"half a second away!"

That's the first thing that comes to mind when I think of Paul Heyman of (the original) ECW fame.

I stumbled onto his column for London's The Sun newspaper, and I've been watching his "Heyman Hustle" webisodes. His videos are all over the map, and a little too sloppy for my taste. Maybe I've just been spoiled by WWE over the years, as far as slick production goes. Once in a while, there'll be a good, solid bit, but it's too hit-or-miss so far for me. It is half a second away.

On the other hand, I find his written columns intelligent, articulated, and perfectly on-point. Perhaps the best example was his post on the Chris Benoit saga, in which he expresses the finality of the senselessness of it all, and how everyone has tried to come to terms with it, family, co-workers and fans alike. I myself have tried to wrap my mind around it, with no amount of success; the tribute shows are still on my DVD's hard drive, neither archived nor erased. I just can't watch them, but I don't want to gloss over the events and pretend they never happened.

I've wanted to write about it, too. But once my mind starts thinking that professional recognition should bear on professional achievements only, I start to think that three people were denied to right to have further professional achievements (or any, in the case of young Daniel), and that that cannot be honoured. All my thoughts string together with "Yes, but..."s. In that, Paul E. sums it up well: "I've no answers and I never will."

But I digress. Point is, Paul Heyman does a great job of analyzing the field of sports entertainment and MMA, particularly from a marketing standpoint, and he is quite enjoyable to read. Give him a try.

He has a particularly interesting viewpoint concerning the Joey Styles/Mike Adamle, um, debacle? Heck, it's the only thing that makes sense. Personally, I think they want to rebuild a "kickable" interviewer, like Coach was in the Rock's heyday. With Jonathan Coachman's rumoured departure for ESPN, they had the opportunity to juggle things around. I think the addition of Mick Foley was brilliant - he's not perfect yet, but give him time to settle in. Besides, he's already better than JBL ever was. Removing Joey Styles, to me, was a mistake for ECW, the weakest brand WWE has. But parachuting Adamle was a great way to turn him heel almost instantaneously - not that he's evil, just that his eagerness to impress and his incompetence are a perfect combination to get people to want him to get beat up. Check out this week's Dirt Sheet; I think that's the best clue to where WWE is trying to head with Adamle.

I just hope they haven't sacrificed a great voice (Styles, I hope you enjoy running the website), if not all of ECW, for the sake of a shortcut to building a minor character. Unless they name him GM of Raw, in which case I quit!

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ufc 83 results

Unfortunately, I didn't get to see it, for a number of reasons. 1. I don't belong to their Fight Club, so I didn't have access to the 15,000 or so tickets that were PRE-sold.* 2. I didn't want to pay the ridiculous prices for nosebleed seats. 3. I didn't buy the pay-per-view, because everytime I have, I have wound up regretting it (e.g. UFC 61 Ortiz Shamrock 2.) and because by the time the St-Pierre Serra fight was on, I was likely to be fast asleep in front of the TV. 4. It was on the same night as the hockey (Habs vs. Bruins game 6), so very VERY few sports bars picked it up, at least in my part of the world.

* Yeah, 15,000 pre-sold. So that leaves 8,000 max available at the moment they go on sale. Then they boast about selling out in record time. WTF? To borrow from Y2J, would you please shut the HELL UP?!

But I'm glad to hear the results, with most of the matches I was interested in going "my way." Congratulations to Georges St-Pierre, Rich Franklin, Mac Danzig and Nate Quarry, not to mention the other homeboy, Jonathan Goulet!

By the way, I need to discuss GSP's nickname, "Rush." I really wonder whether the explanation that his manager gave it to him because his first fights all ended in the first round is accurate. To me, it sounds like that story was concocted to avoid having to tell the story of a beautiful example of linguistic transformation. Because I'd be far more willing to believe someone went from St-Pierre (Pierre=Stone) to "Roche" (Roche=Rock), which got anglicized phonetically along the way. Unless it's a Sting-like story, and the guy is really fond of Geddy Lee et al. Either way, his official version just sounds like he lifted it from Mike "Quick" Swick.

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