My First (And Probably Last) Live WWE Show

Like anyone who had spent any portion of the last ten years watching professional wrestling, I was floored when I heard of the double homicide-suicide involving Chris Benoit’s family. How? I wondered. How could something so horrible happen? Eventually my thoughts of “how?” turned to “why?” as to out of all the lurid and shady characters working as and for wrestlers, why did it have to be such a seemingly admirable person as Benoit? Recent developments suggest that head trauma damaging Benoit's brain led to a case of dimensia, which may in part explain, well, the inexplicable. Regardless, Congress is gearing up to force WWE employees to testify in Washington while conducting its own independent investigation into the matter—hopefully it goes smoother than whatever the hell George Mitchell is cooking up, or else our government really is that inept.

There are two periods of my life when I closely followed and greatly enjoyed pro wrestling: ages 7-10 during the peaks of Hulk Hogan and the Ultimate Warrior’s careers, and 1999 towards the end of 2002, my late adolescent/college years. The early period is easy to explain: wrestling was bright and colorful, and kids enjoyed it tremendously. Eventually, these young boys grew into angst-filled young adults who got a kick out of the fuck-you attitude that Vince McMahon (and to a lesser extent, the NWO in WCW) had conjured with such stars as Stone Cold Steve Austin and the Rock. The moment that got me hooked onto my latter wrestling infatuation was Stone Cold driving a beer truck out to the ring and dousing the Rock, Vince McMahon and his cronies in Bud Light. I don’t care how silly it sounds; at age 16, it was cool. And so I watched WWF Raw and Smackdown! as often as I could, occasionally catching a pay-per-view at a friend’s house, getting one or two t-shirts featuring D-Generation X, and renting the best wrestling games Nintendo 64 had to offer.

What was the moment that ended my love affair with wrestling? Well, other than wounding the product with the purchase of WCW and then completely destroying that company’s legitimacy and credibility, I was completely turned off by Triple H climbing into a casket and “banging” a manikin dressed up in a cheerleader’s outfit. It was the idiotic storyline to trump all the idiotic storylines at the time, and even worse, these storylines were taking over the actual wrestling, which even during the late ‘90s was still the chief way of identifying with WWE.

I wasn’t alone in reacting to what Vince and co. did towards the end of 2002; the WWE’s ratings, house gates and merchandising fell off tremendously, and they haven’t recovered since. They were on the upswing in 2005 and 2006, but the Benoit situation this summer may yet become a fatal blow, depending on how Congress acts throughout the rest of this year. (Put it this way: if Congress tells Vince directly that his performers can’t use steroids, there goes the company.)

But as of September 2007, WWE is still touring rigorously, and this past Sunday they came to Nationwide Arena for a taping of their Monday Night Raw show. Growing up in Cincinnati, my parents probably would have preferred that I go to a strip bar than a wrestling show, but now as an independent adult with reasonable income expenditures, I was too curious to pass up on a $20 ticket in the cheap seats and finally get to see what the WWE was like in person.

The crowd outside waiting for the doors to open was what you’d expect: mostly white and blue-collar as hell. (and yes, that's a grown man with a title belt; there were lots of those in attendence)

I sent this one to straightcashhomey.net after snapping it. Any time you see a grown man in the #45, you need to showcase it to greater mankind for their benefit.


A supplementary reason for attending RAW was to also get a look at what Nationwide Arena is like. The verdict? It’s a beauty. The interior concourse is very polished and modern, and there are a few interactive game ports for hockey and what not, and the food, while obviously overpriced, looked excellent and there was a good variety to choose from. The seats in the arena are also padded and very comfortable. It's a great venue, and I should come here for a Blue Jackets game sometime this winter.


I won’t lie: I was extremely surprised to see a Muslim family at a RAW taping. Those of you who follow wrestling know the WWE loves its xenophobia storylines, from the Iron Sheik to Le Resistance to the borderline racist character Mohammad Hassan a few years ago. They were into it too! Like most of the females at the show, these girls went nuts for John Cena.


Most people have told me how surprised they are to see that the ring looks much smaller in person than it does on television. I had the same reaction. WWE does lots of weird and controversial things, but their production quality is consistently first-rate.

