FanPost

Retroactive Reconstruction: Five Untouchables

WWE.com

Welcome to a special edition of Retroactive Reconstruction. Normally, this is a place where we take a look at abortive, not-quite-there, and downright abysmal gimmicks and angles before retroactively putting them together in order to fix what was broken. It's fantasy booking at its finest! Today we look at "the untouchables."

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Comedy, as a general rule, prides itself on the ability to cross the line of decency. It's like what Mel Brooks said: if I cut my finger, that's a tragedy. If you walk into an open sewer and die, that's comedy. Something about pushing the boundaries of good taste is just too good an opportunity for most people to pass up. When it's done well, it's Louis C.K. pointing out how much he hates the phrase "the N-Word." When it isn't done well, it's Michael Richards destroying his career in an offensively bad and racist rant that goes beyond crossing the line and straight into "that's uncalled for."

As per usual, I'm taking a while to get to my point, but here it is: there are a shitload of things to mock in this goofy industry of ours, and I take pride in pulling them apart like a literary critic who has stumbled into the wrong topic matter for his colorful and long-winded rants. However, everyone's got a line. A line that they, out of respect for others or maybe even just for themselves, just won't cross. Whether because it breaches the bounds of good taste or because there simply is no point to partaking in this mockery is immaterial. It's just something they won't do.

Without further ado, here are five angles/gimmicks that I won't be reconstructing anytime soon.

5.) The "Eddie-sploitation"

Eddie Guerrero, depending on who you ask, is either a great wrestler or the greatest wrestler of all time. His colleagues speak nothing but great things about him, the fans love literally anything that references him (the frog splash, the Three Amigos suplexes, the 'faked chair shot'…), and he is the closest thing you'll get to a man who has practically zero detractors. Seriously, I can't think of a story that proved Eddie was a shithead to people backstage or to fans.

He was also a man who was tortured for years by drug addiction and alcoholism, to the point where he lost his family when Vickie took the kids and left him. We've seen this story before: a tragic end to a great performer in public who just can't get it together behind the scenes. But that's the thing about Eddie; he loved taking something that wasn't his to take. In this case, it was an opportunity to get a happy ending. He got clean as a whistle, won back Vickie Guerrero, and in one of the greatest fucking things I've ever seen, he beat Brock Lesnar for the championship. That's a hell of a comeback story.

Which makes his tragic passing at 38 all the more heartbreaking.

To me, death is one of those things that, if you're going to be working for the sake of storytelling, needs to either be A.) done with taste towards the dearly departed or B.) done in a manner that the dearly departed would approve of. For example, when Monty Python's Graham Chapman died, John Cleese gave the perfect eulogy for the man. When Paul Bearer died, the WWE got approval from the family of William Moody to infuse Paul Bearer's memory into that hellacious CM Punk-Undertaker feud.

Eddie did not get the same degree of reverence.

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It started with Randy Orton telling Rey Mysterio that his dear friend Eddie Guerrero was not in heaven, but in hell. It continued with tacky storytelling elements such as Mysterio supposedly receiving in-ring advice from Eddie's spirit. And it caused Vickie Guerrero to become an onscreen character, whose initial heel turn was so hated that she was eventually forced to embrace the hate and become a heel for life. Also, I find it odd that Rey Mysterio received the major push for this angle when the WWE had Chavo Guerrero who had a much closer relationship to the story (y'know, considering he was Eddie's nephew and the guy who found Eddie dead.)

There's a reason that R.D. Reynolds at WrestleCrap called the Eddiesploitation one of the hardest things he had to write, when it won the website's annual Gooker Award for worst element of wrestling television back in 2006. At least time has allowed us to block out that stupid angle, and let Eddie's memory rest in peace. Because sweet Mick Foley was this tacky.

4.) Kurt Angle versus Jeff Jarrett in TNA

You know, when I wrote this piece a while back, I mentioned that I wanted nothing to do with the infamous Kurt Angle-Jeff Jarrett divorce angle that involved Angle's kids. I guess this entry is just a confirmation that my opinion hasn't changed. But I dared to do some extra research on the stuff, and it makes me cringe even more.

