The 2014 WWE Hall of Fame just ended and the 11-year-old
wrestling fan that still lives inside me can’t sleep.
The WWE Network aired the ceremony in its entirety and it
was silly, moving, sad, fun, exciting – essentially everything I love about the
professional wrestling business. A business of which I have spent 0 minutes of
my life participating in – unless you count that one terrible evening in
Springdale with Val Venis and Chris Masters, but that’s another story.
I remember the first time I saw wrestling on television. It
was the summer of 1976, right before we moved to Arkansas. This little studio
show out of Houston with a very small audience. Just a ring. Maybe a hundred fans.
And there was a big curtain that the wrestlers and announcers stood in front of
when they did their talking bits. The only wrestler I remember from that show
was a masked dude named The Spoiler. He was tall, mysterious and he beat the
crap out of some schmoe. I was hooked.
Back then, the business also lived behind a giant curtain.
All you saw, all you knew about pro wrestling was what was given to you at the
matches. The magazines at the time stuck with the program and only the true
diehards had access to the insider newsletters.
It hasn’t been that way for decades. But tonight, as I
watched these Hall of Famers tell their stories, relive their glory and pull
the curtain back on their lives to show their gratitude and scars – I felt like
that child sitting on the bedroom floor discovering wrestling for the first
time.
The access wrestling fans of today have to the performers is
unbelievable. From their personal blogs and podcasts to the insane amount of
programing on the network – it truly is a great time to be a pro wrestling fan.
Tomorrow is WrestleMania 30. I won’t bore you with detailed
match and story analysis. And you know I could. Just know for four hours Sunday
night, I’ll be getting reacquainted with my inner 11-year-old.
Frankie Valli sang "Big Girls Don't Cry" but Big Shows do.
It's tough out there in the WWE. The travel, the physical abuse, the tight trousers.
It's hard. Then, your bosses come to the ring and tell the whole world you're broke and broken down and if you don't do exactly what they want you'll be flippin fritters at Krispy Kreme.
Such is the life of Big Show since his return from injury. He's had to stand by and watch as Triple H and the McMahon Family rob the title and brutalize the most popular wrestler in the country, Daniel Bryan.
Against his wishes, Big Show has repeatedly been forced to witness Daniel getting smashed and bashed by the Shield and Randy Orton. Show's even had to clobber poor DB with his own giant hamfist in order to keep his job.
This past Monday, it went too far. Living Legend and arguably the greatest talker ever, The American Dream Dusty Rhodes, had to taste the pain of Big Show's hamfist.
Stephanie McH and Dusty Rhodes
The McHs are out of control: firing Cody Rhodes, stripping Daniel Bryan of his title, twice, assaulting a living legend with a knuckled-up ham, preventing the other good guys from running in to foil the bad guys.
I am not a Triple H fan, but his run as WWE COO has been good. His mic work and the entire storyline, has created incredible drama. Not just for Daniel and Big Show, but any WWE Superstar that stands in the way of what's "good for business."
This has been some of the best wrestling drama in a long time and Big Show has really upped his game. Not since the Big Bossman violated Big Show's father's funeral (see below) has the big man show such depth of character.
Uneasy Rider
So, what's the future hold for the WWE's good guys and the fans that love them? I guess we'll have to wait and see. But know this, the good guys eventually prevail. Sometimes. Maybe.
Anyway, here's some other mess going on that I like:
The Shield: Three distinctly different wrestlers in-ring and on the mic that have come together and become one of the greatest teams in the modern era. Seth Rollins week in and week out delivers innovative and exciting performances against everyone he faces. Dean Ambrose is sinister on the mic and his ringwork is pure vintage bad guy, like Rowdy Roddy Piper.
Daniel Bryan: I've been a fan of the former American Dragon since his debut in Ring of Honor. Innovative, aggressive and the best beard in the business. DB is exciting to watch, fun to listen to and has the WWE Universe chanting Yes! Yes! Yes! like a crazed cult. What's happening with him, the fans - it's really amazing. He's the unlikely face of the company if only because he doesn't fit the traditional WWE mold. But, like Mick Foley and CM Punk he has defied the odds and become one of the most beloved grapplers in wrestling. Twice this month, Daniel has won the title and twice they've taken it away from him in less than 24 hours. I understand they are breaking him down to make his hunt for the title and his revenge against the McHs huge business. My only fear is that they'll play this bait and switch game once too often and end up snuffing out this star.
The much promoted debut of the WWE's latest collection of grapplin hillbillies finally hit the TV talkie box July 8, when The Wyatt Family came to RAW and put a crazed-country whoopin on Kane.
