A Dumass Thought - When You're In Heaven, You Don't Bitch About The Peace.
Submitted by Dumass on Tuesday, February 22, 2005 at 2:55 AM EST





If you do, you'll find yourself with a ticket straight to hell.
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WHEN FANS ATTACK!!!!!!
- Fan mail that is filled with hate.
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Recently, I've been getting a lot of positive feedback. People email me questions and their own opinions and I feel great answering and responding to the emails I get. Well, this email I'm posting here isn't really a negative email, it's more of a guy who wanted to voice his opinion and I decided to look at what he said. For rememberance, I will post what he is talking about when this thing starts. He will be in italics and I will be in regular.

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I just wanted to say thanks for your tribute column to the man. I first discovered Dr. Thompson 20 years ago when I read Hells Angel. I was hooked. Your tribute to him reminded me of the first time I Read Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. It finally got me off of my ass to write to you guys.

I thank you for reading my tribute to Hunter S. Thompson. He was a big reason of why I wanted to be a professional writer and he's a hero to me for letting me experience the drugs that would consume my later years and not scold me for doing them. If you want to read a really wonderful tribute, my buddy Bardwire Mike over at Lethal wrote one and it's an incredible read. Again, I thank you and everyone who read that column.


I do not often agree with your column or other columns on LOP, but I still favor old school southern wresting.

Nothing beats sitting down with a good Mid-South or Smoky Mountian tape, putting it on mute, and having fun doing the commentary.


I grew up with Continental Championship Wrestling here in Alabama The Fuller's, The Golden's, and The Armstrong's.

Nothing beats the Southern Boys (Tracy Smothers and Steve Armstrong) fueding with Free Birds. Also, my favorite wrestler from that time and area was 'Hot Stuff' Eddie Gilbert back when it was the CWF. The man was unbelievable. From the CCW days, it would probably be a tie between The Stud Stable (Rob Fuller and Jimmy Golden) and The Midnight Rockers (Shawn Michaels and Marty Jannetty).


I fondly remember a young Tom Pritchard. I miss the weekly TV tapings at the civic center. I used to watch World Class Championship Wrestling every Saturday night where I first saw Cactus Jack Manson(as he was then called). I remember Tommy Rich, and Tracy Smothers when they were young and in shape(not fat and pathetic in ECW).

Ha! I had to laugh at Tracy the fatass. For his credit, he wasn't that pathetic in ECW, he just wasn't as good as he was in CWF days. As for WCCW, I was always partial to big Texan guys like Bruiser Brody and Jeep Swenson since that's what I saw a lot of in Texas. Other great wrestlers from that time and area were Butch Reed, Rick Rude, The Freebirds run, Buzz Sawyer (his fued with Pez Whatley is so underrated), the JYD, Chris Adams, and Steve Austin...to name a few.


I miss the Von Erich's(how much tragedy can one family take).I remember a match they had that had Gentleman Chris Adams get his head shaved in a sold out Cotton Bowl while Larry Zabysko ran like a scalded dog.

I remember the head shaving.


I miss ring psychology. I miss the Freebirds. I miss long matches. I miss television time limits. I miss Gordon Solie. I miss WCW and ECW. I don't watch WWE unless a friend calls and says Benoit is wrestling or Mick Foleys is going to be on.

I miss all of those things also; unfortunatly, it's in the past and it's never coming back.


I guess my point is that I grew up watching wrestling in the 70's and early 80's(never really stopped), while most of the so called IWC(not sure of your age so no offense) grew up with just the big three and that is all you know.

Yeah, I know. I grew up watching ICW, Memphis, Mid-South and Atlantic, PNW, GWF, GCW, Stampede, and UWF when I was a kid. My father only let me watch the WWF when it was on, but he wouldn't let me tape it or buy a tape of it. He would spend countless numbers of dollars buying these old "kayfabe era" federations and had me watch them. I'm amazed that a lot of the IWC doesn't expand and get out of the idea that there were only 3 big federations; but that's their business. If people talk to me about the Bockwinkle/Hansen fued from the AWA in 1986 and why Stan walked out on the AWA afterward, I'll know exactly what they are talking about. I'm pretty educated on the subject and histories, but I don't want to turn every single thing in wrestling political; which it ultimately becomes. That and, if you take into account that I have actually been trained and wrestled in professional matches for several years, I've been over the majority of the IWC for quite a long time.


I saw most of the WWF superstars before their gimmicks. Hell I saw Ted Dibiase when he had black hair and was in shape. Someone on this site recently did a column about the purity of art, He had a point I am not trying to say that old school wrestling is a purer form than today's, but I do believe that alot of the quality is gone. The WWF/WWE has put together some good matches over the years, but they have misused wrestlers time and time again, they seem to focus more on the soap opera and less on the wrestling, and have for years.

That's because that's what the fans wanted. Yeah, I'm blaming the fans. And yes, in essence, I'm blaming myself as well. The truth is that people nowadays would never pay money for wrestling. At all. No one wants to watch wrestling anymore. Us smarks want to look at pro wrestling as legit because we can't pay a lot of money for big prize fights and we can't wait until a new season of whatever sport to start. We want to make it seem like we have a say in a lot of the production and actual storylines. We have no idea how much we influence wrestling. That NWO thing in 1996; that was the death of any and all forms of wrestling being the entertainment. When people saw that, it instantly became sports entertainment. Watch it again. Analyze it. Right when you hear Scott Hall say "You want a war? You got one.", a small pain hits your stomach. Why? Because now, you have to market this thing to make all the money it can. The day after Stone Cold won the KOTR and gave that 'Austin 3:16' speech, you saw the mass market of plain entertainment. The wrestling was not needed anymore. Every week, if you showed the NWO doing something unbelievable or if you saw Austin give a stunner on a regular guy, you could only show that, and it was guarenteed that the ratings would be somewhere in the high 8s.


