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It probably would have been terrible since she and Jimmy Fallon KILLED Saturday Night Live. I haven't seen Mean Girls, nor do I plan to, but Tina Fey is the least funny person ever and I can't imagine she'd contribute anything positive.

Well, entertainment-wise, tonight's Raw was fantastic. All the segments were entertaining, and the Eugene/Evolution storyline really is quite good. I thought it was kind of weak the way they were telegraphing it ending next week with HHH saying he just wants the title back, but the idea fo HHH liking having Eugene around and dragging it out could be a good reason to go that route, especially if Flair and Eugene win the tag belts. However, there are still a few flaws I see with the product as a whole: 1. Benoit being undercut. OK, I usually don't complain about this, but it was especially bad tonight. Edge coming out and talking about how he wanted to be the one to finally take down Evolution, and HHH saying he would fail just like Benoit, while Benoit was still champion was just ridiculous. If HHH won the belt at Vengeance, and Edge cut that promo on Raw the next night, or even if Benoit came out and said he wouldn't be overlooked as a transitional champion ala Jericho before RR 2002, it would have been fine. But just ignoring your champion like that is not a good way to build up a PPV. 2. There's not enough depth on the television roster. There's a reason that there are only five matches booked for the PPV. There's no one else to wrestle. Every healthy heel that appears on television except for Tyson Tomko and the utterly heatless Cade are already booked for the PPV. Basically, on the heel side you've got Evolution, Kane, Tomko, and La Res. That's it. The face side's not much better, as Regal's the only face with any backstory or credibility that's not already booked on the five-match card. I'm not saying they need to go all Smackdown and call up OVW guys with ridiculous gimmicks. But doing little things like having A-Train serve as Bischoff's enforcer or splitting Rosey and Hurricane (who are pretty much dead as a team) or even calling up a couple tag teams that have worked together in OVW and keep their previous gimmick together could help flesh out the show a little bit tremendously. What they've been doing is compensating for the lack of depth by spending a great deal of time on the Eugene story and using filler such as the Diva search for a large portion of the show. This does not allow for any movement up and down the card as you've only got a few select wrestlers stuck in the same roles. If they can just bring up some other people and give them a chance to get over with a few minutes of TV time a night, it could really help flesh out the card.

Eugene obviously wouldn't put himself on the faces side. I'd say that if anything, the likely main event is HHH and Eugene vs. Benoit and Regal.

I was pissed as hell about Mora too. I actually couldn't believe that he wasn't on the reserves or the final fan voting. I kept looking back and forward between trhe two trying to find him, but he just wasn't there. Going purely by stats, he was the second best player in the American League before the foot injury. I didn't really expect him to start over A-Rod, but not being on the team at all? That's ridiculous.

You don't have to wait five years to be in the upper midcard, but it would be perfectly reasonable to avoid giving someone the title three months after they debut, and then letting them hold it for basically half of their three year career. If they hadn't scheduled Brock to get the belt until say Summerslam of last year, and hadn't already given him financial security for life, he might not have gotten "bored with the WWE" so fast. He would be happy to finally be on top, and wouldn't feel the need to play a "real sport" instead. And if he really was that unhappy with wrestling, Brock probably would have quit before the WWE invested a huge push in him, at the expense of pretty much everyone else on the roster. Brock being the ONLY strong heel on Smackdown for his whole tenure created the vacuum on the heel side now that lets JBL be pushed as a WWE champion.

First I want to say that Nash going to Phoenix is a huge boost for the Suns, and a huge loss for the Mavericks. From the Suns' point of view, they've got some good playmakers that can score and rebound. They just needed somebody to get the ball to the right people. Picking up Nash means they'll be battling all season to take the eighth playoff spot, although I still don't quite see them overtaking Memphis, Houston, or Denver to do it. As for Dallas, this is perhaps an even bigger loss. With all the young players that will be getting good PT, (Harris, Daniels, Howard, Podlovic), they really needed a veteran presence to run the offense. Also, with the LA trade on the horizon, Nash would have been the perfect complement for Shaq, as he looks to get the ball to the other scorers first, but he's still deadly from the outside if you leave it open. Both Daniels and Harris are more slashing scorers that will have a harder time consistently getting the ball down low. Nash, Nowitzki, and Shaq together would have been (in my mind), pretty much enough to guarantee a ring for the Mavs, but now the picture's looking a lot murkier, and I'm starting to question if they'll be able to capitalize in the remaining window where Shaq's still the force he is today.

