Vickie Guerrero vs. Eric Trump: Cougars Have Claws and That Doesn't Even Scratch the Surface (BA-DUM, TSS!)

 

Rey Mysterio vs. Dominik Mysterio: a Dad Joke On Mother's Day

 

Dark Side of the Ring

TV SHOW TITLE: Dark Side of the Ring
PRODUCER: Viceland
YEARS: 2019-2020
GENRE: Wrestling Documentary
RATING: TV-14 for language and violence
GRADE: Extra Credit

Is it any wonder why Dark Side of the Ring was voted Best Wrestling Documentary in the 2019 Wrestling Observer Newsletter awards? I wouldn’t be surprised if it became the first ever two-time winner in the 2020 awards, whenever they come out. Viceland might rack up an undefeated streak if they keep putting out new seasons, which they should if they haven’t already. There isn’t a single bad episode in this entire series. Every story will fascinate you whether you remember that particular generation of wrestling or not. I’m not old enough to remember Bruiser Brody and the early days of The Fabulous Moolah, yet I was engrossed in their stories all the same. Dark Side of the Ring might even invoke those same feelings within non-wrestling fans. The episodes are dour and depressing enough to milk even the toughest eyeballs dry. Are these sixteen episodes of pure sadness and anguish appropriate during the COVID-19 pandemic? Will they worsen the world population’s already strained mental health? Well, that’s the biggest knock on this show, but I would argue that feeling sadness is part of the human experience and it beats being numb all the time. But that’s just me talking.

If it’s sadness you’re looking for, check out the first two episodes of season two, which deal with the Chris Benoit double-murder-suicide. There’s no clear explanation as to why Chris did what he did, but the documentary does a good enough job of exploring every avenue there is to consider. Wrestling was his first and last profession, which means lots of concussions along the way, especially when chair shots to the head were commonplace in the 90’s and 2000’s. Chris also had substance abuse issues, particularly with steroids. He also had wear and tear from being on the road all the time. And he lost his best friend Eddie Guerrero in 2005. It wasn’t just one thing that sent him over the edge. It was life in general. Murdering his wife and son before killing himself was disgusting enough, but his other son David Benoit had to bear the brunt of it all. Watching David fall to pieces as he was being interviewed was heartbreaking to watch. He needed those shoulder squeezes from Chavo Guerrero (the last person Chris Benoit texted before he died). David needed that long embrace with his aunt. He wanted to feel good about going to wrestling shows again. The emotions of everybody interviewed in these two episodes were like a punch to the stomach from a loaded boxing glove. I came so close to crying myself.

Another time when I almost lost it was when I watched Owen Hart’s episode. Owen was portrayed as a friendly guy who made everyone around him happy, including his family. But in the ring, he was a technical wrestling genius who could also fly through the air. Think of the possibilities that could have been if he hadn’t fallen to his death at the Over the Edge pay-per-view in 1999. This wasn’t just a tragic accident. This was blatant negligence on the part of not only the riggers who hooked Owen up to the harness, but also on the part of WWE in general for making Owen go through with his unnecessary stunt. It’s bad enough that the world lost a loving human being, but it’s made even worse when Vince McMahon, the owner of WWE, continued the Over the Edge show anyways and tried to screw over Owen’s wife in court when she wanted to sue. The cesspool of emotions you will feel from watching this will range from sadness to anger to depression to borderline insanity. This death didn’t need to happen and Viceland did a great job of making sure that point came across and that Vince McMahon looked like the scumbag he was and still is today. He just discarded Owen like a piece of meat. If your blood isn’t boiling after this episode is over, you don’t have a soul.

Want a completely different emotion to haunt your mind? Try fear. You’ll get all the fear you came for when you watch New Jack’s episode. He has a permanently angry face made even more hideous by the scars on his forehead from busting himself open for his craft. New Jack wasn’t just a wrestler. He legitimately tried to hurt and kill his opponents if he didn’t like them. He legitimately felt anger towards the all-white crowds when he used racism to draw heel heat. When he talks about incidents such as slicing Mass Transit, throwing Vic Grimes off of a scaffold after tasing him, and beating Gypsy Joe’s face in with a bladed baseball bat, he does so with the attitude of either a psychopath or a sociopath. If New Jack did these things in an ordinary job setting, he would be in prison for the rest of his life. He came across like an uncaring murderer, which was further fueled by his back story of growing up in an abusive home. New Jack legitimately terrifies me and Viceland’s documentary on him intensified that feeling tenfold. Now that he’s a bounty hunter, this would be a good time to pay your bail before he beats the daylights out of you and drags you to justice that way.

