So, "Ring of Hell"...

[Al]

Why is Roadkill, who never worked the stuntman style, nowhere to be found, while New Jack, who dove out of balcony's, is still working indy shows?

Roadkill = Bam Neely. He's still active in ECW.

[Cox]

Bam Neely is Justin LaRoche, some other guy. Roadkill was fired a few months ago for selling WWE merchandise that he wasn't supposed to be at OVW shows.

[Al]

Shit. I was mistaken then.

[Jingus]

fired for selling WWE merchandise that he wasn't supposed to

That's at least, what, the third time they've supposedly fired someone for that? I wonder if that's one of their excuses they use when they want to fire someone for some other, more darkly personal reason that they didn't want to make public. Ya know, same thing they do when someone's fired for "drug reasons" when they've failed less than the requisite three tests or "talking to dirtsheets" like Lagana.

[Guest Lone Rogue]

I have one question.

 

Didn't things get really dangerous in Japan as well? Didn't the Japanese Indie hardcore stuff get worse as the 90's carried on, and in AJPW, didn't it go into the "Head Dropping" era? I mean, if you look at the wrestling world as a whole, I think professional wrestling tried to push its boundaries and see how far it could really go. The 90's were a pretty disposable culture as a whole. If you think about it, the two biggest superstars in the 90's only had 4-5 years on top, which is why Attitude fans can't understand why kids still love John Cena.

 

Another thing, did someone mention Mike Awesome? I mean, christ, wasn't he fucking his body up in Japan? Wasn't that why he got to ECW in the first place!? He probably worked softer in ECW.

[Boondocks Kernoodle]

Does working softer mean taking all those hard chairshots from Masato Tanaka?

[sek69]

fired for selling WWE merchandise that he wasn't supposed to

That's at least, what, the third time they've supposedly fired someone for that? I wonder if that's one of their excuses they use when they want to fire someone for some other, more darkly personal reason that they didn't want to make public. Ya know, same thing they do when someone's fired for "drug reasons" when they've failed less than the requisite three tests or "talking to dirtsheets" like Lagana.

 

 

Actually "Ring of Hell" makes it kind of obvious that Lagana was probably fired for being too creepy even for pro wrestling standards, which is pretty wild to think about.

[Jingus]

Does working softer mean taking all those hard chairshots from Masato Tanaka?

To be fair, that feud started back in FMW and then immigrated here.

 

Actually "Ring of Hell" makes it kind of obvious that Lagana was probably fired for being too creepy even for pro wrestling standards, which is pretty wild to think about.

Yeah, that's my point. There have been a bunch of instances where the WWE has fired someone and given a really odd justification. Like, why fire Test for drug use, when he hadn't failed the Third Piss Of Doom which is supposed to determine such things? Why are some of the interchangeable Divasearch chicks kept on while others are let go? Were the Hebners really thrown out of their quarter-century family gig for selling merch on the side? What was the deal when they fired Boogeyman and then hired him back just days later? That kind of stuff.

[Resident Evil]

http://www.stormwrestling.com/063008.html

 

Ring of Hell

June 30, 2008

 

For those of you who haven’t heard about Ring of Hell yet, it is a recently released book that covers the life and death of Chris Benoit, as well as offering a rather scathing expose on the wrestling business as a whole. Ring of Hell is the first book written by one Matthew Randazzo the 5th and based on this offering I hope his last.

 

When I originally heard about the book I had no intention or interest in reading it. I seldom find books like this offer me anything I don’t already know, or more often than not, tell stories I know to be inaccurate. The only reason I picked up a copy was because a fan I regularly correspond with on my website asked me to read it because the book disturbed him and he wanted my opinion of the book and it’s over all accuracy.

 

The book arrived last Wednesday in the mail and by the second chapter I was ready to throw the thing in the trash. If not for my desire to offer my online friend a complete review and the encouragement of Bryan Alvarez to finish the book (which he has HUGE heat with me for now that I’ve finished) I would have never bothered to finish reading Ring of Hell.

