The Beatiful Thing presents: My Story Part III

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MY STORY: PART III

As I sit down to write this column, I’m watching a fantastic custom DVD I got from Rob at Golden Boy. It’s got some of the greatest matches in AJPW history on it, including Misawa vs. Kawada from ’94, which is a legitimate contender for Best Match Ever. The matches on the disc represent, in my opinion and in many other fans’ opinions, much of what is great about being a wrestling fan. The matches are intense, the wrestlers are obviously dedicated to their craft, and the fans are completely into it. Perhaps more importantly, this is wrestling that doesn’t insult our intelligence in any way. It’s necessary for me to have this disc handy to wash away the bitter taste of what I’m about to write. For, you see, * dramatic pause * there was a period of time where I fell out of love with wrestling.

As the 1980s drew to a close, I was still a pretty dedicated fan. All Star Wrestling had folded, but I still worked occasional spot shows for local legends like Rocky Dellasera. The crowds were small for those shows, however, and they seemed to get smaller every month. Wrestling’s Main Event, the magazine that sent me the first cheque I ever received for writing something, had also folded. The wrestling landscape had drastically changed, and there were essentially only two successful promotions left in North America.

The Brain Busters, Earthquake, Bad News Brown, and the Hart Foundation were tearing things up in the WWF, and Sting, The Steiners, The Great Muta, Terry Funk, The Road Warriors, Brian Pillman, and of course Ric Flair were putting on great matches for the NWA. It was still a good time to be a fan. My friends and I were all getting a little sick of Hulk Hogan, because it was painfully apparent that all of his matches followed the exact same pattern. Still, when we heard that he was going to star in a movie, we made plans to be there on opening night.

I don’t know how many of you remember No Holds Barred, but seeing it was an experience that I will never forget. It changed the way I felt about Hulk Hogan, Vince McMahon, and the WWF. The movie was terrible. It wasn’t even enjoyable in a campy, Wrestlecrap kind of way. No Holds Barred was irredeemable garbage. I felt ripped off, and so did the people I saw it with. To make things worse, Bobby Heenan and Gorilla Monsoon lied through their teeth about it on TV. Heenan claimed that people were lining up around the block to see the movie. Monsoon actually hinted that Hogan’s performance had been Oscar-worthy. I felt that this crossed a certain line. I knew from personal experience that prevarication and hype were second nature to wrestling announcers, but this kind of bald-faced lying really bugged me. We had been looking forward to hearing Heenan rip into Hogan’s piece of crap movie, and to hear him pathetically shilling it was almost more than I could take.

A tape of The Great American Bash ’89 was enough to rekindle my interest in wrestling, but I was pretty much an NWA fan from that point on. I didn’t watch the WWF again until the fall of 1990. They recaptured my interest by putting Earthquake in a program with Hogan, and they held my attention by coming up with an interesting gimmick for that year’s Survivor Series. The gimmick took the form of a giant egg that they dragged out on TV and at arena shows for months. At Survivor Series, we were finally going to get to see what was inside the egg. Our hottest speculation was that it might be Lex Lugar.

I had to work the day of the show, but my then-girlfriend’s younger brother went to see it on closed circuit. I dropped by their house the next day, and I was more excited about hearing what was inside the egg than I was about visiting my girl. When he told me, it took a while for me to accept that he wasn’t pulling my leg. What was in the egg, what we had been waiting months to see, was some guy (Hector ‘Lazer Tron’ Guerrero, as it turns out) in a giant rubber turkey suit. He ran around the ring flapping his arms, and danced with Mean Gene as the fans booed like crazy and the announcers tried to claim that the kids in the crowd were loving it.

The Gobbledy Gooker pretty much turned me off the WWF for years. I was tired of being lied to, and tired of having my intelligence insulted. I was sick of Hulk Hogan, I missed the British Bulldogs, and I just didn’t care any more.

I was still a fan of the NWA, but McMahon’s empire had pretty much squeezed them out of Canada, and it wasn’t always easy to find their shows. I remember how excited I was in early 1991 to get hold of a copy of StarrCade 1990. The show featured the culmination of the Black Scorpion story line! I couldn’t wait to see how that would turn out.

Those of you who already know may not be surprised to hear that Starrcade 1990 pretty much destroyed the lingering remnants of my wrestling fandom. The story of what happened is covered pretty well on pages 197-198 of Flair’s autobiography. What it came down to, essentially, is that even the NWA were now running angles that flat out insulted their fans’ intelligence.

Later that year, I moved away to go back to University. The local TV station in my new home didn’t carry wrestling, but I didn’t mind.

I was no longer a fan.


Mean Gene: I hope you’re proud of yourself, you BASTARD!

ELSEWHERE ON THE SITE

O’REILLY takes a look at the EA Sports NFL monopoly, and a great suggestion on what to do if you’re as unhappy about it as I am.

As always, there are some great discussions going on THE GENERAL WRESTLING FORUMS including a lighthearted look at the death of the Internet Wrestling Community, and a serious analysis of cheesy moustaches.

It was THIS COLUMN that started everyone talking about the state of the IWC. THIS COLUMN stirred things up even further.

For those who were asking me to pimp some Stampede Wrestling, my friend J.D. has it covered here, on some other site. As long as good writers like J.D. keep spreading the love, I think the IWC will do just fine.

I’ll have a column on the subject as soon as I’m done telling my story.

Thanks for reading.

Ditch should be here later today with the Puroresu Pulse, and we’ve got Blatt, Bufton, and Hyatte on tap for tomorrow.