Man, you gotta respect the WWF. They not only roll with the punches, they not only triumph over adversity, they turn that sumbitch around and start making some motherfucking money. The name change to WWE is weird and frightening to me, but the "Get The 'F' Out" campaign is great. This name change is only going down because those panda-loving, bamboo-up-their-ass fucks at the World Wildlife Fund have been giving our boys shit, but the WWE is playing this thing as though it isn't a concession. Instead it's a great idea that they would have carried out regardless of the Wildlife Fund's court action against them. WWE is way cooler than WWF. Get the F out, asshole. It's a new motherfucking name now, bitches!

For the record, while I will as of now start getting used to calling the WWF the WWE, I will never refer to the World Wildlife Fund as the WWF. Fuck those guys. I read a press release over at WrestleZone where the Wildlife Fund said they were "expecting that (WWE) would opt for a more distinct name change that would put 'clear water' between our two organizations". Jesus christ, you tree hugging fuckers, you won. You've already rocked the boat by forcing a name change to one of the greatest icons of american entertainment ever to exist, fuck off already. Christ. I'm about to go out and shoot a panda in the head and then fuck it in the brains before sending them the tape of the event with "I LOVE WWF" written on it in blood and semen. For a company that's so worried about their image, they're sure doing a shitty job of getting themselves over with the millions (and millions!) of wrestling fans out there. If saving the planet means giving money to those assholes, forget it. They can take the Earth, shine it up real nice...

But like I said, the WWE are taking this in stride. They can capitalize on anything. Though that being said, it's a convenient segue into talking about how sometimes chasing the dollar is a bad choice.

Hulk fucking Hogan. At first I was shocked to hear that he was coming back, but once he showed up I was okay with him. I had nothing against the guy, I was actually fairly impressed with how dignified he seemed for such an old dude. This was in the nWo black. I was digging the response he got at Wrestlemania X8 just like everyone else, it was an amazing moment. I had to give my respect to Hulk Hogan.

But then they ran way too far with this, trying to capitalize on Hogan's unexpected pops. The first transgression was the return to the red and yellow. Forget that shit. No one can retain their dignity wearing that crap. He looks retarded and I don't like him in it. At least they got him some Jimi music and didn't regress all the way to his Real American theme. Yet.

But the biggest mistake was making Hogan champ. I missed Backlash, so I didn't hear about it until the next day, and I was shocked. I knew that Hogan would lose a lot of momentum if he lost another big match, but I still assumed that HHH would keep the belt. I understand why they gave Hogan the belt, they want to placate the fans who've started watching again because of Hogan, they want to pander and make as much money as they can off of the "Still Running Wild!" t-shirts, but in the longrun this is gonna fuck them more than it helps. Kinda like shooting yourself in your own nuts. Sure, you wouldn't have all those dirty urges to fuck panda brains, but eventually, you're gonna miss those suckers.

If Jericho were still champ and Hogan won the belt from him, it would have been okay. It's not so much Hogan as champ that's the problem, but who he became champ at the expense of. HHH dropping the belt is the real issue.

For the new fans Hogan as champ is probably pretty slick and gives them warm fuzzies, but for us lifers, for the people who watch the show week in and week out, who have stuck and will stick with the WWF/E through thick and thin, this is a bad move. It took me awhile to realize it, but think about what has gone down in order for HHH to get that belt:

Eight months away working through horrifying rehab, a win at the Rumble, Wrestlemania, the biggest match of the year. HHH had traveled a long road to get to that main event, and I thought the match was surprisingly balanced, considering the participants. Jericho vs. HHH should have favored HHH considerably, but they managed to build Jericho and whittle away at HHH to the point where it felt even. It felt like HHH earned that belt, that he fought to get it, not that it was handed to him. I'm not sure how they managed that, considering that the Wrestlemania lead-in plot involved HHH's dog, which is wrestlecrap material if I've ever seen it, but they managed. HHH worked to become champ, he deserved to be champ, and after all that build up he deserved a long and illustrious reign. After all that, he would have been a champ we could believe would hold the belt for 6 months, 8 months, for who knows how long. He went through hell, as JR is fond of saying, and he was not gonna let that belt go for anything. He would have been an immovable object. But instead, a buncha people chant for Hogan and HHH loses the belt in four weeks.

The thing the WWE has to understand is that those people aren't chanting for Hogan, exactly. They're chanting in celebration of all the good memories they have of watching wrestling as a kid, of remembering how much they loved Hogan and Macho Man and the Ultimate Warrior and all those guys. That's what they're cheering for, that's what's running wild, Hulkamania is just the most convenient name for it. It's a nice phenomenon and I like it, but it's no reason to give Hogan the belt. Hogan is not an immovable object the way HHH is, Hogan looks like he'll fall over if a stiff breeze hits him. As my friend Zornog said, it looks like his punches are in slow motion, and now I crack up whenever I see Hogan wrestle, because he's right. The guy's just not in his prime anymore. This is all going to blow over, Hulkamania isn't going to last forever, and then the WWE will be left floundering for a replacement champ and it will be too late for HHH to regain the mantle with the kind of authority he had before. I've always been a bigger fan of the mid-carders in wrestling, that's where most of the really interesting stuff happens, but The Champion is the anchor. He's what holds the entire overall storyline together. No disrespect to Jericho, but he wasn't quite at the level to carry that kind of weight, they needed a strong champion to take the belt, and HHH was that man. Hogan is not. Hogan is a ratings spike, he's not someone who can be relied on in the months and years to come.

