Stupidest Fake Wrestling / Talk Show Host Cross-Overs

A lot of people use "stupid" as a pejorative insult and in many cases it is....but in the field of Entertainment, "stupid", isn't a bad thing at all and in many cases is a compliment.

Would things like Strange Brew, Beavis and Butthead, or something like that be enjoyable if it wasn't about the antics of stupid people? Would I sit and watch an episode of Beavis and Butthead if it was about two brain surgeons discussing brain surgery techniques? Of course not, I watch that to see two insipidly stupid dudes fucking up and hurting themselves. Stupid rules.

One of the most stupid forms of entertainment over the years has without a doubt been Fake Wrestling, again this isn't an insult, Fake Wrestling is the good kind of stupid. I mean where else can you see as much drama-laden, over the top, stupidity as you do on Fake Wrestling? Very few places offer the same amount and same kind of stupidness that is offered to you in gallons with Fake Wrestling.

????

How stupid is this shit? I've seen a guy light a fire cracker no where near his opponent...yet something about the flash caused his opponent to be bedazzled and swoon. I've seen shit on this shit that's so dumb that I often just stop and wonder what the fuck I'm looking at. Basically, what I'm sayin' is, Fake Wrestling is so stupid that's it's veritably surreal.

I'd describe Fake Wrestling as Stupid Performance Art as opposed to any other way to describe it and, again, that's not an insult....there's times where the art is so stupid that it's very very cool and very fun to observe.

Often at times, people from the Real World will cross-over into this Land of Stupidity...we all remember Mr. T (star of TV's The A-Team) showing up at Wrestle Mania One, we remember the great Liberace popping into this world as a "Celebrity Time Keeper",  many recall Mike Tyson teaming up with DX a few years ago to fuck someone up, or when Beetlejuice showed up to get smashed with a guitar, and recently the legendary Pee Wee Herman stopped by to hang out in this strange land.

But...Mr .T, Liberace, Mike Tyson, Beet, and Pee Wee are people you'd expect to pop into the World of Fake Wrestling to perform some Stupid Performance Art from time to time....these are guys who genuinely fit into that world and don't seem out of place at all whilst immersed into it.

As the title of this article suggests, there's been times where a breed of human known as Talk Show Hosts have ventured into this land to engage in SPA (stupid performance art) as well.

We shall be looking into five instances where the Realm of Talk Shows and the Realm of Fake Wrestling intersected and ran congruently for a set interval of time.

Entries shall be ranked on a scale of 10 (ten being Super Stupid and zero being Retarded).

Jon Stewart (intersecting with) Seth Rollins

Recently a feud was birthed out of the fiery taunts directed by one Seth Rollins towards one Jon Stewart. Rollins would taunt Stewart from his camp on WWE's Monday Night Raw whilst Stewart would retort said taunts from at his home base at the The Daily Show.

It didn't take long for his war of words from their base-camps to escalate into an all-out face-to-face beef between the two as a few days after the initial taunts Rollins totally showed up on the Daily Show to put Stewart in a head-lock.

It seems the beef reached its boiling point yesterday,

 

Shots were fired off left and right yet as you could plainly see when the time came for fisticuffs to erupt...Stewart kicked that dude in the dick and skadadledaddled himself to safety.

Now, people might see that as cowardice, but look, I've read Sun Tzu's Art of War and am versed in all 36 divine stratagaems of combat. Do you know out of all of the 36 divine stratagaems of combat which one Sun Tzu himself referred to as the most divine of the divine tactics? Skedaddlin' that's which one.

If shit is getting hot, man, just poke a dude in a eyes, or kick a dude's nuts, and Skee-Fucking-Daddle....that's honestly the best advice anyone can ever give someone. If you're ever in doubt about the outcome of a fight, do like Stewart, and SKEE DEEEDLY DADDLE out of the mother fucker post-haste.

Stupidty Quantifiers:

General Silliness: 7/10

Drama Stupidity: 9/10

Miscellenous Stupidity: 7/10

OVERALL STUPIDITY: 8/10



Jerry Lawler + Andy Kaufman (intersecting with) David Letterman

Memphis Wrestling was some real old school shit that existed before Fake Wrestling was monopolized and if you watch all these Memphis Fake Wrestlings on the youtube you'll probably be pretty entertained by this stupid shit. The premise of the show was mainly "stables" of wrestlers led by a manager versus other "stables" of wrestlers led by a manager. Jimmy Hart rose to prominence in Memphis Wrestling as the head of a stable as did many other managers. You don't really see managers too much anymore but they were good because unlike most of the talent....these manager characters could act.

