Straight Shooting
Don't let Tank Abbott play with knives. WCW has finally gone too far!
February 18, 2000
By Fritz Capp
Well it finally happened. A match went down that totally crossed the line of everything that wresting has been trying to shy away from for a long time. Now with all of the attacks on the WWF’s product and how morally bankrupt it is, one can only shake their head at the complete and utter stupidity of WCW’s thinking when they allowed Tank Abbott to "pull a knife" on his opponent. I was sure that wrestling could not shock me anymore but I was wrong.
Now questions are being raised as to whether or not Tank did this on his own. Considering how desperate WCW is to "get themselves over" I highly doubt it. Especially considering where the knife came from. It was in the pocket of the jacket that the two men were fighting for as a part of the stipulation of the match. No, WCW knew what it was doing..... or did they?
In my mind I believe that they were trying to put over Abbott as the ultimate bad mamma jamma but this is not the way to do it. On top of that they had Abbott yell out that he should f’n kill his opponent right there. This is way over the top and I hope that whomever WCW allowed to write that piece of garbage is fired immediately.
One would think that with the recent WCW booking that Vince Russo was still head writer. (A thought that has crossed my mind on more than one occasion) With their use of more predominately less dressed women, the amount of vulgarity and brutality and now this over the top scenario that played out to all who viewed their Superbrawl PPV one can only wonder. Kevin Sullivan, who is being reported as the current booker, has a track record of putting on some good and some bad television but things like this were never associated with his name. This is the case for all who are supposed to be booking WCW currently.
This takes me back to the complete stupidity of the WWF when they allowed a gun angle between Steve Austin and Brian Pillman. There was no justifiable reason for it then and there is no justifiable reason for it now. These kind of things are exactly what hurts pro wrestling and I can already hear the cries from their major detractors. Are there any names that can be directly linked from the WWF then to WCW now? Only one, but he is supposed to be out of the loop. That name is Vince Russo.
Russo has a penchant for over the top shock television, which he learned from Vince McMahon while in the WWF. It was plain as day when you watched the product in WCW after he left the WWF for greener pastures down south that Russo was running the show. Out came the women with their cleavage showing (not necessarily a bad thing), the language got rougher, the matches themselves were shorter, and the show in general was faster paced. This has not changed in Atlanta since he was supposedly removed from his position, in fact it has gotten worse.
Now Nitro opens up with a 10 minutes verbal assault from the ring most times by the top heels in the company which is very reminiscent of RAW. This was just recently added to the programming. Do you honestly believe that Kevin Sullivan came up with this all by himself? As I said before Sullivan has been doing this for quite a while and this sort of booking was never in his vocabulary.
All in all I believe that WCW has still not hit bottom. Instead of trying to come up with their own formulas for success, they continue to try to copy the WWF’s, which is a huge mistake. In order to make it in the highly competitive wrestling market today you have to be unique and be able to get it out there for all to see before someone else does. This is evident with the WWF’s current product. It is no secret among the wrestling fans who were privy to ECW’s personal brand of mayhem in the mid 90's that they were the ones who reintroduced this smash mouthed brand of wrestling we all call "hardcore". But ECW did not have the vehicle to promote it on. What we are seeing today in the WWF is a direct and blatant ripoff of ECW’s earlier days, the only difference being that the WWF has the vehicle to put it over. Please no letters on the history of hardcore wrestling, as I know ECW got their ideas from Japan and also Florida Championship Wrestling, just to name a few of them that spawned the general influence on the ECW promotion.
WCW does have the vehicle to promote itself though. It also has the talent to do something other than try to copy someone else if only someone down in Atlanta would stand up and take the challenge. If no one does this pretty soon, WCW will be a distant memory and they will have no one but themselves to blame.
With that I am outta here. Remember wrestling is nothing more than what it appears to be.
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