Ask 411 Wrestling: Is Vince Out To Ruin Lana/Rusev?

Hello, and welcome to Ask 411 Wrestling! I am your host for this week, Mathew Sforcina!

Next week, and the week after, I shall not be your host, due to Boring Day Job issues. So for the next couple of weeks I will be leaving this column in the capable hands of Ryan Byers, who is pretty darn awesome at this Ask 411 Wrestling stuff. So if you have a question you want Ryan to answer, send it to [email protected] and he might well answer it!

But regardless, there will always be BANNER!

Zeldas!

Check out my Drabble blog, 1/10 of a Picture! That’ll keep going.

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Feedback Loop

The Wrestling Isn’t Wrestling Video: I do like the video, but that intro was less “I love the video and want to continue it” and more “Circumstances aligned to make that video possible”. I mean, by all means if you or anyone else can create an intro video with someone tangentially related to wrestling saying that Ask 411 sucks, do so and I’ll include it.

Wrestling As Art: Joseph wanted to follow up on this topic, so here we go.

I consider storytelling to be an art, any storytelling is an art. So you kind of answered my question. Allow me to just expand for a sec.

I’m an American, but I try to walk the line of realizing all cultures are not the same, other people have different views than me, and my views are not the only views while balancing the strange monocultural synthesis it seems like the world is doing right now.

Here’s the thing; I’m a PhD candidate. I’m really interested in visual literacy (I identify as Hard-Of-Hearing, so I am studying how stories can be told visually without sound vs. a combination). In America, we got a Supreme Court ruling a few years ago, saying video games are art. Here is part of the ruling

And yes, I quote:

“Like the protected books, plays, and movies that preceded them, video games communicate ideas — and even social messages — through many familiar literary devices (such as characters, dialogue, plot, and music) and through features distinctive to the medium (such as the player’s interaction with the virtual world). That suffices to confer First Amendment protection.”

I guess that’s where I’m coming from, and that may be a more American perspective. Pro Wrestling has its own “features distinctive a Supreme Court ruling a few years ago, saying video games are art. You’re telling a story in this way, using art. I probably should have been a little more specific since the word “art” unto itself is maybe a little grandiose for the question.

I’m also researching comics as a way of telling stories on a purely visual level (and I hope to use comics to develop literacy in Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing populations), I guess the analogy I might use to respond to your comment is that I agree with you that art is in the eye of the beholder, I could show you some really basic and simplistic comics from the 1940s and 1950s about superheroes and I could show you some more contemporary stories that touch on lie in other countries or the Holocaust in very sophisticated ways.

Now we can debate about the degree of sophistication between those two, we could debate about the degree of complexity in those two, we could debate about a number of issues in those two and arrive at some kind of value about how “good” or “bad” those comics are.

They’re both art. They’re both storytelling.

In a strict sense, sure, anything that tells a story or creates an emotion is art. I guess I use art in a slightly incorrect way in that I don’t tend to view bad examples of things as art unless there’s a personal connection. The Mona Lisa is art, but some kid’s crayon drawing isn’t really art unless it’s your kid or the kid did it for you or some such. But yes, all wrestling is art in the textbook definition.

The Trivia Crown

Who am I? I was involved in the last match Dusty Rhodes had in a specific company. My last televised PPV match was a loss, but the odds were against me. I was the second man to do something that you don’t want to do. One of my main gimmicks had its origins in warfare. I once belonged to a group that had a 50/50 split in gender (and also once was outnumbered by the other sex in a grouping, not that I seemed to mind). I’ve been in a few tag teams, but never as a leader (even when I’m on equal with my partner, his name came first). A guy who is all about dem asses, sort of, I am who?

Maraviloso got the answer, but didn’t elaborate. So I guess I’ll have to.

