WWE BLOWS UP~!

(Tildebang stolen from F4Wonline.com)

So the shit has hit the fan.

While we all can argue about who’s fault this is, the reasoning behind it, who caused it, who’s worried, who’s guilty and who’s gonna get fired, one thing we know is this:

The WWE has suspended 10 wrestlers, possibly more, for violating the Wellness Policy.

Now once again, I’m sure Linda McMahon, who’s probably fielding plenty of calls from upset stockholders right now, doesn’t really give a shit about who’s wrestling in the third quarter of hour #1 on Monday. The booking aspect of all of this really isn’t nearly as important as everything else, in the grand scheme of things.

But in a way, it kind of is. The booking decisions, the matches we see on TV, are the only things we, as fans, can see for ourselves. If we want to know what’s going on backstage, we can read the dirtsheets, we can check Newz sites (TORRIE, WILSON CAUGHT SKINNY DIPPING WITH RANDY ORTON… AND WE HAVE THE PICTURES!!), and we can accept whatever scraps WWE.com chooses to feed us. And many times, that information will prove to be wrong for one reason or another. Sometimes, plans change. Randy Orton was supposed to beat John Cena this past Sunday, but plans changed. Sometimes, the information is just plain wrong, because someone wanted to have a big scoop. Samoa Joe was reportedly unhappy in TNA and would take less money to be in WWE, but Joe refuted this personally, with the simple explanation of “Buuuuuuuuuullshit, Are you crazy? I really really like money!” And sometimes, WWE.com just chooses not to give us the whole story, if anything at all.

So the only thing we can all know for sure is that whatever we see on TV, is all that matters. If Jeff Hardy is missing for 30 days, he either got hurt or suspended or something, but we at least know his ass wasn’t there last month.

The reason for this diatribe is simple; while one can argue WWE has much bigger problems on their plate than the simple booking aspect of their TV, as fans, it’s really all that matters to us in the short term.

Now, according to the SI.com article (too lazy to link to it), the magical ten being suspended are:

Randy Orton
Edge
Chavo Guerrero
Umaga
Mr. Kennedy
John Morrison
William Regal
Shane Helms
Charlie Haas
Funaki

Now, on that list, Edge and Helms are hurt, so their suspensions don’t mean much. Haas isn’t used very often, and Funaki is the Jeremy Giambi on the list (although Bryan Alvarez brought up an interesting theory, that maybe Funaki was just buying for someone else, since Funaki is never on TV and usually wears a shirt.) Regal, despite being the most entertaining performer on all of television right now, also isn’t wrestling much now. So that leaves Orton, Kennedy, Umaga, Morrison and Chavo.

All of these men were on the card on Summerslam, taking part in important matches; Orton for the WWE title against Cena, Kennedy and Umaga for the IC Title, Morrison defending the ECW Title, and Chavo fighting Rey in his big comeback.

So, despite all the questions of who’s fault it is and all that, the only question I can ask is, what do they do now?

Lets look at the Raw roster, according to WWE.com. We’ll combine the tag teams and omit the injured, since they can’t help now, and the women, since no one cares about them.

Kendrick/London - Terrific performers, but no way Vince pushes them, right? They’re too small, aren’t they?
Carlito – Had great heat and charisma and potential– two years ago. He’s regressed in the ring and on the mic, and now few care about him.
Cody Rhodes - Gets decent reactions, but not nearly ready enough for the midcard, nevermind the uppercard.
Daivari - Jobber.
Hacksaw Jim Duggan - Still gets reactions, but a jobber nonetheless.
Jeff Hardy - Recently suspended, but still popular.
John Cena - Heavyweight champ. Not as bad a worker as made out to be by smarks, but still can’t get the whole crowd behind him.
Cryme Tyme - Crowd loves them, they’re big enough, but probably couldn’t make it as singles guys.
King Booker - Arguably the best wrestler in the company right now, but he’s also been attached to this steroids investigation.
Cade/Murdoch - Cade has a big future ahead of him, but not right now. Besides, they’re great tag champs.
Highlanders - Haven’t been on TV in a while, if I remember correctly.
Sandman – Fans love him, and he’s absolutely hilarious. But they wouldn’t dare putting him in any important match, would they?
Santino Marella - GREAT heel, but sucks at wrestling. Crowd hates him whenever he’s in the ring, and not in a good way.
Shelton - I love this guy, but his opportunity looks to have passed him by. He’s stuck in tag matches again. I wish they’d give him another shot.
Snitsky – Being booked as a monster heel, but fans don’t care about him anymore.
Super Crazy - Off TV for a while. Jobber when he’s on.
Triple H - Obviously the top dog in the company, but he seems to want to stay as a face, and with Edge, Orton, Kennedy and potentially Booker all gone for the moment, that leaves him without a feud.
Val Venis - Jobber.

