Worst Professional Wrestler Ever?

[El-P]

I don't think I've seen this. I love Martel though, so eventually I should check those out.

[Woof]

Val Puccio's '95 run in ECW, brief as it was, gives me night sweats.

[Jingus]

90% of this thread has been people naming perfectly-competent wrestlers that they just happen to dislike. It's like a Worst Movie Ever thread where The Phantom Menace keeps getting picked. Even guys like Erik Watts have had plenty of passable matches that are just forgotten or ignored.

 

 

Try THIS on for size, then come back and tell me with a straight face that Kane or Sabu or Brian Christopher is the "worst wrestler ever":

 

[goc]

Of course there a ton of no name indy scrubs that would fit this but the OP specifically ruled them out. "Someone who made it through wrestling school, and into a well known promotion, but were just so bad at it?"

 

I still think Jeff Gaylord is probably the best fit for this thread.

[Jingus]

Of course there a ton of no name indy scrubs that would fit this but the OP specifically ruled them out. "Someone who made it through wrestling school, and into a well known promotion, but were just so bad at it?"

I just think that's too limiting on the possible discussion. It's like having a thread dedicated to bad movies, but the only ones allowed in the discussion are big Hollywood films that got a wide theatrical release. Diving into the more obscure stuff provides a look at ASTOUNDING shittiness, the type of insanely awful spectacle which just doesn't exist in the big leagues.

[EricR]

But that would also be kind of pointless because we all know there are thousands of horrible non-trained "wrestlers" who somehow got access to a ring and filmed it. Just like in a worst movies discussion nobody would count my friend Randy's action movie that he filmed on a Saturday behind our high school gymnasium. It's more interesting to talk about guys who actually dedicated real time to pro wrestling, who were then given an actual platform by people hoping to make money. Of course Brian Christopher isn't the worst pro wrestler ever. Nobody agreed with that weirdo.

[Jingus]

Fair enough... but then the answer is Tiger Jeet Singh, and man that's just an unpleasant and boring person to chose for #1 at anything. Astoundingly awful performances from shitty indy guys can shock, horrify, and delight us in ways that we didn't know were even possible. It's like comparing any given Michael Bay or M. Night Shyamalan movie to something like The Room or Birdemic: the former are mostly just tiresome and depressing in how many people actually paid to see the damn things, while the latter are totally unexpected miracles that're made of some kind of previously-unknown alien feces which are somehow much shittier than our Earthling shit, breaking all known laws of physics in their impossibly-pure 9000% turdiness.

[supremebve]

I didn't read every post, but I skimmed through every page. How did I not see anyone nominate PN News. Is there a single good PN News match? He should also get bonus points for also being in contention for worst rapper ever.

[NotJayTabb]

PN News carved himself a fine niche in Europe as Cannonball Grizzly, and was perfectly fine in ring. I think gaining more ring experience and shedding the horrible rap gimmick helped.

[SomethingSavage]

I've heard fairly decent things about News as Cannonball Grizzly, though I admittedly don't recall ever seeking out any of his matches to find out for myself.

[Jingus]

Browsing through a few Cannonball Grizzly matches on Youtube: I think Grizzly Redwood has more devastating offense. PN News in the 21st century has a bad case of "oh, seriously, how do you even expect the other guy to sell that bullshit?" when it comes to his gingerly-applied love-tap strikes. And he does a ton of stalling, his matches appear to mostly be really slowly-paced. Although he does occasionally take a decent bump or two. Not the worst ever, but still not very good.

[Indikator]

People who post Grizzly in this context plain annoy me. Either you are way too lazy or too shallow for your own good. Might as well base your opinion on Mark Henry solely based on his 1996 matches. There is no reason for me to take such people seriously anymore

[supremebve]

People who post Grizzly in this context plain annoy me. Either you are way too lazy or too shallow for your own good. Might as well base your opinion on Mark Henry solely based on his 1996 matches. There is no reason for me to take such people seriously anymore

I have to admit to not watching a single Cannonball Grizzly match, but being annoyed because people aren't taking the work of "The Wrestler Formerly Known as PN News" seriously is possibly the funniest thing I've ever read. It would basically like if someone told me that I'm too lazy and/or shallow, because I didn't let my venereal disease last long enough to get used to the burning sensation. He could have turned into the second coming of Jumbo Tsuruta, but I can't possibly blame anyone for not giving that dude a second chance.