Who am I? I was involved in the last match Dusty Rhodes had in a specific company. (OVW, Cody Runnels & Dusty Rhodes V Idol Stevens & K. C. James) My last televised PPV match was a loss, but the odds were against me (Royal Rumble). I was the second man to do something that you don’t want to do (Fail on a MITB Cash In). One of my main gimmicks had its origins in warfare (Damien Sandow began as a militant). I once belonged to a group that had a 50/50 split in gender (was aligned with Lucky Cannon, Aksana, and Maxine in FCW) (and also once was outnumbered by the other sex in a grouping, not that I seemed to mind) (The OVW gimmick where he was in a three way relationship with Beth Phenoix and Shelly Martinez). I’ve been in a few tag teams, but never as a leader (even when I’m on equal with my partner, his name came first) (Rhodes Scholars, Teacher’s Pets, Miz/Mizdow, Meta Powers). A guy who is all about dem asses, sort of, (The Intellectual Savour of Dem Asses in newLegacyinc) I am who?

Damien Sandow.

No question for this week since I won’t be here next week. But feel free to try and stump each other.

Getting Down To All The Business

Daniel asks about Vince possibly overstepping his boundaries. Because what’s better to start off with than sleazy personal lives of wrestlers?

Hi matt, longtime aussie fan here. ive read recently some rumours about vince mcmahon doing everything he can to interfere/break up the real life relationship between Rusev and Lana, because in his opinion, a hot woman shouldnt be with a brute. this could actually happen, with Vince being in such an intimidating position, and being able to promise Lana the world in terms of a push and other opportunities, and also being able to bury Rusev should he/they stand up to him and fight for their relationship. my question is, can you recall any other situation where Vince has broken up other real life couples, or manipulated wrestlers personal lives, considering what his employees do in their private life shouldnt concern him?

I had not heard these rumors extending that far, I had read that Vince felt that way in terms of on-air, but having looked them up, they are swirling that Vince does, supposedly, think that Rusev shouldn’t get a girl like Lana. But they are just that, rumors, albeit rumors being tossed around by guys usually in the know.

Now, has Vince done this before? Not directly and on purpose to my recollection, at least in terms of the partnership working out.

On the assumption Vince actually is doing this, he’s trying to enforce what happens in wrestling a lot by fate. When a guy and girl end up being put together in wrestling as a manager/client or love interest or whatever, they end up having to spend a lot of time together, and often travel together as well. And this can lead to the two hitting it off and relationships form. Just like any other workplace, with a bit of Hollywood New Squeeze mentality tossed in.

Sometimes this is with two single people, and thus is fine. And sometimes one or both of the people are in a relationship, and that’s less fine, perhaps. But has Vince ever forced one of these before? There’s some scuttlebutt that says he tried to get Shawn and Sunny together, but that didn’t work, and most of the famous wrestling relationship stuff happened without Vince being involved directly.

But, Vince has manipulated guys backstage, all the time, in a (misguided in my opinion) attempt at improving the on-air product. Bret and Shawn may well have not been so antagonistic if Vince hadn’t egged it on to try and make their matches more heated. Certainly, most reports say he made every effort to foster distrust and anger between WWF and WCW during the beginning of the InVasion angle in the hopes this would make the war better.

And WWE has taken actions in terms of hiring/firing over personal issues, BB left due to her having an affair with Hardcore Holly (allegedly), Edge/Hardy/Lita, stuff like that. Your personal life, if it becomes important enough, can impact on the on-air stuff. But if this Lana/Rusev/Ziggler thing is true, this is pretty new for him.

Think I have enough provisos and base coverings there?

Jimbo Slice helps me out with a solid fact question.

At Taboo Tuesday 2005 there was a handicap match with Vader and Goldust vs Batista. The hell was the story there? Seemed so random for Vader and Goldust to be there. Thanks for all you do every week.

The story there is a lot of shifting pieces due to the original plan falling way, way through.

OK, so let us go back to Autumn 2005, the heady days of Triple H being all over Raw, Cena holding gold and Kane and Big Show teaming up and…

Uh, that is, the break up of Evolution, Eric Bischoff as GM and Heel Jonathan Coachman.

Better.

