Column I - 26 / 10 / 00

OK here we go, the first of a new column about the world of wrestling. Mainly this will focus on American wrestling however I will touch on Japanese and British from time to time. As this is the first column I will explain my personal view on wrestling along with my views on the "big 3" in the States. For those who don't know that is the World Wrestling Federation (WWF), World Championship Wrestling (WCW) and Extreme Championship Wrestling (ECW) plus little on other stuff too. In later columns I will review, criticise praise and generally tear to pieces anything I see over the preceding week mainly the stuff on TV.

Large:-I have been watching wrestling since Wrestlemania 3 and have seen the highs and the lows of most federations. I watch all manner of shit from WWF, WCW and ECW to IWA and XPW. Whatever I can get hold of and have time to watch. I enjoy hardcore matches, scientific matches and Death Matches. Wrestling: -From my experience there are many stages to a wrestling fans "life". I present them here in this column for the first time ever.1 ) Belief (Markdom) - This is the earliest stage it's the "Its all real" stage, belief is a great thing because some people never leave this stage. Although some times they will go onto stage 2 but because the belief stage is so strong they quickly return to it.2 ) Suspicion/denial: - Usually the suspicion that wrestling is pre-determined is caused by a catalyst. This can be something like a wrestler selling a move that obviously didn't connect or overhearing the wrestlers talking in the ring. At this point fans will do one of 3 things;* Return to belief and explain away what they saw with some lame ass excuse.* Give up on wrestling as it is all FAKE * Move onto the next stage of their wrestling "life"3 ) Acceptance: - the penultimate stage of the "life" is the second belief. At this point the belief that wrestling outcome is pre-determined but all the moves are real and that the wrestlers are really getting hurt. This really is an extension of the denial, in that although you have accepted the outcome of the wrestling is pre-determined the fights are real. Of course logically this would never happen but because of the strength of the belief in wrestling it is the only conclusion a person can come too.4 ) Smart: -The final stage of "life" is the Smart fan. This takes you to a point were you fully understand that the outcome of the match is pre-determined and that the match is choreographed. At this point the smart fan will accept all that but his/her enjoyment of the wrestling is gained from the storylines, the athletic ability and the psychology of the matches.  WCW: - WCW is the second biggest Federation in the States, owned by the Multimillionaire Ted Turner. Possibly the biggest waste of talent in the wrestling world. WCW is poorly run, badly booked and overall bag 'o' shite. This is a conclusion I have come to over a number of years; I do not take this stance lightly so here I back up my argument with one example. Mike Awesome - Originally brought in against Kevin Nash on Monday Nitro and booked as the Career Killer he was continuing the persona he had perfected over many years in Japan and ECW. Awesome's character was a hard fighting, no nonsense ass kicker, which was great, the fans dug it and he was over quickly. It must be remembered that when he jumped from ECW to WCW he was still ECW World Champion. OK so the fans liked the bad ass Career Killer role so what did WCW do? Did they say "OK Mike Awesome, International Man of Ass Kicking, we would like to continue you role and start a run with a champion culminating in a US championship reign"? No they actually said "OK Mike Awesome, International Man of Ass Kicking, we would like to make you fancy Fat Women and lose all your matches and after you have lost any credibility and fan heat you can then give that up and become a cheap rip off of Austin Powers and That 70's Show and dress you up in crappy clothes and give you a 70's Love Bus to drive into arenas" Now it could be said that this may be an isolated incident, lets see shall we….Sting, how much time off does this guy need.Goldberg, Good…Bad…Good again in the space of 4 weeks there's consistent planning.David Arquete…World Champion????????????????????????????????????????????????Look, I know a lot of you guys out there will like WCW and, OK, I used to love it. But they just don't know how to treat the talent and work the storylines correctly. But this columns is not for the trashing (further) of WCW - that will come later ;-)If you want to watch WCW then here is how. Channel 5 show WCW Worldwide (censored) at 7.00pm on Friday Nights, this show is running about 4-5 weeks behind. Bravo (channel 124 on Sky Digital) show WCW Monday Nitro every Thursday night at 10.00pm and this is only one week behind. Currently the WCW Pay Per Views are not shown on TV in the UK and are released