5 Most Insane Things Happening In Wrestling Right Now (Aug 11)
Felines, no-selling swine, and Jim Cornette's bloody valentine.
What year is this?
Terry Funk, at the grand old age of 73, is returning to the ring. This is a man who enjoyed his proto-The Wrestler "one last run" 20 years ago. This is a man who in the years prior to that was an NWA World Heavyweight Champion in a golden era in which the titleholder, not James Brown, was the hardest working man in show business. He wrestled for an hour every night in brutal matches requiring inhuman levels of stamina and fortitude. He wrestled in the legendarily punishing All Japan Pro Wrestling league for years. He popularised hardcore wrestling in a delightfully insane secondary career. He doesn't need to wrestle for the depressingly-named Big Time Wrestling. He wants to because he is insane.
His (59 year) old sparring partner - or more accurately, the guy he blew to bits in ultra-violent matches over 25 years ago - Atsushi Onita has also stepped gingerly back into the ring for Combat Zone Wrestling this week, the explosives detonated by which he deemed not powerful enough. This from a man recovering from a broken leg, which he also fought through in another bombs bout in January.
We're in 2017. At least, that's what the date on my calendar says. On WWE's, meanwhile, the date is the FIRST, every bloody time...
5. Joey Ryan's D*ck Strikes Again
Mick Foley triggered Jim Cornette this week by taking Joey Ryan's YouPorn Plex on an Over The Top wrestling show in Dublin.
For those few uninitiated with the divisive manoeuvre: Ryan's penis is sentient and has the power to grip the hands of his opponents. The grip is tightened when Ryan flexes his arms. The power his package generates is such that it can flip his opponents onto their back - which, in the case of Mick Foley and his favoured gimmick puppet, provided us with an unsavoury image of a wank sock.
As nuts as is it is to see a WWE Hall of Famer taking the move, fiction has acknowledged itself as fiction for well over a century at this point in other mediums, which didn't suddenly cease to exist - and Joey Ryan exposing his c*ck doesn't expose the business because there's nothing left to expose. Joey Ryan using his weapon as a weapon doesn't suddenly render something like Okada Vs. Omega unrealistic in comparison. If the work is good enough, you can believe in it at that moment. That's how wrestling gets you. The enterprise is phoney; suspension of disbelief occurs after you've bought the ticket under no other pretence. This meta business is just a new context, one you can ignore if you so wish. That's what I do.
The classic ideal of a professional wrestler is able to ply his trade as an independent contractor, not beholden to a monopoly, while preserving his commodity - his body - for as long as possible.
Ryan is closer to it than many are willing to admit.