411’s Dark Side of The Ring Report: ‘The World According to Marty Jannetty’

-Season Finale time as we finish off season four with this episode. Thanks to everyone who read and commented on last week’s recap of the episode on Bash at The Beach 2000. I went back and did a review of the actual PPV and you can find that here. Now, let’s get to it!

-For the final time this season, a reminder that Chris Jericho is our narrator.

-Well, the opening preview shows this may not be flattering to Shawn Michaels based on some of the talking head comments. Marty may have murdered someone as well. Away we go!

-Marty Jannetty welcomes the camera crew to his house and introduces himself as one of The Rockers from back in the day. Marty is in a wheelchair and his right leg/foot look awful with swelling. That looks so painful!

-Al Snow is here and says he has been a professional wrestler for nearly 41 years. He says he was Marty’s partner in the new Rockers and that is where Marty hurt his ankle. They show footage from Survivor Series 96 and you can see his ankle get rolled. The injury got worse over the years.

-Leland McCluskey is an orthopaedic surgeon that has known Marty since high school. They were in the same class and played football together. He mostly deals with foot and ankle surgery. We also meet George McCluskey who is another surgeon that works with shoulders. He notes most people just have one issue, but Marty has six or seven things going on with him. On a scale of 1-10 George says Marty’s daily pain is a 12 on a good day. Ugh!

-Marty says his ankles were bound to go. He has had joint replacement on the right and reconstructive on the left. As he talks they show all the bumps he took in his run with The Rockers. Both shoulders are torn up as well. George remembers Marty being an aggressive football player that was focused on sports more than school.

-Marty tells a story of being in chemistry class and mixing together two chemicals they were told not to. “He never said why,” and Marty wanted to know. One of the girls close by get knocked by a few feet from the reaction. It blew out a window and everyone yelled about Marty blowing up the lab.

-”You can’t believe 99% of what Marty is talking about,” says Karen Walker. She is a friend that has known Marty for 40 years. She says Marty just comes up with the strangest things and if he is telling you a story it’s likely not to be true.

-Cut to Marty saying hookers would give him freebies when he was 13 because they thought he was cute. Oh man, this is what we are dealing with here. Apparently, he he also had Donald Trump come up to him and compliment the pretty girls he always had on his arm. Marty also says he was talked into attending a sex addiction clinic and ended up dating his counselor. Karen says there is a kind and gentle side to Marty, but most never get to see that.

-Marty says he was beat on by his mom as a kid and hid it from his dad, so his parents wouldn’t fight. “Mean” Mike Moran, one half of Disorderly Conduct in WCW, says Marty had a really rough upbringing as a child. He met Marty in 1984 when they were both working in their first territory. He says Marty loved his dad, but he wasn’t there as much. Marty was an athlete and that helped him get out of Columbus.

-Marty is trained by Jerry Oates and works as Marty Oates in Mid South. He jumps to Central States in Kansas City and is paired with a shy, quiet kid that Marty calls “nerdy.” Yep, it’s Shawn Michaels! He was put in charge to show Shawn the ropes and they were paired as a team. They had crazy chemistry from early on in the team and head to the AWA as The Midnight Rockers.

-Pat Tanaka is here and he was part of Bad Company that had a rivalry with The Rockers in the AWA. Brutus Beefcake is here as well, and I mean, we know we are getting to The Barbershop at some point so he needs to be here. Just like Titanic has to hit the iceberg, Marty has to go through a window! We also meet Missy Beefcake, Brutus’ wife! She jokes about wanting to envision Marty naked to see what else was going on under those tights.

-Women loved Marty and Karen notes they hooked up the first night they meet and now she is his forever wifey. Marty says every time he went to St Louis he would see her. The producer asks if she is his girlfriend and Marty replies: “For St. Louis.”

-The Midnight Rockers have a crazy, bloody brawl in the AWA that gets the attention of Vince McMahon and The Rockers are brought into the WWF. Marty tells the story of them getting fired on their first day in the WWF. They have stock footage of comments from Shawn as he notes they had great times. The Rockers were out with the boys and the knew The Rockers liked to party. Jack Funk wanted to see them party, so glasses started getting broken and they were kicked out of the bar. They were fired by Vince the next day. “Now what do we do?”

-Commercials!

-They spent about a week in the WWF officially and Marty says they just had awful luck. He keeps referring to himself as MJ and teaches us about GAT: God’s Amusement Toy. Oh boy! He says God gets bored and throws some bolts of lightning at him. Al Snow knows about GAT and scoffs as he says it’s basically Marty not accepting responsibility. Moran believes Marty has had some bad luck, but a lot of his decisions have caused his issues. Snow says Marty is Marty’s worst enemy.

-The Rockers head to Continental and then after a year get another call to head to the WWF. Tanaka says if you have talent you will get a lot of chances.