A sign the company may on the downward spiral again: my $20 ticket was meant for the upper concourse nosebleeds, but upon purchasing it I found myself in the lower bowl in Row T, not very far from the ring at all. Seven or eight years ago a seat like that would have cost me $40-$50 dollars. As it was, the upper concourse was blacked out, save for some fans on the “TV side” of the ring.

Here’s the TV side:


And here’s the blackout side:


The WWE still boasts about selling out its TV shows, but that’s not been the case for a while now. Nationwide holds around 16,000 at capacity, I’d say the crowd was a healthy 11,000-12,000 people, many (like myself) buying tickets an hour before the show began.


I didn't take too many shots of the wrestling and interviews, seeing as you're not going to get anything memorable 75 yards away from everything. (Not even John Cena in a bigass T-shirt.) The wrestling itself was only so-so. The show began with opening matches that would be taped on Sunday Night Heat, including the likes of Val Venis, Super Crazy, and JIM HACKSAW DUGGAN. I’m not kidding, Hacksaw Duggan, who people thought was old when I was ten, was in the house. He is a BIG guy. All in all, the best wrestling occurred on the Sunday Night Heat taping, mostly because RAW these days (as it has been since about the time I stopped watching it regularly) has all these bullshit backstage segments that bore the hell out of you and take away from some good wrestling.


Case in point: the Triple H match towards the end of the evening. Here’s what Triple H’s evening consisted of: about two minutes of introduction while he did his poses and the crowd went nuts for him; a taped segment later on making fun of Vince’s family, and just about a minute of actual wrestling in his handicap match against Umaga and Carlito (the match was quickly a BS DQ when Carlito and Umaga attacked at the same time, whatever), followed by three minutes of beating the shit out of Umaga with a chair and his phallic-shaped sledgehammer. Yeah, Triple H is a huge star and the king of this industry, but Rock and Stone Cold didn’t have their matches only last a minute before posing endlessly, they performed the heck out of shows. Of course, considering Triple H bangs the boss’s wife, I’m guessing he has a little bit of sway in some of the programming.

Speaking of that boss? Hey, you gotta take a picture of Vince McMahon when you get the chance. Like Nixon visiting China, McMahon’s the only one whose personality and philosophy is twisted enough that he can transform what was once just a good ol’ wrasslin’ program into a marketable business conglomerate. Unfortunately, the conglomerate is still in muddy waters with not only the Benoit situation but also with shoddy storylines and programming. A McMahon family confrontation was the final TV segment of the show (they also had Cena wrestle Mr. Kennedy afterwards to entertain the fans, which was a good gesture to give them their money’s worth). Apparently, Vince has a bastard child that’s about Shane’s and Stephanie’s age, and Linda wants to sue him for, well, whatever, I don’t care, they’ve run a hundred angles similar to this one. Anyways, it turns out that the bastard son is a WWE superstar! How did they announce this? They had a lawyer come out just before the show ended—and I’m fairly certain this is a character NO ONE HAD EVER SEEN ON TV BEFORE—and tell Vince this information. Well, he completely killed the show in several ways:

-He was wearing this yellowish cream suit that looked absolutely hideous,
-Obviously a little nervous, he called Vince “Mr. McCann,” which I found hilarious because it reminded me of Tim McCann, an upperclassmen at ND who lived in my dorm and enjoyed tormenting the hell out of me, and
-He pulled out a piece of paper with vital information on it, and then dropped it and was booed incessantly by the fans.

And that was the final segment of the TV taping. I’m not going to bother to watch it on television, but I can’t imagine that final segment coming off very well, unless they do a hell of a job editing out the “McCann” and paper drop parts. So yeah, what a way to end a show. And unfortunately that’s the kind of crap the WWE has used in its programming, and they’ve lost that casual audience that enjoyed both the personalities and the wrestling content.

Why do I keep harping on how great wrestling content still needs to be? Because the most enjoyable moment of the evening was a tag match between The World’s Greatest Tag Team against Brian Kendrick and Paul London. I’d never heard of Kendrick of London, but they both looked to be about 6’ and 175 pounds and proceeded to put on a great match. They were like the Hardy Boys with a higher degree of technical merit. (BTW, Jeff Hardy was in the opening match against Umaga, and he looked bad. It was an unbearably slow match that only picked up, like always, just before the pinfall. Jeff’s best days left him in 2001.)

