#genuinely steve blackman when i catch you…

[realbeefman]

Thoughts on the umbrella academy season four? If you don’t mind me asking.

whoever was in charge of the audio mixing for this season needs to be BARRED from ever working in the industry again. anyways completely bullshit season through and through. i KIND of liked the five/lila plot and that’s about it… even that was very poorly done imo. what was the overall message the show was even trying to send??? that love means nothing??? nothing was even really explained in the end??? how does undoing marigold in ONE timeline undo everything??? poorly executed poorly logicked and entirely nonsensical. perhaps one of the most egregious cases of character assassination i have ever witnessed. boring bad and borderline unwatchable.

[thesportssoundoff]

What Happens When You Take A Bad Idea And Make It Worse? LET’S TALK ABOUT THE BRAWL FOR ALL!

Joey

March 11th

The Mother Fucking Brawl For All.

Never in my wildest dreams did I ever think I'd actually get around to this but there are miracles around us and what better time than now? The Brawl For All is generally regarded as one of the worst ideas of all time in a business with an entire genre dedicated to grown men and women smashing each other with fluorescent light tubes and slamming one another on beds of nails and thumbtacks. In a business that up until the mid 80s featured nazis goose stepping around and up until 2003 or so regularly and routinely featured women wrestling in their bloomers, the Brawl For All is the one idea that every human being unanimously believes was a disastrous failure. It's the one unanimous tire fire that not even it's most ardent supporter can put out. Not even WCW's junkyard battle royale which featured multiple injuries due to WCW not gimmicking the cars and just having guys taking bumps onto cars and through glass windshields is hated this much. The Brawl 4 All is one of those things people can't even sum up with "It was bad!" and move on. You have to go through layers and layers and levels of badness. You have to view it almost as an affront to your sensibilities, as a personal attack on you as a fan. Hell not just as a fan but as a human being!

Vince McMahon and company have failed in previous ventures before and ventures after. The XFL, the World Bodybuilding Federation, the ECW relaunch, 65% of the undercard Attitude Era angles, their really expensive WWE Films attempts. Some could even argue that the brand split originally was a failure in some respects given that Smackdown never really got going on its own and Raw declined sharply from the brand split onward. That said those failures at least had SOME inkling and morsels of promise behind them. Not the Brawl For All. It was a bad idea from the start, a bad idea during and made even worse by what happened afterwards. Also? The Brawl For All is one of those things that every wrestling fan and every wrestling personality has a hard opinion on, the kind of shit that lends itself to so much gossip, rumor and conversation. Over the next few weeks, I want to discuss the Brawl 4 All a bit more. I want to delve into it because it's as close as we'll ever get to a universal no hope no spin failure by the WWE and because...well...it's one of my favorite fuck ups of all time. It's always been something that fascinated me from watching it live as a casual fan to laughing at it as a smart fan when I stumble across it to making a near yearly pilgrimage to youtube to watch every single fight of it I can find before it got yanked. It's one of those wrestling stinkers that like December 2 Dismember or the Heroes Of Wrestling card that I'm magnetically attracted to. Every wrestling fan FEELS for the Brawl For All even if those feelings are utter disdain for everyone involved with it.

The Concept And How Fucked It Was From Jump

To get why this even happened, you have to go back in a time capsule. Despite catching fire in 1998, the WWF (for the purpose of being as thorough as possible here, we're gonna call 'em as they were when this happened) is still struggling to keep track with WCW Nitro. They're in the midst of an 83 week long ass eating from Ted Turner's Atlanta based wrestling promotion and "good ideas" are running dry. Understand that at this point the WWF has the single hottest property in the business but that sole property isn't enough to get over the hump vs the NWO, the cruiserweights, an ascending Bill Goldberg, Bret Hart, the return of Sting and what was genuinely just a better overall card. Even if Wrestlemania 14 gave birth to so many great stories going forward (Austin vs McMahon, the hard reboot of DX as a faction, Kane vs Undertaker's first match), WCW is in the midst of its highest grossing year ever. Vince McMahon has James Harden putting up 50 points a night and winning on his back but he's still looking up to the Golden State Warriors. Making matters worse, both companies are in the pro wrestling equivalent of an arms race.  Remember how when the UFC and Bellator in 2014 and 2015 signed anybody with a pulse because they were trying to fill up two insanely bloated schedules? It's a bit like that. Anybody who is good (and not a walking flag factory so to speak) is either in WWE or WCW at this point which means if you ONLY have two hours of content, you've got a lot of guys doing nothing.

