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| Guess how many spots this guy occupies on the list? |
I lost my paternal grandfather this past week. My Papa was
my hero, my role model, and someone I could only hope any possible future children of mine would emulate. Despite
being able to enjoy having my family around (including seeing family members
that I haven’t been able to see or stay in touch with for years, for various reasons),
this has been a heartbreaking time for my family and I, to say the least. I
started this blog in order to be able to talk and write about things that make
me happy, and weirdly/proudly, professional wrestling makes me very happy. My goal with this specific entry, in honor of my grandfather and his strong Christian beliefs, is to not swear as a sign of respect. If you've read any of my previous entries, this may not be nearly as easy as it sounds.
Before I proceed (and I fully acknowledge and warn you, any
of the 14 people that may have stumbled here looking for somehow more profane
pages with the word “crap” in the title, that this entry is not for everyone),
I’d like to go ahead and quickly rebut some of the most common arguments
against professional wrestling:
A) “It’s fake!” – OK. The match outcomes are
predetermined, but as far as calling anything these men and women do in the ring
“fake” is an insulting, ridiculous disservice to anyone who's put their ability to walk without a limp for the rest of their life on the line to entertain us.
B) “I can do that!”
- I’m willing to bet a large sum of money* that you can’t do 1/3 of the
things these people do one time. Wrestlers working for major companies do these
things for anywhere from 120-200 days a year. (*-should I somehow lose this
bet, expect to get a ridiculously postdated check.)
C) “GAAAAAAAAAAY!” – While this is mostly from the
MMA crowd, I guess I have to agree somewhat. Speedos and baby oil do no one any
favors. But certainly there is nothing “gay” about 2 dudes in a cage wearing
nothing but short shorts and gloves rolling around on the ground for 15-25
minutes. I will also use this bulletpoint to include the surreal Hilary Duff anti-gay PSA, because I deem it both tangentially related to this point, as
well as the masochist in me enjoying Lizzie McGuire's Smoker's Voice telling me to
“knock it off”.
D) “Too many people die at a young age!” – Yeah, I
got nothing for this, and it’s the only thing about professional wrestling that
really makes me sad, so let’s move on.
E) Last, but certainly not least, my absolute personal favorite, “All they do is stand
around and talk!” As soon as I hear this, I stop listening, because the person
saying it just completely exposed themselves as knowing nothing about
professional wrestling.
The professional wrestling business, in its current
incarnation, thrives on the “promo”, or promotional interview. It helps build
storylines without the wrestlers having to get in the ring and risk injury. It
allows the people behind the characters to expose themselves enough to make the
character their own. They also can run the gamut from funny to emotional to
asinine and possibly (probably?) drug-induced. But we’ll get to him later. But
the main point here is that promos are my favorite part of wrestling, and what
better way to cheer myself up then to go over my favorite wrestling promos of
all time.
For those who are still with me (as I again acknowledge this post will not be interesting to everyone), please keep in mind that
the title isn’t “Greatest Wrestling Promos”. It’s “Favorite Wrestling
Promos”. Most listed do have historical significance in one way or another, but
please don’t get chapped because I didn’t include something you thought should
have been there. This is entirely subjective, and if anyone reading this (which
might be down to 6 or 7 now, once readers saw anything related to ‘rasslin’)
has anything they’d like to include on their own, or if you’d just like to call
me names, there’s a comment section below. I swear. I'm not the only one who's allowed to use it.
As always, all videos used in this blog, with the exception of the last video, are from YouTube, although I will do my best to credit the individual accounts the videos were pulled from, and all images gathered from Google Images.
So let’s get on with it:
#7 - Terry Funk Retires, Loses 99.9% Of His Vocabulary - 1983
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| Pretty sure they named the old Nintendo game "Bad Dudes" after Terry and Dory Funk, Jr. |
“Middle Aged and Crazy”, “The Living Legend”, “Terrible
Terry”, “The Hardcore Icon”. The most famous resident of The Double Cross Ranch in Amarillo, TX.
The Funker.
Most people in my age bracket remember Terry Funk as either
the soft spoken, fire-chair swinging former ECW champion and worldwide name in
wrestling who retired an estimated 297 times, or the guy Sylvester Stallone
hired to be in several of his movies. (MR. CUTLER IS TALKING TO YOU.) But for those who missed out on earlier times, Terry Funk,
as well as his brother Dory Funk, Jr., was an absolute rock star in Japan. On
August 31, 1983, after the teaming Funk brothers wrestled a match in Japan, he
announced his first retirement. Also, he apparently forgot all the words his
brain knows but one:
The fun part starts at about 3:30 in the video. (via)
So how long does he and his wife think Japan will be number 1 again? I couldn't quite make it out...