The crowd responded extremely well to Kendrick and London, and that’s the kind of thing wrestling ought to implement more into its programming, instead of constantly creating silly storylines about Vince’s bastard kid or John Cena’s dad getting his ass kicked by Randy Orton (I’m not going to bother recapping that, it’s stupid). Of course, I’m sure the WWE has more important matters on their minds, like how to get back the audiences that left after what Benoit did.

Those audiences may never come back.

Your obligatory triennial Columbus Crew update

They suck. Not terribly, but yeah.

Probably the Only Arena Bowl Diary You'll Find On the Internet*

PICTURE FORTHCOMING. IN THE MEANTIME, PRETEND THESE ARE BOOBS.
(.)(.)

*This awesome title was shot out of the water when I saw Deadspin link to It's Still Football for their caffeinated entry. It's okay, though, because their mood was completely the opposite of mine while writing.

3 pm A nation holds its breath as Arena Bowl XXI get underwa…no, forget it, I’m not going to sugarcoat this thing, especially with Mike and Mike (Greenberg and Golic, in case you needed to know) hosting this thing, as I just discovered. But part of the mission of this young blog is to represent sports interests in Chicago and Columbus (and to a lesser extent, Ohio), and that’s why I’m throwing away my Sunday afternoon.

That’s not to say anyone’s interested in this game, though. The normally football-crazy Columbus hasn’t even had the Arena Bowl as its leading sports story this weekend; I’m not sure most of the news stations even have correspondents down in New Orleans. No matter, though, there are worse things to watch/do on a Sunday afternoon in the summer, as my crackling, P.O.S. TV gets ready for the team introductions.

3:07 After explaining to viewers the unique rules of Arena football, ABC cuts to a guy yelling in the San Jose locker room before going to commercial again. Smooth. They don’t even take this much time with regular season baseball games, what gives?

3:11 Columbus kicks off in front of the more apathetic crowds I’ve seen for a title game. Must be those corporate arena bowl packages that kill the sport and leave the true fans out in the cold.

3:14 During the opening San Jose drive Greenburg “allows” the audience to let the San Jose quarterback to call the play in the huddle. Golic lets the audience know he’ll interpret what each call means. That’s…okay, thanks though. The Sabercats (S.J.) opening up the scoring with a rushing TD.

3:18 Matt Nagy is the quarterback for the Destroyers, and he looks like he could kick Ben Roethlisberger’s ass. Two quick passes for first yards get Columbus moving, which is good because they’ll need to keep the strong S.J. defense off the field as often as possible.

(I’m just kidding; I only saw Arena Football for the first time two weeks ago, I have no fucking idea what’s going on.)

3:20 Greenberg just remarked how one of the great things about Arena Football is that fans get to keep the ball if it goes into the stands. What a fucking Communist. If Roger Goodell were running this league, that fan catching the ball would be automatically suspended four games before having to perform community service with the United Way. Destroyers drive to the two-yard line and then punch the ball on a running play, 7-7 game. Nagy looks very good early.

3:25 A commercial tells me to come to Louisiana for the great jazz scene. Until my deadbeat ex-roommate owns up and pays his water bill for our old house, jazz is dead to me, so no dice.

3:26 Really, the crowd at the game is making it difficult to enjoy doing this diary. It’s like they were given their tickets for free the night before or something, that’s how quiet they are. In a related story, I’m going to a WWE event in about a month at Nationwide Arena, if only to see if wrestling can truly survive one of its most disturbing moments in history.

3:28 Good things about AFL; a running time clock (even after scoring), receivers in forward motion pre-snap, and live mics. Unfortunately, the live mics haven’t been too noticeable because Mike and Mike feel the need to talk every single moment during the game. It’s like the ESPN football video game series with the two no-name announcers who spoke entire paragraphs on the simplest of rushing plays, you know? I noticed this when I watched them announce the Columbus/Georgia game two weeks ago and it grows old very fast. San Jose scores again to take a 14-7 lead.

3:33 I’m noticing how “lean” all the AFL players are and I just had an epiphany: this is what NFL players would look like if they weren’t on steroids! Whew, maybe HGH is a good thing after all. God knows they’re all cutting their lives short by 20-30 years, but at least they provide much more exciting football.

