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THE REVERSAL
Fighting off a "Sports Entertainment Sleeper"

One Word for this past Monday's Sports Entertainment: ARGGGGGGGH!

The fabulous fad we all know and love (HA!) is always a hit-or-miss proposition, given the nature of the storys and the players involved. However, the WWF threw a perfect no-hitter and WCW's first crack with the Sport Entertainment Twinz didn't fare much better.

If you follow my work (HA! Hi Bobby, this shout's to you), you know I've been trying to do a column entitled Don't Quote This on the Monday shows, basically hilighting entertaining/amusing quotes around my thoughts. The plan was the same this Monday, but around 9:30 (CST) or so, I tore up my notepad and threw it down. About 20-25 minutes later, I threw it at the TV.

Why?

I WAS PISSED.

For those of you that were lucky enough to miss this, the running storyline with the Big Show is that his father has "terminal cancer." Paul Wight has been unfocused and has lost matches to the man he's fueding with, the Big Bossman. While this stroy alone wanders into offensive territory, nothing was terribly wrong with the idea: on the contrary, it was just a bad idea, and when we didn't see the BM/BS hardcore match that was supposed to air on the PPV, I was hoping they had dropped the angle.

Unfornuately, they did not. That match was announced for this past Monday's RAW, and right before the match was to start, we cut to a backstage skit, where a policeman told the Big Show that his father was dead. The "GTV" skit that aired later showed the Bossman giving the "policeman" money and congratulating him on duping the Big Show.

I am, by no means, jumping solely on the WWF here, as I'm sure that you've seen or heard about a popular show that uses/used similar content/storylines. I,for one, AM NOT ENTERTAINED BY THIS B******.

I would feel safe betting that 3 out of every 4 readers on this site has lost a friend or relative or has a friends who's lost somebody to cancer. Brian Hildebrand ("Mark Curtis"), a beloved man across all of the Big 3, just died of cancer not too long ago. Hell, it's not been very long (24 May 1999) since JR & King were mouthing those same (sincere?) words they said to the Big Show about a man who gave 10 years of his life to the WWF, who died a tragic death (that almost was shown ) on nationwide TV. I won't bother you with all the details of my first and thankfully only brush with that subject thus far in my life --just to say the grandmother of my best friend (his guardian and the only parent he'd ever known) (three years past now) died of terminal lung cancer.

What if somebody had jumped out of a corner, and told him, "Haha, just kidding, she's alive and well, we just told you that to play a joke on you?"

It boils my blood : I know it's not real, but if the purpose was to entertain, it miserably failed. It's not right, there are some things that you just DON'T do for entertainment. I didn't enjoy the "domestic abuse" angles, on both sides of the fence, it hits too close to home. I can name QUITE a few Mark Henry angles that piss me off, in addition to the current one. Kimberly's ongoing cheating angle is rapidly heading there. Simply put, some subjects just AREN'T ENTERTAINING: it's doesn't matter what setting they are in or why: they're too PERSONAL to be entertaining at this level.

I've had somebody tell me they (the WWF) are doing what they did in the beginning to be popular: namely, do controversial things to get people talking about them and to tune in, and by writing, I'm another "cha-ching" for the hype machine.

Maybe so. However, I'm gonna be thinking about my best friend of three years ago, who dropped out of school, and is now in mental counseling to try to straighten out his life & his mind after being shellshocked by a huge tragedy. He was a huge wrestling fan: he used to hang out with me on Monday's and Sundays before going away after what happened. He was "the" Outsiders mark.

I'll be over on TNT if you need me.

Speaking of TNT (Mr. Seque, pass me a drink), the Writerz of Baked Wrestling Entertainment (a la Modem) made their auspicious debut. Earn a dime for each time you heard the phrases, "Russo", "Ferrara" or "new creative team"! I enjoy the sports entertainment aspect of wrestling *WHEN IN GOOD TASTE*, as I am a very creative-oriented person myself, but the focus seemed to be lacking. Why?

Well, the Duo of Dreadful Skits took a line out of Stone Cold's playbook, cause they drove a Zamboni-sized object right through the paper-thin storyline core, openly sucking up to the Internet, and having several wrestlers "Shoot". It's funny that WCW has a wrestler named Berlyn, because a similar wall just fell: The Wall of Kayfabe. WCW is obviously looking to the smarks to add to their core audience, and I can't say as I can discount that thinking. In actuality, it seems to be a damn good idea. What's wrong with that?

Execution.

WCW has a history of good ideas, great wrestling, ..and horrible execution. The NWO was a great idea, but the handling of it caused the angle to become stale. Sting as a heel should have been a megastory, but WCW bungled it, to the point where WCW is overdubbing boos over the face pops, and it is been ALREADY a month that Sting has been heel. Russo & Ferrara taking over is a big story, but Monday night was less than enthralling. A hotshotted tag title change, a Buff vs Mgmt angle started, the Outsiders plugging Nyquil in jillions of segments, a very ill-conceived Kimberly "cheating" angle that did not get the point across (you had to be sharp -eyed AND eared to catch the "knockout pills" to get the "point" of the segment), among other things, kinda seemed amatuer in execution.

This didn't work for several reasons. The first one being, that Vince and Co. put heavy self promotion on the show, while at the same time tooling to the Internet. Who are they kidding? Russo & Ed-O may have enjoyed hearing their name so many times on the broadcast but it kinda exposed his little "I'm burned out," speech for what it was: a thinly veiled excuse to revel in the same settings that they write. The power of the spotlight can be tempting, can't it, Twinz? Especially when you sit behind the curtain for a living.....Bischoff Deja Vu?

I also cite the roster. A lot ado has been made of the fact that WCW has a far larger roster that the WWF. Time for a little Reversal: How much of that roster has acting/Sports Entertainment experience? Outsiders, Sid, GB, Sting, Bret Hart, and the Flairs were the main agents in the "backstage" segments -- THE SAME OLD PEOPLE. Jarrett is from the "Attitude" era, he'll do good. Disco Inferno seems to have potential; Berlyn, the Revolution, and the First Family segments have been lackluster. They have a huge roster, but only 10-15 people on it are proven in that genre, and I can think of maybe 5-10 more that show promise IMO. What to do with the other 60%? Toss them out there in meaningless matches that are interrupted by SE spillovers (ie Bret Hart interrupting the Juvi/Evan match)?

Wrapping thing up here, Sports Entertainment not only overtook the wrestling this past Monday, but totally destroyed the spectre thereof by drowning the athlethic portion with idiotic, sometimes latently offensive, highly toxic and clumsy storylines.

And you *can* quote me on that.

Mr .T
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Guest column text copyright (C) 1999 by the individual author and used with permission