Like, do the people at the top of TNA even understand basic human psychology? I know that wrestling is a messed-up business, and that family affairs are often fair game for angles. I mean, shit, some of the most well-known angles in wrestling come from wrestling families. It's a family that owns the WWE and got themselves over as onscreen characters.

But though there might be some real-life struggle or frustration between family members, at the very least there was a degree of professionalism to it all. And you didn't bring in outsiders unless you were very careful with how it was booked.

And children are really difficult to work with.

I hope a shitload of training went into the Raven-Sandman angle where Raven "brainwashed" Sandman's kid to join his stable. At least the kid's mom was with him, so she could most likely whisper "Just pretend to hate daddy. It'll trick the bad man and he'll come save us. Trust me!"

Divorce is just something that is…bad.

If it's between two professionals and it's a kayfabed angle, fine. Triple H and Stephanie during the turn of the century is a (tacky yet) relatively fair example of this. They also didn't involve any kids. That way, there wasn't any confusion for the kids as they wondered what was real and what wasn't.

Kurt Angle's kids were inserted right into the middle of Karen and Jeff Jarrett's vendetta against Kurt. It was poorly thought-out, downright mean-spirited cynicism that was written as an attempt to be shocking. Who was the idiot that was in charge of this stuff?

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3.) Beaver Cleavage

Fuck Vince Russo.

In those three words above, I have distilled the essence of StrongStyle81's amazing takedown of the former WWE and WCW booker from a week ago.

But, see, that takedown was based on a very recent comment that Vinnie Ru had made, in a deliberate attempt to stay in the spotlight whilst trolling the fans that paid money to see the terrible shows he'd written and therefore made him his millions. How very grateful of you, Vince.

But this is perhaps the most ridiculously offensive and downright creepy thing that ever came out of the mind of Vince Russo, and considering some of the gawdawful booking decisions that he has made in the past, this is saying a lot. The basics are this: Poor Chaz Warrington was cast as 'Beaver Cleavage,' who would shoot old-timey black and white promos with his kayfabe mother, the…gifted Mrs. Cleavage. And a disturbingly high amount (note: anything more than 'none whatsoever' qualifies as disturbingly high in this situation.) of their interactions were sexual innuendos.

I'm almost afraid to type this, but one such example would be Beaver complaining that his cereal was too dry, and his mother would offer to rectify the situation by offering some of…Mother's Milk.

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Even Vince McMahon must have thought this shit was too much, and mercy-killed the angle by having Chaz go "I'm sorry, I can't do this!" and walking off camera in the middle of the promo, with Mrs. Cleavage going "We're on the air!" as if this was all a reality show gone awfully wrong. Now, granted, Chaz Warrington would forever and ever be known as Beaver Cleavage, but at least Vince McMahon killed it before things got Game of Thrones creepy.

Yet, evidently, that pissed Russo off. According to some sources, this was one of the reasons that he ditched WWF for WCW and the creative freedom the latter offered. He was pissed because WWF had killed his pet project. Jesus Christ, I think that if the Joker were to take a peek inside Vince Russo's mind, he would go catatonic with shock, curled up in the fetal position while endlessly muttering "crazy-crazy-crazy-crazy."

So yeah, fuck Beaver Cleavage.

2.) Eugene

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Here's a little personal background of mine: when I was in high school, I was on the football team. One of the best things about that, besides the fame and adulation (just kidding. I was the starting left guard. There's more glory in being the team manager than that spot.) was how every game day the players would go to local elementary schools and read to the kids, go out to recess with them, etcetera. And let me tell you, if you're ever feeling a little cynical about life, all you gotta do is make a bunch of kindergarteners smile by letting them gang-tackle the big monster football player like he was Godzilla. (You're goddamn right I let them get away with that.)

My senior year was different. One of the coaches pulled me aside and said they had a special assignment for me: they wanted me to be the reader for the low-functioning cognitive impaired classroom at a local elementary school. There was a high-functioning room, and a low-functioning room. I was, needless to say, fucking terrified. How the hell am I supposed to interact with these kids? I don't know anyone that has cognitive issues, much less have them myself. How do I communicate? What if something happened? That "something," as you can imagine, was less founded in reality and more in my uninformed fear that special-needs people were…different.

