by Jeb Tennyson Lund
OnlineOnslaught.com/CitizenScholar.net

My OnlineOnslaught readers know by now that I hate the mixed-bag column. It feels slapped together and less thoughtful — which most of the time it is. Unfortunately, it's all I got this week.
 
 
HHHBK5: "For Those Just Tuning In..."
Is this the fifth time they've clashed? To be honest, I'm not going to double-check. I think Triple H leads this series 3-2 (which, if it were  best-of-five, means he already won).  But for all I know, he could be winning 4-1 (which, if it were best-of-seven, means he's also already won). I know how this match came about, but I'm not sure why. This is what happens when the Unbearable Forces seek the Immaterial Object.
 
In this case, the immaterial object is "bragging rights." That's ostensibly why the two clashed in the past, and by now that goal should seem pretty pointless. Why fight for bragging rights when winning them doesn't prevent the other person from turning around, saying, "Oh yeah?—well I'm still better than you," then demanding another match? Both men have beaten the other, leading to a rematch. Nothing indicates that the results of this match will be any different. I appreciate why these two are at each others' throats, but I'm not sure why I'm supposed to appreciate watching it yet again, especially if it ultimately decides nothing.
 
Worse, this is (by my count) Triple H's fifth trip to a Hell in a Cell. While I respect his willingness to go the extra mile in these matches, it's also getting a bit tiresome to see him in them again and again. This time it's against Michaels, who was in the first ever Hell in a Cell. Sure, that's neat. And supposedly Triple H is the master of this type of match now. But it also doesn't ameliorate the fact that Triple H had two merely passable outings in the Cell (one against Jericho; another against everyone in the world, plus Rikishi) and a downright awful outing in another (against Nash). The first was predictable and tepid; the second a genuine clusterfuck; and the third garnered more interest from Foley refereeing than the idea that Nash might win, if it garnered interest at all.
 
In short, the Hell in a Cell is getting less and less special, while the Michaels v. Triple H drama also gets less and less special. That's a shame, because both the style of match and this feud are genuinely interesting on their own. If used sparingly and properly, both can be captivating and monumental. But this match carries with it two other potential items of doom and gloom. The first is that Triple H might win. The second is what's potentially lost by scheduling the match at all.
 
By now, most should realize that I don't care for Triple H, but that's not why I'm worried about his winning. I'm worried because I wonder where we go from here. Recent newsbites indicate that filming for Triple H's movie is being delayed. If there's no reason for him to leave TV, why use a style of match custom-made to legitimately knock him out of stories for months on end? If he wins and sticks around, how can you reasonably get him off TV in the future? Also, if he loses, and sticks around, what do you do with him?
 
This is where we wander into the "what is potentially lost, by scheduling this match" territory. The first (and most obvious) thing is current interest in Benoit. I don't believe for a second that Benoit v. Kane will headline Bad Blood; it simply hasn't the spectacle of two main-eventers in a Hell in a Cell. Second, Benoit and Kane aren't nearly the mic talents that Michaels and Triple H are, and their match's heat is steadily siphoned by whatever possible coerced-sex storyline that Kane currently has with Lita. In short, the belt dims in the shadow of two men competing for the fourth or fifth time, while doing so in a style of match they've been in a combined six times. The repetition and familiarity adds insult to injury — as does the silliness of Benoit facing a mutant more focused on terrorizing a woman than winning the belt.
 
Then there is the potential loss engendered by either outcome. If Michaels wins, knocking Triple H out for a while, he and Benoit can have some stellar pay-per-view matches. But Triple H casts a long enough shadow that Benoit's reign will still be incompletely legitimate until the two meet in the ring alone. It's a somewhat silly proposition to have Michaels beat the "master" of the Hell in a Cell, yet have Benoit be a not-fully-realized champion even if he beats Michaels several times. What, then, is the worth of Michaels' win, if it's just a burp in the overall legitimacy and dominance of Triple H? It's a shame for Michaels and Benoit, since Benoit essentially waits for the real main-eventer, and Michaels spends a month or two as a pretender. Both men become less than the sum of their talents and instead the caretakers of someone else's.
 
If Triple H wins and leaves to film his movie, then Benoit's illegitimacy is double. A program with Michaels is a program with "the loser." In the mean time, Benoit confronts and defeats God knows how many wrestlers, but the man who cannot be beaten in the Hell in a Cell remains elsewhere. That Benoit has never beaten Triple H one-on-one merely adds to the sense that Benoit's championship is in a holding pattern. It doesn't matter who wins the Hell in a Cell: either way, Benoit waits for the real match to come.
 
Regardless, all of these complaints involve booking and future stories. The main regret can be found here, now. It is that Michaels and Triple H can put on a delightful match together, but they can typically do the same apart. What WWE gives us is two superlative talents together, instead of spreading that talent among other matches. It puts two-thirds of the best eggs in one basket. I don't really hate the idea of the match itself; I just miss the forsaken possibilities even more.
 
