That Was Then, Is This Too? 08.25.09: The American Dragon and The Canadian Crippler

Welcome back to another installation of That Was Then, Is This Too?, the column that was completely rewritten on Monday night due to the shocking developments that reached me a few hours late due to timezone-related shenanigans. Of course that doesn’t mean we won’t start off with comments.

You sure don`t see many superheavyweights anymore. Bundy, Akeem, Vader, Bam Bam, Uncle Elmer, Kamala, Monsoon, Tugboat, Earthquake…so many are dead now, maybe that`s why there are so few similar builds in WWE now. Also, the mobility is an issue- the slow, plodding offence is not that exciting to watch.

Posted By: FUZEY (Guest) on August 18, 2009 at 05:23 PM

I think that this is mostly due to the fact that over the last fifteen years or so, wrestling has gotten a lot more ‘serious’, with a lot less room for sideshow acts. Even Kahli, the last true giant to make it to WWE, has a history in bodybuilding, giving him a very different look from most conventional giants.

I must confess to being a complete and utter Vader mark.
Vader actually provided me with my earliest wrestling memory. One Saturday afternoon when I was about 5 years old, my Dad was casually flicking through channels and happened upon some WCW program or other, just as Vader was being prevented by the referee from performing a moonsault on Sting. I remember thinking how on earth would anyone survuve a monster like that landing on you from so high?
I had nightmares about Vader for months following that one short clip.

I see a lot of similarities in Kong (maybe it’s why I like her so much as a performer), and I hope there are children somewhere waking up in a cold sweat anticipating the crushing force of Kong crashing down on them from above.

Posted By: smithy84 (Guest) on August 18, 2009 at 05:28 PM

I can imagine there are children having nightmares about Kong crashing down on them from above, but if there’s anything the internet has taught me, it’s that there’s probably an equal amount of confused young men masturbating over the same.

“As hard as Punk has been pushed lately, I simply don’t think he’s ready for Taker in a Cell. It would certainly make for a huge win for Punk if he did pull it off though”

I’m calling it now. Punk to end ‘taker’s streak at Wrestlemania!!!!!

Posted By: mrfish (Guest) on August 18, 2009 at 06:10 PM

I think that at this point even the most diehard ROHbot would cringe at the thought of Punk beating Undertaker at WrestleMania.

Vader was so dominant during his WCW run that when Cactus Jack defeated him by countout during their WCW Saturday Night match, it was considered a huge upset. Let me repeat that. Vader was so dominant that defeating him by COUNTOUT was considered a huge upset, even with the help of the steel rails at ringside! I totally marked out when I watched that on Foley’s DVD. It’s one of my favorite all time matches because of the brutality and the upset factor.

Posted By: Andis (Guest) on August 18, 2009 at 08:59 PM

Yeah, I was so glad they included the full match in one of Foley’s DVDs. It’s just one of those matches that’s perfect if you need to convince someone that professional wrestling is more real than they’d like to admit.

Watching Vader in action you couldn’t help but wince in sympathy for the poor guy that had to face him as the way he just manhandled everyone that was put in his way be it his forearms, his chokeslam, his vader splash, his vader sault, and especially his vader bomb. And he just wasn’t a big brute, he could move like a cat when he needed too against others who tried to stay away. He was stiff yeah but unlike Hardcore Holly he took care of his opponents making sure not to do serious damage to them as one time he was very upset when he accidentailly broke a guy’s back (It should be on youtube.) and if you stiffed him back and took the fight to him you would earn his respect.

Posted By: Michael (Guest) on August 18, 2009 at 10:09 PM

I think there’s a whole host of severely injured jobbers that would beg to differ about Vader taking care of them. I think Vader could easily have toned down his stiffness a bit and still be over like rover as a monster.

With regards to Awesome Kong’s opponent what about Tara/Victoria? If they built her right that would be a great match…

Posted By: AH (Guest) on August 19, 2009 at 07:29 AM

To be honest I hadn’t even thought about Tara as a possible opponent for Kong, but I guess they could pull it off, if they’re willing to give them as much time as they gave Kim and Kong of course.

