When you actually listen to other wrestling fans talk or comment on wrestling itself, you find that they often have a funny relationship with the action inside the ring. It’s weird, but more often than not they’re not really all that impressed with most matches, as if the thing they’re actively enjoying doesn’t really interest them all that much, that they’re simply waiting for that one moment, that one match, that truly seems to fulfill the potential of what they follow. In essence, they regard most of wrestling itself as so routine as to hardly be worth considering all that seriously. Take any blow-by-blow commentary of a typical wrestling show, and if you look at results for the most recent Raw or Impact Wrestling, you’ll quickly see what I mean. In one sense, maybe these guys are right, and maybe most wrestling really is junk wrestling, instantly disposable, and maybe most wrestlers, faced with the pressure of constantly performing throw just any old match together, completely uninspired, focused more on the demands of the particular timeslot they have than entertaining the fans. I would rather believe otherwise. When I watch a wrestling show, I actually have an easier time following a TV show than a PPV, when the pressure should theoretically be reversed, that the wrestlers should put more effort for the big card than the smaller one, but it’s always the reverse. It’s the TV matches where they must establish themselves, work what makes them special. On PPV, they’re expected to shine, and for some wrestlers, that’s the way they always wrestle (and for some of them, this always works). I’m not saying a quick match that’s designed to put one particular wrestler over is preferable to a competitive match, but rather that distinction shouldn’t always be necessary. A short match can be a competitive one, and if you make the distinction that a short match is a TV match, and a long one is a PPV match, if that makes it easier, than fine, we’ll go with that. I happen to like short matches. There are few wrestlers who can have compelling long matches, fewer than many observers usually recognize.
Anyway, that only brushes the top of what makes good wrestling matches, and I could probably write a whole series of columns just on that, and still only brush the top (and that’s essentially what makes a truly committed wrestling fan, not just the personalities that bring in viewers). The topic today narrows this subject a little, and maybe will give you an idea of what I truly appreciate in this regard:
XIII. Favorite Matches
What follows is a fairly relative ranking of encounters I’ve truly enjoyed over the years, and is something I’ve been working on for some time, and for the record, this is not particularly definitive. With time and opportunity, I would prefer to rank any number of TV matches that are eminently worthy of inclusion. Outlets like YouTube have made it far easier to access matches of this kind, but not all of us live on the Internet (and god knows I’ve certainly had my moments where I spent too many hours on it, and come to regret it every time; there’s a fair amount of addiction involved, an inability to stop once you get rolling, and I hope at some point there will be studies available to cite for exactly what kind of cumulative effect this actually has on someone), so I won’t try for that kind of list. Here’s one that references DVD listings for where these matches might be found in a physical sense.
1. Ric Flair vs. Shawn Michaels, WrestleMania XXIV (2008; DVD of same title)
The matches Michaels had with Undertaker at subsequent WrestleManias were all about WWE realizing how powerful a moment this match really was, a culmination of an entire career, of experience and familiarity, and emotion, and pure will, not to mention a mastery of ring psychology, and when all that comes together, it’s instant magic. Perfect opponents come together for the ultimate opportunity, and it has nothing to do with championships, which is something fans can sometimes forget, that a great match doesn’t have to have a title involved. That’s something Shawn Michaels realized very quickly after his comeback in 2002, the last year he wore a heavyweight belt. To imagine that he actually spent eight years without one, and maintained his status as an elite competitor (whether that was always acknowledged or not) is almost unbelievable, and something Ric Flair took years to realize himself (“Nature Boy” had after all assembled a record number of world titles in some twenty years, a trend that tapered off so gradually he never got used to the idea of not having one). Flair spent pretty much the same amount of time as Michaels’ comeback regaining his confidence, and arguably his last match was the moment he finally reclaimed it, and as a result is probably the best match of his career, the one moment he could really share with his legions of fans, and who knew that this what he’d been waiting for all that time? Just imagine if Ric Flair had been more like Ricky Steamboat…?
2. Shawn Michaels vs. Bret Hart, WrestleMania XII (1996; WRESTLEMANIA: THE COMPLETE ANTHOLOGY)
As wrestling contests of pure exhibition go, there will never really be a match that tops this one, a deliberately staged Iron Man, sixty-minute match where not a single pinfall was recorded until, technically, the time limit had expired. Before that, it was simply move for move, will versus will, a show of endurance, and not a single shenanigan to taint the results. This is what many wrestling fans have always considered the ideal, and so there’s very little argument needed to justify its inclusion. I don’t believe Hart ever had a better match, and for Michaels, it was the standard for everything that came after, which was probably a tall order, even for him. For that reason alone, can you blame him for avoiding any immediate rematches?
3. Shawn Michaels vs. John Cena, Raw 4/23/07 (THE SHAWN MICHAELS STORY)
This is the famous near-hour long match that followed their encounter at WrestleMania 23, put on to cover the absence of Randy Orton from the show. They had nothing to prove, and could have easily phoned it in, but instead engaged in a contest that easily eclipsed their earlier encounter, and proved that Cena was, after all, a consummate wrestler, who simply didn’t need this particular kind of match against the majority of his opponents. Who else better to bring this performance out of him than Michaels? Given that “HBK” is in the top three matches on this list, can you guess who I pick as the best pure wrestler I’ve ever seen?
4. Bret Hart vs. Steve Austin, WrestleMania 13 (1997; WRESTLEMANIA: THE COMPLETE ANTHOLOGY)
When he called himself the “Excellence of Execution,” what Bret Hart always served to obscure was that he could just have easily replaced Ric Flair as the “Dirtiest Player in the Game,” maybe something he learned in his wars with Jerry Lawler and his brother Owen. This match is the prime example of that impulse, one of the grittiest matches to never degenerate into a hardcore mess. Like the Iron Match against Shawn Michaels, this was a contest of pure will for the “Hitman,” and never was that particular moniker more appropriate than in this grudge match with “Stone Cold” Steve Austin, who was still making his way through the ranks of WWE at the time. The most dramatic Sharpshooter ever actually caused Austin to pass out from blood-loss, for him preferable to submitting. Hart didn’t win this match. The fans did.
5. Batista vs. Eddie Guerrero, No Mercy (2005; DVD of same title)
This might best be remembered as Guerrero’s final PPV, but for me, it’ll always be remembered as the most heartbreaking and bittersweet moment in wrestling history. You’ve got to remember that he had spent most of the preceding year as a heel, feuding with Rey Mysterio, and fans genuinely hated him. This was only a year after he’d finally become a world champion. What many fans didn’t appreciate was that the feud with Mysterio made him a legitimate player on the Smackdown brand, a man with a story and a mission, and the match and the lead-up with Batista was a direct culmination of all this work. The story of this match was that he was struggling to turn over the leaf, but Batista didn’t believe him, and so this brought everything Eddie had ever learned into the contest, both his wrestling skills and ability to draw the fans into the match, teasing heel tactics, forcing Batista to address something other than what his opponent was actually doing. Other than Flair/Michaels, this is the best story I ever saw in a match. Clearly the direction past this match would have seen a lot more from these two opponents, and all the talk from the McMahons in the tributes after Eddie’s death saying he would have been champion again…they clearly weren’t empty words. When I write about Batista directly, I’ll get into it a little more, but suffice it to say, no career was more affected by Eddie Guerrero’s death than Batista’s. This match would only have been the beginning, and it was already a classic. Now it’s simply timeless.
6. The Rock vs. Hulk Hogan, WrestleMania X8 (2002; WRESTLEMANIA: THE COMPLETE ANTHOLOGY)
The Rock had a lot of matches like this, maybe not on this scale, but with this kind of feel, but Hulk Hogan, who had tried many times, never really did, and maybe that’s why there’s such a contrast between their careers, and such electricity in this encounter. Let me explain in a little more detail. The Rock became one of the most famous wrestlers in history, but he never had to carry the company on his shoulders quite in the same way as Hogan. He had these matches against men like Steve Austin, Brock Lesnar, Bill Goldberg, and only some of these were for world titles. WWE had Hogan in this kind of match for most of the first decade of WrestleMania, and they were always for a world title, and he was always the one to come out on top. Anyway, contrasts aside, this one was history from the word “go.” You don’t need me to explain it.
7. Kurt Angle vs. Eddie Guerrero, Summer Slam (2004; DVD of same title)
Angle seems to have become something of a polarizing figure; either you’re in awe of his abilities, or you think he’s one-dimensional and boring. I’m squarely in the former category. I believe he’s incomparable, and that’s a little of why this is his first match on the list, because he’s so hard to match up with, even if your name happens to be Shawn Michaels. This match is actually a rematch from WrestleMania XX, and is equally obscured by circumstances that put the spotlight elsewhere, and subsequently a tad lost to history (both cards prominently feature Chris Benoit). It’s actually the rematch aspect that puts this one over the edge, past its predecessor, and onto this list, the momentum evident throughout the encounter, even though Angle had spent a fair number of months in between outside of the ring to help his body recover. It’s equally the most unsung story of that year, the feud between Angle and Guerrero. To watch Kurt seethe at the thought that Eddie actually outsmarted him is like watching the evolution of a wrestler who was already pretty good, but who has suddenly realized there’s a whole new level to reach for (the spirit of his early TNA days and epic feud with Samoa Joe). This one’s basically like watching Bret Hart deliberately try to reach the point where he’ll make Steve Austin pass out in that sharpshooter. Angle is bloodthirsty the whole match, looking for his ankle lock at every opportunity, and using Guerrero’s previous tactics against him (when he unlaced his boot at WrestleMania so his foot would slip out of the maneuver). It’s brilliant ring psychology.
8. The Ultimate Warrior vs. Randy Savage, WrestleMania VII (1991; WRESTLEMANIA: THE COMPLETE ANTHOLOGY)
The would-be heirs of Hulk Hogan in the match they were apparently destined to have against each other, after both had had their chances and been tossed aside by WWE, never to be trusted with the opportunity again (which was certainly true of Warrior, and pretty much with Savage). Never mind that this could easily have been the main event, and just bask in the drama of it, another culmination match, Warrior’s ultimate statement with the company (to watch his desperation for victory unfold easily eclipses anything he did with Hogan the previous year). It’s no surprise in hindsight that his career went nowhere after this, since there really was nowhere left to go. Even on shaky legs with the company, Hogan was still preferred over Warrior. How do you work with that?
9. Ric Flair vs. Lex Luger, Starrcade 1988 (STARRCADE: THE ESSENTIAL COLLECTION)
In many ways, this is that exact match, substituting Luger for Warrior. Watching Luger’s emotions develop during this match is a revelation for anyone who ever wondered if the “Total Package” was truly invested in wrestling. You’ll never wonder again, or that is, you’ll be wondering something else entirely, and that’s how all that passion seemed to go nowhere. You’ll wonder why Flair was perfectly happy to work extended programs with Sting, but not with Luger. You’ll certainly scratch your head over the fact that WWE found it perfectly acceptable to screw Luger out of the world title. For shear drama, no one ever quite match Ric Flair like Lex Luger. At least on this occasion.
10. Kurt Angle vs. Mr. Anderson, Lockdown (2010; DVD of same title)
I talked a little about why this match worked so perfectly when discussing Anderson directly a little earlier in the Jabroni Companion, so suffice it to say, this was a perfect moment, unlike anything he’d experienced in WWE. That’s right, I just included TNA in the phrase “perfect moment.” I would very much like to include an Angle/AJ Styles match on this list, and perhaps at some later point, when I’ve studied my DVDs a little further, I’ll slap myself for not doing so (they had certainly reached a point in their working dynamic in early 2010 to equally meet the same criteria used for many of the matches in this top ten), but for me, this Angle/Anderson encounter is more important, and better, and is directly responsible for finally making a world champion of Anderson (twice-over now!). Everyone talked about this match at the time, but it was still overlooked by the end of the year, and that’s simply incredible to me. To me, Anderson is very much like Luger and Warrior in terms of what he brought to this match, which was after all not even for a world title, yet it fought it with an intensity that reflected and augmented the kind of acumen he’d displayed throughout his career to this point, but Angle was able to bring it to another level, with a classic finish that reflects another match later in the list, sheer bravado that wasn’t necessarily called for but put the whole encounter in greater context than what came before it.
11. Sting vs. Hulk Hogan, Starrcade 1997 (STARRCADE: THE ESSENTIAL COLLECTION)
WCW wasn’t alone in hyping this one to a remarkable degree, and that alone helps make the case. Arguably Hogan’s most important match with that company (something he himself didn’t seem to appreciate at the time), and easily Sting’s, even though earlier in the decade he’d been groomed to be the new Ric Flair, which was already quite an accomplishment. Maybe not the greatest quality of actual competition, but that’s not always the most important factor in a truly memorable wrestling match (which as I’ve been suggesting requires intangibles that a lot of fans don’t often appreciate, much like Hogan). Also notable for the participation of Bret Hart, a moment that’s often overlooked in the overall legacy of the Montreal Screwjob (a topic that will actually round out the Jabroni Companion), an element that even overcomes the fact that, technically speaking, the finish was botched and thus obscured the impact of the match once it had actually happened.
12. Eddie Guerrero vs. Dean Malenko, Starrcade 1997 (STARRCADE: THE ESSENTIAL COLLECTION)
There is something a certain amount of exaggeration involved in wrestling. That is, in all fairness, one of the essential ingredients. So when I say that a lot of people tended to exaggerate the importance of the cruiserweight division in WCW, hopefully I won’t be stoned immediately. What made the division work was a confluence of elements, more than the mere existence of the division, and history has generally proven that even those elements, when moved to a different context, did not immediately prove the theory that the cruiserweights, given the chance, could have easily carried the company, if they’d simply been given the chance. Eddie Guerrero, Chris Jericho, Rey Mysterio, and Chris Benoit, who arguably were the greatest cruiserweights to emerge from the WCW cruiserweight era, never reached the Shawn Michaels level in WWE, and even Shawn Michaels probably never reached the level of Randy Savage. So when I say the impact of the cruiserweights was exaggerated, don’t take it as a disparaging remark, or an inability to appreciate their contributions. (Even TNA, which in many ways tried even harder to make their equivalent division, “X,” dominate the spotlight, never quite succeeded, and they never had any qualms of elevating their signature star, AJ Styles, participate in the main event.) To wit, even though I just talked about the intended spotlight of Starrcade 1997, I must always acknowledge that the match that actually stole the show, much like Savage/Steamboat at WrestleMania III, was Guerrero/Malenko. Malenko was so beloved by wrestling purists that he captured the top spot on the annual PWI 500 ranking that year (to be noted is the fact that this match was well outside that particular grading period, which is something of an irony). The Guerrero in this match is far different from the one to be found in the previous matches on this ranking, which again, as I stressed when talking about him earlier in the Jabroni Companion, was one of the reasons he became my favorite wrestler. You only need to see this match to appreciate both of them all over again.