 

Before I get into specifics let me offer this quick over view. Ring of Hell is the Jerry Springer Show of wrestling books. In my opinion it is a complete waste of paper and a HUGE load of crap. Matthew Randazzo the 5th (MR5) is in my opinion a pathetic researcher, a terrible writer, and in several instances, throughout his book, guilty of the same things he condemns the wrestling business for. What I find even more disappointing than the $18 I wasted on this book is that there is in fact a darker side to the wrestling business that can and should be improved upon, but instead of writing a serious expose of the businesses legitimate shortcomings, MR5 seems to sell out and write a sensationalized load of crap in hopes of shock valuing his way into a writing career.

 

I am not saying that there is no truth in this book. There is in fact a fair bit of truth in it, but it is presented very unprofessionally, and in conjunction with a lot of exaggerated, overly sensationalized, and in some cases outright fabricated stories. Had MR5 put in the due diligence to ferret out the real truth and presented it in a professional manner, this could have been a very good book. As it stands it is about as factually based and professional presented as many Jerry Springer episodes.

 

There is one rather scathing story in the book that I know for an absolute fact is incorrect, several that I have heard told by numerous first hand sources that vary wildly from MR5’s accounts and countless tales that are so obviously “bull shit wrestling stories” that the boys always tell, to put over how tough they are or how rough it was when they broke in.

 

I was often reminded, while reading this book, of my favourite Monty Python skit. The skit features four rich guys sitting in a cabana bar drinking cocktails with each trying to top the hardship stories of the other. The climax is a rant by Graham Chapman that goes like this, “Right…. We had to get up in the morning at 10 o’clock at night, half an hour before we went to bed. We had to eat a lump of cold poison, work 29 hours a day down Mill, and pay Mill owner for permission to come to work, and when we got home our dad would kill us and dance about on our graves singing hallelujah.” To this they would all respond in unison, ”You try and tell the young people of today that, and they won’t believe you.” I guess they should have told their stories to MR5 because if Ring of Hell is any indication, he’d have not only believed their stories but wrote a book about how terribly run the Mill industry was in England.

 

I could go into far more detail about things I hated in this book but I fear to do so might actually create enough interest for you to buy this book, which I whole-heartedly encourage you not to do. If you want to read an accurate wrestling book pick up a copy of “Pain and Passion: The History of Stampede Wrestling” by Heath McCoy, which is my next Book Marks book club selection and is a far better read than Ring of Hell.

 

Before I wrap this up I want to point out one last specific flaw which bothered me the most and I think best represents how poorly researched this book was. Throughout the WCW portion of Benoit’s career MR5 talks endlessly about how horrible and unprofessionally run WCW was and for the most part dumps that blame on Kevin Nash, Scott Hall and Hulk Hogan. MR5 goes on quite a bit during those chapters documenting how self serving, unprofessional, dishonest, and unreliable both Hall and Nash were. Then in the WWE portion of Benoit’s career when MR5 is burying WWE and what goes on there, he uses endless quotes by Hall and Nash to support those claims.

 

How can an author spend several chapters in his book burying the credibility of two people he actually quotes and uses as major sources of reference in that very book? If I were his editor I’d have thrown the book back at him so fast and so hard he’d still be rolling from the impact of catching the book. Perhaps much like MR5 his editor realized that if he did that they wouldn’t have been able to get this on bookshelves in time to best financially benefit from the Benoit family deaths. I could have sworn that was something MR5 was very critical of the WWE for doing.

 

MR5 or even MR #1 thru #4 are welcome to direct their hate mail to me at: [email protected]

 

Lance Storm

[goodhelmet]

Just started reading today. Best line in Chapter 1...

 

Chris Benoit is no victim - the voluntary choice to pursue a pro wrestling career is fundamentally too stupid, irresponsible, and silly to ever allow for victimhood.

 

Maybe Lance had his feelings hurt.

[goodhelmet]

Maybe Lance was offended by this line...