3:37 Mike and Mike talk about how “un-soft” the padded walls are before God rescues us from the inane conversation by ending the first quarter and taking us to commercial. Commercials are quite un-offensive thus far; no John Mellancamp, minimal Peyton Manning. We can handle this.

3:44 They finally make use of listening to the play in the huddle, and it’s pretty cool; it illustrates how little we mortals really know about football, when it all comes down to it. Meanwhile, San Jose commit three defensive penalties and but haven’t allowed a Columbus score yet.

3:45 But make that four penalties on San Jose now, yet Columbus still can’t punch it in. Fourth down and goal coming up…

3:46 WHAT A PLAY! Columbus lines their players up left but has a player sneak out to the right after the snap, where Nagy finds him wide open for an easy screen pass TD. Great call.

(BTW, Golic, please do not feel the need to guess what each play call in the huddle means, because each time you get it wrong you look that sillier, and already you’re hovering on being that Fox sports guy who tried predicting all those Boise State calls in the Fiesta Bowl and wound up looking like a complete idiot. Please Golic, do your fellow Irish proud.)

3:50 Nagy has potential to be a big cult hero in Columbus if he can pull this thing off. He was definitely a leader on that goal line stand just now…holllld up, some San Jose dude just returned a kick for a touchdown. They miss the extra point, however.

3:54 Joey Galloway shows up in the booth and reveals himself to be the part-owner of the Destroyers when he’s not rotting in Tampa Bay, waiting for a quarterback to get him the ball. This in turn leads to a photo of John Gruden’s kids (John Gruden has bred children????) holding up a sign asking where he is, because as you all know, missing a day of training camp in the NFL is like missing the birth of your child.

3:56 A great kickoff return is wasted when Nagy’s pass into the end zone is deflected and picked off. It’s only a six point lead (20-14), but San Jose has scored so quickly, it feels like a big advantage this early on.

3:59 Golic relates something about how he’s fat and can’t run the 40 as fast as the guys on the field, or something stupid. I’m getting tired already. It’s all the Mountain Dew I’m drinking. Personal foul on a Columbus defender for slamming a dude into the wall. Remember kids, these walls are tough. You wouldn’t wanna cross them in an alleyway.

4:02 San Jose is stifled, fourth down coming up. Golic: “Heard a ‘38’ in the huddle, so it must be a run…” You see, how the fuck do you know that? He was right, but still, it’s sooo annoying. Thank God Golic wasn’t working for CNN when baby Jessica was lifted out of the well, otherwise he’d tell us he heard the number “65” and he knew that meant they were going to save the baby, because he’s the professional and we’re all morons.

4:05 Touchdown, San Jose State. 27-14, and they’re on the brink of outpacing the Destroyers. A shoving match breaks out afterwards, as cameras cut to the San Jose coach, and he looks surprisingly like Lovie Smith. Hey, will there be special interest pieces on Sportscenter if he becomes the first black coach to win the Arena Bowl? There should be.

4:10 ABC shows image of how shitty the Lower Ninth Ward still is in New Orleans, and they have an amusing statistic in the damages done by Katrina: $70 billion in damages, $1.2 million in evacuees. More proof that if you’re poor and living in America, you’re just a statistic to Uncle Sam. Mike Greenberg goes on to make the bullshit proclamation of bullshit proclamations, saying that the citizens of New Orleans have embraced the Arena Bowl coming to town. That explains the Ritalin-induced crowd, right? What if the New Orleans Hornets actually win the NBA title, are they going to embrace that too? Please. I’d better start writing about football again. By the way, the AFL commissioner is really fat.

4:14 Now this is interesting: Columbus lines up their kicker in their own end zone on fourth down and have him do a field goal attempt, the idea being the ball is still live after it drops and it’ll give their defense good field position. Unfortunately, the kicker slips and the ball scrambles about ten yards down the field, giving the Sabercats amazing field position as we head into the final minute of the first half. Ouch.

4:17 While a guy that works with the Philadelphia Soul (it doesn’t look like Jon Bon Jovi, but I’m not taking any risks) is in the commentator booth, Columbus recovers a fumble and gets the ball back. AFL rules involve the last minute of each half being similar to how the NFL always stops the clock, thus it takes about five actual minutes to complete the final minute of the half/game.

