Sheik Abdul Bashir (a.k.a. Shawn Daivari)

Sheik Abdul Bashir (a.k.a. Shawn Daivari) was robbed of the TNA X-Division title when the referee in the match attacked Bashir, giving opponent Eric Young the chance to make the 3-count and win the match.

TNA referee Shane Sewell, a former Canadian wrestler, has had a couple of altercations with Bashir in the past, but they were always post match. This is the first that actually affected the outcome.

It’s hard to believe that they wouldn’t need involvement from TNA management to reverse the decision on that, but I wouldn’t count on them doing the right thing.

The only good outcome of this is that if the decision sticks, it looks like it may cause a split in the “good guys” locker room, creating a third faction. When there are more than just “good guys” and “bad guys”, things can get interesting.

Just happened to see on the Pro Wrestling Torch web site that the “Hitman” Bret Hart is going to be at the Mall of America in Bloomington, MN at 6:00pm on Thursday Nov 20th. He’ll be signing his autobiography, “Hitman: My Real Life in the Cartoon World of Wrestling” at the Nickelodeon Universe store.

I wasn’t planning on going, but I thought I’d pass it along. Tour dates for other cities can be found in the same article.

There is an interview at PW Torch where Hart says he’s saying goodbye to the wrestling business after the book tour:

“I’d be happy being remembered for really brilliant storytelling in my matches, not for some last chance to snap up some money,”…“I respectfully understand my light in wrestling is fading. I can live with that.”

“I just wanted people - even my kids - to walk in my shoes and know that it was never easy being gone all the time. I was pretty much on the road for 300 days a year and that didn’t include travel back and forth.”

You can find more information at Bret Hart’s official site.

Ed Sharkey

Back when I was still participating in wrestling camp, a crew was filming a documentary about one of my trainers, Eddie Sharkey, and about a few other wrestlers in the Minneapolis area. I had forgotten about this, but I just stumbled across it recently.

You can see excerpts of the short film and hear audio clips at the documentary site. It doesn’t look like the film is available for sale or rent, unfortunately. The film is called The Minneapolis Wrestling Club.

You can find an audio clip of Sharkey on their site, where he talks about Harley Race and himself getting in a fight with a couple of people from the crowd in Denver, CO.

Eddie’s bio on the site:

Eddie Sharkey wrestled from the early 1960s to 1972. He retired and stayed out of wrestling for a number of years. Eventually he was lured back into the business by some younger wrestlers who asked if he would train them. These wrestlers - Jesse Ventura and the Road Warriors - eventually went on to some success. Sharkey still runs a wrestling school in the Twin Cities and referees matches throughout the Upper Midwest [at the time the documentary was filmed].

There is also a short video clip of Sharkey available in the excerpts (QuickTime). In the background you can see me wrestling Terry Fox in our training ring. The referee was “Rough Rod”. Over on the far right of the screen you can see Scott Free and Hellraiser Gutz (who is currently in the WWE as Bam Neely) standing on the apron.

The second part of the clip shows a battle royal. If you don’t blink, you can see me for a few frames wrestling in a black tank top. Eddie is the ref in that match.

Also part of the documentary is a profile of “Sodbuster” Kenny Jay. I wrestled Kenny twice. The first time I wrestled him he was 63 years old (that is not a typo). That was back in 1999. Wayne McCarty has pictures on his blog of Kenny wrestling in June of 2008! Do the math on that one!

I’ve mentioned a couple of times that I was thinking about keeping track of the actual Nielsen ratings for wrestling TV programs in addition to tracking my own viewing habits. Here’s why I don’t think I’ll ever do it:

A story last week stated that ECW had the lowest rating in its history (or something similar). Was it that bad of a program? No, the ratings were down because of the presidential election.

I’m trying to measure the quality of the programming. The ratings are not direct measure of quality or how enjoyable the program was to a wrestling fan. The ratings can be/are affected by the enjoyment, but they can also be affected by other factors.