I thought about Brock's reign too, but I really think Benoit's has been more dominant. Brock's match with Cena may have been the Smackdown main event, but it was still booked behind Rock/Goldberg and the six-man tag from Raw. Cena was even less of a credible threat at the time than Kane is now, and it was a very inauspicious title defense. His only other PPV defense was against Big show in another fairly unimpressive match, and then at Vengeance, he lost clean to Angle. Unless HHH really is a political monster, and the whole last three and a half months were just a big funny joke between Steph and Paul, I really don't think HHH will beat Benoit clean at Vengeance. The two runs were very similar, but I'd say Benoit's reign has been more dominant then Lesnar's thus far.

I just want to say that while HBK making HHH lose the battle royal certainly didn't do Kane any favors, it was far from the deciding factor to make him a weak challenger. His backstory doesn't even come close to making sense any more, and going into Bad Blood, he'd lost in his last four PPV appearances with his most recent win being the huge rub he got defeating Shane McMahon in an ambulance match. As for them saying that the winner of Benoit and Kane would meet HHH, that's a cute little device that they always use when they have a title match after the #1 contender's set for the next PPV. It doesn't mean anything. Benoit's reign is not without its faults, and it certainly would be a step back if HHH gets the title back at Vengeance. However, even if he does Benoit would still have the most dominant title run by a face since The Rock back in 2000. I think maintaining that he's been held down would be a gross misjudgement.

I really don't see why it should be HHH's responsibility to lobby the WWE to push Shelton Benjamin. They asked him to put the guy over, and he did twice and never took his job back. Then, despite being given a huge push, Benjamin was getting pretty lukewarm responses and not doing very good work, so the writers decided to hold off on him a little bit. They had him lose to Orton at Vengeance, at which point he promptly got injured. They gave him every opportunity to succeed and he didn't. I'm not a big fan of the "guy turns babyface, gets the god push out of nowhere, and can suddenly beat everyone on the roster effortlessly" anyway, so I don't feel that bad about him not breaking through. As for Benoit, he had a weak challenger at Bad Blood, so they took advantage of the chance to blowoff the HHH/HBK feud and keep the buyrate up. It would have been nice if the writers put a little more effort into the title feud, but really Lita overshadowed Benoit more than HHH did. Benoit's still been made to look extremely strong, as in the last six months, he hasn't taken the fall in a single match, won the Royal Rumble from #1, and made the three top name workers on Raw tap out clean. I'd say if anyone on Raw's been made to look weak, it's HHH. His win in the HIAC was his only clean win on PPV in the last year, and he certainly doesn't feel like Benoit's equal going into Vengeance. A clean win seems virtually out of the question, and the only thing people are wondering going into the PPV is whether Benoit will be able to overcome the interference of Eugene and the rest of Evolution.

I kinda felt like translating, so here goes. Given the card, it would have been almost impossible to put on a good show here, but at least they tried. I couldn't even justify calling this show average. It was actually worse than I thought it would be. The cruiserweight match was probably the only good one on the whole card. JBL and Eddie can't really do a bullrope match. Of course, the show was so bad that they still were probably tied for second best match of the night with the four way. There's no way in hell that Mordecai, Suzuki, or Luther Reigns belong a PPV. People just don't want to see them. I don't know what they were thinking with the main event match. As the show went off the air, I liked that it was over, but the actual match was really stupid. Overall, the show was probably a 4 or 5 on a 10 scale where a 10 means the best PPV of the year, and a 5 means "Hey, at least nobody died this time." Since Paul Bearer's death will be very short-lived, I can almost give this show a 5, but I should probably give it a 4 just to be safe.

Actually, there's plently wrong with Shelton: 1. He got injured right in the middle of his big push, killing all of his momentum. 2. He has no character at all. None. He's just a guy who happens to win wrestling matches, and happens to be black. 3. His promos are mediocre at best. He may have his moments, but I'd still grade him below Benoit as a mic worker. 4. He has a hard time putting together good matches as a face. When he can rely on working down body parts and cheating, and then throw some cool spots in toward the end, he looks great in the ring, but as a face on Raw he's been downright boring.

