Hello everyone and welcome to another edition of Pulp Wrestling. The man typing the words before you here today is Jules, and he hopes you aren’t overly offended or insulted by his use of third person to introduce himself to you. If you were, then by all means feel free to flood his inbox with hateful emails that he will both read and chuckle at, and perhaps even, grace you with a response. Now before I bore you all to tears, how about we move on with the next section of the column? Hopefully, it will be both entertaining and enlightening, or a close facsimile thereof. 
Let me make this clear to all the people who’ve been sending me emails and questions since I’ve assumed the TNA recap position at a certain website. I don’t work for TNA. I don’t know when so and so is coming back or who’s been let go or why, and I can’t tell you how to get in So Cal Val’s pants. And even if I did know, I probably wouldn’t tell you. In another weird bit of TNA recap news, a little while ago I got a piece of feedback from a man claiming to be Jeremy Borash praising me for my ‘work’. First of all, if it was in fact Mr. Borash, thank you sir. But if it was as I suspect, a Jeremy Borash impersonator, I just have one question. How bad does your life have to suck that the highest person on the impersonation totem pole that you could select was Jeremy freakin’ Borash? Seriously man, get yourself some help.
Speaking of TNA, I believe most of the sane citizens in this world got over the whole Jackass fad back in 2002. For those of you fortunate to not have seen this, for the past two weeks an assortment of X-Division guys have been spending their Thursday nights glued to the monitor watching clips from the upcoming abomination of a film entitled Jackass Number Two. And this week to top it all off an otherwise excellent match between Alex Shelley and Chris Sabin was completely overshadowed and ruined by the inclusion of this wacky little cross-promotional ploy. The only thing this little gimmick is accomplishing is making the entire X-Division look like a load of dorks. What’s next? Eric Young doing his version of the Tom Green show? I don’t know how much more of this I can take kids.
As of this writing, Unforgiven is about a day away, and I’m still arguing with myself over whether or not I should order it. Most of the matches look like they have the potential to be either very good, or very bad, depending on the motivation and condition of the people involved. The prospect of John Cena going to Smackdown is very interesting, if not completely laughable. Recent reports suggest Smackdown ratings have been getting near ‘TNA levels’ which is not a good thing, and on the one hand , I suppose they could use the star power that Cena brings with him, I very much doubt that Vince would drop him back in that show, as it would be from his point of view, like floating a diamond into a pond full of turds. I’m still very saddened at the prospect of Edge’s title reign coming to an end though, so we’ll just have to wait and see.
Sympathy For The Devil
For nearly a century now professional wrestling has, for the most part, been based off of a very simple formula. That being the formula of ‘Good Guy’ versus ‘Bad Guy’, or to make it even more universal, Good versus Evil. It’s a method that has been used to great success not only in wrestling, but also in pop culture, movies, television, religion and various art works, and printed pieces for at least the last two millennia. It’s a concept that most everyone can sympathize with. Most people in this world would of course like to think of themselves as an overall good person, not to say they’re perfect, but when faced with a decision of obvious good or evil, most would choose to remain on the side of good.
Likewise, most sane minded people were brought up by their parents and other elders to despise and detest any acts of evil. When I say evil keep in mind I’m painting with a very broad brush here. As it was defined to me early on; evil is basically anything that contrasts itself with good, or goes against a pre-ordained virtue, in plain terminology a ‘sin’. Now, of course there are various levels and degrees of evil. In this way of thinking it would be evil to sneak a cookie from a cookie jar, a sin I’m sure we’ve all committed at least one time in our life. But would this make us the equivalent to a person who stole a car, or committed the ultimate act of theft, the extermination of human life? I’d be hard pressed to say yes to that whilst keeping a straight face. Now, how does this tie in with wrestling you ask? For years the best heels have all been people who were able to successfully manipulate the feelings of the fans in order to make them willing to pay money to see them get their final comeuppance. The more evil the fans feel you are, then the more apt they are to pay money in order to see you get what's coming to you.
In years past, our society was a much less jaded and desensitized place to live in. Therefore, much less was required to raise the ire of fans. Bad guys who simply turned to cheating in order to win matches were detested for the sheer simple fact that they were no good rotten scoundrels. As times change though, so does public taste. Not to say change is a bad thing, as it is of course, inevitable in all things, and to stand in its way is to error in a most grievously foolish way. Now days though, things are not nearly as simple. We live in a time of round the clock news coverage, in which horrible events are broadcast to us twenty four hours a day. On top of this, our entertainment options have progressed to levels of such extreme violence and sexuality that they would probably make most of our grandparents suffer from cardiac arrest just to be exposed to them for a few seconds. In this new age, somehow a heel using the middle rope to gain a little leverage on a pinfall just doesn’t seem so gosh darned eye-raising anymore.
