It's official: Ricky Steamboat is now a road agent with WWE. He joins Fit Finlay, Dean Malenko, Arn Anderson and others as former wrestlers turned agents, as our generation's answer to Jay Strongbow, Tony Garrea, Sgt. Slaughter etc.

I finished watching my recording of the holiday Smackdown! in Iraq today. Good thing I recorded it... I fell asleep through most of it while it aired!

I'm not in the least denigrating the contribution of troops... these people are making a tremendous sacrifice for their country. The least they deserve is a few minutes airtime!

What I DID find dull though were the matches they were presented. Firstly: anyone who thought heels would go over here, take yourselves outside for a beating. Still, the matches they were given, except for the main event tag bout, were really horrible.

I'd already said how Undertaker-Heidenreich would be bad, but they topped those concerns. 10 minutes of punch/punch/kick, kick/punch/punch. Then to add to the pain, they put Bob Holly on for more of the same!

The troops deserve much better than that!

Man, I missed a week again! Let's try some catch-up:

• Last week's RAW was pretty tight. Tight enough that I forgot we only had 3 matches the entire show. In fact, I didn't realize it until I read about it later on, then counted.

  
  Yes, the match between Edge and Randy Orton was dull. All of Jim Ross' calling of it a "classic" couldn't hide that fact. The rest was very entertaining. Plus, they now actually have a new feud for Shelton Benjamin brewing!

  
  It was all crafted toward Eric Bishoff declaring an Elimination Chamber at the new January PPV to determine the World Champion. Now they have an actual selling point for that event. At least for me.




• Smackdown! on the other hand... a potential classic tag team match with Rey/RVD versus Kidman/Akio got cut down to 5 minutes, so that they could air the entire Cena-Jesus streetfight. Considering how the exact same match filled up Velocity as well (and probably Experience Sunday. I don't watch that crap, so I don't know), I think they could have spent more time and better time on that match instead.

  
  Undertaker-Heidenreich is being filmed on the Middle East tour. Why do we have to punish the troops?

  
  Amy and Joy in a catfight just pointed out what a loss divas who can actually wrestle was to both brands.




• Speaking of those Diva Search losers, it's come to my attention that all the ladies who've been showing up on both shows of late are also losers - ones who didn't even make it to the finals.

  
  So WWE cut all these talented wrestlers, then replaced them with a slew of talentless bimbettes, all because they cost less? Two words for you WWE: Nitro Girls.




• There's a rumor going around about ECW being resurrected for a one-time PPV next summer.

  
  A lot of ECW alumni work for WWE, and if he's still with the company Paul Heyman could come up with ideas for this...

  
  - Only problem: it would suck. We'd get watered down by WWE standard matches, and let's face it: the language and adult content that made that fed great wouldn't appear on the show either... I'm hoping that it doesn't get past the rumor stage.