[Matt D]

Here's what I wrote about PN News/Big Josh vs the Creatures from Halloween Havoc '91:

 

 

 

PN News and Big Josh vs The Creatures

Why does this match even exist? We take things for granted sometimes. It’s easy to do so given the sheer amount of footage available to us right now. Between YouTube and the Network and pro wrestling being on TV almost every night, we’re inundated, but somewhere in the ballpark of 120,000 people bought Halloween Havoc 1991 and watched this match. That’s a lot of people to see a mid card lumberjack and “rap master” go up against two no name masked schnooks. I want to look at what it was and why it happened, and just what it could have possibly been trying to accomplish, because it, more than any other match I can think of, is easy to take for granted and discount. That actually makes it sort of interesting to me.

It was second on the card (best as I can tell, there was no dark match for this event): not exactly a prestigious placement. Traditionally, the first match on the card is supposed to get the crowd excited, to set the mood for the night. Tito Santana talks about the honor of starting Wrestlemania I, and since it’s Tito, I believe him. No one ever talks about the second match of the card being an honor. For Wrestlemania I it was King Kong Bundy squashing SD Jones. This match was actually sort of similar to that, but for Wrestlemania XXX, it was Daniel Bryan vs Triple H (to the live crowd), so I don’t think we’re going to go further down the rabbit hole of second matches.

No, here the key wasn’t the match’s ultimate placement on the card, but instead what it followed. What it followed was about as far from Tito Santana vs Buddy Rose-under-a-hood as you could get: The Chamber of Horrors. The Chamber of Horrors was a wildly unique fiasco. It was the perfect central point between corporate marketing, hilarious mismanagement, and carny wrestling. It was pure WCW in that the high concept, a cage surrounding the ring with weapons and caskets filled with extra goons where you can only win by stuffing one of your opponents in an electric chair, came well before the actual storyline need for the match. This was obvious when you look at first, the fact they kept changing who was going to be participating (down to having newly minted babyface Barry Windham announced on the heel side weeks and weeks after his turn, to Gordon Solie’s increasing dismay in the control center), and then the fact that half the guys in the match, including Vader, the Steiners, and the Diamond Studd had no actual issue with each other. It was an outright insane spectacle, but more than that, it was hugely violent. This was a match with Vader, Cactus Jack, Abdullah the Butcher, and the Steiners, given no rules, no restraints and weapons! It was like watching a Tom and Jerry cartoon with actual blood.

It was also the first match on the card and not to warm people up for the night either. No, it was the first match because it had so little storyline importance (just Sting getting to fight off Abdullah and Cactus Jack) and because the cage took so much effort to set up. They either had to put it on first or put it on last, and given that ensuring the legitimacy of their fairly illegitimate World Championship was so important, Ron Simmons vs Lex Luger had to end the show. Instead of putting the crowd in the right mood for the show, it was an overproduced, discordant grind of blood and gimmicky chaos. It overstimulated them. There was almost no way to follow it with the sort of actual wrestling show WCW needed to put on in their first attempt at a PPV after the Great American Bash disaster.

Therefore, it was those unlikely heroes, Big Josh and PN News, to the rescue. This was a match where the two most cartoony babyfaces in the company completely dominated a pair of event-themed, literally faceless, opponents, in a surprisingly (yet forgettably) high-impact celebratory showcase. The Creatures (enhancement talent Johnny Rich and Joey Maggs wearing reptilian masks and tights) were at worst yet another corporate-driven tie in to make the event feel more Halloweeny and at best a smokescreen to hide the ultimate importance of the Halloween Phantom (Rick Rude) reveal later in the night. They were nothing to write home about. In a vacuum, though, News and Josh WERE something to write home about. People forget how over News was. The fans just wanted to cheer him. They wanted to interact with the rapping. It’s just that he gave them so little to latch on to between the fact he had negative rhythm and just about as much dexterity in the ring. On this night, however, he gave them as much as he ever managed, and it was enough. They popped when he was announced. They grooved to his rap, and they watched him mangle two poor fools. Maybe he was so inspired because he was with there with Josh. I don’t know if someone took the handcuffs off the hugely talented Matt Borne and told him that he didn’t have to wrestle like a bumbling rustic anymore or he just got fed up by the whole act, but there was no pretense here, down to the point where Jim Ross covered it up believably by saying that he was certainly the most improved wrestler of the year.

