Jingus

Stories are cool. Experiencing it firsthand? Not so much. Kind of analogous to how I may enjoy watching Stan Hansen's matches, but I would never ever agree to get in the ring with a guy like that. Once you've been forced to play impromptu amateur security guard between an insane, tiny fan and the enraged, massive wrestler that the fan just hit so hard with a chair that it left a big permanent scar on the wrestler's arm, the old "it was better back when people believed!" sentiment dies pretty fucking quick. Also: don't ever get caught out among the crowd at a Southern show if you're a referee and you missed any heel cheating. At best, you're gonna have some fat retard cut a promo on you for being incompetent; and I've known refs who were even attacked, though fortunately I avoided that sort of thing. You wouldn't believe some of the explanations I've pulled out of my ass to stave off bewildered, possible drunken, definitely angry rednecks who insisted that I explain this thing they just saw that irritated them. That's not cool, that just makes me contemptuous of the fanbase and then adds a side helping of self-loathing for being in an industry which attracts this sort of customer. Loss, I know we've discussed this before. I have met many people who really think that it's real. Dozens of them, which is a lot considering the tiny smalls on most of the shows I've worked. These folks do not just get caught up in the action. They firmly believe that these wrestlers really hate each other, are really hitting each other, and are really trying to win. There's no explaining that away; I've had far too many, for lack of a better word, "conversations" with some dumb mark who accosted me before or after the show or at intermission and then proceeded to expound upon his theories on why his favorite local wrestler should always use a Stone Cold Stunner because nobody kicks out of that, and he's told the local kid this many times but the local kid just won't listen, and if that heel uses that weapon one more time he's gonna call the cops, and blah blah blah. And they're serious. They're not just playing along with the show, they really are exactly that dimwitted. If I've met dozens of these folks in the 21st century, when everything from the internet to the autobiographies to Tough Enough has blatantly exposed the business, then I can't imagine how exponentially many more there would have been in earlier, less informed decades.

Well, there were such things as and I got off easy. Plenty of wrestlers who are still active today have stories about knives, guns, and other deadly weapons being pulled on them at the matches. Fucking morons are fucking morons, and it's not a good thing, period. Any person who's watched wrestling for any length of time in the past half-century and thought it was made of real fights are, indeed, a fucking moron. "It was better back when people believed!" Better for who? The conmen in the ring making the money? Fuck that. Along similar lines, look at all the stories of first-day trainees who were crippled in the name of "proving it's real". Or the idiot fans who were so incensed by the action that they jumped the barricade and hit the ring, and got one of their eyeballs torn out of their head for their troubles. These are not uncommon stories. Any old-timey veteran has a bunch of them. Believing it was Still Real To Me Dammit might've lined the pockets of more wrestlers and promoters than it does currently, but I'm not convinced that was such a positive concept in the overall scheme. Yeah, I know I'm striking out against kinda everyone here, considering the old-school policy of insider omerta when it came to kayfabe. But still, anyone who took one look at any match involving the likes of Bruno Sammartino and didn't realize that it was all phony (which considering all the stories of violence at Madison Square Gardens, is a whole fucking shitload of people) was borderline retarded and I hope they didn't reproduce. I have never ever understood anyone who ever thought that wrestling was real, even as a small child the first time I saw a wrestling match I caught onto the fact that these guys didn't seem to really be hitting each other very hard.

This is something from a discussion at another board, but for historical perspective I thought I'd bring it up here too. Why has anyone thought that professional wrestling matches were real athletic contests? At any time in the past sixty years? Most folks here have seen at least a few matches from the 50s or 60s. Do they look like a real fight? No. Not at all. Not even remotely. It's not just fake, it's blatantly fake. How did people ever believe this shit was legit? (It especially bugs me with cases like Big Daddy, who were beloved by an entire nation who thought his obviously phony fights were somehow real, and is one reason why I was annoyed by the "but he was so popular in his day!" arguments for his HOF inclusion.) This even extends into the modern era. As a heel manager in 2003, I was once attacked by a crazy chain-swinging grandma who thought I was seriously trying to hurt her beloved babyfaces. I've met several other fans who, even in the 21st century, legitimately believe that it's a shootfight between two athletes who hate each other. That's awful enough, but at least they're in the minority. Go back a few decades, and half the goddamn arena crowds were like that. Jim Cornette famously brags that over 100 people have been sent to jail for trying to assault him at wrestling shows, and his career didn't start until the 1980s. In short, how can so many people have been so fucking stupid?

