Colette Arrand

Category: Wrestling

  • Wrestling Review: WWE Monday Night Raw (10/22/12)

    Wrestling Review: WWE Monday Night Raw (10/22/12)

    In WWE, the episode of Monday Night Raw before a pay-per-view is colloquially referred to as the “go home show,” the company’s last opportunity to embellish the storylines going into the weekend’s big matches. For me, that description has never worked for any episode of Raw besides the one before WrestleMania, which is, of course, the show, the one that events like this Sunday’s Hell in a Cell serve as a pyrokinetic PowerPoint presentation for, building up a year-long resume for the evening’s stars before the Monday after WrestleMania, where everything resets in order to build up to next year’s show. Regardless, this is the internet, and once nerds like me catch glimpse of phrases like “go home show,” every episode of Raw is evaluated not in terms of entertainment or plot, but in terms of how well it sells the upcoming pay per view.

    On that level, tonight’s episode of Monday Night Raw was a puzzling mishmash of bizarre elements, the WWE’s signature brands of comedy and mock seriousness colliding with the otherworldly realness of “Best in the World” C.M. Punk and angry, glowering giant The Big Show. As a sales pitch, Raw is perhaps shackled by the fact that Hell in a Cell offers as its main attractions three first-time encounters in an environment that calls for the end of long-standing beef, but in the business of live, active entertainment, you deal with the cards you’re dealt, and the WWE had been given fan indifference in the face of another Sheamus/Alberto Del Rio encounter, and an injury to John Cena just as his feud with C.M. Punk began hurtling towards finality. The lead-in to Hell in a Cell and the pay per view itself have felt like a shuffling of the cosmic deck. Substituting for John Cena is Ryback. The Big Show has been called in as an audible for Alberto Del Rio. A tournament led to the establishment of a tag team division so that one new tag team could battle another over the tag team championships. This Sunday promises a few return bouts—Kofi Kingston vs. The Miz, Alberto Del Rio vs. Randy Orton, Eve vs. either Kaitlyn or Layla, and perhaps Antonio Caesaro vs. Justin Gabriel—but despite how good those match-ups have proven to be (Kingston/Miz and Caesaro/Gabriel have been pleasant surprises, as has Eve’s run as queen jerk of the WWE Divas), they’re afterthoughts to the ongoing championship reigns of Sheamus, Punk, and Team Hell No.

    Stacked up against a presidential debate, Monday Night Football, and Game 7 of the NLCS, the approach taken to building these confrontations, with the exception of Punk/Ryback, played like the WWE’s oft-belittled writing staff throwing everything at the wall to see what sticks to the pre-match hype video. The prime example of this ethic is the story between Team Hell No and the Rhodes Scholars, a feud that’s been simmering since before Cody Rhodes and Damien Sandow won the tag team tournament, way back when WWE let the fans christen Daniel Bryan and Kane “Team Hell No,” as opposed to the meme-worthy “Team Friendship. On the good end of this feud, Daniel Bryan and Kane both had and lost matches due to one dynamic of their partnership or the other: Bryan’s insecurity and Kane’s goofing around in the case of the excellent Bryan/Dolph Ziggler contest, and the Rhodes Scholars vulture-like mentality during Kane’s umpteenth encounter with The Big Show. Less impressive was WWE’s spin on The Newlywed Game, which promised a game of wits between the two tag teams and, instead, served as a platform for WWE afterthought Matt Striker to wish harm upon Team Hell No before getting chucked across the stage by The Big Show. The WWE has oddly succeeded with bits of anti-comedy like this before—as proof, look up their version of The Price is Right—but The Newly Tag Game, awkward name and all, was executed like something thought up on the fly and scratched during the commercial break. Luckily Rhodes Scholars closed out the tag team tournament with a strong match against Rey Mysterio and Sin Cara, so there’s still plenty off intrigue.

    This schizophrenic approach has also permeated the issue between The Big Show and Sheamus, but to better effect. Sheamus is an interesting fellow, a big, tough, amiable champion who has grown leaps and bounds in the ring but whose reliance upon broad-stroke comedy has ranged from awkward (Irish stereotypes) to uncomfortable (Mexican and Jewish stereotypes). Against The Big Show, Sheamus has employed a simpleton’s logic: Daniel Bryan beat the big man 45 seconds into his reign as World Heavyweight Champion, Sheamus beat Daniel Bryan in 18 seconds at WrestleMania, therefore the outcome is clear. He’s joked around with Show, grappled with the futility of his Brogue Kick finishing maneuver against a man much taller than any of Sheamus’s prior opponents, and generally goofed around as The Big Show glowers, punches things, and reminds Sheamus that he’d best be serious if he stands a prayer of retaining his title. Tonight, in a clip that’ll just kill me if it sees any further airtime, Sheamus shilled his new Brawlin’ Buddy toy, which was quickly punched across the state line by The Big Show. Luckily, Show’s involvement in Sheamus’ lumberjack match against C.M. Punk did the job of building towards this Sunday’s championship bout.

