Gorilla Monsoon

[thebrainfollower]

Gorilla was like the dad you could NEVER make happy if you were a young wrestler he was doing commentary for. I grew up with people like that so it doesn't annoy me as much, its just their natural personalities

 

Having said that yes I just watched and yeah it's a huge problem. If you ever wanted proof Vince wasn't always yelling announcer's ears here you go

[JerryvonKramer]

I notice a lot of people are giving him credit for making shows entertaining. Is that the announcer's job? I always saw the announcer as the salesman, but not really a circus attraction in his own right. The entertainment should be happening in the ring, not behind the booth. The announcer is there to faciliate the entertainment of what we are watching, but I don't really agree with the idea of an announcer entertaining people. Announcing is a means to an end, but not really an end. That philosophy leads to an announcer, whose job is to get everything else over, not themselves, getting over themselves and what good does that do?

I think you're imposing your ideas of what wrestling should be onto a product that derived from Vince's idea of what wrestling should be.

 

Vince from the start (83-4) was wedded strongly to the idea of wrestling as entertainment, and as being a TV show in and of itself. After his TNT experiment failed, he hit on something that worked in Prime Time. The back and forth to-camera studio segments between Gorilla and Bobby Heenan on Prime Time were designed to inculcate the feeling of an established TV show. Not necessarily a wrestling show, a TV show.

 

On such a product, the announcers are less salesmen and more characters, part of the internal universe that Vince created. And the whole package is what sells your house show. It's moving from the hard sell of something like your Georgia TBS TV show and towards a more subtle "soft sell".

 

I would think of Monsoon and Heenan on Prime Time as being like a mutually antagonistic Statler and Waldorf commenting from the sidelines, only with a bit more schtick.

 

- Heenan is putting across the suspect heel version of events and to tell gags and keep things generally fun

- Monsoon is there to roll his eyes and say "geez, would ya listen this this guy?", which is a vital component in the double act

 

And this is where I credit Vince with being a kind of marketing genius, because all of that shit keeps the viewer invested in whatever is going on. You can show lots of jobber matches in that sort of environment, because people (and kids!!) are tuning in to see their favourite characters, not necessarily to watch wrestling matches.

 

The entertainment is the hook, the house show is the bait.

 

----------

 

TBS show model:

 

1. Squash

2. Promo - COME TO THE OMNI

3. Competitive looking match

4. ANGLE - usually a heel beatdown

5. Promo - COME TO THE OMNI YOU FUCKERS!!! COME TO THE OMNI

6. Solie - "did I mention about the Omni yet?"

 

Hard sell.

 

PTW model:

 

1. Gorilla and Heenan talk about the latest goings from the last Superstars

2. Squash or match from a house show

3. Gorilla and Heenan talk about the wrestler featured in the match, they bicker over his merits and defects. Monsoon champions the babyface and rags on the heel; Heenan vice versa. But this is really fun to watch for people at home.

 

rinse-repeat

 

Soft sell: WWF would have spots where guys would run down upcoming dates, or drop ads coming in and out of their commercial breaks. It's a more subtle approach.

 

Monsoon and Heenan were more a kind of framing device, at one level of remove from "the main action" (which tended to take place on Superstars and SNME). But that framing device has the psychological net result of making all the guys they talked about seem like massive stars. Vince was a master at making his guys seem more important. What can make guys seem more important than having two guys doing armchair analysis of them? It's almost like Monsoon and Heenan represented two guys sitting at home giving their take on the product. And that's a way of drawing someone in.

 

And I'll always go back to the point: did it work? It's not SIMPLY going national and scaling up whatever had been done in wrestling before, it's producing something that is going to work for most of the markets, most of the time. It's producing a national TV show that can get over with just about anyone.

 

Monsoon was an integral part of that in the overall presentation. He excelled at being that armchair pundit representing the guy sitting at home. I've noticed that US TV loves to do that in general -- we don't really have it as part our TV culture here. It's interesting in a way. Vince was putting existing TV tropes into his show.

 

I'd argue that the Monsoon / Heenan roles aren't quite the same as, for example, Lance Russell and Dave Brown. It's a different thing -- although they too are characters in an internal universe as much as they are announcers in the sense that Loss was outlining.

[thebrainfollower]

This is the best defense of Gorilla I've ever heard. I would argue people watched Prime Time for them.

[cowboy hats]

As far as "classic Gorilla" ruining a match--the pre-eminent example is the Savage/Tito no-DQ match from MSG. Even though Finkle announces plain as day that "there will be NO DISQUALIFICATIONS WHATSOEVER," Gorilla spends the entire match harping about the officiating. By the time Savage decks the referee and uses a chair, he's frothing at the mouth demanding that Savage be disqualified. It's enough that I can't even watch the match, and it's a shame because the work is fantastic.

