Shining the Spotlight 5.05.06: Wrestling Cities, Philadelphia's Importance and Mark Out Moments

Posted by Michael Weyer on 05.05.2006

Why some cities mean more than others to wrestling, Chicago and WM XXI, Philadelphia's importance for both ECW and TNA and my all-time favorite mark-out moment.

So all the talk this week has been about the new ECW and whether or not it can survive. I'm going to try to be a bit optimistic about its chances. As I recall, no one gave TNA more than six months when it debuted and that was almost four years ago. And this is a promotion with a proven brand name and McMahon able to offer money to woo back even the more reluctant of past players.

This leads to the question of where it will be held. To me, the biggest test for this new ECW is whether or not the Philadelphia fans will accept it. They could easily welcome it back like the fans in NYC did for One Night Stand. Or they could completely crap all over it. Lord knows, they have that history.

As the old saying goes, whoever named Philadelphia "the City of Brotherly Love" never attended a sporting event there. This is a town that will cheer opposing players who suffer career-ending injuries, who will blast fans of opposing teams and will turn on their heroes in the blink of an eye. Just look at Terrell Owens.

That extends in a major way to wrestling. One of the most famous examples was Halloween Havoc '89 when the Dynamic Dudes, pushed as big babyfaces, took on the Freebirds. The Dudes were booed for every move. I mean, literally, the fans booed every move they made and the Freebirds were hailed as heroes.

And of course, there was Halloween Havoc '92 with the disastrous "Spin the Wheel, Make the Deal" Coal Miner's Glove match between Jake Roberts and Sting. The fans basically shit on that and the entire card to boot. Not that the card wouldn't have been booed elsewhere (The Barbarian was in the World title match) but the Philly fans were particularly venomous.

As Paul Heyman said on the "Rise and Fall" DVD, ECW couldn't have been born anywhere but Philadelphia. It's telling how I've read interviews with the likes of Raven who say that, despite what some wrestlers say now, at the time, the ECW workers hated some of those fans, especially the ones who began the "you fucked up!" chants. That heat, in my mind, added to the intensity that made ECW so unique.

So if the fans in Philly can accept the new ECW, that's a sign it can work. It's interesting to note that TNA has also scheduled their own house show in Philly in June. That, to me, is a major test for TNA. A lot's been said how the X Division can appeal to the ECW mindset, which is true. However, it's up in the air how the antics of Jarrett, Sting, Christian and Steiner will work in front of the rabid Philly crowds.

All this talk has reminded me of a major point of discussion for the IWC after Wrestlemania, which was the reaction of the crowd. Booing Cena wasn't that surprising, of course, but there was also the way they backed Mickie James so much, with even Jim Ross having to comment on the cheers the psycho heel Mickie was getting. Everyone kept talking about how the crowd didn't seem to want to play by the rules and went against the expected reactions.

Me, I wasn't surprised at all. It's not like it hasn't happened before with Chicago.

Think about it. The last Wrestlemania in Chicago was 13, in 1997. I happened to be in attendance at the Allstate Arena (then known as the Rosemont Horizon and it's the only WM I've been at personally) and I can tell you, the crowd was ready to go against what the WWF expected. Everyone knows of course about Austin/Bret and how it turned Austin into the mega-face. Less famous but even more important in the long term, however, was one of the undercard matches: Rocky Mavia defending the Intercontintal Title against the Sultan.

At the time, Rocky was a smiling, high-flying, ultra-babyface who had upset Hunter Hearst-Helmsley (back before he was just using initials) for the IC belt only a month earlier. WWF was really pushing him as a fan favorite and thus they were thrown when the crowds didn't warm up to him. That night, however, the Chicago crowd really let him have it, birthing the "Die, Rocky, Die!" chants. I wasn't one of them because, while I'm generally bad seeing who can be future superstars (HHH, Cage, Edge, Bret Hart, even Austin), I somehow suspected that Rocky had potential to be a huge star. Of course, I had no idea how huge or how it would happen. On that night, the seeds were laid for the transformation into the Rock.

Flash forward five years, the night after No Way Out and the debut of the NWO into WWF. Hulk Hogan came to middle of the Allstate Arena and ran down the fans, insulted them all, faced off against the Rock, still the most popular guy in wrestling at the time…

And the fans chanted Hogan's name.

