Fair to Flair

One of the big complaints about Elimination Chamber Sunday from those who watched was that it was too predictable. Everything that happened could be seen coming from a mile away. Why should they pay $60 to WWE for something that wouldn’t keep them guessing at every turn? Maybe they do have a point. Why pay to tune into an event where the way the stories play out are apparent before they happen?

That complaint would be valid to me if the only reason anyone tuned into a pay-per-view was to be swerved. Personally, I tune in because there’s a match I want to see, if not more than one match. If I go into the event knowing every single result before it happened, but every match was good to great? Yeah, I would totally feel like my money was spent wisely. I didn’t view Elimination Chamber, but I heard that there was a consensus that both Chamber matches were really good and that the Divas Championship match was the best female wrestling match in WWE in a couple of years, which in and of itself is a small miracle. There were problems with it, yes, but I feel like predictability is lowest on the totem pole after match order making no sense and the utter hokeyness of the Ambulance Match as a closer.

Obviously, there needs to be some imagination and variance in how things play out. If everything was predictable all the time, then of course things would get stale quick. Then again, if the main thrust in the argument is that people are sick of seeing John Cena win all the time, and they paid $60 for/risked arrest for pirating an event where John Cena predictably won, whose fault would it be that they were out that money? That being said, context is key for knowing when to expect when the status quo is going to reign and when there should be a shake up.

Elimination Chamber is the kind of event where no one should have been going in expecting to be swerved. It’s the last pay-per-view on the schedule before WrestleMania. It’s the spot where the final plans for the main event level matches begin to become clear. The swerves and the unpredictable stuff usually is out of the way by the Royal Rumble. EC is the event where fans get two Chamber matches, replete with high spots, scads of violence and hijinks with the most durable substance known to man, LEXAN.

Besides, when given the choice between having an event with a ton of swerves and terrible, short matches or one with predictable endings with great wrestling, most fans would choose the latter every time. It’s a big reason why Vince Russo’s name is spoken among wrestling fans with the hushed tones normally reserved for Lord Voldemort around the halls of Hogwarts. His swerve-heavy television wasn’t nearly resonate as “quality” programming.

Of course, that doesn’t mean there’s no place at all for unpredictability. However, needing it as a prerequisite for good wrestling seems to be a method of watching for those with little to no attention span whatsoever. For me? I’ll take a show where everything is done well, regardless of whether I saw it coming or not, over something where everything that’s done comes out of left field.

TH writes The Wrestling Blog and broadcasts The Wrestling Podcast. You can find him on Twitter, or at various other spots around the Internet. He also loves Chikara, and quite frankly, thinks you should too.

Edited by K Sawyer Paul

I’ve long been a defender of the brand split and multiple World Championships. I always thought merging the belts and unifying the rosters would lead to too many guys losing their gig and their card placement, but after watching the last two WWE PPVs, I just don’t see the need for it anymore.

During the Elimination Chamber, we saw a Raw Superstar defend the US Title against a Smackdown guy and Santino Marella challenge for the World Championship … in a match that also had to feature the Great Khali. And the Royal Rumble, while incredibly fun, struggled to fill the ring with 30 big-name Superstars. When Epico, Primo and an Uso made it in, on top of the fact they had several gimmicky entries like Road Dogg, Hacksaw and Kharma, you know the roster isn’t as loaded as it was ten years ago.

And that’s okay! WWE’s been getting back to basics and we no longer have the star overload that the remnants of the Attitude Era left us with. Right now, the only true HUGE name WWE has is John Cena; Triple H is part-time at best, Undertaker works once a year, Jericho is in Roddy Piper mode, and Rey Mysterio is shelved at least three months out of the year. The Rock could pop in and out now and then, Batista might return and who knows, we may still get one last Stone Cold match, but let’s face facts: the 1998-2005 WWE is long gone.

