After the big push last year, we’re back down to HELL NO vs. the Scholars again and the same formula that has been used for years now. At the end of the day, the division isn’t going to last long term and there’s really no way around that. The TNA tag division is dead again now too with just the champions and apparently a thrown together team of two main eventers.
This is something I’ve gotten asked a good deal recently and I want to clarify it.My favorite baseball team is the Cleveland Indians. That means I like them better than all other teams. That does NOT mean I think they’re the best. Anyone who follows baseball can tell that there are many better teams. The same is true in wrestling. My favorite wrestler is Mick Foley, but I certainly don’t think he’s the best ever. There’s a very big difference between best and favorite, which needs to be remembered.
The whole thing about WWE stealing information to find out what talent they could steal from TNA finally comes to a close. While not confirmed, it looks like a settlement was reached. I never really got why this was such a big deal in the first place.
I’ve touched on this before.I was watching a Nitro last night and Alex Wright put his feet on the ropes to cheat. At Genesis this past week, there were multiple instances where a heel pulled the trunks to win. Why don’t we see these kind of things more often? It’s so simple and it’s almost a guaranteed way to make the people boo you, but instead it’s almost always interference or something like that. In WWE, when is the last time we got a belt shot to the head? It may be easy heat, but it’s better than no heat.
In honor of Del Rio’s title win, what is your favorite vehicle in wrestling? It could be a car, a motorcycle, the horses the Vince and Jesse rode into SNME on, anything. Mine:The ring carts used to get down the aisle at Manias 3 and 6. Those things were straight up cool.
Your picks?
I mentioned this in another post and I had planned on saying something short about it, but the more I thought about it the more I realized it deserved something big. I mentioned that Stone Cold Steve Austin was a near perfect character and today we’re going to look at why that’s the case. Austin is one of the few if not the only character ever to be both completely over the top while also being one of the most realistic. I’ll explain what I mean by that in a bit so let’s get to it.
First and foremost a clarification: I’m talking about Stone Cold, not Steve Austin in general. I’m talking about roughly the period from the day he started defying authority and ending at Wrestlemania X7 (with a few exceptions past that date). Before then his character barely existed and after that it changed for the worse, although he was always talented enough to get whatever he was doing. Austin is on the list of people you hear about who could read the phone book and entertain an audience for hours.
The easiest way to sum up the Austin character in a nutshell is with a famous movie line. In the movie Network, one of the characters says “I’m as mad and I’m not going to take it anymore.” That is Steve Austin in one sentence. Austin was tired of playing second fiddle to all of these older guys who were given better spots than him because they had been around longer. He felt that the spots should be based on how good you were, not when you started in the company.
This was perfectly illustrated at the 1996 King of the Ring which is commonly considered Austin’s coming out party. In the finals, Austin beat Jake Roberts who was back in the WWF for “one more run” as a nostalgia character. Following the match, Austin cut his legendary Austin 3:16 promo, talking about how Roberts may be a legend, but he just got beat and there was nothing anyone could do to stop Austin’s rise.
What followed was the feud that made Austin, as he fought the ultimate current legend, Bret Hart. While Bret beat Austin at the Survivor Series, Austin continued to torment Bret, cheating him out of the Royal Rumble and costing him the world title a few nights later on Raw. This all lead us to Wrestlemania and the I Quit match between the two of them where we saw some of the best storytelling ever.
The basic idea of the match was simple: Bret was as submission master but Austin would never say he gave up. At the end of the match (one of the best ever and well worth seeing if you somehow haven’t), Austin was bleeding terribly and finally passed out in the Sharpshooter to give the win to Bret. Now notice something very important here: Bret could not stop Austin. All he did was slow down what was coming and hope to survive it.
This brings me to my second point: Austin wasn’t just a character. He was a revolution and a new way of thinking in wrestling. The reason for his mass popularity though was he captured the thoughts of the audience. Austin was the voice of the voiceless, in that people are always tired of being told that they have to wait their turn no matter how good they may be and are tired of putting up with corporate suits telling them to work within a system and other various excuses to avoid answering the complaints people had.
