By "Net.cop" Scott Keith

Okay, I get letters. Lots of 'em. Some nice, some not so, but a lot of questions get asked over and over so I thought I'd waste the time of the people nice enough to syndicate my column by answering a couple of the major ones.

Major Question #1: Why doesn't Scott like WCW very much?

Good question.

Okay, let's pretend you're back in junior high (or maybe some of you still are, as the case may be) and you have two friends: Vince and Eric. Last names withheld to protect the innocent.

Vince is an independantly wealthy 15-year old prodigy who inherited a big chunk of money from his parents and made a killing on the stock market. But he's a bit of a jerk.

Eric is the wealthy bastard son of a billionaire playboy who isn't really liked by the rest of the family and has a confidence problem as a result. He's also a bit of a jerk, but he covers it up by trying really hard to suck up to as many people as he can.

Now, Eric has a fundamental problem: Nobody likes him. Vince drives the nicer car and has more people hanging around at his house telling him how cool he is. So Eric does the smart thing: He gets a car like Vince has and starts telling people that he's more popular than Vince is.

Now, some new students at the school haven't met either guy before, and Eric drives a really nice car and has the latest video games at his house, so they naturally start hanging out with Eric. I mean, Vince might have a Playstation with a lot of great games, but Eric's got an actual arcade installed and updates the machines every two weeks.

Vince doesn't like to broadcast his popularity too much. He's got "What the World Is Watching" painted on the side of his car, and every year or so he announces out of the blue how much he appreciates his friends' support over the years, but not much else. So people began to get the impression that Vince wasn't as cool as he used to be.

To compound the situation, Eric's friend Neilson counts the number of people at Eric's house every week and the number at Vince's house, and he keeps track, noting that Eric's parties tend to beat Vince's by 1 or 2 people for 80 weeks straight. Eric is very proud of this fact and will tell anyone who'll listen. Eric furthermore lures the coolest guys away from Vince's parties by promising them bigger parties with hotter chicks and more alcohol. Everyone is pretty sure it's over for Vince.

Now, Eric's fundamental problem remains: People still don't like him very much. Whereas Vince prefers to let others keep the party alive, Eric is constantly trying to be the life of the party, always getting the first dance with the prom queen, and making sure his friends Hulk and Page get the most time on the dance floor. He even gets his little brother Tony to run around screaming "This is the most important party in the history of this school!" All the guys he lured to his party begin to realize that as long as Hulk and Page are around, they're going to be stuck serving punch in the corner. And they begin to get tired of having to suck up to Eric and his friends in order to play his video games. They begin to realize that Vince's video games are just as good, because at least they'll get a chance to play, even if they're not as expensive. And everyone gets really sick of Tony telling them how much more significant Eric's parties are than Vince's.

See, Eric switches his arcade games so much that no one can really get into them. Someone will hit a high score and then the next day the game will be gone and replaced by something newer and better. Meanwhile, across the street at Vince's house, a game of NHL 98 that's been running since last November is attracting tons of new friends to the party because people are getting into the game instead of being dazzled by the money and prestige of having all those newer, cooler games. And pretty soon the guys who were lured from Vince's party begin to get upset because all the booze and chicks they get are hand-me-downs from Eric's friend Hulk and it works out to be not much better than what they were getting at Vince's place.

So in desperation Eric begins asking famous people to stop by his party in order to once again attract the attention of new students who haven't met him before. But one of them shows up stoned and makes a fool of Eric and the other is the oldest guy at the party and ends up making a bunch of lame jokes about Eric's party in the guise of helping it. The people come to see the celebrities and then leave.

Eventually, with all the attention on Hulk's little rants and celebrity sightings, people begin to realize that the video games aren't being updated as frequently and the potato chips are getting stale. Those who were there with Eric from the start hang in and rationalize the decline in the party's quality while everyone else hangs out with Vince. The conclusion is that Eric has a lot of great toys, but he throws a lousy party. You might not be able to put your drink on Vince's coffee table without him throwing a fit, but it's a hell of a lot more fun to hang out there.

And that's why I don't like WCW.

Question #2: If you don't like WCW, why do you watch their PPVs?

