As you may have surmised, this is a follow up to an earlier entry where i made mention of several bright spots of the Russo era. So without further ado, in order:

1. "Positively" Kanyon - As one dimensional as the character may have been, it made for great television. No, it may not have made a mite of sense for Kanyon to join the New Blood and team up with Mike Awesome, right after the guy almost killed his career (another great gimmick that i'll touch upon later in this entry). No, it may not have made the slightest bit of sense for him to just all of sudden decide to assume DDP's identity. But the way Kanyon portrayed DDP so hilariously, and yet so well, made him become one of the best things going for the show, amidst all the inanities. Kanyon himself was always an underrated performer, so it was nice to see him get a little spotlight, even if it was short lived. As we all know, he would be handed another great gimmick upon his arrival in the WWE (who betta?), which, of course, would be scrapped just as it was starting to get over.

2. 3 Count - Say what you will, but this gimmick was absolute genius, IMO. They were heels any male could genuinely hate, since boy bands were still popular back then and frowned upon just as much as ever by the male demographic. The 3 men were also very talented. I never cared much for Karagias, and was actually kinda glad when he left, since his absence brought about one of the best tag teams in WCW's short lived CW tag division during its last days. Their feud and matches with the Jung Dragons were more often than not the saving grace of any card during that period. The way Bobby and Tenay would hype them up and debate over their talent was great. And who could forget their buddy system and frequent serenades with Tank?

3. The concept of the Millionare's Club vs. The New Blood angle - As the title suggests, this angle had the potential to pump some life into a company that was dying quicker than a beached whale. It still may not have saved the company in the end, but it definitely could've popped the ratings for a few months. Ok, so you have guys like Vampiro, Kidman, Mike Awesome, Shane Douglas, and even Sean Stasiak who finally have the opportunity to step it up in one corner. In the other you have a slew of washed up has-beens, and in some cases never-were-beens, who look as if they desperately need to hit the nursing home, but not before elevating some of the younger guys. Hell, that's what the underlying point of the angle was supposed to be, right? So, skipping all the easily predictable negative stuff, alot of the feuds were very interesting, including the Sting/Vampiro and Douglas/Flair (which, as many already know, stemmed from real life tension between the two). The latter ended up having a great match at Slamboree, which i just watched again a few weeks ago for the second time.

4. Ric vs. David vs. Russo - Again, skating around the fact that the angle made Ric Flair look ridiculous most of the time, the Foley-esque emotion that oozed out of this feud was very thick. Russo and Flair had a good chemistry on the mic together. Despite having a total waste of oxygen like David involved, Ric managed to carry the angle very well by himself. David putting the figure four on Reed was gold.

5. Oklahoma - Ok, first things first - the gimmick was stupid, offensive, and pointless. I'm not even going to touch that argument. Making fun of J.R.'s Bell's palsy was messed up, but come on, admit it - you chuckle even at the slightest every time you hear Ferrara scream "JUVI!" or "PINATA!" You know you do.

6. "The career killer" Mike Awesome - Some were saying Awesome might've been the saving grace WCW was waiting for when he first came in. While i'm not sure if i entirely agree with that, he certainly could've been a key figure. His inaugural "career killer" gimmick, though somewhat cliche, was very good. Awesome was very convincing, and played his role well. Then, the WCW braintrust decides to turn him face. If that wasn't bad enough, he would then later proceed to become a fat chick suitor who would make several advances on Judy Bagwell, and a disco stu-esque "70's guy." Ironically, it was Mike's career that ended up being killed.

7. Vince Russo - As much as i've bashed the hell out of him, i'd be lying if i said he wasn't an interesting on screen character.

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I was watching Unforgiven 2000 last night, and came upon a gimmick i had long forgotten - the RTC. It's quite a shame how extremely misused it was, since it was a great concept at heart. It was fresh and original in terms of garnering heel heat, and a perfect addition to the lower mid-card.

The problem was it should've been used to elevate fresh OVW talent. It made no sense at all when the Godfather and Val Venis joined. As soon as the Russo-esque shock rubbed off, the group and their antics became about as interesting as watching paint dry. Two OVW jobbers and Steven Richards feuding with Val Venis, The Godfather, and even Austin (if they pushed the angle off until around December of 00) for a couple of weeks would've made for a much more successful program. It would've killed two birds with one stone - not only disposing Val Venis and The Godfather, but MAKING IT INTERESTING at the same time.