#6 – No Computer Will Take His Job, Daddy -1985
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| Fat or not, Dusty Rhodes > You
Dusty Rhodes has never really looked like he should have
done anything with his life other than be a professional wrestler. An obese man
with a pronounced lisp and more rhythm than most white men are allowed by law, he wrestled like someone who at least had the “obese”
part covered. His finishing move was an elbow, for God’s sakes. I’m guessing he
learned that from Georg Hackenschmidt or Frank Gotch, because something as
simple as a standing elbow stopped being a realistic finisher sometime around
the 1910s.
|
However, one thing Big Dust could always (and still) do is cut a
promo. Rhodes was coming back from an injury, and was set up to wrestle Ric
Flair at Starrcade ’85, which was the NWA’s equivalent of WrestleMania, meaning their biggest and most important show of the year. Rather
than just stay at home, stage interviewer Bob Caudle stuck a mike in his face for a stage
interview. Then this happened:
Shouldn't talk about people starving when you're pushing 3 bills, Big Dust. (via)
I can’t think of any Dusty Rhodes/Ric Flair match that
wasn’t very good to excellent, despite Dusty's dearth of technical skills, but the passion in this interview still gives me
chills.
#5 – Paul E. Dangerously has HAD IT WITH YOU! – 1992
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| Just SO. MUCH. AWESOME. |
This being a totally subjective list, this was very close to
being in the top 2 of my favorite promos of all time. Before he really became an integral part of wrestling history,
Paul E. Dangerously was a Zack Morris-phone carrying manager in WCW, leading a stable
called The Dangerous Alliance. Anyone who has seen Heyman in his post-WCW days
(WWE announcer/manager, and I think he created a wrestling company…) knows the
guy can talk a blue streak, and could sell ice to an Inuit. He could also horribly denigrate women like Madusa Miceli:
I used to rewind 2:09 to 2:19 about 5 times per viewing. Still do. (via)
As a spelling bee nerd, I enjoyed the number of words Paul E. felt compelled to spell for Madusa. I also like the fact that they bleeped the
word “hooker” out on the telecast. It was 1992, after all, but it’s really
weird to hear now. What's not so weird to hear, though, is Paul E. DOMINATING someone on the microphone.
#4 – “Cane Dewey” – 1995
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| (Photo and awesome t-shirt via) |
In 1995, Cactus Jack wasn’t with one of the 2 (at the time)
major companies, but that doesn’t mean he wasn’t still changing the
professional wrestling business. Before he was thrown off a cage, or put a sock
on his hand, or started the hometown/thumbs up combo, Mick Foley was a brawler
that did not get or choose to speak much for the majority of his career. In ECW, however, Foley was given the chance to speak his own
mind, as opposed to having to speak through a character. What followed was one of the most famous promos in ECW history:
He hasn't always been so fan-friendly. (via)
The emotion (more than a little real: Who wouldn’t be upset
by seeing a sign in the crowd suggesting inflicting physical pain onto your toddler?) in this promo
is, to this day, nearly unmatched. Many people think this interview “made” Cactus
Jack. I liked him before this, but it’s really hard to argue with that
sentiment.
#3 – Archie Gouldie Keeps It Racist – 1983
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| "My dad can beat up your dad." |
Liberal use of the word “boy” aside, I LOVE THIS PROMO.
Archie “The Stomper” Gouldie was one of the top heels in Canada’s Stampede
Wrestling, run by Stu Hart and former breeding ground of many of professional
wrestling’s best technicians. During a 6-man tag team match, Gouldie teamed
with his “son” (not really his kid) and fellow bad guy Bad News Allen (better
known to some as Bad News Brown), but during the match, Allen turned on the
Gouldies, piledriving the “son” onto the concrete floor and leaving most
everyone else, Archie Gouldie included, bleeding profusely. Wikipedia calls
this “the most infamous angle in Stampede history”, and I have to agree, if
only because it was so brutal, it caused Stampede Wrestling’s TV announcer to
quit the company on the spot.
