| From WorldWrestlingInsanity.com JG's Columns
You know, wrestling writing is no different than any other writing. We all have certain people that are looked to as easy targets when it comes to humor or abuse. It exists in any form of entertainment. If your beat is politics, you had such targets as Dan Quayle, Gerald Ford, and Richard Nixon to kick around. As time went on and the names changed, George W. Bush became someone who routinely found himself on the receiving end of the ha-has. Maybe you like music. Well, take your pick. You can jump on the Dixie Chicks, John Tesh, Milli Vanilli, Vanilla Ice, R. Kelly, and tons of others. The bottom line is that certain people
have created legacies heavily influenced by the media's
need to lambaste them at every turn. Some deserve the
verbal floggings. Some don't. Regardless of whether
or not you feel the abuse is justified, it exists. Politics
has it. Music has it. And yes, wrestling has it. Who
does wrestling have? Well, I'll tell you. 10. The Ultimate Warrior
Had this list been made a few months ago, Warrior would be ranked much higher. The ranting and raving lunatic formerly known as Jim Hellwig has raised more than his fair share of eyebrows with his outlandish right wing views on politics. Ultimate is known for such gems as "Queering don't make the world work." His shockingly insane ramblings on his website rival any type of parody I could ever hope to produce. When it comes to Jim, parody preceeds him. Half the time, I think he's trying to write the jokes for us. So why is the Dingo Warrior listed at #10? Well, WWE is the reason for that. When World Wrestling Entertainment released it scathing account of Hellwig's career in a DVD set, people started to feel somewhat bad for him. Granted, we weren't exactly depleting the world's supply of Kleenex with a ton of tears for the former chiropractor. However, mocking him became almost passé. It was like the kid that everyone picks on in Junior High. One day, one kid crosses the line and makes him cry. Then you stop picking on him. Why? Well, enough is enough. It goes from being funny to cruel. In that step, the hilarity seems to have lost some luster. Warrior lost his luster this year. We can still make fun of him from time to time, which is why he's still on the list, but it's just not the same. Thanks for ruining our fun, Vince. Thanks for making the kid cry.
Brutus the Barber Beefcake is awesome. He's awesome because he gave us a story that we never expected to read. In fact, Brother Brutai created a headline so crazy that it would have turned heads even if he wasn't someone that once wrestled on television. Last year, the former Dream Team member forced the evacuation of a Boston Subway he worked at. Seems that he left his bag of cocaine behind and it was mistaken for Anthrax. You can't make stuff like that up. Even if you did, who'd believe you? So in 2004, the Beefer went from being
ridiculed for hanging on Hulk Hogan's coattails (a position
that Brian Knobbs clipped away from the Booty Man) to
being ridiculed for causing a terror scare in the North
East. I betcha Beecake is missing the days when people
couldn't stop asking about his parasailing accident.
Now they can't stop asking about his missing coke accident.
I'm about to tell you a story that I never told in writing before. When I was 15 years old, I met Jake the Snake at an autograph signing. I was so stoked to meet him and hear his stories. I woke up early and brought along a wrestling magazine he could sign it. Yes! The Snake! The master of the DDT! I was so excited I could puke. Jake appeared with the Power Twins, a
local tag team that was fairly big in the early 90s.
What did the Snake have to say? Well, not much. It's
hard to talk when you're vomiting all over yourself.
Yup. The Master of the DDT stumbled out behind the comic
book store and lost his lunch all over his shirt. Seems
I wasn't the only one with puke on the brain.
