Fan Companion

Comparative (f)Analysis #3

2012-01-28T09:18:00.000-08:00

Or, Building a Better Comics Page

It's no secret that American newspapers are an endangered species. Perhaps part of the reasons is the comics section, which may no longer appeal to young readers. In an effort to update this section, I present a collection of nine strips created in (more or less) the past twenty years (rather than many of the legacy strips that arguably appeal more directly to older readers) capable of challenging the impression that comic strips can't compete with cartoons and other interactive media.

Pearls Before Swine
by Stephan Pastis
Launched in 2001, this is my current favorite, featuring Rat, Pig, Zebra, Goat, and Larry the Crocodile, among other characters, each presenting a different worldview (some more traditionally comic strip-focused than others) and none of them ever at a loss for words.

Bewley
by Anthony Blades
Launched in 2001, this is a discovery I made at Go Comics that I'm pretty sure I'd never seen before. Would be a prime recipient of the increased exposure of a revamped comics section.

Big Nate
by Lincoln Peirce
Launched in 1991, this is one of the older strips in these suggestions, but has the added benefit of being fresh in the minds of young readers, thanks to the recent publishing efforts meant to capitalize on the Diary of a Wimpy Kid series. This one's always been better.

Nest Heads
by John Allen
Launched in 2003, this is a recent version of the traditional family comic strip.

Over the Hedge
by Michael Fry & T Lewis
Launched in 1995, this current strip was actually the basis for the 2006 film, which makes it odd that the strip didn't experience greater visibility following its release. No doubt most viewers assumed that the movie was just another random CGI cartoon created to cash in on the phenomenal Pixar success story. No, it's actually a comic strip!

Thatababy
by Paul Trap
Launched in 2010 (as far as I can tell!) and therefore the newest strip in this bunch, this one features a baby. Imagine that!

FoxTrot
by Bill Amend
Launched in 1988, this one's the oldest in the bunch, and it's already beloved, but for some reason its cultural impact has been minimal. Amend only does Sunday strips now, but still well worth including.

Dilbert
by Scott Adams
Launched in 1989, slightly younger than the previous entry, and better known, practically a cultural institution, but still hasn't succeeded in letting corporate culture known just how stupid it really is.

Red and Rover
by Brian Basset
Launched in 2000, this is my personal pick as the successor to Calvin & Hobbes (if you think Pearl Before Swine doesn't cover it because of Stephan Pastis's admitted lack of actual artistic talent), a comic strip that totally understands the nature of friendship, this time actually featuring a pet dog.

You could add Garfield, Zits, Mutt, Sally Forth, Sherman's Lagoon, Get Fuzzy, and maybe a few others to fill out the section, but these nine deserve a place where many of them have previously been ignored or overlooked, or otherwise haven't been recognized as the institutions they've become.

Comparative (f)Analysis #2

2011-12-27T12:01:00.001-08:00

The Sunday before Christmas featured the season finale of “Survivor: South Pacific,” the twenty-third edition of the pioneering network reality series. I would consider the season itself to be among the most memorable seasons, strictly for the incredible characters in Cochran, Brandon, and the returning Coach and Ozzy, each of whom had memorable games to play, though eventual winner Sophie is among the least deserving in the show’s history. But, let’s not just make that statement; let’s examine each of the winners, in my specially ranked order, starting at the bottom:

22. Sophie Clarke (“South Pacific,” fall 2011)
Sophie did virtually nothing to make it to the finals, relying on the inexplicable alliance that sprang up around Coach and working pretty much the same game as Albert, constantly scheming big ideas without actually executing any of them, all the while being the opposite socially, speaking more to the camera, but being borderline unpleasant. Without the immunity win, she wouldn’t have won, and for that reason, and for a typically bitter jury unable to give the best player (Coach) his due, I find it difficult to give her any credit.

21. Vecepia Towery (“Marquesas,” spring 2002)
The fourth season of “Survivor” is notable for producing Boston Rob, but was otherwise virtually an attempt to recreate the first season after the comparatively disastrous experiment of “Thailand,” and as such everyone knew the game extremely well, so that someone who wasn’t particularly memorable won for the first time. That would be Vecepia.

20. Natalie White (“Samoa,” fall 2009)
This is not to take anything away from Natalie, because she was probably the most likable contestant that season (and thank goodness!), but “Samoa” is thoroughly dominated by Russell, the most unlikable villain ever to appear on the show. It certainly doesn’t hurt that Natalie actually was likable, but anyone would have gotten more votes than Russell.

19. Danni Boatwright (“Guatemala,” fall 2005)
Danni is one of my sister’s favorite winners, but I still have to be a little bitter that Stephanie didn’t win, because although my sister conversely never liked her, Stephanie was a favorite since before Ulong self-destructed in “Palau.” Danni’s win has got to be considered an upset, no matter what she brought to the game herself (and I personally don’t really remember what that was, other than being the first person to realize that Gary used to play pro football).

18. Jud “Fabio” Birza (“Nicaragua,” fall 2010)
I think Fabio was a rare instance of a season actually producing just a competitive winner, which is good for Fabio and his season, but wasn’t hugely compelling (though compelling, as with Sophie, Natalie, and Danni above, isn’t always a good thing).

17. Jenna Morasca (“Amazon,” spring 2003)
Aside from producing idiot “Survivor expert” Rob Cesternino (first coming of Cochran!), this is another season that was considerably refreshing, taking the game to a different level by proving the alliance strategy all over again in a completely new way, by showing that a bunch of chicks can do it just as well as anyone else. That’s Jenna’s real legacy (not the peanut butter).

16. Tina Wesson (“Australian Outback,” spring 2001)
Everyone knows that it’s Colby who helped get Tina to the finals, that alliance. The fact that Tina was in the alliance proves that she had game, but that Colby didn’t win is still one of the biggest goofs in “Survivor” history.

15. Ethan Zohn (“Africa,” fall 2001)
The third season seems to catch a lot of flack from fans, but I found it to be just as compelling as the previous two, especially with characters like Lex and Big Tom around. Ethan stands as the first competitive winner, which is definitely something to be proud of.

14. Todd Herzog (“China,” fall 2007)
I still don’t understand how the hell Amanda didn’t win. Yes, Todd was a master strategist, but the dude is one of the biggest rats in “Survivor” history, a textbook example of what Sue Hawk talked about in her famous tirade from the first season. Call it the Colby Curse?

13. James “J.T.” Thomas, Jr. (“Tocantins,” spring 2009)
Coach stole this season, too, but it was another competitive winner, J.T., who walked away with the million. J.T. was someone fans could really root for, too, something of a character and a strategist.

12. Sandra Diaz-Twine (“Pearl Islands,” fall 2003/“Heroes vs. Villains,” spring 2010)
It’s probably tempting to award her at least a spot in the top ten, but truth is, Sandra used the same strategy to win both times, holding back while other, stronger contestants self-destructed, the first time very notably Rupert and the second a season of egos that happened to include Russell and Parvati making her own bid to win a second time, very notably her second shot playing with “Survivor” all-stars.

11. Aras Basauskas (“Panama,” spring 2006)
Want to play a game? Who the fuck else remembers Aras, or this season in general? Inexplicably beloved Cirie originated from this season, and there was also Terry (another favorite of my sister’s), but it was Aras being awesome that won. (That’s how I remember it, anyway.)

10. Earl Cole (“Fiji,” spring 2007)
The first landslide victor, Earl’s another one who doesn’t receive a lot of respect, possibly because most fans wished Yau-Man would have reached the finals.

9. Yul Kwon (“Cook Islands,” fall 2006)
In a season that also featured Ozzy and Parvati, this was a deceptively awesome one that split viewers because everyone feared that the initial tribal divisions represented more than they actually did. Hey, would we have gotten Ozzy or Parvati otherwise, much less Yul, another consummate competitive winner?

8. Amber Brkich (“All-Stars,” spring 2004)
I would honestly rate her higher except it’d probably be accurate to admit that Boston Rob deserved to win slightly more than she did. But this is a rare instance of the top two both winning, for strategic as well as entirely personal reasons.

7. Parvati Shallow (“Micronesia,” spring 2008)
The Fans vs. Favorites season was the second time all-stars were deliberately featured, which makes Parvati’s win more impressive than her underdog win that most would probably compare either to Jenna’s in “Amazon” or Sandra’s in (take your pick), because she was dismissed as just another pretty face (and shameless flirt). Girl had game.

6. Chris Daugherty (“Vanuatu,” fall 2004)
Still the gold standard of mind-boggling upsets, considering he was the lone male standing against a wall of women who failed to back up their bite.

5. “Boston” Rob Mariano (“Redemption Island,” spring 2011)
A mastermind who finally got to officially call himself sole survivor, Boston Rob completely understood who to take to the finals (possibly crazy Phillip, for instance), in the first season smart and stupid enough to eject Russell early.

4. Bob Crowley (“Gabon,” fall 2008)
By far one of the smartest players to ever play the game, Bob rarely gets respect from fans, even though his closest competitor (Randy) only managed to outsmart himself.

3. Brian Heidik (“Thailand,” fall 2002)
Few fans seem to want to give Brian credit, focusing on external elements of his character rather than acknowledging that he’s one of the few winners anyone could have seen coming a mile away.

2. Richard Hatch (“Borneo,” summer 2000)
The first winner really helped set a template, at least for the scores of later contestants who heavily relied on alliances, sometimes absolutely to their detriment, and I think far too many of them have never once stopped to consider that. Richard was less devious than his reputation suggests, which really stems from the first bitter jury, rather than how he actually played, more cocky than arrogant (he crossed that line in “All-Stars,” though, and it showed). He simply took advantage of the fact that few contestants, then or now, come to the game with working strategies.

1. Tom Westman (“Palau,” spring 2005)
My sister and I agree that it’s ridiculous how little respect Tom gets from fans, considering that he’s near-inarguably the greatest player ever in “Survivor” (at least in that one season), and that has nothing to do with Ulong’s implosion or Koror’s dominance, but that Tom could do everything, whether it was catching a shark, lasting eleven hours in an endurance challenge, or forming an incredibly intricate alliance with players as seemingly diametrically opposed as Katie and Ian (who was uncomfortably smack in between the maturity of them), which made his path to victory more harrowing than it really needed to be. A lot of fans seem to base their opinions on how relatable a contestant is (which is why someone like Cirie, prepackaged for the couch crowd, can come off as a fan favorite when she’s next to useless and a worse strategist than Rupert but still somehow more popular than Tom), but that’s what I love about “Survivor,” that it literally is a social experiment, both for those who compete and those who watch from home (and how many people have unsuccessfully made that transition now?), how you react to and perceive others, whether in relation to yourself or to a group of other individuals also struggling to make those distinctions. Tom had vocal detractors on his own tribe, even though he clearly didn’t do anything to overtly draw anyone’s ire, other than be himself and therefore be considered a personal threat. Plenty of contestants have been voted out first opportunity for that very reason, but Tom was able to play the Colby game successfully, be charismatic and competitive and strategic, and that alone should make him a memorable winner at the very least.

Where would “Survivor” be without Jeff Probst? In a very real sense, he was the show’s first winner, somehow holding everything together from the very start and finding himself in a position where he not only agreed to repeat his experience over and over again, but possibly becoming the game’s biggest fan. I’m constantly amazed that anyone could consider any other reality show host Jeff’s superior. But he’s also humble, so there’s that.

And with that, it’s time for me to go.

Comparative (f)Analysis #1

2011-12-16T12:38:00.001-08:00

“TV Guide Fall Previews 1997-2003”

What follows will be an analysis of TV Guide’s predictions for seven seasons of network television. Each year will feature listings for show the magazine chose as highlights and another that were either personal favorites or successes that TV Guide failed to predict. There will be a tally at the end of each year concerning the overall success rate of the magazine’s selections. Successes are defined by shows that lasted more than two seasons. Extended Experiments are shows that lasted only two seasons. Failures are considered selections that lasted a season or less. Successes that TV Guide did not select, however, can be defined as shows that lasted at least two seasons, since they had, by the magazine’s standards, more to prove.

I will state for the record that I still hate the fact that TV Guide is no longer digest-sized. It’s been more than half a decade since the format change, and I have never gone back to being as avid a reader as I once was. That’s half the reason why I still have these Fall TV Preview issues and am still referencing them to this day, because it was an ideal format for the magazine. However, having made this survey, I have discovered some alarming trends I didn’t notice originally. I will save those comments until later. For now, the basic results:

1997

TV Guide Favorites

“Sleepwalkers”
Featured Naomi Watts, Bruce Greenwood; didn’t last half a season.

“Alright Already”
Lasted one season.

“The Wonderful World of Disney”
Lasted twelve seasons.

“Ally McBeal”
Lasted five seasons.

“George & Leo”
Featured Bob Newhart, Judd Hirsch; lasted one season.

“Michael Hayes”
Featured David Caruso; lasted one season

“Dharma & Greg”
Lasted five seasons.

“Working”
Featured Fred Savage; lasted two seasons.

“Veronica’s Closet”
Lasted three seasons.

“Nothing Sacred”
Featured Kevin Anderson; lasted one season.

“Cracker”
Featured Robert Pastorelli; lasted one season.

“The Gregory Hines Show”
Personal Favorite; lasted one season.

“Players”
Featured Costas Mandylor, Ice-T; lasted one season.

“The Visitor”
Featured John Corbett; lasted half a season.

Not Favorites

“Brooklyn South”
Lasted one season.

Season tally: 3 successes (“Ally McBeal,” “Dharma & Greg,” “Veronica’s Closet”) 1 long-running variety program (“Wonderful World of Disney”) 1 extended experiment (“Working”)

Accuracy: 3/14 (.214)

***

1998

TV Guide Favorites

“Fantasy Island”
Featured Malcolm McDowell; lasted half a season.

“That ’70s Show”
Lasted eight seasons.

“The King of Queens”
Lasted nine seasons.

“The Brian Benben Show”
Lasted a few episodes.

“Will & Grace”
Lasted eight seasons.

“Felicity”
Lasted four seasons.

“The Hughleys”
Lasted four seasons.

“Maggie Winters”
Featured Faith Ford; lasted one season.

“Seven Days”
Personal favorite; lasted three seasons.

“Charmed”
Lasted eight seasons.

“Jesse”
Featured Christina Applegate; lasted two seasons.

“Two of a Kind”
Featured the Olsen twins; lasted one season.

“Buddy Faro”
Featured Dennis Farina; lasted half a season.

“Brother’s Keeper”
Featured Justin Cooper; lasted one season.

Not Favorites

“Martial Law”
Lasted two seasons.

“The Secret Diary of Desmond Pfeifer”
Personal favorite; highly controversial; did not last long.

“Mercy Point”
Personal favorite; lasted less than half a season.

“Sports Night”
Lasted two seasons.

“Legacy”
Personal favorite; lasted one season.

Season tally: 7 successes (“That ’70s Show,” “The King of Queens,” “Will & Grace,” “Felicity,” “The Hughleys,” “Seven Days,” “Charmed”) 1 extended experiment (“Jesse”) 2 glaring omissions (“Sports Night,” “Martial Law”)

Accuracy: 7/14 (.500)

***

1999

TV Guide Favorites

“Freaks and Geeks”
Lasted one season.

“Malcolm in the Middle”
Lasted seven seasons.

“Law & Order: SVU”
Ongoing.

“Once and Again”
Featured Sela Ward, Billy Campbell; lasted three seasons.

“Angel”
Lasted five seasons.

“Roswell”
Lasted three seasons.

“The West Wing”
Lasted seven seasons.

“Action”
Star Illeana Dougas, Jay Mohr; lasted half a season.

“Now and Again”
Featured Eric Close, Dennis Haysbert; lasted one season.

“Harsh Realm”
Featured Terry O’Quinn, D.B. Sweeney; lasted half a season.

Not Favorites

“Third Watch”
Lasted six seasons.

“The Parkers”
Lasted five seasons.

“Family Law”
Lasted three seasons.

“Judging Amy”
Lasted six seasons.

“Smackdown”
Ongoing.

“Popular”
Featured Leslie Bibb, Christopher Gorham; lasted two seasons.

Season Tally: 6 successes (“Malcolm in the Middle,” “Law & Order: SVU,” “Once and Again,” “Angel,” “Roswell,” “The West Wing”) 6 glaring omissions (“Third Watch,” “The Parkers,” “Family Law,” “Judging Amy,” “Smackdown,” “Popular”)

Accuracy: 6/10 (.600)

***

2000

TV Guide Favorites

“Ed”
Personal favorite; lasted four seasons.

“Hype”
Lasted one season.

“Boston Public”
Lasted four seasons.

“Dark Angel”
Personal favorite; lasted two seasons.

“Bette”
Featured Bette Midler; lasted one season.

“Gilmore Girls”
Lasted seven seasons.

“The Fugitive”
Featured Tim Daly, Mykelti Williamson; lasted one season.

Not Favorites

“Yes, Dear”
Lasted six seasons.

“Girlfriends”
Lasted eight seasons.

“The Michael Richards Show”
Personal favorite; lasted half a season.

“Cursed” (“The Weber Show”)
Featured Steven Weber, Chris Elliot; lasted one season.

“CSI”
Ongoing.

Season Tally: 3 successes (“Ed,” “Boston Public,” “Gilmore Girls”) 1 extended experiment (“Dark Angel”) 3 glaring omissions (“Yes, Dear,” “Girlfriends,” “CSI”)

Accuracy: 3/7 (.429)

***

2001

TV Guide Favorites

“Alias”
Personal favorite; lasted five seasons.

“24”
Persona favorite; lasted eight seasons.

“Undeclared”
Lasted one season.

“Smallville”
Lasted ten seasons.

“Scrubs”
Personal favorite; lasted nine seasons.

“Star Trek: Enterprise”
Personal favorite; lasted four seasons.

“The Amazing Race”
Ongoing.

“The Bernie Mac Show”
Lasted five seasons.

“The Tick”
Personal favorite; featured Patrick Warburton, Nestor Carbonell; lasted half a season.

“The Ellen Show”
Lasted one season.

“Maybe It’s Me”
Featured Fred Willard; lasted one season.

Not Favorites

“Law & Order: Criminal Intent”
Lasted ten seasons.

“Crossing Jordan”
Lasted six seasons.

“One on One”
Lasted five seasons.

“Bob Patterson”
Personal favorite; featured Jason Alexander; lasted less than half a season.

“The Guardian”
Featured Simon Baker; lasted three seasons.

“According to Jim”
Lasted eight seasons.

“The Agency”
Featured Will Paton, Gil Bellows; lasted two seasons.

“Reba”
Lasted six seasons.

Season Tally: 7 successes (“Alias,” “24,” “Smallville,” “Scrubs,” “Star Trek: Enterprise,” “The Amazing Race,” “The Bernie Mac Show”) 7 glaring omissions (“Law & Order: Criminal Intent,” “Crossing Jordan,” “One on One,” “The Guardian,” “According to Jim,” “The Agency,” “Reba”)

Accuracy: 7/11 (.636)

***

2002

TV Guide Favorites

“Boomtown”
Personal favorite; lasted two seasons.

“CSI: Miami”
Ongoing.

“Life with Bonnie”
Featured Bonnie Hunt; lasted two seasons.

“Birds of Prey”
Lasted half a season.

“Fastlane”
Lasted one season.

“The Twilight Zone”
Personal favorite; lasted one season.

“Without a Trace”
Lasted seven seasons.

Not Favorites

“American Dreams”
Lasted three seasons.

“Everwood”
Lasted four seasons.

“Half and Half”
Lasted four seasons.

“Still Standing”
Lasted four seasons.

“8 Simple Rules for Dating My Teenage Daughter”
Featured Kaley Cuoco, John Ritter; lasted three seasons.

“Haunted”
Featured Matthew Fox; lasted half a season.

“Less than Perfect”
Featured Sara Rue, Andy Dick; lasted four seasons.

“John Doe”
Personal favorite; featured Dominic Purcell; lasted one season.

“Firefly”
Lasted half a season.

Season Tally: 2 successes (“CSI: Miami,” “Without a Trace”) 2 extended experiments (“Boomtown,” “Life with Bonnie”) 6 glaring omissions (“American Dreams,” “Everwood,” “Half and Half,” “Still Standing,” “8 Simple Rules,” “Less than Perfect”)

Accuracy: 2/7 (.286)

***

2003

TV Guide Favorites

“The Lyon’s Den”
Featured Rob Lowe, Kyle Chandler; lasted half a season.

“Arrested Development”
Lasted three seasons.

“Skin”
Featured Olivia Wilde, Kevin Anderson; lasted half a season.

“Las Vegas”
Lasted five seasons.

“Two and a Half Men”
Ongoing.

“Karen Sisco”
Featured Carla Gugino, Robert Forster; lasted half a season.

“A Minute with Stan Hooper”
Personal favorite; featured Norm McDonald, Fred Willard; lasted half a season.

“Jake 2.0”
Featured Christopher Gorham; lasted one season.

“Steve Harvey’s Big Time”
Lasted two seasons.

“Miss Match”
Featured Alicia Silverstone, Lake Bell; lasted one season.

“Joan of Arcadia”
Personal favorite; lasted two seasons.

“The Handler”
Featured Joe Pantoliano; lasted one season.

Not Favorites

“Cold Case”
Lasted seven seasons.

“Eve”
Lasted three seasons.

“NCIS”
Ongoing.

“All of Us”
Lasted four seasons.

“I’m with Her”
Personal favorite; featured Teri Polo; lasted one season.

“One Tree Hill”
Ongoing.

“Tru Calling”
Featured Eliza Dushku; lasted two seasons.

“Hope & Faith”
Featured Kelly Ripa, Faith Ford; lasted three seasons.

Season Tally: 3 successes (“Arrested Development,” “Las Vegas,” “Two and a Half Men”) 2 extended experiments (“Steve Harvey’s Big Time,” “Joan of Arcadia”) 7 glaring omissions (“Cold Case,” “Eve,” “NCIS,” “All of Us,” “One Tree Hill,” “Tru Calling,” “Hope & Faith”)

Accuracy: 3/12 (.250)

***

As a whole, success rate breaks down as follows:

2001 (.636)
1999 (.600)
1998 (.500)
2000 (.429)
2002 (.286)
2003 (.250)
1997 (.214)

2001, obviously, is the winner, with TV Guide accurately predicting hit TV shows more than half the time, something accomplished only one other time (1999), while 1998 reached exactly half that mark. These results are somewhat misleading, however, since in both 2001 and 1999, they missed as many shows as they guessed correctly, which is pretty horrible. 1998, then, becomes their most accurate year, when you consider their two omissions (“Martial Law” and “Sports Night”) still didn’t last very long, even though one of them was a critical darling that was missed for years after its cancellation and remains one of the most influential shows in TV history.

There are many instances where TV Guide’s tastes were indeed in-line with actual audiences, but more often than not, the magazine tended to let itself become misled by predilections that were not proven to be accurate, whether in praising shows that lasted for only a few episodes, or rejecting ones that became wildly popular (“CSI,” for instance). In addition, TV Guide presents an alarming impulse to reject programming that would become successful with African American audiences, rejecting nearly all of them, regardless of their actual appeal (“The Hughleys” is a rare exception, but is still atypical). It seems motivated as much by nostalgia as identifying innovative television, and just as often misguidedly rejects anything that may put a fresh twist on a familiar genre, or simply offers a stimulating cast.

It’s admittedly impossible to be a hundred percent accurate, and perhaps a greater analysis might take into account the complete season slate, shows I omitted that didn’t last and therefore might effect a different set of numbers. It’s also extremely difficult to be completely objective, even in hindsight, or to predict how audiences will react to the overall quality of the material (hence why I was as spare as possible). Still, it’s worth considering, especially since TV Guide is an admitted authority. One way it may improve its accuracy would be to place a bigger spotlight on those shows it has deemed to be ahead of the creative curve.

And return to the digest format.

Jabroni Companion #4

2011-12-08T14:44:00.000-08:00

The third major topic I’d like to breech is one that still very much concerns wrestling today. Variously known as a faction, a stable, a clique, I’m talking about a collection of wrestlers united for a single cause, and famous examples through the years have included the Four Horsemen, D-Generation X, Evolution, the Main Event Mafia, the Nexus, but today I will spend my time with the one version I still believe to this day dominates the idea in its most perfect form,

IV. New World Order

Spelling it all out like that is a tad less glamorous and familiar than simply saying, the nWo. I like to using the capitalization featured in the group’s logo, because it looks cooler, and is more representative of what it eventually came to symbolize, breaking all the rules, a rebellion that led directly into the Attitude Era, when wrestling vaulted back into the popular consciousness after the hot early years of Hulkamania died down, which only made it fair that Hulk Hogan was once again at the center of things.

Lots of people have tried to downplay Hogan’s role in wrestling’s resurgence during this time. Even though his heel turn galvanized fans as he himself hadn’t been able to do in years (and in reality, he’d only waited about five years for this moment to arrive), Hogan was seen as past his prime. Fans embraced Steve Austin as the new Hogan only two years after the formation of the nWo, and it took another five years for Hogan to be cool again (only that time, no one realized that the fans now wanted an unmitigated hero again).

Anyway, before I get completely ahead of myself, let’s back up a little. Wrestling is only really popular in the mainstream when it breaks free of its own constraints. A lot of great wrestlers toil for years under very little recognition because they can’t transcend expectations. Ric Flair is probably the prototype. There’s no doubt that he became one of the most successful, charismatic, and beloved wrestlers of several generations, but he excelled at all the things a wrestler was supposed to, rather than completely reinventing the rules. It’s exactly the opposite of what Hulk Hogan did during the very same years. On paper, Flair and Hogan are fairly similar wrestlers, believe it or not. Both of them know exactly the kind of match, exactly the kinds of things to do to involve the crowd, to get them excited or concerns based on the current chances of success. It doesn’t matter that Flair was usually the heel, and that Hogan was usually the face. Both knew what needed to be done, and they did it well, and very consistently. But while Flair would have been at home in any era (as he proved for years), Hogan was something new, which the AWA and WWE itself didn’t realize for years. He had to appear in a movie (ROCKY III) to appear larger than life, for his sheer size to be realized. From that moment on, he was accepted as the new standard for professional wrestling, and the entire industry had to realign itself to compensate.

It’s the same thing that happened with The Rock years later, though as it turned out, charisma is something that’s a lot harder to match than mere presence (just ask Chris Jericho, the wrestler who most benefited from this phenomenon, and who tried the hardest to live up to it), and why WWE had to completely revamp itself around Austin, a process that took years (from a period that actually predated the formation of the nWo, no less).

All of this is to say, true wrestling success, success that the mainstream readily accepts, is incredibly rare, and is probably routinely impossible. When WCW originally acquired Hogan in 1994, the company no doubt believed that it could buy that kind of success outright, even though Hogan hadn’t been relevant for about three years by that point. By dragging everyone to Hogan’s level, the novelty of Hogan himself had worn off. WCW wasn’t a place to develop talent comparable to him, and WWE, faced with lawsuit and scandal, had backed off of the oversize game. A spin-off of the NWA, one of the oldest promotions in wrestling, WCW was far more traditionalist than Hogan was used to, and most of what he had to play with there was already familiar, whether it was Flair (with whom, admittedly, he’d never really done much work, by his own design, when the “Nature Boy” had briefly competed in WWE a few years earlier) or Randy Savage, or…Well, there really weren’t too many options. Paul Whyte debuted as the Giant in 1995, but he was new to wrestling, and so didn’t know what kind of role he should play (think Matt Morgan). Vader might have been a perfect opponent, exactly the kind of foe Hogan would have enjoyed in WWE just a few years earlier, but that wasn’t the way WCW did business (though that’s exactly the kind of program Sting used to enjoy, for some reason, and Flair, too).

No, instead it was WWE who had the likes of Kevin Nash and Scott Hall, charismatic big men who didn’t have the same kind of opportunities Hogan had enjoyed for years, and so ended up looking somewhat average, even though they were pushed as some of the company’s biggest stars. “Average” was exactly what they’d been for years until they’d adopted, respectively, the Diesel and Razor Ramon personas, when they became bona fide stars. Ironically, the same thing that made their careers also inhibited them. “Big Daddy Cool” and the “Bad Guy” weren’t exactly immortal. The business, as I said, had adapted to Hulk Hogan, and not for the better.

So that’s what made the summer of 1996 so perfect, because WCW finally seemed to realize what it needed to reach the next level. It needed, not just Hogan, but Hall and Nash, and the only concept that was big enough for all three of them was the ultimate heel faction, the New World Order. I like to maintain to this day that Scott Hall got the bum deal of all bum deals in his career, since out of the three of them, he alone never became a world champion. Yet he was the only one who could have introduced the concept and been taken seriously. He had indefinable charisma, trapped in a vaguely foreign package that was just strange enough to be cool. Most wrestlers who aren’t outright Americans are relegated to jobbers for the biggest stars. Hall never became that. He also never became anything else.

Anyway, Hall set up the WCW debut (or rather, return of) Nash, so that Nash could finally just be himself and be taken seriously (I still can’t understand how the company had found it so easy to ignore his upside years earlier, when Shawn Michaels saw it so clearly from the other side of the pond), and in turn allow Hogan to become relevant again by completely inverting his appeal. He didn’t become a better wrestler, it’s true, but it’s almost as if allowing fans to hate him made everyone forget that he was using the same tactics, the same basic charisma, to prove the same point. Anyway, I’m getting ahead of myself again.

The formation of the New World Order completely transformed WCW. Beyond Ric Flair only one man truly symbolized the company as it had been before Hogan’s arrival, and that was Sting, and he’d never meant anything in relation to Hogan for two years, and now suddenly, someone seemed to realize that if there was anything that was the complete opposite of Hogan, who blatantly went after the approval of the crowd, it was Sting, who had once been built up as the next generation, and evolution of the Ric Flair archetype. It’s why he didn’t go by Steve Borden, and why he wore paint on his face. But that wasn’t enough in the world of Hulk Hogan. To be the opposite of Hogan, he had to truly be too cool for school, as it were (I swear, that terminology would have been relevant in 1996). Instead of continuing to wrestle, in fact, Sting abandoned the ring for more than a year. And became more popular.

Sure, he changed his look, became more mysterious, less predictable. But the main thing was, while nWo ran wild (as it were), Sting did anything but. He stayed back, looked on from the rafters. One of the most popular wrestlers of that period never even wrestled. While Hogan (in reverse) continued to appeal to the crowd by the same tactics (via different methods) as usual, Sting beckoned for their approval by doing nothing more than looking on in disapproval. He had, in essence, become one with them. He was, as the story went, disgusted, not only with Hogan and his gang, but with the company in general, which had failed to trust him (there’s an excellent War Games match from 1996 that illustrates this whole arc, and has been included in multiple WWE DVDs, which I will reference again later in the Jabroni Companion).

It’s exactly the opposite, too, of what would make Steve Austin so popular, because of all the things the nWo did, it flaunted authority more than it challenged it. A lot of people, though, started to care about WCW precisely because of the nWo, whether because of Sting or alongside him. From the early months of 1996 most of the group remained Hogan, Hall, and Nash, but slowly grew to include many other members, and it’s said that adding to this select group diluted it, but that wasn’t how it originally played. The greater its influence grew, the greater the menace of the nWo grew. It was unlike anything wrestling had seen before. The whole idea of Hall and Nash’s introduction as the Outsiders was that they secretly represented a war between WCW and WWE. It was, in the imagination of the fans, what the later WCW/ECW Invasion was supposed to look like, a whole new company not just challenging but dominating the status quo.

Sting abandoned his allies. Ric Flair was humiliated. The Giant swapped sides (several times). Randy Savage eventually decided, if you can’t beat them, join them. Lex Luger put up a valiant effort, and was actually the first wrestler to defeat Hogan for the strap during the war. But it simply wasn’t enough. 1997 was much like 1996, except nWo was now a way of life. At the end of the year, Sting finally staged his return, and his clash with Hogan at Starrcade was dubbed the match of the century. Austin never had anything like that. Still, the idea of the match was different from the reality of the match, and in reality, Sting was not exactly the Ultimate Warrior (you can do some research and discovery the irony of that statement for yourself). He had done everything he could do. WCW had done everything it could do. But the simple fact was, Sting meant more as an idea than he did as a wrestler at this point. He won the battle (twice), but couldn’t win the war. Wrestling craves, in the end, a lot more than a silent warrior. That’s why Hogan and the nWo were back to dominating before long.

It was okay, too, since there was another warrior on the horizon, by the name of Bill Goldberg. By the time Sting was preparing for his comeback, Goldberg was building a different kind of mystique, not by presence alone, but in the ring. He was a different kind of transcendent star, much as Hogan had been, much as Austin had now become in WWE. He was the rare star who could captivate an audience simply by his performance, not with a lot of fancy tricks, the way Ric Flair would, but by convincing dominance. He truly seemed unstoppable.

By the summer of 1998, two years after the formation of the New World Order, Goldberg was ready for his moment. Roddy Piper had tried already (no, really). Sting had tried. This time it was Goldberg’s chance. He did it on TV. That’s all he needed. The idea of Goldberg alone demanded it. He got the job done with very little fanfare, again, another opposite, the reverse of how Sting had accomplished it. Incredibly, Hogan and the nWo kept chugging along during Goldberg’s whole reign. Part of the reason was that “Diamond” Dallas Page had reached a point where he was a viable contender, a worthy adversary, in ways that Goldberg couldn’t be. DDP could do all the nonsense that Goldberg couldn’t, appear in mixed matches with celebrities. In fact, Goldberg’s biggest world title match during his reign wasn’t against an nWo opponent, but against DDP.

Of course, he didn’t lose the title to Page. Goldberg didn’t lose matches. Although Hogan was no longer a viable contender for “Da Man,” there remained one other foe in the nWo fold who was, Kevin Nash. This was the beginning of the end for Goldberg’s popularity, when he was forced into a position that didn’t suit his character, when he was forced to face the regular realities of other wrestlers (much as had felled Hogan years earlier), when he was forced to become just like everyone else. Make him seem less special and he becomes just another man. Nash defeats Goldberg, nWo takes over again. Goldberg is forced to compete just like anyone else, to prove himself again, and the bullies once again dominate.

The story of the nWo doesn’t get better than that. There are no more glorious chapters, at least in WCW. Jeff Jarrett eventually forms nWo 2000, a version that is only relevant for bringing Jarrett to the main event level for the first time (in hindsight, if not a highlight of the nWo legacy, still incredibly significant in wrestling lore). The group, if not outright disbanding, finally fades. Without a true challenge, whether the intangible threat of Sting, or the awesome power of Goldberg, this ultimate version of the heel means nothing. Still, the idea of the nWo remains. When Vince McMahon conjures the boogeyman (no, not that one) years later, it comes in the form of Hall, Nash, and Hogan. 2002 is not exactly 1996, but the idea of these big names coming at opponents all at the same time is much the same. The only problem is, there are too many targets. Austin and The Rock together are more than even Sting and Goldberg coming at you at the same time. They have charisma to spare. They’re more than just wrestlers. They transcend the ring exactly in the same way the nWo does. So what happens is, this war becomes more about Hogan than his band, more about the epic clash with The Rock, and that brings the nWo right back to where it started. Originally, it brought star power to WCW. Now, it brings star power back to Hogan, if only for a little while. He’s older now, less capable of fulfilling the routine demands of the crowd. (No wonder his presence now means virtually nothing to TNA. He couldn’t surprise the fans even if he wanted to.)

The New World Order, when you strip it down to its component parts, seems very familiar. A group of wrestlers united for a common cause. But it’s the intangible that makes the difference. Bigger than the sum of its parts, but still dependent on those parts, with the intrinsic need for something to work off of, and blessed three times with exactly that. It always gets the job done. It motivates the fans. That’s what it’s all about.

Jabroni Companion #30

2011-11-18T11:22:00.001-08:00

Splitting off into the diverse legacy of ECW now…

Subject 58: CM Punk

I suggested months ago that it’d be interesting to see where Punk had gotten to after his summer revival, and now he’s competing at Survivor Series for his latest WWE championship opportunity, having become a fixture of the main event scene.

Punk’s journey began with Ring of Honor, where he was an acknowledged attraction who was probably Samoa Joe’s biggest rival, but that feud didn’t lead directly into his first world title. For whatever reason, Joe dropped the title to Austin Aries, who held it for half a year, and only then did Punk capture the belt, holding it for a couple months during the summer of 2005 (before dropping it to James Gibson, otherwise known as Jamie Noble).

Punk resurfaced for WWE’s ECW in 2006, quickly emerging as a fan favorite for a brand that tried to combine veterans with emerging stars (almost a precursor to NXT in some respects). Many expected that Punk would become champion before long, but Rob Van Dam dropped the ECW title to Big Show, who eventually lost it to Bobby Lashley, and then the intended switch to Chris Benoit was interrupted by tragedy, and at Night of Champions in June of 2007, John Morrison defeated Punk to capture the vacant championship.

Throughout the summer, Punk and Morrison battled over the title. The fans who’d been eager for months to see Punk represent ECW as champion became restless and lost interest, even when Punk finally emerged victorious in September, setting off a long reign that included PPV defenses, including the improbable fan-selected challenger of The Miz at Cyber Sunday (which led to a three-way dance at that year’s Survivor Series along with Morrison, and was probably the reason Miz and Morrison became a tag team). When Chavo Guerrero beat Punk for the title early in 2008, it opened the door for him to win Money in the Bank at WrestleMania 24, switch to Raw, cash in the briefcase against Edge, and capture his first World championship.

Some observers were unhappy that Punk’s method for success was exactly the same as how Edge himself had done it in 2006 (and again in 2007) (though the pattern has since proven that everyone except RVD and likely Daniel Bryan will handle their guaranteed contract in this manner), stealing the victory and title from an incapacitated opponent. PPV title defenses against Batista and JBL followed, before a combination of Randy Orton and Chris Jericho ended the run at Unforgiven.

Punk again won Money in the Bank, at WrestleMania 25 in 2009, which led to PPV battles against Kane and Umaga, and then cashing in against Jeff Hardy (who had just captured the World title) at Extreme Rules following the main event. Their feud continued for months, with Hardy winning the title back at Night of Champions, and then Punk once more reclaiming it in a sensational TLC match to main event Summer Slam.

As champion on Smackdown, Punk didn’t necessarily have a storyline. He defeated Undertaker in worked controversial fashion at Breaking Point, but lost to him (and lost the title) in a Hell in a Cell match in the PPV of the same name. He began forming his Straight Edge Society, building on the cult of personality he’d developed in the feud against Hardy, and this led to a prominent match against Rey Mysterio at WrestleMania 26 in 2010, a protracted feud, and then another war, this time with Big Show, which spanned Summer Slam and Night of Champions.

The SES imploded in time, and Punk, after a successful tenure as color commentator on Raw, assumed leadership of the Nexus from Wade Barrett in the early weeks of 2011, initiating feuds with John Cena and Randy Orton, which led to a match with Orton at WrestleMania XXVII. It wasn’t until his WWE contract was expiring that Punk truly seemed to become inspired, however, bragging that he would defeat Cena at Money in the Bank (now a PPV), capture the WWE title (for the first time) and then gracefully disappear (as champion), angry that the politics of the company had so often kept him down (you could actually argue that throughout his career, whether in ROH, ECW, or WWE, he was never seen by the front desk as someone the fans would rally around).

As you may be aware, Punk did win at Money in the Bank, much to the surprise of WWE, which had counted on an Alberto Del Rio program against Cena in the closing months of the summer, and so all three were folded into a single program, until we’ve reached this point, where Punk and Del Rio will meet for the WWE title at Survivor Series. Win, lose or draw, CM Punk has now solidified himself as one of the top names in the company, and in the wrestling world as a whole, someone even TNA would take seriously (did you know, for instance, that he worked for them in their early days?), and will probably permanently reside in the main event scene.

Subject 59: Christian.

Emerging onto the world scene as Edge’s tag team partner in 1998, Christian was a key component of WWE programming through 2005, when he grew dissatisfied with his lack of career progress, and decided to make the jump to TNA, where he was almost immediately crowned a world champion, which led to his crowning and extended run as ECW champion upon his WWE return in 2009, and finally string of World title victories in 2011.

Edge had been primed to compete as WWE’s newest sensation upon his debut, but he almost immediately paired with Canadian friend Christian, who was booked as his brother, and together the two became one of the most prominent aspects of the company’s tag team boom in the Attitude Era, even though much of their early work was as members of Gangrel’s Brood or Undertaker’s Ministry of Darkness. It wasn’t until the Hardy Boys emerged in the fall of 1999 that Edge & Christian truly broke out, especially after the acquisition of the Dudley Boys in early 2000, which led to all three teams making history at WrestleMania 2000, and then over and over again as they established the TLC (tables, ladders and chairs) style that punctuated the new millennium.

By 2001, Edge once more transitioned into a solo career, which might have been a bad thing for Christian (traditionally, only one member of a successful tag team goes on to enjoy singles success), but he capitalized on these expectations by becoming a petulant heel, competing against Edge during the Alliance angle over the Intercontinental championship, and against “Diamond” Dallas Page for the European championship at WrestleMania X8 in 2002.

While his prominence as a competitor struggled to form, Christian began working on his persona, which was given a big push when Steve Austin began referring to him as a “creepy little bastard,” or CLB. He started referring to his fans as “Peeps,” and formed a working relationship with Chris Jericho. He was a key player in the revival of the Intercontinental championship in 2003, but his greatest moment came at WrestleMania XX, when his secret alliance with Trish Stratus at the end of an epic match against Jericho, which led to a feud that stretched throughout 2004, in which he gained a key ally in Travis Tomko.

