Friendly Competition 8.18.07

Show The Man A Little Respect, Will Ya?

As we’ve all probably come to discover by now, WWE has gone out of its way to erase any trace of Chris Benoit from their company, removing mentions of him from their website, removing his name from DVDs he appeared on, pulling his DVD set and action figures, and the like. A lot of people across the IWC have expressed their disappointment in Chris Benoit, and have said that they’ll never be able to watch his matches the smae way ever again knowing what he ended up doing. In one weekend, Chris Benoit has become the Adolf Hitler of the world of professional wrestling. I say fuck all that, Chris Benoit was fucking awesome. Listen, I can understand the initial feelings of shock and even being touched for a couple of weeks, but come on, people, it’s been almost two months. Time to start getting over this situation which really had nothing to do with any of us (unless somebody reading this is related to them or were friends with them).

Hey, call me a cold, calloused bastard, but given the time to get over the murder-suicide, I am perfectly able to sit back and watch Chris Benoit matches as well as I did before the whole thing happened. I’ll admit, I never thought Chris Benoit was the greatest performer of all-time since his mic skills sucked ass (which is why he could never have been a REAL headliner), but he was easily the best worker in that company before he decided to take his little vacation, and I’d even be willing to bet that his corpse could still outwork most of the roster. This guy could drag a good match out of anybody, and proved it when he was carrying A-Train around a few years ago.

Besides, you know as well as I do that we were all marking out to the max when he made Triple H tap at Wrestlemania 20. I jumped out of my seat and high fived my buddy because I didn’t think it was actually going to happen. Now all of a sudden everybody’s acting like a guy does when he’s trying to rationalize to his friends why he sucked another guy’s dick. Then again, these are mostly the same people who were HUGE Jake “The Snake” Roberts fans for their entire childhood…until he turned evil and began feuding with the Macho Man and Elizabeth. Listen, we all know how big of Chris Benoit fans we are, psychotic episode notwithstanding. If nobody else is still willing to admit that they’re a fan of his work, then I am. It’s time we all get back to appreciating Chris Benoit for what he was, and that’s one of the greatest workers of our generation.

Fuck Eddy Guerrero!

Now on the other side of the coin, let’s talk about Benoit’s best buddy Eddy Guerrero. Without saying too much, the 411 staff is working on a big feature that will be coming out in a few months, and one of the names that was floated through, quite prominently, was that of Eddy Guerrero. Excuse me, but when did Eddy Guerrero get elevated to the level of wrestling legend? Oh, that’s right, when he dropped dead. Silly me. Now correct me if I’m wrong, but before he died, wasn’t he just another gifted worker who happened to get a short World Title reign? The funny thing about wrestlers dying is that, unless it’s a situation like that of Chris Benoit, when they pass away their legacy always seems to get artificially elevated with no real justification.

Don’t get me wrong, Eddy Guerrero was a great worker and all, but I definitely don’t feel like he’s worthy of being treated like some kind of wrestling god just because he dropped dead one day. Yes, he was WWE Champion, but it was one reign, that one reign was only four months long, and he drew like CRAP when he was champion. He also cracked under the pressure and showed that he couldn’t handle being the top guy in the company. As great a worker as he was, he was an upper-midcarder at best and never deserved that World Title reign, and in fact that title win was not so much to elevate Guerrero as it was to build heat for the Brock Lesnar-Bill Goldberg feud.

And I really think it was the World Title run, because if he’d died two years earlier than he did, you know who he would have been? Curt Hennig. Everybody recognized what a great worker Hennig was and still talk about the great matches he had (despite the fact that he died of a cocaine overdose, but we’ve moved on from that), yet nobody turned him into a timeless name when he died just because he was a great worker, and I think that a big reason for that was because he never held the big belt. Yes, I know he was AWA World Champion, but let’s get real here, we’re talking WWF or WCW World Champion.

At the end of the day, Eddy Guerrero will always be remembered as a guy who could get a decent match out of anyone, had charisma coming out his ass, and truly connected with the crowd. But I’m not ready to treat him like an all-time great or refer to him as “The Late, Great Eddy Guerrero” just because he’s dead. He was good, but he just wasn’t THAT good.

Gettin’ Saucy

On a lighter note, I’ve got a friend named Ross, and he likes to drink. A lot. In fact, most of the drinking he does is in public at the Starbucks near where I live. He drinks there so often, in fact that Ross has been nicknamed “Sauce” by some of the other frequent towngoers. Now don’t get me wrong, Ross is a really nice guy, he just has no common sense, and this was driven home by the events of one night I was in town hanging out. He was drinking in public as usual when the cops showed up. They came over to him and caught him drinking, and arrested him for having an open container. They brought him down to the station, booked him, and dropped him off back in town. Of course with Ross being Ross, he had them drop him off at a shopping center with a liquor store, so he went and bought some more booze and came back to town. It was actually pretty funny, he sauntered back up to Starbucks with his arms in the air going “BALLIN’!” and picked up right where he left off.