 

... most name wrestlers would never dream of joining Stampede's regular roster. Stampede was a territory manned by Stu Hart's immediate family, green local wrestlers looking to make a name en route to a better paying job elsewhere and broken has-beens and never-will-bes struggling to maintain a toehold in the business.

[tigerpride]

Lance does make some good points though.

 

My issue was the horrible writing, the crude language, and saying Randy Orton looked like a gay porn star really just made Randazzo look like an idiot. And he quoted a Billy Gunn shoot interview.

 

I enjoyed the book overall, I always enjoy some good sleaze.

[Indikator]

To me it seems that Lance doesn't like the badmouthing aspect of the book, a legit point by the way. Too many wrestling fans demonize wrestling way too much - as if every wrestler is about to commit a horrible crime. But wrestlers are normal people, they are not as special as you make them. The only reason we see so many bad things in the wrestling business is that we concentrate on seeing those things, just look at the traffic the DVDVR sleaze thread had produced. If you concentrate on all atrocious aspects of the people around you you will find many fucked up things as well. Some fans fail not to distinguish between the wrestling business and the real world.

 

My father likes to tell stories and knows a lot about history and all kinds of wars. I have heard and read so many horrible, horrible war stories that I don't know any single instance in wrestling that could even come close to them. I am a law student, so that has given me access to some heavy shit as well. And because of that I can say that Benoit was "just" a normal murder-suicide. I don't want to downplay that tragedy, but the world doesn't revolve around it either (and wrestling sleaze in general). All of us have had our own tragedies or know people who had tragic things happen to them, but that doesn't make our lives a lie. We shouldn't say that our lives are worthless and don't have any redeeming qualities. Thus we also cannot say that Lance Storms (wrestling) career was worthless and had no redeeming qualities. He is just an average Joe, so let's treat him like a normal human being and not as a threat to all living creatures or a person who threw his life away

[Loss]

Lance Storm is an exception to so many rules in wrestling that it doesn't surprise me that he doesn't get Ring of Hell. It's not really about him.

 

I do think that the item regarding Hall and Nash is a valid criticism, and I would like to see a Randazzo response.

 

One other thing I noticed re-reading the book lately: when covering the 90s, I wish he would have gotten his hands on some Observer back issues. It's like he was just reading the Torch ones because they're available on the VIP site, but he should have forked over the dough to get the WON back issues, and really used the Observer far more as a source, and wrestler shoot interviews and message boards slightly less. I enjoyed the book, but that was an observation I had reading it.

 

Is Dave ever going to finish reviewing the book?

[sek69]

There's no accolade that can be lauded upon "Ring of Hell" better than it being the one thing to make Lance Storm show emotion after 18 technically-sound-but-boring-as-shit years in the business.

 

 

Also, Loss is dead-on in saying that Storm is basically the anti-Benoit so it's no surprise the book offends him.

[goodhelmet]

I haven't read that far but it is perfectly acceptable to use someone as a source on one hand and criticize them for their behavior on the other.

[goodhelmet]

Great line...

 

If Benoit was a great in-ring worker with little charisma, Eddy was a master of every facet of the game.

 

"Benoit's strength was to make people care about a match. With Eddy, people cared about a character in the match. "

[Bob Morris]

I haven't read that far but it is perfectly acceptable to use someone as a source on one hand and criticize them for their behavior on the other.

Agreed. I would add, though, that the stuff Hall and Nash said about Vince McMahon didn't really add anything. You got the picture painted enough by others who Randazzo either interviewed himself or cited their quotes from other material.

 

And while the tone Randazzo writes does come off as negative (not all the time, but when it is, it's definitely evident), it's done so to stress the larger point of what the wrestling business is like as a whole.

 

One other thing... Lance Storm says one story Randazzo cites in the book is not true and several wrestlers have said so themselves. Lance doesn't need to identify the wrestlers, but he should identify the story in question.

[Bob Morris]

I should also add that fans shouldn't be picking wrestling books simply based on how much sleaze and gossip they can get. The best wrestling books are the ones that are written effectively to illustrate a point.

