Posted in: The Northern Star The Northern Star--Drawing a Line
By XanMan
May 13, 2009 - 8:18:04 AM
"Familiar things happen and mankind does not bother about them. It requires a very unusual mind to undertake the analysis of the obvious."--Alfred North Whitehead
While I was in Houston, I saw an amazing wrestling show. While not every match was great, they were all at least decent, other than one comedy sketch that was short enough and did it's job without being obnoxious or offensive. There was one legitimate match of the year contender and two other matches that were at least four stars. A great time was had by all, the crowd was hot all night, and the world championship changed hands in one of those four star+ bouts. The only unfortunate thing in this sentence is that I'm not talking about the 25th edition of Wrestlemania; I'm talking about Ring of Honor's Supercard of Honor IV. Three days after seeing this amazing show(which is likely to continue for a long time to be the best wrestling show I've ever seen live,) I ran into a guy who was not at the show, but is a master of getting his guys over, and in the dwindling supply of managers currently in professional wrestling is easily the best. I'm speaking of "Sweet N Sour" Larry Sweeney, who is just about as opposite in real life from his character as could possibly be. My boy and I were waiting outside of a Starbucks for my wife and daughter, while I was sitting on a ledge wearing my ROH hat--which became an instant conversation starter.
I actually had met Mr. Sweeney--who introduced himself to us as "Alex"--briefly the day before, while at a convenience store picking up some souvenirs for my family(sorry passengers, you just barely missed the cut.) He was talking up a young lady and happened to mention that he was a professional wrestler--which he used to be before switching to the managerial side, for which he's well-suited--and I turned around and asked, "Are you Larry Sweeney?" He said he was, I briefly introduced myself as a big Ring of Honor fan, and then had to run to catch the train over to the Reliant Center for the Sunday afternoon Wrestlemania Axxess event, which was awesome, and immediately preceded Wrestlemania itself. Alex, though, didn't recognize me at first, and so when I noticed him and said, "Mr. Sweeney!" he reacted with, "ROH, alright man!" The previous day, before I made my hasty exit to head off to the events, I asked why he hadn't been at Friday night's show(more on that later) and mentioned to him what a great event his boys had put on. He said, "I know, right? It was an awesome show." The next day, he had the opposite message for me.
Due to the fact that I was wearing a Wrestlemania hoodie along with the hat from the other promotion, he was easily able to surmise that I was in town for Wrestlemania and had gone the night before. It turns out he did, as well, though, because he is still friends with former ROH guys Matt Sydal(Evan Bourne) and CM Punk and he said, "That was a great show, huh? A hell of a show!" He was so enthusiastic about it, that I found myself agreeing with him, though my reaction to the event was lukewarm at best. I then told him that I thought they really screwed up the order of the last three matches--which was a common complaint I saw on the forums when I got back in town--and he asked me why, which honestly kind of astounded me. Here was a guy in the business who I think is brilliant in his role; a role that has almost gone by the wayside despite its obvious importance; who honestly believed he had seen a great show last night, and didn't understand why I thought that the WWE had erred in putting the Undertaker/HBK match as the third to last match on the card. His question was obviously almost inconceivable to me, because the answer seemed so obvious.
I'm sure it did to any of you watching at home, too. The bottom line is that once everybody had lived through the ups and downs of the excellent match between Taker and Michaels, nobody gave a damn about the rest of the show. The crowd was dead; there was hardly any reaction to any matches that followed because all the emotion had been drained out of us by the amazing performance put on by the two veterans. The Austin HOF thing got a huge reaction following the World Heavyweight Title match, also, of course, but that was mostly because nobody was expecting to get one last classic Austin moment; and when it happened it was awesome and it felt surreal, but despite what a great experience that was, it also served to take away the breath of the crowd for anything else that was to come. The WWE seems to have a real problem putting the best match on as the main event if it's nontitle., but honestly, there was no point in Cena, Edge, Big Show, Triple H, or Randy Orton showing up once The Undertaker pinned Shawn Michaels. Despite the fact that the two most prestigious championships in the organization were on the line, they weren't going to get a reaction; there was nothing left for us to give.