Perhaps in light of this, in recent years we have seen the growth of heel characters that are hated for far more personal reasons than the classic heel mannerisms of the past.I mentioned a little earlier that some of the reasoning behind the more risqué heel actions could be due to the overall change in our social climate. But this is far from the first time that kind of thing has popped up. The effects of this shift were already being felt nearly a decade ago now with the rise to popularity of Steve Austin. Steve’s case was one of particular interest because he was in his essence, a classic heel character. However, fans could relate to him and instead of taking the high moral ground like fans of years past would’ve, they admired his bravado and ‘take no shit’ from anyone attitude. The end result was a ratings and money bonanza the likes of which we may never see again. In a sense Steve Austin allowed the fans to turn heel through him, and also experience the fun of being a bad ass without having to take the bumps.
A few years ago though, WWE proclaimed the end of the Attitude Era. Thinking about it in the terms of what we’ve just established, it was like they called for an end to the phenomena of ‘heel fans’, however the fans for whatever reason were decidedly against this change in character. They were heels, and by God, they were having fun. The effects of the remnants of these fans are still being felt to this day in wrestling. John Cena for example, despite the roots of his character portraying a thug, is now being portrayed as nothing short of a perfect deity with super hereon like abilities by WWE writers. The aforementioned fans of the past decade however have rejected him by and large almost unilaterally.
They reject him because he goes against everything they were conditioned to believe were key babyface values. Where Austin was a foul mouthed anti-corporation rebel, Cena is seen by many as the epitome of a corporately produced and totally assimilated clean cut cookie cutter type wrestler. Keep in mind I’m not saying that as a personal judgment of either man, it’s just how I believe their characters have been perceived by the vast majority of Attitude Era fans. In this sense John Cena would’ve made the perfect heel counterpart to Austin in the late 90’s, but the trouble with that is, it’s not 1999 anymore, and fans aren’t supposed to hate the company’s number one good guy. That is, if you can consider his character or anybody elses a 'good guy' at all anymore. One could argue that seeing the WWE's policy of any publicity is good publicity, that that in return 'Any kind of heat is also good heat'. But is this heat that they are getting, really good heat? Where exactly is the moral line that promoters should cease to cross? Let’s explore this a little deeper.
So now, in a world where theoretically, there are no good guys, and right and wrong is all a big blur, how then does a company go about producing an effective top heel? To find the answer to that one need look no farther than the man who many people despise as Satan incarnate, Vincent Kennedy McMahon. During Steve Austin’s unparalleled rise to popularity there was a dilemma regarding who, if anyone could possibly stand toe to toe with him and manage to gain heat, instead of losing it as some characters undoubtedly would have. The answer was as clear then as it is now. Vince McMahon as the evil corporate boss portrayed a different level of evil from anything that had ever been seen before him. He had the power to unleash virtually anything imaginable against whatever unlucky face opposition stood against him. He was the personification of evil. And there wasn’t a single person in any arena that didn’t hate every fiber in his being. The results as mentioned earlier were loads and loads of huge buy-rates and ratings that shook the stratosphere. That was then though, and from a character standpoint,while Vinny Mac is still very much hateable, he's also starting to get as stale as last years fruit cake.
Getting back to today though, the Attitude Era has ended, and the entire heel/face structure is more skewed than ever. Over the past few years though the most talked about and despised heels have all shared one similar characteristic to their McMahon predecessor. They’ve all been portrayed as being men of great wealth and power. The first example that comes to mind naturally is Triple H, who is a relative of Vince by marriage of his daughter. This fact has sparked some of the most controversial debates in the history of wrestling. For better or worse, Triple H has played his role perfectly. If the fans see him as a real life power hungry mongrel, then his on air character does nothing but mirror this to perfection. Even during his recent face turn he still exhibits the characteristics that made him at one time the most hated man on the face of the I.W.C. Another example of this kind of character comes to us in the forms of personalities such as John Bradshaw Layfield, and Jeff Jarrett.
Jarrett, who now only has nominal control over TNA has been seen in much the same light as Triple H, if only on a much smaller scale, and stage. Both men have been accused of holding men back, and strangling the potential of entire promotions, however in the end, they were only following a formula set in place by the master himself. The heat they get from fans is just as visceral as the heat gotten by the many luminary heels of the past. They say the secret to portraying any successful character in wrestling is to find one as close to the truth of your own personal self, but with the volume turned to eleven. With all the men mentioned here, as well as a slew of others, this has been proven to be undeniably true.
The question still remains though. Where is the line? Many fans do not just simply hate the characters Triple H and Jarrett portray; they hate the men behind the characters themselves. That is, the men they assume to be behind them anyway. But is this any different from the heels of years gone by? Before the era of Internet websites, and secrets of the business being so greatly exposed, many fans not in the know weren’t booing Ric Flair: the heel character, they were booing Ric Flair: the no good son of a bitch who hid behind the Horsemen every step of the way while screwing over their beloved heroes of the time. It was legitimate hatred, which many times back in the day led to fans actually attacking the heel wrestlers themselves, an incident which has thankfully decreased over the years as fans have gotten ‘smarter’ to the business.
It’s still the same basic principle at work though. Take a guy who has a natural predisposition to act like an asshole, and exploit it to the farthest lengths possible. In the end, if the man in question is talented enough the results will be a truly hated character. Now the only task that remains is finding the right opponent to offset the heel’s power. It has to be a man that the fans can believe in, and get behind. Often times recently the mistake has been made where the heel in question is made to look absolutely unbeatable, and therefore even when he loses fans still don’t buy the man who beats him as a credible force, but rather, a punk who got lucky.
This in the end though, is not the fault of the performers themselves but of bad booking and poor decisions being made in creative. I have never, and will never claim to know what exactly goes on behind the scenes of any wrestling promotion. But if all the rumors are true about the supposed men in power being the one’s behind these booking decisions, the previous fact still remains. The fact, that even in the face of their ineptness behind the scenes, the strength of their on air performance has still been nothing short of stellar in my mind. Or in Jarrett’s case, moderately mediocre on an almost un-insulting level, and that my friends, is the nicest thing I have ever and will ever say about that man.
To sum up my statements here, I feel that upon close inspection of many of the men who often get criticized for being ‘detriments’ to the business, are in actually important cornerstones of it. I highly doubt that any of them are as malicious in real life as they are on air, but the fact remains that if they were to disappear overnight, a great void would be left in the wrestling world. Every story needs a villain. Remember that, and without some kind of evil to fight against, what good is a hero in the first place? I’m not saying you have to like these men, or even agree with what they do personally or professionally. I’m just trying to play Devils advocate for a few moments here, and perhaps, even, evoke some sympathy. For in the end, those of us who still cling to the past of the last bygone era are for all intents and purposes trying to accomplish the same goal that these men are, that being the goal of getting what we want, by any means necessary. So finally, as I sit here staring at this horde of rambling thoughts, I am not sure what devil it is I should be sympathizing with here, if any.
(Disclaimer, I don’t actually think any of my fellow fans reading this are in any way evil or power hungry. That final bit was added only for dramatic and artistic effect, with of course all due to respect to those of you who are actually criminally insane. Please don’t kill me.)
Now because I am in a giving mood, it is time for some Commandments.
I: I am the original gangsta New Jack, and remember kids; thou shalt obey your thirst! (Or I’ll knife your sorry ass)
II: Thou shalt not have any more matches involving the Big Show that go over fifteen minutes. Why must thee so continually torture thy fans?.
III: Thou shalt not bring back the N.W.O, thou shalt however bring back the Disciples Of Apocalypse! (Revv revvvv revvvv)
IV: Thou shalt make Little Bastard the Cruiserweight champ, before it’s too late.
V: Thou shalt not maketh me sit through anymore Lashley promos, Smackdown.
VI: Thou shalt not ever make the mistake of calling a kilt a skirt, lest ye pay dire consequences.
VII: Jeff Jarrett, thou shalt not wear backwards baseball caps, ever again.
VIII: ROH, there’s a time and a place for one hour time limit draws. That time however, is not at every single f***ing show!
IX: Thou shalt give Ariel more TV time. She is gorgeous.
X: Thou shalt be good to each other, always.
Thanks for reading.
Send all feedback to: pulp_wrestling@yahoo.com
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