    Speaking of the lumberjack match (and I’ll probably speak more about it this weekend, as the “Wrestling Worth Watching” feature returns to cover individual matches from the week in a way that’s not appropriate in a regular review), it was billed as the largest such match in history, boasting some three dozen men surrounding the ring. I didn’t count them, but that sea of humanity was there for one reason: to part like the Red Sea before an incoming Ryback. It was an impressive image, the WWE Universe vacating one side of the ring to make way for the challenger to C.M. Punk’s title, and Punk’s attempt to get away from Ryback, only to be fed back to the ring by a cadre of good guys for one of Ryback’s impressive power moves, begs the question of what will happen when the two face each other in the cell, which is exactly the question the WWE wants you to ask.

    What they don’t want you asking, hence the reshuffling of the deck, is why, exactly, John Cena gave up an opportunity to face Punk mere weeks after insisting, sling and all, that Hell In A Cell was the only way for C.M. Punk to validate his lengthy WWE Championship reign. While serving as Ryback’s cheerleader, Cena wound up being interrupted by Punk, who (in typical heel fashion) claimed it was evidence that Cena had come around to Punk’s overall superiority. Not so, said Cena. He just wasn’t medically cleared. It was incredibly confusing—Cena advocating one moment for the change Ryback represents, then claiming he only did it because he wasn’t cleared—made more confusing when Cena flexed his mighty arm, touting that he’d been cleared and was ready for a fight right-the-hell-now. Naturally, the match didn’t happen (Paul Heyman to Punk: “You don’t fight for free!”), and Cena was quickly called elsewhere, his presence for Hell In A Cell’s main event no longer required.

    That “elsewhere” happened to be the ongoing saga of A.J. Lee, the WWE Diva who went from nerd-baiting background occupier to the most popular woman in WWE not named Kelly Kelly to oddly-written authority figure through a dizzying array of personal relationships, uncalled for attacks, and strange business decisions. This week, before her home town (never a good place for a wrestler to be, C.M. Punk excluded), she unceremoniously resigned from the post of Raw General Manager amid rumor that she’d been fraternizing with the boys in the back, namely one John Cena. A.J.’s resignation was one of the more odd, strangely affecting segments in recent WWE history, a curious mix of A.J.’s real history and the bizarre turns her storyline had taken. With her thanking the fans and hugging Vince McMahon (nobody hugs Vince McMahon!), it was a moment simultaneously real and unreal, something that could either go nowhere or herald A.J.’s long-awaited reentry in the Diva’s division.

    Instead, she’s now caught up in an alleged affair with John Cena, who has made a habit of appropriating elements of other wrestler’s storylines. After WrestleMania, it was Cena who went against C.M. Punk’s sworn enemy Johnny Ace. It’s Cena who’s taken to the occasional “YES!” or “FEED ME MORE!” chant. And now it’s Cena with A.J., a woman who once carried the promise of being the WWE’s first autonomous female character who now finds herself loosely tied to the affections of another of the WWE’s titans of masculinity. Cena’s constant refrain—he and A.J. had nothing more than a “business dinner”—was as inauthentic as the thought of his being romantically entangled with any of the WWE Divas, and heaps an unnecessary amount of drama onto the role of General Manager, a position that’s best when the character occupying it is conniving and sly, or otherwise invincible. Sure, there are other elements to the story, and Cena needs something to do until his elbow is fully recovered, but none of those elements are clicking, and this isn’t it.

    Rating: Stray Observations:

    • I mentioned it in the post, but the feature “Wrestling Worth Watching” will be returning this week, sometime after the conclusion of Hell In A Cell. There’s a vast difference between the narrative structure of a television show and the merit of an individual wrestling match. Of note here, for the interested: Rhodes Scholars vs. Sin Cara and Rey Mysterio, Dolph Ziggler vs. Daniel Bryan, and the C.M. Punk vs. Sheamus lumberjack match.
    • Daniel Bryan, on Kane: “You love rainbows!”
    • Bryan’s reaction to winning The Newly Tag Game was great, a return to his bombastic celebrations as World Heavyweight Champion, but the crowd just wasn’t buying the segment.
  • Gregory Iron: Handicapped Anti-Hero

    Gregory Iron: Handicapped Anti-Hero

    Photo by Wayne Palmer.

    In the year since C.M. Punk—on temporary hiatus from WWE but serving both as the company’s champion and its most talked about figure since the height of the late-90s Attitude Era—christened him as being “fucking awesome,” Gregory Iron has been called an inspiration so many times the words have lost their meaning. Iron, a six-year veteran of professional wrestling, does the same things many men and woman scraping out an existence in independent wrestling do. He trains. He takes brutal road trips for bookings that don’t pay much. He has learned to shoulder nights of physical abuse before a paying crowd. Iron does these things exceptionally well, insisting that he is no different from any other professional wrestler, but he does them with one crucial difference: he suffers from cerebral palsy. His right arm is withered, his range of motion is nowhere near that of your typical wrestler, and he’s had to adapt many of wrestling’s most basic maneuvers to work through his limitations. In short, that Gregory Iron excels at something most able-bodied human beings fail at is incredible.

    But, in an industry that’s been around as long as wrestling, that a skilled competitor would come along with a severe disability isn’t exactly new. In fact, Iron has wrestled against and partnered with perhaps the most famous such individual in wrestling, Zach Gowen, who lost one of his legs at a young age to cancer and went on to an improbable run on WWE television where, every week, he was involved with titans like Hulk Hogan, “Rowdy” Roddy Piper, Vince McMahon, and Brock Lesnar. Iron has dreams of reaching World Wrestling Entertainment and has tried out for them in the past, always with the same response: “Maybe next time.”