Anyway, Jim Ross was the play by play announcer on Raw, and Vince McMahon didn’t like that. He wanted a younger, more photogenic announcer. Mike Goldberg from UFC was the one he was chasing hard, given that Coachman wasn’t working out as a Heel PBP guy. But either way, he didn’t like JR, plus JR had to have surgery on his colon, and would need time off anyway. So on October 10th, 2005, he was ‘fired’ from Raw by Vince and Linda McMahon, who turned heel to do it.

In the weeks that followed, Austin would stand up for his friend, and it would lead to a match being booked at Taboo Tuesday of Austin V Coachman, where if Austin won, JR got his job back, and if Coach won, Austin lost his job.

And then Austin found out that the booking was not, as the storylines seemed to be pointing, to Austin vanquishing Coach and getting JR’s job back, but rather Coach winning thanks to a returning Mark Henry, and JR, if/when he returned, moving to the website as a secondary announcer/host of a Raw lead in show, plans were up in the air. This, coupled with a legitimate back injury, led to Austin pulling out of the match.

So now what? Dusty Rhodes had an idea of what to do. A way to tie off the angle and get a substitute match, while bringing a couple big names back. This led to Goldust and Vader coming back on the Raw before Taboo Tuesday, and the announcement that Coach would now wrestle Batista with no real stipulations with DAVE being the biggest name not currently doing anything on the PPV.

Unfortunately the angle didn’t work out well, plus apparently Vince really, REALLY didn’t like Vader, and thus after the two worked the match at Taboo Tuesday, they were gone again. At least, for a short while in Goldust’s case.

So yeah, it was pretty thrown together, but the original plan would have been a lot better, for a given value of the phrase.

Eric bring us back to Lana and various other topics.

SFORZA PUTRIA, SFORZA PATCHKA!

Seriously… If you put Lana and Victoria/Tara/Lisa Marie Varon next to each other, who gets the proverbial genetic jack hammer? Dude… it’s Lana.

Well neither because they are both human beings with rights and minds and not just there to be lusted after and neither would ever want anything to do with me and I’m not that kind of guy.

However, in the extremely hypothetical situation where I could ‘choose’ one, I’m still going with My Goddess. I totally understand the appeal with Lana, but My Goddess is My Goddess, so… Yeah.

2. Did you enjoy Joe/Owens 1 (NXT Version)?

*goes to WWE Network quickly*

Heh, Chinlock City.

Anyway, yeah, I enjoyed it, for what it was. They weren’t going to go out there and do a balls to the wall instant classic, given how valuable Owens is right now, and how Joe needs to be established both in terms of personality and in power level. But it was a decent little match, sure. The chinlock was a little long, but that’s minor.

… This is why I don’t do reviews.

3. Speaking of Lana, I do not like where they’re putting her. The whole Dolph love triangle has been done already with Fandango and Summer Rea, and… nothing really happened. The American spy theory running around on the IWC was gold. How does “creative” not think of this sh*t? They’re getting paid thousands and thousands to do what exactly?

What Vince wants them to do.

And the thing is, it doesn’t matter how good an idea you or I think something is, unless every crowd everywhere chants for something, we’re stuck waiting for stuff that Vince and Vince alone likes. So obviously he doesn’t want to have Lana go full USA just yet. The one time he cares about a woman’s character being consistent….

4. Name your top 10 thrown-together tag teams. I’d say Team Hell No is among the best. Damn entertaining those two were together…

How do you define thrown together? Is it just two guys teaming up post-establishment? Is a team like the Meta Powers thrown together or not? There’s a logical reason to have them teaming, but they’re not a long term planned thing…

That said, Michael Ornelas had a pretty decent definition in his listing of top thrown together tag teams, to whit:

-A top thrown-together tag team must not be related.
-A top thrown-together tag team must not have an obvious common bond (such as being second-generation wrestlers, or a hatred of America).
-A top thrown-together tag team must not have been brought together by a common manager..