It was a TV squash match on steroids. The Creatures had superior teamwork and some nice little flourishes in their attempts to contain their foes (little headbutts and eyerakes and kidney punches), but they were absolutely steamrolled. There wasn’t shine or heat or anything else. There was just pomp and circumstance and devastation. News hit a giant corner splash. Josh hit a killer dropkick. Josh whipped a Creature into a News bodybump. Whenever the Creatures even tried to fight back they were shoved back into the ground. The first creature ran right into a striking Big Josh axehandle as Borne propelled himself off the top sailing right over News. The second tried to get away only for News to hang on to him so that he could eat a nasty German Suplex from Josh. News even hit this inexplicably pretty Northern Lights looking throw. They let Creature #1 tag out to Creature #2, seemingly out of mercy but really so Josh could chuck him across the ring with a belly-to-belly. At one point, the Creatures actually got their act together for about fifteen seconds, just long enough for News to pump the crowd up from the apron and Josh to get downright furious, crushing his hapless, maligned victim with some sort of over the shoulder gutwrench power bomb. When he shouted timber and hit the Northen Exposure (Earthquake) splash and let News fall off the top rope onto the already-squashed Creature, that was the only bit of real mercy in the match. It was a massacre.

More importantly, though, it brought the fans down and reminded them that they weren’t watching some sort of deathmatch from Japan anymore. They were in Chattanooga and watching Halloween Havoc 91, which was more or less a normal pro wrestling show. It was the definition of a “piss break” match, something without too much heat or emotional investment. There was simply no reason to care about the match. There was nothing at stake. There was no sense of peril. The Creatures weren’t even some sort of vaguely memorable jobber like Larry Santo or Buddy Lee Parker. They were just some masked goons, not unlike the ones who popped out of coffins to get punched in the face by a Steiner Brother, during the Chamber of Horrors. The Chamber hadn’t been a standard opening match. It’d been an alien, outlandish, suspension of belief blender of a spectacle, and this was exactly the sort of heatless mauling of a squash that reset the hearts and minds of those who saw it. When it was over, they were actually ready to sit and watch fifteen minutes of Bobby Eaton and Terrence Taylor cycling through momentum shifts. It was a surprisingly bone-jarring squash from two guys that were surprisingly over, but more than that, it was exactly the right match at exactly the right time, and hey, just because it wasn’t particularly good, that doesn’t mean it shouldn’t get all the credit it deserves for that. There are things more important than stars in this world after all, aren’t there?

 

[supremebve]

Here's what I wrote about PN News/Big Josh vs the Creatures from Halloween Havoc '91:

 

 

 

PN News and Big Josh vs The Creatures

Why does this match even exist? We take things for granted sometimes. It’s easy to do so given the sheer amount of footage available to us right now. Between YouTube and the Network and pro wrestling being on TV almost every night, we’re inundated, but somewhere in the ballpark of 120,000 people bought Halloween Havoc 1991 and watched this match. That’s a lot of people to see a mid card lumberjack and “rap master” go up against two no name masked schnooks. I want to look at what it was and why it happened, and just what it could have possibly been trying to accomplish, because it, more than any other match I can think of, is easy to take for granted and discount. That actually makes it sort of interesting to me.

It was second on the card (best as I can tell, there was no dark match for this event): not exactly a prestigious placement. Traditionally, the first match on the card is supposed to get the crowd excited, to set the mood for the night. Tito Santana talks about the honor of starting Wrestlemania I, and since it’s Tito, I believe him. No one ever talks about the second match of the card being an honor. For Wrestlemania I it was King Kong Bundy squashing SD Jones. This match was actually sort of similar to that, but for Wrestlemania XXX, it was Daniel Bryan vs Triple H (to the live crowd), so I don’t think we’re going to go further down the rabbit hole of second matches.

