Hey Scott,
I've enjoyed re-reading your Rumble rants. I had forgotten how much I hated the '99 Rumble until revisiting it. Thanks!
Anyway, this week the Cru Jones Society is dedicated to professional wrestling. We've got wrestling themed articles all week, and I especially enjoyed writing today's offering: 5 Pro Wrestling Matches Even Non-Fans will enjoy.
http://crujonessociety.com/2010/01/26/5-pro-wrestling-matches-even-non-fans-will-enjoy/
Each match was chosen for a different reason, and I'm interested in your take. I realize trying to get someone who's already made up their mind that wrestling is stupid to change their mind is largely a pointless exercise, but this was fun to write anyway. If you feel so inclined, I'd love to hear your thoughts on my choices.
Also, if you feel like giving this a plug, we'd always appreciate it. Otherwise, hope all is well with you and thanks again for the re-posts.
E Dagger
Definitely an interesting list, although I find that non-fans are non-fans for a reason. Royal Rumbles tend to be really good at sucking people in, and I also found that old school ECW attracted curious eyes as well among casual viewers. I think Hogan-Savage from WM5 is a better choice than Flair-Savage, though, because it’s a similar storyline (in reverse) and the players are big and cartoonish enough that you don’t have to be a wrestling nerd to “get it”. Or even one of their older, shorter MSG matches where Savage is arrogant super-heel and Hogan is super-face.
I would say you should show a different TLC match — maybe the Summer Slam 2000 one.
There is “better violence” and the spots aren’t setup so laboriously that you have a hard time buying the match. There are certainly a couple obvious spots, but it flows about 1000% better overall.
That WrestleMania X7 match is the most overrated match since the Steiners/Nasty Boys match at Halloween Havoc 1990.
I also didn’t care as much for TLC2. Jeff Hardy’s dive is what makes me dislike it so much. Why would a guy take himself out of a match in which he has the opportunity to win a title? That makes no sense to me, and it’s why I don’t like a majority of the more recent ladder matches. The title should be the goal, and everything you do should be in order to bring you a step closer to getting that belt. Putting Rhino and Spike Dudley through a table is just stupid. If it had been one of the Dudleys and either Edge or Christian, so the playing field remains level, then I can see sacrificing yourself for the team. I just remember watching the match and thinking “How the hell is that going to help the Hardys win the titles? What is Jeff’s goal, if it’s not to win the title?”
100% agree. I take issue with any ladder match where the guy doesn’t focus on grabbing that belt. When guys jump off ladders for moves it just completely ruins it for me. That’s why the first ones with Shawn and Razor were good. Yeah the slow climbs get old (but we still see that, it ain’t going anywhere), but all the action is about two guys both desperatly trying to get that belt.
Nice to see someone else thinks bits of WM 17 are over-rated. I was there and the Stone Cold vs Rock match ending / heel turn was just a disaster – Stone Cold spent the last five minutes hitting Rock with the chair and the Texas crowd still wouldn’t boo him.
The problem with these lists is its never clear whether the matches are there to try and convince a non-wrestling fan to convert (largely a waste of time), or to show them why we are fans. Also as fans we never see the matches in isolation, we’ve seen the promos and know the story line which set the context to the match.
If I had to pick two matches to show someone why I’m a wrestling fan, I’d go for Shawn Vs Taker HitC and the Bret Vs Stone Cold submission match. Four of the best story tellers of the modern era, at their peak, in front of hot crowds and (take note TNA) with stipulations which actually made sense in the storyline.
I was there too! I thought the heel turn went great though. Sure, they didn’t boo him, but did anybody really expect them to?
Isn’t the whole point of a heel turn to get the audience to hate the wrestlwer concerned? Compare it to the Bret Hart turn at WM 13 where by the time he had finished with Stone Cold and Ken Shamrock he was being booed out of the building.
I would say that Mankind vs Taker from KOTR98 is THE match for everyone.
