Posted in: Ripped To Shreds Ripped To Shreds #13: Underdogs In Wrestling
By Ripper
May 4, 2009 - 5:41:34 PM
Ripped To Shreds #13: Underdogs In Wrestling
Welcome back to Ripped To Shreds. I’d like to say thanks again to everyone who responded to my last column on Triple H.
My interest in wrestling has dwindled in recent months, but I am, by all means, still a fan. There’s an issue with the wrestling business I’ve been wanting to address for a while now, and I think it would make for a pretty good column topic.
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Without further ado, I’m just going to dive right in, hopefully not ala Greg Loughenis in his famous diving board mishap.
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If there was ever a blue print for stories, even those that only exist in our fantasies, that has incited feelings of joy and exuberance in people everywhere, it has to be the tried and true formula of the underdog going up against an adversary who in comparison makes him just that, an underdog. Classic tales such as David using his sling to slay Goliath, an inexperienced Luke Skywalker battling the overpowering Darth Vader, and other accounts of people who are favored to lose but wanted to win will often times provide great levels of enjoyment for people.
For those who are familiar with my columns, you’ll know I like to make reference to the Rocky movie series from time to time. The Philadelphia street fight fighter turned world champion Rocky Balboa was indeed one of the biggest boxing icons, real or fictional, of the 1980’s. And while the development of his underdog character demonstrates the point that I will be making in this column, the Italian Stallion will not be discussed right now, and instead another boxing icon from the decade in his own right will be looked at. The athlete I am referring to tipped the scales at barely over a hundred pounds, and didn’t even stand five feet in height.
But regardless his small size, he was able to hang tough with the best and the baddest. He would courageously throw his undersized body into the air with all the force he could muster, all while trying to land one of his miniature green boxing gloves into the face of his larger opponents, leaving them with jaw dropping looks of astonishment. Despite their overbearing size, they often times seemed to be equalized by this boxer’s heart. He was brave. He was resilient. He was the embodiment of the phrase “It’s not the size of the dog in the fight that matters, but the size of the fight in the dog.” He was…
Little Mac from Mike Tyson’s Punch Out for the NES (original Nintendo). Mac was the star of what was then, and to this day, undoubtedly one of the most universally memorable video games of all time. Trained by the one and only Doc Louis, the seventeen year old Mac set out to fight a number of the best and bizarre athletes that the world had to offer. Whether pitted against the bad ass Piston Honda from Tokyo, the charismatic French lover boy Don Flamenco, or the ridiculously oversized King Hippo, Mac’s fighting spirit was unbreakable. He slowly climbed the ladder, and after winning a championship in a boxing circuit, his celebrations would not be long lived.
He could soon be seen afterwards training with Doc on the streets of his hometown of the Bronx. With every time his foot hit the pavement during his running, and with every time Doc pushed him to keep going harder and harder, he would look up to the Statue of Liberty standing in the distance, feel the sweat roll off his pink sweat suit, and he would know in the back of his mind that despite the odds stacked against him, he had to do what he had to do. The Bald Bull’s Bull Charge would not be unstoppable for him. Moscow’s own Soda Popinski would not have upper cuts that were too quick and too devastating, and Great Tiger’s teleportation abilities would not be impossible to counter.
To sum it up, it was will against skill.
However, in the end Mac faced one of the greatest boxers of all time- Mike Tyson. He was a tough challenge, but very beatable. After Mac won against Iron Mike, the classic video game came to what seemed to be a fitting and appropriate end. Mac was officially the king of the mountain, and nothing was left to prove. Had the game continued, he would no longer be climbing to the top of the ladder, but rather trying to keep himself from falling down a few rungs.
