Category: digressing

RAW by Scott. (also see: Bad Blood and TUESDAY)

Ultimo Gail is just great. Well, not in the good match sense, the “which wacky submission will she use next” sense. It’s even better when the people taking them have no idea how they’re supposed to sell them. I think it was TomK who correclty wondered what the point of pushing – I guess the JR tease which went nowhere (and so, they shouldn’t have bothered) about pushing a heel female tag team when your champ is a heel, so I guess one of them turns face between now and the next PPV.

Since Gail’s winning and is the more important of the duo right now, I’d guess Molly would be person flipping sides to serve as a building block. Which could’ve been another fine angle post-haircut, as sympathy for her could’ve worked to get the personality shift over. But that would mean they plan these things out in advance.

I thought the Highlight Reel was one of their better talking bits in quite some time. Four different characters got motivation – which isn’t the word I really want but it’s 2 AM so I’ll go with it – setting up the match next week, while drawing in some history. Jericho got a reason to be drawn into the anti-Evolution forces, which makes me happy because that surely means the end of Jericho/Christian for at least now.

Triple H did put over Angle (though there were shennangins) when he was going the undefeated streak, which makes me think he’s going to do the same here. I don’t see anyone reporting it so it’s probably just a red herring (because it was only explicity a #1 contenders match for Triple H), but I was wondering if they might actually main event Eugene this month, for lack of a better thing to do. It’s a pretty safe arguement that he’s got more momentuem than Edge at this moment, and if it was a face/heel match, I’m sure they’d think about doing it. Eugene’s probably never going to be as interesting once the novelty wears off (see: the Hurricane), so they might as well mine it for all it’s wroth.

Main event would’ve been great if anyone who taped it would’ve gotten the whole thing. Since they obviously had to be planning the Joe Schmoe 2 stuff in advance, they probably knew they were going to get extra time to make up for it. If they did, they could’ve just adjusted the schedule that’s distrubted to all the DVRs out there, and no one misses the main event because taping cut off too soon.

I liked RAW – the second hour non-Lita stuff, mostly – but it wasn’t the super duper Great RAW Rick Scaia saw, and I’m thinking he’s underestimating the effect being there had on him. I also disagree with him on his Chavo Classic piece, but I want to disagree with more than thrown off sentence so we’ll try that later.

It must really suck to be Matt Hardy this week. Every mark and smart guy in the world coming up to tell you about Lita’s pregenacy, and have to continunally smile and laugh it off. Forget about being stuck in a stupid storyline two hours a week, try having to talk about it to everyone you meet for the next month, and everyone pretending like they’re the funniest person in the world by making incredible obvious jokes. That’ll cause a sore spot.

Other stuff took longer than I’d like, so I’ll catch up on comments tommorow. I’m tempted to count Rosey/Hurricane vs La Resistance matches too, but we’ll see.

A list. By request.

5 – 19 – 1 (.220)

11/13 SmackDown! – Akio/Sakoda defeat Rey/Noble (Akio pins Noble thanks to Tajiri)
11/20 SmackDown! – Rey defeats Akio
11/27 SmackDown! – Akio defeats Noble
12/06 Velocity – Akio defeats Funaki (thanks to Tajiri)
12/20 Velocity – Ultimo/Kidman defeat Akio/Sakoda (Kidman pins Akio)
01/03 Velocity – Orlando/Moore defeat Akio/Sakoda (Orlando pins Sakoda)
01/08 SmackDown! – Rey pins Akio
01/22 SmackDown! – Bradshaw defeats Akio and Sakoda (Bradshaw pins Akio)
01/31 Velocity – Akio defeats Funaki
02/15 No Way Out – Tajiri/Sakoda/Akio defeat Dragon/Kidman/London (Tajiri pins Dragon)
03/04 SmackDown! – Rey/Kidman/Dragon defeat Akio/Sakoda/Tajiri (Rey pins Akio)
03/11 SmackDown! – Rey/Kidman/Funaki/Dragon defeats Akio/Sakoda/Tajiri/Noble (Rey pins Noble)
03/14 WMXX – Chavo wins Cruiserweight open.
03/20 Velocity – London/Kidman defeat Tajiri/Akio (London pins Akio)
03/27 Velocity – Gunn/Holly defeat Akio/Sakoda (Holly pins Akio)
04/01 SmackDown! – Dudleys defeat Akio/Sakoda (Someone pins Akio)
04/10 Velocity – Nunzio defeats Kidman/Rey/Akio (Nunzio pins Kidman)
04/17 Velocity – Holly defeats Akio
05/01 Velocity – Cena defeats Akio
05/08 Velocity – Orlando defeats Akio
05/15 Velocity – Scotty defeats Akio
05/20 SmackDown! – Kidman NC Akio
05/27 SmackDown! – Classic defeats Akio
06/05 Velocity – Rico/Charlie defeat Akio/Sakoda (Charile pins Akio)
06/12 Velocity – Spike defeats Akio

