Breaking The Walls Down - Thank You And Farewell Submitted by Chris Dailey on Tuesday, September 25, 2007 at 5:13 PM EST
Breaking The Walls Down
Hello all and welcome back to the final edition of Breaking The Walls Down. I hope this column finds you all in good health. This is it, it’s the last column for me here at Lords of Pain. Above all, I feel sad. I know that sounds really crazy, since this is only an Internet column that no one really knows about, but it’s the truth. I am sad that I am ending one of my true-life passions. As I type this, for the first time I can honestly say I don’t know how this column will turn out. So, here we go, this will be something like Bits and Pieces.
Thank You and Farewell
After eight years of typing columns, it’s here, I’m done. Some of you may be happy, some of you may not be. That’s fine with me, that’s the beauty of writing on the Internet, everyone can see your work and you get a broad range of opinions. I am stopping my column because I honestly feel like I can’t provide the type of quality I use to be able to. To be honest, I feel like my column has lacked a lot of personal touch since I started my company back in November of 2005. I feel like I’ve let you guys down and it’s grated on me. My wife has helped me see how important my writing is to me, but at the same time she has also helped me see that I need to let you guys know how important it is to me and how I’ve felt about things the past few years. I never want or wanted to let you guys down and I feel like I have, which is one of the main reasons I’m leaving. Maybe one day I’ll have the time to write again (don’t all columnists say that?), but for now I’m done. I’m keeping it real by saying it’s time to move on (always been a personal weakness of mine – never being able to move on), but first, I’d like to thank a few people.
First and foremost, I must thank Calvin Martin for the opportunity he gave me eight years ago. I’m very appreciative of what Calvin gave me, and as time wore on and I became involved in so much in my personal life, my columns became more erratic. Calvin let me run with it, however, and continue in my writing. For that, I thank him very much. However, I know when it’s time to say that’s it and now is that time. With my work life expanding and trying to find time for my family, time to write a column is lacking. So, I simply want to say thank you Calvin for the opportunity you provided me, it was a great time.
Another person I’d like to thank is the great one himself, Mr. Tito. Tito was there for me from the beginning offering advice on columns and friendly chatter on AOL IM that eventually grew into a unique friendship. What’s funny is Mr. Tito’s columns are what brought me to LoP in the first place. True, I found LoP through looking for news, but I saw his columns come up as a hit in the search engine. I investigated further and found his columns very insightful and while we had some differing opinions on various topics, he proved to be a very interesting read and an even more interesting person. Keep warming it up, Tito, I know I will. ;)
I’d also like to thank all of you throughout the eight years of writing this column. I’ve received too many e-mails to count on various opinions related to what I wrote, and sometimes not even about my writings, but the on goings of the product itself. I feel privileged to have met many of you through e-mail and discussed topics with you over the span of these eight years. What I think is really cool, is some of you have been with me for those entire eight years. That is, in my opinion, a really, really cool thing. So, thank you to all of you. Each and every one of you took time out of your personal lives to read what I typed and to e-mail me. I will always appreciate that. Without you, this column would have failed immediately.
So, eight years and here I sit contemplating on where the heck I’m going to take this column next. To be honest, I would be remiss not to mention several items that are currently going on in the sport we all love. So, that’s where I’m going to take it.
Phil Muschnik is at it again. From his tirades years ago about professional wrestling to his current thumbprint, he sickens me to my core. Now he’s reporting that Randy Orton attempted suicide during his suspension some time ago. While this is certainly a disconcerting matter, it’s not something I feel we need to know about. Muschnik goes on to say that Orton’s father and Orton himself deny that this ever happened, but Muschnik claims his source is solid and that this event did happen. My thoughts? It’s not for us to know, period. If Randy did attempt suicide, it’s a private matter he and his family and friends need to resolve. What good is it going to do telling the world about it? And, the kicker is, Orton himself isn’t telling us, but some columnist is talking about it. Maybe if Orton was telling us about it, that would be news worthy, no strike that, it would be. But, he’s not, and it’s not up to someone else to tell us this happened many months ago. There is such a thing as a personal life, I don’t care how much of a star you are. Every human being has a right to a personal life. Orton is no different, if he did attempt suicide, that is a very sad, serious thing, but that’s something he and his family and friends will keep private, not something that needs to be divulged to the entire world, unless Orton himself feels it’s necessary.
The suspensions of the wrestlers in The WWE is a serious concern for Vince McMahon. The steroid/drug scandal he is trying to avoid by testing is revealing some of his biggest stars to be addicted to performance enhancing items or drugs themselves. McMahon has to be strict when it comes to this. Whether or not people believe professional wrestling is a sport is inconsequential when it comes to the fact that The United States Congress will be watching this situation very closely. They have already sent a letter to TNA stating that The WWE has a drug testing policy and questioning if TNA has a similar policy. I’m sure McMahon wants to avoid the negative stare of Congress, especially with his roster so thin. I’m not sure how, but maybe Vince needs to step up the testing even more somehow.
