I had finally gotten around to watching the movie "350 Days" which a friend of mine, Evan Ginzburg is an associate producer of. He's also associate producer of the movie "The Wrestler" and a documentary called "Wrestling Then And Now".
After seeing Evan plug "350 Days" like ten gazillion times all over Facebook and Twitter I went ahead and found it and watched it (I just re-watched some of it so I could do this review). And if you want the most honest examination of what it was like being on the road, working in the wrestling business, and the toll it takes on the body, family, etc.. This would be the movie to watch. I know a little bit about the driving for hours as I worked for acouple different indie companies in new England back in the 90's.. I was lucky to have the advantage of driving back home to where I lived in NH.. Like say, drive from Rochester, NH down to Lawrence, Massachusetts, back up to NH and the next day drive to Waterville, Maine, then back to NH again.. Or drive five hours from Rochester to Danbury, Ct. for a show, then drive an hour and a half south to old Saybrook to spend the night at a friend's home, and then do the five hour trip back to NH. I also know of a few indie wrestlers who drove up from Rhode island to Lewiston, Maine which is like a five hour trip one way, and if the show didn't sell well, they were lucky if they got gas money to make it back home to Rhode Island.
While that that's an example of what I did, it's nowhere near the level of what guys like Greg Valentine, Tito Santana and others featured in this movie did.. They didn't have the luxury I did and when you work for a major promotion that's on the road most of the year, the luxury of getting back to your home some days, is like a dream.. From the living in hotel rooms and after awhile I'm sure they all started to look the same. Promises promoters made that didn't always come thru and whatnot is what came with being part of 'that life'. Guy's and gals being away from their homes, their families, not seeing their kids grow up the way they wanted to, because the job, or the business, or the job of being in the business, demanded that you be here for this show, there for that show, or even these two places for these shows.. Not to mention wrestling hurt, trying to put on the same level of performance you did the night before and the night before that when you're running on acouple hours sleep that they may have gotten in a car, their bodies hurt from whatever injury or wrong bump they took the night before.. Many things go into account that many fans don't even realize.
Sometimes the only way a fan gets to hear these kinds of things is if they get a 'shoot interview' where the wrestler breaks his character and tells it like it is..
But for the mainstream fan who may not know about shoot interviews and want a really honest assessment of what the life of a professional wrestler is like? Then by all means check out "350 Days". It'll be the most truthful, coming from the very guys and gals who have lived it, that you'll ever get.. Very well done movie that tells it how it is and worth going out of your way to see.
Now that I started this on a high note? It all goes down hill from here.
Many many MANY fans had been looking forward to Matt Hardy coming to AEW.. I can honestly say, I wasn't one of them, and thanks to the bullshit I saw on AEW where he and Chris Jericho had a face to face confrontation? It validated every reason why, I wasn't one of them.
I covered this subject with a story located here.
https://billsbrandnewblog.blogspot.com/2020/03/this-reminded-me-of-why-i-dont-watch.html But I'm gonna expand on it here.
I wasn't one of the million or so fans that got into the "Broken" Matt Hardy gimmick when it first started in TNA/Impact Wrestling. Hearing him say "Delete delete delete" two dozen times an interview or promo was an immediate turn off. Then add all the teleporting crap and any small chance of trying to 'suspend belief' was out the window. It didn't even rank good in the "so bad it's good" department in my opinion, and I would site this as an example of the 'silliness' that Don Callis claimed he was gonna get rid of when he took over as booker in Impact wrestling (Take note, Callis didn't get rid of it and actually ADDED to the silliness, something he refuses to explain every time I've tried to call him out on it).
So when I saw a glimpse of the 'Woken" Matt Hardy gimmick in WWE I just rolled my eyes. Because I knew if there was a company anywhere in the world that could make a bad gimmick look worse? It was the WWE and they did a great job in doing just that, as they always do when they're handed something they didn't create themselves. So when Matt left WWE for AEW I knew we were gonna get more of this "Broken" bullshit, and lo and behold? Matt didn't disappoint.
I mean seriously, THIS, is the reason why he wanted to leave WWE so badly? To do a bad retread of something he started in TNA/Impact? THIS? is the so called 'creativity' he claimed he wanted to do in his last years as an in ring performer? THIS? As I stated in the story I posted a link to above, THIS, had me wanting to grab the remote to change the channel, or more truthfully, after seeing this I went on YouTube and watched some recent Wrestle-1 from Japan along with some older match from Resistance Wrestling, as that, was way better than seeing the third chapter of the Garbage "Broken" gimmick. First Vanguard-1 had me going "Oh God not again". Then I said "How long will it be before he does that teleporting shit again"? Needless to say it didn't take very long for that answer to come. And of course throw in the verbal back and forth he and Jericho had, and you'd swear it came right from the writers of bad creative in WWE. Hence why I said online that this reminded me of why I don't watch WWE anymore.
