The Seventh Dimension 02.29.08: Politics and/or Die!!!

Posted by T.G. Corke on 02.29.2008

Politicians have a profound effect on the product we see. They always have done, and they always will. This week, I examine why such practitioners in selfishness choose said routes, why I harbour no ill-will towards them but only pity, and whether or not it's even that big a deal. Kind of, anyway. That's what I wanted to do, but...well, look for yourselves. It's nice! I washed it first.



Politics and/or Die!!!

Ego. The centre of the self. The thing that drives every human being in this world to do whatever his or her desires require is, unfortunately, also the most fragile and potentially damaging of bewilderments. And, as history has taught us and the present continues to, the latter effect is usually the one that we all hear about. For every Tiger Woods or Bono whose arrogance allows them to simply achieve their own positive goals, there are probably at least 17,000 or so who are more likely to become unscrupulous merchants or jealous wife-beaters. It's the nature of the turd.

Wrestling is no different. While many of those within its realms are simply there out of love for the business and wanting to bring joy to the fans he or she left behind, we have to accept that there is an inner sanctum of toerags looking to cement their legacies with no regard as to how it pans out in the present. Of course, as we've seen all too often before, such behaviour can have a hugely adverse affect on the company that said entity is trying to ply its trade in.

The examples are plentiful, and enough has been said to list them all individually and talk in-depth about how each one allegedly set society back hundreds of years. I won't retread old ground too much, but I'll name a few of the more obvious ones and what impact they had on their respective products.

Hulk Hogan is the archetypal favourite in these debates, and it's understandable. The business wouldn't be the same without him in the ‘80s pretty much making it, but that's a double-edged sword as it could perhaps have become something even better in the 1990s had he not decided he needed to keep himself strong at other peoples' expense. Ric Flair, as Michael Weyer discussed this week, was the opposite of that. He stayed at the top by making himself look weak and screwing his challengers out of the title and such. I'm not sure which is worse – shamelessly burying other talent, or conning your peers into believe you're helping them. Ironically enough anyway, Hogan would come to WCW and end up holding Flair and others down for his entire stay. Thus, Flair's work in that department is ignored, which is a little unfair.

Then there's Bill Watts and the aforementioned Flair (and, to a lesser extent, Dusty), who used their power to help push their sons' careers at all costs. This, in a fashion, is even worse because it almost grants you power of attorney. If your project falls flat, the criticism from most fans won't be that it was given too much of an advantage due to familial connections. It will simply be that your child sucks, and you'll get off relatively scot-free. And finally, there are groups such as the Kliq, who aim to keep each other over as well as themselves. The classic clique that people think about when they hear the term will almost always include Scott Hall and Kevin Nash, and also Triple H and Shawn Michaels if referring to the WWF version. Now, it's pretty much just Triple H and Shawn Michaels left over, although Batista and Randy Orton have both profited from their friendships with the two – although I don't, in any way, accredit these relationships to either Orton or Batista succeeding.

On TNA, Jeff Jarrett's is the name most versed when talking about holding people down and whatnot, as he founded the company and mostly dominated the World Heavyweight Championship scene right up until late 2006. Since then, he's been preoccupied with looking after his dying wife and, since her death, raising his three kids. So now, it's mainly Angle and Nash who get the flak. Angle, because he's been TNA Champion for all but two days (eleven officially) since the title's inception last summer, and Nash because he's Kevin Nash. By the sounds of things, the Murder City Machine Guns have tried, without triumph, to achieve such status for themselves as well. I think it's a good thing that they've been punished somewhat for their approach, because the last thing needed is the message that politicking is the route to success for the next generation of stars.

So that's pretty much the landscape right now. Most of you will have known that already, and I wasn't really trying to teach anyone anything. I just wanted to get them down on screen. So with all that under consideration, I have to ask…

Are we, as a whole, not being a bit harsh on them?

I'm not going to defend such specific travesties as Wrestlemania IX, HBK's lost smile, Starrcades' 1997 and 1998, or Triple H's campaign of career-interment against Edge. I won't defend these because, in every instance, their only function was to screw somebody else over. That's not productive, it's not good business and it damages the faith its audience invests in the show.

What I will defend is the ‘harmless' monotony of a long reign at the top, not because I necessarily think it's the right thing…but just because I can empathise with why people do it. And one factor in particular seems to link every one of them.

