Uh…if I recall, that was RICKY “the Dragon” Steamboat. Guess you just let it slip your mind, eh?
Nope, I’m talking about his more obscure brother Jimmy, who used more kung fu than regular karate in his fights, and–
Ahhh,…I got nuthin’.
The only thing that I think has marred wrestling recently (and also maybe in the past??) has been the number of deaths involving children performing wrestling moves.
The most recent examples:
one: a 13 year old boy performs a “Stone Cold Stunner” on his 6 year old cousin (the move, for those that don’t know, involves standing infront of your opponent / friend, rapidly falling into a position where your legs are straight out in front of you, while holding your arm around their neck. This has the effect of “snapping” their neck forwards.) Unfortunately, the boy was not aware of how the move is performed properly (the person receiving the Stunner bends their knees, and the grip is very loose on the neck, so the person having the move done one them has control over how their head moves.) The end result was that he broke his cousin’s neck, and killed her.
two: A mid-teen boy (I’m not sure exactly of the age) performs a move on his younger sister, called a jacknife powerbomb. Basically, this involves them sitting on your shoulders, facing behind you. You then throw them down, so they land on the top of their spine / neck. This is very dangerous even when done professionally, let alone multiple times (even onto a sofa) He killed the girl as well.
Not enough prominant warnings about don’t try this at home? (I used to love the ones in the 80s with Mean Gene warning everyone that “All WWF superstars are highly trained individuals. Do not (leans towards camera, and points at it) try this at home” (scene changes to shock legdrop… wow suplex… amazing clothesline…)
I think there have been a few “don’t try this at home” segments shown on both WWF and WCW programming recently, although I haven’t seen any in the last few months. Definitely a good idea, though.
However, it probably wasn’t a good idea to put Mick Foley and the Hardy Boyz in those segments, since backyard wrestling is where they got started in the first place. :rolleyes:
And moving on a bit…
Arn was one of my favorites when I started out as a fan, because he was a great wrestler and could get across a storyline on the mic like no one else. He didn’t have to rant or rave, but his promos always kept you interested anyway.
I haven’t been watching wrestling as long as you have, but I might as well list a few favorites of mine:
Ric Flair
Ricky Steamboat
Ted DiBiase
Jake “The Snake” Roberts (shame what’s happened to him lately)
Bob Backlund (well…I only saw him as a psycho heel back in the mid 90s, but he was great at that)
Midnight Express (greatest tag team ever)
Rock 'N Roll Express
The Heavenly Bodies (worked mostly in Smoky Mountain Wrestling)
The Steiner Brothers (before Scott discovered steroids and Rick started breaking people’s necks on a weekly basis)
Jim Cornette (my favorite manager ever)
Randy “Macho Man” Savage
The Great Muta
I also liked Roddy Piper before he became a self-parody, and I’ll probably never forget watching him break a coconut over Jimmy Snuka’s head.
And some more recent favorites:
Chris Benoit
Triple H
Steve Austin (a favorite of mine going back to his WCW days)
Mick Foley
Edge & Christian
Yoshihiro Tajiri (soon to arrive in the WWF)
Mike Awesome
Whoops, sorry, Nik, but I can see that Lionel Tate is rapidly attaining Urban Legend status. Unless of course you’re talking about some other 13-year-old who killed a 6-year-old girl in which wrestling moves were involved. Basically, Lionel beat, kicked, and stomped the girl to death. His lawyer coached him to say it was just a wrestling move, his mother concurred, they refused a plea bargain because the (idiot) lawyer was convinced he could blame it on wrestling and get Lionel off, and now Lionel’s looking at life in prison without possibility of parole. He’s due to be sentenced March 2.
http://www.foxnews.com/national/012601/wrestling_death.sml
So.
Is it possible your two “teenage boy kills little girl with wrestling move” stories are both about Lionel? The only cites that came up under “boy wrestling death” were for Lionel Tate; for Jason Whala, who was 12 and who killed a male toddler–
–, the four-year-old in Georgia who killed a male baby–
–and for the 7-year-old in Dallas who killed a male 3-year-old.
http://www.parentstv.org/advertisinginfo/Courttv.html
And yes, I know, it’s a ghastly thing to be nitpicky about… 
I kinda screwed up
I read the story in a British newspaper (The Sun, and I know I shouldn’t read it but I was researching stuff…)
The gist of the story was that Tate had indeed punched and kicked the girl, and performed a Stunner followed by the People’s Elbow.
