Dark Side of the Ring

[NintendoLogic]

I was pretty disappointed to see no pushback on Bischoff's assertion that Rikidozan was killed because he was Korean. That may be what North Korean propaganda says, but it's bullshit. Hardly anybody in Japan knew about his ethnicity until well after his death.

[sek69]

4 minutes ago, NintendoLogic said:

I was pretty disappointed to see no pushback on Bischoff's assertion that Rikidozan was killed because he was Korean. That may be what North Korean propaganda says, but it's bullshit. Hardly anybody in Japan knew about his ethnicity until well after his death.

Dave did a talk about it in his review, but yeah that was a pretty big miss on the show's part to let that go uncorrected. It wasn't even a hit either. Stories vary, but what seems to be the same is Riki got into a scuffle with a Yakuza member at the club and the dude went into business for himself and stabbed him. The Yakuza even apologized for it because he was such a national hero. 

[PeteF3]

That came right after Mike Chinoy explained exactly that, so I think the implication was that, yes, Bischoff was full of it.

[Robert S]

This was one of the few times in human history when Inoki's statement probably came closest to the truth: "he was killed by a thug".

There was another bit of sloppy journalism in the piece: claiming that Inoki was responsible for getting Japanese hostages released from Iraq. Didn't it turn out eventually, that the hostages being released had nothing to do with Inoki's wrestling-diplomacy?

[El-P]

17 minutes ago, Robert S said:

There was another bit of sloppy journalism in the piece: claiming that Inoki was responsible for getting Japanese hostages released from Iraq. Didn't it turn out eventually, that the hostages being released had nothing to do with Inoki's wrestling-diplomacy?

Kayfabe, man, kayfabe.

[El-P]

So apparently Dana Guerrier called the Dark Side piece "smut" or something. So I guess that makes it promising.

[sek69]

I get the feeling that they are going to tell how Warrior was radicalized by Dana and she's trying to get ahead of it by preemptively smearing the show.

[Afro Steel]

It's amusing, because watching the A&E piece, you wouldn't even know she necessarily shared the same views as Warrior. On the subject of Warrior's bigoted comments, she chalked it up to his voracious consumption of conservative talk radio. She framed it in a way where she almost sounds like the loyal wife who was reluctantly along for the ride. Heck, that would've been my takeaway had I not read on here about that she helped shape his conservative views. 

[sek69]

The A&E piece was basically a way for Dana to acknowledge he said some fucked up things, but to frame it as a guy who fell down a media rabbit hole and away from the person who pointed him in that direction. 

I suppose the fairest (to her) takeaway could be she didn't think he'd take things as far as he did, but what else would you expect if you take a guy like him and continuously feed him right wing nonsense?

[El-P]

Plus, they really made it seem like "queering doesn't make the world work" was an isolated incident and fuck-up. Which of course it was not. I did not even know he said the victims of Katrina basically deserved it (learned it on Meltz show).

[sek69]

So yeah, having watched  the episode it's clear Dana was trying to preemptively smear the show by saying it was "smut and filth" because they showed the clip of Warrior saying she was the one who influenced his conservative beliefs. It was a pretty fair look at the good and the bad, and made it clear that he had some abhorrent beliefs but didn't try to make him a cartoon villain. 

[Johnny Sorrow]

His first wife is pretty awesome, if only because she knows how wrestling is supposed to work.

[El-P]

No shit his former wife comes off the greatest here. Understanding the business, what worked and what didn't and why. She really was the star of the show. It's ironic because it's a lot more fair and so much harsher in term of the guy's character, but it also does a much better job humanizing him in the end, mostly thanks to the ex-wife (it struck me how she is still moved by how she found out about him cheating on her and the divorce and the last time they speak, but wasn't when she talked about his death, which does makes sense, but it's fascinating to me how human relationships work). Watching this, the "smut piece" comment by Dana makes it obvious she's a whitewashing alt-right Karen. Excellent episode (funny also how in 44mn they said *more* than in 90mn, really).

It's kinda bittersweet to me to watch Corny in these, because he always comes off so good that it reminds me how much of a fan of his I was and how awesome he still could be if he had not lost his mind about AEW. I mean, Uncle Eric popping up from time to time on Dynamite is fine, but I would have loved Corny showing up so much.

Next week is Grizzly Smith... Good luck to us with that one. 

[WrestlingPower]

The ex wife was the star of the show.  I did find it a bit odd that she kept all those old photos etc.  I get that they made peace later on but I always assume most people get rid of any history of their former lives with exes.

After watching both shows and one thing they had in common was about his training.  Neither one mentioned that he actually had any.  Did he and Sting literally just send out promo shots with zero training whatsoever?  What did Bassman actually do for them?  I knew their training was far from thorough but these shows make it seem like they had absolutely none.

