Your Viral Dose of Reality 9.11.07: An Evil Entity Industry?

If the WWE has to go down for this witch hunt, the least we can do is throw TNA into the fire as well, and watch them fester and boil in it. After all, at least [WWE are] trying to implement a change into this industry – what’s TNA doing that’s helping the industry outside of showing us how to not book a one hour television wrestling show pretty much every week that Dutch “Hacky-McHackinstein” Mantell and Jeff Jarrett were in charge of? Is the WWE’s drug policy a joke? Of course it is, but then again, so is the policy of Major League Baseball, but everyone seems to be contempt with that as none of their players have had a psychotic melt down that led to them committing a multiple homicide-suicide. Shame that, too, because I really had hopes for John Rocker to pull off such a feat after his New York melt down back in ’00 – what better way to cap off a racially charged, intolerance ramble campaign than that?

But while everyone is turning their eyes to the WWE and asking them why they didn’t do more, the rest of the industry goes unchecked, as if they’re doing any better – as if they’re doing something so drastically different [in a good way] from the WWE that they can get the free pass on this one. I may not like the direction of the WWE product at the moment, even if it’s an improvement from its previous 3 years or a vastly superior alternative to the trashy Thursday Night Raw is War special that Spike TV likes to conveniently remind us is actually the shell of TNA’s Impact!, but it’s not as if they’re the only ones in the wrong on the issue of drug use. Wrestling has always had that rock star vibe about it where just about everyone wants to live for the sex, drugs, and spotlights of the big stages. We’ve all seen the stories about one guy or another caught with recreational drugs, or cheating on their wives with ring rats and groupies, and it usually ends up crashing the illusion of kayfabe, something to which probably adds just a little more pressure to those veins running through the McMahon body. I still sit in wonder about how Vince managed to avoid wanting to strangle Jim Duggan and Iron Sheik after they were caught together in a car with all sorts of recreational drugs, specifically marijuana. But that’s all beside the point, of course.

What a lot of people don’t seem to understand about all of this is that at least the WWE is trying to clean up their act, but how quickly does that get forgotten? What more do they need to do to prove that they’re implementing huge changes in their company? And why is it that some writers, who clearly snort coke off the back of their “Best of Misawa” DVD, and chase Petron shots with Smirnoff crates in order to function properly when rating certain matches, who had television air time on the topic of drugs and violence in the wrestling industry after the tragedy of the Benoit family, has yet to come to the WWE’s defense? Why is Ryder about the only one to throw the spotlight off of the infamous list that Marc Mero is clearly thinking about tattooing onto his inner forearm so he doesn’t have to keep reaching for a soggy sheet that sticks – glued – to his ass cheeks as he sits in the hot spotlights that melt away the rest of the plastic holding up his face – while other writers continue to stay on the comfy bandwagon that the WWE is the evil entity that is ruining and destroying the industry that Bruno Sammartino loves? I love Bruno, and I’ve always agreed with him about how the WWE has bastardized the industry to suite gullible, recliner chair seated yuppie idiots who usually love to follow a block of the Gilmore Girls with re-runs of Family Guy, but I think there are times when you have to defend this evil entity, no matter how unpopular it’ll make you look in the eyes of the internet wrestling community – which, by the way, is filled to the brim with wannabe smarks and smarts who only wish they had half the brain capacity of a decaying cat when it comes to the topic of wrestling [and life].

Oh the joys of being a wrestling fan stuck in a society of wannabe’s and posers who think that because they enjoy the trashy Thursday Nights over the flashy trash of Monday’s that that entitles them to a larger podium to spew their ego-centric message of bollocks. Do you have to like the WWE to defend it in this case? No, you can easily still claim it’s the reason the wrestling industry [as a whole] isn’t as good as it used to be all while reminding yourself, and others, that at least they’ve actually implemented a drug policy – something that was nonexistent in this industry for well over 60 years, and is still not even a thought over in Japan. Maybe if more guys on the bigger podiums would try defending the WWE in this steroid scandal then maybe, just maybe, the witch hunt wouldn’t put as big a dent into the industry and its image in the eyes of our society as it already is?

