Colette Arrand

Tag: WWE

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

    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.

  • Sara Del Rey: The Wrestling Queen

    Sara Del Rey: The Wrestling Queen

    Sara Del Rey

    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.

    Sara Del Rey

    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.

  • A Kübler-Ross Model For Grieving Independent Wrestling Fans

    A Kübler-Ross Model For Grieving Independent Wrestling Fans

    One of my favorite wrestlers, Claudio Castagnoli, was recently signed by the WWE. He’s since made his début for their Florida developmental territory, FCW, under the decidedly European (but not quite Swiss) name Antonio Cesaro. This, for the uninitiated, is what he looks like:

    His signing didn’t get the same fanfare as the early-January signing of Mistico (now Sin Cara), who got a press conference and an almost immediate début, but this is big stuff for the WWE, regardless. After signing and releasing Castagnoli in 2006, they’ve brought him back with five more years of experience, during a period of transition that has seen the WWE pick up guys who aren’t just ex-football players or ex-bodybuilders or models-turned-“wrestlers,” but men and women of real wrestling ability. One look at Cesaro above tells you that he’s everything the WWE typically wants in a wrestler (height, build, continence), but watching his matches, it’s hard to ignore that the WWE have picked up an incredibly polished professional ready to make an immediate impact.

    I couldn’t be happier for the former Double C, as most pro-wrestlers have dreams of making it in the WWE. Selfishly, I’m going to miss seeing him three or four times a year in 20-minute plus matches (I saw him wrestle in person four times this year, in four of the better matches I’ve seen since my fiendish appetite for wrestling returned in 2010), but I can’t wait for casual wrestling fans to be wowed by Cesaro’s very European uppercuts, his power and his charisma. Understandably, however, there are plenty of indie wrestling fans who, while they may be happy for Castagnoli on a personal level, can’t help but be sad to see him go. We’ve come a long way from ECW fans burying wrestlers departing for the six-figure paychecks of WCW and WWF with “You Sold Out!” chants and near-riotous responses as they exited the ECW Arena for the last time, but there’s still a very vocal contingent who don’t understand why somebody making a living as a wrestler would want to do it in front of a large audience. Not that they’re a group of uncaring jerks; they’re just in mourning. Here’s what to expect from your favorite indie wrestling fan as they suffer the period between Castagnoli’s signing and Cesaro’s eventual Raw or SmackDown! début.

     Stage One: Denial

    Here, the independent wrestling fan will try to convince himself (or herself, I suppose) that the news isn’t true, despite the fact that his every message board post on the wrestler in question has been along the lines of “Well, it’s obvious that he’s lost because he’s going to the WWE!” The fan will frantically refresh the newly-signed wrestler’s official website, hoping to see a new booking at a county fairgrounds in upstate New York, and will grow even more despondent when the webpage disappears entirely, redirecting him to the wrestler’s brand new Florida Championship Wrestling biography page.

    “Oh no!” the fan may scream. “I was going to use his gnocchi recipe this weekend!”

    Stage Two: Anger

    Denial is temporary, however, as the FCW bio page will reveal the indie wrestling fan’s favorite wrestler’s new name. Now, to an outsider, the leap from “Claudio Castagnoli” to “Antonio Caesaro” may not look like much, but to the independent wrestling fan, it means everything. This was not just a wrestler’s name–it was a mark, a badge of pride. This is a lot like hipsters debating the merits of their musical taste by dropping obscure band names on one another until somebody screams for mercy. The indie wrestling fan, when talking to a casual wrestling fan, loves to drop a name that the casual guy has never heard, as “My favorite wrestler right now is PAC” will lead the casual fan to admit the indie fan’s superiority before he can even think of naming Zack Ryder. In the future, “I’m a big fan of Claudio Castagnoli” will lead to responses of “Oh, Antonio Caesaro? He’s alright, I guess, but he’s no Chris Masters.”

    The independent wrestling fan may also be driven to forums at this point in time, believing that it is his right to decry the departing independent wrestler for following his dreams of WWE Superstardom.

    “I didn’t buy his t-shirt at the last show that I saw him at,” the post will begin. “I just told him how awesome I thought he was and that he looked ready for the WWE. Oh crap; is it my fault? I knew I shouldn’t have talked to him!”

