Scott’s Blog of Doom

“First of all, I just want to send my condolences to all of the fans in
Canada. I know how much this past week has sucked for all of Benoit’s
American fans, so I can only imagine how you guys feel. I thought the
Benoit tribute show was very well done and put together…. unitl we all
found out the facts. Ooops. But at least this was an honest screw up.
But it makes me think of all of the other things that Vince and Company
have fucked up through the years. Of course the XFL comes to mind. In
your opinion, what would you say the top 10 all time wwe fuck ups would
be?”

Well, the first few are easy, after that there’s a pretty big gap.

1.  The XFL.  Drained millions of dollars in investor money with absolutely no return. 

2.  Asking Owen Hart to rappel from the ceiling.

3.  Saturating the PPV market with 16 shows a year without the creative tools or roster to support it. 

After that you get into more silly stuff like bad angles and whatnot, but those would be my top three.

The SmarK 24/7 Rant for World Championship Wrestling - October 26 1985

- Time to get back on the horse, as they say. I got an e-mail from a concerned fan who thought that I was needing to move on past Benoit and hopefully avoid hating wrestling forever or something, but fear not, I’m fine. If Owen Hart’s death couldn’t kill my love for our so-called sport, this won’t either. (more…)

As a reminder, I’ll be a guest on Sideshow Radio, tonight at 9PM EST, at www.wrestlingrn.com, discussing the Benoit situation and whatever else comes to mind, I guess. 

I was gonna blog about Big Love, but really it’s the other topic that’s bringing all the traffic, so we’ll continue down that road for a while.

This has gone beyond the point where I can even wrap my head around the situation any longer. It’s like there’s this guy who was basically a hero to me, who everyone I’ve talked to that knew him always said what a great guy he was, who never let me down as a performer…then suddenly he’s dead.  And so’s his family.  And it’s like “Oh, shit, that’s awful, I feel so sorry for him.”  And then you find out that he killed his family and then himself.  And then you find out that he not only killed them, he killed them in what can only be called a gruesome and ritualistic manner.  And ironically, when the WWE is getting more mainstream press off him than at any time before, they suddenly erase him from history, too and distance themselves as fast as possible so that we all know that they’re the victim here.  And all the shows scheduled for the prairies in July are cancelled.  Of course, the Saskatoon house show had only done about 1000 tickets if that to date, so I was expecting that one anyway.  But it’s like every time I log on, there’s something else getting piled onto the story to really twist the knife in.  It’s just weird, man.  Lemme tell ya, I’ve been wearing my Backlash 2004 t-shirt on a fairly regular basis as of late, but I’m not risking wearing it again. 

I think that more interesting than the story itself is the range of reactions, not just on this blog but everywhere.  I don’t think anyone’s defending him or even attempting to, but it’s interesting to me that reactions are ranging so wildly between shock and disbelief (which is mostly where I fall at the moment) all the way to outright hatred and comparisons to Hitler.  In all fairness, Hitler killed a LOT more people before doing himself in, so Benoit had a long way to go.

It does raise an interesting question — do the deeds of the performer retroactively affect the quality of the performance?  Someone noted in another thread that defending Benoit’s in-ring work is like trying to seperate Hitler the dictator from Hitler the painter.  I don’t think that’s such a crazy notion, frankly.  If you have moral high ground enough to judge the entire body of work of a man because of his deeds in real life, then bully for you.  It must be nice to be so righteous. I think it’s sad, and it’s a tragedy, and Benoit proved to be a horrible human being who got exactly what he deserved, but in the end unless you were related to Nancy and Daniel it’s hard to justify acting like you knew them any better than Benoit’s longtime fans knew him.  In the end, there’ll be a TV movie or an episode of Law & Order, and we’ll all go on with our lives doing the best we can to cope or mourn or forget about it or whatever.  I’m glad I didn’t know Benoit the person, because it would have made it a lot tougher to like Benoit the performer, and if nothing else positive can come out of this whole sick situation it’s that I can at least still get enjoyment from his matches and hope that one small bit of happiness can overcome the crushing horror that the past two days have brought.  I’ll take what I can get, I guess.

