Wolf-Bone presents Mah Wrasslin' Call 'Em

[Wolf-Bone]

To be updated whenever I've had enough alcohol, Red Bull, or a combination of both to feel inclined to rant about how much I love the sport of kings (and by kings I mean the kind who weren't quite cut out to make it into the NFL)

Well, what the fuck is this shit! Let me ask y'all something: ponder this scenario for a moment. You've got a show on Spike TV, aka 24 hours of ST:GN reruns, short-lived reality shows and some shitty Japanese game show... Oh, and MacGyver. Your show is pretty much the only thing on that station keeping it from being That 80's Channel (just watch, you just know That 80's Show will be revived on there. All 6 episodes back to back for a full fuckin' year, YYEEE HHHAAWWW!!!). And yet you get the feeling lately that they might not be too high on your current two-hour timeslot, since TNA is this close to replacing your current weekend hour-long timeslot as it is.

Now, flip to the other side of that coin. You got another weekly two-hour show, except his one's on UPN. The main difference is it's taped, and doesn't air until several days after Spike's event, which is live. If you keep up with WWE, you probably already know who and what I'm talking about by now. And undoubtedly you probably agree with me that sometimes it feels like WWE has a death wish.

For those who have lives, let me fill you in. They have this character who started out on Raw, named Hassan, and recently moved to Smackdown. He's just about the most successful heel they've had in ages, next to Triple H, because like Triple H he is THE classic heel. He's not an asshole "just because". He legitimately feels like he's been screwed out of the respect and opportunities he deserves, because of his nationality, Arab-American (the guy who portrays him is actually Italian, but he really does look the part).

The last few years, the formula for being a heel that's truly hated by the marks is simple: get on the mic and rant about the post-9/11 world, and say ANYTHING other than "the Dixie Chicks can go to hell!" (which makes you a perfect face, no matter how much you suck). Hassan does just that. But up until the incident which in question, Hassan never once played himself up as some wannabe Terrorist. In his view, he was an Arab-American, proud to be both, who had so much anti-Arab shit thrown at him that he decided he wasn't too proud of the American part anymore.

Then, the writers decided to sell out the Hassan character as the same terrorist-sympathizer the fans thought he was, and that he had denied being. In a match with The Undertaker, Hassan had a bunch of guys in fatigues and ski-masks come to the ring, beat down Undertaker, and symbolically reinact a beheading.

This was taped on a Tuesday, which was before the first London bombing incident. The problem is, it aired when we were smack-dab in the middle of the media aftermath. Needless to say, the shit hit the fan, and WWE decided to take the character of TV temporarily. Not good enough, sayeth UPN. They want the character kept off their network altogether. Now WWE is panicking, trying to figure out what to do with this character. They were thinking of moving him to Raw. But apparently, they've since decided they don't even want to take the risk of getting Spike pissed at them as well as UPN. Probably a smart move, since they're already probably going to lose one timeslot there regardless. Now the most likely scenario is that Hassan's last match as Hassan will take place at Summerslam against The Undertaker, where he'll get squashed and the character will effectively be killed off.

As it stands now, he'll most likely be sent back to OVW (basically WWE's training grounds) while the writers try to come up with a new gimmick for him. "Just great", I think to myself. "Just like Mordecai, Godfather, and all those other guys who've since been released because the writers realized 'oh wait, we CAN'T come up with anything for you, because we CAN'T see you in anything other than the retarded gimmick WE created and somehow expected you to make better than it was by design". The difference here is Hassan was making his character work, because he was believable on the mic, and expressed his anger through his wrestling style. In other words, he made it more than a gimmick. And effectively he'll end up being punished for something he really had no say in. I'll be pretty damn amazed if whatever the writers cook up is nearly as effective as the Hassan character. But if I were Vince MacMahon, these would be my exact words to them:

"You'd better pray you knock this one out of the fucking park".

