I do not offer subscriptions to a mailing list! I do not e-mail images! ______________________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________ - WWE had Vengeance on PPV this past Sunday, featuring Rock challenging for the title. Now, I figured that that match would be enough to draw a small bump over previous buy rates, but they also added the first WWE PPV appearance of Eric Bischoff. While I don't think that the decision of HHH being on this PPV will in any way affect the buy rate, I'm sure if buys increase HHH will disagree with me. After all, he is the master game player. When I ordered the show on Sunday morning, the cable representative I spoke with said that she had received more calls for the show than has been usual for WWE PPVs, so let's hope this signals a turnaround for the business. But given the way that they have completely screwed up every other seeimngly-simple invasion angle and given the way that the top guys have been careful not to let anybody new go over them in a meaningful way, you'll forgive me if I'm not stoked about the possibilities that are at hand with Eric Bischoff's arrival. Shit, they almost blew their wad on Saturday night, talking about Eric attempting to bring in Bill Goldberg. That's breaking a cardinal rule of teasing something that isn't a done deal. I have to quickly say that the whole "General Managers" story line really does come across as a stretch. Damn it all, Vince found a way to put Stephanie in front of a microphone. Eric Bischoff was a smooth move, but Stephanie? Outside of the ring, Bischoff has always been a strong TV personality, but Stephanie? Jeez, she wanted to kill her dad, then got dumped by HHH while renewing their vows, and now she's the boss who has nothing but good things to say about HHH the "ring general." While there is some story line necessity to having a McMahon run one of the brands, Stephanie's presence is not a good thing. Then again, maybe the extra duties will end up reducing her role on the creative side, where she has been a total disaster. They finally clued in to one small thing I've mentioned a few times: using both the RAW and Smackdown commentary teams on the PPV and making a point of talking about it. So the Smackdown crew did the first half of the show and the RAW team did the second half. Rundown: * Bubba Ray Dudley & Spike Dudley beat Chris Benoit & Eddy Guerrero in a tables match: Why Benoit & Guerrero would end up in a tables match is beyond me. Let's hope that Benoit, in particular, is quickly worked into a key main event story line. Although it will probably be Edge who gets this spot, I hope that Benoit is next to beat Hulk Hogan cleanly, before moving on to beating the Rock cleanly. Let's face it: putting over Benoit, RVD, and Lesnar should be Rock's job description at this time. Anyhow, this match was a lengthy heat segment on Bubba Ray. It was pretty much a double team demolition, with Spike punked out. Spike made the hot (?) save, moving a table out of the way of a double team superplex. Bubba rallied with backdrops and the Dusty Rhodes spots. Spike did the Whassup crotch dive. In a stupid spot, Benoit put the crossface on Spike, who tapped before Bubba made the save. The commentators suggested that Benoit was trying to weaken his opponent. Bubba missed a senton on Benoit, crashing through a table, with the commentators explaining that an offensive move had to put him through the table in order to eliminate him. Bubba didn't move after that. Eddy & Benoit got dumped. Spike hit a Dudley Dog on Eddy off the apron, crashing through a table at ringside. Poor Eddy always does the job for everybody -- when certain egos complain about doing a job on TV, Eddy even volunteers to lose. Benoit eliminated Spike. Bubba hit a Bubba Bomb on Benoit for the win. Well, that result sucked shit. Yeah, clearly Bubba & Spike are the money wrestlers that should go over. * Jamie Knoble beat Billy Kidman to retain the Cruiserweight Title: Match was fact-paced from the start. Jamie tossed Nidia into Kidman and then hit a shoulder breaker of sorts on Kidman on the mats. Jamie worked over the arm, including posting Kidman. Kidman rallied, always holding his injured arm. He invented a new move: from a fireman's carry, he flipped Knoble over into a neckbreaker across Kidman's knee. Two count after the usual Kidman powerbomb counter. There were some cracks in this match, but these guys work really well together. Kidman missed the shooting star. Are the cruiserweights still exclusive to Smackdown? Knoble got the win, as expected. I still feel very strongly that they shoul pattern the looming Misterio Jr. vs. Knoble matches after the Tiger Mask vs. Dynamite Kid matches at the beginning of the 1980s. * Jeff Hardy beat Steve Regal to retain the European Title: Early on, Hardy tried to launch Regal over the ropes, but it was so clear that Regal jumped that you could some boos from the crowd. Jeff still looks sickly to me, and I feel kind of sad for what his short career has done to him...or what he's