Two weeks after the fact, I must concede that The Big Show's ECW Championship reign is, apparently, real. It is not, as I had hoped, some sort of horrible dream brought on by excessive consumption of saturated fats and Iron City Beer. The Big Shew (to be pronounced in a sneering Ed Sullivan Voice, for those reading aloud at home) has defended his title once, and looks set to do it again tonight against The Undertaker. I need hardly add that this is not exactly a Match Of The Year contender.
Quite, in fact, the opposite. The ECWWE's bookers have of late been displaying a level of hubris that borders on the pathological. Big Show versus Ric Flair for the ECW title. Hogan versus Orton at Summerslam. John Cena versus Umaga (Christ, ANYONE versus Umaga). The WWE is a carnival of snores, each match more appallingly dull than the last. I may have to change the "Worst Match of the Year" award into a "Worst Match of the Fiscal Quarter" award just to keep pace with the awfulness.
"Apollo," I hear you cry, "Surely the Ric Flair/Shew match wasn't THAT bad." Well, my dears, I possess enough character to admit when I am wrong. The Flair title shot was perfectly watchable, for one simple reason. Both combatants bled like stuck pigs. There were trickles of blood. Gushes of blood. Geysers of blood. Blood whose presence on basic cable struck me as fairly remarkable.
Now, I'm no savage. I would never argue that simply bleeding can make a match great, or even good. Far from it. I WILL argue that copious amounts of gratuitous bloodshed can make a mediocre match at least faintly watchable.
That said, matching two waddling behemoths like The Shew and a past-his-prime Undertaker in Main Event Action will strain even my Herculean endurance. That is, of course, unless the level of bloodshed becomes truly BIBLICAL. I want to see the sins of the ECW faithful and the WWE Philistines alike washed away on tides of vital fluid. I want rivers, oceans, worlds, UNIVERSES of blood. I want to see The Undertaker, old and enfeebled as he is, blinded by the flow from his own gaping head wound. I want his normally pasty countenance to turn utterly PORCELAIN from blood loss. I want fresh infusions of blood flown in from special Fetus Farms, grown and sacrificed just so The Undertaker can keep bleeding. I want all these things and more.
And I want The Big Show to bleed like the big, slow, dumb, lazy, desperate bloodbag that he is.
1 comment:
Ah, ECW: An Ill Conceived Third Brand of Sports Entertainment Unleashed!
I agree with your take on last week's Flair vs. Shew match. Ironically (or sadly, depending on your degree of connection/investment with the acronym pre-2001), it took a broken down legend of professional wrestling grappling with an overweight, untalented sports entertainment stiff to create the most ECW-esque main event since its "relaunch" on Sci-Fi despite the fact that neither competitor had any connection with the original entity -- unless you count Flair by assoication, as the Nature Boy's name and reputation were trashed by Shane Douglas in order to get himself over and distract the audience from his run of the mill wrestling acumen.
What Flair-Shew lacked in in-ring athleticism and psychology, it made up for with intensity, brutality, blood, some plunder, and an engaged, appreciative audience. This match had a different feel than RVD vs. Angle; Shew vs. RVD, etc. . . it conveyed importance -- a big match feel -- and reminded me more of an old school wrestling brawl out of the Mid South territory (if you gave the One Man Gang and Ted DiBiase barbed wire bats, chairs, and thumb tacks to use at will), as opposed to an "extreme rules sports entertainment contest" where the idea of creating "brand" identity and differentiation through sloganeering takes precedence over actually developing a distinctive, well defined, quality in-ring product.
Post a Comment