Shining a Spotlight 9.22.06: Oh, Canada!

Posted by Michael Weyer on 09.22.2006

A look at the fans of the Great White North, why Canadians keep being presented as heels and my thoughts on who's really to blame for Montreal.

I'm sure this will be one of those columns that gets my mail bag filled up as I'm tackling a big subject. A really big subject. In literal terms of size, it's huge.

Canada.

I've been to Canada once in my life. Back in 1987, my parents (for reasons I can no longer remember), took me, my brother and my sister on a car ride from Chicago to the Great White North, stopping in Toronto and Montreal. At the time, I was surprised at how little difference there was between Canada and the U.S. They had McDonald's and Pizza Huts, shopping malls, the same movies playing in the States. If not for the money (and the fact that everything there seemed to cost at least a couple of dollars more), I would have thought we were in Wisconsin or Michigan.

My only other experience with Canada has been the World Showcase pavilion at Epcot Center with its 360 movie and Mountie and bagpipe entertainers. (And if you're planning on going to Epcot soon, I highly recommend the Le Cellier restaurant, excellent steaks).

One thing that stood out for me during my Canadian visit at the time was the fact that there were a lot more wrestling magazines on newsstands than in the States. Of course today I know the reason. Which is that Canada has been a wrestling hotbed since the middle of this century. Not only that, but they take it a bit more seriously than we Americans do. I'm not just talking the fan base but the wrestlers themselves. It's an interesting situation that I wanted to explore, especially given Unforgiven.

The huge pop for Trish Stratus was no surprise, she would have gotten that most anywhere but in her hometown, it was bigger. And Edge being the de facto face for his match with Cena wasn't too surprising. One thing that did surprise, both from Unforgiven and RAW is that after ten years, it seems fans are finally giving Shawn a break for screwing Bret. And I believe Cena deserves a lot of respect for going on fighting despite the fans being so against him and even playing off of that. It was an interesting showcase for how Canadian fans can be.

Some may be worried about my opinions given my rather critical views of Scott Keith in a column a few months back. First off, I am not judging the entire Canadian fanbase by Scott Keith, no more than a Canadian fan should judge all Americans by me or Larry Csonka or Dave Meltzer. I recognize that Keith can be a bit…extreme in his adulation of Canadian wrestlers and so I won't be holding him up as the mouthpiece for all Canadian fans (despite the fact that Scott himself often gives that impression).

A lot of the mentality of the Canadian fanbase has to do with the Canadian people. Now, I don't want to turn this into a big political argument but first off, Canada is not the ultra-peaceful, practically crime-free society so many of its residents may paint it as. The recent school shootings have only illustrated how the violent crime rate has been rising the last few years. Also, despite what Michael Moore will claim, the vaunted Canadian health care system is an absolute nightmare far worse than the American version. My mother, a teaching nurse for almost half her life, will certainly attest to that, with its massive red tape and refusal to pay for procedures that may take place outside of Canada.

Despite that, I will acknowledge that overall, Canadian history and society has been a lot less violent than American. While it'd be completely idiotic to say that there is no racism in Canada (that's just not possible), they get along better. Well, except for Quebec, of course, who have been pissing off the rest of the country for decades by insisting on making French their first language and trying to break off into their own separate country, despite how unfeasible that is.

The point of all this is illustrating that Canadians don't have a lot going for them when it comes to unleashing aggression normally so it comes out in sports. How else to explain hockey being the national pastime? So when it comes to wrestling, Canadians take it a lot more seriously than Americans do, trying to avoid stupid gimmicks and storylines and just concentrate on the action.

One of the best highlights of the Bret Hart DVD was its in-depth look at Hart's Stampede days, showing tons of action from the early ‘80's with Bret and Dynamite Kid among others. Stampede really set the bar for top wrestling in North America, not only with its powerhouse workers but also introducing various types of matches. It was in Canada that the ladder match was first created before Bret brought it down to the U.S. in 1992 (yes, WWE has painted it that the Michaels/Ramon Wrestlemania X match was the first ladder match in WWE. But in his autobiography, Michaels does give credit to Bret for bringing the ladder match over during their feud for the IC belt in '92).