With that out of the way, it’s time to move on to the column! Banner!

That Was Then, Is This Too? – The American Dragon And The Canadian Crippler

Before we start off, I’d like to insert a small disclaimer here regarding Chris Benoit. It’s been two years since the horrible murder/suicide events, and I’d like to think that at this point I can write a column about Benoit as a wrestler without catching flack for it. Obviously he’s a horrible person and the wrestling world is off worse for what he did, but regardless of what Benoit did as a person, his achievements as a wrestler can’t be denied.

It was way too early on Monday morning, after having caught only a few hours of sleep due to watching Summerslam, that I caught the news of Bryan Danielson agreeing in principle to a WWE contract. After wrapping up his indy commitments, which will most likely be done by the end of September or the start of October, Danielson will be checking in at Florida Championship Wrestling to be converted from the best independent wrestler in the world to, hopefully, the best sports entertainer in the world.

Of course a lot of people are skeptical about Danielson’s chances at long term success in WWE. After all, their track record with indy wrestlers is spotty at best. While Evan Bourne and CM Punk have found success, other big indy names such as Ace Steel and Colt Cabana were released long before they ever got a proper chance to show what they could do. With Kaval (Low-Ki/Senshi) set to return from a serious knee injury and Danielson about to make his FCW debut, FCW will be a very interesting place to watch for independent wrestling fans.

Of course this isn’t Danielson’s tango with WWE’s developmental system. Fresh out of high school, with most of his experience coming from backyard wrestling, Danielson signed on with Shawn Michaels’ Texas Wrestling Academy to receive his first real training. During his time there he met with many future WWE superstars, including Lance Cade, Paul London and Brian Kendrick. For the next few months he would tour the country, until he was signed to a WWF developmental contract and assigned to Memphis Championship Wrestling, where he remained until he was released from his contract when WWF moved its developmental territory to the Heartland Wrestling Association.

After being released from his developmental contract, Danielson would go on to become one of the “founding fathers” of Ring of Honor, competing on most of the company’s shows throughout 2002 while also working in several other American and Japanese promotions. Then in 2003 came his second attempt to get a foot in the door with WWE, this time as enhancement talent on the secondary shows Heat and Velocity. One of his most famous matches from that period was against John Cena, a clash between the future of sports entertainment and the future of independent wrestling:

The match starts with Danielson controlling most of it with the standard indy arm wringers, and there’s even a pretty cool spot where Cena forces him into a pin off a Greco-Roman knuckle lock, only for Danielson to bridge out and sucker him into a monkey flip. Then right in the middle of the match Cena just hits a huge clothesline, and from there takes control with high-impact power based offence. It was a perfect display of the difference in style between ROH and WWE, packed within a four minute match.

Danielson never got his WWE contract however, and soon went back to touring for ROH and Japan, developing the in-ring skills that eventually allowed him to claim the moniker of “best in the world”. When he captured the ROH World Championship from once and future WWE superstar James Gibson, he ushered in one of the most exciting eras in ROH history, taking on all comers and planting the seeds for his legendary on again, off again rivalry with Nigel McGuinness. He would hold the ROH title for over a year, finally dropping it to Homicide before taking off time to heal some lingering injuries.

Over the years Danielson developed the Best in the World moniker into one of the most recognizable gimmicks of the indy scene. While he was never strong on the mic, he still managed to get himself over through the sheer intensity of his work in the ring, with a little help from The Final Countdown as his awesome entrance music. Danielson is a small man, probably the palest wrestler working today and not muscular by any stretch of the imagination, but when you get in the ring with him, you know you’re about to get stretched out in ways you previously thought impossible and/or, as the crowd often likes to remind you, “going to get your fucking head kicked in”.

That Was Then…

About twenty years earlier, there was another relatively small, soft spoken wrestler that was making waves across American and Japanese promotions with a vicious technical style. After training in the Hart Family Dungeon, Chris Benoit made his way over to Japan, first as the masked Pegasus Kid and later as the unmasked Wild Pegasus, and soon became one of the top junior heavyweights in the country, even winning the inaugural New Japan Pro Wrestling Super J Cup.