13. 40-man rumble match, Royal Rumble (2011; DVD of same title)
Easily my favorite rumble match, which I knew even before I watched it, and when I finally had the chance, it confirmed everything that I believed worked so well, the flawless execution of each participant’s actions during the match, how every single wrestler and angle as they were then relevant were used to perfection. More often than not the rumble match is chaotic, maybe with a few moments designed to facilitate certain future events, and more often than not simply geared toward the finish, with momentum for the winner toward WrestleMania. Alberto Del Rio won this one. He had barely started with WWE at this point, and he didn’t win his match against Edge a few months later, and he still isn’t champion. There’s nothing wrong with that, and there was everything right about all the other moments that made up this match.
14. Batista vs. The Great Khali, No Mercy (2007; DVD of same title)
The longer Batista pursued the Smackdown, often unsuccessfully, the less respect he got as a wrestler, and it goes without saying that Khali never really got any, and yet this Punjabi Prison Match was magic. The PPV is probably better known for Randy Orton finally reclaiming world champion status (and the series of matches that followed, also including Triple H and Umaga), but I dare you to tell me with a straight face that it wasn’t awesome when Batista leaped from the ring to the bamboo cage and narrowly beat Khali to the outside. That moment, the ending, alone deserves immortality.
15. Samoa Joe vs. CM Punk, 12/4/04 (STARS OF HONOR)
Most of my experience with Ring of Honor can be summed up with a single word: limited. This is not meant to be a judgment on the promotion that quietly amassed a reputation for some of the best wrestling, and wrestlers, of the past decade, but rather an acknowledgment that my access itself is limited, so I was pretty grateful to find a few compilation DVDs, and this is the best match from those sets. Joe is someone I’ve often considered lazier than the hype around him, a little too comfortable with his reputation, which is not to say I don’t appreciate his legacy, but that he could have been so much more than he’s currently amounted to, whereas Punk, whom I’d love to have represented more on this list, has been hungry throughout his career, and it’s shown. I don’t know that his true WWE potential has been reached yet, so this example of his ROH work will have to suffice.
16. Chris Sabin vs. Alex Shelley, Genesis (2009; DVD of same title, included in a “Cross the Line” triple pack)
Sabin and Shelley are TNA’s unsung all-stars, and this is their shining moment, easily. Most fans now know them as the Motorcity Machine Guns, and the more exposure they receive from their tag team work the better, but they’re just at the cusp of joining AJ Styles as the signature homegrown talent of the company.
17. Kurt Angle vs. Jeff Hardy, No Surrender (2010; DVD of same title, included in a twin pack)
Hardy long ago won the respect of the fans, eclipsing his familiar daredevil tactics with sound wrestling technique, but his career has been so topsy-turvy that those same fans have found it easier and easier to forget just how good he is (which may or may not be what is currently troubling him, but that’s just speculation). Anyway, he’s one of the few wrestlers who can genuinely keep up with Kurt Angle, and it’s the momentum gained from this match that propelled him to the TNA world title. Forget how that reign ended, and appreciate the work that led to it.
18. Goldberg vs. Brock Lesnar, WrestleMania XX (2004; DVD of same title)
It’s easy to remember the notoriety of the match, but it was difficult even then to remember it. Yeah, even in 2011 neither is very likely to make a WWE comeback, so question where their hearts were all you want, but Goldberg and Lesnar still gave everything they needed to for a memorable clash of titans, the likes of which are so rare that is was as hard for fans to understand what they were watching as to get over the fact that neither would be around after it. So why care? Because it’s still a standout match a unique encounter, and something that absolutely refused, defied, expectations. These days old WWE stars will work a climax for an entire match, and fans will call it genius. When two dominant stars refuse to bludgeon each other like sacks of meat, it’s seen as a letdown. What else could they do but feel each other out? What else could they do but surprise each other? It was like an old school test of strength, only instead of standing there gripping each other’s fingers, they exchanged maneuvers. Sometimes a finisher really should be a finisher. Goldberg always had the edge in that department, so that probably dictated the outcome, as it always should have. And then Steve Austin gave each of them a Stunner.
19. Triple H vs. Randy Orton, WrestleMania 25 (2009; DVD of same title)
Like the above match, calculated to defy expectations, and worked better for it, once you get past said expectations. Bloodier does not always equal better.
20. Hulk Hogan vs. Goldberg, Nitro 7/6/98 (HISTORY OF THE WORLD HEAVYWEIGHT CHAMPIONSHIP)
Speaking of expectations, Goldberg is the only rookie in history to basically have his way with an icon, and have the fans totally lap it up. If WCW had somehow figured out how to maintain that momentum, it’d still be in business today. Instead a mediocre reign followed, then an ignominious defeat, no more championships, increasingly dubious fans, and bankruptcy.
21. Team WCW vs. Team nWo, Fall Brawl: War Games (1996; THE RISE AND FALL OF WCW)
Probably the best match to come out of the early days of the New World Order, and conveniently enough, the one that led directly into the climactic match between Sting and Hulk Hogan listed earlier. No real coincidence there. The best thing about the nWo was that it added a whole layer of intrigue to WCW that hadn’t existed there previously, whether with individual wrestlers or any previous angle, and there’s a whole story and momentum to this match that maybe didn’t even need a bogus Sting to exist. The company had been doing War Games cage matches for years previous to this, but all due apologies to the Four Horsemen, was never truly relevant until then.
22. Eddie Guerrero vs. Rey Mysterio, Smackdown 9/9/05 (VIVA LA RAZA: THE LEGACY OF EDDIE GUERRERO)
After an extended series of PPV matches, the chemistry and potential between these two should have been exhausted, but that simply wasn’t the case. Mysterio had won all of those; now it was Guerrero’s turn, and he did it in spectacular fashion. Long after the standard cage match had been devalued and relegated to TV, Eddie won the match by climbing out the door, and then re-entering to deliver an emphatic frogsplash, an act of sheer bravado Kurt Angle would later emulate against Mr. Anderson. Who said there wasn’t any drama left?
23. Hulk Hogan vs. Randy Savage, WrestleMania V (1989; WRESTLEMANIA: THE COMPLETE ANTHOLOGY)
“Macho Man” had every reason to be bitter; after a years-long build and the chance to replace Hogan as WWE’s top star, he was about to be tossed aside and virtually forgotten. Yet once again he brought the most energy to the ring, bouncing all over the place, leaping over the top rope, doing everything possible to make the occasion special. He lost, but in that moment it didn’t matter. Rest in peace, Randy.
24. Tatanka vs. Shawn Michaels, WrestleMania IX (1993; WRESTLEMANIA: THE COMPLETE ANTHOLOGY)
The best match on the card didn’t include Hogan, Hart, or Yokozuna, but rather the rising star Shawn Michaels, and a wrestler in the midst of an extended winning streak, who had all the potential in the world at this point, and everything to prove. That man was Tatanka. His career quickly went nowhere. But like Savage above, in this moment, that didn’t matter. He was the first man to make Michaels the “Showstopper” at WrestleMania.
25. Motorcity Machine Guns vs. Beer Money, Genesis (2011; DVD of same title)
The only real tag team match on this list may indicate to you how often this particular wrestling fan believes that division has truly reached its potential. To make it plain, not often. Yet these two teams, which during 2010 had developed a unique chemistry that had finally propelled Chris Sabin and Alex Shelley to prominence, not only eclipsed all their previous work, but clearly demonstrated how truly great tag teams should perform, with a clash of styles that actually complement each other, and propel all involved not only to a great tag team match, but a great match period.
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Thursday, June 16, 2011
Thursday, June 9, 2011
Jabroni Companion #7
When it comes to icons, wrestling has certainly had its fair share, defining performers and personalities, but two of them are so large that they overcame incredible odds to achieve lasting success. One was an Immortal who transformed the business to accommodate his outsize physique and persona. There other was a Phenom who ignored all the rules of plausibility and grew into a role where his incredible endurance itself overcame his character.
XI. Hulk Hogan
He became so big that his reputation was something he could never actually live up to. Vince McMahon effectively began the modern era of professional wrestling by reshaping WWE around Hulk Hogan, spending years, and the formative development of WrestleMania cultivating a dominant star who only five years earlier wouldn’t have lasted more than a year with the strap (see: Superstar Billy Graham), and whose reign as champion even as it was didn’t really compare to that of Bruno Sammartino. Yet Hogan eclipsed both Graham and Sammartino (a bitterness the Italian Stallion still harbors) in short order, perfecting a match type that would prove durable through all the phases of his career, both when he was beloved, and actively reviled.
Everyone knows Hogan thrived best in his original run with WWE. The steroid scandal of the early nineties cost him heavily, took him out of the championship rotation, and led to a brief exile, only for a comeback with WCW, where he was immediately pushed back to the top. Times were different, though, and without a clear mandate, something he’d always enjoyed in WWE, Hogan began to feel like a pariah. Then he famously turned heel, and the act worked so well even industry professionals forgot that he had long ago made himself into the consummate wrestling attraction, the entity everyone had to talk about, or react against.
It’s a little weird to think, just in terms of parallels, the kinds of double standards that always seem to work against Hogan. In 1996, during the first act of the New World Order angle, he’d was celebrating only his thirteenth year as a wrestling attraction. In contrast, Sammartino, while no longer champion (the company was looking for a new face after ten years, and went through Graham, Pedro Morales, and Bob Backlund, a sort of prototypical Kurt Angle at that point in his career, before settling on Hogan), was still beloved, and still doing exactly the same routine. Thirteen years after first winning world championship gold, the Undertaker also attempted to reinvent himself, in reverse, actually, returning to the “Deadman” role after a few years as an “American Badass.” Do you even want to consider Ric Flair in this equation? Thirteen years into his championship career, the “Nature Boy” was, you guessed it, battling Hogan, much as he had Harley Race, Sting, even Ricky Steamboat.
When you think about the harassment he got for the Starrcade match against Roddy Piper, what do you honestly think about the “legends” matches Undertaker has been having not thirteen years but two decades into the peak of his career?
Hogan’s talent for reinvention, knowing what worked for him, and how it worked for the fans, was often unappreciated both by bookers and the fans themselves. The nWo for him ground to a halt sometime in 1998, and disaster really began to strike in 1999, when WCW lost all confidence in him, eve though he’d had extremely valuable programs with at least Sting and Goldberg during that run. He was seen as a past-his-prime liability. Yet somehow, just when he was at his lowest, 2002 rolls around, Vince comes calling again, and Hulkamania ends up running wild all over again, thanks to another blockbuster match, against The Rock. The thing nobody ever seemed to learn during all of this? Hulk Hogan creates seminal moments in wrestling history. He can do it in the ring (okay, not anymore, obviously), and if handled right (read: TNA, why are you hassling him with Eric Bischoff ?) with his reputation alone. By itself, a leg drop at the end of a match is not really all that exciting, especially when this is something he’d done for years. But a leg drop at the end of a match no one knew he was participating in, a moment that completely redefined his relationship with the wrestling business (something WWE has endlessly recreated, most often at the end of a WrestleMania main event, and never quite to the same effect), that’s news.
I wish more people had cared when Jeff Hardy did the same thing last year. That was TNA’s money shot. Who did he have to thank for it? Hulk Hogan.
Did he sometimes act out of paranoid egotism, effectively bury the momentum of those who might have succeeded him? No doubt. Was he better for this business than anyone else from his generation? You bet. Was he the best thing that ever happened to it? Not a chance. But you don’t need everything to have a career like that. Sometimes he was accused of putting himself before the business, but I think the real truth was, and remains, that the people who do business with him are often at a loss as what to do with him. The power of Hulkamania will always be that Hogan himself is capable of rising above a less than ideal situation.
XII. Undertaker
“The Streak” is a manufactured event for every WrestleMania we’re privileged to see this man perform in. Most of the 19-0 wins come against foes and matches that are well beneath the mystique. This doesn’t really matter. That’s not what it’s about. Undertaker is WWE’s new Hulk Hogan, which even Hogan couldn’t do anything about, which even WWE’s own early mishandling of the “Deadman” couldn’t do anything about. Where Hogan was most often defined as a champion, Undertaker has steadily represented himself as the most legitimate wrestler to ever put his name in with a bad gimmick. He used to do this by no-selling, but eventually built a repertoire that put even the most gifted technical competitors to shame, the ones everyone wished had more success, but never had the mind for the game that he assembled after a long career that in its origins almost mocks the wrestler we know and celebrate today.
Undertaker became a more serious force in WWE the moment the company realized that the only way Bret Hart or Lex Luger could be the man to topple Yokozuna was to get him out of the way. A funny thing happened. Once he came back, he became undeniable. A silly program was crafted, a fake Undertaker introduced, and the real one proved himself in more ways than was strictly necessary at this particular Summer Slam, in the transition days of 1994. The deconstruction began in earnest soon after. The treasured urn manager Paul Bearer always kept with him at ringside became the target of a restless campaign from his enemies. Bearer himself betrayed him. Mankind appeared, more bizarre and suicidal than Undertaker, who had always handled himself with dignity, could ever have been. When the company needed a savior in 1997, a year of constant turmoil, that man turned out to be the “Deadman.” It was at this point, when he was treated more like Ric Flair than Hulk Hogan, that perhaps everyone began to see just how versatile, and valuable, he really was.
Hogan never managed to craft a disciple quite like Kane, a man who blatantly copied much of the same template that had made Undertaker a cornerstone of WWE for almost a decade by that point. By making a sort of Mankind version of the “Deadman,” the company suddenly found itself with a challenge that would definitely place Undertaker at the next level, something that proved more of a challenge than it first appeared. He became more demonic, in this attempt at a place in the driving storylines of WWE. He went so far in this direction that he had to abandon the otherworldly gimmick entirely, in fact, and become a “big dog,” as close to a straight brawler as he ever came. That’s probably the only way Brock Lesnar would have ever wrestled him, the only way it would have made sense.
Then, I guess, he realized there was no future, nothing he could use to extend his career for as long as he liked. So the “Deadman” returned in 2004. It wasn’t for a few more years that he cultivated the refined tactician he remains to this day. It wasn’t for a few more years that he became a default champion, a Ric Flair AND Hulk Hogan for the Smackdown brand. Why put the belt on him? Well, why not? Who better for legitimacy? That’s what it was like for a while, and it certainly worked, but as it always seemed to, that phase ran out of steam, before anyone really seemed to appreciate it. (I’m not just saying this because I figure it would have been better for CM Punk to win that feud.)
