Topic: Ask me anything wrestling related

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@bed- I met Austin back when he was a rookie and before I was even training to be a wrestler. I want to say it was either 89 or 90 when he was working Texas. He was a really nice guy (as far as they would let the heels be at the time) and called my dad "Sir" and my mom "Ma'am". I was able to get his autograph because I caught him away from a group of fans and I was sort of known by Chris Adams (going back to my uncle as mentioned before), so Adams let him know I was smart to the business. So really I can't guess as to how he is in his day to day life from that one encounter, but from what I hear the whole spousal abuse thing was blown out of proportion and he's a guy that gives 100% to whatever he's doing. One thing people don't realize is that when he married Jeanne Clark (Chris Adams ex wife) and Chris died he kept supporting Adams and Clark's daughters when he made it to the big time. I think that says a lot about his character.

Professionally? There's no way you could watch his early stuff and not see that he was going to be huge in the business. He had a great look (except maybe the flowered bike shorts lol), he had the fundamentals down and could give a good promo. Over the years he just got better and better at all of it. His work as a member of the Hollywood Blonds along with Brian Pillman just made him better and better since he learned a lot from Pillman and also from when he worked against Douglas and Steamboat (Douglas has burned a lot of bridges and gets a bad rap from a lot of people, but during his prime he was one of the bet all around workers in the industry). Many people don't know this but one of the reasons Flair was so pissed at WCW bookers was that he wanted to drop the title to Austin and felt he was the future of the business but they wanted to protect Luger, Sting and later Hogan so they kept them in the title picture and then dropped Austin from the Blonds and eventually let him go.

When he became Stone Cold Steve Austin, he really came into his own. I'm pretty sure everyone will agree he became one of the top two or three of all time during the Attitude Era. It wasn't just the great promos or the feud with Vince, it was that he was one of the first guys that really seemed believable as his character and the fans really related to him. He was the everyman. He wasn't a huge hulking guy, he didn't do a lot of flashy stuff but what he did do made sense in terms of psychology and he was really the first big name tweener in that he wasn't evil for the sake of evil and he wasn't the all around nice guy, he was the guy you know from the bar that will take just so much crap from someone before beating the hell out of them but then go back to his friends and order another beer and talk about the Cowboys game.

Speaking if the beer, his beer bashes at the end of his matches was a really great gimmick that a lot of people overlook. While it looked like he was just celebrating, what he was subtly doing was inviting the crowd to have a beer with him. You might not be able to go to a bar and hang with him, but you could go to a WWF event and when he ended his match and cracked open those beers you felt like you were hanging with him. Like I said, it was subtle, but look at the attendance figures from his run and you'll see how they increased when he started doing it.

The big difference between him (arguably the biggest star of the 90's) and Hogan (the biggest star of the 80's) is that Hogan was manufactured to be the top guy. Vince chose him to be the face of the company from the beginning and is just as responsible for Hulkamania as Hogan was, whereas Austin wasn't supposed to be the top guy. He created his character, did his own promos and the crowd went wild for him. Vince didn't have any choice but to make Austin the top guy because the fans wanted it. If you look at the totals, Austin didn't have the title as much as people think he did. He was usually chasing the title after it had been stolen from him in some way. It's classic booking in that the chase builds up until the fans are clamoring for him to finally catch up with the champion and give him what he deserves. It's a slow build that gives you a much better payoff (usually at PPV) than having someone come out and do something Monday night and the next week end it like they do now.

That's one of the reasons he didn't want to job to Lesnar before he left. They wanted Lesnar to come out and squash him right away. Austin knew that since he was the heel at the time, it would be better for him to continuously dodge Lesnar and give the crowd a big payoff at the end with Lesnar squashing him. Basically what he wanted to do was build up to the match which would help Brock out even more because he finally catches the "slippery devil" (as JR would undoubtedly say) and gives him his just desserts. WWF wanted to hotshot the angle which could've set up a huge payday for everyone involved (even the other wrestlers would've made money from it since they get a piece of the PPV buys and it would've been huge). It's like when Hogan lost to Goldberg in Atlanta, sure it did a big tv rating, but imagine what it would've done at a PPV with a proper build.

Austin is a smart guy when it comes to the business. Yeah, he protected himself some in decisions about outcomes and angles, but everyone does that. The thing is, you'll never find a top guy in a company that did as many jobs as he did to help get other guys over because he knows the secret to wrestling- if you can make the opponent look like they are as good as you before the match, the more people are interested in seeing the match and the more people that buy a ticket or order a PPV which means more money in your pocket. Not to mention that if your opponent is seen tio be on the same level as you if you do a job for them it doesn't hurt your heat at all so you are still protected.

I think when it's all said and done, Austin will be considered the most important wrestler in the history of the business. He brought in a legion of new fans, ushered in the era of the tweener (although there were people like that before, he made it popular and his style is still being used today with people like Orton) who are more "real" than the classic heel and face, set the bar for merchandise and promos and proved you don't have to be 6'8" 300 lbs. to be a believable champion.