Like Japan and Mexico, Canada has become a training ground for wrestlers who really want to learn the craft, whether native to the country or not. As such, the sport has become very serious business up north, something that promotions in the States have been made to recognize.

Vince McMahon was one of the first to see the massive potential Canada had and wisely forged an alliance with Stu Hart and Stampede. That led to the influx of several Stampede workers, most prominently Bret and Owen Hart. McMahon also ran several major shows in Canada, from a terrific 1986 Toronto supershow to Wrestlemania VI. When Bret won the belt from Flair, it was in Canada, to really get the fans going on Bret as champion.

WCW did not have that ability to break through to the North. To be fair, WCW was held back by the fact that it was born in the South and first attempts to tread north in the States such as Chicago and New York, were pretty disastrous. I don't believe it was until the arrival of Bret in 1998 that the company started to do Canada shows on a regular basis. Of course, being WCW, they failed to fully account for how things worked with Canadian fans and often pissed the crowds off on a regular basis.

Now you can't mention an article on Canada with talking about Montreal. It's a flashpoint in how different the fanbase can be in America and Canada, a major moment that I still believe could have been avoided had Bret Hart just made the right adjustments to his ego. The fact of the matter is, Bret shoulders a lot of the blame for what happened that night. If he had just done what Vince wanted and dropped the belt, so much trouble could have been avoided. Instead, he dug in his heels, wrapped himself in the flag to refuse and thus got screwed.

I admire and I respect the hell out of Bret Hart but I have never quite bought this idea that he's a massive national hero to mainstream Canadians. Scott Keith wrote in one book that Bret is on a level of Michael Jordan in Canada but as with so much of Keith, I think that's a more than slight exaggeration. If anyone is at a Jordan level in Canada, it'd be Wayne Gretsky. It appears that Bret himself seemed to buy into that mentality more than a bit. I'm not knocking him for being a bit full of himself because you're hard pressed to find a major superstar of wrestling who doesn't have that problem. But Bret, like Keith, believed that he was a symbol for the populace and that losing the belt in Montreal would be a massive blow to the collective psyche of the nation.

So many people have harped on Vince McMahon for what he did that night that it's easy to forget that Bret was always one of Vince's favorite wrestlers. Back in 1992, no one wanted Bret to win the title. A lot of guys with pull at the cable companies wanted Warrior, Pat Patterson reportedly wanted Rick Martel but Vince was the one who thought Bret could do it and gave him the shot. True, Vince would be sidetracked by his usual "big guy" love with Luger and later Diesel but he came back to Bret and truly liked the man. He did not want to end that relationship badly but Bret wasn't giving him a choice.

I know Bret had creative control over how he would leave. We all know he wouldn't be the kind of guy who would show up on Nitro with the WWF title and throw it in the dumpster or something. Vince himself probably didn't believe that either but he couldn't take the chance. At the very least, he knew Bischoff would be crowing over getting the WWF champion for WCW and that would have been a huge blow to the company, maybe even a mortal one. WCW had been riding high for so long, a lot of sane and rational people truly believed they would put Vince out of business soon. While we all now know how WCW completely ruined the big Hogan/Sting encounter at Starrcade, no one at the time knew it. They thought WCW would pull off this big pay-off show and drive WWF down further. Vince simply could not let Bret leave the company as champion and Bret should have understood that.

But Bret refused to drop the belt to Shawn and refused to do it in Canada. If you've read Shawn's autobiography, Bret came up to him before the match to explain it, actually saying that losing the belt to Canada would be a blow to the country. Not the fans, but the nation itself. It was because of that that Shawn himself told Vince they had to get the belt off Bret, one way or the other. Again, this was a major bit of hypocrisy that Scott Keith has shown as he has stated that as a WWF employee, Shawn should have just done the job and not argued with the owner. Of course, Bret's place as an employee was to do what the owner wanted to but apparently Bret is bigger than the WWF in Keith's mind. And sadly, it seems, in Bret's mind too.