In its place, we have CM Punk, who is on the cusp of something big, and then a bunch of guys who are kinda big, but not really. And that’s all they’ll ever be as long as WWE oversaturates their programming with too many titles and too many brands. It worked when the Attitude Era overlapped the Cena era, but we’re in the beginning of something new now and there has never been a better opportunity to get back to basics.

Yes, it may mean some guys will get shunted down the card, but what difference does it make when the World Championship match is the fourth most important match at WrestleMania? And that’s assuming they don’t come up with some kind of big special attraction like the rumored Big Show vs. Shaquille O’Neal match. Simply keeping the World Title around and Smackdown as a separate show doesn’t make Sheamus and Bryan bigger deals, it just makes the World Title and Smackdown look lesser. Bryan and Sheamus will no doubt tear it up at Mania, but do you think the Miami crowd is going to be as into it as Rock vs. Cena, Triple H vs. Undertaker or even Punk vs. Jericho? Of course not, and that’s okay, let’s just stop pretending it needs to have a World Title involved to make it a great match. 

So let’s just get on with it and merge the WWE and World Heavyweight Championships and US and Intercontinental Championships. I don’t care when they do it — Night of Champions, SummerSlam, or WrestleMania 29 — let’s just make it happen. It’ll instantly increase the value of the WWE and IC Championships, guys in contention for them will seem like bigger deals and WWE will have to come up with new reasons and stories for guys to feud other than “it’s my turn to get a shot at the title.”

I can’t think of a better way to shake up the program, get people talking and make wrestlers feel like Superstars again.

Razor is a regular contributor to Fair to Flair and the founder of Kick-Out!! Wrestling. It’s pretty difficult to miss him on Twitter, trying to be clever in 140 characters or less. You can also check out Kick-Out’s Facebook and Tumblr pages, because there just aren’t enough social networking sites out there.

Edited by Jason Mann.

Welcome to Sunday Afternoon Smackdown!  Since nothing happened on February 10th edition, I decided to hold off and include the next episode as well as some TNA fun as well.  However this will not include the latest episode of Impact because, well, I don’t want to hurt you like that.  

Sunday Afternoon Smackdown Twists your Fate in our traditional WOO! vs BOO! format.  Everything WOO! was better than Bully Ray’s calves.  Everything BOO! deserves to be breathed on heavily as well as drooled upon by The Big Show.

WOO!

THE EXECUTIVE VICE PRESIDENT OF TALENT RELATIONS AND THE INTERIM GENERAL MANAGER OF RAW MAKING APPEARENCES ON FRIDAY NIGHT SMACKDOWN

Having Mister Excitement on the phone for Smackdown was brilliant.  Somehow, his voice sounds even better over the phone.  WWE.com could make a killing selling Johnny Ace recording personalized outgoing messages for people.  Just 5 minutes of boring before the beep. 

Then he shows up again next week, bringing Otunga’s Thermos with him and shows Teddy Long how a real general manager works.  You never see people destroying Mr. Laurinaitis’ office, do you?  You never see him getting run over in videogames, do you?  I didn’t think so.

RANDY ORTON: MAKING PEACE WITH THE INTERNET

Randy Orton used to be loved by the internet back when he was a terrible shitty wrestler.  It was pretty much based on three things: 1) cutters are cool, 2) large gesturing taunts are cool 3)getting thrown in thumbtacks is cool.  Then he started winning matches and everybody got super jaded about him.  In the last year or so, Randy has been having good to great matches with internet darlings like Christian, The Artist Formally Known As CM Punk and now Daniel Brian Danielson Bryantson.  Their match on Smackdown was certainly an example of that. 

And sure, it looked like Danielson was really pulling his punches in that match, and understandably so because Randy Orton was born with glass bones and paper skin.  But Randy actually let Danielson look like  a legitimate contender.  Even being dominated in certain parts, which makes perfect sense if it was their first match.  Then the toss to the apron into the DDT was smart, instead of having the dude just wait out there for an eon, and finally Randy attacks Big Show by jumping a table like Randy Savage while Danielson lays in the ring dead like Ric Flair.  Everything worked, and now with Randy being taken out of the match, I only want to see them wrestle again that much more.

