By "Net.cop" Scott Keith

Once again, time for another wacky segment from your favorite recapper guy, me. Yeah.

The big news this week is WCW Mayhem, which, barring a miracle, I will not be doing a rant on. I can’t be bothered to spend thirty bucks on the off-chance that we might see a Benoit-Bret final, just so that my roommate’s tape collection won’t have a gap in it. If I hear it’s really good, I’ll check out the replay on Saturday, maybe.

And what the hell is with WCW lemmings e-mail bombing myself and CRZ recently about being "biased"? Of course I’m biased, what the fuck did you think I was, an objective journalist? WCW is a pile of horseshit, as always, and it’s my duty, nay, my DESTINY, to stomp on them until they capitulate and make me booker. Maybe I’ll let Vinnie Roo clean the toilets.

Kind of a slow week. Terry Taylor completely flushed any of the respect I once had for him as a booker on Meltzer’s radio show when he defended the Red Rooster as a good gimmick and revealed the original, stupider ending of the cancer angle: His father gets cremated and Undertaker steals the ashes and flushes them down the toilet. Then Jim Duggan cleans it. No, wait, that’s WCW, sorry, I keep getting those confused now.

I did watch Stampede this week, although the show is looking so bush league now that I can be bothered to recap it anymore. Bad News Allen is the KING of color commentators, however, and one of the Big Two would be well-served to sign him ASAP as a color man or even a manager. Hell, the guy is nearly crippled and he could STILL kick HHH’s ass, I’d bet. Davey Boy Smith is currently hanging around Stampede as a babyface right now, too, and he did a killer "dueling promos" segment with the Bad News man that got Allen over bigger as a heel than anyone in the territory in the space of about 5 minutes. Now THAT’S talent. The rest was pretty crappy, as my man Teddy Hart continues to devolve as a wrestler by the week, doing mainly variations of the inverted DDT this week in a total spotfest where half of them missed. Apparently promoter Bruce Hart has stopped running shows in Edmonton because of hassles with the Boxing and Wrestling Commission over fees. I personally think it’s because he expects people to pay $30 a ticket to see Red Thunder, but maybe that’s just me.

Anyway, on with the ever-popular "Scott Answers His Mail" portion of the program:

MrKwan316 writes to say:

I was at the show live and in person, and I’ve never been so ashamed to be a wrestling fan. The collective I.Q. of your average WWF audience is likely in the negatives, but what kills me is the whole Kurt Angle thing. I heard it was intentionally supposed to be boring to get Angle over as a heel, but I wasn’t bored by it at all. I can’t believe these life sucking losers could chant BORING at a goddamned gold medalist. These people never won anything in their worthless lives and never will, yet they boo this man because he actually has TALENT? I mean god forbid someone actually tries and wrestles instead of cutting a shitty promo laced with drug related catchphrases or parading around a bunch of half-naked gutter skanks with big, plastic breasts?! I’d like to take every other person in that arena, tie them to a chair, tape their mouths shut, and rip off their eyelids and force them to watch the NCAA wrestling championships or Best of the Super Js or some 1980’s NWA so they learn what fucking wrestling is really supposed to be.

First of all, we at Rantsylvania encourage readers to swear freely in feedback letters and elsewhere, so I edited an instance of "f*cking" to the more proper spelling.

Anyway, while MrKwan makes an admirable point, sadly that sort of behavior is what wrestling is today. Vince Russo is correct – it’s all about the ratings. The umbrage I take with Russo is that he’s such a dumbshit with regard to said ratings that he doesn’t realize that alienating one audience for another doesn’t increase the ratings, it merely trades audiences.

Anyway, as for Kurt Angle, when he took the huge paycheque offered by the WWF instead of doing Wheaties commercials until he’s 50, he essentially determined his own fate. I don’t shed tears for him, given what his rumored salary is. You could CERTAINLY apply the above argument to people like Taka and Funaki, who are passed over for any sort of push because of deep-seated racism in the American public which says that someone who is Japanese can’t get over, but that’s a different can of worms.

Luke Stricker writes:

I haven’t ever heard anything about that particular theory, and honestly the only people who would even know were those that were there.

Hennig is an interesting case. In 1991, he suffered what was thought to be a career-ending back injury prior to Summerslam 91, then "retired". He took time off, acting as Ric Flair’s manager, then returned to active wrestling from late 1992-93. He retired again, due to the back injury, and began collecting a VERY lucrative settlement from the Lloyds of London insurance agency. However, this "career-ending" injury suddenly cleared up once WCW and the WWF got into a bidding war for his services (and after he had already collected money literally numbering into the millions), making many people (myself included) wonder how legitimate an injury it was to begin with. Hennig appears to be in "perfect" condition nowadays, with only a knee injury slowing him down and the general wear-and-tear of age. As a sidenote, Hennig’s case is essentially why Lloyd’s of London no longer insures wrestlers.

Scott Sparks writes to ask:

columnists.  So all I ask is for some advice from you.  See you are by far my favorite columnist,I usually read all of your rants.   I find them very entertaining.  So I thought perhaps you could give me some pointers as to how to become an internet columnist.  I apologize for disturbing you, it's just I felt you'd help me before any of the other guys would.