Anyway, my top ten tag teams who I consider ‘thrown together’, in alphabetical order…

Beer Money
Booker T & Goldust
Hollywood Blonds
Miracle Violence Connection
Miz & Mizdow
Miz And Morrison
New Age Outlaws
Owen Hart & Yokozuna
Team Hell No
X-Pac & Kane

With the Kings of Wrestling being #11.

5. And finally, have you ever done fantasy feuds on EWR and then they come to real life? Albeit yes, not with YOUR story but the matches and feud happens in reality? I had Jericho/Punk, Jericho/Wyatt, and most recently Owens/Cena LONG before they became reality. Just cool to see and take oblivious credit for it. Gday!

Directly, no, since I don’t really play EWR. I’m just not great at the gameplay aspect of it.

But I’ve certainly done a bunch of EWR stuff/fantasy booking here on 411 in the 10th Day News Report, Fink’s Payload and such… But I don’t recall ever getting something that later showed up on air. I guess I book too differently from WWE.

Justin asks about a belt going walkabout.

Where was the WCW US Title for the latter part of 1995 when Sting held it? It was never seen on Sting and after he lost the title it appeared again on TV & Paperviews, etc.

Sting won the US title at The Great American Bash 1995, June 18… 1995, defeating THEMONSTERMENG in a tournament final. Vader had been the previous champion, but he was stripped of the title by WCW Comissioner Nick Bockwinkel for an over the line assault on… Dave Sullivan.

Sting would eventually lose it to Kensuke Sasaki in November that year, at a New Japan Pro Wrestling event. But what about in-between those points?

It was, well, around Sting’s waist.

Sting was on TV, and he did defend the title semi-regularly. The problem is, I think, that Nitro didn’t exist yet, coupled with the fact that Hogan was in the company and thus the entire company was built around World Champ Hogan and Hogan’s buddies and such, Sting as US champ was a minor issue. But Sting did have the belt, and did defend it, it’s just that WCW didn’t pay much attention to it because HOGANHOGANHOGAN!!!

Joseph has a few more questions.

4) Do you think pro wrestling can ever get closer to the mainstream? I’m not talking about popularity (like the Attitude Era) per se, but more of its general perception where it’s seen as a little more serious/sophisticated or at the very least accepted than it is now? What would it take to reach that level or do you think it’s always going to have that fringe perception, maybe owing in part to the carnival roots of wrestling?

I’m not sure, to be honest. To get accepted into the mainstream as a legitimate form of entertainment, it’s not so much the carnival roots as it is just the weirdness of the whole thing. It’s grown men and women pretending to fight but sort of actually doing the fight with over the top characters and storylines, and which the largest, most publicly visible outlet for the style of entertainment is squarely aimed at children and families. It’s not like a new style of music or some experimental TV series genre…

But WWE has to either die or change, because as long as the biggest dog in the yard sells itself solely as family friendly safe entertainment, and does so with storylines that seem to have been written by a soft-skulled six year old, you’re not going to see grown men not already inside suddenly view wrestling as sophisticated. If WWE became well booked, maybe there might be hope. But right this moment, I don’t see a path to sophisticated acceptance of wrestling.

Outside Lucha Underground winning the Emmy, obviously.

5) Have you listened to The Mountain Goats Beat The Champ? Thoughts if you have?

No, I haven’t, although I really should. I’ll try and do that over the next fortnight and report back.

6) I’m being serious here, and I’m not really a fan of the WWE’s product right now, but in all honesty–building off of that mainstream question from earlier–in all sincerity is it possible to overstate the contributions Vince McMahon has made to professional wrestling?

Not really, not unless you looked at it in a very narrow way.

If you were to begin from a point of view where professional wrestling is all about two guys with a grudge and fighting it out, if you view Flair/Steamboat as the pinnacle of what professional wrestling is, then Vince the monster who took professional wrestling and turned it into a freakshow carnival of distorted caricatures of wrestlers.