I’d be curious to hear someone pick apart Jake’s story that he was allegedly promised the title.  I wonder if it was a rib from management or they blew him off by sending him to “ask permission” from Hellwig knowing that wouldn’t go well.  I would not totally rely on Jake’s memory on much of anything with all he’s been thru.

[Robert S]

They portrayed Warrior much less negative than they could have, probably because they spent so little time on the period 91 to pre-HOF 2014.

I never really noticed that there is a striking resemble between Warrior and (former chess world champion) Bobby Fischer:

- both came from dysfunctional families (Warrior's father walking out, Fischer growing up without a father and being on odds with his mother) that might have lead to severe psychological problems for their whole lifes (Warrior apparently having anxiety disorder, Fischer definitely was paranoid, maybe even schizophrenic)

- both were driven to become someone, again partly due to their childhood

- both (to some degree) dropped from the face of the earth relatively close to their professional peak (in Fischer it was literally his peak after becoming world champion)

- both had a, let's call it questionable, comeback against their biggest foe (Warrior rehashing his Mania match against Hogan in WCW, Fischer playing (and beating) a way past his prime Boris Spassky (who was the guy he beat for the world championship in 72) in 92 in Yugoslavia during the Balkan war despite the UN embargo, which lead him becoming a fugitive)

- both afterwards became mostly known for their... less then politcally correct statements (which in Fischer's case were even more out there than Warrior's worst stuff was)

- and in the end both dying relatively young (Warrior died at 54, Fischer at 64 - though in Fischer's case it was much less out-of-nowhere; Fischer did not have the closure that Hellwig had at the Hall of Fame, but at least he seemed to be somewhat at peace the last few years of his life that he spent in Iceland)

[NintendoLogic]

I thought the Warrior episode was a letdown, to be honest. They barely touched on the horrific views he espoused and mainly talked about how he let success go to his head and wasn't faithful to his wife, which is small potatoes as far as wrestling's dark side goes. I wonder if it's because you can't really knock a guy for being a right-wing nutjob when you have Jericho as a narrator.

[hammerva]

I assumed that Dana called it "smut" because if you watched the show it kind of implied that Dana was fucking the Warrior while he was still married.  I guess you could argue that they meant he had a different girl in every city

Yeah it seemed like they were more concerned with trying to tell us how awful he was in the ring then how awful he was outside the ring.  You can do 5 seasons of the show if the emphasis is supposed to be awful wrestlers who was pushed way too hard.  

[Makai Club #1]

El Gigante for Season 4, if that's the case. 

[MoS]

Yeah, I thought the doc was incredibly soft. The length definitely hurt them here. Maybe they should have done a two-parter on Warrior

 

[Afro Steel]

I was expecting way worse based on the "smut" disclaimer. Basically, Warrior had a girl in a lot of towns, was difficult to work with, and had some extremely distasteful views post-career. The ex-wife seems to have a refreshingly mature view of her relationship with marriage. It's clear she was hurt by things he did, but those things haven't left her bitter. She's able to acknowledge the good things he did and recall the more humane side of him. Ross and Cornette are the only ones who come out looking really bad in this.

I do wish we'd drop this dated notion that Warrior was an all-time bad worker. He was sloppy, careless, and selfish, absolutely. He still rose to the occasion more times than not when he needed to. His WWF PPV track record during his first run is about as solid as anyone's from that era. You can attribute that to who he worked with, but just about all of those guys had their share of mediocre or bad PPV matches themselves. If Warrior was all-time bad, it doesn't stand to figure that he would've been capable of even being carried by these guys.

[sek69]

The kicker is that Dave mentioned that at the time Warrior's first wife called him at the hotel with another woman, he was traveling with Melanie Pillman (she wasn't Pillman yet of course). 

[El-P]

I don't know what you guys expected. It's a still a show about pro-wrestling, you're not gonna get 20 minutes about what a guy wrote on his blog after he retired. He still came off enough of a dickhead with godawful opinions to me.

[Afro Steel]

I thought the pull quotes from his blog paired with some of the sound bites from his speaking engagements was plenty to get across that he held some dogshit beliefs. 

[sek69]

Yeah they made the point that the dude was an asshole, there really wasn't much more needed to say. 

I suppose you could argue they should have mentioned more about Dana becoming an ambassador/employee and having the balls to try to make him some sort of Pride icon despite.....everything...... but I could see them not wanting to get into a pissing contest with her and/or WWE over it. 

[Blehschmidt]

Not even half way into this Grizzly Smith episode and it's just as rough as we expected.