Notes from the Nosebleeds #61
April 10, 2010
By: Matt O’Brien of Wrestleview.com
The weekend is here! What an awful week it was for professional wrestling. We lost Chris Kanyon and Impact and Raw aired some of their worst episodes in a long time. Next week can only get better right? Next week will feature the return of Nosebleed trivia. In the meantime, here are last week’s answers.
A tribute to the Nasty Boys!
How many times did the Nasty Boys hold the WCW Tag Team championship?
A. 2
B. 3
C. 4
D. 5
In which organization did the Nasty Boys debut?
A. NWA
B. AWA
C. GCW
D. UWF
True or False: Brian Knobbs once won the WCW Television title.
FALSE
Which member of the Rhodes family is related to Jerry Saggs?
A. Dusty Rhodes
B. Dustin Rhodes
C. Cody Rhodes
While he is related in a way to all of them, he is the uncle of Cody
What was the last WCW pay per view the Nasty Boys wrestled before Jerry Saggs retired?
A. Superbrawl 1996
B. Bash at the Beach 1996
C. Fall Brawl 1996
D. World War 3 1996
Grand Kanyon
Every Saturday morning I used to fire up the VCR and tape WCW Worldwide. Looking back there weren’t a lot of great matches to watch but I didn’t have cable and had nothing to compare it to. The show featured mid card talent showcasing their skills against jobbers. One particular tag team of jobbers was Men at Work. Mark Starr and Chris Kanyon came to the ring dressed as construction workers and proceeded to lose to the tag team they were facing. Even though he was a jobber, Kanyon still caught my eye as a kid. I remember freaking out when I first saw him do a spring-board twisting legdrop. Prelim guys weren’t supposed to do stuff like that.
It was not until years later when Mortis unmasked himself and began to go by Chris Kanyon that it was him under the mask all along. The Mortis character WCW had him doing was a combination of Mortal Kombat and Dungeon of Doom. Kanyon made the character work, and he had some really solid matches with Glacier. Mortis began to become very familiar to the WCW audience. When Raven was developing his Flock, he took Mortis out. That year at Slamboree Raven had a cage match against Dallas Page. After the match a security guard entered the ring and took off his helmet, revealing himself to be Mortis. The crowd went nuts! In that moment, Mortis became a huge fan favorite. But it was WCW. Even though they had spent time building up the Mortis character and had finally found a niche for him, Mortis unmasked. Just mere seconds after the resounding pop that night in the cage, Morits took off the mask and revealed his face. The crowd went dead. They had no idea who Kanyon was.
Despite the setback, Kanyon quickly turned things around for himself and began to get over again. Best of all, he could now be himself without the cheesy gimmick. He quickly became known for his innovative talents, pulling moves out that nobody had seen before in the mainstream. He was also in some very interesting angles. His alliance with Raven was entertaining, and his stable with Page and Bam Bam Bigelow seemed like a natural fit for all three men.
Kanyon gained some attention when Mike Awesome through him off the top of a steel cage onto the entrance ramp at Slamoboree 2000. It was an awesome spectacle that allowed two mid card talents to get some attention on a card that featured David Arquette defending the WCW title. There was one problem with the stunt. It took place in Kemper Arena. Just twelve months earlier, Owen Hart fell to his death on live pay per view in that very arena. WCW had just shown just how classless they were.
The angle could have been huge. They could have built up Awesome as a monster over the course of several months while Kanyon recovered. Nope. Instead Kanyon turned heel and even though he was thrown off the top of a cage and shown on television wearing a halo and bound to a wheelchair, he was wrestling matches within a few weeks. All of that didn’t matter. Kanyon was still putting on great matches.
There is a list of competitors from WCW’s mid card that are always mentioned as shining stars, shimmering across a card loaded with over the hill main eventers and bad booking. Chris Benoit and Eddy Guerrero are always the first two to come to mind. After them there’s Rey Mysterio, Dean Malenko, Chris Jericho, and Billy Kidman. One name that always seems to be forgotten is Kanyon. From his days as a jobber, to the Mortis character, and onto his other endeavors in the wrestling business, Chris was always someone I could rely on when I was going to watch a show. I always knew that something good would come from him. Thank you, Kanyon. I will not forget you.
A Raging Storm
Kanyon’s death caused Lance Storm to view an episode of Impact this week differently than before. A chair shot to the head during the show struck a nerve for the great technician. Coming so soon off of Kanyon’s death, seeing that chair shot triggered a reaction from Storm claiming he was done watching TNA. Certainly as an insider, Storm’s reaction feels justified. But is it a reason to drop TNA from your viewing list?
Psychologist and philosopher Edward Bullough had a theory of art in regards to one’s distance from the object and how it affected one’s ability to appropriately connect and take in a work of art. The theory is very interesting. Say you have a picture in front of you of a kitten in the arms of a child in front of three people. The first individual has never owned a cat, never felt anything for a cat whatsoever. They feel nothing when they see the picture; it’s just a picture of a kid and a cat. The second person may have grown up with a cat and something tragic had happened to the cat when that individual was young. They see themselves in the picture and it brings back painful memories. The third is in that middle area. They have a safe distance from the subject and are able to appreciate yet view the picture with a level head. It’s kind of like having Goldy Locks finding the one that is just right.
In tragedies such as that of Kanyon, the main stream media is always the one too far away. They are too far away to really comprehend what goes on in wrestling. Mr. V has a great comment in his Detention section this week regarding this topic. Lance Storm appears to be in that “too close” range. It’s not a bad thing that he is. It’s just a bit strange that this would be the reason he would not watch TNA. This is not to criticize Storm in ANY way. He has my deep admiration and respect. I understand his reasoning. However, if one were going to stop watching TNA, there are plenty of other reasons to not watch.
Knocked Out
The most obvious reason for not watching the show would be because it’s a poor product. This week’s Impact was just another example of why the show is so bad right now. Does anyone remember when WCW did the San Francisco 49ers match? Hopefully you never had to see it. This week TNA reincarnated the match for the Knockouts. From one angle, they had a god idea to take their biggest ratings draws in the company and put them in the main event. But stepping back and looking at the whole picture, they just stabbed the division. After running the atrocious angle, it would appear that TNA exploited the division, but it feels like TNA is thinking they can’t dare let the Knockouts outdraw the fifty and up division. So they have decided to kill the division by making it just like every other. As cold as it sounds, it certainly feels that way, but in reality, the organization is just blind. They just booked another bad show, and lost another fan in the process.
Thanks for reading!
Matt O’Brien
mattman5436@yahoo.com