?Reported by Eric Lewis of WrestleView.com

On Tuesday, January 18, 2005 at 11:51 PM EST

Well, it's been longer than I thought. The good news is, I now have a car on the road, I'm getting paid more at my job and they're sending me to cover a big music event.

Anyway, on to wrestling... I've started writing this column three times. This time I will finish it.

Last night's RAW was a pretty good one overall. I was glad to see a few solid matches, especially Chris Jericho and Chris Benoit's match. I was shocked to see Jericho get over on that one. Nothing against him, but I would just think they'd have Benoit win. What the hell happened to Benoit? He lost the World Title months ago and he's been doing nothing since. I don't get it. The fans are behind him, but if he keeps getting lost in the shuffle...

Man, the Kane VS. Snitsky thing ended on a rough note, eh? I know they can't send the guys plummeting off a skyscraper or anything, but to me it looked like they might have fallen five feet, tops. And when the camera panned over to them, Kane and Snitksy were talking! Two minutes later, as the show closed, they were passed out. Just didn't look very good. And why is it when Kane gets his throat crushed the first time, he's out for months... but when it's reinjured, he's out for a week? Just explain that.

I'm getting really impatient for Batista to finally just clock Triple H. They're giving this one some time to build, but they're being a little sloppy with it. Instead of having Batista look like he's going to blow at the end of every show and having him be perfectly calm the next show, they should have him slowly get angrier. I can't complain too much though, now I'm just being picky. In any event, when he finally loses it, lets hope David Bautista does all us rasslin' fans a favour and he really hits the big-nosed bastard so he'll stay the hell off our TVs for a few months. Hell, powerbomb him off the Titantron, I say!

And just how the hell did he wind up champ AGAIN at New Year's Revolution??? I know, a lot of internet writers were guessing he would be, but that doesn't mean you had to give it to us, Vince! Now he's the 10-time champ. Wonderful.

On to Shawn Michaels. It's funny, Michaels seems legitimately fed up with being treated like crap in Canada. I can imagine! It has been nearly 8 years. I think it's time to drop the subject. But I do find it funny. hehe

Now on to the pay-per-view everyone seems to have hated except for me. Now, every match on the card was a let down, except for the last one. My BIG question is WHY, if this was the first WWE PPV held in Puerto Rico, would they make it such a bad PPV? You would think they'd want to come in strong so when they go back, people would want to come back and see more! Was the mentality here, "Oh, it's just Puerto Rico"? You guys better be careful, because when you can't even sell out a PPV in your home country anymore, foreign lands are your best friends.

And I read that WWE officials considered it basically a "one match pay-per-view." Now, forget Puerto Rico... why would you EVER create a one match pay-per-view? It's a freakin' PAY-PER-VIEW. Your fans PAY to see your product!!! This ain't free TV!!! It looked like a solid PPV going in, so we were fooled into buying crap. And they wonder why buyrates are down.

Now, I said I didn't hate the PPV. Maybe it's because I only see maybe one PPV for every 5 or so, I don't know. But I thought the main event, with the exception of the outcome, was an awesome match. Everyone performed well, even Triple H. He shouldn't have won the belt, but he still should get credit for performing well.

I've bitched and moaned about Ric Flair A LOT lately. Regular readers will know my position on him. But in my last column, I simply asked everyone why I should care about this legend so much. Before I go any further, here's most of an e-mail I received from Thelma Walden, a very nice wrestling fan who shared her views on Flair with me. I'm still sick of the guy, but at least I got an answer to my question. And I can't deny what Ms. Walden has said either.

"What made Ric so great is that inside the ring or out, he was always in character. I saw one of his first tv matches in High Point, NC in 1974/5... He won his first match, no big deal, but then he started to talk. And man, did he ever have a lot to say. It was on the scale of a great evangelist... He made you dislike him immensely, which is a lost art among many of the "new superstars" of today. You were hoping he'd get his butt kicked, just because he was so arrogant. And when he won, it just make you watch even more, hoping that someone would beat the crap out of him. Fast forward to the 80's and enter in Ricky Steamboat, one of the best wrestlers during that era (I think that he should have held the WWF World title, but I digress). He was the exact opposite of Flair and their confrontations were magical. They could really tell a story. Later on, there was Nikita Kolof, Magnum TA and a very young, chrismatic Sting. All of these guys were better than Flair, but Flair had that heel persona down pat. No one could elicit such emotion as Ric Flair. And when you would see him out in public (which I have), he was still his arrogant, obnoxious self. And as a smark, mark or whatever, you really enjoyed that moment--whether you were a fan of his or not...

