By Shane McKinley, Torch specialist

"If you wanna go
I'm gonna go
I got a fire burning
Come on take my hand
Hope you see your man
Baby's gonna be a weird one"
-"Southbound" by Kings of Leon

Hey, what's the similarity between a WWE PPV finish and a parade? You can see both coming a mile away. Oh!

So, should I blame Mattel and Linda McMahon for the firing of Bryan Danielson? For this no-blood policy? For these WWE PPV cards that beforehand look anorexic? For these weak and predictable PPV finishes? For the second MVP gets hit in the left arm, Matt Striker immediately starts yelling, "Oh my gosh! MVP can't make pins with that injured arm! I bet he can't even raise a cup of coffee anymore! Oh no, he got another punch to the arm by the Gatecrashers! He's bound to be paralyzed! Oh the humanity?"

I had a dilemma come Sunday: buy WWE's Fatal Four-Way PPV or save the money to buy Maria's "YouShoot" DVD, where she talks about wrestlers's no-no parts. Hmm, which should I regret purchasing later? I went with the first option. Now I wonder if it was the right choice. No unique uses of duct tape to be found here. WWE's Fatal Four-Way PPV was a
step backwards.

To me, a PPV purchase has to mean more than good mid-card matches. It needs to have fulfilling main events without cheap, predictable, and tame endings. It also needs to have a ladies mud wrestling match and Jim Ross screaming "BAH GAWD," but that's just me. Plus, you know, good PPV build-up and a easily definable reason for why such matches are taking place. I didn't find such things here.

I'm beating a dead horse here, but WWE lost it's mojo a long, long time ago. What do you hear from wrestling fans about WWE? "I've stopped watching WWE since HBK retired." "Man, 2004 was the last good year for WWE." "Sheamus and Swagger? I don't know about these two guys." On and on. Despite these concerns, WWE can still succeed if they can routinely satisfy fans with their PPVs.

But with WWE's latest PPV, the good matches were the ones that were either barely hyped or were surprises to the fans. The PPV gimmick was lame and the announcers hyping same gimmick as "unique" was laughable. It was like they never address the question that fans had: "Um, we've seen fatal four way matches before." Make that puppy an elimination fatal four-way or heck, even do a Scramble match and we're in business. But, instead, all I can envision in buying such a PPV is that somebody will run-in, a wrestler gets a floozy win, and new feuds are started. And that's what happened.

The main problem with how the four-way matches went down can be traced back to the final PPV build-up. The last Raw episode started and ended with the NXT invasion, while the last Smackdown episode started and ended with the "Kane seeking vengeance for his fallen brother Undertaker" storyline. So you could see it coming. And sadly, these angles were getting more attention that the actual championship angles.

-After forcing Teddy Long to get on his knees and do unspeakable things, Drew McIntyre became Smackdown's #1 scum bucket. His "Chosen One" storyline ain't the best thing around, but there is potential with his feuds with Kofi Kingston and Matt Hardy. Plus, what are the other things going on in Smackdown land? Currently in my head I see Vickie Guerro's boy toy, Dolph Ziggler, wearing Daisy Dukes shorts. That's about it.

-Those Divas were determined to make their match respectable. They're trying hard out there. The news out of this match was that Alicia Fox won the Divas championship. At this point, they could announce that Madeline Albright is the new Divas champion and it wouldn't shock me. I'm more interested in Team Lay-Cool and the inevitable mental breakdown of Kaval.

-Why Evan Bourne vs. Chris Jericho wasn't hyped before the PPV makes no sense to me. What was up with WWE's anorexic PPV line-up? Was the concept of a Fatal Four-Way just so damn exciting that they were sure fans would immediately be plopping down their hard-earned money for the PPV? "Well, bro, I don't know how the heck they're going to fill up three hours, but it's gonna be worth my money!" I guess WWE spent all this time crafting the Bret Hart Bumper Cars segment instead of hyping up the PPV. A nice win for Mr. Bourne.

-New York wrestling crowds tend to be tough, and they were just not having anything to do with The Miz vs. R-Truth. Right now fans remember the Miz more for his mic work than his mat work. Hopefully we won't be saying that for the rest of his career.



-I guess we're seeing a casket match at the Money in the Bank PPV with Kane and C.M. Punk. And let's give congratulations to Jack Swagger. He might have been beating people in triathlons at age four (at that age I was finding out if sand was edible), but his championship reign was downright sad. There were times when I had to remind myself that he was carrying the gold.

-If you're like me, the NXT angle has become... annoying. At this PPV, I expected them to fully make their mark. In the old days, you bet that the arena would had been set on fire, Cena would be busted open, and the NXT 7 would be laughing like demons.

Instead, of all of the cool things that could have happen, the NXT 7 executed the only play in their playbook: run-in, attack everybody, anger John Cena, leave. Yawn. Meanwhile I'm sure the announcers on Raw will talk about it in grave tones, like it was the fall of Rome all over again.

And now it appears to me that Sheamus himself is the "mastermind" behind the NXT 7. It would make sense for the lover of Sanford & Son (don't tell me you forgot his ECW promo) to hire the NXT 7 to destroy the icon John Cena. Sure, the earlier proposed Wade Barrett vs. John Cena match ain't such a bad deal, but I have a feeling that WWE might pull the trigger of Sheamus (who, in the WWE storylines, is a rookie himself) running roughshod over WWE with his little gang.



And, plus, Sheamus and Wade are foreign, which makes them incredibly evil. Because all foreign people are.

-So the storyline surprises were predictable let-downs, the PPV concept was lame and the good matches were the ones that came out of nowhere, giving off the impression that WWE was too busy this month yelling at THQ that the wrestlers's muscles in the "WWE All-Stars" video game looked like tiny popsicle sticks. Maybe things would be more exciting with this guy around. Ninja H is gonna save the day.



YouTube URL: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=soMpk8xHDzY&feature=related

Email is mckinley.torch@gmail.com

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