If you put Michaels or Triple H in a match with Benoit, then put the other in a match with someone else, then you have two potentially very good matches in one show. In fact, if you put Michaels in a program with someone and Triple H in a program with someone else, then you have three potentially very good matches — because three matches are vying for attention. Benoit v. Kane isn't overshadowed by two legends facing one another. Instead, the Benoit v. Kane match tops a card featuring Michaels v. Someone and Triple H v. Someone Else. Talent then elevates three matches, instead of talent elevating itself in one.
 
I don't mean to portray HHHHBK Part 5 as a greedheaded scheme to lionize The Clique even more. Such a claim smacks of paranoia and smarkiness — two bad tastes that often go together. It just seems a bit of a waste that two talented people will have one great match together, instead of sharing that talent and iconic status with other wrestlers, in two distinct matches. 
 
Benoit stands somewhere outside this confrontation, which is perhaps the most regrettable aspect of it all. His championship has thus far been a noble, successful and interesting experiment. But the momentum of that experiment is now stalled, at least until the end of Bad Blood. Here's hoping the outcome of Triple H v. Michaels is written in such a way as to kick-start that momentum again.
 
 
God Bless The Coach
Watching the replay of last week's Coach/Eugene/Rock promo exchange, it struck me how most of us failed to recognize and compliment the excellent job that Jonathan Coachman did in playing the bad guy. It's often a thankless job, but he did it with aplomb.
 
We should expect this sort of thing from him, by now, since he's almost WWE's prince of thankless jobs. B-show commentator, cut-rate DVD/Video host, interview-related abuse magnet... name a WWE job that no one respects, and Coach has pretty much done it. But, because those jobs are so thankless and easily disregarded, it's been easy for us to ignore how far he's come in his various roles.
 
I do not intend to venerate The Coach for everything he's done. Given my druthers, he never would have been hired at all. But the WWE is fond of hiring tremendously unqualified people, idiots, bumbling stooges and the out-of-work — then letting them find their way over a matter of years, in front of a national audience, erring and annoying for all to see, until they blunder into a tolerable skill-set by happenstance. It worked for Michael Cole and — at a far faster rate — Tazz. It worked for Coach, too.
 
Perhaps Coach owes his dastardly and hateful character to years of abuse at the hands of interviewees. Perhaps he owes it to programs with JR and The King. Nonetheless, that doesn't obscure the fact that it was he who put the heat on that interview segment, serving up a fat eephus pitch of hate and scorn that The Rock got to blast out of the arena. Take one of La Resistance, take Test, take Val Venis — each of them could have cut the same promo and achieved half what Coach did. Certainly they would have been booed or disliked. But their actions and talents would have engendered more boredom and indifference than indignation (and sympathy for Eugene). Coach is the extremity of unmerited, insupportable smarm. He deserves all of it.
 
What he did, in that segment, was catalyze an arena's worth of latent pity and concern for Eugene and make it an active, involved worry. Coach made us hate and love, and wish vengeance and better things, rather than make us observe and note. We cared; we engaged. We didn't catalogue the moment or turn away.
 
Rock probably would have hit a home run, promo-wise, regardless. But Coach and Eugene put so much momentum on the segment that the force of their interaction and Rock's reaction created an almost titanic blast. By the end of that segment, Rock held us all in the palm of his hand. He manipulated us, and we willingly allowed it. What's harder to see — but what is still evident — is that Coach held us in the palm of his hand, too. He didn't do it with bells and whistles, with catchphrases or peerless charisma. He did it with steady workmanlike application. He did his job, smartly and crisply. And we went along with it too, unwillingly — which is perhaps a more credible and notable achievement.
 
 
Notes from the Studio
I was just as surprised as anyone to hear Victoria's new music. But what held me, transfixed, were the lyrics to her new song:

Go. Go. Go. Go. Go. Go. Go. Go. Go. Go. Go. Go. Go. Go. Go. Go. Go. Go. Go. Go. Go. Go. Go. Go. Go. Go. Go. Go. Go. Go. Go. Go. Go.Go. Go. Go. Go. Go. Go. Go. Go. Go. Go. Go. Go. Go. Go. Go. Go. Go. Go. Go. Go. Go. Go. Go. Go. Go. Go. Go. Go. Go. Go. Go. Go. Go. Go. Go. Go. Go. Go. Go.

Who came up with them, I wondered. How was this recorded? What were its origins? This must be a new popular song from yet another young artist that WWE has taken a shine to, like Limp Bizkit or Richard Strauss. Intrepid wrestling scholar that I am, I immediately went to the internet and did some research.
 
