That Was Then 8.04.06: Time To Pack It In

Posted by Stuart Carapola on 08.04.2006

We return to our regularly scheduled program this week, and talk about wrestlers who just hang on way too long. Guys who never lived up to the hype and their time has passed them by. Guys like Mick Foley, Christian Cage, and...AJ Styles??

Yes friends, real life has reared its ugly head these last few weeks, necessitating the unplanned running of a few things that hadn't been planned to have run for quite some time, but real life has tucked tail and run, at least for the time being, so it's back to our regularly scheduled program for now. But before we get to this week's feature presentation, let's hear what some of my readers had to say about Vince McMahon...and DRUGS.

Jordan Black:

I just read your follow up column - and all the heat you received. I think you are absolutely right. However, it may have beneficial to fulfill an additional point. Most of the drug use you mention is recreational - alcohol, street drugs, partying etc. Drugs for fun and pleasure. The other side of that coin is drugs as a necessity - the daily grind; wrestling everyday, traveling from city to city, wrestling when hurt so you don't loose your position. Too stiff to wrestle? take a pill. Knee bothering you? take a pill. No energy? Take this other pill. That opens up the door to abuse.

Is that Vince McMahons fault? Absolutely not. It's just the nature of the business - and no one going into the business can be naive enough to think otherwise - it's just part of the deal. It's similar to wanting to be famous, and then bitching when the paparazzi takes photos of you every time you leave the house. It's a package deal.


If your prosaically abusing your body every night in the ring, you're going to get hurt - period. It's all about how you handle your injuries. Like you said, no one is forcing pills or booze down your throat - and, no one is forcing you to be a wrestler.

Anyway - I felt that was one major avenue worth exploring more in depth - Excellent job on the columns.

Jeff Penta:

What you fail to realize is that VInce McMahon is responsible for a multi-billion dollar product. He has a commitment to the shareholders in the company to ensure their investment is maximized. The media is all over the WWE when news of deaths, drug bust or anything along those lines in the wrestling world are brought up. Vince's wellness program was implemented not only to clean up the entertainers, but also to ensure that the investors are comfortable with investing in the WWE. As much as we like to think, the WWE is not the same as it was and has moved to a truly global enterprise with smarter and clear cut business decisions. The wellness program is solely a business decision that serves two purposes: help clean up the wrestlers personal demons and to increase public relations for the good of the company.

Good column though. Your thoughts are well in your 1st ammendment rights and although I may not agree what you write some of the time, you do back it up with facts that support the topic.

Matt Schabl:

Just thought I'd drop a line regarding the lastest column. I must say that I agree with you completely. It's not Vince's job to babysit a bunch of grown-ass men and women who have functioning minds of their own. That's the problem these days: People refuse to take responsibility for their actions. Hey, if you're stupid enough to do it, then you're stupid enough to die for it.

HazMatt:

First off, to counter-balance all the other hate mail: I didn't read
your Owen Hart article, and I loved it. (There. That makes about as
much sense as the other letters you were getting.)

Regarding Vince McMahon and the institution of the WWE Wellness
Program: Did we ever actually hear that it was Vince McMahon's idea?
Also, here's why I believe it's in existence.

WWE has shareholders. While Vince and Co. may be the one's in charge,
there are many more questions that are asked and many that have to be
addressed. In addition, these individual contractors also represents
investments to the company. They use the names and likenesses of these
contractors to sell tickets and various merchandise. It is in the
company's best interest to extend the longevity and profitability of
these investments.

Furthermore, Vince still carries around with him ghosts from the
infamous steroids trial. After Eddie Guerrero's death, it is important
that he and anyone in the company try to create as much distance and
lack of responsibility as possible.

So, there are my reasons on why WWE has the Wellness Plan in effect.
1) Securing investments and 2) plausible deniability.

From a very...fired up Smitty:

I agree with you on the drugs and alcohol thing too, these are supposed to be grown men making grown up decisions but the problem is most of them are still basically little boys playing lets pretend, and believe themselves as children will, that they are 10 foot tall and bullet proof. Basically Vince is running a day care center for a bunch of spoiled little rich kids and can only watch them for a certain amount of time each day. Vince didn't come up with the wellness program for the wrestlers, he instituted it for him and his shareholders. Kinda hard to show the herd, as so to speak, if you ain't got the cattle. I agree, let em shoot all the steroids they want, let em shoot the shit till their nads are so shriveled their shootin nothin but millions of little corpses. Best they not breed anyway.

