Pro Wrestling Chronicle

Some final thoughts on Wrestlemania and one of the few beautiful moments you’ll see in wrestling. It’s a WWE-only edition of Four For the Road. Sucka’s been warned!

-Wrestlemania 23 produced some really bad, and some really encouraging results. Is the glass half empty or half full. Business wise, it’s completely full. There were over 70,000 (WWE claims 80,000, but who knows with them) paying patrons who dropped the biggest gate in WWE’s lap. sometime like 5.5 million dollars. That’s not including merchandise, or the worldwide company PPV record they may be setting (domestically, well that record pretty safe for now). Regardless, this PPV will actually make them money. Will it turn around slumping PPV business overall? I tend to doubt it, but I’ll be writing about that in the near future.

As for the show, the reviews around the net that I’ve read, and in particular I pay attention to Brian Hansley’s The Morning after Mania Review, have been favorable. It’s no secret that i don’t consider myself a part of WWE demographics. They’ll tell you I am, but the truth is while I am male, I’m not 12-18, which is who the show is really geared towards. I didn’t enjoy watching it, and I’m happy it’s finally over so I don’t have to hear about it, but it was nice to get together with some old friends and catch up while it played on the screen. It helps when you don’t have to pay the $50 yourself. The main event was pretty entertaining (wish I hadn’t reviewed HBK-Angle earlier in the day), and I actually enjoyed an Undertaker match for the first time in years. also, even if it has significantly declined and probably peaked, all you car crash fans left over from the FMW/ECW salad days got a few good bumps out of the Money in the Bank match.

On the other side, we had Great Kahli vs Kane. Couldn’t this be an inferno match where they actually did set themselves on fire? And why wasn’t Micki James vs Victoria on my TV screen? I know the one bimbo (and I like fake punk rock chicks, don’t get me wrong) is in Playboy, but who the hell looks at Playboy. I’ve got the Internet. Playboy is so ninth grade! Okay, I get it. There’s that target demo again. And don’t get me started on WWE writer’s so-called skits. The WWE might love to be campy, or think they’re clever because they “know” they are camp, and they’re in on the joke, but I haven’t laughed at anything they’ve done since Mick Foley/Christian/Edge promos in 2000. Why did Bob Holly win the Money in The Bank Match? Afterwards, when the guy did a promo, looking like Holly, but sounding like JBL, I realized again that no one will ever really break out until they’re allowed to do promos that aren’t all written for the same person with the same speech cadence: HHH.
At least Vince got his head shaved, even if the general consensus of everyone I watched with was “couldn’t they just quick do this, we see him bald, and it’s done in 30 seconds?” I agreed, but I also thought Vince should have left TV forever after losing to Flair at the Rumble back in 2002. By that time his once great character had run it’s course, and all I’ve seen when I periodically check in with RAW are reruns of stuff I watched when I was still legally required to go to school.

But I guess no big news is good news. Cena kept the title warm for HHH. No one died. And if Hansley and some other things I’ve read are correct, if you’re a part of the Sports Entertainment fanbase, you probably liked it. I’d be worried though, if the two men who carried the top two matches (HBK and UT) were the same two guys carrying PPV main events a decade ago (has it been that long since Hell in A Cell?!) Not only that, the guys they were walking through the park were the two anointed NEW top guys. Well, I guess Vince really has changed things. no one in the fanbase knows WWE use to be WWF, and no one knows they use to be a wrestling show. Now, lets never mention this again.

-The WWE finally realizes the mistakes of the last - I don’t know, fifteen years or so - and honors Jim Ross. I had a chance today to finally sit and watch the WWE’s announcement on RAW of Jim Ross’ inclusion into the 2007 WWE Hall Of Fame. Now, I’ll be honest, I don’t recognize their Hall. I know this puts me at a new level of geek, but if Vince McMahon’s deceased limo driver can be in a pro wresting hall of fame, it’s not really a hall of fame. Any hall where Lou Thesz and Bruno Sammartino aren’t in, but the Iron Shiek is, well, the less said, the less hate mail I’ll get. For the record, Dave Meltzer’s Wrestling Observer has the most respectable and well thought out/voted on Hall as pro wrestling goes, but even that is hotly debated.

What’s important for me to note at times like these is my place as a fan and commentator. I have an opinion, and I base it on being in the 1% of fans who cares about Thesz, Rikidozen, Joe Stecher, and the history of wrestling. I care about Japanese wrestling, and where Mistico will end up in Mexico. I love Johnny Saint matches, and Kobashi chops, and Flair face first bumps. And my opinion is only relevant to the few people i can reach that care about that same history and scope. It’s far more important that Jim Ross be honored on national television by his employer after the years of humiliation.

I watched that video package, and I saw the ovation. I saw tears in Jim Ross’ eyes, and a caring hug from his on-air partner Jerry Lawler. I don’t have much respect for Lawler (I find the man to be more pathetic then respectable), but he reminded me of another moment that should have happened. Bobby Heenan, the roast master of the Hall ceremony, being able to put in his partner Gorilla Monsoon. I remember when Gorilla died, and Heenan broke down live on Nitro as the usual funny man quickly eulogized his friend. That moment should have happened in some big hall on an early April weekend. It should have ended with music hitting, Monsoon coming out, Heenan backpedaling on the mic, before Gorilla uttered his famous phrase, “Oh, will you stop!?”

Lawler GOT his moment to hug JR that night at RAW. In a way, the whole audience did, a touching two minutes of standing and cheering from a crowd usually spending the evening waiting to chant “asshole” or yell “what?” Steve Austin got his moment with his longtime friend too. He got to tell the world (buy the DVD. TV time costs cash) what Good Ol’ JR meant to him as he inducted him. Even HHH and Vince McMahon had to lie through their teeth and pay tribute to the man they tried to destroy so many times before.

JR knows what they all think. The fans. The Wrestlers. The front office. The ghosts of WWE-past (Cornette, Russo, Hogan, whatever). He also knows he got his vindication. Fired twice. Almost replaced by UFC’s Mike Goldberg just 18 months ago. He was to-southern. He was to-old. Then he battled Bells Palsy. He faced mean-spirited skits and taunts from a company that never appreciated what they had. All of it, all the years of trying to belittle him, or sit him at home, and somewhere in that building, Vince, and Johnny Ace, and HHH, and everyone who ever undermined Jim ross as an on-air talent or as head of Talent Relations had to hear that cheer that brought tears to the Okie’s eyes. I got a little choked up myself. Even if they didn’t mean it, it was a classy move from an otherwise classless company.

Georgia and Florida had Gordon Solie. Memphis had Lance Russell. The WORLD HAS Jim Ross.