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Jerry Root

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BLAH

THE MAT POTATO II
French Fries

What's old is new again. It happens in music where a new artist does a cover of an old song (I cringe every time I think of Faith Hill's country version of "Piece of my Heart" and want to run to the bathroom to give a giant technicolor yawn every time my son plays his Brittany Spears singing "Satisfaction".).

Where is this leading?

Patience. I'll get there. Trust me.

I had a chance to watch the Toughman 2000 competition over the weekend. (Normally a taboo around the old Root household, but circumstances were in my favor, and I wanted to see how this wrestler/football player thing worked out.)

Now, let's get a few things straight here, right from the start. The football players were all out of the sport, and as such, way out of shape. The wrestlers were, for the most part, from the UPW fed (more on this later), and were obviously in shape.

So much for wrestlers not being "athletes", huh?

The wrestlers had Honkey Tonk Man as their "representative" which was kind of fun, and I understand this was done due to political pressure from the producers of Toughman. However, it was fun to see him again.

According to the UPW's website (http://www.upw.com/ ) the wrestlers were asked to be in character for the show, but stressed that this was not to be wrestling. As such, I did see a couple of interesting characters there.

First, and foremost, I was impressed by Stefan Gamlin aka "The German Powerhouse". The man is a monster and he cut several great old-school promos. He was in against a guy who outweighed him by a hundred pounds, and when the roving mic asked him if he was going to use body blows, Stefan said, "It doesn't matter". Then the mic holder asked if he was going to go for the head and once again the answer was "It doesn't matter." Finally the genius behind the mic asked him what his strategy was, Gamlin replied, "I'm going to beat the hell out of him". Pure and simple. All spoken in a soft voice which made it even scarier.

I also had a good look at Badboy Basil. He struck me as a bit of a strange breed of cat. Put him and Prince Albert together in an airport and watch them set off metal detectors for miles around. Basil came across as being totally oblivious to pain and suffering, be it his own or his opponents. Sort of like Mick Foley, only without the charisma.

Hardbody Harrison was there under the UPW colors, even though he doesn't wrestle in the fed. He cut a great promo, and was giving Lawrence Taylor (who was commentating) a hard time of it. I understand, from reading the UPW material on their site, that he is a bit of a prima-dona. He's definitely got an attitude. It's totally up to the promoter whether his talent (which is considerable) is worth the potential problems he could bring with him. But then again, it's totally unfair to pre-judge somebody that you know little about. Suffice it to say that I found him eminently entertaining.

The whole thing about it is, these guys all gave old-school promos. Yeah, I know most would find the boring, but I found them refreshing. I would much rather listen to a 30 second "I'm going to beat the hell out of him" than a 10 minute catch-phrase fest.

Now, if we could only get the "Hardcore Kid" in the ring and give X-pac a much needed ass-whipping....

Jerry Root
[slash] wrestling

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