Still, like Jericho WWE seemed to lose interest in Christian by 2005. Where Jericho chose to take a sabbatical, Christian made the jump to TNA, debuting at Genesis on 11/13/05, the same day fans learned of the death of Eddie Guerrero. Christian marked the occasion with an emphatic in-ring promo. He became a world champion for the first time at Against All Odds in 2006, defeating Jeff Jarrett, holding the title for four months before dropping it back to Jarrett at Slammiversary. He recaptured the title at Final Resolution in 2007, after the much-touted acquisition of Kurt Angle, and defeated his fellow WWE alum at Against All Odds. Tomko resurfaced as one of Christian’s allies during this time, though it wasn’t quite enough; Angle finally beat Christian in a five-man “King of the Mountain” match at that year’s Slammiversary, snapping a near-six-month reign. He remained a featured member of the TNA roster, until he made his WWE return in 2009.

Many fans expected Christian to be revealed as Jeff Hardy’s mysterious assailant (actually revealed to be Jeff’s brother, Matt), but he instead debuted as part of ECW’s roster. He competed in Money in the Bank at WrestleMania 25, and then defeated Jack Swagger to become ECW champion at Backlash. After a program that saw Tommy Dreamer finally hold the title for more than a few minutes, Christian regained the ECW belt at Night of Champions, and holding it until ECW folded in 2010, dropping it on the brand’s final show to Ezekiel Jackson.

In the closing months of 2010, Christian became one of Alberto Del Rio’s first WWE rivals, a position that led to a lucrative opportunity in 2011, after Del Rio had feuded with Edge, whose retirement left a power vacuum on Smackdown. Christian quickly took advantage, defeating Del Rio for the World title and entering into a feud with Randy Orton that continued for much of the year. Clearly, success in TNA was something Christian relished, but prominence in WWE was probably all the more sweet for “Captain Charisma.”

Subject 60: RVD

Rob Van Dam was the AJ Styles of the original ECW, but only ever achieved championship success with the TV title. He was the biggest winner in the 2001 Invasion angle in WWE, capturing an incredibly high profile as a member of the Alliance, where he became a rival to “Stone Cold” Steve Austin, encouraging fans to believe that he would become a regular member of the main event scene, something he flirted with for the next two years before settling into a more utilitarian role. Pro Wrestling Illustrated was so energized that the magazine made him their top star in the 2002 PWI 500 despite having failed to capture a world title, not just during their grading period, but in his professional career at any time to that point.

RVD won Money in the Bank at WrestleMania 22 in 2006, and famously called his shot for ECW One Night Stand three months later, in front of a hometown crowd, who heavily favored him over John Cena. He was considered both WWE and ECW champion at that point, since WWE had just decided to launch a full-time ECW brand. RVD lent instant credibility to the experiment. Unfortunately, this particular phase of the experiment ended fairly quickly, with Edge defeating RVD for the WWE title and Big Show capturing the ECW soon after RVW was caught driving under the influence.

Incredibly, he stuck around WWE for about another year, long enough to help represent the ECW Originals at WrestleMania 23 in 2007 and defeating Randy Orton at One Night Stand, and then going on an extended sabbatical.

He was one of several stars to show up for the dawn of the Hulk Hogan era in TNA at the start of 2010, and ended AJ Styles’ lengthy run as world champion at Sacrifice, holding onto the title through the Hardcore Justice PPV that saw another ECW revival, then being forced to relinquish it in October. It was a return that seemed out of nowhere, but fans were happy to discover that he’d hardly missed a beat. Though he seemed to have finally achieved all his goals in WWE and then just as quickly burn away his prospects, RVD came back as a fan favorite in TNA and a world champion, finally fulfilling his potential.

Subject 61: Team 3D.

One of the most prominent, if not the most dominant, tag teams of the modern era, Bubba Ray and Devon Dudley debuted as just another couple of members in the eccentric Dudley family in ECW. It wasn’t until they debuted in WWE and started putting everyone through tables that they put the whole world on notice.

Without the perfect rivals in Edge & Christian and the Hardy Boys, it’s still doubtful that the Dudleys would have gained that reputation. In matches that went well beyond expectations, they were able to showcase their unique style, one that transcended their ECW origins, where the hardcore style was commonplace, demonstrating their ability to work against diverse opponents. The 2002 brand extension split them apart for the first time, but by 2004 they were reunited and served as one of Eddie Guerrero’s toughest challenges as WWE champion, and even proving difficult for Undertaker to handle.

All that would have been well and good, but the Dudleys made the jump to TNA in 2005, competing at the same Genesis PPV where Christian announced his arrival, renaming themselves Team 3D and further adding to their impressive tag team championship tally. In 2010 their ride came to an end at Turning Point when they failed to defeat the Motor City Machine Guns, and Bubba transformed himself into Bully Ray, rejecting Devon and ultimately becoming a key member of the Immortal stable.

In an era where even prominent and highly successful tag team combinations are temporary and last only a few years at most, Team 3D was not only the exception, but a cornerstone of the division in three different promotions. It’s unlikely their likes will be seen again anytime soon.

Jabroni Companion #29

2011-11-12T11:41:00.001-08:00

The wrestler many consider the best of all-time doesn’t need much of an introduction except to say: Woooo!

LVII. Ric Flair

The “Nature Boy” has been a wrestling institution since the 1970s. He won his first world heavyweight title in 1981 with the NWA, and famously (pretty much) retired at WrestleMania 24 in 2008. He wasn’t the first “Nature Boy” (that would be Buddy Rogers, who was also the first WWE champion), but Ric Flair became known as the standard of excellence in the ring, and also for “stylin’ and profilin’,” on his own and with the Four Horsemen and Evolution, contemporaries and successors.

He happened to break his back early in his career, too, but that didn’t stop him.

As the legend goes, Flair was all set to assume a completely different legacy when he was encouraged to adopt his own, and by claiming the tag “Nature Boy,” his natural wrestling ability and personal outspoken charisma quickly shot him to the top, first in NWA and then in WCW, helping mark the transition for one of the sports’ most cherished traditions into one of the modern era’s defining promotions. During the 1980s, with the help of Dusty Rhodes, Harley Race, Sting, and others, he provided the counterargument to Vince McMahon and Hulk Hogan’s WWE, the idea of supersized bodies representing the popular idea of wrestling. He’s the only wrestler WWE ever brought in from a competitor and allowed them to keep their reputation and momentum, in the glorious period between 1991 and 1992. He returned in triumph to WCW and continued his championship dominance. In 1996, he took a backseat to the New World Order, perhaps the successor to the Four Horsemen, but persevered despite great internal opposition, returned to the spotlight, ate another helping of humble pie, watched the death of WCW unfold, and then be welcomed into the WWE fold on his own terms, even if he didn’t understand them at the time.

Ric Flair became a legend very quickly, not just another dependable star that would become the face of a promotion and lay claim to the main event scene, but someone who constantly worked with every emerging face, the wrestler who could always be turned to and be capable of providing compelling action. He amassed a record number of world championships and survived upheavals and changing demographics. He lived the good life (and continues to pay for it) and constantly struggled with an ego that would have been buried if it had come from any other time and from any other man. He is the pattern for the modern champion. Anyone who holds a title for longer than a few months at a time isn’t considered respectable. They’re considered phony, manufactured. It’s enough to be considered competitive, crafty, noteworthy, the three tenets of Ric Flair’s career, the signs that you’re willing to spread the wealth around.

Competitive is what Flair was all about. He knew the business of wrestling inside and out, knew how to manage himself in the ring, against the opponent, off the reaction of the crowd, and had developed predictable but spontaneous moments in every match. If he couldn’t win by superiority, he won by sheer force of will, or by cheating (the “dirtiest player in the game”). Most times by cheating, which is strange, because he made his name by being the most respected wrestler of his generation (a conundrum only Eddie Guerrero was able to duplicate).

Crafty, yes, because he wasn’t just competitive, he knew every way out, not just the cheap way, but the true heel’s craft. He could wrestle hour-long matches, sure, probably better than anyone, probably the last guy to make his reputation that way, outside of the PPV spotlight, but the art of wrestling isn’t just about holds, about maneuvers, but all the things in-between, and every way to influence the outcome of a match that doesn’t strictly involve the rulebook.

Noteworthy because he knew that promoters love the guys who can put themselves over; Ric Flair was among the great stick men. It’s not even that the fans necessarily care that much, if they really think about it, whether or not a guy can talk. Superstar Billy Graham and Dusty Rhodes had exactly the same abilities in that regard, but the “American Dream” built a career out of his gift of gab, while Graham was always dismissed as a muscle guy (as he has sometimes been considered recently, years ahead of his time). Graham was a lot more old-fashioned as a wrestler, though, while Rhodes had figured out the formula the 1970s were popularizing, the one Ric Flair mastered. By the 1980s, everyone had to talk in order to make an impact on nationwide TV; what we consider to be of vital importance today is actually less important, more of a necessity than anything, had already been played out by the end of the 1990s and the Attitude Era, when The Rock and Steve Austin took it to unapproachable heights. Where Vince McMahon now prefers realism, to compete with no-nonsense MMA, someone like Ric Flair would now seem like an anachronism. But at the times, Flair was the best in the business, having studied his predecessors, not just Buddy Rogers but the flamboyant Gorgeous George, and he knew it. “Woooo!” was just the icing on the cake.

“To be the man, you have to beat the man.” Flair might have seen the writing on the wall when he made his first trip to WWE. WWE itself knew how to handle him, but its biggest star, Hulk Hogan, didn’t. It was believed that the two biggest stars of the 1980s couldn’t provide the blockbuster feud of the 1990s, and so Flair spent most of his time in cards with Roddy Piper, Randy Savage, and Bret Hart, which probably worked extremely well for all involved, but still suggested that Flair was not considered to be at the same level of Hogan, when it came down to it. They would engage in a protracted rivalry in WCW, but when it really counted, when everyone had been expecting it, it never happened. Flair’s mastery of professional wrestling, in the end, only went so far. It wasn’t just that the years were starting to pile up, but from that moment onward, Ric Flair was no longer considered the unchallenged rightful heir to the main event.

By the end of WCW, he was probably only about sixty percent of what he had once been. His importance to wrestling, despite how he’d been treated in recent years, warranted a bigger percentage, but his confidence was shot. By the time he came back in 2001 as a thorn in the side of Vince McMahon, he needed every boost of confidence possible to believe that he could still perform where it really counted, in the ring. It wasn’t until Triple H formed Evolution that the old “Nature Boy” truly returned. He was a supporting player throughout the existence of the united stable, but by the end, he was seen as someone who could battle Triple H himself and appear competitive, even though he was now well past his prime. By the time he fought Shawn Michaels at WrestleMania 24, everyone knew the end had finally been reached. As he had depended on since the 1980s, Flair relied on the support of fans who had witnessed a remarkable legacy for decades to put on one last great match.

That’s the real story of Ric Flair, getting the fans behind you, despite every obstacle, despite your best and worst impulses, and keeping them there, not just for months or years but decades, so that they cheer for you in a match like that. Bruno Sammartino had a brilliant decade, and probably could have had another one, but he fell out of love with wrestling, gave up when things changed. Lou Thesz had six NWA world title runs between 1937 and 1966. Thesz is someone whose influence long outlasted him. Sammartino is on the verge of being forgotten. Ric Flair’s accomplishments will probably last as long as professional wrestling exists.

Jabroni Companion #28

2011-11-02T15:44:00.001-07:00

One of those truly nasty and subjective concepts for a wrestling fan would definitely be:

LVI. Wrestlers with potential

Everyone has an opinion, and every wrestler has potential, so I’ll need to illustrate this one very carefully, with a selection of eight candidates.

D’Angelo Dinero begins this group. Currently a member of the TNA roster who had a significantly more important 2010 than 2011, he’s a poster child for potential. Originally competing under the name Elijah Burke, he rose to prominence in WWE under its ECW brand, though his first appearances were on Smackdown as an associate of Sylvester Terkay. Terkay was supposed to be the hot prospect, but he disappeared quickly, and Burke’s own journey got underway. He was more than competent in the ring, but what got him noticed was his showmanship. For whatever reason, WWE chose not to retain him, and he resurfaced in TNA as the “Pope” and was quickly identified as a rising star, frequently competing in tournaments to determine the top contender for the world title. His big chance came at Lockdown in April of 2010, in which he failed to defeat AJ Styles. For many fans, it’s the ability to be dynamic and creative as a personality that sets a wrestler apart, and Dinero quickly proved he was able to do that. Ironically, if anything it was his wrestling style that got in his way in TNA, whereas as a complete package he would probably now have succeeded better in WWE. If anyone is able to figure out how to use him, Dinero has the potential to be one of the top stars in professional wrestling. I had a chance to see him live in 2008 at a taping for Smackdown and ECW, and he was easily the most impressive performer that night. At least for me, that’s all I need to know about his potential.

Jack Swagger is a former world champion in WWE, but that seems like a lifetime ago at this point, and so he falls into the category of potential. Swagger was a hot commodity before WWE acquired him for its ECW brand in 2008, and quickly became champion there, a move that took many by surprise, but clearly potential is exactly what the company saw. He was still a surprise winner of Money in the Bank at WrestleMania 26, and his defeat of Chris Jericho a few weeks later to capture the world heavyweight champion introduced an entirely new face to the main event. Many observers like to comment on his lisp, but Swagger immediately proved that if given the chance he could present a notable presence as champion. His opponents during this time were all existing main event figures, including Randy Orton and Rey Mysterio, who eventually beat him for the title. While he could make a credible champion, Swagger wasn’t given an opportunity to present a particular presence as one. On losing the title he slipped below the status he’d had before the run, and didn’t resurface until Michael Cole needed someone to support his wrestling delusions prior to this year’s WrestleMania. Suddenly Swagger meant something again, a little more generic a heel than before, while he worked to improve his performance in the ring. Some claim he’s become a rip-off of Kurt Angle, but that’s like saying Chris Benoit was exactly like the Dynamite Kid. Given a chance to truly flourish, Swagger could fulfill the potential WWE saw in him, and the promise that his first world title suggested.

Dolph Ziggler began his career in WWE as a member of the Spirit Squad, and that’s probably why he had to be so obnoxious about his new Ziggler persona when he came back repackaged. When I first saw him in action, I thought he had immediate star power, the ability to present himself in the ring with exceptional flare. So far, WWE has been extremely cautious about how far it can push him; since his skills on a microphone have not always been obvious, he’s spent a great deal of time with Vickie Guerrero as his manager and voice, but recently has displayed the ability to represent himself with the same kind of confidence his wrestling suggests. It’s not hard to see that WWE has always seen a great deal of potential in him, and that it has slowly but steadily been grooming him for greater things. That pace may work in his favor, but it might also hinder his progress, as fans become comfortable with him in a supporting rather than main event role. Time will tell.

Alberto Del Rio is someone WWE obviously saw a huge amount of potential in, straight from his days in the Mexican scene, and pushed him accordingly, right from the start. He’s a WWE champion several times over, so it seems a little strange to still be talking about him in terms of potential, but what I mean to say is that his potential hasn’t been tapped. In the short-term, he has proved to be what WWE hoped he’d be, someone they could plug almost immediately into the main event scene. It’s the fans who will ultimately determine whether or not he’ll stay there. What I mean to say, then, is that I believe Del Rio really does have what it takes to win over the fans, that he will be able to stay in the main event scene for a long time to come.

Sheamus is another former heavyweight champion, and so again it seems a little strange to see him with the label of “potential.” His surprise win over John Cena for the WWE title at TLC in 2009 thrust him into the main event scene, and for the most part he’s been able to remain in it, even having return engagements with the title, but it’s hard to say that he has truly been welcomed onto the top of the card. He’s someone who to this point has made a credible insertion in a main event, but not a superstar WWE has felt comfortable working a real angle around, and that is how I’d define true success, the real fulfillment of potential. He’s probably closer than anyone else I’ve talked about so far, however.

Cody Rhodes has made a great deal of progress in 2011 establishing himself as a second-generation star in WWE, with the plastic mask seemingly transforming him from a generic heel to a psychotic and unpredictable fiend, the likes of which his one-time mentor Randy Orton needed a lot more gimmicks to attain in a relatively shorter period of time. For someone who had a lot of encouragement from WWE bookers for an extended period of time, whether on his own, as part of Legacy, or even directly afterward, Rhodes seemed to be going nowhere fast. He might have gone down as the slimmest Rhodes, but the one who completely spoiled any concept of potential. Well, now he’s making up for lost time.

Daniel Bryan is a true underdog. The “American Dragon” made his name in Ring of Honor under his given name, Bryan Danielson, and established himself as one of the best pure wrestlers in the world, but even then, rarely received the respect he was due, spending more than a year as ROH heavyweight champion but receiving far less hype than Samoa Joe in the process. As the most famous member of the original NXT line-up, he was paired with Chris Jericho and once again everyone expected the world from him, and even though he was constantly featured as the most accomplished competitor, when he didn’t win, fans once again felt ready to abandon him. Then the Nexus angle began, he was actually released after a questionable decision in the ring, and once again became a minor indy darling. Then he made his big WWE return at Summer Slam, and got a monster push for the next several months, but again, fans were still not pleased. Daniel Bryan is someone who has time and again overcome the concept of “potential,” and he’s proven it to both ROH and WWE, but the fans seem almost dead-set against him actually receiving it. Winner of Smackdown’s 2011 Money in the Bank contract , he may be approaching his definitive moment of truth, and the fans will finally have to decide if they decide to support him as wrestling’s next big technical superstar.

Whether you know him as ROH’s Nigel McGuinness or TNA’s Desmond Wolfe, the eighth member of my posse of potential is probably the biggest underdog. He’s another ROH champion who held the title for more than a year, while in TNA and after a huge 2009 debut where he took Kurt Angle to the limit, he quickly slipped back below the surface of the average fan’s notice, and is only now working on a comeback (where he could conceivably push ROH forward in the new Sinclair era). He’s got confidence on the microphone and tremendous ability in the ring, he just needs other to believe in his potential. That’s what it’s all about.

Jabroni Companion #27

2011-10-26T11:02:00.000-07:00

I hate to break it to The Miz and R-Truth, but they have a pretty recent example to prove that their latest bid for relevance may be more short-lived than they currently imagine. They may think “making a statement” by beating up other wrestlers will help their careers, but my next subject would probably beg to differ:

LV. The Nexus

Now, hopefully, I shouldn’t have to explain what exactly the Nexus was, but just in case, it was a direct product of the first season of WWE’s NXT program, which aims to short-cut introductions to developmental talent (sometimes the inclusion of someone like Daniel Bryan will leave fans scratching their heads).

Let me just make a digression about the NXT strategy. I think it’s a little bit of backwards thinking. NXT is basically exactly the opposite of what WWE typically does, and demands of its talent. It’s a program that provides potential new talent for the regular rosters of the Raw and Smackdown brands a chance to expose themselves to fans in a soft setting, not demanding too much of them except to simply showcase their current capabilities. In essence, it’s a professional version of Tough Enough (which only complicated things when Tough Enough itself returned). Maybe NXT was a result of WWE having a hard time introducing new stars the old way, but I’m not sure it’s been entirely successful, even with the Nexus angle that followed its inception (to its credit, WWE may have finally realized that).

Typically, you’ll see a new star in what’s supposed to be a finished or near-finished form, a wrestler who’s already supposed to know how to handle themselves on the grand stage, or will be able to quickly refine themselves (or gradually see their exposure and prospects diminished). What NXT did was expose wrestlers in their basic ingredients, in their developmental phases, whether they were really at that point or otherwise (Daniel Bryan). It is and was a curious experiment.

Anyway, from that first season of NXT came the angry band of the Nexus, which quickly focused on the central figure of Wade Barrett, winner of the first season and most capable of expressing himself in a WWE-caliber capacity. That was all well and good. The Nexus made a bold impact and spent months emphasizing their unique position as rookies who immediately wanted their piece of the pie, and chose John Cena as their biggest target. This was both a good and a bad thing, because they would either get what they wanted or be vanquished and consigned back to relative obscurity. Barrett had feuds with Cena and then-WWE champion Randy Orton, and it was interesting to watch because he came from a position of strength defined almost exclusively by the numbers game. On his own he might have excelled just as far, but he constantly had the Nexus around him to explain how and why he was in that spot. In fact, without the others, none of the Nexus really meant anything.

It was a unique way to introduce new stars, but it also stunted their growth considerably, and the longer it went on, the more it fed itself at the expense of itself. When Cena finally got the big win over Barrett, the question became, What comes next? Faced with failure, change was inevitable. Barrett departed with a small faction to Smackdown and transformed into the Corre. CM Punk laid claim to the remnants and basically repeated his strategy from the Straight Edge Society. As a movement in WWE, the Nexus came to a head at the 2011 Royal Rumble, in which both factions dominated for much of the 40-man elimination match. Once dispatched, however, that was the end of the group’s effectiveness, in any form.

Faced without individual identities, the members of the Nexus soon found that they were no longer stars, even Wade Barrett, who had been such a visible presence for months, challenging the top names on Raw and WWE in general. Now they would have to sink or swim on their own. Original members were released or forgotten, stuck in tag team wrestling, or asked to develop other potential stars. The Nexus, once it had been defeated, dissipated and lost all its power. Subsequent NXT graduates more often than not opted not to participate.

Barrett remains a viable presence, though he has to fight for himself much more often now, and finds it difficult to distinguish himself, now that he lacks a de facto position of influence. Maybe that’s exactly the way most stars end up once they join the WWE roster; they’re given a chance to shine, and either make it work in the first attempt, or are given others down the road, which they must fight all the harder to maintain.

The Nexus, then, would be an outsized version of the journey every superstar faces. Maybe that example is something other graduates of NXT are meant to exceed, to build on, to learn from. Maybe the best is yet to come.

Jabroni Companion #26

2011-10-20T21:14:00.001-07:00

I’m going to enjoy this next one, because he’s not a wrestler who’s gotten a ton of respect from the fans, not the ones who should have known better, not from fans in general, but he was definitely good at provoking a reaction. I’m talking about:

LIV. John Bradshaw Layfield

Colloquially (never thought you’d see that word in conjunction with professional wrestling, did you?) known as JBL, at least starting in 2004 (and better known previously simply as Bradshaw), the self-proclaimed “Wrestling God” first came to prominence (or tried to) as the psychotic cowboy Justin “Hawk” Bradshaw, transitioned into the New Blackjacks (rocking a mustache), and was absorbed into the Undertaker’s Ministry of Darkness with Ron Simmons as the Acolytes, which soon enough became known as the Acolytes Protection Agency (the APA), better known for holding down a poker table with cigars and beer than their ring work (though his “Clothesline from Hell” was quickly established as midcard legendary).

Anyway, John was a minor attraction (if that) for years, a WWE mainstay who started breaking out of the pack (tentatively) in 2003 as part of the Smackdown brand. When Brock Lesnar unexpectedly quit the company early in 2004, it opened up a crucial spot in the brand. Ron Simmons went quietly into retirement, Bradshaw started becoming a braggart, starting referring to himself as JBL, picked on champion Eddie Guerrero, and actually defeated him for the title two months later.

No one really took it seriously. Some people were amused by the fresh face in the main event, many were baffled, and it was assumed that the JBL experiment would end quickly. John himself would have been the first to admit that he wasn’t necessarily at the peak of his in-ring prowess, but as a talker, he was virtually untouchable (that’s no doubt what really won him the spot). I was in awe from the moment the transition was made. I was a big Guerrero fan (still am, obviously), would have loved to see him remain champion at least as long as the late Chris Benoit at the time, but JBL was gold.

It didn’t hurt that Eddie had a fallback feud with Kurt Angle that kept getting interwoven with the JBL era in its early months. Angle was resting up at the time, spending his on-air role as Smackdown’s general manager, and proudly supporting John as a “Great American.” John Cena was supposed to be the next big Smackdown star, and I was a big fan of his, too, but he seemed to do just fine with the United States championship, biding his time until the next WrestleMania (the first of the many times Cena left fans unimpressed, unjustifiably).

Anyway, JBL kept the title. Undertaker was returning to the “Deadman” gimmick, and was his next big opponent. Undertaker was no longer as comfortable, at least at that time, in that particular role, and so it was quite easy for me to continue to root for JBL. JBL kept winning, all throughout 2004. He kept winning in 2005, too, at least until the big WrestleMania match with John Cena. After one more match, he basically disappeared.

His in-ring career resurfaced in 2006 when he picked on Rey Mysterio. He served as a perfectly awesome color commentator (“when the lights are on bright”) for Smackdown. He spent some time away, resurfaced at the end of 2007, coinciding with the return of Chris Jericho, and began an improbable comeback. It didn’t last too long, really. But he was still a “Wrestling God.”

Honestly, the man who is also a financial analyst is probably the best thing to happen to wrestling in the past ten years, and hardly anyone will ever admit it. A lot of people dismissed the JBL character as a “Million Dollar Man” knockoff, but he was more politician (with many promos making that blatantly obvious, as well as the eventual addition of his Cabinet with “Chief of Staff” Orlando Jordan and “Co-Secretaries of Defense” the Basham Brothers), a prescient image in an era somewhat besotted with the image of the politician (admittedly somewhat dubious these days).

But really, his stick skills were beyond awesome. Lots of people can play cocky, but few can pull it off quite like John Bradshaw Layfield. He looks pretty much as clumsy as an ox in the ring (but can still pull off a mean power presence), but life without JBL is always a little more dull than it should be, especially when everyone knows JBL is still around, is still capable of being a blowhard. It’s a shame fans aren’t begging him to come back and be just that. He could teach plenty of students in that blessed art. Who wouldn’t want to see Layfield’s Disciples yapping away in the ring?

This message has been approved by JBL.

Jabroni Companion #25

2011-10-14T14:08:00.001-07:00

Our trio of themed pieces concludes with:

LIII. Specialty Matches

Wrestling fans of the modern era might be scratching their heads, because “specialty matches” has almost been replaced by “specialty PPVs,” in that both TNA and WWE have taken to crafting entire PPV events around certain types of specialty matches.

But for the record, “specialty matches” refers to cage matches, ladder matches, Texas bullrope matches, Hell in the Cell, Elimination Chamber, elimination matches, no disqualification matches, time-limit matches, ambulance matches, on and on, otherwise known as gimmick matches, any time a match is conducted under anything but ordinary rules, where pinfalls and submissions are not the only things to keep in mind.

In previous eras, these matches would be the big blow off for a hot feud, the way to say, “This is the only way these two wrestlers are going to stop trying to beat each other up.” As with everything else, over time that just wasn’t good enough. To retain the attention of a wide audience these matches became more and more common. ECW built its reputation over allowing an overall hardcore style to become the norm, which in turn led to hardcore divisions in both WCW and WWE. It might even be argued that the cruiserweight division, by any other name, is basically a gimmick division, in that competitors routinely wrestle a unique, freewheeling style, not just because they’re smaller and more agile, but because they’re capable of sustaining that style over many minutes, matches, and entire careers. You’d never ask Abyss to permanently compete in TNA’s X division, but to make a point, you can feature him in a program against wrestlers who regularly do.

Anyway, gimmick matches also serve to prove how tough a wrestler is, not just in death matches, which are clearly insane, but in general. Triple H had proven himself many times over by the start of 2000, but he gained a new legitimacy by going toe-to-toe with Mick Foley in a street fight and epic Hell in a Cell encounter in the first few months of the year. Without them, it’s doubtful “The Game” would be recognizable today. Foley himself earned immortality by taking a legendary bump a few years earlier.

It doesn’t always have to be something that involves some kind of foreign object or environment, either. Shawn Michaels and Bret Hart brought the idea of an hour-long match into modern times at WrestleMania XII, when previously it had been something guys like Ric Flair did at house shows on a nightly basis, just flat-out exhibiting the best of their technical abilities for a special occasion. Long matches are one thing, but this is something else entirely, especially when you’re given an opportunity to record multiple pinfalls or submissions (something that particularly set Michaels-Hart apart, since neither recorded one until overtime). Wrestlers like Triple H, The Rock, Kurt Angle, and Brock Lesnar later demonstrated that fans liked this specialty plenty much.

WWE developed the idea of TLC (tables, ladders, and chairs) thanks to the emerging popularity of tables in the early months of the new millennium, courtesy of the Dudley Boys, whose feud with Edge & Christian and Matt & Jeff Hardy culminated, or so everyone thought, at WrestleMania 2000, which was technically a ladder match. The three teams had such great chemistry, that they reprised that match, added more elements (officially), and TLC came about, and eventually reprised at WrestleMania X-7 the next year. WWE would bring back the TLC concept several times, before making it a PPV, with various elements from that configuration either used separately or all together. Ladder matches, popularized by Shawn Michaels and Razor Ramon (Scott Hall) at WrestleMania X, also gave birth to Money in the Bank and TNA’s King of the Mountain and Feast or Fired matches. Each threw several competitors into the mix for the chances of winning coveted contracts or even championships themselves. Money in the Bank, too, eventually became its own PPV.

Why bother with these matches at all? Cage matches in themselves became so routine in WWE that they rarely in themselves made it on to PPVs after a while, instead becoming almost a fixture on TV. Fans can become jaded of even the most extreme specialties (as the hardcore phenomenon proved), so it’s always a balance of providing the best and most interesting wrestling possible. A lot of fans can’t seem to be interested in even the most basic wrestling, it can sometimes seem, so there’s always some new specialty being hatched, some new gimmick, or even the tried-and-true being utilized in new and innovative ways, or used as they’ve always been. It’s part and parcel of the wrestling experience.

And here you thought wrestling was just about basic wrestling.

Jabroni Companion #24

2011-10-04T22:56:00.001-07:00

Continuing our series of targeted topics, we now reach one every wrestler dreams of, and every fan secretly frets about:

LII. Championships

In sports entertainment, the concept of a champion is an incredibly tricky affair. Once everyone figured out that wrestling was scripted, the idea of a champion became pretty complicated. The NWA seemed incredibly eager to announce that its champions were chosen by a committee representing each of its major territories. Vince McMahon seems perfectly happy for everyone to believe his are champions of convenience, either designed to showcase the top stars, or calculated to move along a given storyline.

World champions, which can sometimes be considered heavyweight champions (but perhaps less so in the modern era) have been a staple of wrestling for more than a century, from George Hackenschmidt in 1904 to John Bradshaw Layfield in 2004. Owing to the fact that it’s very hard to appease everyone all the time, it’s always been a little difficult to determine a single, undisputed champion, not just on the world championship level, but from across the thousands of competitors at any given time, divided as they are in style, gender, weight and height, countries and languages, even permutations (it’s not all the time a tag team champion is also world champion).

Not every company competes on a global scale, naturally, so not every company can even rightly declare a world champion. So many championships have developed over the years, it’s sometimes hard to keep track of just how and why one of them should really carry any significance. The rule of thumb, as Vince McMahon will tell you, is that a championship should be given to someone who will be able to do something with it. Sometimes that means that the championship will forge a champion, and then sometimes that the champion will help define that championship. At no time is it guaranteed that either one is actually the best in that particular field, only that at that particular moment, it makes sense for the two to come together.

One of the things that really makes championships special is that they will make the wrestlers who hold them immediately involved in important matches, provided that the title is indeed on the line (this is not always the case), though any win against a champion, or a good match against them, is seen as a positive indicator. Sometimes fans will cheerfully ignore this distinction, but that’s just what fans like to do.

How many championships are too many for one company to promote? It’s too many when there’s a champion who doesn’t somehow feel special for being a champion, even in the slightest of ways. It’s too many when one of them feels redundant, when there truly seems nothing to prove or gain from its existence. No matter what that championship’s actually called (because world champions in wrestling compete just as internationally as world champions in baseball), if the idea behind it can’t properly be represented, it’s either time for reinvention, or recycling. Sometimes a good championship comes back, but it has to lay dormant for a while.

Good championships mean almost as much to a company as the wrestlers who capture them. They come to symbolize those wrestlers, the enduring legacy feeding itself, as long as that legacy is maintained, nurtured, and remembered. A championship title alone will not make or break a company’s fortunes, but if used properly it will help legitimize that company.

Fans will agonize over championships, over who has them, who’s had them many times, who may have had them too many times, those who never had them, and those who didn’t have enough time with them. Fans care more about them than they realize, and for that reason, championships are an integral part of wrestling. For all the talk that some championships have been spoiled by misuse over the years, that’s just another way of saying, the fans are obsessed with this stuff.

Jabroni Companion #23

2011-09-30T11:16:00.000-07:00

The first of three straight weeks of specialty topics! There are so many topics to cover in professional wrestling, and I’ve only just now hit the midpoint of the Companion…So once again, less chit-chat, more discussing!

LI. Tag Teams

This is a pertinent topic these days in the sense that the particular art of tag team wrestling is probably at its lowest in decades. At the start of the millennium, there were three major promotions, and each of them had active tag team divisions, building off the momentum that still existed from the innovations of the last several decades. Eventually, thanks to the consolidation of both WCW and ECW into what became known as WWE, the wrestling scene shrank, by necessity, and the resulting landscape had less room for tag teams.

Basically, once WWE became the sole source of popular wrestling entertainment, the independent scene had to concentrate more than ever on its individual stars. Guys like Christopher Daniels and AJ Styles, who actually competed in a tag team for a brief moment in WCW, were more valuable for what they could do on their own than what they might represent in some combination. This wasn’t always the case. Families like the Briscoes (I’m talking Gerald and Jack, mind you) and the Funks, among many others, often found great success both as individuals and in combinations. Many stars even today have been known as tag team wrestlers first (and not, in typical WWE fashion these days, because they were eventually placed in that situation after having failed to capture interest on their own) and then as individual stars.

TNA’s emergence, as well as the rise of ROH, helped make it possible to broaden that landscape a little again, but aside from a few core teams putting on their own spectacles, it can’t exactly be said that there were actual tag team divisions being reborn. WWE maintained separate tag team titles for both the Raw and Smackdown brands throughout the early brand era, before realizing that it’d be easier to merge them, and as a result have even fewer active tag teams on either roster.

Like I said, it wasn’t always this way. I’m not a complete wrestling historian (though that would certainly be a fun occupation!), so my knowledge only goes so far. Aside from the outright family units I already mentioned, there were teams like the Blackjacks and the Wild Samoans. The 1980s were a particular boom period, especially as NWA/WCW was concerned. The Midnight Rockers and the Midnight Express were tag teams in the purest sense, consisting of wrestlers who were fully committed to that particular division. There were the Andersons, who became co-opted by Ric Flair’s Four Horsemen. AWA featured the Fabulous Freebirds. And then there were the Road Warriors, basically the tag team equivalent of Hulk Hogan and the Bigger! Better! mentality of Vince McMahon’s WWF. WWF, as it was then known, favored a combination of what everyone else was doing, which meant, if it couldn’t have the Road Warriors, developed Demolition instead. If it couldn’t have the Andersons, it’d have the Hart Foundation instead. If it couldn’t have the Midnight Rockers, it’d have, well, the Rockers instead. There were also the British Bulldogs, the eventual acquisition of the Road Warriors as the Legion of Doom, and any number of other combinations of wrestlers who didn’t have anything else to do at the time (I would start a list of these, but it would be too depressing).

WCW continued developing its tag team division during the 1990s, with Harlem Heat perhaps the most successful alumni of that effort, as business began to change. In ECW, there were the Eliminators (Perry Saturn’s alma mater), Public Enemy, and the whole clan of Dudleys, from whence Bubba Ray and Devon graduated. WWF had teams like the Headshrinkers (a new pair of Wild Samoans that eventually gave us Rikishi), Men on a Mission (which eventually gave us Big Daddy V, or whatever you want to call him these days), the Quebecers, the Smokin’ Gunns (which eventually gave us Billy Gunn), and more, until the Attitude Era really exploded the scene. (Gosh, have I really not mentioned the Bushwhackers yet?) Billy Gunn formed the New Age Outlaws with Jesse James. Bradshaw and Faarooq (I think I finally got his name right!) became the Acolytes for Undertaker’s Ministry of Darkness, which later became the APA (short for Acolyte Protection Agency). Edge and Christian went from potential rivals to tag team partners in a heartbeat. Matt and Jeff Hardy emerged, went through growing pains, became Team Extreme with Lita. Remember the Headbangers? There was a time when WWF was swamped with gangs (I don’t really want to get into that, but it’d be fun!!!), and WCW kind of joined in, not even to speak of the Nation of Domination, D-Generation X, the New World Order, those guys, even the new Hart Foundation.

Part of how you could tell that the wrestling boom was coming to an end with the turn of the millennium was that it became harder and harder to find new tag teams. The division began to solidify around certain teams, especially in WWF. It became difficult to care about what WCW and ECW were doing. The more the system fed directly into any of the three organizations dominating the scene, the harder it was to find teams who had already formed not only strong alliances, but presence in the ring together.

So the WWE brand era produced pretty much M-N-M (Joey Mercury, Johnny Nitro, and Melina), and then it all went downhill from there. Paul London and Brian Kendrick were probably the last time anyone seriously tried to have a dynamic, thrilling tag team in WWE, and the fans crapped all over them. Lance Cade and Trevor Murdock were probably the last time WWE tried to be traditional. Once the brand titles were merged, WWE tended more toward super groups rather than true tag teams. And then you end up with random people thrown together just to have tag teams and tag team champions.

This is not to say that I believe the state of tag team wrestling is really all that different than it ever was. You still have, basically, two teams of two wrestlers competing against each other, sometimes with a title at stake. Some people have opinions about the quality of those teams, and the matches that result, but at the end of the day, how different are these matches likely to be? There is a pattern to most tag team matches, in which the team that’s supposed to win has one member that suffers throughout the match, and the other member who helps win that match. The team that’s supposed to lose basically gets to dominate however they like, whether by just tagging in and out at their convenience, or with moves that require both partners to pull off. Even with given tag teams, most wrestling promotions will have the main events of their TV programs, on a regular basis, feature tag team contests with combinations of whatever hot programs they have going on. Sometimes this will even be the main event of a PPV.

There’s a certain nostalgia for the times when wrestlers dedicated to tag teams can sell that tag team, and the whole division, as its own attraction, but no company in wrestling history has ever attempted to build itself around the tag team scene as a whole. That to me is certainly telling. It would certainly be interesting if someone tried (Mexican wrestling actually tends to do this sort of thing, but Mexican wrestling has very poor publicity as a whole), and I would be among the first to take an active interest in that company, but the fact as it remains to be revealed to most people who complain about the state of tag team wrestling is, most people don’t really care enough about, understand, appreciate, pay attention to the art of tag team wrestling, no matter what they tell you. I would even argue that wrestlers themselves these days don’t seem overly concerned about this apparent trend. Wrestling is mostly about individual spotlights.

But darned if I wouldn’t like a greater spotlight on tag teams, no matter how, or where, it’s accomplished.

Jabroni Companion #22

2011-09-23T14:01:00.000-07:00

This one will be a peculiar mix of talent, I’m sure, so let’s just dig right in:

XLV. AJ Styles

This guy should be a living legend. Everyone from Michelle McCool to John Morrison has been accused of ripping him off; to have established a style and move-set that is that recognizable would be remarkable in any era, but certainly the modern one. Styles is at the very least the heir of Shawn Michaels, a superstar who has completely obliterated the line between light and heavyweight competitor. He just happens to be the most consistent and recognizable and acceptable face of TNA.

“Consistent” may not be a word you hear associated with Styles too often. He’s one of those wrestlers Pro Wrestling Illustrated constantly complains about, even after putting him atop the 2010 PWI 500, the first TNA star to accomplish that honor. But the truth is, AJ Styles has been consistent since at least 2002, when he first came to national prominence as one of the first pillars of TNA, having established undeniable indy credentials the likes of which friend and rival Christopher Daniels can still only dream about. Styles has had multiple runs as TNA champion, including an epic reign that spanned half a year between 2009 and 2010 that saw him perform just about every conceivable role for a company standard-bearer, which was all the more remarkable in that halfway through, he was expected to continue that reign during the dawn of the Hogan/Bischoff era. He’s the only wrestler on any talent roster who can be instantly plugged into any program and being taken seriously (except by stingy critics).

He’s everything Shawn Michaels was never able to become, actually. HBK achieved his dream, and then descended into a nightmare that eventually robbed years off his career, only to make a comeback that basically placed him in the “purgatory” Styles has enjoyed, while still amassing championships, no less. When all is said and done, AJ Styles will be known as one of the most significant superstars in the history of professional wrestling. He’s done more than Ric Flair and Sting, even, despite the lack of similar recognition and sustained acclaim. If TNA fans treat him like this, it’s no wonder no one expects he’d get any respect from WWE, because it’s everything he can do to defy his hometown critics! And to think he was going to retire in 2009. His best years are still ahead.

XLVI. Scott Steiner

No superstar ever suffered more from success than Scott Steiner. He finally reached the pinnacle of singles success in WCW, only for the company to implode around him. Probably the best-developed heel of that time, he was to become one of WWE’s prized acquisitions in the fall of 2002, but showed up on Raw in 2003 and suffered the backlash of the Triple H backlash (a true wrestling paradox!) instead. He spent the rest of that year in a program with Andrew “Test” Martin, another wrestler whose unfortunate brushings with fate forever mired his career, and then showed up again in TNA in a successful supporting role no one respected…

Yeah, so the one-time tag team partner of Rick Steiner (his actual brother!) was always known as a muscle-based wrestler, but used to be more fluid and agile before seriously pumping up (not to be morbid, but he’s also still alive!) and losing the respect of the fans. But this dude seriously had game! (No pun intended!)

All of which is to say that like AJ Styles, Scott Steiner’s legacy should hopefully age more gracefully than his career.

XLVII. Too Cool

“Grandmaster Sexay,” Brian Christopher Lawler! “Scotty 2 Hotty,” Scott Taylor! Together, they were among the most unlikely and unintended superstars in the history of the WWE! Granted, adding the still more unlikely dance sensation Rikishi to the mix probably helped a great deal, but Too Cool was itself one of the great tag teams of the last great tag team era.

Lawler probably ruined his career in the aftermath of the Benoit murder-suicide, becoming one of the worst emissaries of professional wrestling, but the Hip Hop Drop will still be legendary decades from now, surpassed in brilliance only by The Worm, a move that made Scotty 2 Hotty an icon well beyond the point where WWE seriously expected to see him on the payroll (scored him two WrestleMania appearances!). That’s all I’ve really got to say about Too Cool, that they’re infinitely worth remembering, even if in the grand scheme they didn’t pass the test of time as regular members of the wrestling community quite like the Hardys, Edge, and Christian (let alone JBL!). But who would deny them, if the circumstances presented themselves, a reunion tour?