 

I liked Mick Foley's first book and Chris Jericho's book because they were structured well and told good stories about their careers, and weren't just about tossing out gossip for people to hear. They took the stories they had to tell and put some perspective into them.

 

The stuff Randazzo writes about isn't stuff that is entirely new to wrestling fans, but it worked because it put things into context.

 

Anybody can write a gossip book. But the best books are those that take various stories and put them together to illustrate a larger point.

[ohtani's jacket]

What did Dave say about the book?

[Childs]

He said it was an impressive collection of reporting that made many valid points about the destructive nature of the business. But he expressed some reservations about Randazzo's blanket harshness. He hadn't finished the book and promised a fuller review at some point. He also published a letter of response from Randazzo. Overall, he endorsed it as a worthy read.

[Johnny Sorrow]

Meltzer's review: Credit Wrestling Observer

 

 

Deranged marks like Hart and Benoit were the easiest targets imaginable. Hall would walk up to Benoit backstage `real friendly like’ and say, `I love your finish! What is it, the diving headbutt? I can’t wait to kick out of it!’ On another occasion, Hall began talking to Benoit in a casual chummy manner, relaxing him, making him feel special like a nerd in high school who is finally getting treated like a human being by the jock bully. Midway through the conversation, Benoit realized that Hall had covertly taken out his dick and was pissing on Benoit’s cowboy boots. Since Hall and Nash were politically untouchable, Benoit simply walked away, humiliated in front of his colleagues and his girlfriend.”

 

Now that it’s been several weeks since the book “Ring of Hell,” came out, and whether the book was or wasn’t successful, in the end it wasn’t impactful on the industry.

 

We covered aspects of the book some time back and also had a letter from author Matthew Randazzo here. Coming out a little before the one year anniversary of the death of Chris Benoit, in the end, the book garnered really no steam. Whether it is selling well or not, it has garnered no mainstream coverage and its affect on the wrestling industry, either positively or negatively, has been nil.

 

I don’t know if that’s a reflection of the promotion of the book, which seemed largely non-existent, or the nature of the real world not caring about pro wrestling, so it doesn’t matter what is written and how it is written, nobody will care. Or perhaps, the book itself being such an over-the-top indictment of everything and anything, that so much was thrown out there like an episode of TNA, that by the end, people weren’t going to care.

 

The book in many ways is a modern version of “Chokehold,” a book by Weldon Johnson and former wrestler Jim Wilson which took as negative a tact on every story of pro wrestling. I thought that book had its historical value because there was a lot of documentation garnered from the Justice Department investigation of pro wrestling during the 1950s that had been otherwise forgotten.

 

The strong positive of the Randazzo book is that his overall conclusions about many negatives of the industry are valid. The idea that the sport ultimately can’t be saved from itself and shouldn’t exist is debatable. In the end, it is going to exist as long as it remains profitable and viable as a television product, no matter what the human costs. Given that premise, ideas on how to make things better are the key, and the book does that. But the nature of such a strong indictment guarantees the industry itself won’t listen. But then again, the industry wasn’t going to listen no matter how the book was written.

 

The strong negative is that a large percentage of people who agreed with the actual views as far things wrong with wrestling, still disliked or even hated the book.

 

The paragraph at the top in a sense describes why. First off, to me, whenever I read the term `marks’ written by someone outside of wrestling, it comes across as snobbish, like something insecure people write on message boards to try and act like they are somehow smarter by name calling. Besides, virtually everyone who reaches the top of a competitive field is going to have a certain drive that got them there, which in turn leaves them wide open for over sensitivity because it becomes their very being. Without it, they wouldn’t be good at their profession, and for better or worse, nobody would care about them to begin with. Some people like that have a complete fear of failure that they go through obsessive amounts of training or work to avoid. But in most physical sports, that fear is the best drive anyway. Whether it’s the fear of having a bad match or the fear of getting beaten up, or the fear of losing their job, most people work far harder when they are afraid then when they are comfortable. That’s why there are upsets in fighting sports, because if a fighter isn’t afraid of his opponent, he won’t train as hard in most cases, and then the opponent, who is and did, shows up better on that night. That’s why WWE operates in some people’s mind in an environment where many of the guys are miserable and jealous, because the mentality behind it, and you can debate whether it works or not, is that they will work harder to get to where those they are jealous of are. It doesn’t always work that way of course.

