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[funkdoc]

and i am not ashamed of this opinion in the slightest. to wit:



here we have a canadian wrestling promotion doing a friday the 13th ripoff during the height of that franchise's popularity, something that should be totally forgettable.  and yet jason's partner in crime, the zodiak, makes it something more by doing these batshit crazy green-screen interviews talking about throwing lady luck into a black hole and lord knows what else.  it's probably even better under the influence, but that ain't my jam and i still dig this.  this is the best example i can find atm

plenty more to come...oh yeah, this isn't even the tip of the tip of the iceberg~

[AdrianHealey]

'Pro' wrestling is a pretty athletic, and very unhealthy feat of human capacities.

[funkdoc]

here's today's sample:



i think this one speaks for itself.  this gimmick came about in the late 80s and managed to last into 1990, while basically ending the career of the guy who did it.  a lot of the really embarrassing gimmicks at least involve wearing a mask, but that's obviously not the case here; when he tried working under his real name after this, fans would chant "ROOSTER!" at him.

rasslin is like comic books in a number of ways, but way funnier to me since it's real human beings who have to do crap like this.  i vastly prefer that analogy to the "male soap opera" line you usually hear, particularly because there's a huuuuuuuuge overlap between adults who still watch pro wrestling and adults who still read superhero comics.

also, adrianhealey is v. correct.  steroids/growth hormone are the most obvious health issue people hear about, but painkiller abuse is the other half of that cocktail; those mats are not exactly soft, and guys work 200-300 nights a year or more.  if anyone here remembers the chris benoit story (the wrestler who killed his family & himself), that also made people realize that brain injuries are a big part of the business.  when guys would get hit on the head with steel chairs, that was often completely real.  chair shots are impossible to fake well, so you end up with guys who'd take hundreds of them and are now dealing with memory loss and all sorts of other things.  and that's far from the only culprit.


anyway, this is meant to be a lighthearted thread so i'll end that here.  i'll try to stick to shorter videos like these, but may link a full match once in a while if it's an especially weird one!

[Grujah]

Damn, I luv wrestlin. It's  entertaining as hell but actually quite a hard thing to do (physically), and in the same weird way you love a crappy B movie you fall in love with wrestling too.

Oh, and The Wrestler with Mickey Rourke is great, as well.

[Witherweaver]

[funkdoc]

ah yes, one of the all-time classics.  actually he's something of an anomaly anymore!  modern pro wrestling doesn't even try to pretend it's real, you have official company podcasts with guys talking about "doing jobs" (losing matches) and WWE-produced reality shows that blatantly expose the business.  but they still rely on a lot of the same storytelling conventions they used back when their goal was convincing people it was real, so it's in this awkward phase that's oddly fascinating to me.


anyway, to continue the theme of moments even non-wrestling fans may have heard of, i give you THE SHOCKMASTER:




World Championship Wrestling (WCW) spent weeks hyping up a "mystery partner" for a tag-team cage match, and it turned out to be...this.  he was supposed to be a main-event guy, but his spectacular entrance here changed plans.  they ended up having to explain it away by making clumsiness part of his gimmick, and they eventually changed his name to "Uncle Fred".

this will be the first of many, many times WCW rears its head in this thread...

[funkdoc]

so thus far i've been showing only american wrestling.  that's doing a disservice, because the sea is far wider than that!

the traditional "big 3" markets for pro wrestling are the US, mexico, and japan.  let's take a trip to the 3rd of those with my boy Survival Tobita!

so just who is Survival Tobita?  well, a picture says 1000 words...or in this case, 25:




here's a short match to give you an idea of what he's all about and what kind of "enemy" and "monsters" he's out to save the universe from:




see how that match was from 1999?  i'll spare you the details but this motherfucker is still going to this day

[funkdoc]

so for this one i decided to break down one of my favorite terms from pro wrestling: "jobber"

so in the parlance of the business, "doing the job" means losing a match.  "jobbers" are the no-name schlubs whose entire purpose is to lose to the stars and make them look good.  it's a pretty widely applicable term in general once you know the meaning. =)

to give you a better idea, just watch the very beginning of this match to see the platonic ideal of "jobber":



i suspect this guy was part of the crew setting up the ring or something, and they just gave him a TV match out of kindness.  that's more charitable than the interpretations i hear from most people, haha

[funkdoc]

so i'm going back to Japan for this one, but in a much different direction from my other posts.  won't be for you if you're not comfortable with blood, though...


as anyone who's seen The Wrestler knows, pro wrestlers bleed by slicing open their own foreheads with a razor blade.  the match i'm about to link features a "bladejob" so infamous it spawned a rating scale named after the person who did it (The Great Muta).  this forum doesn't seem to let me link timestamps, so just skip to 15:15:





the even crazier part of all this, though?  the mustachioed mulletlord who supposedly caused that gusher is now the goddamn Minister of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology in Japan.  that's a cabinet position on par with Secretary of Defense or what have you, if you didn't know.

and you thought Jesse Ventura was a wacky story...

[Chris is me]

I keep checking this thread on a subject I have no interest in just because of how damn great the title is.

[Witherweaver]

I keep checking this thread on a subject I have no interest in just because of how damn great the title is.

It's a goddamn credit to the f.ds board, really.

[funkdoc]

aww, thanks yall~

i've been meaning to update this anyway.  so as i mentioned before, mexico is one of the big 3 markets for pro wrestling, and they have a unique way of doing things.  lucha libre tends to be the black sheep of the hardcore fandom, which is a shame because people miss out on gems like this:



here you have a 3v3 tag-team match (or trios) between the cast of disney's fantasia and the thundercats.  it goes in a totally different direction than you'd expect, and i mean that in a good way!

a lot of lucha has always been under the radar enough to get away with this kind of stuff - we've had lucha power rangers and at least two different troupes of lucha ninja turtles.  this is a well-done match on top of the wackiness though, which is why i picked it. =)

[funkdoc]

also, i've been thinking about this for a minute:

would anyone be interested if i organized a mini-wrestling night on a synchtube-type site?  someplace where i can set up a playlist and we can watch it & chat.  i figure that would be a lot more fun than just me posting vids in a random thread, but dunno about time zones etc.

one of the most likely candidates would be a particular pay-per-view that i consider wrestling's equivalent to plan 9 from outer space~

[junkers]

I don't care enough for these pantomimes to follow them with any regularity, but the athleticism is definitely impressive, and funkdoc's enthusiasm is just so infectious.

What are some of your favourite kinds or even periods of wrestling? What do you think makes for good wrasslin'?

Do you find modern WWE (or whatever it's calling itself these days) appealing?

lucha libre tends to be the black sheep of the hardcore fandom

Why is that? Not as showy as the American mega brands, and not as OTT as their Japanese counterparts?