In September of 1997 (don’t worry we’ll come back to the summer months later), Monday Night Raw was broadcast from Madison Square Garden for the first time. Around this time, Austin had been injured in a match with Owen Hart and might not be able to wrestle again because of it. Vince had told Austin to work within the system, to which Austin responded with the first of many Stunners to the boss. In a word, the building erupted. As I said before, it was the audience channeling themselves into Austin and getting to do something they had always wanted to do but never could do in real life.
What followed over the next three and a half years was a path of destruction by the rebel Austin. He did everything from fill Corvettes with cement to blowing up buses to pretending to shoot Vince in the head to spraying down the Corporation with beer and everything in between. The entire time though, Austin was rebelling. This is another of the keys to why Austin was a perfect character: he DID things rather than merely be labeled as something.
In a word, Austin was a rebel. That’s the single word definition of what his character was. Now, can you imagine if he had come in with the name “The Rebel”? Dick Slater had that exact same name back in the late 80s, and remarkably almost no one remembers it. He came out in a Confederate flag vest and that’s about it. We were simply told what his gimmick and character were, as opposed to being SHOWN what the character was.
There’s an old saying which is a cliché, but in this case it’s the absolute truth: actions speak louder than words. That’s one of the reasons Austin’s character worked: we got to see him doing all this stuff. This is true with any wrestling character. Look at the gimmicks like Duke Droese, Henry Godwinn and T.L. Hopper. We were told immediately what these guys were and that was about the extent of their character development.
Now look at someone like Razor Ramon, who debuted with a series of vignettes of him in Miami being a jerk. Those promos told us everything we needed to know about Ramon and all we were told directly was that Ramon was “the bad guy.” Again, it’s about seeing these people do things rather than being told about them. Austin is the epitome of this because the actions he took were huge.
Jumping back to the summer of 1997, we’ll get into another reason why Austin worked so well: he was allowed to be seasoned. Today one of the major problems is pushing people to the main event before they’re ready. A legitimate case could have been made that Austin was ready for the world title after losing to Hart at Wrestlemania, but instead he was given another year of feuding with first the Hart Foundation and then a brief run against the Nation of Domination before entering the world title scene.
Now while Austin won his feud with the Nation, defeating Rock for the Intercontinental Title to end things at D-X In Your House in December, he didn’t have the same kind of luck against the Harts. In his war with the Hart Foundation, Austin regularly lost. He lost to Bret at Survivor Series, he lost to Bret at Final Four, he lost to Bret at Wrestlemania, he beat Bret by DQ at Revenge of the Taker, the Foundation cost Austin the title at Cold Day In Hell, and Austin’s team lost at Canadian Stampede. Austin completely lost the Border War, but he wasn’t on Bret’s level yet.
This is something I can’t emphasize enough: Austin lost. A lot. People often forget that Austin was a SIX TIME WWF Champion. That’s a lot of times to win and lose a world title. When you look back at it, he didn’t hold the belt long other than one reign. His first reign lasted about three months, his second reign lasted one day less than the first, his third and fourth reigns were under two months each, and his sixth reign was less than two months. Only his fifth reign, the one in 2001 when he won the title from the Rock, lasted a good amount of time and it wasn’t even six months long.
Let’s look at how Austin lost the title each time. The first time was a first blood match to a masked man. The question my friends and I asked back then was “how can he make a guy bleed when he can’t get to his face?” Austin couldn’t do it. The second time was in a glorified handicap match against Kane and Undertaker. Again, these odds seemed impossible and Austin failed. The third loss was against Undertaker with both Vince and Shane McMahon as guest referees and Shane fast counted him.
In other words, when the odds were stacked to the roof against Austin, he usually lost. Think about that and think of how rare it is. There was no Superman comeback. Austin didn’t beat four guys on his own. Austin didn’t come up with some cute way to keep the belt. He lost and that was it. Here’s the secret the WWE seems to forget today: you can win a title back. Of the five times Austin regained the title after losing it, three of them were less than six weeks after he lost it in the first place.
