The first ever pro-wrestling gimmick match was in … ah screw it, who cares? Cool aren’t they? I’m as big an advocate of traditional, technical wrestling contests as you’ll find but I can think of nothing more enjoyable than watching a couple of talented nut-jobs whacking the snot out of eachother with an assortment of household objects. No reasons and no excuses today, just some comments on various gimmicks, match stipulations and related stuff that I’ve seen.
CAGE MATCHES
One of the more commonplace gimmick matches in pro-wrestling has had its stock devalued a little over the years, certainly to the point where it no longer merits the gravely-voiced “fifteen-foot high steel cage!” demonic introduction it normally receives. Despite being hated by the vast majority of wrestlers who performed therein, from a visual standpoint I prefer the ‘old school’ WWF cage with the chunky blue bars rather than the diamond-link ‘tennis court’ fencing we get thesedays. Some of the bumps Rick Rude took head-first into those metal bars during his Summerslam 1990 cage match with the Ultimate Warrior must have been sore and there was no give to protect you like you get with the mesh structure. As for my favourite cage match, it’s an odd one: the Steiner Brothers against Money Inc on WWF Sunday Night Summerslam Spectacular in 1993. Sure, there’s been more violent and bloodier cage matches than this but it was a rabidly viewed encounter with an exciting and clever finish. Best cage spot is a bit tougher. Kurt’s suicidal moonsault miss and Jeff Hardy’s table crushing dive were amazing to watch and Elix Skipper’s tightrope walk into a huracanrana in TNA was nothing short of incredible but I’ve got to go back in time again to find my favourite. Hulk Hogan superplexing the Big Boss Man from the top of the cage in 1989 on Saturday Night’s Main Event. Apart from the fact that Traylor must have weighed close to 330lbs back then, it just seemed impossible that Hogan would be able to get him over to (1) execute the move and (2) not execute the Boss Man in the process. I think the mesh cage works better with the ‘lighting rig’ framing around the top (like in WWE) so that there’s some sense of security for those climbing up or leaping from the cage, though I do think they should eliminate the pinfall/submission option and stick solely to the ‘escaping the cage’ to win idea.
UNDERTAKER
The best thing about a ‘Buried Alive’ match is that you’re fairly certain to see a good streetfight before the landscape gardening kicks in. The main drawback with the gimmick is that the damn hole needs filling in but steps have previously been taken to speed up this part using an earth mover or some helpful shovellers. Despite the overly theatrical concept of the contest, it always makes for a visually appealing spectacle and usually contains some decent brutality and drama. Of the two Undertaker gimmicks, I prefer the ‘Casket’ match. Granted, it takes a real opponent like HBK to make the match exceptional but Taker’s had worthwhile casket matches with the likes of Kama (Godfather) and Goldust and this is down to a combination of Undertaker’s presence and the creativeness that the gimmick allows.
IWA KING OF DEATH TOURNAMENT
If I advised anyone to go out and buy a dvd copy of the IWA King of Death tournament from the Kawasaki baseball stadium in 1995, I’d be subjecting you to some cruiserweight action so bad that the Japanese audience were laughing at them, a dull fat-fuelled squash from The Headhunters and a bizarre stand-off between Tarzan Goto and Dan Severn which would have been funny if it wasn’t actually happening. Luckily, that’s the bad stuff. The ‘good stuff’ is a surreal mixture of horror and brutality, only discernible from slasher movies by the bright sunlight and the hoards of scurrying fans abandoning their white folding chairs for fear of being eviscerated by Leatherface’s chainsaw. Thumb tacks, beds of nails, panes of glass, chains, barbed wire with C4 explosives and almost indestructible tables make this a must see for any fan of weapons usage. My favourite moment is when, during the ‘exploding ring’ final with Terry Funk, Cactus Jack lifts himself off the mat only to leave a perfectly formed outline of his face in blood on the canvas. I guess I’m biased towards this event because I’d read about it and seen grizzly photos of it for quite a while before I managed to get a copy and I remember shaking with anticipation when I watched it purely because it felt like I was witnessing an execution or something equally as voyeuristically unpleasant. You’ll find more exciting ‘garbage’ action elsewhere but it’s definitely worth a look as a seminal moment in hardcore wrestling.
HELL IN A CELL
Probably inspired by the structure used in the ‘Chamber of horrors’ match in WCW, the frame used in the HIAC matches gives much more room for manoeuvre than the standard cage and normally produces better matches, if only people would forget about Foley. I’ll rephrase that. No one has yet replicated or superseded what Mick Foley did in his cell matches. HBK fell from the side of the cage through a table and Rikishi fell backwards onto a heavily padded truck (both good spots) but the expectation levels for someone to go flying from the top or through the mesh again whenever there’s a cell match is optimistic at best. Even though Foley’s two HIAC spots from his match with the Undertaker are the most amazing things I have seen in wrestling, the first cell match with Undertaker v HBK is the best one and is unlikely to be bettered anytime soon.
MATCH STIPULATIONS
Different from a gimmick, a stipulation determines a consequence based around the result of the match. ‘Kiss my foot’, ‘loser salutes the flag’, ‘loser wears a dress’, ‘loser eats dog food’ and ‘loser marries a McMahon’ (I made that last one up) are just some of the options available to promoters to add insult to injury. I’m a big fan of the ‘loser leaves town’ idea, even though in the majority of cases we already know who’s leaving, and it does give us the opportunity to sing a Bananarama song, something most people wouldn’t ordinarily do. My favourite would be the Ric Flair v Mr Perfect ‘loser leaves WWF’ match from Raw in January 1993. It also nicely demonstrates the relaxed attitude wrestling has towards ‘retirement/leaving’ stipulations but then anyone dumb enough to think the rules will be adhered to are the same people who think the Big Show is real (there’s actually four midgets working him from the inside).
ATSUSHI ONITA
The ‘Wild Thing’ Atsushi Onita was the ‘Hogan-esque’ superstar of Japanese federation FMW and subjected himself to some appalling treatment in the name of entertainment. Little story. I was once being ridiculed for my love of pro-wrestling by a former Scottish Karate champion and his friends so I invited them all back to my place for a drink and a look at Onita v Mr Pogo from FMW. At the precise moment Pogo’s ice-pick penetrated Onita’s flesh and started rearranging his intestines, my ‘martial arts’ detractor puked up his disapproval all over my clean carpet and accused me of being a sick freak (whilst running from the building). My favourite Onita match, despite some obvious flaws, was his (deep breath) 8-man dynamite swimming pool double-hell death match. Not a mat classic as you’d expect from the name and the aquatic element was neither shocking nor entertaining but it looked cool and there were some nice weapons spots along the way.
VARIOUS
CCW (California Creative Wrestling), mostly infamous for their tasteless wrestler gimmicks like The Abortionist, put on an interesting match involving boards with ‘Aids-infected’ syringes sticking out. Unfortunately, the wrestling was bad, the promos were really bad and the angles would have been offensive if they weren’t so poorly acted. I once saw a weird one (in either W*ING or IWA) where two teams of wrestlers had a match in a deserted house and completely destroyed it in the process. Bull Nakano had an odd series of public matches, beating her opponents senseless on a crowded commuter train and in a busy park on an otherwise pleasant sunny day. CZW must have single-handedly resurrected the fluorescent light tube industry in America and the alternative use for a weed-whacker (or ‘strimmer’ as we call them) was inventively sadistic. The beating suffered by CZW owner John Danzig, culminating in him being hung from the ceiling by hooks through the fleshy parts of his shoulders, is by far the closest thing to torture I’ve seen in pro-wrestling.
So what point am I trying to make? None really.
Lee
