MLW Workrate Report - 10/06/03
What worked ---
The bit segment with the Raven piss test: This entire segment was not entirely unwatchable sports entertainment by way of old ECW crap. The straight edge ref making Raven take a piss test for a straight edge match is hilarious, and made me think of my buddy Lofton who is the whitest man on Earth yet somehow smokes more weed than anybody as well, and when he was out of college looking for jobs, I was the only person he knew he didn’t get gacked up all the damn time, so he’d come by pretty regularly, get me to piss in a thermos right before a job interview, because he had the whole thing worked out with a thermometer where he knew exactly how long it could stay in the thermos and work the drug test. Anyways, of course Raven, forever the aging anti-establishmentarian, throws the cup full of suggestive urine into the face of that stupid straight edge referee. Then we get Francine in negligee at the Marriott, and the bangs hanging over her forehead do wonders to disguise the hideous coke whore she is. She feigns sexuality and tells any wrestler who’s man enough to come meet her, she can do wonders for their career, and I tell you if I was to go to the Marriott to meet some slut and she was wearing that much fancy lingerie when I showed up, I’d be pissed. Slowly getting naked makes for great sexual drama, but starting with frilly white shit and garters, that’s stupid, like wrestlers blading themselves walking down the aisle before the match. Me, personally, I’ve always been a fan of the cheap hotel where you pull the nightstand into the middle of the beds or between the bed and air conditioner contraption that blows dryer lint out all day long, and you play drinking games where you lose pieces of clothing one by one. Most of the girls I’ve found myself mired into don’t wear underwear, so the jeans will be their last refuge, and that’s an aesthetically pleasing image, sitting there drinking beer in some rundown hotel with faux wooden paneling walls, and a chick comes out the bathroom with nothing on but jeans, titties right there, goofy smile on her face, enjoying you enjoying the view, and it’s all gravy for you from there on out. Big natural breasts that flop downwards, or tiny flabs of breast bumping off a ribcage, and all in between, those things are awesome, very awesome, when not altered by man’s meddling superficial nature. Which is what makes Francine so garish. And the last of this little vignette segment of MLW has the big Samoans blocking the door for C.W. Anderson and Simon Diamond to leave, and they do a tense stand-off, but the Samoans let them by after slapping a signed open contract against C.W.’s chest while laughing, and the Extreme Horsemen are standing there in shock as the door slowly shuts and giant Samoan men in urban fashions haw-haw their way into a fade to commercial. It was comedic, yet set up the inevitable tag showdown which had not been built to in the slightest anywhere on their television before, and for that I can appreciate it. They’ve not been known to use wrestling logic much.
The Christopher Daniels promo segment: If The Sinister Minister can’t be there, then The Fallen Angel should be the mouth-piece of that crew, and actually I enjoyed him more because without Jim Mitchell, Mikey Whipwreck finally shut the fuck up and just sat there instead of falling over boxes of talking to rubber duckies or some dipshit crap like that. Jerry Lynn talks his evil talk next, and Whipwreck is silent for the most part, excepting one stupid question quickly answered in controlling tones by Lynn, and it works for me well enough. Then Joey Styles declares they’ve reinstated the DQ rule for MLW, and that don’t mean Dairy Queen, brother. The last bit has Satoshi Kojima talk Japanese, force out “I’m coming back!” and smack his arm in symbolic clock-cleaning movements. I probably wouldn’t have included this segment in the good, except I was really glad to see Mikey Whipwreck shut up, and there wasn’t a whole lot good about this hour of the television wrestling.
CM Punk vs. Vampiro: Punk is berating Nosawa for losing to Raven, and as he does, Vampiro sneaks into the ring, clotheslines Punk, and shows some lucha-tinged Juggalo camaraderies for Nosawa, who just like that is Punk’s enemy. It’s amazing how they’re still able to hot shot angles when they only tape once a month. This match wasn’t really great, but the crowd was all about Vampiro and all against CM Punk, most likely because they looked like a motley assortment of unemployable alcoholics who grew up on wrestling where The Purple Haze was born from the ocean. Vampiro drags Punk into the stands and punches him with beers. It ends with Punk hitting a rana on Vampiro, who rolls through for the duke. Post match, Vampiro is lamping with the drunks in the front row, and spews beer on CM Punk. I hate straight edgers, so I’m bout it bout it. If you don’t want to drink, fine, but don’t preach at me about it. Also, special note to Joey Styles, it’s really dumb to say Punk is anti-caffeine when he has the Pepsi logo tattooed on his shoulder.
