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The Magic Towel and Other Frustrating Indy Moments
Looking at this column, and at least three others on this Web site, the term “Magic Towel” has been mentioned, but unfortunately never explained. Sorry about that. To make up for this glaring omission, what will follow is not only an explanation but also a whole laundry list of frustrating things that have boggled the mind and baffled even the most casual observers of independent wrestling.
At the last ECWA show, Inferno was “injured” at the hands of Billy Bax and Rob Eckos, who used a pole to do some indecipherable damage to his shoulder. Staff and officials ran out to the ring, with one of them clutching, of all things, a towel. No First Aid kits, no stretchers, no bandages, nothing. Just a towel. Apparently these wrestling officials (at least the poor guy singled out here who brought out the towel) felt that this “Magic Towel” would be the perfect treatment to whatever injury suffered by Inferno. Loud, brash pontifications followed by the usual smart asses in the audience as to what other ailments this “Magic Towel” would cure- such as amputation, head colds, cavities, and the like.
A lot of fun, good-natured ribbing and amusement resulted from the end of this angle, as is the norm when it comes to a first class promotion like the ECWA, but sometimes the results aren’t so satisfying. In fact, they’re downright frustrating. Take, for example, the decision at one horrendous NWA show in the beautiful sprawl of mass that is Keansburg, NJ, in 2001 to remove Dawn Marie as a referee in a Simon Diamond/Dick Dudley match because she was “biased.”
Well, no kidding.
Something like this just makes the entire promotion look like a bunch of morons. After all, in their own storyline (and elsewhere), Dawn Marie was Simon’s manager, so it made little sense to have her referee a match featuring her client against a hated opponent. Picture Al Gore moderating a debate between Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, and you’ll get the idea. If the concept wasn’t bad enough, the execution was even worse, as the entire match took place and only at the end did Gino Moore, one of the NWA’s many fine, upstanding, stellar representatives, declare that Dawn Marie was “biased” and then decide to remove her from the match. Brilliant.
More “brilliant” booking took place at the recent “classic” CSWF show where EZ Money turned on his tag partner Chris “You’re On the List” Hamrick because, as it was explained AFTER the match, the partner who scored the pinfall would win the title of the person pinned. It would have been helpful and courteous to, you know, explain that to the 76 people who bothered to show up and watch the show, but one tenet of indy wrestling apparently is to never let logic get in the way of running your fed.
Logic was definitely missing when the NWA ran a show in Yardville, NJ, one of a string of shows that could fill a book with their classic and not-so-classic moments, and held a Three Way Dance featuring Tommy Cairo and Ian Rotten. Who was the third worker? Who cares- I doubt the third worker in the match is too eager to divulge his identity after the match they had- with rules so confusing as to who could get a pinfall that one “fan” decided to make his presence, blow dried 70s hair, and total geek personality known by standing up and screaming at the participants. It became so awkward that Cairo decided to follow the “fan” outside to the parking lot while still in his wrestling gear to debate some of his points. When you’re pretty much forced to draw a diagram of how your match is booked, then you’ve pretty much lost your audience.
Major League Wrestling lost their audience and any credibility they might have generated with their so successful formula of Internet buzz and promotion by their ridiculous refusal to explain the rules of their Lucha Rules tag team match at their show in Philadelphia last year. This left 700 people in the audience scratching their heads as they saw wrestler after wrestler get pinned- yet the match continued without comment, announcement, or explanation. This is one of the major problems with indy feds spending way too much time relying on the Internet of all places to sell tickets- the asinine assumption that every Net “fan” is completely knowledgeable of all types of professional wrestling, and therefore doesn’t need clarification on exactly what the fuck a Lucha Rules tag match actually is.
Let’s put it this way- at the beginning of the match, one of the participants turned to the front row and told anyone within earshot NOT TO WATCH THE MATCH. MLW hasn’t been back since, and isn’t missed a bit. Not even by its “legions” of Internet followers…just another example of a run of the mill Indy of the Moment that went exactly nowhere.
Ring of Honor does seem to be going somewhere, even if they can’t comprehend their own rules of “honor” when it comes to booking angles. For a promotion so supposedly centered on athletic contests and sportsmanship, ROH looked like hypocrites and fools- in other words, exactly what they really have been all along, when they worked an angle with USA Pro workers who “stormed the ring” during a recent ROH card in New York and sparked a terribly rehearsed “brawl” that failed miserably in its attempts to look like a “shoot.”
