Posted in: Column of the Month March COTM - 'Nothing But Net' by Mavsman
By Mavsman
Apr 30, 2009 - 11:45:42 PM
NOTE FROM THE EDITOR: Every month, the Columnist of the Month contest is held in the LOP Columns Forum. The winning columnist gets to have one of his columns posted on the main page. After months of looking like he was about to break out, our winner finally blew away all opposition in this month's contest. Please welcome Mavsman and his column Nothing But Net!
Welcome to the sixteenth edition of Nothing But Net. I am your humble host, Mavsman.
We did it! The Dallas Mavericks defeated the San Antonio Spurs in five games to advance in the playoffs for the first time since 2006! The Mavs will be playing the Nuggets in what should be a great series. Although the Nuggets won all four games between the two teams in the regular season, two of those wins came when the Mavs didn’t have Josh Howard and three of the four wins were by three points or less. My official prediction has the Nuggets prevailing in seven games. As much as I’d love for the Mavs to return to the Western Conference Finals, I just can’t see them winning this series. Prove me wrong Dirk!
Enough sports talk, onto the wrestling matters at hand…
Backlash has come and gone, and we have three new champions. The WWE, World Heavyweight, and ECW championships changed hands on Sunday night. Now, I’m all for creating intrigue with the product, “shaking things up” so to speak. But having three major championships change hands on one night seems like overkill to me. Successive exchanges on one night detract from the significance of the prior title swap. Really, why was the Cena title win at WrestleMania even necessary if they were just going to take the belt off him in three weeks? Was it merely a ploy for a “WrestleMania moment?” Occurrences like that make me wonder just how far in advance the creative team are booking storylines.
Recently, rumors swirled that Jeff Hardy would be leaving the company. It was then reported that he was just declining contract offers in an attempt to gain leverage so he could ask for a lighter schedule. The WWE needs to do whatever they can to resign Jeff. At the same time, Jeff Hardy needs to do whatever makes Jeff Hardy happy. If he’s wrestling with too much stress and strain that will come off in his matches and it won’t benefit anybody. Hopefully Jeff will be able to reach an agreement to resign. It would be a great loss for both the WWE and its fans if Jeff were to skip town.
Speaking of resigning wrestlers, the WWE has been talking about offering Kurt Angle a contract whenever his current one expires in TNA. If Kurt were to come back to the WWE, what would they do with him? Depending on the circumstances, he could be wrestling in the main event right away. SmackDown is the brand I’d choose to put Kurt on as I feel he would get lost in the shuffle on Raw and circumstances were not that great when he was a part of ECW at the end of his tenure in the WWE. However, it might not be in Kurt’s best interest to return to the WWE. He’s forty years old now, and perhaps a restful schedule is more important than some extra money at this point.
A cigarette. A can of beer. A dirty magazine. These three items have one major thing in common; they can become addicting. It doesn’t take much for an occasional cool-off cigarette becomes a full on addiction. You might start out with a beer after work to relax and end up staying out at the bar every night until one in the morning. It’s a slippery slope from peeping at a porno every now and then to only being turned on by the most hardcore stuff available. It’s simply a case of toleration. Your body will build up a tolerance for these substances so it takes more “doses” in order to get your “fix”.
My name is Mavsman, and I have an addiction. I’ve been addicted to wrestling for almost eight years now. I’ve tried (or been forced to try) quitting wrestling several times now, and each time, I always come back. I come back to the sweet drug, the soothing Monday night shows and the release that a Friday night show brings. But now, I don’t get quite as excited for Raw or SmackDown. It takes special occasions for me to get as excited, such as the draft or a title defense. In fact, I often don’t really “watch” the show. Instead, I sit down in front of my computer and play games or browse LOP while wrestling is on in the background. It seems my addiction to wrestling has reached the point where the little things no longer excite me. I have built a toleration for wrestling.
Addiction and wrestling go together like peanut butter and jelly. Of course, as outlined, it can run rampant in viewers, people who will watch every show and order every PPV because they are so enamored with all things WWE. For wrestlers, the wear and tear of a nonstop performing schedule can lead to an addiction to pain pills. In fact, for many wrestlers, that addiction has lead to death. Everybody involved in the IWC knows this. It is wrestling’s dirty little secret, that even though the outcome is predetermined, the action and the consequences are all very real. We know that wrestlers, to avoid the consequences of painful matches, will take pain pills to help dull the suffering and put off a needed surgery or operation. Pain pills offer a momentary release from the pressures of the business, a utopia where all is well. But suddenly, each pill doesn’t quite bring the same release, and you have to take more… and more… and more in order to achieve the same effect. In other words, you’ve become addicted.
