Just S'pose 9.20.06
Posted by Ron Gamble on 09.20.2006
The conclusion to the first two-parter in Just S'pose history!
Yes, I know this is really only my third column, but it sounds a lot more dramatic to say it that way.
Anyway, in football news, Brooke beat Edison (OH) 30-7, and Scott Victorio continued his running ways. Whenever he runs for more than 100 yards, Brooke wins. It's that simple. And the best news? He's a junior. The bad news? His brother, who is a volunteer assistant coach for Brooke, is a former linebackers coach for West Virginia.
Suddenly, I want Scott to go nuts this year and next, then suddenly take up fencing.
As for college, Pitt went nuts in the first quarter, leading Michigan State 10-0, and recovering an onside kick late in the quarter. Then, Michigan State started playing and scored the next 38 points. Pitt made it respectable by scoring two late touchdowns to lose 38-23, but those who watched the game knew better.
As for Monday night and the Steelers? Shut up.
This week, Brooke travels to Parkersburg South, Pitt hosts The Citadel, and the Steelers host Cincinnati in an AFC North showdown. I'm looking for another one of those 3-0 weekends, like I had two weeks ago, but I'm not sure. Parkersburg South is dangerous, Cincinnati is no longer the Bungles, and The Citadel... okay, I can't pull that one off with a straight face.
Let's go to The Watcher's favorite part of my writing.
KURT ANGLE: HE'S HARDCORE
By the time the announcement was made on ECW television, Angle had been training in the ECW Dojo for two weeks. He had become the best student, just as everyone expected, but his trainers had no idea just how fast he could pick stuff up. While most students were in training for a minimum of six months (those who stayed with it, that is), Angle made his debut two months later, in January 1997, at ECW Arena.
"You have been very patient," started Paul Heyman, "and you have been very kind. But tonight, the waiting ends!" The noise started as a low roar, and gradually built as the crowd started to realize what the big announcement was. "We announced his debut a few weeks ago, and since that time he has been in training. He told me backstage that, for the first time since his last match in Atlanta, he is nervous.
"Now, you and I know," Heyman continued, preparing for a big laugh line, "that wrestling in Atlanta is normally no big deal…" he paused and looked up slyly, knowing that the crowd that regularly gathered at ECW Arena was the "smartest" crowd in wrestling, and they did not disappoint him with the loud laughter and the inevitable "F*** You Bischoff" chants that were to follow, "…but instead of working for that waste of a company in CNN Tower, he decided to come here… to E! C! Double-Youuuuuuu!"
Heyman smiled while waiting for the "E-C-DUB!" chants to die down enough to follow up on that greatest of crowd-inducing chant lines. While they were the "smartest" wrestling crowd, they were also willing to be led to a conclusion, like an ox with a ring through its nose being tugged to the water trough. Heyman, right in the middle of his part-Barnum-part-Koresh act, knew they loved it, too, and waited just long enough before starting the next part of his sales spiel.
"This man was the hottest free-agent in professional wrestling. He could have gone to the big bucks in Atlanta…" – the crowd booed in the appropriate spot here – "… but he didn't. He could have gone to the big bucks in New York…" – more boos, as the crowd acknowledged their groupthink of Vince McMahon's company – "… but he didn't. Instead, he came to the one wrestling promotion that appreciates hard-hitting, hard-nosed, and, yes, hard core wrestling. Ladies and gentlemen, I am pleased to introduce…" – the crowd was reaching a rabidity rarely seen, even in the small arena in Philadelphia – "… the ONLY Olympic wrestling gold medalist to ever wrestle in professional rings anywhere in the world, from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania…" – some in the Philadelphia crowd weren't sure what to do with his hometown, and almost booed, but instead started cheering again – "… the Hardcore Olympian… KURT… ANNNN-GLE!"
The Olympic Theme blared over the loudspeakers as Angle made his way to the ring. With simple black boots, a red-white-and-blue singlet, a mouth guard, and a white towel, he made a very simple statement: I dare you to beat me.
Angle climbed into the ring, grabbed the microphone from Heyman, and started to talk. "I am Kurt Angle…" – he paused slightly, and turned his head toward the locker room – "…and I am the greatest wrestler in the world today."
The crowd, which hushed in respect when Angle grabbed the microphone, started oohing and aahing. They could sense where he might be going with his speech, but there was no agreement. Could he be preparing to accept the challenge from Taz? What about Sandman, the former ECW champion? Possibly Sabu, who was, after all, suicidal, homicidal, and genocidal?
"When I was here in October," he continued, "I was challenged by a few guys. One of them was named Taz…" – chants – "…one of them was named Raven…" – more chants – "…and one of them was named Shane Douglas." Now that he had named the three who dared to call him out before he had even agreed to join the company, there were cheers and chants of "AN-GLE! AN-GLE! AN-GLE!" around the ECW Arena.
"Taz, Raven, and Shane Douglas all challenged me, the best wrestler in the world. And I am honored to think that before I even have a match, I am one of the most feared men in professional wrestling." The crowd burst into applause.
