Tuesday, November 22, 2011

Wrestling Six Packs: Fallacious Statements People Believe

To be The Man, you've gotta be... somewhat good, right?
People believe a lot of things, true or not. Some people believe the moon is made of green cheese. Others believe we never landed on it. Others believe that when it hits one's eye like a big pizza pie, that's A-MOREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE. Well, this isn't a lunar blog, or else there'd be a lot more links to Local H covering TV on the Radio's "Wolf Like Me" on here. This is a wrestling blog. Fallacies have their way of making themselves ingrained into people's minds as fact. Here are six things that I feel need to be corrected in the minds of some people.

1. Ric Flair wasn't that good.

This one galls me the most. There's this insidious undercurrent denigrating The Man for various reasons. Obviously, not every wrestler, even the great ones, are going to be universally liked, but the attacks that have gone against Flair have been pretty absurd. They boil down to three points. One, Ric Flair did the same thing in every match, i.e. there's a formula. Two, Flair was overexposed. Three, Flair is ruining his legacy in TNA. Let's go through this point by point.

Ric Flair did the same thing in every match. - No shit, he did. You know who else does the same thing in every match? Every other pro wrestler who ever lived and who'll ever wrestle in this grand tradition. Yes, every match had Flair going to the top unsuccessfully, a Flair flop, the figure four, a nut shot, an atomic drop, stalling, styling and profiling and all the other Flair tropes. However, how many Flair matches, especially from his salad days in the '80s, can truly be said to be carbon copies of each other? The answer is none. The man was a genius in working the crowd giving them what they were expecting as well as being artistically relevant.

Ric Flair was overexposed. - False. Wrestling wasn't televised back then. Fans in Texas didn't see what Flair did in Memphis, and they didn't see him in Greensboro, who didn't see him in Tokyo, who didn't see him in Toronto who didn't see him in Portland and so on and so forth. If anything, Flair was a hot property, and was able to stay a hot property thanks to the territory system. In fact, I'd go even further and say that Ric Flair created more stars in pro wrestling in the '80s than any single wrestler in that era.

Ric Flair is ruining his legacy in TNA. - He might be, but really, does him slogging it out against Sting in 2010 ruin the magic of what he and that same guy created at the first Clash of the Champions? Even so, I can't even speak for the quality of that 2010 match because really, TNA isn't appointment viewing for me. I've heard it was actually somewhat good. Be that as it may, people don't remember Willie Mays and only focus on the run with the Mets. He's the fucking Say Hey Kid. Ric Flair is still The Man who went 60 minutes every night and was the, by God, World's Heavyweight Champion a record 16 times, WOO!

It's one thing to say that someone doesn't like Ric Flair, but to say he wasn't good, wasn't influential, wasn't important is a bald-faced lie.

2. Bruiser Brody's death was a tragedy.

This one might be a bit hairy. GET IT, HAIRY? BRODY HAD A LOT OF HAIR!

Anyway, I think people confuse the words "tragedy" and "travesty". What happened to Brody and with the subsequent trial of Invader Gonzalez was an utter travesty, a miscarriage of justice even. How the guy could stab Brody to death in the shower and get away with it because of cronyism and covering up everything is basically one of the greatest rapes of justice in history. That being said, Bruiser Brody was no saint.

The man was ruthless, often stiffing guys in the ring intentionally or strongarming promoters into giving him contracts by totally no-selling opponents and going into business for himself. He was unabashed about it as well. I don't want to say the man reaped what he sowed, because that would imply that he deserved to die for transgressions in the wrestling industry. That being said, he certainly wasn't careful to make sure that there weren't any weeds or pests in what he sowed. He went and fucked with the wrong promoter, and that wrong promoter at the very least turned the other way when one of his wrestlers stabbed Brody to death for trying to extort the wrong guy. That's not a tragedy. That's unnecessary escalation, but it's reasonable that in a carny business that hostile negotiations would be met with violence.

Again, I'm not saying Brody deserved it. No one should die over business dealings. However, Puerto Rico might be under US protectorate, but it might as well be as lawless as some of its Caribbean neighbors. Why anyone would screw with one of the island's most powerful men in Carlos Colon and not expect to be met with unreasonably disproportionate response is just foolish.

