Date: October 4, 1993
Company: WWF
Show: Monday Night Raw
Rules: The surviving two competitors will wrestle a week later
Stipulation: Winners to compete for vacated Intercontinental Championship
Roster (20): Adam Bomb, Bam Bam Bigelow, Bastion Booger, Bob Backlund, Diesel, Giant Gonzalez, Irwin R. Schyster, Jacques, “Superfly” Jimmy Snuka, Mabel, Marty Jannetty, Mr. Perfect, the MVP, 1-2-3 Kid, Owen Hart, Pierre, “Macho Man” Randy Savage, Razor Ramon, “the Model” Rick Martel, and Tatanka.

Shawn Michaels was a very scummy guy in the 90’s and one of the things that shows it off is how insistent he was to not put people over when it came to dropping titles. When it happens once or twice, you can give the man the benefit of the doubt, but over the years, he’s dropped every major title he’s held in some ridiculous fashion that doesn’t involve losing an actual match. One of the first major instances is in late ’93, where as Intercontinental Champion, he is briefly fired from the company. The reasoning has never been clear (rumors include steroids and posturing for a jump to WCW), but in the storyline, he had to vacate the belt due to not defending it within 30 days.

On this Raw, they make the first step in crowning a new champion via a battle royal. 20 men enter and go at it until instead of one winner, there are two. Whoever they are, they’ll have a match the following week on Raw. This is during a time when Raw is only an hour long, so this match actually takes up literally half of it. Strangely, this is chosen for the first half, leaving the rest of the show for squash matches. Why have a half hour battle royal for a major title as the main event when you can just throw on Doink the Clown vs. some guy?

It’s a pretty packed ring in terms of names. It’s arguably a better roster than most Royal Rumbles around this time. While certainly not the best name in there, having Giant Gonzalez in the battle royal is certainly a notable thing due to how his size makes him a kayfabe favorite. Randy Savage enters the ring last and notices how Gonzalez is standing near the corner, facing everyone else while playing it up how ready he is. Savage plays it smart by going right for him.

A bunch of guys help him out and out goes Gonzalez within seconds. This would be his final televised appearance in wrestling. The other 19 make the following minutes without elimination plenty entertaining, most notably when Mabel has Tatanka in the corner, looks straight into the camera and yells, “EVERY MAN FOR HIMSELF!” while drooling. Mabel would be the next big threat and his opponents choose to gang up on him. Diesel is the next favorite, though he hasn’t made a name for himself yet in Royal Rumble ’94, and he screws himself over by running full-steam at Mr. Perfect, missing and sailing over the top.

Interesting moment comes when Razor Ramon throws out IRS and starts leaning over the top ropes while pointing at him to leave. If he was a heel, this would be a prime moment for him to be dumped over due to his own stupidity. Instead, it’s used as a perilous moment where Jacque of the Quebeccers almost dumps him out, but Razor barely holds on and gets back in with the help of the 1-2-3 Kid and Savage.

Bam Bam throws Razor out through the middle rope and celebrates, not realizing that he needs to send him over the top. Razor slides back in and takes him out with one hell of a bump.

Things begin to thin out after the third commercial break. One of the competitors is newcomer MVP (also known as Abe “Knuckleball” Schwartz), who would go on to do a big pile of nothing in the WWF. Here, he lasts quite a while until Owen Hart flings him out. Owen’s done away with shortly after and we’re down to six. On one side, we have Randy Savage and Razor Ramon. On the other side, we have Rick Martel, the Quebeccers and Adam Bomb. The heels choose to team up together and play the numbers game. There’s some nice commentary by McMahon and Heenan, who come up with reasons as to why these guys would work together. For one, Adam Bomb and the Quebeccers are managed by Johnny Polo. Also, Martel and the Quebeccers are French-Canadian, so there’s a kinship there.

While the French-Canadians triple-team Razor, Savage is able to fight back against Adam Bomb and fireman’s carry him over the top. Bomb is pissed and grabs Savage by the ankle. Bomb’s allies rush him from behind and are able to easily dump him out. Now it’s them against Razor. Personally, I think it would make sense in-story for Martel to try and betray the Quebeccers as due to the rules of the match, he’d be at a huge disadvantage once Razor’s gone, but that never happens. The three proceed to beat down on Razor repeatedly, no matter how many times he fights back.

The three have fun messing with him, like having two hold him back while the other smacks him around. Razor kicks down Martel and the Quebeccers go back on the assault. Jacques holds him back while Pierre tries a clothesline. Razor moves, Jacques takes the hit and gets propelled out of the ring. As Pierre reacts to this, Razor grabs him from behind and eliminates him too. He turns right around and gets ready for Martel, doing his angry stomp taunt. The refs won’t allow it.

The match is over. Razor Ramon and Rick Martel are the winners. The following week has them wrestle for the vacated Intercontinental Championship and to the surprise of absolutely nobody, Razor wins. Regardless, it’s a pretty awesome match. This would be the last hurrah of Martel, who immediately falls back into obscurity and does nothing for the next few months until his release.

Shawn Michaels would come back weeks later and get injected into a Survivor Series match against the Hart Family due to Jerry Lawler’s legal issues. It made little sense and it sucked, but whatever. He starts a feud with Razor based on how he never lost the Intercontinental Championship, culminating in a legendary Ladder Match at Wrestlemania 10. Razor would win and show himself to be the undisputed Intercontinental Champion.

