure, all 10 or 40 “finalists” will be hired, but hopefully, maybe, if the planets and stars all align right, the road to the finale will not suck giant pig testicles.

I gave the XFL a chance when it existed, watching the first two games as if they were a standard Sunday NFL Steelers game. I had friends over, we ordered pizza and got loaded with caffeine, and screwed around on video games while watching the games. This was years ago, of course, back when my attention span was reduced (probably just because of my late-teen age). The games were fairly tedious, maybe not so much a fault of the XFL itself, and after those first two weeks I never saw another game. But I gave it a chance; I never assumed it would tank because it came from a wrestling company.

I always try to be an optimist because life is too short to go around pissed off at everything; cliché, maybe, but true. And yet even with my overly optimistic view on life in general, I have a hard time seeing anything to look forward to with the WWE in the short-term future. With my last column, although I agreed with Rick in general, I disputed his reasons behind the argument and tried to figure out the WWE’s plan and why it may be for the greater good of the business. With this latest round of releases and the announcement of DS2005, I am looking for reasons that this may not be a bad thing, but I simply cannot find any.

I’m going to try to show you all why you should care that Molly was released, and how it impacts the whole product. Not Molly herself, because unfortunately all the divas on the roster couldn’t amount to a change in the WWE’s general direction, but why it symbolically shows the WWE’s efforts to undermine its own efforts.

WWE is sports entertainment. It is entertainment first. It’s not wrestling first, and it’s silly to think otherwise. WWE is a business that, stripped away of everything, seeks to make money from simulating something through bigger-than-life characters and situations. The chosen medium is wrestling, whereas sitcoms choose real-life situations. All forms of entertainment, from video games to horror movies, have the same goal: make money by keeping the consumer happy and/or excited with the product.

Here’s an analogy for you: picture your favorite comfort food. For me, it’s macaroni and cheese. Some may like mashed potatoes or turkey or a steak, it doesn’t matter. On bad days, it’s great to have your favorite food. If you know you’re going to have it for dinner tonight, you may even look forward to the taste of it before the meal is even cooked or prepared.

But what if you had it every day? In my poorer days as a kid when I lived in Pennsylvania, I literally lived on macaroni and cheese. It was the best meal my mom and I could afford, and we ate it a good three weeks straight. Even before the end of that, I was growing sick of it. I hated it, I wanted something different. Once we finally switched to something else, we didn’t eat mac and cheese for months, and the mere thought of it nearly made me sick.

The WWE seems to be heading for the same trap, and the release of Molly Holly is the latest step in a string of events that prove so. We love wrestling, and we come for the main event (or should, if things are booked right). I watch RAW for Batista right now, and I’m just waiting for him to somehow get rid of the shackles of the creative team and bust out some semblance of independent thought like what made me cheer him in the first place.

But, I can’t watch the WWE for only Batista. I would kill myself if Batista and Triple H tried to shoulder RAW for all 125 minutes every week. And in the same vein, I can’t watch the same thing repeated; if Ric Flair was having the exact same problem with Randy Orton for example, it would just be the same story rehashed, which would cheapen both.

The key is in variety. Having something new or different keeps one’s anticipation for the main draw. Watching Shelton Benjamin and Chris Jericho do some verbal fencing warms me up for Batista’s or Triple H’s next move in their mental chess game, and vice versa.

You can see where this is going, I’m sure. The existence of the women’s division should be the variety that feeds our appetites for the men. It sounds goofy, but I watched the women for the simple reason that they were not the men. Good women’s matches, whether through intentional booking or just because it was so, tended to display far more finesse than anything the men did. Gail Kim for example made silky moves in the days before she was tossed; Victoria, Trish, Molly, and even Stacy have flexibility guys heavier than 200 pounds simply don’t have. It made the matches different than the men’s; not better, but it was certainly no waste of time. At the very least, a good women’s match made me look forward to the main event, in the sense of “If the women can do this well, just think what the guys will do!”