    So Iron continues to grind, sacrificing his weekends and logging endless hours on the road to work for outfits like CHIKARA, Absolute Intense Wrestling, PRIME Wrestling, and Chicago’s AAW. Iron’s moment with C.M. Punk, as described by Colt Cabana on his popular Art of Wrestling podcast, was a mitzvah, a celebration of somebody who’d officially made it. Punk’s speech, the parade he and Cabana gave Iron around the ring, the standing ovation from the crowd, all of it was a gift, a springboard from which Iron could launch a bigger, better career. In short order, the video of Punk, Cabana, and Iron went viral on YouTube. Features on him appeared on ESPN and Sports Illustrated‘s websites. A story about him from a Cleveland television station won an Emmy. He was a guest on FOX News Network’s Fox and Friends.

    For an independent wrestler, this level of coverage was unprecedented. Buoyed by his new-found semi-fame, Iron launched a social media campaign where he lobbied for inclusion in the WWE’s annual Royal Rumble event, a battle royal that typically features anywhere from 30-40 wrestlers, including past favorites who aren’t on the regular WWE roster. Needless to say, Iron didn’t compete in the Royal Rumble, though there’s certainly a possibility that he will. To Iron, signing a WWE developmental contract would be the fulfillment of a life-long dream, something he’s wanted since his grandmother introduced him to the exploits of Hulk Hogan, but in 2011, with the eyes of the wrestling world upon him, it wasn’t meant to be. This, however, is not the story of a dream deferred. It’s the story of a curious side-effect of Iron’s quest, that fans in his hometown of Cleveland would look at Greg and his accomplishments and do the unthinkable: boo him out of the building.

    Wrestling is not without its share of unusual villains. Greg’s hero, Hulk Hogan, lectured his fans on the importance of training, praying, and eating vitamins for a decade before turning his back on a legion of Hulkamaniacs, and many diminutive ex-WWE superstars—Gowen among them—continue to ply their trade in bingo halls and National Guard armories as brash, cocky egomaniacs, indignant that they’ve been “reduced” to wrestling in a high school gymnasium. Iron is unique among wrestling’s unusual heels in that he was forced into his villainy by a fan-base that rejected him and sided with his tormentor, Iron’s teacher-turned-bully, Josh Prohibition.

    To understand fan indifference to Gregory Iron is to understand the atmosphere of your typical Absolute Intense Wrestling event. Here is a crowd that cheers for the high-flying, hard-working exploits of Johnny Gargano, who laugh along with the practiced comedic flow of a Colt Cabana contest, who lust for the blood of hardcore legends like Madman Pondo, but, when given a feel-good, hometown story like Iron’s, are unreceptive to the point that it bears asking if wrestling’s Crippled Crusader personally wronged them. In wrestling terms, Cleveland ranks as a “smart” crowd, but to listen to them debate wheather or not the participants in a no-holds-barred death match employed the use of enough fluorescent light tubes is to wonder if the Cleveland audience is too smart for its own good. Their attitude certainly contributed to the weird atmosphere during Iron’s “Dream Tag Team” match at last year’s Nightmare Before X-Mas 5, where Iron and hand-picked partner Cabana—mere weeks removed from Iron’s christening in Berwin, IL—took on Prohibition and his dream partner, “M-Dogg 20” Matt Cross. The storytelling of that match was exceptionally clear. Prohibition, already a bully, sought to ruin Greg’s good story by calling on his friend Cross, reforming a tag team from pornographer Rob Black’s doomed XPW project. To make matters worse, Cross had just recently attempted to break into WWE by participating in its Tough Enough reality show, getting eliminated early despite a decade of experience because he didn’t show enough flash. No matter. Cross and Prohibition—otherwise known as Youthinazia—are Cleveland-area legends and were cheered as such. Colt Cabana, ever the crowd favorite, was showered with applause. Gregory Iron, in a theme that remained constant for many of his AIW appearances in late 2011 and early 2012, was heckled mercilessly by the crowd. He and Cabana lost the match. What was slated as a Dream Tag Team Match was, for Iron, the beginning of a long, puzzling nightmare.

    Though many experts and insiders point to wrestling as a cyclical business—something that’ll be around regardless of popular favor or the economy—wrestlers live by a singular creed: adapt or die. This applies to all facets of the wrestling business. If an injury robs a high-flying luchador of his speed and agility, he must adapt. If a big company goes out of business, the community must adapt. If the crowd in a certain building doesn’t like you, you either adapt or are swiftly run out of town. Parallel to the case of Gregory Iron is that of Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, who made his World Wrestling Federation debut in 1996 under the name “Rocky Maivia,” a tribute/cash in on the legacies of his father, “Soul Man” Rocky Johnson, and grandfather, “High Chief” Peter Maivia. Everything about Rocky Maivia screamed “babyface,” from his clean-cut hair to his beaming smile to the tassels adorning his gear. The WWF was on the verge of seismic change, much of which happened on the shoulders of Dwayne Johnson, but in 1995 they were still a few steps behind their audience, who did not take well to the future smiling star of Hollywood blockbusters, mercilessly chanting “Die, Rocky, die!” in arenas across the country. Maivia eventually turned on the crowd, spoke of himself in third person, adopted the nickname “The Rock,” and spurred the Attitude Era, becoming arguably the most popular wrestler of all-time. On May 11th this year, taking the microphone after losing to a wrestler named Ophidian in the first round of the J.T. Lightning Invitational Tournament, Greg was looking to do something much smaller, but no less noble, than The Rock: he was looking to turn fan attitude against him into a positive. He was looking to stick in Absolute Intense Wrestling.

