Thoughts From The Top Rope 09.25.07: 411 Is Jericho!

Apparently, wrestling is doomed. Or at least, that’s what Phil Feltham would have you believe. As a fan of Phil’s work at 411, I have to respectfully disagree with what he has had to say in his most recent column. Wrestling is not doomed; on the contrary, it’s flourishing. For evidence, you only have to look at the buyrate of WrestleMania 23, a show that smashed all kinds of records only 6 months ago.

Sure, since then the world of pro wrestling has had the odd setback, most notably the death of the Benoit family and the recent “steroid scandal” that has implicated about a dozen WWE Superstars. However, it already seems as if the media circus that surrounded the Benoit tragedy has died down and I have no doubt that in a year’s time, all will be forgotten by those outside of the business. And while fans and performers alike will still remember (and always will) it’ll be viewed as the isolated incident it was and not a reflection the business overall. It’s a similar case with the steroids issue. Short term, the media gets to berate pro wrestling while a select number of stars are off TV for a few weeks. Long term, it’s nothing but good news for pro wrestlers and the business they work for. Just this week, WWE sent out a letter to ex-performers, offering advice and rehabilitation to those who are or have been suffering from drug or alcohol related issues, a classy move by Vinny Mac.

From this sentence onwards, you can forget about Hidden Highlights and MeeThinks because Thoughts From The Top Rope is the new Most Positive Article at 411Mania.com. And that’s starts right now.

I had to change my entire column this morning based on what went down on Raw last night; possibly the greatest thing I’ve ever seen (see, positivity!). It was brief so you may have missed it, but here it is.

Chris Jericho is coming back.

You might be thinking “what the hell, I saw no mention of Jericho!” and you’d be right, there was no direct mention of The Ayatollah of Rock ‘n’ Rolla, but it’s undeniable that this less than 20 second clips is eerily reminiscent of Jericho’s old matrix-esque countdowns and videos. But aside from that, there are more than a few links to Jericho in this video, albeit mostly indirect.

Some of this information is visible with a blind eye, other bits of it, not so much – which is where those geniuses in the 411 forums come in. But first, the obvious stuff…

Of all the numbers, letters and codes that are sprawled across the screen on that brief video, the one phrase that is repeated and stands out the most is “SAVE_US.222.” How is this a link to Jericho, you might ask? Well when Chris Jericho debuted in WWF in 1999 he claimed he had come to “save” World Wrestling Federation. This was a phrase he repeated often in his early promos and this could easily be a link to Jericho’s early WWF days.

By replaying the video in slow motion, rewatching and analyzing the codes, several interesting phrases jump out. One such phrase is “CD_VOLUME4_1.” For those who see no link, wikipedia and my own CD collection tells me that the first track on WWF The Music Vol. 4 is…

“Break The Walls Down!”

Coincidence? Maybe.

Here are a few other key phrases that are visible, followed by how they could be linked to Y2J.

CHAMP_HARD – Chris Jericho is a former WWF Hardcore Champion.

SMACK_BROUGHT1 – This one is a little shaky, but Jericho interviewed the first person brought over from SmackDown in the 2005 Draft Lottery, that being John Cena.

RAW_LOWER_DISP – I had to think about this one, but whenever Jericho brought out the Highlight Reel, a Highlight Reel logo was displayed in the lower left hand corner of the screen during Raw.

RAW_WAR_BUMPER – Again, this one is a little hard to explain. Though Jericho did often rearrange the old “Raw is War” slogan to Raw Is Jericho.

WM00_MATCH – Jericho wrestled Chris Benoit and Kurt Angle at WrestleMania 2000.

LIVEWIRE – Although I originally thought this had something to do with the old WWF show Livewire, further research tells me that on Fozzy’s self-titled debut album, they covered Motley Crew’s track Live Wire.

r/shara/catman/a_man/cat1/ – A lot of this means nothing to me but “catman” is interesting as Jericho used to wrestle under the name Lionheart. Lions are cats, if you didn’t know.

SUMMER_PROM – This could mean anything but several promos aired in the summer of 99 hyping Jericho’s debut.

