By NICK TYLWALK Special to SLAM! Sports A weekly SLAM! Wrestling Editorial Column

Quick hits

Down the Ramp

By NICK TYLWALK -- For SLAM! Wrestling

Every columnist should have the right to monkey with the format of his or her column every once in a while, so I'm going with some quick hits on a number of different topics this week. I sincerely hope this doesn't confuse any of my regular readers. Thanks go out to all three of you, by the way. Here come the Quick Hits:

From the "That Didn't Take Long" department, separate storylines on Raw and Smackdown seem to have lasted less than a month. Here's a little unsolicited advice for the WWF writers: if you wanted to have a feud between Undertaker and Triple H, why not just put Helmsley on Raw after he lost the title? I mean, I understand that he "took the place" of Hulk Hogan on Smackdown, but little details like logic never gummed up the works in the past. The events of this week's shows almost guarantee that The Game and the Dead Man will keep making guest appearances on each other's shows, pretty much negating the whole concept of the brand extension. This is making my head hurt.

I'm all for the Hulkamania revival. In fact, I dedicated a whole column to it a few weeks ago. The fact remains, though, that the Hulkster is pushing my power to suspend disbelief to its very limits. Take last night's Smackdown for example. Seeing Undertaker get "knocked over" the top rope and then the guardrail by Hogan was hard to swallow. To quote the Sports Guy, not good times. Bad times.

I haven't been watching Tough Enough 2 religiously, so maybe this isn't fair for me to say, but I'm not feeling any of the contestants right now. After some discussion with my roommates, I'd say you have to watch out for Kenny as a dark horse. He's been pretty low key, just laying in the cut and hanging around. To this point the best part of this season has been the inclusion of a cast member with a spoiler on his head, though I did enjoy the visit by Maven in last night's episode. Oh yeah, and I'm not volunteering to take any chops from Bob Holly. Ever.

Thanks to all of you who e-mailed me on my column about the possibility of The Rock leaving for a full-time gig in Hollywood, even though many of you disagreed with me. Several people brought up the obvious parallels with Hogan when he first dabbled in movies, but there's really no comparison. Rocky has so much more charisma on the screen than Hogan that it's not even funny. Maybe The Scorpion King isn't the role that will propel him to superduperstardom, but I'm going to stick to my guns and say that he'll be gone from WWF rings by the end of 2003.

The cynics have won me over on the "Brock Lesnar as the WWF's Goldberg" argument. It's still early but the ingredients are all there: guy with a big hulking phsyique and some impressive power moves, doesn't talk, short matches, runs through a bunch of people without tasting defeat but conveniently steers clear of the top echelon stars while doing so. All we need now is the announcers talking about his undefeated streak and we'll be right back in 1998. Aside from the obvious lack of creativity, this is doing a bit of a disservice to Lesnar since, as a former NCAA wrestling champion, he has actual wrestling skills.

And speaking of things that make me think back to the time when I did Nitro reports for this site, I was bummed when Big Show joined the nWo. The one positive is that it was consistent with the way Show gets used by the WWF writers. He's a stopgap solution for any storyline or TV show that has a hole. Need a credible (fairly credible anyway) heavy hitter as a mystery opponent? Cue up Show's music. Does Vince need to teach a mouthy face a lesson? There's that Big Show guy again. Like I've said before, he's the designated hitter of the WWF, sort of a 500-pound, seven-foot Edgar Martinez.

Finally, it's hard to write anything right now without thinking of the staff cuts at Slam! Though I've never met my editors in person, I've been contributing to Slam! Wrestling since 1998 and feel like I know them. It was tough to read John Molinaro's farwell column earlier this week, though I know with his talent he will land on his feet. The future of this site is definitely up in the air, but it's hard to feel bad about losing what to me is a hobby when others are losing their full time jobs. In case I don't get another chance, I'd like to publicly thank John Powell, Greg Oliver and Molinaro for the opportunities they've given me. Thanks guys.

I don't want to end Quick Hits on a down note. JP hasn't sent me an e-mail to say it's over yet, so I'll talk to all of you again next week.

Previous Columns

April 19 ... Goodbye to Rocky
April 5 ... Boarding the Hulkamania bandwagon
March 29 ... WWF split finally here
March 22 ... WWF should just relax
March 15 ... WrestleMania, slamdunk or air ball?
March 1 ... WWF return a test for Hall
Feb. 22 ... WWF return a test for Hall
Feb. 15 ... Nick who?

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