THREE WORDS: “CALVES AND ABS”

TNA, be smart and put that on a shirt.  Bully Ray and Bobby Roode are far and away the two best things in TNA right now, and putting them together, even for such a brief time, is something I will always cherish, like Bully cherishes his calves.  Everything about them.  From Roode screwing Bully time and time again, only to try to reform the alliance with promises of title shots, to Roode slapping Bully on the chest lightly saying “you follow my lead okay?” only to have the Bully responds with slightly harder chest slaps saying “stop hitting me”.  Natural villainous chemistry, and I hope they are given a lot more time to screw each other over. 

“Brothers don’t shake hands, brothers gotta hug”—Bobby Roode

SAMOA JOE: CHAMPION

Our boy has gold again!  After Magnus cut a pretty good promo about England on Impact, and weeks of Joe and Magnus trying to look legitimate over the dual brick shit houses, it is really great to finally be rewarded and see something kind of new happen in the tag scene in TNA that isn’t racist or Shannon Moore.  Between that and the X Division matches kicking ass, there was actually a fair amount to like on Against All Odds.  Except Gunner.

A TNA MAIN EVENT TO LIKE

I know, it’s insane.  But TNA actually put on a compelling main event match.  Bully Ray abstaining for the first portion while the good guys gave us catharsis at the expense of Roode was nothing but logical.  The teased Beer Money taunt, Bully Ray popping up from Hardy’s messed up Twist of Fate Stunner like he was the reincarnation of Scott Fucking Hall, (don’t email me saying Scott Hall is alive, we both know that’s barely true). 

And then finally, Roode  got under Sting’s skin.  He made Sting lose control.  Anytime anyone gets spit on in wrestling, I love it.  And while it was sort of telegraphed with Hardy stumbling in the background briefly, it was still cool.  And the placement was perfect, where Sting couldn’t see Storm getting to his feet in the back ground, and screaming at Jeff to get up.  I thought it was going to be Business As Usual after the ref got bumped twice, but then Sting had to have his moral crisis and it was actually really compelling.  Certainly more compelling than whatever Champ vs Authority Figure they have over in the WWE right now.  Sting made a mistake unintentionally and couldn’t do the wrong thing intentionally.  It was the perfect tone to strike for a clusterfuck TNA ending.  And sure, it could all end in Hardy winning the title at Victory Road where he stumbled through all of his 30 second match just a year before, but still.

Honorable mention: AJ Styles travels with a Nintendo 3DS

I guess Steiner’s taunts about AJ sleeping in a race car bed with Winnie the Pooh sheets actually held some water.  He plays Zelda to get over the hurt of Kaz and beats the hell out of his kids in Mario Kart.

BOO!

SHEAMUS: IN GENERAL

I can’t remember the last time I forgot somebody won the Royal Rumble within a month.  How am I supposed to remember?  He comes into the Rumble with only months of beating up Muhammad Hassan and his only narrative in the match is “OYM GONNA WIN THE ROYAL RUMBLE…MATCH”, which is a far cry from the Ric Flairs and Shawn Michaelses before him.  Then he wins it, and all he does after is say “OY WON THE ROYAL RUMBLE…MATCH!” and goes back to beating up dudes like he’s the general manager’s hired gun. 

Not to mention his Great Shite shirt makes me uncomfortable, aside from it being washed out and terrible.

Then he cuts this promo, which I guess is supposed to be his Hate Me Now thing.  Is it just me, or does it seem like Sheamus learned a fair amount of his moveset from beating up his childhood bullies?  Also, was it JBL that told him his skin was too pale?  Did they haze him?  Did Bradshaw hog tie him in the shower and let Randy Orton rub tanning oil all over him?  I hope we get all these answers and more in his autobiography It’s Not Easy Being White…It’s Not Easy Being Red.

TED DIBIASE IS A CLASSIST JERK

Seriously, if he would have just gotten over his hate for his gardeners, we wouldn’t have to watch the same kind of boring match every week.  All bullies really just want to be loved and accepted, not beaten up and made to look like fools covered in silly string, (or poop if you’re bullying DX or Eddie Guerrero).