For tomorrow’s installment: Shawn Michaels is still a piece of shit.

The story of Icarus is one about obedience and hubris. “Be happy with what you have. Don’t fly too high and too close to the sun,” Daedalus said. Icarus, consumed with glee at being able to fly and escape his fate, ignores his father’s advice and pays the price.

In Dust Tracks on a Road, Zora Neale Hurston writes:

Mama exhorted her children at every opportunity to ‘jump at de sun.’ We might not land on the sun, but at least we would get off the ground.

I had to google around for the exact quote, but I knew it more or less already. “Things can only get better. Jump at the sun.”

Maybe it’s unfair to compare these two, but whatever. I like the contrast. Listen:

It’s hard for me to think of a quote that better defines the experience of being black in America. Growing up, I was taught that I’d have to work twice as hard to be heard, and deal with half the praise. Others would praise me more than my peers, simply because performing on par is exceptional when you start behind the eightball. Either way, I needed, need, to do more than my peers. I need to be better, faster, stronger, smarter, just so that I can be treated as normal instead of a niche.

America is short on black heroes. We don’t get to be the princes on white horses and princesses in high castles. When we are the king and queen, it’s in a creative work that people see as being specifically black, rather than mainstream. That’s “a black movie,” that one’s “a black comic.” It doesn’t get to be normal.

That’s how America works. White is the default. And once you begin changing up the formula — a black hero here, a spanish hero there — you move away from the default and become… niche.

What’s worse? Being invisible or being a curio?

One of my favorite aspects of Django Unchained is that it isn’t that black of a movie at all. It’s not a niche story. It’s a classic, an epic. It’s a story that we all know and love. There is a princess in a castle and there is a hero coming to save her. It’s a little different from damsel in distress tales — Hildi is thrown in the hotbox for trying to escape again, not for just trying to escape; she’s a troublemaker — but at its core? It’s the same. The difference? It stars a black man who loves a black woman, instead of a white man who loves a white woman.

Dr King Schultz tells the story of Siegfried and Brunhild to an attentive and eager Django not because it’s cute, or because Tarantino wanted you to know the end of the movie before it went down. Schultz, and Tarantino, relate that story to show just how universal this movie, a movie that tells the story of a freed slave trying to rescue his wife during one of the most dismal periods in American history, actually is.

Schultz even tells the story in the oldest possible way. He and Django are outside, sitting by a fire. While they eat, Django sits and listens while Schultz tells a story. Shadows flicker on the rocks behind them while they talk.

It’s the oldest story. It’s a love story. That’s what’s at the heart of it. There are revenge elements, but that isn’t what makes the story go. It’s about a man who will do anything to protect the woman he loves. When he finds out where his wife is and what she’s being forced to do, Django says something along the lines of “Not while I’m alive. Not while I have my gun.” We know that feeling. We know love.

Hildi is Django’s everything. His love for her is the engine that keeps him going, letting him push past the misery and horrors he has to indulge in. There’s no point in getting dirty if you don’t get to wash it off at the end of the day. Hildi is his salvation.

And he’s hers. They ran away together, they paid for it together, and after they were separated, she kept trying to get away. She’s no wilting flower. She’s a soldier. She’s going to run until they finally kill her, because freedom beats death every time. She’s willing to die for him, and he’ll die for her.

You don’t see a lot of these stories between black characters in big budget movies. Just a straight-up, no-nonsense, high profile love story. What was the last one? Independence Day? Men in Black? There’s probably been once since, there has to have been, but the fact that you’re wracking your brain right now says it all, if you think about it. It’s such a little thing, but you can feel that lack if you grow up and nobody like you gets to play in the big leagues.

I felt really, really good when I read this quote from Kerry Washington, from an interview with the LA Times:

“I know it’s not the most feminist idea to be a woman in a tower wanting to be rescued, but for a woman of color in this country, we’ve never been afforded that fairy tale because of how the black family was ripped apart [during slavery],” Washington said. “I really saw the value of having a story that empowers the African American man to do something chivalrous for the African American woman, because that hasn’t been an idea that has held women back in the culture — it’s something we’ve never been allowed to dream about.”

She said it better than I ever could. It feels good to finally get to be the prince, and I figure it feels good to finally get to be the princess, too. Damsel in distress stories might be passé to some people, but I bet those people never grew up wishing for fundamentally different skin or hair so that they could indulge in these fantasies.

I love that Django Unchained exists. I hate that it took this long for Hollywood to sit up, pay attention, and hook up a well-done picture that’s treated on par with any other big movie, despite the presence of a willing and clearly underserved black audience. Tyler Perry is a punchline, a cheap joke for internet types, instead of a model. “Nobody’s making movies for black grandmas? Well shoot son, I got these scripts right here…” We — everyone — should be part of the spectrum, part of “normal,” rather than an exception.

Until then, it’s twice as hard. Half the credit.

So why wouldn’t you jump at the sun?

