Author: Colette Arrand

Wrestling Worth Watching: 10/3/11-10/9/11

On these here internets, it’s possible that there are hundreds, if not thousands, of pasty white nerds posting their views and opinions on pro-wrasslin’. I’m no different from any of them, but I’d prefer to stay focused on the positive. Instead of railing against booking decisions or complaining about the lack of airtime any particular wrestler gets, I hope to present to you some wrestling worth watching–matches (and the occasional segment) that make all the other stuff go down a little more smoothly.

A note, though: Ring of Honor does not air in my area, so I’ll constantly be a week behind. I’ve yet to have an opportunity to watch last week’s (likely fantastic) show, and I can tell this article’s going to run way, way long, so I’ll leave you without my account of El Generico vs. Jay Lethal. Still, if you’re so inclined, go watch their product at www.rohwrestling.com. It’s the best wrestling you can watch on TV, and it’s always nice supporting the little guy.

WWE Monday Night Raw (10/3/11)

Everything Mark Henry Does: Seriously, Mark Henry as the World Heavyweight Champion is great; a tremendous throwback to early 90s WCW, where monsters stalked the ring and laid waste to everybody and everything standing between them and respect. This week, the former Sexual Chocolate battled John Morrison, and it was pretty decent for what was an extended squash of Morrison, who must be wondering what happened to his early-year momentum. Morrison actually connected with his finishing top rope splash, only to have Henry shove him off, leading to JoMo’s swift execution. The really exciting stuff, for me at least, continues to be Mark Henry’s work on the microphone. His rants about the Hall of Pain remind me a lot of early 90s WCW monsters as well, particularly Vader, who once told the WCW roster that they should pay rent to him. Big, bad hosses are a good thing, particularly when they’re being booked like big, bad hosses. Henry might be set-up for an eventual title loss to Randy Orton, but I’m going to enjoy his reign while I can.

WWE NXT: Redemption (10/5/11) (Watch it on YouTube)

Note: I haven’t watched NXT since Season 3, which was a intentional trainwreck meant to sink the show as quickly as possible in an effort to clear SyFy up for the cable debut of SmackDown! The show lost a ton of steam that season (despite being hilarious, at times), and probably wasn’t helped by the fizzled WWE career of Low-Ki, the absolute lack of season 4’s winner on the current product, and the fact that this season of NXT just won’t end. At this point, they should rename NXT: Redemption to NXT: Purgatory.

William Regal’s Commentary: If you tune in to an episode of Raw or SmackDown!, it’s likely that, at some point, the three man announce crew will break down into angry tirades that often have nothing to do with what’s going on in the ring. Sometimes it advances a storyline. Sometimes it just drags, to the point that the one neutral party in the argument must throw his hands in the air and say “Guys, the match?” before things settle down. Regal, long one of my favorite wrestlers, seems to be making the transition to the announce desk rather smoothly–his serene, austere delivery is not only a great counterbalance to what’s on TV, but he manages to sound knowledgeable about the craft (which he is) while putting the product over. I’ve wanted to see more Regal on TV for some time, but it was previously for his wrestling. I’d settle for a talking role, at this point, as he is currently flying under the radar as one of the best color commentators WWE’s had since Paul Heyman’s brilliant run during the WCW/ECW InVasion angle.

Curt Hawkins and Tyler Reks: If this tag team isn’t called C. Reks, it needs to be. That’s a license to print money. Long written off, the WWE Tag Team division appears to be making a slight comeback. The champions have a (terrible) tag team name and matching gear. The titles were defended on a Pay Per View that didn’t advertise every belt as being on the line. It’s not like the glory days, but it’s a start, and there’s something to be said for pairing together two guys who previously didn’t have much to do. Hawkins and Recks certainly fit that bill. They opened up NXT this week on the microphone–which is maybe what NXT should be a platform for–and weren’t that bad. I can’t quite get over Recks’ hair, but the two got into the ring and got the crowd to boo them…which isn’t exactly an easy thing to do with virtually no hype or build-up. Beyond that, both of them made some pretty good points. Giving guys legit-sounding beef and allowing them to air it on the air? Good strategy, bro.

Yoshi Tatsu’s Great Muta Get-Up: Anything Muta-esque is gonna grab my attention, particularly if it’s something that has the potential to be something great, and not just Snooki doing a handspring elbow at WrestleMania. The only problem I have with it is that they can’t well enough let Tatsu look good without some dude in the back cracking wise about him wearing makeup, going so far as to call him “Ms. Tatsu” and “Lucy Liu.” I get that this is wrestling, and that wrestling is incredibly macho, but it’s 2011, dudes, and Tatsu’s a far cry from “Adorable” Adrian Adonis. Yoshi should be getting the fans to cheer for him because he’s a great wrestler who looks cool, not because he’s playing a role in an old trope. Same goes for JTG and Darren Young. They could be good wrestlers (JTG was formerly a member of a pretty good tag team), but it’s hard to care about them when they’re not only bullying a guy for his supposed femininity, but are doing so as two black men. That’s double-stereotypical, and just unfortunate.

The black dudes then stole Tatsu's makeup, and, in an ironic twist, the anti-Prop 8 campaign's slogan.

Daniel Bryan’s Beard: Someday, I hope it’ll be at maximum power. For now, it’ll do.

MAXIMUM POWER

Daniel Bryan vs. Heath Slater: This match has happened a few times since “Dat Supah Hero” D-Bryan won the SmackDown! Money in the Bank match at the aptly-named Money in the Bank pay per view, and Bryan’s, so the two seem plugged in and ready to go. It’s a short match, which is what happens when you have four matches and two ten-minute flashbacks to get through, but that doesn’t mean it’s not good. I think the thing I appreciate most about watching Daniel Bryan in the WWE, even if he doesn’t win as much as I’d like (it’s called a slow build, but I’m impatient), is that he doesn’t really have a finishing move in the sense that other WWE wrestlers do. Yeah, his main hold is the Labell Lock, but it’s been awhile since I’ve seen him put somebody away with it, and Bryan is being booked as a guy so proficient, a basic hammerlock could spell doom for his opponent. Here, he beats Slater with his mentor William Regal’s hold, the Regal Stretch, and it doesn’t at all seem out of place. As for Heath Slater, I’ve never liked him, but I was never meant to. He seems to be getting better with each outing, but that “One Man Southern Rock Band” thing doesn’t really mean jack if he’s not playing instruments or pretending to do so, badly. If they nicked a little personality from the Honky Tonk Man’s gimmick, Slater might just go somewhere significant.