 

I also don’t think there is any tying in those qualities with murdering their wife and son or even being criminals.

 

But the book tries to use the traits Benoit had that made him arguably the best worker of his era–the ridiculous amount of hard work and the difficulty in being fully satisfied with his performance level even when at the top, and use that as evidence he had a screw loose his entire life and everyone should have known about that. It shows almost a complete lack of understanding of what makes people the best in their field. And even though he idolized Dynamite Kid as a performer and emulated him in the ring, the fact the real life Tom Billington was something of a Ty Cobb of the wrestling world (one of the all-time greatest baseball players who was also a miserable human being) does not mean Benoit as a person throughout his life was anything like Billington, just like the slew of independent wrestlers who emulated Benoit aren’t anything like him. Benoit was not the sadistic person Billington was, even if in the last weekend of his life he did things far worse than anything Billington ever did. No different that Dave Bautista emulating and idolizing Ultimate Warrior makes him a psychotic right-wing raging homophobe.

 

Whether it’s Jack Nicholson or Jim Carrey or Larry Bird, Brett Favre, or Dan Gable, there is an obsessiveness that got them to the point of getting more out of their natural abilities than any other and it’s prevalent in most top wrestlers in some form, whether it’s a greater need to succeed or a fear of failure.

 

Some will try and differentiate, that having that drive and single-minded determination to be the best in golf or tennis is okay but if you have that in wrestling you are a mark for a fake sport is the simple-minded reasoning of not realizing that actors, and fortune 500 executives who aren’t competing in sports, but in competitive fields for positions, as wrestling is, have those same traits. And they don’t kill their sons routinely either.

 

Randazzo never stated this, but a conclusion of people who have read the book like to make is that the wrestlers who went on television who praised Benoit as a human being were lying and that everyone knew he was this nutty guy. The book, with the constant hammering of this guy being warped by being a fan of a real-life cruel psychotic individual in Tom Billington, created a portrayal of a Benoit that could only be accepted by those who didn’t know him in the first place. In hindsight, the guy did have some real problems, and whether it was the cocktail of drugs (as those closest to him believe) or the concussions, or both, the fact is he functioned and most did not know of his problems because he didn’t talk openly about them. He started his son late one year in school because he was paranoid about the school he would attend because he had an unusual paranoia about him being kidnapped or hurt as the son of a celebrity, because Iron Sheik’s daughter was murdered and there was a threat of a kidnapping of the child of one of the top wrestlers. He would tell his driver when coming back from the airport in Atlanta to take different routes home. He didn’t want any mail going to his home to the point that just a few weeks before this all went down, he sent me, who did have his home address, a change of address form to a box in a store where he diverted all his mail to. So yes, there were some strange signs at the end. But to say the wrestlers who went on television were lying and creating a fake image of him was bullshit. They didn’t know. A few in Peachtree City who socialized with the family knew of a dark side and the arguments he and his wife had, which were bad enough that people told me they weren’t shocked he killed his wife. But you can talk with people who are as personally driven as him, have had as many or more concussions, and did every bit as much steroids and other drugs, and none can even imagine in their state the idea they could harm their child.

 

Indeed, perhaps the most flawed premise in the book is the attempt to act as though Benoit’s whole life built toward that weekend. That weekend is something that is unable to be explained. That’s why so many theories are out there, and many may have relevance, many may not, it could be a combination of many things, and it could be none of the above. When anyone tries to say with certainty what it was or wasn’t, no matter how close they were to the situation, I understand they need answers. But at the end, there are no answers and there never will be answers. And not coming to grips with that last statement itself can drive people crazy, so they try and come up with simple answers.

