I had a dream once about a wrestling match that took place at night, the ring set up in a field, the only thing illuminating the competitors being fires burning around us. There was no audience, just me watching the match, and I remember Perry Saturn being there, covered in blood, giving the best match of his entire life. It was one of the most vivid dreams I've had in years.

I don't know that I still feel quite that way about wrestling, and I think it's time for me to pack up my wrestling page. I haven't written an update in a dog's age, and I sincerely don't want to become one of those guys who only complains about wrestling. Well, maybe once more, for old time's sake.

When business started dropping for WWE I felt kinda bad for them -- they'd lost a lot of star power right before the roster split, and the ensuing shake up was giving them a tough time. The show wasn't quite the same as before, but I was confident. I knew it would only be a matter of time before things picked up.

I was a big fan of the Eric Bischoff 3-Minute Warning storyline, and wrote a piece about it, which I'll include below. I thought it was the first sign of the company turning around, the first of what would hopefully be many great ideas, righting the ship and returning the show to its former glory. I was firmly behind RAW as opposed to Smackdown, largely due to how much weight I attribute to the storylines in wrestling. Smackdown, with its small stable of excellent wrestlers who had long matches week after week, kinda confused me. I even thought it was kinda boring. At the time I didn't understand what they were trying to accomplish.

So RAW was my dog, and the Las Vegas Bischoff-wheel episode sealed the deal. A bunch of unusual matches, pretty decent backstage bits and a Table/Ladder/Chair culmination; man, that was the best RAW in a long time. I thought the dry spell was over.

But we all know what happened at the end of that night. Listen up Kane, 'cause HHH has the goods on you. You're a murderer.

Wait, what?

Yep, the "Kane is a Murdering Necrophiliac Rapist" storyline, universally panned by everyone. Even people who'd never heard of wrestling started getting weird rashes and internal bleeding. I understand why Vince okayed the idea, he was trying to get back that Attitude-era offensiveness of the late nineties. It was worth a try, and I know why he stuck by it even after the initial poor reaction -- a poor reaction is what he wanted, he wanted outrage, he wanted controversy. Thank the sweet lord that he didn't get it, because that would have been a disaster. Not so much the idea of WWE being known as the "murdering rapist" show, but the idea that Kane used to go to parties. Kane? To parties? He's got a burned face! He doesn't know girls! People don't invite him places! They mock him and throw stones! That storyline couldn't have made less sense. And it really was pretty offensive, though HHH dressed as Kane in the funeral home did give me a few chuckles. Luckily TSN cut to commercial in time for me to miss the whole "I guess I really did fuck your brains out" joke, marking the only time in my life that I've been glad for censorship.

That same week we here in Canada got the first episode of Tough Enough III, which was pretty brutal. They put those kids through some hell and did everything they could to pound it into their skulls that being a wrestler is one tough motherfucking job. Ultimate respect has to be given to the person you're in the ring with, they've worked hard to get to where they are and their physical well-being is in your hands. I couldn't help but wonder why they didn't have a similar program for writers. Obviously whoever wrote that Kane/HHH program had no respect for the wrestlers. They had no respect for how much work it took those men to get to where they are, and they were completely unmindful of how this plot could affect each man's career. They were telling these Tough Enough kids that the business is sacred, that it requires everything you have to give, that it's dangerous and that it's hard, but after all the fighting and struggling they'll have to go through to make it into the business, what they have to look forward to are bullshit story lines and nonsense writing. I'm all for comedy in wrestling and I'm all for surprising the audience, but you can't just throw shit at the crowd and expect them to swallow it. By the same token, you can't just saddle the wrestlers with whatever garbage you came up with the night before and expect them to perform at their best.

Ever since that storyline things have just sucked. No two ways about it, the overall product is just reprehensibly bad. Any other show that treated its writing so lightly with so little regard for quality or continuity would be laughed off of television. Now when I got to Walmart and buy WWE DVDs for $5 each, I don't feel bad that business is down. Instead I think "Take that, you bitches. No one with a show this boring deserves to make money."

