Here's a question that sprung off from the biography thread: what is it with Arn Anderson and kayfabe? I was stunned when I read his autobiography and it was 95% kayfabe (the scissors incident and the nWo parody skit being notable exceptions), and the Fuj pointed out that he did his portions of the Horsemen DVD in kayfabe as well (along with a shoot interview).
You know what's up with that? Is there a reason that he's so opposed to dropping kayfabe?
Some of the guys are just like that, I guess. I know his book was kinda ridiculous, with statements like how he and Eaton dropped the tag titles to the Steiners because their head wasn't in it that night or nonsense like that. Harley Race was of course another stickler for it for years and years as well. It might have to do with how they were trained, or just personal preference.
Harley seems ridiculous as he did the exposé tv special in the late 90s.
ReplyDeleteAs much as it kind of bothers me that Arn does it, he probably walks that line better than anyone else. In a sense, you feel that, to Arn, anything regarding the Horseman is as real as wrestling gets for anyone.
ReplyDeleteMaybe no one's told him yet?
ReplyDeleteHe was the "masked wrestler", right?
ReplyDeleteI think he was actually The Booker.
ReplyDeletehe was the stunt granny
ReplyDeleteoh wait, maybe he was the pizza they got after the show
I would actually prefer more kayfabe.
ReplyDeleteOLD SCHOOL
ReplyDeleteThat's hilarious. He wrote a book in kayfabe? Awesome.
ReplyDeleteI love that it's on youtube:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xW3DCnBbROI
Late '90s Fox Summer programming gives me some serious nostalgia. THAT was quality "reality" TV.
I find it endearing that Arn (the ultimate old-school wrestler) still adheres to kayfabe. That's awesome. Arn didn't get enough attention in that "underrated promos" thread...I'd consider him a top-10 talker in wrestling history.
ReplyDeletePiper is another one that clings to kayfabe pretty hard. I watched his DVD the other day and it is pretty hard to distinguish when he's shooting and when he's keeping the angle alive.
ReplyDeleteI love Arn as much as any wrestling fan but the there is no need to protect the business when its been unprotected since as early as the mid 80s.
ReplyDeleteBut definitely by the time the internet was in full swing.
It just comes off as hokey when you have Tully/JJ (who my friend to this day calls "Gay-Gay Dillon") and Barry talking in a non kayfabe fashion on the Horsemen DVD and then here's Arn talking about smacking Sting around because he didn't want to him to get close to FLair's title...
ugh... As someone who watches shoot interviews extensively, its like "Oh vey"
Sidenote: I find it funny that shoot interviews are really shoot interviews anymore as much as they are career retrospectives of people not in the WWE system. People rarely REALLY go in on people nowadays as opposed to like 10-15 years ago.
I know there were two big companies to goto then but I wonder when the shift really happened in the shoot dept.
Piper also did the worst shoot I've ever seen in my life. I think it was two tapes and he was coked out of his mind and unintelligible. Pretty sure he told the same mad dog vachon story twice.
ReplyDeleteI agree
ReplyDeleteProbably around '05? Pulling it out of my ass, but by then everybody of worth had been interviewed?
ReplyDeleteAgain, your shoot promo knowledge vastly overpowers mine.
He was pretty open about Bret needing a push (and really seemed to drop character, except for that little run about him not really losing) but then kept it up for everything else. Either that or he just legit hates Mr. T.
ReplyDeleteI find it sad that people are still clinging to that shit. Even worse are the ones who will do shoots in their own right but get pissed about fans doing it. At this point the cat is out of the fucking bag, kayfabers are almost as lame as finicky magicians who want you to believe its real. Grow up already.
ReplyDeleteKayfabe is fucking retarded. It's akin to a Tom Cruise talking about all the secret missions he's been on or Russell Crowe bragging about all the dudes he's slain in the Colloseum. Retarded. I love Arn though.
ReplyDeleteSuper odd as Arn has an RF shoot video.
ReplyDeleteThere were always only a couple big companies to go to, especially in the "shoot" era. But I think it comes mainly from the fact that the WWF is finally doing a lot of stuff with it's veterans (when business is hot, they give much less of a shit about former stars), and veterans KNOW that, and so aren't going to just come flying out there calling everyone they worked with a bunch of idiotic assholes.
ReplyDeletePlus, the addition of ten more years probably makes a lot of guys less bitter.
When did his autobio/DVD come out? Maybe he changed his mind in-between.
ReplyDeleteAlso, it's not a stretch for the old-school guys to still hold on to kayfabe, especially if it was drilled in your head for so long. I'd imagine it's harder to keep up that persona if you're a heel, so if you do it for long enough, it becomes second nature.
Not to mention guys who pick up on his kayfabeness as justification for saying "It's still real to me, dammit"
I agree to an extent, but the difference is that movies have their roots in live theater, which was openly breaking the fourth wall during performances hundreds of years ago (and probably farther back than that; I'm no thespian expert, but I at least know there were fourth wall-breaking asides written into Shakespeare's works).
ReplyDeletePro wrestling is of course similar to live theater in many ways, except it has its roots in the carnie business. Even if most fans always knew it was fake, as recently as three decades ago it was presenting itself as real athletic competition. Even today, fans' relationship with wrestlers is with their characters. I'm not a Phil Brooks fan who really enjoys his work as CM Punk; I'm a CM Punk fan, whereas a movie actor, sure, you may have a fondness for a particular character but your relationship as a fan tends to be toward that actor or actress.
So I agree that it's silly, but I can at least see where an old-timer like Arn is coming from.
And is it possible that he's just a wise-ass old man that likes fucking with us?
Piper's DVD is a mess. The guy never finishes a thought. Just keeps interrupting himself right before anything meaningful comes out.
ReplyDeleteyeah that piper doc sucks. kayfabing about Snuka, Mr. T, etc. Just garbage. At least it had the Piper's pits and some interesting matches. In today's day and age i have no tolerance for kayfabing on DVD sets or in books. If you want to still kayfabe, then don't talk on the DVD set or write a book. Animal was another that tried to kayfabe some in his book and on the Road Warrior's DVD set.
ReplyDeleteMost of the Crockett guys from that era didn't really have 'gimmicks' (with a few obvious exceptions, like the Russians). Tully and Ole were pretty damn good talkers as well. Even guys who weren't really great talkers could sometimes give a good promo because it sounded like a natural extension of their character/personality.
ReplyDeleteI think having kayfabe books is pretty cool. It's obviously worthless as a resource to gain behind-the-scenes knowledge, but I'm all for canon fictional supplements to the main programming. I knew wrestling was fake when I was a little kid but I still thought it was cool that "Barry Windham" "wrote in" to PWI rebuffing things that were written about him. The character of Arn Anderson is more interesting to me than the person Martin Lunde.
ReplyDeleteThat would be tremendous. lol. Arn is just trolling us and he's shaking his head at people who take him too seriously. Perhaps
ReplyDelete