I might have the newspaper around still, I’ll take a look when I can this week.
Try the PTC website (I’m not sure of the URL), they are interested in stopping the terrible influence that is the WWF.
I have to comment here. As some of you, who have read froggys welcome wagon post, know. I wrestle independant circuits and this is an issue that disturbs me as you may guess.
There is absolutely no respect for what I do, outside of the business itself. I go out there and bust my fucking ass and do things that humans should not be able to do (i.e. planchas, hurricanranas, 450’s, not to mention the hardcore shit.) for the sake of entertainment. Don’t get me wrong, I love my job but I am so sick of doing things that “real atheletes” could not do, and being rewarded with, “but it’s fake.” “wrestling is fake.” “it’s not a REAL sport” my ass it’s not, it’s not a competitive sport, do what I do and then tell me it’s fake.
By the way Jabroni is a play on an insider term “jobber” which is a guy who isn’t “over” with the crowd and is pretty much used as a body for the guys who are over. to “do the job” is to lose to your opponent. Example: I can’t believe that the Hardy’s had to do the job to Rikishi and Haku tonight.
hey skarecrow, do you ever wrestle at incredibly strange wrestling in san fran? mail and let me know, i’ll come down and scream invective and throw tortilla fragments at you. for those of you who never heard of such a thing, its an independent circuit event that encourages strange weirdness and audience participation (by way of thousands of corn tortillas thrown at the wrestlers). they get some lucha libre types, everybody wears masks and costumes, and the wrestling is enthusiastic and third-rate. the acts themselves are howling funny tho, and real punk bands like the dwarves and the supersuckers play between matches. its a fuckin blast!
Duck Duck Goose
I just sat through a fairly trite documentaty called “Wrestling with Death”, about how pro wrestling is a terrible influence on kids today. It was all dull, mundane stuff apart from one segment, dealing with one of the deaths I mentioned above.
the cast
Jason Whala, 12. Described as having a “Borderline IQ”, and was bullied at school. Living with the Sweets (his cousin William, and his mother)
William Sweet, 18 months.
Jason’s parents - recently divorced and living apart
Mrs. Sweet - William’s mother. Working long hours to look after Jason and William.
The fateful day
Mrs. Sweet is out at work. Jason is babysitting William as he does for around 15 hours a week. The two are up watching WWF Raw (by my reckoning, this would be around 9pm-11pm when the show airs)
Baby William starts crying. Jason becomes angered because the baby will not stop crying. He picks up the 18 month old baby and performs the “Jacknife Powerbomb” that I described above 4 times. He realises that what he has done is wrong when the baby begins to cough up blood. “Its coming out of her mouth… [it looks like] foam” were his words to the 911 operator. The baby was pronounced dead at the hospital.
Court
Jason was tried as a child, in a youth court. He was found guilty of “intentional assault, leading to 2nd degree murder.” He will remain in youth prison until he is 18, when the case will be reviewed.
Feelings
The program gave the following thoughts:
The court blame Whala
Whala’s family blame the WWF
Sweet’s family blame the WWF and Whala
Linda McMahon’s comment: “Neglect”
The show was trying to show everyone how bad an influence the WWF was, but every time ended up looking like parental neglect. Another example - 24 year old babysitter puts a WWF video on while he goes to the shop for cigarettes. He returns to find the younger child he is in charge of dead.
I’ll leave this tragic post with a happy slip-up from the show: They were showing examples of violence against women, and showed an Al Snow action figure. Complete with dummy’s head. Research, people?
Nope I’ve never wrestled out on the west coast though that sounds right up my alley (my alley being having fun with this over getting paid) See if you can get some contact info for me I’d appreciate it.
Nik, yeah, that’s the Parentstv.org link I had at the end. It was summarizing that show.
