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| Steroid Society |
Matt Barnes |
People are dying. The government is investigating. But will wrestling actually do anything about its addiction?
Eddie. Davey Boy. Curt. Hawk… Oh, it would be so easy for this to be yet another wrestling-related article that opened with a list of those brothers in arms lost to the evils of drug abuse, mourning their passing and citing them as the reason for change. But this article isn’t about those guys; this article is about every worker in North America today and how industry pressure is causing them to risk their lives and their sanity in exchange for doing the job they love. This article is about an industry that neither understands nor truly cares for its workers and about how, nine times out of ten, only those who succumb to this pressure are given a fighting chance of having a main event career.
This isn’t about the men who have fallen – the industry has had those facts and statistics presented to it over and over again and it hasn’t listened, so rehashing the past won’t help at all. Instead, we are going to look at wrestling’s fascination with muscles and why and how the industry puts so much more emphasis on size than skill, without a second thought for the guys it is killing in the process. Ultimately, this article about changing perceptions and changing opinions.
BIG IS BEAUTIFUL?
Looking at WWE today tells an interesting story. At the top of the card you have Cena, Khali and Nitro, with behemoths like Batista, Lashley and Umaga bringing up the rear. All big men and all, with the exception of Umaga, ripped to the hilt. Umaga is also the exception to the rule in another way, however, because he is a great worker. Nobody else on that list can hold a candle to him, but he is stuck with a gimmick that gives him only a fleeting chance of ever gaining the top honours in America’s biggest company.
Reminiscent of a Bam Bam or a Vader, Umaga is a big, functional grappler who has the power to roll over opponents yet makes them look like great warriors at the same time. While pushing Umaga over a super-worker like Shawn Michaels or Edge would be a mistake at this stage, a guy of The Samoan Bulldozer’s size and ability can bring a whole lot to the table if given the opportunity. But, we ask, what do the other guys in that list bring to the table? They aren’t charismatic (Cena excepted), they’re largely green as grass and, most worryingly, there’s a distinct possibility that that they might be doing something extra-curricular to get those incredible physiques.
But the obsession with huge, muscled bodies is not limited to North America – or, indeed, to wrestling. Look back at the Roman and Greek images of toned, muscular Gods; the need to be powerfully built to be seen as a hero goes back that far, and the contribution of such images to the modern psyche should not be overlooked. They are so embedded in the subconscious that maybe they can be seen as a major contributing factor to what we see on our screens today.
However, that isn’t to exonerate WWE for its ills and it doesn’t at all mean that, as an employer, it shouldn’t be behaving in a professional, responsible manner. World Wrestling Entertainment has a duty of care to its employees, especially considering that Vince McMahon’s business model of ‘bigger is better’ virtually created this problem in the first place. As such, the company should be the industry leader in getting its guys off the gas and working with them behind the scenes to help them get great, natural physiques.
After the steroid trials, guys like Shawn Michaels and Bret Hart were pushed to the moon and the business began to evolve. It took a long time to sink in with the fans, admittedly, but the wrestlers looked healthier, worked better and the shows were fast-paced and exciting. This isn’t to say that guys from the Attitude Era weren’t still prone to performance enhancing drugs but – in an era when star attractions like Steve Austin, The Rock, Mick Foley and D-Generation X were built more on edgy characters and progressive storylines than bloated physiques – the need to stick a needle in your ass in order to succeed at your job took a backseat to great personality, workrate and storylines.
WEIGHT WATCHERS
Just for a second, imagine how agile and skilled some of these monstrous guys that WWE so frequently parades in front of us could actually be if they weren’t on the juice. Once upon a time, Test was doing flying elbows and The Big Show could kip-up – and Triple H didn’t tear his quads just walking across the ring. Steroids are utterly counter-productive to great wrestling – but then, why did stellar workers like Chris Benoit and Eddie Guerrero feel the need to get on the gas? Well, when did you ever see them with a major belt before they did? Case in point, Hulk Hogan. Legend? Yes. Huge physique? Yes. Great worker? No.
If the playing field had been more even, Ric Flair could’ve been the man sought by WWE to start the revolution. Maybe Ricky Steamboat. In fact, any number of great workers could have done it – and skinny workhorses like The Dynamite Kid and Davey Boy Smith would never have seen the need to get on the gas, as there would have been nothing to gain by doing so other than eroding their skills. And would Hogan’s career have been any different without all that muscle mass weighing him down? Granted, he wouldn’t have been a bronzed, God-like figure, but would that have mattered? After all, did it really matter that much when a streamlined Hulkster hit WCW in 1994?
In imploring the industry to change its muscle-bound philosophy, it raises the question as to whether there really is a place for sculpted, Hulk Hogan-types in wrestling. Sure there is, but then where does it end? If we take John Cena, with all his size and muscles, as a modern day Hulkster, who do you have as a viable opponent – Shannon Moore? Austin Aries? Gregory Helms? That would take all the believability out of the situation, because while the big, muscular guys look good, they generally have none of the skills needed to make a smaller opponent look credible – much less make them look like a viable threat to the gold.
And so Cena faces even bigger men still like Khali, then goes headlong into a feud with the mildly more entertaining but still achingly deficient Lashley. And not only do these guys lack mobility due to their sheer muscle mass but they are also, in the main, lacking in charisma – giant action figures who can’t wrestle or talk. Could this be because their lives are consumed with too much time in the gym and not enough time hanging out with friends playing on the Wii? Who knows, but compare the personality levels of Batista, Lashley and Snitsky to those of Aries, Cody Rhodes and, heck, even The Miz. Astonishing, isn’t it?