I figure we should at least try to remember the good before we start hearing about the bad, so here’s a repost of the Chris Benoit DVD rant. Enjoy.

(more…)

I haven’t watched RAW yet, as I just got home from work and I’m trying to keep up with everything happening thus far.

If nothing else, Chris Benoit went from “debatable legend” to “immortality” tonight as far as wrestling fandom for the ages goes, although probably in the worst way possible.  I’d like to pretend that his name won’t get dragged through the muck and that it was just a horrible accident, but I think by now we all know there’s a very seedy underside to wrestling that no one talks about, and this is more evidence of that.

Ideally, I’d like to remember Chris for what he did on-screen:  The humble guy from Canada who was deemed “too small” by promoters and who had to fight for every push he got, who won pretty much every title there was to win and had nothing left to prove in the ring, who could be counted on for at least one good match on every PPV, and sometimes two of them.  I’ve followed his career for 20 years, from his start in Calgary to now, and although it saddens me that he died, it saddens me more than we had to learn what kind of a person he really was on his way out of his life.  If he did what they say he did, then I’m glad he killed himself rather than having to watch him (and wrestling) get dragged through the media circus of a trial and conviction.

It’s just all kinds of bad on every level.  I’ll be appearing as a guest on Sideshow Radio at www.wrestlingrn.com on Wednesday night, and hopefully we’ll have more facts by then.  Obviously Benoit discussion will dominate my interview.

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Wrestling shoes are an important component of the wrestler’s garb. Check out the Internet for the best resources on these items, as well as baseball bats and boxing equipment.

….I can’t even bear to say it.

 http://www.wrestlingobserver.com/wo/news/headlines/default.asp?aID=20000

I know Scott will post something later, but I know it’s tough for him to do anything this second.

I am also sadden by the loss of the women who really drew me to wrestling. Dying a week apart.

Sounds more dramatic that way.

Anyway, didn’t watch as usual, and nothing in the results would entice me to bother.  Was there even a REASON behind the clusterfuck main event?  They’re just randomly stacking the odds against John Cena now?  Johnny Nitro as ECW World champion doesn’t exactly thrill anyone, but they want to make the guy a star, so it’s worth a shot, I suppose.  You can see how it’s better than admitting that someone non-WWE-trained like Punk might be worth a shot. 

As for the rest, I’ll catch it when it’s on 24/7 six months from now, and I’ll likely have forgotten about it by then anyway and can view it unemcumbered by my petty prejudices against bad wrestling and dumb finishes. 

God, another one.  No word yet on whether Shane’s death was caused by drugs, but it wouldn’t shock me in the least.  This is another tough one to take, because I’ve met Biff on a few occasions and he was always a very cordial guy and was more than happy to chat with fans.  He should have gotten his big break in WCW along with Benoit and the other NJ guys, but an eye injury forced him into retirement and he never lived up to his potential.  In fact, the last time I spoke with him was after an eye surgery at a Can-Am Wrestling show a few years back, as he was sporting an eye-patch and hopeful about a return.  More’s the pity.  RIP, you’ll be missed.

I was watching the main event of ECW last night while flipping channels, and I have to think it’s not a good sign that the crowd was so dead for a match that’s supposed to be so important.  Sure, it’s not like Monty Brown v. CM Punk is normally gonna tear the house down anyway, but you could hear a pin drop through the whole match.  Oh, and way to drop Punk on his head.  Ouch.  I think they should have just left the title dormant and revived it if there was a huge outcry from the “fanbase”, whoever that is right now.  It was funnier hearing Tazz & Joey go on about how “If you’re not in ECW to win the World title, you shouldn’t be here!” when really there’s only been three champions and Lashley defended it, like, three times total in his reign, the last of which was against Mr. McMahon.  That being said, Benoit always has a rep as a fighting champion, so when he wins the title on Sunday at least it’ll get defended on a regular basis.  I hope.