On a side note, Ted wears his tights way too tightly.  I can see his bank rolls.

But bless Hunico for trying to turn shit into Shinola.  He came in as Earth 3 Sin Cara and now is trying to tell Ted that he has an evil plan to ruin his bbqs by breaking his wrist.  “NO MORE BURGER FLIPPIN FOR YOU ESE, YOU’LL NEVER BE ABLE TO HOLD SOLID FOOD AGAIN”

ERIC BISCHOFF IS STILL NOT IN THE ELIMINATION CHAMBER VIDEOS

This has been bothering me for awhile, and is almost as big a travesty as nixing “THE WORLD IS WATHCHING” and trying to retcon Jim Ross out of continuity. 

But seriously, the soundbyte of him saying “THE ELIMINATION CHAYMBURRRRR” has to be in the top ten best things that Easy E ever did.  Right before getting on his knees to propose to Hulk Hogan and right after getting on his knees to blow Hulk Hogan.

SPEAKING OF HULK HOGAN: HULK HOGAN SPEAKING

I’m only going to provide a part of the exhaustion infused quote that Hogan gave during one of the U.K. events.

“If I gotta be the hood ornament that you put on front of the ship to bust through the ice cubes, to see through the fog, to feel through the darkness of the night.  I can be the guy because I smell the greatness already.  And if they don’t smell it, I’m going to take everybody in TNA and stuff their heads in it because greatness is their destiny.”

I expect Garrett Bischoff to have the Hall of Fame ring by this summer.  I guess that’s what “Hulkamania stroke” really is: lateral nepotism.  Or at least that’s what it will be until Hogan has his first stroke.  Damn that Jeff Jarrett!  New Blood 4 Life!

By the way, who is even in Immortal now?  Horrace Hogan?

JEFF HARDY IS CLEARLY STILL ON DRUGS

There is no way a person can possibly be this delusional.  How can he stand there with his Worst Birthday Ever facepaint and say that the odds are always against him?

I don’t even have to say it do I?  On no less than 3 separate occasions have you been on a meteoric path of stardom, chance after chance to “GO FOR THE GOLD KID” and “MAKE YOURSELF FAMOUS” and you squandered it to smoke and make horrible videos with your Never Was brother. 

Also, stop calling your fans enigmas, I know exactly who they are, from their kid size chewing tobacco to their hot topic rewards cards.

WWE’S OBSESSION WITH SMELL

Natalya cost herself a match last Friday because she apparently farted in the ring and the ref couldn’t make the count because his eyes were screaming or something.  Just when I thought we were past this.  What is with the writers these days, it’s all bad breath and bad farts and lawyer stink. 

TEDDY LONG IS A RACIST, DREW MAC GOT SCREWED, AND SOMEBODY SHOULD START A PETITION TO SUSPEND BIG SHOW

So let me get this straight:

Mark Henry is taken out of the Chamber match because he wrinkled Teddy Long’s tie, and then is replaced with The Great Kahli off screen because they have to keep up a weight/chamber ratio, then Randy Orton gets taken out because he’s FRAGILE, so they need a replacement, then Mark Henry shows up despite being suspended indefinitely, so Big Show kills him after killing Kahli and destroys Teddy’s office and somehow DOESN’T get suspended OR taken out of the chamber, so then they have a battle royal featuring the J.O.B. Squad and Mark Henry is still not in it, I guess because he’s seeing little Big Shows flying around his head.   They eliminate Drew Mac and David Otunga, the only two people who could go into the chamber with some semblance of a story and put Santino in it, who has only been jobbing to farts in the last few weeks, am I getting this?  Am I understanding this correctly?

I just don’t see how this isn’t the worst chamber match ever.  That is, unless the Cobra gets caught in the chains while Daniel and Cody take turns kicking Santino in the kidneys until he vomits on the front row.