What wasn’t funny was that he got arrested again later that night. Well, it was really funny for us, but probably not so much for him. The cops came back a little later and caught him in the act a second time, and were like “Ross, twice in one night? This is gonna look really funny in the paperwork.” So they brought him in again and I really wanted to stick around and see how the rest of the evening played out, but it was getting late and I do have a job I like to go to every now and then (after all, I need SOMEwhere to write columns and bullshit around on MySpace), so I headed home for the night. However, that weekend I discovered that there was more to the saga, as he had gotten arrested yet a third time later in the week for the same thing. Some people never learn, I guess.

So a few days later, I bring a couple of my friends from out of town to Starbucks with me, and Sauce was there and, might I say, he was looking quite spiffy, and I told him so. He told me it was because he went in front of the judge that day, so I asked him how it went. He told me the conversation with the judge went something like this:

Judge: Ross, I see you got arrested three times last week, two of which were in the same night, all for the same thing, and all in the same place. What exactly is your problem?

Ross: No disrespect, Your Honor, but I think it’s pretty evident to everyone here exactly what my problem is.

Luckily for him, he didn’t get slapped with a contempt charge, and was just let off with fines. Then we move on to the topic of another guy we know (who will remain nameless) who is basically the town drug dealer. The cops never arrest him though, because they just let him deal and the cops pick up the people he’s dealing to, making him a kind of unofficial business generator for the cops. However, he was on the other end of that little business model when he went down to Queens to pick up some coke, and he got arrested for possession with intent to distribute, and now he’s doing time in Riker’s.

So my friends are listening to this and I’m sure it made a great first impression, but then that weekend I’m bringing my girlfriend out to meet all my friends for the first time. As we’re heading to town, I’m trying to fill her in on everybody, and I get to telling her about Ross and she’s just like “Um, okay.” As we’re driving, we pass by the 7-11 and I see Sauce coming out with a 12 case, so I’m like “Hey look, it’s Ross. Hey, man!” and he’s like “Stu, what’s up, lover?” My girlfriend was like “That’s Ross? He’s a lot more clean cut than I pictured.” So we get to my friend’s house and we’re hanging out, and in the middle of the party, word comes out that Ross got arrested AGAIN, and this time they’re holding him on $100 bail. Jordan, Diane, and Cupcakes go down to bail him out, and discover that they set the bail so low because they didn’t consider him a flight risk. This was poor judgment on their part because Sauce has been planning on skipping town for weeks, and told me so when I saw him last night. At least he promised to give Jordan the hundred bucks back before he bolts.

There was no real point to that story, but I guess I needed something to get your mind off of the fact that I just praised a killer. Oops, never mind.

You Sucked That Guy’s Dick?

But getting back to my indignant ranting, I was reading a recap of Ronnie Garvin’s appearance on Monday Night Mayhem a couple of weeks ago, and my first reaction was “Wow, it’s Ronnie Garvin! He had some fun stuff going on back in the day.” But that thought quickly turned into “Boy, did this guy never deserve that World Title, or what?” It’s the same kind of reaction a guy gets when they meet their girlfriend’s ex and say “Wait, you FUCKED that guy??” Don’t get me wrong, he had put in his time in the business and paid his dues, but if I had to put the title on either of the Garvins, it would have been Jimmy, he was a lot more over. Plus, you think about all the other guys that never got that big title win over Flair: Barry Windham, Lex Luger, Nikita Koloff, Magnum TA, Jimmy Garvin, both Road Warriors, Ricky Morton, Robert Gibson…but Ronnie Garvin WAS able to beat him? The thing is that it wasn’t the slightest bit believable, and the second the rematch at Starrcade 87 was announced, everyone with a functioning brain knew Flair was getting the title back, and when he splattered Garvin on the cage and made the three count, it was one of the biggest pops I’d ever seen even though Flair was supposed to be the heel.

But hey, let’s not hate on Garvin too much, because there have been a hell of a lot of other completely undeserving World Champions over the years. Let’s right away cut through the obvious ones like Vince McMahon, David Arquette, and Vince Russo, we all know how we feel about them and don’t need to discuss it more. But what about Sgt Slaughter? What the fuck did this guy ever do to deserve a World Title reign? He had his fans back in the 80s, sure, but who could ever realistically see this guy beating the Ultimate Warrior? I know, it happened, but we’re talking about the only guy in some 13 years to cleanly defeat Hulk Hogan, and had since just rolled over everyone in his path, including Randy Savage, Mr Perfect, Rick Rude, and Ted DiBiase, all of whom I’d have given that title to ahead of Slaughter. Sgt Laughter goes beyond the definition of “transitional champion”, and instead transcends straight to “baboon who’s holding the title until Hogan gets it back at Wrestlemania”. I think the Slaughter reign was just a stupid idea overall, because they skipped out on the potential Hogan-Warrior rematch which never ended up happening until WCW totally botched it eight and a half years later, and they instead gave the title to a guy who now shows up on Raw twice a year to job to anything that moves.