So if we remove the tag teams and jobbers, that leaves us with Carlito, Cody, Hardy, Cena, Booker, Sandman, Snitsky, Shelton and Heytch. And Booker’s still iffy, because we don’t know where he stands. That’s a very thin roster of credible wrestlers.

So, the question is, what do they do? In my opinion, they have four options, although they aren’t necessarily restricted to just one of the four.

1. They can raid Smackdown and ECW. I’m not quite sure exactly who, but Smackdown got hit much less by both this steroid bust and the overall injury bug.

2. They stand pat with what they have. This would mean pushes out of nowhere to the likes of Shelton and Sandman, who are pretty much jokes right now. Although Creative could certainly earn their paychecks if they do find a way to make Shelton get over to fans who aren’t like me.

3. Call up their big prospects. The three that come to mind are Harry Smith, Colt Cabana, and Shawn Spears? Smith is Davey Boy’s son, and has the body and gimmick to make an impact immediately. He’s probably in Cody Rhodes’ camp right now, though, in that he’s not a bad wrestler, but needs a lot more experience before getting a spotlight put on him. If Shawn was healthy and could work as a heel, he’d be the perfect opponent for him. Cabana is an extremely charismatic Ring of Honor vet who is perhaps the most WWE-ready of the three, in terms of the sports-entertainment aspect. He’s a good worker and a goofball who can work either heel or face. His biggest obstacle is one that plagues many other ROH guys; he’s just not that big. Not a stick figure, and not a midget, but not particularly big. I’ve honestly never seen Spears before, so I can’t say much about him, other than people think he’s the best guy in OVW right now and that he also might not be large enough to be a huge WWE star.

4. Throw tons and tons and tons of money at Jericho and RVD, and pressure JBL and others to come out of retirement. Jericho and RVD both seem to be content to sit at home and not kill their bodies for 250 nights a year, but neither has completely ruled out a return at some point. JBL was getting old and wanted to step aside, but supposedly hasn’t eliminated the possibility of a comeback either. The big problem here? By the time it’ll take them to get back in shape, the suspensions will be over.

I’m guessing options 1 and 2 are more likely, since it’s only going to be 30 days. Realistically, it’s only 5 shows they’d have to cover for (4 Raws and a PPV), since it’s acceptable to trot out the likes of Venis and Super Crazy at house shows.

But part of me kind of wishes the suspensions were for more than 30 days. When a sports team blows up and trades away all their players (like the ‘04 Marlins), or when a rebuilding team makes a few moves to immediately surge into contention (like the Celtics this year), it’s always fun to watch. When everything is the same old, same old, or when changes are gradual and almost unnoticeable, it gets boring.

I’ve probably only watched two full Raws in their entirety in the last calendar year, and only one PPV. I only know what I see on Youtube, what I read on forums, and what I hear from Alvarez. I’m honestly more interested in Kaiju Big Battel than WWE, and they’ve only had two shows in the last year.

But this whole steroid suspension thing has got me interested again. I want to see what happens. And the strangest thing of all was that it was brought upon by the deaths of two of my favorite wrestlers. I certainly don’t enjoy that part of it, but that’s what it took for something new to potentially start happening.

All we can do now is just watch and see if they can capitalize on it.

Otakon Diaries?

Yeah, sorry. I kinda got busy. The last day wasn’t all that interesting. Nothing good of note.

The Otakon Diaries, Part 4

Saturday (Day 2 of the Con)

Lovely Complex: …was not being shown, despite being on the schedule for the day. Probably for the best, since it looked like some random schoolgirl anime. Instead, we saw…

GoShogun – The Time Etranger: This was an old school anime from the 80s. We missed the first half hour or so, so we weren’t quite sure what was happening, but it was at least pretty entertaining. Apparently, Remy was some chick in this rad commando unit, made up of a dude with a sword, a dude who looked like Colossus, a dude who looked like a mechanic, a dude with a gun, and the coolest of them all, a dude who did nothing but throw hand grenades. He was awesome. I might be confusing him with the dude with the gun, but anyway, yeah, hand grenades. Awesome.

So, like, Remy and her commando gang are in this weird middle eastern village where you are assigned a fate that you can’t escape. In fact, they’re nice enough to even show you how you die. In Remy’s case, it would be at the hands (or paws, or claws) of a huge-ass black panther, who would rip open her shirt to expose them titty and then eat her stomach. Or something. I forgot. I was staring at them titty.

But Remy and her commando brigade fight their fates, destroy zombies (hand grenade man was by far the most effective) and eventually find a way out of the scary town. Then Remy is in a hospital and she dies. Or doesn’t. I really wish I saw the beginning of this movie. From what I did see, though, it was pretty good. It aged well, unlike some other 80’s animes. Thumbs up.