Four Significant Matches: It’s not everyday that a wrestling show has four matches that are all given a decent amount of time, all of which end relatively cleanly. I’d take four matches like the ones on NXT over Santino/Jinder Mahal every day, and wouldn’t mind seeing Derek Bateman elevated to the main Raw or SmackDown! roster, even if there’s a guy in WWE’s developmental system doing the crazy, unorthodox guy thing better. There’s something slightly different about everybody on this show, which is refreshing. It’s easy to think of the WWE as a sort of homogenized wasteland, but there are men and women on the roster doing things differently from the norm, which is nice. If that were reflected company-wide, we’d be golden.

TNA IMPACT Wrestling (10/6/11)

Impact Hits the Road: Granted, the Knoxville Civic Coliseum isn’t the most impressive venue, but TNA always seems to do account for itself better when it’s not in the IMPACT Zone. As good as that deal probably has been for TNA, the IMPACT Zone often felt like wrestling’s version of Cheers. Inside, everybody knows your name. Outside, you’re either a blip on the radar or “retired” from WWE. Hitting the road, the energy in the building doesn’t feel as manufactured as usual, as you get an enthusiastic, paid crowd to see things up close and personal. IMPACT, or at least TNA’s pay per views, should always be away from the IMPACT Zone. The one negative? The crowd noise is obviously piped in, at times.

Bully Ray: There may be nobody better on TV at playing his role than Bully Ray, and if there was any justice, he’d be in a feud against somebody much better than the inexplicably popular Mr. Anderson, who may be the worst guy on TV when it comes to playing any role. Anderson wants to face Bully Ray in a falls count anywhere in Philadelphia street fight (and, without Bully Ray saying yes or no, Mike Tenay pretty much booked the match). If this one doesn’t end with Ray suffocating Anderson with a Gino’s Cheesesteak, I’ll weep.

Kid Kash: He’s 40-something, still wrestling with a name that sounds like a 13-year-old’s idea of a cool AIM handle. Can’t help but respect that.

Bobby Roode vs. James Storm: Face vs. Face matches are sometimes awkward, but not this one. If you discount Kurt Angle’s interference (he helped his future opponent beat who he was facing that night, which makes sense somewhere), nothing about this small teaser for an eventual singles match/feud disappointed. I’m not a massive Beer Money booster or anything, but Roode and Storm are very solid hands. Not only that, but the two are pretty much the only established guys on the roster who can truly call themselves TNA originals in that their initial buzz didn’t start elsewhere. If this is a small taste of what’s to come from TNA’s heavyweight title scene, I guess I want more.

Hulk Hogan’s Andy Kaufman Impersonation: When a 60-year-old man who admits to increasingly limited mobility claims that he’s going to retire instead of participating in a do-over of a wrestling match that took place in 1997, it’s a safe bet that it’s going to be a ruse. The whole night, TNA played clips of Hogan’s greatest moments in the company (mostly him talking), displayed tweets remembering his matches in the WWF and WCW, and speculated as to what the future of wrestling held without him. All the “Hulkamania 4 Life” signs in the crowd were for nothing, though, as it turned out that Hogan wasn’t retiring. Not only that, but he didn’t respect the good folk of Knoxville, who’d welcomed the Hulkster with open arms. When Hogan mocked them with his best hillbilly voice—it was a fairly decent approximation of the voice Andy Kaufman used to belittle the good folk of Memphis nearly 40 years earlier. That’s the only thing I enjoyed about the psudo-retirement ceremony. If TNA really wanted me to buy it, they’d have at least booked the show somewhere that wasn’t Tennessee.

The Look on Hogan’s Face When He Agreed to Fight Sting: It was some of his best acting since Mr. Nanny.

Verbal contracts are binding, brother.

WWE Superstars (10/6/11) (Watch it On YouTube)

JTG Clapping His Hands Before Applying the Reverse Chinlock: A mannerism so 1986, my heart couldn’t help but flutter. His hip-toss suplex thingie was also pretty looking, but I worry about JTG’s status on the WWE roster. It’s been awhile since his tag team partner was released, but JTG simply has not evolved as a character since Shad Gaspard was future endeavored. As the claimant of at least three unused shots for the WWE Tag Team Championships, my continuity-obsessed brain would explode were he to be axed without using one of them.

The Snot Rocket Stuck to Alex Riley’s Face: It was gross. I laughed. I’m five-years-old in February. I also love how white his face is compared to his super-tan body.

Scott Stanford: For years, the WWE has been looking for an announcer who sounds like a SportsCenter anchor. For years, that search has been as fruitless for them as it’s been frustrating for fans, even though dudes like Todd Grisham and Johnathan Coachman have, ironically, gone on to careers with ESPN. WWE seems to have found their man in Scott Stanford, a local Emmy-winning sportscaster who slips Zack Ryder references into his day job and who, by all accounts, seems to love him some wrestling. On Alex Riley, after his win: “If you look up ‘Pure Athlete’ in the dictionary, you’ll find a picture of Jim Thorpe holding up an 8×10 of Alex Riley.” Real SportsCenter anchors would kill for one-liners like that. He also makes up reasons for wrestlers to have their random-seeming matches (Michael McGillicutty and Percy Watson got into a fight at a restaurant, leading to their match), which adds flavor to the otherwise flavorless.

Michael McGillicutty: In the first six seconds of his match against “Showtime” Percy Watson, Mr. Perfect’s kid showed more charisma than he did during a whole season of NXT, an ill-fated run with the Nexus, and a disastrously uneventful, mercifully ended Tag Team Championship reign with David Otunga. I tend to root for the second and third generation guys to make it, simply because they’re facing the incredible task of living in their fathers’ shadows. McGillicutty’s early WWE career hasn’t been easy to watch (see below), but he’s young and he’s got time.

Big vs. Little Diva Matches: AJ Lee and Tamina aren’t well-developed enough for me to care much about them (one’s a hipster, the other’s the daughter of Jimmy Snuka), but in the WWE’s current dynamic, Diva’s matches come no better than the ones where a large diva asserts herself over a much smaller opponent. Watching Tamina stretch out AJ was shades of what I hoped for (and, I suppose, kinda got) from Beth Phoenix vs. Kelly Kelly. ‘Twas no SHIMMER, but it was the best WWE Divas match I’ve seen in a few months.