RAW_REV_MAY2.action – Looking through some archives, Jericho won the Intercontinental Championship on May 2nd in 2000. However, this was at a SmackDown taping. The only other possible link to May 2nd is that it is The Rock’s birthday; Jericho debuted interrupting The Rock.

WM99_MATCH – The main event of this show was The Rock vs. Steve Austin… the two men Jericho beat in one night to become Undisputed Champion.

giga/flame_5.0.7OCT/action – This is interesting; WWE No Mercy starts at 5.00pm on the 7th of October. A possible return date? Who the hell knows?

These, on the other hand, I cannot link to Jericho;

WM99_PROMO
SURVIVOR_RF
TALENT_PRE
BAT_ASS_WEEK
JVC_FIX
KOR_Qualify13_60

It should be noted that some of these could be thrown in as red herrings.

Speaking of Red Herrings, there are a fair few clues pointing us in another direction. The “222” thing could be ambiguous as Cyber Sunday next month is WWE’s 222nd PPV. The video is very cyber-like, I’d have to admit so it could well be leading to that. Interestingly, Cyber Sunday is being held in Washington, DC, the same place Jericho had his last WWE Pay-per-view match in 2005.

However I can’t see it being anything to do with Cyber Sunday. Why the mystery surrounding it? And WWE rarely, if ever, advertises future PPVs before the upcoming one is done with.

However It does seem Jericho’s book signing tour overlaps WWE’s future live tours. Jericho will be touring for the next few months in promotion of his book, and of course WWE is constantly on the road. Check out the dates;

Jericho’s dates
WWE’s dates

It is worth noting that Jericho has no signings lined up for any Monday in the near future.

And for now, that is all I have. Some of this “evidence” could be coincidental and we’re reading too much into it, some of it just can’t be in there by mistake. Maybe WWE management is laughing at us all now, pleased with themselves for making us look like fools, wasting are time looking for non-existent links. Then again, maybe WWE has created one hell of a video package that very slyly indicates the return of Chris Jericho, and those of us who have found all these clues are simply geniuses… only time will tell.

But for now, join the hunt and help us discover the truth behind this mysterious video! Even if we’re completely wrong, it’s been one hell of a laugh trying to find these damn clues.

Apparently, I wasn’t the only one who made links between Y2J and the video. From Josh;

Hi,

I read the raw report you did and I think that cyber like teaser was for Jericho. The hidden text thing I believe said “save us” which if correct, I can’t see what else it’d mean. Finally!

And from Ben;

Just dropping you guys a line to let you know I went over the strange promo that aired on Raw tonight atdailymotion.com. If yuo go through it frame by frame it is mostley database screenshots from a possible WWE ran website, but one thing caught my eye. Only during one flash I saw the year 1999. Coincidently, that was the year Chris Jericho debuted. Figured I’d throw that at you.

-Ben

I hope you’re both right! Chris Jericho FTW!

And now for some feedback on what makes a wrestling fan! First up is John-Peter Trask;

Hi Daniel,

I was particularly interested in your article on wrestling fans this week because I wrote my Master’s Thesis on wrestling fandom. So, I was hoping you would indulge me a bit by letting me share some of the findings of my research.

First you ask “What defines a wrestling fan?” In their book “Soap Fans” C. Lee Harrington and Denise D. Bielby basically say that fans are invested in the continuance of the text. In other words I may enjoy watching episodes of CSI but if were taken off the air tomorrow I wouldn’t care, I’m not invested. However, take away my WWE and it would, in all seriousness, leave a gapping hole in my life. This is because being a wrestling fan (and in particular a WWE fan) is a major part of how I define myself.

Good point here, without wrestling I’d feel a great loss, at least for a while. If you’ve been a fan for as much of your life as I and many others have, you’ve gone through all the good and the bad and you feel connected to the show. It’s like an addiction – I’m sure there’d be some pretty sucky withdrawal symptoms if I lost wrestling.