During his time in Japan, he caught the eye of Paul Heyman, who brought him into Extreme Championship Wrestling. Although Benoit had made a few appearances in WCW as part of their talent exchange with NJPW, this was his first extended stint in a major American company. It was in ECW that he would be rechristened as The Canadian Crippler, following an incident where Sabu broke his neck after botching a bump off one of Benoit’s suplexes. Even though Benoit was devastated at the thought of having crippled someone, Heyman insisted on turning him into the ruthless crippler that had no regard for the health of his opponents, a gimmick that stuck with him in various degrees throughout his career.

In 1995 Benoit made his jump to WCW. Unlike many ECW wrestlers debuting in the company at the time, he was actually brought in through the WCW/NJPW talent exchange program in stead of Bischoff’s attempt to sign anyone and everyone who had spent any significant time in ECW, and unlike many of his ECW colleagues he only spent a few weeks in the cruiserweight division before moving up to the heavyweights as part of the newly reformed Four Horsemen.

Being associated in any way, shape or form with Ric Flair and/or the Horsemen should be a huge boost to anyone’s career, but like many others Benoit found himself frustrated with locker room politics time and again, which is why he jumped ship to the WWF the day after winning the WCW World Heavyweight Championship, taking the equally frustrated Eddie Guerrero, Dean Malenko and Perry Saturn with him. Even though they started out as a minor stable Benoit was quickly thrust into the WWF title picture, even winning it on several occasions only to have the decision overturned.

Benoit truly flourished in WWF/E, with Angle as the perfect opponent. They had an on again, off again feud that lasted over three years, with many excellent mat-based wrestling matches and even an interesting run in the SmackDown! tag division when it was glowing hot. Even though he didn’t win a world title until 2004, he was still involved in many memorable matches, and clearly given the appreciation he rightfully deserved for the ruthless intensity he brought to the ring time and again, both when fighting for the title and when grooming guys for their future in the company, as was the case with his last major program, the feud over the United States Championship with MVP.

…is this too?

At this point I have to note that it is surprising that Danielson even made it to WWE, considering that with the demise of ECW and WCW, there is now a huge gap between independent wrestling and mainstream wrestling. Still, Danielson has worked hard for years and now we can start rooting for Punk vs. Danielson as the main event for Wrestlemania 28. Of course Danielson still has a very long way to go, but a writer can dream…

Still, the similarities between the career paths of Danielson and Benoit are obvious. They both received training from absolute legends (although Michaels’ credentials as a trainer would probably be more impressive if he hadn’t returned to fulltime wrestling in 2002), and both had major success as junior heavyweights over in the land of the rising sun, with styles that perfectly suited the tastes of the Japanese audiences. Of course one has to remember that being a junior heavyweight in Japan is nothing like being a cruiserweight in America, as Japanese junior heavyweight divisions form highly appreciated parts of their rosters, with matches going on for 30 minutes or more being the norm.

I think that at this point, calling Danielson a modern age Benoit would be a very fair comparison. Although Danielson borrows heavily from MMA, both men have a very physical submission arsenal that more than makes up for any shortcomings they may have in the mic skills department. It takes an extreme amount of talent and dedication for a wrestler to get over purely through their in-ring performances, but Danielson and Benoit have both achieved this in their own way.

Time will tell if Danielson’s transition to the WWE style of wrestling will go smoothly. Many thought that Colt Cabana would have been a perfect fit for sports entertainment, but he got the axe simply because the creative department couldn’t think of anything for him to do. Furthermore, where Benoit came into the company with years of national exposure already behind him, Danielson is still a relative unknown to 99% of WWE’s audience. However, with WWE’s growing emphasis on smaller wrestlers and the success of CM Punk, as well as Danielson’s unbelievable amount of raw talent, I’ll be going with cautious optimism for the time being.