WOW! WHAT A SHOW....

Whew! What a show!

Last night was one of the most exciting nights I've seen in a long time. I saw great technical work, outstanding high flying, some of the best moves around today. I was on the edge of my seat with every move made, every new person to walk in, wondering if what I was about to see would top what I had just seen. And I wasn't disappointed. Every new person brought with them their own personal bag o'tricks. And the action just didn't stop coming.

Too bad I WASN'T watching WWE Raw….I was watching the Men's Snowboard Superpipe finals on ESPN's coverage of the Winter X Games.

Oh, sure, I flipped in and out of RAW during commercials…and what I saw, quite honestly, bored me to tears. The same old stuff. Or in this case, the same old "post PPV" stuff. Triple H comes out and yammers on and on and on about what a GREAT wrestler he is and Ric Flair degrades himself further each week as he continued to proclaim that Triple H is the greatest wrestler in the business today (hogwash). I saw Edge and HBK yammering at each other some more. I saw Bischoff being the spineless jerk he always has been. I saw the longest running continuiously bad feud ijn the (still pathetic and awful) Kane vs Gene Snitsky. In a steel cage. BIG…..deal.

WHY watch that kind of garbage when incredible talents like Danny Kass, Antti Autti, and Andy Finch are blasting down the superpipe doing back to back 1080s and knowing what they needed to do to REALLY electrify a crowd. Even if they did knock my main man, Senor Blanco Shaun White off the podium at the very last second. White did it to himself, giving it all he had, but electing not to pull off some of the antics that the higher scoring Autti, who won the Gold, and Finch, who won the Silver, were doing. Still, the Flying Tomato will be back…and back soon, seeing how he won the SlopeStyle Gold over the weekend.

My point in all this: I made a CONSIOUS DECISION to skip NOT just RAW, but the Royal Rumble as well, to watch some incredible athletes excel at what they do normally. I just didn't see the point in dropping $35 to watch the end results I predicted (every single match correctly, I might add), nor listening to the hype of what had happened the previous night.

I mentioned in a recent rant that WWE wrestling gives me indigestion these days. Possibly that's because I know what a talented group of wrestlers work for WWE. And what they COULD be doing. IF WWE CREATIVE knew what the hell they were doing. From what I've been watching over the past six months, they clearly do not. And I honestly cannot stomach most of the garbage they have been serving up recently.

So I opt to see something that gets my adrenaline pumping the way wrestling USED to. I'm watching stars in the making. I really WAS sitting on the edge of my seat as the last of three runs came down to White, Autti, and Finch last night. I knew Kass was sitting on Gold at the time, and that White could make only Silver at best after his final run. But the big question of the evening was "Would he be able to make it back to the podium at all after having to drop out of the finals last year because he injured his knee during a practice run?" The answer turned out to be no, as Autti's incredible, mindblowing final run dropped Kass to Silver and White to Bronze, and then Finch came in and snatched the Silver from Kass, pushing him to Bronze, and White to 4th place and out of the medals. Now, THAT'S EXCITING!

These days, Vince McMahon wouldn't know exciting if it jumped up and bit him on the ass. I know, and so does the whole world…just look at SmackDown lately….

And the snowboard world knows how to treat it's stars. Not one single top ten finalists is even six foot tall. And some of them are new to what they were doing as well. Take 15-year-old Michael Goldsmidt, who was making his first X-Games finals appearance. Although he fell after a back to back 1080 attempt in his second run, it came at the tail in of the two incredible stunts, and his board hit the top of the pipe in a way that momentum just knocked him on his ass. But it didn't take away from what he had just done or attempted, and the fans just ate it up. And Autti - - he just EXPLODED. Tenth last year, in only his second year at the X Games, he snatched a Gold away from everyone, and then reacted as if just asked his schoolteacher for extra homework because he gets bored. In other words, it almost seemed as if he doesn't care about the medal or the attention…he was there to HAVE FUN.

Contrast that to the WWE's pitiful treatment of it's cruiserweights (or the rest of it's underappreciated roster as well). The FANS know how to appreciate them…well, more accurately, the fans who are in the know - those (shudder!) INTERNET-savvy fans - know how to. The rest of the crowd, the average fan who isn't online and doesn' t follow online news like the rest of us sickos...well, they don’t seem to care that much, and that's a damn shame…they should. The reason the fans don't care that much about truly talented individuals like Paul London, Shannon Moore, Funaki, Billy Kidman, and others is because the WWE tries to forcefeed people with little talent and a lot of height, like Snitsky and before him, Nathan Jones, to it's fans. It basically says "Hey, WE want you to LOVE this guy, so we're going to force him on you until you do." They want to use cruiserweights as "Oh, they're out there? So what, let's do THIS with them in the background" - type of stuff. WWE makes NO effort to get them over with the average fan. But Guess what, folks? It ain't working…and it's causing previously fiercely loyal fans like me to TUNE COMPLETELY OUT. Is that really what you wanted? Didn't think so…

Worse yet, I don't even CARE that I missed it. And that means there's a BIG problem. Because it made me realize that I'll tune out when there's something else on I'm interested in (which means in two weeks, because watching the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show is a tradition in my house, I'll be missing RAW again by choice).

And you know what's truly sad about it? The WWE doesn't care. They simply don't care. Because if they did, they'd be trying to win me back. And believe me, $250,000 Dog-I-Mean-Diva searches and Gene Snitsky's butt-ugly mug on my TV every week…well, that's not trying to win me back in any way shape or form.

I think I'll stick with X Sports from now on…wrestling just leaves me flat…while last night's competition left me FLYING HIGH…and anxiously awaiting the rest of the Winter X Sports season, culminating in the 2005 Winter Gravity Games in March…

And you guys didn't think I followed anything BESIDES wrestling, did you?

Congrats to ALL The X Games champions and challengers, in ALL X sports. You've been putting on one hell of a show this weekend.

God I MISS that feeling where wrestling is concerned. You know, the feeling that you CAN'T WAIT for next week's show?

Oh, THOSE were the days...