So with RAW gone completely to shitsville, I turned my attention to Smackdown. Once I got used to the vibe they had going over there, I started to really like it. Edge, Guerrero, Angle and Benoit going toe-to-toe in a desperate struggle for top-dog -- once you accept the fact that you're gonna see minor variations on that same struggle week in and week out, it actually gets pretty cool. I was really digging the way the balance of power would shift in subtle ways each week, and it became clear that somebody backstage (presumably Paul Heyman) was taking care of things. He was paying attention to make sure that those of us who watch the show regularly were not wasting our time.

But then Big Show comes in out of nowhere and gets a title shot against Lesnar, and I was thinking, what the hell? If he gets the title shot, then what the fuck have Edge, Guerrero, Angle and Benoit been fighting for all this time? Bragging rights? Shouldn't Big Show have to work his way up the ladder? Why didn't Edge, Guerrero, Angle and Benoit kick the shit out of him for even suggesting that he was worthy of a title shot? And then this Al Wilson / Dawn Marie thing... Jesus. Jesus! What the fuck is that? Bill DeMott crushes the cruiserweights, etc etc, long story short is that despite Smackdown being better than RAW, there's still plenty of room for improvement. A-Train could be executed in the ring, for instance. Work or shoot, either would be fine.

But don't get me wrong, I still love wrestling. I still watch both shows and I'm not planning to stop. I saw another house show in Moncton a couple of months ago that was great, and me and Sean are planning on seeing No Way Out live in Montreal in February. There are aspects of wrestling that I still love, like Matt Hardy V.1, who for my money is the most entertaining guy in the whole company. He went from the Hardy that time forget to my favorite wrestler in the span of a month. I fucking love that guy, he's better than Jesus. There are still a lot of good matches and smatterings of writing here and there that impress me, but the writing especially is inconsistent and tends to disappear without building anywhere. I call that "The Raven Effect", after that "masked chick" storyline Raven had. The story's there, it's there, it's there, it's gone. Where did it go? No one knows. The Raven Effect. Maybe it went to Heat.

There's always more I could mention -- I just got back from the 2003 Royal Rumble, and the Rumble itself was gold as always, but did any of y'all see that Scott Steiner / HHH match? It was like those two guys ran a ten mile marathon and then got shot up with horse tranquilizers before the match, and then still wrestled more poorly than they should have. Worst match ever. I don't hate Nidia anymore though, so I guess that picture of her head on a spike that I made was a little premature. Sorry there, Nidia. Yer alright.

Despite all it's problems I still wouldn't recommend to anybody that they give up on WWE. Not yet. You might wanna tape RAW and Smackdown though, so you can fast-forward through all the waste of time bullshit. And if WWE never manages to get back its footing, there'll be somebody else. I borrowed some Ring of Honor tapes, and they were great. Excellent wrestling and very simple but still very cool feuds. I may not be able to say that WWE is great with a straight face anymore, but wrestling is still great. The greatest show on earth, motherfucka. So I'll leave you with the last piece I wrote before WWE really started sucking, and a picture of The Hurricane with Busta Rhymes. BLADOW!!!

On a good day, there really is no show like wrestling. On a good night WWF hits me in a way nothing else can. I just finished watching a Lesnar/Tajiri vs. Edge/Mysterio tag-team match that completely fucking ruled, it was absolutely awesome. Nothing else on tv gets me as caught up as wrestling can.

As far as the balance of the show goes I'm highly biased toward the storyline aspect. The in-ring action doesn't hold the same weight for me as the motivation behind the characters, but when the wrestling is executed well it can be just as great. There was no great storyline behind this match -- Edge is a good guy, Mysterio has got a fan mania surrounding him that's similar to the one RVD had on his WWF arrival, Tajiri's a jerk and Brock is the uber-jerk. Not a lot to go on, but man did they pull it off. When Edge finally managed to toss Brock out of the ring after getting his ass kicked around I felt myself crack a grin. When Brock started losing it despite Heyman's insistence that he calm down, gaving the ring steps a big kick, the smile got a little bigger. Rey started hitting moves, Brock eventually got pissed enough to actively start helping Tajiri when he previously didn't really give two shits about his partner, and it was great. It kept me on the edge of my seat waiting to see what was gonna happen. Wrestling really is a hell of a talent, it takes a phenomenal number of different skills to pull it off. I think I could excel at writing wrestling plots, dialogue, backstage vignettes, in-ring promos, but the psychology of a match once it's actually in the ring eludes me. I get swept up in it, but I can't dissect it. It's that x-factor that I can never quite wrap my head around.