From Cyrus Krapf-Altomare, who is instantly on my favorite people ever list for being a Zork fan:

Hey there Stuart. I wanted to say good column this week. I agree with you 100% actually, about the wrestlers taking responsibility for themselves. Ricky Steamboatkept a family together during his career in the 80's and never got trashed on druigs. Neither did a host of other, more responsible wrestlers. What about Hogan? The man under the most pressure in the 80s? Was he a broken-down cokehead like the rest? No! He took some steroids, but has shown he did not take what he could not handle.

An interesting cross section of thoughts. The only reasoning given to me that I didn't lay out in my column from two weeks ago was the accountability to the stockholders. That's a really interesting angle that I didn't even consider, so thumbs up to those of you who chimed in with that one, and thanks to everybody who wrote in, agree or disagree. I'm really sorry if your letter didn't get printed, but if I printed everything, this column would have been like 20 pages long. But thank you and feel free to keep writing, I really do appreciate them all.

* * *

But let's move on, and this week we're going to talk about some wrestlers whose time has passed. The guys who had the potential to do something great, but never quite lived up to the hype they were, and have been stuck on a treadmill ever since. How many times have you seen it, a guy in his early 20s who had it all: he could work, he could talk, he could do it all and was absolutely CERTAIN to be the next big thing, but it never quite worked out? They may have all been very successful in their own way, but never became quite what many thought they had the potential to become.

Let's get started with something that the three of you who have actually been reading That Was Then since before the death column may recognize. Yes, I ran part of this before as a small blurb at the beginning of the NWO 1998 article, but I'm going to expand on it a bit.

Think back for a moment and remember that weird guy you went to high school with. The one nobody ever really paid much attention to while he was there, but once he was gone he became a sort of cult legend because of how charmingly goofy he was. He starts coming back to the school every so often because he has some friends who still go there and now that he's only there in limited doses, people actually get excited when he comes around. However, soon those friends graduate as well, and the only people who remember him are the kids that were in 8th or 9th grade when he was a senior. At this point he's more than just an old classmate that comes to visit every now and then, he becomes a veritable legend, the older guy that the kids have vague memories of, but not enough to remember all the stupid dorky stuff he did. They think he's really cool and funny and think the rare occasions when he lets them come get drunk with him are awesome.

But finally, those kids are gone too, and all that's left is the kids who are too young to really have any idea who he is. They wonder why this guy keeps coming around and trying to hang out with the cool kids . On top of that, he's quite a bit older than he used to be, and he's also gotten kind of fat. The cool kids won't come drinking with him anymore, and all the teenage girls who used to think he was the cute older guy don't think he's so cute anymore, he's actually really weird and gross. At this point, he's just coming back because he enjoyed the time after graduation when he was cooler than he could have ever hoped to be when he was actually in high school, but can't accept that the post-high school period of coolness is gone, and now he's really just a pathetic older guy facing an age he never thought he'd reach and is doing everything in his power to avoid facing up to the realities of his life in the here and now.

This, my friends, is the perfect analogy of Mick Foley's career. Sure, he was a terrific promo, but for many, many years he was seen as little more than a bump machine that could be exploited to put over the wrestlers that the bookers were trying to build as monsters, such as Vader in WCW and later Kane in the WWF. He did finally get some recognition shortly before graduation (or in his case, retirement) thanks to three straight weeks of him telling sob stories about how much his social life sucked as a kid, but even with his newfound popularity, Vince McMahon recognized that Foley was never cut out to be a long term World Champion, and that his title wins would be worth little more than a short term interest builder while the guys he was working against were killing time until they got to work Austin. You know who I'm talking about, Steve Austin...the cool kid that the weird guy hung around with all the time hoping that some of his social success would rub off on him, but always ended up as second banana, the comic relief that made the chicks feel comfortable around Austin so he could take them home and bang them while Foley sat in his room until 1AM playing Nintendo and masturbating to yearbook pictures.