The Brawl For All on its surface and without malice seems like an awful idea to try and remedy that. Pit sixteen dudes in a shoot tournament and let them go at it with set rules in place. It gets guys on TV, gives them something to do and at the end, in theory, the winner doesn't just get a big financial prize but come out in the end as a star. It's a chance to do something with a section of guys who are doing absolutely nothing at all. Sounds good, riiiiight? Well now let's break into some sexy rumor mongering about what this really was about:

-We can start with the mastermind! Vince Russo is the man who apparently concocted this concept which should be somewhat redeemable if what I laid out above was entirely 100% accurate. It's not entirely the case, even according to Russo's own words. Per Vince Russo, a large reason the Brawl For All came to be was that he had a beef with one of the wrestlers (Bradshaw aka John Bradshaw Layfield aka that guy who got flattened by ring announcer Joey Styles) consistently bloviating that he was the toughest guy in the locker room. Right off the jump, any sort of noble designs are whittled away. Now often in pro wrestling, there's 100 different stories to the same single event often shared by people IN the same room. Imagine how pronounced it is that a) everybody agrees that it was Russo's idea, b) everybody is under the impression that it was over a tiff with a pro wrestling with no shoot fighting experience and c) EVERYBODY agrees it was one of the worst concepts imaginable. The Brawl For All's entire seed was planted not so much out of a design to get guys work and on TV but out of wanting to see a loud dude get punched up. That's insanity out the gate.

-The Brawl For All was by invitation only and depending on who you believe, the process to select wrestlers was rather...exclusive. Bruce Prichard discusses in his podcast with Conrad Thompson that he was the guy who had to round up the talent to fill enough spots in the tournament. Prichard says he had to play to the egos of wrestlers and in a separate interview, Bart Gunn talks about how he got recruited basically by another member of the writing team as well. The name Bart Gunn will become pretty important down the line so jot that down in your notebooks real quick. Wrestlers were recruited with what seems like a pretty easy enough pitch and one I'd imagine that the UFC uses today  with their fighters; basically a "I mean don't you believe you're the toughest dude here?!" and a "We'll pay you!" and we're off to the races. Despite this, the Brawl For All struggled to get people to fill in the spots in no small part due to the fact that no star is going to partake in an absolutely stupid concept like this when they can just make their money being a star. The Brawl For All isn't even a TUF; it's a PFL tournament where all the dudes nobody else wants are lumped into a tournament format with the golden carrot of a $100,000 prize at the end of it.

-Perhaps worth more than the $100,000 prize was the either legit or illegitimate golden carrot of the winner getting to work a program with "Stone Cold" Steve Austin. Understand that no one single act was as hot and drawing as much money at this time as Steve Austin was. He was the it guy, the biggest star in the business and noway near close to peaking as a talent either. The Brawl For All $100,000 prize? That's cool and all  plus that was basically the downside guarantee for a year's worth of work. The opportunity to work with Stone Cold on a pay per view? That's the big money ticket. That's the opportunity to be a made man like how working with Hogan in the 80s was. For top guys, that opportunity may come along at any given point. Again going back a bit to TUF and the PFL, imagine if the UFC offered eight of its guys the chance to compete in a tournament for $100,000. Enticing! Now imagine the winner gets to fight Conor McGregor on a PPV. Tell me if it doesn't get every guy not named Khabib and Tony Ferguson jumping into it. That would be a great no doubt can't miss opportunity!

EXCEPT

-It was probably a lie. Scratch that. We can factually tell that any sort of Austin match for the winner was a lie since every person involved (sans one) says it was real and the winner never actually got said shot. Imagine if the tournament wasn't build on anything truthful but instead on a "The winner will be in the mix" from Dana White. While Bruce Prichard says there was no official plan for the winner to face Steve Austin, everybody else involved from talent to wrestling guru Jim Cornette seems to suggest there WAS a plan in place for the winner to win. That is, assuming of course, the winner was the guy they thought was going to win all along. More on that in the future but just know that the Brawl For All's fighters were flirted with a hush hush unofficial promise of facing Steve Austin that was probably never going to be fulfilled unless won by a specific party. Bart Gunn says he was told the winner would face Stone Cold and well....more on that at another time. Let's just say sports entertainment and combat sports have a long storied history of perhaps listening to the matchmakers a bit too closely.

