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 Holy SHIT this board is rocking. Remind me to shut down for a week every couple of months or so. Just shilled, so to touch on a few things: THE RING POST is KICKING; with a new Jones parody, the latest Jonny X RAW recap, and BRAND NEW (and fucking awesome as always) TOM ZENK. Just because I haven't been to TRL/LI in a few days it doesn't mean I have anything less than absolute filthy prurient lust for Chuck and Cobb, and PHANTASMO still is the body that rocks the party. And the debut of "Dweller" at FILM SPIES is on hold while Stevo and I toss a few ideas around. Oh yeah, and some new banners would be nice. Been awhile, so say it with me... LETS TALK WRESTLING! "At times like this I wish that 'kayfabe' was not only practiced, but a term none of you had ever heard of" -The Barbed Recap, 6/16/02 Last night was one of those "can't miss" shows, and although the Monday before a PPV should theoretically always be... to say that they sort of backed into this one is an understatement (closer to "backed into it and moaned helplessly as it penetrated the company's collective ass with rusty pointed things"). While there are ways it can be compared to shows like the "Nitro takeover" and the RAW after the Montreal screwjob, this was pretty much virgin territory for the group. In the past they'd had enough control in how things played out to gear the stories around it. Last night they were not at all afforded that luxury. Not only are they still stinging from the loss of arguably their biggest star, but it meant re-organizing their entire bookmaking process. "Flying blind" is a cliché, but also a pretty apt way to sum up last night... probably more so than any time since the Owen special. In situations like this, there are several ways to deal with it. They can ignore it completely (this was the standard for years. If a wrestler left for another company, his name was simply never mentioned again). They could have continued on the path they seemed to be following after Saturday night, being as up front about it as they know how to be and just laying it out in front of everyone. "Here's what happened. It sucked. Life will go on". Hell, they could have done what I was FULLY expecting at the end of the program... brought out the bald "Stone Cold" midget and kicked him in the ass as they put a "San Antonio" sign on his back (and I'm pretty sure I speak for all of us when I say "thank GOD that didn't happen"). Or, for better or for worse, they can do what they did... the "swerve". Swerving is basically changing the direction of an angle "out of the blue", usually in a single and (in theory) an unexpected act. It's a wrestling staple, and really the business couldn't exist without them. So you understand the difference between "swerves" and simply "new angles", let's use the recent return of Shawn Michaels to demonstrate. Had he simply shown up on RAW, it would not have been considered a "swerve" so much as being a new direction. HOWEVER, it does fall under the category of "swerve"since two days before, Shawn was interviewed on WWE programming saying that his career was over and not to look for him in the ring again. Likewise, even though it's on a far less grand scale (and since every person in America saw it coming it was a swerve in name only) Michaels superkicking Booker T right out of the nWo also can be defined as such. Last night they pulled this not once but twice. First in the middle of Flair's speech Austin's music started up. I'm embarrassed by how many people in IRC (that had no business falling for it) starting yelling about how everything that happened over the last week had been a work. As the crowd went absolutely nuts, the song switched to something with a salsa beat and Eddie Guerrero came instead. While it made sense for him to be a part of the spot since he had been about to start a program with Steve, the trickery with the music is what defines it as the word we're talking about (which reminds me, one thing I sure hope they don't miss the boat on in the fallout is what they do with Brock Lesnar. There is no such thing as a creative team that can come up with a gimmick as marketable as "monster so imposing that Steve Austin ran away and quit the business rather than fight him", and that's ready-made). The other, of course, was when The Rock turned out to be the guy that Tony Garea meant when he told Vince "he is coming back". Again, being in chat allowed me to guage everybody's guesses and opinions about what was going to happen next. While it wasn't a "surprise" which is often a very important aspect of the swerve being successful, it still worked. Why? Because while SOMETHING was expected, what it wound up being wasn't. The four top guesses for what the payoff was going to be were: 1. Midget 2. "Stone Cold" Dwayne Gill 3. Goldberg 4. Scott Steiner (Of course looking back and seeing he'd been at a house show the day before should've been a tip-off. I was all kinds of fried while watching, what everyone else's excuse is would be something they'd have to answer). So the question then becomes "should they have done this"? Granted, one way or another they had to but in an age where it's used as often as it is, over-reliance on the swerve is a very, very dangerous game. The term "swerve" is probably as responsible as any (other than "total crap") for the downfall of WCW. Russo didn't even know how to book an angle without employing it by the end of the second week, and prior to that Bischoff used it so often that the "insider" term was beamed out to not only fans, but also people that have never watched a minute of pro wrestling when he used it on an episode of "Arli$$" (speaking of shows that '$ucked $hit'). Once you start basing your booking around this tactic the times you really could have made an impact with a swerve turns into just another angle, simply because the audience has become so desensitized by them (my God do you remember how many times they turned Luger?) And once the element of surprise has been either lost or rendered impotent, it's only a matter of time before NO ONE watches anymore... ...and WWE has enough reasons for not watching right now to be adding new ones to their handbook. They have a clean slate right at this second, hopefully they can capitalize rather than this incident being remembered historically as a "nail in the coffin". Back to the basics, guys... that's what you hired Heyman for. Eat a bag of Hell. Barbwire Mike You're expecting a funny end tag here... HA! SWERVE!! OMG LOL!! |