But, the thing is, if you look at wrestling from the mainstream perspective, Vince McMahon IS Professional Wrestling. Sure, guys like Hogan and Rock are huge crossover stars, Vince won’t be the first name a non-fan will list, but while Vince didn’t invent professional wrestling, he’s the guy who brought it to the largest audiences ever, who killed off his nearest competition and now owns slightly less of all professional wrestling than would be grounds for a monopoly inquiry.

Regardless of what you think of what he did, or how he did it, the fact is Vince was the guy who did it. He took wrestling into mainstream, worldwide culture, and got it stuck there. You don’t have to like it, but you have to accept it, that Vince left his fingerprints all over professional wrestling, as much as the Gold Dust Trio did, if not more so. As long as Professional Wrestling exists, Vince’s influence will impact on it.

James had a selection of questions. I have selected a smaller subset of said questions to soliloquize on shortly.

5. I know that Samoa Joe, Tamina, the Rock, Roman Reigns, are all related do you think that this has anything to do with the deal that Joe got and do you see some sort of Samoan Stable ?

I must have had half a dozen possible videos to put here, but in the end, I’ll be boring and just give you the facts.

The ‘All Wrestling Samoans Are Related’ thing is due to the Anoa’i family, hailing from American Samoa. Reverend Anoa’i Amituana’ had several children, Afa and Sika being the ones best known in wrestling. Several wrestlers are children or grandchildren in the family, which then also includes the Maivia family, with the good Reverend and Peter Maivia being blood brothers, which is how The Rock connects in. Then you add in Jimmy Snuka, who married into the family, which gives Deuce and Tamina Snuka even more tenuous but still existent links.

So yeah, the Anoa’i family is huge and hooks up a lot of the Samoans in wrestling… But not all. Samoa Joe has claimed in the past that if you go back far enough, he does have some connection to the family, but it’s so weak as to be non-existent for any practical purpose. Certainly Joe didn’t get his job based on family connections, he got the job based on rep and Triple H’s desire to have the NXT brand have a strong touring line up, followed quickly by both Hunter and Vince looking at the sales figures for his shirt and thus snapping him up quick smart.

(If you ever need to know, Sonny Siaki was a Samoan wrestler in no way shape or form related to the Anoa’i family. Just if you need an obscure factoid like that.)

6. Was Bret Hart the only person to apply the Sharp Shooter correctly, everyone who does it now are obviously not applying it properly and I want to know why?

Depends on how you classify applying it ‘correctly’. I mean, Bret didn’t invent the move, Riki Chōshū did, so surely his application was correct?

I presume this is a matter of the man delivering it not squatting down? That your issue is with people not applying it with full force? I mean, if it’s just a case of people not doing it well, if you’re complaining about The Rock’s Sharpshooter, fair enough, but the squatting thing is mainly on the person taking the move. I mean, unless you’re trying to shoot on the person, how far you can squat and thus bend the back/legs is on the person taking the move, not the person giving it. You put Jack Evans in a Sharpshooter and you could probably have him bent over 300 degrees. Put Big Show in it, and you’re doing well if the legs bend backwards a bit.

Or, of course, you’re just asking why people who aren’t Bret Hart are doing it, because clearly Bret Hart’s the only one. If so, then just think about how that proves how good Bret Hart was, since he got wins with his one…

7. I wonder do you have to be a top star to have a move banned? Randy Orton is a top guy and the punt is banned, Seth Rollins is a top guy and the curb stomp is banned, yet Zack Ryder bro kick is still allowed?

No, you don’t have to be a top star, it’s just that top stars do more moves more often and thus we notice it quicker when they stop. If Ryder stopped doing the Broski Boot safely and started to actually connect the foot to the face when he did the facewash, he’d be told to stop, and eventually we would notice.

But the facewash is pretty safe, as head based strikes go. The punt and curb stomp are moves where contact is made but held back. The facewash, if done right, barely makes contact. You move the face with the strike, it brushes past.

When done right. I’ve seen a guy get his nose busted taking it, so like any wrestling move it has risk, but Ryder has shown the higher ups he can do it safely, repeatedly, and consistently. Thus he gets to use it. If Orton could do the same with the punt, he’d be allowed to use that too.

