My Favorite Wrestlers Ever: #2

Photo Credit: WWE.com

"Stone Cold" Steve Austin
Three Favorite Matches: vs. Bret Hart at WrestleMania 13, vs. The Rock at WrestleMania X-7, with Triple H vs. Chris Jericho and He Who Shall Not Be Named on RAW in June 2001
Three Favorite Moments: "Austin 3:16 says I just whupped your ass!", defeating Shawn Michaels for the WWF Championship at WrestleMania XIV, supermarket brawl with Booker T

Brandon Stroud is going to mock me for this, but I was barely aware of Steve Austin before he came to the WWF. When I was younger, all I knew about WCW was that Ric Flair wrestled there regularly and that Hulk Hogan took the money and ran there when the steroid shit hit the fan, but apparently, Austin was doing some really killer stuff with Brian Pillman and Ricky Steamboat and even Flair himself. So, it stands to reason that maybe I'd have enjoyed that run and appreciated him more if I was a viewer of WCW in those days.

That being said, the guy is #2 on my list of favorite wrestlers ever with me only having seen his run in the WWF, so you know he meant something to me. He was the guy who singlehandedly kept my interest in wrestling until Rocky came into his own, making the WWF must-watch at the main event level while Vince Russo did his best to shit up the undercard with bullshit weaksauce worked shoots that tried to capitalize on the worked shoot stuff that Austin was using to make himself THE MOTHERFUCKING MAN. He had an attitude, hell, he embodied Attitude, and for that, he helped make the WWF a boatload of money, but more importantly, he helped entertain me. That's far more important in my book.

You gotta understand something about me back in the late '90s. I was a bookish nerd, a devout Catholic who listened to everything his high school theology teachers told him, and always wondered about why people broke rules and why people just couldn't live under the letter of the law. I dare say that when Austin broke out, he started to change my world view, because what he was doing was so fucking cool. I wanted to be cool. I wanted to latch onto the cool guy, so in a way, Austin made me the person I am today, a guy who isn't really afraid to question authority or wonder if the world might be a better off place with a little bit of chaos here and there. It may sound pretentious, but I don't give a shit. It's all true.

And on top of that, it's hard not to admire a guy who could back it up in the ring. I mean, Hogan was all well and good and all, but his matches were very limited at times. Yeah, it was the role he was asked to play, but there comes a time when it gets old seeing Hogan go up against giant, immobile guys who can't move, especially when the Intercontinental and Tag Title scenes were so fresh, athletic and vibrant. With Austin, he was following in the footsteps of maybe the most athletic top guys in WWF history to that point, Bret Hart and Shawn Michaels. He didn't come along and replace them as much as he shattered their auras as "the guy", but he also didn't do it by doddering around like Hogan either. Even after he had gotten hurt at the hands of an accidental botched piledriver by Owen Hart, Austin still was able to work some really good, really fun brawls against guys like Triple H, Mick Foley and The Rock.

So there it stands, my fandom for Steve Austin still remains at a fever pitch, especially to the point where if he came back for one more match, I may just lose my shit, especially if that match is against CM Punk, which is something that everyone is hoping happens. I'm never going to forget Austin's impact on my life or on my viewing habits as a wrestling fan. And who knows, one of these days, maybe I'll seek out his WCW and ECW runs and grow to appreciate him even more. Maybe that'll get B-Stroud off my back.

Rehabbing the Monster: Mark Henry's Rebirth

Somebody gon' get they ass kicked
Photo Credit: WWE.com

When you're with WWE for as long as Mark Henry has without really busting through to the main event, it can be easy to claim that he'll never be a big player, he'll never be really over, he'll never get that allure about him. I mean, you'd think that if he hasn't connected with the crowds all this time, what makes anyone think he could be the guy they thought he could be when they signed him 15 years ago? But that's the funny thing about pro wrestling and crowds in general. They don't tend to have long memories. That's why it kills me when people say that "so and so has been ruined forever because of being booked badly for one night!" Unless the performance is so dreadfully bad or the humiliation is so severe that it scars a guy for life, people can come back from most degrees of malaise. When I say that heat is elastic, it's not some trite, anti-smark sentiment that I use to look down on the pessimists. I really do think it's true.

Case in point, look at Henry since Capitol Punishment. He womped on the Big Show. He beat on Kane like he was some sort of hybrid government mule/red-headed stepchild. In two segments, Mark Henry became a monster again, and from the way the crowd reacted, ESPECIALLY that lady with the cell phone, they bought it. It was sublime.

