Dr. Darin Davis

In a previous post, I mentioned how I had gotten the contact information for wrestling camp . Below is a different version of that ad. [update: Image doesn't seem to show up in Firefox. Click here if you can't see it.]

Wrestling Camp Ad From Program

I started training with Eddie Sharkey in March of 1997 at a place called the Peacemaker Center in northeast Minneapolis, MN. This was a building used to teach some Native American studies I believe, but it also doubled as a youth center. It had a boxing gym in it, and way over in the corner near the floor drain was Eddie’s semi-functioning wrestling ring.

In that first month, I was the only new student. In fact I was the only student. There was some guy from Wisconsin that was supposed to show up, but never did. There were also a couple of guys from northern Minnesota that came in 3 or 4 times, but with a 3 hr round trip each day, I knew I wasn’t going to see much from them. Some days I would spend 30-45 minutes just taking bumps. I remember the underside of my forearms turning a dark purple from hitting the mat.

Besides Eddie and occasionally Ray Whebbe, wrestlers Billy Blaze, Willy “The Splash”, and Marty Hamilton (a.k.a. The Joker) were on hand. Apart from Marty, these two guys were “old school”. I still remember sometime during the first week where Billy was stretching me on the mat. He had me in an armbar and said that he would break my arm if I ever told anybody about how the wrestling business worked. The thing is, myself and a few friends already knew a lot about the business from reading the “sheets” (back when they were printed on paper) like the Pro Wrestling Torch and from reading the usenet group rec.sports.pro-wrestling. I thought it was best that I didn’t bring it up at that point. I’m not sure that he would have really broken it, but I didn’t want to find out. He was just trying to protect the business.

I can completely understand where he was coming from. Sometimes we’re so open about the business, even at the WWE level, that we can kind of take the fun out of it. What if you went to see a magician and he came out and showed you how to saw a woman in half, then did the trick? Sometimes it’s better to keep them guessing.

Because it was a boxing gym, there was also a boxing ring there, and a boxing trainer, and a bunch of “underpriviledged youth” learning how to box. If you’ve ever seen HBO’s series “The Wire”, it was kind of like the gym that Cutty set up for the same purpose.

The trainer had an assistant, who they referred to as General Chang. He had fought in the Vietnam war and had a bullet hole to prove it. I always wondered how a non-U.S. citizen had qualified for military service. The problem with my thinking was that I was assuming he fought on “our” side.

Over the next couple of months, the General would be my (inexperienced) training partner. You always hear about the major injuries that wrestlers get - torn ACLs, compressed vertebrae, torn pecs, quadraceps, and biceps. But what you don’t hear about are the nagging day-to-day minor injuries that they live with for the rest of their lives. My story isn’t typical, since I have relatively few. Some of them happened from working with Chang, and the rest of the early ones were caused by my own inexperience and the bone-jarring wrestling ring we were using.

The ring was notorious for being stiff. There is supposed to be a little movement in the center, but this one was seized up. We might as well have been just taking bumps on the concrete. It was almost a relief using the boxing ring except that you could feel the individual boards as you landed.

Around June of that year I got a phone call that the Peacemaker Center closed for some unknown reason. A few weeks later, Eddie teamed up with wrestler Terry Fox to restart the camp up in Coon Rapids, MN. With Sharkey, Fox, additional trainers “Thunderblood” Charlie Norris and Sam Houston, and a bunch of new talented recruits on board, it was shaping up to be a good summer.

But I’ll leave that for a future post…

After the 6/30/08 broadcast of WWE Monday Night Raw, which I thought was one of the weakest in a long time, I started thinking about how someone would measure how good or bad they thought a particular wrestling program was on any given week. Raw was the least liked (by me) of any in recent memory, but was it the worst so far this year?

Sure, for any given show you can say “I loved it”, “I liked it”, “Didn’t like it”, or “Hated it”. You could say, “It wasn’t as good as last week”, or “It was better than the one last week”. But was it better or worse than the one two weeks ago? And by how much? How much more do you like TNA vs. Smackdown? Is there any way to measure them and do a comparison?

I think I mentioned before that I have a TiVo, and that I don’t watch any wrestling programming “live” (or any TV for that matter). Most people’s first reaction to that is, “Oh, because you want to skip commercials”. But it’s actually more general than that. I have home improvement shows I record that I might only care about one particular featured project they are doing. There is a cable access local news channel I watch (Channel 12) that I may only care about certain stories. The ones I care less about I fast forward through at a higher speed (2x, 20x, or 60x). The less I’m interested in it, the higher the speed I fast forward through it. The stuff I really care about I watch at normal “real-time” speed.

