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" The Gravel Pit "
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Wrestling
Responding to Mr. Goodhart
Posted by Matt Ditaliano on Sep 6, 2003, 12:48
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Hey folks! I�m back! Does anyone actually remember me?
Yeah, I know, I haven�t posted at TheSmartmarks.com for almost a month now. Now, I didn�t get frantic e-mails asking where I was.(though, strangely, I did get a lot of porn). However, since I love you all I will give you an explanation. Please note that the reason I am even bothering to explain myself is that �m a self-delusional mess who thinks you care. Also I want to make this column bigger.
The main and most important reason is that I have finally, FINALLY bought my ass a social life. I found some of my friends who were friends in the sense that we saw each other a couple of times a year, and started to go out with them just about every night. So now my life isn�t just �work, read, go online, complain about what a loser I am.� Of course, I�ve picked quite possibly the strangest group of people on earth, but that�s a story for another day.
The other reason for my dormant period is that I have found basically nothing to write about. Nothing has offended me to the point where I have to come on and type about it (like Hell in a Cell or the Angle return.) immediately and have you all call me stupid. On the flip side, nothing (Apart from the drastic Taker improvement, which I plan on writing about) Has impressed me to the point where I feel I should drop everything and shower it with praise. Since nothing really stood out, I decided not to write anything, rather than write just for the sake of writing. I did this once and it resulted in my least favorite (but ironically one of the top feedback getters) columns, my RVD one.
I know what you�re probably thinking. You�re thinking �Well, then Matt, what has gotten you to grace us with your humorous and witty (if not slightly nihilistic) views on life?� Well, good reader, I went to TheSmartMarks.com, as I do every day, and read a column by the esteemed Mark Goodhart.
Now, Mr. Goodhart and I have had some ups and downs on the message board. This is probably unavoidable, seeing as how we have hugely different opinions on the WWF. However, I certainly have no ill will towards the guy, and I�m sure he�d say the same about me. I�m not on some personal vendetta against Mark. In fact, I�d say in recent months, we have gotten along better than we have in the year and a half or so that we have been posting together on the board.
However, that doesn�t mean that I�m going to blindly agree with him. If I see something that he says that I find to be wrong or baseless, I�ll call him out on it. I should hope he would do the same for me. That being said, I felt the need to respond to Mark�s most recent column, where he wrote an open letter to the membership of TheSmartMarks.com message board. Since I am a member of the board (A fairly high profile one at that) and a member of TheSmartMarks.com staff (can�t you just FEEL Dames cringing at that statement?) I took it upon myself to issue a reply to Mr. Goodhart on behalf of myself and the board itself. Hopefully I�m not overstepping my boundaries.
Why yes, that was another patented Ditaliano blathering 600-word introduction �, which is sure to rival the actual body of the article. Why do you ask?
Moving right along (Pun intended)�
As most of you know, I have been in this posting community since about December 2001. I was here for the end of the old Smarks EZBoard, the original Smarks Invision Board, and the eventual turn over to TSM. So I think I�m within my rights when I say I know this board and the people who use it pretty well.
I can honestly say, that while, yes, we can be very bitter and often come across as extremely jaded, we do love wrestling. We, as a whole, don�t want to hate it. We have devoted years of our lives and spent huge sums of money on it. We have gone out of our way (and made ourselves look like real losers in the process) to watch, even on ridiculous days to watch wrestling, like Christmas and Thanksgiving. I think anyone taking time out of the biggest holidays of the year to watch fake fighting is devoted.
Now, in exchange for our time and money, we demand a good product. We don�t merely ask or suggest that they pump out a good show, we demand it. I don�t think that we are greedy or overstepping our bounds in any way. We give a lot to one Vincent Kennedy McMahon, and I don�t think it�s unreasonable to ask that he give back somewhat. And what I mean by give back is �give us what we want.� Vince has to come to the realization that if he runs a company based solely on what he wants, without even looking into the demands of the fans, he�s going to go bankrupt. There is no way to change that. If George Steinbrenner decided that he liked Jeff Weaver so much that he was going to make 25 Weaver Clones and field a team of Weavers, all signed to 20 year contracts, the Yankees would bomb, and slowly but surely, no one would want to see the Yankees anymore. Sure, George might be happier than a pig in shit, but his fanbase would be furious. And to just ignore them would be disaster. Obviously, baseball is different from wrestling, but I�d say that it is more durable. The Yankees would last longer using Vince tactics than WWF will if they keep up at this rate.