Three straight WrestleMania career matches, two against Shawn Michaels, one (actually, a second) against Triple H, and a feud he soundly lost to Kane, and it seems clear that Undertaker, who has regularly taken sabbaticals for most of his WWE career, is almost ready to finally call it quits. You probably won’t see a lot of him in 2011. The Mayan calendar comes to an end in 2012, and so does this career. The legacy, however, is just beginning. No one creates more drama in the ring than the Undertaker. Just imagine what his final match will look like.
XI. Hulk Hogan
He became so big that his reputation was something he could never actually live up to. Vince McMahon effectively began the modern era of professional wrestling by reshaping WWE around Hulk Hogan, spending years, and the formative development of WrestleMania cultivating a dominant star who only five years earlier wouldn’t have lasted more than a year with the strap (see: Superstar Billy Graham), and whose reign as champion even as it was didn’t really compare to that of Bruno Sammartino. Yet Hogan eclipsed both Graham and Sammartino (a bitterness the Italian Stallion still harbors) in short order, perfecting a match type that would prove durable through all the phases of his career, both when he was beloved, and actively reviled.
Everyone knows Hogan thrived best in his original run with WWE. The steroid scandal of the early nineties cost him heavily, took him out of the championship rotation, and led to a brief exile, only for a comeback with WCW, where he was immediately pushed back to the top. Times were different, though, and without a clear mandate, something he’d always enjoyed in WWE, Hogan began to feel like a pariah. Then he famously turned heel, and the act worked so well even industry professionals forgot that he had long ago made himself into the consummate wrestling attraction, the entity everyone had to talk about, or react against.
It’s a little weird to think, just in terms of parallels, the kinds of double standards that always seem to work against Hogan. In 1996, during the first act of the New World Order angle, he’d was celebrating only his thirteenth year as a wrestling attraction. In contrast, Sammartino, while no longer champion (the company was looking for a new face after ten years, and went through Graham, Pedro Morales, and Bob Backlund, a sort of prototypical Kurt Angle at that point in his career, before settling on Hogan), was still beloved, and still doing exactly the same routine. Thirteen years after first winning world championship gold, the Undertaker also attempted to reinvent himself, in reverse, actually, returning to the “Deadman” role after a few years as an “American Badass.” Do you even want to consider Ric Flair in this equation? Thirteen years into his championship career, the “Nature Boy” was, you guessed it, battling Hogan, much as he had Harley Race, Sting, even Ricky Steamboat.
When you think about the harassment he got for the Starrcade match against Roddy Piper, what do you honestly think about the “legends” matches Undertaker has been having not thirteen years but two decades into the peak of his career?
Hogan’s talent for reinvention, knowing what worked for him, and how it worked for the fans, was often unappreciated both by bookers and the fans themselves. The nWo for him ground to a halt sometime in 1998, and disaster really began to strike in 1999, when WCW lost all confidence in him, eve though he’d had extremely valuable programs with at least Sting and Goldberg during that run. He was seen as a past-his-prime liability. Yet somehow, just when he was at his lowest, 2002 rolls around, Vince comes calling again, and Hulkamania ends up running wild all over again, thanks to another blockbuster match, against The Rock. The thing nobody ever seemed to learn during all of this? Hulk Hogan creates seminal moments in wrestling history. He can do it in the ring (okay, not anymore, obviously), and if handled right (read: TNA, why are you hassling him with Eric Bischoff ?) with his reputation alone. By itself, a leg drop at the end of a match is not really all that exciting, especially when this is something he’d done for years. But a leg drop at the end of a match no one knew he was participating in, a moment that completely redefined his relationship with the wrestling business (something WWE has endlessly recreated, most often at the end of a WrestleMania main event, and never quite to the same effect), that’s news.
I wish more people had cared when Jeff Hardy did the same thing last year. That was TNA’s money shot. Who did he have to thank for it? Hulk Hogan.
Did he sometimes act out of paranoid egotism, effectively bury the momentum of those who might have succeeded him? No doubt. Was he better for this business than anyone else from his generation? You bet. Was he the best thing that ever happened to it? Not a chance. But you don’t need everything to have a career like that. Sometimes he was accused of putting himself before the business, but I think the real truth was, and remains, that the people who do business with him are often at a loss as what to do with him. The power of Hulkamania will always be that Hogan himself is capable of rising above a less than ideal situation.
XII. Undertaker
“The Streak” is a manufactured event for every WrestleMania we’re privileged to see this man perform in. Most of the 19-0 wins come against foes and matches that are well beneath the mystique. This doesn’t really matter. That’s not what it’s about. Undertaker is WWE’s new Hulk Hogan, which even Hogan couldn’t do anything about, which even WWE’s own early mishandling of the “Deadman” couldn’t do anything about. Where Hogan was most often defined as a champion, Undertaker has steadily represented himself as the most legitimate wrestler to ever put his name in with a bad gimmick. He used to do this by no-selling, but eventually built a repertoire that put even the most gifted technical competitors to shame, the ones everyone wished had more success, but never had the mind for the game that he assembled after a long career that in its origins almost mocks the wrestler we know and celebrate today.
Undertaker became a more serious force in WWE the moment the company realized that the only way Bret Hart or Lex Luger could be the man to topple Yokozuna was to get him out of the way. A funny thing happened. Once he came back, he became undeniable. A silly program was crafted, a fake Undertaker introduced, and the real one proved himself in more ways than was strictly necessary at this particular Summer Slam, in the transition days of 1994. The deconstruction began in earnest soon after. The treasured urn manager Paul Bearer always kept with him at ringside became the target of a restless campaign from his enemies. Bearer himself betrayed him. Mankind appeared, more bizarre and suicidal than Undertaker, who had always handled himself with dignity, could ever have been. When the company needed a savior in 1997, a year of constant turmoil, that man turned out to be the “Deadman.” It was at this point, when he was treated more like Ric Flair than Hulk Hogan, that perhaps everyone began to see just how versatile, and valuable, he really was.
Hogan never managed to craft a disciple quite like Kane, a man who blatantly copied much of the same template that had made Undertaker a cornerstone of WWE for almost a decade by that point. By making a sort of Mankind version of the “Deadman,” the company suddenly found itself with a challenge that would definitely place Undertaker at the next level, something that proved more of a challenge than it first appeared. He became more demonic, in this attempt at a place in the driving storylines of WWE. He went so far in this direction that he had to abandon the otherworldly gimmick entirely, in fact, and become a “big dog,” as close to a straight brawler as he ever came. That’s probably the only way Brock Lesnar would have ever wrestled him, the only way it would have made sense.
Then, I guess, he realized there was no future, nothing he could use to extend his career for as long as he liked. So the “Deadman” returned in 2004. It wasn’t for a few more years that he cultivated the refined tactician he remains to this day. It wasn’t for a few more years that he became a default champion, a Ric Flair AND Hulk Hogan for the Smackdown brand. Why put the belt on him? Well, why not? Who better for legitimacy? That’s what it was like for a while, and it certainly worked, but as it always seemed to, that phase ran out of steam, before anyone really seemed to appreciate it. (I’m not just saying this because I figure it would have been better for CM Punk to win that feud.)
Three straight WrestleMania career matches, two against Shawn Michaels, one (actually, a second) against Triple H, and a feud he soundly lost to Kane, and it seems clear that Undertaker, who has regularly taken sabbaticals for most of his WWE career, is almost ready to finally call it quits. You probably won’t see a lot of him in 2011. The Mayan calendar comes to an end in 2012, and so does this career. The legacy, however, is just beginning. No one creates more drama in the ring than the Undertaker. Just imagine what his final match will look like.
Thursday, June 2, 2011
Jabroni Companion #6
The wrestlers I talked about last time were either all big stars or those still building toward legendary careers, even John Morrison, who at this point, even without the world championships, has built a considerable legacy and mystique that will be cherished and analyzed for generations. There are others, though, who will never reach even that level, sometimes through no fault of their own, because sometimes, that’s just how this business works. These are my favorite underdogs, these are the ones lost to:
X. Wasted Potential
Inasmuch as wrestling itself is a subjective sport, where winners are based entirely on the needs of the moment and where that moment might lead, and fans have a huge part in that when they decide to respond, it’s hard to sometimes step back and objectively report on the stars who could’ve meant so much more than they ultimately did. Most of them can be identified by tentative, even perennial pushes they received in their promotions, which for those they connect with, can become agonizing after a long period rooting for them, with very little to show for it. These are the wrestlers who end up looking, and not to put this too harshly, like jokes, and seem like they can easily be forgotten, even dismissed. “They had their chance,” you’ll hear, “and they blew it.”
I don’t ken to that sort of logic. Sometimes it really is a matter of too many stars, too little time. Shawn Michaels waited years to become a world champion. So did Steve Austin. Imagine if HBK had never accomplished his goal. Can you say “Marty Jannetty”? His former Rockers partner kept resurfacing, and it wasn’t as if anyone ever said anything bad about his work in the ring. It was just, Shawn got all the attention, all the chances, and was kept on the roster until the moment finally came. It was the same for Bret Hart, even. By the time he was called on to wear the big strap, it seemed as if every other possibility had already been exhausted, and even then, the company spent a year keeping it away from him with a wrestler who was his polar opposite. John Cena first competed for a world title in 2003, and yet didn’t capture one until 2005. I could go on and on with examples just of those who eventually “fulfilled their potential,” but what about those who didn’t?
Andrew Martin, who competed for most of his career as Test, may be one of the biggest examples I can think of. He was set up to be something of the second coming of Kevin Nash, and yet, like a lot of that breed, nothing ever really came of it. He had his closest brush with success during the McMahon-Helmsley Era in 1999-2000, when he was Stephanie’s intended groom, which led into a mini feud with Triple H, who was otherwise occupied with a dozen other challengers, which happened to include Mr. McMahon himself, and not to mention The Rock, just as the “Great One” was entering the period of his greatest popularity. A lot of things can be said about what held Test back, with the biggest of them being that he was never that charismatic a personality, and that perhaps he never quite solidified a style for his matches. Still, WWE saw enough potential in him that he stuck around and was a featured player for years, in a variety of roles, many of which might have pushed him to the next level, if only a window had been there. He was a classic victim of circumstances. When he was with the company, there wasn’t a need for a Kevin Nash. Even Kevin Nash found that out. Even during a brief comeback during the early ECW brand era, when Test finally brought his physical talents to a peak, his reputation spoiled his potential. Sadly, of course, he died young, and all that potential became a moot point. That doesn’t mean that his career as a professional wrestler should be viewed as a failure.
The next man I’ll address has been known by many names, and never reached near the level of even Test. He also, if you’ll mind a little rhyming, liked to compete in a dress. His name, during this period, was Vito, and he’s easily one of the biggest victims of fans not appreciating what’s right in front of them imaginable. They treated him like he was Rico, the gay stylist who actively sought jeers as part of his gimmick, when what Vito should have elicited was cheers. “The toughest man to ever wear a dress,” is how he used to be described, and that should have been it, because his wrestling skills were phenomenal. He knew how to work a match, how to make it dynamic, how to work a submission hold (which very few wrestlers ever bother with), and how, even if it did not ultimately work in his favor, to motivate the audience. There’s no reason why Vito shouldn’t have become one of the most popular wrestlers WWE had during his brief tenure with the Smackdown brand. He had more natural charisma than John Cena, and this is coming from someone who willfully suffered through Cena’s horrid rap gimmick and considered him a breakout star in the early months of 2004, when he was becoming the secret MVP of Smackdown, a role Vito might have assumed, given the chance.
Speaking of MVP, there’s also MVP himself, a wrestler who very quickly and easily established himself as a franchise player, so easily and naturally that it was held against him, and the role he inhabited was already too good to replace. There was literally nothing he could do, unless he was finally given the nod for greater things, for world championship gold. He was never given that chance, and never even experienced a slight flirtation with that level. He’s one of the many victims of the brand era. For every John Cena, there is an MVP.
Tatanka was one of my early favorites. In hindsight he’s very much an Ultimate Warrior substitute, a wrestler with a mystical drive and energy, who can command the ring and the attention of the audience, and there was only ever one thing holding him back: lack of any charisma on the mic. You could easily argue that this was one thing he never needed, but obviously WWE thought differently, and so even a lengthy undefeated streak ultimately meant nothing, came to a dramatic defeat, repackaging, a heel turn he could do nothing with, and then obscurity, and the few odd meaningless comebacks. He could have been so much more, given the chance.
Crush was another star WWE gave an untold number of chances to, and he adapted many times and successfully fulfilled what was required of him, but what he lacked was the chance to be the spotlight heel, and he was always in the wrong era. He would have done better with just a decade’s shift, might have been that foe who forced Hulk Hogan to face a worthy challenge, and not just a manufactured one. That wasn’t something the company ever needed when Crush was actually wrestling. Yokozuna was such a massive obstacle that in his best moment Crush was still forced to play second-fiddle.
Anyway, one of my unabashed favorite was Paul Birchall, and he seems to embody everything that ever went wrong for wrestlers of this type. He had all the gifts he needed in the ring. He had the look, he had a persona, and he had the opportunity. And then Vince McMahon allowed Paul to be transformed into a pirate, and then Vince determined that this pirate gimmick had no future (this despite the movie character Jack Sparrow only just becoming a craze). I loved “Pirate” Paul Birchall. I want to make that clear. Even though it wasn’t necessarily necessary to put Paul over, it was still something he was inexplicably able to make work. Even his breathtaking C-4 somersault slam, rechristened “Walking the Plank,” fit. Except even without Vince’s kiss of death, it never went anywhere. He was made into fodder for Bobby Lashley. Paul Birchall, who could have revamped the whole face of Smackdown with the personality of a brawler who could gracefully soar through the air, was deemed to be inconsequential. Paul and the pirate were soon tossed back into the sea. He resurfaced a few years later, and actually spent more time with WWE than his previous tenure, but his spirit seemed to be broken. The price of the contract this time seemed to be that he was stripped of everything that made him special. By the end, he was busy arguing that “The Hurricane” had to be Gregory Helms. Well…Is that really what the “Ripper” was best for?
Even mentioning the name Orlando Jordan now conjures bizarre images, thanks to Orlando himself, who has updated the homophobic gimmick for the 21st century but attempting to make it cleanly bisexual. Mr. Jordan, that is a distinction that makes no difference at all. Here’s a guy who could have become something of a replacement Rock, having trained with that clan, and adopted many of the same stylings, and yet eventually found himself dismissed as the new Virgil, the “Chief of Staff” for JBL, and the guy who kept tapping out in record time to Chris Benoit’s Crippler Crossface. It didn’t seem to matter that Jordan began evolving as a performer, that he grew more comfortable on the mic, and even put on brave and innovative struggles against the Crossface, something normally reserved for talent far above his level. Once deemed a joke, always a joke, and the worst of it is that Jordan himself eventually came to embrace it. Not in a good way, sir. One of the sorriest stories possible.