CM Punk is proof positive that you don’t need a huge body and a bagful of prescriptions to be a great, believable, successful professional wrestler. Samoa Joe has the “Dusty Rhodes appeal” in that he looks like your average guy but does the business in the ring, and the fans get it. If it worked once before, why wouldn’t that magic repeat itself in 2007 with a worker like Joe, were he to be given the opportunity? And, for all the flab, who do you think would have won if Joe had thrown down with Batista in real life when they had their brief war of words? Big Dave would have been eaten alive. Joe is huge, he can talk, he looks devastating in the ring and, basically, he has everything that WWE would want in an athlete – expect the inflated muscles.
But why does this need to be such an issue? The reason is simple: the cycle of pushing big guys over real talent is self-fulfilling and self-destructive, and WWE has been doing it for decades. Every time the company tops its latest monster with another, bigger athlete, the goalposts are moved and fans’ expectations increase. For every gassed-up powerhouse hogging the limelight on Raw or SmackDown, there are ten more talented workers earning peanuts on the indies, hoping against hope that perceptions will change and that their dreams will become a reality. And whenever the chips are down, Vince goes with the biggest, freakiest wrestler available – you didn’t think it was coincidence that The Great Khali was made World Heavyweight Champion when Edge got hurt, did you?
WEST COAST FLOP
Every time WWE pushes a smaller man into a headline spot, the company can’t help but derail it. Rey Mysterio is a prime example of this; undoubtedly the best small superstar of his generation, if Rey’s World Title reign had been handled with care he may have been an awesome, sympathetic champion.
Instead of having a clumsy oaf like Khali placing his foot on his chest after a violent, lumbering beatdown, Rey could’ve had incredible TV matches with guys like Chavo and Sabu, before facing the monsters on PPV in heated, David and Goliath battles. It could have been sensational, but it was not to be. As outlined in our feature last month, Rey was jobbed out to every big man under the sun and his title run was a disaster – and it cemented WWE’s Observer-Expectancy effect that small men can’t headline.
The only other smaller workers that WWE has given any real space to recently are London and Kendrick, who have been pushed in the same way that The Rockers were during their heyday. And it worked! Between JBL’s enthusiastic commentary and the team’s array of high-flying stunts, the duo managed to carve a niche for themselves on SmackDown and built up a fanbase entirely of their own. And then, completely unnecessarily, they were moved to Raw in the Draft. This move surely represents a major change in status for the duo, as they’ll now face much bigger, Vince-friendly men like The Highlanders and Cade and Murdoch. The future for Londrick looks very bleak indeed.
Let’s face it; it says a lot when guys with the ability of Matt and Jeff Hardy can’t get a look in at the World Title picture – especially given that neither man is in any way small. Instead, WWE would prefer to push the constant PR disaster that is Randy Orton, Wellness failures like Lashley and Khali and walking injury machines like Triple H and Batista. Notwithstanding the fact that Matt and Jeff have their own bullet-proof fanbases that would give overwhelming support to a major title run, not giving them a shot at the big time is also a mistake because both men could, given the opportunity, provide the in-ring integrity that we saw in the mid-Nineties with Bret and Shawn – and possibly restore some dignity to the much-tarnished World Championship belts.
WHO’S NEXT?
But such a change should have happened a long time ago. With RVD, Matt, Jeff, Helms, Kurt Angle, Eddie, Edge, Christian and Benoit at its disposal, WWE had plenty of opportunities to totally transform its public image. The company could have built around young, exciting guys and got the bigger lugs off the gas forever. It could have sent the monsters to rehab for their own good, given scores of fantastic smaller workers the change to shine and reinvented the WWE brand into something on a par with other sports in terms of athleticism.
Even last month, when Edge had to vacate the title, did Matt Hardy – a man who has been ready for the top slot for years and even has an in-built programme with Edge – get a chance to run with the ball? Nope, it was passed to the biggest guy in the company. But then, when even Edge and Rey are caught up in steroid scandals along with guys like Benoit, is there any hope in this debate? Are we just to accept all of the death and tragedy as the price of life in the industry we love?
The problem, of course, is that nobody listens. The fans roar their disapproval at Cena and Lashley and Batista – all guys who have had decent, workable programmes recently and won minor approval, but none of whom could hold a candle to some of the smaller workers. Yet WWE continues to push them. In fact, the company seems to see the disapproval as a challenge, something to overcome. Just another “us against them” battle to be fought. But this is way off the mark, because the battle the company is really fighting is only with itself. Every time it embarks on this self-perpetuating bullshit, it risks ruining more lives, plunging the industry’s reputation even deeper into the sewer and coming under even more fire from the media and even the government.
Another batch of gassed-up athletes appear, another wrestler dies, then the media puts two and two together and makes the only sensible conclusion: that there is direct pressure from the wrestling industry for guys to be human He-Men and it is killing both the sport and its workers. And then wrestling buries its head in the sand, yet again, claiming that none of the problems have anything to do with steroids, that it’s all “personal choice”, that wrestling only exists “to put smiles on faces” and that the media is victimising the sport once more. The reality is that the mainstream media is not victimising our sport but instead drawing rational, reasonable conclusions and demanding change for the better. Only wrestling could be so warped and stupid as to see that things are fine and nothing needs doing…
For the rest of this feature, check out issue 18 of FSM – available at WH Smith and all good retailers. (For US readers we are now carried at Borders, so check for local availability or click here to subscribe.)
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