But yet this is the very same AEW that swore they were going to be the alternative to the WWE. As I said before in the other story, funny how some things stay the same when other companies do exactly what they claim they're gonna be an alternative to. To me this re-retread of the Broken gimmick is like trying to do the Four Horsemen with Paul Roma, Like the WWE trying to do ECW, and in this case, to me it wasn't all that great the first time and it sure as hell isn't intriguing this time around. If you wanted to give me a reason to not watch AEW? Matt Hardy doing this lame shit again gave me the reason. So thanks Matt.
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And trust me, some Indie groups aren't gonna be spared either, as you're about to see.
Bert Prentice's USA Championship Wrestling, based in Tennessee that I see on YouTube every week, had this story line involving Bam Bam Bundy allegedly 'kidnapping' Kid Wrestling.. Something I covered here,
https://billsbrandnewblog.blogspot.com/2020/03/thought-and-ramble-on-usacw-and-david.html
The story I did on it was shown to several people at Prentice's USACW and I know I made it a point to let them know I wrote it.. I made it a point to do so because the logic in the angle/ story line was sorely lacking.. Basic booking 101 of a story line is you go from point a to point b to point c and so on.. And have some FUCKING LOGIC to it.. Click the link above and you'll read how 'out of nowhere' or 'miraculously', Kid Wrestling is no longer kidnapped. so does he call the cops and have Bundy arrested, like anyone else in the world would do? OOHH NNOO, no way, why would want to do that when it's just 'so much better' to when you get out of where you were kidnapped and held at, just go to where they're taping the show and..WRESTLE A MATCH!? yes of course, go do that because THAT, just makes so much more sense.
No.. I'm not making this up.. This is EXACTLY what happened and how they played this out.. Kid Wrestling comes to the studio and wrestles a match instead of talking about being kidnapped and having the cops there. As I said in the story above, whoever booked and wrote this angle out truly didn't think it all the way thru, needs to take a basic booking course or better yet.. Just don't attempt to book something this complex because it's obviously too much of a challenge for them to get it right.
After I wrote the above story and people in Prentice's company saw it, do you think they actually TRIED to fix it? Tried to add some logic to finish the story line out? If you're thinking yes? You're better off saying no.. Because they couldn't even do THAT right.
They're barely even mentioning it now.. Like they're trying to just drop it altogether and hope fans have such short attention spans that they'll simply forget what happened three weeks ago.. PPPSSSTT, YOO HOO. Guess what.. Fans didn't forget and you trying to in a way 'look away' and hope the whole catastrophe of your bad booking and story making magically goes away isn't working for you. if anything it's now made you look even worse and even more dumb.
They should just stick to the basic "wrestler chasing a title' story for now on, because anything more complex than that is too confusing for the powers that be there to get correct.. The proof is already there than anything beyond basic booking is way too difficult for whoever is booking Bert's USACW.
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And Prentice's company isn't the only one doing lame ass story lines, we have THIS ahem... "Gem", for you as well.
Appalachian Mountain Wrestling(AMW) based in Kentucky, would you believe, is having... Get this.. "Impeachment proceedings" with one of their wrestlers/ now president John Noble and their former president Scott Diamond..
Yes, I did type 'Impeachment proceedings'.. This wasn't a typo. And if you don't believe me, you can see this silliness, and God awful angle that trust me, NOBODY is sitting on the edge of their seats for.. Right here with their latest show.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6flA9QqHIV8 ..
To say that this isn't compelling TV would be a freaking understatement. Whoever thinks that THIS, was a great angle or story line to run should really keep their great ideas to themselves. Not even Vince Russo, or the creatively challenged Creative Department at WWE could come up something this bad (and lord knows WWE creative has a masters degree in bad to say the least). This company has a half hour TV show and the fact they spend most of it on this lame stuff is really amazing. This has been going on for the last couple weeks and while usually, AMW is one of the Indie groups I usually, look forward to watching the most.. THIS CRAP.. has me hitting fast forward with a quickness. The fact that whoever is in charge of booking thought this was a great angle really amazes me because it really, isn't.
Acouple weeks back when this silliness started I mentioned on AMW'S YouTube channel how this was some awful storytelling, two other people agreed with me, but yet.. When i went to go check the comments there two hours later? Wouldn't you know? "Comments have been turned off" was what in place of the discussion I had started. And wouldn't you know? Comments have been turned off on every since since then.. Makes you go, HHHMMM.
I guess they didn't want to hear what the fans had to say, and the fact they're insisting on persisting with this horrible angle to the very end shows they must be going with the Vince McMahon mentality of "We're gonna MAKE YOU like this", which never has worked, for McMahon or any other company that's tried that same kind of logic and mentality. or maybe they're trying the other McMahonism of they know what the fans want more than the fans do? LOL.I mean watch it yourself to see how horribly bad it is. See for yourself if this is the shits or not. You won't be alone in thinking it's crap like I did, believe me.
Needless to say, this and the angle USACW did ranks among some of the worst booking and/or storytelling I've seen in years. Just when I try and say that Indie groups do what the major federations won't do? Here's two Indie companies that have gone ahead and proved me wrong on that claim.
Thanks guys, keep up the rotten work.