Oh Brock. You silly goose. Look what you've done. The Next Big Thing was the Big Thing in WWE-Land for a while, but those days are long gone. Lesnar shot onto the scene with a ton of hype and even more talent. He wowed audiences with top notch performances against a wide array of opponents ranging from Kurt Angle to the Big Show. As WWE's (now second) youngest World Champion in history, Brocktune holds the distinction of being the steamroller for a new millennium. To accommodate his crazy travel schedule for the company, Lesnar even bought a plane! Now that's dedication! He sure loved the business. That is…until he got the football bug. Brock risked everything he had for a chance at tossing around the pigskin for Minnesota's pro tream. Sadly for him, the closest he's going to get to being a Viking is if he builds a time machine and takes notes from John Nord. It wouldn't be so bad, except for the fact that he talked major trash about WWE and its fan base after he left. Oh, and he signed a ten year no compete clause. Lez tried everything he could to get out
of it. He whined. He threatened. He pleaded. In the
end, WWE didn't take him back and the Last Big Thing
ended up in Japan while still disputing his contract
with his former employers. To go from so high up to
so far down in such a short amount of time, B.L. invited
the type of attention he now receives. From this point
on, whenever someone gives up a bird in the hand to
go ruffling through the bushes, we won't be able to
help but think of Mr. Lesnar. 6. Kevin Nash
Kevin Nash gets hurt…a lot. In fact, in the time it took you to read this sentence, Kev could have injured at least three muscles. That's not funny, though. I mean, the poor guy is in pain. I understand that. We all do. The problem with Nash isn't his propensity for injury. It's his oblivious outlook on his worth to wrestling at this stage of his career. Anyone else who ran across the ring and tore his leg less than 15 seconds into his WWE return would be mortified. Slink away and hang your head. Not Big Daddy Whoops. Kevin stayed strong in his demands. He claimed WWE should offer him more money, citing the family that he needs to "feed." How much he needs to earn for 15 seconds of work is anyone's guess. Not only that, but Diesel still got another shot in the WWE spotlight when he returned to face Triple H inside a Hell in the Cell. The crowd response to him was so poor that WWE stopped promoting him by name a week before the event. They actually had to bring in Mick Foley as the guest ref and shift all the focus onto him. Honk. Honk. Sweeeet. So does that stop him? No, no, no. He found himself a TNA gig. Appreciative? Eh, not really. In an interview with the Pro Wrestling Torch last year, Nash was quoted as saying, "I'm 46 years old and I'm the hippest guy in the room. What the f**k is that?" Sadly, Kevin forgot to mention one very important part of that statement. It was he who christened himself the "hippest guy in the room." It's par for the course with him, though. It's why he's on the list. Who put him on the list? I did. What gives me that right? Well, I'm the hippest guy on the Internet. Who says so? I do. See how easy it is? 5. Scott Hall This list is not about who I do or don't like. If it was, Scott Hall wouldn’t have made it. Personally, I enjoy Hall. I always have. I think he has a natural charisma that "oozes" out when he's on the mic and a natural sense of how to excite an audience. However, that's not what most people think of when they think of the former Razor Ramon. What do they think of? Well… They think of demons. Yes. Scott's name is as synonymous with "demons" as the movie Poltergeist is. It's these demons that lead to a bevy of peculiar situations for Hall. Anyone who's seen Mr. Show character "Ronnie Dobbs," who gets arrested for a living, can't help but chuckle and think of da Bad Guy. Scott's problems became so prominent in his career that the final days of his WCW run were full of talk about them. In a moment of compassion, World Championship Wrestling even chose to parody their roster member's slow decline into the darkness with a whacky angle on Nitro, featuring him vomiting at ringside. Shortly thereafter, he was gone again. That didn't stop Kevin Nash from sneaking his name on television. Wrestlers fought for his right to return. In the end, it was all moot though. He was headed to ECW. He was there briefly before getting a DUI on Christmas Eve 2000. So much for that. Whether keying a limo or just regular ol' assault, the former Outsider has always found a way to keep himself in trouble. There's no benefit for him in all this. Sadly, he had much more to offer this industry. Young wrestlers who think they're too talented to let addiction or "demons" stand in their way need only look to the founding member of the N.W.O. In the end, the best way to describe Scott