No, here the key wasn’t the match’s ultimate placement on the card, but instead what it followed. What it followed was about as far from Tito Santana vs Buddy Rose-under-a-hood as you could get: The Chamber of Horrors. The Chamber of Horrors was a wildly unique fiasco. It was the perfect central point between corporate marketing, hilarious mismanagement, and carny wrestling. It was pure WCW in that the high concept, a cage surrounding the ring with weapons and caskets filled with extra goons where you can only win by stuffing one of your opponents in an electric chair, came well before the actual storyline need for the match. This was obvious when you look at first, the fact they kept changing who was going to be participating (down to having newly minted babyface Barry Windham announced on the heel side weeks and weeks after his turn, to Gordon Solie’s increasing dismay in the control center), and then the fact that half the guys in the match, including Vader, the Steiners, and the Diamond Studd had no actual issue with each other. It was an outright insane spectacle, but more than that, it was hugely violent. This was a match with Vader, Cactus Jack, Abdullah the Butcher, and the Steiners, given no rules, no restraints and weapons! It was like watching a Tom and Jerry cartoon with actual blood.

It was also the first match on the card and not to warm people up for the night either. No, it was the first match because it had so little storyline importance (just Sting getting to fight off Abdullah and Cactus Jack) and because the cage took so much effort to set up. They either had to put it on first or put it on last, and given that ensuring the legitimacy of their fairly illegitimate World Championship was so important, Ron Simmons vs Lex Luger had to end the show. Instead of putting the crowd in the right mood for the show, it was an overproduced, discordant grind of blood and gimmicky chaos. It overstimulated them. There was almost no way to follow it with the sort of actual wrestling show WCW needed to put on in their first attempt at a PPV after the Great American Bash disaster.

Therefore, it was those unlikely heroes, Big Josh and PN News, to the rescue. This was a match where the two most cartoony babyfaces in the company completely dominated a pair of event-themed, literally faceless, opponents, in a surprisingly (yet forgettably) high-impact celebratory showcase. The Creatures (enhancement talent Johnny Rich and Joey Maggs wearing reptilian masks and tights) were at worst yet another corporate-driven tie in to make the event feel more Halloweeny and at best a smokescreen to hide the ultimate importance of the Halloween Phantom (Rick Rude) reveal later in the night. They were nothing to write home about. In a vacuum, though, News and Josh WERE something to write home about. People forget how over News was. The fans just wanted to cheer him. They wanted to interact with the rapping. It’s just that he gave them so little to latch on to between the fact he had negative rhythm and just about as much dexterity in the ring. On this night, however, he gave them as much as he ever managed, and it was enough. They popped when he was announced. They grooved to his rap, and they watched him mangle two poor fools. Maybe he was so inspired because he was with there with Josh. I don’t know if someone took the handcuffs off the hugely talented Matt Borne and told him that he didn’t have to wrestle like a bumbling rustic anymore or he just got fed up by the whole act, but there was no pretense here, down to the point where Jim Ross covered it up believably by saying that he was certainly the most improved wrestler of the year.

It was a TV squash match on steroids. The Creatures had superior teamwork and some nice little flourishes in their attempts to contain their foes (little headbutts and eyerakes and kidney punches), but they were absolutely steamrolled. There wasn’t shine or heat or anything else. There was just pomp and circumstance and devastation. News hit a giant corner splash. Josh hit a killer dropkick. Josh whipped a Creature into a News bodybump. Whenever the Creatures even tried to fight back they were shoved back into the ground. The first creature ran right into a striking Big Josh axehandle as Borne propelled himself off the top sailing right over News. The second tried to get away only for News to hang on to him so that he could eat a nasty German Suplex from Josh. News even hit this inexplicably pretty Northern Lights looking throw. They let Creature #1 tag out to Creature #2, seemingly out of mercy but really so Josh could chuck him across the ring with a belly-to-belly. At one point, the Creatures actually got their act together for about fifteen seconds, just long enough for News to pump the crowd up from the apron and Josh to get downright furious, crushing his hapless, maligned victim with some sort of over the shoulder gutwrench power bomb. When he shouted timber and hit the Northen Exposure (Earthquake) splash and let News fall off the top rope onto the already-squashed Creature, that was the only bit of real mercy in the match. It was a massacre.

