By "Net.cop" Scott Keith

Okay, so I defended Unforgiven as a good show.  So sue me.

Welcome to the wonderful world of the internet double-standard.  You know what the most common complaint about my review was?  People expected me to rip the WWF a new rear opening for Unforgiven, but I liked the show.  Hey, amazingly I do have my own tastes and won't always tear apart a show just because everyone else disliked it.  I was in a good mood at the time, and I wasn't expecting anything good to come out of the show, and indeed I didn't get anything worthwhile until the tag title match.  I liked that, I really liked the Jericho v. X-Pac match, and I really liked the main event. My own personal rule of thumb is that three good matches warrants a thumbs up, regardless of the crowd.  It wasn't a huge glowing thumbs up or anything, because most of the show *was* worthless, but I think three good matches warrants a thumbs up.

But you know what REALLY irked me about the feedback?   Not the "You've lost all your credibility" letters, because I get those every two days and yet I still have credibility, mainly because I'm right so often and that seems to bug people.  No, what bugged me is that someone wrote me to say that I should be saving **** designations for matches like Rob Van Dam v. Jerry Lynn from Living Dangerously.  You know what I gave that match? **3/4.  I think I've already established that I don't like the RVD v. Lynn series, and to have to rehash that point bothers me.  By my own count, there's been a grand total of three **** matches this year, all involving Steve Austin.  And all were the main event.  There hasn't really been any use for the ****+ designation, because wrestling has SUCKED ASS this year due to the rampant stupidity of Vince Russo.

Now I bash WCW constantly, but in case you haven't noticed, and you probably haven't, the WWF is doing all the same things that WCW did in 1997 to fall from the top and people are defending it left and right because Vince Russo is an internet darling and a writing genius. Newsflash:  Much like Eric Bischoff and the nWo, Russo had pretty much one or two good ideas (Austin-McMahon, Kane-Undertaker and the Rock) and now we've had every possible combination of the above played out time and time again, with some puppies, catchphrases, and bodily functions tossed in to amuse the 12-year olds.

But to the larger point:  The idea that if my reviews don't agree with the overwhelming opinion of the internet, I must be an idiot.   Hey, I liked the last two matches, DEAL WITH IT.  I wouldn't even call Kennel in a Cell the "Worst match of the year" like many others have.  There was some good stiff shots in there and both guys at least put forth an effort, even if they were completely handicapped by the ridiculous gimmick.  The worst thing you could say about the card is that it was boring and uninspired rather than outright bad, if only because the focus in the WWF has shifted so far towards Sports Entertainment thanks to Vince Russo that I'm pretty sure there's little Post-It Notes covering up all references to the word "wrestling" in Titan Towers.

"Give us wrestling!" the masses shout.  So Jericho and X-Pac go out and put on the most technically proficient match that's been seen in the WWF all freakin' year and the masses shout back "No, not THAT wrestling, that's boring."

Well, guess what?  I APPLAUD the WWF for trying to convert the catchphrase fans kicking-and-screaming.  Screw Vince Russo, the WWF stopped listening to what the fanbase wanted months ago anyway.  One guy even wrote me in reference of my rating of the Jericho match and said that I should, and I'm quoting here, "never, EVER, rate matches again". Yeah, rip off Jericho's catchphrase, that makes you almost as cool as Mark Madden.  Is this residual anger over my not recording Anarchy Rulz and sleeping with it under my pillow for the next three weeks or something?  I got lots of letters that basically said "Well, if you didn't like Sabu v. Credible, then what do you like?"  And so I'm saying I liked X-Pac v. Jericho, and now I've got ANOTHER group of fans blasting me for liking that.

I find it shocking that this same group of people is seriously campaigning for Shane McMahon v. Test to be Match of the Year.  Is the wrestling landscape that empty and desolate this year?  I mean, sure, I liked that match and all, but pick a Kidman match off Thunder for chrisakes and nominate that. At least it's actual wrestling and not "sports entertainment".  I don't think I could live in this world with Shane McMahon having participated in a MOTY.