Ted DiBiase vs. Tyson Kidd: Tyson Kidd promises to be a regular feature of this column. He’s one of WWE’s best five wrestlers, but I doubt many WWE fans know much about him because he’s constantly on Superstars. Doesn’t seem to matter to him–he just goes out and wrestles good-to-great eight minute matches every week, none of which are exactly alike. As for Ted, he looks to be picking up a little momentum of late, which is good. Before his WWE run, he picked up some well-deserved praise for his work in Pro=Wrestling NOAH, but since being signed, he’s been mired by his connection to his father. The last name is enough, but putting him in a stable full of guys with second and third generation bloodlines, handing him the Million Dollar Title, and leading him to the ring to an awful theme song that starts “I come from money” is going to make it awful hard to forget his father. Not that that connection is ever going to go away, but if you put Cody Rhodes next to his father Dusty or his brother Dustin, you’d never see the connection. Ted needs some distance, and looks to be finding it. They still need to drop that music, though, and I don’t know if “DiBiase Posse” is clever or kind of sad. Based on his plea to WWE fans to start tailgating before live events, I’m leaning towards sad.

WWE SmackDown! (10/7/11) (Watch it on YouTube)

Is He Gonna Hire Scabs?: Leave it to Zack Ryder to ask the important question about Monday Night Raw’s walkout. If Triple H does “hire” a bunch of scabs to work Raw on Monday, it may be one of the better wrestled shows of the year. WWE’s developmental roster is absolutely stocked with dudes I’d pay cash money to see live, even if a live audience has no idea who Antonio Caesaro, Seth Rollins or Dean Ambrose are, and it’d be interesting to debut a cadre of new faces in this way. Everybody on the show would have a feud built-in, and it’d allow Triple H to do something more than make fun of the situations he finds himself in.

Pee-Wee Otunga, Attorney at Law: Few professional wrestlers have found themselves as ridiculously attired as David Otunga, who dropped his burgeoning (but awful) feud with Jerry “The King” Lawler in favor of reminding people that, beyond being engaged to Jennifer Hudson, he graduated from Harvard with a law degree. Instead of being a kinda boring dude in Ed Hardy-inspired trunks, he’s now a kinda boring dude in a bowtie and argyle sweater, which is exactly what I’d wear to scare the bejesus out of my opponents. The entirety of the Stand Up to WWE Walkout angle has me utterly confused, but it looks like they’re trying to make a star out of somebody who, prior to being involved, wasn’t. How it turns out will be interesting, and could well determine Otunga’s status in the company. Storyline-wise, I don’t see how you can regress from suing the company and hope to retain employment.

Cody Rhodes: The best actor in WWE. His evolution has been amazing and nigh-unprecedented.

Alberto Del Rio vs. Sin Cara: A tiny slice of goodness to start the show, right up until the end, which was flubbed. Despite that, Del Rio was great (as always), and Sin Cara continues to display the occasional flash of brilliance that made him so exciting to watch when he was in Mexico and Japan as Mistico. Del Rio’s cross armbreaker is starting to reach an insane level as a simple submission finisher–nobody right now sells the application of their move better than Del Rio, and few have. It’s like watching Ric Flair “apply more pressure” to the figure four, only Flair didn’t kick his opponents away when they tapped out. I can’t say that I’m particularly interested in the Sin Cara vs. Sin Cara feud, but Hunicio, under the black Sin Cara hood, deserves a do-over from the Hell in a Cell pay per view. Nobody deserves a PPV like the one he got, and he’s a good wrestler, to boot.

Booker T: He says ridiculous stuff. He gets everybody over. I love it. On why he walked out on HHH on Raw: “I had to go to the bathroom. I thought the show was over.” Insipid, or insanely brilliant?

Air Boom Finally Get a Cohesive Theme Song: Now they need a better name. Also, is it ironic that the dudes complaining about the lack of safety on Raw attack their opponents before the bell, or is that the point?

Vickie Guerrero: They’re starting to establish her as a (lesser) Bobby “The Brain” Heenan. Ditch the “Cougar” necklace and give her two, maybe three guys around Jack Swagger and Dolph Ziggler, and we’re cooking.

Air Boom vs. Dolph Ziggler and Jack Swagger (Swaggler): Not as good as their match at Hell in a Cell, but it didn’t need to be. After the pre-match assault, Even Bourne was injured and Kofi Kingston took the brunt of Swaggler’s tag team onslaught. Then Evan tried to come in and turn things around, but he was still injured and was picked apart. Logic? In my pro-wrestling? I’m a fan.

Oh Hey, the Divas of Doom Hurt People: About time. ‘Nuff said.

Big Show’s Return: Big Show’s been wrestling since 1995. Despite that, he’s had exactly zero good t-shirts for his fans’ buying pleasure. That streak of merchandising ineptitude continued this past Friday, as his W.M.D. Precision Strike t-shirt could have been given to practically everybody, and probably should have been given to Air Boom. BUT! Big Show’s return angle was a classic, kind of like Mark Henry’s rise to the top of the card. Four months ago, Mark Henry broke Big Show’s ankle. Show comes back, gets real emotional about his inability to do things like put on his pants or play with his dogs as he normally would. Then he promises to destroy Mark Henry. I don’t remember their match at Money in the Bank, and I can’t imagine their eventual championship match being a barn burner, but it’s the first time I’ve been remotely interested in Big Show since his tremendous run as Chris Jericho’s tag team partner in 2009.

Mark Henry, Man of Logic: His promo about not giving Big Show a title shot was tremendous. “You sat at home for four months; a vacation I afforded you.” I can’t tell if there were no “WHAT?” chants live, or if they were edited out in post-production, but the crowd seems to respect Henry as champion. My mind is still blown by the complete 180 Henry’s career has taken, and I’ve yet to be disappointed by anything he’s done. Go, Henry, go!

Brodus Clay Hype Video: I usually don’t care about hype videos, no matter how well-produced they are. This one’s different, as Brodus Clay’s a giant fat dude, and I love me some giant fat dudes in wrestling, especially if they can throw a good suplex. Looking forward to Clay making his proper post-NXT debut as soon as possible.