-The rules for the Brawl For All? Well those were a mess. According to Bruce Prichard, the rules were still being worked out the week of. According to Steve Blackman (a dude who Bob Holly admits would've won the whole thing), there were plans to allow leg kicks and those rules just happened to get yanked the week of. The glove size seems to change depending on who you ask as the WWF says they were 16 ounce gloves but Bart Gunn argues repeatedly they were 22 ounce gloves. Some of the guys admittedly didn't even think it was a shoot fight either and at least one fighter fought thinking it was a work. According to Bart Gunn, even halfway through the tournament he kept expecting it to be a work suddenly.  The "official" Brawl For All rules had points for takedowns, points for a knockdown and points for more punches thrown across three one minute rounds. The scorecard part doesn't even matter at this point. To be honest, it didn't even matter then.

So let's talk about the big problem here

So imagine putting together a tournament designed around the concept of "Who's the toughest guy!" in a show where the audience is conditioned to believe that the toughest guy is the world champion or if the champion is a heel, the toughest guy is the babyface chasing said champion. We already in theory know who the toughest guy is or at least we're willing to suspend our disbelief. Also if we're to believe that the winner of the tournament is the toughest guy in the company, why aren't the big name tough guys we've been told are the tough guys competing in it? The concept falls flat right there on its own but the hole isn't deep enough. We gotta go from six feet to nine feet so now imagine that you've come up with this concept that pees on the first rule of your product. Make it worse. Make it so that the audience is being told to believe that what they see HERE AND ONLY HERE is legitimate.  NOTHING is as frustrating in pro wrestling as "a shoot." For those not addicted to sports entertainment meth, a shoot is something on the program that the audience is led to believe is real. Now for something to be "real" on a show that's already "real" then that in turn means what we're seeing is fake, right? So a "real fight" on pro wrestling ultimately means that what we're seeing is fake. Now most wrestling fans since the 70s and 80s have probably believed wrestling in some form or fashion is/was not real. We accept it as entertainment and as Jerry Jarrett once lovingly put it "theater of the illiterate." The key is to not remind us that what we're seeing is clearly fake (a problem wrestling fans seem to be having right now with Ronda Rousey). Reminding the audience that what they're saying is predetermined scripted fakeness and then asking them to invest into the REAL portion of the product that breaks their illusion only works if a star is doing it. It doesn't work if a bunch of random dudes and mid carders are doing it. Imagine if in the middle of one of those UFC Embedded gimmicks, we saw Conor McGregor rehearsing the press conference lines and then he went out to try and sell his beef with Cowboy Cerrone as legitimate. You've already hurt the audience's feelings and the Brawl For All actively did that at a time where all WWF fans wanted was to watch Stone Cold kick ass and DX make inappropriate jokes. You've brought DOWN the segment.

So now we're nine feel into the hole. Let's go sixteen feet deep. Nope! Let's go from here to fuckin' middle earth on this bad boy; pro wrestling is a TEAM effort. It requires two or more able bodied people to work together to create a magnificent fake fight spectacle that tells a story and ends with you becoming emotionally invested in its finish and what's to come. That requires participation. Now come up with a tournament where guys are going to beat the holy shit out of one another FOR REAL and then have to go back to participating with one another as if nothing happened! Every single wrestler involved in the Brawl For All has spoken about the bad blood and residual effects the Brawl For All had. Also remember these are not trained fighters either. Some of these guys are amateur wrestlers who probably haven't done that for years. Some dudes dabbled in kickboxing or BJJ on their spare time or in years outside of wrestling had some formal combat sports . Some of these guys were bodybuilders by trade and some of these dudes were just pro wrestlers who happened to have a few "So and so cleaned out a bar room with one hand and six beers!" type magical fishing trip stories. So you're taking a bunch of ego driven (some chemically enhanced) guys and sending them out there to beat each other up on a Monday or a Tuesday and then magically get over it in time to make the house show loop where they're going to team together. We've officially come out the other end through China, folks.

And yet despite all of this very obvious right in front of our faces warning signs, the Brawl For All existed.

Next time we'll talk about who was in it a bit more---and why IF the Brawl For All had a true tertiary motive designed to elevate one guy to superstardom, it was an even bigger failure than humanly possible.

[atomicdrop]

WWF UK Rampage '93 (April 11, 1993)

We’re in Sheffield, England tonight for this exciting card of seven bouts of grappling. Our hosts for the evening are genuine British person, Lord Alfred Hayes, Bobby “The Brain” Heenan and recent WWF hire, Jim Ross. Let’s get down to the ring for action!