XLVIII. Lex Luger

The juggernaut with the worst timing in wrestling, Lex Luger was supposed to be the Next Big Thing a couple of times, both in WCW and WWE, and maybe even in TNA, if things had turned out differently several times.

In WCW, he had to contend with Ric Flair and his own buddy, Sting, who probably replaced him as the new franchise player. In WWE, so the story goes, he leaked the results of WrestleMania 10, and lost his shot at the WWE title. Back in WCW, Sting once again overshadowed him as the New World Order’s greatest threat. And in the early days of TNA, he became embroiled in controversy with the death of Miss Elizabeth. The dude just could not catch a legitimate break.

So I’ll always cherish things like Summer Slam and Survivor Series 1993, when he really did seem like he was going to go all the way, or the fact that he was Nitro’s first big splash, or that he was the “Total Package” long before people refused to accept Chris Masters in a similar capacity. Maybe if WWE ended up putting together a DVD set of Luger’s greatest moments, history might better remember that he really did make an indelible contribution to professional wrestling.

XLIX. Brock Lesnar

Even before he jumped the WWE ship in 2004, the buzz had worn off of Brock Lesnar. He possessed all the talent to be a bigger star than anyone else in the history of wrestling, but you’d hardly know it. Within a few months of his departure, people were already quick to call his old stomping grounds, Smackdown, the unacknowledged red-headed stepdaughter of the WWE. If the company’s biggest star had just been competing exclusively for that brand, what was that supposed to mean, then?

Lesnar made the leap in 2002, and worked his way up the roster in rapid succession, winning the King of the Ring, and then stealing Summer Slam from Shawn Michaels’ comeback. Lesnar himself found the pattern that then emerged a little uncomfortable: repeated matches with the Big Show and Undertaker, plus the much-heralded contests with Kurt Angle, including the infamous WrestleMania XIX encounter with the botched shooting star press. Suffice to say, Brock Lesnar is the star who lost the most from the brand split. Matches against opponents like John Cena and Paul London (it really happened!) were extremely atypical. Brock himself could sometimes be difficult on that front. But the fact remains, there was never and has been since anyone quite like Brock Lesnar.

After quitting the ring for the gridiron (a bid that nearly succeeded), he took a few more matches, by necessity in Japan, at least one a return engagement with Angle, and then…MMA. I’d say that a masterpiece film like WARRIOR would never have been possible without Brock Lesnar, surely the most charismatic MMA fighter to emerge from UFC and its rivals. Should Brock ever compete in the squared circle, rather than the octagon, again, it’d be in an instant the biggest wrestling news in years. He’s still got time to make that kind of decision, too! Do his few years in WWE already constitute a lasting legacy? You bet.

L. Booker T

Almost the reverse Scott Steiner, Booker T is the tag team star who emerged as a frontliner in WCW’s final days, and just about managed to continue his momentum into WWE. With his brother Stevie Ray (who was actually the first of them to tease a ringside career) in Harlem Heat, Booker was a standout in WCW long before he worked his way through the singles ranks. As he himself reminded the fans, he started amassing a considerable amount of world championships, and headlined the Alliance once the Invasion took place in WWE. He sat on the backburner for years, and then gracefully seized the first available opportunity to reclaim his thrown (I mean, as a world champion).

Then he made the switch to TNA, and had some success there, and then came back to WWE, where he has since the start of 2011 been sitting ringside for Smackdown. Not too bad for someone who used to be accused (rightly) and using thinly-veiled versions of The Rock’s patented moves. But only Booker can pull off the Spinaroonie! He’s another star who would absolutely benefit from a DVD package, and he’s as likely as anyone to eventually get that honor from WWE. And then, Booker T would be on his way to immortality!

Jabroni Companion #21

2011-09-13T13:42:00.000-07:00

I’ve talked about WWE, WCW, TNA, even ROH, but I haven’t yet talked about…

XLIV. ECW

ECW, like WCW and TNA, began as an offshoot of the National Wrestling Alliance, and originally stood for Eastern Championship Wrestling. Some of its original stars were castoff superstars like Jimmy Snuka, Don Muraco, and Tito Santana, each of whom had at least one reign as heavyweight championship between 1992 and 1993, notably well beyond the primes of their careers. The Sandman straddled this period, too, but perhaps more notable was Shane Douglas capturing the title for the first time, which led to Sabu, which led to Terry Funk, which led back to Douglas, which led, officially, to Extreme Championship Wrestling in 1994.

ECW was the baby of Paul Heyman, who crafted his dream out of a bingo hall in Philadelphia, with a bunch of spare-parts wrestlers he managed to acquire over the years. To hear him explain it, he attained success the Moneyball way, by finding a way to utilizing wrestlers other organizations were underappreciating, mostly by carefully crafting matches to their strengths. Eventually, ECW became known, point-of-fact, as a hardcore haven a style that had developed organically, but was so unique, that alone helped capture the national spotlight.

Still, while all that hardcore mayhem was going on, Heyman really was sticking to his dream, and along the way helped pave the way for a more international style of wrestling to emerge, directly inspiring WCW’s cruiserweight division by bringing in stars like Dean Malenko, Eddie Guerrero, Rey Mysterio, and Chris Jericho. He salvaged the careers of Steve Austin and Mick Foley and helped transition them to WWE immortality. Hell, he even gave us the Dudley Boys (originally a whole Dudley dynasty!).

Still, for some reason, ECW became known for the chants of, well, “ECW! ECW!,” and stars like Sandman, Sabu, and Tommy Dreamer, so-called innovators of violence who bucked the standards of the mainstream, regularly giving Joey Styles the license to craft the catchphrase “Oh my god!” while performing the most insane moves imaginable, all the while shedding buckets of blood. This is what the legacy of the company became.

Early on, though, Heyman realized he needed help to keep his flimsy business model afloat, and turned to an unlikely partnership with WWE for a little added exposure. The original ECW invasion was last millennium, folks. The company did eventually get a national cable TV deal, but it was well beyond ECW’s peak. Eventually, Heyman realized you need real money in order to pay the talent, and by some coincidence, folded his little enterprise at around the same time WWE bought WCW in 2001. Then, of course, the Invasion happened, and not only did WCW wrestlers participate, but ECW competitors as well. It might be argued that Rob Van Dam’s popular career began that year (it perhaps cannot be stressed enough that in the original ECW, he was never a heavyweight champion).

In 2005, Vince McMahon held the ECW One Night Stand PPV, reuniting many of the company’s top stars, in what most people expected to be a one-off event. Little did most people realize that TNA had actually attempted much the same thing, not so long after the Invasion of WWE officially concluded, led by the indomitable and enigmatic Raven, who went on to become, as he had been in ECW, one of its early stars. In 2006, WWE tried it again, but this time had something a little bit more radical in mind. Just as WWE itself was now two brands, Raw and Smackdown, ECW was about to be resurrected as an additional internal promotion, led by RVD, other familiar stars, and a smattering of new faces meant to represent the next generation. The only one of those who stuck it out with WWE was CM Punk, an electric competitor who originally made a name for himself in ROH, where he had a hard time sharing the spotlight with Samoa Joe (hell, even Bryan Danielson couldn’t really do that).

From the beginning, this new ECW was derided as McMahon’s last chance to completely bury Heyman’s dream by subverting the “original hardcore intentions” and watering it down to a third-tier spotlight for aging veterans and newcomers no one cared about. It probably didn’t help that RVD quickly lost both the ECW and WWE heavyweight titles thanks to an incident with the law, and was replaced as the figurehead of the new ECW by WWE stalwart the Big Show. Kurt Angle had been intended to be a star of the brand, but had opted for retirement from the rigors of WWE travel for the light schedule of TNA, which his battered body could better handle. Chris Benoit, a year later, continued that unfortunate trend of truly respected wrestlers being unable to fulfill the ECW commitment a bit more spectacularly, and by that, I mean that he made news in all the wrong ways, nearly sinking the entire sport in the process. Of course, he was dead; what did he care?

Punk graduated to the front of the class, now that all the distractions were gone, but ended up sharing it with the emerging John Morrison, who had at that time been establishing his singles credentials with Jeff Hardy on Raw (it still boggles me that fans were so lukewarm about the Punk-Morrison feud, and that all three had a quasi-reunion on Smackdown a few years later, and still no one cared). The ECW detractors soon enough got what they thought they wanted, when Chavo Guerrero became champion, then Kane, then Matt Hardy, then Mark Henry, each symbols of WWE futility in their own way…Bobby Lashley had been champion in 2007, the “Real Deal” who was supposed to be WWE’s next big thing (if you’ll pardon the expression). People hated him as ECW champion, saw him as a distraction. The next emerging star to hold the intended honor was Jack Swagger in 2009. This was about the time when WWE really started to use ECW as a platform for new stars, including Kofi Kingston. Swagger had been something of an indy sensation, and his elevation into a champion was completely unexpected, but he soon earned the respect of those still paying attention.

When his term ended, ECW gave the wrestling world its final gift. Christian had been a mainstay within WWE until his defection to TNA in TNA, where he believed, rightly so as it turned out, that his talents would find greater respect. Before Kurt Angle went there, he was the first star to truly steal the spotlight from company founder Jeff Jarrett. Yet the siren call of WWE reached Christian’s ears again, and he found himself the newest member of the ECW roster, and soon enough its champion. In fact, aside from Tommy Dreamer having his last moment of ECW glory and Ezekiel Jackson, Christian might go down as this version of ECW’s last and greatest champion.

Anyway, the brand folded in early 2010, replaced by NXT and the returning Tough Enough reality competition, thanks to persistent fan apathy. TNA held another ECW invasion later that fall, which gave birth to EV2.0…by which point even ECW’s biggest fans decided enough was enough. A bald Sabu just isn’t the same Sabu.

ECW’s ultimate legacy? Controversy, innovative wrestling, some of the sport’s biggest stars…All in all, a pretty consistent message, from 1992 to 2010. Not too bad…

Jabroni Companion #20

2011-09-08T09:56:00.000-07:00

Now let’s talk about three relatively major wrestlers!

XLI. Chris Jericho

I’ve been a fan of Jericho since 1996, so it’s a little weird for me to list him among “relatively major wrestlers,” too. The thing is, I’m not sure he ever really reached his potential.

As we all know, he received his big break in WCW, where he was initially a part of the cruiserweight scene. The cruiserweight scene was a double-edged sword WWE eventually figured out, a division that both gave smaller competitors a guaranteed spotlight, both also locked them into fighting only certain wrestlers, a glass-ceiling situation that eventually greatly frustrated just about every wrestler who ever competed in it, especially in WCW. In WWE, even at that time (1996), Shawn Michaels, who would have been a cruiserweight competitor, was heavyweight champion. (Granted, Vince McMahon is widely known for favoring when he can, larger athletes.)

Jericho began breaking out of the pack by contradicting the stereotype and developing an outsized personality, which might actually have retarded his development as a wrestler. It might be argued that it was more the personality than the wrestler that WWE came to covet, and while it was often said that Jericho was like the second coming of HBK, he soon enough became known as the first coming of Y2J, and that was a harder thing to figure out than anyone first realized. He was a fantastic wrestler, sure, but one who very often relied on the same sequence of moves (think a weird mix of Bret Hart and John Morrison), who could string a good match along with anyone, but who often seemed to be going through the motions. In addition, his outsized personality naturally lent itself to a heel personality, even though his charisma was on par with The Rock’s (so think a petulant John Cena). All of this combined for an oddly unwieldy superstar, who took far longer to become a world champion than anyone expected (there was actually a tease in 2000, but it didn’t really happen until 2001, even though he’d joined WWE to tremendous fanfare and hype in 1999).

It might actually be said that Jericho was more interesting when he was frustrated than otherwise. In 2004, he engaged in one of his most interesting feuds well outside of world title contention when he, long-time ally Christian, and Trish Stratus ended up in one of the most heated love triangles in wrestling history, an angle that lasted for almost a whole year. In 2005, he helped develop the idea for the Money in the Bank ladder match, and helped launch the world championship career of John Cena, before taking the first of his long breaks from the business, to pursue his rock band Fozzy and other entertainment ambitions. Surprisingly, he decided to come back two years later thanks to a match between Cena and Shawn Michaels. Soon, he developed a persona that more closely matched his best possible style, a cocky heel who thought he was better than everyone. Not surprisingly, he became much more successful in this phase, not only engaging in a much more successful feud with Michaels, but capturing several world championships without anyone wondering what he was doing with them. I would actually argue that this two-year period probably helped salvage his career

Like the next man in this block, Chris Jericho has also begun making his name as a memoirist, having now released two books chronicling his wrestling career from a refreshingly candid perspective.

XLII. Mick Foley

Who else could I be talking about? Mrs. Foley’s baby boy has now written four memoirs, plus an assortment of other literary endeavors (including two novels!), an ambition that helped push wrestling into some of its most mainstream popularity at the start of the millennium. The actual wrestling he has participated in has been likened to Jim Ross’s famous phrase, “bowling shoe ugly,” or in other words generally lacking in finesse. One of the original hardcore icons, and at one time described as a “glorified stuntman” by Ric Flair, Mick Foley is also among the most versatile personalities (Cactus Jack, Mankind, Dude Love) to ever grace a wrestling ring, someone who can connect with the fans by squealing like a pig or going for cheap pop (right here, in Colorado Springs!). It might be argued that without him, The Rock would never have become the superstar he is today, both in wrestling and Hollywood.

The irony that some of his signature actions in (or more accurately around) the ring became less important than his increasingly beloved status must not be lost on Mick Foley. The man who was willing to do whatever bump necessary, who’s missing teeth as well as parts of ears because of it, and lives in untold amounts of pain, might never be completely respected as a wrestler (as TNA has discovered, having tried to push him almost exclusively in that regard, and coming up with failure), probably has a surefire legacy all the same.

I remember seeing Cactus Jack on WCW programming, but it was the entrance of Mankind into WWE where my memories truly begin. Mankind was, to put it bluntly, a freak, someone who pulled out his own hair, who was among the first opponents who gave the Undertaker a legitimate challenge (setting him up for Kane, and finally breaking completely free of the supernatural gimmick, even when he finally came back to it). He was such a unique presence, WWE managed to make a star of him, which had proven difficult elsewhere. In time, “Mankind” blended with “Mick Foley,” and we got the Rock ‘n’ Sock Connection (remember that Mr. Socko was originally an extension of Mankind’s Mandible Claw choking maneuver), and eventually just Mick Foley. There was also Dude Love, of course, which was actually Foley’s original idea for a wrestling gimmick, but who really wants to remember that?

XLIII. Kane

Glen Jacobs also portrayed evil dentist Isaac Yankem and the New Diesel, which covers WWE’s original, miscalculated attempts to employ him, but it wasn’t until he became Undertaker’s half-brother (via Paul Bearer!) that he was finally able, under completely ridiculous circumstances, to just be a monster, which was all he ever needed.

Go figure! But he was accepted as a member of the icon scene almost immediately, and rather than being inextricably tied to his “brother,” Kane blended into the rest of the roster pretty nicely, someone who could form a tag team seemingly with anyone (X-Pac, Rob Van Dam, Big Show), offer a challenge to any champion, and who didn’t need to have championship runs more than once almost every decade (a day in 1998, then nearly half a year in 2010, plus an ECW title run). It all sounds so loony, but it really works. Competing under a mask (to hide extensive “fire damage”) in his early years, Kane exposed his face in 2004, and eventually (other than a shaved head and contacts) looked exactly like Glen Jacobs (or Isaac Yankem!), and still easily maintained his monster status. Remember that he was originally mute? Try telling that to fans who marveled at his creepy tirades last year, when he was ranting about the mystery man who attacked his brother, “putting him in a vegetative state,” and then gleefully taking the credit for it, with that cool red lighting.

Still, the knock on Kane is that he hasn’t really evolved his wrestling style, while Undertaker’s been doing that for a decade. But you can’t argue with dependability and success, either. How will posterity remember him? It’ll be interesting when he finally gets to talk about his full career, if he ever breaks the fourth wall while he’s in the ring, or if he waits until the induction ceremony at the WWE Hall of Fame…

Jabroni Companion #19

2011-09-01T15:23:00.001-07:00

Gonna be running through four wrestlers this time around, so once again we’re just going to jump in. For the most part, these are all wrestlers who’ve earned a greater legacy than their actual legacy seems to indicate, in case you’re looking for a theme…

XXXVII. Ken Shamrock

Once known as the “World’s Most Dangerous Man,” it might actually be forgotten today that Ken Shamrock was the original MMA superstar and only successful transplant to the world of professional wrestling. In a lot of ways, he was very much the original Kurt Angle, too, even though he never did reach quite that far in the ring. I’ve been a champion of this guy since his WWE debut, was still hoping for one last great comeback (as a wrestler, since we all know by now that he can no longer compete at the elite level in the octagon).

That WWE debut was actually during the WrestleMania 13 Bret Hart-Steve Austin match, as a special guest referee, just one of many elements that helped make that one the unofficial main event, or at the very least showstopper (it’s ironic that “Hitman” achieved that distinction on the card Shawn Michaels famously vacated “because he lost his smile”) that evening. Soon after, Shamrock became a full-time competitor, and became known as a submission specialist, not in the sharpshooter or figure-four leg-lock way that wrestling had typically known to that point, but introducing the ankle lock into the popular repertoire (which also makes it ironic that Angle would try and take issue with Jack Swagger over using it, when he took it from Shamrock). He established a gritty style that was perfect for the budding Attitude Era, and a general ring presence that, well, helped make his name as the “World’s Most Dangerous Man”

At WrestleMania XIV, he battled The Rock for the Intercontinental championship, and would have won it if he’d released the ankle lock, and thus was established the reason he’d never go any further with WWE. He was not a vocal figure, but a very good competitor, who could be counted on to be colorful (take notes, Kofi Kingston), help the evening be interesting, do what needed to be done. All this, again, all the more remarkable, because he was basically the face of the early UFC era, the man who could legitimately fight and beat anyone. If this had been only a few years later, if Ken Shamrock had stepped into the ring with Angle or Chris Benoit, he would have been a WWE world champion, beyond a doubt. He would have regularly sat atop the card. Instead, he fought Steve Blackman (another unfortunate underachiever who could’ve done more only a few years later, but was instead relegated to the hardcore division), and ran a brief feud with Chris Jericho, and then vanished.

In 2002, he was the first TNA champion, for a brief period (do you remember that R-Truth held the title a few times, too?). He attempted an MMA comeback (hey, so remember Dan Severn? Tank Abbott?), and got embarrassed. I honestly don’t know why he never attempted a proper wrestling comeback, maybe he just wasn’t interested, or maybe wrestling itself, foolishly, wasn’t. But Ken Shamrock will remain one of my most notable wrestling figures.

XXXVIII. Jeff Jarrett

Maybe Jarrett doesn’t deserve to be lumped into the middle of a pack like this, but there’s little doubt that he never did break through the glass ceiling of fan appreciation, even after successfully helping to launch his own wrestling promotion, TNA. It’s true, he spent a couple of years trying to carry the company’s main event on his shoulders, with about as much luck as he’d had in WCW’s final days (remember NWO 2000?). In the end, the erstwhile “Double-J” might be considered the most successful Southern superstar of the modern era. I mean in the sense that he carried the most traditional aspects of “rasslin” into the 21st century.

No matter your first exposure to Jeff Jarrett, chances he’d already had a ton of experience before it. By his WWE debut in 1994, he was already a seasoned pro. He was a terrific stick man and a technical genius, who lacked the pizzazz of Ric Flair but none of his abilities; in fact, it might be argued that Jarrett did everything he could to be the next “Nature Boy,” without anyone ever mentioning it. His TNA title reigns are a lot more like Flair’s NWA days than Triple H’s were on Raw during the same period, but of course, the fans only saw a couple of heels keeping their respective world titles, and hated them for it, just as they would with JBL, seemingly completely oblivious to the fact that any act that draws emotion out of them is a success no matter what they think. That’s the name of the game. Jeff Jarrett was constantly accomplishing that, even if he had to help Chyna get an in-ring career to do it. The ribbon shirt was stupid, let’s face it, and he probably should never have sported long hair (why did no one ever tell Greg Valentine that?), but Jeff Jarrett was a legend before he’d technically done anything to earn the distinction. He made guitars a more acceptable element of matches than sledgehammers, even though neither one has anything to do with any conceivable aspect of wrestling competition.

Jarrett has gone through a lot in recent years, the proverbial rollercoaster, the least of which is earning the respect of Kurt Angle, and has ceded the TNA championship scene to others, all real power within the company, and is still going. Here’re the props you’ve earned, Jeff.

XL. Ahmed Johnson

This one went by a lot of names, but made his WWE mark as Johnson, the first African American to capture a singles championship, after a much-hyped debut matched in hyperbole and flameout only by Bobby Lashley a decade later. I’d like to go on record and state that I wish things had turned out a little better for this one. It’d probable that his body simply wasn’t prepared to handle the rigors of the ring for a sustained period, and that what happened was always bound to happen, but it might’ve be nice if he’d gotten a little farther a little sooner. Maybe it’s just been a long time since I’ve seen an Ahmed Johnson match.

Still. Maybe he was just the new Junkyard Dog, the guy who seemed like he could go anywhere, but ultimately couldn’t. Eventually he helped give Ron Simmons a WWE career, which in itself is a pretty okay legacy (if not that awful “gladiator helmet” Farooq first sported), helping spark the Nation of Domination (and thus the popular career of The Rock), working with the Legion of Doom. He briefly resurfaced in WCW as “Big T,” a replacement in Harlem Heat, with a ton of added weight, was gone as quickly as he’d appeared.

I wonder if Johnson won’t still end up in the WWE Hall of Fame, though, some day, if the company feels like it, if he might still care enough, if that won’t shed some light about his legacy, remind everyone of what might have been, what could have been, what he actually accomplished, in the end.

XLI. Sean Waltman

There was actually a time when it seemed Waltman was going to be a franchise player for WWE, back when he was an improbable sensation (remember his feud with Razor Ramon?), the beanstalk martial artist known as the 1-2-3 Kid (who nonetheless didn’t compete at a WrestleMania until he was known as X-Pac), the babiest of the babyfaces. Probably when Shawn Michaels realized a certain sense of maturity, someone realized they didn’t need Sean anymore. He jumped to WCW and became Syxx, one of the original additions to the New World Order, and began maturing, and then jumped just as abruptly back to WWE and joined D-X as X-Pac, who along with the New Age Outlaws actually made it okay to forget that HBK was ever a member (seriously!). Okay, so his main rivalry was with Shane McMahon, but Shane’s the only McMahon who ever belonged in the ring.

Then, of course, Sean’s career and life completely imploded. I guess he realized he had his own career, that absolutely none of it had made any sense. The truly sad part is that he never really recovered. Oh, he’s back with WWE in a backstage capacity, but Sean shouldn’t be a backstage talent. That’s clearly not what he was born for. Maybe he has an epic comeback in him, maybe he doesn’t. He’s another star due for a reappraisal, though, a little more respect.

Jabroni Companion #18

2011-08-25T15:00:00.000-07:00

We’re going to talk about two more wrestling luminaries this time. Let’s jump in!

XXXV. Jerry Lawler

Briefly discussed last time, wrestling’s most enduring “King” had been a notable presence for decades, whether as a wrestler or ringside commentator. Best known in his home territory in Memphis, TN, Lawler had worked with WWE since 1993, longevity that very few others in the company can match.

I first remember him from an intense rivalry with Bret Hart (probably Hart’s finest overall rivalry from that period), culminating in a Sharpshooter the “Hitman” positively refused to let go, one of the first truly notable wrestling acts of my experience. Lawler quickly retreated behind the mic, where he would frequently and bitterly deny allegations that he was the “Burger King,” but it wasn’t until he was paired with Jim Ross that he really rose to prominence in WWE. His boisterous appreciation of the female form became Lawler’s hallmark (and at least one real relationship he found as hard to hide as his connection to “Grandmaster Sexay,” Brian Christopher, who was after all his son). What’s remarkable is that he actually maintained his double life. In WWE, Lawler would watch the gigantic Mabel in the ring, but in Memphis, Lawler promoted him as a star attraction. He rarely competed for WWE, but maintained an active presence in his own arena. Incredibly, it seemed he would never actually compete at a WrestleMania, until this year’s, during a heated feud with fellow ringside personality and decided non-wrestler Michael Cole.

There were feuds with Doink the Clown (which included perhaps the last time midget wrestlers were properly integrated into WWE, quite memorably, at the 1994 Survivor Series, which you need to see to believe), Andy Kaufman (revisited in the 1999 movie MAN ON THE MOON, for which Lawler agreed to personally recreate the famous Letterman appearance where coffee was generously exchanged), world championships with AWA, the crown, the tights with just the one strap, times when he really did feel like a relic when he made that sporadic wrestling appearance, when he called to drop the boom on, say, Brian Kendrick (who had funny things to say about it afterward), times spent away from WWE employment (never for very long), unquestionably the most regular presence on Raw, both before and after the dawn of the brand era…I can’t pretend to be an authority on Jerry “The King” Lawler, but to be a professed fan, who loves the fact that he’s an accomplished cartoonist on top of everything else!

XXXVI. Bret Hart

If only for that 1993 feud with Jerry Lawler that effectively culminated at Summer Slam (though it was supposed to continue into Survivor Series, until Lawler experienced one of his separations with WWE, and was replaced by Shawn Michaels for a Family Feud match meant to springboard a feud with his brother Owen), Bret Hart remains inextricably linked to Lawler in my estimation of the history of professional wrestling. I know, seems a little silly, but in many ways, the two are more similar than you might at first think. Both are hardcore relics of a bygone era, an earlier time when wrestling was more like Bruno Sammartino remembers it, focused on the art of wrestling itself, and the territorial mentality that no longer exists. Whereas Lawler successfully adapted to the modern age, I’d wager the “Hitman,” in many ways, never did, and it’s all thanks to the same family legacy that helped launch his career in the first place.

The Harts are still beyond a doubt the most famous wrestlers to ever emerge from Canada, the slightly more resilient version of the Von Erich clan that dominated Texas in the 1980s. As you may be aware, the Von Erichs tragically imploded, with one suicide after another. True, on the surface, that’s not what happened to the Harts, but like Jack Kennedy before them, both the Harts and the Von Erichs were dominated by a patriarch bent on achieving greater success through his offspring than he ever achieved (a shame that none of them was aware of the Guerrero clan south of the border, but then, the business still managed to kill Eddie). Bret’s older brothers survived and retired from unremarkable careers, but Stu’s shining pupil was fortunate to emerge during WWE’s formative days, rising to prominence as a member of the Hart Foundation before striking out on his own.

By 1992, steroids finally became a scandal for the company, even though it had blatantly driven the original Hulkamania machine, and Vince McMahan frantically sought a different kind of champion. After a brief transition period with Randy Savage and Ric Flair holding the heavyweight belt, the “Excellence of Execution” was finally, somewhat improbably, given his chance, a sort of latter-day Bob Backland, which was all the more appropriate because in later years Backland would actually return to feud with Hart. After setting off on a furious pace of title defenses against every conceivable challenger (including Shawn Michaels at the 1992 Survivor Series, four years before HBK would finally be given his turn, and five before the far more infamous SS encounter), “Hitman” was felled by Yokozuna, a Samoan monster posing as an unstoppable Japanese machine, and fell well off the championship scene for a year, only to collide with Yokozuna and his presumed successor, Lex Luger, in 1994. By this point, Bret and younger brother Owen had developed an intense chemistry in the ring, and together they put on the most notable championship clash of this particular reign at Summer Slam, before “Diesel” (Kevin Nash) claimed the championship for a year.

I wouldn’t blame Hart for getting a little spun around in this whirlwind, but it never seemed to occur to him that he might take his efforts in the ring a little more seriously. He sincerely enjoyed what he was doing, no matter the opponent. He found chemistry with Hakushi (who lost a great deal in the recent natural disasters that struck Japan) in 1995, but that feud went nowhere very fast. He’d rose to WWE prominence in 1992 by putting on a spectacular match with Davey Boy Smith, the “British Bulldog,” at Summer Slam, but rarely seemed interested in developing a reputation for putting on truly great matches, instead focusing on his technique, a few spotlight matches here and there, a few worthy opponents, but rarely when it really counted. It’s a pattern that would ultimately doom his career. I don’t mean to suggest that Bret Hart is not one of the truly notable wrestlers in the history of the sport, but he spoiled his chance to be one of the greats, or “The best there is, the best there was, and the best there ever will be,” as he liked to put it, by steadfastly believing in technique alone. No wonder, too, since Stu’s infamous training “dungeon” featured hours meditating on specific holds. I don’t know how a showman like Owen Hart emerged from that kind of environment, and neither did Owen, who will have his own feature later, so I won’t dwell too much on his now.

Suffice it to say, but I would have done Bret’s career differently. I would have allowed Owen to beat him, if only momentarily, for the title in 1994. Even if Owen didn’t take his career seriously, it would have allowed fans to, and would have given Bret a more genial profile. Instead, the 1997 Bret who acted like a spoiled brat well before the Montreal Screwjob, convinced both in character and privately that he was an untouchable Canadian institution, ended up happening. Even the feud he had with Steve Austin in 1996 and 1997 could have been taken more seriously. WWE will have you believe that Austin’s push was delayed because the company mistakenly believed he’d work better as a heel than as a heelish face, but if anyone could have seen past that, it should have been Bret Hart, if he understood wrestling as well as he thought he did. Unless he was always looking after his own interests, as he bitterly claimed was the case with Shawn Michaels.

I really don’t mean to open old wounds, but the fact is, Bret Hart remains a fascinating subject. He knew he would be miserable in WCW, and while I certainly can understand and identify with that kind of clairvoyance, it’s not as if he tried all that hard. There were plenty of opportunities, if only he’d tried a little. The onscreen attitude he’d used in WWE didn’t serve him so well in WCW, but either he never understood that, or was legitimately given a chance for something else (maybe it just seemed too authentic by that point). If Hulk Hogan refused to work with him, he had plenty of other options, Sting and “Diamond” Dallas Page being two he half-heartedly embraced (Ric Flair had been unimpressed in 1992, and probably uninterested in 1998). There was the concussion he received from Goldberg, which he blamed for the end of his career, but then, shouldn’t a veteran like Bret Hart have been prepared to handle someone as apparently unpolished as Goldberg by that point? He’d let his apathy literally endanger not just his career, but his life. He was a world champion a few times, in the end, with WCW, but he admits even now that he simply didn’t care. He had plenty of reasons by that point, but perhaps many of them he’d created for himself. I don’t want to revise history, either, but an Owen Hart who had more support from his own brother might not have been hanging around rafters in 1999. I realize that Bret must have had that exact thought a thousand times in just 1999 alone, but still. It was something he barely considered in 1994, let alone the last months of 1997, when he reluctantly switched allegiances, and left his brother forever behind.

Whereas Jerry Lawler is the story of a wrestler who tackled the winds of change and resiliently bounced back from every challenge, Bret Hart is the story of a career that saw every challenge seemingly as an insurmountable problem. If even one of his turning points had been different, if he’d been ready for that first world title, if he’d handled the feud with Owen differently, if the Montreal Screwjob hadn’t happened, if his brother hadn’t died, if he hadn’t been kicked in the head by Bill Goldberg…Still, a remarkable story unfolded in 2010. The “Hitman” actually returned to WWE. Suddenly, that career fraught with peril became a thing of the past, and a new chapter was opened, a chance to get everything right, and that’s exactly what happened. Whodathunk? One of the most troublesome legacies in wrestling history suddenly has a chance for a full redemption. And perhaps greater things still.

Jabroni Companion #17

2011-08-18T15:14:00.000-07:00

The next two topics doesn’t concern wrestlers or wrestling itself directly, but they are absolutely integral to the experience as it is known in the 21st Century.

XXXIII. Ringside Commentators

Maybe you don’t always appreciate it, but half the experience of the match isn’t the action in the ring itself, but what you listen to while it’s going on. Naturally, I’m not talking live events here, but what you experience on TV or PPV. Every generation of fans has signature commentators. Gordon Solie was recently enshrined in WWE’s Hall of Fame, despite the fact that very few current fans will have any kind of real experience with him, even though devoted, long-time, or even just plain students of the game will easily appreciate his contributions to professional wrestling. The same goes for Gorilla Monsoon, or even Jesse Ventura, both of whom went through many different incarnations throughout their careers. They’re a part of history now (even Ventura’s political career), but you can’t watch an early WrestleMania without hearing their voices.

During the Attitude Era, WWE fans made the same acquaintance with Jerry Lawler and Jim Ross, both of whom already had long and storied careers well before then, but came to embody so much of that era, it’s difficult to associate them with anything else (besides Lawler with “puppies” and JR with “Stone Cold! Stone Cold!”). Believe it or not, but even Michael Cole will come to be looked on fondly.

I tend to enjoy commentators more often than not (though Mark Maddon and the specific combination of Mike Tenay and Don West did their fair share of irritation), even when they don’t get a lot of respect. I think WCW’s greatest gift to wrestling was perhaps the finest ever lineup of commentators (it’s easily the best perk of WWE’s regular DVD compilations to revisit them), but I’m not sure how widely this opinion is shared. The biggest gamble of WWE’s brand era was the theory that the company could come up with another team that could rival Lawler and JR, but I think Cole and Tazz more than rose to the challenge, establishing a completely different relationship and perspective that both respected the veterans (as Cole is continuously mocked over, concerning The Undertaker) and hyped the fresh talent (Tazz repeatedly shouted “Here comes the pain!” every time Brock Lesnar showed up for a match) for a roster that more often than not needed the attention focused squarely on the talent. Even JBL, when he temporarily joined the ringside team, was a consummate hype man, not so much for the storylines, but to make a big deal about the spectacle (whereas Tenay and West tried too hard to promote TNA itself).

I wish I could spend a lot of time talking about all my fond memories of ringside commentators, but the best way to experience these guys is to actually hear them, so I guess what I’m really trying to say here is sometimes, just sit back and enjoy that chatter. It’s not just tradition, it’s integral to the experience, and more often than not, it’s completely worth it.

XXXIV. Theme Music

More than commentators, one of the signature elements of the modern era is a wrestler’s theme music, something that wasn’t totally common until the 1990s, and not really perfected until the end of that decade. With all apologies to the efforts of WCW, ECW, and TNA, WWE has been the undisputed champion. Some precedents did allow us to enjoy, say, “Pomp and Circumstance” for Randy Savage, and Ric Flair’s “Thus Spoke Zarathustra” (more commonly known as the theme from Stanly Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey) continued along that trend (which eventually also gave us “Ride of the Valkries” with Daniel Bryan), but “Real American” and Hulk Hogan set the bar, taught everyone how the entrance music can rouse a crowd as much as the actual wrestler, set the tone.

I would actually argue that sometimes, the music can be too perfect, almost overwhelm the star. Ironically, John Morrison has probably been a victim twice in his career, both during his M-N-M days, and when he consciously evoked the legendary lead singer of the Doors. His music is always awesome, his entrance always bombastic, not because of some traditional pyro pop, but because he immediately stands out. I would argue if the company really wants to put him to the next level, they need to come up with another awesome theme. WWE has done several memorable themes for individual stars. That’s the way it works. (On the flipside, it almost never works when they try to tweak a perfected theme, rather than outright change it. The Rock and Steve Austin were victims of this. Rob Van Dam’s actually got better over the years. Edge, meanwhile, kept the same basic intro, but had his theme improved, too, when his character got stronger, with an outright change. WWE’s version of the Goldberg theme, however, was another miscalculation.)

Maybe this is another thing you need to experience to really appreciate, maybe just pay attention a little more, rather than gloss over a familiar element. TNA has been improving its set in recent years, after many generic and abysmal efforts. I’m glad that Mr. Anderson seems to have the best of that lot. Remember that Raw a couple of weeks ago, when CM Punk and John Cena dueled at the end of the show, hoisting their titles to get their particular themes played? Yeah, it might have seemed a little ridiculous, but it was also pretty awesome. That’s how important theme music can be.

Jabroni Companion Special - The PWI 500 2011 Edition

2011-08-11T14:48:00.000-07:00

Wow, so by now, everyone who cares ought to know that The Miz took the top spot in this year's PWI 500. It's a fairly reasonable selection, certainly better than dean Malenko (1997) and Rob Van Dam (2002), though it doesn't say a whole lot of the general quality of professional wrestling during this particular grading period. The Miz put on some innovative championship defenses, even if he's not nearly the quality competitor the ideal PWI 500 headliner should be. (In that respect, Malenko and RVD are certainly superior.) He's more than pulled his weight as an ambassador, though, more than anyone not named The Rock.

If I've got problems, it's elsewhere on the list. At #5, Japanese star Takashi Sigiura sounds like a far more interesting wrestler than his general lack of US exposure would indicate. That's part of my problem with PWI. On the one hand, it certainly makes good business sense to concentrate on the market your audience with most be familiar with, but on the other, you have an incredible platform, and media like YouTube, that could finally explode the full scope of wrestling to its widest potential. There's no reason why I should have been surprised by Sigiura's listing, other than my lack of interest in reading about him elsewhere in international roundups that've consistently made stars like Hiroshi Tanahashi and Satoshi Kojima sound more compelling. I get that the Japanese audience probably is more complicated than I can appreciate, but when you describe Takashi as arguably the best wrestler in the world, your case falls apart when he ranks below someone like Randy Orton, who despite serving a couple terms as world champion during the grading period, sleepwalked throughout all of it, and only recently came alive again thanks to the efforts of a hungry rival like Christian.

To make matters worse, PWI also makes Daniel Bryan's year sound like a failure, even while it spends a lot of time apologizing for the fact that lately, The Miz has looked anything like someone to get behind. Bryan had a remarkable fall, and even found himself slated for a championship match at WrestleMania against a former world champion. Just because that match was pulled for time (with very little build-up, this match would have come off as filler if it'd been short, no matter how much people genuinely like the guy), doesn't mean he's completely lost the momentum that made Bryan one of the biggest stories of 2010. Just ask Shingo (#86) what a short memory can get you. A year ago, he and Bryan put on a match of the year candidate before a very small audience, and PWI gobbled it up. A year later, that match isn't even mentioned in either write-up. What gives?

Every year, PWI finds some expose to say TNA underachieves, even last year, when AJ Styles became its first star to capture the top spot in the PWI 500. Time to find a new tune, PWI? I'd think so, anyway. Instead of catering to lack of general appreciate, why don't you recognize how incredibly versatile, say, Styles was over the past twelve months? He didn't have world title gold, but he was undoubtedly one of the company's most important wrestlers, as he's been since the start. He's only gotten moreso. There's a reason why he was the signature "name" at Destination X.

I don't want to dig around too much, but that's the general idea. When ROH can get a spot in the top ten during an incredibly lean period (do you honestly expect Eddie Edwards, ultimately, to compare to CM Punk, Samoe Joe, or Desmond Wolfe, who was sadly listed as inactive?), you know there's some fishy reasoning in the editorial pool. It's normal. Nothing's perfect, not even the son of Mr. Perfect. But shoot for something greater.

Jabroni Companion #16

2011-08-11T14:46:00.000-07:00

Wrestling is a strange, strange business. No, just take my next topic for example:

XXXII. Steve Austin

It may be hard for the current generation to fully appreciate, because even I only have about half his career that I was fully able to appreciate, but here’s a guy who literally broke all the rules, rising from a greatly-respected wrestler to full-blown superstar. That sort of thing simply doesn’t happen, either historically or in the present. Unless of course you count CM Punk. I have a feeling that when I get around to talking about Punk directly in a couple months, he’s going to be even bigger than he is now, but let’s get started with his unprecedented precedent.

Austin was indeed an admired, underappreciated competitor in WCW for about half of the 1990s, spending time as a tag team wrestler and mid-card title holder (a model for many other wrestlers I can think of, come to think of it). He didn’t have “it,” so the brass had concluded, and so he was going nowhere fast. Transition to ECW for a few months, and he mostly spent his time venting on the mic. Even when he was signed by WWE in 1995, most observers hardly took notice. Austin became known as the “Ringmaster,” and served as Ted DiBiase’s protégé, even got to be the second officially recognized Million Dollar Champion. He still had hair during this period, I might add.

A feud with Savio Vega followed (if I were Vega, I’d still be peeved that Austin’s most notable angle prior to explosion was never revisited), “Stone Cold” was adopted as a nickname, and the 1996 King of the Ring went down in the history books with the phrase “Austin 3:16.” Should I note here that the “Texas Rattlesnake” won the tournament by defeating Jake Roberts? Can you even fathom how Steve still basically had to wait two years for the company to rebuild itself around him?

It’s true! To be fair, CM Punk has benefited a lot from WWE actually allowing him to get away with previously taboo things completely on purpose. “Austin 3:16” came about as perhaps one of the last great unscripted adlibs in wrestling history (not that I know the history of unscripted adlibs; it may well be the greatest, and probably is). It took time to figure out how to present this new character in its entirety, and the masterstroke of giving this heelish face a corporate boss to play against was simply unheard-of in 1996 (in contrast, Eric Bischoff joined the New World Order with very little fanfare, and was promptly swallowed whole; imagine how things would have been different if that one’d played out differently). Bret Hart did a lot of things, both intentionally and otherwise, to help the Steve Austin era to begin. First, there was perhaps his greatest match ever, at WrestleMania 13, and later on in 1997, the infamous Montreal Screwjob, which very publically exposed Vince McMahon as more than just a color commentator prone to describing every single piece of action as a “maneuver.”

