Smackdown

Real quick I just wanted to point out that if anyone has $50,000 laying around, you can stick it in a TD Waterhouse brokerage account and get a free iPod Nano. I think if I had $50,000 to put someplace I would already have an iPod Nano.

Anyhow, on to my Tuesday Night.

On Tuesday night I went to see a live, um, performance(?) of WWE Smackdown. Anyone who would like to see it can tune in to UPN tomorrow. I'm not sure what time. I'm not a fan. Why did I go see it? As it happens one of my suite mates from Freshman year is now a professional wrestler. Yes, I shared a bathroom and living room with Johnny Nitro.



I've never been to see professional wresting, nor have I ever watched it on TV. And now that I've seen it live in the flesh, I don't think I'm going to become a fan despite of, or maybe because of it complete bizarreness.

I've been to basketball games and baseball games, so I know that when people come to see a sporting even they generally cheer and yell and just generally make a ruckus. Professional wrestling doesn't totally work that way. During most of the rounds the Cow Palace was oddly quiet. There were several oooo's and awww's when somebody did something particularly daring - a piledriver, a sideways parallel bar swing outside the ring and back in to hit the other guy move, etcetera. But the rest of the time you could talk to the person next to you in almost a library whisper and be well understood. But I hear that beer was $6.50, so it wasn't entirely non-sports like.

Was everyone aware that there are plot lines in professional wresting? Since this was a televised event there were two gigantic screens on one end of the arena where they played some back-story before any round which was going to move the plot along. As a for instance, I guess there is some wrester who drives around in a limo with two big ox horns on the hood and who wears a cowboy hat, a jacket or shirt of some sort, and a Speedo that says JBL. So I understand from the big screen that JBL was somehow going to shut down Smackdown and the other wrestling league was going to be the only show in town. Luckily (spoiler alert) somebody jumped into the ring and wrested JBL, and now Smackdown is going to be okay. Yeah, I don't know either. I think the writing quality of professional wrestling falls smack in the middle between porn and soap opera. It also combines many elements from both:

Dialog – right out of the porn playbook.
Storylines – from soap opera 101.
Costumes – a little of both.

To keep people interested between plot points they threw in some oddball rounds as well. The first one was two women wrestling. (Not terribly weird, but it was only the second round.) Then it was two midgets wrestling. Then some regular sized dude gets into the ring and the midgets ganged up on him. Then there was a round having something to do with voting and a wrester going on to wrestle in some other league to defend Smackdown's honor. The guy who ended up winning was a little tiny Latino guy wearing a mask. He may have also been a little cross-eyed, but it may have just been the mask.

The final round I saw was a tag team round which featured Johnny Nitro and his tag team partner, whose name escapes me. Their team, if you'd like to research it yourself, is MNM, the N standing for Nitro. In the tag team round each team makes a grand entrance. MNM walked in wearing shiny blue pants and long white fur coats. Between them was their lady person.

I'm not sure what she does other than kiss them both on the cheek, but I'm told that she's John's girlfriend in real life.

The best team entrance award goes to a three person Mexican tag team who drove to the ring on riding lawnmowers. Nobody said WWE was politically correct.

After we watched John(ny Nitro) and his partner (spoiler alert) win the round we decided to go home. It was a 3 hour show and there was a lot of dead time between rounds. And since we had all come to see John, there wasn't a whole lot of motivation to stick around for the rest of it.

On the way out my friend Steve bought an MNM shirt for $25, which I misread as saying.

MNM
It's OK To Share

Which I thought made some sense in that MNM seems to consist of 2 dudes and 1 girl. But when I read the shirt out loud Steve pointed out that it said stare, not share. Now the shirt doesn't make sense to me anymore. But neither did most of the night, so I that is as it should be.





In case anybody is interested/doubts that I really knew THE Johnny Nitro in college, here is a picture of what he, and more embarrassingly I, looked like freshman year. No, we were not in a band. Yes, we did have a lot of Christmas lights. And no, contrary to popular opinion at the time, I was not, nor have I ever been, a stoner.