The Dissection 9.24.08: The Buzz on Pro Wrestling

Posted by Mike Campbell on 09.24.2008

Don't believe the stereotype, wrestling fans really do know how to read.

THE DISSECTION
The Buzz on Pro Wrestling by Scott Keith

Welcome to the first edition of The Dissection. This idea of this column is to read various wrestling books and break my thoughts of the book down into four categories. The Good (self explanatory), The Bad (also self explanatory), The Ugly (things that I don't think are just bad, but are also damaging to the credibility of the book, author, subject, whatever), and The Rest (things that I don't quite feel fit into one of the other three).

As much as a lot of wrestling enthusiasts and old-timers like to hate on guys like Dave Meltzer and Vince McMahon for revealing to the world that wrestling is worked, in my opinion, it's actually made wrestling better for us diehard fans. If kayfabe was still going strong in the industry, then we wouldn't have DVDs like The Tragedy and Triumph of World Class Championship Wrestling, The Monday Night War, and The Rise and Fall of the AWA. Shoot interviews would probably be non-existent, and also there wouldn't be nearly as many (if any) books released on the subject of the business. When Mick Foley wrote Have A Nice Day and was perfectly open about the business being a work and all the backstage stuff, it opened up everyone else to do the same thing, and in a world of kayfabe, that book would never have seen the light of day.

One of the big beneficiaries of this is Scott Keith who has now written five books (his newest one coming out very soon) on various subjects related to wrestling from various viewpoints. If you don't know who he is (and shame on you if that's the case, since he used to write for 411), here's some quick info. Scott Keith resides in Canada (or as Don Callis once put it, that northern suburb of Minnesota), he gained some fame in the late '90's and early '00's for his tape reviews (or as he called them 'rants') on various wrestling PPVs and shows. His unique sense of humor quickly gained him a lot of fame. While he certainly wasn't the originator, he's a big reason that so many people use a star rating method of rating matches. To his credit, he's been to parlay his online success into writing books about different aspects of wrestling, all without having stepped into the ring. Many people consider him to be *THE* standard when it comes to all things wrestling. While I don't personally agree with that, I will give him his props for his success.

The Buzz on Pro Wrestling was Scott's first book, released in 2001. It joins a series of 'Buzz' related books, with the idea being to help newer fans of wrestling gain more understanding of it.

The Good:
One thing Keith does very early on is set the stage for some of what he'll be talking about later by familiarizing the reader with some of the terms he'll be using, and what exactly they mean. So when he's talking about things like ring psychology, angles, selling, heel turns, etc. the reader will know what he's talking about (remember this is supposed to be for new fans). He also gives a quick overview of various moves and describes how they're done, so that a new fan can easily distinguish between Triple H's Pedigree and Stevie Ray's Slapjack, and knows the difference between a German suplex and a Northern Lights suplex.

The layout of the book is a bit confusing, but the way it's done makes the most sense. After getting the basics out of the way, Keith starts to delve into the history of wrestling, starting with the WWF going national. He does this with a series of biographical essays covering some of the major players and the angles and matches they were involved in. When talking about the WWF's glory years, he talks about Hogan until WrestleMania III, and then picks up where he left off with Hogan when he's talking about the WWF's downfall in the late '80's and Hogan's jump to WCW. However, telling the stories that way causes things to overlap a bit. For example, you'll read the Big Show won the WWF Title at Survivor Series 1999 by beating Rock and HHH, and then the next paragraph says that Rock won the Royal Rumble to get a WWF Title shot by eliminating the Big Show. It's written that way because he was going over what Rock was doing, and didn't mention that Big Show lost the WWF Title to Triple H between Survivor Series and Royal Rumble. That comes in the next chapter when he talks about HHH.