Actually, when you really think about it, you do kind of scratch your head at just how convoluted a lot of the things that came to define the rise of “Stone Cold” really were. Almost every single relevant development in his first year as champion came from his rivalry with McMahon. His notable opponents in the ring included “Dude Love,” the most ill-conceived identity Mick Foley adopted during his career, Kane, and Undertaker, who kept battling him and failing to make any kind of reasonable impact as rivals. Everyone wanted to see Steve Austin, and then an embarrassed Vince McMahon. Ironically, the very wrestling skills that had once gotten Austin noticed were reduced to one of the most limited repertoires since Hulk Hogan. Plenty of that had to do with increasingly limited mobility, thanks to a neck injury we won’t get into here, plus bad knees that only got worse. As a result, the concept of the brawl became so exaggerated it almost made more sense to keep the action anywhere but in the ring. No, Steve had very few worthy opponents in those days.

It got so bad that The Rock was elevated to the world title scene, during Austin’s hottest year, 1998, which set the stage for a record three WrestleMania matches, the only time WWE has counted on the same pair of wrestlers on its biggest card so many times (only Kane and Undertaker have a chance of meeting that total). The Rock was such a perfect foil that even when Austin wasn’t around, a completely different star (Triple H) had to be concocted to keep the ball going. In the fall of 1999, Steve finally had surgery on his neck, which put him out of action for a year, and by the time he returned, all his momentum had effectively dissipated. As I’ve tried to suggest, it was the Invasion angle that brought Steve Austin back to relevance, even if no one seemed to appreciate it at the time. Soon after, probably because of that very fact, he saw his opportunities dry up, and decided to bring his active career to an end, more suddenly than anyone had been expecting, in early 2002.

Another fact that many fans don’t seem to appreciate about Austin is that he had become such an iconic personality, that he could literally keep his character going and stay mostly retired (with a last official match occurring at WrestleMania XIX; as if you have to ask who his opponent was), and he did just that during 2003, and on a much more sporadic basis afterward, realizing perhaps too late that he could transition into movies (which is not to belittle his current career so much as suggest he could have been more successful if he’d started earlier).

Anyway, my point may have gotten away from me. Suffice it to say, “Stone Cold” Steve Austin is a formula that probably no one else could have figured out, except Austin and Vince McMahon. CM Punk is indeed very similar, but the remarkable thing about this particular career revision is that Punk is at a point where he can literally still dazzle in the ring both on the mic and in action. Austin’s revelation came too late, and caught the company completely off-guard. Shawn Michaels was supposed to be the breakthrough champion of 1996, and as it turned out, that was basically the only time he would ever have to shine in that capacity. Bret Hart stole 1997, with only a little rub given to Austin in the process, which he himself never seemed to appreciate (imagine how things could have played out differently for everyone if he’d played his little hissy-fit against a rebellious, don’t-care-about-anyone-else’s-opinions “Rattlesnake,” and not against, say, The Patriot; maybe he’d’ve stayed in WWE, and the other Hart I’m not mentioning by name could possibly have had a different fate, too…).

Austin didn’t have a chance to develop the kind of presence in either WWE or wrestling in general that, to a certain extent, Hulk Hogan still enjoys. Wear-and-tear shortened his career considerably; while it could be said that he burned faster and brighter than anyone else for a couple of years, it’s difficult to imagine that a guy who appeared as a minor figure in “The Expendables” amidst a gaggle of way-past-their-prime action stars can truly be absolutely pleased with his legacy. Then again, for a brief period, he was literally a legend in his own time. Wrestling attained mainstream success during that era, a credibility it hadn’t known for decades, and quickly lost the moment he vanished for that neck surgery. A wrestler who waited almost his whole career for vindication, who won it just at the moment where he was barely able to continue wrestling, well, it could certainly have been worse.

I don’t know. Steve Austin is another topic that absolutely will continue to fascinate me. That’s not such a bad fate.

Jabroni Companion #15

2011-08-03T09:46:00.000-07:00

I’ve already talked about this next topic, but there’s so much that fascinates me about it that I really can’t help returning to it. Without further adieu:

XXXI. WCW Purchase Fallout

This is beyond the scope of the Invasion angle; to be a little more precise, I’m now going to discuss who most benefited from WWE’s purchase of WCW. To me, it seems kind of obvious, but it it’s also fascinating discussion material. I’ve come up with six wrestlers whose careers were best affected by the resulting fallout. Let’s just jump into those, too.

Booker T springs to mind among these luminaries, even though, just based on how big of a star he actually became in WWE is still a matter of debate. It’s probably not too difficult, on the one hand, to say that he never attained the success of Chris Jericho, but on the other, he might have been more consistently relevant than, say, Kane. Jericho took years to solidify his place in the main event scene, to be seen as a worthy champion. Booker had similar difficulties, despite or perhaps because of his established WCW pedigree. While Kane could frequently be inserted into the main event scene, he more often sank well below it, while Booker always found some way to stay relevant, without significant gimmick changes required to keep him fresh (we’ll discuss the “King Booker” phase, don’t worry).

Anyway, aside from comparisons, Booker’s career even before WWE, obviously, was quite interesting. He’s the rare tag team star to transition into a solo superstar. He accomplished that, in part, by proving himself in a series of matches with the late Chris Benoit. As time went on, WCW felt comfortable enough to insert him into its main event scene, which he shared with the likes of Jeff Jarrett and Scott Steiner. This was achieved in the company’s final days, a fact that hurt each of them, but perhaps none more so than Booker T, who could easily have developed into one of the sports’ most popular stars, especially if a budding rivalry with Steiner, who was becoming one of wrestling’s most hated heels, had been given the chance to fully develop. It was on the final-ever Nitro that Booker T captured his last official WCW world title, from Steiner.

He was a key member of the WCW/ECW Alliance from the start, and his battles with The Rock, whom he’d patterned many of his moves on, helped make Booker a WWE star. He was easily the most prominent, successful member besides that, rivaled only by Rob Van Dam, whom more fans were only just getting to know, and therefore was more of a novelty (though few fans will admit to this). Booker quickly engaged Steve Austin in a feud, which was a surefire signal that he’d been admitted into the family. By 2003, he was battling Triple H at WrestleMania, and it was a curious selection indeed. Hunter fought other WCW alumni throughout that year, including Steiner, Kevin Nash, and Goldberg, but it was Booker who got to enjoy the honor on the grandest stage of the company. He alone, perhaps, was perceived to be a long-term player. In 2004, he was the cornerstone of Smackdown’s acquisitions from only the second official draft of the brand era, and became engaged in a feud with the Undertaker. It wasn’t until 2006, when he entered into a feud with the emerging Bobby Lashley, whom the company hoped to be the next Brock Lesnar, defeating him to become King of the Ring (and therefore, “King Booker” for the remainder of that stay with WWE), that he was finally accepted back into the main event scene, becoming world champion again and carrying the brand through a feud with the returning Batista.

Maybe it doesn’t seem quite that impressive. He had a run with TNA for a couple of years, mostly punctuated by membership in the Main Event Mafia, but if you were willing to give that group the benefit of the doubt (which most observers weren’t), you might observe that it was quite a notable group indeed. Dismiss as a knockoff of the New World Order, the MEM was actually quite a bit more successful, not to mention coherent. Whereas the nWo diluted itself over time, from the peak of the original three members (reprised years later in WWE), seemingly forgetting why it was supposed to exist and instead becoming a generic gang of bullies, the MEM knew exactly what it wanted to be from the start, and remained exactly that until storylines brought it to a natural end. Booker joined the likes of Steiner, Nash, and Kurt Angle, all notable world champions at some point, probably more on the strength of his WWE work than his time in WCW. None of them were interested in burying TNA talent, or making them look weak in comparison, but actually sought to build the existing talent pool, to elevate it as much as they could.

At any rate, Booker ended up returning, as you know, to WWE, at the 2011 Royal Rumble, to cheers that equaled that of Kevin Nash’s, who resumed the gimmick of Diesel, a persona he hadn’t taken in more than a decade, whereas Booker was cheered just for being himself. Ask yourself if Jeff Jarrett would have gotten that reception, or Steiner.

From Booker we move onto Ric Flair, who was a legend many times over when he appeared back with WWE at the end of 2001. Like Booker, he had competed on the final Nitro in a featured match (against familiar rival Sting, the only time, technically speaking, Steve Borden would clock in on WWE time), but as anyone who’s read Flair’s memoir knows, he hardly celebrated the occasion. He felt ashamed and humiliated, was more like it, wearing a t-shirt, even, to hide the fact that he wasn’t exactly in ring shape at the time. He had lost his self esteem after years of WCW playing mind games with him. He no longer felt worthy to step inside a ring. This was the “Nature Boy”!

WWE brought him back in a speaking capacity, a rival for Vince McMahon, and the culmination of that was the New World Order’s return in 2002. McMahon convinced Flair to compete in a match against him at that year’s Royal Rumble, and he was Undertaker’s opponent at that year’s WrestleMania. But he still didn’t feel like he really belonged anymore. It probably wasn’t until the Evolution group was formed, with Triple H, Randy Orton, and Batista, that Flair felt he had a purpose again. The more he kept at it, the more relevant he became again, both as a personality and performer. It got to the point where, as the group began going its separate ways, he got to fire himself up again, the way he used to every night as champion. The more heated his rivalry with Triple H became, in fact, the more he transformed back into “The Man” (as in “To beat the Man…”).

Eventually, of course, there was the retirement match against Shawn Michaels at WrestleMania. And then, the comeback in TNA, which some said cheapened that retirement. Not to me. If it’d been done in WWE, maybe. But in TNA, he was able to come full circle. He formed Fortune, in which he was not an active member, which was basically his way of reforming the Four Horsemen, one of the proudest aspects of Flair’s legacy. That group is still active, by the way, long after the controversial attempts to mold A.J. Styles in Flair’s image.

Can you imagine Ric Flair’s career without any of that, if the last time you saw him, he was being humiliated by Eric Bischoff once again?

Then there’s Rey Mysterio. Simply put, his entrance into WWE saved his career. He’d lost his mask, wrestled for a year with horns on his head. I might have enjoyed this phase of his career, but it did nothing to ensure his legacy. He was simply one of the recognizable names WCW had left, who hadn’t been bought out by WWE. He was bound to stick around, but his career was never going to advance much further, not in that context. This is not to make judgments about WCW, as so many people have found so easy to do over the years, but to say that for Rey Mysterio, he had gotten as far as he could, and there simply wasn’t enough energy left to propel him further, not there, not by a long shot.

WWE busy WCW, the Invasion happens, and Mysterio is nowhere to be seen. 2002 rolls around and still no Mysterio. Suddenly, on Smackdown, against Kurt Angle of all opponents, he pops up again! He’s got the mask! And wouldn’t you know it, this time he explodes in popularity. The difference this time is that he’s the lone mask in the landscape. The more luchadores WCW imported, the more the company diluted the phenomenon. You ended up with wrestlers like Blitzkrieg, or even “Jamie-san” (Jamie Noble as one of the Jung Dragons). Juventud Guerrera lost his mask first, and everyone giggled. To his credit, Rey was still taken seriously, was still important, but he was no longer close to iconic.

With his mask back on, Rey became iconic in WWE, beloved by all the young fans who identified with his small stature, and were just as wowed by his moves in the ring as everyone else. He became a world champion in 2006, and there are plenty of things to say about why, but he recaptured the world title in 2010, and again in 2011, the last time after Sin Cara had apparently emerged to replace him.

There’s no replacing or substituting for Rey Mysterio, and to its everlasting credit, WWE knew just how to use him, and even that holding him back was the smart move. Yes, Rey would have added a spark to the Alliance, and even if he’d gotten his mask back then, there’s a chance that things would have still worked out the way they did. Then again, more than likely not. Sometimes it’s okay to be happy with the way things actually turned out.

Steve Austin, believe it or not, deserves to be in this bunch. His boss didn’t change, it’s true, when WCW became the property of WWE, but his career received much-needed rejuvenation. He’d undergone career-threatening surgery in the fall of 1999, and completed his comeback a year later. By 2001’s WrestleMania, he was champion for the first time in two years. The company thought it could make him fresh again by actually forging an alliance between “Stone Cold” and his mortal enemy, Vince McMahon. When that wasn’t enough, he joined up with Triple H. When Hunter himself went out with injury, Austin stumbled forward on his own. Then the Invasion happened. Everyone wondered how he would react, what he’d do.

Austin joined the Alliance and became its face, which admittedly was an odd turn for someone whose career had basically been rebuffed in WCW. With The Rock too good a WrestleMania opponent to waste any other time of the year and Hunter on the shelf, Austin’s best days really did seem far behind him. Then something wonderful happened. Someone realized he had chemistry with Kurt Angle. Hell, it might be argued that he and Angle were the most perfectly matched wrestlers of their generation. The comedy was good, but in the ring, they pushed each other in ways no other wrestlers had before. It wasn’t something they had to force or exaggerate, but something that worked so perfectly, it was almost easy to take for granted. They probably saved the company after 9/11. They didn’t have to change anything, even remotely touch what Hulk Hogan and Sgt. Slaughter had done a decade earlier. People wanted to see them fight.

It was probably Austin’s best feud, and it would never have happened, strangely enough, if WWE hadn’t bought WCW. It strange to say that, because both Austin and Angle were WWE wrestlers already, and yet somehow, they were in the right place at the right time to overrun a completely different angle. It made Kurt’s career, and it revived Austin’s, just long enough so he could retire on his own terms.

That basically covers Kurt Angle, by the way, too, since he was up next. 2000 was a good year for him, in which Angle made the transition from rookie to world champion in the kind of time only Goldberg had previously approached, and Kurt Angle was almost the polar opposite of “Da Man.” Few fans found it easy to take him seriously, in fact. At that point, he was treated pretty much as The Miz has been since attaining world championship status (scary to think isn’t it?). It wasn’t until he feuded with Steve Austin that Kurt could truly be taken seriously, and like I said, it was certainly curious timing, and pretty much the reason I never had a problem with the way the Invasion ended up turning out. Two brilliant careers would have considerably less shine on them if it’d developed any different. Two, many more. That’s what this topic’s all about, after all.

I realized after my original formulation of this list that I’d left an important one off it. That’s Jeff Jarrett, the only one to make it bigger without the benefit of WWE. With the help of his father and Dixie Carter, Jarrett built his own damn company, TNA. He doesn’t get nearly enough respect for that. Plenty of other stars have tried it. Hell, Hulk Hogan has tried, and failed, miserably. The difference is, Jeff seems to have realized the formula needed to make it with a major new company in the post-WCW era, probably because he himself embodies all the attributes necessary to pull it off.

Well before “Double J” showed up in WWE, Jarrett was already a veteran in professional wrestling. Strapping on that mind-boggling strip-shirt (however you want to describe it) and smashing guitars over opponent’s heads put him in a different league. He made one trip to WCW before the one he’s famous for, and didn’t make an impact. He cut his hair, returned to WWE, hardened his persona, and became the man we know today. The man has always been a consummate competitor, a fact that has frequently been obscured by the fact that he’s never had the traditional look of a superstar, nor the outsized personality of a Flair or Shawn Michaels. He’s the slimmed-down version of Dusty Rhodes, the wrestler who can bridge the divide between fan and superstar. His ego is the thing that makes it work.

He’s the only one who could have made nWo 2000 work, the version that lacked just about any of the attributes that made the original version work. It’s his own personal D-X, the gig that made him a world champion. No one ever thought Triple H could wear the big belt before he hooked up with HBK, and even then, it took more than a year on his own to convince anyone, and a still more radical attitude adjustment. Jarrett managed it with far less convincing credentials, and yes, he did it in the final days of WCW, and wasn’t champion for more than a couple weeks at a time, but that was hardly his fault.

In TNA, he wasn’t even the second world champion. The reputation he eventually got for hogging the spotlight of his own promotion, was a responsibility he assumed for the same reasons JBL was champion of Smackdown for a year, or Triple H on Raw, or Yokozuna ten years earlier, to build momentum. It built A.J. Styles’ career. Once Christian and Kurt Angle came onboard, Jarrett knew he was no longer quite as necessary. When people get around to re-evaluating Jeff Jarrett, they see him as one of the greatest wrestlers of his generation, easily, and to have become one while having some of the lowest levels of support any such wrestler ever knew, it’ll be very hard to explain.

Could you even imagine if Jarrett ever tried to show his head in WWE again? It’s a little of the reason why Sting will never sign that contract. Only Ric Flair was big enough a star to pull it off with such an established reputation, and keep it, and the first time, even he couldn’t keep it up for much more than a year. WCW was a different kind of company than WWE, no matter what was going on, just as TNA is different from WWE, and yes, even WCW. If WWE were to buy TNA today, the result would be a better WWE, and probably ROH. There’d be less floundering, less rebuilding time necessary. Hardly anyone ever truly seemed to understand what WCW had, let alone WCW itself, and even well after the fact, it’s still hard to analyze objectively even what WWE did with the same stars, whether immediately or a little at a time, later on.

I’m just trying to get the debate going.

Jabroni Companion #14

2011-07-28T14:06:00.000-07:00

Just to warn you in advance, I’m going to make a fairly shocking juxtaposition with this batch of wrestlers. It’ll be obvious soon enough…

XXVIII. Bruno Sammartino

For a generation of wrestling fans, “Da Brune” was the biggest star in all of professional wrestling, and like their idol came to believe, things were never the same, never quite as good again, when that era came to an end. That era, specifically, runs from about 1963, when he captured the WWE championship for the first time, to 1980, when he lost a bloody steel cage match to one-time pupil Larry Zbyszko.

This was well before my time. I knew about Bruno from his reputation, but never had a chance to see him in action, except later, on DVDs. I quickly deduced that his remarkable fleetness indeed made him a standout, despite whatever other differences in overall style might have made his matches difficult to follow from a modern perspective. I probably would have been a fan.

I was disturbed, however, the more I heard about him, his bitterness toward professional wrestling so overwhelming that he essentially deleted himself from the public record. He was not a fan of the changes Vince McMahon and Hulk Hogan brought about only a few years after his heyday. I guess I’ll never really understand why, and will just have to suspect that it’s because Bruno himself was not involved in the explosion of popularity that resulted. Anything else, any other consideration, is superfluous. Wrestling is wrestling. It’s not as if he attempted to bring his fame to another promotion, one that more closely adhered to his ethics (imagine a Ric Flair-Sammartino feud!). He simply withdrew, after of course attempting to oversee his son’s potential in-ring career, which quickly fizzled. Perhaps he was a victim of politics.

Or maybe he couldn’t stand believing that the man who was a legend in New York didn’t have as much crossover appeal as everyone used to believe, that he simply didn’t have as much to offer as he liked to believe, at least in a form he would have preferred.

Bruno, if Bret Hart can make peace with professional wrestling after the Montreal screwjob and his brother Owen’s death, so can you. I’m just saying. You cared about it for twenty years. I don’t believe you can just switch off that kind of devotion. Maybe you can, but you’re doing more damage than good. But then, newer generations won’t care. Maybe you’re okay with that.

XXIX. Kevin Nash

Nash is basically the opposite of Sammartino. He struggled for years to find a role in professional wrestling, and WWE finally made him its top star for a short while, and based on that, he made a career of basically giving back.

It sounds absolutely ridiculous to make that assertion, given the popular opinion of the guy for years, how he was seen in WCW as a Hogan-in-the-making. But that impression itself was always a little absurd, when you think about it. WWE wanted him to be its new Hogan, and that simply didn’t happen. He hardly made an impression as champion in WCW, even though he was a driving force of its creative resurgence with the New World Order. He later staged the mother of all comebacks with TNA, and never once served as its heavyweight champion. Think about that. Even after the point where he finally figured out how to maintain a steady schedule and remain healthy, he never so much as sniffed the title. For a man as tall as he was, he seemed more interested in working with the wrestlers who were several feet shorter. He did the same in WCW, when he helped elevate Rey Mysterio’s stature (figuratively speaking), even if that’s a fact that’s conveniently overlooked in most retrospectives. He did with same with Alex Shelley, and Eric Young. The sad fact is, fans hate to give him any credit.

But they cheered like crazy at this year’s Royal Rumble, all the same, when “Diesel” made his appearance. Consider this one an argument to rebuild Kevin Nash’s reputation.

XXX. Scott Hall

Included in this block not so much for his Outsiders association with Nash, so much as his even more ironic association with the legacy of Bruno Sammartino, Scott Hall is perhaps one of the most tragic stories in professional wrestling history.

Not even to mention his career before “Razor Ramon,” Hall still struggled to get any respect, from fans and peers, even when “The Bad Guy” became one of WWE’s most popular stars. He was probably never even in the running to become a world champion. He never sniffed the title in WCW, either. You will probably hear that it was because of his reliability, which became a greater and greater concern as the years advanced and he found it harder to hide substance abuse.

I don’t know, maybe I just came along when he had everything figured out, looked like a million bucks, and carried himself as well. He competed in the historic ladder match with Shawn Michaels, but found himself almost completely forgotten when anyone remembered it. How’s that for justice? He led the New World Order invasion, was probably the only man who could have done it so brilliantly and effectively, but was still an afterthought. Like I said, was never a world champion. How does that even begin to figure? Even as a transitional champion, a few months, a few minutes, that would have been fine. Not even that.

Kevin Nash has recently stated that Hall’s problems are connected to his ego, his poor self-respect. When you had all the potential in the world and were in the right place at the right time, and were still overlooked, I can figure how a guy would build a complex. Even if it’s something he’s struggled with his whole life, a little appreciation, a little acknowledgement would go a long way.

Well, in my own opinion, you, Scott Hall, are a living legend, a pillar in the sport of professional wrestling. Even on your worst days you have more charisma than most of the talent that has been better rewarded than you ever were. Maybe that’s the cruel irony, maybe that’s what disturbs everyone in the aftermath of your latest incident. You always deserved better.

The business and the fans, both of them, can sometimes be cruel.

Jabroni Companion #13

2011-07-21T13:39:00.001-07:00

This time around I’m going to write about a certain breed of wrestler, the kind that left indelible and in most cases instant impacts, who broke the rules, who were hard to deny but often hard to embrace, who should have but never quite became the icons they deserved to be, pretty much by their very natures.

XXII. Goldberg

As threatened last time, here’s a closer look at Bill Goldberg, perhaps the single greatest star WCW itself ever created. The company technically sprang from the NWA, so stars like Ric Flair and Sting, who became synonymous with the promotion, and even managed to remain prominent members of the roster at the height of the New World Order craze (when wrestlers who’d become famous in WWE came to power) don’t really count.

In the final months of 1997, a graduate of the Power Plant quietly began an undefeated streak, built a mystique as much for his quick work in the ring as for his refusal to comment about it on the mic. Believe it or not, but he competed on that year’s much-hyped Starrcade, the one featuring the culmination of Sting’s epic feud with Hollywood Hogan.

By 1998, Goldberg was starting to get noticed. Or, it was starting to get harder to ignore him. He was given the United States championship, but the title meant very little to his character. Hogan took notice, and made the virtually unprecedented move of putting the world title on him for free on television. It was the complete opposite of what he’d done with Sting, no hype, and no controversy. Goldberg ran with the title for half the year. Hogan still dominated the company (in celebrity matches and a miscalculated return feud with Warrior), but even Chris Jericho was smart enough to see that everyone really cared about “Da Man.” Jericho was hungry for his piece of the pie, and he wanted a piece of Goldberg.

Goldberg did wrestle a variety of unusual opponents as champion. He gave Curt Hennig perhaps his last significant rivalry. He elevated “Diamond” Dallas Page to the main event. He was the one who finally put Kevin Nash back into it. Okay, so that last part didn’t exactly work out for everyone. It was probably the first big mistake WCW made, the beginning of the end. At Starrcade that year, Goldberg suffered his first loss, and his last official taste of the world title. In many ways, it was a brilliant move. In many ways, it was idiotic.

He transitioned into a feud with Bam Bam Bigelow. He battled Sid Vicious. He even finally wrestled Sting. For some reason, however, he never sniffed the world title again. He actually defeated Sting for the title in the fall of 1999, but the company basically pretended like it never happened. I still have no idea why. Sure, in some ways, it did open the door for Bret Hart to finally claim the title in WCW, but such disaster befell him as a result, it’s perhaps no surprise that he eventually did the unthinkable, reconcile with WWE, and repudiate his whole run with WCW (if not right away, then by necessity when everyone had to erase Chris Benoit from their memories, and thus Hart’s favorite match from that time, too, the tribute to his brother Owen).

Goldberg gave Hart a concussion, and lost the respect of most serious fans. WCW stumbled for a year with his character, even as he remained one of its most dominant personalities, and before the company was history he’d already been “retired” as part of a storyline. It made no sense. Meanwhile, Jericho had become a WWE star, and along with Triple H and the continuing fallout of the Hart incident, Goldberg lost the rest of his original momentum while he waited for his next opportunity, which didn’t come until 2003, more than two years after he’d last been seen. WWE chose to use him as a monster from the start, a looming threat for Raw’s dominating world champion, Triple H. Several months into his run, Goldberg finally became world champion again, but it was almost as if he’d become the new Hulk Hogan, of all things, the guy who was supposed to be mainstream but was more interesting when he was anything but. Hogan thrived best in the underdog role (making his name as a face, but perhaps enhancing his reputation by working as a heel). Goldberg had worked best as a wrestler the announcers talked about, but other wrestlers actually danced around, too afraid to confront directly. He was wrestling’s original boogeyman. If WWE had really wanted to understand him, they would have looked toward the Undertaker’s career for inspiration.

But as it is, maybe Goldberg himself is happy the way it all played out. He experienced superstardom, then what it was like to be pretty much just another member of the roster. Then he got out and did other things he enjoyed. Sometimes when a fan wants someone to dominate and be handled better, that wrestler actually doesn’t care as much.

XXIII. Ultimate Warrior

Here’s another wrestler whose career paralleled and contrasted with Hulk Hogan’s to a remarkable degree. But whereas Hogan was thrust almost directly, once Vince McMahon properly understood his potential, into the spotlight, Warrior came along after Hulkamania had been established. What resulted, especially since Hulkamania still ran wild, was that Warrior was never going to be given the same opportunity. Hogan was still hungry, and so while Warrior had his shot, he wasn’t allowed to keep it. Other wrestlers knew this story already.

Everyone knows what happened next. Warrior lingered, became a more sporadic presence, eventually disappeared for longer periods of time. Made several comebacks, notably in 1996, proved to not have the commitment McMahon expected (thereby substantially rewriting 1997), disappeared again, resurfaced again for a disastrous WCW engagement in 1998, then became a punchline, lost in his own diatribes, buried in a DVD release by WWE. Attempted another comeback, this time in Europe. God knows if he thought another full-blown comeback was still possible. These days, he’s pretty much the new Bruno Sammartino. Left behind.

Perhaps not so surprisingly, I’ve never quite found it so easy to forget Warrior. He had a totally unusual wrestling style, so apparently one-dimensional that he was considered a poor worker even by the standards granted Hogan. But it worked to such a degree that much of his persona was later adopted by Batista, some even suggested by devoted company man Triple H himself. In his earliest days, Warrior was in a tag team with Sting. Doesn’t seem so hard to imagine, even if their careers apparently drifted so far apart. Sting always had that touch of flare that Warrior exhibited in spades, built his whole approach around. Sting had Ric Flair. Warrior had Hogan. It’s not that hard to figure out.

XXIV. Randy Savage

The recently-departed “Macho Man” was the other guy who challenged Hulkamania, and came infinitely closer to accomplishing, because he had far more tools than Warrior to work with, and exploited all of them to perfection. So well that he probably overwhelmed everyone, more than anything. Hogan had almost nothing to work with, so Miss Elizabeth was used as a buffer. What should have been a deeply personal rivalry turned into something Savage would later duplicate with Ric Flair. Only Hogan ever saw himself as a ladies man. He could afford to be.

Savage was the best thing that ever happened to WWE, not Hogan or Roddy Piper or WrestleMania. He was an outsized personality who could also wrestle, who could unite every aspect of the business in one package. When he couldn’t wrestle, he could also sit at ringside, and only a select few superstars (Gorilla Monsoon, Jesse Ventura, Curt Hennig, Jerry Lawler, Tazz) in history have been able to make that kind of transition. Of course, Savage ached for competition, almost as much as Hennig did, and so he was quickly back inside the ring. When he couldn’t satisfy his itch in WWE, he jumped to WCW, and quickly amassed more world championships.

His later years became something of a self-imposed exile from wrestling. He made a few token appearances in the early days of TNA, but for the most part enjoyed a well-deserved retirement. Whatever else can be said about him, Randy Savage left an indelible impression behind.

XXV. Edge

Perhaps a curious name to drop in as part of this particular pattern, but Adam Copeland actually does fit in rather nicely with these wrestlers. It wasn’t until 2006 that he joined their ranks as a world champion, but from that point, after having waited for more than half a decade, longer than any of them, he was the only one who became a staple, someone Vince McMahon was perfectly comfortable relying on as champion, whenever it was needed.

Granted, injuries made it necessary quite a few times, and that’s how his many brief reigns came about, for the most part, but Edge settled into elder statesman far more easily than any of his predecessors in this installment. Goldberg, once he lost his groove, never really found it again. Neither did Warrior. Savage snuck in championship reigns, not as blatantly as Edge did, but with less significance.

Yet aside from his epic feud with John Cena, there’s a sense that Edge spent most of his time as champion without any specific purpose or drive, much less momentum, mostly because that’s how it tended to happen. Even his big comeback against Chris Jericho never quite had the feel it should have. It was only in his final months that Edge seemed to find peace of mind as champion. Perhaps determination is the word, like a weight had finally been lifted from his shoulders. This was one world champion who, having finally attained his goal, perhaps realized he didn’t need it. He’d made his legacy years ago, in crazy TLC matches. Even his lauded WrestleMania main event with the Undertaker feels like an afterthought. Maybe Edge is the first superstar to know what it feels like to climb the mountaintop, and look backward rather than ahead. He was great at sharing the spotlight. He wouldn’t have had the same problems as the other guys. Maybe that’s what he realized.

XXVI. Kurt Angle

Here’s one who seems to have less in common with this lot than with, say, Ric Flair or Chris Benoit, someone who actually straddles the line between the embodiment of wrestling’s grandest traditions, and the personification of its worst inclinations. The striving for perfection swings both ways. Someone like Shawn Michaels can dance all around this impulse, its twin edges. Eddie Guerrero had it ingrained so deeply, he stepped away from his own demons a fraction too late to outrun them. Angle is the wrestler who seemed to transcend every ordinary expectation from the start.

You might have heard that he’s an Olympic champion. And that he won his gold with a broken freakin’ neck. Unlike Mark Henry, he spurned WWE’s advances for years, and that might’ve been the smartest thing he ever did. When he finally stepped in the ring, he had everything figured out. At first, he seemed like the second coming of Bob Backlund, not the champion Vince McMahon counted on in the pre-Hogan era, but the nutcase who couldn’t be taken seriously ten years later. Angle became champion within a year, but it wasn’t until he shaved his head and embraced the possibilities of the brand split, methodically shaping Smackdown around himself in exactly the opposite manner Triple H had done with Raw, just as his neck was threatening to finally take it all away from him, that he came into his own. He wisely chose to take his chances on Raw just as his opportunities on Smackdown were dwindling, and then switched back. Sure, these were decisions that the company made. But Angle made it work better than anyone else. Then he made the decision to jump ship and head for the lighter schedule in TNA.

His ego to this day still believes that (pun intended) this would have made a greater impact on professional wrestling than it actually did. McMahon never made him champion for long because he still believed bigger man made better stars. Fans seemed to prove him right. TNA never really had the bigger stars. They had Angle, and for a few years, he dominated, until he became more competitive, engaging in an epic feud with AJ Styles that seemed more natural than the manufactured if equally epic feud with Samoa Joe that had been his introduction to the company.

So how exactly does he fit the pattern? Angle always deserved to be a bigger star than he actually was. There were always others getting in the way, even if he willingly played along with them. Edge might have demanded a bigger spotlight, as early as 2006, after he’d established himself against Cena. He waited, though, and found he fit more comfortably as a company man. In their own ways, each of them were company men. Warrior stepped aside for Hogan. So did Savage. It hurt their careers. Goldberg stepped aside, and lost all his momentum. He was the hottest thing WCW had, and he was basically tossed aside. Angle was a little goofy in the beginning, but became one of the most serious competitors wrestling ever saw, but with more showmanship, simply based on his repertoire, his ability to work any opponent, make anything believable, not Benoit’s pound-and-ground, anything-for-the-sake-of-the-moment (which even Edge never quite did in the TLC matches, allowing Jeff Hardy to go for that stuff), but an incredibly athletic approach that made him a legitimate threat even to WWE’s Next Big Thing, Brock Lesnar.

Perhaps Angle has simply been the most successful version of this wrestling model, the one who was supposed to last the shortest amount of time but will probably keep going for years, as long as he wants to. His transition to TNA was the next step the others never found, something he was uniquely suited to, a second phase that wasn’t so different from the first, but better, more refined, with opponents perhaps better suited to his style.

XXVII. Paul London & Brian Kendrick

Okay, so now you’re definitely scratching your heads. His victory at Destination X notwithstanding, Kendrick will never quite succeed his one-time mentor Shawn Michaels as a world champion. London’s career is all but over at this point, and he never even came close. So how does this figure? Simple: as a tag team, they fit the model than any other combination. They served as Smackdown’s champions for almost a year, dominating against a variety of opponents, thanks to a unique offense that still leaves most observers wondering what they were actually doing. Looked like a lot of meaningless, fancy flipping around. Looked innovative to me, new, interesting. Looked like a truly unique tag team. Most of those follow the basic templates. This one worked as a team and as a distinctive unit. They held the tag team straps for so long because they deserved to.

London had been looking for a WWE spotlight since arriving in WWE in 2003, and most people thought he fit in as the new face of the cruiserweight division. But that division’s best days were long gone before London could say anything about it. Kendrick had been trying to find a role for longer. He had a longer opportunity after the team died, too, and nearly completed his quest, but eventually found himself on Raw, out of his element, and out of WWE.

Few people seem to have ever truly comprehended the potential of the tag team division. For most fans, they look at the past and see nothing but glory, some brilliant combinations who deserved their moments in the spotlight, who established legacies that can never be equaled. I’d guess most of those fans are about a decade too late in their estimations, and so when they complain that tag teams are a lost art in this day and age, especially in WWE, I just have to laugh, because even when good tag teams have been around, fans for the most part seem patently incapable of appreciating them. I’m not here to argue that London & Kendrick were the greatest combination ever, just as I’m not saying any of the preceding solo stars were in their division, but that they were perennially underrated. At least Haas and Benjamin have another shot to be recognized for what they earned years ago. But that’s wrestling for you. You can give the fans everything they could have ever dreamed for, and they won’t come around to understanding what they had until it’s long gone, in a big yellow taxi, outta town.

Some of these guys can still earn that respect, some are long past that possibility, at least in their lifetime. Wrestling history was built on their shoulders, one way or another.

Jabroni Companion #12

2011-07-14T14:04:00.001-07:00

It’s always interesting to hear new perspectives, especially ones that intelligently challenge your own beliefs. Brock Lesnar’s new book is perhaps the first time we’ve been given a chance to hear his side of the story without any kind of bias, why he left WWE so quickly after such a meteoric rise. On the one hand, what he has to say isn’t all that surprising, because variations of his burnout have been circulating since his departure in 2004. But it’s far more revealing to hear the details from the man himself, especially since, far too often when we read the memoirs of a wrestler, it’s from the point of view of someone who never really did leave, the way he did. It’s become common to hear locker room complaints and gripes, but Lesnar’s honesty about the circumstances that drove him from wrestling serves as a new watermark for an insider’s take on a business many of us, even those who consider themselves to be insiders, rarely get to glimpse so frankly.

All of this is to say, Lesnar himself remains a touchstone for fans of the past decade, even though his time in the ring was relatively brief, and in many ways, his best year is the subject of my next topic:

XXI. 2003

It’s a little weird to suggest that 2003 was all that important. In many ways, it’s the year that solidified the apathy of today’s silent, inactive fanbase, the separating line between the golden years of the Attitude Era boom and the current generation. You might argue that 2001 might mark that divide better, especially considering that WWE effectively bought out all its competition that year, or the brand split of 2002 and dawn of TNA, which has still yet to reach its maximum potential (arguably). But for me, 2003 will always be special.

Let me start over a little. The whole reason I’m writing this particular topic is something of a fluke that just kept expanding. Back in 2004, my DVD collection was still just getting started (talk about your generation markers; most people who consider themselves culturally hep these days are probably scratching their heads about even referencing that format, and will no doubt be all the more perplexed to learn I still count on it today). It was the first time I bought a WWE PPV from 2003, and was the fateful start of an odyssey that would see me complete the collection over the course of the next five years. Most of the time, I was hoping to collect the Goldberg appearances, but at some point, I realized how close I was to completing the set, and decided to scoop up the stragglers. Inexplicably, every PPV was available to me, which is all the more perplexing given that as the years advanced this should have become harder, since I never went to the Internet for support. I cruised local stores, used media outlets, whatever worked. And it all worked out.

I’m still a huge Goldberg mark, the way fans were back in 1998. I was thrilled when WWE finally signed him in 2003 (but not to write too much about him now, because he’s one of the subjects for next time). Incredibly, he came into the company at the same time as another dominating monster, Brock Lesnar, who headlined most Smackdown cards while Goldberg worked his way up the Raw food chain. As everyone knows, Triple H reigned supreme on the red brand that year, a continuation of his dominance at the end of the previous year, when he was infamously handed to world title on a silver platter. From Scott Steiner to Booker T to Kevin Nash, he somehow survived a barrage of former WCW stars, only to have his greatest problems with “Da Man.” (As I will continue to argue, WWE did well by its gradual approach to employing WCW talent.)

Steiner receives the most criticism of all the opponents Triple H faced that year. He’d been one of WCW’s most notable stars in its final days, a signature champion when hardly anyone respected even the legitimate ones of that time, and was known for his jacked-up physique. His entrance into WWE in 2002 was supposed to herald a major “new” star for the company, instant credibility, and a worthy opponent for “The Game.” Instead he “wrestled the wrong way,” as observers of the Royal Rumble encounter continue to insist to this day (doesn’t hurt to have Hunter on your side for this particular opinion), and was basically buried for the remainder of his stay with the company, which was about a year. Basically he threw too many suplexes. I don’t really get that, I admit. It’s not as if, with Kurt Angle and Chris Benoit as prominent superstars at that time, WWE was unused to suplexes. Well, maybe Raw was. Tazz had made a career of being the “Human Suplex Machine.” Arguably, throwing suplexes was an innovative way for a muscle man like Steiner to carry himself in a match. He literally overpowered Triple H. Is that really such a bad thing? There’s certainly an argument to be made about mixing it up, but Steiner only really began to rely on them in the latter stages of the match, when he was supposed to be gaining momentum. Maybe Hunter was tired, and really didn’t want to deal with them at that point. (I somehow doubt that pushup artist Steiner would have been, though reports suggest he nearly “killed” Hunter at one point, and I don’t want to make light of that; on the other hand, Randy Orton has exaggerated to make a point, too.)

The match that stole that card was the other championship clash, between Angle and Benoit, which was basically the point people in the back realized Benoit could be champion. Benoit will be the very last topic of the Jabroni Companion, a perfect cap to the Montreal Screwjob I previously stated would round it out, a capsule of the dangers wrestling repeatedly skirts, one way or another, the stuff Brock Lesnar wanted to avoid at all costs. Lesnar steals the show, eventually, too, by winning the rumble match itself, thereby setting up his WrestleMania spotlight a few months later.

WrestleMania XIX was a definite crossroads for the company, across the whole card. You had Shawn Michaels competing at the show for the first time in six years, Steve Austin and The Rock going at it one last time, pretty much capping each other’s careers, Hulk Hogan actually battling Vince McMahon. To end it with Brock’s botched shooting star press, knowing he’d be gone a year later, is morbidly accurate an image to encapsulate the whole night.

Watching Brock in 2003 is as fun as watching Goldberg. Lesnar had already had a career year (and his first) in 2002; in some sense the only thing he had of note to accomplish during the year was the feud with Angle; everything else was an endless repeat cycle, a series of escalations that pushed him to his limits, and while he was able to handle all of it, there was a cost to be paid. He was without a doubt one of the most magnificent athletes wrestling ever saw, a big man with full agility, Hulk Hogan times ten, someone no one could seriously contend with, other than in the ordinary wrestling sense. The moment you brought this one down to earth, you kind of ruined his appeal. He wasn’t ordinary. Whenever someone suggested Batista could fulfill exactly the same role if given the opportunity…Well, with all due respect to Batista, he was given that chance, and he was no Brock Lesnar. He was a perfected Ultimate Warrior, but he wasn’t Brock.

It’s funny, because WWE actually tried it in 2003, but even John Cena wasn’t close to Brock. The only reason Cena’s career lifted off was because Brock left the company. Again, this isn’t to knock Cena, but to say, there wasn’t really much comparison with Brock Lesnar.

Goldberg, on the other hand, was a beast of an entirely different flavor. He’s said repeatedly that he wasn’t handled correctly by WWE (and I’ll talk about that, too, and the irony of such a statement for a man who was basically put to pasture by WCW not even a year into his greatest success), and in truth, he’s not been entirely inaccurate. In contrast to his WCW days, Goldberg had no place to hide, and the more inevitable his championship matches became, the less he could successfully be, well, Goldberg. It sounds like such a bitter contradiction, but that’s the way it was. Goldberg was best when he operated almost solely on his mystique. Get in, get the job done, get out. It’s fine to put him in competitive matches, but the balance needs to be there. He dominated the second half of the Raw year, as much as he could. But to tie him up with a single opponent, even Triple H, was only setting him up for failure. That’s not the way Goldberg works.

It’s probably time I use past tense with him. He ain’t coming back, and I’m fine with that. It’d be nice if WWE did a compilation set for him. Maybe at some point. There’s a lot to see about that career, not just the obvious points, but the ones most people overlooked. But again, I’ll be talking about him next time, too. Gotta save material!

