Don’t try this at Home
WWF/E, back in the Attitude Era of the 90s and early 00s was stuff of legend. Many afternoons were spent glued to the telly watching Raw and later, Smackdown. I watched the sidey shows Metal, Superstars, Velocity, Heat etc. and even the recaps on Livewire, Afterburn, Bottomline. Puberty was hit when Trish Stratus walked out in tight spandex. Adrenaline pumped as Mick Foley was thrown off the top of 20 foot cell through two tables and thumbtacks and what not. And holy shit, how awesome was Stone Cold with his one finger salute!
And then one son of a bitch named John Cena had to come in and ruin it all. With his coming and of all the pussy 12 year olds that listen to the Jonas Brothers that he was targeted at, the tone of WWE programming shifted from R-rated angles around crucifixion, lingerie pillow fights and psychological torment to PG-friendly stories about quirky midgets and lovable retards.
You want epic wrestling, go watch Hart/Austin at WM 13, or the aforementioned Foley/Taker Hell In A Cell at KOTR ‘98 or my most memorable match of all - the epic “unsanctioned” battle that was Michaels/HHH at Summerslam ‘02. Everything about that match, from the pre-fight build-up, to the entrances, to the match progression, to the dramatic ending was perfect. Watch it. And to whoever that says professional wrestling isn’t cool because it’s fake, fuck off. It is called by the management itself as ‘sports entertainment’. Yes, the matches are fixed when they are booked but god damn it, it’s still real to me! The blood is real, the pain is real, the injuries are VERY real. All of which is non-existent in the horse-shit WWE stories being produced these days. They are wasting people like Jericho and Edge by booking them in storylines that doesn’t beget how truly twisted their characters were back in the era of 3:16. Suck it up, kids and tell WWE to get back the lesbian divas and the hardcore matches where blood flowed like… blood. REAL blood.
/rant
However, my purpose of writing this post wasn’t to rant. I recently reconnected with this friend of mine, Ashish, from school and the first thing we remembered was hanging out and pulling off wrestling moves on each other, saying ‘Fuck You’ to the often repeated ‘Don’t try this at Home’ warning. We were 12 and the Stunner was the coolest thing on the planet. But, we never tried it after the one time, it got real and the guy bit his tongue. Also, our backyard wrestling antics were not quite in our backyard as much as it was in our parents’ bedroom. The comfy pillows and the bouncy mattress made for a good wrestling canvas. We would not just simulate specific moves but actually choreograph an entire match between us and tweak it every time till it became a legitimate Match of the Year candidate. Here’s how things would pan out -
Entrance
The WWF entrance themes were amongst the first English songs that I remember hearing. And they still sound just as badass as they did to my 12 year-old self. HHH always had an awesome entrance track (usually Motorhead) but my personal favourite was Break The Walls Down, Chris Jericho’s original theme. The Sevendust version is legendary. I made my entrance to it. And Ashish would enter to either Rob Zombie’s Edge theme or Breaking Point’s RVD theme. We’d pose around for the imaginary crowd, flex our imaginary muscles and snarl and growl at each other before the match got underway.
Ready Moves
Punches, jabs, kicks, sweeps, slaps and headbutts. I loved doing the Ric Flair style ‘wooooo’ chop and could pull off a pretty mean missile dropkick. But, we had to abandon many of the aerial maneuvers at the sound of an increasingly creaky bed.
All of this was the setup to the next part of the match…
Submission Moves
This is where shit got real. Professional wrestling on the telly could be faked but you lock in a very real Ankle Lock on someone and they will tap out in seconds. The Ankle Lock, of course, was made popular by Kurt Angle, a legitimate Olympic gold medal winner in the sport. It was very real and it hurt like a bitch. And then there was the Figure 4 Leg Lock. Try getting one snapped on you and not crying for mommy within the first five seconds. We took care to not hurt each other during our matches but there were times when we had to take a breather and walk off the stretched knee or the extended ankle. Before getting right back into it.
Spots
It wouldn’t be a WWF match without a few cliched spots thrown in for good measure. So we had a ref bump, followed by the heel character (we swapped roles everytime) getting a chair (or more accurately, a pillow) and whacking the other guy in the face and then across the back. If sometimes we had a third friend along then he would do the interference-low blow spot. But through it all the good guy would persevere, do an HBK style kip-up before going apeshit on the bad guy with counters are clotheslines and bodyslams before setting up…
The Finisher
Here is where we would forget we were in a match and just pull off a long list of some of our favourite moves. Spinebusters and Powerbombs were commonplace. Piledrivers added an extra element of danger. After retiring the Stunner from our arsenal there was only one other move that could replace the awesomeness of it. That was… The (MOTHERFUCKING!) Pedigree - HHH’s all time epic facebusting, mindblasting, testicleblowing move of pure win. Sure it started with sticking the guy’s face in your crotch, but there wasn’t a damn thing homoerotic about it. Pain was coming. You hold the bad guy’s face parallel to the ground, double underhook the arms, jump up and bring down the wrath of all that is evil on him by setting up a meeting between skull and (pillowy) concrete. It was the most brutal thing. And we sold it as so. The match was so exhausting that the good guy would have to crawl his way near the fallen bad guy and drag his arm on him as he laid down for the pin count.
1… 2… 3. And it was over.
We got up, dusted off and promptly switched the TV on to catch the latest Raw.