I might be biased since if I had to list my favorite wrestlers of all time he'd be ranked 2nd behind Roddy Piper at #1 and right above Flair at #3.

I hope that answers your question and if not, just let me know what you want me to clarify. I'll also answer your question about Benoit a little later because that will take a lot of time to explain my feelings on that one. But as a quick answer, there's more to it than we were let in on but there isn't a conspiracy behind it IMO.

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Going to try and answer this one while my pain med is still working, so please excuse my typo's. According to Chris Nowitski's report from the Legacy Institute, when they autopsied Benoits brain the amount of concussions he had given him the brain of an 80 year old with dementia. That's widely reported and known, but if you look back at the prior years you see things that could've set him off into full blown crazy mode.

Eddie was his best friend and when he died, I really think that was the day Chris died, too. There are people that claim that Chris would be on his cell phone talking to it like he was carrying on a conversation only to tell the person that saw him that he was talking to Eddie.

Then there is all the pressure he put on himself to be the best. If there was ever a guy who thought what we did was real, it was Chris. Part of the reason he put so much pressure on himself were things said about him in WCW when people like Nash and Hogan would call him a vanilla midget, so he was also obsessed with size. In height and the other way men can be. See there has long been speculation that back in the 80's when Hogan was in WWF, Nancy tried to get a job there and ended up giving a different job to McMahon and Hogan in a limo. (This next part is kind of graphic, so you might not want to read it if sexual terms bother you) If you ever watched Chris, you could tell he wasn't very big in the nether regions. In fact I've heard people say he had microphallus (extremely small penis), which is a medical condition. So (and this is just conjecture) when a 6'6" guy you know has been with your wife and has probably seen you in the locker room nude comes out on TV and calls you a midget, then there's no telling what that does to you mentally. It would also explain why he tried (if it's true) to shoot Daniel up with growth hormone. Like I said, that's conjecture and I'm not sure if he did or if he suffered from the condition, just telling what I heard. (This kind of stuff is why i can't really give out where I wrestle or who I wrestled as, a lot of stuff I know of or was a witness to is of questionable legality. I never did any of the illegal stuff, but just knowing it or being there is enough for me to have to answer for things)

Billy Jack Haynes said in a shoot interview that Benoit found out that Daniel was really Vince's son because of an affair with nancy. Now, I think he's a little off base there. It wouldn't surprise me if Nancy had an affair with Vince (it wouldn't be the first time or last a wrestlers wife did that) but I don't think Daniel was his. Nancy was a flirt, I told some people in the chatroom one night about the first time I met Nancy before she was married to Chris. I told her that I was embarrased to say it, and she coaxed it out of me, but I told her that back in the 80's I was completely and madly in love with her. She threw her arms around me and kissed me hard enough I thought my lips were gonna bruise, then spent the rest of the night telling everyone I was her boyfriend. She was sweet and beautiful, but she knew she was beautiful and used it to her advantage so I could see her using her looks to help her husbands career.

so what was it that caused Chris to go off that night? I have no idea. One thing however, I do think that he wasn't Chris Benoit when he did it. i doubt when it happened he knew who he was, when he realized that's when I think he set out the Bibles and then killed himself. It's one of those mysteries we will never know the answers to. I also know that Benoit had millions of fans (including me) and I'm sure most of them just gave up ever wanting to see him again. I'm not saying they are in the wrong for that, but myself, I can seperate the character he portrayed in the ring and the real man. Also, knowing one of the victims makes it even weirder for most people to understand how I can do it but knowing the kind of brain tauma he had, I don't think he did it knowingly and would put money on that if you told him a week prior he would do it, he'd probably off himself sooner or have himself put away.

There is nothing wrong with seeing him as a complete monster but at the same time there's no problem with enjoying the work he provided in the ring all those years. It's sort of like if you know anything about John Lennon's assassin; what he did was take away one of the most influential and talented people in history along with a loving husband and father to Yoko and Sean, but I'm sure there are plenty of Cuban families that still remember him fondly from when he worked at the Cuban refugee camp at Ft. Chaffee in AR (there's a hint to where I am if you know the location).

Like I said earlier, there isn't a WWE conspiracy and even though it was my first thought when I heard that Chris, Nancy and Daniel were dead, Kevin Sullivan didn't have anything to do with it. It was just cumulative head injuries, along with a smaller person trying to overcompensate with drugs, who missed the only person he felt was really his friend and seeing monsters where there were none.

I'm not sure how he will be looked at in say a decade. If the media is any example, he will be seen as a pariah who happened to work for the Devil McMahon and was just another piece of scum who worked in the industry. Or, if more fans today become media members or scientists, he may become the link that causes more development of better working and medical conditions for the boys. As for how I'll see him, I'll still show his matches to people as examples of how to bring intensity, passion and believability to their work but at the same time explain how using a finisher like a diving headbutt causes real world problems and that we need to be intense inside the ring, safe but intense, and leave it in the ring. Remember, once we leave the event we are off the clock and take time and relax.

