What the hell is going on here?

[sek69]

So one of my e-friends was all "have you seen the Terri Runnels chairshot pic?" and I said no, expecting some hilarious upskirt pic or something along those lines but instead saw this:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

So does anyone know the story behind this?

[Tim Evans]

It was from the last PWS(Pro Wrestling Syndicate show). She was managing some guy in a Ambulance match and got hit with a chair.

[jdw]

Blade or hardway?

[Death From Above]

Somehow I'm surprised this picture hasn't resulted in a thread on DVDVR where like a dozen people got banned.

 

Then agian it couldn't possibly bottom out into stupidity any faster than the "Who sucked the most for the longest" thread did, it would just be creepier.

[Al]

Yeah. Violence on women (real or simulated) is one of the things that really bothers me in wrestling.

[sek69]

Somehow I'm surprised this picture hasn't resulted in a thread on DVDVR where like a dozen people got banned.

 

Then agian it couldn't possibly bottom out into stupidity any faster than the "Who sucked the most for the longest" thread did, it would just be creepier.

 

It would be an interesting sociology experiment, I wonder if the people there who fap to bloody joshi pics would find that exciting or do the women have to be Japanese?

 

 

Also I second what John asked, was this an accidental cut or did she for some reason decide to go full Muto at some indy show?

[tigerpride]

Yeah. Violence on women (real or simulated) is one of the things that really bothers me in wrestling.

That's too broad a statement.

[Boondocks Kernoodle]

(This is a really sensitive subject, especially on this board, because it's full of dudes waiting to call you out on being a misogynist psycho, fairly or unfairly. So maybe I shouldn't say this, but...)

 

There was a thread about a year or so ago on TSM which asked "Is violence on women OK if the woman is a hated heel?" To me, it's the other way around. If a heel hits a woman, then I don't have a problem with it, as long as it's the kind of serious heel who is portrayed as being cold and unfeeling. If it was a goofy heel like WCW Jericho I'd feel differently. But stuff like Orton giving Stacy the RKO, that was really effective. Because Orton's character is that of a total piece of shit. I don't ever like when a face hits a woman, dating back to when the Pitbulls and Dreamer would beat up Beulah in ECW. (And then Beulah became his valet after nine straight months of him beating the fuck out of her, and the crowd cheered! Ugh.) Especially the oft-mentioned Austin stunner on Stacy, which is as disturbing for what we know about Austin in real life as it was for its exemplifying the bizarre on-screen moral code of WWE storyline canon.

 

I think the worst was that storyline in 2000 with Trish and Bubba Ray. We're supposed to cheer Bubba because he's a sociopath obsessed with powerbombing a woman through a table? And Trish is evil because she's "teasing him"? (Granted, her behavior might have lessened the punishment against Bubba were the case to be taken to court. The fact that she videotaped herself begging to be put through a table while wearing lingerie might have led the court to reduce some of the assault charges, or at best convince them that the two of them were playing a bizarre sex game.) You know what the worst thing is? That shit turned him face! He was a bad guy until he became fixated on using a woman's body to break a table. (To be fair, he had done this many times before. But this was a "bad" woman, supposedly, although her actions weren't markedly different from those good women (Terri Runnels, B.B.; I'll go out on a limb and say that Trish and Mae Young probably are a bit dissimilar.) Maybe she was evil because she wore a cowboy hat?)

 

Man, when Jake slapped Elizabeth he barely touched her and it got mega-heat. Where does the time go?

[sek69]

Honestly, the Savage/Liz stuff worked because I don't think a woman in wrestling was ever given a classy character like Elizabeth. Most women are eventually given an angle where they stand up to a man and try to fight them as equals but Liz was always portrayed as the 1950s housewife type who knew her role.

[Tim Evans]

I'm thinking it's a bladejob. Don't know for sure though.

 

And Boondocks, If you think Trish/Bubba was bad, try watching what happened to Miss Linda in Memphis. She got beaten nightly there by people like Bill Dundee and Steve Keirn.

[Jingus]

It all depends on the specific story you're telling. Like, a few years back, my indy fed ran an angle where I (the announcer) "won a date" with ODB. We did some goofy vignettes and stuff, and somehow it culminated in me having a mini-feud with Traci Brooks. Now, I'm not a small guy, six feet tall and a bit over two hundred pounds. But since my persona in the show was as that of the non-wrestler wimp, the crowd had no problem believing that Traci could kick my ass. (Admittedly, when we finally had our "big blowoff" match, I didn't technically hit her myself, I grabbed her arm on which she was doing the Orton cast gimmick and basically made her slap herself for the comeback. Thank my mom for programming me permanently incapable of actually hitting a woman, even in a worked situation.) It probably helped that the angle involved ODB, who was our babyface television champion and defended the belt against heel guys every week. Plus, when she was announced as my date-to-be, she picked me up, slung me over her shoulder, and carried me back to the locker room. That was a situation where the audience had been educated to believe that it was totally possible for a woman to be equal or superior to men in an athletic combat situation. These weren't sophisticates in the crowd, they were Tennessee trailer denizens, but they bought it. If you handle the details and the context correctly, you can make just about anything work in wrestling, even something which seems counterintuitive like a guy being heroic for hitting a girl half his size.