Awards Section

MVP of the Week: Mark Henry’s the easy choice. The very easy choice. If I could find more ways to compliment him for his work this week, I would.

Match of the Week: Without seeing El Generico vs. Jay Lethal, I’m giving it up to Daniel Bryan vs. Heath Slater. I could watch solid undercard matches like this all day, but here’s hoping that D-Bryan starts ascending the SmackDown! ladder soon. No prop in wrestling is dumber than the blue or red Money in the Bank briefcase the winner of that match is forced to carry, and while I dig that Daniel Bryan does more with it than clutch it or hit his opponents over the head, I can’t help but think he’d look a whole lot better with one of the WWE’s championship belts around his waist.

Call of the Week: “I had to go to the bathroom. I thought the show was over.” Booker T is nothing if not honest.

Questionable Decision of the Week: Having the people complaining of unsafe work environments go out and make the work environment unsafe for others. This is especially true of the Divas of Doom, who probably shouldn’t have been the ones to tell HHH that they felt unsafe because they were girls. They hated Kelly Kelly for being a girl. The quick squash and torture of Alicia Fox was for the best, and I dig the Legion of Doom mini shoulder pads the two rock on their new gear, but without a sound victory over Kelly Kelly, I’ll end up more than a little bitter about the whole thing. I don’t want to be bitter. I want to like the wrestling that’s on my TV.

October 9, 2011
The 20th Anniversary Reissue of Nirvana’s “Nevermind” Makes Me Slightly Uncomfortable

This is purely sentimental, I know, but I couldn’t help but cringe when I heard that Nirvana’s Nevermind, a towering record in the history of American rock and roll, was “re-released” in deluxe and super-deluxe editions to “celebrate” the album’s 20th anniversary.

History views Kurt Cobain through a curious lens. The man died in 1994, but was probably the biggest rock star of the 90s. You might be able to make an argument for Kurt Cobain as the biggest rock star of the last decade, too, as the Nirvana greatest hits album unearthed “You Know You’re Right,” the last song of Cobain’s that was near completion, and it was better, more staggering, than anything being released by the clone factory that was erected to create and market the next Kurt Cobain.

His death was an odd sort of sainthood, allowing him to compete with the deaths of Michael Jackson, John Lennon, Marvin Gaye, the Notorious B.I.G. and Tupac on VH1 countdowns of music’s most shocking moments, allowing music critics combing through the contents of Nevermind‘s deluxe and super-deluxe editions to label his death as “shotgun-assisted” rather than “suicide.”

This is a curious detail to me. There are no “shocking moments” lists for authors and artists. A literary critic wouldn’t describe Virginia Woolf’s suicide as “rock-and-jacket-and-river-assisted.” Heck, I highly doubt that a reviewer, given an Elliot Smith retrospective to listen to, would say his end was “steak-knife-assisted.”

But Cobain towers above other individuals in the popular
(likely white) consciousness, is treated differently. That’s why Universal Music Group released the deluxe and super-deluxe versions of Nevermind last week–in 2011, the promise of unheard Cobain music, of previously unknown, rough-hewn gems, may be enough for a Gen-Xer to darken the doors of his or her local Best Buy, ready to sacrifice a small portion of their craft beer and gourmet hot dog budget for two lesser mixes of the album they loved 20 years ago, lovingly packaged with a conert that, per most reports, isn’t as good as the other Nirvana shows already given a retail release. We’re meant to ignore that anniversary reissues of albums–“deluxe,” “super-deluxe” and otherwise–tend to be the exclusive province of 40th-anniversary super-deluxe reissues of Boston’s Boston. The bottom-line-minded Dr. Frankensteins of the music industry have a corpse to reanimate, and no, nothing is sacred these days.

But I’d like to believe that they are, that music can still mean something. I want to believe this despite the fact that I mentioned Tupac in a class that I teach last week and was met with blank stares, despite the fact that most people younger than me will not remember the Walkman, the Discman or a time when Mp3 players held only 16 songs. I know the words to Loverboy’s “Loving Every Minute of It” and half the Spice Girl’s catalog and a good chunk of terrible music (and, despite Nirvana, plenty of 90s music was absolutely dreadful) because listening to music you actually wanted to listen to was less convenient than it is now, was subjected the tape unspooling, the CD getting scratched, the radio bleeping out all the swear words or Clearchannel deciding that the kind of music you wanted to listen to wasn’t the kind of music they wanted to play. It was much easier to feel alienated in the 90s. Now there are stores in malls that make their money selling alienation…or at least a corporation’s idea of it.

Though Nirvana was in regular rotation on the Canadian alt-rock station across the Detroit River, I didn’t listen to Nevermind in its entirety until 1999, when I traded my uncensored copy of Korn’s Follow the Leader for it and MTV Unplugged (uncensored records were worth two regular albums in trade). Suddenly, rap-rock didn’t seem so cool. Pop-punk was right out. Still, I haven’t listened to Nevermind in full for close to five years, and the deluxe and super-deluxe reissues haven’t compelled me to. I have no sense of duty or nostalgia or curiosity about the album, though it and A Hard Day’s Night were the backbone of my pop music education. The singles, of course, are well-worn and don’t need further airplay. Our children are born smelling of teen spirit.

Twelve years ago, the later half of the album was nigh unlistenable. My problems were two-fold. First, my copy was heavily scratched, repeatedly dropped, skipped constantly after “Polly.” Second, I’m not sure I quite understood the point of songs like “Lounge Act” and “Territorial Pissings.” After a few years of Limp Bizkit and Korn, Creed and late-model Pearl Jam, it became easy to lose sight of nuance. I didn’t know what nuance was. I preferred my music nuance free. Gimme convenience or gimme death was my motto, until I figured out what the Dead Kennedy’s actually meant by the phrase.

But now, I’m afraid. I’m convinced that the “Territorial Pissings” of my mind sounds better than the “Territorial Pissings” of the regular, deluxe, or super-deluxe issues of Nevermind, and I suppose I’ll be just as happy not pulling my shopworn copy out and playing it on my next car trip as I’d be with navigating the riffs and gouges I memorized ten years ago.

Oddly, I’d rather not go along with the faux-cannonization of Kurt Cobain, baptized by shotgun fire.

