by Bob Morris

"There's nothing like a day out on the beach when all it does is rain.
You need somebody else to make the sun come out again.
When you find that special someone you never expected to.
It'll make you believe in magic, it could change your life for you."

- "Friends," the theme from Sigmund and the Sea Monsters

I'm sure I'm giving Eric Szulczewski over at The Shooters bad flashbacks about what I just led this off with (head over to The Shooters website and read his Tuesday News Update if you don't know what I'm talking about), but that's what happens when somebody who always reads his stuff happens to own all the CDs in the Televsion's Greatest Hits collection. Not only all the themes are there, but plenty of meaningless trivia about some of the more obscure shows back in the 50's, 60's, and 70's.

BTW, the theme to that show above was written by the same guys who wrote a lot of stuff for the Monkees TV show, so it figures that the theme above sounds like a cheesy Monkees wannabe type song. (Yeah, that cheesy.)

But this column is not about making people old enough to remember that sort of the thing to start having their childhood fears revived about the stuff that passed for entertainment back in those days…it's about wrestling, so why don't we get to that first, shall we?

As I mentioned in my Nitro report this week, I wanted to try to contribute some other type of column to Rantsylvania, and decided upon doing, whenever I can, a "week in review" type of thing where I can just say whatever I feel like about what's been happening in wrestling this week. Hey, I get tired of just writing columns on the subject of "what's wrong with WCW and why" every time, so now I'll get a chance to talk about what's wrong with the WWF and anything else I can think of as well.

So, that being said, looking at the shows this past week…I actually liked Nitro (should add the Flair/Jarrett match was really a ** affair, although I guess my mind was thinking more about the fact the World title is switching hands so often…but when you get a clean ending in a WCW main event, you had better be thankful because Russo only books that type of thing once in a blue moon). Raw was pretty decent, I don't get UPN so I didn't see Smackdown, but Thunder just SUCKED. The Flair/Anderson interviews were OK, but not their best work, and everything else ranged from mediocre to crappy. The best match of the night was the eight-man tag at the start of the show, and it ended in a big schmozz. Yeah, all hail the Bisch and Roo era.

I really shouldn't be too hard on WCW, because they actually are doing some things right. I've liked the Flair/Russo angle so far, and it seems like Russo is finally learning the concepts of how to be a heel and how to do mic work. But he still has that problem of learning how to book an actual show that actually features some wrestling. I also don't understand how the current Sting/Vampiro program is supposed to elevate Vampiro since he jobs so much. Yeah, I know jobbing doesn't hurt wrestlers if people care about the storyline, but when one wrestler does it all the time and the other one doesn't, it's harder to care about the storyline because people see the guy always jobbing as having no chance of ever coming out on top.

But getting back on track…I know the big discussion this week has been whether or not the Flair collapsing in the ring deal on Thunder was a shoot or a work. I had mentioned on a Delphi forum that I suspected some of this was real, but they'd turn it into an angle, and lo and behold, they did turn this into an angle. Of course, Dave Meltzer is continually saying how it's obviously an angle based on what's been done on TV. For somebody who has been pretty respected for getting to the bottom of various issues, I find it odd that he seems to be "assuming" it's all a work just based on what's been seen on TV. If he is talking to somebody who says it's a work, I stand corrected, but otherwise, I can't understand why Dave doesn't bother talking to somebody to get the entire story. Wade Keller may have a history for being inaccurate or blowing things out of proportion, but at least his reports indicate he talked to somebody instead of just "assuming."

But on the other hand, I can understand why Dave would probably just "assume" given the fact the likes of Eric Bischoff and Vince Russo are notorious for being associated with "reality-based" angles. Russo did an angle with Owen Hart based on the Summerslam match where Steve Austin was legitimately hurt (for the record, it was a Raw match where Owen "injured" Dan Severn with a "botched" piledriver, and this somehow led to the Blue Blazer's return), and Bischoff did an angle with Eddie Guerrero based on rumored Internet reports of exchanges between the two (where Eddie walked out during Nitro and declared he was packing up and leaving, and in another segment, made reference to the rumor that Eric once threw coffee in Eddie's face during an argument). And the list wouldn't be complete without the Ric Flair "heart attack" angle and the multiple times Russo has used the Bret Hart Montreal incident for some storyline purpose.

The danger with constantly using these angles to "work the smarts" or whatever it is the bookers hope to accomplish, is people soon start to doubt EVERYTHING they see or hear involving wrestling. I know when Brian Pillman died, the initial reaction to Vince McMahon reporting it prior to Badd Blood was some people said "this had better not be a work," and then there were those who thought at first what happened at Kemper Arena to Owen Hart was a dummy being dropped from the ceiling. And I really hate to think how some people might react initially if something like what happened to Gary Albright earlier this year, happened to a wrestler on a Nitro episode. It's like the boy who cried wolf…the more times the bookers try to fool us with these "reality-based, work the smarts" angles, the harder it'll be to convince the "smarts" about something being legit, when it is legit.

Had the chance to read Ben Miller's interview with Sonny Ono and his lawyer about the racial discrimination lawsuit, and I have to applaud Sonny for not dropping everything and returning to work for his friend Eric Bischoff after people assumed that's what he would do. The only thing I would say to Sonny is while he has many valid points about Russo and his feeling about foreign wrestlers (and I especially object to Russo when he says Silver King doesn't have any talent), but if Sonny is wanting some real evidence to make his case stronger, he had better get evidence of specific situations involving the bookers who were in charge before Russo came into power. As I recall, Sonny was released around the same time Bischoff was first removed from power, and Russo didn't come on board until a few weeks later.

The only thing I'll argue with Sonny and his lawyer that was brought up was how long they waited to use Ernest Miller…my advice to them would to be ask people about how long Lanny Poffo was under contract with WCW, and how he never had to even show up to work. Or ask about how long Jim Mitchell sat on the sidelines from the last time he appeared on WCW programming to the date he finally got released. WCW putting wrestlers on the sidelines and not knowing what to do with them is nothing new, and it happens to just about everybody who signs with that company.

Undertaker's coming back to the WWF, and he'll be at Judgment Day…if the WWF is smart, they'll have Undertaker be a heel, because the WWF really needs more top-level heels at this point. With Benoit supposedly turning face, and Eddie Guerrero get more babyfaces pop these days than heel heat (dammit, I want my "Eddie Sucks" chants back!), the WWF is once again in need of some good heels. HHH and Kurt Angle are the only two top-level heels currently working in singles actions (Edge, Christian, and X-Pac are also doing fine, but they are all in the tag ranks, which I'm considering separately from singles), so unless the plan is to turn Jericho heel at some point, the WWF really does need Taker back on the heel side. He doesn't have to side with Vince McMahon, just have him tell everybody that he hates the Rock and that's the only reason why he's coming after him. Simple enough to understand, I would say.

And I think that will do it for this "Weekly" Wrap-Up. The "weekly" is in quotes, BTW, because I might not get this stuff out every week, especially since next week is Memorial Day weekend, and I've already got plans to be out of town a few days.

But until then…I don't have a catchy closing line.