The Intro
It’s really annoying when the big news breaks on Tuesday. The column is usually about 90% written by then, so all I have time for are addendums like this one. By the way, that’s my official excuse for not taking more potshots at TNA for signing Hogan and Bischoff and focusing most of my wrath on the IWC for liking Cena/Orton and WWE creative for giving me another Big Show/Undertaker feud as well as another triple threat match main event involving Michaels and The Tripper.

I don’t get the love for the Bragging Rights main event, truly I don’t. It was slow and plodding, the emoting from both guys was completely unconvincing, and if my predictions of match results for this PPV were fucking awful (I went 1-4 in the roundtable), my analysis of how that particular match would pan out was spot on. “It’ll be another poorly-acted action movie instead of a match,” I wrote, and I was right. I can deal with stupid angles being inserted into matches once in a while, but with Orton and Cena, pretty much every confrontation has been overbooked to death, and the reason is that neither man can pace anything beyond a ten minute TV match. That’s right, kids, they don’t know how to work. Send ‘em back to FCW.

The next night on Raw, Kyle Busch was the least convincing heel in wrestling history and Joey Logana kicked off his tenure as co-host by completely no-selling the man they were about to appoint the #1 contender for a title he’s technically not eligible to compete for. Considering we were just talking about not knowing how to work, this is an ideal time to point out the fundamental problem with guest hosts – they’re fine in comedy segments, but from Maria Menounos giggling as she was being threatened by Beth Phoenix to Logano’s perma-grin last night, they actively detract from any angles meant to elicit genuine heat. “This is fake,” their expressions say, “I don’t have to take it seriously.”

And so much for DX going after the tag team titles, eh? We should have realized that shit was beneath them. Or maybe they’ll casually swat Jericho and Show aside on the road to Survivors Series anyway. Why not?

Oh, and speaking of casually swatting people aside, TNA signed Hogan. And Bischoff. It’s a good thing in the sense that it probably means the end of the road for Russo, which means that those of us who aren’t fans of that dime store Tarantino’s anti-booking can at least consider the prospect of the right guys getting over. For about a second, anyway. Unfortunately, Hogan and Bischoff are fatter, more vicious versions of the same parasite, and I can confidently predict that yes, they will pop a rating or two for Impact. But then terrible things will start to happen. Hogan is a politician and a grade A prick. Everything he does is to put himself over, regardless of whether he‘s an in-ring talent. He’s not suddenly going to start doing the right thing, and there’s nobody in TNA who’s going to make him. As for Bischoff, I’ve read several otherwise smart people today referring to his business acumen. Seriously, if any of you can find me a profitable and high profile business venture with Bischoff’s name on it, I’ll reconsider my opinion. Until then, I’ll continue to confidently believe and state that Eric Bischoff is a terrible businessman who will generate absolutely nothing for TNA except possibly a few more commercials shilling energy drinks. And sooner rather than later, he will find his way onto TV.

And let’s not forget Hogan’s friends. I think I’m going to start The Ed Leslie Sweepstakes over on the forums as soon as I’m done here.

Fuck. The Intro is becoming a column all its own. Ah, well. I’m doomed to be buried in an avalanche of Hulkamania anyways. I can pretty much write what I like.

So…this week’s Poll Position takes a closer look at the phenomenon of ‘marking out’, a process whereby events of such awesomeness occur that bitter, cynical wrestling fans forget for a moment that they detest just about everything about the business – including themselves for continuing to support it – and leap up out of their seats in the throes of the almost religious joy wrestling is capable of making us feel when somebody actually gets it right. As a general rule, this doesn’t actually happen very often – but then, how many classic movies get made in a year? How many classic albums are released? A lot of shit gets thrown at the wall of our collective taste, and not much of it sticks.

Our poll this week isn’t really so interested in the universal events – those that literally made us sit up and wonder what the fuck we were seeing – as it is in trying to find out what it is that tweaks your happy place as a fan. In the course of writing Poll Position, I’ve had cause to share a few of my most cherished moments, from my favorite Rock promos to Dean Malenko in a Ciclope mask to Chris Benoit winning the World Heavyweight Title. As for things almost guaranteed to make me mark out? Well, let’s take a look…

The Results

You see what I have to work with? One week the response is pitiful, the next we get a new high water mark for participation. I don’t know what to expect anymore. Can’t you see you’re tearing me apart?

No? Fair enough.

The Analysis
Guest hosts – 0%
You lying bastards. My memory may have been permanently damaged by the sheer amount of cheap bourbon I imbibe, but I distinctly remember many of you marking out like retarded kids when Bob Barker hosted Raw. Don’t worry, though, I’d be ashamed, too.