Of course, it's all for naught if they don't follow up on this. If Henry is back threatening to put his stank on the Divas or gets squashed within the next few weeks as recourse, then it's a failure. I don't give the WWE any credit to keep this going until they prove to me they can. I've seen too many instances of bullshit parity booking in the last couple of years to really believe they have a long term star here. However, the initial spark is enough for me to prove that it doesn't matter who you are. If you get a good faith push and you get to destroy peeps, you'll get over, especially if you're talented like Henry is.

Seriously, there's no reason why Mark Henry has had to languish his whole career. Call it a grudge against him from management, call it Vince Russo and those who were scions of his awful style of booking trying to get too fancy with a simple archetype, call it whatever. It's better late than never, but for a guy who's as good a big man worker as he is, a guy whose angry scowl is among the best facial expressions in the business, for a guy who can project anger and rage and fearsomeness as good as some of the best in the business, well, I'm glad that he is getting chance after chance.

Hopefully, the front office will stop dicking around and notice that hey, this is working and hey, maybe he could be used for something better than fodder.

Remember you can contact TH and ask him questions about wrestling, life or anything else. Please refer to this post for contact information. He always takes questions!

Please Call a Cease Fire: My Plea to Impact Wrestling to Stop with the Shootiness

Pictured, Hogan, Sting and Bischoff doing something I hate
Photo Credit: ImpactWrestling.com

Dear Impact Wrestling,

As you prepare to air another episode on Spike TV tonight, I am coming to you with this plea. Granted, it'll do no good for this week or the week after, given that you've already taped the episodes, but hear me out anyway. There's a reason why I pan the shit out of your program each week. It's not because I'm a hater. Lord knows I want to like your product, and I want to praise it and I want to give your company all the credit in the world. I don't dislike Eric Bischoff and Vince Russo because of some arbitrary reason.

No, over the last 15 years (15 years), I've seen them systematically destroy the art of professional wrestling in ways that outside forces can only dream of doing. Under their watch, one company became so undesirable for the people running it that they sold it to their biggest competitor even though it was still pulling strong ratings₁ on its weekly television program. A big reason for that was because under the tenure of Russo and sometimes Bischoff, the magic of professional wrestling, a magic known to carny folk and to smarky wrestling fans alike as kayfabe, was dealt a critical blow. It was cute when Russo had to answer to Vince McMahon, and it helped draw huge numbers (even though I still maintain that it was more the on-screen charisma of Bret Hart, Steve Austin, Shawn Michaels, The Rock, Mick Foley, Triple H and even McMahon himself that had more to do with that than anything Russo ever did or said outside of maybe "Hey, why don't we let these mooks be themselves!"). However, when left to his own devices in WCW, his continual drawing back of the curtain, making everything a "shoot" and continual scatterbrained direction caused WCW to die a grisly death. Add in Bischoff from time to time, a man who never met a legal storyline between two NPCs that he didn't like, and you had someone who helped piss away WCW's lead on the then-WWF when he was on top and then helped accelerate Russo's best unintentional Dr. Kevorkian impersonation when he came back in.

So, it should come as no surprise that your numbers aren't as good as you think they should be. Of course, I'm not interested in your analysis of the numbers or even what numbers you hold important. Ratings can eat my left buttock for all I care. However, if you look at the meaning behind why your ratings suck, that's where you'll find my wheelhouse. Your ratings are terrible because people who think like me, but who don't really feel obligated to watch for purposes of writing a blog, aren't enticed to watch. These people you're not getting to watch your show really want to believe your slogan, but are turned off by every promo Jeff Jarrett cuts on Kurt Angle mentioning that Jarrett, the administrator, signed Angle for ratings, by every time Bully Ray references "the boys in the back" or out-of-character respect when talking on the mic and every time Sting says he needs to keep his title because it gives him "stroke".

While reality TV is still all the rage, the wrestling fan - and believe me, there are still a ton of them left, whether active or in remission - doesn't really subscribe to the theory that wrestling is the original reality programming. Either they're super young and still subscribe to the theory of kayfabe, sweet, lovable kayfabe, or they're our age and watch for the theater, to forget about real life problems and just watch two (or more) guys pretend to wail on each other and then talk about wailing on each other in between wailing on each other. Dragging in legit, real life problems into the fray counteracts that. I mean, you don't go to a Broadway play to see the star talk shit about her costar for stuff that happens off-script. I'm sure if that happened, you'd have a big stink. But hey, it worked in wrestling in the '90s. Okay. Traditional kayfabe? It's worked in wrestling for almost, if not over, a century. I'll take that track record over the track record of something that fizzled out within 5 years of beginning.