That's some impressive tapdancing in #2 to dodge the fact that Benoit's system was loaded up with an obscene amount of artificial testosterone.

Wow. I suddenly feel better about only starting to watch it in 1999.

I can't believe we're still discussing the "MMA=prowres" argument. They are not the same thing. Period. Not even close. PRIDE was a shootfighting company. Period. "But they did worked fights!" And? WWF did Brawl 4 All. Does that make them a MMA company? Of course not. Did PRIDE announce these fights were gonna be worked? No. Then they're not "works". They're fixed. There's a difference. Kazushi Sakuraba vs Little Guido in UWFi is a work. It's supposed to be fake, and the fans know that and accept it. Don King-Promoted Boxer #1 vs Don King-Promoted Boxer #2 is a fix. It's not supposed to be fake, and the fans get angry if they discover it is, not to mention possible inquiries from athletic commisions and such for breaking the law. MMA is a legitimate athletic sport in which two opponents are both trying to defeat the other according to strict guidelines. Professional wrestling is a performance art involving actors putting on a fictional show. The physicality of this show is meaningless in determining whether it's a "sport" or not. I bet that Jackie Chan and his stuntment often beat the living shit out of each other while making their kung-fu movies. Do we consider that a sport? Of course not. The "similarities" between fighting and rassling are meaningless, because one's fictional spectacle and the other is serious competition. They are not the same thing. Period.

Hey Rob, question, something I've been wondering for a while actually. What was the deal with the boys on commentary mentioning you during the first Necro/Joe match? It didn't sound like they were mocking or making fun of you, more like some kind of in-joke that just went over my head. Been curious about it ever since I heard it cuz I recognized the name, just forgot about it til now.

Ventura's always nominated in the not-in-ring category, and I think he could make it in there. He definitely popularized the concept of having a heel color commentator, which almost every other company copied afterwards. Yeah I know Piper and others did it first, but Jesse was the first one to do it on a national stage and he set the tone for such a role. That alone easily covers the fame and influence parts, and it would be hard to argue that he wasn't very effective at playing that part in terms of performance quality. But as for Sakuraba or Lesnar, no way. MMA isn't wrestling, period, and neither one of them had a HoF-worthy career doing worked matches. Brock's was too short, and Kazushi's was far too inconsequential. Whatever either one of them did after leaving wrestling should not affect how their wrestling careers are vieweed in hindsight. The two businesses simply aren't the same thing, they're not even close.

I don't know if I'd call this "worse" than what happened in the real Invasion. About the only thing I can think of that would be worse than that was is if Vince came out every week and pissed on a photo of Ted Turner in the middle of the ring. But yeah, the Cornette deal was a disappointment with a ludicrous overreliance on fake shoot crap. Although really almost the entire first half of the video was just Jimmy doing his usual stream-of-conciousness babbling about whatever came to mind, and it was way more entertaining than the e-fed fantasy booking that followed.

That's the thing, there really is no single, universally accepted list of criteria. Like, why the hell is Kazushi Sakuraba in there? You can't tell me that it was for all those legendary, super-important contributions he made to the sport while working as a midcard jobber for UWFi. Clearly he's only in there because of his shootfighting career, which shouldn't count at all unless you accept the usual "Pride WAS pro wrestling" stuff from Dave. Every defense of Kurt Angle's inclusion (at least those that don't resort to "He's LEGIT") seem to be along the lines of "we're such a mark for him that we just had to put him in". And like you said, lots of the old pre-television guys seem to be inducted on legend alone, with only secondhand hearsay about their contributions. None of the choices are made according to any kind of established routine. Of course workrate shouldn't be the only quality or even the primary one that people are judged for. But it should still play a factor. If it doesn't, we're essentially rewarding people who made the most money and nothing else, and that's just a terribly gray and boring way to look at what is essentially a performance art. That would be like having a Movie Hall of Fame where only record-grossing blockbusters are considered.