Then there’s Randy Orton. Whenever his name comes up as a possibility of being a World Champion or even being inserted into the picture as a challenger, people groan. So what made it any better an idea to actually give him the title three years ago? Oh wait, that’s right, he was two months younger than Brock Lesnar and they wanted to erase Lesnar from ever being recorded as the youngest WWE Champion of all time. Well, I’d say they got a better deal with Orton having that honor, didn’t they? The good news is that they didn’t keep trying that, because the champions would get younger and younger and stay every bit as cocky because they’re having the highest honor in the business handed to them before they’ve had thirty seconds to cut their teeth in the business. Eventually we would have wound up with WWE Champion Aurora Rose Levesque.

And here’s my personal favorite undeserving champion of all time, one Jeff Jarrett. Now don’t get me wrong, I very much appreciate what he’s done by creating TNA and giving talent another option for a place to work, but this guy never should have been anywhere near a World Title, even going back to WCW. The popular argument at the time was something along the lines of “Well, who else are you going to put it on?” To which my response was “Have you LOOKED at the roster?” At the very least, you could have given it to Scott Steiner, who was a way more believable World Champion than Jarrett could ever dream of being. Flair was still functional at the time and still over. You could have pulled the trigger on Booker T a couple of months early. Jeff Jarrett is an upper midcarder at best who would make a great (or at least passable) IC or US Champion, and maybe even an occasional challenger for the World Title, but he’s just not a guy that I or anybody else ever has or ever will accept as a World Champion.

Of course, I can sit here complaining about shit like this until I’m blue in the face, but that won’t stop it from happening. In much the same way that guys will continue to wake up after drunken nights at the bar to find themselves laying next to some disgusting pig and saying to themselves “Jesus Christ, what have I done?”, World Titles will continue to end up around the waists of guys who don’t deserve it, yet were given it anyway either for political or misguided creative reasons. The only difference between Sgt Slaughter as World Champion and the fat pig you fucked while you were drunk is that you can never mention that girl, but everybody knows who the WWE Champion was.

Aliens And Women’s Genitals

I was thinking about what it’s going to be like when we finally make contact with aliens. It’s going to happen eventually, and when they do, you can be damn sure that they’re going to find their way into pro wrestling, because it IS pro wrestling after all. You’d have to imagine that depending on the physiology of the aliens, the contest could be very heavily slanted in one direction or the other. Like, what if all the aliens are nine feet tall and have eight tentacles? Not very fair to the average, steroid enhanced WWE worker, now is it? And you thought that wrestling bears was weird. And what if their nads are in a different place than humans, as they are almost certain to be? Like, what if their nads are in their upper body? Does a low blow not count on them because their junk isn’t there? Do we get disqualified for a high blow? Surely this is some kind of discriminatory double standard that should not be allowed.

That reminds me, does anybody else hate it when somebody hits a low blow on a woman and they sell it like they’re a man? I mean, I’m sure it doesn’t feel great, but it’s not like they have the same target that a man would have. I remember one glaring example from WCW when Dean Malenko of all people hit a low blow on Torrie Wilson and used it to cover for the pin. You’d think that Malenko of all people wouldn’t allow something that nonsensical in one of his matches. I think it could have been a great running gag with somebody like Chyna or even Lita in some of her manlier days, but alas, it never happened. They could even bring out some androgynous wrestler and do like the old “It’s Pat” gimmick where you honestly don’t know whether it’s a man or a woman.

Speaking of which, I used to have a job at a retail store about eight or nine years ago where there was a person who was going through the process of getting a sex change, but the problem is that nobody knew at exactly what stage this person (who we will refer to as “it” for lack of a better descriptive term) was at. Its name was Shadoe, which didn’t help, and to confuse matters further, it used both bathrooms. The voice could have gone either way, so that didn’t help either. Nobody felt comfortable going and asking it which it was, so we did the next best thing: we went and asked the HR lady. She said she couldn’t tell me, with the reasoning being that it would be the same as asking how much they’re getting paid. It ended up leaving before we could discover the truth one way or the other, so the mystery was never solved. But if your name is Shadoe and you’ve had a sex change operation, I think we’re far enough removed from the situation that you can tell me now, so please shoot me an email and let me know.

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