Going Back in Time, WWE-Style

There wasn't exactly a shortage of entertaining sports stories in the news this week, especially with Lawrence Phillips trying to turn a bunch of kids into speed bumps, but to watch the most intriguing "sporting event" of the weekend I ended up at a Hooter's on Sunday night to watch WWE's SummerSlam and the first-ever match between Hulk Hogan and Shawn Michaels.

Granted, this is a match that would've been great 10 years ago, and probably would have been even better if it was 15 years ago, but I wanted to watch this just to see how far the WWE has fallen that they have to rely on a 75-year-old wrestler to carry their PPVs. I brought a notebook with me to Hooter's with the intent on keeping a running diary (a la the NBA finals this year), but was again minus anything that would tell time, so you won't know exactly when everything happened and how many minutes exactly it took Hulk Hogan to walk to the ring, but you will deal with it.

One last note: it has been a few years since I have watched wrestling, so most of the actors were totally lost on me, but once a few friends (the crew this time was my girlfriend, who hasn't watched wrestling since she was 10, her brother Nick and two of his friends, Josh and Logan) invited me to go watch with them, I couldn't turn it down. I mean, who doesn't want to see an aging wrestler with a new hip and knee?

* The first match had Matt Hardy fighting some guy. Matt Hardy's woman, who also appeared to be the other guy's woman, accompanied one of the two to the ring (the first match is never that exciting.) About three seconds into the fight, I already had my first major problem with the show: the announcers. What I don't understand is how the announcers can keep hyping up the most mundane moves — I mean it's ridiculous beyond the point that anyone can believe anything they say anymore. Here are a few quotes from the first match, which was pretty boring.

• "A jump through the ropes is like suicide, no one has ever done that before!"
• "Oh my GOD," thanks to Jim Ross (if there isn't one already, there should definitely be a Jim Ross talking action figure that just screams OH MY GOD and STOP THE DAMN MATCH every time you pull the string on his back).
• "Matt Hardy may have just been knocked out, I'm not a doctor, but he has to be concussed."
• "I'll tell you one thing, Matt Hardy didn't die!"
• "There's something to be said about living to fight another day!" (Really? Like what? I think it was pretty much covered with 'Matt Hardy didn't die.')
• "Lita has to be torn in 1,000 different directions." (Matt Hardy, Edge, or any of the 998 guys sitting near the ring- she did have a dilemma of who to leave with.)

* I do think that Jim Ross should be given another job calling football (he may or may not have done XFL). We have too many pre-season games when the announcers are lamenting about how boring the games are and how they can't wait to get out of there. Now, if you have Jim Ross calling the action, you get a third string running back gently tripping over some lineman falling down, and the call would be, "OH MY GOD, HE JUST HAD HIS ANKLE SHATTERED. STOP THE DAMN GAME, I CAN'T BELIEVE THE CARNAGE ON THE FIELD, HE NEEDS MEDICAL ATTENTION. What's that? OH MY GOD, HE IS GETTING UP! THIS CAN'T BE A MAN; THIS MUST BE SOME SORT OF A MACHINE. OH MY GOD, WE WILL REMEMBER THIS FOR YEARS, WHAT A COMPETITOR.

Can you really say that you wouldn't watch if J.R. was calling the action?

* I have seen a lot of weird things watching the WWF (now WWE) over the years, but the next match was right up there, as I finally got a taste of how different wrestling was (or maybe wasn't) these days. I'm used to the old-school ladder match, but this was new-school "Custody of Domanick" Ladder Match.

I guess that the little 6-year-old kid was adopted by Rey Mysterio, Jr., but was really fathered by Eddie Guerrero, and they were going to fight it out to see who got the kid. The new twist on the ladder match did provide several great highlights, especially when they would show replays of big spills spliced with little Dom's horrified reactions, all while the announcers yell, "Look at little Domanick's reaction as his father is broken in half over that ladder, what must be going through that young man's mind?"

Before the match, we took bets and I threw my money down on Eddie Guerrero. Why? Because he had to win, he was the heel, and if wrestling has taught me anything, its that the people rarely get what they want. If every PPV were satisfying with the babyfaces winning, then it would be boring.