Memphis used to get famous people to stop by and chill, for example here's that Batman Adam West showing up (for no reason):

I don't really know what's going on here. Either Adam is jet-lagged, drunk, or really not happy to be there and is really trying to act odd to make them regret flying him out there. I love shit like this. Adam West, in my opinion, is THE ONLY BATMAN, no other people who played Batman can even come close to what West did with the Batman character.

Another guy Memphis got to stop by and chill was Andy Kaufman....but Kaufman was a little more enthusiastic about being there than West was. Kaufman made a whole shtick out of his appearances on this show and really pulled out all the stops to create some legendary Stupid Performance Art. He developed a feud with Jerry Lawler (Lawler is seen in the clip above speaking with Batman).

The feud between Kaufman and Lawler hit its fever pitch (as many know thanks to the Kaufman hollywood bio-pic) on the set of David Letterman's Late Night program:

The King slapped that mother fucker right in his fucking face. Back in the day most of the people watching this wondered if this was a shtick or not....both guys are good actors and played the SPA really well...no matter what venue they showed up in these guys sold their shit, man.

This was done so well it is barely even stupid...it's like a level of believability that almost makes you forget they were doin' a Fake Wrestling. The actual wrestling matches on Memphis between Lawler and Kaufman were pretty stupid though...mainly involving a whole buncha skedaddlin', turtling, wigglin', and all-around silliness.

Stupidty Quantifiers:

General Silliness: 9/10

Drama Stupidity: 10/10

Miscellenous Stupidity: 7/10


OVERALL STUPIDITY: 9/10


Hulk Hogan n' Mr. T (intersecting with Richard Belzer)

Poor, poor, Richard Belzer. The Belz had the Hulkster and My Favorite Person Ever Mr. T on his program for them to promote Wrassle Mania One and all kinds of hijynx broke loose....

Basically, Belzer asked Hogan to practice some holds on him and Hogan proceeded to choke out Belzer and when the Belz hit the floor after passing out...he cracked his coconut open, observe...

Hold the phone though, THIS WAS NOT A SHTICK, Belzer cracked his head open and then successfully sued Hogan for a coupla million bux. Fuck, yo.

I don't know how to rate this one since it wasn't a shtick at all and that poor man got his skull split open...so, I'm just gonna give it a run of threes and move on.

Stupidty Quantifiers:

General Silliness: 3/10

Drama Stupidity: 3/10

Miscellenous Stupidity: 3/10


OVERALL STUPIDITY: 3/10


Rowdy Roddy Piper (intersecting with) Morton Downey Jr.

This bit featured the in-ring talk show Rowdy Roddy used to host during live Fake Wrestlings. I don't really know why they do these bits, it's like, they want to take a break from the fake wrestling to set up new feuds...I guess that's the reason for the in-ring talk shows.

Piper invited a man with his face painted red known as Brother Love and the late great Mort Downey Junior to join him at Wrestle Mania V for a nice a little chat. I guess you'd call this an insult competition or something. I used to do these at school but we called them "Shafting Competitions" back when the word "shafting" was briefly popular in the early 90s.

Piper proceeds to verbally abuse Brother Love until he skeddadles out of the ring and home to his mommy...and then Piper turns his verbal fury unto Downey.....yet is shocked when his verbal abuse is ineffective against him.

Fuck man, Morton Downey Jr. is unverbally-abusable...he eats insults for breakfast and shafts for lunch. Verbal abuse is like bread n' butter to Morton Downey, he loves that shit. This fucking guy has the nerve to breathe smoke directly into Piper's fucking face, holy shit, right in his fucking face! Even after Piper politely asked Downey to stop blowing smoke into his face the guy just keeps on blowing smoke RIGHT IN his FUCKING FACE. Can you believe it?

Right in the guy's fuckin' face.....

Here watch it here: http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x1vxekc_piper-s-pit-wwf-wrestlemania-5_sport

As you can see in the link, Piper gets the last laugh (well it was his in-ring talk show after all, they were on his turf), as he unloads the contents of a fire extinguisher directly into the face of Morton Downey Jr, Wow.

This bit would have been better without that fucking tomato faced jackass "Brother Love" in the pit....that asshole can't act for shit. Piper and Downey did some good SPA here though, they did some good shit with this pit bit.