Lunch and Game Room: The whole gang went to the game room, where we all snagged some cans of Gay Fuel. It was wonderful. Then we all converged upon the Power Stone 2 machine. Three of us intruded on the game currently going on, then once we soundly eliminated that chump, Jonny, Dom, Joel and I all killed it on Power Stone for a while. Then, we played KOF for a bit. When we came back to Power Stone, these two dudes were playing it. They were brothers, in both the genetic sense and in the racial sense, and Jonny and I figured they looked like good victims for the POWER. We took them on in a 2 on 2 match. I was Rouge. Jonny was Accel. I can’t remember who they were, because we were too busy KICKING THEIR ASS. Man, we kicked their ass. I have a strange feeling they didn’t play Power Stone nearly as much as we did, since Jonny, Dom, Joel and I played Power Stone like every day from 2000 to 2004, even when Jonny was at boarding school and Dom and Joel were at college. But yeah, we had the POWER. And we couldn’t be stopped.

We had lunch at a place called California Burrito. I think. It seemed like a chain, but I’m not sure. It was a nice restaurant, though. Delicious burritos. I took the time to share some great Iron Sheik moments. A good time was had by all.

Best Student Council: The summary sounded kind of funny for this show, and wouldn’t you know it, it wasn’t that bad. It was basically Azumanga Daioh with a little more direction and storyline, although I liked Azumanga’s characters a lot more. The big negative about this one, however, was that it was shown with the dub, which wasn’t very good. Not terrible, but not very good.

Basically, Rando Rino (not sure which is the first name or last name) is a girl who gets invited to a nice private school off in some pretty seaside town. Her apartment is immediately burned down by an arsonist, so she’s homeless. But she finds out that by being elected/chosen to the Best Student Council, she can live on-campus. Which is nice. Through some wacky fluke, she gets elected to the regular student council, and through some wackier fluke, she’s elected secretary of the Best Student Council, which is a secret organization employing commandos, spies and others, all of whom are cute, almost-too-young-to-be-sexually-attractive schoolgirls.

According to this wikipedia summary, the show gets serious for a minute (thanks, Lance Storm), which is nice, because I’m not sure I could take 26 episodes of its wackiness. I only watched the first two episodes and left before the next two, but I might be willing to give it another shot, preferably in the comfort and quiet of my own home. Dumbass nerds screaming with laughter at moderately funny gags gets old VERY quick.

Also, it should be noted that a main character in this show is a hand puppet. A wisecracking handpuppet. Needless to say, the first thing I thought about was Marcus. But don’t worry. Marcus is much, much funnier. Thumbs in the middle, edging upwards.

Kill!: … also was not showing as advertised. Or, in the words of the hilarious projectionist, “Kill died.” That projectionist. When he’s not sucking at changing the reels and ruining the timing of movies, he’s a laugh riot. Kill! was supposed to be another old samurai movie, I think. I’m not sure I could’ve sat through another one, but there was nothing else good showing. Instead, we were told that we would be seeing…

Spirited Away: I’ve seen this movie at least three times, and it still holds up. It’s kind of nice being told that Spirited Away will be showing in your theater, and you can stay there knowing what you are about to watch will be by far the best thing shown all weekend, even if you’ve already seen it. My earlier point about how goddamn awesome Joe Hisaishi is renewed once more. The music in this movie is just plain fucking amazing.

You know who else is awesome? Hayao Miyazaki. Seriously. His worst movie (Castle in the Sky) is still better than 95% of any anime out there. That’s pretty impressive, if you ask me. When’s his son’s movie coming out here? I saw a trailer for it and it looked pretty sweet. I digress. Thumbs through the goddamn roof.

Dinner: Jonny and I went to Five Guys, a burger joint that began in Washington, DC and is now slowly expanding across the east coast. The original restaurants in DC are all ridiculously fucking delicious. By far the best burgers I’ve ever had. This location in Baltimore wasn’t bad, by any stretch, but wasn’t nearly as good as the DC stuff. Still, if you ever see one in your travels, stop by and get a burger. Even when it’s not great, it’s still very good.

It should be noted that during this dinner break, my friend called me asking for directions to a movie theater in Nashville. Nevermind that she knew I’d never been to Nashville, nor had I any idea where any theaters were, but this is important because I think this was the first time in three Otakons that I had talked to a woman. Not one at the conference or anything, and nevermind that she’s my roommate and a stupid bitch, but I thought that was important to note.