 

And then, the top story alone epitomizes the problem. First off, the Hall story about kicking out of the finish story was from 2002, and it was said to Bubba Ray Dudley about the 3-D, not Benoit in WCW. And describing Hall as the cool guy talking to a nerd in 2002 is a joke, as by that point Hall was considered a loser drunk who had thrown away his considerable talents and largely ruined his life. Hall couldn’t very well kick out of Benoit’s finish, given that it was a crossface, and it was Benoit himself who would call for the diving head-butt as a near fall spot in many of his matches.

 

The story of Hall pissing on Benoit’s boot did happen in WCW many years earlier, but hardly the way it was described. The two were both at a urinal, Hall was loaded, and was so off balance from being drunk that he got some pee on Benoit’s boot. The idea Benoit was humiliated in front of wrestlers and his girlfriend was the exact opposite of how it was remembered by those who were there, who remembered it as Hall making a complete fool of himself. The description of Benoit as the equivalent of being regarded like a high school nerd in school is among those in the profession is beyond laughable. While the actions on the last weekend of his life pretty much make it impossible to say much good about him today, the fact is, Benoit was heavily respected by the majority of his peers. The week before his death, I would venture to say of all the active wrestlers in North America, the only one who possibly would have been more overall respected was Undertaker, and only in WWE circles, as Benoit was more universally respected outside the company.

 

The book is filled with stories like that. Some I know are real. Some I know have ties to reality. Some are close enough. A lot are exaggerated in wording, but that’s a given that would happen considering the profession. Some I have no idea about if they are or aren’t true. Some never happened even close to how they were described. Some are just dead wrong. And many are filled with suppositions that may or may not be correct.

 

There is no perfect wrestling book, but there are many books I‘ve read where largely you may have different interpretations of things, but ultimately, they were honest books. There are even a few books where the interpretation of things are almost exactly the way I saw them at the time. Some books are packs of lies. My reaction reading this book, while more depressing about the industry than any other book that I would take seriously, was that it fit somewhere in the middle. Calling Eddy Guerrero “homely” and saying Benoit looked like an “ogre,” were interesting terms. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but Vince McMahon and Kevin Dunn are obsessed by looks in what they put on television, which is part of the reason for ten years of trying to replace Jim Ross even though everyone in the industry admits there’s nobody better at what he does. They would hardly give the world title to someone homely or who they thought looked like an ogre, no matter what their work rate is.

 

And the saddest part is. The wrestling business really does have its problems and every major one of them it talked about in the book. The problem is, so many stories are so exaggerated that the real problems become buried in a sea of apparent sin and sleaze, and when it’s over, instead of accomplishing something, the end result is, to an outsider, it’s not a business worth caring about. To an insider, it makes them so defensive that they start denying even the real problems that could use fixing. And to those in the business who are naturally defensive as well, they can pick out stories they know aren’t true, and use them to ignore a lot of what is true.

 

An example is the chapter explaining who Brian Pillman was and what his background was. It had a narrative reality. The big picture of Pillman as an undersized guy who over achieved in two sports of big guys, football and wrestling, was accurate, but much of the detail work in the story was inaccurate when it came to Stampede Wrestling, his WCW days, and most notably, his transition to WWF. And more than most wrestlers, Pillman’s life has been well chronicled.

 

The portrayal of him in Stampede was as someone who when he was breaking in, the Hart family conspired to get rid of him and set up to be ambushed by a much larger tough guy in an empty locker room, was inaccurate to the point where the opposite was the case. In fact, while he was at the training camp, he stood out athletically to the point the Harts made him an instructor in the camp he himself was being taught, to teach conditioning. Stu Hart loved real athletes, and Pillman had a legitimate college football and NFL pedigree.

 

He was a main eventer from his first week on the job because they liked him so much, and Bruce saw Pillman as his fountain of youth, becoming the cool babyface tag team, Bad Company–at least as cool as aging Bruce could be at the time.

 

The book gave the impression his only friend there was Benoit, called a character at the bottom of the totem poll. Benoit was a minor star in Stampede, and hardly someone at the bottom of the totem poll. He was Keith Hart's tag team champion partner before Pillman or Owen Hart started wrestling and pushed from a few weeks into the business. He was well respected by the time Pillman got there, but Benoit was neither his best friend on the circuit nor any kind of a babysitter of his on the road as described.