Honorable Mention: Wade Barrett’s music sucks because it sounds like the first song some garage band wrote, and then they got big somehow and decided to give it a proper recording because their girlfriends liked it.

Logan Stallings (also known as Garcian Smith) is a Psychology student at the University of Florida.  He’s working on an English minor.  In his spare time he likes writing prose and poetry, as well as fantasizing about wrestling Chris Jericho and stealing all of Raven’s gimmicks.

A little over a month ago, I wrote a piece on International Object about wrestling commentary. I argued that in its current state it served almost no purpose (in fact, I called it harmful), and that one may very well enjoy the show more without it. As a general rule, I’m a theoretical journalist: I observe, posit new ideas, and let people think about them. And while there were quite a few people who did just that, I’m not sure anybody turned the volume down to watch wrestling because of the article. But I did.

Since I wrote the article, I’ve only listened to the audio on a wrestling show once: The Royal Rumble, as I watched that with a group. Every other show I’ve watched has been served in silence.¹ I’d like to take this time to go over a few interesting realizations during this experiment.

1) I miss the crowd.

There’s just no way around this: crowd noise is seductive. It’s instantly understandable why a wrestler’s job is to create as much of it as possible. Without crowd noise, it would be very difficult to tell how the pace of a match is going with the selected audience. It’s also seductive to other audience members—I found myself yearning for the crowd noise at times, wondering what the collective found good or bad about a match. Even though I find myself to be a quiet fan most of the time, there’s something very assuring about knowing the reactions of 20,000 people.

But because it simply wasn’t there, I had to look at match quality from different angles. I had no commentary to tell me if a move had been done very well or poorly (or, as what happened on Raw this week, the schizophrenic feeling when a move is done incorrectly but the announcers call it like normal), and no audience reaction to guide me. I was on my own completely to judge the quality of the matches I saw.

Because of this, I found the largest change was that I actually had to pay attention. You can’t half-watch video with no sound. There are no cues to tell you when to glue both eyes. I couldn’t surf or tweet or fold laundry at the same time—I had to just watch. This confirmed a theory I had in the original article:

Over time (during the 20th century, before everyone had more than 5 channels at home), radio broadcasts of sports events, audio plays, and the like became quite popular, and in many circles still are. There are still people out there who prefer their entertainment to be audio-only. Perhaps its just habit, but I like to think it’s because an audio broadcast sparks imagination in a similar way that reading does: by providing only part of a thing, your brain has to paint in the rest.

By eliminating the audio, I had to imagine the crowd noise and imagine the commentary. And, just to spoil my next point, my imagined commentary was always better than the reality. I can confirm the opposite of this, as well. To test this theory, I went back and listened to some Gordon Solie, Gorilla Monsoon, and Bobby Heenan commentary. Based only on their words, I was able to paint a pretty great picture of an imagined match.

2) I do not miss Michael Cole, Jerry Lawler, Booker T, Josh Matthews, or any wrestler’s voice.

So, I figured I’d enjoy a respite from Michael Cole. But what I didn’t exactly expect was that I wouldn’t really miss any announcing voice. What were they going to tell me that I didn’t already know? I know which moves are which (not that they really call moves that often anyway). I know what’s coming when Randy starts pounding the mat. I know that an injustice has been done when Daniel Bryan steals another victory on Smackdown. I don’t need their help or explanations or hand-holding. The wrestlers are performing in front of 20,000 people who can’t hear the audience, and they have to communicate what they’re doing to the back row. Surely, the zoomed-in camera is picking up their intentions.

Without them, I also didn’t feel any shame in watching wrestling. Michael Cole especially makes the audience feel like they should feel guilty about this guilty pleasure. Nobody feels good about this. Without him, without any of them, I could watch wrestling in peace. I could think about it without being reminded what’s happening later in the main event. It was really nice.

Another thing I didn’t expect was that I wouldn’t really miss the promos. As I just explained, the wrestlers are playing to the back of the room even when they’re talking, so I could figure out what was going on. If Jericho coming back and not saying a word was genius, no wrestlers ever talking would be a revolution.

