"Life sucks! And then you die!" - Vince McMahon

     As you probably know, I love pro wrestling. I covered why that is in one of my first blog posts. I don't like sports. I don't like MMA. I can't explain why, I just don't get the appeal. I really tried to get into baseball once, I watched both of Ken Burns' baseball documentaries, and read Stephen King's baseball books. No dice. If Ken Burns and Stephen King can't get me to like something, I ain't gonna like it. Wrestling isn't a sport, of course, although it's in the neighborhood.
     One thing that really speaks to me is authenticity. In any field; music, film, books, whatever. If something is real, I can usually appreciate it no matter what it is. All extremities of the human experience are interesting to me. It's why I'm such a huge GG Allin and Ed Wood fan. They were bad at what they did, but they did it with all their heart. That's all that matters to me. Pro wrestling is one of the realest things on Earth.

     I know what you're thinking, but stay with me. In the sense of being legitimate grappling contests, wrestling is of course not real, but I don't know why people are still hung up on that. Wrestling hasn't claimed to be "real" in that sense in decades. I don't really need to explain this much further, but briefly: pro wrestling originated as basically a carny grift. If you think pro wrestling is a real athletic contest, you're probably the same kind of person who thinks carnival games aren't rigged. There are still people like that out there, surprising as it may seem, but wrestling, to most fans, would be more akin to opera or ballet. I doubt many would appreciate the ballet comparison, although it's a valid one. (Another funny thing about wrestling is that it's one of the most simultaneously homophobic and homoerotic spectacles I can think of.)
     Basically, think of a Jackie Chan or Tony Jaa movie. Jackie isn't really outwitting a gang of bad guys, but he is really running up a wall and flipping a ladder around like he's a drum major with a baton. Tony isn't really back flipping off an elephant and fire kicking a guy to death, but he is really back flipping off an elephant and fire kicking a guy, then making sure he's OK afterwards. And that's wrestling.



Newbies say: "No way. Bullshit." Purists say: "Not wrestling. Bullshit." But it is real. Nothing in that video was fake, except in the sense that they planned what they were going to do beforehand. Is that fake to you? I submit that doing something like the following to yourself willingly demonstrates a personal conviction dwarfing that of any "legitimate" athlete:



     The guy in the neon pants there is Nick Mondo. He had three broken bones going into that match, and what you just saw there ended his wrestling career. Then again, he was working at Blockbuster to pay his bills, so if you want to call that a "career", be my guest. Basically what I'm getting at is that wrestling is Project Mayhem. But, as noted, purists don't even call that wrestling. That sort of thing is what's derisively known as "garbage wrestling", and there's some validity to that. When viewed as a business, Hulk Hogan is undeniably the most successful American wrestler of all time. He made millions, and he never hurt himself too badly. He played the political game and won over and over again. He's a genius in his way, but is that really the ideal? Is he a warrior? A gladiator? There's a deeper side to wrestling. A darker side.
      In carny lingo, a sucker is known as a mark. In a holdover from wrestling's carny roots, a fan who believes the storylines and buys wrestling as a legit contest is called a mark. A fan who knows the behind the scenes info and views wrestling as a scripted business is known as a smart. Fans ideally want to be a combination of the two, a smart mark, or smark. Smarks know the score, but can suspend disbelief and get caught up in the storylines, like watching a movie. Nothing wrong with that; nobody thinks Javier Barden really shot Kelly Macdonald in the face, but it's still an unforgettable scene. The thing is, though, the biggest marks are the wrestlers themselves.
     Take, for example, the famous Montreal Screwjob. You can Google that if you're unfamiliar, but the short version: Bret Hart is leaving for WCW, but is WWF champion. WWF owner Vince McMahon wants Bret to lose the title to Shawn Michaels, who Bret legit hates in real life. Bret refuses to lose the title in Canada (he was doing a Canadian patriotism gimmick at the time). Vince agrees, but during the match, he has the bell rung and declares Shawn the champion without consulting Bret. Bret spits in Vince's face on camera and punches him in the face back stage. This is an example of Bret being a mark for himself. He was leaving the company Vince owned, and he had no right to tell Vince what he would or wouldn't do with the title Vince also owned. There's a place for furthering your own marketability by any means necessary (it's pretty safe to say wrestling is all politics), but nobody was feuding over a legitimate wrestling championship here. It's a prop the company uses to make money. The belt goes on whoever Vince decides will make him the most money. Can you imagine Mr. T telling Stallone he didn't want Clubber to lose to Rocky because he'd be letting his fans down? Of course not. But that's pretty much what Bret was doing. Almost all wrestlers are like this. And this brings me to one of the central points of this blog, and the two words that prove once and for all that wrestling is real: Chris Benoit.