Let me tell you a couple of Ric Flair stories. The first one occurred in a nightclub in Greensboro, NC. Some friends of my were there that night and they related this story to me like this: Flair was in the club talking to some women. Some of the local guys came up and taunted Flair, saying, "You're not in the ring now, doing that fake wrestling thing. So whatta going to do now, Mr. Big Time Wrestler?" When the smoke cleared, two of the guys were headed to the hospital while Ric walked out with a lady on each arm.

The other story I experience myself. I was on my way home one night and stopped in a convience store to buy a soda. There were several teenaged boys there (I was 21-22) and who should walk in but Ric Flair. One of the teenages asked Ric if he had won his match that night, presumably because Flair had a patch on his forehead. Flair looked at the guys and said, "what are you trying to be, a tough guy or something?' He never said if he won the match but the look on that kid's face showed that he had won some thing more--a fan for life. What was considered one of the biggest wrestling stars in the world had treated this kid just like he treated everyone in his wrestling world and the kid loved it. To top it off, when I got to my car, Flair was sitting in the car beside me with no other than Arn Anderson behind the wheel. We were both headed down I-85 (I lived in Thomasville, NC and they lived in Charlotte). We raced down the highway until I had to turn off. It was such fun and it made them seem like real people.

Now it may seem that I think Flair is great, but in actuality. I don't. Most of the guys I mentioned earlier (especially Steamboat) could run rings around Flair. But because of his antics, he made them all look great and thus made himself look great."

Thanks to Thelma for her funny stories and interesting insight into Flair. It doesn't really change my opinion, but it does make me see a bit of what I hadn't been seeing.

And now, here are my random thoughts on New Year's Revolution, just to sum the whole stupid thing up:

I missed the first match due to technical issues... what's funny is when I couldn't tune in, that was the first match I thought of when thinking about what match I wouldn't care if I missed... Maven played the crowd really well... I was hoping for a real match, but Shelton Benjamin pinning him twice was so funny I didn't care... Lita's injury to me was the tragedy of the night... she and Trish put on a five-star match weeks ago on RAW and I was hoping for a repeat... Kane and Snitsky had a good old-school big man match. Not great, but better than I expected... the best part of the King and Muhammad Hussan's match was Khosrow Daivari's screaming at ringside. He was just belting out the screams. It was hilarious. He sounded like someone was lowering him slowly into a woodchipper.

And here are a few more thoughts for you, about anything and everything:

-- On a scale of 1 - 10, just how stupid WAS the pillow fight last Monday? You think anyone takes note of this? There must be someone in the back whose job it is to convince everyone that horrible things on the show really aren't that bad.

-- If you were Hurricane, wouldn't you just kill yourself?

-- I love how the Rock is still used in all the promos for stuff when he has nothing to do with wrestling anymore.

-- Why don't they move every tag team to one show? Then we might actually have a tag team roster. Women's division on RAW, cruiserweights on Smackdown. They should throw Hurricane over there. Tag teams on... Smackdown. They need 'em more than RAW does. RAW has a huge main event crew. Keep the mid-card (IC and US) belts where they are.

-- So is Stone Cold almost sort of back AGAIN?

-- Anyone know if Viscera has actually been given a contract again? I'm thinkin' he just pops up in time for RAW each week, so the writers, given their penchant for last minute writing, go "HEY! We need a jobber for such and such this week! You want in, or shall we give it to Hurricane?"

Wooo! Well, if you stuck with me through all of that, I must thank you. Here's hoping I can keep up with this and belt out another column for early next week. Send me some feeback!

Cheers,

Eric
kissfan_5@wrestleview.com