I have no doubt that Foley fully intended to have wrestled his last match at No Way Out 2000. But he just couldn't stay away. He had done his time in WCW and ECW, but he truly felt in his element in the WWF, so after some time off he returned to do the Commissioner thing and somehow remained just as over, if not moreso, than he ever was while he was actually wrestling, and didn't have to take a single bump to do it. But when he left the WWF following Survivor Series 2001, that was it for him. Whenever he came back after that, it felt like nothing more than a fat has been showing up and pandering to the fans to make him feel like he still matters to somebody out there, and it also gave him a chance to promote his books. Apparently, the writing gig didn't work out too well when his books didn't have the full muscle of the WWF promotional machine behind them like Have A Nice Day did, so I guess in order to pay the bills he had to come back on board with the company. But by this point, it was not the Mick Foley we remembered from 1998-2000. By this point, it was apparent that his heart was no longer in it, and the man was simply there to cash checks. As great as he thinks his promos are, they just don't have the same fire to them that gripped the fans the way they did years ago, in part because he really can't back it up in the ring anymore. He's disgustingly fat and out of shape, which makes it very hard to really want to watch his matches. If you saw a tub of lard like Mick Foley getting ready to fight an in shape young kid like Randy Orton in real life, what kind of chance do you think he would have? Would you even bother making the trip to the parking lot to see Foley get his fat ass dropped? Of course not, and that's why nobody cares about him anymore. Not that anybody would even if he was in shape...I'd be willing to bet that a large majority of today's WWE fans don't remember his heyday, and have a hard time believing that this out of shape slob once held the same title that is now around the waist of Edge.

I'll tell you something else, it's beyond pathetic and just downright sad what he did at Wrestlemania with the flaming table. Foley, by his own admission, never had that big Wrestlemania moment that seems to define so many other careers, and wanted to do something special with Edge this year. Well, he can't be bothered to get in shape, he can't work a halfway decent match anymore without somebody like Edge or Orton carrying him, he can't cut a believable promo anymore, so he had to resort to the flaming table spot, and the flaming table spot alone in order to get his "Wrestlemania Moment". I've got news for you though...it really wasn't that great. Maybe it was impressive to some six year old kid in Dickhead, Iowa, but to many other wrestling fans, it wasn't that far out from anything we've seen before that it really warrants remembering. It may wind up on a highlight reel from time to time, but are you really going to tell me that this is of the same caliber as Hogan slamming Andre, Austin bleeding to death while locked in the Sharpshooter, Mike Tyson laying out Shawn Michaels...hell, even Kane kicking Pete Rose's ass? If it had happened six or seven years ago, it might have meant something, but Foley's name is meaningless now. Completely worthless, and so a spot that would have been huge if used for some young up-and-comer on the active roster became wasted on a sad attempt by a fat old man to get somebody out there to say "That Mick Foley, he's still got it."

And for what it's worth, Foley working the main event of Wrestlemania 2000 a month after he lost his retirement match was like showing up at your high school to visit on the first day of school the fall after you graduated.

* * *

Time for another analogy, and we're going to play the teenage angst angle again here. Have you ever known a guy who seemed to have it all: good looks, great personality, really smart…basically, the complete package that would surely be a hit with the ladies, yet for some reason it never seemed to work out? You know, just a really nice guy, the kind of guy that all the women are always saying they want to meet? But much to this guy's frustration, the chicks aren't attracted to him in quite the way they theoretically should be. And he tries, oh lord he tries, he tries to say and do everything he can think of to try and win over the ladies. He even starts changing things about himself that he'd rather not change in the hopes that the ladies will come, trying to become what it is that the women are actually going for, but that doesn't work either.

Time goes by, and he gets more and more frustrated and bitter. Here he sits, great guy that he is, yet for whatever reason just can't attract that nice girl that he knows has his name on her. Instead, he is forced to watch from the sidelines as the girls he wants reject him in favor of guys who are far inferior. Either they're into the dirtbag sex players who wear wifebeaters and gold chains and act like they're the baddest shit on the planet, or they're with some fat shabby loser who "understands them" or whatever. He doesn't care, because all it means is that he's not getting the girls who are going for these other jackoffs, and he probably doesn't want them after they've been with these guys anyway.

Finally, after way too much time spent watching others get the girls he wants, he instead decides to lower his standards. He meets a girl one day, and she's OK looking. She's got a cool personality, too. She's a little on the chunky side, but he can deal with that. She's been with a few dirtbags, but he can deal with that because she tells him he's the best thing to ever happen to her. It's nice to be appreciated, and even though she doesn't look quite like what he wanted, and even though despite her nice personality, she can get a bit obnoxious sometimes, he's much happier with this girl than he would have been with any of those other girls, who were probably too high maintenance for his taste anyway and ruined any appeal they had by running around with every other guy on the planet.

Or at least that's what he keeps telling himself. He pretends to be happy, and spends much of his time trying to convince himself that he is. But he still can't help it, every now and then he's at the store and he sees that jacked up asshole with a really pretty, nice girl and thinks to himself "why can't that be me?" He'll be out at the bar with his single friends, and they'll end up hooking up with hot chicks and he'll think to himself "why can't I get that?" As time goes on, he continually thinks that he's wasting his life with this girl, and thinks that he can do better, but he never does anything about it. He'll go to his grave telling himself he was happier that way, but if the right girl came along, he would have given it all up in a second.

