You are here /wrestling
/guests
/Doomsday
Guest Columns

Dan Doomsday

Main

BLAH

THE DEVICE

I GET LETTERS, TOO: Some interesting feedback from last week's wrestlers-to-musicians adventure-

"That was pretty darn original, and really true, as well. I never would've thought about this if I hadn't read your column!"
-James Gowdey

"Russo=smart. You=not smart"
-Laguna S. Loire

You love me, you hate me, you'll forget me the week I stop writing. BANG!!!

Hello, everyone, I'm Dartmouth Dan Doomsday, the World's Most Dangerous Columnist, bringing you a fresh edition of the most electrifying column in sports entertainment today, THE DEVICE. Quick notes before we get started: RIP ScoopTHIS, FU Hillary Clinton, and WTF was that Kevin Nash interview all about on Thunder?! But this week's column isn't about comedy sites or Hyatte. It's not about chronically inept Senate candidates, all-around bitches, or my neighbors. And it's not about lousy Tennesee centers, lousy bookers, or lousy wrestlers. What it is about, however is....

An Open Letter to Arn Anderson

Dear Arn,
I am a longtime wrestling fan. I cheered against you more often than I cheered for you, as the storylines dictated. However, over the last couple of years, I've become more interested in the craft of wrestling itself: moves, psychology, transitions, and storytelling. As a result, I've become a fan of yours, and of the Four Horsemen at large. I feel that I never fully appreciated your talents while you were wrestling, and thought that you might have an interesting take on the wrestling world. With that in mind, I used a gift certificate that I was given as a high school graduation present to buy a copy of your book, Arn Anderson 4Ever, a Look Behind the Curtain. Screw you, Arn.

To illustrate my position, let me present a quote from the book of another recently retired wrestler, Mick Foley. At the beginning of his 1999 book, Have a Nice Day: A Tale of Blood and Sweatsocks, Foley writes:

Now, we should get something straight. I know you didn't pay $25...to have your intelligence insulted. I will not try to portray professional wrestling as being a 'real, competitive sport.' I will readily asmit to occasionally stomping my foot on the mat, and always placing a greater emphasis on entertainment value than on winning.

Well, Arn, I paid 23 dollars for your book, and I think my intelligence is worth a bit more than that extra two dollars. And frankly, Arn, I consider passages like the following to be an insult to my intelligence:

In what I consider a fluke, Tom 'Z Man' Zenk beat me for the TV Title in Atlanta on December 4th, 1990. I had him pretty well beaten until he caught me with a punch as I was coming off the second turnbuckle, and followed it with a missile dropick from the top rope. Three seconds later he was the champ. No excuses, he beat me cleanly that night, but it was just a fluke.

Arn, let me clarify a few things. I know that the reason you lost is because the promoters saw potential for Zenk as a babyface. I know that you knew you were losing the title before the match, because it had been booked that way. And I know that you NEVER hit ANYONE with that double axehandle off the second rope.

Most importantly, though, Arn, I know that professional wrestling is choreographed. I never refer to it as "fake," because I have tremendous respect for what you do. I know that in the course of participating in what some call a "fake sport," you have incurred numerous injuries, not the least of which was the neck injury that required doctors to remove four vertebrae and end your in-ring career.

These are things that just about every wrestling fan knows, Arn. In these days of the Internet, "shoots," and the Wrestling Observer, it just doesn't pay to try to keep up the illusions of the squared circle when addressing the fans in a forum like your book.

When I look back at reading your book, I feel as though I've been cheated. I paid 23 dollars to read a legend's perspective on life in the wrestling business, because you are just that, Arn: a legend. You're a legend as a member of the Four Horsemen, and you're a legend in your own right. However, what I got for my 23 dollars was not a look at life in the business, but a look at the various storylines that involved you in your 15 year wrestling career. I don't know about how you became an Anderson. I don't know whether or not you okayed the nWo parody of your retirement speech. And I don't have any idea what the various wrestlers were like outside the ring, with the exception of Sid Vicious, although that's something that I've known about for some time. Arn, please don't get me wrong here. I have a great deal of respect for you as a performer, and I kind of get the feeling that you're a good guy outside the ring, even if you weren't the babyface inside it. However, if you really meant it when you thank the fans for "Allowing Arn Anderson to catch his dream," then you might have approached the book differently.

Sincerely,

Elliot Olshansky
aka Dartmouth Dan Doomsday
2dope

Mail the Author
Visit 2dope

BLAH

Main

Design copyright (C) 1999, 2000 Christopher Robin Zimmerman & KZiM Communications
Guest column text copyright (C) 2000 by the individual author and used with permission