Tuesday, October 26, 2010

Glossary of terms

So before I continue, I think I'll throw out a couple definitions of basic wrestling lingo, just in case. I figure anything further than this can probably be explained in the context of a given blog entry, but here are a few basics at least:

heel - 'bad guy' or villianous wrestler
face or babyface - 'good guy' or hero wrestler
heat - a strong negative reaction from a crowd
pop - a strong round of applause or positive reaction from a crowd
angle - as explained above, the storylines behind why specific wrestlers are fighting
face turn/heel turn - a character changing from good to bad, or vice versa
bump - a part of a match where a wrestler falls or otherwise puts himself in harm's way (ie - he took tons of crazy bumps in that match)
shoot - anytime a wrestler breaks character and does something completely legitimate, be it speaking as himself in an interview, or accidentally injuring his opponent
work - anything in wrestling that is scripted. The vast majority of what goes on in pro wrestling is "a work" or "worked"
stiff - a wrestler who is so real in the ring, he tends to genuinely inflict pain on his opponent, or an exceptionally rough move (ie - man, he really stiffed him). OR could be a term for a crappy, slow wrestler with no fluidity
workrate - used to describe the realism/quality of an individual wrestler's performances
swerve - when an angle appears to be going in a very specific direction, then goes the complete opposite way suddenly and unexpectedly (I think this one makes more sense when used/seen in context)

I THINK that about covers it. Anything else, I'll explain as I go.

WRESTLEMANIA 1


Wrestlemania 1
Madison Square Garden (New York, New York)
Original airdate: March 31, 1985
So here it is. The beginning. The patient zero of pay per view professional wrestling. And much like I am trying to do with this blog (which I'm sure 2 people will read, but I digress), the WWF was clearly still trying to "iron out the kinks" at this point. While watching this show, I was going back and forth in my head as to how to format the blog. My initial thought was to do a straight forward list of the matches and review each one individually, but that seems too hacky. So what I think I'm going to do is just write my various jumbled thoughts on the show freeform, and then list the results at the end of the entry. That leaves me a lot more freedom to write about different PPVs from different angles, and in some cases, actually come up with an interesting angle from which to write about a crappy, uninteresting show. (if my memory serves me correctly, this will be a particular problem from about 1993-96. Those were dark years for the company).

And much like I am currently doing on a 1000000000000000000000% smaller scale, the WWF was clearly trying to find their identity a bit with the very first Wrestlemania. Don't get me wrong, the seed of genius is CLEARLY there. It wouldn't have lasted 26 years and counting if it wasn't. But it wasn't quite sussed out yet.

There are a couple of problems. One is that (at least to me, the actual product (wrestling) isn't quite up to par yet. Don't get me wrong, there are certainly some great workers on the card. Ricky Steamboat is rightly regarded as one of the greatest of all time, but here he is paired in an extremely forgettable 5 minute match with a generic heel named Matt Borne (Borne eventually acheived some degree of fame years later portraying Doink, an evil clown, but we'll cross that bridge when we come to it). There are also an abundance of wrestlers who, while not anywhere near legendary status, were certainly solid WWF fixtures for many years. Case in point: Tito Santana. Tito, who spent about a decade being good (not great) in the company has the honor of kicking off the show against a masked wrestler named The Executioner. I consider myself a near expert on modern era WWF trivia, but that one stumped me. I had to look up who portrayed the Executioner. Turns out it was "Playboy" Buddy Rose, who spent most of the remainder of his career (before his untimely death) poking fun at his own weight problem. The Executioner must have been extremely shortlived. His match with Tito is just as forgettable.

I think the other thing that makes this show less than memorable is the lack of angles. I'm not really sure how much to explain wrestling lingo, since I'm not sure who (if anyone) will read this, but for the unitiated, an "angle" is the story behind the fake fights in wrestling. In many ways, they're very comparable to much more testosterone laden soap operas. Anyway, there weren't a ton of angles leading into the first Wrestlemania. While Vince Mcmahon clearly had a vision to wed wrestling with other popular culture (WM1 features appearances by singer Cyndi Lauper, "musician" Liberace, Yankees legend Billy Martin, and then extremely popular actor Mr T), but I don't quite think he had the right vision for his own product yet. But that would come in time, obviously. I don't even think they really had the right grasp on production values yet. Everything is way too dark, and little things are distracting, like the fact that the ring ropes are clearly too loose.