That man is Christian Cage.

Christian has always been considered a talented guy. Once he and Edge got away from Gangrel, won the WWF Tag Team Title, and grew personalities, the sky was the limit for the two of them. Even though Edge was always viewed as the breakout star of the pair, Christian was well liked too, and was certain to be headed to the main events right behind his "brother". But it never quite worked out that way.

Sure, he spent a little time as the European and IC Champion, but for the most part, he's been buried in a firm midcard role and never truly given that chance to break out. Through it all: the DDP feud, the UnAmericans, the feud with Jericho, and even the Ass Cream Incident, Christian felt deep down that his natural talent and charisma was going to eventually carry him to the top, but was forced to sit idly by while everybody else came in and went right over his head to the World title programs. Scott Steiner, Randy Orton, Batista…they all came in and vaulted right over Christian's head to the top of the promotion, and don't think that this didn't eat away at Christian's stomach.

Finally, after being buried in title matches against both John Cena and Batista, Christian realized that it wasn't happening in WWE. So instead, he decided to lower his standards and headed to TNA, where he almost immediately won the NWA Title. He tries to convince himself that it's better than what he originally wanted. Sure, not as many people watch TNA as they do WWE, but it's still a World Championship…right? Sure, it's spent most of the last 13 years around the waist of glorified indy guys, but it's still the glorious and historic NWA Title…right? And hey, I'm the guy all the marks on the internet were pushing to get the WWE Title, so people do care…right?

Christian keeps telling himself this, and keeps going on interviews talking about how much better off he is in TNA as the NWA Champion, but you know that deep down, in his heart of hearts, you know he'd give it all up in a second to be the WWE Champion. Frustrated with his inability to cut it in the big game, he ran off to the minor league (and make no mistake, TNA is still the minor league) to become the big fish in a small pond. The same way he had to watch the jacked up asshole with the really pretty, nice girl at the store, he had to sit and watch Batista parade around Smackdown with the World title. The same way he sat there like an idiot at the bar while his single friends took home the hot girls, he had to sit there like an idiot while his own best friend Edge was pushed ahead of him to the WWE Title. You know he'd drop TNA like a bad habit in a SECOND if he thought he could be WWE Champion, but can you really blame him?

The only problem is that now that he's no longer NWA Champion, he doesn't even have the fat girl to keep him company anymore. Now what?

* * *

Our final story of the day is the story of two men, the first of whom is the man called Sting. Although many of you are probably familiar with Sting's tragic tale, I will briefly recap. Considered by WCW officials to be the prize of the UWF buyout in 1987, Sting became the only UWF wrestler to get any kind of sustained push once absorbed into WCW. Within a year he had won the TV Title and was taking World Champion Ric Flair to a 45 minute draw at the first Clash Of The Champions. He had it all: the look, charisma, and was a good worker to boot. The popular opinion was that there was no stopping this guy, Sting would be the top headliner and the guy to carry the company into the 90s and beyond, and it would probably happen sooner rather than later.

Unfortunately, he ran into roadblock after roadblock. He did win the NWA World Title in 1990 from Ric Flair, but a string of underwhelming challengers (including the infamous Black Scorpion) sent WCW into a decline during Sting's reign. House shows were way down and PPV buyrates were terrible. Finally, in an attempt to salvage Sting's career, the title was taken off of him shortly into 1991, and although he would go on to win two more World Titles in 1992 and 1993, he was still often portrayed as the plucky underdog who went into his matches without much of a chance. On top of that, it seemed that WCW officials realized his popularity and decided that he didn't need to be in main evnts to stay popular, so a string of other guys were given main event runs ahead of him, including Lex Luger, Ron Simmons, and Davey Boy Smith. They all bombed, and Sting was continually called upon to pick up the pieces when the flavor of the month inevitably failed, yet was never truly given a chance to run with the ball.

Things got worse for Sting when Hulk Hogan arrived in 1994 as Sting appeared ready yet again to take a shot at the top. Hogan bowled into WCW, stole all of Sting's thunder, made Sting one of his lackeys, and ran around with the WCW World Title, defending it once every two or three months while Sting was relegated to the US Title. Once Hogan turned heel and joined the NWO, the build started to an eventual match between Hogan and Sting, where it was generally assumed that Sting was going to come in, wipe the mat with Hogan, beat him for the title, and finally become the top guy he should have been years ago. Only it didn't work out that way: Hogan pinned Sting, fast count or no, and that was the final nail in Sting's coffin. He would never regain his credibility as a main eventer for the rest of the life of WCW. He continued to watch from the sides as other guys like Goldberg, Kevin Nash, and Bret Hart all came in and vaulted right over Sting and into the main event. When Sting announced his retirement following the final episode of Monday Nitro, there really wasn't anyone who blamed him. The guy had dedicated his career to WCW and, despite many lucrative offers from Vince McMahon, never considered jumping ship, choosing instead to stay loyal to the company that made him, and his career was forever ruined as a result.

