Don't Think Less of Me, But I Like Professional Wrestling.
Whatcha gonna do when Hulkamania runs wild over you?
If you have read any of the posts of The Musings of a Normal Midwestern Guy, you might think I'm a highly intelligent, thoughtful and funny guy and you’d be right. However, you might change your opinion, once you find out that I also enjoy watching professional wrestling.
I know, a guy like me shouldn't like wrestling. A wrestling fan is a certain type of person, maybe someone who has a car on blocks in front of their trailer and might not have finished high school. I am neither of those things, but I do like wrestling and have for a long time. On top of this revelation, is this shocking statement; I think more people should watch wrestling! To understand my thoughts on this we must go back in time and look at the beginnings of my love of wrestling.
Let's go back to 1981, I was eleven years old, and on Saturday morning, after watching Bugs Bunny and the Super Friends. My dad would flip the TV channel to our newest channel WTBS The Superstation, Ted Turner's station out of Atlanta, and we would watch World Championship Wrestling. I rooted for “The American Dream” Dusty Rhodes. I also liked Magnum T.A., Tommy “Wildfire” Rich, Jimmy “Superfly” Snuka, Ricky “The Dragon” Steamboat Andre the Giant and Terry Taylor. I booed Ric Flair, Ken “The World’s Strongest Man” Patera, Paul “Mr. Wonderful” Orndorff, Stan Hansen, The Anderson Brothers, Abdullah the Butcher, Tully Blanchard and Ivan and Nikita Koloff.
It was always good fun, there were bad guys and good guys and it was easy to tell who was who. There was only two exceptions to this rule; The Road Warriors and Bruiser Brody. Both acted like bad guys but the crowd loved them and I did too. I remember every time I saw manager Jim Cornette on TV waiving his tennis racket around and screaming about how great the Midnight Express was, I wanted to punch him in the face.
At the time I thought that wrestling was real and I would get all excited to see the good guys beat up the bad guys and get really mad when the bad guys got their revenge when it was least expected or managed to get a win through cheating.
After a while we started to get WWF (now known as the WWE, thanks World Wildlife Fund.) programing and wouldn’t you know it but a bunch of the wrestlers I had watched on Georgia Championship Wrestling were now here in the WWF. They had Andre, Steamboat, Snuka, Orndorff and the Road Warriors that I was already familiar with and introduced me to wrestlers like the Sargent Slaughter, Junkyard Dog, Tito Santana, “Macho Man” Randy Savage, The Ultimate Warrior, Jake “The Snake” Roberts and of course Hulk Hogan. The WWF was a different experience from WCW. WWF was filmed in arenas instead of a small TV studio so the crowd was bigger and louder and the broadcast was better. I mean they had All-American good guy Hulk Hogan against the Iron Sheik, who waved an Iranian flag. Remember, this was only a few years after the Iranians had held Americans hostage for 444 days. They also had a Russian that would wave the Soviet Union flag and sing their National Anthem.
By the time of Wrestlemania I in the spring of 1985 at Madison Square Garden, I was watching whatever wrestling I could find, and bought Pro Wrestling Illustrated every month. However, I also realized by that time it wasn’t real, or to put it a better way it was staged. I knew that the outcome of the matches were decided beforehand to serve a storyline but I didn’t care I liked it anyway. To me it was just good clean entertainment with a little bit of violence.
Between 1989 and 1993 I was in the Marines and didn’t follow it much at all. The WWF didn't have Salute to the Troops events like they would later. After getting out of the Marines I only followed it occasionally by then the WWF seemed to have the same old stars doing the same old things and before long they all started to leave for the Ted Turner owned WCW. I tried to watch it every now and then but didn’t get to far into any episode because the stories and the characters were just too childish. They had The Mountie, a Royal Canadian Mounted Police officer who was supposed to “clean up” the WWF. Papa Shango, a Voodoo priest who could cause pain to his opponents with spells. Nailz, a convict that wrestled in an orange jumpsuit and said that the Big Boss Man (a big southern cop character, who was pretty silly anyway) had beaten him in prison and he had come to the WWF for revenge. They had The Goon, a hockey player that wrestled in a hockey uniform right down to boots that looked like hockey skates. Xanta Claus, the evil brother of Santa Claus who lived at the South Pole and stole presents from children. Mantaur, a guy that wrestled in a complete minotaur costume. Isaac Yankem DDS a crazed dentist and Typhoon, a fat guy who was supposed to be a natural disaster but was just a disaster.
None of the story lines held any appeal to me, even the Undertaker, who I would really like later on, was kind of lame because of the storylines they had him involved in. I tried watching WCW on TNT but the only reason it was better was I knew the wrestlers.
