First column down. Hey maybe that means I'm a real writer now. Probably not. I'm sitting here watching the NHL skills competition (John LeClair just had a sweet goal in the shootout competition) wondering if my last column made any sense at all. Did CRZ loose his mind by putting that up on his web site? It was an incoherent mess of wrestling gibberish. I had a point in mind when I was writing it but seemed to have entirely lost it by the end of the column. I guess I just have this problem with the amount of effort that people put into reporting and looking into wrestling. Is it that important that umpteen web sites post stuff on a regular basis when there has to be more important stuff going on? Maybe this is just my own self identity crisis than anything else. I just wonder if we all just spend to much time thinking about wrestling.

Enough moralizing, time to talk some fucking wrestling.

I want to touch on this subject of the bookermen. It seems to be one of most importance to us internet types. Why was he booked to do that and so and so and blah blah blah and a bunch of other shit that comes spewing out of our mouths every Monday night. What really interests me about this right now is that ongoing debate of who currently is the best booker in the business. I want to take a look at each of the major three companies in the US and analyze what they have done with who. First lets look at the sinking ship of WCW.

WCW: This currently has to be the ugliest situation in professional wrestling today. I watch WCW on a regular basis and every time I watch the feel of the show is loose. What I mean by that is nothing seems to have any semblance or organization. Every story line that is presented seems to have a logical path laid out before it. That could either A: be finished in one night or B: go on for the better part of the year. This is a particular problem that leads even markish fans to stop watching. If you and I can figure out the ending for the storyline before it happens without checking the latest news from Micasa or any other wrestling news spewing site then the story line is weak. Lets take an example from this weeks WCW television.

Norman Smiley and the Demon. First lets just ignore the obvious problems of this story line (taking the entertaining Smiley and putting him into a feud with a band tie in wrestler) and look at what WCW actually did with the genesis of this 'feud'. First off we have Smiley running around in the back for something that I don't even remember. He gets inside the Demon's little pea pod of a dressing area and as it closes on him he screams. And then I scream 'this sucks!' at my television set because I know that Norman and the Demon are going to feud. And I am not proven wrong. Norman comes out to the ring in crappy demon outfit. He is eventually followed by the Demon with cops. Fucking Cops!!! Isn't the Demon supposed to be something scary with his own sort of hell spawn like powers? Way to destroy the guy's gimmick before you even give it a chance. Well to finish up the recap Norman screams at the cops and the Demon and runs away (at least somebody's gimmick got to stay intact).

By my watching this crap of a wrestling promotion week in and week out I know that Smiley is an entertaining part of the show if not the only entertaining part of the show. Thus I conclude that the Demon has no chance in Todd McFarlane's Kiss' the Psycho Circus comic book hell of coming out on top of this his first legitimate feud (lets choose not to remember the job he did to Terry Funk). Fast forward to Wednesday night's Thunder (and if you actually viewed this program in real time you were wishing for some fast forward). Smiley comes out in full Demon gear and face paint. Then the demon comes out yelling at him and pointing his finger 'you stole my stupid gimmick gear and stuff' I imagine the Demon say or maybe I heard the announcers say it, whatever it all sucks. Anyways the point is that the Demon seems to human to be a demon. A boring match ensues and Smiley wins after absolutely no offense with his cross face chicken wing submission. In other words the Feud is Over!!! And the end result is that nobody benefited from it. This established the Demon as a jobber to the mark fans. This didn't do anything for Smiley and it might even hurt him because he got no offense in against a jobber with a gimmick. WCW got nothing because this feud only lasted a weak and didn't help either wrestler at all. This seems to be how things are done right now in WCW. Nonsensical feuds that have no lasting impact on their fans. Thus the fans can't remember why they watched this shit to begin with and they leave end of story.

As an aside there is one good feud going on in the senior circuit and it happens to be between two men over fifty years old. Flair and Funk never gets old, especially if they keep having great promos like the one on Monday night. This feud could go anywhere and could encompass any amount of twist and turns within the story. This reflects the quality of the two men compared to the Demon and Smiley but every story line should have the opportunity to have some twist and turns in it, and be allowed to develop into something instead of feud starts and feud ends because the face wins.

ECW: Now this is a unique situation. They are trying to build the company from the ground up again. This time for a national television audience instead of a regional audience. I won't claim to understand how difficult of a task this is but it would help if ECW had some fucking stories in it. For some reason Tajiri, Super Crazy, and Little Guido have been feuding for over a year now. I couldn't tell you why it started and I can't tell you where it is going to end. That is the biggest problem right now for ECW. They just seemingly throw guys into the ring to do battle without adding any story or background as to why these guys dislike each other except that they are already established heels or faces and then this will further establish them as such. I like the matches that have come from this feud but I really want to see these three talented men be involved in something different. Have two of them form a tag team to take on the impact players, fuck have all three of these guys form a tag team. Find some story line to unify them. It would probably be pretty easy since they wrestle against each other all the time.

There is a positive trend towards story lines in ECW. The top of the card has the Awesome/Sabu pairing against RVD/LSD pairing. Excellent story developments so far. The only problem with this is that it is the only story line in the company along with the continuing Raven/Dreamer saga. I like ECW and there style. I just wish they would get their act together or before we know it they will be off TV.

WWF: They are currently the king of the booking world. Even when the fuck up they manage to turn things around and make them right. Example: they fucked up the Big Show big time and now after a premature title run he has that beloved heal heat. Chris Jericho is another example. He was saddled with a fat Curtis Hughes which basically almost killed his super heat he had coming in. Then he gets involved in a well done feud with Chyna for the I.C. title and presto! He gets the second biggest pop in the company. And there are more examples but I'm afraid of boring you even more if you have made it this far.

The point here is that analyzing booking shows the place of each company in the industry. One company sucks complete ass. Another is soundly in the middle with the ability to go either up or down. Then there is the Fucking king of them all, the WWF.