Kurt Angle had some rough patches in 2003, but luckily had Team Angle, the World’s Greatest Tag Team, to fall back on, to keep his name active, even when he wasn’t. Charlie Haas and Shelton Benjamin did as much as Angle, Benoit, and Eddie Guerrero to give Smackdown the athletic advantage, something the brand enjoyed for years as a distinctive difference to the more entertainment-oriented Raw. Within a year, Benjamin was given a shot at solo glory, and, well, kept trying for years to make it stick. I was always one of his biggest fans. His only fault was that he was more athlete than entertainer. He might’ve done better to remain on Smackdown. Who knows what that one difference would have made. Another tag team that emerged during 2003 was La Resistance, which should have launched a superstar career for Rene Dupree, but he was never able to outlive the foreign heel persona. Chris Jericho and Christian quietly laid the groundwork for a stellar feud the following year. Teddy Long in a roundabout way got his theme song. Undertaker rounded out his American Badass phase. Kane unmasked. Stephanie McMahon participated in her final on-air moments. One-legged Zach Gowan had his moment in the spotlight. Hulk Hogan had his last regular run as an in-ring competitor. Tajiri, Rey Mysterio, and Jamie Noble kept the cruiserweight division alive. Eddie Guerrero and Bradshaw set the stage for a bigger year in 2004. (If you continue to believe that JBL came out of nowhere, you weren’t paying attention to Smackdown’s efforts to promote Bradshaw throughout 2003.)

Any year can be memorable, and I could have done a complete PPV set for 2004, 2002, what have you, and ended up with a boatload of memorable moments. 2003 was special for Goldberg’s last hurrah, Brock Lesnar’s complete year, and all the other things I’ve mentioned, and more. Maybe I’ve succeeded in expressing how it became special for me, maybe I haven’t. But I’ve got that set, and all the time in the world to revisit it.

Jabroni Companion #11

2011-07-07T13:46:00.000-07:00

This installment is another multi-topic one, so let’s dive right in…

XVIII. Genesis

The topic for this one isn’t biblical, but the annual TNA PPV, which to my mind has become something of an unintentional cornerstone for the company. Most people will think of Slammiversary or Bound for Glory (though come to think of it, along with Lockdown and Destination X, the company has done remarkably well creating these kinds of annual events).

Anyway, a lot of my firsthand familiarity with TNA has come from DVDs, since I’ve only sporadically been able to watch Impact since it landed the Spike contract, so it was amusing when Genesis ended up providing me with most of my favorite TNA memories. The trend began in 2006. Anyone particularly hep to their TNA lore will tell you that year’s Genesis was significant for being Kurt Angle’s first PPV with the company (his first match, anyway), the so-called “Dream Match of the Decade” against Samoa Joe.

Back in 2006, Angle was something of an odd commodity. He’d spent many of the preceding years taking significant amounts of time off from WWE competition to deal with his recurring neck problems, and many were speculating that he was necessarily at the tail-end of his active wrestling career. He’d just had a successful run as Smackdown world champion, wrestled a classic with the Undertaker, and been chosen to be a cornerstone of the new ECW brand, when he unexpectedly chose to bail. For someone who fully understood the increasing limits of his own physical endurance but still burned with energy and drive, the prospect of a lighter schedule with TNA was too good for Angle to ignore. (Of course, he would be a bigger, more important, integral fish in the smaller pond, which must also have been attractive.)

So in November, at Genesis, a renewed Kurt Angle made his most recent comeback in TNA. He didn’t look his strongest, let’s be honest. That’s the thing that shocked me the most when I finally had a chance to see the match. It was almost alarming. Maybe he pushed himself a little harder for the occasion. (I have yet to see the other clashes Angle and Joe had in subsequent months.) I do know that he’s looked hail and hardy since, and has been with TNA for five years now. He shows no particular signs of significantly slowing down. This Genesis was a milestone both for him and TNA, and me, too.

Skip a few years, and in 2009, I found another Genesis of some appeal. As you might know from my list of favorite matches, the highlight of this card was the clash of Alex Shelley and Chris Sabin, which to my mind opened the eyes of TNA management that these two had an appeal that transcended the X-division. What we’re seeing with their Motorcity Machine Guns tag team is that acknowledgement, but I believe we still seeing only the beginning of their legacy. I can’t overstate the importance of this match. For some of the more old school fans, maybe think of the 1992 Summer Slam match between the British Bulldog and Bret Hart. It’s exactly like that.

The 2010 Genesis is perhaps a tad infamous at this point, given the continuing discomfort with the “Hogan Era,” which officially kicked off on this card, complete with a return to the four- rather than six-sided ring. For me, there was Mr. Anderson’s debut with the company, plus another classic clash between Kurt Angle and AJ Styles. I’d also like to give a shout-out to Brian Kendrick, who gets far too little support, even though he’s managed to stick around the national scene in some capacity for much of the past decade, through several incarnations in WWE and an ever-evolving and unique role in TNA, where he’s one of the few cruiserweights (in so many words) to come with an actual personality.

The 2011 Genesis was Mr. Anderson’s christening as a world champion, which to my mind came a good five years later than it really needed to, given WWE’s skittishness long before the injury bug hit him, but probably at exactly the right moment in his TNA tenure. The exact way the company chose to put the belt on Anderson will hopefully garner more respect in the future, given the overall context. For the preceding year TNA had only had three champions (Styles, Rob Van Dam, and Jeff Hardy), while the title of #1 contender had been something of a project for most of that time, with a variety of tournaments that rarely had a satisfactory payoff. This PPV was only supposed to feature the culmination of another of those tournaments, but instead also featured Anderson in a surprise championship match, which played very well with Jeff Hardy’s character at the time (a storyline that was followed, ultimately, too closely). Anderson and Hardy had been building chemistry together since their WWE days, but had also developed a complex relationship in TNA. There was also the best encounter between the Motorcity Machine Guns and Beer Money, also represented on my favorite matches list. A lot of people don’t seem to appreciate how TNA builds momentum, but this particular Genesis benefited greatly from it.

XIX. Ring of Honor

To my mind, ROH is exactly the company every wrestling fan in the 1990s was praying for, everyone who grew up on Ric Flair and who relished the WCW cruiserweight scene, who cherished the Shawn Michaels-Bret Hart clash at WrestleMania XII, who would one day get to see Eddie Guerrero and the late Chris Benoit as world champions in WWE. It’s the wrestling purist’s dream.

Lord knows that there aren’t as many wrestling purists as some fans will sometimes lead you to believe. Many who think they are do like wrestling well enough, but probably don’t appreciate the science of it as much as they think they do. As fans we’re constantly encouraged to embrace it as more of an entertainment, a battle between face and heel competitors, good guys and bad guys, people either to cheer or boo. In Japan, you watch for a whole evening and probably not hear a single peep from the audience. These are fans who respect the art of it.

That’s not the way it is in American wrestling, obviously, and not even the way it is in ROH, whose fans graduated from the ECW school, or as it sometimes seems, from soccer games. They like to chant, “This is awesome!” (That’s where WWE fans got it from.) Without ROH, it’s doubtful we would have ever seen Daniel Bryan (Brian Danielson) or Desmond Wolfe (Nigel McGuinness) in WWE or TNA. We wouldn’t have gotten CM Punk. These are wrestlers more akin to Randy Savage and Ricky Steamboat than John Cena or Randy Orton.

If TNA struggles to become a recognized competitor with WWE, then ROH is the next step down, and that’s quite remarkable. Where ECW was causing a revolution in the 1990s, forcing WCW and WWE to adapt and adopt violence and cruiserweights, ROH doesn’t try and pretend it’s anything like its contemporaries. Like the territory era, it only exports future stars, and lets their new companies try and handle them (I’m still disappointed that TNA ultimately it wasn’t “hungry like the Wolfe”). So far the only ROH star to pull a Savage and retain his exact personality and momentum has been Samoa Joe in TNA. WWE has used the company as something of a farm league in the past, learning, for example, that Jamie Noble really was a phenomenal wrestler (not that he still got much of a chance to prove it when he went back to his old stomping grounds, possibly because trailer park trash needs to drink beer to get over) after he spent time in ROH as James Gibson.

It’s worth noting, too, that Bruno Sammartino took a timeout from his wrestling boycott to visit ROH.

I’m always on the lookout for ROH DVDs.

XX. Pro Wrestling Illustrated

PWI is perhaps notorious for its kayfabe approach, a magazine filled with stories that take wrestling at face value, which is a little odd for an era where fans have long become familiar with the man behind the curtain (I gotta say it, even though he’s been dead for years now: Gorilla Monsoon).

So yes, PWI is on one hand pretty quaint, but on the other, it’s a pretty unique phenomenon, too, a continuously published, mainstream wrestling publication. Sure, the Internet is swarming with websites that carry results, interviews, spoilers, and commentaries, but there’s a hard case to be made for a single authority, and that’s a nice thing to have for any fan. PWI fills that role for wrestling fans, for better or worse.

The cornerstone of the magazine is the annual PWI 500, a ranking of wrestlers from throughout the world. Sure, a WWE star invariably (only Sting, AJ Styles, and Dean Malenko had achieved it for other companies) takes the top spot, mostly because of overall awareness, but it’s an invaluable source for fans to catch up with wrestlers who might otherwise slip their attention, whether they represent the US, Mexico, or Japan. There’s always an argument to made for your WWE or TNA favorites, to either rank higher or lower, but half the fun is the comprehensive coverage of the whole scene.

Last year I purchased a subscription for the first time, and found myself pleasantly surprised to find a lot more analysis on a consistence basis than I’d previously suspected from the magazine (but then again, maybe PWI merely increased the amount of it). I’d always believed that for the most part, PWI lived and breathed for breathless stories detailing the amazing developments and personalities among the biggest stars, that most of the magazine was geared toward fluff pieces. Many of the columnists who supplement these features actually do break kayfabe, but few of them seem interested in serious discussions, only firmly held opinions whose surfaces are rarely scratched. It’s just assumed most fans will have the same ideas. Wrestling is about conformity, after all, isn’t it?

I do wish that PWI would break kayfabe entirely (WWE does have its own magazines, after all, and website recaps of its programming), that it would embrace its responsibilities, as represented by the PWI 500, perhaps demonstrate for a mainstream audience that wrestling really can be taken seriously and as entertainment at the same time. Yes, wrestlers are used for specific purposes by their companies, but the manner in which they succeed as athletes or as personalities can be debated more thoroughly than by how many people choose to cheer or boo them in the arena. As an independent voice of established authority, PWI could actually influence the popularity of a star, by making it plain why they deserve more attention than they currently enjoy. Putting RVD at the top of the PWI 500 doesn’t have as much weight as explaining why he deserves it. You can’t just be a fan in a position like that. If you can describe his assets as more than vocal supporters and a particularly athletic and established in-ring routine, then by all means, do so!

I’m not criticizing as a detractor, but as a supporter. I’d like PWI to reach the next level. Any success a magazine achieves is a win for wrestling in general.

Jabroni Companion #10

2011-06-30T14:17:00.000-07:00

The modern era of professional wrestling is a fairly curious beast. Before Vince McMahon supersized his father’s company and created what we know today as WWE, most promotions were solidly territorial in nature, and you had to be a diehard fan to know who most of the top stars in the industry were, without likely ever having seen them personally.

…Hell, I just made most of that up. By the time I was born, that era was drawing to a close. The 1980s saw the death rattle of the territorial era. The AWA, the biggest competition for WWE and the longstanding NWA, folded, without much fanfare. NWA, for all intents and purposes, was transformed by Ted Turner into WCW, an almost exact duplicate of WWE. And from that moment on, the only wrestlers who really mattered were centered squarely in two companies, and everyone else became independent bush leagues, feeding their developmental talent one way or the other, and you weren’t really anyone unless you broke onto the big stage.

Anyway, all of this is to try and set that stage for the modern era, and attempt to explain the why and what of Total Nonstop Action, otherwise known as

XVII. TNA

As with WWE, WCW, ECW, and god knows how many other promotions before it, TNA began as an offshoot of the NWA, the National Wrestling Alliance, which is recognized as the oldest continuously run wrestling agency in the sport’s history (and still running, I might add). The company was formed in 2002, and has since developed into a legitimate rival on the national stage for WWE. Just what that means has often been interpreted loosely as TNA being the second coming of WCW, which has always been misleading. As the earliest days of the company itself will attest, TNA has always been a little more like ECW, with definite WCW leanings.

As a startup, and with WWE having dominated the wrestling scene for more than a year at that point, TNA in 2002 had two channels of access for its original lineup of talent: either stars who had once been famous for performing in WWE or WCW and for some reasons were no longer doing so, or a batch of new talent that could be found on the independent scene. From the beginning, then, what you thought of, say, Ken Shamrock or Jeff Jarrett and what the implications of their lack of activity within WWE at the time, meant just as much to you as unknowns like AJ Styles and Christopher Daniels, both of whom had become legends on the independent scene within just a few years of activity.

Shamrock hadn’t been active in WWE since the fall of 1999, and Jarrett had been one of the most prominent stars of WCW’s final days, and perhaps not so coincidentally had also been active in WWE during the tail-end of the last millennium. Along with Ron Killings, who’d had a brief, undistinguished run with WWE, these were to be the major stars of the company; not only had none of them been world title contenders in WWE, which had at this point apparently proven that it really was the stage of the immortals (and well into the development of a hot new talent in the form of Brock Lesnar, no less), but between them they had never really energized a significant fanbase before, either.

Shamrock left soon after TNA’s earliest days were over. Whatever he might have had to contribute, and whatever novelty Killings might represent as an unlikely champion, Jarrett soon established dominance as the face of the company. His most obvious rival now became Styles, who was fast impressing fans with his dynamic and energetic, fresh approach to wrestling, not only as the figurehead of the X-division (a revamp of the cruiserweight phenomenon which swore it was anything but…even though its stars almost exclusively amounted to cruiserweights, and fought only cruiserweights, with Styles being the rare exception). For TNA, Styles was the franchise player, the unique talent WWE had nothing to do with; he was basically the company’s Sting.

As the company developed, and the years passed, it became clear that this original model was something it would have to learn to accept. WWE, which had not only defeated WCW and ECW, but bought up most of their talent, and strung their debuts along at a leisurely pace. If TNA had counted on stars like Scott Steiner, Rey Mysterio, or even Bill Goldberg for a little extra juice, once the initial “invasion” of talent in 2001 petered out, one by one, those stars showed up in WWE. There was an influx of ECW talent in the company’s second year (a precursor to EV2.0, if you will), and Raven quickly established himself as one of TNA’s most prominent wrestlers, quickly vaulting back to world title status, which he’d enjoyed back in Pennsylvania, but never in WWE or WCW.

Though the wrestling scene had ultimately proven that it couldn’t support two, let alone three, national promotions, buzz quickly developed that WWE had finally found another challenger. That’s been the constant bane of TNA, the demand that it somehow automatically replicate an experience that ultimately failed. Wrestling will never be able to continuously capture the attention of a mainstream audience. Hulk Hogan, Steve Austin, and The Rock are exceptions, not the rule. That may be a little tough to swallow, a context that’s difficult to understand, when even the core wrestling audience exhibits mainstream opinions more often than a basic interest in the art and science of what everyone has theoretically come to enjoy. Then again, the appeal of pure wrestling still has the 2007 stink on it, when the momentum that WWE’s Smackdown brand ran with for years collapsed in on itself in a couple of murders and a suicide.

I don’t mean to be too expansive here, but to be a tad realistic. ECW, for all the rabid support it had from its fanbase, something that far outlived the company itself, could never really compete with WWE or WCW, even when either company was at their lowest. The international flavor of wrestling that drew many fans to the matches that weren’t blood-soaked in hardcore mayhem had the effect of initiating the cruiserweight phenomenon, which was really just a way of reversing the trend Hulk Hogan had begun a decade earlier, when athleticism was less important than displays of power. Of course, the dirty secret was that the Hogan style if not the exact size was always the predominant form of professional wrestling. Even the fleet-footed Bruno Sammartino could never have gotten away with being champion for so long if he didn’t at least have the look of a bruiser. Ric Flair established a new style by stripping away the extraneous power elements of his most famous opponents, Harley Race and Dusty Rhodes, both of whom were far bigger than him, and let wrestling be as pure as possible. But he was more the exception than the rule, which was why Ricky Steamboat, Sting, and even “Macho Man” Randy Savage, all of whom were closer in style to Flair than Hogan, never quite reached the same level, even though they were routinely praised as the best wrestlers of their generation.

I don’t mean to obscure my points here, but what TNA offered was the best version of almost exactly the opposite of what most wrestling fans demanded, then and perhaps even now. It was like a supersized version of a territorial promotion, or the perfect example of what the independent scene that had replaced that idea could be. It offered dynamic wrestling, but without ready access to outsize personalities (and here I should add “in their prime,” because many older stars continued to appear, and on a more regular basis, as the years continued), that wrestling would always tend more toward what was never going to galvanize a wide audience. The cruiserweight phenomenon was a far bigger success than anyone ever realized. In fact, until TNA developed the X-division, cruiserweights had finally been accepted into the mainstream, as represented by Shawn Michaels’ 2002 comeback, when he was at last embraced as a fan favorite, a position he enjoyed until his retirement. (Anyone who argues his breakthrough came in 1996 wasn’t paying attention.)

This is not to say TNA hasn’t overly indulged in farcical antics over the years, but that these instincts are the lifeblood of a wrestling organization, and have been routinely relied upon for decades, by every single promotion, in any country you can think of, by the proudest and most shameless stars the industry has ever seen. So yeah, I’m a little tired of the argument that TNA doesn’t get any respect because it hasn’t earned any. The basic truth is, TNA is exactly the success, on whatever level you calculate it, that it is because that’s what is actually possible at the moment. It has produced a wide range of classic wrestling moments, built and enriched careers, established a legacy many times over, and is more than deserving of any wrestling fan’s respect. No, I don’t expect anything I have to say here to change the balance of the current landscape, but to suggest that for those currently working for, or anyone who may in the future, TNA, it’s okay to have a little pride. It was not such a bad decision for Sting to once again choose TNA over WWE.

For those of you who judge your perception of morale in the TNA locker room based on public antics and unfortunate behavior, I might suggest that no company, wrestling or otherwise, will always be able to maintain a perfect sense of happiness for its employees. There’s always something to be said for the hope that authority figures will always have the best interests of those employees in mind when they choose how to run their business, but sadly that’s not always the case, in wrestling or otherwise. To be a little more blunt, you can’t blame TNA itself for what Jeff Hardy last did in a wrestling ring. You can blame Jeff for agreeing to participate, when he obviously was in no condition to, and even those who let him walk onto a PPV like that, but you can’t judge a whole company for this one incident. (Hardy had proved for more than a year that he could conduct himself professionally, and was rewarded with a lengthy world title reign; it’s my opinion that TNA simply asked too much of him, in the end, especially considering the legal matters that shadowed much of that period.) You might as well argue that Michael Jordan shouldn’t have been playing basketball with the flu, but then, you can’t always predict results.

In my eyes, TNA has succeeded beyond the wildest of expectations, given that it was never bankrolled by billionaires. You would never have WWE, or the heyday of WCW, without all that money. TNA is about a love of wrestling, and I’m not just saying that in tandem with the latest gimmick and shot at “superstars.” That a promotion can achieve this level of awareness, and last this long, in decidedly shaky financial times, is remarkable enough. But just wait until you see the action in the ring…

Jabroni Companion #9

2011-06-23T13:24:00.000-07:00

Switching gears a little again, time to examine a few more individual stars, three who have made themselves into modern icons, pillars within WWE, in separate but equally enduring ways.

XIV. Randy Orton

This guy was a WWE project seemingly from conception, a generational wrestler whose father had already been fairly famous within recent memory. Okay, so maybe “Ace” Cowboy Bob Orton was better known as a goon than a legitimate competitor, but he was certainly prominent for a few years, especially that persistent cast of his. Still, Randy easily eclipsed his father, almost from the start.

Debuting on Smackdown in 2002, Randy didn’t have much to distinguish himself, but by 2003 was drafted into the Evolution concept, theoretically as the future of the company. Injuries plagued the early period of this project, but Randy soon rebounded, and by the end of that year he’d already laid the groundwork for his future, including a feud with Mick Foley that would come to define his march to the WWE championship in 2004.

Maybe it was a turnaround the company had begun to reconsider, because Randy quickly lost that championship, and never had one of its kind again until the fall of 2007, more than three years later. By the time he was drafted back to Smackdown, once aspirations on Raw were claimed by Batista, he had to prove himself all over again. Few seem to appreciate how easily Randy embraced this phase of his career. He’d lost the chip on his shoulder, but found his star quality. This is where he truly learned how he worked best in the ring. This is where he mastered the RKO. All he needed was the time to earn back the respect of the fans. When the title scene finally opened back up, Randy found himself on Raw again, and in the perfect position when John Cena went out with an injury. He inherited more from Cena than he ever did from his old man.

Ironically, Triple H was far more accommodating this time around, and together they did much more than Batista ever got out of them. This by far the most lucrative period of his career. By the time Cena was back in the title scene, Randy had a legitimate peer to contend with, and he seemed to lose his way. That’s the way I see it. He grew less inspired. He formed Legacy, a knockoff version of Evolution, where every member was patterned after himself. Sure, he was clearly in control, but where did that really lead him, or them? We’re still waiting to find out. He transformed from a heel to a face, and had no idea what to do with that momentum. He spent plenty of times chasing championships with no real inspiration. He spent actual time as champion, with even less inspiration.

What’s the deal with Randy Orton? I think he grows a little too complacent. There always seems to be talk that he’s young enough to main event for decades, but he’s that rare wrestler who does not actually thrive on success. He needs challenges that aren’t so predictable. There was that one feud with Kofi Kingston, but that’s not exactly what I’m talking about. Unlike a Steve Austin or Rock, if he grows too comfortable with his particular quirks, he relies on them too much. Plenty of people say this works really well for him, but in order for that trance state to mean something, he needs something around it. It’s like he’s thinking about the end of the match the whole time. He’s best when he’s a fury of motion, not when he’s standing there with that possessed look, or coiling and fist-bumping for an RKO. Those things have their worth, but not as much as he seems to think.

Anyway, he does have plenty of time to work with it.

XV. John Cena

The flipside of Randy Orton always seems to be John Cena, who also debuted on Smackdown in 2002, but who seemed to have a whole series of opportunities to prove himself to the WWE faithful, who embraced every opportunity with the same amount of apathy. It was only when the company got solidly behind him that anyone really seemed to care one way or the other. In many ways, the career of John Cena is exactly like Hulk Hogan’s. If Vince McMahon hadn’t molded WWE in Hogan’s image, Hulk would have been just another “Superstar” Billy Graham, or Jesse Ventura. The other thing that Cena and Hogan have in common is the ability to know what works for them. You know a John Cena match like you know what Hogan will do in the ring, if he ever makes that one last comeback (and you know he’s always thinking about it, even during the latest surgery).

Even though I didn’t really care for the lame rap gimmick, I was fan of Cena’s early on. He clearly had a passion for wrestling, and every gift he needed. I kept waiting for him to reach the next level, never dreaming that he would eventually come to dominate it. With all due respect to JBL, but Smackdown belonged to Cena in 2004. It was inevitable that he would be the one to finally end JBL’s championship reign. The only left was for the company to make the commitment. When he was drafted to Raw later in 2005, it was the last thing Cena needed to complete his package. Is it really any wonder that when WWE finally announces a WrestleMania main event a whole year in advance, that match involves John Cena?

Unlike Randy Orton, Cena keeps finding ways to keep himself relevant, and it doesn’t always involve a championship. That was easily the most impressive thing about the Nexus angle last year, that the company didn’t think it was necessary to involve a big gold belt. In fact, it hurt that title more than John Cena, made it less relevant. But that’s just how important Cena is. He’s bigger than a big gold belt. No one else could have made Edge a world champion the way he did. Okay, so maybe a plague of injuries to top Smackdown stars could. If the company had saw fit to put Orton into a WrestleMania match with Cena in, say, 2006 or 2007, he would have a vastly different career today.

At this point, John Cena has nothing left to prove, except that match with The Rock. Anything else he does is icing on the cake. I don’t think he’ll be a world title contender after next year’s WrestleMania. He won’t have to be.

XVI. Rey Mysterio

Never has a more peculiar superstar dominated the imaginations of fans quite like Rey Mysterio. He’s far smaller than anyone could ever have expected from such a star, that’s so obvious that it doesn’t really need repeating. He’s a classic underdog story, but WWE has done the David/Goliath story so many times that it doesn’t even begin to explain him anymore. He is, simply put, one of the most spectacular performers to ever step foot into the squared circle.

His fans know that already, too, naturally. He’s had classic battles with the best wrestlers in the world, and he’s the rare opponent who can create magic by constantly and consistently doing the unexpected. Sure, in later years he’s developed a formula, but that’s only like patenting an invention. Who else could do what he does, anyway? John Morrison has been attempting to replicate this template, but the secret really does seem to lie in Rey’s size. Where Morrison can do amazing things, it’s really because no one else is doing them (or in the case of AJ Styles, not doing them anymore). He defies belief. Fans unconsciously interpret what they seem as unnatural, even though he constantly does it. When Rey does it, he gets away with it because that seems to be exactly what he’s supposed to be doing. He’s the perfect cruiserweight. Where others were exhibiting a style, Rey seems to be doing exactly what comes naturally. Mind you, I’m not actually making the case against John Morrison. That’s my only explanation, for why it works for one wrestler, and why it doesn’t for another.

Many fans today probably won’t realize it, but Rey actually went without the mask for a few years, during the last days of WCW. Kevin Nash, who later did the very same thing in TNA, chose to support the very kind of wrestler he wasn’t, and fans didn’t appreciate it then, either. Rey flew around the ropes with a pair of horns glued onto his head. I swear to god. But yeah, I think the mask is a part of it, too, because he looks so completely natural with it. Masks are a tradition for Mexican wrestlers, so there are plenty of wrestlers who compete with them on. Sin Cara, who was previously known as Mistico, is another in a long line of crossover stars who have proven that not all masks are created equal. Maybe Ultimo Dragon competes with Rey in this regard, but clearly not on equal footing. Rey’s is simple, and yet incredibly versatile. His mask is his charisma, and his ability in the ring, and the fact that when he does speak, he still seems likable, no matter the culture or language you bring with you.

I don’t have to try very hard to make Rey sound good, because he’s been doing it himself for years, and most often without the benefit of what many of the other top stars, whether in WWE or elsewhere, often enjoy. I think the only time he wrestled Shawn Michaels was for one of the Eddie Guerrero tribute shows. Can you imagine? His WrestleMania list of opponents and quality of matches rivals Undertaker’s. If you think about it, you’ll understand exactly what I mean. But the fans love him, and the company loves him. His knees don’t love him, though.

Jabroni Companion #8

2011-06-16T14:37:00.000-07:00

When you actually listen to other wrestling fans talk or comment on wrestling itself, you find that they often have a funny relationship with the action inside the ring. It’s weird, but more often than not they’re not really all that impressed with most matches, as if the thing they’re actively enjoying doesn’t really interest them all that much, that they’re simply waiting for that one moment, that one match, that truly seems to fulfill the potential of what they follow. In essence, they regard most of wrestling itself as so routine as to hardly be worth considering all that seriously. Take any blow-by-blow commentary of a typical wrestling show, and if you look at results for the most recent Raw or Impact Wrestling, you’ll quickly see what I mean. In one sense, maybe these guys are right, and maybe most wrestling really is junk wrestling, instantly disposable, and maybe most wrestlers, faced with the pressure of constantly performing throw just any old match together, completely uninspired, focused more on the demands of the particular timeslot they have than entertaining the fans. I would rather believe otherwise. When I watch a wrestling show, I actually have an easier time following a TV show than a PPV, when the pressure should theoretically be reversed, that the wrestlers should put more effort for the big card than the smaller one, but it’s always the reverse. It’s the TV matches where they must establish themselves, work what makes them special. On PPV, they’re expected to shine, and for some wrestlers, that’s the way they always wrestle (and for some of them, this always works). I’m not saying a quick match that’s designed to put one particular wrestler over is preferable to a competitive match, but rather that distinction shouldn’t always be necessary. A short match can be a competitive one, and if you make the distinction that a short match is a TV match, and a long one is a PPV match, if that makes it easier, than fine, we’ll go with that. I happen to like short matches. There are few wrestlers who can have compelling long matches, fewer than many observers usually recognize.

Anyway, that only brushes the top of what makes good wrestling matches, and I could probably write a whole series of columns just on that, and still only brush the top (and that’s essentially what makes a truly committed wrestling fan, not just the personalities that bring in viewers). The topic today narrows this subject a little, and maybe will give you an idea of what I truly appreciate in this regard:

XIII. Favorite Matches

What follows is a fairly relative ranking of encounters I’ve truly enjoyed over the years, and is something I’ve been working on for some time, and for the record, this is not particularly definitive. With time and opportunity, I would prefer to rank any number of TV matches that are eminently worthy of inclusion. Outlets like YouTube have made it far easier to access matches of this kind, but not all of us live on the Internet (and god knows I’ve certainly had my moments where I spent too many hours on it, and come to regret it every time; there’s a fair amount of addiction involved, an inability to stop once you get rolling, and I hope at some point there will be studies available to cite for exactly what kind of cumulative effect this actually has on someone), so I won’t try for that kind of list. Here’s one that references DVD listings for where these matches might be found in a physical sense.

1. Ric Flair vs. Shawn Michaels, WrestleMania XXIV (2008; DVD of same title)
The matches Michaels had with Undertaker at subsequent WrestleManias were all about WWE realizing how powerful a moment this match really was, a culmination of an entire career, of experience and familiarity, and emotion, and pure will, not to mention a mastery of ring psychology, and when all that comes together, it’s instant magic. Perfect opponents come together for the ultimate opportunity, and it has nothing to do with championships, which is something fans can sometimes forget, that a great match doesn’t have to have a title involved. That’s something Shawn Michaels realized very quickly after his comeback in 2002, the last year he wore a heavyweight belt. To imagine that he actually spent eight years without one, and maintained his status as an elite competitor (whether that was always acknowledged or not) is almost unbelievable, and something Ric Flair took years to realize himself (“Nature Boy” had after all assembled a record number of world titles in some twenty years, a trend that tapered off so gradually he never got used to the idea of not having one). Flair spent pretty much the same amount of time as Michaels’ comeback regaining his confidence, and arguably his last match was the moment he finally reclaimed it, and as a result is probably the best match of his career, the one moment he could really share with his legions of fans, and who knew that this what he’d been waiting for all that time? Just imagine if Ric Flair had been more like Ricky Steamboat…?

2. Shawn Michaels vs. Bret Hart, WrestleMania XII (1996; WRESTLEMANIA: THE COMPLETE ANTHOLOGY)
As wrestling contests of pure exhibition go, there will never really be a match that tops this one, a deliberately staged Iron Man, sixty-minute match where not a single pinfall was recorded until, technically, the time limit had expired. Before that, it was simply move for move, will versus will, a show of endurance, and not a single shenanigan to taint the results. This is what many wrestling fans have always considered the ideal, and so there’s very little argument needed to justify its inclusion. I don’t believe Hart ever had a better match, and for Michaels, it was the standard for everything that came after, which was probably a tall order, even for him. For that reason alone, can you blame him for avoiding any immediate rematches?

3. Shawn Michaels vs. John Cena, Raw 4/23/07 (THE SHAWN MICHAELS STORY)
This is the famous near-hour long match that followed their encounter at WrestleMania 23, put on to cover the absence of Randy Orton from the show. They had nothing to prove, and could have easily phoned it in, but instead engaged in a contest that easily eclipsed their earlier encounter, and proved that Cena was, after all, a consummate wrestler, who simply didn’t need this particular kind of match against the majority of his opponents. Who else better to bring this performance out of him than Michaels? Given that “HBK” is in the top three matches on this list, can you guess who I pick as the best pure wrestler I’ve ever seen?

4. Bret Hart vs. Steve Austin, WrestleMania 13 (1997; WRESTLEMANIA: THE COMPLETE ANTHOLOGY)
When he called himself the “Excellence of Execution,” what Bret Hart always served to obscure was that he could just have easily replaced Ric Flair as the “Dirtiest Player in the Game,” maybe something he learned in his wars with Jerry Lawler and his brother Owen. This match is the prime example of that impulse, one of the grittiest matches to never degenerate into a hardcore mess. Like the Iron Match against Shawn Michaels, this was a contest of pure will for the “Hitman,” and never was that particular moniker more appropriate than in this grudge match with “Stone Cold” Steve Austin, who was still making his way through the ranks of WWE at the time. The most dramatic Sharpshooter ever actually caused Austin to pass out from blood-loss, for him preferable to submitting. Hart didn’t win this match. The fans did.

5. Batista vs. Eddie Guerrero, No Mercy (2005; DVD of same title)
This might best be remembered as Guerrero’s final PPV, but for me, it’ll always be remembered as the most heartbreaking and bittersweet moment in wrestling history. You’ve got to remember that he had spent most of the preceding year as a heel, feuding with Rey Mysterio, and fans genuinely hated him. This was only a year after he’d finally become a world champion. What many fans didn’t appreciate was that the feud with Mysterio made him a legitimate player on the Smackdown brand, a man with a story and a mission, and the match and the lead-up with Batista was a direct culmination of all this work. The story of this match was that he was struggling to turn over the leaf, but Batista didn’t believe him, and so this brought everything Eddie had ever learned into the contest, both his wrestling skills and ability to draw the fans into the match, teasing heel tactics, forcing Batista to address something other than what his opponent was actually doing. Other than Flair/Michaels, this is the best story I ever saw in a match. Clearly the direction past this match would have seen a lot more from these two opponents, and all the talk from the McMahons in the tributes after Eddie’s death saying he would have been champion again…they clearly weren’t empty words. When I write about Batista directly, I’ll get into it a little more, but suffice it to say, no career was more affected by Eddie Guerrero’s death than Batista’s. This match would only have been the beginning, and it was already a classic. Now it’s simply timeless.

6. The Rock vs. Hulk Hogan, WrestleMania X8 (2002; WRESTLEMANIA: THE COMPLETE ANTHOLOGY)
The Rock had a lot of matches like this, maybe not on this scale, but with this kind of feel, but Hulk Hogan, who had tried many times, never really did, and maybe that’s why there’s such a contrast between their careers, and such electricity in this encounter. Let me explain in a little more detail. The Rock became one of the most famous wrestlers in history, but he never had to carry the company on his shoulders quite in the same way as Hogan. He had these matches against men like Steve Austin, Brock Lesnar, Bill Goldberg, and only some of these were for world titles. WWE had Hogan in this kind of match for most of the first decade of WrestleMania, and they were always for a world title, and he was always the one to come out on top. Anyway, contrasts aside, this one was history from the word “go.” You don’t need me to explain it.

7. Kurt Angle vs. Eddie Guerrero, Summer Slam (2004; DVD of same title)
Angle seems to have become something of a polarizing figure; either you’re in awe of his abilities, or you think he’s one-dimensional and boring. I’m squarely in the former category. I believe he’s incomparable, and that’s a little of why this is his first match on the list, because he’s so hard to match up with, even if your name happens to be Shawn Michaels. This match is actually a rematch from WrestleMania XX, and is equally obscured by circumstances that put the spotlight elsewhere, and subsequently a tad lost to history (both cards prominently feature Chris Benoit). It’s actually the rematch aspect that puts this one over the edge, past its predecessor, and onto this list, the momentum evident throughout the encounter, even though Angle had spent a fair number of months in between outside of the ring to help his body recover. It’s equally the most unsung story of that year, the feud between Angle and Guerrero. To watch Kurt seethe at the thought that Eddie actually outsmarted him is like watching the evolution of a wrestler who was already pretty good, but who has suddenly realized there’s a whole new level to reach for (the spirit of his early TNA days and epic feud with Samoa Joe). This one’s basically like watching Bret Hart deliberately try to reach the point where he’ll make Steve Austin pass out in that sharpshooter. Angle is bloodthirsty the whole match, looking for his ankle lock at every opportunity, and using Guerrero’s previous tactics against him (when he unlaced his boot at WrestleMania so his foot would slip out of the maneuver). It’s brilliant ring psychology.

8. The Ultimate Warrior vs. Randy Savage, WrestleMania VII (1991; WRESTLEMANIA: THE COMPLETE ANTHOLOGY)
The would-be heirs of Hulk Hogan in the match they were apparently destined to have against each other, after both had had their chances and been tossed aside by WWE, never to be trusted with the opportunity again (which was certainly true of Warrior, and pretty much with Savage). Never mind that this could easily have been the main event, and just bask in the drama of it, another culmination match, Warrior’s ultimate statement with the company (to watch his desperation for victory unfold easily eclipses anything he did with Hogan the previous year). It’s no surprise in hindsight that his career went nowhere after this, since there really was nowhere left to go. Even on shaky legs with the company, Hogan was still preferred over Warrior. How do you work with that?

9. Ric Flair vs. Lex Luger, Starrcade 1988 (STARRCADE: THE ESSENTIAL COLLECTION)
In many ways, this is that exact match, substituting Luger for Warrior. Watching Luger’s emotions develop during this match is a revelation for anyone who ever wondered if the “Total Package” was truly invested in wrestling. You’ll never wonder again, or that is, you’ll be wondering something else entirely, and that’s how all that passion seemed to go nowhere. You’ll wonder why Flair was perfectly happy to work extended programs with Sting, but not with Luger. You’ll certainly scratch your head over the fact that WWE found it perfectly acceptable to screw Luger out of the world title. For shear drama, no one ever quite match Ric Flair like Lex Luger. At least on this occasion.

10. Kurt Angle vs. Mr. Anderson, Lockdown (2010; DVD of same title)
I talked a little about why this match worked so perfectly when discussing Anderson directly a little earlier in the Jabroni Companion, so suffice it to say, this was a perfect moment, unlike anything he’d experienced in WWE. That’s right, I just included TNA in the phrase “perfect moment.” I would very much like to include an Angle/AJ Styles match on this list, and perhaps at some later point, when I’ve studied my DVDs a little further, I’ll slap myself for not doing so (they had certainly reached a point in their working dynamic in early 2010 to equally meet the same criteria used for many of the matches in this top ten), but for me, this Angle/Anderson encounter is more important, and better, and is directly responsible for finally making a world champion of Anderson (twice-over now!). Everyone talked about this match at the time, but it was still overlooked by the end of the year, and that’s simply incredible to me. To me, Anderson is very much like Luger and Warrior in terms of what he brought to this match, which was after all not even for a world title, yet it fought it with an intensity that reflected and augmented the kind of acumen he’d displayed throughout his career to this point, but Angle was able to bring it to another level, with a classic finish that reflects another match later in the list, sheer bravado that wasn’t necessarily called for but put the whole encounter in greater context than what came before it.

11. Sting vs. Hulk Hogan, Starrcade 1997 (STARRCADE: THE ESSENTIAL COLLECTION)
WCW wasn’t alone in hyping this one to a remarkable degree, and that alone helps make the case. Arguably Hogan’s most important match with that company (something he himself didn’t seem to appreciate at the time), and easily Sting’s, even though earlier in the decade he’d been groomed to be the new Ric Flair, which was already quite an accomplishment. Maybe not the greatest quality of actual competition, but that’s not always the most important factor in a truly memorable wrestling match (which as I’ve been suggesting requires intangibles that a lot of fans don’t often appreciate, much like Hogan). Also notable for the participation of Bret Hart, a moment that’s often overlooked in the overall legacy of the Montreal Screwjob (a topic that will actually round out the Jabroni Companion), an element that even overcomes the fact that, technically speaking, the finish was botched and thus obscured the impact of the match once it had actually happened.

12. Eddie Guerrero vs. Dean Malenko, Starrcade 1997 (STARRCADE: THE ESSENTIAL COLLECTION)
There is something a certain amount of exaggeration involved in wrestling. That is, in all fairness, one of the essential ingredients. So when I say that a lot of people tended to exaggerate the importance of the cruiserweight division in WCW, hopefully I won’t be stoned immediately. What made the division work was a confluence of elements, more than the mere existence of the division, and history has generally proven that even those elements, when moved to a different context, did not immediately prove the theory that the cruiserweights, given the chance, could have easily carried the company, if they’d simply been given the chance. Eddie Guerrero, Chris Jericho, Rey Mysterio, and Chris Benoit, who arguably were the greatest cruiserweights to emerge from the WCW cruiserweight era, never reached the Shawn Michaels level in WWE, and even Shawn Michaels probably never reached the level of Randy Savage. So when I say the impact of the cruiserweights was exaggerated, don’t take it as a disparaging remark, or an inability to appreciate their contributions. (Even TNA, which in many ways tried even harder to make their equivalent division, “X,” dominate the spotlight, never quite succeeded, and they never had any qualms of elevating their signature star, AJ Styles, participate in the main event.) To wit, even though I just talked about the intended spotlight of Starrcade 1997, I must always acknowledge that the match that actually stole the show, much like Savage/Steamboat at WrestleMania III, was Guerrero/Malenko. Malenko was so beloved by wrestling purists that he captured the top spot on the annual PWI 500 ranking that year (to be noted is the fact that this match was well outside that particular grading period, which is something of an irony). The Guerrero in this match is far different from the one to be found in the previous matches on this ranking, which again, as I stressed when talking about him earlier in the Jabroni Companion, was one of the reasons he became my favorite wrestler. You only need to see this match to appreciate both of them all over again.

13. 40-man rumble match, Royal Rumble (2011; DVD of same title)
Easily my favorite rumble match, which I knew even before I watched it, and when I finally had the chance, it confirmed everything that I believed worked so well, the flawless execution of each participant’s actions during the match, how every single wrestler and angle as they were then relevant were used to perfection. More often than not the rumble match is chaotic, maybe with a few moments designed to facilitate certain future events, and more often than not simply geared toward the finish, with momentum for the winner toward WrestleMania. Alberto Del Rio won this one. He had barely started with WWE at this point, and he didn’t win his match against Edge a few months later, and he still isn’t champion. There’s nothing wrong with that, and there was everything right about all the other moments that made up this match.