Match 1: Brian Knobbs vs. Fatu (w/ Afa) Fatu is a pre-giant ass Rikishi. Brian Knobbs is a Nasty Boy. Both are, at this point in their careers, generally tag team guys so I don’t know why this is a singles match.

Afa and Fatu keep attempting to perform some sort of ceremony but Knobbs is an asshole and keeps imploring the crowd to scream real loud which they are more than happy to do. I guess that makes Knobbs a face and Fatu a heel.

Knobbs gets in some early offense and more or less dominates the first part of the match but he gets distracted by Afa and Fatu takes control of the match. Fatu hits a slam on the outside and then it’s chinlock city baby!

Knobbs powers out of it and starts making a comeback but runs into a foot and Fatu (with Afa assisting from the outside) puts the Nasty Boy away.

Winner: Fatu Total Uncomfortable Ethnic Stereotypes: 2

This was pretty not good. Lots of headbutts and ugly brawling while Afa pulled weird faces on the outside. Someone in the audience had an airhorn they kept using which got old really quickly.

Meanwhile Backstage… Lord Alfred Hayes interviews Doink the Clown. It’s Evil Doink. Yay! As shitty as Doink became, Evil Doink was pretty solid. Doink says some stuff and the Alfred Hayes tosses it back to, “Gorilla Monsoon and Bobby…uh…and Jimmy.” Bobby Heenan being the best quickly points out the gaffe, “Gorilla’s back in the States!”

Match 2: Doink the Clown vs. Kamala Doink and Kamala get patted down before the match. Jim Ross states that this is the norm, though this is the sole time it happens all night. Doink has got a Steve Blackman Stick up his sleeve. He gets admonished by the ref and the match gets underway.

Doink works the leg until Kamala gets annoyed and avalanches him in the corner. Doink rolls to the outside and goes under the ring. He comes out the other side and sneaks up on Kamala. Being one week removed from WrestleMania IX with the “I’m seein’ double! Four Doinks!” spot in Doink’s match with Crush this causes Jim Ross to ponder, “Is that the same guy that was wrestling?” To which Bobby “The Brain” replies, “Yeah, the big black guy from Uganda.”

Back in the ring Kamala splashed Doink laying him out face down in the ring and then goes for a Cameron pin. The ref doesn’t count so Kamala stands up to argue with him. Doink catches him unaware and rolls him up for three.

Winner: Doink the Clown Total Uncomfortable Ethnic Stereotypes: 3

This was a crap match from a workrate stand point but Evil Doink is great and it was a short match so it didn’t wear out its welcome.

Meanwhile Backstage… “Mr. Perfect what are your feelings about the match?”

“Same as every match! I’m concentration and focused…something something Lex Luger!”

Match 3: Mr. Perfect vs. Samu m (w/Afa) 
The beginning of this is basically the same match as Knobbs vs. Fatu with Mr. Perfect playing the part of Knobbs. He falls for all the same tricks that Knobbs did until he gets wise and goes after Samu’s leg. Like the earlier match Afa keeps interfering.

Samu does a lot of biting, chopping and throws Perfect to the floor a bunch but that’s about it. The match ends when Samu misses a diving headbutt, and Perfect just pops up and hits the Perfectplex for the win.

Winner: Mr. Perfect Total Uncomfortable Ethnic Stereotypes: 4

This was one of the better matches on the card because of Mr. Perfect. The dude is awesome even in a throwaway match like this and he was over as fuck with the fans here.

Match 4: Bob Backlund vs. Damien Demento 

All these years later I still don’t honestly know what Damien Demento’s gimmick was supposed to be. He dressed like the Warlord but had the “I Hear Voices In My Head They Talk To Me…” thing going on.

Bob Backlund’s in the midst of his mid-90s career Renaissance but isn’t “crazy” yet, he’s still just a guy who is legitimately good at wrestling.

This is again pretty much exactly the same as every match that preceded it. Demento clubbers Backlund about for the duration of the match and then at the end Backlund pushes Demento into the ropes and catches him in a snazzy rollup to pick up the win.

Winner: Bob Backlund

Why did these two fight? Were they feuding or was this a random one off match? Why did Demento’s cloak look like an animal attempting to swallow his head? So many questions…

Meanwhile Backstage… Mr. Perfect is with Lord Alfred Hayes looking worse for wear. With Samu behind him he’s now got his sights set on Lex Luger and vows to stalk the narcissist across the European continent.

