Flavian Amphitheatre
Posted by Ben Acheampong
on 09/09/2007
The people are waiting. Hear the cheers. The roar of the crowd. The Gladiators await. Impendent doom. 2 millenniums later, men of valor will continue to pop pills, do 'roids and destroy themselves in front of an unappreciative and/or overzealous audience. Onto the good shit!!!
Flavian Amphitheatre
In a post Benoit-World (uh-oh) . . .
Now there’s been some discussion about this in countless other Benoit topics, but honestly, those can thing’s can become so overrun with pointless banter and useless stuff that it become a pull apart E-brawl about the exact same topics ad nauseam. Pretty much most IWC discussions in a nut shell.
But since it was more or less discovered that Chris Benoit's brain was so horribly mutilated by multiple concussions and various other damage to his brain from pro-wrestling, I'm kind of shocked at how little attention this is getting. startling news. My man, Spunk from another forum put it best. The drugs did their damage to him, no denying that, but it was wrestling the way that he did, and his commitment to killing himself every time he went to the ring that killed him. It is really hard to point fingers at Vince McMahon, the Wellness Policy, the doctor selling steroids via the internet or anything else at this point.
Our savage-like nature to see our favorite performers, run faster, hit harder, jump higher, and off more contrived looking scaffolds leaves us, yes US, partly to blame. A guy like Bryan Danielson, a mighty fine pro-wrestler, who works far faaar from a stiff style has suffered multiple concussions, in a promotion where a large part of its appeal is the snug, hard hitting action it presents, and it leaves me now, with a somewhat quizzical approach to it all.
Now I’ve never been an apologist wrestling fan, in the slightest, but think of all of the head drops Misawa, Kobashi, Akiyama, etc have taken over the years in NOAH and in late All Japan for the name of entertainment, think of all the people who love STIFF pro-wrestling and have basically turned the US Indies into the land of “if it ain't stiff, it ain't good.”
Now come on, if we can be honest with ourselves for a minute. We ALL know that Pro wrestling is a shitty business by nature, which was never intended for the workers themselves to exceed beyond a certain point by the people who run it. Good/Bad Right/Wrong, that’s the way it is. It’s somewhat unfair of me to call those in charge modern day Roman emperors, parallels are there, obviously, but still, I guess that would make us all blood thirsty subjects of the empire, force fed, and appreciative so, of the mauling we witness everyday in the ring … the coliseum … the Flavian Amphitheatre.
Damnation? As people, in many forms of theology, we learned that we as human beings were inherently flawed before we were ever really given the chance to be…much of anything. Whether it be, for the forbidden pomegranate, or what have you.
That’s not what the point of this column is. The point of most any columns is to sway an opinion one way or another. All I ask you to do in this column, is to think. No hand-holding in this column. Believe what you will, but Vince Mcmahon is not the devil, in my humble opinion. The point of writing this for me isn’t just to get you the reader to think, but for me as a writer.
Now you see me, I watch a whole bunch of wrestling. Like a lot. And it’s not an understatement in the least. Because of the diversity of my wrestling tastes, it’s hard to pinpoint what does it for me and what doesn’t. I will say, that I was never a fan of the type of fan who rallied off on stiffness, because “Wrestlings not supposed to be REALZ~! Watch the Martial Mixed Artes for that!!!” To me, wrestling wasn’t supposed to be about who had the best slight of hand magic trickery, either. Hard hitting action to me, could/can still make for compelling matches in many instances, with emphasis on hard in safe places.
Seriously there’s no point in making an about face, and suddenly saying you don’t like stiff wrestling any more because, in all actuality, some one off murderer, who happened to have concussions as a result of the way he wrestled decided to off his family and self, BUT, it’s not to be totally overlooked either. Now let’s look at it from an unabashed Canadian Crippler sort of way.
Especially when you may or may not have been fondling yourself at the site of bloody hardway Zidane-esque headbutts by smark darlings, Regal, Finlay, Benoit, Danielson and McGuinness. (I’m guilty as charged). But what to do? As an athlete, you know what you’re getting into, when you get into contact sports such as pro-wres or football, MMA etc..and as fan’s we also know what it is we’re watching. Heck, we’re watching it for said dangerous reasons.
My favorite form of entertainment? Mace and shield, not included
I for one can’t sit on some sort of moral high grounded high horse when but I love still wrestling, and I guess this makes me a persona de horrible I’m “paying and pushing people to kill themselves". That’s a little unfair though. I download it, so I’m not paying to see people do anything. No but in all seriousness, this is just a dangerous business. Forget hard hitting Dynamite Kid inspired levels of suicidal high flying. People can seriously F themselves up from a simple body slam. (Which gives a lot more credibility to a move like the FU in comparion).
My main man Dave Ditch says "The physics of a bodyslam are said to be akin to being in a minor car accident. Full-force punches to the head by the tends of thousands cause brain damage in only some boxers, and even 'stiff' wrestling is only a handful of potentially bad blows a match. Compare that to the whiplash effect of bumping, which rattles the brain around the skull."
But what do you do for a “problem” that’s been in wrestling since it’s infancy. Even the most menial of simpleton walkthrough matches HAS BUMPS, and bad things can happen even from the slightest of mistakes. I just posted a match of the week, featuring Vader, who I had just finished praising as the greatest big man, the history of evers, who if I recall potatoed the f*** out of his opponents and broke a jobbers back with a powerbomb. A lot of that was part of “the mystique” to me about Vader. I can’t lie and say like “ooh now I hate Vader, he was too stiff, yadaya” because I’d be a hypocrite. Does that make me any different than the spectator in the Amphitheatre? Is Vader not then a lion? The jobber, the Christian Martyr? Benoit … the Christian Martyr?!?
I know that last one, freaks out many people, and makes a lot of other people rejoice in conspiracydom.
This still doesn't mean stiff wrestling your soon to be wife in children are in for a most certain doom, or Mick Foley’s family would be long looong gone. Shit, face it, seeing guys beat the f*** each other is entertaining as hell, that doesn't make it any less perverse, or when things go wrong, any less uncomfortable And we like that sort of thing. It doesn’t make you a bad person if you do. Certain degrees of stiffness are fine. Backfists that break bones that keep your eye in place, ehh, not so much.
I don’t think it means no high-end wrestling ever again, but look at WWE's style, which a lot of smart marks will cry about being too toned down, or whatever but it is still a safe, smart, entertaining style most of the time. Heck, John Cena is the best damn wrestler walking the face of the earth right now, and it’s not because of his super stiff elbows and high angle german suplex acumen.
Me, I’ve always had a higher tolerance for the unapologetically stiff. I mean I am a shootstyle mark. But I mean, if you've got to do something really harsh and dangerous, you could at least save it for when it means something. Less is more is usually best anyway, and when you can make one backdrop driver = 10, you know you’re doing your job as a wrestler.
Obviously there’s not complete safe way to be a wrestler, nor hockey player, nor football player, nor mixed martial artists. Shit, they get hurt badly in Lucha Libre for crying out loud. And to rashly generalize it. All they do is arm drags and headscissors. There is no safe way.
But striving for a way, is not a bad thing.
Now with that, brings the question of matches that well…bore us. Now if we look at a match from this year, one of the best in fact. Shawn Michaels vs. John Cena in the hour classic from RAW in London, we get a compelling match, that didn’t appear possibly death-inducing in the slightest. Obviously Shawn Micheals possess tools in their disposal that can allot them to work a less is more style while having the crowd still eat it up better than say, Jamie Knoble and Shannon Moore. It's not that everyone should be going 50 minutes, but that wrestlers should move towards a style of having as much meaning as possible behind everything they do. The signs of a good wrestler.
Put it like this. A good face can take five bumps and get the crowd hot if at any moment.
Or as again, Ditch puts it.
"A well-timed hiptoss can bring the house down, and a backdrop driver can get no reaction, all based on how it's worked.
In Cena vs Shawn we get distinct styles, distinct strengths and weaknesses, and they played off them. Shawn dominating in technical wrestling, Cena coming back with impact. Shawn rocking the chops, Cena throwing fists. It's possible to establish and build from those sorts of themes in a 7-minute undercard match just as well as a 53 minute main event. It's possible to do so in any kind of style in front of any crowd."
Truer, words never spoken.
Where does that leave us in retrospect? Well, the major point is that, in a pre or post Benoit world, the kind of wrestling we like, is most certainly never ever going to change. And the only reason I, or many of us are even thinking about this in a somewhat introspective sort of way, AT ALL, is for the fact that one man took the life of his wife, and son, and self. BUT, it is most certainly, something to think about.
Of course, Jimmy Rave getting his eardrum popped, and jaw broken during a match, will just be “cool wrestler tidbits” henceforth. It’s just that maybe stiffness and workrate can be treated as separate concepts from now on. Maybe not. Whatever
Stiff wrestling killing the wrestlers we love absolutely, positively IS, a form of hyperbole. Only liking an angle when a kayfabe concussion giver, delivers stiff kicks to an untrained papa, is something to think about. When one of our favorite Awesome bombers winds up hanging himself, due to or not due to, years of unprotected chairshots, it’s something to think about.
----
There was honor to be had, when winning in the coliseum.
There's no honor in dying for fake fighting.
Thumbs Up? Thumbs Down? The loyal subjects, of the empire, It’s up to you to decide.
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