[Loss]

Boondocks makes a great post.

 

Terri Runnels juicing like that obviously crosses far too many lines of good taste, but sometimes, the presentation of women in angles is every bit as much of a problem (or more of one at times even) than violence against them.

[Bob Morris]

I agree with Boondocks as well.

 

As I recall, Bubba Ray didn't start getting cheered until he went after Mae Young (who was drawing bad heat at that point) and then they turned around and had Terri turn on the Hardys as soon as she returned. The initial angle with Bubba and Terri was good and JR put it over very well, but the proper payoff of Terri returning during a Hardys/Dudleys match and slapping Bubba hard in the face and the Hardys eventually winning and hoisting Terri on their shoulders never happened.

 

Loss is correct that the presentation of women in most angles has mostly been poor. The ones in which it was done in the proper context, it has worked very well. I still remember how hot the crowds were for Jake Roberts after the angle Rick Rude did with Jake's wife... the angle was handled properly and tastefully, in that "Rude committed a foul deed and Jake is out to set things right."

[S.L.L.]

Like most everything else in fiction, it's not what you do, it's the way that you do it. I agree with Boondocks' analysis, and would add TomK's (I think) line that even if a female heel did do something really bad to a male face that might otherwise call for a physical response, you could always plant a kiss on her or put her over your knee and spank her, just to get that visual payoff that wrestling so often calls for. Obviously, that brings up some problems of it's own, but I say better that than hitting her with your finisher or putting her through a table for a face pop.

 

At the risk of opening up Pandora's Box even farther, does anyone know the context of the pic in the OP? Not that there's too many situations where that could be acceptable outside of Terri getting blasted by another woman - and even that won't be kosher for everyone - but I'm still curious.

[Loss]

I remember being shocked at all the stuff Sherri would do when working with Savage at ringside, mainly that the babyfaces would beat her up and she would take pretty wild bumps, even by 2008 standards. I know Jerry Lawler had punched Angel in the face, and Miss Linda had been attacked before, but that was my first time to see anything like that.

[Boondocks Kernoodle]

Has a woman ever done a bladejob in WWE? I think it's the kind of thing that could get heat every couple of years if done right. I remember the accidental blood in the angle where Mickie beat up Trish and then kissed her in the ring - it really added to the B-movie psychological thriller atmosphere. In a really heated feud between two women, the rare bladejob could be incredibly effective. I understand WWE's hesitancy to cross that line, plus you wouldn't want to leave a scar on a WWE Diva's forehead. And also, there hasn't been a really heated women's feud since Trish-Mickie. But it is something to think about.

[kjh]

If you handle the details and the context correctly, you can make just about anything work in wrestling, even something which seems counterintuitive like a guy being heroic for hitting a girl half his size.

Actually in front of some crowds it isn't very difficult to get the fans to cheer for male on female violence. Not that the fans are all to blame, as wrestlers, bookers and promoters will happily exploit and cultivate the basest instincts of their fanbases, partly because they share some of those base instincts. The bullying of women behind the scenes, like Sunny, Sable, many of the Diva Search contestants, Lilian Garcia, etc, and that it is tolerated by management is frankly disgraceful and in such an environment it is unsurprising that women tend to be portrayed in a negative way.

[Bob Morris]

In watching AWA on ESPN Classic, they did an angle with Wendi Richter and Madusa Miceli where Bad Company interfered in a match between the women and dropped Richter throat first across the top rope, leading to a beatdown before the Top Guns made the save.

 

In comparison to what Loss mentioned about Sherri, both that and Richter involved women who were wrestlers (Sherri pretty much had to be a manager given that the WWF women's division was dormant for some time) so I suspect some fans may not have thought as much about it because they were trained as wrestlers.

 

Well, in Sherri's case, anyway. I could see more fans being uncomfortable with the Richter/Bad Company angle, but it was put over as a heinous act (although not particularly well as Lee Marshall called it like he would any other heel attack) and they didn't go too far with it.

 

As for a woman doing a blade job in WWE, it would really need to be with one of the Divas who the fans truly buy into as a wrestler, her opponent would need to be one as well and you would need to properly book the feud in order for it to truly be effective.