You're partly right about your anti-England bias, but only partly. Name another European country which has a wrestling scene even half as well-known in America as England did. Germany was legendary for its tournaments drawing big numbers night after night for weeks on end. How many of their top stars are in the Hall? There are literally only four countries on earth that are better known among our peer group for wrestling than England is. There are more English matches on Youtube than there are from the rest of Europe, all of non-Japanese Asia, and the entire continents of South America, Africa, and Australia. Combined. Sure it sucks that the UK got less coverage than the USA, Mexico, Japan, and Canada. But they're still above every single other country on the planet in terms of their stuff being out there. Quick: name an African wrestler besides Power Uti or Kofi Kingston. I can't, and that's a continent of two freaking billion people. To make it more Anglicized: name a wrestler from Ireland. I can't do that either. But I can easily name a couple dozen English wrestlers without even thinking hard. In many cases, there are guys who got inducted clearly on the basis of workrate rather than dollars drawn. It would kinda defeat the purpose of the whole thing if it were solely based on financial results, just adding up the gates and voting in whoever was at the top of the list.

Really? That's weird, because I do have that promo on tape, and it stuck out in my mind because of Hogan talking about how neat it'll be to wrestle on a continent he's never been to before. Anyone know why he didn't go?

Ah, why didn't I think to check Wiki. Thanks. Let's see, according to the list here, everyone I mentioned except Otto are all in. In fact, they all got inducted in that ridiculously massive collection of 120 people in the first year. Still, you'd think the same arguments I've seen here against Moolah and Ventura would also apply to Daddy. Am I wrong about this? Is simple fame in one region enough, when counterbalanced against the most clumsy of remedial ring skills? To make sure I wasn't remembering wrong, I went on the Tube and rewatched some Daddy matches. He never took one single bump, always went over, and the majority of his offense seemed to be literally just walking into people and having them bounce off his bulbous stomach.

Yeah he has. The WWF ran at least one tour in the 80s, right after Mania 2 iirc. I've got a tape here somewhere of Hogan cutting a promo with Mean Gene about Australia, saying it intrigued him because he'd never been there before. Admittedly that's very nitpicky, and "Hogan hasn't wrestled in Australia in over twenty years" probably ends up with the same effect anyway.

Most likely, yeah. Like I said, I don't have a handy list here of who's been inducted previously.

Aside from sheer stardom in his home country, what is the case for Big Daddy? Because I'm not sure if "he was really really popular in his place and time" is enough for the HoF. (Now I find myself wondering if Hogan, Santo, Dusty, Rikidozan, Wanz, and Bruno are all already in; we need a list of current members for debating purposes here. After all, there are many stories about big crowds in Africa going crazy for many years for Power Uti, but nobody's exactly rushing to put his name on the ballot. I admit to knowing little about the man's career, aside from a couple of his matches I've seen on Youtube (which were absolutely terrible) and all the insults Dynamite hurled at him in his book (which were even worse). But to me the He Was A Great Big Star seems like insufficient reason without other qualities. Was he a good wrestler? Clearly not, he was abysmal. Did he leave any lasting legacy on the business beyond his own career? Nobody has suggested so. And the fact that a lot of his popularity probably stemmed from the constant, selfish booking of him as the top superman would probably undermine his case a bit too. So what besides sheer fame (in only one country) makes him a good candidate?

I wonder if Perro is hurt because of When Worlds Collide? That's the one lucha show that even non-lucha fans have seen, and Perro was the lesser performer in what was the least impressive match on the card. He damn near looked like current-day Gypsy Joe in there, which felt like a letdown after all the fast-paced action we'd seen before that. I'm sure that there are tons of people who've only seen him in that one match.

