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Let’s Talk About Wrestling: The Crowd

The AIW crowd at the sold-out Absolution VIII

At the last show I worked, I had the honor of being in the venue before belltime, listening to Tracy Smothers hold court before a group of wrestlers preparing for Absolute Intense Wrestling to broadcast Absolution VIII around the world on internet pay-per-view. It’s unfortunate that the speech wasn’t taped for posterity. Not only is Smothers a legend with an unending supply of stories, but his thesis that night, may I humbly suggest, is something that should be drilled into the heads of every man and woman who nervously enters the ring on their first day of wrestling school: Slow down. Take your time. Breathe.

This seems like vague advice, but wrestling is an art form (I won’t say “industry,” because it’s really only an industry at the very upper echelons—many wrestling promotions in the United States are run month to month on the gate that comes in on the night of the show; one bad draw, and that’s it) defined by vagueness, and anything more specific, in truth, wouldn’t be helpful. But Smothers is an orator, and he came prepared, in case inference wasn’t enough.

“You can’t let the crowd dictate you,” he said, “and that’s hard. The crowds nowadays are smarter than us; they can call our fucking spots before we even think of them.”

In this, the modern era of professional wrestling, the trick every wrestler tries to perform, every match, is to disabuse the so-called “smart mark” of the notion that they are in any way hip to what’s happening in the ring. This is much harder to do in World Wrestling Entertainment for reasons that are obvious, but in indie wrestling, where the risks are higher and the rewards much smaller, guys on the card are often motivated to outperform one another, to put on the best match of the night and get the most buzz when the DVD comes out, the highlight package is posted on YouTube, and the reviews show up online. This means hard, often legitimate strikes; more dangerous maneuvers; surprise near-falls. As a fan and as a broadcaster, it’s nearly impossible to keep up with an eight-minute tag match. Imagine what that must be like for a performer. Slow down. Take your time. Breathe. Not exactly a bad mantra on a night as important as Absolution. Read more

Absolution VIII: This Is the Dance

Tomorrow, at 6:30 p.m., Absolute Intense Wrestling’s Absolution VIII goes live to a worldwide audience. It is the company’s second internet Pay Per View offering following Girls Night Out 8, but, in many ways, it’s the promotion’s first: the first time AIW is presenting its regular roster on this stage, with its regular cast and crew, and its regular presentation. I love women’s wrestling (it’s the major reason I ended up working for Absolute Intense Wrestling), but there’s an undeniable difference between presenting “the girls show” on this stage and the regular, monthly product: there’s always a market for women’s wrestling, a crowd that gobbles it up regardless of the banner it runs under; Absolute Intense Wrestling, however, is a brand, and brands inspire one of four things: loyalty, curiosity, indifference, or contempt. Tomorrow, my friends at AIW are running the biggest show of their lives, featuring the most talented roster they’ve utilized in the promotion’s eight-year history. If you like wrestling, if you’re curious about it or Absolute Intense Wrestling, Absolution VIII is the moment to jump on the bandwagon. It costs $15 and can be watched anywhere in the world thanks to Smart Mark Video, whose reputation (if you’ve ever heard of or seen Chikara, CZW, or IWA Mid South, it’s partially due to their tireless work) is unimpeachable. Read more

Monday Night Means Wrestling: Repo Man vs. Randy Savage (1/25/1993)

Background: The Repo Man—one of Barry Darsow’s many faces once the Demolition well ran dry—is, in my humble opinion, one of the great bad gimmicks of all time. (For the record, Darsow’s stint as angry golfer “Hole in One” Barry Darsow on WCW Saturday Night is another.) During this time, with Vince McMahon fresh from federal trial and casting aside the notion that wrestling was a legitimate sport to throw off the yoke of state athletic commissions, it wouldn’t be farfetched to accuse the chairman of having a persecution complex, and the things McMahon hates, loves, or finds funny often manifest themselves in his product. So in the early 1990s, he had two men running around stealing things from his good-hearted fans: I.R.S., who’d take your money, and The Repo Man, who’d take your ride. This wonderful clip should explain Repo Man’s motivations quite nicely:

Where most bad WWF gimmicks of this period (Bastion Booger, Mantaur, Phantasmo, and so on) came and went before developing a catchphrase or receiving a theme song, Repo Man came to the WWF fully formed with a truly great Jim Johnston theme song and the kiss-off line of “What’s mine is mine, and what’s yours is mine!” Also unlike the majority of goofball jobbers the WWF would come to feature, Repo Man actually had a televised feud with “Macho Man” Randy Savage, notable for its sheer weirdness. Savage had been around the WWF block a few times by 1993, and everything he could possibly feud with another wrestler with, he’d already done. Miss Elizabeth, Queen Sherri, crowns, and championship belts were meaningless to Repo Man, who had his heart set on hooking his towing claw into the one thing he really couldn’t be without: his hat. Read more

Monday Night Means Wrestling: Ric Flair vs. Mr. Perfect (1/25/93)

