These days, with no clear-cut bad guys (Kosovo and Rwanda wouldn't sell any tickets anyway) and with some special-interest group crying out over every little stereotype, wrestling has had no other alternative than to create its own bad guys, who the fans, in turn, then love, giving rise to the antihero, such as "Stone Cold" Steve Austin.
But, hey, once again, we're just mirroring society and, in doing so, giving fans what they want. Look at Hollywood—it's filled with heroes that, decades ago, fans would have found offensive. Although the body counts may be on the rise in hit films, it's not as if violence hasn't always been a staple of the viewing diet. I mean, let's look at some typical family favorites and see what innocent and educational atrocities lie within.
(Keep in mind that the stories I write of are the traditional stories, and not the better-known film versions.)
The Little Mermaid—amputation of tongue, suicide, impaling.
Jack and the Beanstalk—trespassing, robbery, cannibalism, murder by fall from Beanstalk.
Hansel and Gretel—child abuse, child abandonment, destruction of property, imprisonment, starvation, attempted cannibalism, murder by oven.
The Wizard of Oz—decapitation, chopping off of both arms and both legs (read the book), kidnapping, imprisonment, attempted murder, death by falling house, contract killing, murder by melting. Sleeping Beauty—rape, adultery, attempted cannibalism.
Little Red Riding Hood—attempted double homicide by eating, murder by drowning.
The Emperor's New Clothes—full male nudity.
Yes, I made a big mistake by letting my kids sit in the front row at the Royal Rumble, and I have had a hard time dealing with my decision. But I know that as an avid "read me a story" dad, I often have to substitute the words "sleep" or "hurt" for "die" or "kill," and find a lot of classic children's books, including fairy tales by the Brothers Grimm, to be a little, well, grim.
Last night, in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia (which is the coolest name of a major city I've ever heard of, even if its literal translation is "city of mud"), I watched the family classic Seven Brides for Seven Brothers. Without exaggeration, I was mortified, and not just because Howard Keel and his six brothers broke into song at the drop of a hat. No, I got that way by watching the lovesick brothers get their seven brides by riding into town and kidnapping them while leaving a trail of the girls' beaten boyfriends behind. Then they took off for their mountain home while physically restraining the screaming women. And guess what? The girls all fell for the brothers, and they all lived happily ever after. These days, if you even try to compliment a woman on the beauty and fantasy-inducing properties of her breasts, you'd be slapped with a lawsuit faster than a Vanilla Ice CD flying into the discount bin at Kmart. But these guys not only got the girls—they got a G rating.
Hey, I don't mind violence in the cinema. Some of our greatest movies have also been among the bloodiest. Saving Private Ryan is an example. It's a great story, but without the graphic depiction of the Normandy Invasion, it's just not the same. Platoon was an Oscar winner, and I had to close my eyes when the American GI played by Kevin Dillon caved in a Vietnamese boy's skull with the butt of his gun. The graphic decapitations in Gladiator, the slow-motion brutality of Sam Peckinpah's classic westerns, the blood-streaked face of Dallas Page in Ready to Rumble—well, maybe that example was a little off, but you get the idea.
Robert De Niro is probably my favorite actor of all time—next to John C. Reilly, of course. Rocky is my all-time favorite movie, but it's hard for me to give Sly Stallone my favorite-actor nod when he's got Stop! or My Mom Will Shoot on his resume. Of course, De Niro didn't do himself any favors with his Adventures of Rocky & Bullwinkle turn, but that's beside the point. De Niro's collaborations with director Martin Scorsese in films such as Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, and Goodfellas are widely regarded as tremendous movies, as well as being among my personal favorites. Another De Niro film, The Deer Hunter, won an Academy Award for Best Picture in 1978. All of the films were extremely violent and all were filled with language that makes our World Wrestling Federation television offerings look like Barney and Friends.