Remember how Foley used to burn Al Snow all the time?

But now that he's on Tough Enough he's all respectable. God damn it, I won't stand for that.

I think the WWF's biggest problem has always been the lack of foresight in their writing. There are two sides to wrestling, the wrestling and the story, and I remember being amazed when I learned how little of the matches are choreographed beforehand. It still amazes me to watch a really great match and know that most of it is being improvised in the ring.

Initially I was similarly amazed by the writing. I thought it was brilliant, I was sure that the WWF was the new Shakespeare, that it was hitting on a lot of different levels, from the highbrow to the plebs, weaving plots in a way that just amazed me, using the environment of a wrestling arena to tell a kind of story that couldn't be told anywhere else. Eventually, I realized that the plots were handled in the same way as the wrestling, on the fly, changed at the last minute, written day to day instead of planned in advance, and what made me respect the wrestlers more has made me respect the writers less, because it ends up undermining those of us who watch the show religiously.

Instead of giving us the HHH as champion story we've been anticipating for months, they give the Hulkamaniacs their flash in the pan. Instead of explaining why plot threads are dropped, the writers hope that we'll all forget they ever started. It makes me doubt the very company when they throw away a storyline as strong as HHH's journey to the championship in favor of a temporary cash cow. Sure they're making money now, but eventually we, the loyal, will not be loyal anymore. We can only be jerked around in favor of temporary pops for so long before we give up on the show, and in my opinion, we're the audience who should be looked after. We're the ones who've found something of value in the WWF and we're the one's who will keep the flame alive when all the temporary fans wander away. If the cycle comes around again and wrestling falls from its current level of recognition, we're the ones who won't care that people disrespect us for being wrestling fans, we're the ones who'll keep watching. We're the ones who the WWE writing teams should keep in mind, we're the base that has to be built and maintained. The idea is to consider the product as a whole, instead of focusing on the current fan favorite to carry the entire ratings burden.

My hits always go way up when I have pictures of chicks on the page.

Molly has real breasts. And she can wrestle. And she's religious. ...fuck.

Austin and the Rock may have been the ones to bring wrestling back into the spotlight, but it's the mid-carders, the plots, the stories, the entire organization that kept people tuning in. Throw the Rock in a ring for 2 hours every week and see what kind of ratings you get. One man can't carry a show, and Hulk Hogan sure as hell can't carry a show. No disrespect to Hogan personally, but he's not Champ material anymore. Main event, sure, t-shirt phenomenon, sure, but this isn't the WCW World Title we're talking about. This is the WWF Championship, or the WWE Championship now, and it is the cornerstone of the entire business. If people lose their respect for the highest belt in the federation, there isn't much else left for them to care about. It's something that has to be treated very carefully. Giving the belt to Hogan isn't even in the same ballpark as some of the mistakes WCW made, but in the long term people are going to look back and see this as a weakness in the overall plot, a swerve just to grab a few more dollars, and that's not going to help breed brand loyalty. In a sense wrestling fans forget quickly, a common complaint among wrestlers who lose their tv time, but we remember enough that eventually the little errors and omissions add up to the point where even the most hardcore among us will eventually change the channel.

But I don't want to be one of those negative guys who does nothing but complain about the show he supposedly loves. The internet's got plenty of those already. I think the roster split is awesome. I'd been looking forward to it for a long time, because watching what was increasingly becoming the same show twice in a week was getting to wear on me a bit. Smackdown has retained more or less the same feel as the old shows, on the surface having the stronger roster, but RAW has a peculiar feeling to it. It feels kinda like the last day of school, not everybody is there, and even though you're in the same environment it doesn't have the same vibe... it's hard to explain. It has more of an empty feeling, but more room for the people who are there to grow. Smackdown has already drawn its lines of who is a main event performer and who isn't, but on RAW it's still up in the air. There's more of a feeling of potential on RAW.

I really like Bradshaw's push to the main-event. I hope it succeeds, and I think it will, because the WWF has realized an important thing: It's cool to act like a cowboy, but it's not cool to be a cowboy. If any of y'all saw Blackjack Justin Bradshaw, you know what I'm talking about. Or maybe that was Justin "Hawk" Bradshaw, I'm not sure. They were both gay. Bradshaw can be the sheriff of RAW and that's cool, but when he puts on the cowboy hat and assless chaps... that's not cool at all. The cowboy days are over, but the heart and spirit of Texas... why, it'll live forever! YEEEEHAAA!!!