General Silliness: 9/10

Drama Stupidity: 6/10

Miscellenous Stupidity: 10/10


OVERALL STUPIDITY: 8/10


Hogan et al. (intersectin' with) Jay Leno

I didn't really get this one at all. Unlike the trash talking fun ones like with Downey n' Kaufman n' others...Leno played a super baby-face character that kind of came off as like....I dunno how to describe it...he looked like a kid from those "make a wish foundation" type charities who got his wish to be a wrestler with Hulk Hogan. It just looked weird...like a big child is what he looked like.

Video here: http://www.wwe.com/videos/jay-leno-diamond-dallas-page-vs-hulk-hogan-eric-bischoff-road-wild-1998-26009542

He plays it like he's one of the gang, like some little kid who the wrestlers let throw them around because it's the child's make-a-wish wish. It's just strange looking...but it's not really stupid though.

I don't even know if I'm allowed to use the word "stupid" in this situation because I think Jay Leno really is slightly mentally handicapped in real life and therefore you're not allowed to say that in that situation.

You see, the rules with calling someone stupid or 'tarded is this...you can call anyone you want stupid or retarded from a president to a pauper as long as they are NOT legitimately mentally handicapped. In the case where someone is genuinely certifiably mentally disabled then you cannot refer to them as being stupid or as a retard...you have to give the mentally challenged people a lot of leeway and be positive when you talk about them.

I honestly believe that Jay Leno is borderline mentally handicapped...I mean from his "comedy" to his odd looking pudgy face. When you watch him in this fake wrestling you really see a child who's living his wrestling dreams and he looks like a big fat mentally disabled child.

So in that case, since I'm not allowed to call him stupid due to leeway reasons I have to shoot zeroes down the line on this bit. I don't want to call a borderline mentally disabled man "stupid" because it's not correct in this day and age. Therefore, Jay gets a very "special" rating of all zeroes.

General Silliness: 0/10

Drama Stupidity: 0/10

Miscellenous Stupidity: 0/10


OVERALL STUPIDITY: 0/10


Assessment

From most stupid to least stupid. Some entries are being omitted in the final tally...Belzer gets removed because it was not a mutually agreed upon shtick and therefore wasn't exactly Stupid Performance Art and Jay Leno gets removed from the assessment because his was more of a "very special boy" living his wrestling dreams and wasn't really SPA either:

WINNER: Kaufman/Lawler on Letterman

Runners-Up: Jon Stewart/Seth Rollins and Morton Downey Jr./Rowdy Roddy Piper

 
Kaufman and Lawler on Letterman wins...that shtick is pretty tight. They sold it to the point where the average viewer who wasn't familiar with Memphis Wrestling probably had no idea it was a shtick and was like "holy shit" while watching that bit. Those two assholes can sell bits and Letterman acted as a good mediator that kept the shit brewin' up good.

Poet Laureate and Wrestler, Ultimate Warrior, Is no More....

The Ultimate Warrior was known mainly for his ability to get insanely PUMPED and his penchant for clothes-lining dudes fucking heads off, but few people really commend the fellow for his prose.

Was the Ultimate Warrior the greatest poet of all time? Many would argue otherwise yet are they simply dismissing him and his poetic abilities simply because he doesn't look like the average poet? When people ponder who the greatest poet of all time was...do they simply discard the Warrior due to him not fitting the mold of what they believe a poet should look like?


Poets usually look like this:

Dainty, Fragile, Wimpy, etc.

Poets don't usually tend to look like this:

Streamers, Face Paint, Championship Belt, etc.

In order to assess his abilities with the utmost of justice, his poems must be presented in text similarly to how older-school poets submitted their works.



Let's Play a Game

This game is called "Wordsworth, Blake, or Warrior" and the rules are simple. Three snippets of poetry will be presented and the reader must simply guess which is attributed to William Wordsworth, which is attributed to William Blake, and which of the three snippets is attributed to the Ultimate Warrior.


SET A

1.  

"When a sinister person means to be your enemy, they always start by trying to become your friend. It is easier to forgive an enemy than to forgive a friend."

2.

"So let us not be impatient, for only desperate men act with impatience. How should I prepare?  Should I jump off the tallest building in the world?  Should I lie on the lawn and let them run over me with lawnmowers?  Or, should I go to Africa and let them trample me with raging elephants?"

3.

"Suffering is permanent, obscure and dark, And shares the nature of infinity. For I have learned to look on nature, not as in the hour of thoughtless youth, but hearing oftentimes the still, sad music of humanity."



SET B

1.

"Every man's heart one day beats its final beat. His lungs breathe its final breath. And if what that man did in his life makes the blood pulse through the bodies of others; If it makes them believe deeper in something larger than life; than his essence, his spirit, will be immortalized."


2.

