I was watching the Rey Mysterio match last night on Nitro and something about Rey kept on bugging me. His blonde hair and his overalls reminded me of someone else. About the middle of the match it finally hit me. Rey is beginning to look just like Dennis the Menace. Pretty soon he will be pulling a little red wagon to the ring with him and yelling "Hey, Mister Wilson!".
I'd tell you which school I'm going to be at, but if I do, I'm afraid one of my interviews would go like this:
Me: "So, before I start firing questions at you, do you have any burning questions right off the bat?"Interviewee: "I do...are you the Bill from DDT Digest?"
Me (taken aback): "Well...yes, yes I am."
Interviewee (getting excited): "Wow!!! What'd you think of Nitro this week?"
Me (getting flustered): "Er, uh, it was OK, I guess. Now, back to why we're here..."
Interviewee: "Say, do you know what El Vampiro is doing now?"
Me: "Uh, right now, I don't care. I really think..."
Interviewee: "Say, has Ric Flair won more world championships than you've had pieces of ass?"
Me: "What the??!!"
Interviewee (doing pratfalls): "Whoo!! Whoo!!!!! To hire the man, you've got to interview the man!! Whoo!!!!!!"
Me: "Er, that's it!!!!!"
It should be noted that the man himself handed RL his ticket stub for The Sixth Sense.
A number of guys on that show did show up to wrestle. The Jannetty/Rogers vs. SST match was very good, Tully Blanchard really worked hard in his match with Stan Lane, and Julio Sanchez wrestled a good match with 2 Cold Scorpio. And, of course, the Abdullah match was great, assuming you are into that sort of thing.
However, a number of matches on the card were truly horrific. Granted, you can't really expect 50-year-old guys who've been retired a number of years to do a 450 splash, but some of it was really painful.
Plus, whoever put the show together should be banned from the wrestling business for life. The camera work was horrible. The guy picking the angles cut to people in the crowd, a number of them wearing special access badges, at the most inopportune moments. Memo to the Producer: People paying $20 to see the PPV didn't pay to see your friends in the crowd during the matches.
It was supposed to be a night of legends, yet all these wanna-be managers and entourages show up in a pitiful attempt to make a name for themselves even though the people ordering the PPV have never heard of them. No joke, when that nobody managing the Samoans came out, my girlfriend asked me, "Who's that?". I said "I don't know". She said, "I thought this was supposed to be old-timers and you would have heard of him." And, by the way, she fell asleep after the third match.
And that announcer, Randy Rosenpoop, was just awful. He had no business doing play-by-play, or anywhere near a wrestling event in any capacity, other than maybe sweeping floors. I was just groaning over and over as he kept calling the moves wrong. He was even calling some of the wrestlers' signature moves wrong. By the way, memo to the Heroes of Wrestling research team: Bobby Fulton was Tommy Rogers' partner in the Fantastics, not Jackie Fulton. I was wondering where Nick Bockwinkel was. My guess is that he figured out how this was going to turn out, and was running for his life...or at least his self-respect.
And one last comment. I tried to get a couple of the writers to take me up on a bet that Jake Roberts would no-show the event. Ironically, the people who ran the show would have been better off if he did no-show. Also, in watching the tape again, I think I know why the show cut off so abruptly. Jake was reaching down into his pants about ten seconds before the show cut off. At that point, I don't think they wanted to take any chances.
Aldo asked me if I thought Jake was really wasted, or it was just an act. I said, "Sir Laurence Olivier wishes he was that good an actor."
Congratulations, Adrian!!! We're looking forward to seeing you on Monday nights someday soon!
Well, you can't say I didn't warn you. About four months ago in a previous report, I predicted this would happen. Well, my prediction didn't really come all that true after all. The disappearance of Lenny and Lodi took a lot longer than I expected and, according to the article, their disappearance was more a result of outside influences than an entirely internal decision at Turner.
I'm not going to offer an opinion on the appropriateness or lack thereof of the whole angle. It transcends pro wrestling, so nothing I say is going to influence anyone's opinion, and no matter what my opinion, it's going to tick a percentage of the readers off.
However, one thing about the article bothers me, that being the statement that "the complaint from GLAAD was what finally caused Turner bigwigs to remove Bischoff as president of the wrestling organization". The article makes no mention of the sagging ratings or excessive spending, and gives nothing to give you a clue to where the word "finally" is coming from. I reread the article a couple times and I think it's meant to say it was the last straw in this particular situation. However, to the non-wrestling fan, it could very easily be implied that this was the last straw in a string of homophobic moves by Bischoff, and I don't think that's fair to imply.
Plus, did Lenny ever get a boot to the face from Hogan? I don't think so.