Minutes from previous meetings of the Society: The Beatles – “Eleanor Rigby”, Tupac – Makaveli, Blur – 13 (with Graeme McMillan), Blur – Think Tank (with Graeme McMillan), Black Thought x Rakim: “Hip-Hop, you the love of my life”, Wu-Tang Clan – Enter The Wu-Tang (36 Chambers), On why I buy vinyl sometimes, on songs about places, Mellowhype’s Blackendwhite, a general post on punk, a snapshot of what I’m listening to, on Black Thought blacking out on “75 Bars”, how I got into The Roots, on Betty Wright and strong songs, on screw music, on Goodie MOb’s “The Experience”, on blvck gxds and recurring ideas

I Pledge Allegiance to the Grind II

Here’s the intro to the album:

This is not your regular rap album. This is meant to be a soundtrack to your success, brother. A soundtrack to your success, sister. This is right now, real-time music, what the fuck is happening. What ain’t happening is the bullshit lies you been going through. What ain’t happening is the bad examples you been following. You see, the Grind believes in you because we know you believe in us, therefore we don’t bullshit you. Nuh-uh. I wanna see whoever’s buying this record win right now and do great things. But the only way you gonna do that is if you get up off your ass and get about the act of doing something. Grind Time Rap Gang, fucker, bang bang bang. You can never lead if you only follow. What I mean is, if you sit around, and you look at people, and you wait for them to give you permission to do something great, you will never do anything, so get up, brothers! Get about your grind! If you have a boss, maybe you should fire your boss. Maybe you should change your life. Your work ethic will determine your worth, meaning whatever you get is determined by how hard you work to get it. You understand what I’m telling you right now? What I’m saying is there’s nothing in the world that can stop you from achieving whatever it is you wanna achieve. And I want you to let I Pledge Allegiance to the Grind Part II be a soundtrack to your success. Until we meet again on that path of getting to the money… it’s Grind Time Rap Gang. Bang. Bang. Bang. C’mon, let’s go!

What I like about Pledge II is that it’s I can hear a lot of Tupac in it. Pac is still probably my favorite rapper, just because he got it so well. He got it better than anybody else. He understood that you can play a role and still kick knowledge. Son didn’t have a criminal record until he rapped about having one. But he still managed to kick rhymes that had everybody relating to him. He was an everyman, in a way. I don’t mean that he was himself just like the rest of us — he clearly wasn’t, for better or worse — but he understood the value of theater and played a lot of roles. He made “Dear Mama” and “Wonda Why They Call U Bitch.” He rapped about living the fast life and being so depressed he wanted to kill himself. He was everyone, and that’s why he clicked so hard. It’s not that he was conscious or a thug or loved his mom or could spin a sex song. It’s that he was all of that in one.

Mike stepped into that role for me. I’ve liked Mike for years, ever since he hit the beat running like Randy Moss on his feature on OutKast’s “The Whole World,” and I love that he’s grown into this quietly revolutionary figure. Pledge II runs a range of subject matter. He pretty much hits every rap cliche but how much he loves his mom, I think. No, that’s not true: “Grandma’s House” counts there. Civic pride (“2 Sides”), fly rides (“Big Money, Big Cars”), drug dealing (“Good-Bye (City of Dope)”), and on and on. He glorifies drug dealing, stripping, big cars, education, looking out for your family, protecting yourself, and self-esteem. He touches on the power, occasional hypocrisy, and shortcomings of religion. He’s running through a wide range of experiences.

But what makes this political for me is that it’s an entire album not about how ill Mike is but how important it is to grind and get your own. It’s about being self-actualized, loyal, honest, and willing to do what you need to do to survive. On a very fundamental level, it’s about loving yourself because society hates your guts. You have to look out for yourself, your family, and your community.

His point of view is pointedly black southern and post-Reagan, too. The mistrust of authority, the matter-of-fact approach to the way crack ravaged the black community, an emphasis on money but a conscious knowledge of the evils that come from chasing it, and black power themes present on the album all scream that at me. Even the Grind Time Rap Gang stuff is part marketing and part motivation. You’ve gotta make money for yourself if you ever want to have anything of your own.

That’s the sort of political music I can get behind. It’s honest, direct, and if it came down to it, you could dance to it. Throw some elbows or groove, whatever you want. Killer Mike has demonstrated growth in his sound, but also in his politics and prejudices. I listen to Mike and I hear somebody who knows the game and is working to both fit in where he can get in and make things better, which sounds like a lot of people I know and look up to.

I go back to this album regularly. It’s motivation music. I went and checked last.fm to see if I could see how often, and came up with this image:

I was actually surprised to see “Grandma’s House” at number one, but I do love that song. (“If she catch me serving hard, it’s gon’ break my nana’s heart, so I take them bricks, I cut ‘em quick and hit the boulevard,” whooo) I figured that “Pressure” would be number one, but I’m okay with this result. It’s a powerful album, and there’s something that I can take away from every song. It’s intensely political without being in the dead prez or Immortal Technique vein of things. Mike is just talking about what he believes and what he knows. It’s real life rap, like Tupac used to kick, and I appreciate that. I feel like if I can’t apply your revolutionary or progressive or conservative or whichever philosophy to my real life, then it’s worthless. It’s not even hot air, because hot air actually has a use. Theory doesn’t do me any good.