done to himself along the way. Regal got up his knees when Jeff tried for a Swanton. That seemed crazy. Jeff got a surprise schoolboy pin, and Steve Regal cried again. Well, Regal's best role isn't really in the ring anyhow. * After the match, Hulk Hogan and Ric Flair talked with each other, with Hogan joking that he was going to hit a swanton in his tag match. They talked largely about the new general managers possibly burying the new talent. Pretty funny. It could have been funnier if Hogan was talking with HHH and Kevin Nash. * John Cena beat Chris Jericho: This match was created after Cena challenged Jericho on the pre-game Heat. It was originally supposed to be hyped for the show, then it was dropped, and then it was added again at the last minute. This made me wonder what finish they would come up with. Everybody can see that Cena has the presence and charisma to merit a push, despite his inring ability not being up there yet, but the egos in the group have strategically thwarted any attempt at a push. It will be frustrating if Jericho is the first guy to put him over and nobody higher up follows suit. Jericho took control after a mistake by Cena. Kicks to the head, backdrop suplex, rabbit dropkick. Jericho untied a turnbuckle. Some nice fast sequences at the end, with Jericho carrying Cena to a good match. Jericho refused to cover Cena after a Lionsault. He put on the Walls, but Cena countered it into a pin. * Rob Van Dam DQ Brock Lesnar to retain the Intercontinental Title: The result of this match was clear from the start: at this point, Lesnar has to deliver on all of his promises, unless there is a conscious attempt to stop him from becoming the next big thing. Then again, they've so lost track of building the big money match a year from now and instead offering the quick dumb result in the present, so you never really know. There are many ways for Van Dam to put over Lesnar without weakening himself or Lesnar in the process. And even if they go with a finish that weakens Van Dam, they could move into a different, more important program in which he goes over. Lesnar caught RVD on every high spot, finally powerslamming him on the floor. Lesnar didn't sell a post shot, but he shouldn't at this point in his run. Van Dam, not known to me for his ability to carry green opponents, kept this match what it should be, I thought, thanks to some great creative bumping. And Heyman did his role expertly at ringside. The two of them could have made the proverbial broom a contender for the title. I wholly expected that Lesnar would somehow screw Angle in the main event, leading to Rock winning the World Title. Then Lesnar would beat Rock cleanly for the title in an effort to make him a star. The story line arc seemingly should lead to Lesnar vs. Angle at WrestleMania. See, WrestleMania always gets a fair bit of curiousity press throughout North America, but it might well draw more significant sports press if those two square off for the first time with a month of hype. Van Dam countered the F-5 with a DDT. Crowd was the loudest it had been all night. Frog splash. Heyman pulled out the referee, even though Brock seemed to kick out. The ref signalled for the DQ. The referee got destroyed. RVD drew a great reaction, laying out Brock. He was going to go for a Vanterminator, but Heyman cut him off. Lesnar then killed RVD. I don't think this match was what it had to be. If this was the only finish they could come up, why bother with this match? The answer is that they never thought this far ahead when building up the PPV match a couple of weeks ago. That's a shitty excuse, though, since Lesnar really should be fed somebody meaningful before his PPV main event. If he goes on to beat the champion in some shitty manner, they'll have completely blown another sure thing. Very disappointing. Everybody in creative who backed this finish should be moved to some other position inside or outside the company. * Booker T beat Big Slow beat Booker T in a no DQ and no COR match: Jim Ross said that this was the first match Eric Bischoff put together in the WWE. Ugh. The size difference was startling. Jim Ross told us that Booker hit an "enzagoori." Big Slow totally dominated, so this match was easily the worst so far. Slow clotheslined Booker against the post, which seemed unnecessarily dangerous, even with the Slow One doing the move. Booker finally started choking Slow with the power card. They were all over the Spanish commentary area. Booker decked Slow with the monitor. Booker axe kicked Slow through the Spanish commentary cable, jumping off the other table to set it up. Crowd liked it, but I just wanted this shit to end. Wait, a Hogan match and an Undertaker match follow. Oh man. Back in the ring, a low kick and another axe kick. Booker pulled out the Harlem Hangover, which they called the Houston Hangover, for the win. Yes, they finally seem to be beginning the much talked about real push of Booker. * Shawn Michaels interrupted HHH just as he was about to pick Stephanie McMahon's Smackdown