 

Benoit was not the star Owen Hart was when he debuted and became the face of the promotion. Among many of the wrestlers, who resented the Harts pushing themselves, they would always say Benoit more talented than Owen and thus Chris was held back from doing the moves Owen did. But Benoit didn't have Owen's charisma at the time. Owen often teamed with Benoit and Pillman, or Bruce, in six-mans on top, but Owen was clearly the star of the company, not because of who his father was or his brother was, but because he had the most star quality of any babyface in the territory at that time.

 

If anything, Pillman's cockiness infuriated some because he was considered a Hart family favorite and he absolutely had his enemies there. Much of Pillman's stint in Stampede came when Benoit was only around between Japan tours. The brawl described as when Pillman started in Stampede did happen, but it was after he'd been in the promotion for a few years (it was believed to have been a Dynamite Kid set-up because of the belief Pillman was Bruce's ally). Even though he won the fight after being sucker punched by Brick Bronsky (and Bronsky himself told me the story), Pillman tore his triceps in the comeback, and that fight was his signal this was a place to get out of, and he made a deal by starting a friendship with Paul Heyman to go to Alabama. But a week before he was to start, Eddie Gilbert and Heyman were fired by owner David Woods and he was out of a job and when back home to Cincinnati. It was then that Kim Wood was instrumental in hooking up with Jim Ross, which opened the door to WCW.

 

Wood was strength and conditioning coach of the Cincinnati Bengals and became Pillman’s father figure since his own father died young, after Pillman played the 1984 season. Wood was also was instrumental in him getting hooked up with the Hart family in Canada after his career with the Calgary Stampeders was coming to a close due to an ankle injury.

 

It also stated Pillman’s rep grew when he beat up Sid Vicious in a bar fight, when in fact, there was no such fight. There was an argument in a bar when Vicious was bragging about all the money he was drawing in WWF. There was underlying heat between the two. Pillman saw himself as working so much harder and being so much better, but because of the size difference, every promoter was drooling over Vicious even though every attempt to put him on top didn’t result in any box office. Plus, the few times they worked together, Vicious never wanted to sell any of Pillman’s offense, saying it wasn’t realistic, and then Pillman would counter when he played football he took down guys as big or bigger and that was real.

 

With Vicious bragging about drawing, and Pillman, pretty much a student of the game, thinking he was getting a golden opportunity and not drawing anything special, words were exchanged and challenges were issued. Pillman didn’t back down, and Sid left the bar, which was the smart move because there is no point getting into a real fight, particularly with someone half your size. For Sid, it was a total no win. A bully if he wins. A laughing stock if he loses.

 

Sid left the bar in a huff and they figured he decided to go home. He then came with brandishing a squeegee in one of wrestling's more famous tales at the time, which Mike Graham physically took from him. At that point, Sid said it wasn't worth risking injury to beat up Pillman, which given him being a WWF headliner at the time, was the smart choice. The squeegee story is in there, but it claimed Pillman beat the shit out of Sid, when the incident never even got physical except Graham taking the squeegee from Sid.

 

It also made the assertion that McMahon's scandal-mongering business philosophy would be better suited to his character than WCW and that's why he made the move. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Pillman went to WWF because Vince guaranteed his contract for the duration. Bischoff refused to essentially give him a no-cut contract, because of the uncertainty of his physical condition after his humvee wreck that destroyed his ankle and really should have ended his career. I think Bischoff didn't think Pillman would ever leave because he thought they had an understanding having worked the angle together on the boys, not realizing the angle he worked with Bischoff was actually meant to be worked on Bischoff. You can’t say with certainty, but if you take the humvee wreck out of the equation, I’d say 80% that he would have signed with WCW. He viewed WCW as the place to make the most money and at that time in his life, that was his major goal. That, and he had a huge desire to be a main eventer and work with the top guys. The night he and Ric Flair and Arn Anderson turned on Sting he always said was the highlight of his career at the time until the night of the Canadian Stampede PPV in 1997. The key in both instances is he was on a PPV and in with the big boys.