“Burn” is a joint off Killer Mike’s Pl3dge. It’s sort of a sequel to “Pressure,” like how “Pressure” was sort of a sequel to “Bad Day/Worst Day.” If I had to use a song to pin down how I feel about a lot of stuff going down in America over the past few years… it’d probably be this joint.

• “Then said I, Woe is me! for I am undone” [The Roots - undun]
• The Cipher 01/19/11: I lost my girl to the Rolling Stones
• “It’s a new way of thinkin’…” [On Vinyl]
• Screw Music: Cocaine Pentagrams and the Twerk Team at a Black Mass
• Yeah, Sure.

As WWE hit the 2010′s, it became pretty hard to endure for two reasons. One, it became more and more apparent that their storylines were written on an hour-to-hour basis instead of being agreed on in advance. This is mainly due to McMahon being a mentally questionable dude. The sloppy storytelling had led to such promising and exciting storylines as the Nexus – the contestants from the first NXT season, who had become united against the Raw roster – petering out into a mess of bad ideas. Or Sheamus, a badass and dominant heel who became champ in record time and then went on to become a coward at the drop of a hat, ruining much of his appeal.

The other reason, which was arguably worse, was the idea of turning commentator Michael Cole heel. It started with the first season of NXT, which involved the debut of Daniel Bryan, who as I mentioned before was a big name in the indies. Cole would constantly rag on him for being worthless in every way possible. It’s hard to say if this was punishment for being semi-famous elsewhere, a way to set up Bryan giving Cole his comeuppance or a mix of both. Either way, it didn’t matter because comeuppance means very little when it’s a wrestler attacking a non-wrestler unless it’s an authority figure of some kind. Especially when this non-wrestler has an hour a week to rail on you verbally. Cole went from just hating Bryan to hating everyone on the roster other than a select few. This was entirely problematic. He rarely ever got his much-needed retribution and it didn’t stop him from going off on everyone on the roster for 4-7 hours a week. They seriously had a guy making fun of everyone to the point that WWE’s forcing you to hear about how they’re a company of worthless jokes. He was the antithesis of hype and outright made watching WWE a chore.

Eventually, they realized their folly and gradually brought him back to being a kind of okay commentator. Bryan himself endured several losing streaks, Cole’s constant barrage of insults, a temporary situation where he was fired for a really stupid reason and the issue of being a small man in a big man’s business. He won one of the two major championships, turned heel and slowly began to show how much personality he really had. He’s reached the point where McMahon seems to respect him for tolerating his mistreatment without a single complaint and the crowd has embraced him as a huge heel who’s fun to hate and even more fun to like.

As for Punk, he never got to be much more than a punching bag for whatever major face they were trying to push. He spent about a year or so losing nearly every major match and Punk himself was getting pretty tired of it. His contract was coming up and he wasn’t intent on keeping on. Since the general rule of thumb is for the guy leaving to go out defeated, WWE set up Cena (champion) vs. CM Punk at the PPV Money in the Bank 2011, which was in Punk’s hometown of Chicago. Punk publicly brought up that he was on his way out and threatened to leave the company with the championship, thereby making it a callback to his exit of ROH, only this time he was threatening to leave WWE for ROH. He even MENTIONED ROH on WWE TV during a planned segment where he got to get a lot of genuine opinions on the company and its fans off his chest. The story became huge and behind-the-scenes, agreements were made that Punk wouldn’t be leaving after all, despite appearing to in the storyline. He ended up winning the title and skipped town, leaving the company without a champion.

In true modern WWE fashion, it lost steam despite having some awesome moments. They had a good idea for the story: Cena would earn a new championship, Punk would return to claim that Cena was a fraud and they’d have a rematch to crown the true champion. WWE zipped through the whole thing in more than double the time they should have to the point that it outright hurt the narrative. For instance, they held a tournament for the vacant championship and beloved underdog Rey Mysterio won the finals. Later in the show it was decided that he’d defend the belt against Cena on the spot. Cena hadn’t wrestled at all that night, so he had a clearly unfair advantage and ended up winning. At no point did anyone ever bring this up. Not even Michael Cole.

At this point, Triple H was semi-retired, now dealing with the backstage business of the company. Sensing a popular story in the vicinity, he ended up stepping into the scene and robbing Cena and Punk of the spotlight. The storyline became about Triple H and the returning Kevin Nash (Triple H’s good buddy, remember) while Punk got smacked around by both of them and discarded to the side. They cut him off at the knees, but he still did a lot of good. While his ability to inspire high ratings isn’t very good, he’s still a magnet for good merchandise sales and the backstage folks give a damn about him now.

Not only that, but they seem to have accepted that, hey, maybe working your ass off in the indies is a good thing and not something that should be punished on principle. This is also due to Triple H taking over a lot of the talent scouting projects, as even though he’s got gigantic ego problems when it comes to handling his own character, he appears to have a good head when it comes to most everything else in the business. Over the past year, they’ve hired major indy personalities like Claudio Castagnoli (renamed Antonio Cesaro), Chris Hero (Kassius Ohno), Tyler Black (Seth Rollins), Jon Moxley (Dean Ambrose) and others.