A lot of times the show does fall flat, but when it's great, it's great. I've had more than a few people give up after one or two shows and wonder why I was so insistent that they watch it, but it's too great a show for me not to at least try to convert them. A lotta people don't appreciate my vigor, but I just can't help myself. I'm sitting in front of the tv, totally enraptured in watching this story unfold, and I wanna bring it to people. I don't want them to miss this.

But as I'm sure you all know, wrestling's been in kind of a downswing lately. A lot of the old WWF characters and storylines have died, and there hasn't been much of comparable quality to replace them. There's been a slow build of new stuff, principally on the Eric Bischoff-run RAW, my favorite of which being the "3 minute" angle.

This is just the kind of seemingly simple idea that makes WWF great -- it all started when D'Lo and Planet Stasiak (before he got fired) asked Bischoff for a match. Bischoff said fine, you want a match, go kill each other, but you've only got 3 minutes. And it better not be boring. Only Bischoff would admit on tv that a wrestling match can be boring. Of course the D'Lo/Stasiak match was boring as hell, and Bischoff walked down the ramp right in the middle of a submission rest-hold. Now, I understand the necessity of rest-holds when you've been running around the ring for ten minutes. You've gotta take a breather. We modern-era no-respect-for-the-past wrestling fans accept them in that capacity, but when somebody throws one in a 3 minute match, I just wanna kill myself. The match is supposed to be quick, high energy, always moving, constant motion. That's what makes The Rock look so good in the ring, despite the fact that he may not be technically as good as some of the other guys. He has energy, he flows, he almost never stops, and even when he does he's always twitching to get moving again. Even when he's just going through the motions, he doesn't look like he's going through the motions, and that makes all the difference.

So Bischoff comes walking down the ramp and says "Whoah whoah whoah! What the hell's this? A submission hold? I told you to make this match interesting!" Bwahaha! Bischoff cracks me up, like the mud-wrestling match between Stacy K and Trish Stratus where, on top of putting them through this humiliating ordeal, Bischoff had to add that "nobody really cares about women's wrestling". Zing! For Stacy or Terri that wouldn't be so inappropriate, but Trish has obviously worked her ass off in the last year to improve her in-ring skills, and here's Bischoff putting the women's-wrestling-movement back five years. Haha. What a cock.

So after telling D'Lo and Stasiak that their three minutes are up, he sends out the Island Boys to kick their asses. I was excited to finally see these guys, but as it turned out it was the last time I'd get to see them for a couple of weeks. I don't know if you lads in the States know this, but TSN brutally edits RAW whenever they see fit. It's not as bad as it once was, but it's still ridiculous. They claim it's required by some canadian television requirement, but the station The Score that broadcasts Smackdown here has never edited a thing, and they never get in trouble. They even play reruns of things that TSN wouldn't show, and at a considerably earlier hour. Christ, TSN even edits the RAW reruns that don't start until 1am. They're total cock-knocking fucks. They used to switch to wide-shots of the crowd while we could still hear what was going on, and now they just go straight to commercial. It's fucking ridiculous. Hell, we get TNN, we don't even need those fucks, but they blank out TNN during RAW time. Just a big, black screen. Fuck you, TSN. I hate you.

(Editors note: The Score has since edited Smackdown. Just the once, but I'm sure it's just the beginning of a gigantic censor-a-thon. I fucking hate Canada.)

What riles TNN is non-wrestler women getting attacked, but there's a whole lot of other shit that sets them off. You remember that tag match where HHH tore his quad? They wouldn't show the sledge-hammer hit at the end. Or when Regal pissed that weird looking green stuff all over Big Show? Cut. And a million other things too numerous to mention. Goddammit, fuck you, Canada! Fuck you to death, you pelt-wearing, igloo-making fucks!