I didn't happen to pack a Webster's dictionary on my trip to Southeast Asia, but I believe that true violence has to include a connotation of bad intentions. In wrestling, we now readily admit that the fate of the match is predetermined, the action is often choreographed, and the participants are, for the most part, friends. (Why is it that when we portrayed wrestling as "real," critics called it fake, and now that it is more accurately portrayed as "sports-entertainment," our critics deem it "too violent"?) There are no bad intentions in wrestling—with the possible exception of pushing Billy Gunn as a singles star, the intentions of which probably weren't all that good.
In this respect, we are far less violent than other popular forms of sports-entertainment, which, realistically speaking, all sports are. I mean, as soon as the basic rules of a contest are changed to make the game more enjoyable to watch, it becomes "entertainment." Holler if you hear me, "three-point shot" and "mid-thigh-to-belly-button strike zone."
I recently saw a baseball game where Roger Clemens "beaned" Mike Piazza. For those not familiar with the term "beaned," it means he hit him in the head with a ninety-six-mile-per-hour fastball possibly on purpose. Clemens said no, but Piazza disagreed, as did a lot of other people. But wait, let's not be too hard on Clemens, because, after all, this is a time-honored and accepted tradition—throwing hard objects at people's heads in front of impressionable kids. Besides, I hear that Clemens is a big Foley fan, and I might be able to get good seats to a game sometime. The next inning, the Mets pitcher hit a Yankee batter with another ninety-something heater, in the somewhat less dangerous area of the spine, and guess what—no one was surprised. In fact, it was expected, even looked forward to. "Oh, the next Yankee up is definitely going to get it" was a common comment heard in between the innings. Okay, let's get this straight. If I were to hit an unsuspecting person with a hard object thrown at high velocity, I would fully expect to be arrested and possibly even sentenced to prison. Do it in front of 60,000, while millions watch on television, however, and my goodness, you're talking about our national pastime.
Speaking of time-honored baseball traditions that could use a little rethinking, don't you think it's about time we took the baseball managers out of their uniforms? For crying out loud, for the most part, you're talking about thick-waisted, middle-aged men, who are wearing ridiculously tight uniforms that were obviously meant for young men to wear. Wait, am I talking about baseball managers or WCW main eventers here? Think about the ramifications if this curious tradition were to carry over to other sports. Phil Jackson's white, hairy, skinny legs while reading Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. Bill Parcells calling the shots from the sidelines with a set of shoulder pads and a helmet on, while hoping that his jersey hides his expanding gut so he doesn't lose his Slim-Fast deal. Angelo Dundee cheering on his latest boxing protege with a pair of satin trunks pulled up to within a whisper of his nipples. Or how about a wrestling manager with a gaudy pair of sunglasses, a tacky jacket, and a cane, or a tennis racket. . . oops, we do that already, don't we?
Hockey? Now, there's a good one. What other sport encourages groups of kids, who actually like each other, to fight for real so as to emulate their heroes. I will never forget an episode of street hockey that took place in 1977 between Chris Anderson and Chuck Cheeseman. In the same way that the Christmas Story fight between young Ralphie and the bullying Scott Farcus came to be known as "The Farcus Affair," this episode still lasts in my mind as "The Cheeseman Incident." Even though I wasn't officially a part of Anderson's neighborhood, my ability to walk up a big hill and then through a hundred-yard section of woods to get to his house made me a neighbor by proxy. We played a game of street hockey on our home (or Anderson's home) street against the visiting Cheeseman's band of thugs. Actually, all of these guys were my friends, which made Martin Moeckler's reading of the rules even more auspicious. "O
kay, here are the rules. We play three fifteen-minute periods." (He had an actual alarm clock in his hand.) "The clock stops during a fight." Hold on a second. This might sound strange coming from a guy with 325 stitches in his body, but I found the whole concept of friends planning on fighting to be more ridiculous than a Joey Abs title shot. And I said so. "What do you mean, fight? Why are we going to fight?" They looked at me as if I had two heads. "Yeah," Bobby Christman said, "when we start fighting, we stop the clock."
This was actually my first official street hockey "game," even though I'd been playing around in the street with my "flow-through" stick since jumping on the Islanders' Stanley Cup-winning bandwagon a few months earlier. Still, I was hoping for some sense of reason here, and as we lined up for the face-off, I approached Christman for a little friendly reassurance. "Bob, these fights don't happen very often, do they?" I asked hopefully. "Sure they do," Bob said. "Every game."
