TNA
WWE Confidential Recap (10.18.03)
By Alex Padrino
Oct 19, 2003, 18:36

For those of you who care to remember, I did a couple of WWF tape reviews during the summer months and it seemed that I was destined to produce one on a regular basis. Long story short, a series of events came along (most not of the serious nature) that prevented me from doing anything for a while, but since any reason lost its validity at least a month ago, let�s just call it laziness on my part. Fear not, I shall return with a fresh review within the next week.

That brings us to this particular column. Why am I here? As some of you already know, the regular WWE Confidential recapper, Peter Kostka is big pimping this week in Miami, leaving me with the task of watching a program that I�m �lucky� to catch once every other month.

When Peter first asked me to do this, I was a little hesitant. After all, at the time it seemed as if my favorite baseball team, the Chicago Cubs, was heading to the World Series, which of course, started Saturday night. Unfortunately, the baseball gods deemed the notion of a Boston Red Sox/Chicago Cubs World Series to be out of the question, and hence, here we are with the showdown no one wanted to see, the New York Yankees taking on the pesky Florida Marlins. You can just feel the apathy, can�t you? Figures that one of the best baseball postseasons in years would end in such an anti-climatic fashion, but what can you do? Since my hopes and dreams have been dashed, we can now set our focus on this show, which means the situation is even worse than I originally thought.

- WWE Confidential for the week of 10/18/03: Road life with Kurt Angle, a Trish Stratus segment from her new home video, and more.

- Our host as usual is Mean Gene, and I�ll be damned if I don�t forget he�s even with the company until I turn on this show. They�ve done a nice job sweeping him under the rug, although with commentators and announcers like WWE has, perhaps they shouldn�t be trying so hard to hide the guy.

Gene lets us know what we can expect from this edition of Confidential, which leads me to wonder if Peter really is in Miami or just sitting at home and laughing at the fact that he�s pawned this show off on someone else.

- Road Life with Kurt Angle- I guess it was decided that we all wonder what it�s like to be on an International tour, so WWE was kind enough to have cameras follow Kurt around while he goes through five days of touring.

Angle talks about how tough it is to leave behind his family while he tours, noting that he isn�t looking forward to the day when his daughter asks him not to leave. Day One is focused primarily on that, as well as the trip to the first stop, Turku, Finland.

We cut to Day Two, which features Kurt taking a tour of the sites that Turku has to offer, including a castle. Pretty uninformative tour here and we�re then suddenly taken to the live event during the evening, which only shows Kurt going down to the ring.

It�s now Day Three and we�re off to Germany. Angle visits a chocolate factory and even is kind enough to explain the different machines and process in the factory to a little kid, who proceeds to tell him to, �Shut the hell up.� Ok, so he didn�t say that, but you could tell that�s what he was thinking. Another night, another live event. Same sort of clips that Day Two offered. In other words, nothing special.

We�re off to England, as it�s now Day Four. It seems as if they�re double-dipping, because Day Five is also in England. Really nothing special shown, aside from the now repetitive clips of Angle going down to the ring. Oh yeah, he calls his wife on Day Five to wish her a happy birthday. Yup, quite the exciting experience this International touring bit is.

And that is it. Color me disappointed, even with Angle being unable to make this segment worth any of your time. It was built up to sound like we�d know exactly what going on such a tour was like. If that�s true, then I guess all these guys do for five days is visit a chocolate factory and call their wives.

I wouldn�t mind these segments too much if there was some sort of effort put forth, but you don�t get anything out of this segment, even if you�re a fan of chocolate. 0/1

- Outside the Ropes with Jamie Noble- I�m taking it this is a regular feature on the show, but this is the first time I�ve seen it. Tough Enough I flunky Josh Matthews conducts the series of 10 questions, with this week�s guest being the most popular hick in WWE since Hillbilly Jim, Jamie Noble.

I�m not even going to go through each question, since half of them are about trailer parks, but for your comedic enjoyment, there�s some questions pertaining to homosexuality, incest, and stereotypes. After watching this, I felt like Troy McClure in the Simpson�s 138th Show Spectacular after he watches their first short from the Tracy Ullman Show and realizes that he�s supposed to be laughing. 0/2

- Trish Stratus Home Video Clip- This entire segment is lifted from the recently-released Trish Stratus video from WWE Home Video. Even though I find Trish to be overexposed, she seems like one of the more intelligent and down-to-earth Divas on the WWE roster.