The WCW show Monday Nitro actually aired at the same time as the WWF's Monday Night Raw. This started what was called the Monday Night Wars, but WCW was live and most weeks WWF was taped and they would tell you on the WCW broadcast who had won the WWF matches. It was getting a little more interesting and I was starting to pay more attention.
The WCW was far from perfect, they also had problems with silly characters. They had Glacier, Mortis and Wrath who were essentially characters out of the Mortal Combat video game. Disco Inferno who still thought it was 1977. Disco Inferno's less talented and less attractive friend called That 70’s Man who looked like Hyde from That 70’s Show just let himself go. Arachman a guy that was a Spider-Man knockoff. The Yeti, a guy in a mummy costume that was called The Yeti and also somehow a ninja. Oz, who came to the ring dressed all in green and accompanied to the ring by “The Wizard”. The Kiss Demon, who was supposed to be the alter ego of actual Kiss member Gene Simmons and the truly horrible Shockmaster who's first entrance was so bad he never appeared on TV again.
All this changed on May 27 1996. I was watching WCW and in the middle of a boring match, the crowd started going wild and the spotlight focused on WWF superstar Razor Ramon working his way through the crowd. He made his way to the ring, grabbed a mike and told the WCW if they wanted a war, they got one. A WWF star was telling WCW and their fans that the WWF was there to take over. WHAT! There has never been anything like this in the history of wrestling! A company might try a back room deal or a leveraged buyout, but trying to use your wrestlers to literally take over another company was unprecedented.
I was back in with this development, I had to see what was going to happen. The next week Razor Ramon was joined by former WWF champion Big Daddy Diesel and repeated their antagonistic ways and said that they were here to take on the three best wrestlers the WCW could put in the ring. This continued for a few more weeks, with Ramon and Diesel actually going by their real names Scott Hall and Kevin Nash but they were being call “The Outsiders” by WCW. The more they harassed the WCW the better it got, they never reveled who their third man was and that just turned up the excitement even more. I would flip over to the WWF every now and then to see if they were talking about the takeover but there was nothing about it over there and most of the matches were just as dumb as they had been. However there were a few wrestlers that were making waves in WWF, third generation wrestler, Rocky Maivia, Hunter Hearst Helmsley (HHH) and most of all “Stone Cold” Steve Austin.
Just before the WCW's Bash at the Beach, the WWF stumbled into what would become a major part of the Attitude Era. On June 26 1996 Steve Austin had just beaten a Bible quoting legend Jake “The Snake” Roberts to become “King of the Ring” and what says next is unplanned but takes him to a new level. He says “you thump your Bible, you talk about the Psalms, you talk about John 3:16…. Well Austin 3:16 says I just kicked your ass”. At that moment the crowd went crazy. The next night on Monday Night Raw there were hundreds of hand made “Austin 3:16” signs in the crowd and a phenomenon was born.
At the WCW pay-per view Bash at the Beach July 7 1996 the main event was Sting, Lex Luger and “The Macho Man” Randy Savage against Scott Hall, Kevin Nash and their mystery partner. As the match started there still had not been an appearance by the third man. The Outsiders said they didn’t need a third guy to handle this match. Shortly into the match, Sting hit Nash with a Stinger Splash in the corner. However, Nash was holding Luger at the time, and the splash knocked Nash into Luger, thus crushing Luger in the corner. Luger was knocked to the outside, and paramedics came out and took him away, reducing the match to The Outsiders vs. Sting and Savage. As Hall and Nash took control of the match, Hulk Hogan came to the ring and everybody in the arena KNEW that Hogan was there to save his long-time friend, Savage. After having a short stand off with The Outsiders, he suddenly attacked Savage, revealing himself as the third man. In a post-match interview, Hogan claimed he was tired of fans that had turned on him. Hogan labelled the new faction "the New World Order of professional wrestling”. This was the beginning of a feud between wrestlers loyal to WCW and the nWo (this is how the logo appeared). The fans in attendance were so outraged at Hogan's betrayal that they pelted the ring with debris
Hogan and the newly formed nWo would begin appearing on Monday Nitro, causing mayhem and attacking WCW wrestlers.
The nWo took the first step in its takeover attempt of WCW when Hulk Hogan defeated WCW World Heavyweight Champion The Giant on August 10, 1996, at another pay-per-view. In the first of two famous moments after the match, Hall and Nash held the World Championship belt aloft while Hogan spray painted the letters "NWO" on it; the belt would stay this way for most of the next year while Hogan was world champion. In the second moment, Hogan's long time friend Ed Leslie (once known as Brutus the Barber Beefcake, at the time known as Booty Man) presented Hogan with a birthday cake. Hogan hugged him, then signaled Hall and Nash to attack him, stating "business is business.". I was hooked I couldn't wait to see what would happen the next week and the WWF was falling further and further behind in the Monday Night Wars.