Was what happened at the Survivor Series right? Probably not. Would Vince do it again? Maybe, given how it turned out to be just the thing to put WWF back on top but maybe he'd try to do anything else to avoid it. But the fact remains that Bret Hart should have understood how his leaving as champion was going to hurt the company that had helped make him a star and that he loved so much. He had to understand that dropping a title belt was not the same thing as dropping an atom bomb in the heart of Montreal, that it would not be a shocking blow that would rattle Canadian society to its very core. Had he done so, his last few years in the sport wouldn't have been as embittered as they were.

By the way, I know there's a growing mentality by many that Montreal was actually the greatest work in history, not the greatest shoot. That Vince, Shawn and Bret thought the whole thing up to get WWF back on top. Personally, I don't quite buy it (although I admit some of the evidence is compelling) as surely something would have leaked to have revealed it. The irony is that it's so ingrained in the consciousness of wrestling fans that Bret himself could come out and say it was all a work and few would believe him.

All that said, I have to say that given his comments on the DVD and the magazine WWE put out with it, Bret does seem to have let some of that bitterness go. Also, while it would have been awesome to see him as a referee for the Vince/Shawn match at Wrestlemania, you have to respect the fact that he's sticking with his vow to stay out of the ring. I'd like to think that time has healed some of the bitterness in Bret and the DVD allowed him to vent and get it out of his system. We can only hope that Keith and a lot of other Canadian fans can do the same.

What made the Survivor Series even more dramatic was the way Bret was presented before the show. The idea of going heel in America but still being a hero in Canada was truly unique for its time and got Bret over double than a pure heel or face turn would be. When the Brian Pillman DVD comes out, check out the match where the Hart Foundation takes on Austin, Ken Shamrock, Goldust and the LOD. The crowd is HUGE for the Foundation and except for Austin, none of the Americans are able to handle that heel heat. It's a trait that largely remains today, that it doesn't matter if you're a face or a heel, a Canadian wrestler in Canada will be cheered. It was an interesting shift in the usual "evil foreigners" angle.

That angle has been around since wrestling began and is likely to do so because it's so simple (if lowbrow). What better way to get the crowd going for a face than put him against a heel that represents a mentality Americans can't stand? For decades, Russians were the easiest targets but the end of the Cold War cooled that down. There was a brief push for Japanese heels like Yokozuna and also Arabs, despite how insulting that was. But as the 90's dawned, the idea of pushing Canadians as heels was something that started to take off.

One of the earliest examples was Jacques Rogeau as the Mountie, who would go around beating on guys with a shock stick and even had a two-day reign as Intercontiental champion. He would later form the Quebecers with Pieree-Carl Oueller who would hold the tag team titles several times in late 1993 and early '94.

WCW jumped on the "Canadians as heels" bandwagon with their Team Canada in 2000 when Lance Storm defended the U.S. title against Mike Awesome when referee Rogeau kept changing the rules to give Storm the win. The two hooked up with Oueller and Elix Skipper (who was actually American) to maintain dominance over WCW. Storm really got into it, as he held three belts at once----U.S., Cruiserweight and Hardcore----and renamed them, respectively, the Canadian Heavyweight Championship, the 100 Kilos and Under Championship and the Saskatchewan Hardcore International Title. He even placed stickers of the Maple Leaf flag on each belt, giving Skipper the Cruiserweight title and Ouller the Hardcore belt. They would feud with the Misfits of Action and add Americans Awesome and Jim Dugan to the ranks. When WCW went under, the entire angle was pretty much forgotten.

But in wrestling, all it takes is a little time and the same sort of idea will reappear in a new form. So when TNA began their World X Cup Tournament in 2004, Scott D'Amore brought in Team Canada. The first incarnation was "Captain" Teddy Hart and Tim Era, who would spend a lot of time slapping around Jack Evans, Johnny Devine and Petey Williams. Hart was let go from TNA after an altercation at a restaurant with CM Punk where Sabu of all people had to restrain them from brawling. Era was also let go in favor of Bobby Roode and Eric Young and this was the formation of Team Canada that took off. By the end of the year, Young and Roode were the tag team champs and Williams was X Division champ. As 2005 began, they'd lose both titles and Devine would be injured, bringing in A-1. Team Canada would dominate for a while, in the tag and X division ranks, although they'd never hold gold again. But they were still a power so it was a surprise that TNA announced they'd be splitting up. But it's given us the comedy gold of Eric Young so that's a good thing.