It turns out that the author of the song (it's named "Go") is none other than in-house WWE songsmith Jim Johnston. Johnston composed the music, and hired session singer and musical actor Arturo Betteman to sing the now easily identifiable lyric. While Johnston's resume is long and well known, Betteman's is equally considerable. A veteran of the New York stage, he's had numerous lead roles in off-Broadway productions of A Raisin in the Sun, Six Characters in Search of an Author and A Lion in Winter. In Broadway musicals, he's been a chorus member in Assassins, an understudy in Rent, and Queequeg in Oh, Moby Dick! Betteman is no stranger to TV audiences, where he's a frequent guest star on Law & Order, portraying civil rights attorney Luther Kingston.
 
Unfortunately, as recording on "Go" began, Johnston noticed a problem. Betteman wasn't connecting with the lyrics. His "Go's" were tepid and uninspired. It sounded like he was just saying, "Go." Johnston wanted a visceral reading of the text, not a mere recitation. He wanted urgency and humanity. After three hours of repeated argument, blame and re-takes, happy chance intervened in the form of a rapidly spreading fire in the recording studio.
 
Immediately, Betteman rushed to get all the musicians safely from the studio. His terrified barking orders of "Go! Go! GO! GO! GO!" resounded through the room. But fortune once again smiled on WWE's music shop, as his vocal performance was preserved for posterity thanks to WWE's mixing/computer network, which automatically saves data on a server in the basement of Titan Towers. Betteman suffered second-degree burns on his legs and forearms. Later, screams and appeals to "Merciful Jesus" were edited out of the mix.
 
In the end, the winners are the fans!
 
 
Farewell, Nutcase
While we're on the subject, I'd like to bid a fond farewell to a Victoria with an ounce of credibility and without an ounce of unintentional comedy. Victoria is probably the second-most talented woman wrestler in the WWE, but it will be hard to see that in the coming weeks, between whatever storylines they put her in, and her spastic quasi-animatronic grinding that pales in comparison to the inebriated gyrations of my former Kentucky Colonel roommate.
 
It might seem negative for me to deride this gimmick change, but I think critique is warranted. In Victoria's case, we're discussing a reigning champion. When was the last time you saw the WWE (or WWF) Champion undergo a total gimmick change while holding the belt? After Stone Cold won it the first time, did he become a carny, trying to swindle people backstage at the ring-toss? Did he turn into Grandmaster Sexay, just to spike random interest?
 
Victoria can't dance, and her song is awful, but that has little to do with the fact that she is the reigning women's champion and is being reworked before our eyes. Not only is it bad booking and bad characterization, it's also just completely silly.
 
Admittedly, I can understand the quandary the Raw bookers found themselves in: they had a formerly insane woman become a face champion; then she came to the ring to her "insane" music and "insane" entrance video and had to still be a face. For a while, the solution was, oddly, having her kiss boys under the age of ten.
 
The problem here is that WWE is overstepping, looking for something they can't get. Victoria got decent but intermittent cheers as a face. The fault lay less with the fact that she was a formerly insane wrestler and more with the fact that she is a woman wrestler. You could dress her up like a clown or like Vampirella, and it won't change the fact that much of the audience will discount her for: (a) being a woman; and (b) not being some kind of blonde ootsy-coo tit-parade like Trish Stratus or Torrie Wilson. (Make no mistake, I admire Trish's dedication to being a better wrestler. Unfortunately, that doesn't change the fact that she and Torrie Wilson get a comparable audience response.)
 
The other problem here is basic plausibility. Look, Victoria was already nuts. Why change her entrance or her music? She was a crazy woman looking for the belt and nothing more; then she became a boy-kissing happy champion. Why? She's crazy. Storyline problems solved! ("Hey, how do you account for her suddenly being nice right now?" Uh, she's crazy. There you go. Thank you for the question, and please take a ride in this complimentary car to Club Self-Evident.)

But now that she has a goofy new persona, that persona cannot adapt without another reason. WWE could "reset" her this coming week, and all will be forgotten. If they pursue a whole new character, however, they then have to give a background and reasoning to that character. In that case, they paint themselves into a corner. Without the crutch of "she's nuts" to support them, they must craft a rationale, one that can becomes even more ridiculous when she eventually abandons it.
 
There is a three-fold shame at work here. One, WWE took an adaptable and easily explainable character and — rather than altering it within the framework of the character — they simply cast it aside and created something new, stupid, tawdry and substandard. Two, they changed a champion mid-reign, making her achievements (in one persona) mean less, while opening her to critique and doubt that she certainly didn't earn. Three, they took one of their most esteemed women's wrestlers and made a travesty out of her record and an adolescent joke of her person. I can't decide which is the worse distinction: that she has been sandbagged as a character, or that her new stripper-esque routine is so amateurish that even a teenager would find it humorous before finding it sexy.
 
Think well of Victoria and wish her the best, because those managing or scripting her have made her less than the woman she can be.
 

E-MAIL JEB LUND
BROWSE JEB'S ARCHIVE

Jeb Tennyson Lund is the Pope of Online Onslaught. If you want to read his sadly less wrestling-oriented columns, go to www.citizenscholar.net.

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