They have turned down good wrestlers and signed bad wrestlers. The women's division is a prime example they signed Alexis Laree who does have talent but is very Green while they turned down April Hunter(who they did invite for a tryout) one of only four non Japanese women invited to wrestle in Japan last year. Go to her website the wrestling side not the t&a side(though that is nice too) and watch the videos the girl has skills.

I've seen her. She's ok. Not terrific, but ok.


I know I have taken the long way to get there and my meanderings may be due to a misspent youth, but it seems to be that wrestling has been in a decline in this country for years, while from what I have seen it has maintained itself and gotten better in other countries(Japan and Mexico).

It's always been that way. They still appreciate and respect the 'sport' aspect of it.


TNA can be good at times but I can only watch so many spotfests.(I love cruiserweights and wish Vince did he has so many good ones on the roster)

I've said my peace with TNA.


There needs to be a balance You need an unstoppable monster but not too many, big man matches can be fun but you also need matches with psychology, and Main Eventers need mic skills.

Psychology doesn't work anymore because kayfabe, for the most part, is dead. People already know it's fake, so why try and make it look like it's real? The fans create the kayfabe surrounding wrestling. We are the ones who live and breathe the business, not the wrestlers. We're the ones who tell them when to jump and when to fall, and when they don't do it, we scold them and make fun of them and say they are awful. That attitude of the fans mixed with no real good wrestling makes it really hard to get behind wrestling these days. Trust me, coming from both perspectives, I'd rather be a fan than a wrestler nowadays.


Benoit got over years ago because of Flair and Andersons mic skills he stayed over because of his in ring ability. Give him a good manager and he could be bigger than he already is.

I still believe that if they would give him Paul Heyman as a manager, he would be unstoppable.


I remember when hour long main events were the norm not the special Iron man matches you occasionally see today. Forgive me my ramblings. I hope you can see my point. I still love wrestling, but I miss the things that made it special, the things that used to make it believable to all the marks in the audience( I remember Tom Pritchard letting the Dirty White Boy actually hang him to the point of passing out one night at the civic center) nobody sells anymore. I miss the magic that used to be there. I see it occasionally now and then but not often enough. I want to be able to suspend my disbelief and truly enjoy wrestling again. The majority of the product that is out there just falls short.

I remember the Tom/Dirty White Boy fued. I have no problem with Tom; his brother on the other hand...that's personal between me and him.

The big problem is that we, as fans, don't put wrestling to a higher standard. We watch wrestling to get away from the "real" sports and such and maybe some of us have gone and tried our hand in it. It's a tougher business than alot of things out there, and yes, it's harder to do than say. It's even harder when you're own fans come along and, while your signing an autograph for a stary-eyed kid, you get some punk scream out "You're a fucking fake!!" and all you can do is put your head down and pretend you didn't hear him.

As for the IWC, the fans of this "sport", smart or not, need to stop whining and crying about a lot of things. Remember, it's been worse and the product right now is nothing compared to some of the other times wrestling has been thrown off. We also need to stop being complacant on what they are giving us on TV. It's sad to think that people are praising horrible matches just because it's the only thing on and it's sad that people are whining about the product when they have no real solution to fix it.

There was something that I'll always respect Mick Foley for (not that I don't already) and that was, during one of his "anti-hardcore" promos, he said "The fans were smarter than any of us....they knew that they control [ECW] wrestling, not us!" The wrestlers don't control the wrestling on TV, we do. You and me and the smarks and the marks and the smarts and the columnists and the reporters....all the way down to the kid in the 3rd row who needs to be put on his dad's lap to watch the event; we control wrestling. How do we control wrestling? Because wrestling, for better or worse, relies on what we want to survive. It's always been that way; since the days of George Hackenshmdit and Paul Landis; the fans decide who they want to cheer for and who they want to hate, which is the basic jist of what pro wrestling is. Why do you think they finally gave Benoit the title? Because the WWE knew it would shut us up for a while. For the people complaining as to why he's not a champion, they were officially silenced no matter how much they keep talking about it.

If we control the wrestling, why are we still bitching about the wrestlers? We need to stop the idea that everything they give us is the best and we need to stop thinking that everything they give us is the worst. What do we need to do then? We need to stop and think about why we watch. We watch out of habit some of us and that's fine. We watch for the stories and that's fine. We watch for the wrestling and that's fine. But, in order to really grab the depth of the sport and entertainment of pro wrestling, we need to know why we watch. A lot of people don't know why they watch and that's a shame. I know why I watch. I watch because I know that it will eventually get better. Wrestling always comes full circle; sometimes it takes a while. In wrestling, there is always going to be more bad years than good years; but those good years are the best things we can experience because it's a sure fire thing that the next week is going to be better.

Knowing is half the answer, the rest of the answer is doing something about it.


Thank you for your time, and again I hope you can see my point through my meandering rant. Also thanks again for your tribute to the late great Dr. H.S.T.

Sincerely,

Randall Stanton(real name by the way)

Thanks for reading and replying, Randall. My real name is Eddy, by the way; and I want to thank you for reading my column.

Thanks for reading,

Dumass

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Dumass <----Email me!!

AIM: Dumass4k

Lethal Wrestling - Making My Life Worth Living, One Post At A Time.








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