When the Monday Night Wars started the WWF was the big dog on the block and had been for some time but WCW was quickly catching up. The powers behind the scenes were thinking hard on ways to vault permanently into the lead on Monday nights. Little did I know, but the whole nWo angle was staged by the WCW. The Vice President of Operation Eric Bishoff got the idea from watching wrestling in Japan and when Scott Hall and Kevin Nash became available, he saw the opening he needed to work the Japanese inspired invasion angle.
It was a one of the best ideas in wrestling and it put the WWF behind the eight ball in a big way. Between the introduction of the nWo in July of 1996 and April 4 1998, the WCW won the ratings battle every week.
This forced the WWF to try something even more radical and on December 15 1997, WWF Chairman Vince McMahon had a taped message played before that night’s show, announcing a change in the direction of WWF programing and ushering in what would become known as the Attitude Era.
Now I was really back into wrestling. I would actually watch both Monday night broadcasts. I would switch back and forth based on the match or promo that was on each show. In the WWF on August of 1997 a new group of wrestlers form, it consisted of HHH, Shawn Michaels, Rick Rude and their female bodyguard Chyna. In October of 1997 they would be christened D-Generation X after a comment from Brett “The Hitman” Hart saying that they were a bunch of degenerates. They were often shown on television in sophomoric or crude situations and rebelling against authority figures in the company, primarily Vince McMahon and Commissioner Sgt. Slaughter who they took extra glee in humiliating, by giving him the nickname Sgt. Slobber.
For everyone that had ever wanted to “stick it to the man” D/X was great, plus they also had plenty of “adult humor” like playing strip poker in the ring (Chyna won and the boys were in their undies) or impersonating Mr. McMahon. It was so funny that you can hear the announcers saying their faces hurt.
They also tried to invade WCW for real, the two companies had shows just 14 miles apart in Virginia and DX drove a jeep mounted with a cannon there and tried to get inside. Of course they were unable to do so.
The WWF made other changes that were integral to their success. Rocky Maivia, changed his name to The Rock and started speaking in the third person and another icon was born. Vince McMahon started to become involved in storylines, playing an evil over the top version of himself known simply as Mr. McMahon. He helped the wrestlers he liked and put every roadblock imaginable in front of those he didn't. They brought in a bunch of “female wrestlers” that they mainly used as eye candy. So you had a group sticking it to the man at every turn and a bunch of scantily clad girls romping around. What more could a guy in his mid-twenties want?
The feud between Stone Cold Steve Austin and Mr. McMahon was epic, it was a blue collar “working man” against the billionaire owner of the company. The kind of thing that appealed to many WWF fans including me. This feud provided some of the best moments of the era. Including Austin spraying Mr. McMahon his son and The Rock with beer and jumping off a Zamboni into the ring to attack Mr. McMahon. It seemed like he was getting arrested every other week. Meanwhile there were lots of other storylines going on as well. In fact there was so much going on they actually expanded Raw to three hours.
In contrast the WCW quickly burned through the excitement the the early nWo generated, they just took it too far. Their solution was to split it into two factions; the nWo Wolfpack, led by Kevin Nash and nWo Hollywood, led by Hulk Hogan. The two factions started to recruit as many of the WCW wrestlers as they could and it just became boring and predictable. At one point it seemed like there were more wrestlers in one nWo faction or the other. It appeared that if they brought in a new wrestler he was immediately made to join one of the factions, before he even had a chance to develop a character or any kind of rapport with the fans. At that point I was solidly in the WWF camp and have stayed there to this day. The fortunes of WCW quickly started to turn and by 2001 Vince McMahon bought WCW.
There is so much to say about the Attitude Era that I could write and whole series of posts about it but I won’t. Suffice it to say that it was the Attitude Era that sucked me in and made me a wrestling fan for life. Even when the WWF changed it’s name to World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) after being sued by the World Wildlife Fund and changed it’s rules back to being more of family friendly product it is still just good fun.
Earlier I said that more people should watch wrestling and I think that is true. One must watch it knowing that it is really just theater and that the wrestlers are just telling a story. I like to say that wrestling is Soap Operas for guys and while that might have been true in the Attitude Era, in this day and age it is more like a ongoing drama/comedy for the whole family. If you watch wrestling with and eye to the athletic accomplishments of the wrestlers and the wonderment of how they can perform those moves without actually hurting their opponents and suspend belief for a little to buy into the storylines I think it can be real entertainment. I’m not saying that everyone needs to watch WWE because there are a couple of other wrestling promotions out there to choose from. You could watch Impact Wrestling, Ring of Honor Wrestling (ROH) or All-Elite Wrestling (AEW). They all have their good points and bad points and if you have watched WWE before you just might recognize some faces. My hope is that these other promotions will spark the WWE to new directions just like the WCW did back in the late 1990’s.
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