Insecurity.

Hulk Hogan? Toyed with repeatedly in the AWA, goes over to the WWF and reinvents wrestling as it is known. After making that big an impression on the business, it's hardly surprising that he'd have trouble letting go – especially when it's been shown on multiple occasions that he's still a draw to this day.

Triple H? Ok, he was already part of the Kliq when he was involved in that Madison Square Garden incident. But, I believe his hogging of the World Heavyweight Championship from 2002 until 2005, as well as the fact he's been so unwilling at times to take a loss, is a direct consequence of his punishment de-push that probably cost him his place in the Attitude Era's main-event scene.

Jeff Jarrett? Bounced around between WWF and WCW looking for what he felt was his bite of the cherry, but it never came. He did get to nibble at the stalk, in the form of four WCW World Championship reigns during the last year or so of the company's existence. But, really, that's nothing to gloat over. It doesn't help that he's still regularly accused of demanding a huge pay-out from McMahon for jobbing to Chyna when, in fact, he was just asking for backdated royalties that he knew he was unlikely to receive once he jumped ship. So I don't really blame him for wanting to raise his reputation in TNA.

Hall, Michaels, Nash, and Flair are more difficult ones to analyse under the old diffidence thing. So, I won't bother. I don't think it's necessary to look at EVERY person guilty of these things, just the few I have covered. It's not designed as a huge ‘In Defense Of'-esque parable, anyway. I just want to make it clear that, although I certainly feel jarred when the same old backstage banditos get their way, I don't really hate these guys for it. They weren't necessarily born pricks, and they may not even be such now. It's a little unfair to be so judgmental, although I can also see why they garner such abhorrence. Besides, I have to say that there are certainly WORSE people we could see doing this. Imagine if Stephanie McMahon Levesque was actually Stephanie McMahon Snitsky. Or Stephanie McMahon Brooklyn Brawler. Well, Lombardi. But you get the idea.

The big problem is that it's a "damned if you do, damned if you don't" scenario that seems rather difficult to weigh up correctly and get a perfect blend. On one hand, seeing Triple H with the World title for nine months from 2002-2003, when fans were begging for one of the many big faces he was rivaling to take it from him, was tedious as all hell. Even worse, the pay-off was a very under-whelming "career-threatening match" (yeah, right) against Bill Goldberg, who really just should have won the Elimination Chamber the previous month instead. Plus, there was the Fingerpoke of Doom, the relative burial of Monty Brown, and Undertaker's feuds with Orton and Kennedy which many believed would actively damage both men (but ultimately didn't).

On the other hand, take out ALL the politics…and you've got Russo's spell in WCW.

I like Russo more than most, he seems like a fan at heart and he always wants to do what he feels the audience will want to see. And he's obviously got some serious bollocks as well, his "bald bastard" promo on Hogan at Bash at the Beach being proof of this. The problem is, he's also mental – and his Hogan promo is proof of THIS as well, since it led to Hogan leaving and suing the company. And, because he's such a lunatic, the dying days of WCW was pretty much free of a glass ceiling. Unfortunately, it was also free of walls, a floor, or any furniture other than a giant inflatable settee with ‘SWERVE~!' scrawled across it in glitter-pen.

So, since it's apparently impossible to have a mainstream promotion that is both politics-free AND booked quite sensibly, and there's no real compromise to be had…I guess the question we have to ask ourselves is this: Which is worse? One egomaniac holding the top belt for months on-end with little competition, or constant "blink and you'll miss it" attention-seeking bull-hickey and celebrity champions?

Sadly, when it comes to a choice such as that, you know you'll probably just carry on watching regardless.

Rubbish Youtube Quote of the Week~!

From ‘Wrestlemania Press Conference Part 3 of 6'

Wrestlinfan35
WWE are idiots.

Maria and Candice are sluts.

The Main event is pure crap.

I also want to point out that, as well as this comment, he also responded to somebody else's comment with "Fuck you" for NO REASON. Just because the other guy said he enjoyed the product. Fascism rulz, kidx!1!