I already know his presence is the difference between Nirvana and the Foo Fighters, Nirvana and Creed, Nirvana and Nickelback. I know his music. It is written on my bones. It was my punk rock, once, and I don’t need no corporate suit puppeting its corpse for my benefit. Is this not the sort of attention Cobain was averse to? Wasn’t Nevermind supposed to be the final nail in the super-deluxe coffin for bloat of this nature?

Nevermind Nevermind. I think I’ll listen to In Utero, instead.

October 9, 2011
Sara Del Rey: The Wrestling Queen

Any time I tell somebody or some other person tells somebody that I run (well, ran) a movie blog, inevitably the person gets around to asking a question that I assume everybody in my particular line of nerdery dreads. The same goes for small talk with new people in sports, literature, music…on and on and on, all anybody is interested in is knowing what constitutes my favorite thing. On the surface, these are easy enough questions and I can say “The Big Lebowski” or “The Detroit Lions” at the drop of a hat, but I hate being asked because not only do I feel my taste or merit as a critic being judged by the asker, but because I fear the hidden, unspoken question: Why?

“Why” is a much harder question to quantify than “What,” as I don’t always know the reasons why I like a particular thing. I can say that I fell in love with the Lions because they’re my hometown team and, as a child, I saw Barry Sanders run in ways few human beings can wrap their minds around, but I didn’t experience Barry Sanders when the Lions were perennial playoff hopefuls and, for the majority of my life, they’ve have been playing such awful football that any sane man would have given up the ship years ago. Why not follow another team? I don’t know.

I used to be happy on the rare occasions when somebody asked me who my favorite wrestler was, because that was an answer I could give freely, with full explanation. I was watching a very special episode of WCW Monday Nitro on January 4, 1999 when Tony Schiavone, the voice of WCW, told me not to change that dial to Raw (which I never did to begin with) because he had it on good authority that Mick Foley, formerly known as Cactus Jack, was going to win the WWF Title from the Rock.

Even though I once served detention for doing the Degeneration-X crotch chop at recess and talked with my classmates about Steve Austin and the Undertaker and Kane and all that junk, I was a WCW man, right up until this point. See, I didn’t know anything about wrestling, even though I’d been watching since I was four, and the list of my favorite wrestlers remained unchanged from when I first saw an old Coliseum Video tape that I somehow got my hands on: Hulk Hogan, “Macho Man” Randy Savage and Bret Hart. So skilled was the WWF marketing machine that I followed these guys to WCW. My childhood love of Hulk Hogan had faded, but I still dug Macho Man and Bret Hart, who were having good feuds with the likes of Diamond Dallas Page, Chris Benoit, Raven and Goldberg, who I also grew to love. There was the ultra-cool combo of Kevin Nash and Scott Hall, the incredible acrobatics of Rey Mysterio Jr. and the humor of a young Chris Jericho to keep me interested between 20-minute long odes to the Hulkster. Though I had all WWF action figures (they were better) and knew nobody who liked WCW, these were my icons. But I knew about the WWF and had read about Mick Foley and his barbarous Hell in the Cell match against the Undertaker and had bought a VHS tape called “The Best of Cactus Jack in ECW,” which was not only my introduction to a third “kind” of wrestling, but a new kind of wrestler in general.

Foley wasn’t in the best shape, he didn’t have the best look or the best gear, but he did everything he could to entertain/enrage an audience, and he was extremely good at his job. As an out-of-shape 11-year-old who couldn’t do a ton of athletic things because I suffered from cluster headaches (which were incapacitating) and swollen adenoids (which made it hard to breathe), I appreciated Mick Foley as a kind of avatar. He, too, was an out-of-shape dude who couldn’t do a ton of athletic things, and he was going to win the WWF Title.

This is what I saw when I flipped the channel:

And this is what happened on WCW Monday Nitro:

I think, had I been watching the rest of Nitro, that I would have stopped watching wrestling forever. As it stood, however, I became a big time WWF fan and Mick Foley became my favorite wrestler, which was too bad because 1999 was his last year as an active, full time competitor. Foley’s books and DVDs kept me going, but I was pretty much done with wrestling in 2002, when I went to a Raw is War and saw Kane and Triple H in a casket match because Triple H insinuated that Kane had slept with a dead woman. It was a combination of boredom and stupidity that did me in, and I was pretty sure that I was over wrestling.

But then YouTube was invented, I looked up “wrestling” and came upon clips of this woman:

Not that Manami Toyota ever took over for Mick Foley, but the minute I became aware of women’s wrestling, a kind of women’s wrestling that went beyond beyond the scope of the WWE’s diva division (which regularly featured matches where the two women fought in giant bowls of gravy or eggnog or what have you), the door flew open for somebody new.

Someone New

I’ve written a little bit about how Daniel Bryan (formerly known as Bryan Danielson) got me into indie wrestling (here). While the wrestler above—Sara Del Rey—wasn’t at that show, I started watching more and more indie wrestling, a scene where she’s a fixture, and was immediately drawn to her. I think indie wrestling works a strange magic on serious wrestling fans, and that, to me, is no more apparent than how Sara Del Rey became my favorite wrestler.

This is how indie wrestling works: When a guy like CM Punk comes out on TV and declares himself the best wrestler in the world, people who watch a ton of wrestling wag their fingers (or blow their tops) and start naming a bunch of dudes who are supposedly way better. Today’s wrestler of choice is probably Davey Richards. In 2009, when Chris Jericho was claiming to be “the best in the world at what he does,” the wrestler of choice would have been Bryan Danielson. This goes back as long as there’ve been nerds debating the finer points of pro-wrestling, with many asserting Ricky Steamboat as the best wrestler in the world at a time when maybe Ric Flair or Randy Savage were on top of the world, and you don’t even want to open the door to Mexican or Japanese wrestlers. The more wrestling one watches, the more likely the viewer is to settle upon some mostly obscure guy as their pick for Best in the World, which may be one of the most annoying chants I’ve ever heard at a wrestling show.

