Wrestling
Feuds Should Make Sense
By Matt Ditaliano
Jan 28, 2004, 02:45

I�m BA-ACK!

I bet you guys thought you�d never see me on this site again! Ha! Wishful thinking says I.

Now, I�m sure you want some kind of explanation as to why I haven�t posted an article since the Carter Administration. Well, I don�t exactly have one, so please accept this pointless rambling in its place. The basic story is that I just went totally creatively dry around October of last year. I had nothing to write about, and nothing that even really particularly interested me on the programs as a whole.

Sure, I suppose I could have just wrote something for the sake of writing something, but that would have been a waste of everyone�s time and energy. Did anyone really need my viewpoint on the unspeakably bad Eddie vs. Big Show and Kurt vs. Cena feuds that stunk up Smackdown for most of October? A septic truck? Rap offs? MIDGETS? Or on the Raw side, we had the Randy Orton push escalating to ridiculous levels.

Hey, I just gave my opinion. Would you look at that.

So, basically I just decided to ride it out until I found something in the product that either annoyed me to the point of near insanity or that actually made me somewhat happy. And guess what? I found one of both within the last couple of weeks.

The good, is of course, Chris Benoit finally winning the Royal Rumble and heading to a world title match at Wrestlemania XX. On top of that, he not only went from number one to the end, he beat out Shawn�s length. And on top of all that, he outlasted Backlund�s longevity record by about half a minute. Of course, he�s gone to Raw for some unexplained reason, but at this point�well, it�s bad.

Okay, enough of that pleasantness.

Let�s move on to the crap. And speaking of crap, I�m gonna get a lot of it for this rant. I HATE this Kurt Angle vs. Eddy Guerrero feud. HATE HATE HATE. It�s probably the last thing I want to see either guy doing at the biggest show of the year, and I�m damn pissed that it�s what we�re going to end up seeing. Don�t get me wrong, I like the prospect of a great match and the rumors that it will be for the belt. But I just don�t like the current story or any direction it can logically progress in.

I�ll be honest. I can be somewhat nitpicky when it comes to feuds, but I hate it when I have to take a huge leap in logic to have it make any sense whatsoever. In this Kurt/Eddie feud, we have to leap over the Grand Canyon.

First of all, why the hell is Kurt anywhere near Eddie Guerrero? What is his character motivation? It simply makes no sense. Sure, plenty of people have tried to offer suggestions as to why Kurt would have been in the family feud and then would start a feud with Latino Heat. Of course, they hold absolutely no water, as I�ll demonstrate now.

The first and most ridiculous reason that I will argue against is the idea that Angle was stirring shit between uncle and nephew in order to get the elder Guerrero out of the Royal Rumble and thin the field for Kurt. Uhm, no. If Kurt were trying to thin out the field heading into the pay per view, he�d be going after all the contenders, not just randomly singling one out. In fact, Guerrero wasn�t even being built up as a top threat in the Rumble. Why wasn�t Kurt harassing Benoit or Cena and organizing matches for them at the show? Is Kurt supposed to be playing an idiot who has no idea what�s going on again? Because that�s not really the impression I got from his acting. Tazz and Michael Cole certainly weren�t selling it like that.

If they wanted to run that storyline, the ideal move would be to have Kurt slowly, and sneakily (but make it obvious to the audience) knock off the competition one by one. Start some real shit between Cena and Show and force them out of the Rumble and into a match at the show. Get Benoit inserted into the title match. Finally, have him begin to create trouble with Eddy and Chavo, and have Eddy actually call him on it to plant the seeds. THEN it would make sense to have Kurt thinning out the field.

The second suggestion was that Kurt Angle was legitimately crusading for family values. Huh? Kurt Angle? How does that fit in with his character at all? Kurt has always been a guy who is willing to sacrifice his family for what he wants. Let�s take a trip down memory lane. The time was Survivor Series �00, and Kurt is scared shitless of the Undertaker. So what�s Kurt�s solution? Hide Eric Angle under the ring and let UT beat him up so Kurt could sneak a pin in? And then the next night he let Taker throw Eric off a stage? What about when he pulled THE SAME STUNT with Brock Lesnar? Or when he tried to cheat on his wife with Stephanie McMahon? TWICE? Kurt is not exactly your consummate family man, and trying to portray him as such is just totally going against his character. Kurt is such a great family man, huh? Yeah, there ya go.

Of course, maybe if he was supposed to be a hypocrite it would work, but they can�t even give us that much. Kurt is being represented as a completely honest man. Guerrero hasn�t called him out on it past the �why are you involved in my family business� route. Michael Cole makes him out to be bigger face that Eddie, for Christ sakes. This idea is almost worse than the first.

The hits just keep on coming though. Why, Kurt is doing this because he just HATES Eddie so much! What do you mean �huh?� What, are you saying you don�t remember them hating each other. You�re crazy. CRAZY, I SAY! The Smackdown Six! You know, back in the fall of 2002? Like two and a half years ago? Where Kurt and Eddie had some kind of vague dislike of each other based on the tag titles and a series of matches they had against each other in a tag setting? Yeah, that. That�s the reason Kurt has come back to torment Eddie. Yep.

Along the same lines, we have the �Kurt is jealous of Eddie�s pop from the summer of 03� excuse. Sure, that makes sense. Kurt was so irritated by the huge face reactions that Latino Heat was getting in July that he�ignored it for six months. Some burning ambition you have, Kurt. Sure, Kurt was injured for December, but if this Eddie issue bothered him that much, he had from July to November to take care of it. He couldn�t care less. It wasn�t even something he put on the back burner for a month like he did with his Brock feud when he had THAT feud with Cena. He just never even acknowledged it.

Well, maybe he was just festering. Festering, I say! In fact, while you may have thought that he had his sites set on Brock and the WWE title, he was actually plotting his revenge against that evil Eddie. He wasn�t putting his heart into the most prestigious prize in the business because his deep personal hatred of Eddie was clouding his mind and�I give up. I can�t find a way to justify that excuse. It�s late and I have no patience for any of that.


I don�t think I ask for so much. I just want my wrestling to make sense. Is that really so much? I think it�s like a basic necessity for wrestling feuds. Unfortunately, the WWE doesn�t really think so. They take a good idea in theory, such as pitting Angle and Guerrero against each other at Mania and bog it down so much with a stupid feud that it�s basically killed all my interest in seeing that

And that makes me sad.

Until next time�

This has been

Uh�Me.

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