Over the last year, two of the greatest performers in the history of pro wrestling have had a difficult time pleasing an elite group of highly intellectual wrestling fans known as smarts.

First there was The Undertaker. The man has been a dedicated worker for 10 years, giving his heart & soul for the WWF fans. Anyone remember the start of his first TRUE WWF title reign at Wrestlemania 13? Did he flex his 24 inch pythons after the match, brother? Talk to his hands & press his arms up & down like a waaahrioah? Strip his heart-printed tights off & lay in the middle of the ring like a primadonna? Nope. Instead he took a knee with the belt, got up and pointed all around the Rosemont Horizon and mouthed the words "thank you" over and over again.

Fast-foward to 1999. Mark Calloway competed for several weeks on a torn groin muscle. It got so bad that the tear went all the way up to his lower abdominal muscle. Why did he stay around so long instead of getting some much needed rest? It's because he was programmed in a tag-team with The Big Show, where his job was to tutor Paul Wight on the intracicies of the business, both on and off TV. After being coaxed my managment to take time off, he began training again so he could make a return in January of 2000. While training, he tore his pectoral & got so discouraged that he contemplated retirement. After busting ass for months and building the most impresive physique he's had in his entire career, Undertaker came back at Judgment Day to a huge ovation.

Anyone this side of the combined IQ of WCW management would realize that after taking off half of a year, there would be some ring rust to work through. But apparently these "smarts" didn't think so. After his first few matches, all of the smarts began calling him "Lazytaker." The smarts cracked jokes about how slow and plodding he was.

A few months later, perhaps the biggest superstar in the history of the business came back to the company he helped dig up from the dead. "Stone Cold" Steve Austin was suffering from numbness in his arms & legs during the latter part of 1999, mostly due to an errant piledriver delivered by the late Owen Hart. So in January of 2000, Austin underwent major surgey. He had a piece of bone removed from his hip & inserted into his neck, an operation which was necessary for him to be able to walk & move about normally again. After the surgery, he couldn't do any sort of exercise besides walking around his Texas ranch. Naturally, you'd expect people to realize that someone coming off of that kind of surgey won't win any bodybuilding contests for the foreseeable future.

But when Vince McMahon called on Austin to help the WWF boost the buyrate for Backlash 1999, all these "smarts" could talk about was how fat Steve Austin got. So Austin busted ass & returned for good in the fall of 2000. He slimmed down a great deal, even getting back the six pack abs he had during his in-ring prime in WCW. You'd think that'd be enough for the smarts, right?

EH-EH!

Instead, the smarts began targeting his in-ring skills, saying that all he does is punch & kick. Nevermind that he's suppossed to be a foul-mouthed, beer swilling, ragin' redneck... the smarts demanded that Austin bust out the fireman's carry and Peterson rolls. So Austin goes out and has back-to-back wrestling matches with Chris Benoit and Kurt Angle. Contrary to popular belief Benoit cannot have a great match with everyone; Billy Gunn proved that. And while Kurt Angle has made tremendous strides for a rookie, he's still not capable of carrying a poor worker to a good match. Austin's in-ring skills and ability to call a match did had a lot to do with how well those matches came off.

Even that is still not enough for the "smarts." The continue to ride these two men for being lazy, bumbling idiots that can't string along two moves. Nevermind that these 15 year old, overweight "smarts" probably wouldn't even be able to handle the road schedule a WWF wrestler has to endure, or the fact that these men came back from injuries that'd keep the typical keyboard typist in bed for months on end - they demand wrestlers to be superhuman, damnit!

Newsflash, smart guys: YOU ARE ALL MARKS. So am I, Wade Keller, Dave Meltzer, Vince McMahon and anyone else that devotes as much time to wrestling as we all do. So unless you're a journalist whose job it is to critique the business, I suggest you keep your fat jokes to yourselves. You'd really sound a lot smarter that way.