Tears of a Fan

Have you ever seen an image so powerful that the need to draw it just overrides every part of you? Well, I did today, and for once it's not One Piece related. I just saw Spoony's latest vlog regarding the WWF "Slammy awards" show. The pain and disillusionment he felt as he talked on about the sorry state that WWF is in was so palpable. It's like I was watching his inner child die slowly. And I feel his pain. I used to be something of a wrestling fan myself.

It's not like I actually ever believed it was real or anything, and even back when I was a little kid, I understood just how stupid it was. I just enjoyed it for it's camp value. The hyperbolic ravings of Jim Ross, the painfully bad acting of most of the roster, the way Vince MacMahon's face contorts with every syllable he utters , or Kurt Angle trying to sing... It was stupid, but an incredibly funny stupid. But as the years passed, I too became disappointed and pissed off at WWF. In the spirit of that vlog, I would like to share with you the top eleven factors that made me stop watching it. Why top eleven? BECAUSE THERE'S TOO MUCH BULLSHIT TO CONDENSE INTO AN EVEN TEN!!



#11- Undertaker's "biker phase". When I was a little boy, I always liked the Undertaker. The whole "Dead man" motif really appealed to me. Then one day, after he returned from an injury I was shocked to see him in a biker's ensemble talking like a total hick. His character was raped so, SOOO badly. And worst of all, he chose Limp Bizkit to make his new theme song. LB was even regarded at one point as the WWF's favorite band........WHY?!? Anyway, thankfully he dropped the biker bit and Limp Bizkit.(Hopefully off a tall cliff...) Sadly, the damage was long past done.

#10 Austin's heel turn. His character was so run down after Wrestlemania " X7 " He used to be like the Chuck Norris of the WWF, but after he became this sniveling, annoying jerk who played on his guitar singing crappy songs and kept saying "What?" after every sentence. What? I said he kept on saying "what?" a lot. What? It was annoying. What? It was superfluous. What? And yet the crowd ate it up. What? What? What? He was just a step away from wearing bright orange and shouting "Believe it!" And the WWF suffered all the more for it.

#9 Kane. I used to like him, too. He was like a kick-ass super-villain, and he appealed to my inner pyromaniac. But he never seemed to live up to his image, and some of the storylines he was in were VERY offensive. Like that one where he was accused of murdering some girl and then Triple H did that whole necrophilia bit. Or the one where he impregnated Lita only to have her have a miscarriage after an in-ring "accident" thanks to the fugly Gene Snitsky, who made his debut at the time. Afterwards, people would chant "Baby-killer" every time he walked in the arena. And not only did he insist "It wasn't my fault", he actually tried to make a catchphrase out of that saying. And what's worse is that the whole dynamic of that story was SO inconsistent. First, Kane was the bad guy for impregnating Lita, then Snitsky was the bad guy for "killing" the "baby", then Lita was the bad guy for not even wanting it. Hard to believe this shit was written!

#8 Neurotic wrestlers. I remember the old school wrestlers like Undertaker, Yokozuna, the Legion of Doom and HOAK HOGAN. They used to impress me as a kid because they seemed so mighty and larger-than-life. But most of the latter day wrestlers are so boring and lame. They usually prattle on about some made-up rhetoric or wasted air time trying to "find themselves". Yawn.... As if anyone's the least bit interested in their existential dilemmas.

#7 WWF vs. WCW. You'd think that would be a "clash of the titans" type of scenario, except that the WCW was missing most of its titans at the time, such as the NWO, Goldberg or Big Poppa Pump, and just used WWF wrestlers to fill in the blanks. Lame.

#6 The NWO. When the hammy Vince MacMahon learned he'd have to share ownership of the WWF with the "Nature Boy" Ric Flair....WHOOOOOO!!!...sorry, that was involuntary....he decided to "KILL" the WWF by bringing in the NWO, consisting of HOAK Hogan, Kevin Nash and Scott Hall. Little did he know they almost DID kill the WWF. They made relatively little impact on the wrestling scene. Kevin Nash gets injured in his first match and is relegated to the sidelines, (Pfft, some Super Shredder...), Scott Hall gets fired in a few months, and the Hulkster becomes a good guy again. And once more, WWF wrestlers were brought in to fill in the blanks, such as X-Pac....yay...... And then as soon as Nash healed, he had one match and got injured AGAIN. The NWO was subsequently disbanded after that.

#5 The name change. You know, the whole WWE thing. It always leaves a bad taste in my mouth when I say it. I guess the World Wildlife Fund was tired of people calling to order tickets to Summerslam or something.

#4 The stereotypes. I mean, wow! The WWF writers have got to be the most racially and culturally insensitive people I know. When it came to stereotypes, they had them all. The "Mexicools" on their riding mowers, the "gangsta rappers" whose names escape me, Finlay, the fightin' Irishman, and God knows what else after I stopped watching years ago.

#3 Brock Lesnar. This guy pretty much tore the WWF roster apart. I didn't mind that, since a lot of the wrestlers I didn't like back then were injured and put out of commision. But, Brock got too big too fast. He had already become champion within a year and took on the heaviest hitters the WWF had to offer. By the end of his second year, he pretty much got bored and left after making some of my favorite wrestlers seem so feeble. It was hard for me to remain as impressed as I was after he left.

#2 Eric Bischoff. The guy was a dick, and he dragged the WWF down quite a ways. He was brought on as a General Manager of WWF RAW. I still remember his big speech about how he was going to shake WWF to its very core. His first act? To move the announcer's table from ringside to entrance-side. And he announces it with such pride: " I, ERIC BISCHOFF, have decided to move the announcer's table....OVER THERE!!" And the less said about " HLA " , the better. And it was all downhill from there.

And finally, the #1 reason I personally decided to stop watching WWF: Their bias against Canadians.( Y'know, 'cause I am Canadian...) One of my most hated moments in WWF history was when Canadian wrestlers Lance Storm, Christian and Test formed a group called the Unamericans. Basically it was a cheap ploy to make the U.S. look good, but it backfired horribly at Canada itself, as Stateside fans started bashing the True North, Strong and Free. They would chant "Canada Sucks" and hold up signs depicting the burning of the Canadian flag and slogans like "Forget Iraq, bomb Canada". I know this because the cameraman was nice enough to feature those signs so prominently. And of course, commentator Jerry Lawler wasted no time in bashing Canada himself.

So that's that. Also, I know Spoony didn't technically cry...but he was crying on the inside.