Date: December 28, 1992
Company: WCW
Show: Starrcade ’92
Rules: Normal
Stipulation: None
Roster (8): Van Hammer, Danny Spivey, Big Van Vader, “the Natural” Dustin Rhodes, Great Muta, Barry Windham, “Dr. Death” Steve Williams and Sting

I didn’t watch all that much WCW in my childhood and I especially didn’t see any WCW PPVs. The concept of Battlebowl always had me interested, though, and it’s something I’d love to see WWE bring back. The first step to it is the Lethal Lottery. A bunch of wrestler names are picked out of a hat to create very random tag team matches. For instance, at this show, Big Van Vader and Dustin Rhodes had to team up to face the Barbarian and Kensuke Sasaki. Vader and Dustin won, each advancing into the big battle royal to end the show. In Vader’s case, it also softened him up a bit for a scheduled match against Sting that he ended up losing.

Sting is the last entrance into the fray and as they hype him up as last year’s winner, Vader rushes out the ring and collides into him. He goes from repeatedly clobbering him to trying to choke him out while Harley Race cheers him on. Refs try to separate the two while the other six go at it in the ring.

Sting and Vader eventually find their way in there and for quite a while, a big pile of nothing happens. It’s made a bit more boring from the fact that whoever’s directing this feels the need to hold back on changing any camera angles. It’s just the same hard camera shot of eight men brawling for far too long. Eventually, they show two more screens of other camera angles, which makes an 8-man brawl look more complicated than it really needs to.

Dr. Death eliminates Van Hammer about five minutes in and finally we’re onto something, but it’s barely noticed as the focus is more on Dustin giving Windham a bulldog on the walkway to the ring. With the eight guys involved, the only two feuds that have any meat on them are Sting vs. Vader and Dustin vs. Windham, who were partners before Windham turned heel. Sting soon after eliminates Spivey and that too is rather underwhelming.

With six guys left, Vader cuts it down quite a bit by diving into Sting and taking them both out in one go.

That leaves Muta vs. Dr. Death while the Dustin/Windham fight keeps on keeping on. Once it’s time to reach the end, Dr. Death repeats the same exact spot as Vader and accidentally eliminates himself along with Dustin Rhodes. That brings us to Windham – who is bloodied from that earlier bulldog – and the Great Muta. The crowd suddenly wakes up at this point and there are huge chants in support of Muta.

Windham works on Muta and holds the advantage for a few minutes. After a nice dropkick, he figures it’s time to finish it and throws him over the top rope. Muta holds on, does the “skin the cat” spot and saves himself from elimination.

He bombards Windham with a couple dropkicks and sends him over the top, thereby winning the Battlebowl Ring in what Jesse Ventura insists is an upset. The place goes nuts and fireworks go off for our Japanese victor.

Keep in mind, this is a pretty mind-blowing finish for the time. Shawn Michaels made it memorable at the 1994 Royal Rumble, but that’s still just over a year away by this point. So that’s cool.

Speaking of Shawn Michaels, tomorrow is all about his absence and the need for a replacement.

Django Unchained is controversial in part due to the fact that a slave revenge story utilizes one of the most painful periods in American history for action movie thrills. The extreme Fox News types want to know why Quentin Tarantino is producing a hate tract, Spike Lee and them want to know who Tarantino thinks he is to tell this story, and it seems like everybody else is trying to figure out if Tarantino is racist and how racist he is (this one’s pretty dumb). Django Unchained is, to a certain extent and on a few different levels, something we aren’t used to seeing. It’s getting a lot of attention accordingly.

But what’s easy to miss in all the hullaballoo is the fact that Django Unchained isn’t that foreign of an object at all. In fact, Django himself is a quintessentially American hero, a type of character we already know and love. Well, to a point.

I like this bit from Andrew Dominik’s Killing Them Softly, delivered by Brad Pitt’s Jackie Cogan:

My friend, Thomas Jefferson is an American saint because he wrote the words ‘All men are created equal,’ words he clearly didn’t believe since he allowed his own children to live in slavery. He’s a rich white snob who’s sick of paying taxes to the Brits. So, yeah, he writes some lovely words and aroused the rabble and they went and died for those words while he sat back and drank his wine and fucked his slave girl. This guy wants to tell me we’re living in a community? Don’t make me laugh. I’m living in America, and in America you’re on your own. America’s not a country. It’s just a business.

America isn’t baseball, bald eagles, apple pie, and pretty blonde cheerleaders dating sturdy quarterbacks. America is John Wayne. America loves John Wayne. I could be mean and point out how Wayne’s racism and white supremacist views are as American as apple pie, if not more so, but really, it’s his persona we love. The reputation of the dude he played in the movies. It’s the idea that one man can stride into town with not much more than a gun, a grimace, and strong sense of right and wrong, and make a difference.

We love lone gunmen out here. Men of action, not like our wishy-washy politicians or corrupt constables. Men who know how to get things done. Mavericks. We like John McClane more than just about anything. Films noir are littered with these guys. It’s one man against the world, and we love it so much because the man can win.

The lone gunmen gives us an icon to look up to, a hero to aspire to. You can see it in the rhetoric that comes after shootings. “If only one man was there with a gun to do the hard thing…” It’s stupid if you think about it for more than half a second, but it’s undeniably sexy. We don’t have a lot of control over our lives, so the idea that one man can take control, and that in the right situation, that man would be us, is wildly seductive.