What followed was one of the most intense, heartfelt promos
I have seen, even to this day:
(via)
In addition to the “boy” usage, you may have also noticed
the sentence “I’ll rub your black hide up and down that gravel road” was
partially censored. But the racism in the promo doesn’t detract from the
passion, at least to me. Should he have used different wording? Absolutely.
Aside from that, could he have done that promo any better? Highly doubtful.
#2 – The Summer of Punk II –2011
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| Maybe this is the "indy darling" picture in my pro wrestling glossary. |
If you can find a professional wrestling glossary of terms,
and look up the term “indy darling”, you’ll most likely see a picture of CM
Punk (Not my glossary, though. Mine has a picture of Bryan Danielson). Punk
honed his craft in independent wrestling organizations like Ring of Honor for
years before he was signed to the WWE. Even after making the “big time”, he
spent a large portion of his time floundering. For every great match he had
with a Jeff Hardy (or most anyone), there were 2 programs where he wasn’t even
on TV. For every Straight Edge Society, there was a New Nexus. By June 2011, Punk’s contract was ending, and by all indications, he was very frustrated with his current direction in the company and wanted to take some time away and reassess his options. On June 27, Monday
Night Raw that evening ended like this:
After this promo, the internet and professional wrestling
world in general was abuzz with speculation. “Was that really supposed to
happen?” “Is this a work?” “Let’s bring this pro wrestler guy onto my radio
show because I think what just happened was real.” (I might be talking about someone specifically here.) It led to a lot of very good things, both for Punk
and for wrestling fans that don’t want to watch bodybuilders that don’t have a
clue or care what’s going on. (Might be talking about someone specifically here too.)
You may notice that the title of the #2 entry was called “The
Summer of Punk II”, which would indicate there is an original Summer of Punk. I
would have loved to include the promo that started that, along with a couple of
other things from the company, but since Ring of Honor is fanatical to the point of alienation about
making sure none of their product that exists before 2009-2010 ends up online (because the Dewey Guida School of Business teaches us nothing good can come from exposing
your product to a larger audience. Right, Lavy?), I have no ROH stuff. Thanks,
guys!
Before I get to the #1 spot, there are 3 guys that I
desperately wanted to include on this list, but they’ve done so many great
promos that it was very difficult to pick only one. So the Magnificent Seven
Lifetime Achievement Award winners are:
Ric Flair
Jake “The Snake” Roberts
"Never trust a snake...or a hardcore crack addict." (via)
“Rowdy” Roddy Piper
From a promo to a murder accusation. That's breaking the 4th wall. (via)
And my leader to this point (because this could change at
any week, ridiculous as that might sound if you watch most of the current major
product offered):
#1 – Steve Austin –“That’s For Somebody Else”—1995
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| You'd look heated too if you had to job to "Hacksaw" Jim Duggan in 30 seconds. |
Way before he became one of the most popular and
recognizable wrestlers on the planet, “Stone Cold” Steve Austin was a guy who,
due to horrible misuse in WCW and an arm injury suffered while wrestling in Japan, found himself out of
a job. Lots of guys get let go in wrestling (especially in WCW during the ‘90s,
as they had over 225 wrestlers under contract, if only to sign most of them only to keep them from
jumping ship to the WWF), but not a lot of guys get fired via a FedEx letter
while convalescing and healing up from an injury caused while working for that
same company (WCW and New Japan Pro Wrestling had a working agreement allowing wrestlers to work for both organizations). While waiting to heal up, Paul Heyman (remember that guy?) gave
Austin the opportunity to simply speak his mind. What followed was not only a
side of Steve Austin that hadn’t been seen before in American wrestling, but a
precursor to a character that changed wrestling forever:
(via my own DVD collection)
See any resemblance? It’s almost like a stand-up comedian workshopping
new jokes, with the main exception being Austin really didn’t need a whole lot of time.
6 months in ECW (where, due to still healing up from the arm injury, he only
actually wrestled 2 matches in his entire time with the company and lost them both), signed with
the WWF, and the rest is history.
Hey, this was fun. On a personal note, I would like to
sincerely thank anyone and everyone who took the time to send positive words,
wishes, and thoughts during a very difficult time. Some I’ve been able to thank
personally, but if I haven’t been able to, please accept my gratitude.
And hey, no swears! I'm growing.
And hey, no swears! I'm growing.
Thank you very much for reading, and enjoy your day.
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