4:19 Awesome live mic exchange between Nagy and the offensive coordinator; a good argument about the play and one bad word bleeped out. Nagy says he wants speed and he gets it in that Bush guy for the Destroyers (no it’s not Reggie, fuck Reggie) but the pass goes incomplete, yet there’s another defensive penalty by the Sabercats. Columbus has 16 seconds to make this a one-score game going into the half.

4:22 Nagy floats one to an open guy in near the middle of the field, but that receiver gets hammered and can’t hang onto the ball. A short gain a play later sets up a field goal opportunity. Unfortunately, field goals in AFL are difficult, and the Columbus kicker (Peter Martinez) looks exceedingly incompetent as he misses the kick and we head into halftime with the score being 27-14.

I’ll give the AFL this; when people know what they’re doing (players and coaches alike), it can be quite fun to watch. But the Sabercats defense should be thankful that Columbus couldn’t find an offensive spark in that second quarter because they really didn’t look like they were holding up well together.

The game’s good but it’s not the most exciting thing I’ve seen, and let’s face it, NFL athletes would destroy these two teams (albeit in a nice way, plus I’m convinced now that most NFL players take steroids). If the score becomes a 24-point deficit for the Destroyers, I’m gonna call it a day and do something more productive. I’m guessing most people won’t mind.

BTW, what is up with Suzy Kolber hosting NASCAR on ESPN? Do they introduce every NASCAR clip with Dale Earnhardt saying, “All I wanna do is race, Daddy”? Because they should. It probably won’t happen, but ESPN has the potential to kill NASCAR if they felt like it. Hey, they’ve already done it with hockey.

4:39 Third quarter starts and Columbus again gets bad starting field position. This is negated, however, by San Jose committing two penalties on the same play and giving Columbus a much needed offensive boost. How many penalties is that for San Jose, eight? That’s a lot when you consider how quickly these games move.

4:46 My TV is crackling and really irritating me, let’s see how much longer I can do this. Fourth and goal Columbus…they convert again on another great pass play! Nagy is exceptionally fun to watch and listen to. Greenburg then ruins this previous sentence by stating that Nagy has “regained his composure.” HE ALWAYS HAD HIS FUCKING COMPOSURE, YOU FUCKING COCKSUCKER! YOU WANNA BLAME SOMEBODY, BLAME THE COLUMBUS DEFENSE! Idiot.

4:48 Is it mean to call someone a cocksucker if he’s gay? Because I say that to people all the time regardless…

4:49 Come fall in love with Louisiana, all over again. That ad would be 8,000 times better if it featured Ted Turner dressed as Captain Planet, looking into the camera and saying, “Come to Louisiana or I’ll fucking kill you! CAPTAIN PLANEEEET!” (Outside the Star Wars episode, this is the most re-watchable Robot Chicken segment of all time.)

4:50 Golic continues to insult our intelligence, asking Nagy what they did to calm down at halftime. Never mind.

4:52 So is the San Jose coach actually coaching or doing his Art Shell impression? Not that it matters, his offense has driven towards the goal already in about five seconds. First and goal after a pass interference call for the Sabercats.

4:55 Yep, that was quick, 34-21 San Jose with the third quarter winding down. Columbus D must step up.

4:56 The EA Sports College Gameday commercial featuring Oklahoma stopping Boise State in the Fiesta Bowl is just plain wrong, as is the commercial featuring deadbeat dad Matt Leinart beating Texas in the Rose Bowl. I’m not sure how those kinds of commercials are supposed to help you sell your product, considering everyone loves Boise State these days and nobody loves Matt Leinart. But then, I’m not an evil monopolistic empire issuing the be-all and end-all of the video game world, so kudos to EA for eventually breaking our will to live. Cunts.

(On a side note, there will be college football previews coming up for Notre Dame and Ohio State. One of these teams has a great chance of going to another BCS game. The other has a great chance of finishing the season at .500. I’ll let you decide which is which.)

5:01 Another side note: Cubs 6, Reds 0. YES! I *might* have to make a trip to Great American Ball Park for the regular season finale in September, depending on what’s happening in the NL Central.