For wrestling, the same thing applies. If there is an interview or a match I don’t care about, I zip through it fairly quickly (20x speed). If there’s a match that I have only a limited interest in (maybe the outcome or a few high spots), I may watch it slightly sped up (2x speed). If I’m really into it, I’ll watch it at normal speed.

Taking this into account, it seems like the amount of time it takes me to watch a program would be a measure of how much I liked it. Not counting commercials, a 2 hour program would take me about 90 minutes to watch if I liked everything and watched it at normal speed. If one week it took me 75 minutes to watch it and another week it took me only 45 minutes, it seems like it would be pretty easy to tell which one I liked better, and even how much better. If one of those weeks was 6 months ago and I can’t remember anything about the program, I would still be able to tell whether or not I liked it better.  Or looking at a trend over time whether a program like Raw is getting more interesting, less interesting, or about the same. Again, this would be just in my opinion. This doesn’t necessarily reflect the ratings, or how any other fan feels about the programming.

Another measure I thought of after watching this week’s July 7th Raw was to keep track of how long a viewer has to wait from the start of the program until the first wrestling match. It was a looong time on Monday.

OK, this whole thing may be a little geeky (most likely it is a LOT geeky), and I don’t know how many people will be interested in it, but I thought if I was going to do something for my own curiosity, I might as well make it public.

Starting this week, with this post, I’m going to be providing a weekly update and comparison of Monday Night RAW, ECW, TNA, and Smackdown based on my data. I’m planning to do it for at least a few months.

I mentioned before that I haven’t been watching Smackdown for quite awhile. There were a few reasons why I haven’t. The two biggest reasons were that I couldn’t stand listening to JBL (I might have actually said the announce team before, but it’s actually just JBL), and that one more wrestling program a week was just too much, even for me. If I had to drop one, I’d drop Smackdown. But since JBL returned to active wrestling, and the WWE draft a few weeks ago put Jim Ross as the play-by-play man on the Smackdown show with Mick Foley, and because I wanted to see how Smackdown measured up to the other programs, I’ve decided to start watching it again at least for as long as I do this experiment.

So here is the data for the week of 7/7/2008:

Minutes From Start Until First Match

As you can see here, Raw continues its tradition of filling the opening, and in this case almost the first half hour, with interviews and other non in-ring activity. TNA’s 2 minutes may be unusually short, but we’ll have to see.

Total Viewing Time In Minutes

Here is the total viewing time for each program this week. Looks like TNA is the “most liked” by me this week, with Smackdown being the least. ECW has a slight edge on RAW, but given that it has been scaled by 2 (i.e. I only spent 21 minutes watching ECW)* it means they are pretty much the same. RAW’s 28-minutes before the first match hurt it I’m sure.

[*Note: I'm thinking about changing this to a percentage of the total program time instead of minutes so I don't have to double the ECW viewing time for the chart.]

Here are this weeks highlights…

RAW Highlights:

• Ric Flair DVD commercial (yes, I stopped and watched a commercial)
• Kofi Kingston match (but I’m still not taking back my original opinion )
• Some kid running into the locker room to get on camera

ECW Highlights:

• Tony Atlas appearance (except for the end)
• Evan Bourne

TNA Highlights:

• World X Cup matches
• Awesome Kong match

Smackdown Highlights:

• None (okay, seeing Bam Neely on TV is one)

Are the bookers getting lazy? I’ve seen more countouts in televised wrestling in the last 4 weeks than I’ve seen in the last 4 years. Especially double countouts.

Other than that purple Muppet on Sesame Street, who likes countouts?

Fans hate countouts.

Wrestlers hate countouts.

Referees hate countouts (they have to take all the heat).

So why do them? That’s just bad booking, in my opinion. There is (almost) always another way to accomplish what you want without using them.

I watched a documentary last weekend about women’s wrestling in the 1940’s and 50’s called Lipstick & Dynamite.

I won’t give a full movie review about it (for that you can check out Roger Ebert’s 2.5 stars). Not a great documentary on wrestling itself, but it did give you a feeling for what the first females had to go through starting out in a sport dominated by men.

There were probably at least half a dozen women interviewed, all of which had worked for a promoter named Billy Wolfe, but the focus of the movie was on three particular women. One was an 84-year-old with the mouth of a sailor named Gladys “Kill ‘em” Gillem. The other two were The Fabulous Moolah and Mae Young, who are known to younger fans due to their ongoing appearances in the WWE.