(Weird thing. I turned my mp3 player on as I wrote this and "The Continuing Adventure of Rocky Raccoon" by The Beatles came on with the characters being the title character, a girl named Nancy and another named Daniel. I don't believe in coincidence, so I think it was synchronicity)

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1) Unfortunately not many people do promos that aren't scripted. It's a lost art. It's also a reason why I don't think characters connect with the audience like they used to. What I mean is that a writer can't write a promo in the same voice as the person saying the promo. Basically, a character isn't just the gimmick, a gimmick to me is just that a gimmick. Think of it this way, they recently tried to make Ted DiBiase into his father with the Million Dollar Belt. They tried to write his character almost the same as the way his dad played the Million Dollar Man and it went over like a fart in church.
The big difference with the two and using the same "gimmick" of the Million Dollar Man and Belt was this: Sr. lived the character, he thought like the Million Dollar Man and treated the belt as it it was more important than the WWF Title. When he gave a promo it was ad libbed from the standpoint that he was this rich guy that not only thought he was above everyone else, he wanted to prove it to everyone. He seemed to get a sick pleasure from using his money to embarrass others, after all, to him he had everything he could ever want the only thing to do with his money was to use it to make others miserable. You might not like him, but you could relate to it since many people think that is what all rich people do, use their money and power to make their lives hell when they have to work for them or what have you.
Now, with Jr. his promos were written by the same person who had to write promos for MVP, Big Show, Sheamus, Cody Rhodes and others. They don't have the time to flesh out the character, so you get a stereotype. The stereotype was a rich kid who gets things handed to him. Like when they had his dad "give" him the Million Dollar Belt. The reason it didn't work is that when they originally gave it to him, he seemed to treat it the way his dad did and then without warning it's just gone. No follow up. Also, his promos went from spoiled rich kid to well, I haven't heard him give a promo since Golddust got injured.
Now that's not a perfect example, but look back at the big names people remember from the past-Hogan (see I can give him a compliment if he deserves it lol), Piper, Flair, Austin, Foley, Rock and Jake Roberts. These guys you just told them "you have five minutes and you're working against X" and they knew their characters so well, they could go out there and give you five minutes of talking, get the event over, themselves and their opponent over and make you want to see the match. It's what a promo is for, it seems like all the promoters and wrestlers have forgotten that except for one person who I will give a compliment to in this aspect. The Miz realized his promos sucked for the first few years he was in WWE, so he went to improv classes and has become arguably the best promo in the company. Vince noticed. Look who's wearing the WWE title right now. Hoo-yah, indeed.

2. Worst? Well, I was supposed to work against Jim Neidhardt in a match, but he no showed so I ended up working against a drunk Jake Roberts (that was fun. that was sarcasm btw). I love Jake, one of my all time favorites, but I'm glad he's called it quits since most of the bumps he took the last decade came from bumping his head on the toilet seat. And the biggest name I never got to work with and was upset because I didn't was Terry Gordy. Sure he wasn't the biggest name in America and was passed his prime. But I was scheduled to wrestle him at an indie show and he died a couple of months before it happened. I was really looking forward to it since he was part of the Freebirds and they were the reason I decided I wanted to be a wrestler at age 6, I believe.

3) The reason I don't give my name is mentioned in my response to the Benoit question. Basically for legal and financial reasons (under the table payments in a lot of cases in the industry). But I live in AR and wrestle mostly in the south.

4) A few ways. Go to a wrestling school and train like any other wrestler and when you get booked for shows, try to get the promoter to let you go out with someone as a corner man or something (you'll usually have to offer it for free) and prove to them it's worth it to let you do it for a fee or just frequent your local indie shows, get in good with the boys, offer to help with the ring or chairs, etc...and just try to get hooked up that way. Make yourself invaluable to the boys and the promoter and they'll usually find something for you to do.

5) Well, it's kind of unfair to everyone else, but a few years after I started I found out I'm like 3rd cousins with him on my moms side. BUT, even before that he was always my favorite. I just had the same attitude as him, I thought he was hilarious, he gave the best interviews in the business (go to youtube and look up Roddy Piper interviews himself, prepare for 10 minutes of awesomeness), his matches were usually great, he could adapt to any type of opponent and he was a bad guy that they fans loved.
I still say one of the greatest matches in WWF history was Piper vs. Bret at Mania VIII. When Piper was going to hit him with the bell and then did that second glance type thing it was kind of chilling.
He was just really entertaining during my formative years. If I could have anything in wrestling I'd ask for a commentary team of Piper, Bobby Heenan and Jim Cornette in their prime. Hell, they could make TNA watchable.

(Went longer than I thought and the Ibuprofen wore off, so I'll answer more tomorrow)