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.

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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.

Satire Wars: Refutation of Statements by One Chris Hedges in Defense of One Jon Stewart

I'm a regular dude just like you and everyone you know. I do the same stuff you do, you know...I get together with my friends over tea at times and discuss the heroes of the age. We talk about who's the Master Tacticians (i.e. Earl Weaver) of the age but we also discuss who are the Master Satirists (i.e. Sacha Baron Cohen) of our era.

When we discuss the Master Satirists of the Age, should names like Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert be considered? I believe so, yes I most surely do. It doesn't seem one pulitzer prize winner named Chris Hedges would agree with that though:

http://acronymtv.wordpress.com/2013/10/28/stephen-colbert-and-john-stewart-have-destroyed-satire-chris-hedges/

In this video, while he and a colleague discuss (not over tea) the Master Satirists of the Age, Hedges absolutely blasts Stewart and Colbert:

"Satire becomes destroyed in essence in the hands of figures like Colbert, John Stewart and others,” Hedges asserts. “They will attack the excesses or the foibles of the system, but they are never going to expose the system itself because they are all millionaires, they are commercially supported. You have very few people (George Carlin was one) who will stand up and do it. If you do that, it is tough to make a living. Carlin maybe being the exception. But if you really use Satire the way Swift used Satire, to expose the English barbarity in Ireland because culture, like everything else in the society has been completely corporatized."

I disagree with this assertion. I really do.

Hedges

First off, who is this Hedges character? The first time I ever heard of this guy was when he had some sort of altercation on TV with a CBC analyst.

(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MAhHPIuTQ5k)

I agree with a lot of what Hedges says, but I don't respect his ability to handle trolls. The interviewer is a talking-head in Canada who makes a Tiger of Money formula show and who's shtick is the "bad mean judge" character (a la Simon Cowell). I don't respect how Hedges gets all offended and says he'll never ever come back.

Look, I've been fucking around on the internet since Usenet, man. I've been trolled, got trolled, done the troll, re-trolled, counter-trolled, de-trolled, un-trolled, front trolled, and even back trolled. I've employed the swift-kick ,the ego-stitch, and the body-snatch and have had all those things done to me. I'm a dymaxion troll, I can handle trollin' from all angles whilst trollin' and counter trollin' at the same time.

In this argument between O'Leary and Hedges, the obvious troll is obvious...yet O'Leary still manages to get Hedges' goat. It's actually kind of sad.

What about my homeboys Stewart and Colbert? How do they deal with these types of characters? Do they let the name calling and invective get under their skin or do they enter dymaxion-mode?

Here's Colbert's character exchanging blows with one Bill O'Reilly and his media character:

(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QquTUR9nbC4)

This is more in the style of the internet "debating" that I'm used to. In this match-up we have two characters, with two goats (one each)...yet only one man will leave with his goat. My man Colbert is as cool as a cucumber throughout the entire match and maintains his goat through the early stages. O'Reilly ups the invective by about 200% and begins literally yelling at Colbert...yet he keeps his goat. When it's all said and done Mr. O'Reilly seems flustered and jealous that Colbert is "more popular than him."

Even on O'Reilly's home turf Colbert managed to leave this veritable Thunderdome...with TWO goats. Why? Because he's a bad ass fucking man, that's why.

Yet way before Colbert was coming on this types of "spin" shows and doing battle, Mr. Jon Stewart had already conquered that circuit:

(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aFQFB5YpDZE)

This video is up to 6.1 million views now and it deserves them. Is Jon Stewart responding to the heat by whining, crying, and gettin' flustered like that Chris Hedges? No, because Jon Stewart is a bad ass motherfucking guy.

This is a two-on-one situation and old Jon is the one shorthanded...YET...he is still guiding the tempo of the debate, keeping his shit and bein' cool.

Man, to keep your cool in that 2-on-1 and be witty is pretty bad ass. If I was being fucked with by some bitch in a bow-tie...I would have mauled that fucking dude.

Anyways, the issue I'm trying to raise here is that Chris Hedges is kind of a weiner.

Stewart

I like Jon Stewart, he can be pretty cool sometimes. The first time I ever saw him on TV, he was playing with toys. He had an action figure of Screech off of Saved by The Bell and he was fooling around talking in a high voice for the action figure (kind of like the act they do on Robot Chicken). I remember thinking to myself...this guy's goin' places.

Out of those three vids above, Jon's has by far the most hits. He's popular, in fact he's so popular that countries with far more oppressive governments are using his Satire Model and character template.

Here's a video of Jon in Egypt:

(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kEO2Rd3sJbA)

Bassem Youssef's version of Stewart's show is not something that part of the world is used to.

I wrote a few months back about how making fun of your government or military in some countries is the ultimate crime. That Baba Jukwa in Zimbabwe that I wrote about, there's still a man hunt out for him and people have died under the suspicion of being Baba. Making a joke is not a joke in some places...it's serious business. Satire is even taking hold in Zimbabwe nowadays (anyone ever check out Nyoka and Kunyepa?).

In the case of Bassem Youssef, take this recent article:

http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2013/10/29/egypt-authoritiestoinvestigatetopsatiristbassemyoussef.html

The Egyptian government is investigating Mr. Youssef just for making fun of "nationalist sentiments". That's pretty fucked up.

Jon Stewart also ran a bit on his show which caused major controversy in the Oldest Country in the Vorld...The Iran. The Daily Show visited Iran and interviewed everyday people to try and show they are actually very very similar to you and me. It's harder to want to go to war and bomb people when you see how human they are. This bit was pretty good.

See: "Behind the Veil"

One of the men interviewed in that segment was later accused by the Iranian government of being a spy for doing this interview. Don't fret though, everything has cooled down and the man, Maziar Bahari, and Jon are currently making a film together.

Conclusion

Look, when your satire template is being used by people in a Muslim country to make fun of their government...you know you're on to something with your shtick. Okay?

So, back to my main point. When me and my friends gather over tea and discuss the Master Satirists of the Age, the names Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert do tend to come up, and we discuss their merits at length.

Do you know which name never ever comes up?

Chris Hedges.