As far as my tastes in independent pro-wrestling go, I tend to prefer the stuff being done by women’s promotions like SHIMMER Women Athletes. It’s got a lot to do with YouTube exposing me to Japanese women’s wrestling before anything else, and also because groups like SHIMMER (and other promotions who use women from SHIMMER) are doing something completely different than what I can see on WWE television: treating women like they’re on the same level as men. Though women’s wrestling on TV is much better now than it was when bra and panties matches were in style, most of the women being pushed by WWE aren’t really my cup of tea. No matter how hard she works, I don’t think I’ll ever completely buy a Kelly Kelly victory, even over a woman of similar size and skill. I don’t have that problem with Del Rey, who looks genetically developed to crush the WWE Divas division into a fine powder.

Del Rey won me over late this past July, when I saw her perform three nights in a row. The first night, in Cleveland, she wrestled Sassy Stephie for Absolute Intense Wrestling at a show called Girl’s Night Out 4 which, as you might guess, featured mostly women’s matches. The show itself was great (if you’re a wrestling fan, you can throw some shekels their way at aiwrestling.com), but there were people in the crowd who, to be honest, made me ashamed to not only be there, but to like wrestling/be a man at all. I don’t think you can talk about the moral degradation of society until you sit next to a nine-year-old boy screaming “Gimmie a blowjob!” at every woman who happened by him, and there were other mutants in the audience who, when not feeding that kid lines, shouted out their own doozies, “kick her in the clit!” and the decidedly un-rhythmic “we want a stripper pole!” being favorites.

I don’t mean to trash AIW—they’re an up-and-coming, well-respected promotion who bring some of independent wrestling’s best to Ohio on a regular basis, and I’ll probably go to more of their shows in the future. But when people standing outside waiting for the door are debating if one of the wrestlers at the last show should have broken more fluorescent light tubes over his opponent’s face, however, you realize that an evening full of women’s wrestling is kind of a tough sell. Del Rey, who was wrestling a last-minute replacement for a wrestler named Super Oprah, was able to get the crowd to watch her match with a minimum of stupid, snide comments, despite the fact that she was pretty much squashing Sassy Stephie, her opponent for the evening.

It was at Girl’s Night Out 4 that the privileges of indy wrestling became apparent, as Del Rey came out during the intermission to sell DVDs and 8x10s. My friend Caleb and I introduced ourselves to her and talked about the crowd at AIW and our travel plans and how we were looking forward to seeing her match against Claudio Castagnoli at the old ECW Arena. I’m sure every schmuck who’s been to a live performance where audience/crowd interaction is key has felt like this, but when Del Rey wrestled Sassy Stephie, asked us to keep chanting her “Queen of Wrestling” moniker, called out for move requests and actually did the stuff we asked for, it felt less like she was playing to the crowd-at-large, and more like she was wrestling for us.

The match that Sunday, against Claudio Castagnoli (recently signed by the WWE), was the reason Caleb, his girlfriend and I packed up and hit the road. Friday in Cleveland and Saturday in Reading (a chaotic six-woman tag team match featuring a trio of wrestlers from Japan) were a great appetizer, and the whole weekend had been filled with a diverse array of spectacular wrestling. British legends Johnny Saint and Johnny Kidd, for example, wrestled two technical masterclasses that weekend–once against each other, once teaming with CHIKARA-founder Mike Quackenbush and Chicago’s own Colt Cabana, respectively—but Del Rey vs. Castagnoli was the featured attraction: One of the best men on the independent scene going against the best woman in a match that not only would determine both wrestler’s future chances at a title shot (this is always important), but was also an issue of respect. The deeper intricacies of the Del Rey/Castagnoli feud are unnecessary, as are the details of the match, which was pretty much worth the road trip.

I don’t know how easy it is to tell from the above image, but the difference between Castagnoli and Del Rey is vast. Claudio’s a huge man—260 pounds of Swiss mountain muscle—and while Del Rey’s not exactly tiny, Claudio had at least 100 pounds on her. The Asylum Arena, long a cradle for American independent wrestling, was sweltering that afternoon, an easy 100 degrees, and the CHIKARA faithful, usually a loud, raucous bunch, were quieted by the conditions in the building. Not during this match, where nearly 500 people yelled themselves hoarse chanting “QUEEN OF WRESTLING” as Del Rey tried her best to overcome Claudio. When she did, surprising Claudio with a cradle pinfall, the place exploded; the reaction was not unlike the best WWE crowds going nuts at a WrestleMania where everything goes right and everybody is sent home happy.

This comparison, of course, is unfair. Indie fans, when backed into the corner, will inexorably talk about matches like CM Punk vs. Samoa Joe being better than, say, CM Punk vs. John Cena. Not to say that their opinion is wrong—it probably isn’t—but the demands of a match performed in front of 300 people are much different than those of a match performed in front of 17,000, plus an additional 200,000 domestic pay-per-view buyers (even more if we’re talking a WrestleMania or Summerslam kinda night). But still, sending 500 sweat-soaked, tired, possibly jaded pro-wresting fans happy is an impressive feat, and Del Ray and Castagnoli really went all out for a great match, trading European-style uppercuts and kicks, lariats and somersault splashes, perspiration flying into the lights with each shot, Rocky-style, for 13 minutes.

Again, the privilege of being an indie fan: After the match and after the after-match shenanigans, Del Rey stood at a table with a few DVDs to sell. Nobody in line was buying them, instead choosing to ask questions like “Did you get that thing I bought for you off your Amazon wish list?” and giving her homemade wallets and other small tokens of affection, which, I suppose, is the privilege of being an indie wrestler. Caleb and I stood in that line, made our way to the front, and started blabbing about how great the match was, how great our trip was and, the weird thing was, she remembered us from Cleveland and stood around and talked to us for a bit:

“That was only thirteen minutes?” I asked. “It felt like half an hour!”

“I hope that’s not a bad thing,” Del Rey responded.

It wasn’t, but I don’t even think the match or her sticking around after the fact is what sealed the deal. There are plenty of wrestlers having plenty of good matches who are plenty nice to the fans. Mick Foley, for example, had a career’s worth of great matches and is almost legendarily nice to his fans. I think, rather, that I like Del Rey for the same reasons I like a guy like Foley or a team like the Detroit Lions—she’s a decided underdog, and it feels good to cheer for the underdog. But even here, there’s a difference.