I was fiddling around with the mountain that is my wrestling tape collection earlier today, and found a tape from the Russo era. So for my own sick pleasure, i put it in. It started with an episode of Thunder that took place 2-3 weeks after the Goldberg heel turn at the Great American Bash. This show was full of even more crap than i care to remember, i.e. the return of Dale Torborg a.k.a. KISS demon and his female companion, Asya, who would ignite a filler feud with Vampiro while Sting was on hiatus. (probably because i blocked out most of it.)The pinnacle of this turd was the appearance of Tank Abbot and the dog faced gremlin who had been relegated as his sidekick of sorts. Tank then grabbed the stick and graced me with some gutteral, poorly delivered, incoherent mumbling that i'm guessing was his promo. Even for Russo to think this guy was the future of the company is too much for the old noggin to compute. I must've had one hell of a threshold back then. Like a fine wine, Tank gets crappier with age. Luckily, though, later on in the tape was another episode that contained one of the few bright spots of the Russo era, Tank singing and dancing like a frat boy that just came out of the closet with 3 count.

Welp, only one week til my well deserved month off. :D This semester really flew by. In fact, the years have really flown by. But that's another discourse for another time. This semester wasn't so great. My grades were above par, but not very impressive either. I'm a straight B student, with a few C's here and there. I take pride in the fact that i haven't gotten one D or F, thus far.

College is kinda lame. Well, at least my college. It's a pretty small school, about 1400 undergraduates. And because of that, the social atmosphere isn't as broad or spread out as the average college or university. It's just one big sewing circle. The same crap from high school, repackaged and refurbished.

My roomate experience has been god awful. Worse than i had ever imagined. And i say that without any hyperbole whatsoever. My first roomate was a disaster. My current, and soon to be former, roomate is meh. It's like trying to choose between Bush and Kerry. Both were crap sandwiches (my former roomate being the soggier one). My current roomate (Sasha) is a real piece of work. He's pretty bright, but completely immature. He blames the school for "breaking his spirit", when he hasn't even so much as opened up a book for most of the semester. Sasha is one of those "wannabe giggalo" types. He scores, but not as much as he'd like to believe he does (not that i should really be poking fun at other people's sex lives, since my own is non existant). He also has to lie to them, or play sports to enhance his "image." Forgive me for sounding like the cliche counterculturist, but it's true. Worse yet, He leaves his j*zzed up condoms all over the floor.... which led to my utter displeasure of stepping on one. The guy's a real sex machine too. That seems to be the only thing running through this guy's mind. Sex, sex, sex, sex, sex. I can't even begin to count how many times i've walked in on him sexing some nasty ass broad to death. In spite of all of that, he still makes me laugh.

Example: My first roomate and i parted ways after a week of hell, fighting over who would move out. He agreed to move out initially, but "unofficially" retracted that. The initial plan was that h would move in next door with his friend John, and Sasha who was his roomate at the time, would move in with me. Of course, Sasha was totally left in the dark about all of this. So i leave to go home on the weekend one Friday, and i come back Sunday night to find that pretty much all of John's belongings had been shipped over, and hidden in the cabinets in a beyond poorly executed underhanded attempt to kick me out. In short, they would've done the same things to Sasha, as they tried to do with me. Then the next thing you know, me and my roommate are screaming our lungs out at each other. We argued and argued for hour upon hour. Then he brought John in, and the both of them doubleteamed me. They tried to annoy me, and ultimately coerce me into packing my gear and heading out. My former roomate even broke out his nifty ol' acoustic gee-tar, and strung a couple tunes, whilst singing a song that illustrated the situation, a la The Rock circa 2003. After 45 minutes of serenading, it was clear to him and John that i wasn't budging. So then, they tried to bribe me out with a half eaten philly cheesesteak sandwich. :| Not facetiously, either. They were dead serious. Let that sink in for a minute, before you seriously begin to try and understand that. Then they tried to bribe me out with $100. After another hour of that, they finally brought out the big gun - the RA! Fortunately, she was a rational lass, and easily took my side of the story over their's. I can't tell you how close was to screaming "Teh sheep have been pwnt!!!11".

So what does this all have to do with Sasha, that is, if you still care? Well, we scheduled a meeting that Thursday to do the paper work and be done with it. And as all 4 of us, my former roommate, John, my current roommate, and myslef were going up to our floor on the elevator, after this long, hard, stressfull week of pure hell, my current roommate could only say to my former roommate at that perfect moment" Dude, do you have to take your TV with you tonight?". All i could do was laugh. Like at the end of Jaws, when Richard Dreyfuss and Roy Scheider just inexplicably laugh after surviving all of the hell they went through prior to that. You had to be there.

Matches i watched this week:

WWE HHH vs. HBK @ Summerslam '02.

Shelton Benjamin vs. Ric Flair @ Backlash 2004

Chris Jericho vs. Kurt Angle vs. Chris Benoit @ WM2000