By Scott Keith

As always, all the news that’s fit to print, or that the general public is dumb enough to want to read, whichever applies.

So I’m watching this "Behind the Music" special on Canada’s equivalent to VH1 tonight, and it’s the Milli Vanilli, done a few months after Rob Pilatus killed himself. If you EVER saw something on a wrestling show and thought "What a self-important pile of shit", then this is the show to watch to snap yourself back in reality right quick, because it’ll teach you that no matter how ego-driven and self-important wrestlers may be, there’s always someone else out there making more money with less talent and less connection to what life in the real world actually entails. MuchMusic’s Ed the Sock actually had the funniest line about Milli Vanilli I’ve ever heard a few weeks ago: "Rob was found dead in his home in 1998. Originally it was ruled suicide, but it later turned out he was just lip-synching Michael Hutchence".

I think 3-Count could take lessons from the Milli Vanilli story. Sure, the women, money and fame are rolling in for them right now, but how many sold-out concerts can they perform before fans tire of hearing the same song over and over? And how soon before someone catches onto the fact that they’re not REALLY singing? Why, just last week I was watching footage of them getting mobbed at LAX and thought to myself about how similar the situations are. I mean, hell, by the you read this, they could be the laughingstocks of the wrestling industry, getting mocked by WCW’s own announcers! That’s how fickle the industry is.

If you REALLY want to hear me sound like a genius, wait until Monday when the Apocolypse debuts on RAW as Vince McMahon’s muscle, and then go back and listen to my appearance on The Edge (www.emzee.com/edge) as I PREDICT EXACTLY THAT. If it doesn’t happen, we never had this conversation.

I got the N64 back from it’s borrowed state this week, so the WM2000 templates for Ahmed Johnson, Randy Savage, Hulk Hogan, Ricky Steamboat, Ric Flair, Owen Hart, Sid Vicious, and a few others will be soon be up on the site as promised.

By the way, as a random note for some of you who have asked about it, I stopped doing Stampede months ago because the show, frankly, is unwatchable at this point aside from Bad News Allen being an asshole to Bruce Hart. Wanna know how far it’s sunk? The lead feud right now is Rick Titan (the fake Razor Ramon, currently doing that same character) v. The Cyborg (a 7 foot tall goof who wears leather pants and has four moves, finishing with a sloppy powerbomb – sound familiar?). Ticket sales have been pretty bad, to the point where they don’t even run shows in Edmonton anymore, and I can’t say as I blame Bret Hart for distancing himself from them. I stand by my assertion that Mauro Renallo is an AWESOME play by play man, however, and I’m anxiously awaiting the day someone lifts "Drop the chilupa" as a synonym for a flying elbow from him. He’s completely wasted with Stampede’s bush league production.

Bad week for secondary TV shows, as well. Thunder of course was a spectacular crash-and-burn non-effort on WCW’s part, and Smackdown alternated between cure-for-insomnia (Rikishi v. Rock in "duelling samoan drops" and Billy Gunn v. Al Snow in "winner gets a marketable personality", Stephanie trying to go toe-to-toe with Mick Foley on the mike and failing miserably) all the way to jaw-droppingly stupid (X-Pac’s censored sex talk with Kane, Mae Young’s pregnancy revelation) with a couple of watchable matches tossed in for fun. Call this week a writeoff on both sides and hope for the best next week, I guess. But then one side will have Benoit, Malenko and Guerrero under contract by then, so it’s not really a fair fight.

For lack of anything better to talk about this week, let’s hit the Netcop Mailbag…

Several people have asked me whether the Stone Cold DVD is worth it. Short answer: Not really. The material is basically the Hell Yeah video, along with some key stuff from the first two videos, with some soundbites from fellow WWF stars added in. It’s much handier to view the video on DVD thanks to chapter stops and the like, although the picture and sound are limited by the original source. Thankfully, the WWF uses the cutting edge of production guys, so future DVDs should be using the best possible video and sound quality. Hopefully someone will also utilize the woefully-ignored multiple angle feature that DVDs offer, because god knows if there’s one outlet for it even better than porno, it’s wrestling.

As a reminder, I actually pitched the very idea to Rick Scaia that became "Ask the Rick" when the Wrestleline takeover began (see the June 17^th Thunder rant for proof), only to see HIM using it months later. Do you think he sends ME royalty cheques out of the Wrestleline bounty every month? HA! Well, at least I have Rantsylvania to satiate my ego.

Rant Crew regular HITMAN383@aol.com writes to ask…

"Why did Rock go so brutal on Foley at the Rumble '99?"

Because Foley asked him to. Simple as that.

Ramon asks:

"In your great rant of royal rumble 2000, you mentioned that it was the best ppv in a LONG time. I whole-heartedly agree, though, which previous ppv was as good as Royal Rumble 2000? Was Summerslam '98 the WWF's last great pay-per-view (besides rumble 2000)?"