Match 5: Typhoon vs. The Brooklyn Brawler


Clearly this is going to be the match of the night. Typhoon tries to hit a drop kick. That’s about. Lots of rest holds and slow clubbering. Brooklyn Brawler stupidly tries to bodyslam Typhoon but that’s not working. Typhoon hits an avalanche and a powerslam and mercifully brings this match to an close.

Winner: Typhoon

Why was this more than two minutes? This should have been a one minute squash rather than a competitive back and forth bout of grappling.

Meanwhile Backstage… Lex Luger looks good and says that he will end Mr. Perfect. If Mr. Perfect wants to watch his match tonight, that’s okay. Luger will have some insurance at ringside too.

Match 6: Shawn Michaels vs. Crush


It’s mullet vs. mullet in this battle for the Intercontinental Championship. Crush uses his power to get the advantage early on. Shawn bails and goes for a clothesline but it has no effect on the big man from Kona, Hawaii.

Crush charges Michaels, but Shawn tosses Crush out to the floor. The fight outside the ring for a bit and Shawn slams Crush into the ringpost. They go back into the ring where Shawn hits a succession of double axe handles. He follows up with a DDT that gets a two count but Crush kicks out.

Shawn takes Crush on a trip to Chinlock City, but Crush Hulks Up and gets out of the hold. Michaels goes for Sweet Chin Music but Crush blocks it and kicks Michaels in the face. He hits a leg drop but Michaels bails to the floor and the bell rings. He’s apparently been counted out.

Crush goes after him and drags him back to the ring and gives him the Kona Crush center ring. Crush then holds aloft the IC belt and gets a huge pop before it’s announced that since Michaels lost by count out he’s still champion.

Winner: Crush I have no idea what’s going on with this card. A Brian Adams match was literally the best thing on the card.

Meanwhile In The Ring… Bobby Heenan interviews Mr. Fuji and Yokozuna about the bullshit that went down at WrestleMania IX with Hulk Hogan. Fuji says he still thinks Yokozuna is champ because they never signed a contract or talk money or anything. Bobby Heenan agrees and that’s that. Total Uncomfortable Ethnic Stereotypes: 6

Meanwhile Backstage… Lord Alfred Hayes is with “Hacksaw” Jim Duggan talking about his upcoming match with Lex Luger. Duggan’s all like, “You might look like a bajillion bucks, but this isn’t a body building contest, it’s a wrestling match and I’ll fight you!” He then talks some shit about Yokozuna who apparently almost ended Duggan’s career.

Match 7: Lex Luger vs. “Hacksaw” Jim Duggan


Duggan’s out with an American flag and his 2x4. Yokozuna is still at ringside, apparently to watch Duggan. Duggan gets the U.K. fans to start a “USA” chant. Heenan calls them idiots and says that they must not know where they live.

Duggan knocks Luger out of the ring a few times, but Luger takes over with a clothesline from his “controversial elbow” (aka the “loaded forearm”). Luger then locks in a chinlock that lasts four and a half years and kills the momentum of the match.

Duggan fights out of the hold and the two men collide. Duggan falls out to the floor and while Luger distracts the ref Yokozuna sits on Hacksaw’s sternum and then rolls the half-dead Duggan back into the ring. Luger hits another controversial forearm and goes for the pin, but Mr. Perfect hits the ring to break up the pinfall causing Luger to win by DQ. Yokozuna comes and and helps Luger work over Mr. Perfect. They set him up for the Banzai Drop but Mr. Perfect rolls out of the way at the last second. Duggan hits the ring with his 2x4 and wrecks house on Yokozuna to close out this mess of a card.

Winner: Lex Luger

I’ve seen Luger have if not technically good at least fun matches, but this was just boring as fuck. The ending was pretty good and probably set up some sort of Duggan & Perfect vs. Luger & Yokozuna house show matches for the British tour they kept hyping during this.

Final Thoughts Goddamn was this awful and the worst thing is that it didn’t have to be. The WWF had star power during this time, but here it so little of it was used. Instead we got a bunch of tag team dudes in singles matches and squash matches that lasted nine minutes.

The only redeeming things in this dumpster fire of a card were the Crush vs. Shawn Michaels match and Mr. Perfect being consistently awesome. Everything else was goddamn awful.