Your search for tangible representations of fandom, like PPV buys, merchandise collection, etc. is interesting, because fans who engage in these activities certainly are fans; however these activities are simply expressions of fandom, not measurements. Any number of factors, from economic, to cultural, to just plain amounts of free time may restrict the fans’ abilities to express their fandom. Their lack of expressions do not mean they are less of a fan than any other fan, the lack of expressions only mean that they don’t care to, or can’t express their fandom in those particular ways. In addition each fan expresses his or her fandom in different ways and through different mediums. With the increased availability of the internet it is possible to be wrestling fan and not even watch a wrestling show.

I agree with you here, and this is something I kind of touched on last week. I think if you do buy shows, watch TV and all that, you most certainly are a fan, but if you don’t – it doesn’t mean you’re NOT a fan, largely due to outside factors and the massive availability of pro wrestling today, largely, as you mentioned, through the web.

This is not to say that all wrestling fans are fans to the same degree some fans are more invested than others. I work with a guy who is a big wrestling fan, he’s watched for years, but every Monday night in the fall he watches football. I would suggest he’s less invested than I am, but I know he would be very upset if wrestling disappeared from the airwaves. Therefore, I would say that the best way to measure individuals’ wrestling fandom would be to see to what degree it would affect their lives if everything wrestling were taken from them. Those that would be least up set by the prospect, or those that recovered the quickest would probably be the casual fans. Those that were profoundly affected would mostly likely be the serious diehard wrestling fans.

I also enjoyed your examination of smarks and marks dichotomy. You are definitely on to something when point out the fans who criticize everything. But I’m not convinced that it is because they don’t want to be outed as wrestling fans. In fact those fans that are the most critical (and the most vocal I might add) might also be some of the most invested. These fans criticize for the same reason soap opera fans, science fiction fans and even fans of legitimate sports criticize their respective genres of choice: they are frustrated with the lack of control they have over the product. Soap fans write letters, science fiction fans blog, sports fans play armchair quarterback and wrestling fans bitch. These fans want certain events to happen and they look for ways to affect change.

Nearly all wrestling fans know that wrestling is scripted but they play along anyway at the arena because they want to be a part of the show. The marks might cheer the faces and boo the heels because they are marks. This might frustrate the smarks, because the marks (who greatly outnumber the smarts) cheer for guys like Cena, Triple H, Hulk Hogan and Kane (guys the smarks dislike or have had a history of disliking, primarily for their “work rate, back stage politicking, or both). The highly invested Smart is frustrated because the cheers for these performers come at the expense of their favorites, the smaller more technical “better wrestler” wrestlers.

But herein lies the flaw in all of this smart/mark stuff: the smarks are total complete marks for their favorite wrestlers. They try to hide behind the idea that they have a refined taste for the art of wrestling the same way people who love indy and foreign films lookdown on summer blockbusters. Just because these people can say they prefer the subtle nuances of dramatic performance of Anthony Hopkins over the catch phrases of Arnold Schwarzenegger doesn’t make them any different from fans who prefer the opposite, they are all still being entertained by a guy pretending to be someone he’s not. The same goes for wrestling fans, Hulk Hogan might be a “bad wrestler,” and Shawn Michaels might be a “great wrestler,” but in the end they are both just pretending to fight. The qualities of their performances are completely subjective and the fans that prefer one wrestler’s performance over the other are simply marks for that wrestler or that style of wrestling, because wrestling is still a dance. Some people like ballet others like the Polka.

This, again, is a very good point. People are entitled to cheer or boo whoever they want obviously, but smarks, in my opinion, feel they’re more qualified to boo a guy like Cena because of their supposed “inside knowledge” and thus view themselves as superior to marks – this is why I’d prefer to think of myself as a mark. For marks, things are more black and white – there’s good guys and bad guys. For a smark, they see the way certain wrestlers are responded to and decide to go the opposite way for the sake of being different. They then try to apply this “inside knowledge” to justify it – not that these things really need justifying.

This argument caries through to your examples of Indy-Feds, ROH and TNA, which you say wouldn’t exist without smarks. Following the same logic you present if all the marks stopped watching WWE the promotion would probably go bankrupt. So if marks are to WWE as smarks are to Indy-Feds, ROH and TNA, then what is the difference between smarks and marks? Next to nothing. Smarks are marks, they are just marks of a different style and a different narrative, and that different narrative includes all of the rumors, backstage happenings, and inside info that the internet provides the smark.