With Cena, the company had still decided that they weren’t going to turn him heel no matter how much the crowd booed him, as he still had a ton of young fans and made a fortune on merchandise and also did a ton of good with Make-a-Wish appearances. They’ve been keeping him out of the title picture for quite a while, mainly distracting him with a feud against the Rock. The Rock quietly stepped away from wrestling during the early 2000′s to jump headfirst into a lucrative movie career, making one final in-ring appearance at Wrestlemania 20 in 2004 and the occasional rare cameo here and there. Notably, he dropped “the Rock” from his name and only called himself Dwayne Johnson, strongly suggesting that he wanted to distance himself from his wrestling career and the stigma that came with it. Toeing the company line, Cena – likely under the orders of McMahon – publicly derided Rock for claiming that the wrestling business meant everything to him and then leaving. Rock seemed to just let it slide off his back when this was brought up in interviews. Eventually, Rock made his return to WWE to start a year-plus rivalry with Cena that brought their real-life animosity into the fictional picture. It came to a head at Wrestlemania 28, where Rock won. Some were annoyed that this guy could leave for eight years and come back to stomp down the top guy in the company, who had been working harder than anyone else on the roster, but really, only by losing could Cena move forward in any meaningful way.

Similarly, Brock Lesnar had also been brought back. After leaving the company in a huff years before, he made a failed attempt at an NFL career before settling on becoming one of the biggest stars in the Ultimate Fighting Championship circuit. While he wasn’t the most skilled, he was still an unstoppable brick wall of brute force and that won him quite a few big matches. He used the skills he learned as a wrestler, not in terms of fighting, but in terms of verbally running everyone down before and after his fights to the point that people would pay money to see somebody shut him up. Just like Gorgeous George told Muhammad Ali to do many decades ago. There was a thorn in there to the UFC fans who hated the idea of the “fake fighter” punking out the real deals, but it only added to the amusement. Especially when he started losing. Due to some high profile losses and some illness issues, Lesnar retired from UFC. WWE, still high on their business with the Rock, is currently paying him a ton of money to work for them for another year with limited appearances.

Right now, WWE is playing with fire in what appears to be the latest in a list of nose-diving endeavors. Over the last twenty years, McMahon has tried branching out from wrestling in many ways. He tried the World Bodybuilding Federation, which would use wrestling-style stories and personalities in the world of bodybuilding, and that didn’t work out so well. His XFL football league is notorious for bringing in the absolute lowest ratings in NBC history during its one season. His wife is setting out for her second attempt to be a senator after the last time cost them millions. WWE Films has yet to pick up any steam for good reason. And now, they’re trying to set up the WWE Network. A 24/7 channel that features years worth of footage that the company has stocked away is certainly something I’d be up for, but many are too cynical on its possibility of success. Especially with reports on how less-than-competent they’ve been in working on the launch.

That brings us to where we are now. ROH is still doing their thing, albeit gutted by losing some of their bigger names to the WWE. They have a TV show that’s also available on YouTube and a good amount of internet PPVs. Underneath them, the other big indies are still going strong as an alternative to the occasionally-hopeless mainstream. They too have been experimenting with iPPVs, giving the fans new ways to get into them and support them.

TNA finally got rid of Vince Russo, but the damage has been done. Hogan and Bischoff have done too much against the brand and the company will be better off once they move on. If anything, they need to find their own identity like they did in the early days instead of trying to latch onto WWE in the desperate hope of being considered competition in any way.

WWE has the tools necessary to increase business. Their talent pool is pretty damn impressive at the moment. If anything is holding them back, it’s the febrile-minded inability to be consistent. Too much second-guessing and changing stories and winners at the last second for the sake of being unpredictable or because McMahon is having one of his weird moods. Despite everything I’ve said against Triple H, I feel that the company has a better shot at a strong future once he takes over completely.

In the end, the cycle will continue. Boys will be boys when they should be men. Potential will be ruined by ego and short-sightedness while some of the real stars will be created by happenstance and the ability to endure antagonistic bullshit from their bosses and coworkers. There will be good matches, there will be great matches and there will be downright unwatchable matches that make zero sense. When it’s good, it’s good and when it’s bad, it’s hilarious. Yet, as always, it’ll always be the men and events behind the curtain that make everything so damn fascinating.Similar Posts:

• Wrestling History (From My Recollection): Part 4
• Wrestling History (From My Recollection): Part 3
• Annotating CM Punk
• Wrestling History (From My Recollection): Part 1
• Dictator vs. Wrestler: Vega and the Vegan

RBG: revolutionary but gangsta

Case in point: “Hell Yeah (Pimp the System).” What I like about this song is that it’s probably the purest example of how high school dead prez’s philosophy is. The song’s a banger, don’t get me wrong, but it’s stone stupid. The title makes it seem like it’s all about pimping the system because you’re broke, turning the man’s methods against him, but in terms of actual content, it’s about robbing a pizza delivery man, pulling a credit card scheme so that you can buy fancy stuff, pulling a different scheme so you can get food stamps (???), and robbing whatever store you work at because “doing dirt is a part of living.”