And Austin vs Bret Hart from WM13 comes close.
Both matches are not focusing on the wrestling, but more on dramatic stunts and heat between the rivals, especially the latter.
Certainly not saying it’s a match that would draw a non-fan to be sucked in to wrestling, but the match that got me in (and probably the reason I prefer it to the rematch) was the Survivor Series match between Stone Cold & Bret Hart. It’s my favorite match of all time and a lot of it is probably to do with that, and also the fact that it felt like a sporting contest, the storyline of the great Bret Hart coming back and the up and coming Stone Cold trying to prove he was better than Bret, and they let it all hang out in the ring, and the match is pretty flawless. WM13 was the perfect follow up.
I’d say though, a few I’d say would be;
Hell in a Cell – Mankind v Undertaker
Street Fight – Triple H v Cactus Jack
TLC – Either WM17 or SummerSlam 2000
Hell in a Cell – Shawn Michaels v Undertaker
WM18 – Hulk Hogan v The Rock
Royal Rumble 03 – Kurt Angle v Chris Benoit (not an obvious choice, but I had a few people over at my house in 03 when this PPV was on and even the most casual fans that were there were glued to the TV and cheering everything)
WM13 – Bret Hart v Stone Cold
I also agree with the Royal Rumble match, any rumble pretty much does the job, casual fans get right into it.
Obviously it depends on who your audience is. For people who think wrestling is just ridiculous, no match or spot is going to impress them.
For those who have a slightly more open mind, there’s 3 types of matches that could interest them. The first is a match involving megastars that they will have heard of – Austin/Rock at WM17 is probably best for that. The second is a match that clearly shows wrestling hurts and isn’t as fake as it looks – Mankind/UT HiTC match perhaps the best example. And the third is to show a really athletic match with great looking moves – maybe one of Mysterio’s great matches from the 1990s (e.g. vs Guerrero at Halloween Havoc). The latter is the type of match that usually impresses my family or friends who don’t normally watch wrestling.
There are matches that have actually hooked non-fan friends of mine over the years (at least for a while)
Austin vs Dude Love from Over the Edge 98 (didn’t hurt that they thought DX was cool too, and the Rock promo against Milwaukee was interesting to them, seeing a guy being openly insulting to fans in attendance).
Foley & Edge vs Dreamer & Funk from One Night Stand 2006 – This match broke one person’s “I thought it was all fake” thing, which pretty much hooked her from then on until this day.
Batista vs Triple H contract signing promo – My friend was so impressed by how Batista looked that he became a fan. Just like with UFC, it’s easy to cheer the guy who looks like he’ll rip you in two.
Of course, in these cases, the one match isn’t enough. The one match will create interest, but there has to be something else to hook them. In case 1, it was Buff Bagwell & the NWO over on Nitro (they were girls, so Buff apparently was “the stuff.” The second one was John Cena, and just a general enjoyment of rooting for the good guys and cheering against the bad guys. The third one was a lot shorter lived, as he seemed to lose interest once Batista achieved the goal of winning the title.
Guess sometimes the money really is in the hunt.
I still can’t understand why UT-Mankind (HITC) gets so much praise. Just because Foley did a couple of stunts that could have left him paralyzed for life, it’s now a great match? I’ll never get that one.
Because it is always more spectacular to see someone falling from a high cage, than showing some wrestling moves…
Kurt Angle: “the name of the game is wrestling.”
Yes, but when you are not a wrestling fan, you are not a wrestling fan and so you need something else to suck someone in the “game”.
That’s like saying that helmet to helmet hits in the NFL are more fun to watch. I don’t think the majority would agree with that. It just makes you flinch because of the possible repurcusions. It’s not like I like some “highspots” in my wrestling; but what Mick did in that match was just stupid.
But nonetheless more entertaining than 20 minutes of matwrestling…
…and moonsaults from the top rope are stupid too… so much too high flying action.