Here’s the thing though – marks would never completely turn off at once because like I mentioned earlier, there aren’t too many shades of grey for them and they’re usually happy to boo or cheer for whoever WWE tells them to cheer for. This doesn’t make them inferior in any way. Smarks like to think they know more about the business and so things should be done their way. If all the marks did leave, the business would once again start catering to the smarks – who would only then become marks because things are being done the way they want.

After WrestleMania 22 I had a bit of an epiphany. For months I had waited for Cena to lose that WWE Title belt and I was sure that Triple H the king of backstage manipulations himself, the guy that married the bosses daughter, was going to get that belt. I loved listing to the crowd lay into Cena, he sucked, he couldn’t wrestle, he was a disgrace to the WWE Title. I was a smarky as they come that day, so when Triple H tapped out in the middle I was pissed off, I mean I was really angry. I almost immediately said “that’s it we’re getting backlash because I want to see this asshole lose that belt!” That’s when I realized what a mark I was. I was willing to pay to see a guy lose a fake title based only on the fact that I hated him. I though I was a smart; but I was just a mark for the smart point of view being propagated on the internet. Now I just consider my self a mark, I’m a mark for all things wrestling including the stuff that is traditionally smark territory.

And this is where there is a fine line. A true mark would have said “fuck this, I’m not watching until Cena loses the belt!” You, on the other hand, said “I’m going to order a show to see this guy lose!” That’s a sign of a true mark.

This ended up being a little longer than I planed, I hope I didn’t bore you and I look forward to reading you articles in the future.

Thanks,
John-Peter Trask

Thanks for emailing man, I really enjoyed reading your thoughts.

Next up is Yinette Perez;

Long time I don’t read such a real column! I think it fits a lot to this time that i see many columns with fans bashing wrestling and saying that their 20+ years of fanaticism is over.
I don’t watch order PPV regularly, nor I buy merchandise, they don’t fit me, all the cool stuff is for males!!. I’ve bought some actions figure for my lil friends some time ago though. However; I respect the business, specially the performers! Like you wrote, the “marks” may not know what the wrestler is giving up to entertain s/he that night. In other cases the “smark” forgets all that is on the line for a performer while over analyzing and bashing a match.

I discover wrestling when I was 9 years old, back then I was in my country of origin and PPV where free for me. I know how excited, great and enjoyable when you think that your fav wrestler is kicking the bad guy ass for real. I used to see The Undertaker sitting up in my dreams. Then my mother told me that was fake, and I watched more because I was intrigue with how they fake all those bumps and stuff. Then thanks to the internet I kind of became a “smark”. But I enjoy a show as much as I can, I cheer for Taker like a crazy mark!! c’mon even though his gimmick is the most unbelievable one; the guy nails it. I plant like a mark for many wrestlers nowadays, cuz they deserve it.

The wrestling show may be in a drought right now, but if one is a smark I don’t think one should bash it too much, although bashes are needed to make it change right.

Anyways… I’m supposed to be working, great column; do the pay you for that?

yinette perez

Lol, I wish they paid us. Thanks for the compliments and I completey agree with what you say. In a time when wrestling isn’t at a true peak, smarks would do well to look for more positives than bashing the business that they supposedly love.

And we finish off with my old pal Samer;

Hello Dan, congrats on your new column…

Thanks ma, I appreciate it. Not that I had to do much to get it. I just asked the boss and he said “fine.”

So the WWE produces its worst PPV of the year, well maybe second worst, behind No Way Out. I’m glad PPV’s are for free here, because i would be pissed if i had to pay 40$ for this mediocrity. After SummerSlam, which i thought wasn’t that good, especially for the second biggest show of the year, WWE needed a good show, and a good show that wasn’t.

WWE has had a slew of mediocre shows and while I haven’t disliked any of them that much, it’s about time we had another great show like Baclash. Could No Mercy be the one?