is a semi-main event version of Jake Roberts for a new
generation. 4. Buff Bagwell He's Buff. He's the stuff. And the critics can't get enough. Where do you start with Buff Bagwell? What route do you take when pointing out the reasons why he's been mocked? You know you're wondering what direction we take with this. Do we go the stripper route and mock his former profession? The former "Handsome Stranger" is well known for his past exploits and has his name mentioned alongside the business many times over. Do we go the calf implant route? Why? Well, because he got calf implants. What more explanation do you need there? How about the switch hitting jokes? Not that there's anything wrong with that. However, in the "tail" end of WCW, Bagwell had done a work/shoot debacle with Diamond Dallas Page. To drum up support for this insanity, Page went on TV and told the world that while the ladies may love Buff, "so do the guys." Splendid. Way to get a guy over, DDP. Sure that sold some tickets in the bible belt. How about the Hurricane Helms jokes? After all, Shane Helms is like four feet tall yet he apparently housed Marcus Alexander with an ice pack. How about the opening night of WCW on Raw stuff? The first night of WCW's existence in WWE Land was marked by a "big" match on Raw between Bagwell and Booker T. The contest was so putrid and the crowd was so let down that the entire idea for World Championship Wrestling to exist on its own was scrapped. Out of the two performers in that match, one was kept. One was bounced. The one bounced? Buff. How about the Judy Bagwell route? The Buff Daddy still gets heat for the tag title reign of his Buff Mommy. That's right. In case you missed this period in wrestling history, you missed some real insanity. It's hard to hear a Buff Bagwell joke without having Judy's name pop up. Of course some people still like to bring up his arrest in WCW for punching a crew member in the neck. Ah. Good times. What makes all this golden is that the WCW 1992 Rookie of the Year seems oblivious to it. His public appearances are marked by crazy statements and arrogant self love. Anyone who starts to feel bad for Buff needs only hear one Bagwell radio interview to change their mind.
3. Joanie "Formerly Chyna" Laurer
"Chyna," as she was known in her past life, really succeeded in doing what no one else could do. She became a big name in World Wrestling Entertainment. She garnered main stream attention for it. From there, she proceeded to make a spectacle of herself so big that everyone got a chance to see. That's what makes Joanie so amazing. On the surface, the woman has a right to be upset. Her ex-boyfriend left her for her boss's daughter. Laurer has about as much chance for a WWE return as Michael Jackson does at working for Kids R Us. In one swoop, she lost her man and her job. That sucks. That sucks hard. So she became a mess - a big messy mess. That's fine too. I mean, this is wrestling. This whole list is full of people who were messes at one point or another. That's not the issue. The issue was that she let the world see her insanity. Chynna-Doll garnered attention initially for the debut of her sex tape "One Night in China." A repugnant porno starring her and Sean "X-Pac" Waltman, this video repulsed millions. You can blame it on whatever you want, but at the end of the day, it didn't accomplish it's goal. It didn't set the world on fire. It did, however, lead to a string of violent battles with Waltman in public. Then, Joanie made her way to VH1s Celebrity cruelty show "The Surreal Life." On the program, a constantly inebriated Chynna-Doll opened up about depression and addiction. Half-way through the season, Sean showed up at the door and the two engaged in a bizarre argument. In the end, Waltman left and was actually threatened by Da Brat, a female rapper. My personal favorite was Joan on the Howard Stern Show. She was completely out of her head. She was talking in circles and slurring. Howard laughed at first, but by the end was talking to her in a sympathetic tone that he hasn't really used since Dana Plato. How scary is that? The public eye isn't forgiving and few people are going to think about the "rough patch" that "Chyna" has gone through. All they see is the bumbling nut who's falling out of her top on television. Those who cry about what should be done to save wrestlers who have passed from drug usage, I ask you to look at Joanie. People say, "We should have done something when so-and-so was still alive!" Well, Joanie's still alive. She's obviously going down that same path. Why aren't they all these people doing anything to save her?