There is a chance that you’ll become disillusioned with wrestling by the time you’ve watched all sixteen episodes. It’s a sliver of a chance, but a chance nonetheless. Whether you do or not, you’re not walking away from your viewing experienced unscathed. You’ll be angry, terrified, and sorrowful for a long time to come. I don’t want to say you’ll get PTSD from watching Dark Side of the Ring, but you’ll definitely have a lot to think about, probably when you’re lying awake at night or crying yourself to sleep. Dark Side of the Ring seasons one and two get an extra credit grade from me for not only keeping my interest as a wrestling fan, but opening my eyes to the sick world behind the scenes. I’m happy I never became a professional wrestler. I’ve considered it in my high school days, but I’m glad I never followed through on those dreams, or should I say nightmares.

Exploiting Death

***EXPLOITING DEATH***

Even though I wrote a blog months ago about marketing my wrestling novella to the right people, I just now thought of another example when it comes to wrestling vs. real life. Only in wrestling would it make sense to do horrible things for the sake of ratings. In other words, the Most Disgusting Promotional Tactic award only goes to wrestling and mixed-martial arts organizations, no where else, although the NFL had their fair share with the deflated balls scandal.

The year 2015 is almost over and in the WWE there was recently a late entry for the MDPT award. I don’t know just yet if it’s going to end up winning since the Wrestling Observer Newsletter awards don’t come out until late January, but it’s a strong contender. I’m talking of course about an ending segment on an episode of Monday Night Raw.

Charlotte and Paige were signing a contract in the middle of the ring so that their Divas Championship match can take place at Survivor Series. Charlotte is the daughter of Hall of Fame wrestler Ric Flair and the sister of deceased wrestler Reid Flair. When Charlotte spoke tearfully about her family’s fighting spirit, Paige said, “I guess your baby brother doesn’t have much fight left in him now, does he!” Charlotte went berserk and beat the shit out of Paige while backstage, Ric Flair was crying his eyes out.

That’s right, folks: for the third time in a whole decade, WWE has exploited the death of a fellow wrestler or personality, the first two times being Eddie Guerrero (2006) and Bill Moody aka Paul Bearer (2013). The thing that has a lot of people upset is that nobody asked Ric Flair if it was okay to do this segment. The creative team just went ahead with it, showing that being assholes was the only way the divas division would earn attention.

Going back to my Occupy Wrestling argument, only in pro-wrestling does exploiting death make any sense. It’s wrong as hell, but it makes sense nonetheless. It wouldn’t fly anywhere else. People are already pissed off at the Westboro Baptist Church for all of their “God Hates Fags” protests. Ronda Rousey has had it up to here with Twitter users talking shit about her dead father. Don’t get me started on the NYPD wearing shirts that say, “Breathe easy: don’t break the law” in light of the murder of Eric Garner, and yes, it was murder despite what any cop apologist says.

Exploiting death also leaves a sour taste when it comes to fictional TV shows, movies, and books. Want some examples? Here they are. Let’s do a Star Wars example.

　

DARTH VADER: Luke, you keep looking at the heavens for Obi-Wan Kenobi. He’s not in heaven. He’s down there…in HELL!!

　

How about NCIS?

　

HARPER DEARING: Gibbs, you have just as much chance of catching me as Caitlin Todd does of coming back to life.

　

Ouch! But it gets worse. How about Final Fantasy VII?

　

SEPHIROTH: Well, Cloud, I guess Aerith doesn’t have much fight left in her anymore, now does she!

　

Luke Skywalker, Leroy Gibbs, and Cloud Strife would either cry their eyes out, scream in rage, or beat the shit out of whoever said those things. Not only that, but the audience would have a sour taste in their mouths and would hit the power button at the drop of a hat. And yet, we continue to watch wrestling because there are other segments that are fun to watch.

With wrestling, it makes sense to watch it for things other than the worst parts. You don’t have that luxury with a movie like North Country, which is swarming with sexual harassment scenes. Another example would be a movie I have no desire to see, but know about anyways: Iron-Jawed Angels, where women in the 1920’s were jailed, beaten, force-fed, and raped in their struggle for the right to vote.

The Most Disgusting Promotional Tactic award serves the same purpose for wrestling and MMA that one and two-star reviews do for authors like me: they enforce accountability. However, they don’t always enforce humility, which is much different by comparison. At least when it happens to an author, there’s a slight chance he or she will go back and fix his mistakes, which is something I did with American Darkness and will do with Occupy Wrestling as both books hold a 2.75 star rating on Good Reads and Amazon. The WWE, on the other hand, has exploited death over the past ten years three different times.

