Belly to Bellyaches
by B. Brian Burke on 2001-07-24

As I sit watching a retro video , typing this column, what comes up but Starr's theme, "Wannabe", by the Spice Girls. Which makes me think of the Eagles Hall. Well, most of RAW was far less heated than say Mr. Gillis vs. Rocket Randy Tyler, or 2 Eagles vs. Manson at the Eagles Hall.There is a severe lack of emotion, an indy like lack of heat for alot of the show. ECW will be fine. WCW is like the corpse in My Weekend at Bernies, with Austin and ECW carrying it along.

Stephanie McMahon is terrible.Terrible. Her delivery is horrible. In that leather beret, she looks like Lisa Sliva, the Guardian Angel leader that WWF tried to develop when Steph was about 11 and doing Piper Scrooge videos with Daffney. She looks positively... stupid. which rhymes with Kanyon. Anyways, Steph sux. She's as annoying as the Frog was.

Paul and Shane should tell her to forget it, just go get knocked up and have that kid with the huge forehead and the zits already.

Albert works hard but the poor guy had zero crowd steam behind him. Lance Storm got a good pop going over. I'm looking at my notes, and honestly most are critical. Coachman is useless. Page tries hard but it's really not a top angle. APA is funny, Jericho looked good .Vince's pandering to the Rock was a waste. He could have done something much better.

The announcing doesn't work. Calling RVD "boastful" as a means of putting heat on him is indy-level amatuerish force-feeding tripe. Cole is pathetically robotic and bland. God help the business that this is now considered a play by play guy. He undersells all sorts of moves -listen to him sometime, it's like Schiovone talking thru things and going " whatta move". AWFUL. Use some ECW guys for color.

JR trying to get across Booker T having an attitude problem is ridiculous. Who writes this crap? This act is not helping the angle, and the crowd seemed deflated, even during the main event. The 2 tables not breaking is not easy to book, I wonder how they did it lol...

Which brings me to the "women's match." That was pure porno, far too adult. I don't mind but that is not suitable for children of a certain age, and Vince sells tickets to their parents and says bring the kids.

Torrie Wilson is athletic and seems to be learning, Trish Stratus is not even good enough for ECCW. She has no timing, a lot of aggressiveness and 2 good moves, 4 if you count her attributes. She almost killed Torrie tonite. Once Trish does more than a spot, she's lost. I swear she makes Palestina from GLOW look like Mildred Burke. Please, Vince or whoever, stop her from "wrestling".

Let her get her ass whoomped, fine. I'm sure she's a nice person, but it really deflates their house to see her shoot kick Torrie half to death, not because there's heat, but because she's a clumsy horse-faced titazon. Speaking of which, why don''t they just fly in Francine to give a seminar, she understands and defined the role.