A dude being thrown off a scaffolding through a stack of flaming tables covered in thumbtacks and broken glass. With a bomb strapped to his face – 4%
I thought the bomb was a nice touch. You folks take me too literally. This is just my way of saying ‘hardcore wrestling’. Which is also my way of saying ‘shit wrestling’. I’m sure I’ve made my dislike of hardcore clear enough in previous Poll Positions, but let’s do this one more time, and get into the mark aspect of the thing a little.

I’ve been exposed to far more hardcore wrestling than I’m comfortable with over the course of my time as a wrestling fan, and I was never really into it. The only time I think I ever actually marked out for something hardcore was when The Undertaker tossed Mick Foley off the top of the cell, and that was more because I’d never seen anything like it at the time. Neither had a lot of people, but it quickly became something to be topped, and it could be argued that this angle led to a series of similar incidents, including the infamous ‘Danbury Fall‘, when Vic Grimes and New Jack tumbled over twenty feet onto an unprotected concrete floor during ECW’s Living Dangerously show some two years later. In 2002, during a match in the horrifying XPW, New Jack would take revenge on Grimes for permanent damage sustained to his brain and right eye by shocking him with a taser and throwing him off a forty foot scaffold in such a way that he missed the stacks of tables that were supposed to break his fall and came very close to missing the ring entirely. The segment in 2005 documentary Forever Hardcore where New Jack claims he was trying to murder Grimes is genuinely chilling, and made me wonder just how the hell this man managed to remain involved in professional wrestling.

I mention these incidents specifically because the main problem with hardcore wrestling is escalation. Seeing a guy take a twenty foot drop through a table is a “holy shit” moment the first time. Once you’ve seen it a couple more, it’s not that big a deal. So to get the pop, the guy performing the drop has to up his game by falling further or harder or through more tables or whatever. It’s a fool’s game, because sooner or later you end up with promotions like CZW, where guys are routinely bleeding like stuck pigs and it’s not something anybody marks out over because it’s every guy in every match. At this point, to get the pop, you’re busting out stupid, potentially life-threatening spots.

I don’t think there’s much of a place for hardcore wrestling anymore. It’s gone back to being a very specialized niche for a very specialized group of fans (I believe they call them ‘fucking morons’ in many parts of the civilized world), which is probably why I was so upset by the pointless violence of the Foley/Abyss match from Bound For Glory. It was completely unnecessary and the entire reason it happened – much like the pyro shenanigans from Bragging Rights – was because there was a guy in the ring, Mick Foley, who can’t work a straight wrestling match anymore. Of course, in Cena and Orton’s favor is the fact that nobody broke a woman’s arm in their match. I didn’t like either contest, but I’ll take the PG-rated product over what inevitably happens when wrestling goes beyond that – because it’s anything but mature.

Fuck hardcore wrestling. It’s an embarrassment to the business. And if you’re the kind of ‘fan’ that actively supports guys falling through sheets of plate glass and using staple guns on each other, then fuck you, too.

A sixty-minute masterclass where two amazing technicians exchange the crispiest of crisp moves until one finally outmaneuvers the other to score a clean pinfall – 15%
This is a slightly different kettle of fish, as matches of this nature tend not to be a series of mark-out moments so much as one of those times where you sit with your mouth hanging open, reminded for once that there are men (and women) who are something close to artists when it comes to putting together the technical side of a wrestling match. Again, I didn’t necessarily mean a match that goes sixty minutes, the exaggeration – like the bomb thing – was in fun.

A vast majority of my favorite matches and performers fall towards this end of a straight line drawn between technical and spotfest, and most of what I’m watching outside of the weekly TV shows at the moment is a great deal of KENTA and Naomichi Marufuji from 2000 to the present, which is a little technical, a little spotty, and then a lot guys getting kicked in the head. I’d ultimately put many of those matches into this category because they really don’t fit anywhere else, and I think they’re awesome.

Speaking of KENTA, one of his more famous admirers, CM Punk, is another on my list of favorite performers. Before he Learned How To Work, Punk put on some great wrestling matches with the likes of Danielson, Styles, and Joe that are – in the opinion of this writer – an absolute highlight of Sapolsky-era ROH.

Moving away from the Puro and Puro-influenced, much of which I’ve only started watching in the last several years, I grew up admiring the likes of Curt Hennig, Shawn Michaels, and Bret Hart, and that trio of names alone invokes – once you get past the bitterness and politicking – images of great wrestling matches performed with a grace and surety that lives long in the memory. Shawn in particular will leave a stunning legacy of classic matches.