Now the pattern repeats itself with our final tragic figure, one AJ Styles. Once considered the breakout star of this decade, Styles is in major danger of turning out just like Sting, and it may already be too late. This may sound like a ridiculous statement, but allow me to explain. Much like Sting was considered the diamond in the rough of the UWF buyout of 1987, Styles was considered by TNA and many of its fans to be the best of the young indy talent picked up by TNA when it began operations in 2002. Thanks to a string of excellent matches against Low Ki and Jerry Lynn early in the life of TNA, Styles became the talk of the town. He was an amazing athlete and able to work unbelievable matches, and the best part was that he was only in his early 20s. He pulled off some moves that people had never seen before, and he didn't appear capable of a bad match with anybody. Shortly after the start of TNA, he had won both the X-Division Title and the NWA World Tag Team Title, becoming the first dual champion in the company's history mere weeks into its existence. It wasn't long before he beat Jeff Jarrett to win his first NWA World Title. Much like Sting, there was no stopping him, Styles was already considered to be one of the top guys in TNA and would surely be the man to carry TNA through many of the coming years.

But then the problems started. He soon showed that he wasn't the best promo guy in the world, and despite his excellent ring work, was not put in a position where he was truly put forth as a legitimate main eventer, and even though he won the NWA Title two more times over the coming years, he was never anything more than a placeholder until Jarrett took his title back. After he lost his last NWA Title in 2004, he was moved back into the X-Division (strangely, at his own request) and would continue to be the best of the midcarders, just as Sting had been once Hogan came to WCW. His popularity was also generally accepted as a given by TNA management, and he would soon also be passed over for main event spots, as guys like Jeff Hardy, Kevin Nash, Monty Brown, Christian Cage, and eventually even Sting himself came in and were shot right into the main events ahead of Styles while he was left in the midcard trading wins and losses with Christopher Daniels.

Soon Styles was confronted with the Hulk Hogan to his Sting when Samoa Joe entered TNA. Once Joe made his debut, the focus completely shifted away from Styles and instead to the Samoan shooter, who steamrolled over everyone in his path, including Styles. Thanks to a series of decisive wins over both Styles and Daniels, Joe soon became the undisputed king of the X-Division, holding the X-Division Title twice and never actually being beaten for it. Joe has now moved into the main event scene and is almost a lock to be NWA World Champion within the next year. Styles, having been overshadowed by Joe, remained in the midcard, teaming with Christopher Daniels to win the NWA World Tag Team Title again. And even though the NWA World Tag Team Title is nothing to sneeze at, it is a far cry from the main events that he once seemed destined for until guys like Joe, Christian Cage, and Rhino started filtering into the promotion, and suddenly Styles was no longer the certain heir to the throne that he once was thought to be.

Will Styles recover? Will he be spared the fate of Sting, at one time considered to be the Chosen One, only to be left to twist in the wind when something bigger and better came along again...and again...and again...and treated like a jobber to the stars until his main event credibility is totally shot? Or is he instead destined to a lifetime of working third from the top while WWE castoff after WWE castoff comes to TNA and leapfrogs over him to the NWA World Title? Only time will tell, but hopefully the TNA bookers think a little more highly of him than the WCW bookers did of Sting. Otherwise, we're going to be sitting here in ten years watching Styles squash a flabby, t-shirt wearing Jeff Jarrett in the final match ever on TNA Impact, then go into retirement immediately afterward.

***

That's it for this week. Before I go, I want to give a shout out to my boy Ari Berenstein from Column Of Honor, who got the word out and did his part in saving Survival Of The Fittest, the coolest concept show of the US wrestling year. Fuck the Royal Rumble. I also want to mention he has some great thoughts on Samoa Joe and his place in today's ROH, and also pimp an awesome piece he wrote on how all of us are really just marks at heart whether we want to accept it or not, and did it in a way that was not the slightest bit derogatory or condescending. I can't do justice to it here, you really have to read it for yourself. You owe it to yourself to go check it out, and you don't even have to be an ROH fan to appreciate this one.

As always, all feedback can be directed to [e-mail]. See you in seven rotations.