The main event serves as a nice glimpse into what is to come, though. It pits Hulk Hogan and the aforementioned Mr T against Rowdy Roddy Piper (who still had some good years with WWF left ahead of him) and Mr Wonderful Paul Ordorff (who would be out the door within a year or two). It's by no means a gem or an all time classic match, but the crowd is clearly more invested in it than any of the other bouts. And while Hulk was still maybe 2 years off from being the full fledged phenomenon he would eventually turn into, you could tell people had already gotten behind him a fair amount. Plus, the inclusion of T was a clever bit of cross promotion, Unlike the women's match, which essentially served as an extended commercial for Cyndi Lauper's song "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun".

All in all, a good start and certainly extremely important in a historical sense, but not an essential event in any way, unless you consider yourself a total WWF completist (which I guess I will be when this blog is said and done) or if, like me, you can't get enough of the Iron Sheik refering to "Mean" Gene Okerlund as "Gene Mean".

Card:
Tito Santana def. The Executioner
King Kong Bundy def. Special Delivery Jones
Ricky Steamboat def. Matt Borne
David Sammartino (w/Bruno Sammartino) fought Brutus Beefcake (w/Johnny Valiant) to a double DQ
The Junkyard Dog def. Intercontinental Champion Greg Valentine by countout (Valentine retains)
Nikolai Volkoff and The Iron Sheik (w/Classy Freddie Blassie) def. The US Express (Barry Windham and Mike Rotundo) (w/ Capt. Lou Albano) to win the Tag Team Championships
Andre The Giant def. Big John Studd (w/Bobby "The Brain" Heenan) in a "15,000 dollar Bodyslam Challenge"
Wendi Richter (w/Cyndi Lauper) def. Leilani Kai (w/The Fabulous Moolah) to win the Womens Championship
Hulk Hogan and Mr. T (w/ "Superfly" Jimmy Snuka) def. "Rowdy" Roddy Piper and "Mr Wonderful" Paul Orndorff (w/ "Cowboy" Bob Orton)

Friday, October 22, 2010

A brief intro

I've been a wrestling (the "fake" kind) fan on and off my entire life. I'm not even entirely sure why. It's just something I got into when I was maybe 3 years old and never truly got out of. I very vividly remember watching 3 or 4 hours of wrestling EVERY Saturday morning during the hours most kids watched cartoons. There was Wrestling Challenge, then WWF Superstars of Wrestling, then some cruddy WCW show, then it was time to go out and play. The amazing thing is these shows were extremely unexciting in retrospect. It was mostly established stars wrestling no name "jobbers" and not very much was done to advance the soap opera like storylines that I could never get enough of.

As I got a little older, I'd save the money I made doing chores around the house and occasionally get my mother to let me purchase one of the WWF's then quarterly pay per views. It was a BIG event to do that back then. You had to go down to the cable company, pick up a special box to hook up to your tv just for that night, then take it back in the morning. And despite the fact that it is certainly a conventionally "dorky" thing to be into (probably moreso now), my stepdad was cool enough to take me to whatever live shows WWF ran close to us, including Raw once around 1996 (the salad days of their next big crop of stars like The Rock, Triple H and Stone Cold Steve Austin)

ANYWAY, at some point in like 2006, after a lengthy absence from having anything to do with wrestling, I gradually got back into it again. It started with checking out some old late 80's pay per views for nostalgia purposes. Then I decided to order the Royal Rumble, because that was always my favorite of their shows. Then it was Wrestlemania. Then I started dabbling in the WWE's weekly shows again. That was when it started getting out of control again. Now, I can fully admit to being obsessed again. I watch all WWE and TNA (a veeeeeery distant second to WWE in terms of mainstream popularity) programming and regularly attend shows run by a variety of other "indie" organizations (which is made tremendously simple now that I live a mere 10 minute walk from the old ECW arena).

Since then, I've always toyed with the idea of doing a wrestling blog, but I certainly don't think I'm clever enough to distinguish myself from the other dorks who write long detailed blogs about the business using nerdy mark terms like "workrate" or "pop".

But then the idea for the gimmick behind this blog hit me. And yes, I can freely admit it is a total gimmick. I'm going to watch every Pay Per View event the WWF has ever run, and write about them as I go. This seems right for a multitude of reasons. One is that it will be like taking a walk through my 26 year old life. Wrestlemania 1, the very first pro wrestling pay per view, aired on March 31, 1985. I was 1 year and 24 days old at the time. This gave me the idea that maybe as I go through these, it will trigger some personal reflections of growing up, since I essentially grew up along with that particular company.

So here goes nothing. Obviously the first couple years will go by without too many entries since less than 5 ppv's a year ran until the early 90's. If I can, I'll try to keep it interesting by approaching these in different ways. Maybe I'll even have some guest writers if I watch a certain show with someone else. So yeah...let's do this. Someone bring out the Fink for some ring intros.

Note: I'm putting no time frame on how often I'll be able to watch these. Realistically, working around my job and everything else, it will probably be just a couple shows a month. We'll see.