The Katz Files – Arnie Katz
My RAW (4/5) Notebook
The Kingfish Arnie Katz delves into the Flair retirement, the new Big Show angle and other issues raised by RAW.
The Flair Retirement
Seldom has professional wrestling showed more class than WWE has with the Ric Flair Retirement. Never has any wrestler been more worth of respect.
Both the segments on WrestleMania and those on RAW set a standard for how big-time promotions should treat retiring stars. In an industry that talks a lot about respect, it’s great to see an outfit like WWE actually show respect.
I don’t blame the fans who booed Shawn Michaels during the match. I don’t think they were right, but I understand how the heat of the match could make them hate HBK. Did you notice that the next night, on RAW, fans pretty much stopped booing after the touching scene between HBK and Flair in the ring.
HBK did the right thing, which was to help Ric Flair do the right thing in the best possible way.
In professional wrestling, the right thing is for the retiring star to put over someone who still has a ring career in motion. That is exactly what Ric Flair did. He gave HBK the rub and JBK reciprocated by helping The Nature Boy exit on an outstanding match.
The Big Show’s New Angle
No one ever accused Vince McMahon of lacking guts – and launching a new angle for Big Show the night after that boxer-wrestler match shows no lack of intestinal fortitude.
It was hard not to admire the way they simultaneously moved Big Show into the babyface column as they initiated hostilities between him and Great Khali.
It’s a lot easier to sell Paul Wight as a fan favorite than to make the story itself believable. Fans like Big Show and respond to his warm, easy-going personality. Even in the Mayweather storyline, the fans gravitated toward Show rather than the ego-inflated boxer. And let’s face it, even Umaga could be turned into a face by putting him against Khali.
The apparent plotline is something else, though. It doesn’t matter how Floyd Mayweather achieved his victory. He beat Big Show. It’s going to be a tough sell to convince fans that a man who can’t beat someone over a foot shorter and 300 lbs. lighter can now defeat a trained wrestler (well, for plot purposes…) who is taller and heavy than he is.
WWE must take the line that Mayweather only won because of his six helpers, chairshots and brass knuckles. That’s what Big Show suggested in his post-WM interview on this week’s RAW. They are going to have to emphasize it much more heavily, especially at this early stage in the story. It wouldn’t be a bad idea for RAW to re-show the second half of the Mayweather-Big Show contest with someone like Jim Ross providing analysis.
Giant versus Giant could be a PPV winner, even given the low quality of Great Khali’s wrestling and his non-existent mic work.
That’s it for today. I’ll be back tomorrow with another installment of the Internet’s fastest-rising daily wrestling column.
– Arnie Katz
Crossfire4@cox.net
(4/5/08)
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