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Good tidings citizens.
Please accept my humble apologies for not writing since WrestleMania, but what can I say – the wrestling world is failing to ignite the creative paraffin within me.
But it seems I am not the only one who feels this way. My fellow columnists on wrestling-online.com have also become lax with their submissions.
So I come to you with my attempt to revive a dying breed. I come to you with my infinite wisdom in sports entertainment, for I, I am a wrestling-writing GOD! Or something like that…
Today I’m going to talk about what has caught my imagination lately with the wrestling world, my random thoughts on the current events of the WWE and also the first of my 5 part review of the Greatest Royal Rumble Entrants of All Time! Hah!
In late November, I had a week off work, so I got round to a whole tonne of things I’d been too lazy to carry out. One of these is backing up my collection of wrestling VHS tapes onto DVD. I have a vast collection for which I, like many of you, have contributed to Vince McMahon’s war-chest in order to accumulate.
Because I am a primitive type, these are getting transferred real-time, so I am finding myself sitting watching many of these. It’s costing me a fortune in Pringles and nachos.
But the thing that strikes me when reviewing these events is just how much poorer the content is in 2008 compared to 1998.
One event I watched was Fully Loaded 1998. I distinctly remember at the time thinking that this was a very average pay-per-view. But when watching it 10 years later, I not only find that it has stood the test of time, but what was a distinctly passé offering a decade ago stands out as a better example of wrestling and sports entertainment than what the WWE have had to offer for a long time.
Please don’t misunderstand me, I believe the WWE has some excellent content when creative can be bothered. And some of the matches in 2008 have been out of this world. But does Raw glue you to your HD television? Does Smackdown inspire you to buy the latest pay-per-view. THAT’s what I’m referring to.
Thanks to Sky broadcasting Raw live in the UK, I now get up an hour earlier on Tuesday mornings to watch the Monday Night shenanigans. Is it just me or is it all a little ‘samey’?
I couldn’t be less interested in Batista. A muscle-head who, it has been reported, is a complete jerk in real-life. I can only assume this to be correct as, when attending a live event in Glasgow in the spring, Batista made his entrance to the ring, stood on the turnbuckle, and posed for the crowd. Upon seeing a sign he didn’t like he proceeded to flip the bird to a guy in the audience. That’s poor form for one who was idolised by so many young kids in the arena.
When Dave Batista appears on my screens, I cannot stop my thumb from hitting the fast forward button because I just find him so interminably tedious.
I know this may be controversial, but I feel the same about Randy Orton. His infernal theme music (which is worse than his previous one), his boring matches, his ultra-repetitive monologues, JEEZ, in the wrestling dictionary his picture is next to ‘boooo-ring’.
There are shining lights, such as Monsieur Jeffrey Hardy. He’s ‘So Damned Over’ (trademark pending). The Brian Kendrick and Ezekiel are a great double act, but you get the feeling Vince is more interested in making Big Zeke the next Diesel rather than Kendrick the next Shawn Michaels.
Jack Swagger has promise and unusually for a newbie, he’s got a great name! (“Zach Ryder” and “Ricky Ortiz” don’t exactly have the ‘wow’ factor).
Anyway, the fact I’m having to dig so much depresses me, so I’ll move on to my Royal Rumble Greatest Entrants List (catchy title, huh?).
Being the sad git that I am, I used Wikipedia to decipher just who is the greatest entrant ever in the Royal Rumble over the course of it’s 21 year history (I have included the 1988 TV special event).
Points are given for wins, final four positions, number of competitors eliminated and number of seconds in the ring. Bonus points are allocated for more than 1 opponent eliminating a superstar (e.g. Big Daddy V scored big in 2007 because it took EIGHT men to get him out). Similarly points are deducted if a wrestler was dumbass enough to eliminate himself.
Wrestlers who have competed under different names over the years have had their totals combined (e.g. Rikishi/Fatu/Sultan, Earthquake/Golga etc)
So here is the first part of the Top 50 (there have been 248 competitors in the 21 years of the event!).