I get this one a lot, and it continually amazes me that people somehow think that being an "internet columnist" is such a glamorous thing to begin with. At any rate, it took me a LONG time to get my "big break" on ‘net, as I started as a lowly lurker and occasional poster on rec.sport.pro-wrestling and spent 1993-1996 doing really horrible PPV reviews. The key to my eventual success, I found, was to keep at it and maintain a single style that people could identify with. I credit John Petrie very much with giving me a general template to work from in that respect. That, plus the development of the incredibly obnoxious Netcop character that lasted until mid-97, allowed me to "get over" with the general readership. Once I had a name there, I started shopping my general columns to websites, landing at a small one called "Blake’s Wrestling Wrap" for a few months, where I learned how to properly write in that format Those columns ("The Wrants") are still available over in the "Netcop Rants" section of RS.com. Once I had those to use as sample material, I submitted one to Mike Samuda when he asked for columnists for the new Wrestlemaniacs.com site, and the rest is history. Others have taken a more accelerated path (like RS.com’s own Steve Schroeder) by specializing in one or two areas, but I prefer to be a more generalized smart ass.

Adam Holland writes to say:

I guess I just expected you to rip them apart for that goof

Sorry to disappoint, but I wasn’t really paying that close attention to the tournament bracket. Just to warn you, though, if the final ends up being Sting v. Jarrett, you’ll look pretty dumb.

Someone named Neal writes to ask:

hi! Luv the rants. Where can i get thunder rants(preferrably by you if you did them) for the first thunder up til the october 98 versions, (where your archives begin).

Well, see, here’s the thing. Back in the day, I was notoriously fickle about Thunder. I did rants for the first 10 shows, then went on "strike" for about two months, then started again, then stopped for another month, then got the job with Wrestlemaniacs in October of 98, which is where the archives begin here on RS.com. So, to be perfectly blunt, there are no rants from before Oct. 98 to speak of. The truth hurts, I know.

Mike Reyes has a list of questions…

2: Anyway you could give WM XII and IYH: Good Friends, Better Enemies a onceover? I'd love to know your perspective on them now, with match ratings and all... also, a rant on Beware of Dog would be good. The second one, though, because the first one would take maybe a page. :)

In order…

1. You know, I haven’t actually watched Summerslam 96 in so long that I don’t think I could rate it off the top of my head. I wasn’t doing match ratings in 96, so I didn’t rate it then, but I don’t recall being terribly impressed with it. Mathematically, I gave the first match (at King of the Ring) * and the fourth one (at Survivor Series) ***1/2, so it’s a safe bet to guess at **1/4 here, I’d think. I’ll probably redo this show on a "Leftovers" type of week when I’m really bored.
2. Wrestlemania XII and Good Friends, Better Enemies were both one match shows. And they were both really great matches, in radically different ways. WM12 was, of course, Bret v. Shawn and pretty much nothing else. I have to take huge marks away because the match was so damn boring, and neither guy wanted to lay down for the other and let them get the advantage, hence the 0-0 tie. I’d still call it ****1/4. Shawn-Diesel was the match that really introduced the WWF to garbage wrestling main events, and it did a GREAT job of it. I’d consider it Diesel’s best match ever, and I still love watching it today: ****3/4. The crazy bumping and shock moments make it a classic. Beware of Dog is just too disjointed to be worthwhile, although the main event could have been excellent if the booking didn’t end up so screwed up thanks to the power outage.

Evan Fain writes to ask a question that many people ask me:

    Second, I have two questions for you: I'm really getting into Japanese wrestling, and I'm wondering if you can recommend any shows to me. I've already got J-Cup Tournaments from 1994 and 1995, which I gathered must be good from your reviews.

Yes, I absolutely can:

1. Anything from Michinoku Pro. Seriously, I have to yet to see something from that group from 1995-1997 that didn’t kick six types of ass, if only because they always stuck a ****+ six-man on the end to save even the sucky shows. If you like junior heavyweights at all, THIS is the stuff to get.
2. In addition to the J-Cup tournaments, there’s also the slightly more hit-and-miss Best of the Super Junior tournaments, which feature a much wider range of matches but also result in some spectacularly bad style clashes. Chris Benoit wins the 93 version, so you might wanna start with that one.
3. Toryumon is pretty good from the limited exposure I’ve had to it. It’s more for the WCW Saturday Night / Worldwide crowd who can appreciate developing and unpolished talent, but I think Magnum Tokyo could’ve gotten over huge in the States given a chance.

The above list is a good start, I’d think.

And finally, what you’ve ALL been waiting for, Jason Kreitzer assembles a table of all the negative-star matches I’ve rated over the years…

By this evidence, Heroes of Wrestling definitely was the worst PPV ever, with four -STAR matches.

Jason also notes that Hogan and Undertaker are tied with 6 matches a piece that fall under DUD, with Roddy Piper closely behind at 5. Don’t worry, with another "retirement" I’m sure he’ll surpass both quite easily.

That’s the news, so in the meantime, and in-between time, that’s it for another edition of the Netcop News Update.

- "Netcop" Scott Keith