3) Language is not essential for a great performance.

Watching wrestling with no sound heightens the art of it by an order of magnitude. Without commentary, I have absolutely no choice but to pay attention to the individual wrestling moves, stack them up in my head, and figure out the rhythm and build.

If you haven’t seen The Artist yet, please go do that. It’s a wildly good move that is entirely without audible language. One of the points the movie makes is that silent actors have to ham it up in order to communicate their feelings. This supports wrestling as a visual artform, says Roland Barthes:

“Each sign in wrestling is therefore endowed with an absolute clarity, since one must always understand everything on the spot. As soon as the adversaries are in the ring, the public is overwhelmed with the obviousness of the roles.”

The movie suggests that films with sound would so easily trounce silent films because actors could be more realistic with their emotions. But wrestlers have microphones and announcers and they’re still overacting. The Artist flips this throughout, showing both the up and downsides to audio. It highlights a lovely point: there is room for all kinds. It’s a point you can see almost anywhere, because there are so many art forms that work like this. To see how a great overacted performance can be received, take Daniel-Day Lewis in There Will Be Blood. As Andy Friedman of Esquire reminds us:

For roughly the first 15 minutes of Paul Thomas Anderson’s magnificent oil-baron epic… Daniel Day-Lewis doesn’t speak a single intelligible word. There’s a fair bit of grunting, hissing, and moaning — his character, name of Plainview, is just a journeyman prospector at this point, physically engaged in the grimy nuts and bolts of digging wells — but no actual dialogue.

It’s not just films. Ballet dancers will communicate epic love stories with no voices. Cirque du Soliel performances often have no speaking roles. And, of course, there are the mimes. We must never forget the mimes.

And yes, very few of these mediums work with no sound whatsoever. Music often accompanies them to heighten moments and keep the audience engaged. Do not misread this argument: I’m not saying we need absolute silence. I would love a live audience option on my remote. I would be delighted to hear that a wrestling company hired an orchestra.² But I do not need the announcers.

As it stands, I don’t really feel any great desire to turn the volume back up. I’m enjoying wrestling more. If I miss a funny line, undoubtedly I see it embedded on Tumblr somewhere. Almost every wrestling plot boils down to “let’s wrestle” or “let’s wrestle later,” and I can piece together who’s feuding with who. It is really not that difficult. And as a nice perk, I don’t wake up my girlfriend as I catch up with Raw on Thursdays. I might just keep doing this.

Goldberg v. Diamond Dallas Page from Halloween Havoc 1998 is discussed by Jason Mann and Thomas Holzerman. They talk about whether Goldberg should be held in higher esteem, how he was underused in WCW main events, the merits of Page’s diamond cutter v. Randy Orton’s RKO, and much more.

Download this episode of Wrestlespective Radio. And if you leave a comment on iTunes, any topic you want will be discussed in an upcoming podcast.

I miss ECW.

No, I don’t miss the seminal Philadelphia-based promotion that revolutionized what it meant to be an indie promotion and influenced the most profitable period in wrestling history. Don’t get me wrong, I loved that ECW, but it ran its course, something that I’m reminded of every time someone tries to dig up its corpse and parade it around like it’s still vibrant. I love the spirit of the promotion, but the people who like to grave rob the company think that having Sabu jab a screwdriver into Justin Credible’s head is how we should be paying tribute in 2012.

What I miss is WWE’s third brand, the one called ECW in name only, the one that the fanboys sneered at like it was anathema that someone dared take the name they held sacred and paraded something that wasn’t low rent under that banner. Heh, as if anything in wrestling is really worth holding sacred. I miss the show WWE put on every Tuesday night, the one that gave the world Sheamus and Zack Ryder, where old guys like Tommy Dreamer and William Regal got to do their thing unfettered by restraint. That show ruled.