Benoit's not exactly the future of the company. With his suplex-intensive style, he'll probably end up retiring before HHH does. I think HHH is doing a very good job in his current role, and if he gets a one-month reign from Vengeance to Summerslam, I would have no problem with it at all. However, I do agree that this is not the time for another lengthy HHH reign. The fans have already paid to see HHH's huge reigns finally end three times in the last two years. If he had another one right now, I think it would be hard for the fans to get excited about it. HBK and Goldberg both ultimately failed against him after initial title wins, and it wouldn't be right for the same thing to happen to Benoit. When Benoit loses the belt, it needs to be to someone different so that Raw feels like it's making some progress. I guess if I was booking right now, I'd let HHH get the quick one-month reign at Vengeance after interference, and then tell Evolution to stay out of the match when he faces Benoit at Summerslam so they can see who the better man really is. Then, Orton can beat Benoit with tons of interference later (at Survivor Series maybe), and HHH will still have grounds for a face turn. HHH/Orton is still the obvious main event for Wrestlemania, and if HHH stays away from the title for nine months and turns face, he would probably be a completely fresh champion by the time he wins the title back.

Well, HHH said that they're gonna use Eugene until he helps them get the title at Vengeance and then they're done with him. That would probably mean that HHH will win the title back due to Eugene's interference at Vengeance, and then there will be a clean blowoff at Summerslam where Benoit likely gets the title back. By that time, Eugene should be angry enough that he won't be content for "special referee" gigs, and he'll be actively trying to destroy Evolution. If I were to guess, I'd say he faces Flair at Vengeance because he wants to face a legend, and he has booking powers next Monday. Then, at Summerslam, he'll take on either Batista or Orton. In fact, I think it's likely that Orton's gonna retain over Edge at Vengeance in order to keep the belt warm for Eugene.

Well, the one thing that really strikes me about the article is the Dudleys calling Smackdown the "wrestling show" right after they were in a PPV main event handicap match where the whole point was whether or not an old manager would be smothered in cement. Shit, the Dudleyz have been doing nothing but angles for the last month. As for the greatest tag team debate, I can't really judge the Road Warriors since I only started watching when they were on their very last legs, but the Dudleyz aren't even the best tag team of the last 5 or 6 years. I'd say Edge and Christian take that crown easily, with the New Age Outlaws running a distant second. Just because Bubba and D-Von failed on their singles pushes, and became a tag team again after they had no heat doesn't mean they're anything special.

I think if anything, Booker T has Scott Steiner syndrome in that he's boring, can't wrestle very well, and can't talk very well, but still looked good compared to WCW. The best work he's done in the WWE was when he was tagging with Goldust. The idea that he should get the World Title is usually ludicrous, although I guess he would still be a better champion than fucking Bradshaw.

Well, I actually thought Raw was pretty entertaining tonight. Granted, I was drunk while I was watching it, and I had it TiVoed so I could fast forward through the bad parts (commercials, La Resistance match, and the Diva Search segments), but I still really enjoyed the show. The HHH/Eugene story is solid, the Lita/Kane story is decent when Lita doesn't have to act too much, and the opener and main event were both tremendous matches. This was the first time in a while when all the segments of Raw that I watched were entertaining and I never really thought about changing the channel. The one thing that kind of pissed me off was Lita's random interjection at the end. The fans were into Benoit retaining and then they tried to put Lita showing how she was mad at Kane in there for no logical reason. The fans even showed that they were pissed by chanting "you tapped out" throughout the whole segment to put the focus back on Benoit all through Lita's stupid shit. Now usually I'm far from a Benoit mark, as I usually put Benoit down and mark for Kliq members like HBK and HHH if anyone, but this one time you could see that the crowd was into Benoit, and they were still focusing on random bullshit anyway after Benoit climbed the mountain in a unique stipulation that I can't remember seeing before in the WWE. All around, it was still a good show, but I think they should show a little more respect to their very over world champion, and put a little less focus on dumb bitches that can't act or wrestle like Lita. Also, the backstage skits that give away storylines and show no functional purpose such as the one where HHH told Naitch that he was setting Eugene up piss me off a little bit too. They could have just as easily let this segment off, as well as the one where Lita tols Stacy that she was pregnant and the show would progress just fine. In fact, back in the day when Raw was at its peak, they would always let the storylines stay dormant until they climaxed in the ring, and it helped tremendously. Yet I'm getting off the main point. All around, this was a very interesting/entertaining episode of Raw that kept me tuned in throughout, and I was thought about tuning out altogether. If the WWE would keep putting out shows that were just this well thought out, they would have no trouble climbing back into the high 4.0s, and just maybe even crack that elusive 5.0. Good show WWE.