A few things I thought were interesting:

• Unlike the men, who could work a particular territory for months at a time, the women had to constantly be on the move and were not able to stay in a territory for more than a match or two
• Many states (like California and Illinois) had a ban on female wrestling
• Many of the women interviewed had careers that spanned more than 20 yrs
• Moolah claims to have been the women’s champion and undefeated for 29 yrs. Some of the other wrestlers disputed this, saying she had her own belt.
• Moolah, Mae Young, and midget wrestler Diamond Lil were living in the same house together (??)
• All of the women said that they don’t like the “T&A” shows that women’s wrestling has become. Promoters put women in the ring that look good and have no talent. Most of them also thought that the recent “gag” appearances of Moolah and Young in the WWE tarnished their reputations.

With many of them in their 80’s at the time of filming, and some that have since passed on (Moolah), the movie gives us a glimpse at some really “tough broads” that were pioneers in the industry.

Lipstick & Dynamite theatrical trailer:

Josh over at Missouri Wrestling Revival has announced a special writing competition for the summer of 2008.

The theme is “Improving the Midwest Pro Wrestling Scene”. The competition is open to all wrestlers, promoters, and fans in Missouri and the bordering states.

From the site:

We want to hear your open, honest, professional solutions to the problems faced by professional wrestling promotions in the Midwest. Whether you are a wrestling fan, promoter, wrestler, or otherwise connected to the business, MWR knows you have ideas that can revitalize wrestling in the area. If you have solutions to the challenges that pro wrestling promotions face, then create a memorable essay that offers these solutions in a professional and thought-provoking way. Your goal should be to cause a strong positive reaction from all readers, regardless of his or her wrestling background.

A portion of the entry fee will be donated to the Wounded Warrior Project, which “seeks to assist those men and women of our armed forces who have been severely injured during the conflicts in Iraq, Afghanistan, and other locations around the world.”

The deadline for submissions is July 31st. See the site for details.

Welcome… to Monday Night Yawn…

Starting on Monday June 9th, Vince McMahon began giving away one million dollars during the live telecast of Monday Night Raw. To enter, you need to register at wwe.com with your name, address, sex, age, and phone number, and watch the program live to get the “password” while you’re waiting for the call. Apparently a move to bolster ratings (not sure why he didn’t do it during sweeps), while also boosting the number of registered users on their web site. I could also see where having the registration information would be useful when talking to advertisers, so that they could give more information about their demographics instead of relying in the Nielsen data.

In his speech the previous week, McMahon also mentioned that it was an attempt to bring back some fans that hadn’t watched Raw for awhile, and recruit some new viewers that have never watched the program.

Rather than putting on some solid matches and compelling content to give these new fans and “lapsed” fans a reason to tune in every week, we were all treated to an absolute snoozefest.

Seeing McMahon fumble with the touch tone phone was like watching someone’s grandpa “drunk dial”. He took several attempts to dial the numbers, all with the crowd getting more and more restless. Giving away random amounts of money was okay (the total for the night was $1 million), but I can’t understand why he would give one woman two dollars! What is the best thing you could think would happen after that? Is that excited family that probably freaked out when their phone started ringing going to be watching next week? Do you think that someone might tune in and find that so hilarious that they would watch the program again?

With the constant interruptions of the program to watch the Chairman of the Board fatfinger a telephone, and some of the stupid antics (like Charlie Haas and Mae Young) that rivaled the writing at an award show, the whole production seemed amateur.

Apart from that, we got to see some “interesting” facts going into the commercial breaks, like “Did you know that Monday Night Raw is the highest rated regularly scheduled program on cable?“. Anyone who was watching for the first time would surely be asking, “Why?“

I would hope Vince McMahon is going to “re-tool” the program next week, if he continues the giveaway at all.

I came across this as I was looking through my old tapes for some Bam Neely (a.k.a. …) footage. This was a portion of a great matchup between Minnesota wrestler Lenny Lane and internationally known Japanese wrestler The Great Sasuke (pronounced Sas-kay, I believe). Lane had worked for Michinoku Pro Wrestling in Japan, which was owned by Sasuke. Being in the US for some reason, Sasuke agreed to work a match for Sharkey’s promotion. The fans definitely got their money’s worth.

This match has a lot of significance for me for several reasons:

• I started getting into the local scene as a fan around 1995, about the same time that Lane started wrestling. I thought it was great to see him get some national and international exposure (this was before he was in WCW).
• I was there. If you look for the guy with the camera and the greenish colored sweatshirt, that’s me. I had watched a few tapes of Sasuke in action and was amazed by his skill. I couldn’t believe that he was actually wrestling locally.
• The program I received from this event (see below) had a phone number on the back of it. The number was for Eddie Sharkey’s wrestling training camp. This is the number I called to become a professional wrestler. The ad looks pretty cheesy by today’s standards (or by any standards for that matter) since it was mostly for a 1-900 wrestling “hotline” with a couple of sentences at the bottom about Sharkey (I have a better looking one, but it wasn’t part of this program). Had some trouble getting the thumbnail link to work, so you’ll need to click here to see it.