Sure enough, at about three minutes in, or when Mickey Mouse's arms were at the seven and the two, the official street-hockey alarm clock had reason to stop.
After being scolded about a rough body check (which, for the record, I have no problem with), Anderson told the Cheester, "Stop acting like a pussy." Cheeseman walked away. Until, that is, Scott Burgoine appealed to his sense of manhood, or at least to his twelve-year-old boyhood, and said, "Chuck, did you hear that? Anderson called you a pussy." It didn't matter that Burgoine was wrong. Technically "acting like" a pussy and "being" a pussy are two different things. In the heat of a meaningless street-hockey game played by kids who'd just begun to sprout hairs on their sacks, this fact was overlooked. Down went the gloves, off went the clock, and on went the fight.
I don't remember who won the fight, or who else got involved, or even who won the game, but I do remember thinking it was the stupidest thing I'd ever seen. Until of course I got to Memphis in 1988, where my willingness to throw myself onto concrete floors for $25 a night just may have eclipsed the "Cheeseman Incident" on the stupid scale.
I do know, however, that it was the last time I played an organized game of street hockey that involved an official fight clock, and that it was a long time before I watched a game of ice hockey on television again.
Now, I know that hockey is a phenomenally popular sport, and that it is, when played properly, a wonderful game played by tremendous athletes. In fact, I had high hopes when I took Colette and the kids to see a Pensacola Ice Pilots game near our home in the Florida panhandle. Instead, I saw a potpourri of dirty tactics, including the stick between the legs, a check to the testes that even one of our World Wrestling Federation referees wouldn't have allowed, and three honest-to-goodness fights. To further enhance my viewing pleasure, the team mascot spent most of the game singling me out by giving me big fake elbows in the crowd. Unlike wrestling, I couldn't tell my kids that these guys were "just playing" or that they were all friends who would hug each other afterward—especially when Dewey and Noelle met the players afterward and saw their bruises and cuts. The Ice Pilots wanted to talk to me about "Hell in a Cell" and I wanted to find out why such a great sport had to be ruined by such bush-league stuff. Their answer was sad. "We're encouraged to fight," one bruised player, who will probably never have Janet Jones for a wife or his own fictional doughnut shop, told me. "If we don't fight, attendance will drop, and the league might fold."
Hey, guys, if the fights are part of the job, let me give you a few words of advice. Fix the damn things! Start using Asiatic thrusts to the throat and a Three Stooges eye rake or two. Who knows, throw in something like a People's Elbow and you might start selling out the place. It works for us.
Lacrosse has tried to take a page out of hockey's book. I played lacrosse for five years, as a surprisingly quick-reflexed goalie who specialized in wearing a bull's-eye on his balls and combat boots on the field and eating worms to "psych out" opponents before games. At least that's what my reputation was. In reality, I wore the bull's-eye during one camper-vs.-staff game at lacrosse camp, wore combat boots one time when I forgot my cleats, and ate one worm during warm-ups at junior-varsity football practice. But you know how reputations are.
In my five years as a lacrosse player, I saw exactly two fights. Years later I saw a thirty-second commercial for a professional indoor lacrosse league. During those thirty seconds, I saw three. And, I'll tell you, there's nothing like watching Ivy League graduates fight to make you appreciate a Pete Gas match. Being that my high school alma mater, Ward Melville, is something of a lacrosse factory, I've known quite a few of these professionals, and they too admit that they are encouraged by the league to fight to ensure the league's existence. And these fights are real too; they just look like they're fake. But I understand their plight, and I get a tear in my eye when I think of those poor players, who would have to slave away at their real jobs as doctors and lawyers should the league fold.
I used to read a lot of "autobiographies" of football stars when I was a kid, and many of the players "wrote" of their propensity for knocking people unconscious—hell, most of them bragged about it. In his book, They Call Me Assassin, Jack Tatum, who is best known as the man who paralyzed New England patriot Darryl Stingley, even talked about the rush he received after nearly decapitating an opponent. Of course, knowing now what I've learned about ghostwriters and their permission to use "creative license" on quotes and facts, I'll give the "Assassin" the benefit of the doubt, and hope he never actually felt that way.
In fifteen years as a professional wrestler, I've been knocked legitimately unconscious once—in the June 1998 "Hell in a Cell." My opponent in that match, the Undertaker, didn't feel a rush when it happened, he felt only concern. I've knocked out a few guys as well, and likewise felt no pride in doing so—only an emptiness in my gut as I waited for them to regain consciousness.
The 1985 quarterback sack of Joe Theismann by Lawrence Taylor on Monday Night Football, which resulted in a compound fracture of Theismann's leg and the subsequent end of his career, may have been the most nauseating moment in professional sports history. Granted, it was accidental, and Taylor's immediate reaction to the sack was to plead for help when he heard Theismann's leg crack like the sound of my hand on Al Snow's buttocks. It wasn't cool to watch either. I mean, I doubt that teenage computer geeks who have never touched a female breast were watching that incident over and over on their VCR, like they do now with my first trip off the aforementioned cell. The Theismann incident did, however, offer me an opportunity to compensate for many years of frustration suffered at the hands of ignorant borderline wrestling fans—none of whom I imagine are reading this book.
I saw Joe Theismann on the National Car Rental courtesy van in November 1997 in Charlotte, North Carolina. It turned out he knew who I was, but at the time was keeping his excitement well hidden. I respected Joe for his notable football career, expert commentary on the game, but most of all, for having nailed Cathy Lee Crosby for many years. I decided to break the ice. "Excuse me, Mr. Theismann," I began, thinking of some of the morons who had approached me over the years, "you didn't REALLY break your leg in '85, did you?" Joe laughed a genuine Harvey Korman watching Tim Conway on The Carol Burnett Show laugh, and then shared stories about Cathy Lee with me that kept me awake for a week. Not really, but he did do that Harvey Korman thing.
Boxing—now, there's a great one. Not only do boxers try to turn their opponents' brains into unfla-vored gelatin, they then immediately thank God for having the ability to do so.
A year ago I had to tell a father that I could no longer let his two sons train at the small gym I own when I found out that the boys were actually eleven, and not fourteen, as their dad had told me. The father was very upset, because the boys, he informed me, were boxers, and needed to train so they "could have that one-punch knockout power." All of a sudden I felt so guilty; after all, who was I to deny these kids access to equipment that would help them knock other eleven-year-old boys unconscious?
What about the riots, death, and mayhem in a soc
cer game? Oh, I'm sorry, we're talking about the sports themselves and not the spectators.
Professional wrestling is a very physical form of entertainment. We entertain fans around the world by presenting a reasonable facsimile of a real fight while adding athletic elements that could not plausibly happen in the real world. Have you ever seen a "reversal of an Irish whip" in a real fight? Or in the Olympics? How about a moonsault or a Hurricanrana? Or the worm? Highly unlikely. We do however, as seen in the "I Quit" match, use chairs, and the chairs do hurt, and I do believe that a scaling down on the number of head shots would be advisable. Shots to the back? Go ahead—they're part of what makes the business fun, and only hurt a minute anyway.
Yeah, shots to the head with a steel chair hurt, unless of course you use the popular "fake chair" that many fans know so much about. Personally, I don't know where to find one, and if such a thing is a reality, I wish someone would have told me a long time ago. I don't, however, see wrestlers using chairs for purposes other than sitting leading to the decay of Western civilization. I've never turned on the news and heard Dan Rather say, "Four men were killed in a failed robbery attempt this afternoon. The assailants, all armed with folding chairs ..." I don't see militant extremists walking out of "chair shows" with enough steel to overthrow a small country. And as far as I know, there is no such thing as a drive-by chairing in the 'hood, even if the East Coast/West Coast rapper rivalry was rumored to have been kicked off by a chairshot delivered on the Vegas strip following a Butterbean bout.