Well, I wouldn't say wrestling's dead. Raw still shows little hints of promise every now and then. The HHH/Benoit main event for Vengeance is even a little bit intriguing. However, the WWE Title as a credible, respected belt? That is deader than Paul Bearer. (As in six months from now it will still be dead. It can't just magically zap back to life.) Sure, they could make Smackdown an entertaining show again, and they could rebuild the title to make people care about it again, but it will never again mean what it once did. As for saving Smackdown, it is possible, but it's not going to happen. They would need to bring someone in right away. (Rocky would be ideal, but Austin, Brock, Hogan, or even Foley would work.) They could say they were watching Smackdown, and they couldn't believe that a piece of shit like Bradshaw was holding the title they fought to get to their whole life. They take it as a personal affront to what they accomplished, and they want him tonight. Then, they could win the title on the spot, and go on to either a decent-sized run or to get destroyed by a heel Undertaker. That might help people forget what happened tonight. Failing that, Eddie needs to get the belt back within the next two weeks to solidify that this was a fluke, but even that will let Bradshaw's reign sink in further. The way I see it, they made a terrible mistake that ruined their prized title, and they're pretty much fucked. They might as well write off the brand extension as a failure and have Bradshaw tap out clean to the Crippler Crossface on Raw tonight.

Bull fucking shit. When HHH won the title in '99, he'd been a solid second-tier player for years. He'd ended Rock's long IC Title reign a year earlier so that Rock could get the WWF title. He'd even got screwed out of the title on Raw about 8 or 9 months before. He bided his time in the upper midcard and then had a very solid storyline going into winning the belt. Bradshaw meanwhile came absolutely out of nowhere. He was toward the bottom of the tag division, then he got taken off TV because he was so inconsequential that creative had nothing for him to do. Then, he wins the title in his first feud back. I don't think he'd had a PPV win in about a year, or a singles PPV win in recent memory. At least when Vince won the title, it was with the storyline that he controlled the company, and with outside interference from a stunner. You could even argue that Vince had been built up more as a wrestler than Bradshaw before winning the belt, as he had won the Royal Rumble, main evented at St. Valentine's Day Massacre, and won the main event at King of the Ring that year. Bradshaw is THE worst champion in the history of the WWF/WWE Title.

But he really wasn't looking to injure him. He just wanted to make him feel a world of pain for a few minutes and then be done. He certainly had no idea he was gonna fuck up the guy's career.

GOD DAMN that's a long post. Anyway, the one point I want to make is that Flair and Dusty both lived in an era where the success of a wreslter was based almost completely on his push. It was still in kayfabe so wins and losses were of ultimate importance. Triple H's road has been completely different. He's been put against people who's storylines have so many gaping holes that their characters don't make sense (Kane), people whose in-ring skills are so bad that they'll get more heel heat as a top face than any heel in years (Steiner), and people who were completely left off PPVs before and after main eventing against him (RVD and Booker). Blaming the loss of their heat on a single loss to Trips is simply ludicrous. HHH is a smart man. He knows how the business works. He knows main events against strong faces draw more money, and he's never intentionally made all his opponents look ridiculous to keep his spot. What he's been doing is overselling for all of them despite their obvious flaws in a vain attempt to get them over. Then, he's forced to hold on to the title when they get sunk by creative and there's no logical contenders. I really think this whole HHH holding down talent thing is nothing more than an internet myth. To quote a movie (I think Scream), it's kind of like the Richard Gere/gerbil thing, even if it's ridiculous, if you keep hearing about it long enough, you start to believe it.

No, it's more like just spotting the ball ten yards ahead on a game-winning touchdown drive. Yeah, they probably would have driven in anyway, but it can still be construed as the winning margin. Of course it's like Miami losing a game to Miami of Ohio in this fashion, where really they can't blame the ref for playing WAY worse than they should have.