Chris Masters continues, in my mind, to disappoint in the long run. He is someone I figured that could learn the ropes and become one of the next big personalities in professional wrestling. To be honest, I figured someone was going to be there to help him, but his legal troubles have stifled that thought process. I was really hoping that The Warlord would be there to somehow help Chris Masters develop as a upper-echelon star. Granted, while The Warlord was never one of the top stars in the old WWF, he was still one of the most memorable, with The Reverent Slick as his manager. It was said that The Warlord was going to be used to help get Chris Masters over. I don’t know what it is, but I see something in Masters. I really think he has something going that he could perfect in his character. What that something is, is something he has to find in himself. That one, infinite thing, that thing he can give in abundance. He has it, he simply doesn’t realize it. The Warlord, I think, would have been perfect to bring that out in him. Only time will tell, with Masters’ most recent suspension if he can make a serious comeback. I certainly hope so, and so should The WWE.
I’ve been saying this for the past three or four years, but where has tag team wrestling gone? I will not stop being the proponent of tag team wrestling. I think that is a necessary commodity in professional wrestling. It was a shame to see Cryme Tyme released by The WWE, but their apparent backstage conduct was unacceptable. However, where does this leave tag team in the professional wrestling world? Don’t give me that there’s TNA, because they haven’t proven me one thing as far as being a legitimate contender to The WWE. I don’t care that they have a deal with Spike TV, they don’t hold a candle to The WWE, and that’s saying something. As Stone Cold Steve Austin said it, they need to drop that six-sided ring idea. Regardless, tag team wrestling, for all intents and purposes, is done in The WWE. Seemingly, with the week roster, The WWE is interested in building its single division. I can’t say I blame them, but I hope that one day, sometime soon, they find it in themselves to bring back to life the tag team division. I think it’s a cash cow that The WWE is sorely missing right now and one day it will return to the forefront of WWE programming.
Regarding Chris Master, or at least in relation to, performance enhancing drugs are an ugly friend to professional sports. They have been in the past (for at least two decades), they are today, and (undoubtedly) they will be in the future. I think, in some sick, twisted way, we are partially to blame for that. We, as an audience, are indirectly to blame for this whole monster. We try to pretend it’s not there, but when you look at someone who’s 6’5” and 300 pounds of solid, Herculean-like muscle, you secretly know that something is more than likely wrong with that picture. We want bigger and better. We always do. Bigger and better homes, cars, paychecks, and, ultimately, sports teams and sports figures. This kind of inadvertent pressure is bestowed on the mass market of sports and therefore trickled down to the athletes themselves. Now, don’t get me wrong, it’s still wrong, but we are partially to blame. Thirty years ago if we hadn’t cheered the big towering hulks of professional athletes that existed in professional wrestling, do you think that we would have perfectly, chiseled physiques today? While it’s possible, I doubt it’s as much a probability as the sky being blue. Before you jump on me for placing the blame on society itself like some forlorn Goth or Emo, I want to make clear that we are partially responsible, not wholly responsible. To say that we are not at fault, in some capacity, no matter how minute, is ridiculous no matter the justification. I don’t pass judgement in many cases, but in this instance you must take a serious look at the past thirty or so years and see the monster of proof that we like to sweep under the carpet or hide in the dark corner. In the end, we all want superheroes. People bigger than life itself to take our fears away or to get that big win we always feel out of reach. The one thing we have to keep in mind is we have no legitimate super humans among us. While it can be argued, and rightly so, that we have had superheroes in our past (firefighters and police of 9/11 for instance), we don’t have those monster, towering hulks of physical freakness in our history books. Why is that? Because they simply aren’t feasible naturally. If we can’t do it ourselves, naturally, nobody will be able to. We have to learn to rely on our inner-strength to find the answer before we go injecting a needle, popping a pill, or rubbing cream. Heroes, in the physical sense, can be genetically created, I’m sure, but the true resolve is inside each and every one of us naturally. Sadly the craze to get bigger and better has gotten the best of us. And, it will take us a society to uniformally stand up and declare that we no longer wish to see these kinds of modernly-enhanced marvels. Until this happens, the sports leagues and products will continue to give us what they perceive we want, whether they publicly endorse it or not.
Before I go, I would also like to take this time to thank my beautiful wife for being so supportive of my writing. You guys seriously have no idea how much she knows writing means to me. She has been very instrumental in making sure I can still find my creative outlet in writing through Lords of Pain. She always has a smile on her face when she says, “I read your latest column”. She sees a side of me come out in my writing that never normally sees the light of day. To her, I say thank you very much and I love you.