The ratings measure how many people (wrestling fan and non-wrestling fan) decided to watch the programming rather than doing one of a million other possible things they had available to them. They could have decided to watch another program, play a video game, read a book, or believe it or not even go outside.

BTW, “share” is a measure of how many people that decided to watch TV watched a given program. It is a percentage of the total viewers during that time period. A “10″ share would mean 10 percent of the people who were watching TV at the time were watching that program.

I’m more interested in what wrestling fans that watched the program thought of it than whether or not the general population watched it.

As a follow-up on an earlier story about the WWE getting into Japan and heading back to the ’80s, I’ve read a few posts where people are wondering if TNA will step up to the plate and fill the void (if there ends up being a void) of wrestling programming for those of us that are more than 14 years old.

From Wrestle World- New “Kid Friendly” Direction for WWE, could this be TNA’s opening?:

WWE has been taking a drastically more Kid Friendly direction. The storylines are cleaner, less sex less violence… They have brought back the classic heel/face story lines. Gone are the days of grey area. What about TNA you ask? Well, Mick Foley seems to think its worth a shot. And if it’s good enough for Mick, it’s good enough for me.

JustJeff09 writes about TNA:

I’ve been TIVO’ing TNA for the last year or so and I find myself fast forwarding less and less. I’m a huge mark for the X Division guys… TNA is faster paced with better storylines. The mix of old WWE’ers with the new generation works well.

I wrote a post called Circling the Bowl? back in January about some of my problems with the TNA product. The main problems I have with them is that they seem to be copying some of the WWE or WCW angles or ideas when they could be doing so much more with the talent they have.

Another post on Wrestle World- Ways to Improve TNA:

…if TNA continues running its program they way it is now, I don’t think Vince will be losing any sleep… TNA needs to stop ripping off WWE and attempting to be the same company. Remember WCW? How did that end. ECW at least used to offer an alternative… TNA also has the X Division which is amazing. It is actually exciting to watch. TNA also has a new interesting story line with the MME (main event mafia) vs young talent.

I agree with most of what they have to say, except for the MME. The whole Main Event Mafia thing has gotten a favorable reception, but it smells like the NWO to me (except in this case it would be the OWO: The Old World Order). The thing that made the NWO interesting was that it hadn’t been done before (at least in the time that I’ve been watching wrestling), and that it introduced shades of gray- an alternative to just “good guys” and “bad guys”. You could argue that the lack of respect that Sting is complaining about and the “young lions” disagreement with that could have fans cheering or booing either side. But I haven’t seen anything to make me think they aren’t going to just duplicate what’s already been done instead of taking it to another level.

From Off The Mat- Changing the face of wresting forever:

How many times have we heard that from TNA, WWE, WCW, et all? I’m all for the hype, but seriously. Do we need yet another earth-shattering announcement that will cause the world to spin off its axis and hurtle uncontrollably at the sun?… There is simply no way to live up to that pronouncement.

It will only end up “changing the face of wrestling” if we’re able to look back on this and say that it was the beginning of a legitimate competitor to the WWE. Otherwise it’s just another angle.

From Pinakin’s Weblog- I’m Glad:

i’m glad…That TNA has started revamping themselves in a big way and stepping up the non-wrestling aspect of their shows… The wrestling was always there. (Many times it has been better in the TNA ring than anywhere else) But the one thing they lacked was the high quality production values…

While I’m usually not as interested in the non-wrestling aspects of the shows, it’s probably because they’re bad (or that they could be better). I see his point. I would agree that making the production better would help. Part of that is not copying everyone else.

Will TNA step up? Only time will tell.

I’ll continue to track the amount of time I view the program to see if anything changes.

I think Evan Bourne being out of action for possibly the next few months will affect the already low amount of time I spend watching ECW. His matches were definitely ones that I wouldn’t fast forward through.