Unlike 'The Death Of WCW' where every PPV of every month was mentioned in some form or another, this book only sticks to the important things. The rise of the WWF from the expansion until WrestleMania III (with bios of Hogan, Piper, Savage, and the Bulldogs), their slow downfall starting in '88 and when things got really bad from '91 to '97 (more about Hogan and Savage, as well as details on The Undertaker, Ultimate Warrior, Kevin Nash, Scott Hall, Bret Hart, and Shawn Michaels), and their eventual rise form the Montreal screwjob until 'The present' of the book which is in early 2001 (Montreal, Steve Austin, The Rock, and Triple H). Keith talks about WCW's early years in the form of bios of Ric Flair, Sting, and Lex Luger. And then moves on their success in the form of talking about Goldberg and the nWo . There's also a fairly detailed essay about the fate of the AWA included, although it was seemingly just randomly included in the book, in a place where it had no real meaning.


The Bad:
The early portion of the book has a wrestling time line that appears to have been lifted directly from the old PWI Almanac. But many significant things were passed over, and there are some big holes. One would get the impression there was nothing notable between October of 1988 and November of 1990. Also some of the things mentioned don't make much sense, does it really matter that much that New Japan was formed in March of 1972 with Inoki, Kido, and Fujinami, or that All Japan was formed in October of '72? It obviously matters in Japan, but it's not particularly useful info for this book.

This isn't a knock on Keith per say, but rather the publisher or editor, the book could seriously have used some proof reading. On one page he's crediting Terry Gordy with inventing the powerbomb in the '80's and then on the next page he says that Lou Thesz actually invented it. There's a photo of Curt Hennig, with the caption of 'Kurt Hennig' and there's also an occasion where he refers to a rather famous Canadian wrestler as 'Brett Hart.'

The book also contains various lists, there's a list of the top 5 best and top 5 worst finishing moves, but with no explanation as to why that particular move is good or bad. So the reader will know that the Steve Austin's Stone Cold Stunner is better than Hulk Hogan's leg drop, and that Kevin Nash's powerbomb is better than Ric Flair's Figure Four Leg Lock, but we just don't know *why* it's such a better move, we apparently need to take his word for it.

He talks for a bit about the concept of star ratings and credits Jim Cornette and Jim Dooley for the concept, but that's really all that he goes into about match quality. As such new readers are just supposed to take his word apparently that Hulk Hogan and Ultimate Warrior weren't great wrestlers, but Ric Flair, Ricky Steamboat, and Bret Hart are. Now that is indeed true, but Keith doesn't bother to tell anyone exactly why or what the difference is. The closest that he comes to doing so when he talks about Vince putting Bret Hart on top, and saying one of the pluses was that Bret was more of technical wrestler rather than doing lots of punching and kicking like Hogan. During the various career bios that are pertinent to the time frame he talks about, Keith adds little addendums about the wrestler including their best match and the star rating, but star ratings are subjective, and again, we're supposed to simply take his word that Shawn vs. Diesel from April '96 is ****3/4 Also, while he did a fine job in explaining terms, he didn't go into much detail about any other in-ring aspects, like the general rule of the ring to be working to the left, or the old rule that the heel controls the match. In fact, at one point he seems to almost intentionally dodge it when talking about a Flair/Rhodes match and saying that Flair had to control things because Rhodes was too out of shape.

Finally, the book is supposed to be designed to educate new fans of the business. However, Keith's various bios stick mostly to results and angles with only brief mentions, and no real explanations of anything. He mentions in passing that Wayne Ferris was part of the Tupelo Concession Stand Brawl, but doesn't give any more info than who was in the match, not mentioning it's overall importance at all. He mentions countless wrestlers by name and doesn't give anymore details than that. He mentions that Shawn Michaels wrestled Tatanka at WrestleMania IX for the IC Title, and then quickly moves on. What's the point of even bringing that up if he's not going to give anymore info? Yes, Shawn did wrestle that match, but also he introduced a new valet to replace Sherri, and it was during Tatanka's undefeated streak. The latter of which actually caused some excitement over the match.