So why do promotions turn to Canadians as heels? Partly because of the attitude. As I noted before, Canadians take a lot of pride in being a more peaceful and yes, I'll say it, better society than America. True, a lot of the stuff they boast isn't really accurate but then we Americans like to pave over the bad stuff in our history too. That has led to a growing feeling that Canadians are, to put it bluntly, snobs. With such a sweeping generalization, coupled with Canada's legitimate excellence in wrestling, that has led to a lot of heel pushes for Canadians where they boast over how they're automatically better than Americans.

It hasn't always worked. Just look at the Un-Americans where Storm, Test and Christian would bad-mouth America and its policies which came off really too soon after 9/11. Sometimes it's best if you don't have the worker wrap himself in the flag as with Edge, who came in Unforgiven a mega-face and Cena booed mercilessly. But Cena played up to that, especially after he won, his body language telling the crowd "go ahead and boo, I've got the belt, I don't care what you think." Contrast that with Wrestlemania X8 when Hogan and the Rock were taken aback at how the Toronto crowd were so into Hogan and thus the whole match was thrown off a bit. They do love their hometown heroes, those Canadians and you can't take that away from them.

Of course, attitudes seem to be changing a bit in Canada, with news one of its major broadcast networks is no longer carrying WWE. There's also the fact that at Unforgiven, Michaels actually got some cheers, showing that after almost nine years, fans are finally starting to let Montreal go. Vince will still get it full blast of course but maybe some fans are starting to understand how much fault Bret had in what happened that night.

It is difficult for Americans to fully understand how it feels to be people from other nations because of the cultural upbringing. But I would argue the same applies to Canadians. So many times I've read writers from up North like Keith talk about American's feelings towards the military and 9/11, that we wrap ourselves in the flag too much. That may be true sometimes but with respect, it's pretty hard for someone not American to fully understand how 9/11 affected us. Just as it's hard for we Americans to understand how the bombings in London and Spain affected them, not to mention the Middle East problems.

I didn't mean for this to segue into politics. I just wanted to point out that there are some cultural divides between nations that may never be fully bridged. I'm sure some Canadians who read this may take offense at some things I say. I simply wanted to point out that with things shifting in wrestling, the Canadian fanbase is one of the most important international ones to get hold of. The trick is that the Canadians will so often forget the classic heel/face mentality and just cheer for whoever's Canadian, which can shuffle things up too much. You can't control a fanbase, we all know that, but many Canadian fans could use a little perspective to try and make sure angles work out right.

I admire Canada for being so passionate about the sport and taking it a bit more mainstream than the States do. And again, I can't fully fault them for cheering their own guys as patriotism in wrestling is a time-honored tradition. But I also say that Unforgiven shows a shift, maybe mild but maybe leading to bigger, in Canadian fans. Actually giving Michaels a break and letting him do his show rather than automatically boo him for something that happened nine years ago is a good step forward. They also seemed to give more of a shot at some matches that sounded bad like Kane vs Ugama and their boos actually seemed to help Cena out.

If WWE can find a way to tap that passion out and spread it around, they may see a new rise in wrestling's popularity. That's something the Canadian fans should be going for because WWE has long been the only American promotion that gives a crap about them so keeping that going would be a good thing. Bret Hart may act like losing the belt was a blow to fans but I remember how the NHL strike almost sent the country into shock. Lord knows what they'd do if wrestling dried up in the Great White North. Hopefully, they can keep that dark winter away for a while to come.



Some other good columns around:

Story Lines reviews a very nice ECW book I tackled a while ago, good review.

The Goodness asks if Vince is really smart or just lucky.

Julian counts down the Top 10 Gimmick Matches

Larry C takes an intriguing look at Ric Flair

Ron Gamble brings back Just S'Pose by asking what if Angle had debuted in ECW.

Don't forget Column of Honor, Hidden Highlights, 3 R's, Triple Threat and Fact or Fiction.


All for now. Next week, I take a look at some of the more famous families of wrestling. For now, the Spotlight is off.