"To spell out the obvious is often to call it in question."--Eric Helfer
When I explained this to Alex, he took it all in and then explained why I was wrong. He said that we may disagree with what goes on in the shows or the order of the matches, but that he can't, and he doubts that I have the money to be able to rent Reliant Stadium, much less put on a show there, and neither could he. He then went on to say that while The Undertaker is a big star, he had the main event last year with Edge, and since Triple H is the big guy right now--he actually called him the Hulk Hogan of today--he needed to be back in the main event this year. The third thing he said was that, "Yeah, that match might have fried the crowd, but Gabe fried the crowd every night in almost every match." Being that he is an insider and works in the business, I listened to what he had to say with an intent ear, but I have to say that I didn't agree with his points then and still don't a month later. Intelligent minds can certainly disagree on important points, but I honestly didn't really see the wisdom in what he had to say on the issue. He was a hell of a nice guy and very fun to talk to, but I believe he was just plain wrong about Wrestlemania--except that despite my preferences, Wrestlemania was a great show.
I have ever been a fan of Mark Calaway; he's a tremendous talent, the best big man in the history of the business--sorry Andre--and he deserves everything he has achieved over the course of his career, but there's no way in the world that I wanted to see a third consecutive championship vs. streak match. I actually thought Edge should have won last year, after all he'd never lost at Wrestlemania, either, and it would have been interesting to see if his streak could close in on Undertaker territory, but it was not to be. I also thought Shawn Michaels had a great chance of ending the streak this year, which is why the false finishes in their amazing match were so effective. I'd still prefer that Kane be the one to derail The Undertaker's streak, if anyone is going to, but whether the streak was going to end or not, there's no reason Taker couldn't have been in the main event for the second straight year and Michaels hadn't been there for five. John Cena is the new Hulk Hogan, not Triple H, but they both have many more years left than either Michaels or Undertaker, and those guys deserved the main event spotlight, since they are prime time performers who were destined to have the match of the night.
The match of the night that would have fried the crowd in a good way, because the show would have been done, everybody would have left happy and amazed instead of with a sour taste in their mouth. If all the match results had been the same, but the main event had been Taker/Michaels, the event may have still been looked back on with disfavor over the course of time, but I guarantee that the feelings of those leaving the arena and changing the channels at home would have been a lot more positive than they ended up being. The idea in show business is to always leave your audience wanting more, and Taker/Michaels would have done that in a way that no other match on the card could have, with the possible exception of a better Hardy Boyz match. What Sweeney said about Gabe kind of sticks in my craw, because I've been watching the matches, man. I've been getting caught up on 2005 ROH, and I don't see what he's talking about. Almost every show has at least one great match, but I don't see them trying to outdo themselves every show or match to match. It's bullshit. Every show needs ebbs and flows. Gabe Sopolsky, the best booker in the business, knows that.
Vince McMahon was once a tremendous booker in his own right, but that time is long past. He is, of course, and has been for a long time, the largest wrestling promoter in the world, but he has brainwashed himself to believe he's not in the wrestling business. He's done that so that he could sell advertising and sell his product to masses that believed they were above the sport of kings and in doing so, he's bastardized the industry that made him a fortune; the one that made him a king, and he's done so in such a way that he probably doesn't even realize he's done it. All of this is to say that the Vince McMahon who took over all the territories, ran WCW out of business and eventually bought them, and built the largest empire professional wrestling has ever seen isn't necessarily the same guy that sits atop it now. While Wrestlemania has often had its share of comedic and entertainment moments, I don't believe the Vince McMahon that once ruled with an iron fist would have created or approved this version of Mania. He really has lost touch, so despite the fact that wrestling fans may not have the money to put on a wrestling card, that doesn't mean we don't have a better vision than the current one.