Picture an all-star concert featuring Eric Clapton, The Rolling Stones, Savage Garden, Aerosmith, Hanson, Elton John, Van Halen, Smashing Pumpkins, Nine Inch Nails, George Michael and Garth Brooks. Now imagine it's promoted by Squiggy from Laverne and Shirley, produced by Pauly Shore, and the concert video is directed by Steven Spielberg.

First of all, there's something there for everyone, even if you do have to sit through a bunch of stuff you hate. And even if the production is horrible, the sheer talent of the performers involved should, in theory, overcome the inepticy of the men running the concert 6 times out of 10. And the video will look fabulous, no matter the quality of the material presented.

So generally there will be some worthwhile stuff in the concert, it's just a matter of whether the promoter manages to make the right performers happy and get one of the good performances out of them. But if he puts the wrong color M&Ms in the backstage food, or sends the wrong size limo to pick them up from the airport, then a lousy performance will result. But the concert-goer, not being privy to the backstage politics of the concert, is unaware of these extraneous circumstances and just has to buy his ticket and hope that the promoter gets it right this time. And when the promoter manages to keep all the stars happy, a fabulous concert emerges no matter how inept the producer is. It's the 50/50 shot that comes with being a fan. Unfortunately the producer's goofy finishes to the concert (with lots of backstage interviews and other bands running in) undermines the talent more times than it should, but when it doesn't magic can happen.

And that's why I watch WCW pay-per-views. And because I don't have to pay for them, but that's minor. :)

Question #3: Why don't you review that many WWF shows?

No analogy this time.

WCW and the WWF have a fundamental difference in presentation: WCW likes wants to SPORTS entertainment, while the WWF wants to be sports ENTERTAINMENT. To put it another way, WCW features athletes who can act, while the WWF features actors who can fight.

Now, sports lends itself very well to quanitative analysis. In simpler terms, it's much easier to judge the quality of two guys fighting in WCW in terms of those scary terms like workrate, psychology and transitions because they're being put out there as an athletic exhibition. Kidman is fighting Juventud Guerrera for no reason other than trying to make the crowd excited by the match. Whether this is a good thing or not is entirely up to the viewer, but it makes it easy for me to say "Yes, this is a **** match" because there's no emotional involvement. I can sit and objectively trash or praise a WCW show because I honestly don't care about the participants aside from one or two guys.

On the other hand, the WWF has recently turned the storyline and soap opera aspect of the product way up. As a result, it's harder for me to sit and rate a WWF match when I'm busy yelling, screaming, cheering, booing or laughing along with the crowd, as the case may be. The main Steve Austin storyline is a very involving one emotionally, and it takes me a while to be able to sit back and say "This is only a ***1/4" match when I was caught up in it the first time. I tend to rate older WWF shows higher for the same reason -- I cared very deeply about many people in the WWF as a mark, and the shows are very nostalgic for me to watch and my ratings of them are influenced as such. On the other hand, I didn't get to see any WCW/NWA shows until months (or even years) after the fact when I was a mark, so there was no vested emotional interest. I mean, here in Canada it wasn't like you could just pop down to the video store and rent WrestleWar 89 when it came out, it was just WWF stuff available. I could appreciate WCW from a technical standpoint and learned to like that part of it, but my allegiances were always with the WWF.

And that's why I don't usually do reviews of WWF shows.

Finally, a very bitter young man named Michael Tyler (who regularly writes to me after a WCW review by myself comes out) sent me a particularly nasty letter after my Road Wild review, calling me a bunch of bad names and saying that...

1) Road Wild was much better than any WWF PPV this year.
2) The WWF should be called the "Wheelchair Winded Federation"
3) WCW's median match rating is higher and therefore it doesn't deserve the scorn I heap upon it.

Not in such polite language, of course, but those were the essential points. Luckily for him I don't have the inclination to

1) Write his ISP and report his foul mouth.
2) Waste a column refuting three ridiculous claims such as above, or
3) Publish his e-mail address here and let my adoring readers tell him themselves what his opinion means to them.

But hey, Mike, it's die-hard fans such as yourself that keep Eric Bischoff in business so he can put on quality matches featuring talk show hosts, so I'm hardly one to hold a grudge. Love kills the demon, you know.

Now if only we could do something about Hulk Hogan...