Please, just enough with the “shoots” already. No one believes them anymore. No one is convincing enough to pull them off in an angle. No one’s smart enough to know how to convincingly write a “shoot” angle. And honestly- no one CARES about “shoot” angles anymore. People pay their money to see professional wrestlers wrestle. See where the “oh boy this is actually real” stuff landed WCW, ECW, MLW, the career of Shane Douglas, and all those debuts and Surprises of the Week in the NWA-TNA.
Talk about frustrating- D’Lo Brown had five years with the WWF. He had a good run, got paid six figures a year to do it, and then got cut. So of course, NWA-TNA brings him right in this week so he can run down the WWF/E and promptly make the NWA-TNA look like a bunch of pikers who realize they’re running a second rate promotion when compared to the WWE. The “disgruntled WWE worker” promo is just totally hypocritical coming from a guys like D’Lo, who made a nice sum of money working mid card at best matches and now just looks like an ingrate that wished he wasn’t fired from a better company than the one he’s resigned to working for now. Similar to Dusty Rhodes and any company he works for these days, and whose continued, irritating nostalgia trips fail to wash away the marks of failure and ego he’s left on the business.
Hypocrites, egos, and fools…which brings us back to Ring of Honor and its lame “shoot” angle that makes their rules of “honor” not worth the paper or cheap handout program they might be printed on- especially when this classy promotion managed to get three different camera angles on a “shoot” and proceeded to shill this as a “must see” tape. Ring around the collar has more credibility at this point than Rob Feinstein and his “see how many real ‘friends’ I have in this oh so friendly business ‘cause they work for me” fed.
This “friendly” business has cost people friendships and in some cases, relationships outside of the business. It’s extremely frustrating, and very hard to feel any sympathy or sorrow for the Messiah, as he lost his thumb due to one bad choice of partners, only to almost immediately find another promoter’s significant other’s pants to jump into. Messiah, whose real name is Billy Welsh (courtesy PWBTS), apparently didn’t learn that it’s not smart to mess with another man’s woman. No one cares who he’s banging, but if he’s taking time to announce during a wrestling show that “she loved it,” then he’s inviting problems that, in his case, he wasn’t prepared for- and clearly problems he seems to want to continue to invite into his life by going out and banging someone else whose other half has some connection to the wrestling business.
It’s OK to be frustrated by things like that. Even if we’re not so incredibly fortunate and skilled enough to be granted access to the hallowed halls of an indy fed’s locker room. Or not “lucky” enough to have bookings all over the region. Or have not managed to ingratiate, toady, fester, grovel, or kiss unwarranted and worthless ass on our way into being fooled that we’re part of “the show.” Or not be blessed enough to talk to the ever reclusive and introverted wrestlers that populate the wrestling business. You know, “the boys,” as those who think they’re in “the business” refer to them. Or think it means something to have “dirt” on someone in the glamorous world of professional wrestling. We’re allowed to discuss it and be frustrated by it, even if it might jeapordize or upset that precious and really valuable apple cart of “wrestling connections” that look so good in the real world and on a professional resume.
Perhaps that’s one of the biggest attractions of the world of professional wrestling. Sorting the wheat from the chaff. Finding the diamonds in the rough. The rose between the weeds. Seeing the sparking gems amidst the piles of broken rock. Looking for the extraordinary, special, satisfying, compelling, and entertaining moments that seem to be mired in a sea of stupidity, insecurity, illogic, diffidence, egocentrism, self-preservation, and frustration.
Here’s to continuing to keep on looking.
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The comments and statements
do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Brett Schwan and the Wrestling
Clothesline (although many times, he comes damn close!). Please
feel free to email HIM with any comments, complaints, etc.
Jim has been watching wrestling for over 20 years and has followed and reported on indy wrestling for over 6 years. He's also a fan of the New York Giants, New York Yankees, St. John's Red Storm basketball, Alabama Crimson Tide football, and the New Jersey Devils, but please don't hold that against him.
Contact Jim at BilJim2@hotmail.com
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Previous Columns:
Watching Tazz is Tough Enough
Seven in Two
Getting Your Moneys Worth
How Not to Run and Indy
If That's What it Takes, They Don't Have It!
Customer Service in the Wrestling Business
Consider the Source
How Much Would You Pay?
Living Off The Past
Enough
Already
What
A Cop Out
Climbing
the Psychic Hotline
Subtleties
Pure Carny Scum
Will Bleed For Food
Review...of a Review
Some People Just Don't Get It.
The Third One's The Charm
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