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Marvellous Martin

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BLAH

MARVELLOUS MUSINGS
Why the internet has started spoiling wrestling for me. Plus other gibberish.

"Until you've broken necks and cashed cheques...you only know half the story!" - Marvellous Martin

Bar weep grar nar weep minnie bon to you all. I can't believe nobody emailed me about Matt Borne and his ridiculous gimmicks. I'll give you one more week, tell me the name of one or both of Matt Borne's terrible gimmicks and get your name in lights, well text, RIGHT HERE in the next column. You can't AFFORD to miss out!.


  • Jim Ross said - "Shawn Stasiak is being released by the WWF. We wish this gifted young athlete nothing but the best." You fire the guy for being nothing more than paranoid and you wish him "nothing but the best"? This smacks of pressure from some of the other wrestlers backstage, it seems like a massive overreaction.

  • Speaking of back stage politics, a heated war of words broke out between Vince McMahon and Chris Jericho at the Smackdown taping last week. Vince basically told Jericho that he was very disappointed and that Jericho was not working up to the standards expected. Jericho has apparently been letting the company down. Jericho said that Vince had been listening to Triple H and X-Pac too much who are both really down on Jericho. It seems he's facing the same crap he did in WCW, he does not fit into the conventional template of big wrestling talent and a lot of guys in the back don't like him because of that. What a load of crap to be going down, especially considering how talented Jericho is.

  • I withdraw anything positive I have ever said about Evan Karagias. He must be one of the sloppiest wrestlers I have ever seen. That spinning splash he did a few weeks back on Thunder was pathetic, he just span around vertically in the air and then did a splash, I could do that!! Get that damn belt off him soon but not to Madusa though, what a nightmare that would be!

    Now on to a serious subject that I think its about time I addressed.


    Why the internet has started spoiling wrestling for me.

    This is something of a thorny subject, but I would like to share with you my outlook on what the internet has done for my and many others' views on wrestling. I might do a little bit of generalising with this so please don't be annoyed with me if you feel misrepresented. If you do, the chances are I'm not talking about you.

    I remember the first time I went to a wrestling web site. It must have been about three years ago now. I had started watching WCW Nitro again at my friend's house. Seeing as it isn't on British TV until Friday, I decided I would like to find out the results sooner. A short visit to Yahoo took me to DDT Digest, to this day the first place I go to get the Nitro results (sorry Chris!) After a while, my interest in wrestling developed and when I started going to university about a year and a half ago, I found myself with a lot of spare time which I would spend surfing the various internet sites devoted to wrestling. This was a turning point for me. I was no longer a casual wrestling fan who would just watch the show and then get on with something else. I was slowly becoming an internet smart.

    I no longer just saw Hulk Hogan as just an increasingly annoying heel taking up mic time, I saw him as a rampaging ego making life easy for some and making life difficult for most others due to his close backstage relationship with Eric Bishoff. When Hogan turned face, there was a part of me that would have really enjoyed it if I hadn't have known that he was keeping younger and vastly superior wrestlers down with his little clique of buddies. I would have appreciated it all more if I hadn't known he was a strong influence in Chris Jericho's decision to leave WCW. I would have been happier just thinking Ric Flair had been taking a break a while back, not knowing that he was refusing to appear and that Eric Bishoff was suing him. This just all seems so very intrusive.

    The insider sites, the news and rumour sites, all they do is take some of the magic out of the whole experience of watching wrestling. I even bring up rumours or news that I have heard myself in these columns. I'm kind of trapped because I've some to find this backstage information interesting, like a lot of other people. I also get so bored that I don't have anything better to do than go read a story about who was shouting at who back stage or who has got an injury when on the show he was kidnapped by aliens. What would a film be like if you were told in great detail how it would have turned out differently if it wasn't for the film company making them change scenes to make it more mainstream, or that one of the star leads made them change lines so they sounded more heroic? It would take something away from the film, perhaps disillusion you a little. I am very disillusioned now. The Ultimate Warrior was one of my favourite wrestlers when I was young. The whole image and aura he seemed to have to me was spoilt when I read on the internet about what a glory hog he is and how he refused to be a bad guy. He was just another big snarling ego like so many others. I was nineteen when I read about that but it did almost feel like when I was ten and my mother told me Father Christmas didn't exist. Not as extreme as that but you get the picture. I had held this image from when I was young about how cool I thought the Warrior was and that got destryed.

    What the internet does to wrestling fans more than anything is make them less imaginative. We have our imaginations sapped out of us by 'the truth'. Why do you think Stone Cold Steve Austin was so over with the crowds? He was portrayed as "the toughest son of a gun you ever did see". All those people watching with their 3:16 shirts and their wrestling figures and their video games and NO INTERNET saw him as the greatest wrestler EVER. On the internet, we know so much more. We know he can hardly do any wrestling move to speak of because of various injuries. We have read the rumours that he wouldn't work programmes with Billy Gunn or Jeff Jarret, and that it caused the latter to decide to go back to WCW. I am very cynical about Steve Austin. I refuse to by into the way Austin has been portrayed in the WWF, because I know too much. At the same time, I accept that Bruce Lee can take out over a hundred inEnter the Dragon. I can accept that Arnold Scharzenegger can shoot thousands of people without being shot back once. But I couldn't accept The Rock selling the Stone Cold Stunner and getting pinned at Wrestlemania XV. Why not? Wrestling is not any more real than a martial arts movie, but our mentality is that we want to believe there is more to it. There isn't, but for some reason we act like there should be, and we read into everything - the amount of time I have read that "Vince Russo could be playing the internet smarts here" is ridiculous.

    We are a tiny percentage of the total wrestling fans, about 5%? We are not that important and we are not better wrestling fans because we have access to all this extra information on the internet. If anything we are worse, we are heading the way of those depressing people who read those terrible sensationalist magazines just to find out which actor is dating which pop star and who is having a secret love affair with who. Sometimes we should take things at face value and I wish with wrestling I still could. But I can't.

    The only good about the internet is that I get to talk to and express my views with other wrestling fans, which I really enjoy doing. It's nice meeting other wrestling fans and I even enjoy disagreeing with them. Unfortunately unless you just have no interest or a lot of self-discipline, you will find yourself looking for the Smackdown and Thunder spoilers or looking for the latest news on who won't work with who because he thinks he's an asshole. I have learnt to accept it, but I do sometimes yearn for the days when I just watched the wrestling and didn't know the Warrior really was totally mad. I'm not changing now though, otherwise my column would be pretty boring wouldn't it? But I hope you can see what I mean...

    Please mail me about this, I would really like to know what other people think, if I get enough mail I may devote a whole column to it so please give me your opinion, even if its to tell me I'm talking utter crap.


    With that out of my system (sorry about getting a bit serious there), I bid you goodbye for now. If I don't have anything else for you in the coming week, EVERYBODY HAVE A REALLY EXCELLENT AND MERRY CHRISTMAS. Be nice to each other, don't drink and drive, and just have a good time dammit!

    Marvellous Martin
    freelance

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