(Kane is no longer in the Money in the Bank match for the WWE Title as a result of the beating)
Family patriarch Bray Wyatt, and his followers Erick Rowan and Luke Harper, are psycho-swampbillies straight out of some Florida nightmare. Bray is part Jim Jones, part ECW'sRaven. This hillbilly's got depth. He works on your mind while the family works over your body.
So far, I love everything about these guys. The cryptic, almost cult-like talk from Bray is a welcome addition to a growingly complex WWE talent lineup. I don't know what his words mean, but I like them. And that's all that matters.
Crazed hillbilly talk is a lost art. What with the internets, book learnins, computerized toilets and such, it's a wonder we ain't all brain geniuses. I don't really know what any of that means but it has a great collection of words: "crazed hillbilly talk," computerized toilets.
Grapplin hillbillies have always been among my favorites in the ring. Taking a quick glimpse through wrestling hillbilly history, it's easy to see why there has almost always been a clan of hillfolk punching city dudes in the head. These guys are always country strong, country stupid, somewhat quick to anger and, like any good wrestler, prone to violence.
In Ring of Honor, the Briscoe Brothers, Mark and Jay, are certainly country, but aren't really hillbillies. More like New Age Rednecks. They are gun lovin, freedom fightin, chicken raisin sons of Delaware and a couple of the most entertaining guys not signed by a major wrestling company. While they will have to tone down the offensive language and gun violence if they do get signed, I don't think taming #DemBoys will hurt their effectiveness in the ring or on the mic one bit.
Mark and Jay Briscoe #DemBoys
I'm sure there were many before these guys, but none looked the part better than The Kentuckians - Grizzly Smith and Luke Brown.
Rawboned hillfolk The Kentuckians
These guys tore it up in the territories and set the standards for ugly galoot pretty high. Smith went on to work behind the scenes for a lot of major promotions and was the father of Jake "the Snake" Roberts, who, while not a hillbilly, was sleazy and trashy.
The Kentuckians were cut from the same sackcloth as The Scufflin' Hillbilles (two different teams made up by Rip Collins, Chuck Conely, Cousin Willie and Cousin Slim). And brother they looked the part:
Cornsqueezins and rifles!
Some of the most beloved and bizarre hillbillies popped up in the 80s. The always smiling Hillbilly Jim and his family country stomped their way into America's hearts with their good friend Hulk Hogan. These guys were polar opposites of the Wyatt boys - simple talk, warm smiles and a great sing-a-long ring entrance:
But for me, the two greatest hillbilly teams from the 80s were the Moondogs (Spot, Rex, um ... Steve?) and the mad men from New Zealand, The Sheepherders. The Moondogs were some of the most violent, ugly, crazed monsters to ever club a dude with a hambone. They weren't physical marvels in the bodybuilder sense. But what was amazing was how hard these dudes could fight on only 23,000 calories a day:
The Moondogs were at their violent best when they were splitting skulls in Memphis. Crazy brawls and buckets of blood were the Moondog's calling card.
The Sheepherders (Luke Williams and Butch Miller) set the violence bar to a new height for me in the mid 80s. I never saw such carnage live and in person until I saw them spill buckets of Fantastics blood in the UWF. Barbed wire, cages, combat boots and only 7 teeth between the two - just awesome.
The WWF turned them from hill-brothers-from-another-mother-country to lovable goofballs The Bushwhackers. I didn't like it at first. But just look at those mugs! Who couldn't love that?
There was a serious hillbilly drought in the early 90s. What with their sophisticated haircuts and HAM radios, the new breed of fan and promoter forgot the subtle charms of hillfolk. The Blu Brothers stopped and started pretty quick in 1995. I don't think WWF fans were ready for twin hillbillies. Then the Godwinns invaded the WWF/E and the Hillbilly Torch was passed:
Phineas I. Godwinn and Henry O Godwinn
These hog farmers from Arkansas would carry slop buckets to the ring and Henry (Mark Canterbury) would uncorked dudes from their heads with fantastic clotheslines. They started their WWF career with some hillbilly-cred as Hillbilly Jim managed them early on. They eventually lost the buckets, and at one point classed themselves up a bit with sports coats as Jeff Jarrett's bodyguards Southern Justice. Until this past Monday night they were the last hillbillies to grace a WWE ring.
There were plenty more billies to stomp in the squared circle. Guys like Haystacks Calhoun, Crusher Jerry Blackwell, Trucker Norm "from the highways and byways of America" and Plowboy Frazier. I'm sure I'm missing many more, but my hillbilly juices done run out.
