The moss covered, three-handled family gredunza is the third of Chris Jericho’s 1004 moves, preceeded by an armdrag and armbar, and to be followed by an armbar and the Saskatchewan spinning nerve hold. It is a reference to the Cat in the Hat’s TV special.
An explanation of great matches
Welcome folks to the Moss Covered, Three Handled Family Gredunza. This week, I’l be talking about what makes a great wrestling match. As an example, I’m just going to take one match (time restrictions apply here). I’m going to take you back to 2001 for several reasons, not just because this match is great, but because of the weekend it took place on. Timing is of the utmost importance here. So, 2001, No Way Out, Stone Cold Steve Austin VS HHH, 2/3 falls. It made match of the year in a lot of people’s books (including the WWE’s). It’s an important match for several reasons.
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First off, the setup. It’s the majority of time your spend with the characters. Just abobut every live event moves the story a little bit, but the climax is of course reserved for pay per views. Usually the big pay offs happen 4 times a year, but this match happened between two much larger events, the Royal Rumble and Wrestlemania. I really think they should have kept the feud going another month to blow off at the big show, but for some reason they did it here (perhaps because bigger things were afoot). The storyline between HHH and Austin had been brewing for a few months, but with WWE’s revisionist history terms they claimed the feud was going on for a year. In November 99, HHH orchestrated the injury that Austin sustained by getting hit with the car (that Rikishi drove), and a year later, when Austin returned, he initially had a small feud with Rikishi, but this quickly transitioned to HHH. Within a few weeks, Rikishi was written out of the storyline and HHH took credit for the injury. So in November 2000, Austin got revenge in terms of car related injuries by grabbing a pitchfork-styled vehicle, grabbing HHH’s car (with HHH inside), lifting it 30 feet, and dropping it, literally killing the man.
HHH returned a month later, completely destroying any idea of reality. People complained about the giant plothole, but this is fiction through and through, so the lengths they went in terms of logic were really quite brilliant and insane. So there’s the impossible violence and the revisionist history, two necessary components in wrestling. Following this is two stereo screw-overs. HHH cost Austin the world title, and three weeks later Austin cost HHH the same title. This means that the feud was only tangentially involved with a championship. They touched on it in the premise, but kept it mostly personal. Following these events was the best contract signing they’ve ever done. McMahon comes out and says that they need to be separated. So they sign a match at No Way Out in a month, but until then they weren’t allowed to touch one another at all. I love this gimmick because it brings in psychological warfare. Austin would attack HHH’s wife. HHH attacked Austin’s friend, JR. They spelled out the fact that they could do anything they wanted to do to other people but not themselves, whilst brewing the tension to the big show, and you’ve got a perfect build up. This is important because you can’t have a wrestling show without physicality, so not allowing them to fight actually drives them a little nuts.
Add to this the gimmick of 2/3 falls. They did it in a very practical way. The first fall was about “spirit,†which meant that it was just straight psychological wrestling. The second fall would be a street fight, so no DQ’s, weapons, etc. The third fall, if required (and it always is) would be a steel cage match. So here you get the image of a confine being dropped and surrounding the combatants. As well, this was not the main event of the evening, as it went on halfway through the show. This makes it a hell of a lot easier to write over, as in a month this match had been nearly forgotten by the onslaught of the death of WCW, ECW, the event that was Wrestlemania X-7, and Austin’s heel turn. The revision of importance is paramount, because once you take something to this extreme, you have to write over it and start over, or else you’re left with wrestlers constantly pushing the envelope until they fall over and die.
So, the first fall is about “spirit,†is about respect (with two people who hate one another). Austin spends the match working on HHH’s left arm, and HHH spends his time working on Austin’s left knee. So, wrestling psychology is clearly apparent. They also do the brilliant display of selling these injuries throughout the match. The crowd is a rabid Vegas crowd, which gives us the idea of risk and danger. Within the first fall we get a few necessary elements of a great match. First is the aforementioned psychology. Second is the usage of the figure four leg lock. One simply can’t have a good match without one. Thirdly, we had no idea who was going to win until ten seconds before the pin fall, even though the announcers gave it to us a minute in by saying that HHH was more the technical wrestler, while Austin was a brawler, and opposites and contrasts have to be present in pro wrestling, because that’s all it is anyways.