I hate the first verse. I can’t even tell you how much I loathe it. Their big idea of getting a break from poverty is robbing a pizza delivery man. Now, I dunno if y’all have met any pizza deliverymen, but these cats are not the 1%. Not even close. They’re regular people working a crappy job where people regularly try to cheat them out of cash and short them on tips. A pizza delivery guy is a dude that’s sitting exactly one rung higher on the ladder than the characters in the song.

Robbing that guy is a sick idea. First, son is going to have sixty bucks on him, max, plus maybe three pizzas. Good haul, dunny. Second, it’s poisonous and stupid to attack someone who’s basically on the same level as you. If you’re going to rob anyone, you need to be running up in a rich man’s house or pulling Bernie Madoff into a dark alley or putting a gun to a celebrity’s back or something, not robbing somebody who makes six bucks an hour plus tips. The rest of the song isn’t much better. The credit card scam isn’t a way to escape poverty so much as to buy fly clothes and ruin your friend’s credit while he ruins yours. How is that pimping the system?

dead prez has got a few genuine bangers. “Hip-Hop” and “It’s Bigger Than Hip-Hop” still go (trivia: Kanye to the West produced the latter). “The Pistol” is pretty okay, and that last verse is pleasantly cold. But a lot of their stuff, stuff like “Mind Sex” and every time they talk about running up on white folks just because and whatever… it’s good agitprop, but it isn’t good philosophy. It’s not workable. It’s not real. It’s terrible, in fact, and for it to be positioned like something to emulate, as something that’s more real and important than Scarface serving cocaine to the geeks is just… dishonest. At least these dudes pushing jiggy or crack raps have a coherent position. “I like money more than I like my fellow man.” dead prez has a chaotic assortment of overcompensatingly militant Black nationalist rhetoric, and precious little of it is applicable to your life.

I mean, look at the video for “Hell Yeah.” You rob a white family, steal their video camera, and throw a party? What part of the game is that? That’s revolutionary? That’s J Edgar Hoover’s wet dream.

Every time somebody is like “Do you know dead prez????” I basically react the same way I do when someone asks about Ron Paul/Ayn Rand/Johnen Vasquez/Charles Bukowski/MIA. I know that I’m in for a painful conversation that’ll probably be about black helicopters and how school exists to brainwash you into being a robot and la-di-da. And I mean, I went out and got “uhuru” tattooed on my actual body. I’m down for the cause or whatever, but having a cause or claiming to be a socialist or vegan or feminist or whatever is no replacement for actually having ideas that can be applied to real life and have a possibility of causing change.

“Rob a white family, throw a party” isn’t going to cause any change I want a part of. “Stick up a pizza delivery man to feed your folks” is a shortsighted and stupid plan. And dead prez’s music is rife with this stuff. It gets to the point where my eyes are rolling while my head is nodding. It’s frustrating.

I think it’s awful that Jay-Z, of all people, got on the remix to “Hell Yeah” and had more compelling content than these conscious rappers, when all he was doing was biting The Eminem show-era Eminem. Ice Cube’s “Gangsta Rap Made Me Do It” is more sound and honest than any dead prez song you care to name:

• Ultimate Edit Week 2: Day Five
• Top 8 of 08 #7: Immortal Technique – The 3rd World
• “When is it not pirating?” and/or “When is piracy understandable?”
• “My life dope? (straight cocaine)” [On Killer Mike]
• Stan the Man

Minutes from previous meetings of the Society: The Beatles – “Eleanor Rigby”, Tupac – Makaveli, Blur – 13 (with Graeme McMillan), Blur – Think Tank (with Graeme McMillan), Black Thought x Rakim: “Hip-Hop, you the love of my life”, Wu-Tang Clan – Enter The Wu-Tang (36 Chambers), On why I buy vinyl sometimes, on songs about places, Mellowhype’s Blackendwhite, a general post on punk, a snapshot of what I’m listening to, on Black Thought blacking out on “75 Bars”, how I got into The Roots, on Betty Wright and strong songs, on screw music, on Goodie MOb’s “The Experience”

There’s this bit from Method Man & Mary J Blige’s “All I Need” video that’s stuck with me for years. No lie, ever since I was a kid. It’s a brief burst of strange horror in a video that’s set to a love song. If you start around 3:10, you’ll see it. Mef peeks up over a ledge. His eyes are whited out, the fronts in his mouth give his jaw a weird shape, and then he taps his fingers and disappears. There’s something alien about it. It didn’t scare me, but I recognized that it was scary, if that makes any type of sense. There’s a creepy, unsettling aspect to that specific image. It’s the beginnings of a horror movie.