It was as close to an old-school wrestling show as we got from WWE on regular television. It was a simple formula. They put on wrestling matches, had guys feud over simple issues and based it all around the old staples of wrestling heat building, things like promos and interview segments. Given that that alone doesn’t make a good wrestling show, the reason why it worked was because the cast of characters was usually able to deliver the goods.

The roster included at times but wasn’t limited to CM Punk, The Miz, Ryder, Regal, Dreamer, Christian, Jack Swagger, Sheamus, Yoshi Tatsu, Chavo Guerrero and Mark Henry. It had Tony Atlas laughing like fiend over the befuddled indignation of Abraham Washington. It featured Matt Striker before he became insufferable and Todd Grisham before he started making inappropriate analogies on SportsCenter. It featured a great match at least once a month, including a series between Christian and Swagger that might have been the best thing WWE had in the ring in 2009.

Even when RAW and Smackdown both stagnated, ECW felt like it was something different, something fresh. Right now, that’s what’s missing from WWE programming on regular TV. I’ve heard great things about NXT, but it’s hard to sit down in front of a computer and watch TV on the small screen, no matter how good it is. Watching readily available programming on an actual TV screen is taken for granted so much. Right now, it might not seem like that much, since both RAW and Smackdown have more good weeks than bad. However, there’s always room for a breath of fresh air, for a spotlight for guys who deserve the spotlight but who can’t always have it on the bigger shows.

That’s why ECW was important, nay, essential. That’s why it was such a crime that people overlooked it and ignored it because of the name. WWE did do it a major disservice by keeping the name, because unlike any other fanbase, the rabid ECW fanboys often are the most possessive of their memories and upon what the label can be placed. It was the breath of fresh air, and it was packaged like it was a retread. Talk about false advertising.

So yeah, I will shamelessly admit that I shed a single tear every time I think of the new ECW. I may be in the minority, but I’d be way, way, WAY more excited for a return to SyFy of the WWE’s “bastard” version of the brand than even one more Hardcore Homecoming.

TH writes The Wrestling Blog and broadcasts The Wrestling Podcast. You can find him on Twitter, or at various other spots around the Internet. He also loves Chikara, and quite frankly, thinks you should too.

Edited by Jason Mann.

We want to have a serious, multi-threaded conversation about women in wrestling here at Fair to Flair, and there’s absolutely no better way to do that than make a literal issue out of it. The fourth issue of Fair to Flair quarterly is all about women & wrestling. We want to explore this issue as thoroughly as possible. We feel that women’s wrestling is unfairly criticized, unfairly run, and unfairly represented, and the issue will tackle major issues pertaining to women’s wrestling today.

Because we want to make this issue known, we’re not only doing an issue of essays, but officially making the month of March “women’s wrestling month.” All month at Fair to Flair, you’ll see articles from guest writers that will also be in the quarterly.

If you’d like to participate (and we’d really love it if you did), email us your article at editor@fairtoflair.com or use our “submit” box above. Please include a little bio of yourself. The article can be anywhere from 750-1500 words. It can include photos and illustrations. This subject matter runs the gamut: write about female wrestlers you like, matches you want people to see, stories you’d like to see told, issues you’d like to discuss, and ideas on how to improve women’s wrestling in the eyes of both promoters and fans. We want stories from the big leagues and the indies (where TH and I recently argued is where you’re most likely to find exciting female action these days), and we want stories that come from the heart.

Women & Wrestling will be the fourth issue of our first volume. Authors will be paid a percentage of the sales, and all authors will receive free digital bundles of the journal.

If you want to be included on the website, please have your piece into us before March 1. We will be bundling the issue together at the end of March, and it’ll be available for pre-order April 1.

We think women wrestlers rock. Let’s make a lasting tribute to their side of the art.

The Rock & John Cena v. The Miz & R-Truth at Survivor Series 2011 is discussed by Jason Mann  and Alex Torres of Failraiser.  They talk about the strengths and weakness of the Rock-Cena story in 2011 heading to WrestleMania 28, how Rock and Cena have each been insufferable louses at times, how fun the Awesome Truth were together, and Alex’s experiences attending this show in person.