This bullet-magnet born of a spare fuck is pretty much everything I loathe from a wrestling ‘fan', compressed into one over-entitled walking pretence. "Look at me. I am a smark. I am better than you, and that's the bottom line because John Cena can suck Kennedy's dick while he sucks mine because they both suck and…" Ugh. Just garbage. What kind of unqualified conceited wank-burger is this? "WWE are idiots"? Why? Because you, as an individual, choose to have a negative view on the product? And some of you may think "well, shucks, that's his opinion". But that's my point, it's NOT an opinion. It's a bare-bones statement of fact that seems to be based on absolutely nothing other than taste.

I can't stand it when people do this, they feel that their point of view should be the be-all-end-all of universal belief. Sharing an opinion is fine, but only when 1) you can back it up, or AT LEAST attempt to, and 2) it's not written as if it's an unarguable account of factual matter. It's like when I read all this insipid, puerile, sub-remedial infantilism on Teletext claiming that Ricky Gervais is "totally talentless" or that Little Britain is "not remotely funny" – as if talent or humour is one and the same with ability, and is therefore gauged by the reckoning of one person (and that person most often having utterly no experience within the profession themselves. But that side of it runs too deep, and is riddled with holes, so I won't go there). It makes me sick. S-I-C-K!

And now, for a crappy extra, here's a response that HE got from someone else. At least, I assume it was meant for him. It wasn't actually posted using the ‘Reply' function, so who knows. He could be talking to the ghost of internet innocence, for all I care.

saijith201918
WHY ARE U CALLING WWE IDIOTS U MARON...

I'm not going to type too much here, or be too harsh. I just wanted to share this example of "all caps makes me look like I'm shouting which intimidates people, aiiii!" psychology, as well as the rather inaccurate punctuation used for what is, in fact, a QUESTION. Oh, and the misspelling of ‘moron', which goes without saying. Unless he's foreign and ‘maron' is Burmese for "unsightly haemorrhoid, please discard all mighty saviour of my own embittered conscience" or something. Seems a bit far-fetched though, so we'll just say he fucked up.

**By the way, I do understand the hypocrisy of complaining how other fans' attitudes ruin the industry while also watching WWE programming for free on Youtube. I'm not proud of it, but unfortunately it's my only source. I still report pay-per-views getting uploaded, and won't watch them on there. But the television shows? Might as well, since they'll only be there anyway.**

Feeder Readback

Brilliant, I got the most comments ever last week (an insane number, for me at least), AND an email. This is from Shawn Moroney (ironic, after the Youtube quote thingy).

Great to see a column examining things that matter, but the things that most folks don't realize counts for quite a bit.

Orton's theme was great a few years ago...but lately, I think his look has turned into something else. A few years ago, his hair was a little different, he had a less withered physique, and now he doesn't seem so much like captain blue chip cocky. But he does a pretty fine job as champ.

Love to see the intricate examination, sir!

May God Bless,
Shawn

Thanks a lot. I agree the music sounds like it is contextually designed for a baby-kissing face, or at least a cheeky rogue, but I still think it works fine myself. It's still one of the best songs used at the moment, that's for sure.

Hey, since I've written a bit less than usual, I'll even take a look at last week's comments. There were forty-six in total, so here is just a selection of snippets that I found to be overtly interesting or humorous.

• Good work. I don't agree with any of your picks, but you have some well thought out reasoning behind them, so kudos.
• Finlay and the midget aren't the only two Micks in the company. Foley's still there. Sorry, as half an Irishman myself, I had to. Couldn't resist.
• Cena's theme has nothing on his old one. I blame that change for all the hate he now gets.
• Hardy's new music couldnt be worse if he wrote himself.. ..which I thought he did till they told me otherwise..
• Carlito's theme. It would be good, except they didn't bother to make it long enough for him to get down to the ring before it loops, it'd be like Austin getting halfway down the ramp, his music fading and the glass breaking again, not as effective really is it?
• Mark Henry's Sexual Chocolate music. They should have Big Daddy V and Mark Henry do the overweight lover gimmicks again and have them come out to that.
• orton has the best music. but the overall package, is batista. he has the best entrance hands down. the music, pyro and his faux machine gun gets me amped everytime. i am not even a batista fan.

Also, I feel inclined to note that fellow writers Jeff Small and Owain J. Brimfield chimed in with their views, as well. Thanks again, everyone!

Oooh, yeah!

Right, that's your pound of flesh for the week. I've got a nasty cold and one of my friends is going away for goodness knows how long, so I'm off to sulk like the undersexed physical purgatory that I have become.

Missing you already.

XOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOX