Recently, your saviour hasn't been very well. A nasty bout of the cold has kept me down for a few days now: but I'm never to ill to talk to my loyal followers. Today's subject isn't about today's current wrestling standings as much as the past.
Whilst laid up, ill and suffering, I decided to watch the poorly put together DVD 'Starrcade - the Essential Collection' and while the documentary could have been twice as long and the matches could have been picked better, something came to me. Something I'd never really noticed before. And that thing forms the basis of this blog: what does it take to finish a wrestler off?
Finishing moves are the staple of every company fron Ring of Honor to NJPW to TNA and WWE. You have such finishers today as 'The Styles Clash', 'The Pedigree', 'The Attitude Adjustment', 'The Tombstone Piledriver', 'The RKO'. If you said these words to any wrestling fan across the globe then they'd be able to tell you what they were and who they belonged to. Each one of these moves is designed to finish off a match and give the audience a satisfactory ending to the cintest taking place.
Re-watching 'Starrcade - the Essential Collection', I came across a match that wasn't all that great but was billed as the second coming. Sting vs The Great Muta. While both men deserve their place in wrestling history for very different reasons and both men have their own finishing moves, most famously the Scorpion Deathlock which has been a staple of Sting's move list since the lat 80's, the match ended when Sting suplexed Muta from the top rope. The landing was soft and Muta looked like he could get back up and go for another twenty minutes.
In these days of finishing move heavy endings, my question is, why was it so acceptable back then for a match becoming the second coming to end with a superplex from the top rope, yet today, the match has to finish with, more times than not, a finishing move? Why couldn't Sting have pinned Muta with the Scoprion Death Drop, another Sting move which he still uses today. Could you see a Randy Orton / Triple H world title match ending when Orton suplexed Hunter from the top? The answer is an obvious no.
In the 1980's Sting was just as much a valuable commodity to WCW as John Cena is to WWE today. WCW built their promotion on Sting until the massivly overated Hulk Hogan jumped ship. The point I'm trying to make is that why are moves back then that are considered just normal today, allowed to be match winners?
Another case is the Rock. A wonderful, talented actor and wrestler, whose finisher was a simple elbow drop - nothing more. Would a match today end on an elbow drop? No. Has any match every finished on an elbow drop except when the Rock (and sometimes the comically poor Eugene) has been involved? Not in recent memory. So why is it more devestating when the Rock did it? Anyone?
Every move today is a staple in the wrestling business. And thank god we've evolved from old times when a match could finish on a DDT or suplex, can you imagine how dreary the business would be today if A.J Styles or Rob Van Dman stuck to arm locks and full nelsons? Wrestling has moved on and so have we. But when we see such laughably bad ending to matches, it brings back what could have been today.
I have been a harsh cirtic of Vince McMahon over the past 20 years. The one thing he has to eb credited for of course, is the way he's taken what was a simple and let's face it, quite boring sport and made it into an international sensation. Adding spectacle and grandure in his wake. Under him finishing moves were brought in when some wrestlers in the 80's and early 90's didn't have one and made everything unique. Sometimes, to the point of destruction, but unique nonetheless.
I've watched matches from the 70's, 80's and evry era in my time as a fan and some damn near bored me to death, some I greeted with indifference and some I've rewatched over and over again because they are that good. If you know me, then you'll know I get so worked up about things like this.
Your saviour is a very complicated person, yet a person who always calls it like it is, even when it makes him unpopular. So what if people don't like my opinion, I'm not forcing them to listen. I'm a writer and actor by profession who is about to make it big, depending on when you read this. I love wrestling and I love the art of it. I also think Karen Gillan, Miley Cyrus and Tamsin Egerton are the three most beautiful women in the world, but that's another blog for another day.
I'll leave you to ponder your saviours words. While you're doing that, try and grab yourselves a copy of 'Starrcade - the Essential Collection' or at least look up Sting vs The Great Muta at Starrcade on You Tube or find someone that has a copy. Watch how poor the match is and then look how poorer the finish is. Would we be allowed to get away with that today?
I think not.
"To die is poignantly bitter, to die without ever having lived is unbarable!"
- Erich Fromm
Happy Times and Places...
No comments:
Post a Comment