I’m a recent college grad who works in event planning. I’ve been watching wrestling since the early 90’s. The first wrestling match I went to was when I was around 9 or 10, and it was Survivor Series with the main event being Bret Hart vs. Diesel in a no DQ match for the title in Landover, MD. Since then I’ve been to many live events: WWE, WCW, ppv’s, house shows, TV, and indy shows. The most recent match I went to was last year in Charlotte. It happened to be Chris Benoit’s last match (it was against Elijah Burke). I watch RAW every Monday, Smackdown usually, ECW hardly ever, and TNA sometimes. To me, wrestling has always been a unique entertainment experience. It is different than anything on television: it builds a show around the incidental magniloquence and flare of actual sport, artificially creating those outrageous moments and heated conflicts that sometimes occur in real sports, and turning it into an episodic television drama. The matches are fixed but the experience is similar to watching sports because the entertainment is drawn from the same kind of drama. Thankfully, however, wrestling is predetermined and almost always guaranteed to be entertaining while real sports are sometimes wholly disappointing bore-fests.

That being said, what I like in wrestling are moments, angles, feuds that are based in the athletic/sport dramatic element. Performers who make it look as if they are actually competing against each other while executing dangerous, skillful, and physical maneuvers are the best. Realism + flash + big-bump = good wrestling match. In my opinion, the best wrestlers are those who are able to deliver a good match, again and again, with creativity and flare. I would name my favorites, but it is futile because some of the best wrestlers are those we never see because great wrestlers generally do not get big pushes. That is a complaint of mine you’ll be hearing a lot of in the future, no need to elaborate now.

Now that you have an idea of where I come from as a wrestling fan, it is time to move on to what will be the meat and potatoes of my weekly column…

Turgid Worm’s RAW Impressions:

I am loving Jericho’s reign as World Champ right now. His whining, “I get no respect,” heel persona is one of his best character roles. He plays the whiny baby as well as Shawn Michaels played the cocky bad-boy. It is a shame that Lance Cade had a seizure (which I assume was alcohol induced) and got fired because this character works well if the champ has some muscle to threaten people with.
Turgid Is As Turgid Does: I would keep the title on him and drive everyone crazy for as long as I could. Build some major heat with some really weasely title defenses.

It is fairly obvious that Stone Cold is going to be at Cyber Sunday, no matter how many $.99 text-messages Vince rakes in that say HBK. This is good, because Austin is awesome, but I don’t see how he fits in to the Jericho-Batista picture. I imagine that they use him on the show for the referee and then bring him back out to set something up for the rumored WrestleMania 25 match.
Turgid Is As Turgid Does: I see Austin vs Cena at WrestleMania being an astronomically huge draw. Especially if you turn Cena heel for it. Cena needs a little edge and I think him pulling some shenanigans on Austin could give it to him.

Mike Adamle still botches something at least once every episode and I don’t think anyone really knows why he is the GM.
Turgid Is As Turgid Does: Mike’s role should be played as the annoyingly aloof and incompetent “The Office” type of boss. The WWE certainly is not unfamiliar with stealing material from current pop-culture, and USA is an NBC network so there may be some potential for cross promotion. Either way, Adamle comes off as aloof and incompetent anyways, why not make it intentional and get some laughs (ratings?) out of it?

It is a little naïve of me to think that talented wrestlers should get real pushes based on their work rate and ability to perform in the ring, but this Haas gimmick is too much. Maybe it was funny once or twice, but coming out every week and getting squashed by JBL while performing other wrestlers’ gimmicks is career suicide. Yes, Haas is getting TV time, but he is not showcasing his real ability at all. Any ham-and-egger can mimic other wrestlers, why waste this stupid role on someone who is actually talented and has proven himself time and time again. It will take a stroke of writing genius to re-instill some genuine interest in Haas as a wrestler after this gimmick runs out. And what does this do for JBL? Nothing. This is nothing but pure mid-card time filler. If I were at the show I would have gotten a beer during that match.
Turgid Is As Turgid Does: I would much rather see Haas vs. Paul London in a solid 10-15 minute match. But I guess good wrestling doesn’t get to that cheap-pop ratings niche that Vince so craves.

The Rey Mysterio Jr./Kane program confuses me a little. Why exactly does Kane hate Rey so much? “Something to do with his mask, and Kane is a psycho-path.” Oh, okay, I guess that works. But as fragile as Rey is, wouldn’t you want to put him in with someone a little smaller. Maybe the big guy is able to protect him more. I don’t know. But Rey is always entertaining to watch wrestle. The Rey v. Snitsky match was solid: quick spots, no botches, get the job done and put Rey over.
Turgid Is As Turgid Does: Put Rey in the tag title picture with Evan Bourne or the IC title against Santino. Hell, put him in the World title picture against Jericho. But definitely keep giving him 10 to 15 minutes every Monday night.

The Miz and Morrison promo before the tag match against Kofi and Punk was well done, I thought. It showed their ability to give an entertaining promo while putting themselves over as punk-heels. I really liked this match. Kofi Kingston is probably the most talented guy in any WWE locker room, with Punk and Morrison somewhere up there with him. For whatever reason-- maybe the crowd, maybe the position on the card-- the energy seemed to lack a little bit in the middle of this match. Otherwise it was a great match for RAW with a lot of innovative and exciting spots and a strong finish. Great stuff!
Turgid Is As Turgid Does: Get Paul London in the ring with some of these guys, please!

Santino is hilarious. He doesn’t need the IC title I think because it somewhat demeans the title. But I’m not hating it.
Turgid Is As Turgid Does: Keep the mic in his hand. Keep him with Beth Phoenix.

I would have liked to have seen Priceless actually wrestle. These guys are certainly the future of the WWE and they need to invest more time in them on RAW. Hopefully soon, with Orton returning, we will see the formation of this legacy stable. It is certainly a cool idea and these guys definitely have the skills to take that ball and run with it.
Turgid Is As Turgid Does: Give Priceless and match and keep Haas in the locker room if all he’s going to do is waste time and get squashed.

The gauntlet match, I must say, was pretty dumb. It was just confusing. What does it do for the first two heels to get beat by Batista? What does it do for Jericho to have him lose twice? I think this was an attempt at something new that just didn’t come out right. I know you have to do something with Jericho and Batista in the main event, but this was not it.
Turgid Is As Turgid Does: Finish RAW with HBK and Batista vs. Jericho and Kane or something like that. I know it is boring and its been done before but its much better than the fuster cluck that ended RAW last night.

So that’s that. These are simply my opinions, take them as you will. I welcome any and all feedback so please write in with your reactions/comments. Again, thank you for reading and remember: if its worth doing, its worth doing with turgidity.

Peace