Jingus

By all accounts, most of the writers have practically zero say over what goes into the show. Vince requires all of them to write their own individual scripts for Raw every week, and then cherry-picks whichever bits he likes best.

I can't imagine how they possibly did it. I wouldn't wanna watch that match, ever, but I wouldn't mind someone else summarizing it for us. I know that in terms of physical endurance, such a thing is definitely possible; your average triathlon, for example, usually goes for much longer than seven hours. But how could you possibly make such an insanely long match into something fun to watch? Even the best pros tend to run out of shit to do after about forty minutes or so, and most hour matches have a hell of a lot of laying-around-in-holds in order to kill time. EDIT: come to think of it, didn't Chono and Takayama have an hour match sometime early in the decade?

Yeah. Or evil doll Chucky coming to WCW, or Santino biting into a magic Slim Jim that transforms people, or Hornswoggle painting a door on a wall and then running through it Road Runner style, or any of the big stupid stunts which would've instantly killed the participants if it happened in a real-life setting, or any guy who has a spooky gimmick complete with occult superpowers. Kermit & Co. look downright classy and restrained next to some of that stuff.

Here's one: Hogan/Beefcake vs Dibiase/IRS at Mania 9. At one point the ref gets bumped, and Jimmy Hart runs in to make a three-count for his guys. Hulk Hogan, who in kayfabe terms is the most brilliant competitor in the fed, immediately jumps up and starts celebrating like he'd just legitimately won the match and the tag titles. Because his manager counted to 3. And then there's this one, which has haunted and puzzled me for years. On some IYH show or Coliseum video, the Godwinns had a race with some heels. The Godwinns were driving some kind of ancient steam-powered automobile, the sort with gigantic wheels and a top speed of about fifteen miles per hour. I forget exactly who the heels were or what they were riding, be it train or car or whatever, but the point was that it was a modern vehicle and the Godwinns clearly had no chance of winning this race. Well, that's when you expect some shenanigans to happen, right? Some Bugs Bunny kind of shit that lets the babyfaces win (lacking the wit of Bugs Bunny, the WWF could've at least given us some 80s Skiing Movies pranks and tricks). And... nothing happens, the Godwinns lose the race. They seem genuinely befuddled as to how this happened, and are portrayed as being so goddamned retarded that they seriously believed their hundred-year-old jalopy magically went faster than today's cars. But there are people in comas who aren't as brain dead as Rick was portrayed in the latter half of 1998. Remember when he demanded that the evil doll Chucky come down to ringside and fight him? Absolutely nothing he did in that time period made any sense, even by WCW standards.

Also, that's assuming that Hall would just sit home during his suspension. It wouldn't be too much of a stretch for him to show up at the bar afterwards despite not working the show, especially for such a legendary party animal. Maybe they were running a show close to his home?

This never gets mentioned enough. But even beside that, the "Bret could take the belt to Nitro" comment is monumentally retarded, for one simple reason : Vince owned the belt. Despite the old carny stuff about the champion always possessing the belt, the fact is that it was WWF property. All Vince had to do was tell Bret that he couldn't carry the belt around for the last couple of weeks, that Federation officials would be transporting it and Hart was only allowed to put his hands on it during the course of the shows. Now admittedly that probably would've been something that an old-fashioned dude like Bret would've been awfully whiny about, but once again it wasn't his belt. Being identified as champion (aka, the best there ever etcetera) was the important part to Bret, not the prop he wore around his waist.

There never was much of a consensus, as far as I can tell. Seems like that match was always rather polarizing among many people. I mostly liked it (while agreeing with the most common critique that they really needed to do some falls during the hour) but I wouldn't give it more than three stars.

