5 Most Insane Things Happening In Wrestling Right Now (Dec 8)
Sh*t-Shows & Fellatio.
Wrestling, being wrestling, has proffered many a disgusting promotional tactic over the course of its dark, dark history.
World Class Championship Wrestling was on fire in this regard in the 1980s, during which Fritz Von Erich exploited the so-called family curse to sell tickets to his wrestling shows. When one of his sons had the temerity to not off themselves in '88, Fritz took the drastic measure of faking a heart attack - at Christmas! - to take advantage of his public's financial support at times of genuine need.
As the decade drew to a close, the shocking death of Bruiser Brody, "allegedly" stabbed to death by José González, rocked the wrestling world - of course, wrestling being wrestling, two enterprising gents in Carlos Colón and Atsushi Onita saw money where most saw tragedy. The former, buddies with José González, booked him as a babyface (!) in 1989. The latter, in 1990, sought vengeance on behalf of Brody's ghost and stabbed José right back. Hooray for justice.
WWE, in comparing the 9/11 terrorist attacks to Vince McMahon's federal indictment and basically bullying several of their employees/independent contractors, have excelled in recent years - but at last, genuine competition has emerged. If only it wasn't things of this nature, to quote Vince himself.
This week, Insane Championship Wrestling all but secured the venerable Wrestling Observer's Most Disgusting Promotional Tactic Of The Year Award...
5. Session Job Martina
It has since been taken down - common sense has prevailed - but ICW this week posted a drastically misjudged backstage snippet from their recent Fear & Loathing X show on YouTube.
Some context: ICW has previous with Bram. The company previously used his real-life notoriety - Bram's ugly, physically abusive past is well-documented - by booking him to work-shoot all over Ravey Davey's face earlier this year. As with most "shoots", this was quickly exposed as a work - if the failure to cut away from the scene didn't accomplish that immediately - and Davey suffered genuine pain in the name of theatre for virtually nothing. He resembled a hammerhead shark for virtually nothing. The very idea that ICW would mine this source material in the first place was surely enough.
Davey's girlfriend, the amiable Session Moth Martina, later turned on him in order to shack up with Bram and, at Fear & Loathing, gave him oral sex on a settee. This was cheap and tawdry in itself - but the conventions of storytelling, and the laws of wrestling, almost necessitate the bleakly unnecessary; at some point, Bram is bound to batter Martina to set up a match between him and Davey.
2017 has exposed the toxicity of abuse in the field of entertainment - and since wrestling categorically cannot "do" social commentary, we can only view this as something beyond the pale.