The ECW title match opened the show. Why? After Punk’s win against Nitro, they really need to build him as a credible champion, which will give the ECW title some credibility. Of course it doesn’t help that the match wasn’t even a good one. For some reason Punk and Burke aren’t clicking that much. This was their 3rd PPV encounter this year, and all of them have been average at best.

I liked this match – it was fun – but I agree that the pair aren’t gelling as well as they should. I saw a match between the two from OVW a while a go and it was actually really good, though Punk was playing the role of the heel while Burke was face then.

I totally agree with what you said about Hardy-MVP vs D & D. What you failed to mention however is how much Deuce and Domino still suck.

This is very true.

The fans don’t care about London and Kendrick, the WWE really needs to push them as a top babyface tag team, they can be the new Hardyz, and to be honest, both London and Kendrick are better wrestlers than the Hardyz.

The fans really want to care, but doing stuff like having Triple H Pedigree the pair of them really doesn’t help.

The World title match was surprisingly solid, but it should have ended the show. I’m sick of Batista, but at least Khali isn’t the champ anymore.

For whatever reason, I’m willing to give Batista another shot. He had some good matches with Taker and Edge this year. With the right opponent I think he can do well, though I’ve been waiting for him to turn heel for a long time now.

Taker vs Henry was what you would expect and that isn’t good. But why was it the main event?

Cena vs Orton… Had i paid for this show, i would have felt ripped off. I don’t care if Taker is returning, THIS was the match the fans paid to see, and what they got was a 7 minute brawl that ended in a disqualification. Sure it was fitting storyline wise, but that was a PPV. And why a last man standing match? They already did 2 of those this year, why not just a normal hardcore, or no DQ match? Anyway it should be a good match.. Let’s hope it doesn’t end with a double KO.

I wouldn’t mind a Double KO actually. It’s better than having Cena win clean and then giving Orton another shot anyway. I really think Orton will end the title reign but a LMS is the wrong environment to do it in. Hell in a Cell looming perhaps?

And now onto RAW IS HHH!

Ok i love the guy, but sometimes i wish he never returned. Why should i care about his feud with Carlito if Carlito couldn’t lay a hand on HHH in a whole month? The first time he was able to have any sort of offense against HHH was at Unforgiven, and that was a NO DQ for Carlito only match! Why not have an HHH beatdown by Carlito so that he can gather some heat? I hate this HHH Superman shit. Besides his feud with Carlito, there’s a mini feud with Vince. I’ve really seen that a thousand times already, and i don’t think HHH is that funny. Is he trying to be the ROCK? Oh and why the hell did he need to burry the only two tag teams in the WWE? What a babyface he is!! London and Kendrick saved him from a 3 on 1 beatdown and he beat pedigreed them? Wow. I guess he’s trying to be Stone Cold as well. Wouldn’t have been better if he just celebrated with them and that resulted in a 6 man tag next week with Londrick teaming up with HHH to take on The Tag team champs and Carlito? At least the fans will start caring about London and Kendrick. It is things like this that prove why Kennedy shouldn’t feud with HHH.. HHH never puts over Midcarders, it is that simple, and as much as i like him, Kennedy isn’t a main eventer yet. Sure i gave Hunter all the credit in the world for putting over Chris Benoit, Batista, and Cena 3 years in a row, but that was another thing.

I agree with you on nearly all accounts here, though I do still laugh when Vince gets ripped apart verbally by The Game. It’s that much funnier knowing he’s his son in law.

What makes a Wrestling fan? Well the fact that no matter how many bad shows we watch, we keep coming back and watching some more. I just sent you an e-mail criticizing everything that the WWE put on lately, but i’ll watch them no matter what. And to be honest, even when we watch bad shows like Unforgiven and last night’s Raw, we still enjoyed some parts of the show, and we can never regret watching a show no matter how bad it was.

Take care, good column.

Valid point there, and thanks for the feedback.

OK guys, that’s all we’ve got time for today. Next week I continue with the positivity and look at some of my favorite WWE matches of all time. Until then, keep praying for Jericho’s return.

Oh yeah, I almost forgot one more clue in that video. Watch the last few seconds closely… focus your eyes in the middle of the numbers… you might see these screenshots…

Chris Jericho in…