 

One other thing: In one of the e-feds I am in, there is a person who handles a women's wrestler who has pushed to compete in the men's division as she wants to be the first woman to win a World title (as in, the men's top title). The character is a 6'6", 225-pound woman and is a willing participant. There has been debate, though, as to whether or not a woman should be allowed to compete against men, even if it's just stuff being written into an e-mail.

 

In real life, the only example I can think of is Chyna, and it was portrayed more as a novelty act than anything else.

 

So the question I would pose is this: Is there any way to effectively portray a women's wrestler going up against men's wrestlers, or is that something that is better left not done at all?

[Jingus]

So the question I would pose is this: Is there any way to effectively portray a women's wrestler going up against men's wrestlers, or is that something that is better left not done at all?

It's been done many times, just never on a large scale consistently. Like you said, Chyna is obviously the primary example, and the fans were clearly willing and able to believe that she could kick men's asses. WWE is kinda sorta toying with this storyline now with Santino and Beth, since she's portrayed as being significantly tougher than him. Lots of indy shows do intergender matches on a fairly regular basis, with some chicks like Sara Del Ray, Lufisto, Cheerleader Melissa, and Mickie Knuckles seeming to spend half their careers against male opponents. (My personal favorite recently being Chuck Taylor vs Candice LeRae in PWG; in the middle of a forearm exchange, Chuck goes for the "two enemies of opposite gender suddenly stop fighting and passionately make out" spot, but LeRae shuts him down all like "No, dude... just no".) And I think you could certainly put someone like Awesome Kong in the ring with the guys without any of wrestling's "credibility" being jeopardized. But it probably won't happen anytime soon. Wrestling's still very much an old boys' club, and lots of them still refuse to even entertain the thought of letting a woman make them look weak.

 

EDIT: despite all my femynist equality ranting, I'm still dead set against women blading. It's entirely an emotional thing, no logical basis, I just feel that the sight of a girl with blood running down her face is inherently wrong and nauseating. Hypocritical, I know, but there it is.

[Death From Above]

It would be an interesting sociology experiment, I wonder if the people there who fap to bloody joshi pics would find that exciting or do the women have to be Japanese?

I never really did understand this subsect. And that comes from someone that thought joshi in it's big years was just great.

 

I dunno, maybe in wrestling circles I'm the werido. I can seperate the fact that if I find a woman attractive from her DOING HER JOB for a living as entertainment. I've always stayed out of the "wrestling fans discuss chicks they think are hot" thing because I don't want to get painted with the same brush as... well, "those people".

 

I mean, I had a thing for Megumi Kudo back in the day, but it had fuck all to do with the fact that Combat Toyota busted her open. They're two entirely seperate worlds, to me anyway.

[Tim Evans]

At the risk of opening up Pandora's Box even farther, does anyone know the context of the pic in the OP? Not that there's too many situations where that could be acceptable outside of Terri getting blasted by another woman - and even that won't be kosher for everyone - but I'm still curious.

I was wrong. Apparently she got opened up hardway and it wasn't a bladejob. Not sure who hit her though? It could have been the other woman in the match, Randy Savage's ex Gorgeous George. Anways on this same show was The Iron Shiek, Eddie Kingston vs Kamala in a match that lasted a minute and the main event of Balls Mahoney vs Sabu vs Sandman vs Devon Moore vs some other guy. And the show only drew about 200 people.

[tomk]

It's 2008 there is no way post Attitude Era WWE to do violence on woman as spot to get heel heat. At least in the North East it's a face popping spot no matter what the context. Wrestling has long since been brought out of the smoke filled backrooms and into the well lit gutter.

[jdw]

On the question of whether a WWF/WWE woman ever juiced, I want to say that they did at least once. Lita? Trish? It just sticks in the back of my mind, and that there were some who were turned off by it, while others pointed to it happening in joshi.

 

John

[tomk]

I want to say Chyna took a bump into a "laundry basket of broken glass" or some such thing. I think blood packets.

 

There was a Roxxi v Awesome Kong hardcore match in TNA where I assume the blood was result of bladeing.

[jdw]

I want to say Chyna took a bump into a "laundry basket of broken glass" or some such thing. I think blood packets.

 

There was a Roxxi v Awesome Kong hardcore match in TNA where I assume the blood was result of bladeing.

The one I'm thinking of wasn't Chyna, since no one would have cared online. I just have in the back of my head the picture of Trish bleeding onto that white baseball "sleves" style shirt she would wear. Terri was nutty and doped up enough to juice back then. And I have an image in my head of Lita's hair wet with juice working sympathetic babyface.

 

I could be completely wrong.

 

 

John