Petey Williams, if TNA could ever have found itself capable of supporting an X division star not named “A.J. Styles,” could easily have become one of the biggest names in wrestling, but instead became something of an undersized joke himself. Imagine if this had happened to Rey Mysterio. Just a damn shame that everyone seems perfectly happy to have let this happen.
Same, too, with Sonjay Dutt, who couldn’t have tried harder to work the charisma he had, and the skills he possessed, all to nothing much at all. Dutt and Williams were like the Dean Malenko of TNA, the workers who didn’t seem to have to work at all. It’s no longer, sadly, a Dean Malenko world.
It never belonged to the likes of Sylvester Terkay. Whereas someone like Ken Anderson, who will always have a brash personality to fall back on, can work against having a wrestling style that defies expectations, this was never to be for Terkay, who could have been another Smackdown star to transform perceptions, but was quickly abandoned. At least Elijah Burke still has the chance to salvage some of his legacy.
Jimmy Yang, who became the most improbable redneck in wrestling history in an effort to bridge an impossible gap, is like WWE’s version of Dutt and Williams, someone with phenomenal talent, but no way to make it work effectively in the context available to him.
Jamie Noble had a number of chances available to him, but became another victim of an unfortunate gimmick. Seems wrestling fans aren’t too keen on supporting trailer trash. Sucks, too, because Noble had the ability to surpass the remarkable stature of, yes, Dean Malenko.
Marc Mero, who once competed as a wrestling version of Little Richard, and was eventually eclipsed by Rena “Sable” Lesnar, had incredible potential, but circumstances just kept getting in his way. Could have been the new “Superfly.” Could have been the first MMA-style wrestler. Could have been great. Never got the chance.
Then, of course, there’s Carlito. Grew incredibly frustrated with WWE, and there’s a damn good reason, because he was never allowed to do anything but what he had, like MVP, done from the start, which was, like Scott Hall as Razor Ramon, become an instant star. WWE, and its fans, really don’t like that sort of thing, apparently. You have to earn it. And sometimes, even when you do, it’s either not enough, or too late.
That’s just the way it goes, sometimes.
X. Wasted Potential
Inasmuch as wrestling itself is a subjective sport, where winners are based entirely on the needs of the moment and where that moment might lead, and fans have a huge part in that when they decide to respond, it’s hard to sometimes step back and objectively report on the stars who could’ve meant so much more than they ultimately did. Most of them can be identified by tentative, even perennial pushes they received in their promotions, which for those they connect with, can become agonizing after a long period rooting for them, with very little to show for it. These are the wrestlers who end up looking, and not to put this too harshly, like jokes, and seem like they can easily be forgotten, even dismissed. “They had their chance,” you’ll hear, “and they blew it.”
I don’t ken to that sort of logic. Sometimes it really is a matter of too many stars, too little time. Shawn Michaels waited years to become a world champion. So did Steve Austin. Imagine if HBK had never accomplished his goal. Can you say “Marty Jannetty”? His former Rockers partner kept resurfacing, and it wasn’t as if anyone ever said anything bad about his work in the ring. It was just, Shawn got all the attention, all the chances, and was kept on the roster until the moment finally came. It was the same for Bret Hart, even. By the time he was called on to wear the big strap, it seemed as if every other possibility had already been exhausted, and even then, the company spent a year keeping it away from him with a wrestler who was his polar opposite. John Cena first competed for a world title in 2003, and yet didn’t capture one until 2005. I could go on and on with examples just of those who eventually “fulfilled their potential,” but what about those who didn’t?
Andrew Martin, who competed for most of his career as Test, may be one of the biggest examples I can think of. He was set up to be something of the second coming of Kevin Nash, and yet, like a lot of that breed, nothing ever really came of it. He had his closest brush with success during the McMahon-Helmsley Era in 1999-2000, when he was Stephanie’s intended groom, which led into a mini feud with Triple H, who was otherwise occupied with a dozen other challengers, which happened to include Mr. McMahon himself, and not to mention The Rock, just as the “Great One” was entering the period of his greatest popularity. A lot of things can be said about what held Test back, with the biggest of them being that he was never that charismatic a personality, and that perhaps he never quite solidified a style for his matches. Still, WWE saw enough potential in him that he stuck around and was a featured player for years, in a variety of roles, many of which might have pushed him to the next level, if only a window had been there. He was a classic victim of circumstances. When he was with the company, there wasn’t a need for a Kevin Nash. Even Kevin Nash found that out. Even during a brief comeback during the early ECW brand era, when Test finally brought his physical talents to a peak, his reputation spoiled his potential. Sadly, of course, he died young, and all that potential became a moot point. That doesn’t mean that his career as a professional wrestler should be viewed as a failure.
The next man I’ll address has been known by many names, and never reached near the level of even Test. He also, if you’ll mind a little rhyming, liked to compete in a dress. His name, during this period, was Vito, and he’s easily one of the biggest victims of fans not appreciating what’s right in front of them imaginable. They treated him like he was Rico, the gay stylist who actively sought jeers as part of his gimmick, when what Vito should have elicited was cheers. “The toughest man to ever wear a dress,” is how he used to be described, and that should have been it, because his wrestling skills were phenomenal. He knew how to work a match, how to make it dynamic, how to work a submission hold (which very few wrestlers ever bother with), and how, even if it did not ultimately work in his favor, to motivate the audience. There’s no reason why Vito shouldn’t have become one of the most popular wrestlers WWE had during his brief tenure with the Smackdown brand. He had more natural charisma than John Cena, and this is coming from someone who willfully suffered through Cena’s horrid rap gimmick and considered him a breakout star in the early months of 2004, when he was becoming the secret MVP of Smackdown, a role Vito might have assumed, given the chance.
Speaking of MVP, there’s also MVP himself, a wrestler who very quickly and easily established himself as a franchise player, so easily and naturally that it was held against him, and the role he inhabited was already too good to replace. There was literally nothing he could do, unless he was finally given the nod for greater things, for world championship gold. He was never given that chance, and never even experienced a slight flirtation with that level. He’s one of the many victims of the brand era. For every John Cena, there is an MVP.
Tatanka was one of my early favorites. In hindsight he’s very much an Ultimate Warrior substitute, a wrestler with a mystical drive and energy, who can command the ring and the attention of the audience, and there was only ever one thing holding him back: lack of any charisma on the mic. You could easily argue that this was one thing he never needed, but obviously WWE thought differently, and so even a lengthy undefeated streak ultimately meant nothing, came to a dramatic defeat, repackaging, a heel turn he could do nothing with, and then obscurity, and the few odd meaningless comebacks. He could have been so much more, given the chance.
Crush was another star WWE gave an untold number of chances to, and he adapted many times and successfully fulfilled what was required of him, but what he lacked was the chance to be the spotlight heel, and he was always in the wrong era. He would have done better with just a decade’s shift, might have been that foe who forced Hulk Hogan to face a worthy challenge, and not just a manufactured one. That wasn’t something the company ever needed when Crush was actually wrestling. Yokozuna was such a massive obstacle that in his best moment Crush was still forced to play second-fiddle.
Anyway, one of my unabashed favorite was Paul Birchall, and he seems to embody everything that ever went wrong for wrestlers of this type. He had all the gifts he needed in the ring. He had the look, he had a persona, and he had the opportunity. And then Vince McMahon allowed Paul to be transformed into a pirate, and then Vince determined that this pirate gimmick had no future (this despite the movie character Jack Sparrow only just becoming a craze). I loved “Pirate” Paul Birchall. I want to make that clear. Even though it wasn’t necessarily necessary to put Paul over, it was still something he was inexplicably able to make work. Even his breathtaking C-4 somersault slam, rechristened “Walking the Plank,” fit. Except even without Vince’s kiss of death, it never went anywhere. He was made into fodder for Bobby Lashley. Paul Birchall, who could have revamped the whole face of Smackdown with the personality of a brawler who could gracefully soar through the air, was deemed to be inconsequential. Paul and the pirate were soon tossed back into the sea. He resurfaced a few years later, and actually spent more time with WWE than his previous tenure, but his spirit seemed to be broken. The price of the contract this time seemed to be that he was stripped of everything that made him special. By the end, he was busy arguing that “The Hurricane” had to be Gregory Helms. Well…Is that really what the “Ripper” was best for?
Even mentioning the name Orlando Jordan now conjures bizarre images, thanks to Orlando himself, who has updated the homophobic gimmick for the 21st century but attempting to make it cleanly bisexual. Mr. Jordan, that is a distinction that makes no difference at all. Here’s a guy who could have become something of a replacement Rock, having trained with that clan, and adopted many of the same stylings, and yet eventually found himself dismissed as the new Virgil, the “Chief of Staff” for JBL, and the guy who kept tapping out in record time to Chris Benoit’s Crippler Crossface. It didn’t seem to matter that Jordan began evolving as a performer, that he grew more comfortable on the mic, and even put on brave and innovative struggles against the Crossface, something normally reserved for talent far above his level. Once deemed a joke, always a joke, and the worst of it is that Jordan himself eventually came to embrace it. Not in a good way, sir. One of the sorriest stories possible.
Petey Williams, if TNA could ever have found itself capable of supporting an X division star not named “A.J. Styles,” could easily have become one of the biggest names in wrestling, but instead became something of an undersized joke himself. Imagine if this had happened to Rey Mysterio. Just a damn shame that everyone seems perfectly happy to have let this happen.
Same, too, with Sonjay Dutt, who couldn’t have tried harder to work the charisma he had, and the skills he possessed, all to nothing much at all. Dutt and Williams were like the Dean Malenko of TNA, the workers who didn’t seem to have to work at all. It’s no longer, sadly, a Dean Malenko world.
It never belonged to the likes of Sylvester Terkay. Whereas someone like Ken Anderson, who will always have a brash personality to fall back on, can work against having a wrestling style that defies expectations, this was never to be for Terkay, who could have been another Smackdown star to transform perceptions, but was quickly abandoned. At least Elijah Burke still has the chance to salvage some of his legacy.
Jimmy Yang, who became the most improbable redneck in wrestling history in an effort to bridge an impossible gap, is like WWE’s version of Dutt and Williams, someone with phenomenal talent, but no way to make it work effectively in the context available to him.
Jamie Noble had a number of chances available to him, but became another victim of an unfortunate gimmick. Seems wrestling fans aren’t too keen on supporting trailer trash. Sucks, too, because Noble had the ability to surpass the remarkable stature of, yes, Dean Malenko.
Marc Mero, who once competed as a wrestling version of Little Richard, and was eventually eclipsed by Rena “Sable” Lesnar, had incredible potential, but circumstances just kept getting in his way. Could have been the new “Superfly.” Could have been the first MMA-style wrestler. Could have been great. Never got the chance.
Then, of course, there’s Carlito. Grew incredibly frustrated with WWE, and there’s a damn good reason, because he was never allowed to do anything but what he had, like MVP, done from the start, which was, like Scott Hall as Razor Ramon, become an instant star. WWE, and its fans, really don’t like that sort of thing, apparently. You have to earn it. And sometimes, even when you do, it’s either not enough, or too late.
That’s just the way it goes, sometimes.
Friday, May 27, 2011
For Fans of the Film Fan...
Part of the Fan Companion cycle (and possibly the most popular to date) was the Fan Companion, which was infamous for covering a large amount of movies with very few words. Anyone interested in reading some further movies thoughts from your Scouring Monk might read reviews for current movies over at Examiner. Apparently the only available slot for Colorado Springs movie examiners was for action movies, so I'm mostly going to be writing about that particular genre. Not that I've had a problem so far...
Thursday, May 26, 2011
Jabroni Companion #5
Now that we’ve established my absolute favorite wrestler (Eddie Guerrero, remember?) and thoughts on several historic angles, not to mention touching on WrestleMania, I thought it would be fun to dive into the nitty gritty of a fan’s regular appreciation of wrestling, some more of my favorite superstars. Let’s start with someone who hasn’t always been easy to appreciate. Let’s start with
V. Mr. Anderson
Anderson. (Sorry, had to do that.) Here’s a guy who came to prominence in 2005 (no, really!), and ironically had his first significant match against Eddie (which was, in fact, Eddie’s final televised match). The encounter was plenty indicative of the way WWE chose to push Anderson. He had struggled for years on the independent circuit, but once someone realized that he had the gift of gab (and probably when he started introducing himself, the routine everyone knows), he shot onto the track of superstardom. In fact, when he debuted in WWE, on the seldom-seen B-show Velocity, he really was Mr. Anderson, but by the time he arrived on Smackdown had been rechristened Mr. Kennedy (which you might recall happens to be Vince McMahon’s middle name…another suggestion that a certain angle was supposed to reveal our hero as the boss’s bastard son). At the time Smackdown certainly liked to give humongous pushes to newcomers (think Carlito and MVP), but Kennedy/Anderson was almost a different case entirely. He famously defeated a series of former world champions, which, of course, became regularly referenced by the ringside commentators during his matches. What the company obviously expected was that this guy was going to become an overnight member of the main event scene.
Maybe Vince forgot about a dude named Rocky Maivia. Okay, you don’t exactly forget about The Rock, but what I mean is that maybe Vince forgot that you can’t engineer crowd favorites. It’s something Hollywood does time and time again, find an actor it really likes, and then push that actor in countless projects. It seldom works. Those actors either catch on, or they become the next “where are they now” trivia answers. That’s what happened to Kennedy/Anderson.
You’ll constantly hear the argument that what did him in is his wrestling ability, and that’s partially true. He’s unorthodox in the ring. He’s the rare wrestler who will relish the chance to sell his opponents, not cartoonishly, like a Ric Flair or Shawn Michaels, but enough so that maybe it’s a little too easy to believe that he’s allowed the match to get out of hand. It’s probably a holdover from his former jobber status (and probably what helped him get out of it, too, because anyone who can make beatdowns truly look good can probably do other things, too), and so rare most fans will never even think of a good wrestler competing that way. When it comes to offense, he prefers striking, but also has some striking, as it were, sentons, which is another baffling element of his repertoire, because it’s also not routine for most wrestlers to depend on sentons, whether delivered from a standing position or from the turnbuckle. When you’ve got a distinctive style, it either means that you’re playing directly to the crowd, performing time-tested and anticipated maneuvers, or simply getting it done in the match. Kennedy/Anderson never really draws himself out of matches. His style has drawn comparison to Steve Austin because of that. That and his brash personality.