 

What's the date of this MSG match?

[Sean Liska]

I love Gorilla and think he's actually underrated. At his best, he wasn't just an entertaining guy who had fun banter with his fellow announcers. In the 80's he could do a hell of a job making a main event feel like a big deal. You couldn't do a better job of selling the epic nature of Hogan-Andre than he and Jesse did. One of the great calls of all time. And a pretty damn good call on the same show of Savage-Steamboat too. Or his disgust at Piper breaking the record over Albano's head and kicking Lauper. Or his call of Slaughter-Shiek. I love that stuff so much. Judging him on 1994 WWF is like judging Lance Russell on 1997 USWA.

[thebrainfollower]

Watching Flair-Santana from Royal Albert Hall

 

 

Everything Gorilla did to not get Flair over is justified. By Flair's performance here which is so self destructive it's sad. Flair just didn't get it.

[PeteF3]

No question. Flair needed to tear Santana's leg to pieces and then figure four him for the submission. Then preferably keep it on afterward until Tito was screaming for mercy. Instead we get, IIRC, a cheap roll-up and hook of the tights finish. Okay for a traveling champion, but Flair was a true "newcomer" for the first time in years and needed to be put over like one or insist on being put over like one.

 

On top of that, England was about the worst possible spot for Flair to have one of his first televised matches. That isn't anybody's fault, it's just horrendous luck, but it was all the more reason for Flair to put his foot down and insist on going over strong.

[JerryvonKramer]

It's not Flair's fault, it was the way WWF booked virtually all heels who weren't Zeus or The Undertaker. I'd be interested to see how many clean pins vs. non-jobbers (i.e. without tights or foot on the ropes or manager interference) any heels got under Vince Jr from 85 to 94.

[Matt D]

Watching Flair-Santana from Royal Albert Hall

 

 

Everything Gorilla did to not get Flair over is justified. By Flair's performance here which is so self destructive it's sad. Flair just didn't get it.

 

The story goes that Buddy Rose didn't either, having hugely entertaining matches on TV where he gave the enhancement talent way too much so the crowd in MSG didn't see him as a threat to Backlund.

[Loss]

This is the best defense of Gorilla I've ever heard. I would argue people watched Prime Time for them.

 

Wrestling announcers are not paid to tell the truth. They are supposed to make you think everything and everyone you are watching is great.

[Matt D]

I think that's an oversimplistic way of looking at things. Different roles can be used in different ways to achieve different ends. At the end of the day, the goal is to make money over a prolonged period of time. How you add up to that can be done in different ways. The WWF machine was so pervasive and there was so little room for divergence, even down to the months and months that they ran the same house shows, that if people tuned into PTW for Gorilla/Heenan shitting on things, then that's more money for the WWF and with relatively little damage since they weren't doing any lasting harm to much of the core audience.

 

Or at least that's an argument, and I think a valid one.

[JerryvonKramer]

 

This is the best defense of Gorilla I've ever heard. I would argue people watched Prime Time for them.

Wrestling announcers are not paid to tell the truth. They are supposed to make you think everything and everyone you are watching is great.

 

With respect, this does not at all pertain to the defence I wrote above, which doesn't really talk about Gorilla as an announcer at all. I was talking about his studio interactions with Heenan.

[Loss]

He can be a terrible wrestling announcer and good at other things, and that's great. People always defend him as an announcer though, not as a television personality. I just think it's worth distinguishing. To say he's a bad announcer doesn't mean he was worthless or anything like that.

[JerryvonKramer]

I'd certainly agree that his value to the company was much less as an announcer and more as the host of Prime Time.

 

Perhaps in another thread we might have an interesting discussion analyzing this line:

 

"[Announcers] are supposed to make you think everything and everyone you are watching is great."

 

I am not sure that this is the only way to go with an announcer. It's one philosophy of announcing.

[Matt D]

I think there are plenty of baseball announcers who don't make the players look good, but instead knock them or are entertaining personalities in general. When you have to fill time for a nine inning baseball game, you have to keep people engaged that way. It's sort of the same for a long MSG show from 85.

[Gregor]

There are, and there are also a lot of Reds fans who wish that Marty Brennaman would stop griping about his team's best player during his broadcasts

 

The baseball announcers who are best described as "entertaining personalities" are generally polarizing, just like Monsoon is.

[PeteF3]

I do think there's a line to walk between selling everything as being great and selling out your own credibility. No question Brennaman shits on the team too much, much like Jim Ross was sometimes capable of doing. But as I mentioned earlier...a wrestling announcer has to maintain a shred of credibility if he wants to sell you on anything at all. And sometimes that means calling a spade a spade with regard to what's being shown.