-They talk about partying with models and strippers. Tanaka says he wanted to sleep, so Marty fired a pistol to wake him up. It seems he shot his car and blamed Tanaka for trying to sleep and causing him to fire off the gun. Marty notes that he and Shawn were like brothers. He says they partied together and did a lot of women together. I don’t know if he really means together, or perhaps he did. Hey, whatever.

-In 1990 Marty gives a jobber named Chuck Austin the Rocker Dropper and broke his neck. Austin told Marty he knew how to take it and we get grainy footage of the incident. Marty says the kid stood up and dove straight down into the ring and it broke his neck. Tanaka backs up that Austin took the move wrong and yeah, it’s nasty looking. Marty could tell he was injured and told Shawn. He came off the top and didn’t even touch the guy because they knew he was hurt. They got the pin and got out of there to the back. Austin had to be taken out on a helicopter to a hospital and it messed with Marty. “Man, I caused that?”

-It became a story picked up by the media and we see old footage from Austin doing a TV interview. His claim is that Marty told him he would protect him. Austin sued for 10 million and they had the jury watch the incident which freaked them out. It seems they had Dean Malenko come it to properly take The Rocker Dropper and the jury didn’t care. Marty said that is the worst thing for a wrestler as you want them to cheer or boo. The jury comes back with a verdict in 20 minutes.

-Commercials!

-The verdict is in and WWF is found 90% negligent, Austin 5% negligent and Marty 5% negligent. They award Austin $24 million dollars. Holy smokes! Marty jumped up and was going to yell that he was suing for ten, but his lawyers told him to sit and they would appeal. They go through the appeal process and settle on $10 million. Marty has to pay 5% of that so it is taken out of his royalties checks for a bit. So 5% would be $500,000 if my math is correct.

-The case against Shawn is dismissed as he had nothing to do with it, and Marty notes that is the luck of Shawn. “He can step in shit and come out smelling like roses.” Karen lets us know she is not a Shawn fan at all and calls him egotistical. She says The Heartbreak Kid isn’t a gimmick as that is really Shawn. Marty says that was his brother and he was always good to him. They started to have issues and Karen says Shawn didn’t have as much of a drug problem as Marty did.

-Al tries to list the drugs he knows Marty has had an issue with: Crack, Somas, Hal, Cocaine are just the ones he rattled off his head. Karen saw him take a lot of Hal and found him on the floor with pills spilled everywhere. She called Shawn and he told her not to call anyone. Shawn and Snuka took Marty and threw him in the shower. Karen was shocked as she thought Marty was going to die.

-Moran says that Marty and Shawn eventually got into a fight in a hotel. Marty came in drunk and cussing out Shawn, so Shawn decks him and puts him through a window. Luckily they were on a bottom floor. Well, that gives the later window toss more backstory. Marty popped up, asked Shawn if he thinks he can do it again. They head outside and start fighting again and this time Marty is choking Shawn out. Marty says it should have never happened, but it did and Shawn was the one left bleeding. Vince knew they had to split the team and Marty said they needed to talk first, but Shawn was all for it. Vince told them he saw Shawn as a future star and didn’t see that for Marty. Karen and Mike take some shots at Shawn, but I mean really, everyone could see that Shawn was going to be the bigger star out of the two. Vince backed the right horse there. Mike believes Shawn was in Vince’s ear, or ass. Beefcake also thinks Shawn was kissing ass. Marty didn’t want to be shit canned, but if they kept him, he would do the split.

-Al goes over the story for the split as Shawn was getting a little more full of himself and they weren’t on the same page in matches anymore. We see the famous WWF Magazine Story and we see Shawn slap Marty in the face.

-The Barbershop! Let’s Go! Al notes it was the pinnacle of the turn. Beefcake says he had no idea until that day what was going to happen. Marty tells Shawn he can leave the team, but if they shake hands they can continue with the team. Shawn spins Marty around to shake hands and all seems well, and then BAM! Shawn superkicks Marty and Marty notes he was kicked so hard he didn’t even feel the glass. Shawn famously tosses Marty head first through the glass window in one of the greatest tag team splits of all time. Mike says the fans didn’t want the team to break up and nobody saw it coming. Sadly, they don’t include Heenan claiming that Marty tried to jump through the window to get away from Shawn. Marty was toast after this split just on the optics alone!

-Commercials!

-Shawn says that Marty was upset and asked “what’s going to happen to me?” Shawn says they are both going to be singles and will get judged on what they can do from here. He told Marty if he gets over they will use him. Al thinks Marty resented Shawn and that Shawn wanted to get away from Marty so he could climb the ladder.

-More bad decisions from Marty as he is with a stripper and a cop found a bag of cocaine on him. He had to do six months of house arrest. We have video of Marty in India, riding a cop’s motorcycle into a hotel and crashing into a guy that sends him into a water fountain. The guy yelling “high spot” while filming the incident is a hero! Al says that Marty and Sheik may have the record for being fired and brought back the most times.