The other thing you’ll hear about him is that injuries and controversies undid his WWE career. I would argue that WWE screwed him, as it were, by failing to understand that they had a far more literal next Rock on their hands than they ever seemed to realize. They couldn’t push him successfully the way they wanted. He needed feuds with competitors at his experience level, not at the status he deserved. Instead of Undertaker and Shawn Michaels, he should have had more matches with Bobby Lashley, MVP. Hell, imagine if he had ever had a program with Chris Jericho. During their mutual time in the company, Jericho hadn’t definitively established his world champion credentials (other than that run as undisputed champion, which both he and WWE had determined to be something of a failure).
Anyway, instead of establishing a list of defeats against former world champions, Kennedy/Anderson might’ve simply ingratiated himself to the fans, what every wrestler is supposed to do. Randy Orton became a “Legend Killer” so that he could better represent his arrogance, not put himself at a specific level (though his was another career that WWE had to constantly play catch-up with, until things finally leveled out, which reminds me, that the Legacy stable was delayed for something like a year because both Orton and Batista kept getting themselves injured during their early runs with the company, something Orton seems plenty eager to ignore when considering Anderson’s prospects).
When he debuted with TNA, a company with a reputation for making all the wrong decisions, a funny thing happened. Mr. Anderson was finally handled correctly. Sure, the highlight of his first year was a feud with Kurt Angle, but at that point, and because it was both prominent and calculated, and treated Anderson nearly as an equal instead of an arrogant pretender, that one worked. Instead of constantly working pseudo main events, Anderson was allowed to be himself, develop himself. He had worked sporadic programs with Jeff Hardy in WWE, but TNA took that to another level, which is something perhaps many fans still don’t realize, how important that particular relationship has been. Never mind that Hardy had been battling personal demons, as it were, recently. In a single year, TNA did everything right with Anderson, and successfully crowned him a first-time world champion, a status he has maintained since, and a title he will reclaim, though there’s no big rush this time, either. Now everyone knows that he can make it work, and that he’s only just began to tap into his potential…
VI. John Morrison
Other than The Miz, Morrison is the most famous and accomplished veteran of the Tough Enough system WWE ever discovered. Unlike Miz, however, Morrison has had to scratch and claw his way toward recognition every step of the way. It’s somewhat ironic that Miz succeeded where Anderson failed, in almost single-handedly rising to main event and world champion status based on personality alone (but don’t worry, I’ll return to Miz directly later on in the Jabroni Companion, so if you’re not down with that description, you’ve got a few more words coming). Morrison, on the other hand, is still working on it.
And not for lack of trying. He rose to prominence within the company as Eric Bischoff’s lackey, Johnny Nitro, establishing a pattern of looking cool, before forming M-N-M with Joey Mercury and Melina (another Tough Enough alum) on Smackdown, where he had a chance to develop and present a distinctly athletic style, using the ropes for propulsion as few other wrestlers tend to, and then returning to Raw as a singles star, feuding with Jeff Hardy (there’s that name again) over the Intercontinental championship (presenting himself as proficient in ladder matches for the first time).
He caught his big break, however, when he was picked to replace Chris Benoit in 2007 as the new face of ECW, a brand WWE could never find respect for (both when it championed the company itself and when it tried to revive said company under its own auspices; this is one relationship that was never quite what fans tended to believe, but I’ll get back to that, too). I say “big break,” but Morrison (as he was soon rechristened during this period) might have just as easily considered it a curse. This was a period when fans were finally allowed to fully embrace CM Punk, which they had been clamoring to for months, but they inexplicably chose not to. Morrison and Punk engaged in a lengthy feud, which is standard procedure in wrestling (the legendary Flair-Steamboat rivalry grew throughout an entire decade; imagine if the fans who booed the ECW headliners in 2007 had been watching those guys!). The ECW brand itself was supposed to be a place to groom new talent, which it routinely did, but fans (who can’t even seem to realize what the point of a show like Superstars is, because most of them can’t seem to appreciate actual wrestling; no, I absolutely cannot explain it) only liked to comment on how little they respected WWE’s version of ECW. Might anyone point out that Paul Heyman routinely employed wrestlers no one else was able to showcase properly, that he built a cult following based on unique talent, many of whom became far bigger stars (Steve Austin, Eddie Guerrero, the Dudley Boyz; the list goes on and on; suffice to say, is not actually limited just to the hardcore wrestlers who nonetheless became synonymous with the company) for having the exposure he was able to craft.
But aside from ECW, this period developed Morrison as a personality. He adopted such nicknames as the Guru of Greatness, the Shaman of Sexy. He took residence at the Palace of Wisdom. Despite all these awesome phrases, fans didn’t really glom onto him. He developed Starship Pain in ECW, but quickly realized what maybe AJ Styles did over at TNA. Unless Morrison became a typical wrestler, instead of merely an outstanding one, it would be very hard to gain the level of respect he truly deserved. Although he now had the look, the entrance, the moves, even notoriety along with The Miz, Morrison still needed one thing: the respect of the fans.
He found himself on Smackdown, and in matches against the likes of Chris Jericho, CM Punk, and Jeff Hardy, Morrison put on some of the best TV matches anyone was likely to see, all with the express purpose of putting him over. It never worked. Because he couldn’t or didn’t conform to the demands of a typical main event personality, who regularly bark into the mic rather than simply exude natural charisma (someone tell Gorgeous George that he couldn’t have begun the modern era in the actual modern era!), Morrison developed the reputation of failed potential.
And now, of course, he’s on the injured list. He’s got all the talent required, more than anyone else could possibly handle (the only comparable performer, AJ Styles, long ago stopped wrestling this way). The fans demand a concrete reason to cheer and admire talent like this. What Morrison needs to do is put his cocky confidence to a whole different level. He needs to be like Russell Crowe in GLADIATOR. He needs to demand, “Are you not entertained?” Because he can do anything. His style could easily be presented as impossibly dominant, in an entirely unique way. If WWE, and its fans, could grow comfortable with this, John Morrison could become a legend.
VII. Shawn Michaels
The wrestler most people compare Morrison to is Shawn Michaels, the only other performer who has been able to so completely perfect his craft that he has literally been able to do anything he wanted in the ring. It’s how he became known as Mr. WrestleMania. He could make anything look like he was the innovator. Even though he popularized the ladder match against an opponent, Scott Hall, who had a completely different style, it was HBK who came to dominate the legacy of that original encounter, because where Hall kept wrestling much the way a good and competent wrestler does (and I’ll get back to Hall, too), Shawn just kept pushing his game to whatever level was necessary, in whatever situation he found himself.
That’s how he became an icon. He was in the wrestling business, and WWE, for years before this talent was appreciated. That ladder match at WrestleMania X came about because Vince McMahon was finally forced to recognize that Shawn could no longer be denied. 1993 had been something of a hassle for all parties, and if things had continued the way they were then, the entire sport of professional wrestling would be different today. It was a transition year, when Yokozuna was pushed as champion simply because he was naturally what the company could no longer do artificially, which was be larger than life. While WWE tried to push Bret Hart and Lex Luger as the new faces of the company, Shawn Michaels was finally putting his Rockers tag team past completely behind himself. He was not supposed to steal the show at 1994’s WrestleMania, but steal the show he did.
He brought in Kevin Nash during this period, and Nash, thanks to Shawn’s prescience, was quickly recognized as a considerable talent, and became a featured performer on the main event and world title scene. 1995 belonged to “Big Daddy Cool,” but that year’s WrestleMania was also the first time Shawn was allowed to legitimately compete for the world title. Everyone finally seemed to realize that he belonged at that level, but on his own terms, and so he was put into a program with a competitor who might truly be able to keep up with him, and with that, Bret Hart finally met his match, and WrestleMania XII happened.
The only problem was, 1996 eventually went in the direction Shawn himself had realized a few years earlier, when he singled out Kevin Nash. The return of the era that had held wrestlers like HBK back couldn’t have come at a worse time. Shawn seemed to return to the mentality that had almost undone him in 1993, and things kind of got out of control for a while, and then he took all that energy and put it in a more useful direction, and made the momentum swing in his favor. He truly blossomed, finally, as figurehead of DX, just as his career seemed to be winding down. 1998 eventually became 2002, though, (yes, I’m horribly compressing), and Shawn found himself to be a WWE elder statesman (years before Undertaker would truly embrace a similar role).
Long story short, Shawn Michaels became the most improbable beloved figure in sports entertainment. Plenty has been said about his career, so I won’t spend a lot of time talking about this one.
VIII. Triple H
Someone who has struggled to win the respect of the fans throughout his career not named Ken Anderson would be Paul Levesque, better known as Hunter Hurst-Helmsley, better known as Triple H. Few wrestlers have as dramatically altered their original images as this man, who went from the “Blue Blood” to “The Game” during an arduous transformation process. Unlike Shawn Michaels, his career didn’t really benefit from DX shenanigans. He didn’t become a world champion until several angles after his original DX run. It was the infamous McMahon-Helmsley era that truly put him on the map, that came to define his career, as someone who got ahead by literally sleeping with the boss’s daughter. If he hadn’t made that late 1999, early 2000 run so entertaining, maybe I’d agree that it was an unholy alliance that made his career. Never even mind that his development was delayed for years after Hunter pissed off Vince McMahon back in 1996 by breaking character. Apparently something like that is easy to overlook when you really want to hate someone.
What Triple H did better than anyone else was embody the potential of the heel. He did it so well he actually did it too well. Unlike his mentor Ric Flair, Hunter was a braggart in a coward’s body. He didn’t win by accident or cheating, but by any means necessary. That’s what the program with Mick Foley was meant to convey. That’s why he adopted the trusty sledgehammer. All due respect to The Miz, but Triple H was no fluke champion. He wore the title because he’d truly earned it, and had waited long enough. Only Triple H could prevent The Rock, during The Rock’s most popular period, from being world champion.
Years ago, the story would have been different. Roddy Piper, by this reasoning, would have been world champion at WrestleMania I. What Hunter’s original reigns as champion represented was Vince McMahon’s evolving appreciation of the art of professional wrestling, things he might have learned from Ric Flair, you might say, or even Steve Austin. You put the title on the wrestler with the most heat, and you’re guaranteed hot programs. It’s another overlooked aspect of Hunter’s career that his original reign as champion ended somewhat abruptly, extended though it was. By the summer of 2000, The Rock was champion, and then Kurt Angle was champion, and Hunter never even sniffed the title again. He became embroiled in other feuds. Maybe that card with Austin should have been saved for 2001’s WrestleMania, not 2000’s Survivor Series. It didn’t matter, maybe, because Hunter went out with an injury, and missed a whole year, missed the whole Invasion, missed WCW, ECW, and the crowning of the first-ever undisputed champion.
Of course, that meant that when he did return, he would be given what most wrestlers only dream of, and that’s the spot at WrestleMania, the featured spot, not one that steals the show, but the one that marks a significant moment in a wrestler’s career. Several years after attaining world champion status, Hunter was given that spot. His detractors might note that even this did not immediately return Triple H to dominance.
Brock Lesnar became pushed as the “Next Big Thing,” and suddenly Hunter was tapped as the face of continuity within WWE. In the summer of 2002, Triple H was awarded the world title, and was almost immediately placed in a hot program with the returning Shawn Michaels. When Lesnar’s push cooled , Hunter found himself in the position to try and reclaim the kind of role he’d had in the McMahon-Helmsley era, and responded by forming Evolution. The development of this stable was delayed by so many injuries between Randy Orton and Batista that fans thought they could be forgiven for confusing it with keeping Triple H champion for the sake of Triple H being champion. In fact, by 2004, Orton was finally coming into his own, and by 2005, Batista was putting his potential into the stratosphere.
With the departures of major stars like Austin and The Rock, Hunter had become an undisputed cornerstone of the company, and at the dawn of the brand era, asked to carry one of two promotions within WWE, competing against what was hoped to be the new Hulk Hogan. Triple H didn’t sweat it. By this time he knew what to do. It was the fans who were confused. They would probably have been more confused if they’d looked at an NWA or WCW scorecard, and tried explaining why Ric Flair amassed all those championship reigns, and why guys like Sting and Vader entered the main event scene without ever replacing him. His own company grew tired of relying on the “Nature Boy.” Hunter, like I said, made it look easy. He did what he had to, and for fewer years than “Naitch.”
Triple H became a more conventional company player after this, and managed a dominant as well as quiet period as world champion on Smackdown. I don’t know. Maybe it’s not so easy to explain, but “The Game” was a favorite from the start, and his many, ah, evolutions just made it all the easier to enjoy following his career.
IX. The Rock
In contrast, even WWE didn’t see The Rock coming, when it tried to make an instant sensation of Rocky Maivia in 1996. The fans famously sparked a backlash against this initial push, which forced The Rock to transform from a babyface to a heel, begin to talk in the third person, and start laying the smackdown as a member of the Nation of Domination, the only time he would ever be seen as a performer by the color of his skin (aside from Owen Hart, the Nation was more or less a gang of black wrestlers). How exactly he attained world champion status was less a matter of the fans demanding it and more Vince McMahon attempting his old tactics (the 1998 Survivor Series was the first chance Vince had to offer a true alternative to the wildly popular “Stone Cold” phenomenon, and, truth be told, The Rock was not actually there yet, and so that’s why the epic rivalry and/or relationship with Mick Foley happened).
But The Rock became a huge fan favorite all the same, and his charisma was noticed beyond wrestling thanks to a 2000 appearance hosting Saturday Night Live, and Dwayne Johnson emerged as a legitimate Hollywood star. I could go into all the performances I like best (THE RUNDOWN, BE COOL, SOUTHLAND TALES, RACE TO WITCH MOUNTAIN, FAST FIVE), but this isn’t the Film Fan, this is the Jabroni Companion. Know your role and shut your damn mouth.
The Rock made an improbable WWE comeback in 2011, and so there’s more yet of his wrestling career to speak of, which is exactly what sports entertainment needs right now. For a man who last wrestled in 2004, and even that was an exception, it speaks to how unique a personality he has become, how big a phenomenon he really is, that he doesn’t look out of place in this context, and that he can still manage two separate careers. Much can be said about how that transition was originally made, but for now, let’s just revel in the millions…and millions of the Rock’s fans. Because they’re still here.
If any one personality can truly encompass the complicated relationship between professional wrestling and the rest of the world, that would be The Rock.