This is what I was referring to when I said Austin was both over the top as well as realistic. Rather than making a superhuman comeback, he would lose. At the end of the day, it would have been REALLY hard for fans to buy Austin beating both Kane and Undertaker in the same match. If nothing else, it’s bad for business because why should I believe Kane or Undertaker could beat him one on one if they couldn’t do it together? Also, it doesn’t hurt Austin to lose in a situation like that because it’s not like he missed a layup or something. He lost to the most dominant pairing in company history. It was a much smarter decision to have Austin go down and get the title back later.
This brings us to the final reason why the Stone Cold character worked so well: he was really entertaining. I mentioned this earlier but Austin is one of the few wrestlers where he could make eating a sandwich entertaining. Austin could do anything from drinking beer to singing Jimmy Crack Corn to Stunning people to shouting WHAT over and over again to singing the Rick Roll song (Youtube that one. It’s hysterical.) to telling funny stories and people would be entertained. Look at him now as after his wrestling career is over he’s enjoying a decent career as a B-movie action star.
The other side of Austin’s entertainment value is his ability in the ring. People often forget how excellent of a pure wrestler Austin was. Think about to some of the matches he had with Bret, Rock, Foley, Benoit, Angle, Jericho, HHH and I could go on. With Austin, his work on the microphone is so good that it’s constantly overshadowing his work in the ring. To give you an idea of how good he was, according to Meltzer, Austin has two five star matches, the same total as Bret Hart and Shawn Michaels.
Overall, Stone Cold Steve Austin was one of the best characters of all time because he was both realistic and over the top as well as incredibly entertaining. He connected with an audience that wanted to express themselves but couldn’t as well as never going so far overboard that he was unrealistic in the ring. On top of that, he was an excellent in ring wrestler that had one of the best collections of matches that anyone has ever had. Austin might be as close to a perfect character as there has ever been.
Given the news that broke earlier in the week this popped into my mind. Those of you who regularly read my stuff might already know this.The worst feud I’ve ever seen was Matt Morgan vs. Elijah Burke (D’Angelo Dinero) down in OVW. They feuded for months over the OVW Title with Morgan finally taking it from Burke to end things. This NEVER became interesting whatsoever and the matches were consistently terribly dull. I have no idea what the point of this feud was and it kept me from ever caring about Burke again.
I saw a link to this and thought it was pretty cool. Over the years, wrestling rules basically are altered to fit whatever story was going on. This however is an official set of NWA wrestling rules circa 1974 from a souvenir sold in the Mid-Atlantic area. It’s pretty cool stuff.
http://www.ddtdigest.com/features/prog1974/pictures/backib.jpg
I’d LOVE to see a WWF version of this just for the sake of comedy.
Yet another idea that hasn’t been used in like 15 years.Goldberg debuted on Nitro seemingly as a jobber. Tenay, the WCW announcer who seemingly knew everything, had no idea who Goldberg was or knew anything about him. Ignoring the winning streak and all that jazz, that’s a pretty smart way to debut someone. Don’t give them a character, don’t give them anything unique, don’t tell us anything about them, but have the guy win and fill in the background later. It’s better than a ballroom dancer, no?
Well it’s the end of the year and it’s time for someone else to do their awards results. I’ve used a combination of the PWI Awards, the WON Awards and the WrestleZone Awards while leaving a few out. I’ll be listing the winner and another that came to my mind when I was thinking about the winner. To explain it to you schmucks who have to complain about everything I do, THE WINNER IS LISTED FIRST AND THE OTHER PICK IS LISTED SECOND. Let’s get to it.
Winner: CM Punk. The guy was world champion all year long and there’s nothing else you can say to top that. No questions asked here.
Other: John Cena. Love him or hate him, he’s the biggest thing in wrestling and has been for years. He was in the main event of Wrestlemania and had the match of the year with Brock Lesnar. Unfortunately that’s about all he did this year, but no one tops him aside from Punk. Bryan was great too, but Cena fought Brock Lesnar and the Rock. That alone trumps anything Bryan did in the ring.