Other than having to sit on the sidelines when you are on a hot streak and being given a major push in the promotion, what’s the worst part of severely injuring your right ankle in a match? Having to sell the left one because that’s what your opponent(s) are beating on.

If you didn’t see the tag team match on ECW last week, Bourne did a somersault outside the ring on Bam Neely (another shameless plug for Bam) and came down wrong on this right ankle (we’d later find out that it was a dislocated ankle and ligament tear). After the injury, he finished out the rest of the match with his opponents working over his left leg for the duration. I was cringing watching it because I was aware that it was the wrong wheel. And I knew that to do a good job selling the left leg he would have stop using it. So for about ten minutes he had to hop around on his dislocated, torn right ankle to let everyone know how badly the left one had been pummelled.

Next WWE Japan Champion?

There have been a few stories going around lately about the WWE pushing harder to get into Japan. The WWE sees Japan as one of the most important overseas markets.

Here are a couple of quotes from a USA Today article:

“Japanese fans are changing,” [Funaki] told The Associated Press. “The key is to give them more opportunities to watch WWE. If they see it, they’ll get it.”

and

“Even if you’ve never watched it before, you can jump in and start watching because it’s good vs. evil,” said Ed Wells, Vice President and General Manager and WWE Japan. “We always refer to ourselves as sports entertainment. We created that genre in the U.S. And it’s something that we are now, as of this year, taking really worldwide.”

Is this a good thing?

There have been many times over the years that the WWF/WWE has steered toward the ridiculous, whether it was a particular storyline or a particular character, to the point where I just didn’t want to watch anymore. Not that other national promotions haven’t done some really stupid, embarrassing stuff as well –

Robocop in WCW, I’m talking to you brother!

When you got to the point where you thought American professional wrestling was just unwatchable,  you could always get a hold of a Japanese tape and see some great wrestling action without all of the soap opera, crazy product tie-ins, kiddie-safe fare, or black-and-white storylines (e.g. “good” vs “evil). The WWE of late seems to be going back to the ’80s, where apparently everybody had to have a second job to make ends meet. They had garbage men, dentists, clowns, undertakers. Now we’re getting a carny. [Coming from a "doctor", maybe I shouldn't be too critical about that part]

With the WWE trying to become a bigger fixture in Japan, I’m getting a little heartburn. Will it become popular enough in Japan that the other promotions will have to adopt some of the WWE’s format and storylines to compete?

How long before we see Godzilla wrestle Rosie O’Donnell in a “King of the Monsters” match?

[Updated 10/20/08: Put in a couple more wrestling trainees I forgot to include when I originally published this]

[Updated again 10/21/08: a few more names I forgot to include]

In Part 1, I talked about how I started wrestling training back in 1997 with Eddie Sharkey. In Part 2, I covered the move to a location in Coon Rapids, MN after the closing of the Peacemaker Center, and the addition of trainer Terry Fox, along with Charlie “Thunderblood” Norris and Sam Houston.

Part 3 was intended to cover “the rest”, but I’ve been struggling with how to do this for a couple of months. “The rest” is too big for one post or for several posts and I tend to remember things out of sequence. I think it’s time to drop the numbers. I’ll cover the rest of the overview with this one and then anything else will be sort of random from sometime between the start of Part 1 and the end of Part 3.

Continuing from Part 2…

At the end of the summer of 1997, with the weather growing colder, it was time to find a place inside.

We ended up setting up shop in a garage in St. Louis Park, MN. It was actually in back of Terry Fox’s house that his mom was living in (Terry was living somewhere else). Sometimes she would have us do a few chores like carrying a roll of carpet up from the basement, or other things that she couldn’t do on her own. As long as she had some “big, strong boys” there, might as well put us to work.