What didn’t work ---
Eddie Colon vs. Jerry Lynn: I blame Joey Styles for this more than anything. Lynn is out in speed metal t-shirt, and I think of how he was proud to wear a Lamb of God t-shirt when ECW had a house show in Richmond years ago, and how Lamb of God were flown, by Slayer, to England to open up those shows where Slayer encored with the entire Reign In Blood album, and I think about all the times I’ve had with Lamb of God and am much more happier for them to be successful in their endeavors than I was when the guy I used to do acid with in college ended up being the bassist in the Dave Mathews Band. Eddie Colon looks nothing like I expected, no forehead roadmap or weird singlet or anything. Lynn attempts to taunt the crowd and showboat and heel it up, but they don’t know this skinny Puerto Rican kid, and are so behind Lynn that Styles is forced to fess up to it on the commentary. Eddie Colon needs some American charisma in the ring; I’m sure the air horns would be a-blowing in his honor at Roberto Clemente Stadium, but nobody gave a fuck about his ass in Florida apparently. I guess that’s the same reason Carlos Colon was in every wrestling magazine ever printed in the 1980s, but he never won the NWA National title or anything on American soil. Colon gets flipped into a tree of woe position, for the diving boots to the face, and I hate that move. How the fuck can you always untrap your foot after getting stomped, but never before? It looks ridiculous and should be sent to the scrap heap. Joey Styles really sucks it up in this one, and I’ve been hard on him about his MLW duties, but not nearly as hard as one probably should be. It has not been as apparent as it was during this match that Joey Styles is completely mailing it in, not caring in the slightest about what he’s calling. I don’t even think bringing in a color guy would help now; they need to actually relegate Styles to backstage interviews where he gets tussled and tugged and pawed at ala Mean Gene Okerlund style. He has become that worthless. As Styles speaks words that mention how tough Eddie Colon is, having fought the likes of Abdullah The Butcher and all, I am emotionless. Lynn practically falls over backwards leaning for an inverted DDT before Colon does his part of the move. Colon ducks a punch off the ropes and hits a neckbreaker and we enter the-young-kid-getting-two-counts segment of the match, and again, Styles sounds as if he’s more interested in clipping his toenails while calling it. Wrestling needs emotion or it’s just two dudes pretending to be fighting each other under an expensive lighting rig on a roped stage. Sure, live, it’s up to the wrestlers to bring that emotion, but the whole point of having someone do commentary is to get certain things across to the viewer at home. Styles doesn’t do that, and pretty much has made me not care about Eddie Colon at all in the process.
The Extreme Horsemen promo: Corino is a renowned talker, but he talks too goddamned much in these Horsemen promos. Simon Diamond is not bad, but I always feel he lacks the passion he had when he’d be talking about destroying The Cheetah Master in Delaware back in the day, and C.W. Anderson is lyrical methadone, even when limited as he is to a couple of lines. I wish C.W. had grown up in Alabama instead of Carolina and was C.W. Stubbs, nephew of Jerry. He’s much better designed for that role. P.J. Walker comes out, overblown as always, in a John Deere t-shirt, and with his Gen-X goatee and shaved head, I imagine he’s been as close to a tractor in his life as I have to a Clique summer cook-out, complete jumbo shrimp, shark steaks, and “classy” strippers doubling as life partners.
The War Games recap: I dug it last week, but if you show something for half an hour last week, you’d better not have a five minute recap the following week unless it involves Santa Claus causing Dusty Rhodes to lose a loser-leaves-town cage match or someone getting their head shaved. As I watch it, I think, “This better end well to justify this shit,” and Joey Styles re-busts his two “Oh My God”s from last week, so he owes me nine bucks now. The slow motion replay of the fire-blowing into Corino’s face was nice, but it ends with Fonzie? Talking about Christopher Daniels? Sabu holding a sizable gutter nail aside, this was worthless. Do these people actually think about this stuff as they plan out episodes, or is it like art student public access madness, where they plan it on the fly, just with much glitzier production levels?
Nosawa vs. Raven: Styles hypes this as Nosawa’s return after an earlier loss to Raven shamed him, but shit, two weeks ago he was teaming with B-Boy billed as Homicide in a tag match. Goddamn, if you only have 23 viewers, you don’t need to be insulting the intelligence of the 17 of them who are actually paying attention. Raven’s head is shorn, post TNA main event angle, and Styles makes some stupid comparison to this new-look Raven being like when he first showed up in ECW. This match sucked, and was a standard Raven squash against an indy guy not on his level of marquee status, and ends with the old Nosawa holding Raven for CM Punk to smash, but Raven amazingly ducks, and Nosawa gets clobbered, then DDTed, and that’s that. Joey Styles made this episode shit. I may try it on mute next week and listen to Leon Russell.