More importantly, though, it brought the fans down and reminded them that they weren’t watching some sort of deathmatch from Japan anymore. They were in Chattanooga and watching Halloween Havoc 91, which was more or less a normal pro wrestling show. It was the definition of a “piss break” match, something without too much heat or emotional investment. There was simply no reason to care about the match. There was nothing at stake. There was no sense of peril. The Creatures weren’t even some sort of vaguely memorable jobber like Larry Santo or Buddy Lee Parker. They were just some masked goons, not unlike the ones who popped out of coffins to get punched in the face by a Steiner Brother, during the Chamber of Horrors. The Chamber hadn’t been a standard opening match. It’d been an alien, outlandish, suspension of belief blender of a spectacle, and this was exactly the sort of heatless mauling of a squash that reset the hearts and minds of those who saw it. When it was over, they were actually ready to sit and watch fifteen minutes of Bobby Eaton and Terrence Taylor cycling through momentum shifts. It was a surprisingly bone-jarring squash from two guys that were surprisingly over, but more than that, it was exactly the right match at exactly the right time, and hey, just because it wasn’t particularly good, that doesn’t mean it shouldn’t get all the credit it deserves for that. There are things more important than stars in this world after all, aren’t there?

 

 

I don't know what is worse, the fact that you wrote that much about a PN News match or the fact that I read it and thought, "I should watch that when I get home." We are fucking nerds.

[Al]

Here's what I wrote about PN News/Big Josh vs the Creatures from Halloween Havoc '91:

 

 

 

PN News and Big Josh vs The Creatures

Why does this match even exist? We take things for granted sometimes. It’s easy to do so given the sheer amount of footage available to us right now. Between YouTube and the Network and pro wrestling being on TV almost every night, we’re inundated, but somewhere in the ballpark of 120,000 people bought Halloween Havoc 1991 and watched this match. That’s a lot of people to see a mid card lumberjack and “rap master” go up against two no name masked schnooks. I want to look at what it was and why it happened, and just what it could have possibly been trying to accomplish, because it, more than any other match I can think of, is easy to take for granted and discount. That actually makes it sort of interesting to me.

It was second on the card (best as I can tell, there was no dark match for this event): not exactly a prestigious placement. Traditionally, the first match on the card is supposed to get the crowd excited, to set the mood for the night. Tito Santana talks about the honor of starting Wrestlemania I, and since it’s Tito, I believe him. No one ever talks about the second match of the card being an honor. For Wrestlemania I it was King Kong Bundy squashing SD Jones. This match was actually sort of similar to that, but for Wrestlemania XXX, it was Daniel Bryan vs Triple H (to the live crowd), so I don’t think we’re going to go further down the rabbit hole of second matches.

No, here the key wasn’t the match’s ultimate placement on the card, but instead what it followed. What it followed was about as far from Tito Santana vs Buddy Rose-under-a-hood as you could get: The Chamber of Horrors. The Chamber of Horrors was a wildly unique fiasco. It was the perfect central point between corporate marketing, hilarious mismanagement, and carny wrestling. It was pure WCW in that the high concept, a cage surrounding the ring with weapons and caskets filled with extra goons where you can only win by stuffing one of your opponents in an electric chair, came well before the actual storyline need for the match. This was obvious when you look at first, the fact they kept changing who was going to be participating (down to having newly minted babyface Barry Windham announced on the heel side weeks and weeks after his turn, to Gordon Solie’s increasing dismay in the control center), and then the fact that half the guys in the match, including Vader, the Steiners, and the Diamond Studd had no actual issue with each other. It was an outright insane spectacle, but more than that, it was hugely violent. This was a match with Vader, Cactus Jack, Abdullah the Butcher, and the Steiners, given no rules, no restraints and weapons! It was like watching a Tom and Jerry cartoon with actual blood.

It was also the first match on the card and not to warm people up for the night either. No, it was the first match because it had so little storyline importance (just Sting getting to fight off Abdullah and Cactus Jack) and because the cage took so much effort to set up. They either had to put it on first or put it on last, and given that ensuring the legitimacy of their fairly illegitimate World Championship was so important, Ron Simmons vs Lex Luger had to end the show. Instead of putting the crowd in the right mood for the show, it was an overproduced, discordant grind of blood and gimmicky chaos. It overstimulated them. There was almost no way to follow it with the sort of actual wrestling show WCW needed to put on in their first attempt at a PPV after the Great American Bash disaster.

