Dr. Darin Davis

Are the bookers getting lazy? I’ve seen more countouts in televised wrestling in the last 4 weeks than I’ve seen in the last 4 years. Especially double countouts.

Other than that purple Muppet on Sesame Street, who likes countouts?

Fans hate countouts.

Wrestlers hate countouts.

Referees hate countouts (they have to take all the heat).

So why do them? That’s just bad booking, in my opinion. There is (almost) always another way to accomplish what you want without using them.

I watched a documentary last weekend about women’s wrestling in the 1940′s and 50′s called Lipstick & Dynamite.

I won’t give a full movie review about it (for that you can check out Roger Ebert‘s 2.5 stars). Not a great documentary on wrestling itself, but it did give you a feeling for what the first females had to go through starting out in a sport dominated by men.

There were probably at least half a dozen women interviewed, all of which had worked for a promoter named Billy Wolfe, but the focus of the movie was on three particular women. One was an 84-year-old with the mouth of a sailor named Gladys “Kill ‘em” Gillem. The other two were The Fabulous Moolah and Mae Young, who are known to younger fans due to their ongoing appearances in the WWE.

A few things I thought were interesting:

• Unlike the men, who could work a particular territory for months at a time, the women had to constantly be on the move and were not able to stay in a territory for more than a match or two
• Many states (like California and Illinois) had a ban on female wrestling
• Many of the women interviewed had careers that spanned more than 20 yrs
• Moolah claims to have been the women’s champion and undefeated for 29 yrs. Some of the other wrestlers disputed this, saying she had her own belt.
• Moolah, Mae Young, and midget wrestler Diamond Lil were living in the same house together (??)
• All of the women said that they don’t like the “T&A” shows that women’s wrestling has become. Promoters put women in the ring that look good and have no talent. Most of them also thought that the recent “gag” appearances of Moolah and Young in the WWE tarnished their reputations.

With many of them in their 80′s at the time of filming, and some that have since passed on (Moolah), the movie gives us a glimpse at some really “tough broads” that were pioneers in the industry.

Lipstick & Dynamite theatrical trailer:

Josh over at Missouri Wrestling Revival has announced a special writing competition for the summer of 2008.

The theme is “Improving the Midwest Pro Wrestling Scene”. The competition is open to all wrestlers, promoters, and fans in Missouri and the bordering states.

From the site:

We want to hear your open, honest, professional solutions to the problems faced by professional wrestling promotions in the Midwest. Whether you are a wrestling fan, promoter, wrestler, or otherwise connected to the business, MWR knows you have ideas that can revitalize wrestling in the area. If you have solutions to the challenges that pro wrestling promotions face, then create a memorable essay that offers these solutions in a professional and thought-provoking way. Your goal should be to cause a strong positive reaction from all readers, regardless of his or her wrestling background.

A portion of the entry fee will be donated to the Wounded Warrior Project, which “seeks to assist those men and women of our armed forces who have been severely injured during the conflicts in Iraq, Afghanistan, and other locations around the world.”

The deadline for submissions is July 31st. See the site for details.

Welcome… to Monday Night Yawn…

Starting on Monday June 9th, Vince McMahon began giving away one million dollars during the live telecast of Monday Night Raw. To enter, you need to register at wwe.com with your name, address, sex, age, and phone number, and watch the program live to get the “password” while you’re waiting for the call. Apparently a move to bolster ratings (not sure why he didn’t do it during sweeps), while also boosting the number of registered users on their web site. I could also see where having the registration information would be useful when talking to advertisers, so that they could give more information about their demographics instead of relying in the Nielsen data.

In his speech the previous week, McMahon also mentioned that it was an attempt to bring back some fans that hadn’t watched Raw for awhile, and recruit some new viewers that have never watched the program.

Rather than putting on some solid matches and compelling content to give these new fans and “lapsed” fans a reason to tune in every week, we were all treated to an absolute snoozefest.

Seeing McMahon fumble with the touch tone phone was like watching someone’s grandpa “drunk dial”. He took several attempts to dial the numbers, all with the crowd getting more and more restless. Giving away random amounts of money was okay (the total for the night was $1 million), but I can’t understand why he would give one woman two dollars! What is the best thing you could think would happen after that? Is that excited family that probably freaked out when their phone started ringing going to be watching next week? Do you think that someone might tune in and find that so hilarious that they would watch the program again?

With the constant interruptions of the program to watch the Chairman of the Board fatfinger a telephone, and some of the stupid antics (like Charlie Haas and Mae Young) that rivaled the writing at an award show, the whole production seemed amateur.

Apart from that, we got to see some “interesting” facts going into the commercial breaks, like “Did you know that Monday Night Raw is the highest rated regularly scheduled program on cable?“. Anyone who was watching for the first time would surely be asking, “Why?”

I would hope Vince McMahon is going to “re-tool” the program next week, if he continues the giveaway at all.

I came across this as I was looking through my old tapes for some Bam Neely (a.k.a. …) footage. This was a portion of a great matchup between Minnesota wrestler Lenny Lane and internationally known Japanese wrestler The Great Sasuke (pronounced Sas-kay, I believe). Lane had worked for Michinoku Pro Wrestling in Japan, which was owned by Sasuke. Being in the US for some reason, Sasuke agreed to work a match for Sharkey’s promotion. The fans definitely got their money’s worth.

This match has a lot of significance for me for several reasons:

• I started getting into the local scene as a fan around 1995, about the same time that Lane started wrestling. I thought it was great to see him get some national and international exposure (this was before he was in WCW).
• I was there. If you look for the guy with the camera and the greenish colored sweatshirt, that’s me. I had watched a few tapes of Sasuke in action and was amazed by his skill. I couldn’t believe that he was actually wrestling locally.
• The program I received from this event (see below) had a phone number on the back of it. The number was for Eddie Sharkey‘s wrestling training camp. This is the number I called to become a professional wrestler. The ad looks pretty cheesy by today’s standards (or by any standards for that matter) since it was mostly for a 1-900 wrestling “hotline” with a couple of sentences at the bottom about Sharkey (I have a better looking one, but it wasn’t part of this program). Had some trouble getting the thumbnail link to work, so you’ll need to click here to see it.

Within about a month or two of this match, I would be starting training camp with the “Trainer of Champions” in a boxing gym in northeast Minneapolis, MN.

But I’ll save that for another time. Enjoy the match.

This match originally aired on “Slick” Mick’s Bodyslam Review, hosted by Mick Karch and produced by Al Pabon.