     

    Iron’s tirade that evening was a classic bad guy promo, its vitriol towards the audience couched in truth, much like the classic heel lectures of Cactus Jack in ECW, Steve Austin in 2001, and the C.M. Punk currently on television every week. As Cactus Jack, Mick Foley once intoned that “wrestling will never be respected,” the obvious offshoot of that being that professional wrestlers, too, would never see the respect they deserved. Foley’s revelation came to him in a hospital room in Germany, where a nurse threw a piece of his ear into a garbage can while laughing about wrestling’s public image as a theatre of the fake and bizarre, never mind the lump of disembodied flesh in her hand. Iron’s was much more public—a group of like-minded people who previously cheered him screaming “Fuck you, Greg!” and worse during his every appearance—but the common thread linking Iron to Foley, Austin, and Punk—respect—is no less powerful because an odd subsection of wrestling fans congregating in one city have chosen unilaterally to hate his guts. Iron’s a man who got the crap kicked out of him by J.T. Lightning, Prohibition, and others far beyond the point when most members in the audience would have quit. He’s suffered debilitating injuries, nearly died for the sport that he loved and participated in, often for no money. In short, Iron’s a man whose dues, cerebral palsy or not, were paid long ago; who are you to tell him otherwise?

    Before that evening, had you voiced your doubts about the ability of a crippled wrestler to turn full-blown megalomaniac, you wouldn’t be alone. In wrestling, everything’s a gimmick: a cocked eyebrow, a blown knee, a punishing disease. On The Art of Wrestling, Iron acknowledges that cerebral palsy, like the t-shirts he sells at shows, is something that he’s used to get noticed. Considering Punk, considering his bookings in Chicago, Michigan, New Jersey, and New York, it’s worked. Sure, Iron has talent, but cerebral palsy’s a kicker, something most people haven’t seen in wrestling before. When Iron says that he doesn’t want his affliction to be a crutch, he means it. One only needs to witness his springboard somersault splash—a move he uses utilizing his shins, rather than his feet, as is customary—or the way he’s been suplexed, kicked, and piledriven by much larger men to realize that Iron is very much a wrestler’s wrestler. There are no easy paydays for him. But his disability has been the fous of Iron’s run in CHIKARA, the point of his feud against Zach Gowen in PRIME, his good humor and determination in the face of such an ailment engendering sympathy where an otherwise healthy wrestler of his size and skill is perhaps looked over by a shrewd promoter or tired crowd. It’s something Iron realizes has a limited shelf-life—both in the independents and should the WWE come calling—something he’d eventually need to shed or use differently to truly succeed.

    In Absolute Intense Wrestling, Iron is using his cerebral palsy as a tool to further provoke an already incensed crowd. He’s also using the notoriety gained from Punk and Cabana to stoke the AIW audience’s hatred of him. Referring to the pair as “Phil and Scott,” Iron makes a show of the things he’s accomplished without the use of his right arm. He’s smashed the glasses of a contest winner, assaulted a fan, and has turned to the legal advice of fellow wrestler, Veda Scott. Scott’s another wrestler who has achieved tremendous success despite the obstacles placed before her.  She completed her training at the prestigious Ring of Honor wrestling academy and began touring the United States while pursuing a law degree, taking on an unfathomably busy schedule despite the rather limited set of opportunities given to women wrestlers at both the national and independent level. (Recently,  a number of  articles have questioned if there are too many promotions featuring mostly or exclusively women’s wrestling, something that’s never been asked its male counterpart.) On Ring of Honor television, she’s merely the promotion’s interviewer. In most promotions, she’s a snide hipster chick whose disdain for the crowd is palpable. In Absolute Intense Wrestling, she is Gregory Iron’s legal adviser, a concerned citizen with a Juris doctorate who believes that Iron is discriminated against by the company and its fans due to his disability. Not only has Scott won her client regular time on the microphone, but headed into AIW’s last show, she arranged stipulations unprecedented in the history of professional wrestling: by rule, opponents seeking to beat Gregory Iron by pinfall must keep his shoulders to the mat for a four count, a world of difference from the traditional three.

    The result of this new rule couldn’t have played out any better for Iron, who took to the microphone at Point Break to challenge Josh Prohibition to one last match to settle their long-standing issue. Despite being jumped, despite the distraction of Veda Scott, Prohibition took control of the contest, obliterating Iron with his Drunken Driver double-underhook piledriver. With Prohibition covering the former Handicapped Hero, the referee counted to three and called for the bell, only to be told by Scott that he had to adhere to the Gregory Iron Rule and count to four. Prohibition, arguing with Scott over the referee’s shoulder, was in perfect position for Iron to pick him off and roll him up for the traditional three count, the AIW fans justifiably upset.

