Struggle For Power - Deception Can Be A Good Thing
Hey, everyone! This is Degenerate, joining you in the next round of the Columns Forum Classic. I'm amazed that I not only survived the first round but that the judges gave me the highest combined score out of the bunch. That just blows my mind, especially since there were so many great columns written by everyone who participated. I'm glad it was well-received.
Still, there's no rest for the weary. I now have a little bit of added pressure of performing up to the standards of a top seed, so I'm back with my entry into this round, and it's going to be a long one. I hope it's as enjoyable as my previous column, even if I don't make it past this round.
Although I have business to take of when it comes to writing a column, I decided I'll just make this into a regular edition of Struggle For Power, so I'll include all of my usual sections. Enjoy!
Current Romps
* As I type this, I'm finished watching WWE's Backlash and A.J. Styles just became the WWE World Heavyweight Champion. After typing those words, I still can't believe it actually happened. If you had told me at the beginning of 2016 that A.J. Styles would not only be in the WWE but also be the world champ, I would have laughed in your face. I'm glad that it did happen. He was the only reason I watched TNA back in the day and hoped he would receive more than he had at the time. If anyone deserves this, it's him. His performances have been stellar since day one, and I hope he has a long, healthy reign with the title.
* I caught CM Punk's debut in UFC 203, and I was deeply saddened by it. I was really pulling for him to not only hang with Mickey Gall but also pull off an upset. Sadly, it was nothing like that, and he got schooled pretty bad. I didn't realize why I felt bummed, but my buddy Al.Pyro made me realize it was because I had become invested in him after all the years watching him wrestle. In any case, I hope he rebounds in some fashion, whether it's UFC or elsewhere. He followed a dream, and there's absolutely nothing anyone can knock against that.
* It seems like Alberto del Rio is no longer in the WWE. I'm also bummed by this news. There are a ton of people who have tweeted or posted elsewhere that they're happy with it, but I'm not because it's just a ton of wasted potential. I wasn't his biggest fan but I enjoy his work for what it is. His surprising return and subsequent defeat of John Cena after a great U.S. title reign should have built him up to incredible heights. But he was given garbage afterward, and I don't know if anyone would have been able to recover from that crap.
* I'll be writing a column about this in the future, but I wanted to mention that the Japanese are taking over. Shinsuke Nakamura, Asuka and Hideo Itami are killing it in NXT. Kota Ibushi and Akira Tozawa are / were standouts in the Cruiserweight Classic tournament. New Japan Pro Wrestling is setting high standards when it comes to in-ring performance. There's a lot coming from this country, and I'm glad to see it happening. Now if we could only do that with Puerto Ricans...
Locking Horns
There are lots of reasons why we love professional wrestling. Some of us love it because of the larger-than-life characters we see every week. Some of us really enjoy the incredible feats of athleticism that occur multiple times on a weekly basis. Some are drawn into the storylines that span weeks or months at a time. Although we all enjoy most or all of these reasons, there's one thing that stands out to us that keeps bringing us to watch wrestling week after week.
I recently spent some time thinking about what I enjoy the most out of pro wrestling, and why I still take the time to watch after more than 30 years. Certainly, having been watching wrestling regularly since I was five years old helps with that. It's followed me throughout all the places I've lived in. But there had to be something more that kept bringing me back, and I found what it is.
Anyone who knows me well enough would now be thinking "Oh great, this is going to be another one of Degenerate's Shawn Michaels love stories to pay tribute to him." But I have done that plenty of times already. Hell, even one of my columns was titled "Degenerate's Big Ol' List Of HBK Lovin'". Look it up in the Retro Columns thread. Although my admiration for Shawn Michaels will forever exist, this column isn't about that. However, thinking about Shawn Michaels (not in that way, you dirty-minded people), I realized that my favorite moments in wrestling have come from The Turn - when a wrestler turns face or heel.
These turns add a layer of fascination on top of everything else that we love about professional wrestling. It's what I feel makes wrestling awesome, and it's a unique part of the whole "sports entertainment" formula. Sports have the athleticism but lack the intrigue of these turns for the most part. Entertainment might mix the attraction of these moments, but lack the live energy that pro wrestling brings to the table. Without heel or face turns, I think pro wrestling would be another sport. That's not a bad thing, but it wouldn't make professional wrestling special.
The thing I like about turns in wrestling is that they can come in a variety of ways. Often, they're the "slow burn" type of turn, which occur after weeks of anticipation and guessing. I like these types of turns when they happen since it just builds and builds over a long period, and even though we can smell change coming, we don't know when, where or how it will happen. I have a couple of favorites when it comes to these lengthy story arcs.