Well, Skarecrow, FWIW, I do have a lot of respect for what wrestlers do. I stopped telling Bonzo, “It’s all fake” right after we watched the first of several videos on “How They Do Professional Wrestling” (or words to that effect) from the public library. They had several, from the Discovery Channel and other places, and I was honestly surprised to discover that while the storyline may be choreographed, and the wrestlers may have practiced their moves ahead of time, and they know how to fall and stuff, like tumblers, still there were genuine groans and grunts of pain in these non-fiction “behind the scenes” videos.
So he does understand that the soap opera aspect of it is what’s fake–Kurt Angle and The Rock don’t really have a “death feud”, but the wrestling is all real.
And Owen Hart really was killed during a stunt.
http://www.abcnews.go.com/sections/us/DailyNews/wrestling990523.html
Now for my take on “Backyard wrestling” and the unfortunate deaths of young people from “emmulating WWF stars.”
The first thing that I want to bring up is unfortunate, I do not agree with it, but it is fact, it is also a fact that the media seems to ignore. “Backyard” is the future, at least a fad of the immediate future, and I am not talking about 15 year old kids audaicously throwing each other through tables, maiming each other, and giving the sport a bad name. I am talking about independant wrestlers taking it outside, to get the “Backyard feel” on video. Why? Because there is money in it. It’s called “spot wrestling” and indies are slowly realizing that instead of working matches on the weekends busting their ass for a slimey promoter that may slip them a 10 spot at the end of the night, they can film a spot video on the same weekend, minus all the “rasslin” and sign a deal by the end of the day. Straight “high spots” and royalties to boot. It’s a sweet deal and the tapes sell. I have sold out, admittedly and have mixed emotions about it. On one side the "backyard tapes will now be done by professionals and the risk involved is minimal. on the other hand will this perpetuate the fad of kids maiming and recklessly injuring each other? I don’t know, but I went into it thinking it was a positive. I really hope that it is.
In regards to the needless deaths of young people “emmulating” WWF stars, I say this; The case of the 13 year old killing the six year old makes no sense to me. The childs attorney says that he was mimicking the WWF, although from what I have read he punched her, kicked her, stepped on her, and threw her down the stairs. This sounds alot more to me like an emmulation of witnessed domestic abuse than it does rasslin. I heard of no moves attempted. The real story that should be covered by the media is the decline in parenting skills in this country, and here is why, News agencies fear pissing people off, and they know that people will not tolerate a program, (or story) telling them that they are to blame for our society today. Parenting skills have deteriorated to the point that we place our children in front of the television (at 10 pm no less) and have a bit of “me time” and then have the gaull to blame Vince Mcmahon (or anyone else for that matter) for not instilling the proper values in our children. The practice of victimizing the offender is out of control. Parents set down the zoloft and martinis and raise your fucking kids. It’s not Vinces job.
Strangely, the show got it right. Some feminist group (I forget which one) complained a couple of years ago that the dummy’s head Al Snow carried around advocated violence against women.
I know, I don’t get it either. But the most ridiculous part of it was that they actually got Wal-Mart and other stores to pull the action figure, which has to rank high on my list of the dumbest things I’ve ever heard of. Unsurprisingly, the PTC joined in on the protest, and I think that’s about when they began persuading sponsors to pull out of WWF programming. Of course, Vince just signed on new advertisers at higher rates, so it didn’t exactly hurt business or anything.
Still, the RTC can go fuck themselves with a railroad spike.
Er, I meant the PTC in that last sentence. Damn, I really have been watching Raw too much lately. 
PTC… bunch of assholes.
They seem to think that all the worlds problems would be eliminated if we all watched seventh heaven :rolleyes
They also think that Drew Carey and Ellen DeGeneres are bad examples to kids.
http://www.parentstv.org/Smackdown/smackdown20001130.html
check this out. they think that someone holding up a sign that says “Dumb Ass” is inapropriate.
Their sight speaks for itself. Check out their top 10 good and bad programmes to see where their loyalties lie.
Hell Yeah! I am salivating at the thought of a lengthly Benoit-Tajiri program. Good, I hope they use him right, and not turn him into a cartoon like Kaientai.
Priorities?