Yeah, dude. Totally. Exactly! ...except there were three of 'em. Not that I've come to expect impeccable fact-checking from wrestling journalists, but still, that one's particularly glaring. Hell, considering regular journalists' alarming record of frequent errors, it really says something that the smark reporters are even worse than average. Pro wrestling journalism: the damp, smelly, silverfish-infested basement of the news media.

Terry Funk said it too, but differed on the opinion of why Murdoch never got the belt. A quote from his autobiography here: A page later, he even talks about Murdoch and the HoF. Not sure if I agree with all that, but it's an interesting perspective from a guy who knows the situation well.

Size. It's nice to have, but I'd put it dead last behind all the other qualities any good wrestler should possess. I'm past tired of hearing people claim "it's not credible for Little Guy to beat Big Guy, the fans won't believe it" despite having many years' worth of incredibly profitable examples to the contrary.

Eighteen months maybe? Goldberg didn't really get over as anything more than an undercard experiment until around spring of 1998. Less than a year later, the 1-2 knockout combo of Nash beating him and the Fingerpoke incident pretty much stalled every bit of momentum Goldberg had. Considering that the buyrates, ratings, and profits for WCW went steadily downhill from that point onward, I don't think you could ever call Goldberg a draw again. He only main evented two PPVs after that, and never held the world belt again. Even when he was champion, for half a year, he only defended the belt on PPV a grand total of three times: once in the semi-main under a celebrity match, once where he was pinned and beaten, and once where he was wrestling non-top-guy DDP and half the satellite providers missed the match anyway. It's almost like the company was intentionally sabotaging the guy, and considering this is WCW we're talking about, I wouldn't put it past them. You can argue that all this wasn't his fault and that he wasn't given enough chances, but that's the coulda-shoulda-woulda style of debating; a HoF should be based on factual history, not speculation about what might've been. In fact, shocklingly, Goldberg main evented as many WWE pay per views (5) as he did in WCW (also 5). I don't think you could call him a draw there, since the WWE system is definitely based on the company name drawing rather than any of the individual stars. You could make cases for a few guys, most notably Cena and Mysterio, but Goldberg ain't one of them. Billy Graham objectively drew for a much longer period than Goldberg did. In terms of star power, they seemed about the same. In terms of ring work, that's an argument where I'm not sure that I wouldn't take Graham over Goldberg at his peak (but Dylan and some other folks have argued with me forever in the past over Berg's workrate and let's not continue that here). Graham was definitely a far superior talker. And I could even see an argument made that his vast influence over the future of the business was a positive, considering that Hulk Hogan more or less directly stole his act and went on to draw money the likes of which the older generation couldn't even dream of. Goldberg had little if any long-term influence on the business; once he departed, he left behind no lasting legacy. I don't see how Goldberg is a better candidate than Graham would be, based on the rules of this thing.

I'd say they're probably very relieved that it happened now instead of a month ago. They might possibly even come up with some bullshit story about how they let Jeff go because of his Personal Demons or something like that. And oh yeah, I'm always glad to have yet another example of "everyone in wrestling does steroids, whether they look like it or not".

#2? Who was #1? Hogan was on his way out the door permanently, Luger was still the Narcissist, Savage was an announcer, Razor was still a heel, Undertaker had lost some of his luster and was a midcard novelty gimmick, and Mr. Perfect was definitely below Bret on the totem pole. Am I missing anyone?

I agree with JDW here. Never understood your average American's total willingness to be immersed in the most sickening details of savage violence, while fleeing in horror at the very mention of genitalia.

The Lawler thing: fact is, he was a 40 year old man with no visible muscles who was 5'9". The WWF was unlikely to ever push him period, even moreso since he was driving back to Memphis every week to keep working there. True. But: 1. Wrestling gets judged differently from everything else in fictional media. Imagine the reaction if, say, Randy Orton even verbally threatened that he was gonna commit whatever horrible crime happened last night on Law & Order: SVU to Stephanie McMahon. Sucks that this fake show still gets treated as if it were more "real" than other "action-adventure programming", but it does. 2. None of those other guys did something like strangle their family with a chokehold similar if not identical to his signature wrestling finisher hold.