50: CM Punk – 3117 Points: Not a bad return when you consider he has only entered 2 Rumbles (2007, 2008). He’s aggregated about 50 minutes in the event which has propelled him into the top 50 ahead of the likes of Mick Foley and Booker T.
49: Hercules – 3130 Points: Ummm, okay. The late Ray Fernandez never really made it above muscle-bound jobber level, but he managed to slip under the radar in the 1991 match lasting 37 minutes. He was out in 56 seconds the following year…
48: Jerry Lawler – 3141 Points: You might say ‘The King’ can’t be classed in the top 50 as he hid under the ring for half an hour in 1996 and lasted precisely 4 seconds the following year. But hiding under the ring is sound strategy…
47: Diesel – 3212 Points: A surprisingly low position for Kevin Nash, particularly when you consider his memorable 1994 performance when he eliminated 7 men. However, he’s only competed in 2 of the matches and a total of 35 minutes.
46: Goldust – 3305 Points: 6 appearances have led to Dustin Runnels achieving a Top 50 position. Never really the most prominent competitor, but he racked up the in-ring time to earn his spot.
45: Shelton Benjamin – 3388 Points: Ain’t no stopping him, nooo! Well, 44 other guys are more successful in the Rumble so I guess there is. Has been eliminated by Shawn Michaels the last 3 years in a row and an 18 second stint in 2008 didn’t help his plight.
44: Tatanka – 3499 Points: I’ll be honest, the only memory I have of Tatanka in the Royal Rumble, is him being a surprise entrant in 2006. He’s eliminated a few guys over the years (tending to be the likes of Aldo Montoya) but that seems to have escaped me.
43: Carlito – 3515 Points: That’s cool! The good man the WWE love to keep down gets his spot. Actually, Carlito tends to be reserved to be eliminated by guys the WWE is pushing, like a returning-from-injury RVD and John Cena. He was also a sacrificial lamb for The Great Khali.
42: Yokozuna – 3547 Points: We have our first winner on the list! The only Rumble victor not to make the Top 50 is Big John Studd, who only actually competed in one of the matches and only eliminated 2 people. Yoko on the other hand was a bit more dominant in his victory, memorably bench pressing Randy Savage over the top rope to win 1993 (after Savage tried to pin him!?).
41: Jim Duggan – 3612 Points: Like buses, you waited ages for a winner and 2 come along at once. I considered giving Duggan less points for winning in 1988 as his match only had 20 people, but I decided against it. Duggan deserves his spot.
So that wraps up the first 10 places. I’ll count down 40 – 31 in my next column. You’ll know the full Top 50 by the Royal Rumble in January (think of this as an extended preview!).
Finally, I read an article that made me laugh the other day. It was about an intern who was allowed to sit in a couple of WWE creative meetings. I was under the impression that these meetings were very private affairs with no outsiders being allowed in without the expressed permission of Vincent Kennedy McMahon. But I digress…
The intern gave Stephanie McMahon-Levesque a glowing reference saying:
“she is passionate and hard-working… (and) always remained down to earth and approachable.”
The ‘down to earth’ and ‘approachable’ part are certainly contrary to what has been reported about the Boss’s daughter previously.
About Vince, the intern says:
“He is very neurotic and intense. Not that this is a bad thing. It’s his company and he demands respect.”
Again, fairly positive I guess for Vince. But the intern sticks the knife into Shane commenting that: “he never seemed to grasp the big picture from a creative standpoint.”
Quite damning.
Now lets see. In full support of Stephanie, fairly complimentary and honest about Vince and extremely critical of Shane.
It seems like a PR stunt by someone who is trying to make Stephanie smell like roses and stay on Vince’s good side while making Shane look incompetent.
Is it possible that this intern’s name was Paul Levesque?
I’ll leave you with that thought. Full credit to the Wrestling Observer for the quotes. If you have any thoughts about this column, feel free to email me at andrewbulik@wrestling-online.com .
Au Revoir!
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