I’m not sure I would describe my reaction to these matches as marking out, but they’re certainly high on the list of things I would include on a DVD for someone who had never seen pro wrestling before and wanted to know why I liked it. I think that may actually be higher praise.

A gang of juniors busting out an insane spotfest with more flips than a pancake – 17%
I do like me a good spotfest, so long as it has some kind of context (i.e. as part of a larger match) and so long as it isn’t ridiculously dangerous. Like hardcore wrestling, there is an element of escalation to the theory of high-flying spots, and when guys start hurling themselves off cages or into the railings or whatever, I start to worry about their safety more than I’m enjoying the match. Five years ago, I probably wouldn’t have even thought that last sentence, but a lot of water has passed under the bridge since then, and it just isn’t necessary for any worker to put their body on the line that way. Going back to Bound For Glory, another wince-inducing moment was the bump Suicide and Daniels took at the end of The Ultimate X match. I was about thirty feet away, and I jumped out of my seat at that for all the wrong reasons. I genuinely thought Daniels had broken his neck.

Not a mark-out moment.

One of the changes I really feel needs to happen to the business, wherever and however it may be presented, is this mindset that it’s impressive for a guy to take a bump like that and then show up for TV two days later. It’s something that even intelligent fans seem to actively encourage, and I have trouble understanding why. There’s something in all of us that responds in a very primal way to that guy in the fight who just won’t quit. Not the biggest, not the baddest, and not the most technically gifted, he’s the one that’ll stand up, soaked in blood and half-dead, and give the other guy the finger. On the one hand, it’s the relationship between the wrestling fan and this particular archetype that has given us some truly great angles and matches. On the other, it’s the very same relationship that leads us to declare Mick Foley a God because he can roll off a stretcher and stagger back to the ring with a concussion and one of his teeth hanging out of his nose.

Given all that we now know about the damage wrestlers do to themselves over the course of a career, the flame-outs and horror stories and deaths, the lack of benefits and protection offered to them when they decide to hang it up, I often wonder if that makes any of you as uncomfortable as I occasionally feel.

A little off the beaten track of cruiserweights, I admit, but there’s definitely a correlation between the more extreme aspects of being a flyer and some of the spots that show up in – say – Wrestlemania’s Money In The Bank match, surely now the most high profile spotfest in mainstream wrestling. The difference, I think, is that when you see Shelton Benjamin jumping onto a group of guys from three-quarters of the way up a Hardy-sized ladder, well, it’s a group of guys. Barring any serious mishaps, nobody’s eating concrete.

All of that aside, I think cruiserweights are awesome, and it’s borderline criminal that there are no major US belts in the weight class anymore. I would mark out like a little girl being bought her first pair of Jeff Hardy armbands if WWE was ever to do anything as awesome (and random, I grant you) as replacing ECW with a cruiserweight show.

So I mark out for awesome cruiserweight bouts that include cool spots, but man cannot survive on spotfests alone.

Two ring psychologists who have mastered the art of wrestling to such an extent that they can literally exchange headlocks and punches in slow motion and the crowd goes nuts for it – 19%
Honestly, I’m no expert in the field of the old masters (you’ll want Glazer for that), but I’m a seasoned enough fan and critic that I can tell the difference between somebody who knows how to whip a crowd into a frenzy by doing virtually nothing, and somebody who thinks acting like that guy is the same thing. One is Flair in his prime, the other is Triple H (and by extension, Randy Orton, a man not yet thirty who wrestles like he’s forty). The aforementioned Mr. Glazer sent me a 1986 clash between Barry Windham and Flair last week, and I was struck by Flair’s awareness of his environment and the way he worked his way from a respectful start to letting his natural heelishness come out as the crowd rallied behind Windham. Perhaps it was coming away from such an entertaining display of ring psychology by one of its masters that made me shit all over Orton/Cena in such a big way. Orton does gurning Viper Of Evil and that’s really it. In comparison, there are so many shades to Flair that it feels stupid to stand them side by side.

I think that’s a lot of the attraction to old-school wrestling. Being NWA champ in the days of the territories wasn’t just about putting yourself over. If there was going to be money to be made the next time you came through, you damn well needed to leave the other guy looking strong, too. That’s something of a lost art these days, and the reasons are as confusing as they are illogical.