While not all real athletes and fictional story characters lose their appeal once they prove all they have to prove, the ones who primarily gain our attention and interest due to their underdog status usually do. Professional wrestling is no exception to this. After turning to a baby face in 1995, Shawn Michaels’ career practically caught fire, and while he was a fun, charismatic guy who had the ideals of the classic baby face, the foundation of his popularity as a face was primarily based on his fighting spirit. His ability to stand up in the face of the adversity that his small size created for him is what really drew fans to care about him. For a lack of a better term, his dancing and care free attitude were only the sizzle to his tenaciousness’ steak.
Wrestlemania 12 came around, and with all the hype of Michaels trying to fulfill his boyhood dream preceding the now legendary sixty minute Iron Man match with Bret Hart, the story of Shawn’s rise to the top had gotten as good as it was going to get. It was said in the autobiography “Heartbreak and Triumph” that some wrestlers feel that when you win the title, the fans stop caring about you. While I agree with this to a degree, it is especially detrimental to wrestlers who depend on their actual climb to the top to gain reactions rather than their actual character and personality beyond the competition of wrestling.
After Shawn Michaels won his first WWE championship, and pretty much held the title until his famous “lost smile” speech in early 1997, there really was nothing that seems that memorable today about that tenure. Some of his matches, such as against Diesel and Mankind, are remembered, as well as his loss and regaining of the title against Sid.. But the actual storylines he went through are long forgotten. Shawn was a phenomenal wrestler, and that never changed. But his personality just no longer had the impact it once had.
The character simply revolved around maintaining, no longer attaining, the boy hood dream. Competing against monsters like Vader and Sid seemed like a toned down, rehashed version of the Heart Break Kid’s initial rise to prominence, but in the end he wasn’t walking away with anything more than what he initially walked in with. HBK was Little Mac competing in a sequel to Punch Out that never should have been made. The fact that he had a lesser set of characters to work with didn’t help much, either, but that’s another topic for another time.
This problem can be avoided, and while it’s not all together impossible for the proverbial underdog to keep his character in tact and still be recognized as the best, a character change would do wonders. In the original “Rocky” movie, Rocky was a no name local fighter who was given the opportunity to compete against Apollo Creed, the dominant reigning heavyweight boxing champion at the time.
He was not favored to win, and captivated movie watchers everywhere when he took Apollo to his limit. Losing by split decision in the first movie, Rocky was still seen as not being the favorite when he fought in a rematch in the second movie. Finally, he won the title that eluded him in the first film. A sequel could have spelled disaster for the franchise, but in the third edition, the concept of Rocky getting caught up with the glitz and glamour of being champ and losing his competitive “Eye of the Tiger” was the focus of the movie. Now Rocky’s character had changed, and the audience had a new reason to care about him.
Although Michaels “losing his smile” was a wide open opportunity for a character refinement, injuries got in the way, and thus, it was not to be. His year on top will go down as being great only for his phenomenal matches, and very little more. Rey Mysterio was another person who was always up against the odds, and when he won the World Heavyweight Championship at Wrestlemania 22, he proved it was true what Bret Hart once said in “The biggest dreams can still come true.” Mysterio was able to build an alliance with Chavo Guerrero, and continue to promote the spirit of his fallen friend Eddie Guerrero, to keep some complexity to his character. And while I may stand along in this, the constant losing of non-title matches wasn’t the only problem with Rey’s reign. His time on top seemed bland and uninteresting, as we all really knew the best had already been achieved.
Whether it’s the Boston Red Sox losing some of their appeal due to their so called 80 year plus year old “Curse Of The Bambino”, what made so many non-Red Sox nation fans become interested in them in the first place, being broken, or Shawn Michaels eventually getting booed at the ’96 Survivor Series in Madison Square Garden, the underdog’s curse is a tough one to deal with. The phrase “the underdog champion” is an oxymoron, and unless fans stop seeing you as not being much more than a guy who stands up in the face of adversity even though he is not favored to win, I believe your appeal will be lost. Unless people care about who you are outside of a competitive environment, they probably will stop caring in the long run.
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Thanks for reading.
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