 

Pillman's goal was to play both sides against the other, but use it to drive his price up, thinking Bischoff would view him as his creation and would pay big to keep him. He wanted Lex Luger money, figuring it would mean a Lex Luger level push. At the time, I was always trying to convince him to go to WWF, because Shawn Michaels was the top guy and wasn't big, and he could have a run at the top that would establish him as a main event singles player. Plus, politically, he would likely have key allies in Bret and Owen Hart (Steve Austin was not yet a star at the time this was all going down although the two were good friends). We were constantly discussing the issue and it was always me saying to go WWE because there is more opportunity there, and him always wanting to stay in WCW because he perceived there was more money there for him and all of this was about making the most money before his body gave out. My feeling was WWF had less talent depth at the time, and if he'd become a singles main eventer there, do his time, and then Bischoff in two years or three years, would pay through the nose to get him back. The wreck changed the dynamic as he didn't know if he could ever work again, and the decision was purely made based on McMahon giving him the no-cut deal.

 

There was a story in the book about two guys in WWF roughing him up regarding his drug use there when the actual story was that guys in WWF talked about roughing him up as a way to jar him into straightening up, but it was just a suggestion that never happened. And while Pillman started using steroids as a college football player, the book made it seem like he was a wanton reckless steroid abuser when in fact, he hated steroids, had plenty of negative side effects from steroids, and for much of his career was either off them or using them in low doses. He absolutely did use them intermittently, because he was a little guy naturally and felt he needed them in a big man's business. He was 185 when he started using steroids at Miami of Ohio, and played college and pro football at 225 (since he was a lineman, he was listed at 240) when he was tossing heavy iron.

 

He usually wrestled in the 195 to 210 pound range and at 195-198 was not on steroids, which were long periods of time during his career, but he did use due to insecurity about size and wanting to be seen as a headliner. The characterization of 225-pound Chris Benoit who was probably 185 natural as a heavy user is probably accurate. Chris wouldn't get off steroids even during his year out with a broken neck. For Pillman, he did use, but characterizing him as a reckless steroid abuser is fingering his wrong vice.

 

The description of him in his WWF days that he "shot himself up double-barrel loads of steroids that would have intimidated Dynamite Kid," is ridiculous hyperbole. He used GH in low-end dosages until he started panicking about the cost, and then stopped using cold a few months before his death. He did some Decadurabolin, when Jim Ross, who headed WWF Talent Relations at the time, tested him before he died, the test showed low levels that the WWF doctors felt indicated usage most likely weeks or months in the past (deca can stay in your system as long as 18 months if you're unlucky, but usually six months), but probably not at the time of the testing which was a few weeks before his death, but it’s possible he was on a low cycle. He looked more strung out and wiry muscular in his WWF days than a blown up thick mass of steroid muscle. The book linked his death to steroids, and while a heart attack at 35 of a guy who started using roids in college and used them on-and-off for the next 15 years and did have the enlarged heart that so many of the wrestlers who died young with steroid histories have had, you could make that supposition. I certainly wouldn't rule it out as a possible part of the story. His wife, because of his having an enlarged heart, thought the GH was more of a factor. The coroner, in his death certificate, the only drug listed as a contributing cause was cocaine.

[Jingus]

He then came with brandishing a squeegee in one of wrestling's more famous tales at the time, which Mike Graham physically took from him.

Heh. Never heard about that part. When fricking Mike Graham is shooting on you, that's like... I can't even come up with a metaphor sad enough.

 

Good writeup with many valid points. Is that the whole thing, though? It just randomly cut out at the end there, felt like there's more.

[Boondocks Kernoodle]

No, that's it.

[Jingus]

Um... weird. I know it's an easy go-to since Dave knew him so well, but it's kinda odd that he makes literally half the article about Pillman and then just cuts to black like the Sopranoes finale. The pressure of constantly writing on a deadline, I guess.