Yeah, that was nothing. He tackled the guy and he landed wrong on his head. I even thought the suspension was excessive. I mean yeah it's too bad that the guy got hurt and all, but Bertuzzi wasn't doing anything out of line enough to merit more than a game misconduct and possibly a short suspension.

I know it sounds kinda weak, but the only time that T&A would "sell" for me is when it was Stephanie. I don't know if it was that she was rich and unattainable or whatever, but I always kind of had a thing for her. Of course to me, selling the PPV just means that I make sure to get my ass over to the bar, and maybe if they're really assholes there, I have to pay up to a $5 cover charge. Trish was kind of hot every now and then, but when it comes to bitches like Torrie and Sable, I could give a fuck less. The way GAB is looking right now, I can't think of anything that would make me go over there if I wasn't working though, let alone actually request the day off. The last PPV I saw was WM XX, and even that was a disappointment. The last PPV I saw and enjoyed was Vengeance last year, and that's because when Angle's going strong, he's a fucking miracle worker. Outside of Undertaker and occasionally Rey, I can't think of one person on Smackdown right now that I give a flying fuck about. It really amazes me that they even get 3.0s for that program, because I was about as hardcore a fan as they come for years, and I can't watch that show for more than five minutes. It still kind of amuses me to read the results and see how abd they're doing, but the actual shows are just dreadfully dull.

Actually, here's what I'd really like to see if I were a booker that would probably work even better. At Summerslam, Benoit controls most of the match against HHH before there's a ref bump and Evolution starts working over Benoit. Then Rocky comes out to miss the save with a chair and nails Orton, Batista, and Flair, but misses on HHH and cracks Benoit. The next night, Benoit asks for a rematch, but Bischoff brushes him off saying that Rock and Eugene are facing HHH and Flair. The next week Benoit gets brushed off again by Bischoff in favor of The Rock. The week after that, Benoit reminds him that he's contractually guaranteed to get a rematch against HHH, and if nothing else, he'll get it at Unforgiven. Bischoff finally relents and grants him his title shot that night on Raw. Benoit again controls the match, but when he finally goes down, HHH goes for the chair and Rocky nails him for the DQ. The next week, Rocky has a #1 contender's match against Kane and when HHH comes out to interfere, it looks like Benoit is going to make the save, but instead he absolutely destroys Rock with about 10 stiff chairshots, until they do the EMTs like they did with HBK. He cuts a promo saying that he's given 20 years of his life to this business, and then when he finally got to the top, he got overlooked for some piece of shit that can't even be bothered to show up to Raw half the time. He earned the World Heavyweight Title and there's no way in hell he'll let The Rock steal the moment from him. I've always thought psycho heel Benoit was way more entertaining than goofy face Benoit, and the Rock/Benoit feud would be money in the bank. Benoit could get suspended for a few weeks to give Rock a chance to win the title, and then eventually win the belt back and carry it as a heel until Wrestlemania. That would draw some serious money.

I wouldn't mind the diva search thing that much if it was just one segment. It would be like OK, this is their little cross-promotional effort, and they're telling us what it's going to be. Fine. But using four or five segments on it is just ridiculous. Luckily, working through Raw every week allowed me to have my fast-forward button handy, but I can tell I would have gotten pissed if I actually had to watch that. I'll tell you what would draw like it's 1999 is a Rock/HHH feud for the belt. Rock should just take a three month hiatus from shitty movies. Then they can have HHH fuck up Eugene even worse to where Rock has to come back to "stop" HHH. Then, they can build the feud on how they used to be equal, but HHH has passed The Rock by, and Rocky can't beat him anymore. Then, they could just do a whole bunch of those training videos, saying Rock wants to get back to his past glory, and they could just run one every week so it looks like he's still focused on wrestling when he's back making shitty movies. The WWE could even set up their schedule to come to Anaheim or LA or SD or Miami once a month so that The Rock can still come to a show. It would even be interesting to see Rock come back, win the title (after 8 months or so of off and on wrestling), and then say he accomplished what he wanted to and now he's leaving again, surrendering the title and setting up a 16-man tournament for the belt. It just seems that the audience is so hungry to see The Rock involved in the show again that if they could get another serious run out of him, it would be huge.