"Without contraries is no progression. Attraction and repulsion, reason and energy, love and hate, are necessary to human existence... I was angry with my friend: I told my wrath, my wrath did end. I was angry with my foe: I told it not, my wrath did grow." 

3.

"Life is divided into three terms - that which was, which is, and which will be. Let us learn from the past to profit by the present, and from the present, to live better in the future."



SET C

1.

"Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting. Not in entire forgetfulness, and not in utter nakedness, but trailing clouds of glory do we come. One impulse from a vernal wood May teach you more of man, Of moral evil and of good, Than all the sages can."

2.

"What is grand is necessarily obscure to weak men. That which can be made explicit to the idiot is not worth my care... The man who never alters his opinions is like standing water, and breeds reptiles of the mind."

3. 

"No Sleep. No Food. No Nothing. Just Maniacism. As a skeleton we still walk as Ultimate Maniacs therefore what are you gonna do? Bury us now?"



SET D

1.

"I saw the walls. Walls that build them with fear. Dig your claws into my organs, scratch into my tendons, bury your anchors into my bones. Nightmares are the best part of my day. The desire to withstand the pain, and give you the utmost."

2.

"To see a world in a grain of sand and heaven in a wild flower Hold infinity in the palms of your hand and eternity in an hour."

3. 

"That though the radiance which was once so bright be now forever taken from my sight. Though nothing can bring back the hour of splendor in the grass, glory in the flower. We will grieve not, rather find strength in what remains behind."



Answers

Set A: 1. Blake, 2. Warrior, 3. Wordsworth
Set B: 1. Warrior, 2. Blake, 3. Wordsworth
Set C: 1. Wordsworth, 2. Blake, 3. Warrior
Set D: 1. Warrior, 2. Blake, 3. Wordsworth


Assessment

William Wordsworth and William Blake are like fucking legends when it comes to poetry and prose and shit...but don't you feel they come off as a bit preachy and emo? I do. Also, did either Blake or Wordsworth ever hold the Intercontinental or Heavy Weight Championship at any point of their lives? No, not even close.

Is it then safe to conclude that they were total jabronies and not the greatest poets of all time as everyone seems to claim they are? Probably.

Ultimate Warrior? More like ULTIMATE POET EVER.

Great Moments in Literature: The Evolution of "Bob Backlund"

From Howdy-Doody to Criminally Insane to Loved and Accepted, the wonderful character development of Bob Backlund is one of literature's greatest moments.

Glossary of Terms to be Used in Article:

Howdy-Doody: This was a puppet that appeared on NBC in various forms from the 1940s to the 1960s. It was "a freckle-faced boy marionette with 49 freckles, one for each state of the union" who represented polite All-American boys around the great nation of the U.S. of A.

Criminally Insane: To display behavior so anti-social and violent that the only recourse is to either jail, hospitalize, or exile the individual from society.

Love and Acceptance: The concept of an individual being welcomed and appreciated in a group of multiple individuals of varying quantity.

The Cross-Faced Chicken-Wing: An unstoppable, unbreakable, and ultimately undefendable arm-lock submission hold that if you refuse to tap-out will leave you with a fractured limb.

Bob Backlund

Who's Bob Backlund? The Double B was a pro-wrestler who was famous from 1973-1984 and then made a reemergence and was doubly famous from 1994-1997. As everyone knows pro-wrestling is a shtick and not a competition of athletics. It is governed by a rule structure referred to in the business as "kayfabe" which replaces athletic skill competition with over-the-top choreographed drama. Most of the time this "drama" is fantastically and laughably retarded but in some cases it manages to create some interesting characters and satire.

One of the earliest precepts of "kayfabe" was to maximize drama by pitting "heroes" against "villains." The terms were refered to as "baby faces" versus "heels" where a babyface is a well-liked good looking person who the crowd relates to and the heels were foreign people with strange customs who the viewing audience could not relate to. Examples of "baby faces" are Hulk Hogan whilst examples of heels are guys like Nikolai Volkoff and the Iron Sheik.

In Backlund's first incarnation he was the aforementioned baby face character. Baby faces, naturally, are relative and dependent on their environment, meaning if the audience was Japanese then the baby face would be someone like Rikidozan and the heel would be someone like the Classy Freddie Blassie. In the case of Bob Backlund, he was operating in 1970s America and to pull off this role in that environment it required being a clean cut white "boy" who was constantly draped with American flags.

American flag jacket, American flag undies, American flag singlet. That's what you needed to be the "All American Boy." They should have gave him 49 freckles on his ass to symbolize the 49 states in the union then he'd be perfect.