    As unlikely as it sounds, he and Scott are the hottest act in the company. Currently without a match at Absolute Intense Wrestling’s Hell on Earth 8, their appearance, along with the promise of a statement by the two, has been advertised, the speculation being that Scott will argue for a title match on behalf of her client. Given their success, the way they’ve steamrolled through AIW’s management figures thus far, it’s hard to see a scenario where Iron or Scott lose their argument, where a crowd that has come to hate Iron goes home happy. Backstage at Point Break, Gregory Iron explains his recent actions to the camera by sarcastically reciting the lyrics to “Real American,” the song that played Hulk Hogan to the ring countless thousands of times. “When it comes crashing down and it hurts to hide,” Iron sneers, “I’ve got to be a man, it don’t help to hide.” The message is clear: Gregory Iron will go on being an inspiration, whether you like it or not.

  • Wrestling Review: WWE Monday Night Raw (10/15/12)

    Wrestling Review: WWE Monday Night Raw (10/15/12)

    For weeks now, the narrative of WWE Monday Night Raw has been this: to cement his legacy as an all-time great champion, CM Punk would need to defeat John Cena within the confines of Hell in a Cell, WWE’s steel cage warzone that’s seen its fair share of company defining moments. On one level, this makes sense: many of the company’s top feuds, from The Undertaker’s battles with Shawn Michaels and Mankind to Triple H’s beefs with Chris Jericho and Cactus Jack, have wound up there, and Cena/Punk is certainly worthy. On another, it’s a complete mystery: Punk’s been involved in two Hell in a Cell matches and hasn’t outright lost to John Cena since before last year’s WrestleMania. The cell has mostly loomed in the background as another specter of WWE past, taunting the long-tenured WWE Champion like Bret Hart, Mick Foley, Jim Ross, and Vince McMahon have over the past few weeks. Tonight was billed as the night CM Punk chose between John Cena and Ryback  as his eventual challenger, and also as an evening during which Vince McMahon would potentially choose Punk’s opponent. In a move unsurprising to folks who follow injury reports but inconsistent in terms of overall narrative, neither Punk nor McMahon chose who would be stepping into Hell in a Cell, but John Cena, who abdicated the ring and led the audience in Ryback’s chant of “FEED ME MORE.”

    This swerve came despite Cena telling Vince McMahon that he was ready, if need be, for the challenge of the Cell. Despite weeks of him telling Punk that respect and a lasting legacy would only be his if he agreed to the match. Obviously, Cena’s elbow is still an issue, but stepping away from a fight he was previously begging for is something completely outside his character, even when he was a white rapper of questionable associations nearly a decade ago. Ryback, fortunately for the WWE, is an able substitute. Listen to the response he gets, even after failing to lift up the monstrous Tensai for his finishing maneuver a week ago. There is no hotter act in wrestling. The only thing the WWE has to fear is that Ryback’s luster is diminished by a loss, or that a championship victory is too much, too soon. It’ll hurt the narrative a little, but not enough to seriously damage Vince McMahon’s unsinkable ship.

    Ryback, love him or hate him (I’m a fan), is the best example of the WWE’s seemingly newfound ability to turn its new stars from awkward newcomers into characters worth investing time into over a short period of time. The law of diminishing returns has effectively caused the Funkasaurus to go extinct, but acts like Damien Sandow and Antonio Caesaro have done well for themselves; Kofi Kingston, The Miz, Cody Rhodes, and Sin Cara have gotten a new sense of purpose; and the much maligned Tag Team and Divas divisions have had an energy to them that has been largely absent for years.

    A lot of this, oddly, has been a side-effect of Jerry “The King” Lawler’s heart attack and subsequent hiatus from the broadcast position. That night forced play-by-play announcer Michael Cole to drop his evil ways and return to simply reporting on matches, rather than actively picking favorites. He’s been joined at the table by Jim Ross and John Bradshaw Layfield, both of whom are gifted analysts with whom Cole has tremendous chemistry. Layfield was not on Raw tonight, but Ross has a way of connecting with wrestling fans that, as an announcer myself, is both enviable and hard to describe. Cole, sitting beside him, is tremendously effective in making Ross’s points digestible to the WWE’s young demographic. If the aim of broadcasting this format is to make the wrestlers in the ring look as good as possible, few recent matches have befitted as much as the one between Kofi Kingston and The Miz, which was meant to hype a title fight between the two on WWE’s new Wednesday night show. I’ve been disinterested in Kofi Kingston for some time and have never really been a fan of The Miz, but listening to Ross talk about Kingston’s history and Cole put over The Miz’s accomplishments, it really felt like their match meant something. Considering that the issue sprung from an incident where Larry King’s wife through water in The Miz’s face, that’s saying a lot about both the commentary and the match itself.

    Similarly, the WWE has found a way to make The Big Show a compelling character again: a disgruntled carnival strongman with a right hand that’s literally lethal, facing down a grinning goofball Irishman whose most compelling argument for success is that a mutual opponent once beat Show in 45 seconds. Tonight, The Big Show demanded to face Daniel Bryan in a match so he could “erase the memory” of his 45 second title reign and handily defeated the WWE Tag Team Champion. The match achieved the dual purpose of establishing Show as a legitimate threat (something that’s proven hard in the past, despite the man’s size) and further gelling the team of Bryan and Kane, the unlikely champions who belittle each other but are growing into a semi-functional unit. The odd man out here is World Heavyweight Champion Sheamus, who would probably be one of my favorite wrestlers were he not involved in a mind-boggling amount of lame sketches that’ve resorted to bullying, racial stereotyping, and grand theft auto, none of which have utilized his natural charisma, nor the size and strength that make him so impressive.