Therefore, it was those unlikely heroes, Big Josh and PN News, to the rescue. This was a match where the two most cartoony babyfaces in the company completely dominated a pair of event-themed, literally faceless, opponents, in a surprisingly (yet forgettably) high-impact celebratory showcase. The Creatures (enhancement talent Johnny Rich and Joey Maggs wearing reptilian masks and tights) were at worst yet another corporate-driven tie in to make the event feel more Halloweeny and at best a smokescreen to hide the ultimate importance of the Halloween Phantom (Rick Rude) reveal later in the night. They were nothing to write home about. In a vacuum, though, News and Josh WERE something to write home about. People forget how over News was. The fans just wanted to cheer him. They wanted to interact with the rapping. It’s just that he gave them so little to latch on to between the fact he had negative rhythm and just about as much dexterity in the ring. On this night, however, he gave them as much as he ever managed, and it was enough. They popped when he was announced. They grooved to his rap, and they watched him mangle two poor fools. Maybe he was so inspired because he was with there with Josh. I don’t know if someone took the handcuffs off the hugely talented Matt Borne and told him that he didn’t have to wrestle like a bumbling rustic anymore or he just got fed up by the whole act, but there was no pretense here, down to the point where Jim Ross covered it up believably by saying that he was certainly the most improved wrestler of the year.

It was a TV squash match on steroids. The Creatures had superior teamwork and some nice little flourishes in their attempts to contain their foes (little headbutts and eyerakes and kidney punches), but they were absolutely steamrolled. There wasn’t shine or heat or anything else. There was just pomp and circumstance and devastation. News hit a giant corner splash. Josh hit a killer dropkick. Josh whipped a Creature into a News bodybump. Whenever the Creatures even tried to fight back they were shoved back into the ground. The first creature ran right into a striking Big Josh axehandle as Borne propelled himself off the top sailing right over News. The second tried to get away only for News to hang on to him so that he could eat a nasty German Suplex from Josh. News even hit this inexplicably pretty Northern Lights looking throw. They let Creature #1 tag out to Creature #2, seemingly out of mercy but really so Josh could chuck him across the ring with a belly-to-belly. At one point, the Creatures actually got their act together for about fifteen seconds, just long enough for News to pump the crowd up from the apron and Josh to get downright furious, crushing his hapless, maligned victim with some sort of over the shoulder gutwrench power bomb. When he shouted timber and hit the Northen Exposure (Earthquake) splash and let News fall off the top rope onto the already-squashed Creature, that was the only bit of real mercy in the match. It was a massacre.

More importantly, though, it brought the fans down and reminded them that they weren’t watching some sort of deathmatch from Japan anymore. They were in Chattanooga and watching Halloween Havoc 91, which was more or less a normal pro wrestling show. It was the definition of a “piss break” match, something without too much heat or emotional investment. There was simply no reason to care about the match. There was nothing at stake. There was no sense of peril. The Creatures weren’t even some sort of vaguely memorable jobber like Larry Santo or Buddy Lee Parker. They were just some masked goons, not unlike the ones who popped out of coffins to get punched in the face by a Steiner Brother, during the Chamber of Horrors. The Chamber hadn’t been a standard opening match. It’d been an alien, outlandish, suspension of belief blender of a spectacle, and this was exactly the sort of heatless mauling of a squash that reset the hearts and minds of those who saw it. When it was over, they were actually ready to sit and watch fifteen minutes of Bobby Eaton and Terrence Taylor cycling through momentum shifts. It was a surprisingly bone-jarring squash from two guys that were surprisingly over, but more than that, it was exactly the right match at exactly the right time, and hey, just because it wasn’t particularly good, that doesn’t mean it shouldn’t get all the credit it deserves for that. There are things more important than stars in this world after all, aren’t there?

 

 

That was fucking fantastic.

