Shades Of Gray #17

In this week's column, I weigh in on two of the most talked about happenings in the world of professional wrestling from the past week: Mike Admale becoming the Raw General Managr, and Freddie Prinze, Jr. becoming a WWE writer. Will Adamle be able to draw on the heat he already has and become an entertaining heel G.M.? And what will the Scooby Doo star contribute to WWE?

In "The Links of the Week," you can catch up on all the highlights from the past week's television programming, including William Regal's return from his 60-day suspension, the Cutting Edge with Mick Foley and the best match from "Saturday Night's Main Event." And in honour of last night's show, "Extras" re-visits classic moments from past editions of SNME, including a Steel Cage Match for the WWF title, Andre The Giant and Ted Dibiase screwing over Hulk Hogan, Shawn Michaels winning the I-C title for the first time, and much more.

Mike Adamle as Raw General Manager

Oh man, where to begin. A lot has been written and said about this controversial decision already, even by WWE fans who voted in a poll on wwe.com. Almost 70% of over 265 000 fans responded “Mike Adamle?! Are you serious?!” in response to the question, “What do you think of Mike Adamle being named the new General Manager of Raw?” But I want to put in my two cents as well.

Back in April, I said that I liked Adamle’s move to the ECW announce booth because it was train wreck television and the unintentional comedy Admale provided was off the charts. But that was “ECW” - this time, he’s moving to “Raw,” and has one of the biggest on-screen roles in the company.

Clearly, WWE is trying to get the most out of Adamle after signing him to a ridiculous contract. The “ECW” experiment failed (horribly) and now they’re trying to keep pace with the unpredictable feel to “Raw” by naming this ass-clown as the new G.M. Unfortunately, the unpredictable move backfired immediately when the crowd no-sold the announcement. Even worse, the crowd was so pissed off that they didn’t pop for the announcement of Cena vs. Bastista at SummerSlam.

Adamle has shown no improvement since he started with the company, and I don’t buy the argument that he’s been purposely bad in order to set up this heel character. It seems like he doesn’t care about or like wrestling, and his lack of interest and lack of talent is disrespectful to the other workers and announcers in the company who do care.

On the plus side, he has that 1995 Eric Bischoff-look going for him, and Bischoff was able to make a successful transition from the announce booth to a character role. Unfortunately, Adamle’s no Bischoff - Bischoff had charisma and knew the business. Adamle doesn’t know anything about the business and doesn’t appear to be trying to learn either.

Freddie Prinze, Jr. a part of WWE's Creative team

Here’s another topic that’s received a lot of play in the dirtsheets that I thought I’d weigh in on as well. Compared to the reaction to Mike Adamle’s elevated role, the response to Prinze joining the writing staff has been favourable. The signing shouldn’t come as that big of a surprise anyways, considering WWE’s history of signing writers with Hollywood experience.

In fact, WWE also signed Michael Pavone this week, a writer from the popular Fox show, Prison Break. Vince Russo and Ed Ferrera started scripting WWE television in the late-90s, and since then, the fed continues looking for people with TV-writing experience.

Prinze certainly fits the bill. Besides his long line of acting credits, Prinze was also a writer and producer for all 22 episodes of the “Freddie” series on ABC. Now, whether writing a terrible sitcom translates into writing entertaining wrestling programming is another matter entirely. Luckily, Prinze is supposedly a lifelong fed mark, and he’s so familiar with the product that he’s written numerous blogs on the WWE Fan Nation site.

In the end, I thinks its silly for WWE to continually seek Hollywood writers instead of people who know the wrestling business inside and out. For me, I think someone like Mick Foley would be a great addition to the creative team. As a whole, I’m not a big fan of scripting wrestling television anyways. WWE needs wrestlers who are instinctively creative - instead, they’re creating robots. Guys like Batista and Shelton Benjamin are used to having others write stuff for them - and I guarantee neither of them could come up with a solid wrestling promo on their own.