"But, there's someone else in the locker room who I want to wrestle. It's not because I'm scared of the other three, but it's because I don't think they present much of a challenge right now." The audience gasped at the thought of an outsider lumping three of the best in the locker room as "not much of a challenge," like they were Hack Myers, Johnny Hot Body, and Mikey Whipwreck.
"Instead of going after one of them, I want a real challenge. So, I chall--"
"WHOA! HOLD IT RIGHT THERE, AMATEUR BOY!" Before Angle could finish calling someone out, Shane Douglas started yelling from the Crow's Nest, where he was sitting next to ECW announcer Joey Styles. "Are you going to stand there and tell me that I'm not ‘much of a challenge?' I've beaten everyone that's been put in front of me, I've ducked no one, and I've been the ECW Television champion for almost six months. I'm not ‘much of a challenge?""
Before Angle could answer, Raven started toward the ring from the front entrance, wearing his newly won ECW Title. "Shut up, Douglas! Did you just say you're not scared of me? It could be because you have no idea what you're up against!" Raven entered the ring and walked up to Angle, getting right in his face. "I am your worst nightmare, Angle, because what I know about amateur wrestling is that you can break any kind of hold with a bottle to the head!"
Then, before Angle could say anything to either Raven or Douglas, "War Machine" by KISS blared through the speakers, and a group of men clad in orange and black entered the arena. As Taz entered the ring, he was attacked by Raven, and the two of them fought at ringside. Meanwhile, Shane Douglas had made his way to the ring, and was walking up, when he was whacked from behind with Sandman's Singapore Cane. Sandman was swinging for Raven, but Douglas just happened to walk in the line of fire.
As the impromptu four-way dance raged at ringside, Angle stood alone in the ring and watched it all. The referees, Paul Heyman, Tod Gordon, and other wrestlers had come out to break up the brawl, and managed to get them all backstage, fighting all the way. Angle looked down at the mat, where he saw the microphone he dropped while watching the melee, picked it up, and continued.
"As I was saying, I want a real challenge. So, I challenge the one man that I think can take me farther than anyone else in the back. Rob Van Dam, get out here!"
The crowd gasped again, then started cheering when they realized they were about to see something special. It was a good thing ECW taped all their shows, because people would want tapes of this match for years to come.
Angle and Van Dam put on a twenty-five minute match that was part high-flying, part ground wrestling. Angle was lying prone on the mat while Van Dam leapt to the top rope. He went for the five-star frog splash, but as he prepared to jump, Angle sprung to his feet, caught Van Dam, and, using Van Dam's momentum, suplexed him overhead. Angle had won his first professional match. After Van Dam had struggled to his feet, Angle shook his hand in a sign of good sportsmanship and left the ring.
Angle's next match was against J.T. Smith, and he beat Smith in five minutes with the same move he used to beat Van Dam, calling it "The Olympic Torch." He kept working his way through the ECW locker room, and by the time of ECW's first pay-per-view, "Barely Legal," three months later, he had managed to work his way into the ECW Television title scene. His match against Shane Douglas, which many thought would be the main event, was instead the fourth match from the top. Angle beat his fellow Pittsburgher in eighteen minutes to win the ECW TV title.
Three months later, at Hardcore Heaven, Angle beat Taz to retain the ECW TV title in the semi-main event. Now, he was unstoppable. Before ECW's third pay-per-view, November to Remember, to be held in Monaca, PA (just outside Pittsburgh), he made a challenge to ECW champion Bam Bam Bigelow, even forfeiting the TV title to get the match. After a twenty-four minute match, Kurt Angle had gone from rookie to World Champion in less than one year.
He continued his tear through ECW, beating everyone in the locker room at one time or another. Instead of being upset that a rookie was the standard-bearer of the company, the entire company rallied around him, for many reasons. The biggest reason was, because of all the attention the company was getting, they were able to draw bigger crowds, which allowed them to get bigger paychecks. However, Angle was also very popular in the locker room because he was willing to share his knowledge of amateur moves, which allowed even their brawls to look more realistic.
Angle continued to reign as champion, but he had another effect on ECW: more and more wrestlers with solid amateur backgrounds came to the company, because they had seen how well one of their own had been treated by Paul Heyman. Dan Gable, one of Angle's coaches in the 1996 Olympics and an amateur wrestling legend, was brought into the company as a color commentator, to help Styles when the brawl had broken down into a ground-and-pound style. Together, they made the best announcing team in professional wrestling.
By 1998, Angle was still ruling the company, but it was a very different company than what he joined. Most of the brawlers, like Sandman, New Jack, and Axl Rotten, were gone. Balls Mahoney, originally seen as an amateur champion who liked swinging chairs, dropped the chairs from his matches and went back to the amateur style that was said to have made him a New Jersey high school champion. Old-school wrestlers who had not been around a ring for several years, like Bruno Sammartino and Lou Thesz, made guest appearances in the ECW Arena, telling the appreciative crowds that ECW was the home of "true professional wrestling."