    The result of this episode of Raw is that the Hell in a Cell pay-per-view is now much more full, though it remains unclear as to what matches will actually end up in the cage. There’s Punk and Ryback, as mentioned by Vince McMahon, and I presume Big Show and Sheamus will also end up there. Daniel Bryan and Kane may face the winners of next weeks Rey Mysterio/Sin Cara vs. Damien Sandow/Cody Rhodes encounter in Hell in a Cell, but that’d be three first-time matches taking place in a structure formerly reserved for the end of a long-standing conflict.

    In this regard, give CM Punk and manager Paul Heyman most of the credit for selling the upcoming show. Punk, as always, has really taken to the role of smarmy jerk, and if anybody deserves to go through the crucible of Hell in a Cell, it’s him. Punk has been through two such matches, as previously mentioned, but neither of them were classics. Paul Heyman, though, was a big part of one of WWE’s best such brawls, a bloodbath between his client Brock Lesnar and Hell in a Cell staple The Undertaker. He may be pivotal two weeks from now, worrying outside the cage as his man stares across the ring at a young challenger with nothing to lose, unheard of momentum, and an unbeaten record. The vitriol aimed at Punk since he attacked Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson on the thousandth episode of Raw crossed into the realm of reality last week, when Punk punched a fan, retaliating to a hostile crowd trying to push him down a flight of stairs. The WWE Universe is out for his blood, meaning that there was no bad choice for Hell in a Cell. If only that choice had followed the WWE’s already established logic.

    Rating: 

    Stray Observations:

    • Raw General Manager A.J. Lee has become less and less essential to the show since she was given power and granted a last name, but they’re still portraying her as an emotionally unstable woman who doesn’t like the word “crazy.” This resulted in an odd verbal gaffe by Michael Cole, who noted that he shouldn’t “call A.J. the ‘C-word.’” That’s a basic rule of thumb for all women, Mr. Cole.
    • Vince McMahon’s reply when Ryback said “FEED ME PUNK?” “I’ll take it under consideration.”
    • Paul Heyman is perhaps the greatest slimeball manager in wrestling history. The way he tries warming up to Vince McMahon while also setting him up for a match against Punk was great. His response to Vince when McMahon said he’d only take a match against Heyman (“That’s not what I pitched! That’s not what I pitched!”) was golden.
    • I like Wade Barrett a lot, but I can never tell if he has a new theme song, or if they’ve just given him something that bland and generic. Considering how many times they changed Barrett’s music when he was a member of Nexus and The Corre, I wouldn’t be surprised if they just haven’t settled on one generic rock song or another. Entrance music is a big part of professional wrestling (for one, it lets the audience know exactly how to respond the moment a wrestler enters the arena), and Barrett’s considerable mystique would only be enhanced by something recognizable.
  • Wrestling Review: CM Punk: Best in the World (2012)

    Wrestling Review: CM Punk: Best in the World (2012)

    If you’re even remotely familiar with World Wrestling Entertainment, just one look at CM Punk on a Monday Night Raw telecast will tell you everything that makes his narrative so compelling: in an industry built upon and carried by Herculean physiques, CM Punk doesn’t fit the mould. If you are familiar with WWE, familiar enough, perhaps, to’ve seen one of their many retrospective documentaries, then the difference between Punk and men like Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, “Stone Cold” Steve Austin, and John Cena are even more clear cut.

    The documentaries chronicling the rise of your typical ten-time world champion all make the same point: becoming a legend in professional wrestling from the outset of one’s career is as unlikely for Ric Flair as anybody else. But many of the narratives pushed by the WWE are remarkably similar, involving men of uncommon drive and ambition who were standout college athletes, second- or third-generation performers, or who had the luck and good fortune to see the workaday, bingo hall grind of territory day wrestling pay off in the most unimaginable, improbable way. They all say something along the lines of “I wasn’t supposed to make it,” but, for whatever polish a man like John Cena lacked upon his debut in the big time, it’s hard to not look at his story—and most stories like it—with a sense of inevitability. Some men were born to be superstars.

    A particular subset of wrestling fans will tell you that CM Punk was destined to be a superstar, and to some extent, that’s true. Wrestling has shrunk and grown, grown and shrunk, and otherwise mutated since Vincent Kennedy McMahon ended the territory system by taking the World Wrestling Federation national on the back of Hulk Hogan, but the cyclical nature of wrestling almost dictated that the territories would come back. They have in the form of independent wrestling, and if CM Punk had never been signed by the WWE, he’d almost indisputably be the biggest wrestler in the world not employed by McMahon’s corporate juggernaut (a slot currently occupied by Punk’s best friend, Colt Cabana), the best independent wrestler in the world. But the WWE is given to signing buzzed-about talent, and in 2005, few men had as much buzz as CM Punk. His story would be unusual enough were it to end there, the land of giants inviting a small, scrappy punk into its fold, and had anybody with the power to hire wrestlers to contracts known what they were getting into with Punk, it’s likely that his story wouldn’t have made it that far. But Punk’s an odd character, a man driven to make it despite his apparent flaws, a man confident enough in his abilities to recognize those flaws as a potential strength. Punk doesn’t fit the WWE’s mould, and he’s just fine with that.