And what was so bad about the main event?  First of all, there's never been a six-pack match before, so it's not like there's tons of alternatives to compare it to.  It's not like you can line it up against Flair-Steamboat or anything, because the circumstances are totally different and the match setup and dynamic is totally different.  The whole idea of match ratings is to compare things that are, at the very least, comparable.  So what's the frame of reference?  I was entertained, it had no resting to speak of, no nonsenical brawling to waste time, a hot sequence at the end, a reasonably clean finish, and tons of heat.   It was, without a doubt, the best six-pack challenge match I've ever seen (even though it was the first) and thus I gave it ****1/2.  If the WWF does another one in the future, or even one like it, and it completely rocks my world, then perhaps I'd be motivated to re-evaluate, but as it stands I found it to be the best match of the night, and perhaps the best of the year, and that's that.

And as for X-Pac v. Jericho, I had many irate complaints about giving it ****1/4 while I gave Lynn v. Storm ***1/2.  Okay, well first of all X-Pac is a better worker than Lynn and Jericho is a better worker than Storm, so that's a handicap against the ECW guys right there.  There wasn't much crowd heat for the Jericho match, but they were apparently busy cheering the antics of the sign police, so it's kind of hard to count that against it.  Besides which, I get tons of criticism from the more hardcore workrate freaks that I shoudn't pay so much attention to crowd response and heat, and so I basically turned the sound down and evaluated the match from a technical standpoint, and there was some way cool stuff in there.  The spot where X-Pac dropkicked Hughs on the fly, the bronobuster variation, Jericho's dodging of said bronobuster on a couple of occasions, all good stuff.  The highspots were crisply executed and nothing was blown too severely in the ring.  About the biggest minus against the match I can think of is the awkward sequence in the middle with the chinlock due to the idiotic crowd.  Well, what did you expect them to do?  Work through the sign nonsense and get ignored during a vital part of the match?  If the crowd won't pay attention, screw 'em. Slap on a chinlock and let them come back to the match when they're finished playing with their signs or beachballs or whatever other nonsense is going on in the crowd.

The same thing happened at Bash at the Beach, with the Triad facing Saturn & Benoit for the tag titles, as the crowd was largely distracted by a beachball and shananigans from the guards.  They did the same thing there, and I didn't penalize there either because it was beyond the control of the wrestlers involved to deal with.  Hey, shit happens, and sometimes you just have to work through it and worry about what the internet marks will think later.

Anyway, the only other glaring bad thing about the Jericho match that was presented to me was that it had a dumb finish.  That I agree with. But I can at least understand the need for it.  So to summarize, the really bad things about the match were:

         1) It had a bad finish
         2) There was a blatant chinlock in the middle

That's really not enough for me to blast the match as crap, as others have done.  I think the problem lies more in the huge expectations people had for Jericho, as though he was going to suddenly step in and become the next HBK overnight.  Well, you know that HBK took about 4 years to really become over in any significant way once he went solo, right?

But I can understand workrate freaks blasting me over the match, because they're generally right when they do so.  It's the catchphrase freaks who pop for the NAO intro then sit on their hands for the next ten minutes that bug me when they write.  Writing to complain about my evaluation, like my longtime sparring partner Gabriel Sanchez did, doesn't bother me overly because I can deal with that.   It's writing to complain that the wrestling was boring that bothers me.  I know it's cool to whine about Edge and Christian not getting a bigger push because they're such great wrestlers, but please don't then complain because the match wasn't the highspot-fest you expected.

I have to put some of the blame on the WWF for this.   Well, okay, most of it.  The result is generally the kind of putrid, self-serving "sports entertainment" extravaganza that passed as an episode of RAW tonight, featuring an hour of talk, a half an hour of commericals, twenty minutes of entrances and extra-curricular actives, and maybe 10 minutes total of wrestling, all of which had stupid non-finishes.  You want a show to blast as crap, THERE you go.   Take your best shot at that, because it made Unforgiven look like Bash 89 by comparison.

So the next time Jericho and X-Pac try to build a 15 minute wrestling match to cover for Shamrock's absense and you're too busy cheering signs in the crowd, just remember who's to blame for the bad reviews.

I'm just the reviewer.