The writers fucked up, and one of the talent is going to end up paying for it with a career less successful than it could've been. Yes, I've already heard the cries of "but they couldn't have known there'd be a terrorist attack!" and "they didn't have enough time to edit it out!", and all that may be true. But these are the times we're living in. Bombings, beheadings and the like have all become questions of when, not if. The smart thing to do right now would be not to depict terrorist acts at all, because chances are pretty damn good that one will actually occur around the time your show airs! WWE wonders where their ratings are going, and then they pull a stunt that's probably put them one notch below Jerry Springer in public opinion. In fact, I think it wouldn't be unsafe to say 9/11 is part of what contributed to WWE's ratings decline which has yet to truly recover. After 9/11 many casual fans, myself included, spent less time watching wrestling and more time watching the news and reading news magazines to get a sense of what's going on in the world. And when the reality of how fucked up the world is becoming (or has already been since forever) finally hit us like a ton of bricks -again, myself included- when we did watch wrestling, we changed the fucking channel because we were having it shoved back in our faces by Scott Steiner and Chris Nowinski! When I watch something like wrestling, I do it to momentarily distract myself from the reality that my great grandkids will be living in fucking Nineteen-Eighty-Four. Not to be painfully reminded of it. If they ever want to return to the days of sold-out arenas and mainstream popularity, they're not going to do it by becoming the show where world affairs are played out by guys in spandex. WCW once had a German-supremacist heel named Berlin, and his anti-American, pro-German ranting was all fine and dandy, because he never went that extra mile of offensiveness by doing the Nazi salute (that honor belongs to JBL, who got away with it. I guess it's ok to do the Nazi salute to Germans as long as you're not German).

Despite the groan-inducing background story of Hassan, I liked it because I felt it was worth it if it meant having one of the more believable heels in a while. Leave it to the Marvel Comics rejects WWE hires for writers to absolutely ruin it for everybody. Especially Hassan himself. FUCK! I think I'm gonna become a wrestler. My angle is gonna be that I was a wrestling fan who was ashamed of the direction WWE went in so I went on a crusade to revive RollerJam. My gimmick will be that a loophole in the wrestling rulebook makes it legal for me to wrestle with my rollerskates on and kick people in the face with them.

[Tiamot]

That makes me sick to hear. I truly enjoy the sport and have to admit that I found Hassan to be a very effective heel. He torked me off, which made me realize, "Shit, he's doing a great job! He's even got me pissed!" I even enjoyed watching him wrestle, I noticed him pulling a lot of techinical moves and not doing all sorts of fancy improvised BS which lead me to believe that he had a good solid base in his training. I'd like to see his career blossom,but it looks like the writers get to shove their bad decisions on another scapegoat. The entire piece you wrote reminded me of the time in ECW when Raven (I think it was him) tied another wrestler to a cross and crucified him. Supposedly that was ad-libbed. But at any rate, you remember who he did that to? OH, and did you manage to catch WWE's ECW pay per view?

[Wolf-Bone]

Yes, it was Sandman. Frankly I don't understand why that got so much heat yet when the Ministry of Darkness "crucified" everyone from Steve Austin to Stephanie MacMahon (which I actually thought was kinda hot in Steph's case), it wasn't as big a deal. I understand religious conservatives see it as a slap in the face to their religion, but don't they realize Jesus wasn't the only person crucified?

I didn't have any money at the time of the ECW PPV. That was around the time I was looking at not having a place to live. I plan on buying the DVD though. Especially since out of those 16 wrestlers that just got fired, that may be the last WWE pay-per-view event some of them ever work.

There's another DVD called "101 reasons not to be a pro wrestler", which consists mostly of shoot interviews about what goes on backstage and on the road. It's only available for online purchase, and that coupled with the shitty box art turned me off to it but I heard some good reviews for it, so it might be worth checking out.

[Tiamot]

My friends got the PPV and taped it so I got to watch it, albeit after the fact. It was enjoyable. I've also seen the Rise and Fall of the ECW DVD which wasn't bad either. Haven't heard of the other one though. If you end up getting it, let me know how it is.

[Wolf-Bone]

Update:

Hassan was indeed "killed off" at The Great American Bash. Undertaker gave him the last ride powerbomb through the stage, which probably looked pretty impressive live. So at least he went out with a bang.

In my next edition, I plan to delve into other gimmicks WWE writers could come up with to offend the entire fucking world through Mark Copani. What are some of my theories? Let's just say recycling is good for the environment.

