Invasion Aftermath

After a faltering, stuttering start, an event that at first promised to draw more yawns than cheers hit our television screens on Sunday, and quite frankly, blew us away.

The WWF/WCW/ECW Invasion angle got off to what could only be termed a very poor start, and if it hadn't been for the injection of ECW, which, so I am led to believe, is now officially owned by WWFE, this whole pay-per-view event could have been limper than Fred Durst's bizkit.

So, Monday night, I put the video in the machine around half seven in the evening, and settled down for a night's entertainment, finger ready on the fast forward button (Channel 4 had the rights to show this one, so there were plenty of ad breaks), in eager anticipation of what was to come.

And I was not disappointed. From the first match pitting Edge and Christian against Mike Awesome and Lance Storm, to the final ten man tag which saw Steve Austin turning his back on the WWF, this was one hell of a night, and it even gave us some match of the year candidates.

Although, reading various reports and articles on this event, I am left to wonder, why is, it seems, everyone in the world against Sean "X-Pac" Waltman? People loved him in the good old days of DX, but now, he just can't seem to do anything wrong.

Some wrote that his match with Billy Kidman was one of the low-points of the night. I actually thought that this match wasn't that bad. Okay, it wasn't actually a show stealer, but it was a good match between two of the top cruiser/light-heavyweights currently doing the rounds.

Yet, because the match contained the aforementioned Mr. Waltman, everyone seemed to be down on it. Oh well, guess you can't have everything.

Anyway, the match of the night had to be THAT match between Rob Van Dam and Jeff Hardy. While watching the opening exchanges of this encounter, a phrase started to repeat itself over and over in my mind - "the part of Jerry Lynn will now be played by Jeff Hardy."

This was a fine example of what a match should be. There were plenty of high spots, plenty of great moves, and the crowd reaction was tremendous.

Rob Van Dam showed that he belongs in the big leagues. He is, without a doubt, the greatest wrestler ECW ever produced, and one can only scratch his head and wonder why he never became ECW World Champion? Still, there is the possibility that, should WCW ever get a television deal of their own, that one day, RVD will become WCW Champion. He deserves no less.

And as for Jeff Hardy - this 23 year old has now held three of the five WWF singles titles. He is now a former Intercontinental, Light-Heavyweight and Hardcore champion. Yet the sad thing is that the combined length of time for all of these title reigns is probably only about four weeks. This shows that the WWF don't think he's ready for an extended title run, or are only grooming him for bigger things. Imagine what a Jeff Hardy-Lance Storm IC title match would be like.

And now onto Stone Cold. Well, I've only read the Raw report, I haven't seen it yet, and, if truth be told, the only wrestling I may watch this week will be Smackdown (a little thing called Big Brother taking care of Raw this week), but I am really intrigued by Austin defecting to WCW/ECW. I don't think I'm going to offer any comments on this development - yet.

But there is one thing I'm going to comment on, something no one else has since this entire Invasion angle began. The Internet wrestling e-fed.

Just over a year ago, I was in a couple of e-feds, and for me, the appeal of these was watching someone from WCW being matched with someone in the WWF, and going at it in a feud of some kind, culminating in a match at the imaginary promotion's pay-per-view.

Yet now, with the likes of RVD facing Matt Hardy, and Kurt Angle facing Booker T, the appeal of e-feds could wear off a little.

Sure, there will always be some of us who indulge in a spot of fantasy booking. Games like Promotion Wars and Extreme Warfare will always allow us to indulge in this, but will the e-fed world suffer because of this? Will we want to see Booker T v The Rock played out on a web site when, very soon, we could see the same match played out on our very television screens?

Anyway, I'm off. Before I go, I made mention of it before, but if you want to run your own wrestling promotion, log onto www.promotionwars.com to get the latest download of this great game. We are promised Promotion Wars II sometime later this summer, and with the developments the programmers have planned, it looks like it could be very good!

In case you're wondering, I'm currently the boss of WCW. My champion - Japanese legend Kenta Kobashi, with help from his co-horts Kaz Hayashi, Yang and Jado, known collectively as Team Burning. Kobashi is currently in a feud with RVD, having just seen off the challenges of Booker T, DDP and Lance Storm.

Hey, maybe I could give all these sites a new Monday Nitro report!