I have to bring Shawn Michaels back into this conversation because his heel turn was the catalyst for writing this column. His heel turn on Marty Jannetty to split up the Rockers in 1992 had been coming for a few months before that. It started in the 1991 Survivor Series when Marty accidentally caused Shawn to be eliminated in their match. Then Marty, trying to help Shawn in the match of his career against Ric Flair, carried his knocked-out body into the ring just to promptly be pinned. Two months after their first on-screen argument, Shawn turned on his long-time partner after seven years together by smashing him through a plate glass window. I watched this moment as an 11-year-old and remember being upset about it as I really liked The Rockers. That January 1992 segment of The Barber Shop is still talked about today and spawned one of my favorite moments on commentary (Bobby Heenan's quip of "Janetty tried to dive through the window to escape, what an act of cowardice!").
Another "slow burn" turn involved Batista. Prior to the 2005 Royal Rumble, Triple H won the World Heavyweight Championship for Raw as part of Evolution with Batista and Ric Flair. This was during the period of the original Brand Split, and we had two world champions in the WWE. Triple H urged Batista to not enter the Royal Rumble and focus on keeping the championship in the group, but Batista did and he eventually won.
The winner of the Rumble, due to a loophole discovered by some unknown person in the previous year, would have the opportunity to choose which champion they would face at Wrestlemania. Triple H and the other Evolution member, Ric Flair, would push Batista hard to choose to face the WWE Champion on Smackdown because he wanted Evolution to run the WWE, but in reality, he feared facing an up-and-coming Batista. After Batista discovered Triple H's attempts of swaying him and thinking he was a fool, it finally happened. During the ceremony where Batista would choose which person to face, he gave Triple H a thumbs up to lure him into thinking he would be going to Smackdown. Then the smile turned into anger, and the thumbs up into a thumbs down, and Batista turned into a full-fledged face by Batista-bombing Triple H through a table. I vividly remember watching this moment live with a few housemates in Puerto Rico and we were all marking out like crazy.
Besides turns that are weeks or months in the making, there are also the turns that take place out of seemingly nowhere that truly make an impact. The biggest one has to be Hulk Hogan's heel turn in 1996 when he formed the nWo with Kevin Nash and Scott Hall. After more than a decade of being a white-meat babyface, we never thought that we would see The Hulkster be the opposite of the vitamin-taking, prayer-saying, real American fighting for the rights of every man type of person he was. But when he came into the ring at the 1996 Bash at the Beach show and leg dropped Randy Savage and bad mouthed everyone, it was surreal. Someone taped this show for me and I watched it a few days later with some friends at my house in Puerto Rico and we didn't believe what we just saw. Even as a 15-year-old who figured out wrestling was pre-determined, I just couldn't believe it.
I think that heel turns are way easier to pull off to create that shocking moment. But there are occasions when a face turn is just as magical. One of my favorite moments of all time occurred during Wrestlemania 7. For more than two years before this event, Randy Savage was one of the biggest heels in the WWF, and a large part of this was due to his treatment of Miss Elizabeth, his valet (and real-life wife) who was portrayed to be just short of an angel and a saint.
At that Wrestlemania, the Ultimate Warrior and Randy "Macho King" Savage faced off in a retirement match. After Savage was pinned by Warrior and was forced to "retire", he began to be beaten while unconscious by Queen Sherri, his valet at the time. This prompted Miss Elizabeth, who was conveniently in the crowd, to run down and save Savage. When Savage realized what happened and saw that Elizabeth was still in love with him, they embraced in a hug while shedding tears of joy. I saw this match after renting it at a local video store (remember those?) with my brother when I was 10, and I admit that I cried as well. My brother still gives me crap about it when he remembered.
Out of all these moments, I do want to talk about my personal favorite turn. Actually, it's about two turns, and they happened on the same night.
On the night after the 1999 Royal Rumble, the leader of Degeneration X, Triple H, demanded an "I Quit" match again the WWF Champion and member of Vince McMahon's Corporation, The Rock, due to his actions from the previous night when he beat Mankind for the championship in the same type of match. The ending of that match came when fellow DX member Chyna was brought out and threatened to be obliterated by Kane unless Triple H quit. He did, only to have Chyna betray Triple H by one of her patented low blows. Chyna left Degeneration X and joined The Corporation. This isn't one of the turns that I wanted to talk about, though.
A few months later, we're at Wrestlemania 15, and Degeneration X was in full-fledged war with The Corporation. A few of the matches on the card were between members of both factions. First up was Triple H versus Kane. During the match, Chyna came to the ring and towards the end of the bout came into the ring with a steel chair. We all thought Triple H would be victimized again, but instead, he got Chyna whacking Kane in the back with the chair, which led to a Triple H Pedigree and victory. Everyone in the crowd and at home - including myself - celebrated Degeneration X being at full strength again.