Winner: HELL NO. This is another layup here as you had two guys who you would NEVER (you have to shout a lot with this team) picture working well together having some of the best comedic chemistry since probably the Outlaws or Edge and Christian. Absolutely the right choice here and I don’t see any real argument for someone topping these guys.
Other: The Shield. These guys burst onto the scene and took over the company near the end of the year. They had one of the best debut matches EVER, taking a war to Ryback and HELL NO. These guys have a ton of potential and they have a chance to be huge in the next year, but this is for team of the Year, not November and December.
Tie: Undertaker vs. HHH (Wrestlemania 28)/Brock Lesnar vs. John Cena (Extreme Rules)
I did this one already and I still can’t come up with a reason for either to be higher than the other. If you’ve got a favorite between the two then rock on man, but I can’t pick here.
Winner: John Cena vs. John Laurinitis (Over the Limit). I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again: the best kind of a match is the kind where you can’t figure out who is going to win. This was the polar opposite of that idea, with EVERYTHING happening exactly as we expected it to, down to the not shocking heel turn by Big Show at the end. Why would I want to see this on PPV for 20+ minutes?
Other: Wes Brisco vs. Garrett Bischoff (Impact). I have no desire to ever see either of these guys again, and now we’re going to see these two as major players in Aces and 8’s. This was probably a plot point to introduce them on camera, thereby making this match an unholy abomination.
Winner: James Storm vs. Robert Roode. They feuded forever and the two matches were both great. If Storm had won the title during this, it would have been perfect, but for some reason TNA decided that the perfect build up didn’t deserve the perfect pay off. Then again, that probably has something to do with them never being able to crack a 1.4 TV rating. Anyway, great feud here and great matches throughout.
Other: John Cena vs. The Rock. It’s John Cena vs. The Rock. That’s my explanation.
Winner: Daniel Bryan. Bryan wasn’t much last year, having won the world title about a week before the new year began. Then he got the world title and became a heel, which allowed for him to show some character. On top of that, he then went to war with the fans with a mere two words. On top of THAT, he then got together with Kane of all people to form one of the funniest tag teams in years. Great stuff here and a great surprise.
Other: Big Show. Who would have pictured Big Show ending the year as World Champion, having won the match in a dark horse candidate for the match of the year? He’s doing well with what he’s got, which is a surprise as it’s basically the same stuff he’s always done.
Winner: Jerry Lawler. The man had a heart attack live on Raw and was back two months later. There was no other option here and there shouldn’t be.
Winner: Ryback. This of course depends on what your definition of a rookie is. In the WWE sense of the word, it’s hard to say anyone had a better first year than this guy. He went from squashing jobbers to what would have been three world title matches in a row on PPV. He had me believing something could happen….and then they screwed it up because Rock had to have his title match announced six months in advance but whatever. Anyway, Ryback had an awesome year, but I don’t see much brightness in his near future.
Other: Antonio Cesaro. This is for you traditionalists out there. Cesaro was the only newcomer who didn’t have experience in WWE (remember that Sandow was on Smackdown for a few months back in like 2006/7). He went from debuting to screwing Aksana to US Champion to getting to be the main villain on Tribute to the Troops. For a guy who debuted back in April, that’s quite a year.
Winner: Wrestlemania. It had three of the ten best matches of the year and almost nothing bad going on at all. We also set up a bunch of stuff throughout the rest of the year, had some great matches, and had a match that was literally built up over a year. I had an absolute blast watching this and it still holds up today. Oh and it made more money than any pay per view ever. Wrestlemania wins.
Other: Extreme Rules. Yeah they were mainly rematches, but DANG they were some good rematches. This show is almost always fun as we redo Wrestlemania but with gimmicks instead. Throw in Brock vs. Cena in a WAR and it’s hard not to like this show a lot. Things went downhill from here, but they were pretty high up before they started going the other way.
Winner: Survivor Series. Nothing happened, the main event was thrown together after announcing a different one the week before, and none of the matches were particularly great. Oh and it’s one of the worst drawing shows ever.
Other: Final Resolution. This is basically the TNA version of Survivor Series as it was more or less a house show with nothing significant happening. At the end of the year it felt like both companies were just trying to get to January, and that makes for some BAD PPVs.
