by Penny Sautreau-Fife
Sorry for the day’s delay folks. I was very sick yesterday and asked Glazer for an extension given I don’t have a ByLine yet, because I couldn’t focus enough to even eat yesterday, let alone type up a full-length bitchy rant of any decent coherancy.
Flea returned to the Pulse this week and suggested all new Pulse writers need to promote themselves. I dunno if I qualify as new, given this is actually the second weekly guest-spot on someone else’s column I’ve had on IP, (the first being Penny Candy on Hatton’s Monday Night Rabble in ’07), but as Glazer might eventually upgrade me to a by-line and my own space here each week, I suppose it couldn’t hurt.
My name is Penny. I’m a semi-terminally ill lesbian in Canada, living in a dinky little basement suite in Surrey BC with my wife (Yay Legal Same-Sex Marriage!) and out various pets. I’m 36 with the body of an 80 year old. I’m in constant excrucxiating pain which drives the bulk of my bitchy ranty opinions, as venting about what pisses me off in wrestlking helps distract me from the whole slowly dying thing. Though personally I think the doctors are full of shit. I’ve already outlived 3 of their “You won’t live past…” dates. I’ll outlive all of you. I’m too goddamn stubborn to die.
Besides, I have to live to see Micheal Cole pied by a fan live on Raw.
I have actual legit journalism experience, having in the 90’s written videogame review columns for various newspapers in the Conrad Black chain. That lasted for about two years until a newspaper writer’s strike in 1996 wherein my editor and I had a falling out. My co-workers were shitting on me for not showing up at a picket line in support of them, and my editor refused to clear up for them that I was in Toronto at the Donkey Kong Country press conference and didn’t know there WAS a strike til I got off the plane the day AFTER the picket line. For selling me to the wolves to get brownie points with the other writers, (he cut my pay to appease them into conceding a demand) I told them all the truth, that he used them, and quit in front of everyone telling him to go fuck himself. He replaced me with a douchnozzle who calls his readers pinheads if they don’t own this that or the other thing.
The bulk of my life now is spending time with my wife and blogging about GLBT issues. The USA gives me SO much material, with all the batshit whackadoodles never afraid to spew insanity into a microphoe about how the ho-muh-SEXKS-shuals are destroying everything good and decent that existed in the 1950’s on bad sitcoms.
There, that’s about as much self-promotion as I care to bother with. I’m no one special or important, just a grumpy fat lesbian in a lot of pain bitching her opinions about a pretend sport every week.
So I was going to talk about the WCW Invasion this week. For one because everyone else has already discussed anyt big news each week to death, and two, to continue my “Missed opportunities in wresting” theme. But the comments last week, while mostly positive, suggested no one wanted another full page column dissecting that failure again. (The short version is; I think it was actually working until they buckled and turned WCW heel when fans love biooing Vince, destroyed DDP, and let Stephanie have sweet fuck all to do with ANY of it AT ALL), so I asked for suggestions.
Someone said Lance Storm.
Now that IS a good point. The WWE really didn’t do much of note with Storm. And I could probablyt fill an article detailing the multitude of things the ‘E could have easily done with him and succeeded at. But the suggestion got me thinking.
Lance isn’t the only wrestling talent that was a damned near perfect worker that never really had huge main-event suvvess in the ‘E, but…. he DID have success. Just as Daniel Bryan Danielson is currently lugging 10 pounds of painted gold and leather around, (190 if you count the Bella Twins last month. HEYOOOOO!!!!), Lance DID win gold in the ‘E. He had a comfortable run on the mid-card. He was in memorable angles, and fans knew who he was enough to care enough to boo him. But the more I think about it, the more I realize that his WWE carreer can’t really be called a missed opportunity to anyone but his most hardcore fans.
As much as we IWC folks would flip our shit if Danielson ever got a world title push and won it, we realistically know it’s never going to happen. And it was never going to happen with Storm. Shawn Micheals is one of very few smaller guys who ever broke the glass ceiling because he MADE it break. He played politics relentlessly. He put himself over to management at the expense of others. He seems to be a decent human being now, but everyone knows what a douchebag he was in his prime. Shawn Micheal broke through because he walked all over everyone else in his way.
Guys like Danielson and Storm, well, by all indications they’re nice guys. They don’t play politics. They’re wrestlers, all they want to do is wrestle. But both men, (in Storm’s case at least until he retired), were workrate freaks, skilled technicians. In the WWE envirnment, top of the midcard is the best men like that can hope for. 98% of the time it’s the best that ever happens. Partly because of Vince’s size and style over skill and substance mantra, and partly because of how Vince has trained the bulk of his audience.
The majority of the audience has been conditioned to not take anyone in the main event seriously unless they posess at least 3 of the following 4 qualities.
1) Exceptional charisma. You can get away with half-assing a 5 minute match as long as you can have the crowd hanging on your every gesture or facial expression. Examples; Hogan, The Rock, Orton.
2) Amazing Promo Talent. If you can have the crowd in the palm of your hand hanging on ever word, you can get away with a lot. See Pink, HBK, Cena, The Rock.
3) A huge physique. Muscle bound and imposing. The bigger the better. See Batista, Triple H, Booker T.
4) A hook. Be it a catchphrase the audience loves to chant along to or a signature move that makes everyone mark out to high hell, if you have a hook that gets the fans acting Pavlovian, you’re on your way. See The People’s Elbow, the 5 Knuckle Shuffle, The RKO, The Big Boot and Legdrop.
The audience conversely, has been also mostly trained to see the technical wizards as the midcard warm-up.So without that extra something special, guys like Storm were never realistically going to break past the mid card. With HBK’s showmanship, The Rock’s Charisma, or Jericho’s mastery of emotionally manipulating the crowd whereever he wants them to go, a technical wizard is just warm-up material to keep the crowd going until the main event. Storm himself knew this. He’s adsmitted he never had any illusions about being a world champion in WCW or the WWE. So while hardcore wrestling fans who appreciate the technical skill above the entertainment fluff would think it a damn shame Storm never got better than an intercontintental title reign, realistically he was lucky to get even that. He was a damned good worker, but at best competenant on the mic. Competant however, is not dazzling, and the ‘E is about dazzle.
Still, it WOULD be nice to see Danielson upend the Miz in a surprise victory, even if he only got to be champion for a week.
Hey just because I’m a realist doesn’t meant I can’t still dream.
Now go for a walk. There’s a whole world out there you don’t need 3D glasses for.