I’ll be a wrestling fan no matter what horrible shit happens between the ropes. But if you’re an author with your own brand, you can’t always rely on people always being a fan of you if you exploit death. Sure, it will make your villains the ultimate assholes, but if they keep doing it over and over again like it’s their whole gimmick, then it’ll just frustrate the reader to where he or she won’t want to read anything by you again.

The one thing you can take away from this journal, if nothing else, is that villains were made to be hated, but it’s also okay if they’re liked every once and a while as well. And what do you know? The WWE has villainous wrestlers who are cheered (Kevin Owens) and heroic wrestlers who are booed (Roman Reigns). I just hope Kevin Owens doesn’t find out where The Ultimate Warrior is buried and piss on his grave. That would be bad for business. We’ve got ears, say cheers!

　

***POISON TONGUE TALES***

Would you believe it if I told you I only have three more short stories to write for Poison Tongue Tales before I meet my quota? I didn’t believe it at first either. I knew I had a lot of stories, but not 47. Number 48 will be one called “Wasteland” and it goes like this:

　

CHARACTERS:

　

Faye Blood, Human Monk
Marco Torres, Human Thug
Rook Maxwell, Human Dark Paladin

　

PROMPT CONFORMITY: N/A

　

SYNOPSIS: Faye has been wandering the desert wasteland for days and is exhausted from dehydration. Her monk teachings don’t allow her to attack other travelers to steal their water, but at this point, Faye has no other choice. When she sees Marco and Rook making out in their tent and wasting water by pouring it over each other for added effect, Faye figures that she’s justified in stealing their water. Her martial arts training will get her through almost any battle. Will it get her through this one if she’s caught?

　

***WRESTLING JOKE OF THE DAY***

Since NXT wrestlers Zack Ryder and Mojo Rawley like to call themselves The Hype Bros, then they probably won’t mind calling their tag team finishing move The Bro Job. Then Byron Saxton can make an awkward joke on commentary about how Zack and Mojo have an “in-your-face” style of wrestling.

"Gone Too Soon" by Ian Hamilton

As you can guess from the title of this book, you won’t be expecting a happy ending…or middle…or beginning. What this 90-page summary implies is that it actually took tragedies in order for the wrestling business to change. These changes should have taken place a long time ago, but it’s an ugly side of life we all have to live with at some point. Take for instance the first person this book talks about, Owen Hart. He was a fun guy to be around and a great performer in the ring. The fact that he’s never won a world title before is a sacrilege. He would have had a lifetime to do it, but in order for that to happen, he couldn’t have performed a stunt from the top of the rafters and fallen to his death. Unfortunately, that’s how Owen’s life came to an end: the harness he was wearing broke and he plummeted to the ground below. It actually took that accident for the writers to realize that dangerous stunts like those should be kept to a minimum and closely monitored. Or not even done at all, that would be even better. You know who else could have used close monitoring? Eddie Guerrero. For a while, he was heavily into drugs and alcohol and it got so bad that he had to be released from WWE. Upon completing rehab and getting himself clean, he came back to the company and ended up winning the WWE Championship from Brock Lesnar. That would end up being his only world title reign as a year later, he had a heart attack from all the drug abuse he put himself through. Because of that horrifying death, WWE put into place the Wellness Program, where superstars can be suspended for testing positive for drugs of any kind. It seems good on paper until you consider the case of Chris Benoit, who passed several drug tests despite having a high ratio of testosterone in his body. Because of his own problems with performance-enhancing drugs and several blows to the head, he went into a rage and murdered his wife and child before hanging himself on exercise equipment. I’ve said it before and it bears to be repeated: it shouldn’t take a tragedy for regulations to be in effect, let alone three. And the sad part about all of this? These three wrestlers, Owen Hart, Eddie Guerrero, and Chris Benoit, are not the only ones who died under such circumstances. If you look near the back of the book, you’ll see an entire list of people who died prematurely. It’s depressing to see your heroes go so soon. It really is.

　

***LYRICS OF THE DAY***

“These wounds won’t seem to heal. This pain is just too real. There’s just too much that time cannot erase. When you cried, I’d wipe away all of your tears. When you screamed, I’d fight away all of your fears. And I held your hand through all of these years. But you still have all of me. I’ve tried so hard to tell myself that you’re gone. But though you’re still with me, I’ve been alone all along.”