Mick Foley is one wrestler who saw what pain pills could do to a wrestler, witnessing it first hand every night he stepped into an arena. And he prided himself on never falling into drugs, never falling into a dependence upon medication to remain “normal.” Foley highlights four reasons wrestlers potentially turn to pills to help get through life: pain, sleeplessness, depression, and anxiety. While pain and depression may be obvious, sleeplessness and anxiety are somewhat surprising factors. But, as Foley puts it, “Living in a fishbowl with a job that never ends and no real place to get away from it all can make even the best of us anxious.” Wrestlers may not be as big of celebrities as they were in the Attitude Era, but they still have to deal with a shrinking private life due to fans’ invasiveness. As for sleeplessness, the constant travel adds up for a wrestler, and one pill can help make life more bearable. Is that really so bad?
Pain pill addiction has left a mark on wrestling, but the industry has another problem that is also serious. Chris Jericho has underscored the problem for us recently. Jericho realized what was going on with the legends of wrestling. He saw the wrestlers like Ric Flair and Hacksaw Jim Duggan wrestling well into their fifties. He witnessed Ric Flair’s ride into the sunset at WrestleMania XXIV and then saw Flair come back sporadically for appearances with the WWE. Then he watched The Wrestler, a movie about a washed up wrestling star of the 80s seeking a return to glory, and he was sickened with how people empathized with Mickey Rourke’s character. Chris Jericho knew that there were wrestlers who resembled Randy “The Ram” Robinson and knew that they were anything but down on their luck wrestlers. They were a problem. They had an addiction. These wrestlers were addicted to wrestling.
It sounds ridiculous, I know. How can a wrestler be addicted to wrestling? Next I’m going to tell you a politician is addicted to politics or a baseball player is addicted to sports. With wrestling though, it’s different. The peak for a wrestler occurs before they turn 40, after that, it’s downhill. However, wrestling continually sees veterans wrestling well past their primes. At WrestleMania, we saw three wrestlers do so (Roddy Piper, Jimmy Snuka, Ricky Steamboat) with only one of them not completely humiliating himself. And even though The Dragon might still “have it”, there is no argument that he is not the wrestler he once was. This is also just considering the WWE. Once TNA is brought into the equation, the issue of veterans being addicted to wrestling becomes even more prominent. The Main Event Mafia is really just one big group of wrestlers struggling in vain to hold onto their glory days. Kurt Angle’s career has been crippled by pain pills in the past, and it seems that now he is suffering from an addiction to wrestling.
So what is an addiction to wrestling? It is exactly what it says it is. Wrestlers are unable to give up wrestling. Just like another person might not be able to give up cigarettes or heroin, a number of wrestlers can never move past the spotlight, even when the spotlight has dimmed to the point where it resembles the light emanating from a firefly. Chris Jericho has a point when he condemns these wrestlers. It is wrestlers like Ric Flair and Sting who hold down more talented and able competitors from reaching the main event. Sure, there needs to be a degree of respect from the younger wrestlers to the older wrestlers, but can you really blame the youthful wrestlers for holding a grudge against the “veterans?” The youthful wrestlers are oftentimes better and more athletic, yet they remain lower down on the card because the crowd reaction the veteran earned ten years ago still has some hold in the audience.
Earlier, I mentioned Mick Foley when talking about pain pills. Foley lived above the influence, managing to never become addicted to the medicine. And for that, I commend him. But, Foley became prey to a serious wrestling addiction, and for that I condemn him. OK, maybe condemn is a little strong, but I certainly have lost a measure of respect for him. Even though I started watching wrestling way after Mick Foley’s prime, I have always respected The Hardcore Legend. He started off wrestling in anonymity in numerous small venues, moved on to sacrificing life and limb across the globe, and yet he still continued to love wrestling with a passion. Through sheer passion, grit, and determination alone, Foley managed to claw his way to the top of the wrestling world.
At the beginning of 2000, Foley engaged in a classic street fight with HHH at the Royal Rumble, but lost. Cactus Jack wanted one more shot at the title, but he had to put his career on the line to get it. And so, at No Way Out, Foley risked his career in a Hell in a Cell match… and lost. It was obviously an emotional scene; the wrestling world was losing a hell of a wrestler and an even better man. Or, at least so it was thought. After his retirement match, and after defaming “prostitutes” who reneged on their retirement promises, Mick Foley returned for “one night only” at WrestleMania 2000. Surely, we thought, this must be the last time we see Mick as an active competitor! It wasn’t. Mick returned for a string of matches with Randy Orton in 2004, and then again for a series of contests with Edge in 2006. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed those matches a lot, and I was glad to see that Mick still had it. So why did I lose respect for him? Well, in truth, I didn’t lose respect for him after these things. I definitely decided to take his future words with a grain of salt, but there had not yet been a straw that broke the camel’s back. No, that came in 2008.
