Opinionated Thoughts Number One

I have had some request to include some of my opinions and views on the wrestling world. Well, one request, really, and I promised Dean I wouldn't mention him personally. So, Dean Simon, I will keep you out of this! (Who knew I had a humor, huh?)





WWE Programming and Storylines

Depending on what era of professional wrestling you subscribe to being the best, I do have a definitive opinion on this one. I started out watching the then WWF in the early 80's Like many I saw the exploits of the likes of Jimmy "Superfly" Snuka doing his patented splash from the top rope, at a time when wrestling was a bit more grounded, and I immediately fell in love. Jimmy was larger then life, and the first wrestler who actually grabbed my attention. However as the early to mid eighties moved into the latter part of the decade I switched to Fritz Von Erichs WCCW where the Fabulous Freebirds and the various Von Erich boys were lighting up the old Sportatorium. The WWF was at that time a little to cartoonish for my liking, while WCCW was more pure to the wrestling roots. However, the local station that carried WCCW back in Muskegon, MI, where I lived, stopped carrying it, so naturally I moved to the then National Wrestling Alliance/WCW. The Four Horseman, Lex Luger, Steiners, Barry Windham and Dusty Rhodes held my attention for quite awhile until I did the unthinkable-got too busy with life to keep following it. My interest was rekindled in the mid nineties with the coming of WWE's new attitude era, and I fell in love again. I tried to watch WCW at first, but the quality went to far down the tubes. Jim Herd was running WCW then, and the quality sucked. Herd was never around wrestling, and not much of a fan of wrestling either, and anytime you have someone trying to run a wrestling promotion who is not a fan, the results will be disastrous. In my opinion he should have stayed at Pizza Hut selling pizza. That is the job he had before WCW, albeit as an executive. So I hope you can see where I am going with this, I am more a student of traditional wrestling, with a bit of the more acrobatic moves thrown in. I like interesting storylines that follow a situation from the start to it's logical end. Sadly I feel somewhat of a downturn with WWE's current writing. For instance, the big buildup to No Way Out with the Undertaker and Kurt Angle. WWE had Kurt retain his title at No Way Out, thereby making the whole Undertaker/Angle storyline meaningless. 'Taker is undefeated at Wrestlemania, and I seriously doubt they would make him lose now for the first time. Now, there have been rumbling about the quality of WWE's PPV's recently, and I feel that 'Taker was brought in to boost No Way Outs Buy rates. But in the end it all makes for an empty feeling in the pit of your stomach. How about when Edge won the title, just to give it back? He's still whining about it sure, but where is THAT going? To set up a WM match with Mick Foley? There were plenty of way's to go about setting that up, leaving the title off of him. With that being said, I would have Edge win and keep the title, but set up a feud with someone else as I feel John Cena is getting tired.

I don't know who is writing for Raw right now, maybe a couple of extra soap opera writers who are just a bit outside of their genre. The last I heard was that Stephanie McMahon was writing for Smackdown, but I see a lot of the same writing on the wall there too. So, who knows?