over Eric Bischoff's RAW. In a segment that dragged much too long for my tastes, HHH ended up picking RAW so he could pal around with Michaels. * Lance Storm & Christian beat Hulk Hogan & Edge to win the WWF Tag Titles: I didn't get into this match at all. The result was clear from the start. Chris Jericho ran in to nail Edge with the title belt, leading to the pin. * Rock beat Undertaker & Kurt Angle to win the WWF Title: In thinking about this match, you should ask yourself who would mean the most losing cleanly to Brock Lesnar. Rock, I think, so I fully expected him to win here. Undertaker would be the second choice, perhaps with some controversy so that Rock could try to lay claim to the championship. That way, Lesnar could beat Undertaker for the title and then beat Rock in a title defence. Before the match, I still felt that Lesnar should come out to watch the match and see who his opponent will be, really as an excuse to screw Angle. That would plant the seed of Lesnar being afraid of Lesnar. The problem there is that Angle would need to be moved into some other program before facing Lesnar months from now. Maybe with the dueling general managers, they could institute some sort of number one contender deal after each PPV to feed Lesnar opponents other than Angle and to give Angle some other issues, as he gets screwed in those competitions. Angle went to the floor first, leaving UT vs. Rock. With UT on offence, it was not good. He has severely overstayed his welcome, IMO. UT got dumped, leaving Rock vs. Angle in the ring. Angle had new ring attire. UT came back in and "asserted himself," according to Jim Ross. I'll translate that to "brought the match into the toilet." Rock choke slammed a distracted UT for a two count, with Angle running in. The pattern continued, with each guy using another guy's finisher for a near fall. They brawled around outside the ring. Angle bladed. UT continued to attack him, as Rock was laid out outside. "Old school Undertaker" means he doing some slow move he did ten years ago instead of the slow moves he's bored us with in recent times. Rock and Angle traded spots. Undertaker was booked to be the strongest by far of the three. After a ref bump, Angle chaired UT and hit his slam on Rock. A couple of minutes later, my feed of the PPV died, right around 10:30pm EST. When the show clicked back on, Rock was holding the title and Jim Ross was proclaiming this the best three-way match he's ever seen. When the replay aired, I was very unsurprised to see that Rock pinned Angle to win the title. Turns out that Viewers' Choice Canada and my cable company didn't settle the issue of whose fault the problem was until after the rebroadbast on Tuesday. So they added a few more rebroadcasts of the show on the weekend. Well, I had the choice of catching a rebroadcast or getting an $8 refund. Guess which option chose? On RAW the night after the PPV, they fast-forwarded through six months of storyline for HHH. See, he jumped to RAW to be with his buddy Shawn Michaels. So you'd think that we get a month or two of these two clowns causing trouble for Eric Bischoff, as the promised us on the PPV. At that point, Eric could retaliate with some sort of move to generate some friction between the two. That two months of development took all of four minutes, as Eric Bischoff announced at the start of the show that Shawn Michaels would be HHH's manager, leading to HHH obviously being upset that Michaels was acting like the big star and taking the spotlight. Again, that storyline and reaction from HHH should or could have been stretched out for a couple of months, with the disdain of Michaels towards being a lowly manager mixed in with charismatic ego making him want to be the star. That pissed off look from HHH should have come at month four down the line, not minute four of RAW. Some time after that angry look, HHH could propose that he and Michaels are miscast as wrestler and manager and that they really should go back to having fun, like they did the first two months. HHH could cut a promo alongside Michaels, turning on him in the process. Add a bit of padding to the scenario and you've got six months of TV. Nope, instead, HHH proposed that Michaels and he cause trouble to thwart Eric, leading to the turn on Michaels all on the same night. Hey, if they only do this fastforwarded storyline once to get the new show over, I can live with it. If they do stuff like this every week, with the idea, I guess, of giving RAW a fast-paced Nitro feel, they will run into the same problem that Nitro ran into: eating up storylines at such a rate that fans no longer get into any of them. How many times did pretty much everybody on Nitro turn heel/face in that last year? ______________________________________________________________________ If you have any feedback regarding my web pages, please send me e-mail. Don't forget to delete the leading "x" from my e-mail address; that "x" is my web spider spam guard. ______________________________________________________________________