But let’s take a couple of steps back to that guy who won’t give up, and specifically to the Bret Hart and Steve Austin double turn at Wrestlemania 13. That may well be my all-time favorite wrestling match, and there isn’t a whole lot of wrestling in it. What makes the last couple of minutes so mind-blowing are the months of storyline behind it coupled with the performances of both Hart and Austin during the match itself. Going into the ring, Hart is a babyface attracting some boos for the way he’s carried himself. Austin, on the other hand, is a heel attracting cheers for the very same reason. The psychological weight of the match is carried mainly by Hart, who does a magnificent job of playing the frustrated hero teetering on the precipice before finally losing it when he refuses to release the Sharpshooter. Austin, for his part, doesn’t behave like a face during the match at all, but it’s clear from his behavior that the crowd reaction is pushing him onward, and the superb commentary from Jim Ross (one of his last truly great performances, I think) only adds to the impression of a massive groundswell of support breaking through. These separate character arcs converge at the moment when Austin, with blood streaming down his face, first momentarily breaks the Sharpshooter (which nobody did back then), and then passes out before he’ll submit to Bret, who then punishes him (and turns heel) by refusing to relinquish the hold.

I vividly remember the first time I saw the Hart/Austin clash because I was absolutely mesmerized. And at the crucial moment, as Austin’s bloody, broken body sagged to the mat, I had shivers down my spine.

Again, for the cheap seats, that is why I’m a wrestling fan, and that all falls under the umbrella of psychology.

Other – 20%
Lots of other this week. Let’s take a look at what got mentioned in the forums.

“When the unexpected happens,” says Dhaise. “Tommy beat Raven. Benoit made Triple H tap. Even Hogan bodyslamming Andre.”

There was a little back and forth on the subject of Russo, a master of the inexplicable rather than the unexpected, and Dhaise was quick to add the disclaimer: “Russo swerves need not apply.”

All of which I totally agree with. My Ciclope-is-really-Malenko moment totally fits this description, where the outcome is unexpected but logical, and pays off, in some way, an angle or storyline. It definitely makes for some mark-out moments.

“Alcohol,” says Iain Burnside, and is horribly right. At least in my case.

Lucard raises the terrible spectre of the Boss Man and Big Show’s dad, which I have to admit is one of my all-time favorite angles mostly because it’s so atrocious. The Boss Man, one of my favorite wrestlers when I was an innocent boy with no idea where my enjoyment of this business would take me, is so magnificently evil throughout this storyline that it’s all I can do not to cheer for him. And then, of course, there was the ‘funeral’, a scene that climaxed with The Boss Man driving away a police car with Show’s father’s casket attached to the back. Attached to that? The Big Show himself, trying desperately to hang on.

Sometimes you just have to love wrestling for all the wrong reasons.

While we’re in the realm of comedy, Beadle pointed out a few of his favorite moments, including Edge and Christian (“Long live the stream!” “Long live the zoo!”), Tomko and Christian (“Gimme a beat.” “No.”), and…uh…Snitsky and Heidenreich.

Glazer pointed to the mark-out potential of a perfectly executed angle, with his example being Orton and Dibiase on Raw a week or so back. I actually loved that angle. The guys involved, not so much. I kinda wish the kids would quit taking acting lessons from Triple H and his quivering face.

Jack_The_Ripper marks out every time someone springboards towards Kane and eats a chokeslam for their troubles. But Jack’s weird like that. I’ll take his point in two ways. 1. I pretty much always mark out for the Michinoku Driver and the many variants thereof, and 2. A small part of me pretty much always marks out when CM Punk shows up.

BSUVincent mentioned debuts and returns, and mentioned that Bischoff on Raw was the last time he called someone to ask if they were watching. This reminded me of being at a friend’s house and being caught completely off-guard by The Radicalz being in the front row at Raw. My friend had gone to the restroom, and I remember yelling for him to come back. That was definitely a mark-out moment at the time.

All of this is good, valid stuff.

A word-perfect, ten minute promo from one of the industry’s best – 26%
I’m already eight pages into this thing, a day overdue, and sick as a dog, so I’m going to let one of the guys who has starred in this weeks’s column do this section for me. It’s just a couple of minutes, but if you want to see a promo that utterly defines a character and a feud, I have one for you. Go to it, CM Punk.

The Position
Tough choice this week. But if there’s one thing I find any match, angle, or storyline is useless without, it’s that elusive creature we call psychology. It doesn’t necessarily have to be two guys convincing us that headlocks and punches equal a classic, but it’s a reason for things happening, a reason for us to care, and for those of us who like the unexpected to make sense, our spots to be in the context of a match, and our promos to mean something, it’s a reason to mark out.

The Pimpage
Oh, shit. Wheeler is nicer than me?

Aaron Glazer starts with Ted Dibiase, Jim Duggan, and enough stipulations to choke a horse, and ends with the…Greatest Match Ever?

The Future
Next week’s column is already preparing to take about a million shots at Vince Russo and DX. The question? “How Do You Feel About Kayfabe?”