He's ba-ack…and serving his penance. No one sheds any tears for Eric Bischoff. The "whiz kid of 1996" hit pay dirt in the dot com age with WCW. He rocked the wrestling industry and finally unseated Vince McMahon for a brief while as the king of 'rasslin'. However, Uncle Eric's story is more than just that of a young upstart with big dreams. Bischoff's tale involves big talk and big attitude. During Bisch's run over WWE, he enraged employees and competitors with his practices. Easy E called Vince McMahon a dinosaur. He gave away results of the pretaped Raw episodes on Monday Nitro. He instructed announcer Tony Shiavone to mock Mick Foley's title reign on the night it happened. He challenged McMahon to a shoot fight on pay-per-view. He told the locker room that he wanted to see Ric Flair's family starve. Wait. There's more. He threw coffee at Eddy Guerrero. He alienated Chris Jericho. He did Prodigy Internet chats and laughed about how easy WWE was to crush. One memorable chat involved the sad little Bischoff telling the readers that the ratings weren't "even fun anymore." According to ATM Eric, as he was called, the Nitro winning streak took all the fun out of Tuesday mornings. Shortly thereafter, Raw started beating Nitro in the ratings again. Everything after that is sort of a blur to Bischoff. Things sunk quickly. Bisch was let go and made sporadic returns here and there. There was, of course, the Gold's Club scandal that saw the former WCW VP called in to testify about prostitution allegations. Oh, and the personal favorite, all but announcing he had taken over WCW on the second to last broadcast of Nitro, only to have Shane McMahon do that dance thing he does on TNT the following week. So now, here we are. Eric Bischoff is the GM of Raw. That's some funny stuff right there. What separated Eric from the rest is that it's hard to ever truly feel sorry for him. Despite the ridicule he receives from WWE, you know that had things progressed differently, it would be Bischoff doing those same things to Vince McMahon on Nitro. If Easy E would have won, he would have hired Vinnie Mac and rubbed it in his face every week. Then again, I don't think Vince would have accepted the job. Eric did, though. To each his own, I guess. 1. Vince McMahon/Triple H/Stephanie
All three of these names belong at the top of this list together. They are the Triangle of Insanity and the inspiration for my book. Hell, that's why they're all on the cover. The thing that makes the Vince/Stephanie/Hunter triangle so amazing is that each one is needed to truly put the insanity together. Individually, they all have made missteps. However, as a unit, they're unstoppable. The best part about these three and the place where all the parody comes from is their desire to justify their actions. Triple H has talked about how Vince is a "filter" in which ideas must flow. Fingers have been pointed at announcers, performers, and fans. However, the three in this equation rarely point to themselves. Stephanie McMahon oversees the writing team. One of the low points of WWE's product, the writing is far from what they should want it to be. However, certain concepts continue to play out. Certain people remain on top. That person is Hunter. Arguably the most "over" wrestler on the roster, Helmsley should be. With all the build-up put into his character, a bag of carrots could be over. To be honest, if Trips wasn't "over" at this point, after years of relentless pushing, then I'd say there's something seriously wrong with him. Of course he's over. They all but changed the show's name to "The Hunter Show" in 2002. As for Big Daddy Vince, well he's just
gone batty. Light in the attic. No one's home. That
kind of stuff. He doesn't have to worry, though. He
has people to mind the shop for him, right? That brings
us back to the other two. See how it works? I'll leave you with this quote: "If you're asking if I would
ever date a wrestler, certainly I would. However it
wouldn't be good business for me to get romantically
involved with anyone in any aspect of our business."
Sid Vicious was not included because his horrendously disgusting leg injury has overshadowed anything stupid he's done. A horribly broken leg trumps softball. Announcers (Coach, Cole, etc) were left off the list. They are typically repeating things that are said to them, so they are not solely responsible for their abuse. Same thing with wrestlers playing roles. No one was listed here for playing a goofy character. Teddy Hart wasn't included on the list because it's not two years ago. JBL would have been on this list last year, but has since focused more on his character than on "working" the net. He's improved tremendously on TV and has carried himself with much more professionalism outside of the ring. Lex Luger was #11. Finally, I'm sure you guys have plenty on your list. Feel free to stop by the Insanity Message Boards and tell us about it. © Copyright by WorldWrestlingInsanity.com WorldWrestlingInsanity.com is not
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