14. Batista vs. The Great Khali, No Mercy (2007; DVD of same title)
The longer Batista pursued the Smackdown, often unsuccessfully, the less respect he got as a wrestler, and it goes without saying that Khali never really got any, and yet this Punjabi Prison Match was magic. The PPV is probably better known for Randy Orton finally reclaiming world champion status (and the series of matches that followed, also including Triple H and Umaga), but I dare you to tell me with a straight face that it wasn’t awesome when Batista leaped from the ring to the bamboo cage and narrowly beat Khali to the outside. That moment, the ending, alone deserves immortality.

15. Samoa Joe vs. CM Punk, 12/4/04 (STARS OF HONOR)
Most of my experience with Ring of Honor can be summed up with a single word: limited. This is not meant to be a judgment on the promotion that quietly amassed a reputation for some of the best wrestling, and wrestlers, of the past decade, but rather an acknowledgment that my access itself is limited, so I was pretty grateful to find a few compilation DVDs, and this is the best match from those sets. Joe is someone I’ve often considered lazier than the hype around him, a little too comfortable with his reputation, which is not to say I don’t appreciate his legacy, but that he could have been so much more than he’s currently amounted to, whereas Punk, whom I’d love to have represented more on this list, has been hungry throughout his career, and it’s shown. I don’t know that his true WWE potential has been reached yet, so this example of his ROH work will have to suffice.

16. Chris Sabin vs. Alex Shelley, Genesis (2009; DVD of same title, included in a “Cross the Line” triple pack)
Sabin and Shelley are TNA’s unsung all-stars, and this is their shining moment, easily. Most fans now know them as the Motorcity Machine Guns, and the more exposure they receive from their tag team work the better, but they’re just at the cusp of joining AJ Styles as the signature homegrown talent of the company.

17. Kurt Angle vs. Jeff Hardy, No Surrender (2010; DVD of same title, included in a twin pack)
Hardy long ago won the respect of the fans, eclipsing his familiar daredevil tactics with sound wrestling technique, but his career has been so topsy-turvy that those same fans have found it easier and easier to forget just how good he is (which may or may not be what is currently troubling him, but that’s just speculation). Anyway, he’s one of the few wrestlers who can genuinely keep up with Kurt Angle, and it’s the momentum gained from this match that propelled him to the TNA world title. Forget how that reign ended, and appreciate the work that led to it.

18. Goldberg vs. Brock Lesnar, WrestleMania XX (2004; DVD of same title)
It’s easy to remember the notoriety of the match, but it was difficult even then to remember it. Yeah, even in 2011 neither is very likely to make a WWE comeback, so question where their hearts were all you want, but Goldberg and Lesnar still gave everything they needed to for a memorable clash of titans, the likes of which are so rare that is was as hard for fans to understand what they were watching as to get over the fact that neither would be around after it. So why care? Because it’s still a standout match a unique encounter, and something that absolutely refused, defied, expectations. These days old WWE stars will work a climax for an entire match, and fans will call it genius. When two dominant stars refuse to bludgeon each other like sacks of meat, it’s seen as a letdown. What else could they do but feel each other out? What else could they do but surprise each other? It was like an old school test of strength, only instead of standing there gripping each other’s fingers, they exchanged maneuvers. Sometimes a finisher really should be a finisher. Goldberg always had the edge in that department, so that probably dictated the outcome, as it always should have. And then Steve Austin gave each of them a Stunner.

19. Triple H vs. Randy Orton, WrestleMania 25 (2009; DVD of same title)
Like the above match, calculated to defy expectations, and worked better for it, once you get past said expectations. Bloodier does not always equal better.

20. Hulk Hogan vs. Goldberg, Nitro 7/6/98 (HISTORY OF THE WORLD HEAVYWEIGHT CHAMPIONSHIP)
Speaking of expectations, Goldberg is the only rookie in history to basically have his way with an icon, and have the fans totally lap it up. If WCW had somehow figured out how to maintain that momentum, it’d still be in business today. Instead a mediocre reign followed, then an ignominious defeat, no more championships, increasingly dubious fans, and bankruptcy.

21. Team WCW vs. Team nWo, Fall Brawl: War Games (1996; THE RISE AND FALL OF WCW)
Probably the best match to come out of the early days of the New World Order, and conveniently enough, the one that led directly into the climactic match between Sting and Hulk Hogan listed earlier. No real coincidence there. The best thing about the nWo was that it added a whole layer of intrigue to WCW that hadn’t existed there previously, whether with individual wrestlers or any previous angle, and there’s a whole story and momentum to this match that maybe didn’t even need a bogus Sting to exist. The company had been doing War Games cage matches for years previous to this, but all due apologies to the Four Horsemen, was never truly relevant until then.

22. Eddie Guerrero vs. Rey Mysterio, Smackdown 9/9/05 (VIVA LA RAZA: THE LEGACY OF EDDIE GUERRERO)
After an extended series of PPV matches, the chemistry and potential between these two should have been exhausted, but that simply wasn’t the case. Mysterio had won all of those; now it was Guerrero’s turn, and he did it in spectacular fashion. Long after the standard cage match had been devalued and relegated to TV, Eddie won the match by climbing out the door, and then re-entering to deliver an emphatic frogsplash, an act of sheer bravado Kurt Angle would later emulate against Mr. Anderson. Who said there wasn’t any drama left?

23. Hulk Hogan vs. Randy Savage, WrestleMania V (1989; WRESTLEMANIA: THE COMPLETE ANTHOLOGY)
“Macho Man” had every reason to be bitter; after a years-long build and the chance to replace Hogan as WWE’s top star, he was about to be tossed aside and virtually forgotten. Yet once again he brought the most energy to the ring, bouncing all over the place, leaping over the top rope, doing everything possible to make the occasion special. He lost, but in that moment it didn’t matter. Rest in peace, Randy.

24. Tatanka vs. Shawn Michaels, WrestleMania IX (1993; WRESTLEMANIA: THE COMPLETE ANTHOLOGY)
The best match on the card didn’t include Hogan, Hart, or Yokozuna, but rather the rising star Shawn Michaels, and a wrestler in the midst of an extended winning streak, who had all the potential in the world at this point, and everything to prove. That man was Tatanka. His career quickly went nowhere. But like Savage above, in this moment, that didn’t matter. He was the first man to make Michaels the “Showstopper” at WrestleMania.

25. Motorcity Machine Guns vs. Beer Money, Genesis (2011; DVD of same title)
The only real tag team match on this list may indicate to you how often this particular wrestling fan believes that division has truly reached its potential. To make it plain, not often. Yet these two teams, which during 2010 had developed a unique chemistry that had finally propelled Chris Sabin and Alex Shelley to prominence, not only eclipsed all their previous work, but clearly demonstrated how truly great tag teams should perform, with a clash of styles that actually complement each other, and propel all involved not only to a great tag team match, but a great match period.

Jabroni Companion #7

2011-06-09T14:12:00.000-07:00

When it comes to icons, wrestling has certainly had its fair share, defining performers and personalities, but two of them are so large that they overcame incredible odds to achieve lasting success. One was an Immortal who transformed the business to accommodate his outsize physique and persona. There other was a Phenom who ignored all the rules of plausibility and grew into a role where his incredible endurance itself overcame his character.

XI. Hulk Hogan

He became so big that his reputation was something he could never actually live up to. Vince McMahon effectively began the modern era of professional wrestling by reshaping WWE around Hulk Hogan, spending years, and the formative development of WrestleMania cultivating a dominant star who only five years earlier wouldn’t have lasted more than a year with the strap (see: Superstar Billy Graham), and whose reign as champion even as it was didn’t really compare to that of Bruno Sammartino. Yet Hogan eclipsed both Graham and Sammartino (a bitterness the Italian Stallion still harbors) in short order, perfecting a match type that would prove durable through all the phases of his career, both when he was beloved, and actively reviled.

Everyone knows Hogan thrived best in his original run with WWE. The steroid scandal of the early nineties cost him heavily, took him out of the championship rotation, and led to a brief exile, only for a comeback with WCW, where he was immediately pushed back to the top. Times were different, though, and without a clear mandate, something he’d always enjoyed in WWE, Hogan began to feel like a pariah. Then he famously turned heel, and the act worked so well even industry professionals forgot that he had long ago made himself into the consummate wrestling attraction, the entity everyone had to talk about, or react against.

It’s a little weird to think, just in terms of parallels, the kinds of double standards that always seem to work against Hogan. In 1996, during the first act of the New World Order angle, he’d was celebrating only his thirteenth year as a wrestling attraction. In contrast, Sammartino, while no longer champion (the company was looking for a new face after ten years, and went through Graham, Pedro Morales, and Bob Backlund, a sort of prototypical Kurt Angle at that point in his career, before settling on Hogan), was still beloved, and still doing exactly the same routine. Thirteen years after first winning world championship gold, the Undertaker also attempted to reinvent himself, in reverse, actually, returning to the “Deadman” role after a few years as an “American Badass.” Do you even want to consider Ric Flair in this equation? Thirteen years into his championship career, the “Nature Boy” was, you guessed it, battling Hogan, much as he had Harley Race, Sting, even Ricky Steamboat.

When you think about the harassment he got for the Starrcade match against Roddy Piper, what do you honestly think about the “legends” matches Undertaker has been having not thirteen years but two decades into the peak of his career?

Hogan’s talent for reinvention, knowing what worked for him, and how it worked for the fans, was often unappreciated both by bookers and the fans themselves. The nWo for him ground to a halt sometime in 1998, and disaster really began to strike in 1999, when WCW lost all confidence in him, eve though he’d had extremely valuable programs with at least Sting and Goldberg during that run. He was seen as a past-his-prime liability. Yet somehow, just when he was at his lowest, 2002 rolls around, Vince comes calling again, and Hulkamania ends up running wild all over again, thanks to another blockbuster match, against The Rock. The thing nobody ever seemed to learn during all of this? Hulk Hogan creates seminal moments in wrestling history. He can do it in the ring (okay, not anymore, obviously), and if handled right (read: TNA, why are you hassling him with Eric Bischoff ?) with his reputation alone. By itself, a leg drop at the end of a match is not really all that exciting, especially when this is something he’d done for years. But a leg drop at the end of a match no one knew he was participating in, a moment that completely redefined his relationship with the wrestling business (something WWE has endlessly recreated, most often at the end of a WrestleMania main event, and never quite to the same effect), that’s news.

I wish more people had cared when Jeff Hardy did the same thing last year. That was TNA’s money shot. Who did he have to thank for it? Hulk Hogan.

Did he sometimes act out of paranoid egotism, effectively bury the momentum of those who might have succeeded him? No doubt. Was he better for this business than anyone else from his generation? You bet. Was he the best thing that ever happened to it? Not a chance. But you don’t need everything to have a career like that. Sometimes he was accused of putting himself before the business, but I think the real truth was, and remains, that the people who do business with him are often at a loss as what to do with him. The power of Hulkamania will always be that Hogan himself is capable of rising above a less than ideal situation.

XII. Undertaker

“The Streak” is a manufactured event for every WrestleMania we’re privileged to see this man perform in. Most of the 19-0 wins come against foes and matches that are well beneath the mystique. This doesn’t really matter. That’s not what it’s about. Undertaker is WWE’s new Hulk Hogan, which even Hogan couldn’t do anything about, which even WWE’s own early mishandling of the “Deadman” couldn’t do anything about. Where Hogan was most often defined as a champion, Undertaker has steadily represented himself as the most legitimate wrestler to ever put his name in with a bad gimmick. He used to do this by no-selling, but eventually built a repertoire that put even the most gifted technical competitors to shame, the ones everyone wished had more success, but never had the mind for the game that he assembled after a long career that in its origins almost mocks the wrestler we know and celebrate today.

Undertaker became a more serious force in WWE the moment the company realized that the only way Bret Hart or Lex Luger could be the man to topple Yokozuna was to get him out of the way. A funny thing happened. Once he came back, he became undeniable. A silly program was crafted, a fake Undertaker introduced, and the real one proved himself in more ways than was strictly necessary at this particular Summer Slam, in the transition days of 1994. The deconstruction began in earnest soon after. The treasured urn manager Paul Bearer always kept with him at ringside became the target of a restless campaign from his enemies. Bearer himself betrayed him. Mankind appeared, more bizarre and suicidal than Undertaker, who had always handled himself with dignity, could ever have been. When the company needed a savior in 1997, a year of constant turmoil, that man turned out to be the “Deadman.” It was at this point, when he was treated more like Ric Flair than Hulk Hogan, that perhaps everyone began to see just how versatile, and valuable, he really was.

Hogan never managed to craft a disciple quite like Kane, a man who blatantly copied much of the same template that had made Undertaker a cornerstone of WWE for almost a decade by that point. By making a sort of Mankind version of the “Deadman,” the company suddenly found itself with a challenge that would definitely place Undertaker at the next level, something that proved more of a challenge than it first appeared. He became more demonic, in this attempt at a place in the driving storylines of WWE. He went so far in this direction that he had to abandon the otherworldly gimmick entirely, in fact, and become a “big dog,” as close to a straight brawler as he ever came. That’s probably the only way Brock Lesnar would have ever wrestled him, the only way it would have made sense.

Then, I guess, he realized there was no future, nothing he could use to extend his career for as long as he liked. So the “Deadman” returned in 2004. It wasn’t for a few more years that he cultivated the refined tactician he remains to this day. It wasn’t for a few more years that he became a default champion, a Ric Flair AND Hulk Hogan for the Smackdown brand. Why put the belt on him? Well, why not? Who better for legitimacy? That’s what it was like for a while, and it certainly worked, but as it always seemed to, that phase ran out of steam, before anyone really seemed to appreciate it. (I’m not just saying this because I figure it would have been better for CM Punk to win that feud.)

Three straight WrestleMania career matches, two against Shawn Michaels, one (actually, a second) against Triple H, and a feud he soundly lost to Kane, and it seems clear that Undertaker, who has regularly taken sabbaticals for most of his WWE career, is almost ready to finally call it quits. You probably won’t see a lot of him in 2011. The Mayan calendar comes to an end in 2012, and so does this career. The legacy, however, is just beginning. No one creates more drama in the ring than the Undertaker. Just imagine what his final match will look like.

Jabroni Companion #6

2011-06-02T13:35:00.001-07:00

The wrestlers I talked about last time were either all big stars or those still building toward legendary careers, even John Morrison, who at this point, even without the world championships, has built a considerable legacy and mystique that will be cherished and analyzed for generations. There are others, though, who will never reach even that level, sometimes through no fault of their own, because sometimes, that’s just how this business works. These are my favorite underdogs, these are the ones lost to:

X. Wasted Potential

Inasmuch as wrestling itself is a subjective sport, where winners are based entirely on the needs of the moment and where that moment might lead, and fans have a huge part in that when they decide to respond, it’s hard to sometimes step back and objectively report on the stars who could’ve meant so much more than they ultimately did. Most of them can be identified by tentative, even perennial pushes they received in their promotions, which for those they connect with, can become agonizing after a long period rooting for them, with very little to show for it. These are the wrestlers who end up looking, and not to put this too harshly, like jokes, and seem like they can easily be forgotten, even dismissed. “They had their chance,” you’ll hear, “and they blew it.”

I don’t ken to that sort of logic. Sometimes it really is a matter of too many stars, too little time. Shawn Michaels waited years to become a world champion. So did Steve Austin. Imagine if HBK had never accomplished his goal. Can you say “Marty Jannetty”? His former Rockers partner kept resurfacing, and it wasn’t as if anyone ever said anything bad about his work in the ring. It was just, Shawn got all the attention, all the chances, and was kept on the roster until the moment finally came. It was the same for Bret Hart, even. By the time he was called on to wear the big strap, it seemed as if every other possibility had already been exhausted, and even then, the company spent a year keeping it away from him with a wrestler who was his polar opposite. John Cena first competed for a world title in 2003, and yet didn’t capture one until 2005. I could go on and on with examples just of those who eventually “fulfilled their potential,” but what about those who didn’t?

Andrew Martin, who competed for most of his career as Test, may be one of the biggest examples I can think of. He was set up to be something of the second coming of Kevin Nash, and yet, like a lot of that breed, nothing ever really came of it. He had his closest brush with success during the McMahon-Helmsley Era in 1999-2000, when he was Stephanie’s intended groom, which led into a mini feud with Triple H, who was otherwise occupied with a dozen other challengers, which happened to include Mr. McMahon himself, and not to mention The Rock, just as the “Great One” was entering the period of his greatest popularity. A lot of things can be said about what held Test back, with the biggest of them being that he was never that charismatic a personality, and that perhaps he never quite solidified a style for his matches. Still, WWE saw enough potential in him that he stuck around and was a featured player for years, in a variety of roles, many of which might have pushed him to the next level, if only a window had been there. He was a classic victim of circumstances. When he was with the company, there wasn’t a need for a Kevin Nash. Even Kevin Nash found that out. Even during a brief comeback during the early ECW brand era, when Test finally brought his physical talents to a peak, his reputation spoiled his potential. Sadly, of course, he died young, and all that potential became a moot point. That doesn’t mean that his career as a professional wrestler should be viewed as a failure.

The next man I’ll address has been known by many names, and never reached near the level of even Test. He also, if you’ll mind a little rhyming, liked to compete in a dress. His name, during this period, was Vito, and he’s easily one of the biggest victims of fans not appreciating what’s right in front of them imaginable. They treated him like he was Rico, the gay stylist who actively sought jeers as part of his gimmick, when what Vito should have elicited was cheers. “The toughest man to ever wear a dress,” is how he used to be described, and that should have been it, because his wrestling skills were phenomenal. He knew how to work a match, how to make it dynamic, how to work a submission hold (which very few wrestlers ever bother with), and how, even if it did not ultimately work in his favor, to motivate the audience. There’s no reason why Vito shouldn’t have become one of the most popular wrestlers WWE had during his brief tenure with the Smackdown brand. He had more natural charisma than John Cena, and this is coming from someone who willfully suffered through Cena’s horrid rap gimmick and considered him a breakout star in the early months of 2004, when he was becoming the secret MVP of Smackdown, a role Vito might have assumed, given the chance.

Speaking of MVP, there’s also MVP himself, a wrestler who very quickly and easily established himself as a franchise player, so easily and naturally that it was held against him, and the role he inhabited was already too good to replace. There was literally nothing he could do, unless he was finally given the nod for greater things, for world championship gold. He was never given that chance, and never even experienced a slight flirtation with that level. He’s one of the many victims of the brand era. For every John Cena, there is an MVP.

Tatanka was one of my early favorites. In hindsight he’s very much an Ultimate Warrior substitute, a wrestler with a mystical drive and energy, who can command the ring and the attention of the audience, and there was only ever one thing holding him back: lack of any charisma on the mic. You could easily argue that this was one thing he never needed, but obviously WWE thought differently, and so even a lengthy undefeated streak ultimately meant nothing, came to a dramatic defeat, repackaging, a heel turn he could do nothing with, and then obscurity, and the few odd meaningless comebacks. He could have been so much more, given the chance.

Crush was another star WWE gave an untold number of chances to, and he adapted many times and successfully fulfilled what was required of him, but what he lacked was the chance to be the spotlight heel, and he was always in the wrong era. He would have done better with just a decade’s shift, might have been that foe who forced Hulk Hogan to face a worthy challenge, and not just a manufactured one. That wasn’t something the company ever needed when Crush was actually wrestling. Yokozuna was such a massive obstacle that in his best moment Crush was still forced to play second-fiddle.

Anyway, one of my unabashed favorite was Paul Birchall, and he seems to embody everything that ever went wrong for wrestlers of this type. He had all the gifts he needed in the ring. He had the look, he had a persona, and he had the opportunity. And then Vince McMahon allowed Paul to be transformed into a pirate, and then Vince determined that this pirate gimmick had no future (this despite the movie character Jack Sparrow only just becoming a craze). I loved “Pirate” Paul Birchall. I want to make that clear. Even though it wasn’t necessarily necessary to put Paul over, it was still something he was inexplicably able to make work. Even his breathtaking C-4 somersault slam, rechristened “Walking the Plank,” fit. Except even without Vince’s kiss of death, it never went anywhere. He was made into fodder for Bobby Lashley. Paul Birchall, who could have revamped the whole face of Smackdown with the personality of a brawler who could gracefully soar through the air, was deemed to be inconsequential. Paul and the pirate were soon tossed back into the sea. He resurfaced a few years later, and actually spent more time with WWE than his previous tenure, but his spirit seemed to be broken. The price of the contract this time seemed to be that he was stripped of everything that made him special. By the end, he was busy arguing that “The Hurricane” had to be Gregory Helms. Well…Is that really what the “Ripper” was best for?

Even mentioning the name Orlando Jordan now conjures bizarre images, thanks to Orlando himself, who has updated the homophobic gimmick for the 21st century but attempting to make it cleanly bisexual. Mr. Jordan, that is a distinction that makes no difference at all. Here’s a guy who could have become something of a replacement Rock, having trained with that clan, and adopted many of the same stylings, and yet eventually found himself dismissed as the new Virgil, the “Chief of Staff” for JBL, and the guy who kept tapping out in record time to Chris Benoit’s Crippler Crossface. It didn’t seem to matter that Jordan began evolving as a performer, that he grew more comfortable on the mic, and even put on brave and innovative struggles against the Crossface, something normally reserved for talent far above his level. Once deemed a joke, always a joke, and the worst of it is that Jordan himself eventually came to embrace it. Not in a good way, sir. One of the sorriest stories possible.

Petey Williams, if TNA could ever have found itself capable of supporting an X division star not named “A.J. Styles,” could easily have become one of the biggest names in wrestling, but instead became something of an undersized joke himself. Imagine if this had happened to Rey Mysterio. Just a damn shame that everyone seems perfectly happy to have let this happen.

Same, too, with Sonjay Dutt, who couldn’t have tried harder to work the charisma he had, and the skills he possessed, all to nothing much at all. Dutt and Williams were like the Dean Malenko of TNA, the workers who didn’t seem to have to work at all. It’s no longer, sadly, a Dean Malenko world.

It never belonged to the likes of Sylvester Terkay. Whereas someone like Ken Anderson, who will always have a brash personality to fall back on, can work against having a wrestling style that defies expectations, this was never to be for Terkay, who could have been another Smackdown star to transform perceptions, but was quickly abandoned. At least Elijah Burke still has the chance to salvage some of his legacy.

Jimmy Yang, who became the most improbable redneck in wrestling history in an effort to bridge an impossible gap, is like WWE’s version of Dutt and Williams, someone with phenomenal talent, but no way to make it work effectively in the context available to him.

Jamie Noble had a number of chances available to him, but became another victim of an unfortunate gimmick. Seems wrestling fans aren’t too keen on supporting trailer trash. Sucks, too, because Noble had the ability to surpass the remarkable stature of, yes, Dean Malenko.

Marc Mero, who once competed as a wrestling version of Little Richard, and was eventually eclipsed by Rena “Sable” Lesnar, had incredible potential, but circumstances just kept getting in his way. Could have been the new “Superfly.” Could have been the first MMA-style wrestler. Could have been great. Never got the chance.

Then, of course, there’s Carlito. Grew incredibly frustrated with WWE, and there’s a damn good reason, because he was never allowed to do anything but what he had, like MVP, done from the start, which was, like Scott Hall as Razor Ramon, become an instant star. WWE, and its fans, really don’t like that sort of thing, apparently. You have to earn it. And sometimes, even when you do, it’s either not enough, or too late.

That’s just the way it goes, sometimes.

For Fans of the Film Fan...

2011-05-27T13:44:00.001-07:00

Part of the Fan Companion cycle (and possibly the most popular to date) was the Fan Companion, which was infamous for covering a large amount of movies with very few words. Anyone interested in reading some further movies thoughts from your Scouring Monk might read reviews for current movies over at Examiner. Apparently the only available slot for Colorado Springs movie examiners was for action movies, so I'm mostly going to be writing about that particular genre. Not that I've had a problem so far...

Jabroni Companion #5

2011-05-26T13:06:00.000-07:00

Now that we’ve established my absolute favorite wrestler (Eddie Guerrero, remember?) and thoughts on several historic angles, not to mention touching on WrestleMania, I thought it would be fun to dive into the nitty gritty of a fan’s regular appreciation of wrestling, some more of my favorite superstars. Let’s start with someone who hasn’t always been easy to appreciate. Let’s start with

V. Mr. Anderson

Anderson. (Sorry, had to do that.) Here’s a guy who came to prominence in 2005 (no, really!), and ironically had his first significant match against Eddie (which was, in fact, Eddie’s final televised match). The encounter was plenty indicative of the way WWE chose to push Anderson. He had struggled for years on the independent circuit, but once someone realized that he had the gift of gab (and probably when he started introducing himself, the routine everyone knows), he shot onto the track of superstardom. In fact, when he debuted in WWE, on the seldom-seen B-show Velocity, he really was Mr. Anderson, but by the time he arrived on Smackdown had been rechristened Mr. Kennedy (which you might recall happens to be Vince McMahon’s middle name…another suggestion that a certain angle was supposed to reveal our hero as the boss’s bastard son). At the time Smackdown certainly liked to give humongous pushes to newcomers (think Carlito and MVP), but Kennedy/Anderson was almost a different case entirely. He famously defeated a series of former world champions, which, of course, became regularly referenced by the ringside commentators during his matches. What the company obviously expected was that this guy was going to become an overnight member of the main event scene.

Maybe Vince forgot about a dude named Rocky Maivia. Okay, you don’t exactly forget about The Rock, but what I mean is that maybe Vince forgot that you can’t engineer crowd favorites. It’s something Hollywood does time and time again, find an actor it really likes, and then push that actor in countless projects. It seldom works. Those actors either catch on, or they become the next “where are they now” trivia answers. That’s what happened to Kennedy/Anderson.

You’ll constantly hear the argument that what did him in is his wrestling ability, and that’s partially true. He’s unorthodox in the ring. He’s the rare wrestler who will relish the chance to sell his opponents, not cartoonishly, like a Ric Flair or Shawn Michaels, but enough so that maybe it’s a little too easy to believe that he’s allowed the match to get out of hand. It’s probably a holdover from his former jobber status (and probably what helped him get out of it, too, because anyone who can make beatdowns truly look good can probably do other things, too), and so rare most fans will never even think of a good wrestler competing that way. When it comes to offense, he prefers striking, but also has some striking, as it were, sentons, which is another baffling element of his repertoire, because it’s also not routine for most wrestlers to depend on sentons, whether delivered from a standing position or from the turnbuckle. When you’ve got a distinctive style, it either means that you’re playing directly to the crowd, performing time-tested and anticipated maneuvers, or simply getting it done in the match. Kennedy/Anderson never really draws himself out of matches. His style has drawn comparison to Steve Austin because of that. That and his brash personality.

The other thing you’ll hear about him is that injuries and controversies undid his WWE career. I would argue that WWE screwed him, as it were, by failing to understand that they had a far more literal next Rock on their hands than they ever seemed to realize. They couldn’t push him successfully the way they wanted. He needed feuds with competitors at his experience level, not at the status he deserved. Instead of Undertaker and Shawn Michaels, he should have had more matches with Bobby Lashley, MVP. Hell, imagine if he had ever had a program with Chris Jericho. During their mutual time in the company, Jericho hadn’t definitively established his world champion credentials (other than that run as undisputed champion, which both he and WWE had determined to be something of a failure).

Anyway, instead of establishing a list of defeats against former world champions, Kennedy/Anderson might’ve simply ingratiated himself to the fans, what every wrestler is supposed to do. Randy Orton became a “Legend Killer” so that he could better represent his arrogance, not put himself at a specific level (though his was another career that WWE had to constantly play catch-up with, until things finally leveled out, which reminds me, that the Legacy stable was delayed for something like a year because both Orton and Batista kept getting themselves injured during their early runs with the company, something Orton seems plenty eager to ignore when considering Anderson’s prospects).

When he debuted with TNA, a company with a reputation for making all the wrong decisions, a funny thing happened. Mr. Anderson was finally handled correctly. Sure, the highlight of his first year was a feud with Kurt Angle, but at that point, and because it was both prominent and calculated, and treated Anderson nearly as an equal instead of an arrogant pretender, that one worked. Instead of constantly working pseudo main events, Anderson was allowed to be himself, develop himself. He had worked sporadic programs with Jeff Hardy in WWE, but TNA took that to another level, which is something perhaps many fans still don’t realize, how important that particular relationship has been. Never mind that Hardy had been battling personal demons, as it were, recently. In a single year, TNA did everything right with Anderson, and successfully crowned him a first-time world champion, a status he has maintained since, and a title he will reclaim, though there’s no big rush this time, either. Now everyone knows that he can make it work, and that he’s only just began to tap into his potential…

VI. John Morrison

Other than The Miz, Morrison is the most famous and accomplished veteran of the Tough Enough system WWE ever discovered. Unlike Miz, however, Morrison has had to scratch and claw his way toward recognition every step of the way. It’s somewhat ironic that Miz succeeded where Anderson failed, in almost single-handedly rising to main event and world champion status based on personality alone (but don’t worry, I’ll return to Miz directly later on in the Jabroni Companion, so if you’re not down with that description, you’ve got a few more words coming). Morrison, on the other hand, is still working on it.

And not for lack of trying. He rose to prominence within the company as Eric Bischoff’s lackey, Johnny Nitro, establishing a pattern of looking cool, before forming M-N-M with Joey Mercury and Melina (another Tough Enough alum) on Smackdown, where he had a chance to develop and present a distinctly athletic style, using the ropes for propulsion as few other wrestlers tend to, and then returning to Raw as a singles star, feuding with Jeff Hardy (there’s that name again) over the Intercontinental championship (presenting himself as proficient in ladder matches for the first time).

He caught his big break, however, when he was picked to replace Chris Benoit in 2007 as the new face of ECW, a brand WWE could never find respect for (both when it championed the company itself and when it tried to revive said company under its own auspices; this is one relationship that was never quite what fans tended to believe, but I’ll get back to that, too). I say “big break,” but Morrison (as he was soon rechristened during this period) might have just as easily considered it a curse. This was a period when fans were finally allowed to fully embrace CM Punk, which they had been clamoring to for months, but they inexplicably chose not to. Morrison and Punk engaged in a lengthy feud, which is standard procedure in wrestling (the legendary Flair-Steamboat rivalry grew throughout an entire decade; imagine if the fans who booed the ECW headliners in 2007 had been watching those guys!). The ECW brand itself was supposed to be a place to groom new talent, which it routinely did, but fans (who can’t even seem to realize what the point of a show like Superstars is, because most of them can’t seem to appreciate actual wrestling; no, I absolutely cannot explain it) only liked to comment on how little they respected WWE’s version of ECW. Might anyone point out that Paul Heyman routinely employed wrestlers no one else was able to showcase properly, that he built a cult following based on unique talent, many of whom became far bigger stars (Steve Austin, Eddie Guerrero, the Dudley Boyz; the list goes on and on; suffice to say, is not actually limited just to the hardcore wrestlers who nonetheless became synonymous with the company) for having the exposure he was able to craft.

But aside from ECW, this period developed Morrison as a personality. He adopted such nicknames as the Guru of Greatness, the Shaman of Sexy. He took residence at the Palace of Wisdom. Despite all these awesome phrases, fans didn’t really glom onto him. He developed Starship Pain in ECW, but quickly realized what maybe AJ Styles did over at TNA. Unless Morrison became a typical wrestler, instead of merely an outstanding one, it would be very hard to gain the level of respect he truly deserved. Although he now had the look, the entrance, the moves, even notoriety along with The Miz, Morrison still needed one thing: the respect of the fans.

He found himself on Smackdown, and in matches against the likes of Chris Jericho, CM Punk, and Jeff Hardy, Morrison put on some of the best TV matches anyone was likely to see, all with the express purpose of putting him over. It never worked. Because he couldn’t or didn’t conform to the demands of a typical main event personality, who regularly bark into the mic rather than simply exude natural charisma (someone tell Gorgeous George that he couldn’t have begun the modern era in the actual modern era!), Morrison developed the reputation of failed potential.

And now, of course, he’s on the injured list. He’s got all the talent required, more than anyone else could possibly handle (the only comparable performer, AJ Styles, long ago stopped wrestling this way). The fans demand a concrete reason to cheer and admire talent like this. What Morrison needs to do is put his cocky confidence to a whole different level. He needs to be like Russell Crowe in GLADIATOR. He needs to demand, “Are you not entertained?” Because he can do anything. His style could easily be presented as impossibly dominant, in an entirely unique way. If WWE, and its fans, could grow comfortable with this, John Morrison could become a legend.

VII. Shawn Michaels

The wrestler most people compare Morrison to is Shawn Michaels, the only other performer who has been able to so completely perfect his craft that he has literally been able to do anything he wanted in the ring. It’s how he became known as Mr. WrestleMania. He could make anything look like he was the innovator. Even though he popularized the ladder match against an opponent, Scott Hall, who had a completely different style, it was HBK who came to dominate the legacy of that original encounter, because where Hall kept wrestling much the way a good and competent wrestler does (and I’ll get back to Hall, too), Shawn just kept pushing his game to whatever level was necessary, in whatever situation he found himself.

That’s how he became an icon. He was in the wrestling business, and WWE, for years before this talent was appreciated. That ladder match at WrestleMania X came about because Vince McMahon was finally forced to recognize that Shawn could no longer be denied. 1993 had been something of a hassle for all parties, and if things had continued the way they were then, the entire sport of professional wrestling would be different today. It was a transition year, when Yokozuna was pushed as champion simply because he was naturally what the company could no longer do artificially, which was be larger than life. While WWE tried to push Bret Hart and Lex Luger as the new faces of the company, Shawn Michaels was finally putting his Rockers tag team past completely behind himself. He was not supposed to steal the show at 1994’s WrestleMania, but steal the show he did.

He brought in Kevin Nash during this period, and Nash, thanks to Shawn’s prescience, was quickly recognized as a considerable talent, and became a featured performer on the main event and world title scene. 1995 belonged to “Big Daddy Cool,” but that year’s WrestleMania was also the first time Shawn was allowed to legitimately compete for the world title. Everyone finally seemed to realize that he belonged at that level, but on his own terms, and so he was put into a program with a competitor who might truly be able to keep up with him, and with that, Bret Hart finally met his match, and WrestleMania XII happened.

The only problem was, 1996 eventually went in the direction Shawn himself had realized a few years earlier, when he singled out Kevin Nash. The return of the era that had held wrestlers like HBK back couldn’t have come at a worse time. Shawn seemed to return to the mentality that had almost undone him in 1993, and things kind of got out of control for a while, and then he took all that energy and put it in a more useful direction, and made the momentum swing in his favor. He truly blossomed, finally, as figurehead of DX, just as his career seemed to be winding down. 1998 eventually became 2002, though, (yes, I’m horribly compressing), and Shawn found himself to be a WWE elder statesman (years before Undertaker would truly embrace a similar role).

Long story short, Shawn Michaels became the most improbable beloved figure in sports entertainment. Plenty has been said about his career, so I won’t spend a lot of time talking about this one.

VIII. Triple H

Someone who has struggled to win the respect of the fans throughout his career not named Ken Anderson would be Paul Levesque, better known as Hunter Hurst-Helmsley, better known as Triple H. Few wrestlers have as dramatically altered their original images as this man, who went from the “Blue Blood” to “The Game” during an arduous transformation process. Unlike Shawn Michaels, his career didn’t really benefit from DX shenanigans. He didn’t become a world champion until several angles after his original DX run. It was the infamous McMahon-Helmsley era that truly put him on the map, that came to define his career, as someone who got ahead by literally sleeping with the boss’s daughter. If he hadn’t made that late 1999, early 2000 run so entertaining, maybe I’d agree that it was an unholy alliance that made his career. Never even mind that his development was delayed for years after Hunter pissed off Vince McMahon back in 1996 by breaking character. Apparently something like that is easy to overlook when you really want to hate someone.

What Triple H did better than anyone else was embody the potential of the heel. He did it so well he actually did it too well. Unlike his mentor Ric Flair, Hunter was a braggart in a coward’s body. He didn’t win by accident or cheating, but by any means necessary. That’s what the program with Mick Foley was meant to convey. That’s why he adopted the trusty sledgehammer. All due respect to The Miz, but Triple H was no fluke champion. He wore the title because he’d truly earned it, and had waited long enough. Only Triple H could prevent The Rock, during The Rock’s most popular period, from being world champion.

Years ago, the story would have been different. Roddy Piper, by this reasoning, would have been world champion at WrestleMania I. What Hunter’s original reigns as champion represented was Vince McMahon’s evolving appreciation of the art of professional wrestling, things he might have learned from Ric Flair, you might say, or even Steve Austin. You put the title on the wrestler with the most heat, and you’re guaranteed hot programs. It’s another overlooked aspect of Hunter’s career that his original reign as champion ended somewhat abruptly, extended though it was. By the summer of 2000, The Rock was champion, and then Kurt Angle was champion, and Hunter never even sniffed the title again. He became embroiled in other feuds. Maybe that card with Austin should have been saved for 2001’s WrestleMania, not 2000’s Survivor Series. It didn’t matter, maybe, because Hunter went out with an injury, and missed a whole year, missed the whole Invasion, missed WCW, ECW, and the crowning of the first-ever undisputed champion.

Of course, that meant that when he did return, he would be given what most wrestlers only dream of, and that’s the spot at WrestleMania, the featured spot, not one that steals the show, but the one that marks a significant moment in a wrestler’s career. Several years after attaining world champion status, Hunter was given that spot. His detractors might note that even this did not immediately return Triple H to dominance.

Brock Lesnar became pushed as the “Next Big Thing,” and suddenly Hunter was tapped as the face of continuity within WWE. In the summer of 2002, Triple H was awarded the world title, and was almost immediately placed in a hot program with the returning Shawn Michaels. When Lesnar’s push cooled , Hunter found himself in the position to try and reclaim the kind of role he’d had in the McMahon-Helmsley era, and responded by forming Evolution. The development of this stable was delayed by so many injuries between Randy Orton and Batista that fans thought they could be forgiven for confusing it with keeping Triple H champion for the sake of Triple H being champion. In fact, by 2004, Orton was finally coming into his own, and by 2005, Batista was putting his potential into the stratosphere.

With the departures of major stars like Austin and The Rock, Hunter had become an undisputed cornerstone of the company, and at the dawn of the brand era, asked to carry one of two promotions within WWE, competing against what was hoped to be the new Hulk Hogan. Triple H didn’t sweat it. By this time he knew what to do. It was the fans who were confused. They would probably have been more confused if they’d looked at an NWA or WCW scorecard, and tried explaining why Ric Flair amassed all those championship reigns, and why guys like Sting and Vader entered the main event scene without ever replacing him. His own company grew tired of relying on the “Nature Boy.” Hunter, like I said, made it look easy. He did what he had to, and for fewer years than “Naitch.”

Triple H became a more conventional company player after this, and managed a dominant as well as quiet period as world champion on Smackdown. I don’t know. Maybe it’s not so easy to explain, but “The Game” was a favorite from the start, and his many, ah, evolutions just made it all the easier to enjoy following his career.

IX. The Rock

In contrast, even WWE didn’t see The Rock coming, when it tried to make an instant sensation of Rocky Maivia in 1996. The fans famously sparked a backlash against this initial push, which forced The Rock to transform from a babyface to a heel, begin to talk in the third person, and start laying the smackdown as a member of the Nation of Domination, the only time he would ever be seen as a performer by the color of his skin (aside from Owen Hart, the Nation was more or less a gang of black wrestlers). How exactly he attained world champion status was less a matter of the fans demanding it and more Vince McMahon attempting his old tactics (the 1998 Survivor Series was the first chance Vince had to offer a true alternative to the wildly popular “Stone Cold” phenomenon, and, truth be told, The Rock was not actually there yet, and so that’s why the epic rivalry and/or relationship with Mick Foley happened).

But The Rock became a huge fan favorite all the same, and his charisma was noticed beyond wrestling thanks to a 2000 appearance hosting Saturday Night Live, and Dwayne Johnson emerged as a legitimate Hollywood star. I could go into all the performances I like best (THE RUNDOWN, BE COOL, SOUTHLAND TALES, RACE TO WITCH MOUNTAIN, FAST FIVE), but this isn’t the Film Fan, this is the Jabroni Companion. Know your role and shut your damn mouth.

The Rock made an improbable WWE comeback in 2011, and so there’s more yet of his wrestling career to speak of, which is exactly what sports entertainment needs right now. For a man who last wrestled in 2004, and even that was an exception, it speaks to how unique a personality he has become, how big a phenomenon he really is, that he doesn’t look out of place in this context, and that he can still manage two separate careers. Much can be said about how that transition was originally made, but for now, let’s just revel in the millions…and millions of the Rock’s fans. Because they’re still here.

If any one personality can truly encompass the complicated relationship between professional wrestling and the rest of the world, that would be The Rock.

Jabroni Companion: WrestleMania XXVII

2011-05-21T14:38:00.000-07:00

Having finally had a chance to check out this year's WrestleMania for myself, I've got a few thoughts:

The "Snookie match" was probably intended more as Michelle McCool's dream match, against Trish Stratus. You can kinda tell because, well, she retired soon after and most of the match take place between them. Also, to say all John Morrison did was perform Starship Pain is kinda like saying all Tazz did was suplex. He performed Starship Pain off the frickin' top turnbuckle. Onto the floor. I don't know if the commentators I read are aware of this, but that's not the way he usually does it. For the record. I'll have more Morrison on Thursday.

As a whole, the card felt like a huge throwback to how WrestleMania was in the beginning, with a huge emphasis on celebrity (which happened to come from WWE's own, for the most part, in the form of Dwayne Johnson), and not a lot of concern for important matches. Don't get me wrong, because for most of the wrestlers on the card, they were actually involved in personally significant matches, but I'm not sure the company was looking for any technically excellent exhibitions. They ahd Undertaker in yet another climactic encounter, and as long as they've got that, I think they'll allow the rest of the card to rest a little easy, which is pretty interesting.