Method Man’s Tical gave me the same feeling as that video. It’s an album that teeters on the edge of being uncomfortably dark. It definitely doesn’t sound like the other Wu joints from that first wave. It’s hazy, obviously, and the layered samples and ad-libs give it a haunting feel at times. The female vocalist on “Biscuits” isn’t harmonizing so much as wailing (which is different from a scream, mind you). His token love song has a deep, bass-y, and very un-love song sound, not to mention Streetlife salting Method Man’s game. It’s a down album, not quite as down as Pac’s Me Against the World, but it sounds and looks like it was recorded in a dungeon by an old black dude who used to be a slave and is wild upset about being in chains again.

Tical having such a horror influence is sorta funny, actually, because Method Man is by far the most fun-loving and charismatic member of the Wu. He was the crossover champion, the dude who rocked fly clothes because he could. He’s still classically handsome, even twenty years later. You can hear that charisma on “Release Yo’ Delf” more than anything else, I think. It’s strange that Tical was so dark, because if anything, Mef should’ve dropped a Ready to Die or like… I don’t even know, an “Ain’t No Nigga” (which “All I Need” eventually became once they drafted Mary J) instead of “Meth vs Chef.” Remember when he did “The Riddler” for that Batman Forever soundtrack? That’s no pop song. But: here we are. He should’ve been on songs with Blackstreet or whoever.

Meth doubled down on the dark image on Tical 2000, which I remember as being a lot of smoke and not enough fire. It’s gotten better as I’ve gotten older (everything from “Shaolin What” to “Spazzola” goes, and “Play IV Keeps” is no joke), but it’s still no Tical. But he made the subtle apocalyptic subtext of Tical into text, full stop. It was an interesting choice, and while how loyal he is to that sound meanders around (“Sweet Love” is out of place and off-tone, and the entire last quarter or so of the album are pop joints), it’s an album that puts the thought of the end of the world in your mind. I honestly haven’t gone back to listen if he’s Behold A Pale Horseing it, like a lot of rappers were doing around ’99. I don’t think so, for the record — I think he’s pulling from Mad Max, Cyborg (both of which are explicitly shouted out in the lyrics), and other pop-apocalyse films rather than conspiracy theories and secret societies. Secular apocalypse, rather than religious. The fall of man, and then the fall that comes after. Nuclear winters, poverty-stricken ghettos, whatever.

But Method Man’s steez around then (“around then” being like six years I guess) stuck with me, in part because precious few people were in the same lane of occasional horror rap (Company Flow is another highlight of this era, Bone Thugs was another, Three 6 Mafia of course, Geto Boys on occasion) and in part because it’s such a departure from his aboveground work. Somewhere out there lurks Method Man with the white eyes and the grill, waiting to pop out of a dark alley and hit you with a grin that chills the soul. In the meantime, we’ve got the laughing, cooldude stoner and family man.

The video for Spaceghost Purrp’s “The Black God” dropped the other day. It took me a minute to get into his sound for whatever reason, but Ray the Destroyer’s review over at Мишка got me pointed at the right project. I like God of Black volume 1 quite a bit, especially “The Black God.” Baow:

What’s crazy is how SGP reinvigorated and reinvented Meth’s ’90s lane. The grill and glasses, the Lee Bermejo-style skeleton, and a host of near-faceless black men in hoodies… it feels cultish, almost, like there’s a secret here and you’re not invited, even though that secret will definitely destroy your soul. “When you think of us, think of pyramids and pistols, and shimmering gold teeth that shine like crystals,” right, like dead prez said? This is that. It’s the barest hint of a face in the dark and a shine you can’t quite make out.

(Sidebar: consider the monsters in Attack The Block. Think of their shapes and their teeth.)

I wrote “faceless horrors” in my notes as something I wanted to talk about. I can’t fit it in here in a natural way, but I think it’s worth mentioning. The focal point of the video shifts and blurs as people move in front of the camera and change clothes. The only distinct figure is son in the white t-shirt, isn’t he?)

“The Black God” puts me in mind of The Nation of Gods and Earths, too. The idea that the Asiatic Blackman is God, Allah representing Arm Leg Leg Arm Head (a human body, keep up), the 5% knowing the truth while the 85% remain ignorant and self-destructive… all of that is in here. SGP talks about how he’s “no longer a black man,” meaning he evolved past that. He’s The Black God, and the song is all about self-improvement laid over a spooky piano melody and deep drums.

And I mean, SGP is obviously not biting Wu-Tang or whatever here. I doubt there’s many 5%ers in Florida, for that matter. But SGP in 2012 and Method Man in 1995 were both definitely working out some of the same ideas on wax and aesthetically, and even using some of the same language — whether that’s visual language or spoken language — to do so. I like that a whole lot. Grab The God of Black here. Amazon’s got Tical and Tical 2000: Judgement Day if you’ve somehow not heard them before now.Similar Posts:

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• “i deal with the real” [The Roots - Things Fall Apart]