In the summer, we could have the ring outside, but in the winter it had to be moved to the garage. At first, there wasn’t much headroom. Even though we were in a shorter ring (the ring posts were sawed off so that it could be used in the low ceilings of a typical bar), if you went vertical more than a couple of feet you would be banging your head. I remember a few people (including me) getting their heads driven into the rafters taking a reverse atomic drop. A few months later Terry would cut away most of the rafters to give us a lot more room. I didn’t really look too closely at what was holding the roof up (didn’t want to know), but it looked like he did a pretty good job of putting in other reinforcements.

The trainees from our previous location stayed in the camp (Robbie and Mike Thunder, Hellraiser Gutz (a.k.a. ECW’s Bam Neely), PrimeTime, “Opera Man”, the Mighty Angus, referee “Diamond” Joe, Hellraiser Blood, and fairly quickly we started getting new recruits.

In the years that I was there, the trainees that I can recall were Thor Tyler, “Playboy” Pete Huge, Big Daddy Hoofer, Ultimate Fighter Brad Kohler, “Andy” (forgot his ring name), Mitch Paradise, Shawn Daivari (a.k.a. Sheik Adnan Bashir in TNA), “City Slicker” Jake Ricker, Ian & Ashley Xavier, K-Train, Scott Free, The Sheriff, Shifty, Lacey, Crystal, Ladyhawk, Cynnamon, Sandy from FL, Morgan P.R., “Ray” (don’t remember his ring name), Austin Aries, Helmut Von Strauss/Justin Lee, Smilin’ Jack Daniels/Devin Nash, Black Stalliion, Drej, Travis Sharpe, Storm Wolf, “Stone Cold” Doug Johnson, Troy “Don’t Call Me Goldberg” Steel, Chuck Diesel, some kid from China (?), and the High Rollers.

At one point I remember counting 17 people training all on the same day. Crazy. Way too many to do anything effectively. Some doing in-ring drills, some on mats outside the ring, some working on punches and other holds. Then “musical chairs” and everyone rotates.

Besides the camp regulars, on Fridays we sometimes had wrestlers from out of town including neighboring states (mostly Wisconsin and Iowa) work out at the camp. They usually were coming in to work a Saturday show and got in a day early to get a little extra ring time. Guys like Travis Lee, Red Lightning, “Superstar” Steve Stardom, Jay Hanna/Mr. Destiny, T.S. Aggressor, Kamikazee Kid, Rain/Payton Banks. Some former Sharkey trainees like Red Tyler and Lenny Lane would also stop by occasionally, along with local wrestling “celebrities” Tim Larson and “Capital City” Kyle.

Other times we had “friendly” promoters like “The Iron Duke” Jim Mitchel, Big Al, and the High Rollers come in to do some talent scouting.

The Split

I’m a little fuzzy on the timeline of what happened next (sometime in 2000?), but there was a growing unrest among some members of the camp. I think part of it had to do with the fact that you couldn’t use the top rope for 8 or 9 months out of the year when the ring was inside. Others may have had some disagreements about paying for heat (which I didn’t mind). Still others thought that we should be learning more advanced moves than some of the basics (armdrags, bodyslams, etc.).

Whatever the various reasons, collectively they were enough to split the camp. The Sheriff and Shifty would go off to form their own training camp under their Midwest Pro Wrestling banner, renting a building in an industrial park area. They started out in St. Louis Park and then moved to Maple Grove. Some people stayed with Terry, some went to MPW, and a few of us participated in both camps (including Sharkey).

Except for the occasional collection of money to pay for propane in the winter, Terry’s camp had the policy that if you were trained there (and you paid your original training fee), you could work out in the camp as long as it was running. The MPW camp had the benefit of high ceilings so top rope moves could be perfected, but with that came a building that needed the rent paid and other expenses. For existing wrestlers that had already been through training, they set up a fee structure much like a health club. For a small monthly fee (I think it was something like $15 a month), you could use the facilities. They also had free weights and some other perks that I never really got to take advantage of. The MPW camp also churned out quite a few wrestlers, including O.D.B.