This one is really bizarre for me personally, because I knew James back before he got famous and worked with him on several occasions. (I've still got a VHS copy of him giving me the most hilariously ginger superkick which didn't even touch me.) So this is the first time that a guy I've known has managed to go far enough to be the world champ in an established nationally-televised federation. I've still got vivid memories of this dude bumping in the pouring rain at a free show in a used car lot, taking hiptosses from Prince Justice into a huge puddle of water in the middle of the ring. Storm always had talent, and it's worth your while to track down some footage of Bert Prentice's USA television from around 2001. Storm gets to work the oddest array of people on those shows; one week it's some flippy Wildside guy, next week it's fat old Tommy Rich. His feud against Rick Michaels was especially cool, including a couple of bumps off that balcony where PG-13 famously did that one hanging angle that was in all the old RFVideo highlight packages. But still, going from that to "and then I pin Kurt Angle for the world title" is a pretty big leap. They haven't ever really tried to seriously push Storm as a singles act before, it often seemed like his various partners were always planned to be the real stars. And with the current Vietnam-level clusterfuck that is the creative team in TNA, who the hell knows where this is going. I guess the most important question is... is the TNA belt important enough that this means anything? Where do you draw the line between legitimate national competitor and jumped-up superindy fed with the world's biggest money marks?

lol That's long been a problem with any Nashville indy which gets on television. There's still a shit-ton of guys who work/worked for TNA who live in the area, and many of them are willing to accept cheap local bookings on the weekend just for an easy paycheck (albeit a small one) which is within quick driving distance from their house. You can see why a promoter would wanna book a Jerry Lynn or someone like that, since they're a known name and they'll generally put on a more competent match than a lot of the hometown wannabes. But TNA has long enjoyed pulling their petty little power plays and fucking with indy show bookings, for no apparent good reason.

Agreed. I still vividly remember being at ringside for a Wildside tag team match between the Briscoes and the Lost Boys. They set up a "steel coffin" spot, the one where you line up a whole bunch of chairs and then two dudes jump onto them with a bulldog of the apron. Okay, no problem, that's easier than taking the bump straight to the floor and in wrestling kayfabe logic everything becomes more damaging and is multiplied when you stick some furniture in there. But after whoever took the bump, like thirty seconds later they were back on their feet and going for the next spot! I couldn't believe it. We were at the after-party that night, and only my timid nature kept me from demanding what the fuck they thought they were doing with that spot, while I smoked weed for the first time ever. Hey, there's a meme. How redneck are the Briscoes? So redneck that via osmosis, Jingus accepted some of their redneckitude and wasted years on drugs and rassling.

To me, Daniels has generally been at his best whenever he's out of his comfort zone. Throw him into a big clusterfuck of a bloody brawl, and he's not bad. Whenever he actually decides to show some fire, he's perfectly capable of it. The problem comes when he tries to go all highspotty and Match Of The Year (especially in singles, he's better in tags or multi-man) and ends up looking like Lance Storm's android doppelganger.

I'm surprised that Roberts isn't in the hall, let alone not even being on the ballot. For sheer fame alone, he's hard to beat. He achieved that weird sort of mainstream celebrity which most wrestlers never get; there's probably plenty of ex-casual-fans out there who have no idea who Ric Flair is but will instantly recognize the name Jake The Snake. His use of the DDT was a major influence on how lots of guys today utilize their finishers, and almost every "evil mastermind" character in the past twenty years have stolen some stuff from his act.

There's the way I defended Flair and then there is that way to defend Flair. Wow. Yeesh. That was just sad. At points in the article, he's literally reduced to saying "he's RIC FLAIR, he can do whatever he wants!" I hardly needed another reason to hate Mark Madden, but there ya go.

That's the important bit. In "who can beat who" wrestling hierarchies, there's guys with a wide range of kayfabe skills. Rey Misterio should have no problem kicking the shit out of Zack Ryder, and the fans would completely believe it and cheer along if Rey squashed Zack in like a minute. Size is always a factor, but some of you guys act like size is the only factor.

Yeah, for the same reasons that they have those super-speed cameras focused on the finish line: because when you compete at the very top level, tiny numbers count. But we're not talking about real competition here. We're talking about rassling. It's storytelling. It's fiction. Nobody complains that Sarah Michelle Gellar beating up David Boreanez in Buffy the Vampire Slayer is unrealistic, despite the fact that David is literally triple Sarah's size. "But that show takes place in a fantasy setting" is the response, to which I reply: and wrestling is supposed to be realistic? We're not protecting the business anymore. It's all a show. Everyone knows it's all a show.

