Where’s the WWE Union and Where’s “No Holds Barred 2: Return of the Lazy Eye?”
Why is it when you feel like Tim Roth shouting at a guy who just lost an ear, variables always seem to get thrown at you that prevents relief, even on your day off? I am assuming bronchitis, so my high alcohol tolerance preventing me from trying to get a hang over to spew the ills away is Mr. Blonde bullshit. “Escape from New York” being too good to be background noise, thus demanding my total attention preventing me from writing this blog, is Mr. Pink saying I won’t get the medical care I need (we’ll call that sleep). Hopefully, my go to audio ambiance, the Tiny Lister classic “Men of War,” will at least shut Chris Penn up, and finishing this blog for eternal (I wish) slumber will be Mr. White’s bullet.
This would be a great place to transition to talking about the subject matter of this eventual edition to the “Rip ‘Em System” Tublr, but I do want to address “The Art of Wrestling with CM Punk and Colt Cabana,” that I’m still trying to download. The WWE “workers” need to get their shit together and form a union. I’m fairly certain the quotes I’ve read about the WWE’s denial or ignorance of the actual state of their talents’ health are true. To clarify, this ignorance is probably directed to the workers with voices that the company does not want to be heard.
Dolph Ziggler and The Miz get all of the time off to recover from a concussion since they ride with the physician. These guys are also products of WWE, not the indie scene, so they’ve been developed by the McMahons to be the sports entertainers they want to showcase despite they can’t pull up Punks kick pad (maybe lace up is the correct term, I got mine through Highspots or Century instead of eLucha.
I’m not saying that Ziggler and Miz aren’t talented. Ziggler’s athleticism is outstanding which is his downfall because it seems to be the emphasis of his offense. It just seems sloppy because he wants to execute every one of his signature moves too fast. This may just be a personal preference since I seem to be the minority. Most of my fellow veterans of the squared circle (a Barry Horowitz moment) opinions coincide with the majority. The Miz is awe…inspiring on the mic which is why I loved his tag team with John Morrison. Mike could sell the true talent, like he’s doing with Mizdow.
Still, these two performers work so hard to be social network relevant, you’d expect they’d be capable of doing the socially responsible thing and support a union to assure the safety and proper compensation that all of their fellow “Superstars” deserve. The workers have no other options when it comes to making a celebrity-style living. Unless CM Punk fights A.J. Styles for the command of the Bullet Club, there is no competing promotion to work for that give the performers leverage.
Vince McMahon may not go for dealing with a union, but if all the talent joins, he’ll have to rely on his subpar writing to get over subpar wrestlers. I think the 18 to 35 is still his target demographic, so he’d better be ready to return to Saturday mornings curtain jerking for figure skating and gymnastics, hoping for a bump from “The Mighty Morphing Power Rangers.” In the end, Jerry Lawler would become the head of talent relations as every non-union athlete prepares for his General Mills cereal box gimmick.
Or should I have said Post because of their established relationship with Fruity Pebbles?
Perhaps my proposal of a union wouldn’t have been needed if Hollywood would have capitalized on the home video market during the boom in wrestling. Why wasn’t there a “Planet of the Samoans” franchise developed between Wrestlemania and Wrestlemania XVII? Could you imagine the reboot when you cast The Rock as Cesar?
Give me some props for the round about way of getting to what I really wanted to write about this week.
What did we get with the mixed martial arts boom? Tap Out putting their name of direct to DVD films. It may have slowed down recently, but since at least 2008 (when I was living with a girl, trying to find cheap flicks to watch instead of giving into budgeting her need for cable TV) I found on my weekly visit to the Walmart electronic shelves, a long side the knock off of the soon-to-be-released theatrical horror flick with a gimmick, was a flick about no-holds-barred fighting with an MMA star second billed behind the guy who probably produced the vast majority of them.
Have I watched many of them? No. Why would I? These are movies focusing on guys who seem to have no prerequisite in the minimal requirements in acting or telling a story. And then you add in the MMA fighters with the same qualities when it comes to the big screen (is 40" a big enough screen, or should I have opted for a bigger TV from my folks instead of the PS4?). I should be more careful with my words, Vinnie Jones tends to star in these films. Can we just make him a citizen so he doesn’t have to work on these projects to stay in the States?
Isn’t pro-wrestling better suited as subject matter for a direct to video release? It’s a crooked business, probably more so than the UFC, so stories are easy to write. I’d just like to see one undercover cop in the ring, or maybe I just want to see the further relevance of Jacques Rougeau. El Santo had a rather epic film career in Mexico, a market that WWE hasn’t seemed to make any headway with (way to go Hunter).
Growing up with parents who didn’t let me watch “Gremlins” until I was twelve (but listen to the vinyl records that came with kids meals from Hardee’s, and they wonder why I was afraid of the dark until I realized the joy of sleeping past noon [that may have been different if “Muppet Babies” was still on]), there wasn’t much for me at the video store after I out grew “The Masters of the Universe.” All there was that didn’t make it to the Morton Cinema, the Varsity Theatre, the Beverly Theater, or the Fox Theater (P-Town represent) were horror movies.
My parents also let me watch pro-wrestling because they knew it was fiction. All I knew of the boxing realm was “Rocky III.” It would have been nice to have had stories starring Randy Savage, Jake Roberts, and Junkyard Dog. I think my dad’s favorite music was Curtis Mayfield, so we could have bonded over the cinema you’d expect a JYD flick to be.
It’s not like these movies wouldn’t be appreciated by Cannon and Newline Cinemas, houses built by Chuck Norris and Freddy Krueger respectively.
Could you imagine Chuck Norris versus Hulk Hogan? The only time in the 80’s where we could have seen the Hulkster doing the favor (or else). If we had two or three of these films a year (from 1985-1988), NHB may have been cinema gold that could have prevented the rise (crawl may be the better suited term) of 90’s comic book movies. Lori Petty may not have been one of the dream lays of my adolescence (behind Kelly MacDonald and Chun-Li ["Street Fighte 2: The World Warrior"]), but from the lessons learned, “Ready to Rumble” may have been a masterpiece. If Warner Bros. thought it could top “No Holds Barred 3: Brell Lives,” of course.
Hind sight is a Bella Twin (better to use that B-word than the other five-lettered one). Or it’s just evidence of how out-of-touch Vince McMahon is. Here is a qualifying question Cabana should have asked (if he didn’t…listening to audio from YouTube at work tomorrow seems awkward): What was the last film McMahon saw. It couldn’t have been either of the latest “Pirates of the Caribbean” films if you locate the most recent (11/30/14) Paul Burchill interview.
Knowing that if you dawned the spandex (the most comfortable fabric in the world…Lycra specifically), you would have multiple income sources if you worked hard enough, the selfish attitudes that will likely never see the WWEPA (I’d hope the boys will call themselves performers instead of Superstars) would be fine. It was the 80’s, if there was ever a time to for pro-wrestling movies leading to decadence, it was then.
There’s the future for CM Punk. I’m sure there will be characters from Marvel that won’t be featured in Phase IV. Time to get to producing. Surely, Seth Green would step aside to let Colt Cabana become Howard the Duck. “Main Event of the Dead” could always use more backers.
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