A big name I haven’t talked about in a while is Triple H. While Austin, Mick Foley/Mankind and Rock left the company in the early 2000′s, Triple H continued to rise to the top. A storyline marriage to Vince McMahon’s daughter Stephanie led to the two getting together and becoming married for real. Triple H spent most of these years as a heel and became rather unbearable as a top name. He was champion for most of the time, would drone on for about 20 minutes at the opening of every show and when tasked with feuding against rising faces who really needed the big win to make them superstars, Triple H instead used his backstage pull to stay on top and win the matches. The most notable is his match against Booker T at Wrestlemania 19, where the lead-up featured Triple H heavily insinuating that black people don’t get to become champion. Logic would dictate that Booker would HAVE to win in the end, but Triple H beat him rather decisively and Booker’s career never really recovered. Other people who have feuded with Triple H and had their careers hurt in one way or another include Chris Jericho, Kurt Angle, Rob Van Dam, Chris Benoit, Kane, Randy Orton and Sheamus. When confronted about this in interviews, Triple H would reflect on how much he was buried due to his Ultimate Warrior match and the year following the MSG Incident and still became a top guy despite not having to beat anyone major… willfully ignoring everything Mick Foley did for him. Triple H was sneaky like Hogan, but smart enough not to ever let it bite him on the ass, while also a far better performer. Hogan burned too many bridges while Triple H is set to run the WWE when McMahon steps down for good.

Speaking of Hogan burning bridges, I have to hit a tangent and mention one of his funnier moments. Hogan made the occasional appearance for a special feud now and again as he and McMahon were still under good terms from the post-WCW run. Shawn Michaels had returned from a lengthy back injury after four years and a story was set up where he begged Hogan to come out of retirement for one last match. They teamed up a couple times and Michaels attacked Hogan out of nowhere so set up Hogan vs. Michaels. The idea was that they’d have two matches as faces with Michaels winning one and Hogan winning the other. Once it was in motion, Hogan nixed the plans and used his political power to make it so that Michaels was the heel so that Hogan didn’t have to worry about a crowd that would either be split or even booing him. Then he finagled it so that there would only be one match, taking place at Summerslam 05, and he’d win before leaving for another year. The thing about Michaels during all that time he was injured is that he had found God and became a better man, working to undo the asshole he was during the 90′s. He’d eventually even make peace with Bret Hart over their mutual hatred and the Montreal Incident. That said, based on what a turdburglar Hogan was being, Michaels went back to his old ways when the match happened and in this case, two wrongs made a right. Sometimes a wrestler would mess with an opponent he outright hated by going off-script and acting unaffected by the offensive attacks. Michaels went the other direction, acting as if everything Hogan did to him was equal to being hit by a speeding truck. He flew all around the ring and flopped across the mat like a fish at every punch and kick, making Hogan look like a complete fool.

The John Cena backlash increased the more his endless title reign became unbearable, coming to a head when conniving heel Edge won the belt off of him through an unfair-yet-amusing way. The ratings suddenly spiked in reaction to this momentous shift, but it was quickly smacked back down. The company was insistent on setting up John Cena vs. Triple H at Wrestlemania 22, so they almost immediately had Cena win back the belt. Amusingly, Triple H was very critical of Kurt Angle, who feuded with Cena months earlier and couldn’t get the fans to boo him over Cena, even when he referred to himself as a Jesus-hating racist. Despite Triple H’s criticisms, he too ended up getting cheered like crazy at the show despite being the heel. With Edge no longer in the title picture, the ratings dropped back down to normal.

In the middle of the 2000′s, WWE released a DVD called the Rise and Fall of ECW, which chronicled the history of the company with a 3-hour documentary and a big collection of matches. The sales were immense and it inspired McMahon to put together a PPV called ECW One Night Stand, where they brought in a lot of the old ECW talent to have a series of matches at the Hammerstein Ballroom, one of the main hangouts of the late federation. It was a financial and critical success. So much that they did it again the following year and spun it off into a new ECW, a third show/roster to split up the guys on the payroll even further. While the PPV was a success, the ECW show was a mishmash of great and horrible. The show mixed old ECW mainstays, WWE veterans who needed a shot in the arm and up-and-coming new guys. Unfortunately, it had a lot working against it.

For one, WWE practically buried it by having Raw’s commentator Jerry Lawler constantly badmouth it by referring to it as “Extremely Crappy Wrestling”. This ultimately led to him getting beat up at One Night Stand, but he’s still a face and having him recite the diatribe again and again for weeks caused many fans to take his side. They tried to focus on Rob Van Dam, Sabu, Kurt Angle and the Big Show as the top guys on the show, but that fell apart. Rob Van Dam (the champion) and Sabu got pulled over while smoking marijuana and that crippled both their WWE careers. Big Show became champ and did the best he could as a dominating “extreme monster” who challenged guys from Raw and Smackdown on his ECW turf, but he was in dire need of time off due to a fatigued and hurting body, plus one of these challenges led to a major backfire from the crowd. They decided to have Big Show vs. Batista, who, like Cena, was an unbeatable top face that WWE practically factory-made from the ground-up and they decided to have this match at the Hammerstein Ballroom. The live crowd hated everything about the match and let loose with some creative chants, such as, “CHANGE THE CHANNEL!” Batista was apparently really mad about this and afterwards, WWE never did another show at Hammerstein ever again.