Download this episode of Wrestlespective Radio. Do it for the children.

After reading a bit of discussion on The Wrestling Blog, Fair to Flair and Twitter about the dueling chant, I felt compelled to share my piece. As a veteran live wrestling show fan (in multiple promotions, cities, and countries), I think I have a fairly good grasp on the concept. In fact, if you follow SHIMMER or CHIKARA or ACW, you’ve probably heard me and my friends leading a dueling chant ourselves. As someone who has been there, done that, and done it better than most let me first say: put away the idea that fans do this as some self-indulgent attempt to draw attention to themselves.

As anyone who attends wrestling shows can tell you, the asshole fans who want to draw attention to themselves actually draw attention to themselves. They don’t join in with other fans to cheer on a wrestler or applaud the match. They cat call. They make obnoxious comments. They talk about the football game or cheesecake or make unfunny and embarrassing Undertaker references at ROH shows or do other things that have no purpose save making others look at them and acknowledge their existence. You won’t hear these people on TV or DVD, but they are there at every show. They are the actual jerks attempting to take away from the match for their own benefit.

The true vocal fans, the troublemakers, the chanters, the clappers, the singers are on the complete opposite end. They are the hardworking, very small minority of people that make the difference between a “hot” crowd and a “dead” one. They might be just three or four people in a crowd of two or three hundred, but they’re the ones who get all the chants (not just the dueling ones) going. The majority of fans only join in with the fire starters when they can be bothered, which is only a fraction of the time. The notion that either of these factions, the lead vocalists or their grudging backing chorus, clamp their hands numb and scream their throat raw out of anything other than love or passion for the sport is, simply, wrong.

On dueling chants specifically, K Sawyer Paul suggested they were a failure because they don’t clearly convey their purpose. The mistake is in thinking that the crowd has a purpose. A wrestling crowd is not, in any way, a homogenous group with a single defined goal. It is a collection of individuals with various tastes and preferences that are in constant conflict with each other. 

When I and 10 to 20 of my favorite people in the world at the moment scream, “Let’s-Go-Kana,” and then 10 to 20 people who in that moment I hate more than anything in the world scream, “Let’s-Go-Sara,” we’re both making very clear our, separate, goals: We want Kana to choke the life out of Sara with the Kana Lock. They want Sara to decapitate Kana with an axe kick. 

This is not a detached, orchestrated, cooperative, unified attempt; it’s fucking war. We must scream louder and harder and longer or they (those putrid sub-humans  who dare challenge us and our chosen fighter) will win. In that moment it’s all or nothing. Kill or be killed. It’s Pro Wrestling.

You might not understand this if you haven’t been there, in the trenches, trying to convince Chris Hero that he absolutely cannot beat ACH while Chris Hero’s many fans reassure his ego with a “Yes-he-can!”If you were there but sat unmoved and didn’t cheer “Ha-ma-da” or “Me-li-ssa,” then you didn’t feel that surge of adrenaline and you didn’t see how time stood still and the euphoria hit and you didn’t realize you were not only watching the perfect wrestling match, but that your voice had become a part of it. The wrestlers see it and feel it too. They’ve told me. They live for those moments just like fans. 

Of course not every chant fans earnestly perform is good, but the truly problematic ones (“U-S-A” or “Show-Your-Tits”) tend to have more obvious issues than merely seeming mildly pretentious or confusing in a limited context. So, before judging a chant, of any kind, consider what it’s like for the people actually saying it, and the wrestlers as they hear their fans fight for them. Better yet, participate yourself at the next show you attend. It’s an experience worth having.

And just one more thing: To any Cheerleader Melissa fans attending NCW Femmes Fatales in Montreal next month, I only have this to say: Let’s-Go-Hailey! - Clap - Clap - ClapClapClap

Leslie, aka John Hyperion, is the editor-in-chief for the progressive pro wrestling blog, the Dirty Dirty Sheets. Check it out for the beat on everything puroresu, joshi and independent wrestling.

Edited by TH.