 

If Ross describes a shitty match as "bowling shoe ugly" but then hypes up a promising youngster like a Brian Pillman, fans will notice. "Ross isn't going to lie to me, he didn't lie about that earlier crapfest. I better pay attention to this guy!" Rings a lot less phony than New Generation Era Vince.

[Loss]

Wrestling announcers and real sports announcers aren't really doing the same thing. Baseball announcers aren't expected to get certain people over so they can fill up stadiums.

 

I think it's possible for announcers to sell us that everything we're seeing is good without coming across as phony.

[JerryvonKramer]

I think what Monsoon was trying to do though was come across like a regular sports announcer by pointing out mistakes and talking about tactical decisions or strategy. Monsoon's top priorities seemed to be, in descending order:

 

1. Get the match over as a legit contest, even if it means criticizing aspects of the wrestler's approaches

 

2. Get over the angle or the *characters* involved in the match -- note that is specifically "characters", namely his take on why babyface X is great, or why heel Y is a low-down and despicable character who has done A, B and C heinous deeds

 

3. Get over everyone as being "great", or at the very least a "superstar".

 

Monsoon often emphasized 1 and 2 over 3.

 

Was anyone's career really hurt by it though?

 

*Heel Y puts his head down for a back drop*

 

*Babyface X stops short and grabs heel's head / kicks him in the face*

 

Monsoon: "That was a cardinal mistake for a pro"

 

Kid at home in his own thoughts, "hmmm, it was a bad mistake, I thought heel Y might know better, but the competition is tough at this level! There can be no mistakes in the WWF! Oh and by the way ... DAD ... wrestling is real!"

 

Or something like that. No? Tell me why not.

[Loss]

Well, Jim Ross and Tony Schiavone also pointed out tactical mistakes, but they did it in a more measured way, meaning that they didn't do it frequently. We've heard both talk about wrestlers letting their emotions get the best of them and that sort of thing. But because it was balanced with far more praise than criticism, it didn't come across like they were trying to make themselves look smart and the wrestlers look stupid.

 

Clash I: Ross and Schiavone point out that Sting is not going to make Flair submit with a side headlock, but that he's weakening him to make him more prone to something else later in the match.

 

Compare that to the oft-mentioned "I've never seen anyone submit to an abdominal stretch. Why is he even bothering?" thing people mention about Monsoon.

[Matt D]

Wrestling announcers and real sports announcers aren't really doing the same thing. Baseball announcers aren't expected to get certain people over so they can fill up stadiums.

 

I think it's possible for announcers to sell us that everything we're seeing is good without coming across as phony.

 

Someone should rephrase all this and tweet it to Tony Schiavone. I just read that Expos book over at DVDVR and I kind of wonder if the announcers aren't there to provide the franchise with more money in various ways, that being one of it.

[PeteF3]

Wrestling announcers and real sports announcers aren't really doing the same thing. Baseball announcers aren't expected to get certain people over so they can fill up stadiums.

 

I know this isn't your field but I'm not sure that's the case. One area where the analogy doesn't hold up is that in real sports there are national announcers and then local announcers, and local announcers are expected to hype up the team and sell tickets. So are national guys to some degree (see: Tebow, Tim and Manziel, Johnny) to sell TV ratings if not fill stadiums. But local announcers have a similar balancing act in having to get over various talking points the front office wants them to, calling the action, and being able to build trust with their audience.

[Loss]

So if a baseball player is bad and strikes out every time he's at bat, are they expected to put a positive spin on it and cover for him? I'm sure announcers in every field have certain things they have to get across that come from above, but surely that's far more the case in the worked world of pro wrestling.

[JerryvonKramer]

Well, Jim Ross and Tony Schiavone also pointed out tactical mistakes, but they did it in a more measured way, meaning that they didn't do it frequently. We've heard both talk about wrestlers letting their emotions get the best of them and that sort of thing. But because it was balanced with far more praise than criticism, it didn't come across like they were trying to make themselves look smart and the wrestlers look stupid.

 

Clash I: Ross and Schiavone point out that Sting is not going to make Flair submit with a side headlock, but that he's weakening him to make him more prone to something else later in the match.

 

Compare that to the oft-mentioned "I've never seen anyone submit to an abdominal stretch. Why is he even bothering?" thing people mention about Monsoon.

I get that, and as I said on a recent show (Clash 16?), I think Schiavone is actually one of the very very best guys at talking about wrestling strategy, he's almost completely unheralded in that role and I won't knock him.

 

But I wonder if they were trying to get across different things?

 

You say Monsoon was trying to make himself look smart and the wrestlers stupid, but isn't it more that he was trying to get WWF over as the very top of the sport? i.e. "That might work in the little leagues, but not HERE!"

 

No?

[Loss]

Did he say that line at some point? I don't recall him saying that.