So, when Bischoff decided the next week that Lillian and Finkle's arguing had gone on about three minutes too long, I didn't get to see the Island Boy beatdown. But I imagined it, and it was great.

The next week The Fabulous Moolah ran her mouth about 3 minutes too long, and Bischoff had the crap beat out of her. I didn't get to see that one either, despite the fact that she's actually a wrestler, and I was starting to forget what the Island Boys looked like.

Week after that Goldust had a midget with him, and that one I got to see. Christ, it was brutal. If you ask me, Lillian Garcia taking a few bumps isn't nearly as disturbing as beating the shit out of this poor little midget. I felt bad for the tiny little freak.

Up until this point the beatdowns had been coming pretty regularly and pretty predictably, and then the angle shifted into high gear. That's when Bischoff started doing the swerve attacks. He brought out Jimmy Snuka and gave him a lifetime achievement award, which I thought was pretty cool. I just figured it was something Vince was giving out and since Eric was his on-air proxy, it was his job to present it. But while Snuka was giving his acceptance speech Eric interrupted him with a "Whoah, whoah, that's great, it's real nice to hear what you have to say, but jesus, you've been talking for like three minutes..." That's when a smile jumped to my face. Holy shit. What the fuck is this? He's gonna beat the shit out of Jimmy Snuka? Why? What possible reason could he have for doing that? What a fucking asshole. I loved it. Jimmy fought valiantly, and if it'd been just one of the Island Boys I think he coulda won, but they eventually got him and beat the living piss out of him. Why? WHY!? It was ridiculous, and I loved it. Wrestling is best when it surprises you, and it'd been awhile since it surprised me that well.

Week after that Bischoff had the boys beat up Jeff Hardy during a misunderstanding between the two, to lull us back into a sense of familiarity. The standard beatdown had returned.

Smackdown, meanwhile, continued to tread water, the only minorly interesting announcement being that long-suspected homosexuals Billy and Chuck were going to get married the following Thursday. Huh, I thought. That's weird. And gay, too.

On RAW, Bischoff had a plan to counteract this headline-grabbing ratings ploy. A little piece of nonsense he liked to call H.L.A. Me and my friend Matt looked at each other. HLA? What the fuck is that? "Hot lesbian action?" Matt ventured as a joking guess, mere moments before Bischoff proclaimed "Hot! Lesbian! Action!"

Yeah, that Bischoff, you gotta love him. We knew he wasn't gonna come through, of course, and I got pretty sick of Lawler talking about nothing but H.L.A. for an hour and a half, but when the lesbians actually came out it had my attention. Bischoff walked them through the process: Why don't you take your skirts off? Then your tops... then hug a little... then kiss...

At this point parents had removed their kids from the arena and TNN was ready to give Vince a stern talking to the next day. Boo hoo. Fuck off, you Star Trek playing pussies. So I was watching and waiting for something to happen, someone to interrupt, something to go wrong, when out of the blue Bischoff tells the ladies to stop because he's getting kinda tired of them, and in fact thinks they've been hanging around for about three minutes too long...

I couldn't believe it. Why would he destroy his own plan, which he'd been hyping for the entire night? Why beat up these lesbians? It was insane! His only justification was that sex and violence sell, and I got to see Rosie and Jamal standing in the ring just before TSN cut to commercial. I was a little bummed that it was edited, but I was so shocked and amazed at what Bischoff had just done that I just couldn't be annoyed. That lesbian beating was something I never saw coming in a million years. It was the kind of lunacy that can make up for an entire lackluster RAW broadcast and leave you walking away happy. Not that I condone the beating of lesbians, necessarily, but the comic timing and ludicrous brutality was something you just can't emulate in other shows. Only the format of wrestling allows it, and only the environment of the ring makes it possible. It's stuff like that that makes wrestling great, and wrestling writing something to aspire to. I'm sure those of you who didn't see it think I'm fucking retarded, but trust me -- it was a moment to be proud of.

After that I told everyone with great confidence that Bischoff was never gonna swerve me again. That was just too crazy, it was too ridiculous, I'd be on the lookout. The lesbian beat-down was great, but it was so over-the-top that the angle was killed. No more surprises were possible after that.