Talking about Danielson in the HOF is very premature. He's still a relatively young and very active wrestler in his prime, and his career could go in so many different directions that we couldn't possibly predict. A year from now he could be world champion, or a jobber, or retired due to unforeseen injuries. Christopher Daniels is somewhat similar, but he has been doing this several years longer. I just don't get the point of a HOF where you induct people who are still performing. I know that wrestling makes it harder than any other industry to tell when someone is officially "retired", but I don't understand why you would want to have people on the list who are clearly still in the middle of an ongoing career.

Great call. Wrestling has always had this insane "size equals toughness" mindset, and it's just not true. Let's imagine a hypothetical scenario. I kidnapped you into a time machine, took you back to 1985, put a gun to your head and said "Okay, you have to fight one of these two people". Standing there are Andre the Giant and the Dynamite Kid. Which one would you rather fight? Personally, I'd go with Andre in a heartbeat. At least I could attempt a hint-n-run strategy on him, landing strikes to his knees and then backing off and looking for another opening. You know, stuff out of the old Sakuraba playbook. I'd probably lose (using myself was probably a bad idea, considering that I've got cerebral freakin' palsy) but I might have some small percentage of a chance at getting in a lucky shot on the big guy. If I was in there with Dynamite, I'd pretty much just resign myself to a severe asskicking and hope that it ended quickly, because I can't possibly win a fight against a guy like that. Size is great to have, but it's nothing without technique and speed.

Ditto. And besides, size doesn't always triumph even in a shoot. Just look at Royce Gracie slaughtering his way through a bunch of much larger opponents in early UFC, for one example.

The problem about attempting to find an "origin" for pro wrestling is that various pseudo-rassling sports and shows have been around for thousands of years. I'm sure the ancient Greeks probably had some fixed or worked matches in their day. Hell, Shakespeare's As You Like It contains a major plot point about an experienced shooter who plans to seriously hurt his opponent in what's supposed to be a friendly exhibition bout.

Supposedly he trashed his house before he was taken maybe-forcefully to the hospital, per Meltzer. Also, the dumbass posted his home phone number on Twitter last night. This is definitely not the kind of mindset which would be cured if all the online meanies would just go away and leave him alone.

You still get them occasionally in modern WWE, just not very often. I'd argue that HHH/Taker counts as one. It felt like a rather transparent attempt to recapture the magic of the two Taker/Shawn matches, except that Trips just isn't nearly as good as Michaels when it comes to playing that sort of role. HHH looks silly trying to play the unbeatable ace against a guy like Undertaker, but he's not very good at playing the underdog either. Shawn himself sometimes toed the line at making SCEs, the matches with Angle come to mind, but the only time I think he fully jumped into look-at-me wankery is when he's doing those incredibly long matches against HHH. The difference in quality between most of their singles matches and the triple threats with Benoit is pretty big, imo.

Ali-Inoki was widely regarded as an embarrassment and a flop, though. It hurt Vince Jr as a promoter, it took him a little while to recover.

Seriously? Could've fooled me, I had no idea. I made a perfect score on my verbal SAT test here in America, and your posts are often better written than mine. I don't agree with that one, for a specific reason: they worked that into the story of the match. Joe was deliberately ripping off a bunch of spots from the AJPW legends, and Kobashi responded by getting pissed off and beating the everliving shit out of this wannabe. I don't think I've ever seen Kenta stiff anyone so hard in the face as he was with those diving double-handed chops in the corner after the hundred-chop barrage. They intentionally made a point out of Joe marking out and doing cosplay spots, and that causing Kobashi to be all "what the fuck, you little punk? You haven't earned that!". Joe only took back over on offense once he stopped being a wannabe and went back to the faux-MMA stuff which was his calling card. Samoa Joe doing masturbatory "I can't believe I'm wrestling KENTA KOBASHI, holy shit this is the greatest day of my life!" e-fed spots and then paying for his hubris was the specific point of the story those two guys were telling.

JDW: I started to type out what would've been a long damn retort with many footnotes and references, but I gotta face the fact that you just plain master debated me. (Have A Nice Day pun is entirely intentional.) You actually made me question the integrity of what Mick Foley wrote in his book. I'm not so sure exactly what was planned anymore. That's damn fine internetting, sir.

I heartily agree with that. Had a phone conversation with an indy wrestler tonight which is surprisingly relevant to the subject of this discussion. I'll type up a full summary when I sober up tomorrow.