Background: In 1992, The Ultimate Warrior, according to official WWE company line, pulled one of his stick-up jobs on the WWE. Vince McMahon, bearer of the world’s largest grapefruits, did not budge in the face of Warrior’s demands and changed the main event of Survivor Series 1992. Instead of Warrior and Randy Savage taking on the team of Ric Flair and Razor Ramon, Savage would seek help from an unlikely source: Flair’s friend and ringside advisor, Mr. Perfect. Wondering how such a thing came to pass? You’ve clearly never had Bobby Heenan antagonize you:

The Flair/Heenan/Perfect triumvirate was one of the great combinations in WWF history, the culmination of years of Bobby Heenan chasing the WWF Championship with his ever-growing Heenan Family of wrestlers. Not that Ric Flair needed a manager (let alone two), but he was the missing piece of the puzzle, and Perfect, recovering from a back injury, brought the physicality that The Brain no longer could. However, as the video above illustrates, the bonds that held Mr. Perfect and Ric Flair together were tenuous at best. In the end, all Macho Man had to do was ask for the aid of a perfect partner. When Flair informed Vince McMahon that he intended to return to World Championship Wrestling at the end of his WWF contract, the stage was set for the first match on the WWF’s new flagship program with any kind of stakes. Read more

Monday Night Means Wrestling: Shawn Michaels vs. Max Moon (1/11/93)

*It’s hard to believe, but WWE’s flagship television program, Monday Night Raw, turned 20 this year. When considered alongside WCW’s Monday Nitro, which ran from 1995-2001, there exists thousands of hours of primetime wrestling content, a rich tapestry that, as is true of most professional wrestling, manages to be good, bad, and often head-scratching. With Monday Night Means Wrestling, Fear of a Ghost Planet will be diving into the history of Monday night wrestling on a week-by-week basis, bringing back only that which stands the test of time.

Background: This match comes to you from the first episode of Raw, which, in its infancy, didn’t have much of an identity. Oh sure, the commentary trio of Vince McMahon, Randy Savage, and Rob Bartlett often allude to Raw’s “uncensored” (and uncooked/uncut) nature, but beyond being a live television show filmed within the cozy confines of the Manhattan Center, there wasn’t much distinguishing Raw from, say, SuperStars or Mania—WWF shows where big superstars squashed hapless jobbers for an hour while building to the next pay per view. The first main event in Raw history pitted The Undertaker against Damien Demento, but the first good match on Raw was an extended showcase for WWF Intercontinental Champion Shawn Michaels. Here, he makes a defense of his championship against goofy looking intergalactic luchador of the future Max Moon.

The Max Moon character was originally created by and intended for Konnan, the future Hulk Hogan of Mexico. Before introducing lucha libre to the United States by way of Extreme Championship Wrestling and World Championship Wrestling, he came up with Max Moon, had a costume commissioned, and sold it to Vince McMahon for a sum just north of one-thousand dollars. When the gimmick didn’t get Konnan anywhere, he quit, and the suit was foisted upon Paul Diamond, no stranger to hiding his ethnicity beneath spandex bodysuits and masks. While this match is often attributed to Konnan, it is, in fact, Diamond underneath the mask, making this an extension of the long-running rivalry between Michaels and Diamond that went back to their days in the AWA as members of the Midnight Rockers and Badd Company, respectively. Their most famous encounter, the brilliant tag team match between The Rockers and the Oriental Express from the 1991 Royal Rumble, can be viewed here.

The Match: Quite honestly, it’s not much to write home about. Beyond early classics like the Ric Flair/Mr. Perfect “Loser Leaves Town” match and a number of contests involving the 1-2-3 Kid, matches like Michaels/Moon really only stand out because the competition is so dull. Though Michaels was obviously a game-changing superstar in the making, Moon, as talented as the man under the mask was, is exhibit A as to everything that was wrong about the oncoming WWF New Generation era: talented men were wasted in matches against goofy gimmicks nobody believed in or cared about, and talented men were often saddled with those gimmicks, chewed up, and spit out. That promotions like CHIKARA are able to look back at 1993′s WWF and mine a considerable amount of gold from it is a testament to the creative minds behind it and the faith the performers underneath the mask put into that creative process.

Still, if you’re able to get past Rob Bartlett’s beyond awful “impersonation” of Mike Tyson and his gags that very often give away the theatrical nature of wrestling (why wouldn’t Michaels pull a knife to defend himself against a futuristic cybertnetic organism shown shooting fire from his hands as he approaches the ring?), the Moon character was the WWF’s second attempt at dipping its toes into the waters of lucha libre. (You can read about the first here.) Though it’s Diamond under the mask, his maneuvers are very clearly modeled on the more athletic heavyweight wrestlers of Mexico. That Vince McMahon would attempt to do this without the Mexican wrestler who created the gimmick under the mask perhaps explains his later attempts to clone departed workers Razor Ramon and Diesel. The difference here, of course, is that no fan in his right mind could claim to love Moon, or particularly care who was under the mask. Those spin kicks in the corner and that seated senton off of the ring apron would both become staples of American professional wrestling, especially as the WWE became a vast melting pot of international styles in an attempt to capture as much of a global audience as it could. This match offers but a mere flash of that future and the future of Shawn Michaels, but that’s just what Raw functioned as in 1993: a brief glimpse of wrestling’s future on television.

Next Week: Mr. Perfect goes one on one with “Nature Boy” Ric Flair, and the loser will leave town.

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