My take on the “Monday Night Wars 2010”

I used to be a wrestling fan. Back in the days of the WWF and the “Attitude Era.” Seeing Stone Cold Steve Austin, DX, the Rock, it was edgy, exciting, fun. Once WCW and ECW went out of business, the WWF had no competition but went on to do some interesting things with the talent and the storylines. But eventually, Stone Cold left, WWF became WWE, and they split their roster into 2, and slowly became PG. It was no longer exiting. It was safe, boring, predictable. I stopped watching a few years ago.

Along comes TNA, getting into the spotlight, on Spike TV and against RAW. There’s the passion, the excitement, and not to mention actual wrestling. WWE’s biggest star is John Cena, a cheesy smiling babyface ala Rocky Maivia in 97, (who got booed for being lame) with 4 moves in his arsenal at best. TNA’s biggest star is AJ styles, an actual athlete. but still WWE persists and is king. Are they really better?

Lets take a look at Raw from March 15th. Stone Cold Steve Austin guests hosts. Awesome right? He comes out to a decent ovation, nothing like the old days but decent. He then goes onto cutting a promo about Bret Hart vs Vince McMahon at Wrestlemania. Bret Hart’s back in the WWE, cool. But, Vince McMahon is 60+ years old. Bret hart cant take a slap to the face without his post concussion syndrome fucking him up. Needless to say I’m not terribly interested in a match between the two, let alone having Stone Cold talk about it on a very rare appearance on raw. Then, Stone Cold says: I don’t care if i have to break my foot off in his as-…….” 3-4 seconds of silence…did they really just censor the word ass? Really? Ass? it barely qualifies as a cuss word.

Then what happens next, John Cena comes to the ring, with almost a bigger ovation (it’s hard to tell, it was much higher pitched from all the tween-age girls and 8 year old boys) and it’s not even to confront stone cold, it’s to have his match. If this was the attitude era, John Cena would have been booed out of the damn ring. But it really is a different, much much lamer time in WWE, and this only illustrated it to the fullest.

So it’s Wrestlemania rewind night, all matches are former Wrestlemania matches, pretty cool right? We start off with John Cena vs the big show. Any match with John Cena is boring, and biased, ends up with him getting his ass beat the whole match only to make a miraculous recovery and bust out 4 moves and win/have someone cheat him into losing. Every damn match. Every…single…one. And the big show, the largest athlete in the word, is basically a sidekick to some douche from the real world. So their match goes on, big show huffing and puffing around the ring, John Cena taking his usual beating. John Cena counters, does literally 4 moves, Batista, his WM opponent comes out to interfere. Cena goes for the FU, oh sorry, the “Attitude adjustment”…how fitting. Batista distracts him, Big show pulls out THE MOST DEVASTATING MOVE EVER…..a punch. 1, 2, 3. First match of the night, ended with illegal interference. And a punch. Now I know a punch from the big show would hurt and knock me out. But that’s ridiculous in wrestling. Not to mention it was less a punch and more big show slinging his arm lazily over to John Cena with the same impact as someone taping you to get your attention, and Cena took it like he got shot.

Also, I can’t remember the last time I saw a WWE match between 2 top level competitors that didn’t end in some kind of cheating or interference. It’s ridiculous. Would anyone watch a football game where the coach distracted the refs while the team switches out footballs and cheats a touchdown? Would anyone watch a UFC fight were the guy sneaks in a chair to win the bout? It basically negates the whole Wrestling match. I don’t care what happened and what moves went on, because that’s not what won the match. Where’s the 20 minute matches where the two opponents battle till one cant go anymore? May as well skip to the end, if you’re gonna cheat to win don’t waste the time of going through the useless match beforehand.

Next up, I almost missed this match because I had to go find my sunglasses because of this guy:

Holy crap. That’s the whitest person ever. Combined with the red hair he could play Ronald McDonald without makeup. He’s fighting some little dude. Wonder who’s going to win. He starts out the “match” hitting the little dude with the microphone, then crushing him in about a minute, then goes on some promo about fighting triple H at WM for about 4 minutes. And just because “I’m bad you’re bad lets see who’s badder grr.” Creative storyline for a match. And the poor “little dude” is actually Evan borne, who is actually a good and exciting wrestler, and this is how they use him. If he were in TNA he’d be X division champion putting on spectacles of matches.

Quick promo of Shawn Michaels talking to Austin about his WM match, and Chris Jericho coming to try to get out of his Wrestlemania rewind match against him tonight. The whole thing is basically a promo for Austin’s new movie, which played in the background the entire time.

