MAJOR LEAGUE WRESTLING TV WORKRATE REPORT - Sept. 8, 2003
(by RAVEN MACK)
What Worked
The promo segment with Sabu & Fonzie, and then Sinister Minister & his organization of generally rotten enterprises: A toothless, recovering alcoholic yelling about the silent dude next to him with fifty staples in his arm and how he’s a scarred-up freak, well, that makes me happy. And Sinister Minister’s Anton Lavey by-way of campy B-movies evilness is nifty enough as well. I dig a more macabre Jerry Lynn as well, as he’s been nothing but a long-haired, hard-working, good guy for years. I also dig him being able to dig into his closet full of metal t-shirts, because now I’ll know what new shit is worth a crap to check out and won’t get suckered into accidentally listening to nu-metal garbage pretending to be metal. You don’t have long hair for as long as Jerry Lynn has without respecting the metal, and when you are wearing an Adidas jumpsuit with a pierced eyebrow and spiky hair, that’s not for-real metal, that’s Jackie Chan movie bad guy gang stereotypical metal. And the less goofball Mikey Whipwreck I see, the better. That schtick is tired. Keep it evil, mean-spirited, and relegate Mikey to throwing fire at people.
 Jerry Lynn vs. Homicide: Seems odd to push the Young Lions angle, as Jerry Lynn has never been a bonafide superstar enough to warrant it, but whatever. This wasn’t nearly as good as their first match, but Homicide is bladed up and bloody, and catches Lynn in a half-nelson like he’s gonna hit a Russian legsweep, then rolls him forward for a quick pin. On it’s own, the match wasn’t great, but as part of the whole story, it was perfect, hopefully spiraling Jerry Lynn deeper back into his “dark domain”, and also establishes Homicide not just as an upset artist, but ahead on Lynn two to nothing. I could really dig Lynn keeping on losing and getting meaner and meaner to start to win against these young whippersnappers. Maybe they could bring in Iceberg and the two of them could be evil as fuck, old school metal style, and come out to “Angel of Death” and carve people up and just generally destroy people for no good reason.
Christopher Daniels vs. Sabu: I was very into this, partially because both of these guys have been my absolute favorite at times. Sabu was there back when I discovered ECW in ‘95/’96, and the same with Christopher Daniels when Tim Noel’s public access show was edumacating me on some of the great indy shit in American wrestling in ’98/’99. Then both styles, the ECW style and the believable indy style, became en vogue and were over-used to the point that I could give a shit about either of them anymore. Table spots and indy handshakes are as boring as Woody Allen flicks for me. The entire beginning was nice, with Sabu reluctant to take the spike out of his boot to give to Fonzie, who would give it to the ref to start the match. After he finally did, and the ref hammered it into a table ringside, oddly enough, Daniels was reluctant to lock up with Sabu. A good stalling, build-up is often neglected on TV, and in matches like this, it psychologically makes it seem more dangerous. And if you make things seem dangerous to the viewer, then you don’t have to chop people up with weed-eaters as often. Wrestling neglects the magic of mental illusion too often lately; I’d rather be tricked than educated. After commercial, they come back and Daniels is mid-moonsault, and then hits another. Then Sinister Minister tells him to get the spike. Probably my favorite part of the match was when Sabu took the spike, and as he was gonna impale Daniels, the Fallen Angel countered with some submission armbar chicanery. Now that’s the hybrid style those MLW motherfucerks had been hyping up all that time. They get a table ringside, and Daniels is on top, but Sabu gets up there, and they tease a suplex out onto the table, but take it in the ring for a table spot a few minutes later. Mikey Whipwreck comes in and either completely blows a fire spot or is supposed to look like an incompetent fool for a second and then never be a part of the match again. Finally, we get the spike in Sabu’s hand striking against the pate of Daniels, who is bludgeoned to bloodiness. Sabu puts him in the camel clutch, all while driving the spike into Daniels eyebrow, causing him to give it up. I dug the hell out of it, because it was a good mixing of their styles within a match that also furthered their feud, and also because I’m a big, stupid mark for both of them.