In 1999, ECW was the number one wrestling promotion in the world, and other companies in the US had to make decisions to avoid closure. WCW decided to offer their entire roster a one-time offer to sign with another company, if they thought another company would have them. Meanwhile, booker Eric Bischoff announced, WCW was going toward a style of wrestling that was more a "battle for survival." Within six months, Sabu was fighting Kevin Nash for the WCW World title.
WWF owner Vince McMahon went another way, melding the ECW "strong style" with the characters that had brought them through the Hulkamania days. At WrestleMania XV, the Canadian Superman had beaten Rob Van Dam with his finishing move, the Sharpshooter.
While ECW was number one, WCW and WWF still had more money to pay their wrestlers, and that was what allowed them to stay afloat. Eventually, ECW's flagship show, "Tuesday Hardcore Television," had overtaken both WWF's "Monday Night Raw" and WCW's "Thursday Thunder" in the ratings, but in mid-1999, the ratings lead enjoyed by ECW had begun to erode. The crowd loved seeing Kurt Angle, but his almost two-year reign as ECW champion became so commonplace, it became – dare I say it? – boring. It was decided to go one of two ways: either have Angle drop the title, or bring in challengers from around the world. They decided to have it both ways, as Yuji Nagata, former IWGP Triple Crown champion, beat Angle at July 1999's Heatwave.
Kurt Angle, having the strain of holding up the company almost since his debut in early 1997, needed a break. He went home to spend three months with his family. Within a week, he was rushed to the hospital with chest pains. Having several family members die of heart attacks, he knew not to mess with chest pains. Fortunately, his pain was not caused by any heart problems. Unfortunately, it was because of a torn muscle in his upper chest. The doctors told him he may not need surgery, as long as he stopped training for two months. Angle sat for a month, then tried lifting weights. This time, the muscle would not hold, and he needed surgery, which kept him out of the ring for six months.
When Kurt finally returned to ECW in early 2000, the plan was for him to finally get his long-awaited rematch with Nagata. In his return match, against a young wrestler named Bryan Danielson, Kurt went for a move he called "The Olympic Slam," and ended up landing awkwardly on his neck. He tried to roll over for the cover, but could not move. Medical personnel came quickly to ringside, placed him in a neckbrace, and transported him to the hospital. While there, the feeling returned to his arms and legs, but he was diagnosed with two broken vertebrae. After surgery to repair the discs, he was sidelined for another nine months.
While he was gone, the wrestling business continued to evolve. WCW singed a deal with Mexican company AAA, and brought the Lucha Libre style to the United States. WWF, meanwhile, went more toward a "soap opera" type of product. ECW, meanwhile, stayed with the pro-amateur hybrid that made them the number one company in the world, and even joined with Japanese companies NJPW, IWGP, and WAR.
In 2001, all three major companies in the US were in the "high" points of the business cycle. ECW had decided to give Bryan Danielson the "crippler" gimmick, fudging the real history of how Kurt Angle had broken his neck by saying Danielson had somehow countered the Olympic Slam by twisting his body just before impact. He then went through the entire locker room, getting what had become known as "the Angle Push." He beat ECW champion Shane Douglas (who beat Yugi Nagata in February 2001 in Vancouver, BC) at Living Dangerously 2001 to win the title, "breaking" Douglas' arm. The build-up began again, as Angle's neck-breaking move was replayed over and over on ECW television. Angle beat both Tito Ortiz and Mark Coleman on his way to the rematch with Danielson, and won the title back in a forty-five minute war in ECW's first appearance in Mexico.
Kurt Angle's second title reign was a little more dangerous than the first, simply because of the risk of reinjuring his neck. He beat most people with ease, but had an epic match with Rulon Gardner when they had a Greco-Roman rules match. Gardner became the second Olympic gold medalist to sign with ECW in late 2000, after successfully winning his second gold. Angle agreed to meet him under Greco-Roman rules, with a later match under normal wrestling rules to follow the next month.
Thirty-two minutes into the match, Gardner went for his own version of the Olympic Slam. Angle tried to counter it, but instead of sliding off Gardner's shoulders harmlessly, he somehow twisted his body and slid down Gardner's back head-first. Angle landed awkwardly, and knew at once his career was over.
He had broken the same two vertebrae, but this time, surgery did not completely repair the damage. In January 2002, five years after his career began, he returned to ECW Arena one more time to announce his retirement.
ECW continued to survive, but with no hope of Angle ever returning to the ring, their stranglehold on the ratings loosened. WCW and WWF, because they were forced to adapt to different circumstances, managed to take some of the audience from ECW, and in July 2002, all three organizations were in a ratings dead heat.
Kurt Angle never stepped in a wrestling ring again. His career, minus injury time, lasted just under three years. But his impact was felt by professional wrestling fans and organizations for many years after.
I NEED A HANKIE...
Again, just shut up, okay?
Next week, we leave Kurt Angle and ECW to look at another alternative history. "Just S'pose... WrestleMania I failed miserably."
