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DIR Return to: Sheriff Lonestar's PPV of the Week
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#Post#: 20226--------------------------------------------------
Sheriff Lonestar's PPV of the Week; Heat
By: SheriffLonestar Date: November 2, 2013, 2:49 am
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While flicking through Twitter this week, I happened upon a
tweet by OVW trainer Rip Rogers. He was explaining how tough it
was being a heel in the old, kayfabe, days. How if you where a
good heel in Mexico you may well be threatened with acid, the
riots in Puerto Rico, the dark stadiums in Oklahoma, and
reminded me of every road horror story I had heard from guys
like Jim Cornette, Jerry Lawler, Bruiser Brody and Bill Dundee.
I asked Rip if it was possible to get that kind of heat these
days? The super over, white heat that fuelled that anger. I made
my case that within the last twenty years the only guys who I
had seen have it where Eddie Geurrrero and Art Barr in Mexico as
the Gringos Locos Tag Team, and Shane Douglas and the Dudley's
in ECW. Rip replied that is is still possible in the Deep South,
because the love wrestling and still believe in its sincerity.
The clue for me was of course in the question. The Gringos Locos
where able to use racial tensions with their Mexican audience to
build their heat. It helps that in Mexico wrestling is still
portrayed as a real sport and their Rudos wrestlers are seen as
really evil people, it is still real down there, damn it. In ECW
Shane Douglas took advantage of the unfortunate broken neck to
Gary Wolfe to get white hot heat, I mean police escort from the
building heat, by making fun of Gary's predicament with some
guiding work from Paul Heyman and rode it to incredible heights
of unpopularity. What was more impressive was that it was in
Philadelphia, with some of the smartest and cynical fans of any
era. They bought into the story because Gary was loved, Shane
was perceived as a WWF failure and he has a natural heat getting
persona. All the things clicked into the right place and the
natural antipathy Philadelphia fans have towards everything
fuelled this absolute hatred of the Franchise. It took a long
while for them to forgive Shane, but he had a couple of world
title reigns and PPV headline matches to compensate. I am sure
he didn't lose sleep.
So what about this day and age? Even though I loved those
matches and angles, they did happen twenty years ago. Things
where different then. Well whilst I was watching my stream of
downloads for the week I encountered perhaps the best example of
heat getting in the modern indie era, from a small company, with
an ultra hip crowd who went absolutely ballistic only last year.
I have talked about my love of GBG wrestling in an earlier
episode of this column and today's PPV of the Week is their one
night Title Elimination tournament in Gothunberg. The heat comes
from a perfect baby face run of the wonderful Conny Mesjel, and
the equally heelish Steinbolt. Two great characters both men
have honed in their home town promotion. Steinbolt is everything
that GBG fans are not, in fact he is everything other GBG
wrestlers are not. He is toned, fit and looks like the perfect
athlete. His body looks like a blank canvas compared to the
heavily tattooed GBG roster. In a company that specialises in
guys that don't look like wrestlers, to be honest their female
wrestlers look a lot stronger and fitter than some of the guys,
he stands out because of his otherness so is primed to get great
heel heat. On the other hand you have Mesjel; beer gut, tights
sliding off his lack of ass, a mess of hair that has a life of
its own, tattoos festooning his body and a beer in hand. This
character has gotten over before in places like Philly (The
Sandman), Florida (Dusty Rhodes), WWE (Steve Austin) TNA (James
Storm) and is a well trod trope, but Mesjel fine tunes it for
his home audience and is he totally beloved. Because really does
he look that much different from the guys in the audience? It
helps he has charisma to burn, just like Sandman, Austin, Storm
and Rhodes. We crave the familiar, but its nice that GBG have
some subtlety to play with.
The setting is a tournament for the vacant GBG title and as
always with tournament cards I don't want to give to much away,
but the character drama is built on a quite a few levels. In my
last review of them, I pointed out that GBG keep things simple.
No one took massive risks and they got over well enough; this is
why. On a card like this where they are trying to build emotions
to a fever pitch, they can hang lose a little bit and let a few
things fly in order to get folks over. The brutal little out of
the ring brawl between the Scandinavian Shiva and Bad Buddha is
a case in point. They are not brawling into the bar area for
kicks, it is to get over, the only reason why you should take
these risks and it works. You can't do it to often, TNA Creative
take note, but every once in a while you can create a big brawl
atmosphere and get your guys over stronger for next time. This
audience is as clued in as the ECW crowds of old, but they have
bought into the product left right and centre, so now you can
toy with their emotions a bit, and GBG played them so well, I
have not seen a crowd this hot in a long time. Well with one
exception. Early this year Alpha Female won the World of Stardom
Championship, in a match that was noted for getting incredible
heat. Alpha and former champion Nanae Takahashi worked
incredibly hard that night, but they took advantage of the
audience as well. Alpha was everything Nanae isn't. She is a
brutish monster, tattooed, blonde and German, compared to the
the heroic, embattling Takahashi she is another world entirely.
She can get heat just by walking into a room and taking her
hoodie off in Japan, flexing her muscles and showing her tattoos
on her 6' 1 perfectly proportionate body. She is like no
wrestler Stardom Wonder Ring fans have seen before. The results
showed in a match that stunned a usually very vocal crowd to
silence when Alpha's hand was raised.
Alpha, like Steinbolt, took advantage of expectation and got
over just by being what they are; looking good, being good, and
being just physically more impressive than their opponents.
Which is what really wrestling should be about right?
Enjoy the show.
HTML http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M7g9rQjtP5A
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