Django Unchained is an incredibly American movie, isn’t it? Django’s up against blatant evil, an evil that has been propped up by a corrupt government and culture, and that frees him to do the hard thing without being a bad man. Generally, killing someone is something to be frowned upon, but when Django does it? It’s righteous. He’s giving them what they deserve and we cheer him because he is right. Never mind the murder, or the laws, or any of that. What matters is that someone has done wrong, and they need to pay for that.

Seeing this kind of story in action, the ultra-capable lone man hero, makes us feel good inside. It suggests that there is order in the world, and that our problems can be solved in spectacular fashion. It fills a need that is hard to express in polite society. It isn’t fair or kind, but some people deserve to die. They’ve reached that point that we, as individual people or a society, say “Build his gallows high.”

We want to see Django kill those folks because they deserved to die for their crimes. Tarantino mined the history of slavery, and simply seeing it in action let us mentally justify the massacres at the end. Django is our lone man, our instrument of vengeance. We have seen evil, and we want it gone.

The lone man is a stupid and evil idea, too, of course. I assume you know that already. The idea of a lone gunman sucks for everyone who doesn’t want to play lone gunman. It’s the pretty face of imperialism and terrible, murderous aggression. Django’s just the inverse of the oppressor, a cruel answer to a cruel wound. And even then… he has to willingly take part in the exploitation of his own people. He has to stand by and let two men be murdered, just so that he can get his wife back.

It can be nice to visit, to indulge our desire to be the big man on campus, but you can’t let it stick around in the back of your head. You can’t take it to heart. A lone man is no way to be a part of a family or a community. Lone men just hold everyone back in the long run. America can be Martin Luther King Jr as well as John Wayne.

Date: January 28, 1991 (broadcast on February 16, 1991)
Company: WWF
Show: Superstars
Rules: One man being eliminated counts for his partner as well
Stipulation: #1 contender spot for WWF Tag Team Championship at Wrestlemania 7
Roster (14): The Bushwhackers (Butch and Luke), Demolition (Smash and Crush), the Legion of Doom (Hawk and Animal), the Nasty Boys (Brian Knobbs and Jerry Sags), the Orient Express (Kato and Tanaka), Power and Glory (Hercules and Paul Roma) and the Rockers (Shawn Michaels and Marty Jannetty)

Here we go. I started watching wrestling in early 1991, so this is one of my earliest WWF memories. At the time, the tag champs are the Hart Foundation and we’re in the final days of the company having a great tag division. It’s been said that the Legion of Doom were the last time Vince really cared about tag teams and this is the first step in their rising up the ranks.

With the exception of Haku and the Barbarian and, naturally, the tag champs themselves, we have the entire tag division duking it out here for a chance at the belts. Kind of cool to see a battle royal for tag teams being used for #1 contenders in a stipulation they still weren’t using for the Royal Rumble by this point. In fact, the first time someone became #1 contender via Royal Rumble, it was also for the chance to dethrone Bret Hart. Huh.

After two minutes of clusterfuck clobbering all over, the Rockers take out Demolition. First they stagger Crush with a double superkick, then they do a double dropkick that sends Smash to the outside. Crush is annoyed that he has to leave and attacks the Rockers for a moment until accepting his loss. Soon after, the Bushwackers are out. What follows is something I’ve always wondered about as a kid. Jannetty holds Knobbs and Michaels goes for a dropkick. It misses and Jannetty goes flying out.

They get over it, but I was never sure whether or not they were trying to lay down the groundwork for the Rockers split-up at this point. Keep in mind, they spent MONTHS building it up through all kinds of screw-ups on either side. Was it just a cool spot or was this the first step in Shawn Michaels’ amazing singles career? I can never figure out just how long-term that booking really was.

Four teams become three once the ever-forgettable Orient Express are done with. That leaves the Legion of Doom, Nasty Boys and Power and Glory. Despite the heel dominance in the ring, Roma spends the last few moments running from Animal, even getting chased out of the ring, only to be thrown back in. His fate is sealed when Hercules throws Roma at Animal and fails to take him down.

Power and Glory are now out, leaving the Legion of Doom to take apart the Nasty Boys with little problem. As Animal sets up the Doomsday Device, Hawk climbs to the top rope. An annoyed Roma gets on the apron and shoves Hawk’s leg, causing him to fall to the floor. Despite Power and Glory no longer being in the match, that still counts as an elimination and the Legion of Doom are done. The focus appears to be more on Animal angrily glaring at Roma and Hercules as they walk off than on the fact that the Nasty Boys are Wrestlemania-bound.

The Nasty Boys would indeed go on to defeat the Hart Foundation, allowing Bret to go off on his own budding solo career. On the same Wrestlemania 7 undercard, the Legion of Doom got their hands on Power and Glory, destroying them in a fit of swift vengeance less than a minute in length. Said match also gave us the most cringe-worthy Hawk quote of all, “Power and Glory? POWER AND GLORY?! When we’re done with you, you’re gonna be SOUR… and GORY!”

Hawk and Animal earned their right to challenge for the belts and their climactic battle with the Nasty Boys took place months later at Summerslam. The Legion of Doom won their first WWF title victory and the wheels started rolling with this match.

Tomorrow, we’ll have a tag team battle royal of a different sort.