So Austin pins HHH, and Lawler screams “Well, that’s done, onto the street fight,†channelling the crowd’s bloodthirsty presence, as if the first fall was just a way to attain rights to further violence. The second fall happens mostly outside the ring. They hit each other with television monitors, tables, etc. Austin throws chairs in the ring, foreshadowing the third fall. And then they fight in the crowd, which is still the best visual just about any melee could give us. They get back in the rings, and Austin grabs a chair and shot for shot foreshadows what he’s going to do to the Rock in a month when he turns heel. This is storytelling through wrestling moves in a trans-match, trans-character way that is about as deep as it can get. It’s foreshadowing through character-driven motive that makes every inch of sense. This shows that wrestling isn’t just a bunch of violence; it’s actually exceptionally subtle storytelling through character-driven means, even when it’s a steel chair.
So they go outside again. One shot, Austin is standing above HHH. Then, they cut to the audience, and when they cut back Austin has a bat wrapped in barbwire. It’s a great camera shot, very vintage horror. This is a direct homage to Mick Foley’s usage of the barbwire bat a year ago against HHH (Austin and Foley were friends). However, as Mick Foley himself has blatantly pointed out numerous times, that if you bring a weapon in the ring, it will be used against you. HHH wrangled the bat away from Austin and cracks him open with it, drawing a sea of crimson. However, he can’t follow up because of the hesistation he has due to his injured arm. Hesitation is always cause of great loss in wrestling. Austin’s blood here shows mortality, but it also gives the crowd satisfaction in addition to the already delivered anticipation.
And then HHH breaks out a sledgehammer. They both have their own signature-ish weapons, and they enter the ring again while the announcers blame one another for bringing these harbingers of violence into the realm in humorous ways. The humour is important as a contrast to the violence to give us a total package. HHH hits Austin with a pedigree, and now both of them have used their finishing moves to pin the other, which somehow makes them less powerful for later on.
And then eerie music starts to play. The lights go down, and the cage begins to lower. This is Vaudevillian theatre at it’s most profound. This also gives JR a moment to hyperbolize the match further as a “saga.†He also brings up the fact that No Way Out is actually a fitting name for the event, which is something that almost never happens anymore. JR then mentions that this is a personal story, which are the ones that really matter anyway. As great as titles are, they are worthless next to a great carving of quality wrestling and storytelling. It was personal to me as a fan, too, because around here is when the business stopped being just entertaining for me and began to be something to study. This was possibly because wrestling arguably stopped being red hot around this point. This was the climax of professional wrestling. After this, things would continue, but they would never again hit the white-hot flash that 2000-early 2001 would provide.
So the steel cage match starts. The first real spot is that of Austin raking the barbwire across the forehead of HHH, a spot lifted from an old 80’s Magnum TA match in the NWA. The reference is definitely appreciated.
An interesting point about this cage match is that no escape attempts are really made. HHH tries to climb once, but at that point, JR says “you can’t win by escaping†which causes him to stop. It’s this cool moment of symmetry between audio and video that goes beyond instant commentary.
The slower pace alludes to the tiring of the crowd. It also alludes to the release of satisfaction. The crowd is almost done at this point, filled with appreciation. Anything past the near-falls in the steel cage actually pushed the buttons of the psyche in the audience. The finishing sequence, where Austin hits HHH with the barbwire bat and HHH hits Austin with the sledgehammer, shows great equality but also the futility of free will. It shows that they will push no matter what, and it’s a kind of sad moment when they both fall in exhaustion and pain. HHH falls on Austin in a stroke of luck, pins him and wins in a seeming anti-climax, but it’s really a deliverance of catharsis. The image of HHH lying on Austin is interrupted by a fan throwing a beer can at Austin’s head was a little moment of fan interaction, which is small but so important for the fans. But it’s this moment when you realize that the winning and losing of this match was never the point, and this is illuminated when Austin gets up and stuns HHH, switching the music that is played in the arena from the winner’s soundtrack to the losers’.
And that brings us to the conclusion of the match where Lawler says “Well, that was great, but we’re not done yet,†which sums up the cynical cyclical nature of pro wrestling. They’re never, ever going to be over. That point is both alluring and incredibly saddening all at once, just like this match, just like all great matches.