I also have to disagree with your assessment our assessments (say that five times fast :p ) of wrestlers. It�s common �anti-smark� rhetoric to say that we see everything as black and white �great or horrible.� I think that is absolutely false. Personally, I think there are plenty of wrestlers who are fine wrestlers without being over the top great. Matt Hardy is a fine example. He�s not Godlike, but he routinely goes out there and puts on very watchable wrestling matches. John Cena is certainly not great, but with the exception of any match with Brock Lesnar, he never puts on something horrible. On Raw, guys like Goldust and Hurricane are examples of good workers who aren�t gods. I see these guys acknowledged almost weekly for their good efforts. No one claims they are God�s gift to wrestling, but I�ve never seen someone call them horrible.
On the flip side, if you go out there week after week and never seem to have a good match, darn right we�re going to get on your case. Besides all the money that Vince is paying talent to perform well, I also feel they have an obligation to the fans to put on a good match every week. If they refuse, or are incapable, I am sure that someone is willing and able to fill his shoes. And that�s the way it should be. I don�t have a problem with demanding that an incompetent be replaced.
You bring up the topic of Randy Orton. Obviously, I�m biased, so I�m not going to get too far into this subject, but this is the way I look at it. You are in a major company, and your mail boy was a nice enough guy, but a bit on the incompetent side. He�s also the CEO�s best friend�s son. He shows some glimpses of mail delivering ability, but more often than not, your mail is lost, or if you do get it, appears to have been opened. You happen to know that there is someone who would make a much more competent mail boy waiting in the wings. But since the current one has some �stroke� he�ll never get the job.
Now, do you petition to get the mail boy replaced? (There is an absolute guarantee of no repercussions from up above.) Or do you just wait by and hope that this guy eventually improves?
If you picked the former, don�t you think you should hold wrestling to the same standard? If someone is more over and talented than Orton, yet Orton continues to get pushed under the assumption that he�ll eventually improve, don�t we have a right to complain? I think it�s our duty as a wrestling fan to try find ways to fix the problems in wrestling. Pushing the wrong people is probably the biggest.
I also object to your claim that we just ignore the good in favor of complaining about the bad. The fact of the matter is that the bad simply overshadows the good. It�s not some cynical approach at things. The World�s Greatest Tag Team has had great matches. So, logically, it makes sense to leave them off shows, and feud them with the APA where the main point of the angle is that Bradshaw thinks Shelton is a woman. I�m sorry, that�s just absolutely horrible. Eddy is putting on good matches every week, but just holding the US title is bad. There is absolutely no reason for someone this over and this good in the ring to be toiling around the midcard. Absolutely none. Give me one good reason that Eddy is not fighting for the world title. His size does not count. And who is an Eddy midcard feud helping? Certainly not Eddy. He�s too over for this. Not Cena. He�s already beaten Eddy three or four times. Neither one is going to get more over, nor neither will climb up the card. It�s a waste of everyone�s time. The McMahon�s dominate every single show, sometimes getting forty-five minutes of a two-hour show. That is unacceptable. Chris Benoit has become such a non-issue that I keep forgetting whom he�s feuding with. And I have no idea why they won�t just let him beat Albert, but whatever.
Speaking of Albert, your point on hosses does make a lot of sense. It takes some strength to do what they do. But let�s be honest. Powerbombs and press slams have become so common place that no one cares anymore. It�s all about what the fans react to. And, in general, big man offense has non-real reaction anymore. Why do you think Batista was such a bomb? No one cared that he could do a spinebuster. So, they should have stopped pushing him. Instead, he gets a big push (before hurting himself twice) to almost no reaction, while guys like RVD who get huge reactions are almost routinely left off pay per views. That is so illogical that it makes my head hurt, and it can only be explained through Vince�s big man fetish. There�s a major problem there.
Well, I hope this column proves to be a suitable counterpoint to Mark�s because I kept myself up late to type this up, and I�m tired and my hand hurts.
That reminds me, taking a month off does a lot for your hands. You should try it. And tell your boss that it�s a medical problem. I�d get a kick out of that. Well, actually, I don�t care either way, so please don�t take that as an okay to tell me how you play hooky from work.
I�m sure someone will anyway.
Ditaliano.
Feedback.
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