The Future

March 5th of this year marked the 11th anniversary of my first day of training with Sharkey. December of this year will be 7 years since my last match. Still hard to believe it’s been that long on both counts. A lot has changed since then, both on the local and national scene. Promotions have come and gone, and then come back. TV viewership swings with the mainstream popularity, which then trickles down to the locals. I had started in the business just as the general population was being re-introduced to the WWF/WWE because of a guy named “Stone Cold” Steve Austin. In the same month I started camp, his classic match against Bret Hart at WrestleMania 13 took place. This was the match where Austin bled like a “stuck pig” and would end up passing out rather than quitting when placed in Hart’s Sharpshooter finishing move. After that match, Austin became the next superstar and the wrestling business really took off– even more than it did in the Hulk Hogan era. The local scene usually lags by about 6 months or so, and by the time I was ready to start working matches the shows were being booked at a regular pace.

Around the time I left, the business was starting to slow down again. Guys like Austin and “The Rock” were moving away from wrestling to other parts of the entertainment business and there wasn’t really anyone of that magnitude to fill their shoes. Things eventually slowed down around this area as well.

In the last year or so the local scene seems to have picked up. There seem to be more local shows running and more venues that are promoting wrestling on a regular schedule. I’m not one to predict the future, and I haven’t really researched too far into the past, but I’m guessing that this will always be the normal curve for pro wrestling. The pendulum swings one way and then the other. I don’t think there’s any danger in pro wrestling ever going away at the local or national levels, and at the same time I would be surprised if it ever became more popular than it was in the late 1990s. Luckily for me, I just happened to time it right and get in at the bottom of that upswing.

Now if I could just figure out how to do that for the stock market I’d be set.

-========-

Terry Fox continues to run his promotion [MIW]. Wayne McCarty has some pictures of Terry’s latest training camp w/ Austin Aries on his blog.

I switched over to Google Docs to keep track of the wrestling TV viewing habits that I’ve been publishing here for a few months. One of the advantages is that the Google spreadsheet makes it easy to publish the charts using the same links every week. That means after watching a program I can put in the new numbers, update the chart, and it will immediately appear on this blog without me having to do anything else. No more offline spreadsheet. No more uploading of image files, etc. No more modifying links to point to the new images.

The only downside so far is that the Google office app is pretty weak in the charting area. In fact to get them all using the same scale I had to artificially put in a trend line of 100% to force it to come out the same. Hopefully they’ll improve this over time.

Since it’s pretty easy to update them, I’ll be doing it several times a week rather than waiting until the end (or the end of the month like I used to do). Most likely I won’t post anything here when I do an update. You can just go to the TV Viewership page whenever you want to see the latest data.

If I add any new metrics, like the number of annoying poses Matt Morgan does per match, I’ll let you know.

The good news: we got to see Lenny Lane on ECW this week.

The bad news: it was a squash match

Rather than let the memory of Lenny in a squash linger, or to let the words of color commentator Matt Striker,  saying Lane was “…trying to make a name for himself here in ECW…” , be the most recent ones people remember, I dug out a video from more than 10 years ago to share with everyone. I guess Striker “forgot” that Lane had competed in ECW in the past, or that he had been a champion in WCW beating the likes of Rey Mysterio (jr.) and Ultimo Dragon.

This is a match between “Luscious” Lenny Lane (with manager Mortimer Plumbtree) and the Kamikazee Kid. These two had a great feud back in the Northern Premier Wresting (NPW) promotion.

The match takes place in Austin, MN, which is the hometown of Kamikazee and it originally aired on ”Slick” Mick’s Bodyslam Review. The match was already joined in progress, so rather than editing it further to try to get it under the YouTube 10 min limit I broke it into two parts.

A note for the squeamish– “There Will be Blood”.

Part 1

Part 2

Commentary: “Slick” Mick Karsh & Tom “The Bear” (and J.B. Trask)
Referee: Mike Diamond
Producer/Camera: Al Pabon