In September of last year, Foley signed with Total Nonstop Action for a “short-term deal.” The move came after a falling out between Vince McMahon and Foley. Regardless of the cause, Foley was now TNA property. It had been over two years since Foley had last wrestled, and I assumed that he would merely be on TNA in an authority type role. My ignorance apparently knows no bounds. Not only has Foley now returned to wrestling, he is TNA World Heavyweight Champion following his victory against Sting at Lethal Lockdown. Sting is 50, Mick Foley is 43. It has not been a secret that TNA favors fading stars over potential up and comers, but this is a new low for them in my opinion. A man who had “retired” from wrestling nine years ago defeated a man who is older than Alex Shelly and Consequences Creed combined.
In his books, Mick Foley teased WCW mercilessly. He criticized them heavily for relying on old stars too much and not making way for the new guys. Foley’s health finally caught up to him in 1999, prompting his “retirement” in 2000. But his addiction to wrestling caused him to return on four separate occasions and lose sight of his previous convictions. Foley’s addiction has blinded his ability to see that he has become a hypocrite of the worst degree. Perhaps he doesn’t even remember his own words. But the undisputable fact is that Foley is a world champion nine years after his “retirement”, a retirement in part spurred by his fear that he wouldn’t wrestle quality matches anymore. Now, Mick Foley has wrestled some spectacular matches since his “retirement.” His matches against Orton at Backlash 2004 and Edge at WrestleMania 22 come to mind. So, maybe I’m blowing this all out of proportion when it comes to Foley. Is it so bad that his addiction to wrestling led him back if he still has the ability to grapple with the best of them?
I say yes. Even though I’m somewhat of a hypocrite because I enjoy having Foley on my TV screen, I still cannot help but to be saddened a little by his presence. Sure, things are going great now, but ten years from now, who’s not to say that Mick Foley won’t still be plugging along as a wrestler because he can’t quit it? What about HHH? Or Chris Jericho? A wrestling addiction is bad for both the wrestler (because he can’t move on) and for the promotion (the wrestlers take up valuable roster space that could be used promoting and pushing younger talent to higher levels).
While wrestling tries to fix its problem with drugs and steroids, they are neglecting an addiction that is ruining wrestlers’ legacies and transforming once great wrestlers into mere shadows of their former selves. What then can wrestling promotions do? They can put their feet down. By all means, the WWE should still show great respect to legends. But they have the Hall of Fame to recognize their achievements. They cannot be allowing wrestlers to wrestle into their fifties. It’s a liability for the company. Push them backstage, let them be announcers or ring managers, by all means encourage them to move on, but don’t let them wrestle and crap on their legacy. Help them to realize that there is more to life than wrestling, that they have other career options than being tossed around the ring like a sack of potatoes. The first step to curbing any addiction is admitting you have a problem. That would be a good place for the WWE to start.
The inspiration for this column came when Mick Foley won the TNA World Title. I have been reading his second autobiography recently and some of the things he said in there and in his first memoir (about older wrestlers not making room for young up and comers) popped right into my head as soon as I found out he was champion. I’ll always like Foley, but I really am saddened by his inability to stick to his words and hang up his boots for good.
Really, I’m most concerned about the precedent that is being set here. These days, the WWE has problems elevating promising younger wrestlers to the main event level for a sustained amount of time. It’s an issue of star power. While it may not be a big deal now, five to ten years down the line, either these inadequately prepared youngsters will be leading the company or it will be in the hands of upper thirties to lower fifties Superstars who can’t find it in them to move on. The Rock got out before he became addicted to wrestling and became a movie star. Jesse Ventura moved on to politics. Mick Foley should have moved on to literature. Wrestling is not the safest business to be in. It is my opinion that those who have a chance to get out before they become fully addicted to wrestling should do so. Those who are already addicted to wrestling need to evaluate their lives and try as hard as they can to escape before tragedy strikes. Again.
That’s just about it for this edition of Nothing But Net. I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it.
I’d like to apologize right now for taking this long to post my column. I let myself and all those who voted for me down and I really am sorry. A combination of a busy schedule and (for inexplicable reasons) a lack of motivation served to make me lethargic when it came to column writing. I have several ideas I’m excited about though, so hopefully you’ll be seeing some of those soon.
I hope all of you stay safe from the swine flu. Texas has cancelled all high school sporting events until May 11th as a precaution. While I do think it is an overreaction, the phrase “better safe than sorry” applies here. Hopefully this whole thing blows over soon and it will be remembered as a scare and not a pandemic.