The reason I bring that up, besides to point out my rare blend of stone cold masculinity and rapist wit, is that the female situation at Otakon is always weird. Year One saw plenty of hot chicks, including a Chun Li that is still ingrained into my head to this day. Year Two was the year of the Rikku, in which any skinny white girl attending the convention saw fit to dress as Rikku from FFX. There was nothing special about this year, but one thing that all three had in common was the abundance of women who should not be wearing the costumes they were wearing. If I had a dime for every chunky Haruhi Suzumiya, every chubby Lillith, every tubby Yuna, every stout Sakura, and every other flabby strumpet in an ill-fitting outift, I would easily have 5 dollars. That’s 50 dimes. That’s like, 600 yen, I bet.

So fatties, sort it out. Stick to your mallgoth sweaters. I don’t care if its 90 degrees out.

So now you’re asking, hey Duke Davis. If you’re so bad, why don’t you mack with the hotties, or hawteez, as it were? Because plain and simple, I don’t trust a single one of them motherfuckers. Suppose I turn on the charm jets and get one of these honeys to invite me back to their hotel room. This is a hot chick at an anime convention wearing a hot costume. Something’s not right here. Chances are, she’s crazy. She probably cuts herself. Or listens to Nickelback.

Fatal Conflict: I’d love to provide a link to this movie, perhaps a wiki entry or an Imdb page or a place to buy it. But I really can’t find this movie anywhere. Methinks “Fatal Conflict” was not an accurate translation of the title. So let me just describe it for you in grand detail.

Kong is a member of the Hong Kong Martial Arts Team, and also a wacky kung-fu dancer type thingy for some theater. He gets asked by the local mafia to fight in some underground fights, being offered $1000 HK (no idea how much that is in US money), but he refuses. Later, he has dinner with some chick he wants to bewn, but they can’t afford the tab, and he feels embarrassed. So he takes up the mob on their offer and completely hammers this one dude in like 20 seconds. Then he keeps accepting more and more fights, winning more money for his bosses and himself.

After a while, the rival boss, who is supplying opponents for Kong, gets frustrated and begins hiring crazier fighters. In one fight, he takes on a dude who sticks nails in his shoes, which cuts up Kong something fierce. He still kicks his ass. Actually, this fight began as 3 on 3, elimination style, not unlike a Capcom vs SNK match. Kong’s two teammates were dispatched quickly in order by the first dude on the other team, but Kong went on to beat all three dudes in a row by himself. It was pretty sweet.

Eventually, the rival boss goes so far as to hire the CHAMPION OF K1. And of course, Kong beats him, too. After this, however, people eventually stop betting against Kong (partially because the rival boss placed anonymous bets in his own circles to hype up Kong and adjust the odds). So Kong’s bosses, about to lose a ton of money from Kong’s imminent victory, order him to throw the fight.

I won’t spoil the end, although I’ve already given you 75% of the movie. I’ve also avoided talking about the boring scenes where Kong’s ladyfriend repeatedly admonishes her friend for being a whore. This happens like six times in the movie, and each scene is like 10 minutes long.

Petty criticisms aside, this movie was FUCKING AWESOME. Even though the ending was a little weird, the fight scenes were all amazing. It followed a format that I love in action movies; storyline, fight, storyline, fight, storyline, training, fight, storyline, fight. That’s all you need. If the Street Fighter movie was like that, it would’ve been awesome. The dude who plays Kong, whom I’ll be damned if I could find out his name, was charismatic and a great fighter.

For a movie that was basically about a dude kicking the shit out of everyone, it succeeded. Thumbs way up.

A Bittersweet Life: Of all the movies I saw that weekend (that I hadn’t already seen before), this one was the best of them all. It was well shot, had some great music, fantastic acting, and some sweet scenes.

Sun-woo Kim (who just so happens to share the name of my favorite former Korean Red Sox reliever) is a total badass. He “runs” a hotel, he does jobs for the mob, he kicks people’s asses, and he doesn’t take shit from no one. In one scene, some fags in a sweet car are honking at him, tailgating him and flashing their highbeams at him. So he cuts them off, pulls them out of the car, kicks their asses, throws one of them through their own car window, and throws the car keys off a bridge. Stone cold killer.

Kim is asked by his boss to look after his mistress, whom he thinks is cheating on him. If he finds they are cheating, he is to kill both of them immediately. Kim does in fact find them cheating, but takes pity on them and spares them. Big mistake. His boss finds out, and orders his men to torture/humiliate/kill Kim. Kim escapes, then buys a ton of guns and promises vengeance.

It’s equally funny, awe-inspiring and radical to watch, as there’s plenty of guns and high-powered kicks to the face to keep it interesting. It seems somewhat like a movie Tarantino would make. I’m sure you can find it somewhere. I highly recommend it. Thumbs way up.

And that was our night. An average day was saved by a fantastic night of two sick, sick movies. There was one more day left, albeit only a few hours, and a long drive after that.