     Chris Benoit is easily one of the greatest wrestlers who has ever lived, as far as in-ring performance. He had zero mic skills, and no charisma except a kind of mad, single minded intensity. But he made up for that with his technical skills. As an in ring performer, Benoit is easily in the top three wrestlers of all time, if not the single best. He's that good, and it's really very difficult to overstate just how good. He will be remembered for killing his family.
     Benoit modeled his wrestling career on a guy named Tom Billington, the Dynamite Kid. Dynamite Kid is also one of the greatest in ring performers of all time. I've rarely seen such a united opinion, but I don't think I've ever seen a single person say a single bad thing about Dynamite Kid's wrestling skills (except maybe that he sometimes "took liberties" [hurt people for real]), and, conversely, I've never heard anyone say a single nice thing about him as a man. He is truly a vicious bastard. An unlikeable, spiteful, mean, hateful man. He's confined to a wheelchair today, because he wrestled such a punishing, self sacrificing style. Last I heard, he uses a cocktail of uppers and pain killers to get him going in the morning, and downers and booze to get him to sleep at night. He spends his days on his porch, shooting at anything that moves. But man, could he wrestle. Like nothing you've ever seen. Benoit didn't know the dark side of Dynamite when he started to idolize him. He just saw a small guy, like himself, who was winning everybody's respect, and he wanted to be like him. Many even used to say Benoit had the potential to be Dynamite without the dark side. If they only knew.
     Just in the way of back story, Benoit's doomed wife, Nancy, was originally married to Benoit's coworker Kevin Sullivan. Nancy was also a performer (under the name "Woman"), and she was Kevin's wife on and off screen. Kevin wrote a storyline in which Benoit stole Nancy from him. Due to spending so much time to together while acting out this storyline, Benoit actually stole Nancy from Kevin, and Kevin Sullivan was from then on known as the man who booked his own divorce. Fake?
      Benoit's (there's no other way to put it) psychotic perfectionism drove him to abuse steroids, alcohol and drugs. By his own admission, he was totally straight before he got into the wrestling business. He wrestled the same style that put Dynamite in a wheelchair. He flew into rages and physically abused his wife. One night, he went too far and killed her. My interpretation of the events that followed is obviously speculation, as all involved parties are dead, but I think it's a pretty reasonable idea.
     We know that Benoit killed his young, disabled son later that night. This was the part that baffled many who knew the Benoits; everyone said he loved and was devoted to his son. The way I see it, Benoit flipped out and killed Nancy, then when he came to his senses, he decided he couldn't face the consequences and that he was going to kill himself. He killed his son because he didn't want to leave him with dead parents. It was, to him, a sort of mercy killing, or "taking him with us". The story came out in the aftermath that Benoit's son had marks the coroner couldn't explain, until they saw footage of him wrestling, and recognized the marks as consistent with his finishing hold, the Crippler Crossface.