The clip we�re shown includes interviews with her family members, who discuss what Trish was like growing up, as well as how she got into sports and wrestling. Trish also goes into the story about how she wanted to go to med school, but a strike took place right before she was ready to begin. She was discovered by a photographer from Muscle Mag, which more or less got her foot in the door for modeling. She appeared on TSN�s Off the Record a number of times, which is where she was first able to let it be known that she was a wrestling fan and would like to get into the business some day.

Trish recalls the bidding war that took place over her between WWE and WCW, with WWE winning out in the end because her �loyalty had always lied with them.�

Overall, a surprisingly interesting segment, and god help me, it actually made me want to see the rest of the video. Women wrestling hasn�t ever appealed much to me (within WWE, at least), but I was able to look over that fact because of how well done the segment was. 1/3

- From the Vault: Shawn Michaels vs. Marty Jannetty- This would be the former duo�s only meeting on PPV, taking place at Royal Rumble �93, with the Intercontinental title on the line. For the four of you who don�t know, these two once comprised one of the most popular tag teams of the 1980�s, The Rockers. By late 1991, the duo began to show signs of dissension (even though the real-life tension had begun a year prior to that) and by January of 1992, things came to a head, as Michaels officially turned on Jannetty during an edition of the Barbershop on Wrestling Challenge. Michaels capped off the attack by throwing Marty through the glass window of the Barbershop, solidifying his heel turn and triggering what would become one of the most successful single�s run of the 90�s.

While Shawn�s solo career took off, Marty fell out of sight, only to resurface eight months later to confront Shawn, who by that point, had taken on Sherri Martel as his manager and was about to become the Intercontinental champion. After a brief brawl between the two, Marty was looking for his revenge on Michaels, as he was ready to smash Shawn with his own vanity mirror. Michaels, being the cowardly heel that he was, pulled Sherri in front of him, resulting in her taking the mirror shot, and Shawn heading for the hills.

And all of that is what led up to the match in question. As per the usual with these segments, the match is brutally clipped, but when viewed in its original length, it�s one of the few reasons to watch the event. On an unrelated note, the late Stu and Helen Hart can be seen sitting at ringside. A bit odd, seeing as how Stu passed away just a couple of days ago.

While it would�ve been nice for them to let the casual viewer know why this match was so important and what Sherri�s role in the match was, this was still a solid segment, especially since we got to hear the classic commentating tandem of Gorilla Monsoon and Bobby Heenan. 2/4

- Los Guerreros in Finland- A fairly short segment here, as we follow Eddie and Chavo around the streets of Turku, Finland, in search of items to steal. Highlights include Eddie questioning what kind of country is it because they don�t have any low riders, as well as the duo being unable to find a mamacita above the age of 16. Not really a point to the segment, but these two are always good for a couple of laughs. 3/5

- Randy Orton Photo Shoot for RAW Magazine- I never saw the point of turning photo shoots into a segment. They�re almost always uneventful, pointless, and in the end, a waste of time, which is exactly what this one is. Randy�s forced and unconvincing prima donna act is displayed here, as he�s sure that all of the models involved in the shoot want him. This push is going to flop worse than the Bluechipper Rocky Maivia did and the end results aren�t going to be anywhere near as pretty. 3/6

- Gene closes out the show reminding us that No Mercy is this Sunday. Only the �top� three matches are even mentioned here, and two guesses as to which match is mentioned last, as if it's the most important one on the show. I don�t want to go into a rant about what�s wrong with WWE, but when you�re booking your PPV�s so that a match involving a member (or two in this case) of the McMahon family is the headlining match on the card, you shouldn�t be surprised that the buyrates are garbage. No one�s cared about the McMahon family since 1999 at the very latest, so why they insist on booking themselves at the top of shows that people pay upwards of $35 for is beyond me. I think I�d rather watch the World Series than this poor excuse for a PPV.

As for the show, a decent, if not uneventful show. I think the program�s at its best when it does historical pieces or at least something that�s truly interesting. The Trish segment was surprisingly good, but aside from that, the three-minute From the Vault segment was the only other thing that this show had going for it.

Anyway, Peter will be back next week and hopefully, next week�s Confidential is a little better to him than it was for me. In the meantime, why not drop me a line?

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