    Stage Three: Bargaining

    If the departing independent wrestler has a Twitter account, he’s in for a solid week of Twit-spam from indie wrestling fans who foolhardily believe that asking him not to appear in Tampa will surely get him to appear at next week’s Combat Zone Wrestling show, being held in some grassy patch in Illinois. A smattering of Tweets:

    • @AntonioCaesaro: Please come back! I’ll buy six Ricola Bomb t-shirts!
    • @AntonioCaesaro: If you don’t sell out to Vince, I’ll buy something off your Amazon.com Wish List!
    • @AntonioCaesaro: Please come to next week’s show, Claudio. I’ll make you a cake. A Swiss cake.
    • @AntonioCaesaro: Can you say “hi” to CM Punk for me?
    • @AntonioCaesaro: RT this if Vince is keeping you hostage.
    • @AntonioCaesaro: #LeavetheMemoriesAlone

    It’s a modern take on this:

    Stage Four: Depression
    At this point, the independent wrestling fan will go into a serious funk. Matches featuring the departing indie star, once favorites, will lose their appeal. His t-shirts will go un-worn, his DVDs will go to dust. Oh sure, there are still indie shows to watch and there are other indie wrestlers worth watching, who, like the departing indie star, have their own unique charm about them, but when the official YouTube channel goes un-updated and the news from Tampa has it that the ex-indie star is losing semi-regularly to an ex-bodybuilder picked from a random issue of Muscle & Fitness, it’ll seem to be over for the indie wrestling fan. You can suspend a pinata from a pole and have two Mexican luchadores fight over it, you can book a giant turkey to hatch from a giant egg on a Pay Per View, and you can have Snookie pick up a win at WrestleMania and the wrestling fan will come back. Horrendously misuse a favorite wrestler in the eyes of an indie wrestling fan, however, and there’s little point in even complaining about it online.

    Stage Five: Acceptance

    But lo, the first footage of the former independent wrestling star will emerge on YouTube, and it will be good:

    The independent wrestling fan will view this footage, will note the small child to the right absolutely lose it for the duration of the clip’s three minutes, and his heart, dear readers, will grow like the Grinch’s upon seeing the solidarity of Whoville. After all, seeing a favorite wrestler get signed is like an affirmation from the big guy upstairs (Vince McMahon, who I assume occupies the top floor of Titan Towers) that, yes, independent wrestling fan, you’ve got pretty good taste. Not only that, but you may just be able to identify potential stars who, one day, casual fans will speak of with the same reverence you once did.

    And if things don’t work out, hey, it’s no big deal. The future endeavored former independent wrestling star can always go back to the fairgrounds. His old gear is waiting. His old name is waiting. His old fanbase will follow.

  • Sgt. Slaughter vs. Pat Patterson (5/4/81)

    Sgt. Slaughter vs. Pat Patterson (5/4/81)

    Back when wrestling was viewed as legitimate sport, encounters like this “Alley Fight” match were a rare breed, pulled out only for feuds that had reached their limit, somehow. The steel cage match (or lumberjack match), for example, was brought into play when the heel had pushed the fans patience to the limit by running away from every possible confrontation with the face. The knock down, drag out, no disqualification slugfest here happened because the two men legitimately hated each other and, to this point, their hatred could not be contained by a mere one on one encounter. Slaughter and Patterson went at each other for so long that promising a resolution to their feud was enough to sell out Madison Square Garden in an era where really only two other men–Bob Backlund and Bruno Sammartino–were capable of doing the same.

    The match itself is about as intentionally brutal as the WWE gets–just two guys wailing away at one another. Blood is spilled, shoes are used as weapons, and the fans absolutely eat up every move. This would be an interesting match to show to somebody who just got into wrestling, somebody who expects some sort of no holds barred contest every week on free television. Slaughter rubberlegging his way around the ring as Patterson clubs him with cowboy boots and big ‘ol fists might look goofier than, say, a dude getting whacked headlong with a steel chair, but there is no wasted motion here, not a single minute where I ask myself why two guys who supposedly hate each other so much are spending their time doing moves or setting up for their finisher. I love that this match has to be stopped by Slaughter’s manager (THE GRAND WIZARD!) by means of throwing in the towel, and love even more that Slaughter, battered and blind from the blood in his eyes, wants nothing more than to continue, even though all he’s capable of are slow haymakers.

    If I remember correctly, this match was honored by more than a few prestigious wrestling journalists (I know, right?) as 1981’s match of the year. It’s not hard to see why. Each punch, each kick to the head, each move feels important, as if that’s the one that’ll either put Patterson over the top, or send the fans home angry. Patterson’s a genius in the ring, and when he retired he put that genius to use as a backstage agent, structuring other important matches and giving guys advice on how to work the WWE’s style. Chris Jericho credits him with saving his WWE career, and Patterson put together the 60-minute Iron Man match between Bret Hart and Shawn Michaels that maybe doesn’t hold up as well as it did, but is near miraculous in that it both sent the crowd home happy and did so without pushing Michaels or Hart, who hated each other at the time, towards the exit and to WCW. A wrestling match like this is all about the small details, and Patterson’s a master of those. If it’s the job of a wrestler to put smiles on faces (I’m dubious to that notion, but that’s what they advertise), then by the end of this match it’s obvious that Pat Patterson knew that job to a science.