Again, you guys have talent on the roster. They're either bogged down by having to put Bischoff over or they're shunted to once-a-month status because God forbid we don't give Hulk Hogan 4 segments to lumber around and say "brother" like it hasn't already gone out of style. The emphasis is all wrong. If your wrestlers weren't forced to act like ZOMG SHOOTZ all the time, maybe some stories would organically get over. Maybe if the emphasis was taken off authority figures and onto real wrestlers, then wrestling might matter. The formula doesn't work.

I don't have high hopes for Impact the next two weeks. Excepting Austin Aries wrestling tonight, I'm not sure there's going to be a whole lot of must see TV for me. Quite frankly, I'm not really excited for the future after next week either, because the same people are still going to be in charge. But if you wake up, smell the coffee and realize that a change will do you good, maybe the future won't be so bleak. Maybe there'll come a time when I look forward to watching Impact, either first-run or on my DVR.

But that'll only happen if you at least pretend you give a shit about restoring the magic. Please, for my sake, for the sake of fans who want you to succeed... give a shit about restoring the magic.

1 - Strong relative to everything else on TNT at that point, not strong compared to WCW's peak or the numbers the WWF was pulling.

Remember you can contact TH and ask him questions about wrestling, life or anything else. Please refer to this post for contact information. He always takes questions!

The Fans Didn't Ruin a Damn Thing

The Hulk Hogan Facebook/Twitter comment controversy is absurd because he's a guy who owns a company that caters to wrestling fans blasting wrestling fans for not being grateful enough to appreciate his product. This is the kind of delusion we all like to laugh at, even if no one would really pay it any mind if we didn't shine a light on the stupidity. Could I have let it alone on Saturday? Probably, but then again, I just don't like being condescended by a guy that wants me to spend my hard-earned dollar on his shitty, fourth-rate imitation of what wrestling was in 1998 (and unless you count the portion of my cable bill that goes to Spike TV, he's been unsuccessful in that endeavor).

However, what I find fascinating and infuriating is when fans start getting on the self-hatred train, or to be more accurate, when some fans start blaming others for the downfall of wrestling. "The Internet killed wrestling!" they cry, despite the fact that there are as many opinions as to how wrestling should be on the Web as there are grains of sand in the Sahara, and that booking to some nebulous body would be impossible. But let's entertain that notion for a second.

It's true, Vince Russo loved to book to the smarks and to the Internet. Hell, he still does. However, if he's booking to such a small percentage of the audience, then whose fault is that, the niche fans, or the guy who spurns the fans at large FOR the niche fans? That's the reason why people who are in charge are in charge; they have the good judgment to know which people to listen to and which ones to ignore, or at least they should. Shame on Russo for initially plunging WCW into the mire by continually booking to a niche crowd. Shame on WCW for continuing to employ him after his track record kept speaking for him. A million shames on Dixie Carter for continuing to employ him after a decade-long track record of futility.

The biggest fallacy though is believing that the WWE booked to smarks after Russo left. The biggest notch in the case against that argument is the Invasion angle. If so-called smarks booked the Invasion angle, and this is assuming that there's such thing as a nebulous band of fans on the Internet that all share the same brain, then do you think that the WCW faction would have been jobbed out as hard as it was? Do you think DDP would have been made Undertaker's bitch? That Booker T would have had to have played lackey to Steve Austin and Kurt Angle rather than leading the WCW guys himself? Hell no. If the "smarks" had their way, then RAW would have turned to Nitro, Hugh G. Rection would have unified all the titles and Eric Bischoff would have caned Vince McMahon on live television for 82 weeks straight.

It's coincidence that "smarks" liked the small guys before WWE pushed them. If Chris Jericho, Eddie Guerrero and Chris Benoit didn't get the reactions they got from larger crowds, there's no way the WWE would have pushed them. Jericho, Guerrero and up until the time he murdered his family in cold-blood, Benoit, were all super over with the WWE fans-at-large, and that's why they all got to main event status. Not because the WWE booked to smarks. If that were the case, where was Dean Malenko? Lance Storm? Jerry Lynn?

The fact is that the content-controllers have all the say in what goes on your television. If they try₁ to cater to smarks, it's their problem, not ours. If they put out content that doesn't draw or is low-rated or isn't satisfactory, it is their responsibility. I don't have to watch wrestling. I choose to watch it because I like the artform. I am free to choose what content providers I support with my money, my time and my attention. If I don't like a product, I'm free to do so, and it is not my fault for not liking it. If I choose to criticize a product, it is my protected right by the First Amendment to the United States Constitution to do so, as long as what I say about that product is factual or at the very least is presented as opinion. The former means that any failing of a product is due to the people producing it, not the people consuming. The latter means that I don't have to shut up and keep my voice to myself.