V. Mr. Anderson
Anderson. (Sorry, had to do that.) Here’s a guy who came to prominence in 2005 (no, really!), and ironically had his first significant match against Eddie (which was, in fact, Eddie’s final televised match). The encounter was plenty indicative of the way WWE chose to push Anderson. He had struggled for years on the independent circuit, but once someone realized that he had the gift of gab (and probably when he started introducing himself, the routine everyone knows), he shot onto the track of superstardom. In fact, when he debuted in WWE, on the seldom-seen B-show Velocity, he really was Mr. Anderson, but by the time he arrived on Smackdown had been rechristened Mr. Kennedy (which you might recall happens to be Vince McMahon’s middle name…another suggestion that a certain angle was supposed to reveal our hero as the boss’s bastard son). At the time Smackdown certainly liked to give humongous pushes to newcomers (think Carlito and MVP), but Kennedy/Anderson was almost a different case entirely. He famously defeated a series of former world champions, which, of course, became regularly referenced by the ringside commentators during his matches. What the company obviously expected was that this guy was going to become an overnight member of the main event scene.
Maybe Vince forgot about a dude named Rocky Maivia. Okay, you don’t exactly forget about The Rock, but what I mean is that maybe Vince forgot that you can’t engineer crowd favorites. It’s something Hollywood does time and time again, find an actor it really likes, and then push that actor in countless projects. It seldom works. Those actors either catch on, or they become the next “where are they now” trivia answers. That’s what happened to Kennedy/Anderson.
You’ll constantly hear the argument that what did him in is his wrestling ability, and that’s partially true. He’s unorthodox in the ring. He’s the rare wrestler who will relish the chance to sell his opponents, not cartoonishly, like a Ric Flair or Shawn Michaels, but enough so that maybe it’s a little too easy to believe that he’s allowed the match to get out of hand. It’s probably a holdover from his former jobber status (and probably what helped him get out of it, too, because anyone who can make beatdowns truly look good can probably do other things, too), and so rare most fans will never even think of a good wrestler competing that way. When it comes to offense, he prefers striking, but also has some striking, as it were, sentons, which is another baffling element of his repertoire, because it’s also not routine for most wrestlers to depend on sentons, whether delivered from a standing position or from the turnbuckle. When you’ve got a distinctive style, it either means that you’re playing directly to the crowd, performing time-tested and anticipated maneuvers, or simply getting it done in the match. Kennedy/Anderson never really draws himself out of matches. His style has drawn comparison to Steve Austin because of that. That and his brash personality.
The other thing you’ll hear about him is that injuries and controversies undid his WWE career. I would argue that WWE screwed him, as it were, by failing to understand that they had a far more literal next Rock on their hands than they ever seemed to realize. They couldn’t push him successfully the way they wanted. He needed feuds with competitors at his experience level, not at the status he deserved. Instead of Undertaker and Shawn Michaels, he should have had more matches with Bobby Lashley, MVP. Hell, imagine if he had ever had a program with Chris Jericho. During their mutual time in the company, Jericho hadn’t definitively established his world champion credentials (other than that run as undisputed champion, which both he and WWE had determined to be something of a failure).
Anyway, instead of establishing a list of defeats against former world champions, Kennedy/Anderson might’ve simply ingratiated himself to the fans, what every wrestler is supposed to do. Randy Orton became a “Legend Killer” so that he could better represent his arrogance, not put himself at a specific level (though his was another career that WWE had to constantly play catch-up with, until things finally leveled out, which reminds me, that the Legacy stable was delayed for something like a year because both Orton and Batista kept getting themselves injured during their early runs with the company, something Orton seems plenty eager to ignore when considering Anderson’s prospects).
When he debuted with TNA, a company with a reputation for making all the wrong decisions, a funny thing happened. Mr. Anderson was finally handled correctly. Sure, the highlight of his first year was a feud with Kurt Angle, but at that point, and because it was both prominent and calculated, and treated Anderson nearly as an equal instead of an arrogant pretender, that one worked. Instead of constantly working pseudo main events, Anderson was allowed to be himself, develop himself. He had worked sporadic programs with Jeff Hardy in WWE, but TNA took that to another level, which is something perhaps many fans still don’t realize, how important that particular relationship has been. Never mind that Hardy had been battling personal demons, as it were, recently. In a single year, TNA did everything right with Anderson, and successfully crowned him a first-time world champion, a status he has maintained since, and a title he will reclaim, though there’s no big rush this time, either. Now everyone knows that he can make it work, and that he’s only just began to tap into his potential…
VI. John Morrison
Other than The Miz, Morrison is the most famous and accomplished veteran of the Tough Enough system WWE ever discovered. Unlike Miz, however, Morrison has had to scratch and claw his way toward recognition every step of the way. It’s somewhat ironic that Miz succeeded where Anderson failed, in almost single-handedly rising to main event and world champion status based on personality alone (but don’t worry, I’ll return to Miz directly later on in the Jabroni Companion, so if you’re not down with that description, you’ve got a few more words coming). Morrison, on the other hand, is still working on it.
And not for lack of trying. He rose to prominence within the company as Eric Bischoff’s lackey, Johnny Nitro, establishing a pattern of looking cool, before forming M-N-M with Joey Mercury and Melina (another Tough Enough alum) on Smackdown, where he had a chance to develop and present a distinctly athletic style, using the ropes for propulsion as few other wrestlers tend to, and then returning to Raw as a singles star, feuding with Jeff Hardy (there’s that name again) over the Intercontinental championship (presenting himself as proficient in ladder matches for the first time).
He caught his big break, however, when he was picked to replace Chris Benoit in 2007 as the new face of ECW, a brand WWE could never find respect for (both when it championed the company itself and when it tried to revive said company under its own auspices; this is one relationship that was never quite what fans tended to believe, but I’ll get back to that, too). I say “big break,” but Morrison (as he was soon rechristened during this period) might have just as easily considered it a curse. This was a period when fans were finally allowed to fully embrace CM Punk, which they had been clamoring to for months, but they inexplicably chose not to. Morrison and Punk engaged in a lengthy feud, which is standard procedure in wrestling (the legendary Flair-Steamboat rivalry grew throughout an entire decade; imagine if the fans who booed the ECW headliners in 2007 had been watching those guys!). The ECW brand itself was supposed to be a place to groom new talent, which it routinely did, but fans (who can’t even seem to realize what the point of a show like Superstars is, because most of them can’t seem to appreciate actual wrestling; no, I absolutely cannot explain it) only liked to comment on how little they respected WWE’s version of ECW. Might anyone point out that Paul Heyman routinely employed wrestlers no one else was able to showcase properly, that he built a cult following based on unique talent, many of whom became far bigger stars (Steve Austin, Eddie Guerrero, the Dudley Boyz; the list goes on and on; suffice to say, is not actually limited just to the hardcore wrestlers who nonetheless became synonymous with the company) for having the exposure he was able to craft.
But aside from ECW, this period developed Morrison as a personality. He adopted such nicknames as the Guru of Greatness, the Shaman of Sexy. He took residence at the Palace of Wisdom. Despite all these awesome phrases, fans didn’t really glom onto him. He developed Starship Pain in ECW, but quickly realized what maybe AJ Styles did over at TNA. Unless Morrison became a typical wrestler, instead of merely an outstanding one, it would be very hard to gain the level of respect he truly deserved. Although he now had the look, the entrance, the moves, even notoriety along with The Miz, Morrison still needed one thing: the respect of the fans.
He found himself on Smackdown, and in matches against the likes of Chris Jericho, CM Punk, and Jeff Hardy, Morrison put on some of the best TV matches anyone was likely to see, all with the express purpose of putting him over. It never worked. Because he couldn’t or didn’t conform to the demands of a typical main event personality, who regularly bark into the mic rather than simply exude natural charisma (someone tell Gorgeous George that he couldn’t have begun the modern era in the actual modern era!), Morrison developed the reputation of failed potential.
And now, of course, he’s on the injured list. He’s got all the talent required, more than anyone else could possibly handle (the only comparable performer, AJ Styles, long ago stopped wrestling this way). The fans demand a concrete reason to cheer and admire talent like this. What Morrison needs to do is put his cocky confidence to a whole different level. He needs to be like Russell Crowe in GLADIATOR. He needs to demand, “Are you not entertained?” Because he can do anything. His style could easily be presented as impossibly dominant, in an entirely unique way. If WWE, and its fans, could grow comfortable with this, John Morrison could become a legend.
VII. Shawn Michaels
The wrestler most people compare Morrison to is Shawn Michaels, the only other performer who has been able to so completely perfect his craft that he has literally been able to do anything he wanted in the ring. It’s how he became known as Mr. WrestleMania. He could make anything look like he was the innovator. Even though he popularized the ladder match against an opponent, Scott Hall, who had a completely different style, it was HBK who came to dominate the legacy of that original encounter, because where Hall kept wrestling much the way a good and competent wrestler does (and I’ll get back to Hall, too), Shawn just kept pushing his game to whatever level was necessary, in whatever situation he found himself.
That’s how he became an icon. He was in the wrestling business, and WWE, for years before this talent was appreciated. That ladder match at WrestleMania X came about because Vince McMahon was finally forced to recognize that Shawn could no longer be denied. 1993 had been something of a hassle for all parties, and if things had continued the way they were then, the entire sport of professional wrestling would be different today. It was a transition year, when Yokozuna was pushed as champion simply because he was naturally what the company could no longer do artificially, which was be larger than life. While WWE tried to push Bret Hart and Lex Luger as the new faces of the company, Shawn Michaels was finally putting his Rockers tag team past completely behind himself. He was not supposed to steal the show at 1994’s WrestleMania, but steal the show he did.
He brought in Kevin Nash during this period, and Nash, thanks to Shawn’s prescience, was quickly recognized as a considerable talent, and became a featured performer on the main event and world title scene. 1995 belonged to “Big Daddy Cool,” but that year’s WrestleMania was also the first time Shawn was allowed to legitimately compete for the world title. Everyone finally seemed to realize that he belonged at that level, but on his own terms, and so he was put into a program with a competitor who might truly be able to keep up with him, and with that, Bret Hart finally met his match, and WrestleMania XII happened.
The only problem was, 1996 eventually went in the direction Shawn himself had realized a few years earlier, when he singled out Kevin Nash. The return of the era that had held wrestlers like HBK back couldn’t have come at a worse time. Shawn seemed to return to the mentality that had almost undone him in 1993, and things kind of got out of control for a while, and then he took all that energy and put it in a more useful direction, and made the momentum swing in his favor. He truly blossomed, finally, as figurehead of DX, just as his career seemed to be winding down. 1998 eventually became 2002, though, (yes, I’m horribly compressing), and Shawn found himself to be a WWE elder statesman (years before Undertaker would truly embrace a similar role).
Long story short, Shawn Michaels became the most improbable beloved figure in sports entertainment. Plenty has been said about his career, so I won’t spend a lot of time talking about this one.
VIII. Triple H
Someone who has struggled to win the respect of the fans throughout his career not named Ken Anderson would be Paul Levesque, better known as Hunter Hurst-Helmsley, better known as Triple H. Few wrestlers have as dramatically altered their original images as this man, who went from the “Blue Blood” to “The Game” during an arduous transformation process. Unlike Shawn Michaels, his career didn’t really benefit from DX shenanigans. He didn’t become a world champion until several angles after his original DX run. It was the infamous McMahon-Helmsley era that truly put him on the map, that came to define his career, as someone who got ahead by literally sleeping with the boss’s daughter. If he hadn’t made that late 1999, early 2000 run so entertaining, maybe I’d agree that it was an unholy alliance that made his career. Never even mind that his development was delayed for years after Hunter pissed off Vince McMahon back in 1996 by breaking character. Apparently something like that is easy to overlook when you really want to hate someone.
What Triple H did better than anyone else was embody the potential of the heel. He did it so well he actually did it too well. Unlike his mentor Ric Flair, Hunter was a braggart in a coward’s body. He didn’t win by accident or cheating, but by any means necessary. That’s what the program with Mick Foley was meant to convey. That’s why he adopted the trusty sledgehammer. All due respect to The Miz, but Triple H was no fluke champion. He wore the title because he’d truly earned it, and had waited long enough. Only Triple H could prevent The Rock, during The Rock’s most popular period, from being world champion.
Years ago, the story would have been different. Roddy Piper, by this reasoning, would have been world champion at WrestleMania I. What Hunter’s original reigns as champion represented was Vince McMahon’s evolving appreciation of the art of professional wrestling, things he might have learned from Ric Flair, you might say, or even Steve Austin. You put the title on the wrestler with the most heat, and you’re guaranteed hot programs. It’s another overlooked aspect of Hunter’s career that his original reign as champion ended somewhat abruptly, extended though it was. By the summer of 2000, The Rock was champion, and then Kurt Angle was champion, and Hunter never even sniffed the title again. He became embroiled in other feuds. Maybe that card with Austin should have been saved for 2001’s WrestleMania, not 2000’s Survivor Series. It didn’t matter, maybe, because Hunter went out with an injury, and missed a whole year, missed the whole Invasion, missed WCW, ECW, and the crowning of the first-ever undisputed champion.
Of course, that meant that when he did return, he would be given what most wrestlers only dream of, and that’s the spot at WrestleMania, the featured spot, not one that steals the show, but the one that marks a significant moment in a wrestler’s career. Several years after attaining world champion status, Hunter was given that spot. His detractors might note that even this did not immediately return Triple H to dominance.
Brock Lesnar became pushed as the “Next Big Thing,” and suddenly Hunter was tapped as the face of continuity within WWE. In the summer of 2002, Triple H was awarded the world title, and was almost immediately placed in a hot program with the returning Shawn Michaels. When Lesnar’s push cooled , Hunter found himself in the position to try and reclaim the kind of role he’d had in the McMahon-Helmsley era, and responded by forming Evolution. The development of this stable was delayed by so many injuries between Randy Orton and Batista that fans thought they could be forgiven for confusing it with keeping Triple H champion for the sake of Triple H being champion. In fact, by 2004, Orton was finally coming into his own, and by 2005, Batista was putting his potential into the stratosphere.
With the departures of major stars like Austin and The Rock, Hunter had become an undisputed cornerstone of the company, and at the dawn of the brand era, asked to carry one of two promotions within WWE, competing against what was hoped to be the new Hulk Hogan. Triple H didn’t sweat it. By this time he knew what to do. It was the fans who were confused. They would probably have been more confused if they’d looked at an NWA or WCW scorecard, and tried explaining why Ric Flair amassed all those championship reigns, and why guys like Sting and Vader entered the main event scene without ever replacing him. His own company grew tired of relying on the “Nature Boy.” Hunter, like I said, made it look easy. He did what he had to, and for fewer years than “Naitch.”