So the kid ended up trying to stop Eddie from winning, and Eddie was about to teach the kid some manners with his right hand, until Mysterio woke up and beat the crap out of Eddie, only for them both to take some big falls before Eddie's wife sabotaged his win (and probably earned two black eyes for the effort, a la Stone Cold Steve Austin).

After the match I realized that they were just playing on everyone's emotions by adding the kid in. Once they completely overdid how bad of a father Eddie would be, it was pretty clear they would let Mysterio win, which pissed me off. If they really wanted to move fans, why not have a "Litter of Kittens" ladder match, where if Eddie won, he got to kill an entire litter of kittens? Then you would have all the fans saying, "Nooooo, not the kittens, get him Rey, do it for those adorable cats!" I'm still bitter over my loss and I'm sending Eddie's conniving wife a bill for $1 for costing me the match (by the way, there is nothing better than betting on scripted action).

After a few garbage fights, the Undertaker came out to fight Randy Orton. Taker is an interesting character, because he has gone from satanic, to regular, to more satanic (when he abducted Stephanie McMahon), to a biker type, and ultimately back to old-school satanic. The fight was bland outside of the high amount of near falls we had (which at this point is useless, we all know a match won't end until we see a finishing move, so all of those "1, 2, 3 ... no, just two, he got up at the last second!" counts are just annoying now).

As the main event approached, everyone started betting heavily on Hogan (except for Josh, who was too afraid to bet on anyone). I was the only one at the table to bet on HBK, and I had a few reasons. First, he's about 10 years younger than Hogan, yet still probably in his 40s. Hogan is twice his size, but can barely move, and Shawn Michaels still has hair.

Before the match they started showing highlights of what led to the fight. Being in a loud sports bar, you couldn't hear anything, but you could read the closed captioning and figure out what was going on. Relying on that, however, did have a few difficulties. For instance, they kept talking about how "Shawn Michaels just superdicked Hogan in the face," leaving everyone to wonder if HBK (and by the way, I think Michaels has to be the only person over 30, outside of Michael Jackson, that still refers to himself as a kid) had changed his finishing move over the years. And then they just run random words together, like when "Hon Toast God" ran across the screen. I'm pretty sure they throw that stuff in there just to see if people are paying attention.

As soon as Hogan came out and they dropped a giant American flag behind him, I knew I was screwed and that he was going to win. During Hogan's 20-minute march to the ring, the table started debating Hogan's hairstyle. Logan thought he should shave his head and just go bald, Nick went with a toupe, and Josh thought a comb-over would be a good look. I think that Hogan's ridiculously receding hairline is just part of him now; it would throw me off without his, in the words of Nick, Bozo-esque hair.

The match is everything I hoped it would be as Hogan can barely move. Watching him amble around the ring was worth the nothing I paid to see the match. It was comical watching him limp around like he still belonged in the ring. For his credit, Michaels was still able to move and had to double sell every move to make the fight at least look legitimate, but it still was beyond ludicrous.

Hogan got knocked around a little bit and broke out the crimson mask, but everyone at the table was certain it was fake blood. There was far too much blood for it to be real, because if it was, Hogan would've died in the ring. And for the record, it's probably not okay to refer to HBK as the upstart Shawn Michaels, because I'm pretty sure you can't be upstart after a retirement.

After two refs got knocked out (I think the best acting job of the night was that the refs didn't just start cracking up in the middle of the ring after being "knocked out" by Hogan brushing into them), Hogan finally started "hulking up" and hit Michaels with the devastating big boot and leg drop, leading him to the win.

As he pranced around the ring, the announcers started yelling that we might never see another Hulk Hogan ever, but the fact of the matter is we don't need to. Hogan has been fighting for the past 25 years, and will continue to wrestle into his 70s and beyond, because, let's face it, Hogan is going to be their marquee name until the day he dies. Sure, they had promise back in the days of Stone Cold and The Rock, but now, they are content rolling out an a decrepit Hogan for the main event. And it won't be too long before they are rolling him out, literally, which might lead to the first ever wheelchair match.

The Sports Gospel According to Mark is sponsored by BetOnSports.com. BetOnSports.com gives you the greatest sports action to bet on. Wager on football, cricket, boxing, Rugby, horse racing, and more. Mark Chalifoux is also a weekly columnist for SportsFan Magazine. His columns appear every Tuesday on Sports Central. You can e-mail Mark at [email protected].