I gave up on black misery a while back. You know what I’m talking about. Movies or books or whatever about how sad it is to be black, how hard black people got it, and how messed up life is for black people. Whether it’s Precious, The Blind Side, Roots, whatever whatever — I’m through. I’m tired of being reminded of the black condition all the time. I get enough of that in real life, whether through black faces falling victim to the war on drugs or white faces going out of their way to quote whatever cool movie said “nigger” at me at parties. You know BET marathons Roots come Christmastime? I watched Monty Python & The Holy Grail with the fam instead.

It ain’t the sadness or the misery that did me in. I’m fine with either of those, really. But it’s the weight of dozens of movies and history books and conversations that did me in. The highlight reel for blacks in America goes like this: stolen from Africa, fed to sharks, sold at auction, whipped to death and back, freed from bondage and forced into even more bondage, died fighting some machine made of hammers, invented the peanut and stop light, wrote a bunch of poems, decided the front of the bus was the cool spot, got the right to vote, turned into drug dealers and thugs, decided the back of the bus was the cool spot, crackheads&fiends&geeks&junkies, Obama.

It sucks.

Quentin Tarantino’s Django Unchained is what Tarantino calls a “southern,” meaning a western set in the south. It’s the antebellum south, too, and depicts the version of life in the south at that time that you’d expect to see. People say nigger fifty-eleven times, slaves get torn apart by dogs and whipped, and there’s a big fat cotton field.

It’s also the most feel-good movie I’ve seen all year.

The American slave trade was an atrocity. It was government-sponsored genocide. It is a cultural wound, a scar that has never been atoned for and one that we’re still feeling the effects from today.

There are other scars, obviously. But we’ve avenged Pearl Harbor and World War II hundreds of times over the course of an interminable number of video games and movies. We’ve won the west even more often than we’ve won World War II… but we’ve never won slavery.

Just the opposite, in fact. Between moronic Lost Causers and well-meaning creative types, we’ve elevated the Confederate soldier — a man who fought for the right to hold another person as property, regardless of his personal politics — to a frontier hero, a symbol of American exceptionalism. We made scumbags into underdogs.

Django Unchained is a corrective. It’s not the first of its type, but it is by far the highest profile. Instead of wallowing in misery, Tarantino gives us — me — the story we’ve been waiting for: a violent, bloody revenge tale set in a time period that we have been continually dishonest about.

Why’d it take so long? I figure it’s because you can otherize the perpetrators of those other wounds. Nazis are German, the west was won over the bodies of Mexicans and natives… you can point at them and say “That’s them, not us.” You can’t do that with slavery. I mean, you can — you should — but what you’re really doing is “That’s Jody’s great-grandfather. That’s Ella Mae’s great great grandma. Nathan still spends summers between school in that house.”

It’s too close. You have to accept the fact that the people whose lives led directly to your life profited off misery. It takes the fun out of the revenge, when you realize that you’ve benefitted from the actions of the people doing the oppressing. (We all have, though. This ain’t a black or white thing.) It’s easy to feel distance and enjoy that righteous anger when our lone hero is shooting up the bad guys when they’re from some country you can’t even spell or have never visited. When it’s your people, though…

I loved it, though. I’ve been waiting for this movie for years. We treat slavery and the Holocaust and 9/11 with kid gloves a lot of the time. We act like the only proper response to misery is more po-faced misery. That’s no way to get past something, though. That’s no way to grieve. We need to be able to laugh and cheer and appreciate the fact that, despite the horror, we were here. We lived our lives, we did the best we could, and sometimes, we did something extraordinary.

I’ll probably never get my Nat Turner action movie, but Django Unchained is a nice stopgap. I needed this. A lot of things that fall under the umbrella of “the black condition” make me mad, and there’s nothing I can do it about it. I’m one dude up against the weight of centuries of oppression and billion dollar industries. I type on the internet and donate out of my meager paycheck when I can.

So yeah, I’m going to sit in a theater in smalltown Georgia, late at night with a theater full of black people and watch this movie. And we’re going to cheer and hoop and holler and revel in the fact that it’s 2012 in the United States of America and we’ve finally got the ultimate black fantasy on the silver screen, with a fat budget, great direction, and an amazing cast. And all it took was a white dude who’s really into black culture to write and direct it, which I feel like makes it the most American story of all.

John Wayne has a lot to answer for, but you can’t deny how powerful and invigorating a lone man righting wrongs can feel sometimes.

Date: October 6, 1987 (broadcast on October 31, 1987)
Company: WWF
Show: Wrestling Challenge
Rules: Normal
Stipulation: None
Roster (10): Bam Bam Bigelow, Boris Zhukov, Cowboy Bob Orton, “the Rock” Don Muraco, Hercules Hernandez, Junkyard Dog, Nikolai Volkoff, the One Man Gang, Outback Jack and the Ultimate Warrior

I found this piece of WWF history too interesting not to include. It’s probably the shortest televised battle royal in WWE history at just about four minutes and the roster is a peculiar list of who’s who for the 80’s. Seeing a match between two named wrestlers on Challenge was always a rarity, so despite the short length and the fact that it has nothing to do with anything, this would still be considered a treat, all things considered.