I'll probably keep all my updates in this thread.

[Wolf-Bone]

Wolf-Bone back up in da hizzouce again with a new wrestling column. I calls it,

The Price of Gas

The title will make sense in due time, trust me.


http://i18.photobucket.com/albums/b143/Wolf_Bone/Intercontinentalcham p.jpg


Lance Storm's physique is nothing to sneeze at by any means. But does he look like someone on steroids? I never thought so. But according to him, many of the kids he's gone to the gym with in his 23 years of weightlifting assumed he was "on the gas" as he put it in his latest commentary (http://www.stormwrestling.c om/080505.html)-- and they wanted a hook-up! In it, he makes some pretty blunt statements about the realities of just how prevalent steroid use is in pro sports. He also goes on to talk about why kids, some of whom aren't even competetive athletes are using steroids, or want to.

Personally, I agreed with what he had to say, for the most part. But I wish he'd have pushed that envelope a little further in the direction of the wrestling business. It would've made for the perfect talking point to support his case for why kids feel inadequate if he'd use the ultimate measuring stick of insane standards - WWE. Now, I'm not exactly free from the effects of having grown up watching guys built like The Ultimate Warrior, Hulk Hogan and Lex Luger dominate one end of the physical spectrum. I demonstrated it earlier by scoffing at the notion that someone with Lance Storm's build used steroids to get there. I'm pretty sure the standards held by WWE since before I was born have something to do with that.

Until quite recently, cruiserweights were virtually unheard of in WWE. In fact, up until the mid-90's, guys like Bret Hart, Shawn Michaels and Lance Storm - all well above the 200 lb mark - were considered small! Now plenty of people have described me as being very well built. And I usually don't truly believe them when they say that. You know why? Because at a scant 160-something lbs, I feel like I couldn't even lace up Shawn Michaels' boots - which is pathetic, because he's such a shrimp, right? - let alone compare to the likes of Triple H and Batista. It wasn't until WCW started tapping the talent of the luchadores that WWE (then WWF) decided to create the lightheavyweight division. And it was a small concession to those of us who wanted to believe wrestlers closer to our stature could make it. Yeah, they had lightweights on the roster, but a guy could hold the top spot for his division one week and be put in a squash match to elevate a bigger guy's push the next. It really diminishes the cruiserweights as a division when the best one of them is just cannon fodder for The Next Big Thing (pun/dis intended). It says muscle beats mat skills, every time.

So I've internalized this notion that I don't measure up. And while I've never taken steroids, and am not about to any time soon, I have done things that were counterproductive to getting bigger, such as overtraining. For example, I was a laborer for several years, bottom guy on the totem pole. I fucked up my back twice while doing this job. I probably would have under the best of conditions, as typically, construction companies go through laborers like cartons of milk -- they expire almost as fast. I wish I had known then what I know now, about how long it takes for muscle to repair itself after a normal work out, let alone a job which is essentially a 10 hour work out - with no rest between sets. If I'd sat on my ass all day drinking protein shakes after a typical day and got a full night's rest, it probably still wouldn't have been enough rest and replenishment for my body. But what did I do right after I punched out at 5:30pm? Headed straight to the gym and slammed the iron for as much as 2 hours!

I'm hoping where I'm still young and have smarted up since, it won't come back to bite me in the ass down the road. I'm confident it won't. About a year's worth of sessions with a chiropractor, and two years later I haven't had a back problem since despite hitting the weights as hard as ever, albeit more sensibly. I bet my prognosis would be more grim if I'd hit "the gas". Looking at all the guys who were big back in the 80's and early 90's in wrestling, they're dropping like flies. And many of the ones still alive are running into serious health problems. I know a lot of these wrestlers were into other drugs besides steroids, and that the stress of life on the road (and in the ring) takes its toll. But I can't help thinking steroids might've been that final nail in the coffin for some of them.

I know virtually every other pro sport has horror stories of guys who seem to be above average fitness dropping dead. What gives? Again, I'm not saying steroids are the only factor, but can they be ruled out at all?

As Lance Storm posits, the root cause of steroid abuse among young people is the desire to be on the same level as the athletes they believe set some sort of standard for what is and isn't a good body. I think by bringing this ugly side to the forefront, it might change a few peoples minds who were thinking of doing something stupid, whether it's taking steroids, overtraining, having dramatic surgery or whatever.