That’s where writers like Freddie Prinze, Jr. are supposed to help, I guess. And in all honesty, I hope everything works out fine for Prinze. But if his first pitch to Vince goes something like this . . . “Okay, so there’s this WWE Superstar that makes this bet with his fellow Superstars that he can turn a nerdy, unattractive Diva into the WWE Women’s Champion” . . . then I told you so.

Quick Hits

There’s no way Kaz is coming out of this “leaving TNA” angle looking better - if anything, it’ll be for the worse. It doesn’t help that Tomko and Dustin Rhodes legitimately left the company this week. Kevin Nash was pretty close to leaving, too.

Speaking of Nash, you have to credit the guy for knowing when he has leverage. Apparently, he left the tapings Tuesday night after being pissed off with the finish of the 10-man Weapons Gauntlet Match (set to air this Thursday). Since then, though, things have been smoothed over. After all, they’ve been setting up a Joe-Nash main event for months, and Nash knows they want him to stick around, and are willing to accomodate him to do so.

Cena and Batista are set to face each other for the first time at SummerSlam. This will either be horrible or ridiculously horrible. I put the over/under at 5 (how many rehearsals they need before the match takes place on August 17).

Until I read a recent internet report, I’d completely forgotten that Ashley was gone. Good riddance, I say. If she hadn’t been released because of the whole escort service scandal, she would have been gone soon for other reasons anyways. (cough*drugs*cough)

What happened to Christian Cage? He’s become an afterthought in TNA. At one point, Edge and Christian were World Champions at the same time in the two biggest wrestling companies in the United States. Now, Edge is still on top - and Christian’s teaming with Rhino.

Edge’s segment with Mick Foley to end “SmackDown!” was awesome. WWE is right in using Foley sparingly as far as putting over others physically goes, which makes it seem more special when it does happen. And the crowd's reaction Friday night proved that. Edge, of course, is the best promo man in the biz, and Foley was one of the best when he was active too.

According to a blog written by Tommy Dreamer, Mark Henry literally knocked the shit out of him two weeks ago on “ECW.” That’s all I’ve got to say about that.

Links of the Week

1. William Regal makes his return in a stiff match against CM Punk. I loved how Regal beat the snot (er, blood) out of Punk, and then Punk decided to fire back (pay attention to his comeback - none of that shit misses).

2. Chris Jericho’s final Highlight Reel, which includes some classic Attitude Era moments. HBK makes his return to "Raw” on Monday night.

3. The main event from “Raw”: Cena and Batista vs. JBL and Kane (Part 1; Part 2).

4. Matt Hardy and Braden Walker backstage at “ECW.”

5. Colin Delaney’s looking like even more of a chump after this.

6. Beer Money vs. Christian Cage and Rhino - the winners face LAX for the tag titles at Hard Justice (Part 1; Part 2).

7. Kaz explains why he’s “leaving” TNA.

8. Booker T and Samoa Joe preview their TLC Cage Match.

9. The Cutting Edge with special guest, Mick Foley (Part 1; Part 2; Part 3).

10. Edge vs. Jeff Hardy on “Saturday Night’s Main Event” (Part 1; Part 2).

Extras

11. The best music video of all-time, which debuted on SNME in 1985.

12. Hulk Hogan and Paul Orndorff in a Steel Cage Match for the WWF Championship.

13. Andre The Giant wins the WWF title and then surrenders it to Ted Dibiase.

14. Ultimate Warrior vs. Super Ninja. Uh-huh, I said Super Ninja.

15. From a 1989 broadcast: The Rockers vs. The Brain Busters (Arn Anderson and Tully Blanchard). Anderson and Blanchard left the fed shortly after this match.

16. Shawn Michaels pins Davey Boy Smith for the Intercontinental title in 1992.

17. Another Shawn Michaels match - this time, in a Street Fight against Shane-O-Mac (Part 1; Part 2).

18. Dubbed the “Strangest tag match in WWE history”: Kane, Eugene and Doink vs Viscera, Kevin Thorn and Umaga (Part 1; Part 2).

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