I'll watch it again at some point, but on the whole, apart from the vastly different tone, I would not call it a failure, as most others seem to be saying. There were so many emotionally charged moments in previous months, because of the whole Nexus angle, that they had to go in a different direction, and Cena-Rock had appropriately already been announced for next year.

To steal a line from The Miz, that one will be awesome.

Jabroni Companion #3

2011-05-05T14:37:00.001-07:00

Okay, so now that we’ve looked at my favorite wrestler and the most famous card in professional wrestling, how about one of the most hotly disputed angles to ever develop? I’m talking

III. The Invasion

Incredibly, 2011 marks the ten-year anniversary of Vince McMahon buying WCW, thereby effectively ending one of the greatest rivalries wrestling has ever seen, WWE vs. WCW, headlined by the Monday Night War that gave us the nWo, the Attitude Era, and an endless series of wildly inappropriate Mae Young appearances.

There’s been plenty said about how WCW sabotaged itself during its last year of existence, from increasingly erratic booking to the dwindling impact of a formula that had, since its hottest days in 1996, lost the interest of the fans. The company attempted a number of ways to repackage existing stars, reposition them, and keep business going more or less as usual, but WWE, behind the cultural phenomenon of Steve Austin, had finally managed to completely eclipse its competition, and there was just no way WCW could maintain, much less regain, the kind of momentum it had enjoyed previously. For financial reasons, the prospect of new ownership made everything that much more unstable, and that allowed Vince to slip his way in, and bring WCW to a close, and in dramatic fashion, with a simulcast announcement occurring between Raw and the final edition of Nitro. The new boss couldn’t wait to rebrand his acquisition, quickly establishing the seeds to a whole new era, and the beginnings of the Invasion angle, by representing his son Shane as a usurper of this historic moment.

It was a slow build from there, and part of the reason was that WWE had an opportunity to rebuild itself around Austin, who had recently returned from career-threatening surgery, and that year’s WrestleMania kicked off a different angle entirely, the unexpected alliance between the “Texas Rattlesnake” and his former archrival, Vince McMahon. The story only became more complicated when Triple H, who only months earlier had been confirmed to be the culprit of the storyline that had explained Austin’s absence, and therefore the recipient of a violent blood feud with him upon his return, joined up, and together, this “Two-Man Power Trip” ran roughshod over the company. The Rock (Dwayne Johnson), meanwhile, was just getting started in his movie career, and so the biggest competition for this duo was the late Chris Jericho and the late Chris Benoit. Things hit a patch when “The Game” himself went out to injury.

And things only became further complicated from there. WCW stars, and then ECW stars, began the invasion in earnest. It probably bears noting how complicated the wrestling scene had been for the preceding year. ECW, a cult promotion known for its devoted fans (strong enough for WWE to later revive the idea for an entire brand, and then TNA to bring back its most visible stars once again), began suffering a major setback (as Ring of Honor in recent years can probably relate) when WWE and WCW raided its best talent to stock up their own rosters. WWE had names like the Dudley Boys and Tazz under contract by 2000, while WCW literally stole Mike Awesome during his ECW heavyweight championship run. About the only name that remained loyal was Rob Van Dam, but he had never been a world champion with the promotion, and the momentum ECW constantly strove to build never really came. The company was out of business by the time WCW was bought out.

By 2001, then, it wasn’t uncommon to find wrestlers who had been known as ECW competitors to be featured regularly on a WWE card, and that included Rhyno, who had become something of the ECW equivalent of WCW’s Goldberg, a monster of a wrestler who mauled opponents with the Gore, a version of the tackle that Goldberg and WWE’s Edge had made one of the modern era’s most feared maneuvers.

By the time of the invasion, fans were salivating at the prospects. WWE had the ECW and WCW rosters to pick from, which promised a war of epic proportions, a clash between all the biggest stars of the days, now free to mingle in the same ring. What seemed like a perfect dream, however, was apparently not what Vince McMahon himself had in mind. These are names that never factored into the invasion: Scott Steiner, Tommy Dreamer, the Sandman, Sting, Ric Flair, Kevin Nash, Scott Hall, Hulk Hogan, Sabu, Rey Mysterio, Goldberg, Jeff Jarrett. It’s not as if none of these men would ever be seen in a wrestling ring again. Many of them are still, in some way, ten years later, still very relevant to wrestling fans. Yet none of them graced a WWE ring in 2001, ever appeared with the WCW/ECW Alliance, even though they were and are undisputedly the biggest names from either promotion.

Fans who caught on to that fact were a little put off, to say the least. WWE used all the least relevant stars, in some ways. Sure, you had Booker T and RVD, both of whom became far bigger stars than they had been before as a result. But what was the point of this angle if Austin didn’t finally have that match with Goldberg, for instance, or any number of other blockbuster combinations?

Almost exactly from the start, WWE was using its existing stars to augment the ranks of the Alliance, those who had famously competed in those organizations, and even some surprises, such as Steve Austin’s turn at the Invasion PPV itself, when he turned his back on WWE. It was almost business as usual in some respects. What was the point?

Chris Jericho, in his recent book Undisputed offers one possible explanation, when he talks about his own rough transition from the style he had become used to wrestling to what Vince expected from him in WWE, and this is just one exceptionally gifted star. Imagine what kind of nightmare it would have been to try and develop two whole additional rosters of stars, when WWE itself already had a roster of talented individuals who shouldn’t be expected to give up their spots to relatively unproven talent. This I’m saying purely in the sense that there were now dozens of wrestlers WWE fans and the WWE system itself would now have to incorporate into a cohesive vision. When most fans think about wrestling, it’s easy in theory to juggle different promotions, and that was a lot of what sustained the Monday Night War, and what allowed ECW to stand out, with a style that stood out in stark contrast, until it was adopted and adapted to suit both WCW and WWE.

But that was when fans could pick and choose, when there were options, when there were different channels, and the ability to clearly delineate support between promotions. Vince quickly determined that he would have to very carefully calculate and modulate the conflicting affections his fans would now have to juggle all at once, and that it would best serve him, his stars, and yes, the fans, if he did so in a very deliberate manner. He put his own company first, and it was a damn smart move. I will actually be writing another column about who benefited the most from this decision, so I may seem to be skipping over some rather significant developments in this one, but suffice it to say, I intend to finally dispel the myth that the Invasion angle was a missed opportunity.

The Invasion, which quickly segued into the Alliance, was an angle that officially lasted from the Invasion PPV in July of 2001 until that November’s Survivor Series. As we all know, another huge story occurred at roughly the midpoint of all this, 9/11, one that was far bigger than any wrestling event, and something that is rarely referenced when fans talk about the failure of the angle, because it ended up being far shorter than most people seemed to hope.

That’s being all the more naïve, though, especially when you consider how many things happened after Survivor Series, when the Alliance appeared to have been completely neutralized. Ric Flair made his return to WWE soon after, and initiated an epic feud with Vince, and that in itself led to the comeback of the New World Order, with its original members Kevin Nash, Scott Hall, and Hulk Hogan, which itself led to perhaps the biggest match in WrestleMania history, Hogan vs. The Rock. This was quickly followed by the beginning of the brand era, when WWE split into Raw and Smackdown as separate promotions, thanks to the increased roster that was the direct result of the acquisition of WCW and ECW. Word had it that originally Vince hoped to split WCW off into its own brand within WWE (but then, WCW had the same hopes with the nWo), and while that very dream would one day be realized with ECW, this was a different era. Vince McMahon had won the professional wrestling war. He had no reason to immediately capitulate and grant his vanquished foes their own platform in his own company. His sole job was the satisfactory welfare of WWE, and the stars he himself had nurtured. I would venture to say that doing anything at all with a flood of WCW and ECW talent was more generous than anything. He gave the lesser-known talent an unbelievable opportunity (which fans might better appreciate today in the post-Nexus era), and then moved on to bigger and better things.

As I said, Booker T was a huge beneficiary of the Alliance angle. He had been WCW champion several times in its final year, but was one of the stars that failed to properly motivate fans to truly care (Jeff Jarrett and Scott Steiner were the others), and was even positioned as the final champion on the last Nitro, and so became the face of the promotion at the onset of the Invasion. Since he had developed several moves that resembled ones The Rock had made famous, it was only natural that he and The Rock would enter a program at some point, and that alone elevated Booker’s profile. That this feud helped Chris Jericho become a world champion for the first time is another huge development that the Invasion helped make possible. When the Alliance was defeated at Survivor Series, Booker was one of many stars who were supposed to disappear, but he never did, and in fact became a WWE staple, and by 2003, a scant year later, was competing in a WrestleMania main event.

RVD, meanwhile, became such a fan favorite that it became difficult to understand how he himself wasn’t immediately pushed into world champion status, even though his own ECW promotion had never done so. He was the true breakout star of the Invasion, and this would never have bee possible if all those other big names had been around. He would have been an afterthought. Instead, he eventually became the cornerstone, and champion of, the ECW revival in 2006, which in turn would give him the legitimacy to headline TNA years later.

This is to say nothing of how Steve Austin and Kurt Angle, for example, benefited, and that’s another hugely overlooked development of the Alliance angle, and one that will figure prominently in the follow-up column, to be sure.

The Invasion and the Alliance, however, were only one small element of Vince’s strategy. Where others sawed only a series of missed opportunities, he envisioned a series of prospects that only increased in time. He had two world champions during the whole angle, and these titles were routinely defended, separately. That opened the door to the unprecedented unification tournament at that December’s Vengeance, when the first-ever undisputed heavyweight champion would be crowned. Since Steve Austin and The Rock were both involved, it seemed natural that one of them would claim the honor, but Vince gave fans another huge swerve when he tapped Jericho instead, thereby paving the way for the return of Triple H in time for the 2002 WrestleMania.

He had the chance to launch the WWE careers of many famous WCW stars at his leisure as well. Rey Mysterio didn’t debut until the summer of 2002, a good year after the initial invasion. Imagine if Rey had been just another WCW star trying to make his mark. Vince instead had the vision to make him something special from the start, and reaped the benefits for years, finding an unlikely (WCW itself had never been able to make Mysterio quite so popular) fan favorite, and an even more unlikely world champion. Scott Steiner, who had closed his WCW career as a heel with one of the most hotly greeted fan reactions of the modern era, made his WWE return in the fall as a free agent greatly desired by both brands (and therefore accentuating not only his own presence by the still-novel concept of rival brands within WWE). No matter the controversies that would surround his matches with Triple H, or his increasingly undistinguished year back. “Big Poppa Pump” had already proven Vince’s point.

WWE gained new developmental talent, too, wrestlers WCW had been working on, such as Jimmy Yang, Nathan Jones, Oleg Prudius, which it was free to nurture at a different pace. Yang went through several incarnations before becoming something of an attraction as an unlikely redneck. Jones, who has since become a Hollywood favorite, but was first discovered by WCW, had a few opportunities to prove himself inside of a WWE ring, even at one point being slated to compete as the Undertaker’s partner at WrestleMania, which is far more than he ever got with the organization that found him. Prudius, meanwhile, was a Russian sensation whose general ungainliness for mass conception eventually gave WWE and Santino Marella the easy-going Vladimir Koslov.

Through all of this, WWE kept the spotlight on its own stars, and 2001 served as a significant transition year for not only Austin, Angle, Jericho, but also for Edge, Jeff Hardy, and William Regal, who finally found the perfect WWE role for himself, a persnickety authority figure whose personality fans could really get behind. 2002 was a significant year for developing new stars as well, from John Cena and Randy Orton to Brock Lesnar, who came about at a time when the company could use a fresh new face to dominate the main event scene, something fans hadn’t even thought about a year earlier. And after the return of Triple H, the comeback of Eddie Guerrero was probably the best feel-good development of the year, at least in terms of WWE stars. Did I mention that Hulk Hogan, after several years of lukewarm WCW reception, energized arenas for the first time since turning heel, by becoming a bona fide fan favorite again? It would never have been possible if he had simply been brought back as part of the invasion angle.

Looking back, Vince McMahon undertook perhaps his second greatest accomplishment, after the birth of WrestleMania, when he bought WCW, and executed the results the way he did. I’m not here to argue that everything went off without a hitch. Nothing is perfect, but the Invasion/Alliance angle was as near perfection as you can get in professional wrestling, satisfying every long-term goal Vince might have envisioned. The four months the Alliance actually existed did a lot more than fans realized or appreciated at the time, and during a difficult period of world history. I guess what I’m trying to say is, revisit this particular era for yourself. Surprise yourself. Try to remember what it was like, rather than what you might have been feeling. If you’re new to wrestling, 2001 is the year you have to thank for everything you enjoy today, so reward yourself with a look at what things were actually like ten years ago. Things were very different. But then, maybe they really weren’t.

Jabroni Companion #2

2011-04-28T14:36:00.001-07:00

If that’s not enough for you, then maybe WWE’s greatest legacy, WrestleMania might satisfy you. This year’s card was a few weeks ago, and so maybe the rush of it is still flowing in your veins, and you’re still energized. Rather than attempting to analyze all of it, I’m going to limit myself a little, with a nifty little exercise that looks at what is ostensibly the most important part of the show.

II. Ranking the WrestleMania Main Events

Oftentimes, when fans look back at WrestleMania, they remember the matches that stole the show, and they aren’t always the main event. In fact, although the hype traditionally rests at the top of the card, it’s perhaps just as traditional for superstars other than those who perform last to leave the lasting memories. You may know those better, actually, so rather than preamble further, let’s jump into the list, and revisit the intended attractions.

1. XII (1996) Bret Hart vs. Shawn Michaels
This is the famous Iron Man match, which in itself is perhaps special in the annals of WWE lore, but as many purists will tell you, broadways have often been used to test, and on a regular and frequent basis, the best wrestlers in a given promotion. That WWE actually headlined a WrestleMania in such fashion, however, required a ton of hype, and two very particular competitors. Hart had been champion off an on since 1992, and that’s the year he and Michaels first clashed for the title, at Survivor Series. Nicknamed the “Heartbreak Kid,” Shawn had for years pushed himself to be one of the best wrestlers in the world, but had long been denied headliner status because of his comparatively small stature. WWE had attempted to fill the vacancy of Hulk Hogan in many ways, and seemed as happy as it was reluctant to do it with the “Hitman” for the past several years. His most notable opponent over the past four years was Yokozuna, who was not exactly best attuned to fight the kind of match Hart was best suited for. Neither was Ric Flair, or Randy Savage, or maybe the company simply believed Bret deserved someone of his own generation. That would turn out to be HBK. By the time this match took place, Hart’s time as champion was effectively over. He’d have another run in 1997, and another Survivor Series title match with Shawn, but the perfect confluence was here, when all points came together, and the best pure wrestling match WWE had seen was finally allowed to happen.

2. XIV (1998) Shawn Michaels vs. Steve Austin
It’s ironic, since 1996 also saw Steve Austin’s transformation from gifted but generic wrestler to a bona fide star, when he preached the “Stone Cold” gospel at King of the Ring, and he still had to wait, like HBK, several years before he was granted what he had earned. So despite a lot of pain, Shawn helped make the transition official, took the next four years off, and allowed the Austin era to begin. It might be said that the only stars WrestleMania itself was ever allowed to make were HBK and “Stone Cold,” and so that’s reason enough to place those main events at the top of this list. Hulk Hogan had a succession of these things to make his legacy, but it only took once to make it stick for the main event to make the appropriate statement and moment for these two.

3. XXVI (2010) Undertaker vs. Shawn Michaels
The other great legacy of WrestleMania is “the Streak.” The Undertaker, since WrestleMania VII in 1991, has overcome each and every one of his opponents, a total record as of 2011 of 19-0. A couple of stars (Kane, Triple H), he’s defeated twice, and this match marked another one, but there was even more significance. There have been a few deliberate rematches in WrestleMania history, but none moreso, when HBK chose to end his career in much the same way he’d helped Ric Flair two years earlier. I had something of a problem with this match initially for that very reason. It seemed too obvious, and didn’t seem to honor Shawn in the right way. The match itself, as it first seemed to me, seemed nothing more than a methodical rehash of the original encounter, a classic version of “epic encounter” where the point really seems to be to slip almost immediately into desperation mode, into one giant climax. Then I watched it again. And then again. The final moments of the match are what really make it, when Shawn finally brings his own unique stamp to the occasion. He briefly flares up into the defiant imp he’d become in his original DX days, when everyone started to legitimately hate him, when they thought the selfishness and destructive impulses he himself would admit to truly had permeated his professional career. All that in a flash, a show of defiance in the face of what Undertaker, and everyone watching already knew, from that other match, that Shawn couldn’t win. Suddenly the booking made sense. All of it made sense. If Shawn wasn’t ready for this moment a year earlier, he helped make it better by making everyone stew on it for a little while longer. A WrestleMania main event where a world title isn’t defended is pretty rare. This was the best of them.

4. 21 (2005) Triple H vs. Batista
Triple H is kind of a funny case. He has appeared in six of the twenty-seven WrestleMania main events to date, more than Hulk Hogan, more than Shawn Michaels, more than any other WWE superstar. About the only year of the modern era when he was healthy that Hunter skipped that honor, ironically, was 2003, the year everyone agreed he’d reached the apex of insufferability. Part of what skewers his legacy, despite a sustained and inspired career, is the fact that, unlike HBK and Steve Austin, he didn’t have his championship breakthrough at WrestleMania. “Stone Cold” had to pass the torch in the summer of 1999 so he could go off and have career-salvaging surgery, and that’s how Triple H finally won the gold. We’ll get to his first WrestleMania main event with it a little later, but there’s a sense that his momentum was a tad sabotaged before it was even begun (something of the story of his career). But Hunter still did wrestling good. He built a whole stable, along with one of his primary inspirations, Ric Flair, around Randy Orton and Batista, both of whom would go on to have arguably even more successful careers. What makes this particular main event so fascinating is that it was exactly the opposite of what everyone expected. Orton was supposed to be “The Man,” and 2004 was all about making that happen, but “The Game” instead tapped the relatively unproven Batista for the WrestleMania honors. It turned out to be the right move. “The Animal” proved to be WWE’s revision of Ultimate Warrior and Goldberg, a reliable and consummate champion with his own brand of unusual charisma, and this match had the whole story. Batista might not be Shawn Michaels, or even Triple H, but he’s as close to the next Hulk Hogan that the company has ever found.

5. 25th Anniversary (2009) Triple H vs. Randy Orton
But getting back to Orton, he’s perhaps still more fascinating. As I said, he was, by all signs, intended to be the main beneficiary of the Evolution stable (even in the early days, when it seemed like just a bunch of goons to keep the gold around Hunter’s waist). The “Legend Killer” came into WWE in the same year as John Cena, 2002, but was fast-tracked to world champion status almost a year sooner than “The Champ.” Turns out, however, it was a little premature. Orton spent three years waiting for his next run with a heavyweight title, during which Cena spent the majority of that time with just such a title firmly around his (neck?), and Triple H not so far away with another. He spent that time developing a calculating persona even more coiled than his mentor’s, becoming “The Viper,” and turning his attacks on and relationship with the McMahon clan even more personal than Triple H’s from the McMahon-Helmsley Era. Much of it was a new version of what had made Steve Austin a star, but what made this match so special was that it inverted just about every bit of conventional wisdom, from the fact that Hunter would finally draw inspiration from his real marriage with Stephanie McMahon to having a grudge match that was constrained to conventional rules. Even an Orton-Hunter match, which had been seen many times, felt special. Most WrestleMania matches should be exceptions because they’re uncommon encounters. This one really was the reverse of everything fans had grown to know.

6. 2000 (2000) Triple H vs. The Rock vs. Big Show vs. Mick Foley
I don’t know how many other fans have a special place in their hearts for WrestleMania 2000 (fun trivia that never gets old: this is the only card in WrestleMania history to not feature a single one-on-one match), but it’s the only one I’ve seen on PPV, so there’s that at least, and beyond that, it’s almost the one most like the first WrestleMania, at least in terms of the main event, that WWE has done since. This match should have been Triple H and The Rock. Everyone knows that, or at least should. The two had engaged in feuds long before either one was a world champion, and this particular feud continued for several months afterward. Mick Foley, one of the most unlikely world champions ever (whether you consider his titles in WWE or TNA), won his way to the main event thanks to sentiment (and, no doubt, literary prowess, having become the most successful wrestling memoirist ever at that point). Big Show had his only WrestleMania main event, probably to round out the match, make it even less predictable. Hunter had done his best to enrage Vince McMahon, as only Steve Austin had managed to accomplish previously, by stealing power, and the boss’s daughter, and there was a McMahon in every corner for this match (watch out for Linda!). The finish is still a classic for me, even though the exact same thing was done the next year, with Vince screwing over The Rock to give Hunter the win. It was a win Triple H needed to be a legitimate champion, even though I still kinda wish Rock would have been successful (his anemic wins later in the feud did nothing to make him look better, but it’s not as if his legacy needed a strong run as champion).

7. 23 (2007) John Cena vs. Shawn Michaels
The constant knock on John Cena is that he isn’t much of a wrestler, and this match was clearly designed to counteract that argument (well, beyond the fact that HBK was subbing for an injured Triple H). For an improvised feud, it worked surprisingly well, and it really didn’t hurt that it was probably Shawn’s last great card (the two would but on an even better match several weeks later on Raw), the better for its spontaneity (not to knock the ones with Chris Jericho or Undertaker, but you can still hear the same desperation from them that Edge wrung from HBK not long before this match). Not surprising, then, that Shawn’s next three WrestleMania matches basically summed up his career. He really had nothing left to prove.

8. III (1987) Hulk Hogan vs. Andre the Giant
It seems a little perverse to list this one so low, but that has nothing to do with the momentous nature of seeing these two titans clash so much as the actual quality of the match. Andre was a living legend, the Undertaker of his day, with a mystique that had seen him, to this point, remain undefeated, and he was basically retired by the time he agreed to it. He enjoyed a career resurgence, and in turn gave Hogan the legitimacy two previous WrestleManias couldn’t. Still, maybe there’s a reason why everyone still argues that the best match from this card was Savage-Steamboat, the first time in WrestleMania history, in the first one that lived up to the hype, where a match other than the main event stole the show. That has got to say something. But it’s still weird to say that this match shouldn’t, by definition, be at the top of the list. That’s the evolution of wrestling, folks.

9. XV (1999) The Rock vs. Steve Austin
In a perfect world, the first time Austin and The Rock clashed should have been something like Hogan-Andre, but the truth is, Rock hadn’t hit his stride yet (that was the thing that was basically squandered at WrestleMania 2000, even though it turned out to be a good thing), so as good as The Rock was at this point, he was basically cannon fodder for “Stone Cold,” even more blatantly than Andre. That’s what makes a blockbuster encounter like this rank so low. The Rock’s greatest WrestleMania match was against Hogan. Everyone knows it. That’s where the magic is. It’s not here.

10. XXVII (2011) John Cena vs. The Miz
This year’s WrestleMania is still pretty fresh, and in point of fact, I haven’t even seen it yet, but I am still willing to rank it, in terms of importance, because of what was quickly announced in its aftermath. If it really happens, it’ll be the biggest thing to happen to WrestleMania since Hogan-Andre. I’m talking Cena-Rock. WrestleMania III ignited an arc that continued at least through WrestleMania V, an uninterrupted story that saw Hogan’s quest to regain the title after his war with Andre evolve with the emergence of Randy Savage as an unexpected threat. So this is not to say that The Miz is akin to Andre the Giant, much less Hulk Hogan. But John Cena is on that level, and The Rock, even though he has not actively participated in a wrestling match since 2004, is beyond even that. To have The Rock push around the company’s top star is comparable to Vince McMahon helping Triple H win at WrestleMania 2000, and to have the promise of Cena-Rock finally happening (a dream match Cena has actively pursued for years) is like having the biggest blockbuster imaginable, and between two stars who will actually be able to perform at more or less the same level. So cheer up Miz, that’s what you’ve accomplished so far!

11. V (1989) Hulk Hogan vs. Randy Savage
If Hogan were at the same level as the “Macho Man,” this match would serve as a precursor to the kind of action we might expect next year. But while Savage was at his best (though reports have it otherwise, much like Shawn Michaels at WrestleMania XIV), bouncing and leaping all over the place, Hogan does his usual, almost making a mockery of the occasion. I’ve never really gotten around to actively loathing the “Hulkster,” but I can see how he came to actively support his own career at the detriment of others. Charisma is not the only thing that makes a career, but Hogan came as close as anyone to creating that illusion.

12. VI (1990) Hulk Hogan vs. Ultimate Warrior
What Savage couldn’t do, Jim Hellwig did his best to achieve, which was to meet Hogan at his own level, and this was an epic clash that had all the kids in the schoolyard buzzing, which is something I remember vividly to this day. If anyone ever came close to truly subverting Hulkamania, it was the Ultimate Warrior, who offered an equally overblown and one-dimensional hero for fans to believe in, and a limited ring presence worked to its most efficient capacity. Warrior had a better match with Savage, not surprisingly, one year later (and just imagine if that had been a WrestleMania main event; you’ll hear about that one again later in the Jabroni Companion), and Hogan subsequently did everything he could to get the attention back on himself. More on that later.

13. XIX (2003) Kurt Angle vs. Brock Lesnar
This was a dream match between amateur wrestling stars, and a clash of styles, and all you really needed to know was that “The Next Big Thing” was supposed to receive his crown as the new Hulk Hogan that night. Well, one botched shooting star press later, and even Lesnar seemed to have second thoughts. Gone from the company a year later. Still, those of us who experienced Lesnar know that Batista still owes him big-time. A monster who could do whatever he wanted (except, it seemed, when “the lights are on bright,” as JBL liked to say), Lesnar gave Angle his only WrestleMania main event (something that TNA clearly feels was a huge oversight, and this journalist agrees with). Another match that could be ranked higher, without a lot of argument necessary.

14. IV (1988) Randy Savage vs. Ted DiBiase
I have nothing particular against “The Million Dollar Man,” but a tournament that deliberated eliminated Hulk Hogan and Andre the Giant was the only way he was ever going to find himself in a WrestleMania main event, whereas for Savage, it was exactly the scenario that would best differentiate himself from either star. He was everything they weren’t (including DiBiase), and while this was definitely a case of being in the right place at the right time, more often than not, that’s exactly the opposite of what the career of the “Macho Man” came to symbolize.

15. X (1994) Yokozuna vs. Bret Hart
I loved the idea of an unstoppable monster being champion of WWE, and Yokozuna was far more capable of filling that role than just about any other big man the company has seen before or since. He was predictable and unpredictable. He could do anything that was required of him. The only problem here is that the truth could not be said of Bret Hart. I love Bret Hart, but he never had any business competing against Yokozuna. That much was proved the first time around (more on that later), and only because Vince was annoyed that Lex Luger told somebody what would have been obvious to anyone, he was given the chance to do it against, this time even more lamely. Still, on Yokozuna’s end, this particular main event was still pretty awesome, at least the build-up.

16. X-SEVEN (2001) The Rock vs. Steve Austin
Much like HBK-Undertaker II, very little was done to make this sequel very sensical other than that, for practical reasons, it simply had to happen. The Rock was in better form, but the company was more interested in rebuilding “Stone Cold,” but that didn’t really happen until the WCW/ECW invasion (more on that later), so this just seemed lazy. But good lazy!

17. I (1985) Hulk Hogan & Mr. T vs. Roddy Piper & Paul Orndorff
I realize that in order to make it a spectacle, to make it feel like something special, something out of the ordinary had to be featured in the main event, but the first WrestleMania could have fulfilled that imperative without bloating the match. It should have been, simply, Hogan-Piper, and that match would have been, to this day, one of the greatest encounters in wrestling history. But instead, and no disrespect to “Mr. Wonderful,” we get Mr. T and Orndorff plugged in, plus a half dozen others, and nothing much at all. But at least there have been twenty-six other WrestleManias since!

18. XI (1995) Lawrence Taylor vs. Bam Bam Bigelow
Like the above, though it was good for business it’s still baffling historically. And while it’s also good that Bigelow, the “Beast from the East,” did get into a WrestleMania main event, well…

19. XXIV (2008) Edge vs. Undertaker
I’ve been one of Edge’s biggest admirers from the moment he first appeared in WWE, but I would never describe his wrestling style as anything but “controlled awkwardness.” Some argue this to be one of the best matches they’ve ever seen. It’s a good match, but I would never be able to say that. Sorry, Edge.

20. VII (1991) Hulk Hogan vs. Sgt. Slaughter
The only time Slaughter was relevant as a WWE competitor was when Hogan needed someone to make him seem like the greatest symbol of patriotic valor imaginable. So naturally the company turned to the only other guy who had literally built his career around that model. Yes, it makes sense. No, it is not actually compelling to watch as a match, at least not on this level. But Hogan had done worse in this regard.

21. XX (2004) Triple H vs. Shawn Michaels vs. Chris Benoit
Let me just start out by saying I’m not ranking this so low because my opinion of Benoit dropped like a stone in 2007. Quite the opposite, really. I remained a supporter of Benoit’s legacy through the most vicious reactions that year. 2004, however, belonged to Eddie Guerrero, if it belonged to any former WCW cruiserweights matriculated as Radicalz in WWE. As much as I loved to watch the “Rabid Wolverine” compete, it was always a bit like seeing, well, a rabid version of Bret Hart throwing himself around the ring, with less charisma, and to make that man world champion was like endorsing “Hitman” as champion, and I was never able to do that, either, except during the summer of 1997, when Hart really seemed to get into his character for the first time (ironically, as it turned out). Triple H and HBK are there to round out this match, in the same way Big Show was at WrestleMania 2000. How is it that two out of three competitors are there to round out a match? Exactly.

22. 22 (2006) John Cena vs. Triple H
The year after John Cena became a heavyweight champion he was still fighting to form the definitive statement for what it meant for him to have that title. He didn’t have that statement in this match, and neither did Triple H.

23. X8 (2002) Chris Jericho vs. Triple H
It’s a damn shame that “Y2J” competes in the WrestleMania main event, and becomes completely invisible, not because Triple H hogs all the glory, or Rock-Hogan had already stolen the show, but that Jericho himself is completely uninspired. If you’ve read either of his memoirs, you’re probably wishing he’d gotten a second chance. That would have been froot!

24. 13 (1997) Sycho Sid vs. Undertaker
I like Sid, and I’m a big fan of the Undertaker, but WWE had so many other plans and things going on, you could almost completely overlook this one, and also forget that it led to Undertaker’s most sustained run with the world title, and not really miss anything. Word was the Ultimate Warrior, who’d attempted a grand comeback the previous year, was supposed to be featured in this one. Against Undertaker? Well, that would have been awesome indeed.

25. IX (1993) Yokozuna vs. Bret Hart
Seriously, who booked this stuff? If anyone has any real memories of Hart’s first championship run that seem significant, please let me know, because it seems like, even though 1992 seemed to have a succession of transition champions that should have been better than that, its sole purpose was to transfer the ball to Yokozuna (and then, to Hulk Hogan, and then back to Yokozuna, and then back, improbably, to Bret Hart).

26. VIII (1992) Hulk Hogan vs. Sycho Sid
Speaking of 1992...! If he ever had a blatant misuse of influence, and a baffling one, this was it. He reportedly vetoed a match with Ric Flair, and opted for this last effort at dragon slaying, in what was basically his WWE swan song. Apparently he forgot about:

27. II (1986) Hulk Hogan vs. King Kong Bundy
Bundy, and no great offense to him, or Sid, but he was no Andre, as Andre himself had to prove a year later. Why this was a WrestleMania main event is somewhat beyond me. But as we all know, WrestleMania managed to survive it, and I guess that’s what really counts.

Jabroni Companion #1

2011-04-21T14:25:00.000-07:00

I can’t say how exactly I became a fan of professional wrestling. I was born in 1980, and so by the time WWE began building itself around Hulk Hogan, I was concerned with many other things, but there was a happy confluence when Hogan and Junkyard Dog began starring in cartoons. If I had to guess, that would be the genesis, so you might say that wrestling itself is not the reason I started to follow wrestling. There are many fans of yesterday and today who could say the same.

Hogan remained a staple for many years, and I remember my mother asking us to turn off the TV while he was getting smashed with a steel chair, because wrestling was too violent. My father would sometimes fondly recall his days following Chief Jay Strongbow (whom I would see on TV, briefly, in later years, during an association with another Native American, Tatanka), and so I suppose it’s no great mystery as to who I can thank for my earliest exposures. In school, I remember a great amount of hype over Hogan’s epic confrontation with Ultimate Warrior, and how each had their partisans. And it kind of snowballed from there, as my access grew, and I grew up.

Because I did not, technically, grow up watching it, but only really had my chance to follow the action in adolescence, I had a lot of catching up to do, from just how important Hogan was, the context for WWE, and the rich history that preceded both of them, including other major promotions and stars who might be said to rival what had come to define for me the whole concept of wrestling. I came in just outside of the era of regional promotions that had once dominated the imaginations of fans, and besides, I was from Maine. Aside from a few famous names to call the state home (Scotty 2 Hotty, Tony Atlas), it’s not exactly what you might call a hotbed of wrestling excitement.

1993 is more or less the first year of my true infatuation with wrestling. It seems a little weird, because for a lot of fans, 1993 doesn’t seem all that significant. I can rattle off any number of reasons why it’s still significant to me, and I will no doubt repeatedly refer back to that year in the coming 100 topics, but suffice it to say, I became a fan, a devoted one, and have continued to be one through every twist and turn wrestling has seen since then, from WCW’s acquisition of Hogan, to Hogan actually becoming relevant to that company, to Steve Austin arguably eclipsing his legacy in WWE, and even to my earliest memories supporting John Cena (earlier than you’d think).

Why care about wrestling? By Hogan’s time it became exceedingly clear that the action was not, technically, real, that it owed more to the circus than it did to sports, and by the time he parted ways with WWE, the first hushed whispers that there were many things to be concerned about, and this long before the parade of deaths came to justify in the minds of an increasingly skeptical public the opinion that the sideshow would be better off closing for good. Maybe I came about during an appropriately impressionable time in my development, and that seeing Hogan and JYD as animated versions of themselves didn’t adequately prepare me for what was to come.

Maybe, and then again, maybe I’ve found more reasons to admire wrestling than abhor, mock, or deride it. I take it seriously, even while I continually derive great amusement from it. But let’s get started on those 100 topics, because I have one particular individual in mind who will help illustrate my point:

I. Eddie Guerrero

In 2005, during the midst of writing the second act of what would become my first book, Eddie Guerrero died in a hotel room. I can tell you that the immediate impact was to profoundly alter the trajectory of that story, disrupting my plans and setting my characters on an entirely new path. It was a death that reverberated far more than almost any other death I had experienced before, and I’m talking about people I knew personally and those I only knew from the media. It was almost like James Dean, JFK for me, someone cut down in their prime, all their future potential suddenly lost in the blink of an eye. Eddie had already enjoyed great success in his career, but in many ways it was only just beginning.

The Guerrero family itself probably never saw Eddie coming. He came from a great tradition of wrestlers, but for all intents and purposes, he came to overshadow that tradition. There are many famous families in wrestling, and it seems that just as often as a famous father given birth to a famous son, that next generation will have greater opportunities than their predecessors ever dreamed of. Wrestling as we know it today, as practiced by WWE, TNA, ROH, and promotions all over the world, in Mexico and Japan, and in the independents ranks, has been practiced for more than a hundred years, and there has been a legion of famous names. You begin to truly appreciate it when you hear about Eddie’s upbringing, how he and his nephew Chavo were practically raised inside a wrestling ring. Eddie was born for professional wrestling, and so it was no surprised when he stepped between the ropes as a career. He plied his craft for a variety of promotions before reaching WCW at the height of the cruiserweight craze, when the international scene came crashing into the living rooms of everyday Americans, who had previously only experienced the deliberate styles demonstrated by the likes of Hulk Hogan, Ric Flair, Bruno Sammartino.

Cruiserweights were known for their in-ring ability, not for their outsized personalities, and I say “were” in the full knowledge that it’s a tendency that persists to this day. “Cruiserweight” is a term that doesn’t even exist anymore. WWE doesn’t have that division today, while TNA prefers to put a big “X” on it (“not about weight limits, but NO limits”). The truth is, the cruiserweight style has since been assimilated into the mainstream. You can thank early pioneers like Randy Savage and Shawn Michaels, but you can look no further than Eddie Guerrero for the one superstar who was able to combine style and personality, almost from the start (with apologies to Chris Jericho).

In his WCW prime, Eddie was a natural heel, which might have been a result of his origins in the Mexican ranks, where to this day persists a fairly black and white interpretation of ring rivalries, long after the Attitude era obliterated that concept for the average American fan. He was never a part of the mainstream, exactly (though he was not exactly excluded from it), but he took the nWo concept and crafted the Latino World Order, marshalling the company’s many masked luchadors, mostly in a war against Rey Mysterio, who flatly refused to join. Although I best remember the Eddie of this era, as many still fondly recall the Savage-Ricky Steamboat match from WrestleMania III, for his clash with Dean Malenko at Starrcade 1997. It was instantly one of the finest matches I had ever seen.

I’ll have more to say about that sort of thing later, but for now, let’s continue with the trajectory of Eddie’s career. He remained with WCW for a few more years, but became one of the Radicalz who shocked WWE fans in the early weeks of 2000. He was easily the one who fit best with the new company, especially after Jerry Lawler dubbed him “Latino Heat” (and here, I pause while you repeat that nickname in your best Lawler impersonation). I never saw someone blossom more organically and more naturally, and so instantly. The Rock, in comparison, took years to development from Rocky Maivia to “The People’s Champion.”

This is not to gloss over Eddie’s personal failings, which plagued him throughout his initial years with WWE. Although 2000 was a breakout years, for some intents and purposes, you might say his real tenure didn’t begin until 2002, when he became truly embraced as a competitor (which is certainly strange to say, because by all rights that’s how he should have been accepted in the first place). You might say he found the strength to conquer WWE by first conquering himself.

He became a world champion in 2004, and took that momentum into the next year, when his feud with Mysterio dominated Smackdown, until he was accepted as a legitimate challenge for the world title again, and against Batista, during his original run with the title, when everyone unquestionably loved him. Eddie was the only competitor who ever challenged the fans to root for the other guy. At the time, he was coming off his second great heel performance, and the whole program with Batista was designed to turn him back into a face (“heel” being wrestling parlance for villain, “face” the term for hero).

While I had appreciated Eddie’s efforts for years, it was during his reign as champion where he evolved once more, into a star capable of selling not just himself or his wrestling matches, but the purest appeal of his chosen profession, the interaction between himself and the fans. While he was never presented as a dominant champion, he was the kind of underdog you could really get behind. He didn’t take himself too seriously, and seemed to draw on his whole heritage, as if the ring really was his home, and not just acknowledge the crowd for a cheap pop, but allow them in on the joke, when he’d use the old referee distraction to pull a fast one on his opponents. Everyone else knew what Eddie was up to, but the moment the referee looked around, Eddie would be flat on his back, and it seemed like it was his opponent who had used the title belt as a weapon. Eddie would then wink again, just to make sure the joke sunk in. He didn’t have to paint his face to outclass Doink the Clown. He loved wrestling. It was clear in everything he did.

And that love was infectious. It was clear from the first time I saw him, and it was clear right up to the last time, and that’s what struck me, when I learned of his death, that it was all over. At least his character had had a chance to redeem himself. I would argue only the controversy of Chris Benoit’s death would make it a rival for the biggest impact of the loss of a professional wrestler. Only a few months later, Batista went out with an injury, and in many ways, his career never recovered. Eddie’s death affected his peers tremendously. He was my favorite wrestler then, and he still is to this day. No one better embodies professional wrestling to me, its fullest potential, its highs and lows, than Eddie Guerrero. If you ever wanted to understand it, become a student of this man’s career. Many fans criticized WWE’s apparent exploitation of his death in the months that followed, but in truth, Eddie had been building Rey Mysterio’s career not only in the year leading up to his death, but for years. And besides, you can’t escape a shadow that large very easily, and Eddie’s death left a shadow that large because his career was sheer brilliance. Remembering him is remembering what makes wrestling great.

More than Hogan, more than Shawn Michaels, even more than the Undertaker, Eddie constantly evolved, found the challenge of a long-term career something of a sport in itself. You take wrestling seriously because of that kind of devotion, that Eddie was born into it, and never grew tired of it, and always found the best of it.

Film Fan Friday Flashback!

2011-04-08T14:51:00.000-07:00

And where do we flash back to, exactly? Last Friday! And, specifically, to Source Code. Folks, I think this one has the secret of the universe in it.

I love it, I really do. It's a good year for sci-fi fans already, if you've got material as good as The Adjustment Bureau and Source Code. It's only April! I loved Duncan Jones' Moon, the movie that got a tiny release two years ago, but is the reason this one opened wide, so I was a little apprehensive when I read a crappy review in the local indy paper, but I had been curious enough by the previews I'd seen, I had to give it a chance. I'm glad I did.

The opening has some of the best atmospheric shots I've ever seen. If this were an IMAX flick, I would have developed vertigo. And that's not even the thrust of the movie! Most of it is in confined spaces, either on the train, the military base, or the capsule, and each of those are memorable locations for those who have already seen this one. Anyway, and so I don't bog you down with stars so much as wow you with starpower movie making, I'll just stick with explaining what makes it so fantastic. Yes, it actually does play a lot like Moon, and yes, a little like Groundhog Day, and a whole lot of Star Trek reboot episodes, but it transcends all of them, it really does. It's brilliant. You walk out of it trying to figure it out, but here's the secret.

Trust Jake. Ignore Jeffrey. Jake's the real expert, or becomes it. He participates, however willingly or not, in an experimental program that ends up sending his consciousness into the future, and it's in there where he finds success, and transmits that success to the past, to his own past. How do you make sense of life? You trust it. I guess that's what you might say this film's message is.