What draws me to this is just how interesting and random a cast of midcarders we have here. All of them are memorable in some way and to see them all in one ring is slightly surreal. From Ultimate Warrior, the newcomer who would pin Hulk Hogan years later, to Outback Jack, a poster boy of Wrestlecrap from that era, the thing is a who’s who of WWF in the 80’s. I should note that Outback Jack was also a replacement for an injured Hillbilly Jim.

Even though he’d be the runner up at the first Royal Rumble months later, the massive One Man Gang is out within seconds thanks to the teaming up of Outback Jack and Junkyard Dog. Then Outback Jack is ousted because he sucks. Already less than 30 seconds and we’re down to 8. Despite the shortness, there’s nothing outright bad about the match. It’s entertaining for what there is. The ring gradually shrinks down over the course of the next minute or so and Ultimate Warrior shows off his super strength by pressing Zhukov over his head and flinging him out of there. Though while he’s doing that, Orton has no problem in sneaking up from behind and throwing him out to join Zhukov.

That leaves Bam Bam vs. Orton and Hercules. Yeah, Hercules reaches the end of two battle royals this year. The two heels corner Bam Bam and prepare to waste him. What they aren’t prepared for is CARTWHEELS!

Outside, Don Muraco has decided to stick around for the sake of cheering Bam Bam on. Eventually, Orton and Hercules get their hands on Bam Bam and work him over. After a moment or two of beating on him and nailing a double-clothesline, the two set him up in a corner and do that bit that never seems to work where someone tries to lift out a guy very slowly against their will. It’s usually a stall tactic for any battle royal, especially the Royal Rumble, but here it’s an excuse for Bam Bam to free himself by conking their heads together via his legs. They release the grip and he takes care of them in one fell swoop.

And Bam Bam wins! It’s kind of amazing how strong the company was behind him before he needed knee surgery. A few weeks later, Bam Bam would be part of Hulk Hogan’s team in the main event of the very first Survivor Series. The match ended with Bam Bam left alone against Andre the Giant, King Kong Bundy and One Man Gang. Bam Bam took out Bundy and the Gang, only to hang in there briefly against Andre before being snuffed out. Still, that’s a damn nice boost. Too bad they never did anything with it. The kids in the crowd for this match were crazy into him.

Tomorrow we’re heading into the 90’s for some tag-teaming.

I wrote Mark Andrew Smith a message on Kickstarter asking what was up with Sullivan’s Sluggers being on Amazon and for sale elsewhere, even though the Kickstarter page says “This book is exclusive only to Kickstarter backers and available here for a limited time.” I was curious and I had a couple friends who were asking me if I knew what’s up, so I reached out. He wrote back asking me if I was stalking him.

Okay.

I figure it was because I wrote about his kickstarter on ComicsAlliance and talked about the pros and cons? But sure, stalking. Okay. I figured it was him trying to deflect and that I wasn’t going to get an answer, so it was whatever.

Rich Johnston asked the same question on the Kickstarter, and Smith didn’t answer him, either. But he DID answer another backer who responded to Rich and here’s the goods:

@John the book also now is upgraded to an Omnibus Size, with Slipcase, Hardcover, Bound in Ribbon Book Mark, Gatefold Cover, Print inside the front cover, and Baseball Card sheet inside the back cover. It’s really not the same book as it was originally on the Kickstarter and US backers are getting this at essentially $25 plus $5 for shipping and handling.

There were a lot of opportunities to cut corners and cut costs. We never did.

We put $49.99 on the back of the book to reflect the actual value of the book. So while it was listed as exclusive it’s really no longer the same book, and it’s never again going to be offered at the price original backers picked it up at and never sold for less. Aside from that it will be offered on our website at a higher price but shipping after orders go out to backers first.

We did an overprint to raise funds for future projects, and we’re going to offer the book as a reward item from time to time on Kickstarter to raise funds for new projects and the focus really is the creation of more new and original comic book projects.

Lotta mush in here, lotta things to tackle, but I LOVE the idea that because the Kickstarter was such a big success that the book morphed into this big fat other book that isn’t bound by the rules he laid out for the original Kickstarter, and in fact, we should be thankful, because he could charge us a lot more!

But nah, here’s the thing: the book that he’s selling on his site and on Amazon is the book that backers pledged for. It’s not some magical new thing. People pledged money to produce this book, and then they kept pledging to make the book get better, often at Smith’s urging. This fancy technicolor omnibus dolby digital edition is exactly what the backers kicked him almost ninety thousand bucks more than he asked for in order to get.

So to say “the book changed, and that’s why I’m not bound by my word” is more than a little shady. To subtly shame people for getting it cheaper than it’s worth (“the actual value of the book”) when it was your idea to make it a dope package in the first place — c’mon, son. Where are you going with this?

How is this anything but Smith going against the terms of his own Kickstarter? It says in plain language that it is exclusive for backers, right? But it isn’t. If the plan was to sell things all along, just say so upfront! If plans changed in mid-stream, say so! Most people will understand, I figure, especially if the book did change into this whole other deluxe package. If it’s money, if you promised too much, then I bet people would understand that, too. There are hidden fees everywhere and in everything. “Hey, I thought I could print this for X, but I can’t, so it’s going to take longer” is way better than “I’m doing you a favor, have you seen how nice this book is?”