In one of the few things in his biography you can take as absolute fact, Hogan talks about how thrown he was, that no matter what he did, the fans just kept cheering him on. Sure, WM at Toronto was a big shift but it was in Chicago that everyone knew the expected Hogan heel angle was not going to work.

So Chicago has a history of bucking the expected when it comes to wrestling crowd reactions. Perhaps that's because of the city we are. Maybe we're not as extreme as Philly but we too have a tendency to turn on our teams at a moment's notice. When the White Sox won the World Series, so many guys were singing their praises and how they never gave up on the team or its dream…the same guys who were running the Sox down as dead and buried when they hit a slump in September.

It's also why TNA's actions with the White Sox seem to work. In any other city, the idea of a manager smacking a guy with a chair because he intruded on spring training would be too wild. But when it's Ozzie Guillen, well, half of the fans here actually believed this was for real.

We're a town of contrasts, we always have been. We get annoyed when people only think of us as Al Capone's town, yet Capone tours flourish. We trash the Bears as bad, yet are willing to pay millions to renovate Soldier Field for them. Two teams (one in the short-lived World Football League, the other our current pro soccer team) have each taken the name of the Fire. Think about that. Two teams have named themselves after the greatest disaster in the city's history. So it's not surprising that we have different tastes than other wrestling-centered towns.

Jim Crockett didn't understand that in 1987 when he made one of the biggest mistakes of his life by holding Starrcade here. For one thing, he was apparently unaware that Chicago is a union town so costs just to put up the ring doubled. Second, he ended up at the UIC Pavilion. That's University of Illinois, an inner-city college, which automatically made the NWA look second-rate. The bigger problem was that the Southern booking mentality was not suited for up north. The one match that the crowd was really behind, the Road Warriors versus Anderson & Blanchard in what everyone thought was the for-sure Warrior title win, ended with a "Dusty finish" that allowed Anderson and Blanchard to retain. Dusty booked himself to win the U.S. title from the younger and more athletic Lex Luger in a 40 minute cage match that was about 35 minutes longer than the crowd wanted. And then the main event of Ronnie Garvin vs Ric Flair for the NWA title. In the usual Crockett territories, Garvin was the face, Flair the hated heel but Flair's high-style act was tailor-made for Chicago and so he came off the mega-face. Starrcade, a show that had traditionally done quite well in the Crockett-run South, pretty much bombed in front of the Chicago crowds.

A year later, Verne Gagne made the same mistake when he had Superclash III run out of Chicago. This was going to be the culmination of the efforts throughout the year of the AWA, World Class and CWA to work together in inter-promotional matches, highlighted by AWA champ Jerry Lawler facing WCCW champ Kerry Von Erich to unify the two titles. The feud had done tremendous business in the South, particularly Texas and Tennessee and had given all three promotions new life. So for God knows what reason, they decided to have the big PPV blow off in Chicago in the middle of December, an area where coverage of AWA was low, coverage of WCCW was insignificant and coverage of CWA was nonexistent. The result: barely 1,000 fans showed up for a disaster of a card highlighted by a cheap "halted due to blood loss" win for Lawler.

I mentioned how big a mistake Crockett made with Starrcade in Chicago. A reason was that the fans of Greensboro, who had hosted the show in its first four incarnations, had thought they played a huge part in its success and were not at all happy about it being moved. To them, it was like having the Red Sox decide to hold their home games of the World Series at Yankee Stadium. It should be noted that one thing Crockett always did right was to make sure to keep Ric Flair happy because the Carolinas were always behind Flair, even as a heel. It was a fact that the people who took over WCW, from Jim Herd to Eric Bischoff to Vince Russo, could never get their heads around and it cost them dearly.

Another mention should be made of Lawler, who to this day will still get a monster pop whenever he comes to Memphis. That's because for two decades before he became a goofy announcer, he was the true King of wrestling in Memphis. That was shown to be true in 1993, when he was feuding with Bret Hart. Naturally, in WWF, Lawler was booed and Bret cheered. However, when Bret came down to Memphis, he was the heel and Lawler the face. I do suspect Bret had that in mind when he came up with his "Canadian hero" gimmick in 1997.