[Woof]

 

Here's what I wrote about PN News/Big Josh vs the Creatures from Halloween Havoc '91:

 

 

 

PN News and Big Josh vs The Creatures

Why does this match even exist? We take things for granted sometimes. It’s easy to do so given the sheer amount of footage available to us right now. Between YouTube and the Network and pro wrestling being on TV almost every night, we’re inundated, but somewhere in the ballpark of 120,000 people bought Halloween Havoc 1991 and watched this match. That’s a lot of people to see a mid card lumberjack and “rap master” go up against two no name masked schnooks. I want to look at what it was and why it happened, and just what it could have possibly been trying to accomplish, because it, more than any other match I can think of, is easy to take for granted and discount. That actually makes it sort of interesting to me.

It was second on the card (best as I can tell, there was no dark match for this event): not exactly a prestigious placement. Traditionally, the first match on the card is supposed to get the crowd excited, to set the mood for the night. Tito Santana talks about the honor of starting Wrestlemania I, and since it’s Tito, I believe him. No one ever talks about the second match of the card being an honor. For Wrestlemania I it was King Kong Bundy squashing SD Jones. This match was actually sort of similar to that, but for Wrestlemania XXX, it was Daniel Bryan vs Triple H (to the live crowd), so I don’t think we’re going to go further down the rabbit hole of second matches.

No, here the key wasn’t the match’s ultimate placement on the card, but instead what it followed. What it followed was about as far from Tito Santana vs Buddy Rose-under-a-hood as you could get: The Chamber of Horrors. The Chamber of Horrors was a wildly unique fiasco. It was the perfect central point between corporate marketing, hilarious mismanagement, and carny wrestling. It was pure WCW in that the high concept, a cage surrounding the ring with weapons and caskets filled with extra goons where you can only win by stuffing one of your opponents in an electric chair, came well before the actual storyline need for the match. This was obvious when you look at first, the fact they kept changing who was going to be participating (down to having newly minted babyface Barry Windham announced on the heel side weeks and weeks after his turn, to Gordon Solie’s increasing dismay in the control center), and then the fact that half the guys in the match, including Vader, the Steiners, and the Diamond Studd had no actual issue with each other. It was an outright insane spectacle, but more than that, it was hugely violent. This was a match with Vader, Cactus Jack, Abdullah the Butcher, and the Steiners, given no rules, no restraints and weapons! It was like watching a Tom and Jerry cartoon with actual blood.

It was also the first match on the card and not to warm people up for the night either. No, it was the first match because it had so little storyline importance (just Sting getting to fight off Abdullah and Cactus Jack) and because the cage took so much effort to set up. They either had to put it on first or put it on last, and given that ensuring the legitimacy of their fairly illegitimate World Championship was so important, Ron Simmons vs Lex Luger had to end the show. Instead of putting the crowd in the right mood for the show, it was an overproduced, discordant grind of blood and gimmicky chaos. It overstimulated them. There was almost no way to follow it with the sort of actual wrestling show WCW needed to put on in their first attempt at a PPV after the Great American Bash disaster.

Therefore, it was those unlikely heroes, Big Josh and PN News, to the rescue. This was a match where the two most cartoony babyfaces in the company completely dominated a pair of event-themed, literally faceless, opponents, in a surprisingly (yet forgettably) high-impact celebratory showcase. The Creatures (enhancement talent Johnny Rich and Joey Maggs wearing reptilian masks and tights) were at worst yet another corporate-driven tie in to make the event feel more Halloweeny and at best a smokescreen to hide the ultimate importance of the Halloween Phantom (Rick Rude) reveal later in the night. They were nothing to write home about. In a vacuum, though, News and Josh WERE something to write home about. People forget how over News was. The fans just wanted to cheer him. They wanted to interact with the rapping. It’s just that he gave them so little to latch on to between the fact he had negative rhythm and just about as much dexterity in the ring. On this night, however, he gave them as much as he ever managed, and it was enough. They popped when he was announced. They grooved to his rap, and they watched him mangle two poor fools. Maybe he was so inspired because he was with there with Josh. I don’t know if someone took the handcuffs off the hugely talented Matt Borne and told him that he didn’t have to wrestle like a bumbling rustic anymore or he just got fed up by the whole act, but there was no pretense here, down to the point where Jim Ross covered it up believably by saying that he was certainly the most improved wrestler of the year.