Anyway, see Source Code. You'll thank me later.

Top Fifty Recent Viewings

2011-03-31T14:09:00.000-07:00

#1. The Adjustment Bureau (2011)
Because the Film Fan never sleeps, 2011 must be represented, and this is one movie I’ve been waiting for since its release was delayed from last fall. Considering the sheer number of Matt Damon projects that’ve been released over a very short period, I choose to believe the studio couldn’t possibly have been concerned about the quality, because this is a mind-blowing experience that, as the trailers suggest, explores free will, with politician Damon attempting to win campaigns and the heart of Emily Blunt, all the while dodging the likes of John Slattery and Terence Stamp, while getting a little help from Anthony Mackie. I’m always a sucker for ambitious material, and this one’s very ambitious indeed, based on Philip K. Dick, but with expanded scope (it’s usually the other way around).

#2. Bronson (2008)
After Tom Hardy’s breakout appearance in Inception, suddenly everyone wanted a piece of him. Having been a huge fan of his after Star Trek Nemesis, I’d anticipated this kind of reaction years earlier, but a variety of setbacks (including the reaction to Star Trek Nemesis) made it difficult to keep track of him. One of the projects that helped put him on the comeback trail was this explosive and highly imaginative portrait of a real-life small-time criminal who gained notoriety by repeatedly breaking out of prison (though the tone is radically different from I Love You, Phillip Morris, mind you) and being an all-around badass. You walk away from this one impressed by the audacity of Bronson, and once again marveled by Hardy.

#3. 12 Monkeys (1995)
My love of Terry Gilliam has been developing since 1999, when I first saw The Adventures of Baron Munchausen, and I’ve been working my way through his catalog ever since, and finding myself more and more impressed. I’ve grown to love this one, the more familiar I’ve become with it, based not as much on Brad Pitt’s gonzo performance, but the quiet bewilderment of Bruce Willis, in the lead role, one of his best attempts to finally crack out of the action mode Die Hard had placed him in. If he weren’t so determinedly Hollywood rather than prestige-performance driven, Willis would have so much more respect than he does even to this day.

#4. Reds (1981)
Warren Beatty is another actor whose career was basically overshadowed by peripheral concerns, even though he consistently brought magic that few other actors in film history, even though with considerably more acclaim, have ever approached. Here he actually makes a communist manifesto, though it’s more about fighting for ideals over conformist corruption, a complex political drama that’s as relevant today as when it was released thirty years ago.

#5. Wyatt Earp (1994)
Kevin Costner does one of his typically epic character studies, and that’s all well and good, but what I’d really like to take note of is Dennis Quaid’s appearance as Doc Holliday, one of the greatest supporting performances I’ve ever seen, a truly stylized effort that steals every scene Quaid appears in, and easily the best acting I’ve ever seen him do. Where the hell is that guy in his other films? Because I like Quaid, but his Holliday is a true revelation.

#6. Traffic (2000)
Quaid’s here, too, but so are a boatload of other talented actors, including Benicio Del Toro, Michael Douglas, Catherine Zeta-Jones (in the project that introduced her and Michael, and thus the fucker that broke a million hearts), Don Cheadle, even Topher Grace, all led by the momentarily glorified directing of Steven Soderbergh. Besides all the acting brilliance is a piercing study of the modern drug scene, which is stupendously complicated.

#7. The Good German (2006)
Speaking of Soderbergh, he’s here, too, in one of the projects that eventually got him blackballed by critics, who apparently both love and hate cinema, because they hated this one because they claimed it aped classic cinema too much, calling it a poor variation of Casablanca. Listen, baby, I know Casablanca, and The Good German is not Casablanca, and I don’t say that because I think poorly of The Good German, but because there’s only a fleeting resemblance, so little that it doesn’t even need to be referenced. What you’ve actually got here is George Clooney, who’s had most of his career suffering to break free of his classic movie star appeal (though he prefers to fall back on it in direct defiance), as maybe a distant cousin of Rick’s, caught in the middle of a complicated affair that involves an ambiguous pairing of Tobey Maguire and Cate Blanchett (how critics don’t love her as much as I do is another mystery). Anyway, it’s also in black and white, so all around it looks and unfolds beautifully.

#8. Sucker Punch (2011)
Even more recent movie alert! Obviously, I’ve only just seen this one, but I’m a big fan of Zack Snyder, more so over Watchmen than 300, so I was anticipating this one for maybe as long as The Adjustment Bureau, and since it’s basically his first original vision, there was that much more intrigue involved. Emily Browning (she liked to tie her hair up in Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events) must find some inner resolve to overcome a world that seems diametrically opposed to her, and that strength ends up being metaphorically visualized by a lot of ass kicking. Having already proven himself a visual master, Snyder now demonstrates that his storytelling flair is not exclusive to adaptations. I rank this one above the similar Black Swan for reasons I’ll get into when I reach the Natalie Portman spotlight a few entries from now.

#9. The Thin Red Line (1998)
It’s taken me a number of years to fully absorb this one, even though I’ve had ‘The New World” to amply demonstrate Terrence Malick’s genius (small prediction, but I suspect his upcoming The Tree of Life will be a 2011 favorite), but I’ve finally done it. The obvious highlights are Jim Caviezel and Elias Koteas, both spiritually troubled in the patented Malick fashion.

#10. The Missouri Breaks (1976)
Marlon Brando may have been the greatest actor to garner some of the worst reviews Hollywood ever saw. This one is inexplicably among them, another of his efforts to capitalize on his sudden Godfather-inspired career revival, though the movie really belongs to Jack Nicholson as what has become one of my favorite antiheroes, a horse thief attempting reform on the basis of falling in love. Sporting a wild beard, he looks and acts like one of the more authentic and sympathetic types you’re likely to find in a Western not staring the cuddly John Wayne.

#11. Green Hornet (2011)
Another recent release! I have yet to see Knocked Up in its entirety, so Funny People is for me the defining Seth Rogen flick. Well, now it’ll have to be Green Hornet, since Rogen folds so perfectly into this particular vision of the relatively obscure superhero that it’ll now be impossible for me to separate the two. Rogen is basically Seth Rogen, with a more sympathetic background, until he decides becoming the Green Hornet is a strategically good idea, and from there, expectations continue to be subverted, whether in the presentation of Kato, Christoph Waltz as the villain, or Cameron Diaz as the unexpectedly helpful office temp. Diaz is more appealing here than she was in Knight and Day, which was another nice surprise.

#12. The Phantom (1996)
Here completes our unofficial B-level superhero group, with Billy Zane bringing it as an iconic version of the newspaper strip staple, and basically a direct precursor to Mask of Zorro, even having Catherine Zeta-Jones along for the ride (how the hell it took until Zorro for Hollywood to officially notice her will forever baffle me).

#13. Brothers Grimm (2005)
Here’s Terry Gilliam again, in a movie I think I’ve finally come to completely appreciate. The whole reason I watched it originally was basically to help round out the Heath Ledger catalog, but even then, I liked it well enough to wonder why it was received so tepidly. Monica Bellucci, you’ve got Monica Bellucci! I also realized this time that Lena Headley’s in it, and Lena Headley (300) is awesome. Peter Stormare is a comedic genius here, too (he was also a highlight in The Million Dollar Hotel and Prison Break, but he seems to be appreciated very sparingly, another confusing notion). Ledger plays very tenderly against type, while Matt Damon seems to be lampooning his emerging Jason Bourne persona, and the whole affair cleverly places the Grimm brothers in a fictional but historic context, making it enjoyable on too many levels to dismiss as easily as everyone seems to have.

#14. Black Swan (2010)
Not included in the 2010 list last week because I hadn’t seen it yet, as with The Fighter (a few entries down). Remarkably similar to Sucker Punch, in that much of the story is presented from the warped perspective of the central character. But while Zack Snyder unambiguously integrates every element of his story together, Darren Aronofsky once more obscures the impact of his troubled lead by relying on audience participation and sympathy than outright skill. This movie undoubtedly builds on the Natalie Portman canon, and is perhaps its apex, at least to this point, and so the actress absolutely deserves all the accolades she’s received based on it, but I always find it puzzling when a filmmaker doesn’t seem to realize, or doesn’t care, when they leave enough clues about an alternate interpretation. Black Swan is supposed to be about unbearable pressure, but it’s probably easier to view it as Portman crumbling under expectations and passion that she herself never really shared, and is only now just realizing where exactly it’s gotten her. Or maybe that’s exactly what Aronofsky was going for. Either way, I guess I’m still working on this one, while Sucker Punch, for instance, is far more deliberate, though just as much an overall artistic achievement. Sometimes easier really is better, even if temporarily.

#15. How to Lose Friends and Alienate People (2008)
Very much like the earlier Devil Wears Prada, in that someone is thrust into a job that proves more difficult than they previously imagined (ha! and reads just like Black Swan, too), but with the added benefit of Simon Pegg. Around him are Jeff Bridges, before everyone started caring about him again (and, like Meryl Streep in Prada, sporting atypically silvery hair), Kirsten Dunst (vulnerable and alluring, as always), and Megan Fox (trying to prove her acting appeal).

#16. Bowfinger (1999)
Steve Martin and Eddie Murphy were hailed as an inspired comedic pairing at the time, but it seems as if this movie has since been completely forgotten. Well, no more!

#17. Solaris (2003)
Soderbergh again, this time accused of aping (ha!) 2001: A Space Odyssey, even though this is a remake of another book adaptation entirely. George Clooney (this director’s own personal De Niro, or DiCaprio) is plunged into a deeply psychological mess when he’s forced to confront his lingering feelings for his late wife, Natascha McElhone. Jeremy Davies seems to audition for Lost as one of the troubled astronauts who attempt to demonstrate how much trouble Clooney is going to find.

#18. The Fighter (2010)
Boxing is such an inherently cinematic sport that it’s no surprise that Hollywood has repeatedly explored it, even as boxing itself has become less culturally relevant. Famously, Mark Wahlberg and Christian Bale portray a pair of Lowell, MA brothers who unexpectedly found success, though how exactly is what provides the story for this film, the fall of the older brother, and the rise of the younger. While I wish the movie had provided more of an arc for Wahlberg’s lead character, his loss is Bale’s gain.

#19. Primary Colors (1998)
One of the movies that attempted to break the stranglehold Titanic maintained for months at the box office and in the imaginations of filmgoers, this is the adaptation of the famously anonymous (at the time) look at a fictionalized Bill Clinton, and probably the last time John Travolta really got to shine in his big comeback.

#20. Sanjuro (1962)
The less famous follow-up to Yojimbo, I can really get behind the strategic and brilliant mind on display here.

#21. An American Tail (1986)
I honestly can’t explain at this point how this one was left out of the 500 countdown, because this is an acknowledged touchstone of my childhood, a classic tale of a misfit trying to find his way, with songs I still sing today, even though it’s been a long time since I last saw it.

#22. Simone (2002)
This is a movie that has long fascinated me, but one I’ve only recently seen. Al Pacino fabricates a movie star (almost entirely Rachel Roberts), but the reasons why and how he does it and completely fascinating. Mostly, I guess, critics didn’t care because they mostly don’t care for Pacino, though as always, it’s their loss.

#23. Bringing Out the Dead (1999)
Martin Scorsese went through a period where he was kind of anonymous (much as how Shutter Island was received last year), though there was tepid praise for this one, in which Nicholas Cage can’t seem to find equilibrium in a world he can’t seem to understand.

#24. What Dreams May Come (1998)
Critics really hated this one, I mean with vehemence. God knows why. Robin Williams must have shot their dogs or something. Anyway, what some like to call manipulative, I call fantastically imaginative, as Williams literally walks through paintings in his quest to understand death and reunite with his troubled wife. Cuba Gooding, Jr. forever torpedoed whatever respectable career he might have had after Jerry Maguire by having the hubris to appear in something like this.

#25. Go (1999)
Lots of great actors and storytelling in this one. Sarah Polley navigates a baffling night trying to do the right thing, and a million obstacles get in her way, including William Fichtner, Scott Wolfe, Jay Mohr, Timothy Olyphant, and Taye Diggs.

#26. The Postman (1997)
I’m pretty sure this one marked the end of Kevin Costner’s epic characters phase, the concluding backlash review all but burying it, to no other explanation other than the critics finally wanted to put the actor behind them. Based on a book, but it doesn’t matter, more inspiring than The Road could ever hope to be (read that book, never did see the movie).

#27. More American Graffiti (1979)
The sequel that cashed in on the sudden popularity of George Lucas after Star Wars, that brought back most of the characters from the original, with more focus on the characters themselves.

#28. Alpha Dog (2007)
This and Primary Colors serve as the predecessors to The Social Network, and this one even has Justin Timberlake! Basically following a bunch of completely unlikable characters around (including the apparent victim in all of it, Anton Yelchin), and like the other two movies, based on real events. Of all the egos represented, Alpha Dog features the most unsavory. Yay for achievement!

#29. American Graffiti (1973)
George Lucas’s second movie, and the one that most properly established his interest in following events and characters rather than truly exploring them (when you think about it, that’s what really happens in Star Wars, and it’s only different in the prequels because he finally has a character he’s literally committed himself to hanging something around). Basically a series of vignettes, but a little less clearly so than the sequel he had nothing to do with. Also not related to it, but clearly inspired by it: Happy Days!

#30. Battlefield Earth (2000)
So many people were petrified that this was a blatant attempt to popularize Scientology that the word of mouth was sour from the start, and not a scrap of film ever needed to be seen to sustain this momentum. John Travolta and Forrest Whitaker have a grand time oppressing humans, represented by scrappy Johnny Good Boy Tyler (Barry Pepper), one of my favorite names of all time. All considered though, even with all the efforts from the filmmakers insisting that it didn’t, if you really think about it, you can still pull off a Scientology interpretation if you want. But you don’t have to!

#31. Jabberwocky (1977)
Terry Gilliam in his first attempt to make a movie that had nothing to do with Monty Python, even though it is clearly inspired by his days running with the crazy Brits (though Michael Palin stars), is probably a better overall movie than the Pythons themselves ever made. (Heresy! Heresy!) But Gilliam was only getting warmed up.

#32. K-19: The Widowmaker (2002)
Kathryn Bigelow makes a movie that explicitly asks us to care about a bunch of Ruskies. How far we’ve come! Though not too far, because critics wouldn’t really care about her until The Hurt Locker. Still, you’ve got to appreciate the showdown between Liam Neeson and Harrison Ford, even though, technically, neither of them are Russian.

#33. Kalifornia (1993)
David Duchovny does those Blair Witch Project brats one better, by setting out to study serial murderers and actually finding them, but still being able to handle it. Michelle Forbes is another story, though. Juliette Lewis does her best crazy person, and Brad Pitt is his usual awesome.

#34. Lost in Translation (2003)
Sofia Coppola won mounds of acclaim for this one, and Scarlet Johansson basically got a career out of it, but try as I might, I still can’t think of this as anything other than a Bill Murray movie. He’s done plenty of movies at this point that have attempted to be the “latterday Bill Murray movie,” but this may be the definitive one, other than Cradle Will Rock. And he will probably never surpass, for the record, his new comedy cred from Zombieland.

#35. Merchant of Venice (2004)
Jeremy Irons, you’re in this too, but you’ve got to contend with Al Pacino. Long dismissed as a slander of Jews, Merchant of Venice is perhaps better understood as a study of the clash between cultures, and maybe this movie helps make that clearer, at least for modern audiences. Because Bill Shakespeare does pretty good on his own.

#36. Gandhi (1982)
I had this one on my to-see list for years, but only recently got around to it, half to finally see the performance that made a name out of Ben Kingsley though only mostly a career, and the other to better understand Gandhi himself. And while I greatly appreciate the example he set, I emerge from Gandhi with something of a shattered myth on my hands. On the one hand, he had an incredible amount of willpower. And on the other, it’s not like he began his campaign from a position of little respect. Anyway, it was, in the end, worth all the anticipation.

#37. Snake Eyes (1998)
Nicholas Cage in perhaps a prototypical wild man performance, at least in the early scenes, when he’s bursting with confidence and ego, until good friend Gary Sinese lets his conspiracy unfold. It seems like this is a classic just waiting to be appreciated.

#38. Romper Stomper (1992)
On the flipside from Gandhi is this movie, about a couple of hoods lost in racial theories that don’t even belong to them, and caught up in a tide of events that are both bigger than them and collapsing on them (Nazi dreams, ironically, once helped stem the tide of British imperialism, so there’s that, too), as they’ve already collapsed for others, even though they don’t seem to realize it. Of course, none of that would matter if it didn’t star Russell Crowe, all pure savage appeal.

#39. Southland Tales (2006)
This is almost like the ultimate B-movie, filled with cheesy characters and situations, and utterly reveling in it, and blesses with an awesome cast, including Dwayne Johnson in one of his best roles, Seann William Scott (ditto, though they paired up well in The Rundown), and Justin Timberlake, who at one point basically makes a music video for The Killer’s “All These Things That I’ve Done.”

#40. Sunshine (2000)
For a while, it seemed as if Ralph Fiennes was going to be the critically acclaimed version of Kevin Costner, until he became too obscure even for critics to take notice. Sunshine tracks three different generations, and each of them is portrayed by Fiennes, as they attempt to find prosperity in trying times, until, finally, one of them realizes that going back to the start really isn’t such a bad thing.

#41. The Way of the Gun (2000)
Ryan Phillippe and Benicio Del Toro spend the whole movie disproving the confident image represented in the opening sequence, and that’s pretty awesome.

#42. Young Frankenstein (1974)
If Mel Brooks had made a career of such biting parody of Hollywood itself, instead of enjoying himself, Hollywood would ironically have liked him better.

#43. Days of Heaven (1978)
Terrence Malick and Richard Gere in one of Malick’s earliest visual feasts.

#44. Infernal Affairs (2002)
The original version of The Departed is fascinating to watch, if not in outright comparison, then in its own right, though I will probably always prefer the Scorsese version.

#45. The Missing (2003)
This is almost Ron Howard’s version of True Grit, starring Cate Blanchett and Tommy Lee Jones.

#46. Oscar and Lucinda (1997)
Cate Blanchett again, in Ralph Fiennes’ sandbox. But this is basically Cate’s first big role, so there’s that to admire, too.

#47. Rock n Rolla (2008)
Guy Ritchie, Gerard Butler, Tom Wilkinson…Now that I’ve had a little time to process it, maybe I’ll say the goods are in Tom Hardy’s performance, which is totally different from anything else I’ve seen him do.

#48. Starship Troopers (1997)
Like a parody of WWII patriotism, this adaptation is somewhat notorious, but deserves to be kept in mind. Also, check out a younger Neil Patrick Harris, not yet having outlived Doogie, and not yet having transformed into Barney. Awesome!

#49. Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958)
Paul Newman and Elizabeth Taylor are not the highlights here, but Burl Ives. Seriously!

#50. The Conformist (1971)
I’ve tried several times to penetrate this one. Now it occurs to me that it plays like a moody predecessor to The Godfather. You will never view Michael Corleone the same way again.

That’s it, then, that’s the absolute end of the Film Fan, unless you absolutely demand I continue! We will otherwise segue into the Jabroni Companion, where you will find such noted actors as Dwayne Johnson (see Southland Tales above), Roddy Piper (They Live), Hulk Hogan (Suburban Commando), and even Ken Anderson (Behind Enemy Lines: Colombia), in slightly different roles!

2010 Top 50

2011-03-24T14:45:00.000-07:00

#1. Inception (2010)
I can’t begin to say how much I love this movie. Its poor showing in the official awards ceremonies, especially the Oscars, was a slap in the face to films. How do you not celebrate when someone like Christopher Nolan, who has already made at least two timeless movies (Memento, The Dark Knight, which ranked at #7 and #4, respectively, in the 500 countdown), has just made what he calls his passion project? To put this in perspective, it’d be like saying the Mona Lisa was a minor accomplishment, or the Sistine Chapel, or Moby Dick, or The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. The sheer imaginative scale of it alone, from the idea of dreams being the last true place to exploit in the human psyche, to the visualization of it, to how the dreams are actually experienced, to how they fold into numerous plots…This is postmodern filmmaking. And to say nothing of the Hans Zimmer score. And to say nothing of the cast, any one of whom I could mention here, but I’ll settle on two: Leonardo DiCaprio, still among the hungriest actors to ever land in Hollywood, and Tom Hardy, finally receiving the recognition he’s been working on a decade to earn. If you can’t find at least one movie every year that would have a good shot at entering your favorite-ever experiences, you are probably not trying very hard to enjoy movies. Not that a movie like Inception is much of an effort. Unless you really want it to be.

#2. Robin Hood (2010)
Ridley Scott and Russell Crowe, together again (Gladiator, A Good Year, American Gangster), bringing a terrific sense of reality to the Robin Hood legend. Critics seemed to hate this one, mostly because Gladiator is still something they’re trying to figure out. They hated it so much they kept insisting that Robin’s Merry Men weren’t very merry. I honestly have no idea what movie they were watching! Great Big Sea, a favorite Celtic rock band of mine and Crowe’s (he’s listening to them on the radio in State of Play), contributes Alan Doyle to play some of the best music any Merry Man has ever played. Cate Blanchett also appears, playing a fiercely independent Maid Marion, perhaps the only actress capable of matching wits with Crowe. Mark Strong, who has quickly become the unsung darling of supporting actors, contributes a strong hand to the unusual villainy afoot.

#3. Shutter Island (2010)
Martin Scorsese and Leo DiCaprio (Gangs of New York, The Aviator, The Departed) knock the socks off the Dennis Lehane book, with Mark Ruffalo and Ben Kingsley, among others, turning in strong supporting performances.

#4. Get Him to the Greek (2010)
Russell Brand reprises his supporting role from Forgetting Sarah Marshall to help justify the huge amount of hype he’s gotten in recent years. The songs, played mostly for laughs last time, are more integral and better this time around, and a lot of the reason I love this movie so much. I also enjoyed Colm Meaney, marking something of a resurgence in recent years, as Brand’s dad. Rose Byrne, who normally fades into the background, is another surprise as Brand’s estranged lover, and the source of more memorable music.

#5. Scott Pilgrim vs. the World (2010)
This is the full-geek version of (500) Days of Summer, with Michael Cera strong enough to pull off both the unlikely romantic and comic lead performance. There’s a lot of stuff going on around him, but he never gets lost in it. Good stuff all around.

#6. Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps (2010)
Oliver Stone has become a critical afterthought, so it was no surprise that his follow-up to one of the defining movies of the 1980s was almost completely overlooked, even though it’s as important to today’s world as the original was to its own time. Michael Douglas, Shia LaBeouf, Josh Brolin, and Frank Langella are all excellent. This is the version of The Social Network that doesn’t get lost in its own sense of self-importance (which is ironically what that movie was supposed to be about).

#7. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 1 (2010)
It’s always hard for me to rank a Harry Potter. Even more than a Star Wars, you’re constantly aware that there’s another movie that continues the story (that was the main problem of Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings). There’s always something unique about them, but you can’t help but wonder what it would be like if the filmmakers could truly cut loose. They’re still infinitely better than every other movie they inspired, though. The problem with this one? It’s literally the first of two.

#8. The Warrior’s Way (2010)
I loved Ninja Assassin, but this was like that movie, improved maybe a thousand percent, with a whole world built around another mystical figure stepping out of one world and spinning into another. It really helps that Kate Bosworth has a chance to steal the show, a performance that comes out of nowhere, especially since she’s been virtually absent from the screen for the last few years.

#9. The Next Three Days (2010)
Remember when everyone was going nuts over Paul Haggis? Well, he’s another classic backlash case, and this is the latest victim. Russell Crowe and Elizabeth Banks try to figure their way out of a bad situation, and it doesn’t get a lot more thrilling than how it all plays out. Olivia Wilde has a supporting role.

#10. I Love You, Phillip Morris (2010)
Based on real events, this is the next evolution of Jim Carrey, which is really strange, since the more he grows as an actor, the smaller his audience gets. Ewan McGregor plays Carrey’s lover. Maybe that explains why you didn’t hear about this one.

#11. True Grit (2010)
Jeff Bridges completes his transformation into one of Hollywood’s undisputed titans, claiming the role of Rooster Cogburn for his own. Matt Damon and Josh Brolin are equally memorable in supporting roles. May also be the Coens’ most complete movie experience.

#12. Remember Me (2010)
Robert Pattinson and Emilie de Ravin star in this heartbreaking journey that unexpectedly ends in the tragic events of 9/11. Like Orlando Bloom in Elizabethtown, Pattinson is liberated as an actor by completely breaking free of his usual persona.

#13. The Town (2010)
Ben Affleck completes his Hollywood comeback by making his version of The Departed, starring as a habitual bank robber looking to start over. Jeremy Renner and Blake Lively are among the excellent supporting cast.

#14. The Losers (2010)
The biggest action thrills of the year came from this ensemble flick headlined by Jeffrey Dean Morgan and Jason Patric that’s basically an American version of Desperado.

#15. The Way Back (2010)
Peter Weir directs this absorbing drama about the unlikely journey to escape the legacy of WWII, though from a perspective that’s rarely tapped in Hollywood, so that the only American we meet is Ed Harris, and everyone else is some other nationality, whether hero Jim Sturges (whom I’ve been following since Across the Universe), whose betrayal in Poland lands him in a Russian gulag, where he meets, among others, Colin Farrell, putting a new spin in his character credentials as a selfish thug who doesn’t have to be in the whole movie to leave a lasting impression.

#16. How to Train Your Dragon (2010)
The best animated movie of the year was a strong message of tolerance set in unlikely circumstances. The portrayal of dragons as dogs is a novel one, and helps to give the story unexpected depth. Craig Ferguson and Gerard Butler are effective Vikings.

#17. Valentine’s Day (2010)
Like He’s Just Not That Into You, but better, with a strong central performance from Ashton Kutcher, and a huge heaping of supporting efforts, including Jennifer Garner, who’s just one of many participants in surprising romantic situations.

#18. The Social Network (2010)
If anything was going to win Best Picture at the Oscars and not be Inception (True Grit was less likely to win because the Coens had previously won with No Country for Old Men), it should have been this one, which takes a smattering of mostly unlikable people and tries to make you sympathize with them. Jesse Eisenberg, a scowling version of Shia LaBeouf, makes Mark Zuckerberg into an insufferable genius douchebag. Andrew Garfield, a previous standout in The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, and the future Spider-man, is probably the only likable figure in the movie.

#19. Hereafter (2010)
Critics burned out on tapestry filmmaking years ago, which is mostly why this powerful and Dickensian flick from Clint Eastwood was all but completely ignored. They didn’t even need the recent tragedies in Japan to downplay the tsunami that serves as the dramatic spectacle here for no real reason. Matt Damon is an actor whom I appreciate more and more, and he does a standout job as the anchor of three narratives.

#20. Cairo Time (2010)
I know Patricia Clarkson has gotten the bulk of the praise (and attention) for this one, but I prefer to focus on Alexander Siddig, an actor I admittedly first noticed in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. But he has since become one of film’s great unsung treasures, popping up in supporting roles all over the place, mostly as the sympathetic Arab (Kingdom of Heaven, Syriana). This is his first starring role, which is something to celebrate.

#21. You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger (2010)
Woody Allen is yet another accomplished and talented filmmaker critics like to downplay at their convenience (and to their loss of credibility). I’ve grown to admire him in recent years (Match Point, Cassandra’s Dream), and this is another strong entry, revolving around struggling author Josh Brolin, with a lot of fun pieces moving around him, including an unusually appealing Naomi Watts, the luminous Freida Pinto, and Antonio Banderas.

#22. Cop Out (2010)
Kevin Smith disowned it, but he really shouldn’t have. Bruce Willis, Tracy Morgan, and Seann William Scott all shine in this buddy cop parody.

#23. Death at a Funeral (2010)
Chris Rock actually grounds this farce, with an outstanding supporting cast around him, so that at times, you may actually forget that Chris is sharing the screen. At times.

#24. Megamind (2010)
Will Ferrell has a signature role here with his “giant blue head.” Brad Pitt shines every time Metro Man appears, too.

#25. Machete (2010)
Robert Rodriquez is like the indy version of Christopher Nolan, never failing to bring anything less than a complete vision to the screen. He also manages to corral some of the best casts anyone has ever seen for his movies. Here you get Jessica Alba, Michelle Rodriquez, Robert De Niro, and Don Johnson, who makes (except within this film’s credits), an unappreciated comeback after several years away from the screen.

#26. Unstoppable (2010)
This is like a factual version of Speed, with Denzel Washington and Chris Pine, getting his first starring role since Star Trek, swapping in for Keanu Reeves and Sandra Bullock. Standout supporting roles go to Rosario Dawson, who’s always awesome, and Kevin Corrigan, who also steals every scene he has in a recurring Fringe gig.

#27. Alice in Wonderland (2010)
Tim Burton, who normally has a tendency to spin a little out of control, is one of the few directors who seems to completely appreciate the advances of technology and the increased ability to step, well, into Wonderland.

#28. Devil (2010)
M. Night Shyamalan attempts to become a brand, renting out this story about a group of strangers who wind up in a dilly of a pickle.

#29. The Last Airbender (2010)
He also adapts the Nickelodeon cartoon and steeps his own impulses deep into mythology, allowing some of the visuals to do what he normally does psychologically, which is to immerse his audience into a breathtaking situation.

#30. The Book of Eli (2010)
Denzel Washington and Mila Kunis survive in a post-apocalyptic world by being awesome.

#31. Clash of the Titans (2010)
There’s any number of reasons why I loved this movie that was tanked by 3D backlash: Sam Worthington, Liam Neeson, Ralph Fiennes, Gemma Arterton, Greek mythology. The last thing I cared about was that this was basically a remake of a flawed 1980s experience.

#32. RED (2010)
Bruce Willis and a strong supporting cast, and I will choose to spotlight Karl Urban over several eminently worthy names, in another fine action adventure.

#33. Tron: Legacy (2010)
As much as anything else, it’s almost as if this movie was made to redeem the 1980s as a legitimate source of material that was not originally a cartoon and/or action figure. Jeff Bridges and Olivia Wilde are standouts.

#34. Despicable Me (2010)
Steve Carrell and Jason Segel engage in an epic feud and create distinctive character voices in a movie that’s basically Monsters, Inc. made by someone other than Pixar.

#35. Takers (2010)
This is one of those movies that seemed to taunt me for months with some preview or another, and so I was just glad that it was finally released, and ended up being worth the wait.

#36. Jonah Hex (2010)
Given how low it is on this list and that it landed on a list of 500 overall favorites previously, you might think that I reevaluated my interest in this one, but that’s just how things sometimes work out. For the record, I stand by it.

#37. Iron Man 2 (2010)
Better than the first one, with more interesting things for Robert Downey, Jr. to do, and better supporting stars around him, aside from the steady presence of Gwyneth Paltrow. This time around, Mickey Rourke and a boisterous Sam Rockwell lend their support. Scarlet Johansson, surprisingly, falls a little flat here, though she’s basically competing with Jennifer Garner’s untoppable performance from Daredevil, so it’s not such a surprise.

#38. Shrek Forever After (2010)
The fourth Shrek rebounds from a somewhat pointless third entry by bringing the focus back directly onto Shrek himself. Basically the ogre version of It’s a Wonderful Life.

#39. Resident Evil: Afterlife (2010)
I think they finally figured out how to make a really good Resident Evil movie. Milla Jovovich is joined by the returning Ali Larter and Wentworth Miller, marking his first significant role since Prison Break, playing far more ambiguously, and with a sinister edge, than Michael Scofield.

#40. Gulliver’s Travels (2010)
A silly modern update of Jonathan Swift’s classic featuring Jack Black being Jack Black. Jason Segel and Emily Blunt are among the supporting cast who help parody expectations.

#41. The Sorcerer’s Apprentice (2010)
Surprisingly effective, what I would call an American version of Harry Potter. Nicholas Cage may appear to be fairly indiscriminant, but I think he has a better eye than most people give him credit for.

#42. Predators (2010)
I have never seen any other film with said Predators in it, whether the originals in the series this ostensibly continues, or the mash-ups with Aliens that a bunch of comics helped make possible. Adrien Brody and Topher Grace are among a strong cast that gets to try and survive.

#43. Skyline (2010)
Speaking of survival, this was like the American version of District 9, in that it was made on a shoestring budget, and you’d hardly know it. While lacking as effective a story, it still features an engaging alien problem with a transcendent final sequence that effectively eliminates the need for any of the actual actors to appear.

#44. Toy Story 3 (2010)
Everyone loved this movie, the latest Pixar movie to redefine the possibilities of animated movies. Everyone except me. Pretty much a rehash of the second movie, with less engaging additions, and a less compelling obstacle. The only thing that redeems it is the element that everyone else was busy concentrating on, the fact that for the first time, Andy isn’t a complete afterthought. In fact, it’s mostly his scenes that give this entry any meaning at all, and they’re worth the hype.

#45. The Other Guys (2010)
Mark Wahlberg and Will Ferrell engage in a fairly standard oddball pairing flick that also features Eva Mendes, Samuel L. Jackson, and Dwayne Johnson.

#46. Knight and Day (2010)
Tom Cruise attempts his big comeback, and while the charisma is there in spades, I guess audience interest wasn’t, even though this is thoroughly enjoyable material. Cameron Diaz has a fairly routine supporting performance, mostly reacting to what happens around her.

#47. Salt (2010)
This was basically Angelina Jolie’s Knight and Day, an enjoyable ride, but with more of an edge. Liev Schreiber co-stars.

#48. The A-Team (2010)
Joe Carnahan gets a little lost in the spectacle he creates around the personalities he helps revisit with actors like Liam Neeson, Bradley Cooper, and Sharlto Copley. Jessica Biel and Gerald McRainey put in additional layers.

#49. The Wolfman (2010)
I was hoping for a more potent combination from Benicio Del Toro, Anthony Hopkins, Hugo Weaving, and Emily Blunt. Maybe I’ll just have to revisit this one at some point.

#50. The Bounty Hunter (2010)
People like to shit on Gerard Butler, mostly because he presents a dynamic that’s almost completely unfamiliar from the standard Hollywood tropes. He’s incredibly masculine, but in a relatable way. It seems like an impossible contradiction, but there he is. Jennifer Aniston gets to play with that.

Film Fan #476-500 (conclusion!)

2011-03-17T14:19:00.000-07:00

#476. National Treasure (2004)
So, obviously, I like the sequel better, but the first one is pretty entertaining, too.

#477. Serenity (2005)
I have this huge problem that I assume most other people have, too, and that I just don’t entirely understand the appeal of Joss Whedon. Now, obviously, he’s got a fairly rabid, if small, following, that believes just about everything he does is genius, but what I see, when I periodically sample his material, is something that a really good collaborator could improve on easily (much the way I’ve viewed J. Michael Straczynski’s Babylon 5). Bottom line is, Joss has too many people fawning over him to reach a higher level. Serenity, and the short-lived TV show that preceded it, Firefly, was cast almost perfectly (hence the reason why many of the actors keep popping up in fairly prominent ways), and that remains the highlight and draw for me. It’s how everyone and -thing seems so darned stilted…I just don’t understand how much apparent passion can lead so much wasted potential. Then again, maybe Joss simply isn’t as talented as he has been successful…

#478. The Road Warrior (1981)
The sequel to Mad Max remains true to the established formula, and is in many ways exactly like For a Few Dollars More, another second act in a famous trilogy that would give way to a little more inspiration in the third.

#479. Alien (1979)
I don’t know at this point how many low budget rip-offs eventually dimmed the impact of this movie, or if it’s simply that I’ve been trying to play catch-up with the whole franchise for years, since it was Star Wars and Superman that amounted to the big new series begun at the end of that decade. The fact that only one other entry in this particular series seems to have actually been well-received also helps to dull the impact. Still, Ridley Scott and Sigourney Weaver create a unique experience that truly does deserve the franchise treatment. But it kind of makes you wonder how things would be if that franchise were a little more deliberately created…

#480. The Pink Panther Strikes Again (1976)
Herbert Lom truly has a chance to shine when bumbling Clouseau finally drives Dreyfuss crazy in this entry.

#481. The Rutles: All You Need Is Cash (1978)
This is basically a fairly flimsy Beatles parody, but I liked it all the same. Eric Idle is the Rutles version of Paul McCartney.

#482. Revenge of the Pink Panther (1978)
Peter Sellers’ last actual turn as Clouseau (three other films technically follow in this original phase of the franchise, with the second beginning the process of trying to replace Sellers) is a strangely appropriate romp where the French inspector is apparently murdered.

#483. Where the Wild Things Are (2009)
Absolutely sensational…until you get the sense that the filmmakers got a little ahead of themselves and forgot to continue developing the story, and instead started resting less on inspiration and more on obvious developments that don’t ring true.

#484. Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time (2010)
Who am I kidding? This was the second movie that year to feature Gemma Arterton, and this time in a far more prominent role. I was powerless to resist. Otherwise, fairly clever, though not the second coming of the Pirates of the Caribbean films that Disney obviously expected.

#485. Dawn of the Dead (2004)
I should maybe note for the record that I haven’t gotten swept up in any of the periodic waves of zombie mania, and that this was a fairly random experience that happened to resonate. Great cast, including Ving Rhames, Sarah Polley, Mekhi Phifer, and Ty Burrell (yes, the Modern Family dad, years before anyone else noticed him). Great twist ending, too! But, mostly I’m a zombie spoof kind of guy, Shawn of the Dead, Zombieland.

#486. Rat Race (2002)
This was like a modern remake of It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad World, just a film packed with funny people in a nonsensical race. Stars include Whoopi Goldberg, Jon Lovitz, Rowan Atkinson, Cuba Gooding, Jr., John Cleese, Breckin Meyer, Amy Smart, Seth Green, Wayne Knight, Kathy Bates, Dean Cain…Basically a whole cast of actors who could barely star in their own movies, but together are magic.

#487. Ned Kelly (2003)
Orlando Bloom was in an incredible hotstreak when he made this. It turns out, making a story about an infamous Australian outlaw doesn’t really compete with Lord of the Rings and Pirates of the Caribbean. Anyway, it was one of his first chances to demonstrate some real versatility. There’s also Heath Ledger, playing a variation of his solemn heroes from other films, and Geoffrey Rush, who was busy being Geoffrey Rush, as always.

#488. Ladder 49 (2004)
John Travolta and Joaquin Phoenix explore what it’s like to be a firefighter. Apparently it’s pretty tough.

#489. Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans (2009)
I’m mostly going to talk about Nic Cage here, so let’s mention Eva Mendes, one of the most luminescent stars to have ever graced the big screen. So, Nicholas Cage. I’ve talked him up before, so let’s just state for the record that this may be his consummate role, where he’s almost completely out of control, but struggling for the small percent that isn’t, the façade that keeps the whole thing going. Surprisingly or not, one of the few times critics seem to get what he’s doing.

#490. Wide Awake (1998)
This would be the first M. Night Shyamalan flick, which possibly you weren’t aware of because it doesn’t fit the pattern that seemed to be established with The Sixth Sense. But if you watched this one, you might see a completely different pattern, one that sees Night explore genuine human experience in extraordinary circumstances. Wide Awake could literally change the whole perception of this filmmaker, if it were better known (if, in fact, known at all).

#491. A River Runs Through It (1992)
Mostly, I remember this film for Robert Redford’s narration. Redford’s peak was probably right around just before I was born, and so during the first ten years or so of my life, he was busy growing into a quiet authority, the rare actor who could rest on his voice alone, which is funny, since it was probably anything but that originally got him Hollywood roles.

#492. For a Few Dollars More (1965)
Ah! So we meet The Road Warrior again!

#493. The Champ (1979)
Critics really hate when a movie appears too manipulative. Well, sometimes, that manipulation is earned, by good old filmmaking. I only really remember and care about the ending, in which tearful Ricky Schroder is trying to rouse his fallen dad, Jon Voight. Hollywood loves boxing movies (this was actually a remake of a film many decades older). Sometimes someone really does make them distinguishable.

#494. Unforgiven (1992)
Clint Eastwood attempts his Shootist. Not only is he a little early in his career (though he subsequently made a career of exactly this role), but he’s better. Still, if it weren’t for the sensationalism, there wouldn’t really be much here. Morgan Freeman and Gene Hackman co-star. I know this is one of my many heresies, but Hackman was better in The Quick and the Dead.

#495. Jonah Hex (2010)
I seem to have been the only one to have enjoyed this one (welcome to the club, big guy!). Josh Brolin has a rare, unabashed (well, except for that ugly scar) starring role, Megan Fox is better than people admit (as always), and there’s some really fantastic editing toward the end that alone would make it memorable for me.

#496. Last Tango in Paris (1973)
This was how Brando chose to follow up The Godfather, with a creepy guy who’s looking for sex in a foreign country. It’s the only way he could have made it, on the good graces of Vito Corleone.

#497. The Men (1950)
From creepy Brando to freaky Brando, proving he doesn’t even need the use of his legs to electrify, in another movie that his presence alone makes.

#498. The Man Without a Face (1993)
Remember when Kevin Spacey does this exact role in Pay it Forward? Well, as it turns out, Mel Gibson does it better.

#499. The Shootist (1976)
I’m more interested in Jimmy Stewart. I guess John Wayne owed it to him, after Man Who Shot Liberty Valance.

#500. The Grapes of Wrath (1940)
Henry Fonda and cinematography help make this one a classic.

That’s it. Let me repeat, that’s it! We’ve finally reached the end of the 500, which I started posting back in October. I should perhaps remind you that this list, the latest version of a project I’ve been working on for most of the last decade, consists of movies and opinions I’ve had dating back to 6/20/2010. This may be important, because next week I will be putting one last entry into the Film Fan, the top fifty films from 2010. Some of my rankings of films from this very list may seem to be contradicted, if you think too much about it. But mostly, (and because I’m crazy enough to loosely consider a second post-list entry that consists of fifty films seen and reconsidered since last June that don’t necessary come from last year’s releases), my love of movies continues unabated, even if that love seems downright reckless at times…