    Best in the World plays a lot like a typical WWE DVD release, with a documentary feature on the superstar in question and a collection of his best matches spanning two discs. The difference here, however, is that Punk did not come up through the modern WWE Superstar’s usual channel (the various promotions WWE has used to develop its future talent), nor are any of his classic independent matches part of the WWE’s mammoth video library. In direct contrast to the company’s “Don’t Try This” PSAs, Punk began his career in a friend’s backyard, a kid with a shameless DIY aesthetic that led him to become one of Chicago’s most successful independent wrestling promoters before seeking proper wrestling training. The nature of Punk’s career and the WWE’s obsession with charting the rise of its most bankable stars necessitates the video libraries of entities like IWA: Mid-South and Ring of Honor—promotions most members of the WWE Universe would be forgiven for not knowing—and interviews with indie wrestling luminaries Ace Steel, Colt Cabana, Bryan Danielson, and Chris Hero, not to mention WWE personel, midcard fixtures, Punk’s friends and surrogate family, and punk musician Lars Fredrickson. That Punk’s early story is supplemented with footage of his contests against Cabana, Hero, and Samoa Joe is an unexpected bonus, something that has the potential to open a WWE fan’s world to a different kind of wrestling in a way that never existed before now.

    It’s a unique line-up of talking heads, all of whom do an exceptional job of telling the story of WWE’s least-likely company figurehead. The “wrestler who wasn’t supposed to make it” storyline is personified by Punk to the point that it should forever be retired. Here’s a guy who is too small and too different to make it (his Pepsi and G.I. Joe tattoos are regularly left off his action figures and video game likenesses), but a man who is nevertheless too vocal, too passionate to submit to a role less than the one he currently occupies. Though Vince McMahon does not appear on this DVD (the Chairman is likely being saved for a a sequel somewhere doen the line), he is very much the authority Punk rages against, even if it’s clear that Punk’s eventual breakthrough in 2011 was good for his company’s bottom line. The WWE version of the Summer of Punk—the 2011 saga that saw Punk give unbelievable speeches about the state of the WWE, threaten to beat John Cena for his WWE Championship on Punk’s final night with the company, then leave with the title—was largely borne from Punk’s frustration with his position on the card and the overall direction of the WWE, a theme that’s being revisited even now as Punk angles his way towards yet another confrontation with Cena over the title the two have come to define.

    If Punk has beaten the odds placed before him—and WWE creative and corporate figures like Michael Hayes (of 1970s and 80s Freebirds glory) and Triple H will be the first to tell you that he has—it’s due to his willingness to barge into McMahon’s office and ask (or demand) for something better. It’s not surprising to learn that the Straight Edge Society—Punk’s messiah-like play on cults and his own straight edge lifestyle—was his idea, but it’s practically unheard of for a wrestler to drop 14 weeks of television on the boss’ desk, even rarer for that plan to be carried even partially to fruition. Best in the World shows Punk at his best in the ring, but its greatest pleasure is in detailing the way CM Punk thinks about the business. To that end, Best in the World doesn’t mythologize its subject, as most WWE documentaries attempt to. This is a quieter, more intimate portrait of a wrestler, something along the lines of WWE’s recent Steve Austin documentary and its earlier efforts focusing on Chris Benoit and Eddie Guerrero. It doesn’t offer much for those who aren’t wrestling fans, but for those who are, it’s an impressive look at one of the medium’s smartest, most gifted performers, a surprisingly strong argument in favor of viewing professional wrestling as art.

    Rating:

    CM Punk: Best in the World. Directed by Kevin Dunn. A documentary featuring CM Punk, Colt Cabana, Chris Hero, Daniel Bryan, John Cena, Triple H, Michael Hayes, Paul Heyman, and others. Released October 9, 2012, by WWE Films. Extras include documentary footage and matches across Punk’s career.

  • Hulk Hogan vs. Stan Hansen (4/13/90)

    Hulk Hogan vs. Stan Hansen (4/13/90)

    [youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jQZwqNiTN1E]

    Almost without question the best match Hulk Hogan had after losing the WWF Championship to the Ultimate Warrior at WrestleMania VI a mere 12 days earlier, this encounter between Hogan and Stan “The Lariat” Hansen has a major advantage over most Hulk Hogan matches—from that era or otherwise—in that it takes place in Japan. I’ve written a little bit about the curious effect Japan had on Hulkamania, but this goes deeper than the Japanese expecting more than routine, about their wanting to see the Axe Bomber lariat and not the Atomic Leg Drop. See, in Japan, Stan Hansen was the living, breathing embodiment of America at its meanest, at its toughest, at its worst. Stan Hansen was worse than any ol’ monster Hulk Hogan had chopped down in America. He was a tobacco chewing, bullrope twirling bully, an American Godzilla.

    That’s important, because in any other country but Japan, Stan Hansen in a WWF ring is a cartoon cowboy. Oh, maybe not when he broke Bruno Sammartino’s neck in 1976, but plenty had changed in the intervening 15 years. Heck, 10 years after Hansen and Bruno’s feud, Terry Funk came to the WWF as fodder for Hogan’s budding WWF Championship reign and was portrayed as a cartoon cowboy. A middle-aged and crazy cartoon cowboy, which was actually a good contrast for Hogan, but not quite the Terry Funk 1985 needed. In Japan, Terry Funk is Terry Funk. Stan Hansen is Stan Hansen. He’s a bully. The bad man from Borger. And everything about his ring entrance tells you just that.