I don’t even care about looks. Of the WWE divas from the past decade, the only ones I’m physically attracted to are Ivory, Gail Kim, and Victoria. Rick’s man-crushes on Trish and Molly are lost on me; Trish’s laugh aside, I just don’t dig either of them from a physical standpoint. And yet, I would still watch either of them or Jazz or Shaniqua or Lita anytime over Chris Master and his comical excuse for a moveset.

You can say it’s about looks, and you can delude yourself into thinking I’m just oversexed and want to see half-second nipple slips, and that I’m lying about my non-attractiveness to the women, but it’s honestly not about that. Forget the gender, as Rick said; this is about variety, about giving us fans something for our money aside from another bodybuilder who looks more like a wrestler than acts like one.

I’m not saying there isn’t room for Barbie doll-type women or goofy gimmick matches. Hey, I appreciated The Kat’s flash in the kiddie pool match years ago, and I don’t mind seeing Spaz jiggle as she skips to the ring for yet another lingerie pillow fight. But I can only handle so much T&A at one time. For the WWE to blow an eighth of its time slot on pie-eating contests or Kane busting in on a few women in allegedly sexy clothing just to scream like a 70’s B-movie, it wastes my time and patience. If I wanted to see hot chicks who are bad actors, I’ll download an Asia Carrera movie from BitTorrent.

It’s not just about the women getting shafted that shows the WWE’s motives. As Rick mentioned, Matt Hardy could operate in a wide variety of circumstances. The way to the fans’ hearts and mainstream acceptance is to vary your appearances and show that you’re not a one-trick pony. We’ve seen Matt go toe-to-toe with everyone from Rey Mysterio to Kane, and we’ve seen him in everything from straight 1-on-1 matches to a three-team TLC match.

So to make an ugly situation (referring to Lita and Edge) even uglier, it seems that Matt is being punished for two other people’s mistake. The simple solution would have been to send him to SmackDown! to retard that brand’s increasing stagnation. While I wouldn’t have had the pleasure of seeing him perform week-to-week, at least it wouldn’t be yet another fantastic talent wasted in the free agent pool. (As an aside, to make even more worse, I feel that the kiss between Lita and Kane on the latest RAW was someone’s way of sending a subtle “fuck you” to Matt, as if the release wasn’t bad enough.)

The WWE is in full-throttle with its view that big men are the way to go, and if they intend to push guys like Chris Masters while ignoring the chants of “boring, boring,” the fans will eventually stop chanting and just leave.

You want proof? Think about their reaction a few weeks ago when Triple H came to the ring and cut the 15-minute promo we’ve heard a million times. Everyone in the audience decided to grab a snack, a piss, or maybe even their car keys after they got the point. The WWE was forced to dim the arena lights to make sure they saved some face, even though fans at home (me included) were doing the same thing the live fans were doing.

It was all because of the lack of variety, the fact that the “Triple H Pissed At Everyone Because He’s the Greatest but Feels Disrespected” promo has been done since his first title reign. In one of Orton’s few bright spots, he cut a promo that basically called Triple H on the repetitiveness of it all… and that was interesting, because it was new and fresh to see someone actually do that.

The WWE needs to realize that if it continues to create an environment that makes its best performers unhappy while promoting other performers who are clearly not ready, fans will get bored and stop caring. If it cares about buy rates and profits, boring its audience is definitely a bad thing, and the sooner they figure out how to put a stop to it, the better. The solution is obviously not thinning certain divisions, so why not try something else? Like bolstering the roster with people who can elicit, you know, cheers, instead of “boring” chants?

All I know is that for me, personally, the WWE’s current direction and apparent goals are wearing thin on my nerves. If it wasn’t for my Byte This! recapping duties and Online Onslaught in general, I may have already kissed it goodbye again and re-devoted my Monday nights to “24.” At least Kiefer Sutherland gets more time to talk and entertain than any of his co-stars do, giving me a reason to care about him and his character.

I still have some faith. The WWE brass can’t be so blind and deaf to their fans’ reactions that they won’t correct their mistakes, can they?