Within about a month or two of this match, I would be starting training camp with the “Trainer of Champions” in a boxing gym in northeast Minneapolis, MN.

But I’ll save that for another time. Enjoy the match.

This match originally aired on “Slick” Mick’s Bodyslam Review, hosted by Mick Karsh and produced by Al Pabon.

Wow. What a difference a month makes. I take back what I said about Kofi Kingston a few weeks ago. Actually, I don’t take it back since it was true at the time, but I thought it would take longer to get a good match out of him. His match with Shelton Benjamin on this week’s ECW program was really good. I guess it goes to show you how someone who’s a little green needs someone with experience to lead him along. Usually it’s the heel that does the leading in this type of situation because they can keep taking control.

Kofi’s undefeated streak is over. That’s a good thing. Even though Kofi lost, he came out of the match looking good. The dynamic of having him be the underdog and almost winning several times worked. Benjamin would have the upper hand, but when Kofi needed to take over he had the athletic ability to pull off one exciting move after another. It didn’t have the paint-by-numbers feel that his other matches have had. And now that they don’t have to continue the streak they can put him against other wrestlers and not worry about what the finish is going to be.

The test will be seeing whether he can continue the momentum in his next match, or if it really was all Benjamin making this one turn out as good as it did.

In his early days, the wrestler now known as Bam Neely spent a lot of time wrestling in a tag team with his uncle. They were known in the area as Blood and Gutz- The Hellraisers.

Blood had wrestled several years before in a tag team with someone I believe was his real life brother. I think the team was called the Blood Brothers, but don’t quote me on that.

Although the following match is unstructured (it’s pretty much a free-for-all at times), and it’s definitely not their best match as a tag team, I thought it would be worth posting to see four guys having fun beating each other up at a bar.

This match originally aired on “Slick” Mick’s Bodyslam Review, hosted by Mick Karsh and produced by Al Pabon. It was taped at Sharx in Fridley, MN. I believe it was in 1998.

I’ve never really liked “gimmick” matches. By that I mean matches that either have some kind of special stipulations or special equipment needed.

Don’t get me wrong, I really like most of what happens during a ladder match, or during a TLC (tables, ladders, chairs) match. We get to see incredible moves off of ladders, sometimes to the outside of the ring. We get to see wrestlers get smashed through tables. We get to see inventive uses of chairs- wrestlers launching themselves off of chairs, launching chairs at other wrestlers, double team moves, multiple chairs, etc.

If the goal of the match (i.e. the way to win) was to be the first to put your opponent through a table, I’m fine with that. If the winner had to have the most pinfalls or submissions within a certain time limit, that’s good also- there have been a lot of great matches over the years with that theme. The majority of the time though, the way to win these gimmick matches is to reach something. In a pole match, you have to grab something off of a pole in the corner. In a ladder match, you have to grab something suspended above the center of the ring. In some cage matches, you have to climb over the top and touch the floor, or climb out the door and reach the floor. In a bullrope match, you have to touch all four turnbuckles in a row before your opponent does. And that is the biggest problem I have with them.

As soon as getting somewhere becomes the way to win, then the way you end up building suspense is to have someone almost get there and then get stopped. Sounds good on paper but can be difficult to watch in practice.

I just laid you out so I can climb this ladder to get the belt. Let me adjust the position of the ladder for about 20 seconds, then I’ll get up to the first rung and have to rest. I just did a top rope bulldog, but for some reason I get winded taking one step. Okay, now I’m up to the second rung. I’m going to look up- yep, it’s still there. Made it to the third rung, gotta rest again (Dude, get up!). Going for the fourth… oh, I got knocked off (Whew!).

TNA wrestling had a women’s match last week that was a “hair clipper on a pole match”. Same thing. Someone slowly climbs up and waits to get knocked off. The winner of this match would be granted immunity from the “hair” match at Sunday’s Pay-Per-View. In this match, the loser gets their head shaved. But if you win the “clipper on the pole” match and you lost Sunday’s match, you wouldn’t get your head shaved but the person that pinned you would. Or something. Sounds like too many rules to me, which is another problem some of these match types.

And why does “TNA managment” think that I would be more likely to buy their PPV if I got to see one of their hot TNA Knockouts get their head shaved? If they really wanted guys to tune in they would be… never mind.

I guess gimmick matches will probably be around forever (in the future they’ll probably involve robots or flying cars). I’d be curious to find out if PPV orders or TV ratings were actually higher because of these. I have a hard time believing they would be.