Triple H became a more conventional company player after this, and managed a dominant as well as quiet period as world champion on Smackdown. I don’t know. Maybe it’s not so easy to explain, but “The Game” was a favorite from the start, and his many, ah, evolutions just made it all the easier to enjoy following his career.
IX. The Rock
In contrast, even WWE didn’t see The Rock coming, when it tried to make an instant sensation of Rocky Maivia in 1996. The fans famously sparked a backlash against this initial push, which forced The Rock to transform from a babyface to a heel, begin to talk in the third person, and start laying the smackdown as a member of the Nation of Domination, the only time he would ever be seen as a performer by the color of his skin (aside from Owen Hart, the Nation was more or less a gang of black wrestlers). How exactly he attained world champion status was less a matter of the fans demanding it and more Vince McMahon attempting his old tactics (the 1998 Survivor Series was the first chance Vince had to offer a true alternative to the wildly popular “Stone Cold” phenomenon, and, truth be told, The Rock was not actually there yet, and so that’s why the epic rivalry and/or relationship with Mick Foley happened).
But The Rock became a huge fan favorite all the same, and his charisma was noticed beyond wrestling thanks to a 2000 appearance hosting Saturday Night Live, and Dwayne Johnson emerged as a legitimate Hollywood star. I could go into all the performances I like best (THE RUNDOWN, BE COOL, SOUTHLAND TALES, RACE TO WITCH MOUNTAIN, FAST FIVE), but this isn’t the Film Fan, this is the Jabroni Companion. Know your role and shut your damn mouth.
The Rock made an improbable WWE comeback in 2011, and so there’s more yet of his wrestling career to speak of, which is exactly what sports entertainment needs right now. For a man who last wrestled in 2004, and even that was an exception, it speaks to how unique a personality he has become, how big a phenomenon he really is, that he doesn’t look out of place in this context, and that he can still manage two separate careers. Much can be said about how that transition was originally made, but for now, let’s just revel in the millions…and millions of the Rock’s fans. Because they’re still here.
If any one personality can truly encompass the complicated relationship between professional wrestling and the rest of the world, that would be The Rock.
Saturday, May 21, 2011
Jabroni Companion: WrestleMania XXVII
Having finally had a chance to check out this year's WrestleMania for myself, I've got a few thoughts:
The "Snookie match" was probably intended more as Michelle McCool's dream match, against Trish Stratus. You can kinda tell because, well, she retired soon after and most of the match take place between them. Also, to say all John Morrison did was perform Starship Pain is kinda like saying all Tazz did was suplex. He performed Starship Pain off the frickin' top turnbuckle. Onto the floor. I don't know if the commentators I read are aware of this, but that's not the way he usually does it. For the record. I'll have more Morrison on Thursday.
As a whole, the card felt like a huge throwback to how WrestleMania was in the beginning, with a huge emphasis on celebrity (which happened to come from WWE's own, for the most part, in the form of Dwayne Johnson), and not a lot of concern for important matches. Don't get me wrong, because for most of the wrestlers on the card, they were actually involved in personally significant matches, but I'm not sure the company was looking for any technically excellent exhibitions. They ahd Undertaker in yet another climactic encounter, and as long as they've got that, I think they'll allow the rest of the card to rest a little easy, which is pretty interesting.
I'll watch it again at some point, but on the whole, apart from the vastly different tone, I would not call it a failure, as most others seem to be saying. There were so many emotionally charged moments in previous months, because of the whole Nexus angle, that they had to go in a different direction, and Cena-Rock had appropriately already been announced for next year.
To steal a line from The Miz, that one will be awesome.
The "Snookie match" was probably intended more as Michelle McCool's dream match, against Trish Stratus. You can kinda tell because, well, she retired soon after and most of the match take place between them. Also, to say all John Morrison did was perform Starship Pain is kinda like saying all Tazz did was suplex. He performed Starship Pain off the frickin' top turnbuckle. Onto the floor. I don't know if the commentators I read are aware of this, but that's not the way he usually does it. For the record. I'll have more Morrison on Thursday.
As a whole, the card felt like a huge throwback to how WrestleMania was in the beginning, with a huge emphasis on celebrity (which happened to come from WWE's own, for the most part, in the form of Dwayne Johnson), and not a lot of concern for important matches. Don't get me wrong, because for most of the wrestlers on the card, they were actually involved in personally significant matches, but I'm not sure the company was looking for any technically excellent exhibitions. They ahd Undertaker in yet another climactic encounter, and as long as they've got that, I think they'll allow the rest of the card to rest a little easy, which is pretty interesting.
I'll watch it again at some point, but on the whole, apart from the vastly different tone, I would not call it a failure, as most others seem to be saying. There were so many emotionally charged moments in previous months, because of the whole Nexus angle, that they had to go in a different direction, and Cena-Rock had appropriately already been announced for next year.
To steal a line from The Miz, that one will be awesome.
Thursday, May 5, 2011
Jabroni Companion #3
Okay, so now that we’ve looked at my favorite wrestler and the most famous card in professional wrestling, how about one of the most hotly disputed angles to ever develop? I’m talking
III. The Invasion
Incredibly, 2011 marks the ten-year anniversary of Vince McMahon buying WCW, thereby effectively ending one of the greatest rivalries wrestling has ever seen, WWE vs. WCW, headlined by the Monday Night War that gave us the nWo, the Attitude Era, and an endless series of wildly inappropriate Mae Young appearances.
There’s been plenty said about how WCW sabotaged itself during its last year of existence, from increasingly erratic booking to the dwindling impact of a formula that had, since its hottest days in 1996, lost the interest of the fans. The company attempted a number of ways to repackage existing stars, reposition them, and keep business going more or less as usual, but WWE, behind the cultural phenomenon of Steve Austin, had finally managed to completely eclipse its competition, and there was just no way WCW could maintain, much less regain, the kind of momentum it had enjoyed previously. For financial reasons, the prospect of new ownership made everything that much more unstable, and that allowed Vince to slip his way in, and bring WCW to a close, and in dramatic fashion, with a simulcast announcement occurring between Raw and the final edition of Nitro. The new boss couldn’t wait to rebrand his acquisition, quickly establishing the seeds to a whole new era, and the beginnings of the Invasion angle, by representing his son Shane as a usurper of this historic moment.
It was a slow build from there, and part of the reason was that WWE had an opportunity to rebuild itself around Austin, who had recently returned from career-threatening surgery, and that year’s WrestleMania kicked off a different angle entirely, the unexpected alliance between the “Texas Rattlesnake” and his former archrival, Vince McMahon. The story only became more complicated when Triple H, who only months earlier had been confirmed to be the culprit of the storyline that had explained Austin’s absence, and therefore the recipient of a violent blood feud with him upon his return, joined up, and together, this “Two-Man Power Trip” ran roughshod over the company. The Rock (Dwayne Johnson), meanwhile, was just getting started in his movie career, and so the biggest competition for this duo was the late Chris Jericho and the late Chris Benoit. Things hit a patch when “The Game” himself went out to injury.
And things only became further complicated from there. WCW stars, and then ECW stars, began the invasion in earnest. It probably bears noting how complicated the wrestling scene had been for the preceding year. ECW, a cult promotion known for its devoted fans (strong enough for WWE to later revive the idea for an entire brand, and then TNA to bring back its most visible stars once again), began suffering a major setback (as Ring of Honor in recent years can probably relate) when WWE and WCW raided its best talent to stock up their own rosters. WWE had names like the Dudley Boys and Tazz under contract by 2000, while WCW literally stole Mike Awesome during his ECW heavyweight championship run. About the only name that remained loyal was Rob Van Dam, but he had never been a world champion with the promotion, and the momentum ECW constantly strove to build never really came. The company was out of business by the time WCW was bought out.
By 2001, then, it wasn’t uncommon to find wrestlers who had been known as ECW competitors to be featured regularly on a WWE card, and that included Rhyno, who had become something of the ECW equivalent of WCW’s Goldberg, a monster of a wrestler who mauled opponents with the Gore, a version of the tackle that Goldberg and WWE’s Edge had made one of the modern era’s most feared maneuvers.
By the time of the invasion, fans were salivating at the prospects. WWE had the ECW and WCW rosters to pick from, which promised a war of epic proportions, a clash between all the biggest stars of the days, now free to mingle in the same ring. What seemed like a perfect dream, however, was apparently not what Vince McMahon himself had in mind. These are names that never factored into the invasion: Scott Steiner, Tommy Dreamer, the Sandman, Sting, Ric Flair, Kevin Nash, Scott Hall, Hulk Hogan, Sabu, Rey Mysterio, Goldberg, Jeff Jarrett. It’s not as if none of these men would ever be seen in a wrestling ring again. Many of them are still, in some way, ten years later, still very relevant to wrestling fans. Yet none of them graced a WWE ring in 2001, ever appeared with the WCW/ECW Alliance, even though they were and are undisputedly the biggest names from either promotion.
Fans who caught on to that fact were a little put off, to say the least. WWE used all the least relevant stars, in some ways. Sure, you had Booker T and RVD, both of whom became far bigger stars than they had been before as a result. But what was the point of this angle if Austin didn’t finally have that match with Goldberg, for instance, or any number of other blockbuster combinations?
Almost exactly from the start, WWE was using its existing stars to augment the ranks of the Alliance, those who had famously competed in those organizations, and even some surprises, such as Steve Austin’s turn at the Invasion PPV itself, when he turned his back on WWE. It was almost business as usual in some respects. What was the point?
Chris Jericho, in his recent book Undisputed offers one possible explanation, when he talks about his own rough transition from the style he had become used to wrestling to what Vince expected from him in WWE, and this is just one exceptionally gifted star. Imagine what kind of nightmare it would have been to try and develop two whole additional rosters of stars, when WWE itself already had a roster of talented individuals who shouldn’t be expected to give up their spots to relatively unproven talent. This I’m saying purely in the sense that there were now dozens of wrestlers WWE fans and the WWE system itself would now have to incorporate into a cohesive vision. When most fans think about wrestling, it’s easy in theory to juggle different promotions, and that was a lot of what sustained the Monday Night War, and what allowed ECW to stand out, with a style that stood out in stark contrast, until it was adopted and adapted to suit both WCW and WWE.
But that was when fans could pick and choose, when there were options, when there were different channels, and the ability to clearly delineate support between promotions. Vince quickly determined that he would have to very carefully calculate and modulate the conflicting affections his fans would now have to juggle all at once, and that it would best serve him, his stars, and yes, the fans, if he did so in a very deliberate manner. He put his own company first, and it was a damn smart move. I will actually be writing another column about who benefited the most from this decision, so I may seem to be skipping over some rather significant developments in this one, but suffice it to say, I intend to finally dispel the myth that the Invasion angle was a missed opportunity.
The Invasion, which quickly segued into the Alliance, was an angle that officially lasted from the Invasion PPV in July of 2001 until that November’s Survivor Series. As we all know, another huge story occurred at roughly the midpoint of all this, 9/11, one that was far bigger than any wrestling event, and something that is rarely referenced when fans talk about the failure of the angle, because it ended up being far shorter than most people seemed to hope.
That’s being all the more naïve, though, especially when you consider how many things happened after Survivor Series, when the Alliance appeared to have been completely neutralized. Ric Flair made his return to WWE soon after, and initiated an epic feud with Vince, and that in itself led to the comeback of the New World Order, with its original members Kevin Nash, Scott Hall, and Hulk Hogan, which itself led to perhaps the biggest match in WrestleMania history, Hogan vs. The Rock. This was quickly followed by the beginning of the brand era, when WWE split into Raw and Smackdown as separate promotions, thanks to the increased roster that was the direct result of the acquisition of WCW and ECW. Word had it that originally Vince hoped to split WCW off into its own brand within WWE (but then, WCW had the same hopes with the nWo), and while that very dream would one day be realized with ECW, this was a different era. Vince McMahon had won the professional wrestling war. He had no reason to immediately capitulate and grant his vanquished foes their own platform in his own company. His sole job was the satisfactory welfare of WWE, and the stars he himself had nurtured. I would venture to say that doing anything at all with a flood of WCW and ECW talent was more generous than anything. He gave the lesser-known talent an unbelievable opportunity (which fans might better appreciate today in the post-Nexus era), and then moved on to bigger and better things.
As I said, Booker T was a huge beneficiary of the Alliance angle. He had been WCW champion several times in its final year, but was one of the stars that failed to properly motivate fans to truly care (Jeff Jarrett and Scott Steiner were the others), and was even positioned as the final champion on the last Nitro, and so became the face of the promotion at the onset of the Invasion. Since he had developed several moves that resembled ones The Rock had made famous, it was only natural that he and The Rock would enter a program at some point, and that alone elevated Booker’s profile. That this feud helped Chris Jericho become a world champion for the first time is another huge development that the Invasion helped make possible. When the Alliance was defeated at Survivor Series, Booker was one of many stars who were supposed to disappear, but he never did, and in fact became a WWE staple, and by 2003, a scant year later, was competing in a WrestleMania main event.
RVD, meanwhile, became such a fan favorite that it became difficult to understand how he himself wasn’t immediately pushed into world champion status, even though his own ECW promotion had never done so. He was the true breakout star of the Invasion, and this would never have bee possible if all those other big names had been around. He would have been an afterthought. Instead, he eventually became the cornerstone, and champion of, the ECW revival in 2006, which in turn would give him the legitimacy to headline TNA years later.
This is to say nothing of how Steve Austin and Kurt Angle, for example, benefited, and that’s another hugely overlooked development of the Alliance angle, and one that will figure prominently in the follow-up column, to be sure.
The Invasion and the Alliance, however, were only one small element of Vince’s strategy. Where others sawed only a series of missed opportunities, he envisioned a series of prospects that only increased in time. He had two world champions during the whole angle, and these titles were routinely defended, separately. That opened the door to the unprecedented unification tournament at that December’s Vengeance, when the first-ever undisputed heavyweight champion would be crowned. Since Steve Austin and The Rock were both involved, it seemed natural that one of them would claim the honor, but Vince gave fans another huge swerve when he tapped Jericho instead, thereby paving the way for the return of Triple H in time for the 2002 WrestleMania.
He had the chance to launch the WWE careers of many famous WCW stars at his leisure as well. Rey Mysterio didn’t debut until the summer of 2002, a good year after the initial invasion. Imagine if Rey had been just another WCW star trying to make his mark. Vince instead had the vision to make him something special from the start, and reaped the benefits for years, finding an unlikely (WCW itself had never been able to make Mysterio quite so popular) fan favorite, and an even more unlikely world champion. Scott Steiner, who had closed his WCW career as a heel with one of the most hotly greeted fan reactions of the modern era, made his WWE return in the fall as a free agent greatly desired by both brands (and therefore accentuating not only his own presence by the still-novel concept of rival brands within WWE). No matter the controversies that would surround his matches with Triple H, or his increasingly undistinguished year back. “Big Poppa Pump” had already proven Vince’s point.