"To plunder, to slaughter, to steal, these things they misname empire; and where they make a wilderness, they call it peace."--Tacitus
Let's be honest, from a wrestling fan's perspective the current vision sucks. The WWE appears to be less interested in putting guys in the ring and on screen that can work a match than they are in putting guys in the ring that have great looks. Having a great look is supposed to mean something else in professional wrestling than it does in modeling, and yet it doesn't in the WWE. There are exceptions to this rule, of course. While not ugly by any stretch, guys such as CM Punk and The Miz are currently receiving decent pushes despite not looking like they just stepped out of GQ magazine, but they are just the exceptions that prove the rule, aren't they? Personally, I think Cody Rhodes is ugly as sin, as does my boy, but my daughter thinks he's cute, and she tends to say about the boys in legacy that they, "look good in jeans." Seriously, is that really what we've come to in the biggest professional wrestling promotion that's ever existed? Do we really give a flying fuck about how these guys look? No, we don't. We care about whether or not they can go in the ring. We care about how they can entertain us. But it no longer matters to Vince McMahon what we care about.
None of this is really a revelation. If you've read my previous columns, you know that I've been disheartened with the WWE for quite awhile, because I like to watch wrestling when I'm watching wrestling and I tend to see that very, very infrequently when I turn on a WWE program. That pisses me off. As I said I would back in Smells LIke Teen Sweatsocks, I watched pretty much every Smackdown and RAW leading up to Wrestlemania in an attempt to get myself hyped up for the event. While I really wanted to see the Taker/Michaels match and Supercard of Honor, really wanted to go to the Wrestlemania Axxess events and the Hall of Fame ceremeony, and was excited to be going on vacation with my family, I have to say that the Wrestlemania card itself was a huge disappointment to me going in. I tried to get hyped for the event; I tried to feel what they were trying to do, but I just didn't care that much. They did a really bad job of making the matches scheduled for the event feel special--especially the two title matches--and that's a big mistake when it comes to Mania. The love triangle thing was stupid for a reason I haven't really seen anyone mention and the Orton/Triple H feud had the title as an afterthought.
A lot of people feel that the Jericho match was built up to be something huge that didn't deliver what it should have, but I have absolutely no problem with Flair, Hogan, Austin, or Rourke not being Jericho's opponent for the match. What we got certainly wasn't excellent, but it was a nice way to showcase some of the stars of wrestling's past, and that of Wrestlemania itself. Why people don't get that, I don't know. The divas battle royal that a lot of people seemed to be excited about and looking forward to because they wanted to see female stars of the past I also had an opposite reaction to from everybody else. I didn't give damn one about it from the start, mostly because I don't give a damn about women's wrestling. While it was nice to see the returning divas like Sunny and Molly Holly(both of whom I got a picture and autograph with, btw) I didn't care about their match; I thought it was just taking away something that could have been great, like maybe Beth Phoenix vs. Trish Stratus or something along those lines. I mean if we have to have women's wrestling, let's have women's wrestling, not some damned joke to get a guy over who's never going to amount to anything in the ring.
That's probably my biggest problem with Wrestlemania and why I had such a different opinion of it than Larry Sweeney. Despite all evidence to the contrary, and several attempts at light persuasion by my buddy, BK, I still hadn't gotten it yet, but I do now. I should have before; I freely admit that it was looking through glasses of hope that caused me to miss it, but now the WWE refuses to be about professional wrestling. When word first surfaced that the WWE were going to start calling themselves "entertainment" instead of "sports entertainment" and their on-air talent "entertainers," several people jokingly referred to "the granddaddy of them all" as "Entertainamania," which was a nice, sardonic way of looking at the ridiculous that the company does to try to make themselves look like anything but what they "are." The problem is that they are no longer what they "are"--what they were. They aren't a wrestling company anymore, which is very sad to me; a guy that grew up watching classics between Ricky "You've Still Got It" Steamboat and Randy Savage or Bret Hart and just about anyone. They really should rename it Entertainamania, because it has very little to do with wrestling.
