The Shine

You can be anything you dream, as long as you're a wrestler

I worked Pine Bluff last night. My opponent was gorgeous. She couldn't wrestle for shit but she was so pretty. She looked like that girl from Black Bear, Aubrey Plaza. Even though she was terrible we had a good match.

There was a bald dude with her that was her manager or minder. I hope it was her dad or trainer instead of her boyfriend since he was in his fifties. Whoever baldy was he knew how to put a match together for her. He had developed a set routine designed to hide her weaknesses. That generally doesn't fly with people but I was fine with it.

This match was my first that was as more like sports entertainment than wrestling-wrestling. It was fun to work like that for a change instead of super serious indy style. The crowd was hot for everything we did which was also a nice switch-up for me. It's hard to say how much of their enthusiasm was because her ass was hanging out and her tits weren't far behind. Most of it probably. I'll take it.

Truthfully, it's not fair to say Aubrey Plaza 2 isn't a good wrestler. The goal is to look good and get the crowd excited, which she did. What is fair to say is that she was unathletic, not interested in taking bumps, and not good at doing anything like a real fighter might. But so was Hulk Hogan and people loved him so much he got to be in several movies even though he's an ugly hot dog man that can't speak English.

Considering those limitations she is actually a fantastic wrestler. Look what we did with those hindrances.

After the show baldy and Aubrey Plaza 2 took me out for dinner to thank me for working with them and not trying top bust her up. The bare minimum you should expect from an opponent.

I enjoyed my grand slam so much that it didn't occur to me until later that they can afford to be generous because she probably got paid five times what I did. Even though I took all the risk. And afterwards she probably also sold merch.

I've heard old timers say that back in the day the faces used to give some of their payday and merch take to the heels because they knew that they couldn't look good without someone else to make them look good. I don't know if that's true but I know that no one does that now.

Baldy and AB2 were pleased with the match but the guys that went on after us were not. As far as I know wrestling is one of the only jobs where you can get in trouble for doing it well. If the guy running the show is doing his job the card is set up to build to the main event. Not everyone is good at it but the idea is that you start off hot, then you cool things down a little, and so on so you keep the crowd into it without blowing them up until the big finale.

It's a touchy backstage issue if you have a really good match when the organizers expect that you to only going to have an okay match. It makes some people mad and then they accuse you of trying to sabotage them by being good at your job. It's weird. It's like stand-up comedy, you want the person before you to be funny and get the crowd going, but not be TOO funny and use up all the laughs.

The match after was a tag between two guys with a lame white boy wannabe rapper gimmick against a guy in a pimp Halloween costume and a dude in a gold shiny suit with the ass cheeks cut out. This was supposed to be a comedy match. The crowd wasn't finding it funny that night.

Afterwards ass cheeks came to chew me out for killing the crowd, blaming me for their lame bullshit not working. Baldy and AB2 were nowhere to be seen, I bet he got her a private dressing room where she doesn't have to deal with this shit.

I didn't say anything to this guy, I didn't even give him a hard look, because Doug the Disco Biscuit taught me that when you're new you keep your mouth shut and show respect. Which is a fun joke because I did not care about what he was saying in the least.

Now that I bet is the same a lots of other jobs. Show respect to someone you don't respect even a little.

Despite my discretion he could tell that I thought he was a fucking moron. I'm not a good actor. I thought he might backhand me. I wondered if anyone would do anything about it. There's complicated etiquette around locker room fights and when to step in, but those are all for hot man on man action. I don't think there are rules for a man smacking a woman around backstage. That's supposed to happen in private.

Ass cheeks didn't hit me though. Instead he punished me by explaining his character to help me understand why what I did was wrong. That explanation didn't need to be long, here I'll do it in one sentence, his character is that he's ripping off some old guy on the radio from the 90s. I don't understand why that was supposed to make me like him more. Not only is he a fucking moron, his fucking moron idea isn't even original? How is that better?

He was memorable, points for that, but I think this gimmick falls into the category of there is such a thing as bad press. I looked up the guy he was ripping off, Howard Stern, and he's famous for having topless women on his radio show. Explain to me how a naked woman you can't see is a draw. I thought everyone was on coke in the 80s not the 90s.

I realize that this is somewhat hypocritical coming from the woman in black trunks with the gimmick of "is a wrestler" but it's amazing to me how little imagination there is in the world of wrestling. Most wrestlers don't even try. The best thing this guy could come up with was to steal a stupid idea from 30 years ago. You can literally do anything in professional wrestling. Literally. There are no rules. Look at ThunderFrog, that's a guy who said, what if I was Thor and also a frog. And then he did it.

You can be anything you want in wrestling and most people don't be anything. You can be a space ninja with bionic legs. You can be Captain Ahab come to life. You can be a clone of Abraham Lincoln. There's nothing holding you back. I heard it said that the best gimmicks are your real personality turned up to 11. I'll call bullshit on that. Unless the Undertaker is a zombie lightning bolt throwing mortician in real life. Which, and I'm just guessing here, I don't think he is.

Having said that, how crazy would it be if the Undertaker knew magic and really was shooting lightning at people? I should buy one of his old hats on eBay and see if there's any magic rattling around in there I can absorb. Or since I probably can't afford that at least I should buy one of those foam urns. 

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