3. Rey Mysterio only got his shot at the World Championship because Eddie Guerrero died.

It'd be foolish to deny that Mysterio won the Royal Rumble and then the World Championship at WrestleMania as a makegood on Guerrero dying. However, if that was the only reason that someone would get that kind of push, then why didn't Chavo Guerrero get it? I honestly believe that Guerrero dying wasn't the reason that Mysterio was pushed to main event level, it was the excuse to put him to the next level. Since entering WWE, he was getting loud cheers and still wrestling in great matches despite the fact that his knees were already on the shot side. He also may have been de-pushed a little bit even after winning the title, but he was still in high-profile matches and feuds. There's no way that it wasn't noticed by upper management.

So, while Mysterio got his shot because of Eddie, it wasn't like it was the only reason. The fact that they've leaned on him for the better part of a decade speaks to how they feel about him, and I get the feeling they felt that about him for the longest time. They just needed an avenue to stick him in there despite the fact that WWE traditionally has a size fetish.

4. People don't like women's wrestling at all on a mainstream level, and won't ever like it.

If people keep getting fed shit, then people will continue to spit it back up. What most people think of when they hear the term "women's wrestling" are matches that don't last more than 90 seconds featuring shitty models doing awkward moves. Remember back to when the Divas of Doom angle started. Beth Phoenix got a MASSIVE reaction when she waylaid Kelly Kelly. It was unintentional, but there were fans in the crowd who wanted to cheer Phoenix. Of course, that reaction was nerfed in an attempt to try and get people to wag their tongues at Kelly Kelly again, but that moment, as small a sample size as it was, was enough to make me believe that it's not just the indie nerds who love SHIMMER like me who want to see the women get a bigger stage.

And really, wrestling is wrestling. I used to shirk at women's matches, but then I discovered SHIMMER and Sara del Rey and the Knockouts before they were turned to shit and so many other good women's wrestling. There's nothing keeping women from being presented as people worth our cheers other than stupidity and sexism. If good wrestling came from the Divas division, they'd be a really good part of the show.

5. WWE books to the smarks when they [insert radical booking decision here].

Some Internet fans love to pull out the "WWE books to the smarks" card at times usually when they're denigrating other fans for complaining about not liking what WWE gives them. Something like "HEY CM PUNK IS CHAMPION STOP COMPLAINING SMARKS!!!1" This grates at me for two reasons. One, it assumes that all Internet fans share some hive mind and think the same way. Yeah, there are guys that are universally loved on the Web, but the composite opinions are as diverse as can be. Secondly, it assumes that WWE actually books to the whims of the Internet. That's not true.

CM Punk didn't get pushed because "we" wanted him to. He's naturally gifted on the mic, can work a great match and is probably the most talented guy at working a crowd since The Rock (and some might argue he's better, although that remains to be seen). Bryan Danielson didn't get signed to WWE because the Internet clamored for it. He had some powerful connections, and when he got here, he continued to deserve his employment through connecting with new fans as Daniel Bryan. For as many times as WWE books favorably to what this skewed vision of the Internet is to some contrarian blowhards, they've ignored other fan favorites in favor of less palatable wrestlers. They do what they think is good for business, not what we here on the web think is. It's a hard pill to swallow sometimes, especially when Drew McIntyre is floundering on Superstars while Mason Ryan gets to do his human Claymation act at Survivor Series. *sigh*

6. Chikara is all nonsense and comedy.

Chikara's mission statement includes wanting to bring fun into wrestling. With that, there's the air about them that they don't take things too seriously. It's one of the things I love about the promotion. There's a good dose of comedy, but the thing is that it's not exactly a straight up comedy promotion. People actually do hate each other in character. There are a lot of really serious matches that stack up to what other, stiffer promotions put out. I'd put the final two matches at High Noon against any ROH matches in 2011 at all for emotion, tension and heat.

I think people look at the wrestling ants and the ice cream cones and the really ridiculous stuff and get turned off. Hey, it's not my fault that these people were never told by their parents never to judge a book by its cover, but hey, that's their prerogative. That being said, those who do get into it know that just because the wrestling ant feuded with the faux-viking doesn't mean that it was all goofy. Obviously, if people want ALL seriousness in wrestling, they can watch ROH. But really, the allure of wrestling is that comedy integrates seamlessly into it. Chikara does it best, and maybe for that, I feel like they get the rap that that's all they're about. I'm not sure that's any further from the truth than it is.