Wrestling With Idiots

I have not watched wrestling in many years. The modern product embarrasses me for reasons that I won’t get into here and now as it has nothing to do with what I want to discuss. I did, however, watch a lot of wrestling between 1985 and 2001. A lot. Probably too much, considering my grades in math. I still think the coefficient of 6 is cabbage. I also remember not completing a history report on time because I was watching WrestleMania VII.

As a wrestling fan I was fortunate enough to grow up in a time when there was no shortage of wrestling on TV. In addition to the juggernaut World Wrestling Federation, cable gave me access to the NWA, AWA, World Class, and because the territory system had not yet been completely killed by Vince McMahon, I could keep up on areas like Florida, Alabama, Tennessee, and Oregon via the monthly magazines or the short-lived Pro Wrestling This Week (seriously, it existed – check it out on YouTube).

Having watched hour after hour, week after week for year after year as a kid, I learned a lot of things. The main thing I learned?

Good guys are idiots.

Seriously. These guys just kept making the same stupid mistakes over and over again. I know as fans we're supposed to suspend our disbelief and just get engrossed in the storyline, but when the same idiots keep making the same mistakes over and over again, you have to wonder if they're worth rooting for.

So, they say hindsight is 20/20 (or in my case 20/40 because I have astigmatism), but here are a few tips to help the good guys out there stop making such stupid mistakes and get one over on the bad guys. This is by no means a comprehensive list of all the things good guys can do to keep themselves from being suckered or looking like idiots, but it's a start.

1. Be Aware of Your Surroundings

If you're wrestling, and your opponent's tag team partner or manager (or worse, both) is outside the ring, do not attempt any moves near the ropes. If you attempt a suplex, a slam, or any other move where your opponent is above you, your opponent's partner is going to reach under the ropes and trip you, allowing your opponent to fall on top of you and ultimately pin you. Now of course even though this illegal move happens right in front of the referee, the ref will not see the partner reach under the ropes because he's too busy arguing with your opponent's manager.

2. Trophies are made for smashing

Championships are generally represented by title belts, but sometimes a trophy is used, like in a special one night tournament, or if fans are voting in a contest. If you have won a trophy and it is going to be presented to you live during an interview segment, think twice. More often than not, the person you beat for that trophy will ambush you and destroy the trophy, more often than not by bashing it over your head. Now for whatever reason no good guy has ever figured out that trophies equal beatings, and they never have back up. Normally the bad guy will have a good one to two minutes to lay the beating on you before your fellow good guys realize what's happening and run out of the locker room to save you. By then you're a bloody mess. Use your head for something other than a target. Either bring someone out to watch your back, or insist on a private trophy presentation.

3. Ignore the fans – they're also idiots

The fans are not to be trusted. They're not that bright. I attended a card in 1989 with a match between The British Bulldogs (true Brits) and The Bolsheviks (Russian characters), and the fans were chanting “USA, USA”.

I digress. Anyway, in the middle of a match, never turn to the fans and ask for their approval to execute a certain move. If you have your opponent compromised, keep on him. Don't turn around and ask “should I keep beating him some more?” The fans will encourage this kind of behavior instead of, if they were smart, shouting at you to keep your attention on the task at hand. Many a moron has been beaten by turning away from his opponent, only to turn back and get clocked by a pair of brass knucks or a roll of quarters.

Speaking of brass knuckles and quarters - 

4. Be Prepared for Foreign objects

You know this is going to come into play at some point, because you're a good guy, and you're wrestling bad guys. Bad guys use foreign objects. So, how do you avoid being the object of what the late, great Gorilla Monsoon would call chicanery?

If you knock your opponent out of the ring, let the referee do his job and start counting. If you distract the referee by trying to pull your opponent back into the ring, he's only going to turn around and push you back into your corner, and while his back is turned your opponent will grab brass knucks, a roll of quarters, a chair, the hammer for the ringside bell, or, if his manager is Johnny Valiant, a lit cigar. The only way to minimize the use of the steel chair is to have all ringside fans and officials sit in beanbags, and that's a lot less exciting. Comfy, though.

As a good guy, you should never use a foreign object, because while the bad guy never gets caught, you most certainly will. And if you do manage to get the object away from your opponent and hit him with it, don't then stuff it into your tights. The ref will count the pin, but while the bell rings and you're busy celebrating, the ref will notice the suspicious bulge in your tights (settle down) that wasn't there during the pre-match check and then disqualify you. Toss the object out of the ring instead.

5. Fool Me Once, Shame on Me, Fool Me Twice, I'm Tito Santana

It's a well known fact that unless the match is being held under some sort of special stipulation, a title can only change hands if you pin the champion or make him submit. This has been the rule since the dawn of time, yet countless times, some idiot good guy, usually Tito Santana, beats the champion by count out or disqualification and grabs the belt, starts jumping around like a lunatic because he thinks he's the new champion, then acts shocked when the ref takes the belt away and tells him he won the match, but not the title. The fact that Tito had this happen to him multiple times may say more about his individual intelligence than good guys in general, but it's still a point that needs to be made.

6. Be Aware of Friends' Mood Swings

We all argue from time to time. It's part of being human, but if you have a tag team partner with whom you have never had a cross word and suddenly in interviews he begins acting differently, even if in extremely subtle ways (facial expressions), or arguing with you in the middle of a match, watch out. He's going to turn on you. It'll happen in one of two ways: 1) he'll unexpectedly assault you during a match, costing your team the win, or 2) attack you after a loss in which you accidentally bumped into him, causing him to get pinned. In this second scenario he may even extend his hand to you to say “it's OK, I know it was an accident”, but once you take his hand he's going to waffle you with the other. Then he'll continue his assault with a ringside beanba.... chair, until all the other good guys run to your aid. One of them will try to talk some sense into your partner since in the world of wrestling all good guys are friends (as are all bad guys), but your partner will waffle that guy too before beating a hasty retreat to the bad guy locker room despite the fact that all of his clothes are in the good guy locker room (and where oddly enough all of the bad guys will welcome him with open arms, despite the fact that he was the enemy only five minutes earlier).

7. Keep Family Away

Bad guys will do anything to mess with you. Nothing is off limits, not even family. If you have your wife or kids at ringside watching the matches, or if you bring your wheelchair bound father out with you during an interview segment, someone is going to be harassed, threatened, hit, or humiliated. These situations never end well, and you're just going to cause months of heartache for yourself until you ultimately get your revenge in some bloody brawl in a cage.