-We cover The New Rockers and Marty wasn’t into that and Al doesn’t blame him. Marty felt it was poking fun at what he did with Shawn and some think Shawn had Vince do that to Marty to humiliate him. Marty knew it was time to leave and went to WCW. Al thinks WCW had plans for him, but Marty had several DUIs and one of them lead to him losing his license for ten years. His contract was up and that was it.

-Meanwhile Shawn has become a Main Event star in WWF and Karen says it devastated Marty. She says Marty would put pictures of Shawn on dartboards and throw darts at him. Marty continues to spiral for five years before finally hitting rock bottom.

-Marty decided to do cocaine until his heart busted unless God gave him a sign. His phone rang and it was Shawn calling him. He invited Marty to Athlete’s International Ministry in Arizona. Shawn took care of everything and it was the first time they had talked in years. Marty went to Arizona and was baptized by Shawn. He says he lived a pure life for three weeks and next WWE wants a Rocker reunion.

-RAW 2005: The Rockers reunite and Marty is nervous that people forgot him. Shawn told him “we are the Rockers and nobody will forget.” The crowd popped and they were in tune with each other once again. WWE was impressed with the match and Marty says they offered him a contract for over a million dollars. Marty was in jail a week later!

-Commercials!

-Marty says he got into a fight with the wifey (a stripper) and the neighbors called the police. Marty was on probation so he was arrested and there went the contract with the WWE. They note that Marty has a habit of hanging out with strippers who are doing drugs. Mike: “I like that too, but don’t be shocked when it bites you in the ass.” Marty says even Vince recognized that Marty had a black cloud that followed him. Karen says the same but notes Marty is the reason for the black cloud.

-Karen worries about Marty because he is alone in his poor health. Beefcake says Marty continues to wrestle shows with the bad ankle and he thought it was insane. Missy brings up Facebook and how that is Marty’s audience since he is house bound. We see some of his posts about not being racist and having 13 black daughters possibly out there and about his cocaine habit. Tanaka believes Marty feeds off those reactions and Karen says Marty just sits around trying to think of funny stories.

-The producer asks about the post about his daughter. Marty says he was hacked and never even saw the post. He says she didn’t deserve that and neither did he. Al questions what Marty is doing and says there were a lot of holy shit moments.

-Marty trends on Twitter for claiming he “made a man disappear” when he was thirteen. We get Brian Alvarez footage from Wrestling Observer Live going over the story and how it is being investigated. Marty says it was an accidental death!

-Commercials!

-Marty’s claim was someone was trying to rape him at 13 and he made the guy disappear. The police were at his house and Marty says he said it was a story to get people to leave him alone. The producers ask Marty to tell the story hypothetically. He takes the camera crew to the bowling alley and said he worked there when he was 13. The guy who worked the desk also sold weed out of his car. They go to the car and the guy puts his hand on Marty’s crotch. Marty smacked his hand away and they started fighting. He got Marty down and was on top and trying to unbutton his pants. Marty grabs a rock and hits the guy in temple with it. He didn’t know what to do, so he got his family member and they agreed they can’t call the police. They dumped the body in the nearby river and Marty says again it’s hypothetical and is a story to get him back in wrestling.

-Marty notes what happened in the car was true, but the rest is all story. He says they did a missing person and never found a body. There is a statement from The Columbus Police Department: “We have no evidence of a murder, connected cold cases, or missing persons concerning Mr. Jannetty’s allegations.” They did confirm they investigated the claim.

-Al is afraid that Marty is going to be alone. Brutus says he loves Marty and wants him to keep his hands off his wife. She jokes she thought about flashing Marty on camera here, but she is mic’d up. Brutus laughs through all of this. Al brings up that the joke is nobody wants to be Marty of the team, and he says you would be lucky if you were. There would be no Shawn Michaels at the level he is without Marty. Marty is asked about Shawn and he notes that he loves him to death. There was seven years of a great relationship and it has been great again since that phone call. Shawn notes they had one fight in seven years of being together 24/7 and that’s not bad at all.

-An old interview from Marty as he notes he didn’t dump the guy in the river. One of his friends dumped him in the woods and poured gas on him. Al says that is the story Marty told him in the 90s. Karen says that is the one story that she believes is true. Marty told her that a long time ago and she can tell when he is lying. Marty has the final word and says he isn’t going to give anything else and we need to look through the smoke and mirrors.

-This was a good one to close the season as it was full of all kinds of craziness and the things this series is known for: drugs, sex, possible murder, and wrestling. I have no idea what to believe with Marty, but I do agree with everyone that Marty’s issues are because of Marty and not due to God being out to get him. Outside of Karen and a shot by Mike, Shawn didn’t get drug through the mud as much as I thought he would. Al Snow came off well here and you can tell he cares about Marty. Beefcake needed to be here for the Barbershop Talk, but outside of that he was just there to cheese at the camera and get his wife on screen. I am sure we will continue to hear more about Marty and whatever else stories he can put out there. It is encouraging to hear that he and Shawn have made peace and I hope that stays. Thanks for reading and thanks for following along with me overt the last ten weeks. Hopefully, there will be a season five and if so, I will be there.