The problem — and this is something I talked about a lot when writing about Kickstarter for ComicsAlliance — is communication. If I say “Hey, I’m gonna do this thing you don’t like” before I do it, then you have a chance to either go “Hey, how about no?” or “Okay, cool, whatever, I’ll get over it.” If you don’t, and then just do things anyway, you look like you’re hiding something. When you take into account the suddenly non-exclusive nature of the book, ComiXology getting the book for non-backers before backers even got their digital PDF, Smith himself putting the book up for sale before print backers get theirs, Stokoe being entirely silent despite being the main draw for the book, and backers who ordered two books having to wait until probably late Feb or March to get their stuff… the project leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

It’s not cheating his backers, not exactly, but it’s definitely shady and frustrating. It’s the kind of thing that makes people look at Kickstarter as a problem, and it kills the faith that people have in the process. Kickstarter revolves around one basic transaction: “I am going to give you money, and you are going to give me what you say you will.” That goes for exclusives, upgrades, and everything else. People back projects because they believe in it or they want the product, and it’s important to keep your word.

I’m not out any money or anything — I paid ten bucks for a PDF and got it; it was pretty — but this is the type of thing that makes me not want to back someone’s projects or pay attention to their work at all. Transparency, keeping things aboveboard and honest, is crucial.

(Late addition — Smith was begging free work off people in the name of Sullivan’s Sluggers, too.)

Thanks to Gone With the Wind and the desperate machinations of lost causers, the picture we have of the antebellum south is one of southern ladies in big skirts, lemonade, and stalwart men looking out for what’s right. The south, and the trappings of the south, are the closest thing us Americans have to royalty.

And people get into it, boy. You can buy all types of antique and blatantly racist trinkets and tchotchkes if you know where to look. People really dig on the Stars & Bars, too. Georgia finally managed to get it removed from the state flag, and whoops we just replaced it with a different Confederate flag sorry y’all. There’s a country music group based out of Nashville called Lady Antebellum, even. It’s real in the south.

The antebellum south, our picture of it, is built on a lie. The pastel paradise wouldn’t have, couldn’t have, existed without a grievous moral lapse on the part of all involved. It needed pain and scarred up backs to work. It ran on blood and tears and wasn’t the Disneyland you think it was.

It’s ahistorical, too. You can’t justify the slavery of Africans on any level if you know half of anything about history. You can’t argue that negroes were docile or particularly suited to slavery when you know how influential and diverse the black population of the world has been.

They could argue that back in 1858, sure, and they even brainwashed a lot of colored folk into believing that the story of Ham, Shem, and Japheth justified their toil. But it’s 2013. That kind of ignorance doesn’t play any more.

Django Unchained explodes the myth of the south, and it does so in spectacular fashion. We see two plantations — Big Daddy’s plantation and Calvin J Candie’s Candyland — and both have the appearance of the idyllic plantations of our fantasies. But once you take a closer look, you can see the rot inside them.

Big Daddy has a name like a pimp and more than a few notably light-skinned children on his plantation. Big Daddy carved out his own little slice of Miscegenation Heaven (™ and © Pedro Tejeda, 2013) and populated it with his legitimate and illegitimate family. Why do you think he makes the slaves call him Big Daddy?

Big Daddy’s slaves are generally well-dressed and the women get to play on swings when they aren’t working. It sounds like the prototypical happy slave situation, and we catch a glimpse of their fun as Django storms toward two men who did him wrong in the past. They’re about to punish a slave for dropping eggs by whipping her, and that’s your contrast right there. The impeccable table-setting, good ol’ homecooked food, mint juleps… none of that was the result of singing, happy-go-lucky, jolly slaves. That was the result of people who were beaten and maimed into submission. You complied or you got the lash. And the well-dressed pretty girls playing on the lawn? They’re Big Daddy’s prostitutes. Nothing is as pretty as it seems.

Candyland, on the other hand, is a small kingdom. Candie’s father and father’s father were cotton men, and they own one of the biggest plantations in the land. Calvin, though, has expanded into something else: mandingo fights. Take two strong slaves and pit them against each other in a fight to the death. Winner takes all.

Candie himself is the very picture of a landed southern gentleman. He’s a paragon of virtue, well-mannered, educated, fashionable, and positively cosmopolitan. He’s also corrupt. Worse than that — he’s corrupt amongst the corrupted. His daddy and his daddy’s daddy were in business. They beat, raped, battered, bought, and sold flesh to secure their fortune. Their descendant, though, has added pointless violence to the family’s repertoire, expensive gladiatorial combat.

The antebellum south was nothing to be proud of, and I like how Tarantino went about showing it. The usual train of thought goes that slavery was accepted at the times, just a product of the time, but let me ask you this: accepted by who? It certainly wasn’t accepted by the slaves, or else there wouldn’t have been over two-hundred different slave uprisings. So who was it accepted by? The people who had a vested interest in enslaving other people? That’s who we’re judging the past by? Greedy cowards? It gets harder and harder to sell or believe in the pastel paradise the more you look at what it took to create that paradise.

I think Tarantino feels similarly. Whenever you see Django doing something untoward for a negro at the time, slaves look at him with a stunned expression and quickly look away. It’s a “Did he just do that? Is he crazy?” look. They know what they can and cannot do, and the surprise and admiration they watch Django with is them wanting to see if he can get away with it. They know who they are and what they are expected to be, but, given half a chance… well.