I like moonsaults. Now, Brock trying a shooting star press and landing square on his head? Not so much. My theory watching wrestling has always been less is more. If you reserve the high spots as part of the stoyline of the match and within the flow, it makes more sense. As a kid, I used to mark out when Barry Windham would bust out the superplex finisher because you rarely saw it.
The UT-Mankind match was all kinds of bad anyways. Take away Mick nearly killing himself and really, it’s not a very good match. I’m not saying that we should all watch a 20 minute mat match; but there’s safe ways of doing things. I put up as an example the HHH-Cactus match from the 2000 rumble. The crash through the top of the cell was prepared in advance with the mat below having a “sweet” spot. Mick jumping off the cell into tables was just him being stupid.
I want my favorite stars to go on after wrestling and have productive lives. I don’t want to continue to see cripples walking around by the age of 50. It’s like the NFL. Sure, it’s not as rough and tumble as it was in the 90s with all of these helmet rules and protection of the QB’s head and knee, but there are still plenty of hard hitting action as evidenced by the beating both Favre and Kurt Warner took in the playoffs.
“That’s like saying that helmet to helmet hits in the NFL are more fun to watch. I don’t think the majority would agree with that.”
While I can’t say whether this holds true for the majority, lots of people enjoy watching “Sports Bloopers”, and usually the more insane and violent the “blooper”, the better.
People enjoy watching other people get hurt, and in all honesty, I do sometimes, as well – guys like Mick Foley and Jeff Hardy made their careers on taking beatings, that’s millions of people who all “had fun” watching them destroy their bodies.
Even Kurt Angle – who “guy incognito” cites – couldn’t say that a large part of his (pro) career hasn’t been taking insane risks that could have paralyzed him. Sure, there’s a lot more to him than that, but did we all not mark-out when he did that moonsault off the cage?
Recently, when ESPN Classic was free from Comcast, I’d occasionally watch the old AWA shows they reran. My 13-year-old commented that one thing he liked about the old stuff was that it looked more real.
So from that perspective–matches that look like two guys who really hate each other really fighting without all the flash–here’s a couple that I’d show:
For straight-up wrestling, the Flair-Windham freebie from World Wide.
For no-holds-barred grudge settlement, the Magnum-Tully “I quit” match.
Both are great examples of storytelling without looking like storytelling.
Maybe it’s just me, but I’d say Austin was a bigger star than Hogan. He accomplished what Hogan did and more in only three years whereas Hogan had a decade+ to work with. That’s why his match against Rock at WrestleMania 17 should be in place of Hogan-Rock.
I think Austin might be a bigger star among us…the wrestling fans.
But outside of wrestling? It would be Hogan, hands down. Stone Cold is a guy, kind of like the Undertaker, that some people might not know about. You have to like wrestling to know those guys, and Ric Flair.
Now, Hogan, The Rock and Andre? Those three are known. They have transcended wrestling. My opinion, anyway.
Yeah, you’d be crazy.
I think i would probably recommend Eddie G. and Mysterio from WCW days. I say this simply because seeing them is what got me watching wrestling again after a four year hiatus. I was flipping by and saw Eddie in the ring and thought it was amazing stuff. Then I saw Hogan, Savage, etc. and decided to keep watching. I was hooked. Eddie’s death was about the last Raw I watched all the way through, so he was kind of the bookends of my modern wrestling watching.
While we as fans can all appreciate the artistry of a well-executed scientific match or the drama of a well-executed storyline, you have to remember that “non-fans” are non-fans for a reason – to them, it’s a fake sport framed by a sub-par soap-opera.
There’s nothing that can be done about the storylines, if you don’t “get it”, there’s nothing that can be done. I mean, what were the most successful storylines in recent memory? Austin/Vince and the nWo? Umm, if Vince hates Austin so much, why didn’t he just fire him? If the nWo were a renegade faction, why were they allowed in the building? There are just too many plot-holes for any non-fan to ignore. I mean, how many counts of attempted murder have we seen on the screen?
