By "Net.cop" Scott Keith

Well, we’re having some changes coming up here at RS.com, so you might as well get used to me doing these more often.

Strongest recommendation to check out Dave Meltzer’s 11/16 internet show, featuring an interview with Raven. Raven just lets it all hang out and covers everything from real name etiquette to how much he hates Hulk Hogan to the rather charming nickname the ECW lockerroom has for Tommy Dreamer (it's pretty much what you’d expect) and it’s a very entertaining two hours.

Okay, so the big site news (well, the big news involving me, and really what more do you need?) is that the DVD quest finally ended this week, as I bought a Creative 5x kit for my computer. Works great, I love it. Plus with a feed run to the TV, I’ve got a player for that too. Unfortunately, disaster struck Sunday night as I got home from watching the Survivor Series to find that a power surge (well, I assume, I wasn’t there) had done bad things to my motherboard and left me with a paperweight. Luckily, a quick test of the other components on my roommate’s computer revealed that the board was in fact the only casualty, and that’ll be replaced as soon as it’s successor arrives. On the bright side, I needed a new one anyway because the old one didn’t support anything past 500 Mhz and had been crashing Windoze with alarming regularity. ANYWAY, the long and the short of it is that I don’t currently have access to my Rantsylvania.com accounts (unless I wanna move my hard drive into my roommate’s computer and play with the cables long enough to make room for it) so if there’s anything REALLY pressing you need answered, use my everyday address: skeith@home.com

Wrestling stuff to address: I watched the Steve Austin biography on A&E on Monday (it got a 1.4 rating, by the way, which is VERY disappointing for them) and it was certainly an interesting hour. There was no real break of kayfabe and it provided an interesting look at his career and how he morphed from "Stunning" to "Stone Cold". The one thing it really hammered home in my own mind is that Eric Bischoff is a fucking moron for not turning "Stunning Steve" into the biggest heel in wrestling history. The guy is 6’2", 250 pounds with long blond hair and a killer workrate, and you can’t do anything with him? You deserve what you got, Uncle Eric.

I saw RAW, didn’t see Nitro obviously. I’ve been a little besieged with e-mail wondering what I thought of the JR thing. My own feeling, without having seen it, is that it sounds like it suffered more from a lack of taste than any real malice towards Ross. I personally find the idea of forcing the luchadores to do a "Pinata on a Pole" match to be more offensive, and I think that speaks volumes of who exactly ended up killing the light heavyweight division in the WWF. Not to mention that Dr. Death ended up putting three of the guys in the hospital due to overenthusiasm, and the PTB don’t have any idea what they’re gonna do with Doc in the first place. It reeks of conceit and sloppiness, stuff that was supposed to be eliminated when Eric was fired. And we’re STILL waiting for that big ratings surge that the WCW lemmings keep promising thanks to Russo and Ferrera. Hey, you know me, I LOVE to say "I told you so", and I did tell you so. The hardcore WCW fanbase was maybe 3.0 to begin with, and they were completely separate from the Sports Entertainment dipshit fans who currently populate the WWF, so to alienate them in hopes of winning over the WWF fanbase, a fanbase which is getting more ECW-ishly Koresh-like in it’s fanatical devotion by the day, is a ridiculous proposition at best. The strategy seems to be becoming "We’ll do a lot of spoofs of WWF stuff", which says to me "We’re the same as the WWF, except we’re a big joke". Great move, guys. Ask Vince McMahon how well the Billionaire Ted skits helped the Wrestlemania XII buyrate, why don’t ya?

Big news from RAW: Jericho apes "Casino" and smashes Chyna’s hand with a hammer, and Big Bossman becomes the #1 contender. I think people are freaking out over the latter a bit prematurely, given that Rock put HHH over a million times and Mark Henry once and Steve Austin twice, and yet he’s still around and he’s still more over than any of them. I mean, hey, I personally might not have gone that route with it, just because I’m not a big Traylor fan to begin with. But the guy has monster heat on him right now, and the feud is pulling ratings, so if Vince thinks he can hotshot a buyrate by doing a Big Show-Bossman match on PPV, then god bless him for trying. It’s not like Bossman has another 15 years left in him anyway, might as well cash in while he’s got a hot character going. As for Jericho, well, obviously the loss didn’t hurt his heat in the slightest. I think the main bitching point the online fans have is that we wanted to see the IC title on someone other than Chyna. I have faith in Vince on this one – obviously he’s got big plans for Y2J because he went to huge lengths to get him, and the "psycho Chris" thing might just be the ticket. Look at it this way – HBK didn’t get over until he ditched the goofy narcissistic heel schtick and just went out there and hauled ass every night, and I think Jericho is in the same boat. He needs a character that allows him to get over as a heel in an environment where fans cheer anyone who acts cool, and Jericho was definitely cool. Raven fell into the same boat in WCW, because he spent months being an asshole and got huge heel heat because of it, to point where only politics prevented him from being elevated, but once he started pandering to the smarts, he was cheered because he was "cool". Jericho doesn’t need to be cool, he needs to be BOOED and smashing a chick’s hand with a hammer is a darn fine start in the right direction.

So that’s Monday night.

On to "Scott answers his mail" for this week. First of all, I’ve had a couple of letters wondering why I don’t do "LETTERS…TO ME" segments anymore. Well, three reasons. The first is that it’s become the trendy thing to do, and when the other recappers start doing something, it’s time to stop before you become passe. The second is that I started to get people who would write me with opinions contrary to mine specifically for the purpose of getting printed in the Thunder rant, where I could make fun of them. That’s just too cynically crass and commercial, even for me. The final reason is that some people were getting really funny lines, and Rule #1 of the Netcop is NEVER BE FUNNIER THAN THE NETCOP! So there.

Anyway, onto the mail:

A couple of people have e-mailed me and asked how I "knew" it was a stuntman and not Austin who took the car shot on Sunday. Well, strictly speaking, I don’t, but I’m using my years of life experience to assume that someone who’s neck is so badly injured that he can hardly walk wouldn’t take a bump where he gets hit by a car. A lot of people seem to be basing their questioning of my stuntman theory on the presumption that the bit was live. That of course is silly – it was obviously pre-taped, which gave them lots of time to cut to an edit before Austin got hit, then edit it again to put Austin on the floor. If you’re a really observant twit like myself, you’ll notice that Austin doesn’t land in the direction he went flying after getting hit, and in fact he’s pointing the wrong way to boot. So strictly speaking, he COULD have taken the bump, but if I was in Vegas and had to put $100,000 on one guess, I’d go with the stuntman.

TJ Schwalbe asks:

what ever happen to the legion of doom

Okay, let’s go one at a time on these ones…

1. It’s been proven pretty conclusively that Nitro’s replay has almost zero effect on the ratings. The replay generally gets a 0.4 or 0.3 rating, which is statistically meaningless. If it were drawing a 1.0 or greater, then yeah, I’d say it was affecting things, but as it stands the only people who really need the replay are those too dumb to know how to use the VCR or who want the "live" feel of the show.
2. The LOD are effectively retired after becoming a big joke, and who can blame them? They had no credibility left, no heat in either promotion, and no chance of getting near the top again, so they did the honorable thing and got out before turning into Hulk Hogan. That’s wrestling for ya.

I had a lot of people write and let me know that I missed certain matches in my ***** table, but y’all should know I didn’t make it, Everlit did. I just enjoyed seeing it so much I decided to post it here.

That about covers it for this week. I’ll be doing this regularly from now on since I’m the Whole Fuckin’ Show and we all know it, so until next week, MAKE MINE NETCOP.

- "Netcop" Scott Keith