Did you notice how insistent everyone in Django Unchained was that Django wasn’t a typical nigger? Big Daddy and Candie both talk about his exceptional nature, with an emphasis on the “exception.” Like this bit that got howls from the audience:

Big Daddy: Django isn’t a slave. Django is a free man. Do you understand? You’re not to treat him like any of these other niggers around here, ’cause he ain’t like any of these other niggers around here. Ya got it?
Betina: Ya want I should treat ’em like white folks?
Big Daddy: That’s not what I said.

Django’s exceptional, but he still ain’t a white man. But his exceptional nature is crucial, because the last thing you want to do is show these lil unexceptional niggers that they can be exceptional, too. Then the pastel paradise comes crashing down, and nobody wants that.

But if you keep positioning Django as just one man? Then you can keep control. You can keep the paradise and you can show the many that they are not, and never will be, the one. But they’re watching him anyway, aren’t they? They want a way out.

All it takes is one example.

Date: March 14, 1987
Company: WWF
Show: Saturday Night’s Main Event
Rules: Normal
Stipulation: None
Roster (20): Hillbilly Jim, Outlaw Ron Bass, Sika, Haku, Tama, Lanny Poffo, Hercules Hernandez, Butch Reed, Paul Orndorff, Billy Jack Haynes, Koko B. Ware, Nikolai Volkoff, Blackjack Mulligan, Demolition Ax, Demolition Smash, Honky Tonk Man, Brian Blair, Jim Brunzell, Andre the Giant and Hulk Hogan

Our first battle royal is a bit of a surprise to me. This was before my time and while I vaguely recall seeing a brief clip of this during the hype video at Wrestlemania 3, WWF never really seemed to bring up this Saturday Night’s Main Event bout. Taking place about two weeks before Wrestlemania 3, the big storyline is that Andre the Giant has turned heel and is gunning for Hulk Hogan’s championship after years of friendship. The two are part of this match, making it the real first battle between the two in a WWF ring. What we get is Hogan vs. Andre with everybody else getting in the way.

I should note that Hogan is champ here. It was nice back in the day when people could have a battle royal just because. It didn’t push you into an automatic title shot or give you a role as GM or anything like that. It was all about bragging rights.

It begins with Hogan and Andre closing in and ready to go at it, but then they’re both swarmed by the other 18 guys. From there, the battle royal has four factions: Hulk Hogan, Andre the Giant, 9 faces and 9 heels. All the heels pile on Hogan while all the faces pile on Andre. For Hogan, he takes a bunch of punishment and occasionally has a spurt of energy that allows him to throw out someone like Honky Tonk Man. Andre, on the other hand, refuses to be overwhelmed and destroys everyone in his way. At one point he even takes Blackjack Mulligan and Hillbilly Jim and effortlessly clobbers them together. The biggest victim of his onslaught is poor Lanny Poffo, who eats a mighty headbutt that splits his head open. He’s tossed out and left on the mat, lying in a pool of his own blood.

Once nearly half of the competitors are done away with at the hands of Hogan and Andre, Orndorff and Hercules get their hands on Hogan. Whether they realize what they’re doing or not, they whip him across the ring and right into Andre, knocking the Giant back a couple feet.

Right there, the two begin to stare down and finally trade blows. Hogan seems like he might have an edge, but Orndorff and Hercules attack him. Though Koko does go after Andre during this, which is hilarious because Andre gives him no notice and smacks him aside. With Hogan distracted from fighting off two of Bobby Heenan’s goons, Andre pulls him in for a headbutt, flings him out of there and gestures a wave of disgust, as if to say, “Good riddance!”

As he taunts the leaving Hogan, who is pulled back by security, Andre is yet again attacked by Koko. Yet again, Andre gives zero fucks.

Once Hogan’s done with, the match loses its flavor because now all the remaining faces and heels join together and overcome Andre. They heave him out of there and it’s down to just a handful of midcarders. It whittles down to Koko and Billy Jack against Hercules and Smash. Koko’s done away with easy enough because he’s Koko, allowing Hercules and Smash to double-team Billy Jack. Ventura laughs at this on commentary because for once, heels are able to beat on the face 2-to-1 and Vince McMahon isn’t allowed to cry about it. Hercules sets Billy Jack up for a double-team attack to soften him up more, but he hops over Hercules and dives into Smash with a clothesline, sending him flying out of the ring.

That leaves it as Billy Jack vs. Hercules, who happen to have a Wrestlemania 3 grudge match set up. Their brawl is very short-lived as Heenan jumps onto the apron. Billy Jack makes a run at him, ends up empty-handed and Hercules uses the opening to flip him out of the ring. Hercules and Heenan celebrate his win, just as they’ll celebrate his eventual victory at the upcoming PPV.

It’s a definite fun match, although it really loses its steam once the main eventers are gone. It’s weird booking to see now, though. I can’t help shake the feeling that if this match happened these days, people would be crying all over about how WWF totally messed up their Hogan/Andre main event by having Andre lose. By showing him to be weak against eight or nine other guys, they’re totally burying Andre and ruining his mystique or some shit.

Tomorrow I’m going to keep it in 1987, only with a far shorter and less important exhibition.