That Thursday was the Billy and Chuck wedding. Critically, people seem to think Smackdown has been better than RAW since the split, but I couldn't disagree more. Strong wrestling fundamentals and good workers don't mean much when the show is boring, and from a storyline perspective it's been about as interesting as "Let's fight!" "Them's fighting words!" People describe it as a return to an "old-style" approach to wrestling. Well, I've got news for you: Old-style wrestling is fucking boring. I watch old wrestling when I get the opportunity, I have an appreciation for the technique and physical skill required, but it doesn't grab me at all the way modern wrestling does. I can watch what people call a five-star classic and not be particularly entertained. Without the characters and storyline behind it, the actual wrestling means very little, especially the standard mat-style wrestling the company has moved toward lately. Less high flyers, less theatrics, less characters, less plot. Everyone's opinions on the matter differ, but it wasn't a sudden interest in technical wrestling that rejuvenated the sport in the late nineties. It was characters, it was theatrics, it was surprising and entertaining storylines. The recent drop in viewership isn't some cruel twist of fate, it's a lack of the things that made modern wrestling popular. One reason a lot of pay-per-views fall flat for me is that very little happens from a storyline perspective. Very few backstage segments, little time on the ring-mic, just a lotta wrestling. The resolution of conflict can be satisfying, but usually it's not half as interesting as the build-up. I've come away from a couple of pay-per-views thinking that the retrospective promos they play to refresh everyone's memory about the current feuds were the best part.

On the one hand, there's no way for the in-ring spectacle to continue to become more risky without even more injuries and deaths than they've already had. I can understand wanting to scale back the danger of what the wrestlers perform in the ring. However, that should make the storylines even more important; you can only watch so many hundred wrestling matches before you become a bonafide wrestling fanatic or decide that you've seen enough for one lifetime and turn to something else.

The Billy and Chuck wedding; was it a good idea? I dunno. Was it a well-devised plot? Probably not. But was it a smart move? Definitely, because at least it got people talking. WWE got some exposure, and I'm sure a few people who had never tuned in before gave the show a shot, such as my mom. Now my mom is a lot smarter than me in many respects, and she's seen a little wrestling here and there, but besides the Mick Foley's Hard Knocks and Cheap Pops DVD she never seemed too interested. That's the greatest WWF compilation DVD of all time, by the way. I happened to mention to her that tonight was Billy and Chuck's wedding, so she said "What the hell, put it on." We watched the complete-waste-of-time Bob Holly vs. Brock opener, but things picked up with Eddie and Edge. At the end of the match Chavo was preparing to give Edge a stinkface, but Edge smashed Eddie in the nuts and made him take the stinkface instead, and it totally cracked my mom up. It was a solid match to begin with, but it takes something a little extra to make it stick with people, and the dumb look on Chavo's face vs. the insane rage of Eddie Guerrero was the trick.

I was about to head off to my own house to watch the rest, reckoning that mom didn't want to sit through two hours of wrestling, but she said hey, you know, you can stay and watch it here if you want. You all know what that means, right? I kinda want to watch this, but I really can't justify it without having my twenty-two year old son here as well. So I was more than happy to come to mom's rescue, and we had a great time. Overall it was a really strong show, particularly the Rey Mysterio vs. Kurt Angle rematch, and eventually the commitment ceremony commenced.

Billy and Chuck have been favorites of my friends and I since they showed up, because they're funny. They go that extra mile and do things most people wouldn't do to give us a laugh, and that's worth big points. But it was only funny when they acted gay but would never admit that they were gay, so this whole gay-marriage angle caught me by surprise. And in fact, the whole ceremony was kinda lame, a few jokes here and there, but nothing particularly noteworthy. Even when Billy and Chuck called things off at the last minute, admitting that it was a publicity stunt and that they're not really gay, it was still less than a stellar segment. Less than stellar, that is, until the crotchety old man who was performing the ceremony protested, claiming that the bonds of union to another person are sacred, whether they last fifty years, sixteen months... or three minutes.