As for Kurt Angle, the Olympic gold medalist was easily one of the best all-around wrestlers in WWE at the time and perhaps ever. His problem was that he was getting a little too intense. He gave 110% every time and due to his neck issues, WWE officials were a little antsy about him becoming a liability. He refused to scale back his style and they ended up suspending him so that he could at least heal his body up a bit. When he came back, he continued doing what he was doing and they ended up firing him. Angle went immediately to TNA, which was probably their biggest acquisition and the only time they ever had a chance to really get their foot in the door as competition to WWE. They immediately set him up against Samoa Joe, the top name in the company who was champion, undefeated and simply a great wrestler to watch at the time. Sadly… in the same week, TNA also hired Vince Russo as head writer. Everything TNA had going for it became increasingly diluted and things became pretty unwatchable as a whole. Russo was brought in to help out their low ratings and he had zero effect on the situation.

As expected, Angle vs. Joe was a feud that started strong but soon became ridiculous dreck.

Back to ECW. The show was written by Paul Heyman, though with lots of interference from McMahon and others. Many argue that he was set up to fail, especially when it came to the next ECW-specific PPV, December to Dismember in 2006. The show took place a week after the far more mainstream WWE PPV Survivor Series, had very minimal advertising and only two matches were announced ahead of time. The main event title match, which featured a couple popular wrestlers, was won by Bobby Lashley, another WWE-created face that they were dead set on pushing to the top. The ECW fans were not especially happy with him, nor the PPV in general. Nobody was and McMahon made Heyman the fall guy, ultimately firing him.

ECW’s bad luck would continue into one of wrestling’s darkest and most infamous situations. There have been many wrestlers who have died young due to what the business has done to them, whether it be drugs, suicide or the occasional freak accident. Guys like Brian Pillman, Owen Hart, Louie Spicolli and Chris Candido have even passed away while on an active wrestling roster. None are more chilling than what happened with Chris Benoit in 2007. One of the matches for WWE Vengeance was set to be CM Punk vs. Chris Benoit for the vacated ECW championship. On the Friday beforehand, Benoit snapped at his home and killed his wife Nancy. A day later, he killed his son Daniel. After changing his ticket to a later flight (yes, he was still considering going to the PPV and competing like nothing happened!), he decided to take his own life. A couple friends got strange text messages about his dogs needing to be fed and the match was changed to CM Punk vs. Johnny Nitro with the only explanation being that Benoit had a sudden family emergency. The crowd, naturally, chanted that they wanted Benoit. After all, he did represent the concept of rising to the top by being a great wrestling performer first with looks and charisma being secondary. He was an idol to many.

The next night, the 3-hour edition of Raw featured McMahon in an empty arena, explaining to the people at home that the Benoits were found dead at their home. Without any details, they had sent the crowd home and instead played a mix of Benoit career highlights and eulogies from various WWE employees. As Chris Masters said in an interview years later, there was an underlying feeling in the locker room of what really happened, but nobody was able to speak up because if you’re wrong, you’re the biggest dirtbag ever. When William Regal said his words on Benoit, he seemed less saddened and more distant and disturbed, refusing to say more than that he was a great performer. As the show went on, more details came out and the hosts Jim Ross and Jerry Lawler appeared more and more distracted. On the following night’s ECW, McMahon started the show to apologize about doing that Raw having now known the truth, then promised that they’d never mention Benoit’s name again.

At least positive things came from the horror. While the media blamed steroid use for his mental breakdown, an autopsy showed that it was massive brain damage from years of performing and taking lots of hits to the head. Since then, WWE has been far more careful about head trauma, outright banning chairshots to the skull and moves like it. Benoit’s legacy is often debated by fans. Some can never bring themselves to sit through his matches in light of his final days while others are able to still enjoy them for what they were.

WWE’s incarnation of ECW went on to become a really enjoyable TV show, albeit with declining ratings due to its lack of importance when compared to Raw and Smackdown. Still, it gave a shot in the arm to wrestlers who needed a new coat of paint and introduced a lot of names who would go on to have success on WWE’s main roster. It ended up being cancelled and replaced with NXT, a staged reality show based on rookie wrestlers earning a spot on the roster. The fifth season, which had become online-only, mutated from being a contest to being just another show where the lower members of the roster could do their own thing and be weird because nobody’s watching anyway. At least, nobody in charge.

Back to Bobby Lashley, he left the company shortly after due to disagreements with WWE writer Michael Hayes, who has been speculated as having a racist streak. Lashley had been pushed from day one and even feuded directly with Vince McMahon at the end of his run, so McMahon was furious at him leaving. Between this and the Lesnar situation, McMahon punished the roster for years to come. Whenever a wrestler would start to pick up steam with the crowd, the writers would have him suddenly de-pushed for the sake of initiation. For instance, a wrestler Kaval got very popular because of his unique and crisp in-ring style. He started losing a lot and openly complained about his treatment on Twitter. He ended up being let go. This habit has cost the WWE in the longrun as they’ve had a hard time creating new stars and only succeeded in discrediting certain hopefuls.