1. Coach over Eugene – Anything could happen in a Coach match, though. Then again, Coach lives to figure out a statistical category he’s good in, and the writers live to end his happiness.
2. La Resistance over Benoit/Edge for the Tag Titles – no sense in having Benoit/Edge win to drop them again
3. Chris Jericho over Tyson Tomko – This needs to die and everyone else needs to move on. It’s Scott Steiner/Test of ’04! With better people.
4. Lita over Trish, Gail and Victoria for the Women’s Title – if this was a top title, thinking would be to keep it on Victoria to continue building her, plus you’ve got lots of heel challengers (Gail, Trish, Molly, even Lita allied with Kane) and no face matchups if a heel wins. Thing is, they typically like the undercard to build drama to the main, and since Kane’s plan is for both he and Lita to have gold on the night, Lita’s got to win first. Everyone complains.
5. Randy Orton defeats Shelton Benjamin – They’ll probably keep this going for a while, so Shelton doesn’t get the win yet.
6. Benoit over Kane for the World Title – If the segment ended with La Resistance being announced as the winners instead of Bischoff making a 3 on 2 match, they’d have more to build up Edge/Benoit than Kane/Benoit. So I’m thinking they’re doing Edge/Benoit for the belt.
7. HHH over HBK – Until the end of RAW, I was thinking they were going to other way. Now, not so much.

I’ll totally change my mind later.

I saw a newsbit* that said Bruce Pritchard is suggesting they get rid of the Cruiserweight Title. I don’t imagine it’s really of any merit; whenever they’re doing non-serious things with the division and people get a little paranoid, looking for trouble where it may not be. I doubt there’s more truth to it than to stir up some righteous indignation and banner impressions.

That said, I think killing the Cruiserweight Title is a good idea.

There’s too many titles as is, and there’s no sense in having a belt around that’s basically worthless. Belt or not, you could still do the same matches, either increasing the competition around the US Title (ie: more than Cena’s challenger of the month) or the tag titles or any other reason. Chavo Classic can still be Chavo Classic, and Jamie Noble can still wrestle someone on Velocity each week. Nothing much changes, except they don’t have to worry about upsetting people by not doing anything with the Title.

The way I see, there’s differing levels of how you can do this Cruiserweight thing:

1. Defended every month on the PPV, with secondary feuds not directly involving the title
2. Long periods of being an after thought/PPV filler with shorter periods of being a midcard issue
3. Total goofness (the last couple months)

3 is a pointless waste of a belt. 1 isn’t happening in this or any other WWE universe. 2 is what they usually do, and all that does is lead us to 3.

There’s a spot between 1 and 2 that’s a possible level of WWE commitment and worthwhile experience, but is it realistic that they’d ever get to that spot?

I’m sure this discussion has come up before but I dunno, I need a clean break or something. It’s just not working out.