British Bulldog, Road Warrior Hawk, Curt Hennig. Just tell these kids that these guys at one time had what was considered the perfect body. Now they're all dead. How perfect is their bodies now? Is the price of gas worth that?

[Lance Walker]

Yeah, that's a shame about Hassan. But atleast he got to go out with a bang. And he's still in OVW which is good I guess considering with the carelessness the WWE has directed at it's talent here lately, it wouldn't have surprised me the WWE would have just fired him outright so as to not offend anyone.

Look, even I know that people are sensitive to the whole terrorist thing due to 9/11 but I can't help but feel like the whole thing that happened with Hassan was censorship at it's worst. True the WWE writers fucked up Hassan's character by taking it in the direction they took it in, but I for one didn't care if he had terrorist sympathies or not. Big deal! I wasn't stupid enough to believe that terrorists had invaded Smackdown and really were choking the life out of the Undertaker, which I hear that a number of people who voiced complaints to UPN did believe just that, so why then should the WWE have to pull a character, regardless if he's a terrorist wanna be, just because it upset a few people. Heck, I've even heard from people who had lost a loved one on 9/ll and even they thought it was stupid that people were offended by this. I seriously wonder sometimes if we're quickly becoming a society that's ruled by whatever the majority says at any given time. *sighs and shakes head*

For the longest time I hated him and then I realized why. Cause he was extremely good at what he did: his job. With most of it's heels running like scared dogs with they're tails tucked between their legs when confronted by an angry face wrestler, Hassan was one of those few that perfered to fight rather than run. Plus, he was believeable in what he did and phenominal in what he did in the ring. I mean, really, besides Kurt Angle, and a other select few, who else could make a submission move like the Camel Clutch actually entertaining to watch. Hassan took a gimmick that could have easily been forgetable and made it work. Such a shame that such a promising career goes up into smoke like this. And what of Davari? As far as I know he'll still be in WWE on Smackdown, but doing what? Other than being a gimickless wrestler in the cruiserweight division I don't really see much of a future for him in the WWE.

As for steriods, I've got a friend who uses them cause they make him look bigger without having to go to the trouble of finding time to work out since he works 16 hour shifts on a regular basis. I thought about taking them too, till I found out that they can change your behaviour and make you more aggressive than you already are. Which is sorta a problem to me since I have a quick temper already, and I'm kinda the type of person that controls any violent outbursts I might think up with a strong level of self control. I've already experienced a lapse in this self control while under the influence of strong liquor and beer so I shudder to think what the gas might do to me.

Also, in an interview for a local tv show, Edge was quoted as saying that not only did he do steroids, but that alot of wrestlers in the WWE did them as well, especially the main event talent. Though he wouldn't name anyone sides himself. Also another WWE wrestler, maybe Billy Gunn who was let go by the WWE shortly before the Edge interview, did say that the WWE schedule is tough and that you often need them just to keep your strength up. Though I imagine that they're also good for giving you a better bulk so that the right people might notice and better your chances of either getting into or holding on to a spot in the main event. Such as the case with Edge as when he left due to his neck injury he was a tall, skinny guy with a small build. Yet when he returned almost a year later he had bulked up a considerable degree. Many thought at the time that he'd been hitting the weights with a vengence but now it may all have simply been roids the rescue after all.

Kinda makes you wonder if they'll ever come out with a tell all book stating who did steriods in the WWE and why and just who's names will appear in it and who's won't.

Well, I'm out.

Later all,

Lance Walker :cool:

[rafaeldelafae]

To talk about Hassan for a moment..and the "terrorist" angle.

UPN had the tape in theri hands right after the show Tuesday into Wednesday. UPN should have editted it, not the WWE. It's UPN's own stupidity not to do so, so WWE shouldn't be blamed.

Not knowing about the London attacks be damned, UPN should have editted it if they didn't like it--but what's the most UPN does--they air a warning saying that the next segment coming up shouldn't be watched due to the bombings.

WTF!? So THE NETWORK does that THEN they get pissed at the WWE?