One guy able to succeed in spite of all of this was CM Punk. Punk was a big name in the independent scene and #1 guy in ROH. As a heel, he took part in a final storyline in ROH where he publicly talked about signing with WWE and threatened to leave ROH with their title in his hands. Now, WWE had since taken up another bad habit of constantly changing wrestler names upon joining the company. That way, if the wrestler was to leave, they would have to go by a less-recognizable ring name when performing elsewhere. For instance, indy star Bryan Danielson (his real name) joined WWE and became Daniel Bryan. Back when he was still with the company, Paul Heyman pulled a lot of strings to make sure that CM Punk would get to keep his iconic name. Punk was never meant to go anywhere, mainly due to the company’s distaste for anyone who became a big name from the indies, much like Daniel Bryan and Kaval. And believe me, Punk had enough of a reputation as shown when making early WWE appearances in the Hammerstein Ballroom and the Wachovia Center, where knowledgeable ROH fans loudly chanted his name. Rather than capitalize on this popularity and acknowledge that a wrestler on their roster had a following for something that happened in another federation, the company chose to hold him down, leading to multiple reports that he was in “the doghouse” for years.

The reason he ended up succeeding, outside of straight-up hard work, is pretty funny. You see, Punk is straight edge, meaning he doesn’t do drugs or alcohol. It isn’t just a part of his act. There are a couple instances where he ended up winning some kind of championship because the guy originally meant to win ended up getting suspended for drug use and Punk got the victory out of default.

The best way to describe Punk’s ascent is to explain his professional relationship with one Jeff Hardy. Hardy was a popular star who got his start in WWF during the Attitude Era and garnered quite a following with his stick figure appearance and daredevil wrestling style. He left for a few years, went to TNA and then returned and slowly gained enough steam to be considered for a run as champion. Wrestlemania 24 featured a multi-man match where the winner would get a free title shot whenever they wanted (and they won every single time they’ve used this gimmick). Hardy was destined to win and become champion soon after, but he got suspended for drug use. Punk was given the winning role, went on to become champion and it was booked in a less than flattering story arc. Hardy fell into a deep depression, especially after his trailer home caught fire and his dog died, and made sure to stay drug-free. Hardy eventually gained the trust of management and they made him champion. Punk turned heel to feud with him for the title and turned his straight edge identity into a holier-than-thou gimmick, constantly claiming that Hardy would fall from grace yet again. Hardy’s contract was ending soon, so it was agreed that he’d lose the title and overall feud, take some time off for a while and eventually return to get his storyline revenge on Punk. Punk won the title and defeated Hardy a couple times over, sending him off into the sunset. No longer under contract, Hardy decided to do a lot of drugs and got caught by the authorities days later with a crazy laundry list of possession. Punk ended up looking like a million bucks because Hardy couldn’t keep himself together and even got an okay title reign out of it… until the the Undertaker got annoyed at Punk not wearing a suit whenever in public (he didn’t “dress like a champion” or some nonsense) and complained enough that he became champion soon after.

As for Hardy? Despite his gigantic legal troubles, TNA welcomed him with open arms. Because they’re that stupid. They also brought in Hulk Hogan and Eric Bischoff to join Vince Russo at the company’s helm, which only succeeded in making a bad show worse. The whole company became a haven for guys WWE no longer wanted anything to do with (see also: Mr. Kennedy/Mr. Anderson) while treating their homegrown talent like afterthoughts most of the time to the point that most of them lost their drive. Samoa Joe especially. They even got rid of the six-sided ring, chopping away at TNA’s unique identity.

TNA tried to compete with WWE directly by changing their show Impact from Thursday to Monday nights. Had they been able to put together a competent show, this may have made a slow-but-sure dent. That wasn’t the case and the ratings got even worse. After all, remember how in 1992, the dream match of Hogan vs. Flair was scrapped because their non-televised matches didn’t live up to the hype? Imagine the two guys fighting it out on TV nearly twenty years later when Hogan can barely move and Flair looks like a big ball of melted rubber. It didn’t take long for TNA to go back to Thursday night while citing fan demand as the reason. The fact that Hogan would do radio interviews and talk about himself so much while completely neglecting to even mention TNA once didn’t help.

The most sigh-worthy situation came from a PPV Victory Road where the main event was set as Sting vs. Jeff Hardy. Despite Sting’s age, there was a strong possibility of a good match in there. The problems weren’t on Sting’s side, though. Hardy came out, strung out of his mind and in absolutely no condition to perform. Bischoff came out and played himself up as a big, authoritative heel while slipping word that they were changing the match on the fly. Hardy stumbled around and played to the crowd until Sting pulled him in, hit his finisher and forcibly held him down for the pin in mere seconds. The crowd, who still had 30 minutes of advertised show left, chanted, “BULLSHIT!” to which Sting nodded, “I agree with you.”

Jeff Hardy is STILL part of TNA despite this. Yet in the end, he’s less of an embarrassment than his brother Matt, who TNA had actually fired at one point. You don’t get fired from TNA unless you go out of your way.

I’ll wrap up the rest tomorrow.Similar Posts:

• Wrestling History (From My Recollection): Conclusion
• Wrestling History (From My Recollection): Part 2
• Wrestling History (From My Recollection): Part 3
• Wrestling History (From My Recollection): Part 1
• Royal Rumble Week: Day 5