What Didn’t Work
  The War Games promos at the top of the hour: First off, the Extreme Horsemen were a week behind, and still talking about it being three on three. Corino is good on the mic, but when he and crew are wearing the same clothes they wore two weeks ago in the same corner of a cafeteria talking the same shit, well, it’s stupid. I know they tape a few weeks at once, but me, sitting at home, doesn’t have to so obviously realize that. And C.W. Anderson needs to shut the fuck up about how Andersons have been in War Games before, especially since he shouldn’t be talking too much. I love C.W. in the ring and all, but he’s the perfect example of somebody who would thrive much better in the old system of using managers, where an oaf-tongued solid worker like himself could just stand there and do the throat-cutting motion while someone more eloquent did the talking. Simon Diamond seems okay by default coming up after C.W., but still doesn’t keep my attention. And good lord, the face promo was like a bad drama skit at a rural community college’s night class in theater. Sandman’s concern for the match to start it was ridiculously fake sounding, and Steve Williams…well, Steve Williams makes me sad seeing him on MLW in shit like this. At one time, here he is, with Terry Gordy, in front of thousands of people on a regular basis, having his pick of young, teenage whores and all the eight balls he could want, on credit, no questions asked, and now, he’s here, shucking and jiving for a few coin in a terribly executed grudge feud on a third-rate rip-off of the later years of ECW’s second-rate rip-off of it’s own glory days. I laughed when Lawler said, “Watch him…Doctor Death,” and would make it an answering machine message if I was the type of dumbass who put crap that I watched on TV as my answering machine message. Terry Funk was going nowhere with his part of the promo, and didn’t really do anything but toss out a few “perverts” and “liars”, but at no one in particular. Then The Sandman said something stupid and that was that. The fuckin’ War Games is in two weeks, and no mention of being worried (or confident lack thereof) about who the mystery Horsemen would be? No visible hatred from the heels? Shit, they were saying how they respected the old guys. You don’t do a be-all, end-all cage match to the death, I mean submission, with people you respect. You need to hate those motherfuckers, want them dead. MLW coasts too much.

 Joey Styles on commentary: Again, he could really benefit from somebody to cleanse the aural palate of his schtick. CM Punk was hilarious on the IWA-Mid South tapes I heard him commentate on, but he’s mired down in a boring feud as a serious heel, so he’s out. I counted three “OH MY GOD”s this week, but I might’ve missed one. I’ve decided that Styles owes me a dollar for every one of those he says, so he’s into me for three dollars next time I see him. I’ll gladly accept quarters from his stupid infomercial.
Samoan Island Tribe vs. Monsta Mack & B-Boy: Folks know a lot of bullshit ways hip hop has influenced the World by watching bullshit M2 or crap like that, but a little known fact on how hip hop tinged the World in a new way is the New Funky Nation LP by the Boo-Yaa Tribe’s influence on wrestling. I used to have that jank on vinyl, bought at a black dude’s record store where he didn’t mark anything and charged white people an extra dollar for full-length releases. It was a cool enough record, the title track was my favorite, but Samoan rappers was something new. Before that record, all Samoan wrestlers were stereotypical island maniacs, carrying coconuts around and grunting and stomping and doing a lot of barefoot kicks and giant splashes from the top rope. But not long after that, Samoan wrestlers all went gangster, and they’ve never looked back. The grass skirts have been traded in for leather football jerseys, and the wild island hair is now usually corn-rowed with nice over-use of colored rubber bands at the tips of braids, in what I guess is Lou Albano’s lasting influence on the Samoan team in wrestling. I think I might could actually sort of like the Samoan Island Tribe if they were a monster heel tag team destroying all sorts of people ala the Road Warriors in Georgia. But nobody wants to be a monster heel anymore – it’s all about being a cool heel, which seems odd to me because by judging from the shrieks and cheers and chants of the crowd, there’s a whole lot less pussy to be gotten at a wrestling show in 2003 as compared to 1983. Why would you want to be cool as a heel? Cool for who? Anyways, if MLW had a cheap, TV taping in some studio once a month to get some squashes and more current promos to compliment the one big show a month, they could make a team like the Samoan Island Tribe seem devastating to an extent, rather than have them drag out a competitive and boring match with a guy who lost his partner in Monsta Mack and some guy who’s never before been on MLW TV, not even for a second, in B-Boy. The crowd seemed more concerned with chanting “table” during this match than anything else, and the guys kept working towards these stupid spots that seemed so forced, rather than having the ability to go with the flow and let things develop. At the end, Ekmo and Monsta Mack are both laying in the ring, and when Samu gets B-Boy on a table ringside, Ekmo goes from being passed out to jumping, literally jumping up to his feet and hitting a giant Samoan splash for a cheap finish. Terrible.
The TVN Urban Extra commercial: Note to marketers attempting to grab a bigger chunk of the average degenerate’s spending dollar – your window of attention is about three weeks. I’ll give you a fourth, maybe a fifth week of credit, for that one giant, jiggling ass on that cocoa-colored chick in the referee’s outfit, but goddamn, MLW’s been on TV for like 20 weeks and you’ve ran the SAME MOTHERFUCKIN’ COMMERCIAL EVERY WEEK! Show the big-assed chick shake her ass in a different way, or at least put some different clips in your commercial. The least you could do is shave five seconds off the end and have one of the girl’s say, “Order now,” all stupid and sexy like those girls in that IWA Total Impact commercial mainstay that say, “Call us. We’re eighteen.”
CM Punk’s promo: They are pointless. I’ll give him credit for not working from a script and hitting his main points, old school style, but he’s got a ways to go to be believable. And Nosawa is gonna save Raven from his drinking and drugging? Last I checked, Nosawa looked like a raver kid who’d be hard-pressed not to come up with ecstasy deposits if somebody tapped his spinal cord. It seems to me Nosawa would be more likely to share some ketamine with Raven and tag team Chloe Sevigny’s character from Kids before he’d help Raven quit drugs and drinks.