So that just leaves the wrestling. But what wrestling would satisfy a non-fan? One irish-whip and the illusion is blown, no matter how great the match is. Personally, I’ve always found that the best matches to show non-fans are the ones that make them call into question just how “fake” the matches are – namely, really violent ones.
This might seem like an odd choice, but I’ve always found Tajiri/Corino (from “Hardcore Heaven, 2000″) to work the best. The face/heel alliance is made obvious from the beginning (thanks to a really insulting pre-match promo from Corino), and then it’s just ten straight minutes of Tajiri kicking Corino in the face, sending blood flying out in every direction. And the beauty of it is that, as stiff as the match seems, as much as it seems like Tajiri is legitimately kicking Corino in the face over and over again, it’s all a work – Tajiri is (IMO) the KING of worked kicks, and everything he does throughout this match seems legit. Throw in a few neat spots and the sight of the always-awesome GREEN MIST, and you have a match that can get just about any “non-fan” talking.
Taker/Foley “HIAC” (”King of the Ring, 1998″) Rock/Foley “I Quit” (”Royal Rumble, 1999″), and the three big Hardys/Dudleys/E-C matches are also great examples.
Sure, it’s easy to nitpick some of these choices, there may be some who consider these nothing but “garbage wrestling” that has no place in the business, but when it comes to getting a non-fan to drop the condescending attitude, these are the kind that work the best.
I say the 10 man tag from IYH: Canadian Stampede is another classic. It’s one of the loudest and wildest crowds I’ve ever heard. The match is amazing, the build to the match was phenomenal, as the crowd got louder for each guy and exploded when Bret came out. Simply an amazing moment and match.
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Just for its simplicity, what about Bret vs. Piper. The interview right before the match provides all the context that’s needed to set it up. It’s an example of really basic but good storytelling which would give a non-fan a lot of insight into simple, easily understood wrestling psychology. It might not be a stuntshow with a ton of violence like most of the above suggestions, but I think it would do a lot more to teach a non-fan about what wrestling is all about (or at least what it was all about when it was still good). Besides, the commentary is hilarious. Even non-fans might think Bobby Heenan is a great comedian.
From the soap opera standpoint, I’d go with the Rock/Mankind “That’ll put asses in the seats” match or Eddie’s title win over Brock, because I can’t imagine anyone who wouldn’t dig the post-match celebrations. If the non-fan in question was a fan as a kid in the 80’s heyday, then the Warrior/Savage retirement match and the Savage/Elizabeth reunion falls into this category too.
Scott himself made a recommendation of sorts on this subject in an old rant: I seem to recall, in his review of the Love Her Or Leave Her match from SummerSlam 1999 between Test and Shane McMahon, he said something along the lines of “when even non-fans are popping at your work, you know you’ve booked a match right.” So maybe that match could be part of the current conversation as well?
In my experience, it needs to be a total package kind of thing to hold someone’s interest — the problem is a lot of times they may not be that interested in watching the actual wrestling, so the rest of it has to be there too – the commentary, the atmosphere, etc.
I think Piper/Bret Hart was a good suggestion — or Savage/Steamboat. In both cases you have great matches, great atmosphere, huge loud crowds, and top-notch commentary.
Another “car-crash” kind of match that might work…how about Kurt Angle/Shame McMahon from KOTR 2001?
IYH: Canadian Stampede would be the PPV I would show someone else if I was allowed a whole show rather than one match. It’s just perfect, four matches all of different types and all really well executed, in front of an insanely hot audience. Has always been my favourite WWF PPV ahead of WM 17.
It’s also a reminder just how much goodness you can get in a two hour PPV, in these days when WM is now four hours so we can listen to fracking Kid-Rock instead of the tag-titles being unified.
Good call on Piper/Bret Hart as well, again a reminder of how the fundamentals when executed properly will stand the test of time much better than a whole PPV of HitC matches.