Why not reminisce over what the fuck made me a wrestling fan? I guess I can't really do that in a bona fide way as I don't have any Best of Sweet Ebony Diamond 10-disc sets laying around the house, but let's settle, like we always do in life. I've got this here Great American Bash '87 divid that somebody mailed to me (judging from the handwriting - sort of worried and degenerate looking, with a red Sharpie - I bet it's Ed Turtle), so let's crank it up and watch some wrestling from when I was a spry 14-year-old, and it being summertime when this was happening, I probably would tune in with enthusiasm to the Saturday afternoon syndicated JCP show while lacing up my cleats to go play pony league, which was so exciting since my town only had one team in that age group, and most of the nearby counties only had one or two teams as well, so we'd actually drive somewhere to go play baseball... it was like I was Duane Kuiper. But see, this is the grey area, because if I was 14, unfortunately, I had already started smoking weed and having sex with this redneck slut named Cindy (as well as her "best friend" Daphne, but that was on the down-low, which wasn't even a term back then... what a crazy mixed up world!), so I might not've watched the daytime Saturday JCP show, instead catching the late night Saturday one that came on after Saturday Night Live, because I usually had to be home by midnight back then because my parents didn't really want to come pick me up anywhere later than that. Ahh... juvenile delinquency... if you can't be recklessly retarded when you're 14, when can you?
Time machines would be great fun in life if you could have one and nobody else know, because in 1987, Tony Schiavone looked like he made sense, but were you to secretly and suddenly fly him to 2006, looking exactly as he does, he would make no sense and everybody would assume he was the gay night manager at the small town Fas-Mart everybody gets their cheap gas at.
I have often dogged Vince McMahon for wrestling excess and painted the '80s NWA as the penultimate in my experiences as a stupid wrestling fan, but seriously, the War Games set-up is as obnoxiously overdoing it as Wrestlemania, just done from a non-celebrity point of view. I mean, you've got two giant rings, which most indie promotions today probably couldn't even afford one, wrapped in immense nice chain link fence cages, bright lights, and a slew of top-dollar wrestlers. It's ridiculous. I never noticed before that the Dusty Rhodes team comes out to some weird Stanley Clarke/Axel Faltermeyer studio jazz "jam". And there are women in the crowd, like actual grown women beyond the age of 16 who are there for something more than trying to give Alex Shelley oral sex.
DUSTY vs. ARN! Dusty may be the gimmicked son of a plumber, but Arn Anderson looks more like a trim carpenter who drives a diesel Ford than anybody else who has ever wrestled, all the way down to the prescription sunglasses he used to sport that only rednecks wear. Arn instinctively tries to escape the ring, only to hit cage, and Dusty climbs up to hold the top to reinforce the fact that THEY ARE TRAPPED TO SETTLE THEIR OWN GRUDGES, but according to National Wrestling Alliance rules, as enforced by SCRAPPY MCGOWAN! God, how I hate Dusty Rhodes. He's basically Hack Myers, but without all that S&M creepy undertone. DDT by Dust, he leans his fat ass into the corner to watch while Arn blades, then they go right to the cage, TO MAKE IT REAL! Teddy Long is reffing as well, I guess one ref on each side of the cage constructure. Man, can you imagine walking into a bar in 1987 and seeing Scrappy McGowan and Teddy Long sitting there together drinking?
THUS ENTERS TULLY! Tully Blanchard gets caught up in the ropes trying to get at Dusty, because he not only infused old school sensibilities with '80s era wrestling styles, but he did so with a touch of comedy only as it could be filtered through a cokehead's mind. Also interesting to note in retrospect, the coin toss to decide who went in first ate up about half of Tully and Arn's two minutes to fuck Dusty up. Had J.J. Dillon been worth his rate as a manager, he would've filed an official protest over that matter.
Animal enters and powers up his team like floating Shinobi balls, and the crowd squeals in delight, even though Dusty has tasted the slivered blade of making it real as well. I hate Dusty, but he sure could bleed nice.
Nature Boy in, and I think both Tully and Animal now both bleed. And you know this whole story already, because you are an internet wrestling fan. And then Nikita, and then Luger, and then Hawk. It's basically a ridiculous parade of bladejobs, with the crowd falling victim to adrenaline or disgust, depening on which two-minute period we are in. AND THE MATCH BEYOND HAS NOT EVEN BEGUN YET!
Hawk enters and all heels take a bump or two for him to give his team time to recoup and to even the match. I will never really understand how the Road Warrior named Hawk got the immense push he always did. J.J. Dillon is in last, but is an impotent old untanned man attempting to penetrate Hawk with his strikes. Dillon does do, however, probably the best motherfuckin' wobbly legs I've ever seen a man do while being completely held upright by another man, looking almost Jed Clampett dance-like even below the waist while Nikita holds Dillon's upper body still. Dillon blades a gusher while Ellering uses a Warrior arm spikelet to force the realness. A few power moves, Dillon leg twitches, and back to the spike. Who let Ellering bring that spike in the match? Again, Dillon should've filed a protest. Dillon surrenders, camera close-up on the bloody facial money shot, match over. The watching crowd orgasms in delight.
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