This is what Hogan, Bischoff and a certain sect of sophist fans need to realize. Of course, it's easier to blame anyone but yourself for your own failings if you're delusional and egotistical like Hogan seems to be. And it's fun to play troll if you're on the Internet and you really have nothing better to do. But really, it's a tired act and a tired talking point.

1 - And the key word is try, since it's IMPOSSIBLE to cater to nerds of any branch of entertainment. Case in point, people actually criticized X-Men: First Class this weekend because it didn't have continuity with X3 and X-Men Origins: Wolverine, despite the fact that some of those same people were the ones who loathed those last two movies. This is why we can't have nice things.

Remember you can contact TH and ask him questions about wrestling, life or anything else. Please refer to this post for contact information. He always takes questions!

The Impact Wrestling Commercials Offend Me

This segment disproves the notion that wrestling matters at Impact Wrestling
Photo Credit: TNAWrestling.com

If you watched RAW last night, then odds are, you probably saw a commercial for the newly rebranded Impact Wrestling. I'm not sure if it was locally-purchased or whether the folks at TNA grew balls and bought national advertising on USA, but my guess is that no matter what they did, they did it on a wide scale. I can commend that kind of advertising attack, although that's the extent of the praise that I'll deliver for it. I've been trying to find an embeddable video of said commercial as more of a reference for why I hated it, but I can't. For those who didn't see, it was basically Hulk Hogan, AJ Styles and Robert Roode talking about how wrestling mattered and how if they wanted to watch "entertainment", they'd rent a movie.

ON a deeply personal level as a wrestling fan, every second of that commercial offended me to the core. It wasn't because they made slurs or because they did something "insensitive". They insulted my intelligence, really. I mean, I watched Impact both weeks since they rolled out this "wrestling matters" campaign, and judging from what I've seen, it's nothing more than lip service.

I mean, it's one thing to try and brand yourself with a new identity, but that rebranding isn't going to work if the same people are in charge who were part of the prior identity. It's shown throughout the last two weeks. Two shows ago, there was barely any focus on the kind of things that would mark a "wrestling" show rather than an "entertainment" show until Mick Foley made the announcement halfway through. This past week didn't have a different feeling than your garden variety Impact since the Bischoff/Hogan regime took over either. There was still a massive focus on Immortal fighting a battle with a face NPC authority figure. There was still Eric Bischoff getting into ring gear and being an active competitor even though he's not a "wrestler". The angle where Winter is using voodoo magic to control Angelina Love.

And the most galling thing to me? A big segment of the show was surrounded around Robert Roode and Ric Flair acting out a scene that would better fit on a reality TV show about the back workings of a wrestling fed rather than a wrestling angle. Yes, there was a ham-handed attempt at saving towards the end to turn it back into a wrestling angle, but in no way, shape or form should anyone go out there and call out another wrestler for using a wrestling hold to win a wrestling match because of a non-kayfabed injury. I'm sorry. If wrestling mattered, then the backstage stuff wouldn't and shouldn't peer out into the on-camera world.

The opposition to my viewpoint is that I should give them time to change the game. I say feh to that, a feh indeed, because since the Hogan/Bischoff regime took over, they have proven nothing to me that they deserve the benefit of the doubt. As a wrestling fan, I am NOT obligated to give everything a chance to play out. Promoters, bookers, wrestlers, announcers, whatever, they have with me and should have with everyone a limited line of credit when it comes to what they want to sell us, and with each entity, they have a credit score. If NWA Hollywood or Chikara came to me with a questionable gimmick, I'd give them a lot of time for them to win me over. Why? They have good credit scores when it comes to the intellectual capital known as "the benefit of the doubt". The WWE has considerably less capital in that regard, and dragging up the rear is any promotion that Bischoff or Vince Russo has a hand in creative. If they've given me NOTHING to hang my hat on as a fan in the last 18 months (or really, 10 years to be honest), then why should I give this iteration time to develop without criticizing it?

That being said, if they deliver (even a blind squirrel finds a nut), then yeah, I'll praise them. But for now, what they're telling me is so patently offensive that I actually get angry when I see those spots on TV. I don't like being lied to, and I don't like having my intelligence insulted. For Hulk Hogan to tell me wrestling matters when he's the head of a company where they've yet to prove it in the last 2+ years that I've followed it closely is a slap in my face, and it makes me not want to tune in on Thursdays or record it to watch at my leisure.

Remember you can contact TH and ask him questions about wrestling, life or anything else. Please refer to this post for contact information. He always takes questions!