     This was one of the most flabbergasting details of the whole sordid affair, and many wrestling fans couldn't believe it. It makes perfect sense to me: Benoit was not violently attacking his son in a rage like he had his wife. He was "mercy killing" him, and was undoubtedly filled with horrendous regret and self-loathing while he was doing it. His using the Crossface to strangle/smother his son is consistent with that. To make the act as painless (for himself) as possible, he may have used something that represented good times in his life. More likely, in my opinion, Mr. Soon to be living the rest of his short ass life in agonizing pain used the Crossface because he blamed the wrestling industry for the mess his life had become, and the symbolism was negative. Or it could be as simple as not wanting to scare the kid. They'd probably play wrestled many times, and the boy probably let himself be put in the Crossface without thinking anything was wrong. And then, when daddy pulled too tight and wouldn't let go, it would just be a few minutes of unpleasantness and it would be over. Whatever the reason, the medical examiner said it, not me. Benoit murdered his son with the Crippler Crossface.
     He then hung himself on his weight machine, another symbolic strike at the wrestling industry, and the hell it had wrought. Benoit's death was determined to be slow and excruciating, but he stuck it out, so there was probably some significance to using the weight machine, which ties back into the way he used the Crossface. I'm sure he also felt like shit for what he had done to his family and most likely thought he deserved to die in pain like that. Either way, the story is this: Chris Benoit was in a wrestling storyline where he stole his coworkers wife, and he proceeded to steal his coworkers wife. He lamented the fact that wrestling had robbed him of his sobriety and his stability, and he ended up killing his wife in a rage. He then murdered his son with his own finishing move and tortured himself to death on his weight machine. Tell me what's more real than that.
     Benoit is tabloid news, but lest you think I'm being sensational, I'll give you two more words that establish once and for all that whatever wrestling is, it ain't fake: Mitsuhara Misawa.

     There's a cliche about wrestling: In Japan, it's a sport. In Canada, it's a tradition. In Mexico, it's a religion. In America, it's a joke. That's pretty well covers it. I'm not even going to touch upon the culture of pro wrestling in Mexico, because I know much less about it than I do Japanese, or American and Canadian wrestling, but rest assured, stuff goes on there that's as real as anything else I discuss in this blog. But I digress. Japanese wrestling is my favorite style of wrestling. I'm something of a Japanophile anyway, and Japanese wrestling, or "puroesu" (derived from an Engrish pronunciation of 'pro wrestling') embodies a lot of the things I love about the culture. They do everything to the extreme. Puroesu also doesn't suffer the "fake" stigma that wrestling has here. Their matches are scripted too, but nobody ever had a problem with this, and wrestling is totally mainstream entertainment. Wrestling stars are legit superstars, combining the best aspects of rock stars and pro athletes.
     The Japanese approach wrestling with a bushido-like dedication, and they will destroy themselves for their craft. The Japanese, as I demonstrated earlier in the blog, can do the garbage style of wrestling better than anyone. They can also put on better storytelling, more athletic matches, and just generally do everything Americans can do, only better. Because they take it very, very seriously. Young wrestlers have literally been killed in the training dojos. The story goes that the Japanese wrestling industry is straight up run by the Yakuza. Because why not?
     But all that is backstory to what I'm going to tell you about Misawa. Misawa was one of the most respected, biggest stars in puroesu. He rose to fame wrestling for All Japan Pro Wrestling, an absolutely legendary company, and eventually split off to form his own company, Pro Wrestling NOAH, taking many of AJPW's biggest stars with him. What I'm trying to establish is that this guy could draw like Hogan and work like Flair. He was The Man. One of the top figures in the entire wrestling world. He had some of the greatest matches of all times. Two of his most famous rivals, legends in their own right, were Toshiaki Kawada and Kenta Kobashi. Here are some clips of these three guys doing their thing:





Notice anything different? Can you imagine Hulk Hogan... or Steve Austin... or Ric Flair... or Sting... or The Rock doing moves like that? These guys are some of the biggest stars in the business, and they kill themselves, not because they have to, but because they believe in it. You might say "Well, they got to be such big stars by taking risks like that. They probably mellowed their style at the top. Like Mick Foley." Take a look at this:


That was in 2003, when Misawa and Kobashi were well established legends. That's one of the single craziest things I've ever seen in wrestling: Kobashi is taking a completely unprotected drop onto the back of his head from the entrance ramp, which is, there's no other word for it, unnecessary. Who are the marks?
     Misawa was paralyzed in the ring. More than once. He came back. Misawa was struck blind in the ring. He came back. It seemed like the only thing that could stop Misawa is if he physically could not move (like Dynamite), or if he died. And sure enough, the worst happened. Misawa lost consciousness in the ring and died. They say he wanted to retire, but he never got the chance. One of the biggest stars in the industry literally killed himself for the fans. Tell me what's more real than that.