There are other cities that have that unique aura. I don't think it's a coincidence that TNA decided to move to Orlando. Maybe it's the tourist atmosphere but Orlando has always had hot crowds. Witness the amazing chemistry at shows like the 1990 Royal Rumble when Hogan and the Warrior first went at it. That has really come to the fore with TNA as the PPVs have almost always had some great crowd reactions.

However, a promotion cannot live by one city alone. And that brings us full circle as TNA is beginning to extend outward. The Detroit show was a success but Philly will be the true test. Indeed, with TNA and ECW both setting their sites on the town, not to mention the next Hardcore Homecoming, Philadelphia is going to show how they can effect wrestling all over again. To paraphrase the old song, when it comes to wresting, if you can make it in Philadelphia, you can make it anywhere.



We all have our mark-out moments, don't we? The moments that we cherish even today, that we can watch over and over again with that same thrill. I'm planning to spotlight some now and then and feel free to throw your own my way. So, starting off with my personal favorite…

SummerSlam 88, August 29th, 1988, Madison Square Garden.

People today complain about JBL being WWE champ for so long. They complain about Jeff Jarrett being NWA champ so long. Believe me, those are nothing compared to the fifteen months fans spent seeing the Honky Tonk Man reign as Intercontinental Champion. This was a comedy worker at best who made JBL look like Ric Flair. He was arrogant, obnoxious, always got himself disqualified to keep the belt, even the fans who normally cheered the heels couldn't stand this guy. And yet he remains the longest-reigning IC champ ever.

Honky had been feuding for a while with Brutus Beefcake, who had come close but no cigar to winning the belt several times. Going into SummerSlam, they were set to lock up again but Beefcake was attacked by Ron Bass, who cut him open on TV with a spur, forcing him out of the contest (this was back in the days when a wrestler could be bloodied and not be perfectly fine the next night).

So at the inaugural SummerSlam, HTM came out with Jimmy Hart, doing his usual routine of dancing in the ring like Elvis as everyone waited for his opponent. Howard Finkel announced a challenger coming out, but no one did. HTM grabbed the mike and openly said "Get me somebody out here to wrestle, I don't care who it is!" He went back to his dancing as everyone waiting, buzzing but not that excited.

And then the music began.

Back in 1988, you didn't have wrestlers suddenly announced by their music all the time. Hell, not as many wrestlers even had their own music. But this was different. This was a pounding rock beat of guitars and drums everyone knew and the crowd were instantly on their feet. Honky and Hart looked around, thrown as the camera showed Howard Finkel being the first to see the figure rushing out of the dressing room area: The Ultimate Warrior.

Howard didn't even get past "Weighing in at…" before the Warrior hit the ring and sent him rushing out, Hart following. Honky Tonk threw a punch, which would be the only move, offensive or defensive, he'd make in the entire match. Warrior blocked it and hammered him with a trio of punches that sent Honky down. Pumping his arms, Warrior followed it up with a bodyslam and, after running around the ring, a flying shoulderblock. He then nailed Honky with a clothesline, ran off the ropes and splashed the fallen man, wrapping his legs up as the referee rushed to make the pin.

As Hebner's hand came down for the third time, Madison Square Garden erupted into one of the biggest pops I've ever heard. The entire crowd were on their feet, screaming, waving fists and more, delirious at finally seeing Honky Tonk beaten. The irony was delicious: The longest reigning Intercontential Champion lost in (at the time) the shortest title match ever, a mere 30 seconds. Honky, still in his red Elvis suit, was dragged out of the ring by Jimmy Hart as Howard Finkel introduced the Warrior as the new champion and he celebrated, holding the strap over his head to the crowd.

Say what you will about the Ultimate Warrior but he deserves an everlasting place in heart of every wrestling fan for ending the debacle of the Honky Tonk Man's IC reign and sending HTM right back to the lower card where he belonged. It was Warrior's best contribution to wrestling and is still remembered all these years later.

Choke…I'm sorry…I just get so emotional when I think of the immeasurable favor the Warrior did the entire sport. The…the spotlight is off.


Next Week: The Spotlight falls on the wrestlers who may benefit from a face/heel turn.