5:02 San Jose’s single-man pass coverage is quite impressive, as Columbus cannot complete a pass over 20 yards to save its life. If they were just tidier with the penalties this game would already be over.

5:03 Good grief, I didn’t even finish typing that last sentence when Columbus executes essentially the same play and the cornerback gets burned for a Destroyer passing TD. Martinez misses the extra point though! How can you do that??? 34-27 Sabercats, fourth quarter about to start.

5:07 I’m not sure if I could care less about Barry Bonds pursuing the home run record anymore. He has acted like such a jackass since the All-Star game. Oh, and then there’s his reputation before he called Bob Costas a midget.

5:08 This Sabercats offense is methodical; they complete an easy first down pass to the middle of the field.

5:10 Mike and Mike get so bored they start talking about their stock options. Seriously. BTW, San Jose is fucking expensive to live in, as shown in an extensive San Jose city profile. So where’s the Columbus city profile, bitches? Affordable living, plenty to do for young people, OSU football, Nationwide Insurance. Toss us a fucking bone, too. Meanwhile, the Sabercats inch towards the Destroyers goal line again.

5:12 Touchdown (like the eleventh of the afternoon), albeit he was probably down before crossing the line. The Sabercats start acting like they’ve already won the Arena Bowl. Fuck that.

5:17 Another interesting AFL rules wrinkle: multiple offside penalties in a half/game will eventually turn into 10-yard instead of 5-yard penalties. Well, that’ll learn San Jose. But in the meantime, Nagy makes a big error, throwing an off-balance bomb that gets picked off easily. Big turnover this late in the game.

(Btw, can this game be over now? This is enough Arena Football for one year, I’ve decided.)

5:24 Nothing of note happens for about ten minutes so I revert to playing Hearts on my computer. Seriously, I know I’ve written it two or three times now, but the lack of true fan involvement in this game does not translate well to television. Even the conference final game I saw two weeks ago had a half-full house of Georgia fans making as much noise as they could, and it was compelling stuff, but this? It feels like a high school state football championship on turf. San Jose scores again, lightening-quick this time, and a 48-27 score with 6 minutes to go means I’m wrapping this thing up soon—but not before cringing at the sight of a pre-made sports package highlighting all of Ohio’s championship failures in 2007, featuring the Buckeyes and Cavaliers. Fuck you assholes. The Midwest fucking rocks and you know it. I think Maynard James Keene summed up the West Coast best (and fuck it, the East Coast too) in that “Aenima” song by essentially saying “fuck West Coast lifestyle because it’s all fake bullshit,” and that’s the truth. I don’t know what I’m ranting about anymore—probably the fact that I’ve thrown away my entire afternoon blogging an Arena Football game, and I’m almost out of Mountain Dew.

5:30 Columbus keeps plugging at it, and San Jose still keeps giving up silly penalties. They’re extremely lucky their offense was unstoppable today. But then, the Destroyers take too long to score on offense, making too many incomplete passes, whereas the Sabercats just zoomed down the field in about a minute. Tough.

5:34 Give Nagy a ton of credit though; he completes another TD pass on fourth down. You can’t blame him for the deficit in this game, his defense did not back him up. One minute to go, praise the Lord. I have laundry to do.

5:37 Onside kick by Destroyers, and somehow Martinez doesn’t screw it up. San Jose recovers however, and we get set for the clock to run down. The outcome of the game was simply based on San Jose’s offense killing Destroyers, and I think stat lines are going to unjustly suggest Nagy is an inferior quarterback to, uh, whoever the Sabercats quarterback is, but that’s not the case. Nagy was like Brady Quinn against USC last year, shorthanded against a superior opponent. And as if to prove my point, the Sabercats score again, within the final minute. Fortunately a small melee breaks out at the end, which is always amusing, as the dozen or so Sabercats fans in the stands begin to celebrate.

5:41 MVP is Matt Grieb (that quarterback whose name I forgot), and he gets a Mitsubishi Spyder as a prize. It looks awesome, but it’s gonna break down a dozen times over the next year, so good luck with that, Matt! (I’d make fun of this more if I wasn’t driving the ’94 Volvo 850T from Hell.)

And we’re gonna finish it there. Arena Football: it’s football without steroids, true fans, good kickers, and good commentators. Good times!