Winner: Brodus Clay is the Funkasaurus. Let’s think back to this for a minute. For weeks and weeks, we had been told that Brodus Clay was coming. We knew what Brodus looked like and we knew that he was a monster. Then we heard Lillian say “From Planet Funk”, and everyone collectively said “HUH?” Clay then danced out in a freaking track suit, complete with hot dancing girls, dancing to Ernest Miller’s old theme music. I’ve seen a lot of things in my time watching wrestling, but I NEVER would have guessed that was coming. That’s what I call a surprise.
Other: 18 Seconds. It’s the world title at Wrestlemania. You expect that to break 30 seconds don’t you?
Winner: Daniel Bryan and Kane go to Anger Management. I’ve talked about this one a lot, but man alive is it funny stuff. When I first heard this was coming, I rolled my eyes and thought it sounded awful. Then Kane launched Josh Matthews through the air looking for Bryan, and things got great. The promo by Kane where he lists off his history is still hilarious and these two never stop being funny together. Also, for probably the only time I can remember in years, WWE timed this PERFECTLY, giving them the tag titles almost immediately instead of waiting three months when the angle would have slowed down.
Other: Joseph Park and the Search For Abyss. This one works for me because of Park’s acting. Honestly, if I didn’t know that it was the same guy, I don’t know how long they could have gone before I figured it out. That’s how good Park is in this role of Joseph. The comedy has been great, the matches have been entertaining, but above all else, Park’s acting has been outstanding. The stuff he does in the ring where he looks like he has no idea what he’s doing is amazing, because there’s so much stuff in wrestling you can’t unlearn. This is one of the bright spots for TNA this year.
Winner: Cena and AJ Sitting in a Tree. This is #1 for one reason: it came after Clair Lynch. There’s no arguing that this was a straight copy of Clair Lynch’s story in TNA, which means that someone thought that story was actually GOOD ENOUGH TO BE RIPPED OFF. I’ll give TNA points for trying something and having it fail, but in this case WWE ripped off a terrible idea and somehow made it even more boring by having it go on as long as it did.
Other: Clair Lynch/AJ Styles. It was stupid, it went on too long, the woman who it was centered on left because apparently she couldn’t handle people not liking her and wasn’t a fan of being on a wrestling show. I’ll hold myself back from going on a rant about how pathetic I find that and go with this story SUCKED, but at least it came first.
Winner: Bully Ray (Destined For Greatness – No Surrender). This one works for a few reasons, but the number one of all is that it was done by Bully Ray. I mean….BULLY RAY? Really? The promo is right before the finals of the Bound for Glory Series, where Ray has the chance to go to the main event of the biggest show of the year for the first time in his career. He said that the other participants may be bound for glory, but he was destined for greatness. This promo alone basically turned him face and he’s been on a roll ever since. You know what? I’m reversing these two. Ray deserves it more.
Other: Daniel Bryan/Kane (Anger Management – Raw). This is the kind of promo that we need to see in wrestling more often. This was a promo from outside of the arena, which is where great comedy can come from. It gives you a reminded of how absolutely insane wrestling is when you really stop to think about it. Kane listing off the history of his character is some of the funniest stuff you’ll ever hear, and the reactions from “non-wrestlers” are great.
Winner: HHH/Undertaker/Shawn Michaels embrace after HIAC (Wrestlemania 28). You don’t often get to say this, but this moment was four years in the making. This was the culmination of four excellent (ok so the WM 27 match wasn’t excellent but it sounds better than three excellent matches and one very good match) matches between three guys who time has passed. The match was the perfect ending and the hug at the end summed up the years amazingly well.
Other: Brock Lesnar Returns (Raw after Wrestlemania). This is ruined by one thing: the fans knew he was coming. The fans started chanting WE WANT LESNAR and then here he is. If I remember right this was spoiled earlier in the day which holds back the surprise. You can’t factor in the stuff that came after it, but just having Lesnar back even for a little while was absolutely shocking and made you realize we were in for a big summer.
So that’s it. If you want my take on anything else, ask in the comments.
Merry Christmas,
KB