-Evanescence singing “My Immortal”-

"Undisputed" by Chris Jericho

Welcome everybody to Raw Is Jericho! Well, technically this isn’t Monday Night Raw, but if I was to say welcome to Garrison’s Library Is Jericho, it wouldn’t have the same ring to it. In fact, it would sound flat-out dorky. Just because it isn’t always Monday night, doesn’t mean you can’t have your fill of Y2J Chris Jericho, as evidenced in the memoir he wrote in 2011 called “Undisputed”. This memoir documents his days in the WWE from 1999 to 2007. Jericho had a particularly tough time transitioning from WCW to WWE since they do things a bit differently. Every match is planned out ahead of time instead of improvised. The sooner Chris Jericho learned this, the sooner he would become a major star. And become a major star he did. He is credited as being the company’s first Undisputed World Champion, hence the title of his memoir. In addition to being a mega-star in WWE, his metal band Fozzy was also taking off like a rocket ship. For the most part, whenever Jericho wasn’t fighting with Bill Goldberg or getting cussed at by either Vince McMahon or the producers, he was having the time of his life. But don’t think for a moment that this book doesn’t have its darker sides as well. As I said before, this memoir documents his life all the way to 2007. The years 2005 and 2007 were shrouded in sorrow as those were the years that Eddie Guerrero and Chris Benoit died respectively. Guerrero and Benoit were Jericho’s best friends in the industry all the way back from his WCW days. He did Eddie Guerrero justice when talking about him extensively near the middle of the book. The one part of the book I don’t agree with, though, is where he says that Chris Benoit should be forgotten about based on the double murder-suicide that ended his life. The way I see it, Benoit’s deadly behavior was not consistent with the rest of his life, which was decorated with entertaining matches and illustrious championships. For all the Chris Benoit fans out there, don’t take this as a sign that you should pass up this book. Chris Jericho’s life story is an awesome one and should be enjoyed by everyone who reads it. The witty descriptions alone are enough to put a smile on anybody’s face. But for all you future authors out there, take this as a cautionary tale, because Chris Jericho does something that is taboo in the literary world: he name checks celebrities. The only reason why he can get away with it is because of his popularity with wrestling fans. In the end, however, if you’re grinning from ear to ear and enjoying his references, it doesn’t really matter. Pick up a copy of “Undisputed”. It won Best Book of the Year in 2011 from the Wrestling Observer Newsletter, after all. Those awards are not easy to get.

　

***WRESTLING QUOTE OF THE DAY***

“I was once part of a band called T-Mobile, but we kept breaking up.”

-Jerry Lawler-

"The Death of WCW" by Bryan Alvarez & RD Reynolds

Like “Death Clutch”, “The Death of WCW” is for wrestling fans only. Somehow, I can’t imagine a literary genre nut being too enthused about reading a book dealing with a wrestling company from the 90’s. It just doesn’t seem…“multi-layered” enough! But for the rest of us who appreciate professional wrestling for the art form that it is, please pay attention. Would you like to know why WCW died the nasty horrible death it did? Well, I’ll start by saying that during the New World Order invasion in 1996, nobody would have seen the apocalypse happening from miles away. Business was booming, money was flooding in, and WCW was outperforming then-called WWF in leaps and bounds. But then it started to crumble all around the Eric Bischoffs and Vince Russos that took the reigns of the company. The main event stars were old and stale, the booking was selfishly done, the younger talent wasn’t getting the spotlight they deserved, and the screenwriting practices were downright atrocious. If you want some examples of what I’m talking about, listen to this. Remember “Stone Cold” Steve Austin? Before jumping ship to WWF, he was sitting in contractual purgatory with his career going absolutely nowhere. In WWF, he was a multiple time world champion, a huge star, and a Hall of Fame inductee. How about Chris Benoit? Yes, I dare say his name despite what he did during his final hours on earth. Benoit was also being smothered by the older talent to the point where he couldn’t get over. Since joining WWF, he became a World Heavyweight Champion and a massive star. The exact same story went for guys like Eddie Guerrero and Mick Foley, who were young, extremely talented, and thrived in WWF when they couldn’t do the same in WCW. You’d think that through the publication of this book, these same mistakes wouldn’t have been made again by any other company, right? I’d like to agree with that premise, but then we’d both be wrong. TNA has been called a modern day version of WCW with the horrible screenwriting and unprofessionally-run shows. I stopped watching TNA back in 2011 because it was making me depressed. Because of what happened to WCW and what will eventually happen to TNA, “The Death of WCW” should be in bookstores and libraries everywhere and it should be hammered into the skulls of every young wrestling star looking to make it in the world of professional wrestling. Not literally hammered, don’t get me wrong. They take enough bumps on the head already.

　

***WRESTLING JOKE OF THE DAY***

Q: What’s Daniel Bryan’s favorite System of a Down song?
A: KNOW!! KNOW!! KNOW!! KNOW!!