It was a TV squash match on steroids. The Creatures had superior teamwork and some nice little flourishes in their attempts to contain their foes (little headbutts and eyerakes and kidney punches), but they were absolutely steamrolled. There wasn’t shine or heat or anything else. There was just pomp and circumstance and devastation. News hit a giant corner splash. Josh hit a killer dropkick. Josh whipped a Creature into a News bodybump. Whenever the Creatures even tried to fight back they were shoved back into the ground. The first creature ran right into a striking Big Josh axehandle as Borne propelled himself off the top sailing right over News. The second tried to get away only for News to hang on to him so that he could eat a nasty German Suplex from Josh. News even hit this inexplicably pretty Northern Lights looking throw. They let Creature #1 tag out to Creature #2, seemingly out of mercy but really so Josh could chuck him across the ring with a belly-to-belly. At one point, the Creatures actually got their act together for about fifteen seconds, just long enough for News to pump the crowd up from the apron and Josh to get downright furious, crushing his hapless, maligned victim with some sort of over the shoulder gutwrench power bomb. When he shouted timber and hit the Northen Exposure (Earthquake) splash and let News fall off the top rope onto the already-squashed Creature, that was the only bit of real mercy in the match. It was a massacre.

More importantly, though, it brought the fans down and reminded them that they weren’t watching some sort of deathmatch from Japan anymore. They were in Chattanooga and watching Halloween Havoc 91, which was more or less a normal pro wrestling show. It was the definition of a “piss break” match, something without too much heat or emotional investment. There was simply no reason to care about the match. There was nothing at stake. There was no sense of peril. The Creatures weren’t even some sort of vaguely memorable jobber like Larry Santo or Buddy Lee Parker. They were just some masked goons, not unlike the ones who popped out of coffins to get punched in the face by a Steiner Brother, during the Chamber of Horrors. The Chamber hadn’t been a standard opening match. It’d been an alien, outlandish, suspension of belief blender of a spectacle, and this was exactly the sort of heatless mauling of a squash that reset the hearts and minds of those who saw it. When it was over, they were actually ready to sit and watch fifteen minutes of Bobby Eaton and Terrence Taylor cycling through momentum shifts. It was a surprisingly bone-jarring squash from two guys that were surprisingly over, but more than that, it was exactly the right match at exactly the right time, and hey, just because it wasn’t particularly good, that doesn’t mean it shouldn’t get all the credit it deserves for that. There are things more important than stars in this world after all, aren’t there?

 

 

That was fucking fantastic.

 

 

Agreed. That was a killer read.

[Jingus]

People who post Grizzly in this context plain annoy me. Either you are way too lazy or too shallow for your own good. Might as well base your opinion on Mark Henry solely based on his 1996 matches. There is no reason for me to take such people seriously anymore

Bullshit. Mark Henry stayed on national television for another two decades. PN News vanished to sparsely-attended outlaw indy shows. The only time he ever showed up in a big promotion in America again was his brief tenure as one of Da Baldies, and he wasn't exactly setting the world on fire then either.

[Matt D]

Thanks guys. I'm glad you enjoyed it. Hopefully I can get work under control a bit more by mid october and start doing companion pieces for WTBBP again. I had fun with it when I was able to.

[mrwaukegan]

I've only seen his WCW work, but is there anything Charlie Norris does/did that was good?

When he made it to WCW he had only been in the business a few years. I would say less than 5 years. His prior experience was for the part time PWA. He wasn't ready for his role. WCW had neither the brain power to develop and nurture him. Rather they were more concerned with having their own Tatanka.

 

They stuck Norris in the ring with Titan. Then have work the bar shows for additional side work in the proto power plant system.

[TheU_2001]

El Gigante and Blaster Master Iron (he only had the match at Clash XII, but it was bad). Motor City Madman too.

[The Chief]

Rocky Mountain Thunder?

[Brandon-E]

Shocked that Stevie Ray hasn't been mentioned yet.

[ButchReedMark]

Was any wrestler ever shitter than Al Green?

 

 

no

 

[joeg]

I went to a lot of indie shows when I was a kid, usually to see somebody like Danielson, Low Ki, Haas Brothers, etc. Anyways there would always be somebody comically bad on the show. Guys like Mr. Ooh La La, Prince Nana, The Japanese Pool Boy, Corpral Punishment, etc were some of the worst that I saw.