"The higher up you go, the more mistakes you are allowed. Right at the top, if you make enough of them, it's considered to be your style--Fred Astaire
I legitimately feel bad for Alex. While I can't consider him a friend; I barely know him and only talked to him for about twenty minutes; he seemed like a terrific guy. Cody mentioned that he might want to go to the ROH Academy to train, so Sweeney showed him how to do a couple of moves right there in the Starbucks entry area. It was pretty awesome, and hopefully something that Cody will remember all his life. He is a terrific guy, but apparently he's a little messed up, too. He let us know that he was manic depressive and that the reason he wasn't able to appear at the ROH show I saw is because he was suspended for an incident having to do with his mental illness; I've since read on his blog that he has quit working for ROH because he feeled they were treating him badly by not recognizing the illness as a disease and that he refuses to use medication to control it, because he feels there are other methods out there. Well, more power to him, but my wife has been diagnosed with the same thing and I have been diagnosed with clinical depression, and Zoloft works very well for us. His situation with ROH is unfortunate, but I can't lay the blame directly at their door when he doesn't help himself.
The same is true for those guys that try to succeed in the WWE and fail because they don't have the right look or they "can't talk" or they don't have charisma. See, the writing is now on the wall with that company, and if I as a wrestling fan can see that, it's certainly something the wrestlers themselves should be able to. Yeah, the big money right now is in working for Vince McMahon in the WWE, just as it has been for most of the last twenty-five years, but now on top of all of the other drawbacks to working with the WWE, there's this one: it's no longer about wrestling...not at all. If you're big and strong, and willing to risk your body and your health to be bigger and stronger, you might eventually find yourself earning a solid place in the WWE. If you're a good looking man or woman, or you have a very good sense of humor that you don't mind displaying in front of thousands in attendance at an arena and millions watching a national television audience as a living, breathing, clown, you might also make a nice living being in the WWE. But make no mistake about it, this is a new era in the organization, and it's only getting worse for real professional wrestlers and fans of it.
Larry Sweeney was right, Wrestlemania XXV was a great show. It had a tremendous spot-fest in Money in the Bank, which wasn't great, but wasn't bad, either; it had a pretty damned good performance by a major recording artist in Kid Rock, which was followed by a short battle royal featuring a bunch of pretty women and a guy who was acting like one; it had an incredibly short Intercontinental Title match that featured the live quitting of the guy who basically saved the Smackdown brand after being defeated by a guy that couldn't even beat me believably, a battle between brothers that was basically a second spotfest, a great moment for a former great in the business--Stone Cold Steve Austin; and the aforementioned main event matches. There was a lot going on; there was a lot to be entertained by, but there wasn't a lot of wrestling at an event that was named for the sport and built on it. Don't get me wrong, my family and I will go back. We'll get the package again, because we all had a grand time at everything the WWE had to offer. Next time we'll even get the top level of seats, but being there in person didn't re-energize me as a wrestling fan, it made me come to a realization I'd been fighting for years.
The WWE does what it does very well. We might always agree with their booking decisions, or who's being pushed, what the championship belts look like or who holds them, but there's one thing we can't possibly disagree with. When they are firing on all cylinders--when they get everything right--they really put on an amazing show. Just don't make the mistake of calling it a wrestling show, because it's not. It's a tremendous spectacle, but it's really just eye candy. Bill Behrens said this week that nothing that happens in a TNA ring matters, because they don't enforce the rules uniformly, and thus the results of the matches don't matter, since they change the rules to fit the way the match is written. That's a very similar problem to what's going on in the WWE right now. When I watch a WWE show, almost nothing wows me because I've seen it all before--usually multiple times because they replay everything important that happens. There's only so far you can go on style alone, and McMahon's company has gotten to that point, and rolled right past it. I'm a fan of professional wrestling, but most days I'm also a fan of the WWE. Fascinatingly enough, they aren't the same thing.
Long days, pleasant nights
You can send any comments by email to me at XanManX@hotmail.com with the words "Northern Star" or "feedback" in the subject line; or, if you're a member of the LoP Forums you can click here to leave feedback, as well.