    Here he is whipping a fan with his bullrope.
    Here he is checking the ring announcer to the canvas.
    And here’s Hulk Hogan, presumably terrified.

    The pre-match segment, with Hogan standing around in his locker room stretching, ignoring the Japanese interviewer, and watching Hansen make his way to the ring, is one of my favorite parts of this match. There’s something to be said for WWE-style ring entrances and what they accomplish, but nobody knew how to create an atmosphere for a wrestling match quite like the Japanese. With Hansen out in the ring whipping every thing in sight and Hogan in the back, silently watching, it was pretty obvious that something special, something living up to the “SPECIAL DREAM MATCH” bulling was about to go down. Hogan and Hansen were two bombs, set to explode.

    What’s amazing, at least to me, is that Hansen was a last-minute replacement for Terry Gordy, the All Japan Pro Wrestling Triple Crown champion. A loss to Hogan, Gordy figured, would do him more harm than good. The resulting match, however, has a sense of destiny to it. Hogan teamed with Hansen during Hogan’s time in Japan. He’d grown to be this big, shouty, American teddy bear, a nice enough dude, but somebody Hansen would be deeply ashamed to associate with. Instead of one of those cutesy American matches between former tag team partners—you know, where one man knows the other’s move “almost before it happens!”—things escalate very quickly from Hogan’s mat wrestling display (those who’ve long bemoaned Hogan’s five moves of doom should pay attention to his STF, his cravate, his drop toe-hold, and so-on) to a Hansen-style brawl. Both men throw punches. Both men shed blood.  Hogan, in a decidedly anti-Hogan twist, bodyslams Stan Hansen onto an unbreakable Japanese table. Beyond Hogan’s yellow trunks and his willingness to cheat, he’s almost unrecognizable.

    That’s what I appreciate the most about Hogan’s one-off appearances in Japan, that they represent something utterly different from what I’m used to. I recently listened to Colt Cabana’s interview of William Regal (one of my top five favorite wrestlers), and Regal said something that reminded me to look up this match. He said that, too often, wrestlers (and people involved elsewhere in the industry) get too caught up in the finer details of their craft and forget what interested them as children. For me, it was Hulk Hogan. Sure, I also loved Randy Savage, Bret Hart, Ultimate Warrior, and Jake Roberts, but it was Hogan who got me in the door and, later, Hogan who I most bitterly complained about.

    It’s not my place to talk about Hulk Hogan the person or Hulk Hogan the backstage politician, but Hulk Hogan the wrestler existed, and was not just a figment of my imagination. Beneath his routines, beneath his catch phrases, and beneath his pre- and post-match posedowns there existed a Hulk Hogan who could really go in the ring, but wasn’t called upon to except on the rarest of circumstances. When I watch a Hogan match like this, I think of all the good-to-great John Cena matches I’ve seen, all of the Randy Orton matches I’ve enjoyed despite not really liking Randy Orton, and the divide that exists between people who love those two wrestlers and those who hate them. It’s a wide gulf, one unlikely to be bridged, but take a look at this match and realize that, for 13-minutes, Hogan and Stan Hansen are equals. Then watch John Cena vs. C.M. Punk or Randy Orton vs. Christian and tell me, with a straight face, that one carried the other. I don’t think I’m revealing anything when I say that wrestling, at its core, is a partnership. If the two partners aren’t somehow equal, the match fails. There’s a wealth of Hulk Hogan matches following this one that only proves this point. Wonderfully, none of them take place in Japan.

  • Bobby “The Brain” Heenan vs. The Ultimate Warrior (6/25/88)

    Bobby “The Brain” Heenan vs. The Ultimate Warrior (6/25/88)

    Bobby “The Brain” Heenan is almost unquestionably the best manager of all time. He’s almost unquestionably the best color commentator of all time. He was never much of a wrestler, but he was so good at the other two roles that the audience clamored for his comeuppance in the ring. The role of the manager in the WWF was somewhat different than in the gritty, southern NWA—Slick, Jimmy Hart, Mr. Fuji, Kim Chee, Harvey Whippleman, The Coach, and the rest of the WWF’s ringside talent got involved with their words, their ability to distract others, and their tendency to employ the cheap shot during a match, but in the N.W.A., James J. Dillon, Paul Ellering, and James E. Cornette were sometimes forced to step into the ring, fight within the confines of a steel cage, or to scale an intimidatingly high scaffold, where, it was virtually promised, justice would be served. It was this difference that made Bobby Heenan’s rare in-ring excursions so exciting to WWF fans. Sure, Heenan had experience as the third tag team partner of The Blackjacks in the NWA, and in the WWF as the third man in a Heenan Family trio that included King Kong Bundy and Big John Studd, who warred against The Machines (Andre the Giant, Blackjack Mulligan, and/or Demolition Ax, under masks and managed by Captain Lou Albano) in 1986. But his series of “Weasel Suit” matches against The Ultimate Warrior in 1988 took the manager vs. wrestler trope one step further. Heenan worked alone in these contests, a set-up that promised fans the complete and utter destruction of The Brain, who unquestionably has it coming. (more…)