I wouldn’t call Summerslam 98 a great PPV – it had flashes of brilliance, but was pretty flawed overall. It was very good, however. The last really great PPV they had was Wrestlemania XIV, however, hands down.

Rick Mahr asks:

"Are you still reviewing videos for Wrestleline and/or WOW?"

Sure, if they send me more. Assuming I ever get off my ass and call Jason Hervey over at WCW, I should be getting a preview copy of the new Bret Hart video to check out, and the new videos when they come out later this year. To be honest, I don’t really want to be too closely tied to WCW right now though, just because I’d rather not go down with the ship.

Dan Belenkov notes:

"PS... In your RR '99 rant you made a mention about the Rock dropping the elbow on Foley not being enough to smash someone's skull. Now, I dunno if smash is the right word for it, but it is technically possible. Theoretically, Rocky is using all his weight and momentum in that elbow, on top of the chair which supposedly has no give to it. According to my ninjitsu instructor, that should be enough PSI (pounds per square inch) to break the bones in one's skull. Of course, its also dependant upon the person on the recieving end of the elbow, as it takes more PSI on some people than other to inflict any kind of injury anywhere. However, it is Sports Entertainment, so of course its not real :) Or am I nitpicking?"

You’re nitpicking, but let’s think this one out. In "real" terms, the Rock is landing with all his weight on the mat, with the elbow only barely making contact with the victim. The original intent of the move was a heel taunt of the opponent, just to showboat rather than inflict damage. When Rock turned face, it suddenly became his finisher (Triviata: Mark Henry was the first one to be pinned with the Elbow) and now the suspension of disbelief was suddenly much harder to swallow because it was such a ridiculous move at heart. For the announcers to now have to sell the move as deadly is even sillier, but let’s accept it and move on. Now, the next thing we have to accept is that the steel chair, in theory, has no give to it. This rule is directly contradicted within the "fake" physics of wrestling itself many times ("He left a dent in the chair!") over the years, so obviously even within wrestling’s bogus rules of physics, the chairs DO have significant give to them, probably more than enough to absorb the force of the People’s Elbow and then some. But then let’s assume Rock hits the elbow perfectly and the chair doesn’t give – what about Mick’s head? It’s also been established within the "rules" of wrestling that Mick has an exceptionally hard head – even within that very match, he withstood 15 chairshots to the head before succumbing, and as Cactus Jack he has been known to shrug off shots that would floor a normal wrestler. So what we have, even within kayfabe, is a weak finisher executed on a chair with plenty of give to a person with a very hard head. In other words, it might hurt for a bit, but Mick was in no danger of having his skull shattered. QED.

See, you DO learn something from RS.com!

Paul Fontaine brings up the Great Canadian Shamrock Conspiracy:

"You don't think that Shamrock being booed in Canada stems back to that whole USA/Canada fued from 97, do you? I mean, other than Austin, Shamrock was probably the highest profile member of the group fueding with the Harts at the time, and he's had lengthy fueds with Owen, as well as Bret Hart. Canadians have long memories, cause it's so infrequent that we're actually graced with the presence of these guys."

In fact that’s exactly where it stems from. Shamrock’s problem (which started at Canadian Stampede, the WWF’s last great PPV before WM14) was that he couldn’t distinguish the Canadian fans’ good-natured ribbing (booing his every move as befitted his American role in the 10-man) from legitimate hatred by the same fans. The fact that we then heckled the poor guy mercilessly the next night in Edmonton for RAW probably didn’t help his state of mind either, but it’s wrestling and you’ve gotta think someone backstage would have been smart enough to warn him that he wasn’t gonna be working as a babyface North of the Border. But then the WWF was in a pretty bad place at the time. Still, that’s what you get when you mess with the Canadian Mafia.

Someone named Beans2212@aol.com asks:

"I’m curious to know your thoughts on Starrcade 85…"

He goes on to give his own thoughts, but then this is MY site, so my own thoughts are thus: It’s a pretty boring card overall. I saw the full card in 1985 but didn’t remember any of it, and from then on I was at the mercy of Turner video for watching it. Thankfully the entire show only has three matches of any note, all of which are contained on the superlative "Best of Starrcade 83-87" set which I cannot recommend enough. Anyway, Blanchard v. Magnum TA is awesome, of course, an easy ***** brawl. Rock n Roll Express v. The Russians in a cage match is the usual good RnR match during a period when Nikita could actually work and Ivan wasn’t a total waste of space, and Flair-Rhodes featured Flair’s ***** attitude and Dusty’s DUD workrate evening out around **1/2, plus the first Dusty Finish on a nationally televised program, as Rhodes "won" the title from Flair only to see the decision reversed the next week on a technicality. Overall, not worth the time needed to hunt it down, especially in the heavily clipped form.

Well, that’s enough pontification for one week. Until next time, MAKE MINE NETCOP!

- Scott Keith