Next up, some women wrestling. No one cares who or who wins, it’s just an excuse for some T n’ A ironically enough. And no one cares because this was the only match to have a legitimate pinfall finish thus far. More girls come, 13 year old boys around the world masturbate, and that demographic is satisfied as far as WWE is concerned. Vikki Guerrero comes out, supporting some of the bad girls from Smackdown, because the diva’s champion accidentally spilled some cottage cheese on her or something so she made her lose the title. Really. That’s a storyline. It’s just the women but really. Long gone are the days of Wendy Richter and Alandra Blaze. Chyna and Trish Stratus even. Just good looking women and shittier dialogue than a porn movie. But don’t get me started on Smackdown. It’s basically RAW, without any of the spontaneity, or “excitement ” of guest hosts, just WWE’s shitty brand of “Sports entertainment.” Some dude named “R-Truth” comes out and does a sing along with all the 8 year old boys in the crowd. How cute. If I wanted to watch Dora the Fucking Explorer I would be.

Anyway, next up is Chris Jericho VS Shawn Michaels. Shawn Michaels, who probably shouldn’t be wrestling, and Jericho, I just can’t stand the guy. He looks disproportioned. He needs some pants back on, get rid of the shitty prep haircut with the gelled front, and stop doing promos like a monotonous fuck. Where’s Y2J? Where’s Lionheart Chris Jericho? Who is this black hole of Charisma? Someone who, like most everyone else, doesn’t seem to give a shit about entertaining wrestling fans anymore. He’s a heel I don’t like, but not in the intended way. Nonetheless they put on a decent match, until Jericho just leaves and lets himself get counted out. Again, you could have saved us 10 minutes and just left at the beginning. Hell don’t even show up. I just watched the fictional equivalent of the Yankees giving up in the 9th inning just because. Edge comes out. Pulls out his hair. I’m surprised they didn’t censor that. Spears Jericho and says “Spear” and leaves. That’s the whole point of their rivalry now. At first it was because Jericho made light of Edge being injured, but apparently it was too complicated for all the children so now it’s just “I’m gonna spear you” “No you won’t” Spear Spear Spear.” Swiper no Spearing! Jesus.

Next up, last year’s WM main event, HHH vs Randy Orton. Good match right? they wrestle, HHH gives Orton the pedigree, and pins him 1, 2, 3!!!…..just kidding. Cody Rhodes and Ted Diabetes come out and get HHH DQ’d, they beat up Orton, Ronald McDonald comes out and beats up HHH. Wow, riveting Television.

Next up, Batista vs Kofi Kingston. Is that even a WM rewind? I stopped watching before Kofi was around. So, Batista is the WWE champion in the WM main event, on a roll, and Kofi is a mid-card guy who can actually Wrestle. Guess who’s going to win this one? If you guess Batista, you’re absolutely right kids! Lets all go get some ice cream! Sigh. Kofi kicks Batista in the face, accidentally busting him open. Oh boy, blood! now it’s getting goo—huh? The Referee busts out some latex gloves form his pocket, Batista finishes the match almost immediately, and the referee tries to hand Batista a towel. Does Batista have aids or something? What the fuck is that? At least Batista didn’t take it like a fucking pussy, but that was the most bizarre reaction to blood I’ve ever seen on a wrestling program. Batista gets a legit pinfall, because no one in WWE cares about Kofi or what’s he’s doing.

Promo for nest week’s guest host, Pete Rose. They show his appearance on WWE in 98. I’m a guy from Cincinnati, but Pete Rose was barely topical back then, he’s much less so 12 years later.

Main event time, must have saved a spectacle of a wrestling match for this one right? Huh? Oh, it’s the contract signing for Bret and Vince’s match. But we do have 3 huge names of wrestling in the ring at one time. Bret, who is like a piece of glass, Vince, who needs to die off already quite frankly so WWE can get interesting again, and Stone Cold, who can’t do anything interested to upset the “storylines” because he’ll be gone after this. Stone Cold tells Vince to “Sit your ass down” to a big pop from the fans, although we at home don’t hear his say it because they censored 4 more seconds of audio because he said the word “ass.” On cable TV at 11:00 at night. I thought this was PG not fucking G for “Gee these guys are fucking pussies!”

They censor the word ass one more time, Vince and Bret talk shit, Bret’s injured leg isn’t really injured, he hits him with the cast, and Vince sells it like he got hit with a paper mache sculpture, which is probably what it was. Raw ends…….zzzzzzzzz.

I can’t believe almost 4 million people watch this a week! TNA was watched by about 1 million, and it has Hulk Hogan every week, Eric Bishoff, Sting, Rob Van Dam, Jeff Hardy, Ric Flair, AJ styles, and actual fucking wrestling. The main event against RAW was Jeff Hardy vs AJ Styles, and Jeff Hardy got a legitimate pin on the world champion, 1 week before a PPV where AJ wrestles Abyss. But I don’t even want to break down TNA. An acceptable wrestling show would be miles ahead of WWE’s shitty programming. WWE is like George Bush in 2004. Both ruined what they represent, and both are shitty at what they do. And I don’t care who is competing with either one of them, I’m voting against them, because anything is better than the crap we got now. But can TNA really beat WWE? Well, George Bush did get re-elected. Only difference is, WWE’s term doesn’t have an expiration date. Joy, joy joy. Unless something changes, sub par wrestling and boring safe programming will continue to reign over much, much better product. it’s disgusting.

~ by Adam Hughes on March 17, 2010.