Later in the night, we had another faction versus faction match between The Corporation's Shane McMahon and Degeneration X's X-Pac for the European championship. This match was full of interference from The Corporation's side, from Pat Patterson and Gerald Brisco to the Mean Street Posse to Test. Triple H and Chyna came down to even the odds a bit. Chyna distracted the ref to allow Triple H to come into the ring - but instead of helping his DX brother, he instead hit the Pedigree on X-Pac. When I saw Chyna and Triple H then celebrate with The Corporation at the local bar near my home that transmitted these Pay-Per-Views, my jaw was floored. I was not expecting that at all, especially with the events from just an hour or so prior.
I personally think this is the most underrated turn in WWE history. It was entirely unexpected (at least to me) and it eventually catapulted Triple H into that next level, winning the World Championship a few months later. It accomplished a lot in a short period of time and really helped just about everyone involved. Triple H got put into the main event. Chyna was eventually split off and reached her peak on her own. Even X-Pac and Kane had a good, solid run as a tag team after being aligned due to their respective betrayals.
What's more evident to me is that all of these turns that I mentioned are memorable. I almost remember all the details of where I was at the moment I saw those. This is kind of rare for me since I tend to vaguely remember a lot of things but don't really have that "photographic memory" that some might have when it comes to remembering these events.
Of course, there are some duds that happen when it comes to making someone turn heel or babyface, like the seemingly monthly turns by Big Show, or when one of the female superstars just shows up on TV in a multi-woman match on the opposing team she was just a week or two ago.
However, when these turns are done right, it's just outright magical. They're remembered for ages. They reignite the fire we have for watching this product and spending lots of our time and money in it. That's the beauty of these turns in wrestling, and that's why I show my gratitude for these events. Here's to having deceit, duplicity, treachery, craftiness and underhandedness causing more of these special moments for us all.
Random Ruckus
I really enjoyed writing this column. Thinking back about these moments just energizes me, which is probably why I wrote a pretty lengthy column. I wanted to add a couple of more notes about it but decided to do it separately since they don't add a lot more to the main portion. These notes relate to some of the independent shows I've gone to.
Usually, at smaller independent shows, we don't get a chance to see heel or face turns. Since the participants at these events are not part of the promotion's roster and are brought in just occasionally, there's no need to have deep storylines like this. But I have seen two heel turns at independent shows that have really been a joy to experience for the added depth that it brought to the show.
I experienced a heel turn recently at one of the small, local shows I mentioned in a column I wrote earlier this year. The promotion, Shi-en, holds a couple of free shows near where I live, so I make a point to go and watch some free wrestling for an hour. The main events of these free shows are typically six-man tag matches, and the promotion's champ (also the promoter - go figure) is part of it.
At the end of this match, the champ got the win and celebrated with the rest of the babyface team. One of the three babyfaces left to the back, and suddenly the other babyface brutally attacked the champ all the way through the crowd and busted him open. The newly-turned heel got the mic and said he was sick of being part of these matches and made a challenge for the championship at a later date, which was not a free show.
This turn was great because I didn't expect it since these tag matches were lighter in nature and done for fun. It also made me want to watch their match and pay for it, which is really the way pro wrestling is - make people want to come get the heel get their ass beat. It's funny because my wife was really visibly upset over the blade job and the heel turn, and she just despises the guy now.
The other turn was at a show on August 2014 in Alameda, California called Stars of Wrestling. This show was fun, featuring the likes of Carlito, Boogeyman, and Brian Kendrick. The main events of the evening included Brutus "The Barber" Beefcake and Bobby Lashley. In the last match, Lashley pinned a member of one of the local tag teams known as Hit Squad. The other Hit Squad member came down and they double-teamed Lashley.
All of a sudden, The Barber came down running out of the locker room. By "running", I mean walking at the brisk pace of an 80-year-old man, since his knees seemed to be completely useless. He hit the ring and evened the odds, helping Lashley get back to his feet and clearing the ring. They celebrated and I thought that was the end of the night.
Slowly, the Hit Squad members surrounded the ring - and Lashley attacked Beefcake! They then triple teamed Beefcake until the promoters (always the promoters…) came in to save the day and set up a match for a few months later. I really liked this because of the unexpectedness of it all. How the hell was I to know that Brutus "The Barber" Beefcake would be involved in a wrestling angle in 2014?
I remembered I got some video of that moment, so I uploaded it for your enjoyment: https://streamable.com/03mx
Anyway, I hope you all enjoyed these memories as much as I enjoyed writing it. Whether I stay in this tournament or not, I'm fine with it as I'm having a lot of fun writing again.
'Til next time,
Degenerate