The Ugly:
Keith's math skills leave a little to be desired. Honky Tonk Man's Intercontinental Title reign was June '87-August '88 (fourteen months), but Keith says it was eighteen months long. Keith has said numerous times that Orndorf turning on Hogan was the moment that cemented his fandom, but you'd think then that he'd recall the details of it a bit better. He says the feud went on for a year, when it only went for about six months. He describes the match as Orndorf taking a huge beating and refusing to tag in Hogan, until Hogan took matters into his own hands. In fact, it was Hogan showing up Orndorf early on, Hogan getting beaten on, Orndorf not tagging in, and then Orndorf attacking Hogan afterwards. I know this from simple memory, and not having seen it in nearly ten years, and it wasn't that pivotal a moment for myself. He also knocks the angle where The Giant was portrayed as Andre's son as being tasteless because Andre had only died a year before that. Andre died in January '93 and the Giant debuted in the summer of '95.

The book in general contains a lot of little errors, stuff that a quick proofread by Keith or anyone with the slightest wrestling knowledge would know to fix. It states that Razor Ramon was upset by Bob Backlund at WrestleMania IX, Ramon actually won that match. He says that Bret Hart won the WWF Title when it was suddenly decided that Ric Flair wasn't needed in the WWF any longer, then why was Flair around for another three months? When talking about Rick Rude's build to his cage match with Warrior, he says that Rude's build up was based upon him becoming a more serious wrestler and dropping the long hair for a more marine style haircut (true) and also by dropping his pre-match routine of running down the fans and making a show out of taking off his robe (false). When discussing Shawn Michaels, Keith talks a bit about Shawn's famous backstage tantrums. He specifically brings up losing the title to Sid instead of Vader, and says that it only happened because Razor, Diesel, and 1-2-3 Kid were also backing up Shawn in losing to Sid and not Vader. Those three were all in WCW by that time.

Keith could also have done to do some more or some better research for the book. At one point he says that David Von Erich died from Toxic Shock Syndrome. David died either from a drug overdose or a ruptured intestine, depending on who you believe. It was Mike Von Erich who suffered from the Toxic Shock Syndrome, and he didn't die from it. Some of the things he says appear to make sense, but are just flat out wrong. He says that WCW came up with the name Bash at the Beach as a play off the previous PPV names of Beach Blast and the Great American Bash, I've never heard that before but it seems to make sense. But then he says that the GAB PPV was retired after the horrible 1991 show, which is completely wrong. It did take a bit of a hiatus until 1995, but there was still the show in 1992. He says that the WWF purposely held off doing an extended Savage/Hogan feud because Savage was too popular and they stuck him with George Steele after only working one match with Hogan, which is completely untrue. Savage and Hogan had three MSG matches, Savage beat Hogan by count out twice (December '85 and January '86) and then lost a lumberjack match to Hogan (February '86), before going to the program with George Steele.

The Rest:
One thing Keith fails to do at any point is cite any sources for his info, which caused me to have to take several things he said with a grain of salt, because I'd seen exactly how much he'd gotten wrong before. Now granted, he didn't have any truly monumental errors (aside from the Von Erich one). But seeing his out of wack time line with Honky Tonk's IC title reign, and his huge blunder with David Von Erich's passing, it's hard to simply take his word over something that I'd never heard before, no matter how trivial it seemed. And it's even worse because some of the tidbits he'd thrown in were rather interesting, like the Can-Am Connection being the ones who were supposed to win the WWF Tag Titles from the Hart Foundation, but Tom Zenk quit the WWF because Vince thought that Martel was the star of the team because of how long he'd been wrestling compared to Zenk. He also brings up a funny tidbit that Akeem was called "The African Dream" to take a shot at Dusty Rhodes. Also, the reason Bret lost the IC Title to The Mountie of all people was because Bret's contract was coming to an end and WCW was showing interest in Bret and they didn't want to risk him pulling an HTM at the Royal Rumble and threatening to jump if demands weren't met.

Overall:
The biggest problem that the book has is that it's meant to be an introduction to wrestling. Beyond where Keith went over the terms and his section talking about various moves, there's very little else that could really be done in book form to introduce someone to wrestling. The best way for someone to learn about it is to watch it. The bulk of the book is more or less a cliff notes version of WWF and NWA/WCW history from 1985-2000. The best way to sum up the end result of the book is to say that it was a good idea in theory, not so much in execution.