* – wDB linking to it? I don’t remember and I hesitate to bring it up without a source, except I kinda downplayed it as legit so I guess I’m okay

On the Dan Patrick, an person knowledgeable about the NBA talked in reference to last night’s game, agreeing that referees expect scrubs to come in and foul, so they’re usually called for fouls, and superstars will not be fouled out unless it’s a no doubt.

That’s nothing new. The twist: the knowledgeable person was former NBA referee Hue Hollins. (If you’re from here, you know him as “’94, Game 6 vs NY, Pippen ‘fouls’ Starks)

Dan gave Hollins multiple chances to back away from what he said, but Hollins mostly talked himself in circles and stayed with what he believed.

The next 12 SportsCenters and any NBA action will mention and include clips of this, but you should grab the ~10 minute interview off ESPNRadio.com (probably up around 3:15 CST) to hear the whole thing yourself.

I had an urge just to tune away for a bit, because I felt sorry for how bad this man was burying himself and his former colleagues. Came off as validating all the biased refereeing complaints the NBA has denied and denied for so many years.

I’m so out of the loop of using a VCR, I guess, that I screwed up setting the times. So I got a half hour of Card Masters instead of the last half hour of the JL Movie. And I can’t believe they’re not reairing it again soon. I think there was a DVDVR post with spoilers I avoided a while back that I’ll go look for in a second.

If the last 20 or some minutes was as good as the first hour, the movie was some good fun. Fine story, and lots of awesome bits: Batman and J’onn doing an intervention on Green Lantern while Flash is clueless and “Wally West, Clark Kent…Bruce Wayne” were show making scenes, but the part that was the greatest in the history of the series:

GL: “Who’s side are you on?'”
HG: [with pleading eyes] “Don’t you know?”
[pause]
[Hawkgirl KOs Green Lantern with her shield, and her fiance shows up to hug.]

It’s kinda diminished by her not sticking to the dark side but it was all kinds of hilarious when it happened.

Ah, there’s that thread. Thanks Sven, now I’ll go search SuperNova and watch the rest.

A list! My favorite kind of entry because it requires little effort. Although I’ll probably forget a couple. I could go look at the stack of disks but that’s all the way downstairs and eh.

– Midnight Racer (one) – This was fine in the “look what this new system can do” sense, although I never played it much.
– 3? Madden games. 2003 and 2004 I know for sure.
– NBA Live 2004 which I played like twice. The NBA died on me, I think. Or the Franchise mode wasn’t very enjoyable.
– FIFA 2002. We were dying to get this game and anticipated it’s release date and then it was available no where in North America for about or month, or at least it felt that way.
– NASCAR Thunder 2003. This was surprisingly playable when I rented it one time and I got hooked. Mike got 2004 and they made the cars quite a bit more loose on turns, and I have no clue if it’s more realistic that way or what, but it’s not nearly as fun. Which sucks because they really fleshed on the career mode from the looks of it.
– MVP Baseball 2004. I’ve talked about this. I’m back to being unable to hit, especially against humans. The way me and Mike are now playing is that we each take a team near each other rank wise, the other guy chooses who you use as your starting pitcher (the worst guy, of course), and you can’t use another starting pitcher unless the game goes to extra innings. Makes it a bit more realistic without the frustration of facing ace pitchers game after game.
– Tiger Woods PGA Golf 2004. I think I’ve mentioned this too. I was like 130% complete before I let Mike borrow the game, and now there’s no chance I’ll ever see it again. The upside is I’m borrowing
– NCAA College Football 2004 which is fine and all and has some parts better than Madden, but I have a tough time getting in to because my school doesn’t have a football team and while there are teams I hate, there’s no team I’m a big fan of. It is kinda fun making you non-football playing school into a National Powerhouse.
– Final Fantasy X. I was thinking those games were good when I rented them a billion times for the NES and I’m sure the PS games were good even if I never played them or got a PS, so maybe I should try them again. And this was good and stuff but I seriously wouldn’t have minded a couple of people on my own side dying off by the end. And then they DID. Sorta. Auron is/was my personal role model. I traded this to Mike for – hey, wait, he didn’t give me anything for this? I think we brought it up today and I promised revenge for the twelfth time. I must work on the revenging.
– Kingdom Hearts. I did my “these are so obviously aimed a different gender and a different age group that it made me feel old and silly for playing” rant at some point already. So let’s not do it anymore.
– Final Fantasy IX. Not a PS2 game! It was either this or FFX-1 and all the things I was reading were “If you liked FFX, you’ll loooove this” and since I didn’t and PS games are cheaper, I went backwards. Which is what I wanted to do in the actual game the last time I was on it – I passed a point of no return where I couldn’t do everything because I only found out about things (aka: read a GameFAQs FAQ) too late, so I was conflicted as to restart or to finish up. I ended up doing…nothing, and it’s been sitting there on my PS Memory Card for 4 months. Great move. I think I was digging it better than FFX up to the point.

That’s it. I think. I play Madden and NCAA online, but all but one of the games have been against Jake – that was the reason why I did the Golf for NCAA switch if I remember right. Playing Human people (when there’s no visible sign except from them trying to break game rules) isn’t really any better than playing Computer people when the Computer isn’t being an easy to outhink AI, and even then it’s a toss up. I don’t know what’s the next game I’m gonna get (assuming I don’t get a new game before Madden, which is always possible); looking for something good multiplayer, I guess.

I’m like 3 or 4 games away from completely filling out my EA Bio, which annoys my friends greatly. They don’t see that having no point to filling out your EA Bio is the point. What’s wrong with them. I dunno.

That killed the time till this poker tournament started quite nicely.

Waking up…

Tanvir: Ew. Sorry. This is why I talk to no one when I’m downtown, because you’ve got a 50% chance of getting a complete nut job (percentage may soar at night near bars.) But at least you did a good thing.

Justin: I think I started at 2 AM after having stopped doing Velocity three different times the night because I was bored with recapping things. I spent five minutes laughing like a pothead after I stumbled upon my first line for the Jacqueline segment and it continued to spiral from there.

Recaps You Should Read, Even If I Knock Them Off The Main Page
– Feely does SmackDown!
– Joe’s long form ROH review
– Scott’s Judgment Day Recap – and his star ratings are over in Tuesday, where he’s also very right about TNA on FSN.
– And Scott watched Raw too.

The post last week with me wondering “What possibly could be GAB’s main event?” looks exceptionally dumb in retrospect, because it’s not obvious they’ve been thinking a No DQ match (or maybe a title change on DQ match) since the angle with Eddie’s Grandma; Eddie’s anger is out of control so he’s going to cost himself the match, and a brawling no rules match works better to Bradshaw’s strength. Should’ve seen it, taking away points as a penality. Now, they may change their mind because the story of the match ended up being the excessive blood loss rather than Eddie getting himself DQed but from the tapings, it still seems to be the direction they’re going.

I’m not exactly sure why I felt compelled to add the TV logos to the unoffical upcoming schedule down there, but it looks nice for something I spent fifteen minutes on.

I was going to get some general lucha stuff done tonight, but I fell asleep again and then watched the end of the Cubs game and now I’m watching the NBA Game 7. So maybe after? Although I owe Jake a no-hitter in MVP. Not sure if it’s me or him with the no hits. Anyway, lucha times for this week are up and there’s no news and no comments about matches I should see what else do I have to do? Right, the TV and the tape.

I think I might already otherwise be done with MVP, though. I put together an Expos team (second lowest payroll but probably a lot easier than the Brewers since you have better parts to start with) with a Livan/Orlando/Zach Day/Toma Okha or Johnan Santana (managed a four man rotation for most the year – the rest was a three man) and Rocky Biddle closing and a whole of spare pieces hitting, and yet, I won the division by about 20 games and easily won the World Series. Scott Podsendik, picked up by me, was the MVP. Day won 25 games and the Cy Young. If I can pull that off, is it really work the administration work of signing AA and AAA free agents and all the other trival off season work?

MVP is the first console baseball game I’ve owned since – hmm RBI? (which I loved just because I could pinch hit for Benito with Tony Gwynn and all the sudden you’ve got a .370 guy hitting 8th – also, Joe already talked about all except I *think* the Baseball Simulator 1.000/2.000 games where batters and pitchers had special abilities like the super jump and earthquake ball and it ruled and I rented it about 40 times) and MVP is fine and all, but I think if I sat down with a piece of paper and a pen while I played, I could probably come up with at least 20 flaws of various seriousness within an hour. (#1 – somehow, base runners score from third when the last out is a groundout at first.) And it’s not nearly as fun to play as Madden or Golf even. So, I dunno. Should go finish up FFIX or something.

As a complete surprise, I got an iPod as a birthday gift. Totally something I would’ve wanted to get but wouldn’t ever committ myself to buying it, which is the best kind of gifts. 15 GB, which is probably far more than my small MP3 and 3CD collection actually needs, but it’ll allow me to create all sorts of wacky play lists without burning a new CD every time. And no more burning a CD to only realize that one of the songs was faked or corrupted or mislabled, which is awesome.

I figure I want to get the Cassette Adapter so I can hook it up in my car, and I still haven’t gotten any tapes, so when I was supposed to be doing things today, I kinda figured out a $200 budget for buying stuff via still yet to be deposited tax refund.

$20.00 Sony CPA-9C Car Cassette Adapter (iPod)
$39.00 iPod Carryling Case
$11.87 Neyer/James Guide to Pitchers (amazon.com)
$16.98 Saving the Pitcher (amazon.com)
$20.00 general iMusic Usage – BUY MUSIC? What the heck.
$26.99 Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers Anthology (26.99)
$10.00 CMLL 01/14/04 and 01/24/04 (Ultimo/Rey vs Park/Shocker – the TV we missed)
$10.00 CMLL Arena Coliseo de Guadaljara 3/21/04 (Cibernetico! I’m a mark)
$10.00 EMLL 1999 Vol. 6 (Various good stuff)
$10.00 Best of Lucha ’97 (Felino Cibernetico)

But then do I really want the carrying case? Because I don’t like my phone one that much. And spending money on online music, have I gone MAD. Two books too, I’ll probably buy something with James/Neyer regardless but reading one’s blog isn’t always enough to get you to buy the book. I may need to rethink all of this. All the tapes would be from Alfredo because he’s good.

The one thing I realized and someone also pointed out to me, is that I now have
– TiVo
– Laptop
– Wireless (G) Card
– iPod
– Website w/blog

So either I am the greatest ever or a huge tech dork. It may be possible to be both.

I also got Cartoon Network Speedway for the Game Boy Advance (because it has Johnny Bravo on the cover and someone thought that’s IT), but I can’t find my Game Boy Advance right now. The pictures look nifty though. The parental warning on the back says “Comic Mischief”, what a warning that is.

Wolves won. That’s it. And now I’ll edit this twice because when you put things off for a week, you remember half of what you wanted to say really late.

Hey, happy birthday Tan. Hope you got to do something besides work. Forgot to say it yesterday, but I did get done the Best Of CMLL – which just reminds me how little I’ve seen. And how matches used to be longer on average back in the day.

Joe on ROH on WO. More later.

Congratulations on the job, Tan!

No lucha today – sorry, I passed out again. And I’m going to be completely fried the rest of the week because now I can’t get to sleep.

This is the idea of an angle/ongoing gimmick that’s been floating around my head for – for a long enough time that I can’t even remember the exact inspiration. But it’s come back to me in the lat bit of time, so I might as well write it down some time or another.

Bring in a tag team. Of course, lucha style – masked, fully covered in outfit body to toe. Since I picture this in WWE, they’d be Conquistador like for today – acrobatic, undercard heel goof henchmen types, lots of finishes involving missed switches, don’t talk much if at all.

They stick at that roll for a while (unless something clicks, of course), maybe picking up a token tag team championship, eventually failing when trying to help a higher tag team win an important (title?) match. The two teams turn on each other, and my masked duo gets booked as the faces because people love the goofy.

It turns into your typical death feud, and since we’ve got the titles elsewhere, there has to be a different conclusion. Maybe a gimmick match, maybe not, but since we’re borrowing from lucha here, there’s a stip thrown in: mask vs hair. Person who takes the fall only.

Match goes as you’d expect with the setup I’ve given you: heels go over, masked team just doesn’t get the break when they need one. When it comes for the demasking, the goofy duo tries one more switch, only for everyone to catch it and try to figure out why? Which becomes a clear a second later, as the guy who takes off his mask is obviously not a guy – he’s a she, and she’s got a whole lot of wins over guys before anyone besides her partner caught on.

This is my belief: A woman can get over as being an equal of men in wrestling only if she’s established as an equal before she’s established as a woman. It’s essential for fans to believe that she’s there not because of who she is (which only breeds resentment – though that might be a decent heel angle coupled with a heel GM type), but because of what she can do inside the ring. It’s take a very special person (and some tape and forethought to avoid situations where she’s exposed) to pull this off, but you end up creating a star. Which is the point.

The real life problem is that within a week of the team’s debut, it’d be all over the ‘net what they were up to and by the next tapings, there’d be crowd chants giving it away. And the surprise is so key.

It’s my birthday Wednesday, and it’d be nice if that was what I was getting stressed out about so it’d be over, but I don’t believe that’s true.

I keep meaning to do A List Of What I Want which I haven’t even really told the people who might by some chance actually buy me these things but that’s kinda unnecessary because they’re more in the school of Buy Him What We Think He Needs. But. Anyway. This is more A List Of Things I’d Like To Get Myself
– For Mike’s birthday last October, I got him a Tom Petty DVD of their performance on SoundStage, but also ripped the songs from the DVD into mp3s for a couple CDs. I used to have the songs on my computer and the PBS broadcasts on my TiVo, but a hard drive crash and too much stored lucha messed both of those things up.
– Really though, I’d like any CD that’d I really like but wouldn’t normally stumble upon without a hint. Listening to same thing gets old, but missing out on some other really good stuff bug me more. I think someone might be coming through here.
– River City Ransom for Game Boy Advanced . When it comes out. If it comes out.
– Tapes tapes tapes. The CMLL show GALA skipped so I can think about Robert’s crazy theory some more (I’ll let him go public with it first), the Chris Hero tape, and probably more lucha.
– CMLL putting on a 90 minute show somewhere
– The ability to watch a tape without feeling required to do a 10 page recap
– People not insisting on buying me Cubs tickets and Cubs tickets right this instant. I mean, I’ll go, but since we’re going to have to buy them from a scalper now or later, there isn’t any hurry till people besides myself commit to going.
– A new place to hang out
– the magical ability to get out of going to weddings.

I don’t know if they have all of this on the Interweb.

I need to stop posting while hazy.

Hey, Butch, I appreciate the link (people actually click it! shocking) but Bartman jokes no. I keep meaning to expound on this and I probably never will at this rate, but the most awesomest moment of the 2003 Chicago National League Ballclub season was when Kerry hit that homerun in Game 7 and it seems for all the world he was going to will the rest of the team to the World Series. Every time someone brings up one foul ball, they’re overemphasizing one ball and marginally all the cool moments of the season. It ain’t right to Carlos’ homer in Houston, Bako’s 6 RBI game, the 5 Game Cardinal Series, Sammy for it to be stuck in the shadow of one play. It wrecks the point of 162+ season if a sliver of it shadows the rest.

It was oh so cute when the only file footage they happened to have of Alou this week was that out of play ball. Like, since the whole bit started with him not using batting gloves, perhaps you might want to show him check swinging? I dunno. ESPN Is Dumb, but not as dumb as I, Max.