on an infrequent basis on Video but not DVD.WWF: -Arguably the most popular and successful wrestling organisation in the world today. WWF is a family business and is run by Vince McMahon his wife Linda and the two kids Stephanie and Shane (o-Mac).The WWF seem to be producing a more coherent product at present with better scripting and more "believable" characters. Admittedly some of the WWF ideas are as bad as the WCW ones, it's the nature of the game that some ideas will look great on paper but the fans will reject them. For example……………………well I am sure I could think of a few given time. The WWF have 12 major PPVs a year plus 2 UK only PPVs. If you want to watch WWF then here is how. Sky show Raw every Friday night twice on the Sports channels, they also show Smackdown Uncut on Saturday night on the sports channels and also a kid friendlier version on Saturday morning (11.00am) on Sky One. They also show many of the "recap" shows (Live Wire, Metal and Superstars) on a variety of channels at a variety of times. They also show the majority of WWF Pay Per Views on SKY Sports 1 Live at 1 am plus a encore showing during the week on one of the Sports Channels. Channel 4 show WWF Heat every Sunday as part of the T4 show, it usually airs around 4pm. Channel 4 also have the rights to show 4 of this years PPVs, 3 of which have already been aired (Royal Rumble, Backlash and Fully Loaded) and have one left to show (Armageddon). The WWF have always had a good video release policy though a company called Silver Vision. Silver Vision has released every WWF PPV (with the exception of one for very good reasons) plus the majority of the special releases. Silver Vision are also releasing a selection of WWF PPVs on DVD so far that has been Wrestlemania 15 and Royal Rumble 2000, both of which include extra footage, alternative commentary track by the wrestlers and some behind the scenes stuff too.ECW: -Extreme Championship Wrestling was created in the early 90's by Paul Heyman; older fans will remember this guy as Paul E. Dangerously who worked WCW for the longest time. ECW was originally Eastern Championship Wrestling when it started in Philadelphia (the city of Brotherly Love!) and started out as a standard independent fed however the federation gained a reputation for violence not seen in the major feds, quickly adopting the tag line "It's not for everyone". Eastern became Extreme and then they added 2 letters to the ECW to produce the EC F'N W. From the small ECW Arena ECW has become the third biggest promotion in the US today producing six PPVs a year plus 2 weekly TV shows (well one now that the WWF have moved to TNN). Many of the major stars of wrestling have worked for ECW over the years including Chris Benoit, Perry Saturn, Tazz, Raven, Mike Awesome, Lance Storm, Chris Jericho and the Dudley Boys. ECW is the most high profile Extreme wrestling federation in the US and have had some excellent "hardcore" matches however this often overshadows the excellent mat/chain wrestling of such stars as Rob Van Dam, Super Crazy, Jerry Lynne and Tajirri. These guys are the real Superstars of ECW, yes I respect guys like Balls Mahoney and Tommy Dreamer however when you see one guy hit over the head with a <insert weapon of choice here>, it can get a bit repetitive. However ECW is a great all round promotion which will fulfil all you wrestling needs.If you want to watch ECW here's how. Bravo (channel 124 of Sky Digital) show ECW Hardcore TV every Sunday Night at 11.00pm with a repeat the following Saturday Night at 11pm. Recently Delta has started to release the ECW PPVs onto video and DVD a good selection is available from most on-line retailers.Others: -There are many other smaller federations in the US including Shawn Micheals' TWA, the XPW and WWF affiliate UPW. Japan: - Japan has always had a great wrestling tradition and many American and British wrestlers have used Japan to hone their skills and lifted their careers to new heights. Japan also was the originator of the Death Match, matches which use many implements and weapons that are considered a little unusual. Possible the most famous Death Match is the IWA King of the Death Match card from 1994. This card was basically King of the Ring style tournament but each match included some incredible weapons such as Barbed Wire, Glass, bed of nails, thumbtacks (Drawing pins) and in the final C4 explosive. Cactus Jack (Mick Foley) won this tournament after defeating Terry Funk in the final. FMW also uses death matches in their promotion and have constantly produced some of the most innovative main events to super cards. OK so that is the break down if you didn't know that then now you do if you new that then come back soon to check out more opinionated crap from Large. Including the review from the new X-treme Pro Wrestling (XPW) Super Card Baptised in BLOOD, the American King of the Death Match tournament.Later,

Large