WWE gained new developmental talent, too, wrestlers WCW had been working on, such as Jimmy Yang, Nathan Jones, Oleg Prudius, which it was free to nurture at a different pace. Yang went through several incarnations before becoming something of an attraction as an unlikely redneck. Jones, who has since become a Hollywood favorite, but was first discovered by WCW, had a few opportunities to prove himself inside of a WWE ring, even at one point being slated to compete as the Undertaker’s partner at WrestleMania, which is far more than he ever got with the organization that found him. Prudius, meanwhile, was a Russian sensation whose general ungainliness for mass conception eventually gave WWE and Santino Marella the easy-going Vladimir Koslov.
Through all of this, WWE kept the spotlight on its own stars, and 2001 served as a significant transition year for not only Austin, Angle, Jericho, but also for Edge, Jeff Hardy, and William Regal, who finally found the perfect WWE role for himself, a persnickety authority figure whose personality fans could really get behind. 2002 was a significant year for developing new stars as well, from John Cena and Randy Orton to Brock Lesnar, who came about at a time when the company could use a fresh new face to dominate the main event scene, something fans hadn’t even thought about a year earlier. And after the return of Triple H, the comeback of Eddie Guerrero was probably the best feel-good development of the year, at least in terms of WWE stars. Did I mention that Hulk Hogan, after several years of lukewarm WCW reception, energized arenas for the first time since turning heel, by becoming a bona fide fan favorite again? It would never have been possible if he had simply been brought back as part of the invasion angle.
Looking back, Vince McMahon undertook perhaps his second greatest accomplishment, after the birth of WrestleMania, when he bought WCW, and executed the results the way he did. I’m not here to argue that everything went off without a hitch. Nothing is perfect, but the Invasion/Alliance angle was as near perfection as you can get in professional wrestling, satisfying every long-term goal Vince might have envisioned. The four months the Alliance actually existed did a lot more than fans realized or appreciated at the time, and during a difficult period of world history. I guess what I’m trying to say is, revisit this particular era for yourself. Surprise yourself. Try to remember what it was like, rather than what you might have been feeling. If you’re new to wrestling, 2001 is the year you have to thank for everything you enjoy today, so reward yourself with a look at what things were actually like ten years ago. Things were very different. But then, maybe they really weren’t.
III. The Invasion
Incredibly, 2011 marks the ten-year anniversary of Vince McMahon buying WCW, thereby effectively ending one of the greatest rivalries wrestling has ever seen, WWE vs. WCW, headlined by the Monday Night War that gave us the nWo, the Attitude Era, and an endless series of wildly inappropriate Mae Young appearances.
There’s been plenty said about how WCW sabotaged itself during its last year of existence, from increasingly erratic booking to the dwindling impact of a formula that had, since its hottest days in 1996, lost the interest of the fans. The company attempted a number of ways to repackage existing stars, reposition them, and keep business going more or less as usual, but WWE, behind the cultural phenomenon of Steve Austin, had finally managed to completely eclipse its competition, and there was just no way WCW could maintain, much less regain, the kind of momentum it had enjoyed previously. For financial reasons, the prospect of new ownership made everything that much more unstable, and that allowed Vince to slip his way in, and bring WCW to a close, and in dramatic fashion, with a simulcast announcement occurring between Raw and the final edition of Nitro. The new boss couldn’t wait to rebrand his acquisition, quickly establishing the seeds to a whole new era, and the beginnings of the Invasion angle, by representing his son Shane as a usurper of this historic moment.
It was a slow build from there, and part of the reason was that WWE had an opportunity to rebuild itself around Austin, who had recently returned from career-threatening surgery, and that year’s WrestleMania kicked off a different angle entirely, the unexpected alliance between the “Texas Rattlesnake” and his former archrival, Vince McMahon. The story only became more complicated when Triple H, who only months earlier had been confirmed to be the culprit of the storyline that had explained Austin’s absence, and therefore the recipient of a violent blood feud with him upon his return, joined up, and together, this “Two-Man Power Trip” ran roughshod over the company. The Rock (Dwayne Johnson), meanwhile, was just getting started in his movie career, and so the biggest competition for this duo was the late Chris Jericho and the late Chris Benoit. Things hit a patch when “The Game” himself went out to injury.
And things only became further complicated from there. WCW stars, and then ECW stars, began the invasion in earnest. It probably bears noting how complicated the wrestling scene had been for the preceding year. ECW, a cult promotion known for its devoted fans (strong enough for WWE to later revive the idea for an entire brand, and then TNA to bring back its most visible stars once again), began suffering a major setback (as Ring of Honor in recent years can probably relate) when WWE and WCW raided its best talent to stock up their own rosters. WWE had names like the Dudley Boys and Tazz under contract by 2000, while WCW literally stole Mike Awesome during his ECW heavyweight championship run. About the only name that remained loyal was Rob Van Dam, but he had never been a world champion with the promotion, and the momentum ECW constantly strove to build never really came. The company was out of business by the time WCW was bought out.
By 2001, then, it wasn’t uncommon to find wrestlers who had been known as ECW competitors to be featured regularly on a WWE card, and that included Rhyno, who had become something of the ECW equivalent of WCW’s Goldberg, a monster of a wrestler who mauled opponents with the Gore, a version of the tackle that Goldberg and WWE’s Edge had made one of the modern era’s most feared maneuvers.
By the time of the invasion, fans were salivating at the prospects. WWE had the ECW and WCW rosters to pick from, which promised a war of epic proportions, a clash between all the biggest stars of the days, now free to mingle in the same ring. What seemed like a perfect dream, however, was apparently not what Vince McMahon himself had in mind. These are names that never factored into the invasion: Scott Steiner, Tommy Dreamer, the Sandman, Sting, Ric Flair, Kevin Nash, Scott Hall, Hulk Hogan, Sabu, Rey Mysterio, Goldberg, Jeff Jarrett. It’s not as if none of these men would ever be seen in a wrestling ring again. Many of them are still, in some way, ten years later, still very relevant to wrestling fans. Yet none of them graced a WWE ring in 2001, ever appeared with the WCW/ECW Alliance, even though they were and are undisputedly the biggest names from either promotion.
Fans who caught on to that fact were a little put off, to say the least. WWE used all the least relevant stars, in some ways. Sure, you had Booker T and RVD, both of whom became far bigger stars than they had been before as a result. But what was the point of this angle if Austin didn’t finally have that match with Goldberg, for instance, or any number of other blockbuster combinations?
Almost exactly from the start, WWE was using its existing stars to augment the ranks of the Alliance, those who had famously competed in those organizations, and even some surprises, such as Steve Austin’s turn at the Invasion PPV itself, when he turned his back on WWE. It was almost business as usual in some respects. What was the point?
Chris Jericho, in his recent book Undisputed offers one possible explanation, when he talks about his own rough transition from the style he had become used to wrestling to what Vince expected from him in WWE, and this is just one exceptionally gifted star. Imagine what kind of nightmare it would have been to try and develop two whole additional rosters of stars, when WWE itself already had a roster of talented individuals who shouldn’t be expected to give up their spots to relatively unproven talent. This I’m saying purely in the sense that there were now dozens of wrestlers WWE fans and the WWE system itself would now have to incorporate into a cohesive vision. When most fans think about wrestling, it’s easy in theory to juggle different promotions, and that was a lot of what sustained the Monday Night War, and what allowed ECW to stand out, with a style that stood out in stark contrast, until it was adopted and adapted to suit both WCW and WWE.
But that was when fans could pick and choose, when there were options, when there were different channels, and the ability to clearly delineate support between promotions. Vince quickly determined that he would have to very carefully calculate and modulate the conflicting affections his fans would now have to juggle all at once, and that it would best serve him, his stars, and yes, the fans, if he did so in a very deliberate manner. He put his own company first, and it was a damn smart move. I will actually be writing another column about who benefited the most from this decision, so I may seem to be skipping over some rather significant developments in this one, but suffice it to say, I intend to finally dispel the myth that the Invasion angle was a missed opportunity.
The Invasion, which quickly segued into the Alliance, was an angle that officially lasted from the Invasion PPV in July of 2001 until that November’s Survivor Series. As we all know, another huge story occurred at roughly the midpoint of all this, 9/11, one that was far bigger than any wrestling event, and something that is rarely referenced when fans talk about the failure of the angle, because it ended up being far shorter than most people seemed to hope.
That’s being all the more naïve, though, especially when you consider how many things happened after Survivor Series, when the Alliance appeared to have been completely neutralized. Ric Flair made his return to WWE soon after, and initiated an epic feud with Vince, and that in itself led to the comeback of the New World Order, with its original members Kevin Nash, Scott Hall, and Hulk Hogan, which itself led to perhaps the biggest match in WrestleMania history, Hogan vs. The Rock. This was quickly followed by the beginning of the brand era, when WWE split into Raw and Smackdown as separate promotions, thanks to the increased roster that was the direct result of the acquisition of WCW and ECW. Word had it that originally Vince hoped to split WCW off into its own brand within WWE (but then, WCW had the same hopes with the nWo), and while that very dream would one day be realized with ECW, this was a different era. Vince McMahon had won the professional wrestling war. He had no reason to immediately capitulate and grant his vanquished foes their own platform in his own company. His sole job was the satisfactory welfare of WWE, and the stars he himself had nurtured. I would venture to say that doing anything at all with a flood of WCW and ECW talent was more generous than anything. He gave the lesser-known talent an unbelievable opportunity (which fans might better appreciate today in the post-Nexus era), and then moved on to bigger and better things.
As I said, Booker T was a huge beneficiary of the Alliance angle. He had been WCW champion several times in its final year, but was one of the stars that failed to properly motivate fans to truly care (Jeff Jarrett and Scott Steiner were the others), and was even positioned as the final champion on the last Nitro, and so became the face of the promotion at the onset of the Invasion. Since he had developed several moves that resembled ones The Rock had made famous, it was only natural that he and The Rock would enter a program at some point, and that alone elevated Booker’s profile. That this feud helped Chris Jericho become a world champion for the first time is another huge development that the Invasion helped make possible. When the Alliance was defeated at Survivor Series, Booker was one of many stars who were supposed to disappear, but he never did, and in fact became a WWE staple, and by 2003, a scant year later, was competing in a WrestleMania main event.
RVD, meanwhile, became such a fan favorite that it became difficult to understand how he himself wasn’t immediately pushed into world champion status, even though his own ECW promotion had never done so. He was the true breakout star of the Invasion, and this would never have bee possible if all those other big names had been around. He would have been an afterthought. Instead, he eventually became the cornerstone, and champion of, the ECW revival in 2006, which in turn would give him the legitimacy to headline TNA years later.
This is to say nothing of how Steve Austin and Kurt Angle, for example, benefited, and that’s another hugely overlooked development of the Alliance angle, and one that will figure prominently in the follow-up column, to be sure.
The Invasion and the Alliance, however, were only one small element of Vince’s strategy. Where others sawed only a series of missed opportunities, he envisioned a series of prospects that only increased in time. He had two world champions during the whole angle, and these titles were routinely defended, separately. That opened the door to the unprecedented unification tournament at that December’s Vengeance, when the first-ever undisputed heavyweight champion would be crowned. Since Steve Austin and The Rock were both involved, it seemed natural that one of them would claim the honor, but Vince gave fans another huge swerve when he tapped Jericho instead, thereby paving the way for the return of Triple H in time for the 2002 WrestleMania.
He had the chance to launch the WWE careers of many famous WCW stars at his leisure as well. Rey Mysterio didn’t debut until the summer of 2002, a good year after the initial invasion. Imagine if Rey had been just another WCW star trying to make his mark. Vince instead had the vision to make him something special from the start, and reaped the benefits for years, finding an unlikely (WCW itself had never been able to make Mysterio quite so popular) fan favorite, and an even more unlikely world champion. Scott Steiner, who had closed his WCW career as a heel with one of the most hotly greeted fan reactions of the modern era, made his WWE return in the fall as a free agent greatly desired by both brands (and therefore accentuating not only his own presence by the still-novel concept of rival brands within WWE). No matter the controversies that would surround his matches with Triple H, or his increasingly undistinguished year back. “Big Poppa Pump” had already proven Vince’s point.
WWE gained new developmental talent, too, wrestlers WCW had been working on, such as Jimmy Yang, Nathan Jones, Oleg Prudius, which it was free to nurture at a different pace. Yang went through several incarnations before becoming something of an attraction as an unlikely redneck. Jones, who has since become a Hollywood favorite, but was first discovered by WCW, had a few opportunities to prove himself inside of a WWE ring, even at one point being slated to compete as the Undertaker’s partner at WrestleMania, which is far more than he ever got with the organization that found him. Prudius, meanwhile, was a Russian sensation whose general ungainliness for mass conception eventually gave WWE and Santino Marella the easy-going Vladimir Koslov.
Through all of this, WWE kept the spotlight on its own stars, and 2001 served as a significant transition year for not only Austin, Angle, Jericho, but also for Edge, Jeff Hardy, and William Regal, who finally found the perfect WWE role for himself, a persnickety authority figure whose personality fans could really get behind. 2002 was a significant year for developing new stars as well, from John Cena and Randy Orton to Brock Lesnar, who came about at a time when the company could use a fresh new face to dominate the main event scene, something fans hadn’t even thought about a year earlier. And after the return of Triple H, the comeback of Eddie Guerrero was probably the best feel-good development of the year, at least in terms of WWE stars. Did I mention that Hulk Hogan, after several years of lukewarm WCW reception, energized arenas for the first time since turning heel, by becoming a bona fide fan favorite again? It would never have been possible if he had simply been brought back as part of the invasion angle.
Looking back, Vince McMahon undertook perhaps his second greatest accomplishment, after the birth of WrestleMania, when he bought WCW, and executed the results the way he did. I’m not here to argue that everything went off without a hitch. Nothing is perfect, but the Invasion/Alliance angle was as near perfection as you can get in professional wrestling, satisfying every long-term goal Vince might have envisioned. The four months the Alliance actually existed did a lot more than fans realized or appreciated at the time, and during a difficult period of world history. I guess what I’m trying to say is, revisit this particular era for yourself. Surprise yourself. Try to remember what it was like, rather than what you might have been feeling. If you’re new to wrestling, 2001 is the year you have to thank for everything you enjoy today, so reward yourself with a look at what things were actually like ten years ago. Things were very different. But then, maybe they really weren’t.
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