Sara Del Rey isn’t an underdog in the same way the Lions are, as she’s not getting paid millions of dollars to do what she loves, and she’s not an underdog like Mick Foley, who could have never won a major world title but still would have had an excellent, globe-spanning career. She’s an underdog because, in terms of body type, she’s not the kind of woman the WWE usually hires. Yes, there are women working for the company right now who are larger than your average Hawaiian Tropics model, but that, too, may be working against Del Rey, as you’re either “the norm” or you’re too similar to someone else outside their definition.

That, again, is one of indie wrestling’s strange peccadilloes. I think most of the people who watch it aren’t just invested in the performance aspect of wrestling, or in the characters, which come and go. We’re invested in the people behind the fake names, the men and women wearing the spandex. I don’t know if it’s because we’re closer to the action or if it’s because indie wrestlers actually talk to fans or because there’s a strange sense of power in being a fan—my buying or not buying Rickey Shane Page’s $20 shirt is the difference between him eating at Subway or him eating Ramen—but I like sitting down front row at the TaylorTown Trade Center, looking into the ring and seeing a bunch of people who not only want to be in the WWE, but who deserve to be there.

Del Rey is one of those indie wrestlers. She not only looks ready, not only is ready, but she really wants to go. So she wrestles across the country and gains critical acclaim and builds her fan base hoping that somebody with the WWE will take notice and give her the shot that she deserves. She answers questions about “divas” and body type and her chances of getting in all the time, in a way is told that she’s not going to make it, but she keeps working and keeps getting better. Professional wrestling is how Sara Del Rey makes her living. There appears to be no back-up plan. She either wrestles and gets into the WWE or she wrestles and doesn’t, and it’s hard to be a wrestling fan and not respect this mindset.

It’s a huge part of the reason I like her, and it’s probably why I’ll miss seeing her in high school gymnasiums and half-empty flea markets when she does get signed. But this, ultimately, is why I buy a $10 ticket or a t-shirt or ask her to sign a poster. This is my reality television, and I want to see people who put a lifetime worth of work into something I also love get rewarded for doing so. I want Sara Del Rey to do like Mick Foley did in 1999 and silence the sort of people who look cynically upon hard work and dedication and say “You can’t do it” or “You don’t look right.” I’m a sucker for stories like this, stories which, oddly, professional wrestling seems to have the market cornered on.

September 30, 2011
Bring It Back: The United States Hot Rod Association

* America is currently obsessed with her shameful pop-culture past, reviving everything from Charlie’s Angels (TWICE) to Polly Pocket. Bring It Back humbly suggests bringing back these formerly hip fads, zombified and ready to destroy culture.

Before we start, yes, I know that there’s a thing called Monster Jam, and that it technically is run by the United States Hot Rod Association. I went to a monster truck rally in January and, shock of shocks, it was a lot of fun. But, sadly, it wasn’t the sort of fun I had as a kid. No quad racing, no dirtbikes, no 30-foot tall car-eating metal dinosaur. Just giant trucks, racing in a circle. Cars were only smashed on accident at Monster Jam, and this logo, like Bigfoot (the truck), had vanished:

That logo tells you everything you needed to know about the USHRA: As an outfit, they were only about victory, America, and giant goddamn tires. Like a huge, automotive circus, the USHRA traveled from NFL Stadium to NFL Stadium in the 80s and 90s, doing everything and anything to get people into a seat. Didn’t like monster trucks? They had dirtbikes. Not a fan of dirtbikes? There’s a dude sitting on a lawnmower that’s got a rocket strapped to it–go watch him. A veritable orgy of motors, trucks and machines, the USHRA should be brought back onto our television sets the way God intended: Big. Bad. Bold. (And possibly on VHS.)

I know what you’re thinking: Those bikini clad chicks are lip-synching the words “big,” “bag,” and “blow,” which probably marks its decade much better than pointing out that this is one in a seemingly endless series of pro-athlete music videos that ripped off the Super Bowl Shuffle. And yes, that is America’s heavyweight wrestling champion Sgt. Slaughter pretending to play a Budweiser guitar. You astute viewers may even notice that the tape is nearly worn-out where one of the women, demanding a big bag of blow, polishes a chrome pipe. Based on this video, why should we bring back the United States Hot Rod Association?

Because it’s in our blood. Because TV has been missing something since things like the Wide World of Sports went off the air, and having a variety hour dedicated to giant machines and rednecks smashing things up while scantily-clad, questionably attractive women shake their moneymakers seems like a good remedy for what ails us as a people. I, for one, can’t help but feel an enormous swelling of pride as a funny car pulls a tractor loaded with giant Budweiser cans down a quarter-mile of sand, nor can I help but feel it when the tape’s narrator proclaims that Bigfoot has saved the day…from another man driving a smaller truck. The glory days of monster truckin’ were not all that much unlike those of pro-wrestling, and that’s what needs to come back. I want pomp and circumstance. I want mud-bogging, sand-dragging, quad racing, dirtbike jumping and Truckasarus.

Truckasarus needed to be on my TV yesterday, preferably instead of MANswers or the day’s third repeat of A View to a Kill. If the relaunch of Motor Madness is successful, Truckasarus could be given a spin-off sitcom where he works as a mechanic despite his unending hunger for nuts and bolts, and that would be great, too. In addition to Truckasarus, monster trucks should be given a sense of character again. Yes, Gravedigger and Monster Mutt (a truck with big, floppy ears) exist, but there’s no real sense of rivalry amongst drivers or cars anymore. Before this year, the last Monster Truck rally I attended had Gravedigger, trucks modeled off of Hulk Hogan and Bill Goldberg, and Bigfoot. And Truckasarus. I can chant all day for Bigfoot, but I’ll be damned if you catch me screaming my head off for Tom Meents, driver of Maximum Destruction, because I don’t care about the driver. In the battle of Man vs. Machine, the machine has more charisma.

Speaking of Bigfoot, he hasn’t competed in USHRA events since 1998. Along with bringing the USHRA back to its former prominence, bring back Bigfoot and tear a page from pro-wrestling by selling me the story of Bigfoot trying to regain his supremacy in vehicular thunderdome after 13 years in the minor leagues. And if you want to bring in the human element, that’s fine. Book a man vs. machine angle, where men and women compete against the dominant monster truck in a deadly game of tug-o-war. Sgt. Slaughter will demonstrate how this works:

Granted, you probably want something a little more exciting than what goes on here, but it’s been 27 years since Slaughter led his battle battalion to a draw against Big Foot, and we can do a lot better than unknowingly-flamboyant musclemen throwing their weightlifting gloves at Bigfoot’s driver.