Many probably know that America went through a cultural revolution of sorts during the 1960s and 1970s featuring all sorts of movements from civil rights to women's rights to aboriginal rights and many others. This "All American Boy" persona did not sell as well as it used to as Americans were becoming less religious, less nationalistic and thus more adults than "boys" so to speak.

click to enlarge

This was the case in other sports as well. A famous case in baseball was in the Yankees organization where Mickey Mantle was regarded as the "All American Boy." You probably don't know that Mickey didn't exactly like being known as a "boy" and he didn't like the howdy-doody persona one bit. In a famous 1973 letter (shown to the left) when asked to speak about his favorite Yankee moment, Mantle responded that it was that one time he got head from some chick in the bullpen in right field, and he sarcastically signed the letter as "The All American Boy."

Wrestling noticed a drop in sales due to their "All American Boy" champion not drawing the crowd's support as it once did. Backlund was made to lose the belt to the Iron Sheik (who in turn lost it to the body building hollywood rockstar 80s babyface Hulk Hogan) and by the year 1984 Backlund faded out of wrestling, into obscurity, into the the no-man's land of "has-beens."

The Hokey Dokies and Howdy Doodies time in the sun was over. These rinky-dinks weren't entertaining anyone and were quickly being regarded as ultra lame by the society they were meant to be accepted by.





Reemergence and Total Character 180

Backlund was out of wrestling for a full decade before making this appearance in the squared circle in 1994,

(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DFwtjILNN28)

I was about 11 years old in 1994 and I saw this bit as some kind of boring little tribute to some old dinosaurs from when wrestling was super boring and stupid. Then Backlund comes out and goes on some angry vicious diatribe culminating with him putting the poor old Arnold Skaaland in the dreaded chicken wing arm-lock! What the fuck is he doing!?

The All American Boy had lost his marbles. This wasn't a one time isolated appearance either, he went on a nation wide chicken-wing RAMPAGE in which he put announcers, managers, wrestlers, fans, old dudes, and just about everyone under the sun in the divine unbreakable arm-lock. No one was safe from this mentally unstable kook and his patented chicken wing.

All-American Bow-Tie?

He wore these silly bathrobes that looked like they were made in the 1930s...he looked like a relic from a past age that was dug up by an archeologist. He still wore the American flag on his person...but as a bow tie.

The bow tie is like the encapsulation of lame, no one can look tough or bad ass in a bow tie. Yes, Bob Backlund still represented America but now he was an encapsulation of everything that was wrong with it. He was a status-quo conservative backlash that wanted to place all of society in a cross-faced chicken-wing and caste it in place so it would never change. He basically wanted to put all of America into 1930s bathrobes and force them to read the dictionary 24 hours a day.

He displayed ultra-conservative views of morality and preached that society was a mess that needed intervention. He was like a fire-brand preacher spraying ludicrous invective on anyone who would approach him, observe:

(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bVEyE9F-fGQ)

Bob is now the ugly side of America...he's a living embodiment of the John Birch Society. Hold up though, did you notice something in that clip above? That he's got the belt? Yeah, in 1994 Bob was once again the Champion. Yup, the megalomaniac chicken-wing madman was now the most popular wrestler on the circuit. I'll say this right now, Bob Backlund was my favorite wrestler in that era, hands down. He was entertaining as hell.

He's a criminally insane old man...but he's so darned likeable. It was so weird to watch him look at his hands (sorta like Ren used to on Ren and Stimpy) after the aftermath of a chicken wing atrocity just took place.

(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3JdY9ZxyH64)
THANK GOD THE MACHO MAN WAS AT RINGSIDE TO SUBDUE THIS MANIAC!!

Iconoclast

Fast forward to 2012,

(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=58DwRdpluAs)

Look who rises up from the ashes to challenge today's heroes...it's a relic from the past. A beloved relic from the past who the fans cheer for and chant his name. Bob Backlund is an icon, maybe even a folk hero.

Is he an icon for being the rinky dinkin' howdy doodin' All America Boy? No. He's an icon for portraying a criminally insane status-quo obsessed homogenized pasteurized marauding psychopath who wants to put today's society into a permanent cross faced chicken wing.

In Conclusion

Not through patriotism did Backlund achieve love and acceptance from society...he achieved his L&A through good old fashioned satirical kookery.

So next time you see an old bastard in a bathrobe, slicking his hair back with Wild Root Cream Oil, kicking cats around, speaking in tongues, and putting random passersby into vintage submission holds...don't hate on him, just see him as a window into the past...a chilling past where everyone was crazy.