Needless to say, I am incredibly thankful that I got the opportunity to do this. I quickly learned that the kids probably weren't listening to what it was that I was reading, nor did they particularly care whether or not the itsy-bitsy spider was going to make it up the top of the water spout. They seemed more interested in…me, like I was some mythical beast. (Can't say I blame them. I think I was bigger than all of them plus the two teachers combined. Football player and genetics, y'all.)

I don't miss much about football. It's a nasty, brutish sport especially at the high school level when you know the odds of you playing at the next level are in the negatives (I was good enough to start, but let's not get carried away here), and I'm damn lucky I didn't get a concussion. But I will always, always treasure the few days I got to spend with those kids. 'Cuz, as cliche as it sounds, they showed me that if they can find a way to be happy in their own way despite the horrific roadblock life has thrown them from the get-go, then goddamn I can be happy with the blessed life I've got.

They sent me a card at the end of the year, and it's pinned up on my desk's bulletin board as I write this.

Thus, as you can probably imagine, I'm not a big fan of a guy whose gimmick is essentially "Let's point and laugh at the stupid retard." And this clip from ECW ONS 2006 is…well, it's not good. I wish Nick Dinsmore wasn't tossed into such a terrible gimmick like this, because the dude was able to fucking go in the ring. And I wish they hadn't wasted that clever "steal another guy's finisher" gimmick on Eugene.

I've alluded to it before, but this is my least favorite gimmick I've ever heard of in professional wrestling.

So what could be worse than this?

1.) Anything that has to do with Chris Benoit

Chris Benoit, the performer, is apparently one of the greatest to have ever stepped into a ring. He was a technical wizard, he was able to legitimately get over because of his performance without strong mic skills, and put on some great matches with guys like Eddie Guerrero et al.

Having said that, I'm going to express an opinion that I don't think is terribly popular, but I feel I have to let it be known: I think that Chris Benoit is a vile human being.

In complete sincerity, I admire people that are able to separate the man from the performer. This is not an attack on you or anyone you know that feels the same way. This is an expression of personal belief. I simply cannot separate the two sides myself.

Chris Benoit murdered his wife and child.

We've heard the stories come out now that his dangerous style of wrestling left him with the battered brain of a man in his 80's with Alzheimer's Disease. We know that Chris might have been having marital problems around the time of his death. I'm sure that his body was breaking down due to a long career of being a hardcore wrestler.

But all the same: Chris Benoit murdered his wife and child.

Maybe it's because it's been an incredibly cynical time to be a sports fan these days that has me feeling particularly down, with the revelation that some of our sports heroes are wife-beaters or child abusers and the sheer effort exhibited by the league to cover it up raises chilling questions of what other skeletons are in the proverbial closet, but I just can't separate the performer from the man. I'll never be able to watch Ray Rice in a uniform without thinking "wife beater." I'll never be able to see Adrian Peterson without thinking "child abuser."

But there is a difference between what those two did and what Chris Benoit did. Peterson and Rice at least have the chance to exhibit remorse, and maybe change for the better. I am skeptical of that happening, and will need convincing as to whether they have truly changed, but at the very least they have the opportunity. If they are good at heart, I pray they take it.

Chris Benoit committed an ultimate sin. He murdered two innocent people. He murdered his own family. And then he took his own life.

How the hell am I supposed to talk about Chris in the Four Horsemen, or whether he got screwed in WCW, or whether Triple H gamed him out of a championship belt after Wrestlemania XX so Haitch's protege Randy Orton could get it? How do I mention that I think "Crippler Crossface" is a deviously-named finisher, without feeling guilty? How do I reconcile all of that with what he did in his final days? We'll never know exactly what happened those fateful three days, I suppose. The chain of events that led to those acts. We just know the horrible end.

I might bend on the other four, after a certain amount of time and thought. But out of respect for Daniel and Nancy Benoit, I'm never touching Chris Benoit.

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Don't worry Cagesiders, RR returns as scheduled later this weekend.

The FanPosts are solely the subjective opinions of Cageside Seats readers and do not necessarily reflect the views of Cageside Seats editors or staff.