This vs. Bigfoot would sell out arenas worldwide.

It’s time America got in touch with her (questionably) masculine past. Grow out those mustaches. Break out them socket wrenches. Scarf down some nachos. You may pay $15 for a seat, but my friend, you’ll only need the edge. Put the United States Hot Rod Association back on TV, the way it was meant to be. Everyday should feel like Sunday, Sunday, Sunday.

September 28, 2011
Movie Review: Abduction (2011)

A quick spoiler for those of you considering putting down your hard earned money on Abduction: Nobody in it gets abducted. Guns are fired, people are murdered, others are beaten up, and spies from the CIA battle a rogue Russian black-ops agent looking to regain some stolen files, but the only people who get kidnapped here are Alfred Molina, Sigourney Weaver and Michael Nyqvist, who were apparently blindfolded and shoved into a van headed to Pittsburgh. There, they were forced, likely at gunpoint, to recite 20-years worth of teen action movie cliches as Taylor Lautner smiled or grimaced at them, depending on the scenario.

There happen to be two scenarios. In the first, Nathan (Lautner), is a typical high school kid. He crushes on the girl next door (Lily Collins), gets wasted at a party, gets busted by his dad and, like your normal American high school kid, is beaten up by him in the backyard of their fantastic mansion. Lautner is all smiles here, other than when he’s about to deck his crush’s boyfriend or when he’s at therapy, where his shrink (Weaver) leads him by the hand through some angsty boilerplate. Despite the fun he has playing beer pong and riding his motorcycle, he feels weird, like he doesn’t belong at the school or with his family…a stranger in his own skin.

If that’s not familiar enough, there’s scenario two, where Lautner discovers that his parents aren’t his parents, that he’s been trained by world-class martial artists, and that he has a Russian hit squad coming after him for unknown reasons. He finds this out because, conveniently, he was assigned a paper on missing persons, and a missing persons site had some software that aged an old baby photo of his into a shockingly accurate future-him. The girl he’s crushing on, Karen, immediately jumps to the most alarmist conclusion: “Like, ohmigod Nathan, your parent’s totally aren’t your parents! They, like, abducted you or something!”

Only they didn’t abduct him, and they’re soon shot dead by the Russians. The CIA gets involved, and Nathan and Karen run from both groups, traveling in teen-friendly vehicles like 2011 BMWs and Amtrak trains as CIA man Burton (Molina) and the rogue Kozlow (Nyqvist) chase him down. The rest of the movie consists of standard chase scenes, punctuated briefly by bits of dialog so awkward, Sir Laurence Olivier would struggle in lending them gravitas.

“I’m not dying here,” A man says, trying to fend off Lautner’s blows. “I’ll tell you everything you need to know. There’s a bomb in the oven.”

And then Lautner goes to the oven, discovers that there is indeed a bomb in it (a decidedly old-school looking one that must have been placed and set magically), and manages to drag his panic-stricken future girlfriend to safety, even though the digital readout is at a comically short seven seconds. This, of course, means that the man who swore he wasn’t dying there dies, which would be sad were he not inept at his job. Later, in recounting the day’s tragedy, Lautner grimaces and deadpans “I just saw my parents get murdered in front of my eyes.”

And that’s just it…his parents did get murdered, right in front of his eyes even, and his loss just flat does not register. Yes, I understand that he’s an “action hero” and I get that he’s got “rage issues.” But rage is an emotion, and it’s the one action heroes need. First Blood, for example, would be nothing without Stallone breaking down and crying into Richard Crenna’s arms at the end of the movie, and half of Schwarzenegger‘s best stuff would similarly be wasted were he not enraged that somebody killed/kidnapped/threatened his wife/child/Christmas cookies. Neither Schwarzenegger or Stallone were particularly known for pathos, but, bulletproof though they were, they reacted to danger as if it were dangerous. Here, in an empty PNC Park, Lautner puts his arm around his girl and cracks wise about how exciting their first date was, despite missing the Pirates game.

Yeah bro, but your parents are still dead. Maybe you ought to work through those issues before sliding into second base.

Rating:

Abduction. Directed by John Singletary. With Taylor Lautner (Nathan), Lily Collins (Karen), Alfred Molina (Agt. Burton), Michael Nyqvist (Koslow), and Sigourney Weaver (Dr. Bennett). Released September 23, 2011, by Lionsgate.

September 28, 2011
First Issue Collector’s Item: Suicide Squad #1

One of my difficulties in getting into DC Comics (and when I worked at a comic shop and had free reign with my pull list, believe me, I tried) is that the collection of villains faced by guys like the Flash, Green Lantern and Green Arrow are often, well, boring. Even Batman has some rogues that were just impossible for me to get into, as they had, in my estimation, no real purpose. A guy like the Penguin, for example. Great in the old TV show. Great in Batman Returns. Terrible in the comics, where he was a nightclub owner who may or may not have been running guns, who may or may not have been a good source of wisdom. Too often, a member of the Bat Family would drop in on his club, beat up Penguin until he squawked, and that’d be it. Deadshot, one of the main characters of Suicide Squad has kind of the same problem. He’s an assassin, and that’s it. You pay him, he shoots people, he moves on. Oh sure, he’s a talented assassin, and he only misses if Batman screws up his shot, but if you think about the number of superheroes and supervillains in the DC universe…there’ve got to be HUNDREDS of guys just like Deadshot out there, making a pretty good living despite the fact that they’re not dressed in some snazzy armor or carrying a wrist gauntlet gun. What’s so exciting about that?

The Suicide Squad, as created by John Ostrander, has a way of re-contextualizing these villains. Taken from their cells by a secret government agency and fitted with a tiny bomb that will blow up if they disobey orders or drop off the grid, the men and women who make up the team of ex-cons are sent to do some of the DCU’s more ruthless tasks–at the end of this issue, for instance, they’re sent on a mission to attack an NFL-sized stadium with some 60,000 people inside. Not only does it give a nobody like King Shark something to do with his life beyond biting the arms off of passers-by, it gives dudes like Deadshot something to fight for–not only will the agency kill him if he screws up, but they know his secrets and can hurt him that way, too. (more…)

September 22, 2011