Kayfabe! – YouShoot with Al Snow

Kayfabe!
YouShoot with Al Snow

There are some good moments here, but, this is pretty much the definition of being ‘middle of the road.’ Honestly, the best stuff, by a good margin, was the first subject which is Al’s takes on the wrestling business. For those who don’t know, Al Snow did a Guest Booker interview in late 2010/early 2011, and made some remarks about the business that a lot of people disagreed with. Namely, that the only thing that matters is what draws money, so the best match on WrestleMania III wasn’t Savage/Steamboat, but rather Hogan/Andre, since they drew the house. That was probably true when he started wrestling in 1982, but with the advent of videotapes, and now DVD and streaming on demand, it’s different. So, he first fields a few questions on that subject, including someone asking him since drawing money is his definition of a good match, is it fair to say that he’s never had a good match? He says it’s not, because he’s had a thirty-plus year career, so he must have done a few things people liked. (Note from Mike: I would assume that Al drew some money in SMW during his feud with the Rock ‘n’ Roll Express)

There’s a hysterical moment, when someone asks how it feels always being the smartest person in the room and Sean comments “Questions for Al only please.” Al brings up an interesting parallel to the medical field when talking about Dave Meltzer. Al loves medicine (which leads Sean to do an Iron Sheik impression saying that all the boys love the medicine), and reads medical journals, watches all the medical TV shows and documentaries etc. But, when he’s sick and goes and sees a doctor, the doctor doesn’t care what Al thinks might be his issue, because Al isn’t a doctor. Sean rebuts that he can still say that he didn’t enjoy a Mariah Carey concert, or that Brian Williams can still report on a war without having served, but, Al explains that he’s not talking about critiquing and reporting, but rather people in the business (and as a result, people not in the business) look to him as an expert. I get his point, but that’s hardly Meltzer’s fault, he’s not touting *HIMSELF* as the expert. Al also provides some interesting insight to the origins of terms that all of us marks throw around, like kayfabe and jobber.

Honestly, that’s the big highlight of the interview. There is some other good stuff, like getting Al’s side of the ‘penis suplex’ story from Foley Is Good, when Bob Holly held him up for a vertical suplex, and moves his singlet to expose the twig and berries to the crowd. But, there’s really not much else of note. They play ‘What’s In The Bag?’ and Al just generically answered “wrestlers” for almost all of them. They play a game called “Worse Than Avatar” where Al ranks various gimmicks and whether or not they were as bad as his character Avatar in 1995, and almost every answer is “Better gimmick, longer legs.” Some of the choices include TL Hopper (who Al mistakenly calls Freddie Joe Floyd), Mantaur, The Goon, Aldo Montoya, Bastion Booger, and Dr. Issac Yankem. Blue Meanie makes a cameo via video, to rib Al by asking a drawn out question, that winds up leading up to “How big is Batista’s Dick?” It ends on a very good note though, with Al telling an awesome story about being on an airplane with Kimo Leopoldo and Joe Son after a UFC event, and they started talking about how they hopes the plane crashed and everyone died so they could be with Jesus. After some turbulence during the flight, where everyone thought they were going down, Al went back and cut a promo on them, asking if they were happy now.

Again, this easily beats out the YouShoot with the likes of Chyna or Awesome Kong, who were both clearly holding back in hopes of returning to WWE. But, this is still a long way from the YouShoot with Cornette, Manny Fernandez, Honky Tonk Man, and others.

6.0

The final score: review Average

The 411

Like I said before, this is pretty much middle of the road, it's not the best, it's not the worst. It's just sort of there.