I’ll be the first one in line to admit that I love Ring of Honor, but do they actually test their workers for any substance abuse? Would as many people care if instead of a steroid pumped Triple H it was the steroid filed body of one “Tank” John Toland found washed up in some secluded motel off the back lots of bum-fuck America? The media isn’t interested in actually doing work to paint the entire industry by picking at it one small piece at a time, because we all know that if they can paint the WWE as the evil enabling, drug pushing cartel that they believe them to be, then they already paint the entire industry to look like that as well. Doesn’t matter if your Pelle Primeau’s are drug free or not, because if the John Cena’s are snorting lines in the back with an albino coke addict off the back of Brian Gerwitz, then the media will pick up the ball and run down every spandex wearing man as being a druggie wannabe athlete hack. We should all be treating this as if the media was out for the wrestling industry rather than just the WWE, but instead, many of us want to keep the cool blinders on and believe that if the WWE is killed at the hands of the government than we’ll get our good wrestling back.

It’s all about the industry here and if the WWE loses we all lose. But the reality crashing into many of your faces that this is an industry issue will be when Jarrett can’t confirm that his promotion has a drug policy of any magnitude. Oh how I’ll be looking forward to that day.

An illegitimate code

But while many want to continue to harp on the drug issues of the WWE as if it were only a problem for them and not the rest of the industry, others will continue to gripe about the current summer storyline the WWE spawned after the tragedy of the Benoit/Daus family. I’ll admit that at first I screamed about how I really would have respected Vince if he had simply blown himself up a second time then do this storyline, and in a way I still scream those sentiments.

The issue isn’t so much that it’s a dumb storyline as much as it is just filed with really bad fucking segments that leave you wanting to laugh at it at first but then [they] drag on to the point that you’re looking in the mirror and seeing the face of Kurt Cobain and all you want to do Is deep throat a 12 gauge. Half the time you’re just waiting for the cringe inducing thing to simply fade away off your screen and never resurface, but then it comes around to slap you in the face, call you fat and stupid, and remind you of how much longer we’ll have to wait for this payoff as it waves its dick around, spraying piss all over us, laughing, mocking us for still tuning in to watch it.

Of course we looked forward to seeing Mr. Kennedy get a push to the main event – many of us craved for that since his debut on SmackDown, really. Personally, I’m almost grateful that it won’t be him, simply because it could mean that someone in the WWE will have to unshackle the WWE creative team and allow them enough leeway to turn this predictable slosh into something inventive and creative that we could enjoy for months, if not years, at a time. I honestly believe that this timing of suspensions, drug use and other roster ailments could turn out to be a good thing for the WWE and now they’ll have to build longer term superstars that they can rely upon in 5 years time rather than trying to rely on them for the now. But then my optimism is cast into the shadowy grave of doubt, again, as they manage to continue to clusterfuck such a good looking deal with the possibility of McMahon’s child being revealed to be The [not-so] Great Kahli. Does he honestly need more build to his character?

One could speculate any number of superstars that could benefit from this sort of rub down of a character and storyline, but if the track record of the WWE is any indication for who they’ll saddle up with this push we should start expecting the worse. Do I want the WWE to fail on this storyline? No. I’d actually like them to succeed, and they have the options to make this more interesting than just handing such a push to Ken Kennedy so early in his career. But the WWE has rarely given me a chance to believe they’ll do something that could keep me interested in their programming for long term commitments. After all, this is the same company that, on its “A” show, managed to drop the ball on a main event push for Rob Van Dam for 3 years, and dropped Booker T around like he was a mid-card joker card that you could easily allow to flounder outside of the deck of big-name players crowding their main event. Maybe they’ll surprise me and hook me in for long term commitments on Raw – they’ve already turned me into an ECW fan these past few months following Vengeance – but I certainly won’t be holding my breath.

The multitude of names they could play around for this character, storyline and push is so great that I can’t believe someone over there isn’t thinking of the good this time period actually has become. Yes, the WWE is hurt for superstars they can easily ride off the backs of, but look at how this storyline could create an instant star and how they can build that star up to be something so radically different from the rest of the molded OVW clone factory models they pump out and try and push to greater spotlights. Look at that roster and tell me there aren’t more interesting choices for this role over Kennedy.

I’ve already gone over the list of guys they could use as the replacement for this role on my LiveVideo account, where I went on to list such names as CM Punk, Kevin Thorn, Paul London, M.V.P. and Ken Dykstra (as a select few from that listing), and I honestly believe any one of those guys being given this storyline for long term commitments, that could land them in the main event in 6 years time, would be far better than Kennedy getting this to end up in the main event of next summer. No need to rush a process that once took guys almost their entire career to get to, when many of these same young superstars who are being pushed too fast, too hard and too soon are just leaving the industry before their 35th birthday. Do we really want to see how well the WWE can survive after 3 more Brock Lesnar’s up and leave their main event scene after only 5 years in the title picture, just because they’re bored of being an 8 time WWE/World Champion? Yeah, I didn’t fucking think so.