Will wants to talk divas and turning to finish up.

The Bella Twins are constantly turning from face to heel to face to heel with really no explanation. Can you remember another wrestler, or wrestlers, who turned so frequently with no justification in the storyline? Is this just me or is this incredibly poor storytelling?

Thanks for all you do!

The only person who comes close is a special case, in that Jerry Lawler has to have the record simply because he would go from face to heel and back again every time he crossed Memphis city limits, with no actual explanation given why he was the upstanding hero in Memphis but then went full slimy heel on WWF TV.

But the Bella Twins and the current diva division in general are a major problem, given the way they’re booked, which is in the style of Russo’s shades of grey, in the worst possible iteration.

See, there are two acceptable ways to do shades of grey booking. You can have it so that you have your purest white snow babyface, you have someone sweet and without a single bad bone in their body, the most heroic possible person. And then you have the other end, where you have someone who is the darkest deepest black heel, the devil’s nightmare level of badness. And then everyone else is on a sliding scale. Some people are closer to the light, others the dark, so who is babyface or heel in any dynamic is a case of looking where they are on the chart and booking accordingly.

The other way, which I admit to preferring, is you create characters that have positive and negative traits, you create flawed but mostly larger than life people and then put them in stories and let the fans decide who’s good and who’s bad, and then adjust accordingly.

But in both of those situations, you need consistency of character. The characters need to be, while not fixed, free-flowing. You have to be able to follow the character from point to point. You need to establish that Diva X is self-absorbed, which means when she’s up against the innocent Tomboy Y she’s a dick, but when threatened by Evil Heel Woman Z she’ll stand up for herself and by extension America.

The lazy way to approach shades of grey? You just have them act like heels one week, faces the next, and don’t give a damn about consistency. Shades of grey baby!

Considering that WWE’s Divas division seems to have the motto of ‘Bitches Be Crazy’, the front and center divas being the most inconsistent does fit, but yes, as storytelling goes, it sucks. But it’s hardly a fault that applies solely to the divas, because it’s part of the overall issue that for a company that has so much time to fill, they always seem to be in a rush to waste time.

There’s no middle ground with WWE, either you retell the same story with no forward advancement for weeks on end, you wrestle the same guy a bunch of times until the PPV where you… wrestle them again, stuff like that. Or, you suddenly switch, and WWE tells, not shows. If you’re suddenly to be a threat, there’s no weeks of build up where you get big wins over people, you just go from being a joke one week to the announcers telling the audience how scary you are the next.

With the Divas, this manifests with women being face or heel and we’re supposed to understand and accept these positions without remembering or caring what they were last week. You like the Bellas this week, and next week they’ll be bitches again.

I don’t know if it’s lazy or just part of the overall reasoning behind the timing thing. I’ve said this before, I think, but the main issue with WWE booking is that they appear to be booking at kids, not for kids.

Every babyface is simplistic and egotistically vain and self-centered, while anyone with nuance, intelligence or basic adult sense is a bad guy. Women are all crazy and weird, you have to make sure they understand ideas by drilling them into the kids heads for weeks on end, they don’t notice repetition, they don’t care how many finishes are the same, and they’ll believe what you tell them, so you don’t have to bother showing changes, you can just announce it and it’ll be fine.

Now obviously this works to some degree, as kids come along and cheer for Cena and what have you. But it could be so much better. Kids can handle some complexity, even if it seems they can’t handle Cena losing clean. They can handle storylines that run across multiple weeks, even months. They can have heroes who aren’t over the top egos, and they can appreciate good family friendly professional wrestling.

Or at least, I certainly hope they can. Because that’s possibly the worst part.

WWE might be right.

WWE may well be booking correctly for their target audience of kids. I really, really hope I’m wrong about that, and I think I am, I think kids are better than that.

But I don’t know.

And on that horrible downer thought, I’ll bid you goodbye for a while, Ryan will be in next week, ciao!