"Wait a second," the old man said, standing up straight and speaking in a far clearer voice. "Did I just hear myself say... three minutes?"

I was jumping in my chair, pointing at the screen, going "Holy shit! Holy fuck, that's fucking awesome!"

Mom gave me kind of a look.

"That's Eric Bischoff, that's the fucking guy from RAW, he's got these two guys... holy shit!"

Bischoff pulled off his old man mask and Rosey and Jamal stormed the ring, destroyed everything, pounded Stephanie McMahon into the ground and ruined the entire ceremony. It was awesome. It was the biggest swerve since the ECW crew turned on the WWF during the Alliance angle last year. I was pleased as punch.

A couple of minutes later my friend Matt burst through the door. He'd run all the way from our apartment to our friends Mark and Chris's house, figuring I was there, then across the street to my mom's house, just so he could fly into the room and say "HA! YOU SAID BISCHOFF WOULD NEVER GET YOU AGAIN! AHAHA! HAHA!" Then we watched the final segment, where Matt Hardy (v.1) beat the Undertaker. Haha, take that, 'Taker, you old bastard. Take that!

So the next day I'm sitting at the comic shop, 'cause I work there don't you know, and who should burst through the door but my friend Sean. And guess what he said? "HA! YOU SAID BISCHOFF WOULD NEVER GET YOU! BUT HE GOT YOU, MAN! ADMIT IT! HE GOT YOU GOOD!"

So here's to you, Bisch. You got me, you WCW-wrecking bastard.

Hey, that reminds me, have you heard about this continuity-editor job that WWE is advertising? What you do is watch all the shows, keep track of storylines, keep a record of who hates who and why, how different storylines affect ratings, make little character bibles for each character, and occasionally pitch storyline ideas. That's basically what I do in my spare time. Man, I'd love that job. But they want all these people with "tv experience" and "college edjucations", and word on the street (ie: the internet) is that they don't want to hire wrestling fans in writing capacities. If that's true it really sucks, because only the fans understand what makes this show so special. Only we can see the potential of the ring as a storytelling medium unlike any other. Only we can make it a show above and beyond any other on television.

So for christ's sake Vince, gimme a call. No matter what you ask me to do, I'll do the job. Get it? "Do the job?" I'll job to any higher up on the writing team who wants to put me through a table. And I'll love it. Don't think I won't. I'll even win the World Title if you want me to. Anything good enough for Russo is good enough for me.

Written by Fred Cook on 08/13/2002

Thanks to reader Travis P. for sending in the following:

Perhaps some of the funniest post-Raw banter we have seen in some time. After the final 8 man tag match, Undertaker told Booker T he couldn't leave until giving the fans a spinerooni. Booker relented, then told Taker he needed to see a Taker-rooni. Taker said that would be gimmick infringement and said no one should have to be put through the pain of watching that. Then Rock came back out and said he wanted to see the Taker-rooni. Then Triple H came back out, told Rock he was out there for some serious business, then went to town taunting Taker to get him to do a Taker-rooni. Triple H said for 12 years he's seen dead man walking -- tonight he wanted to see dead man spinning. Then he accused Taker of not having the balls to do it. "For 12 years you've had balls. Tonight -- no balls."

Then, Vince McMahon comes out! He said he would even do a spinerooni -- which Trip asked "Would that be a Mac-erooni?" So Vince did his spin (very poorly), which Triple H immediately followed by calling Vince the whitest man on earth. Goldust even followed up with a very impressive spinnerooni, which Vince called the Fag-erooni. So then, Triple H gave it a go -- with a very sad spin -- and Taker then gave him a chokeslam and hightailed it out of the arena. Rock then did a Rock-erooni (also not that impressive) then gave Triple H a spinebuster, followed by a People's Elbow. As Rock left the arena, Triple H said "I hate you Rock". Then he looked to the crowd and said "And I hate you". This whole thing lasted about 25 minutes after RAW was off the air, but no one could leave... waiting to see if Taker would really do it. Thank god he didn't.

As a final P.S. before I cap this page off: For christmas my mom made an eighty dollar donation in my name to the canadian branch of the World Wildlife Fund. Real fucking funny, mom. Real fucking funny.