wrestling / Columns

The 8-Ball 05.10.2012: Top 8 Comedy Wrestlers

May 10, 2012 | Posted by Ryan Byers

Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to the 8-Ball. As always, I am your party host Ryan Byers. Last week, we went into some brutal, hardcore wrestling with our Top 8 Images from Deathmatches. Now, seven days later, we’re going to the complete opposite end of the spectrum and eyeballing professional wrestling’s lighter side. We’re going from wrestling that takes your breath away because you’re shocked to wrestling that takes your breath away because you just can’t stop laughing . . .

. . . and we’re doing it after the banner . . .

Top 8 Comedy Wrestlers

Almost as soon as professional wrestling moved from being a legitimate sport to being a work, participants realized that there was some benefit to, from time to time, interjecting spots into matches that were more comedic than chaotic. This continued for years, and years grew into decades until, within the past fifteen years or so, “comedy wrestling” became a genre unto itself. No longer confined to just a spot or two on every fifth card, certain performers made sure that most if not all of their bouts were comedic affairs from bell to bell. Granted, these comedy wrestlers are almost never go to be main event superstars, but, recently, they have managed to build up incredibly large cult followings. These followings ensure them job security and merchandise sales that cause just about anybody outside of the top tier of a promotion to be envious. And, though there are some people who complain about how it bends if not outright shatters kayfabe, it appears that comedy wrestling is here to stay.

So, who are the Top 8 Comedy Wrestlers in history? Here’s my list.

8. The International Homewrecking Crew

In comedy, there’s an old stereotype about women. It’s a pretty cruel stereotype, actually. See, the old conventional wisdom goes that it’s just flat-out impossible for women to be funny. However, there are boatloads of examples that prove this bit of conventional wisdom wrong. Jane Curtin immediately springs to mind, or, more recently, The Daily Show‘s Samantha Bee or Kristen Schaal. And, when it comes to comedy in professional wrestling, the best representatives of the fairer sex are Lacey, Rain, and Jetta, collectively known as the International Home Wrecking Crew.

The Crew has roots all the way back to the year 2000, when Minneapolis’ Lacey and St. Paul’s Rain both made their wrestling debuts. There were very few women on the Midwest independent scene at the time, meaning that the two ladies engaged in a very long feud against each other just because there was nobody else to wrestle. Eventually, after wrestling against each other for years, the two became great friend and a tag team, which they called the “Minnesota Home Wrecking Crew” in a punny tribute to the Minnesota Wrecking Crew of Gene, Lars, and Ole Anderson. After competing in miscellaneous independents, the two wrestlers were a cornerstone of the SHIMMER promotion in its early days, though, at the time, they were more of a serious act than anything else. However, as time went on and the company’s roster fleshed out to include more top-flight in-ring talent, the Home Wreckers were allowed to put more of their comedic chops on display. Things kicked into particularly high gear when Jetta, a British wrestler who coincidentally had a very similar style to Lacey and Rain, was imported by SHIMMER and added as a third member of the team, taking the Minnesota Home Wrecking Crew and making it truly “International.”

Perhaps the Crew’s funniest moment was their first time out as a trio on SHIMMER Volume 16, when, prior to a six woman tag team match, the threesome put on an EPIC stalling session that was packed with wacky hijynx. From there, things just got better, including the duo coming to the ring in PJs (seen above) after claiming to be afflicted with swine flu and doing some more comedy based around the rather ample, ahem, “assets” that Jetta had previously been hiding under her rather modest ring gear. Unfortunately, both Jetta and Lacey are almost 100% out of the ring game these days, and Rain isn’t focusing on it nearly as much as she did before. However, they remain the top comedic act for women in U.S. wrestling history.

7. Norman Smiley

Norman Smiley didn’t start his career as a comedy wrestler. To the contrary, he trained under the Malenko family and one of his first big breaks in pro wrestling came when he got the chance to work for the shoot-style UWFi promotion in Japan, which was full of guys who would just as soon rip your face off as look at you. From there, he went to Mexico’s CMLL, where he became the promotion’s top star and World Heavyweight Champion, feuding with the likes of Vampiro, Villano IV, and Ray de Jalisco, Jr.

Fast forward to 1997, when Eric Bischoff was given free reign of the purse strings of WCW and, for reason that I still don’t entirely understand, signed just about every English speaking professional wrestler on the face of the earth, including guys that they had no plans for whatsoever and a couple of guys who sat at home collecting massive paychecks despite never once appearing on television. (Remind me to tell the full story Lanny Poffo sometime.) However, unlike a lot of these guys, Norman Smiley actually managed to break out of WCW Saturday Night obscurity and become somewhat of a mainstream star. How did he do it? Part of the answer was his superior in-ring skills, but even more of it was his charisma, his dancing, and his comedic timing.

It all started with a cult favorite interview backstage on Saturday Night, when the Brit announced that he was not Norman Smiley. Instead, he was “Eh-no-man Smi-LAY,” said in the most pompous manner possible. Smiley’s more arrogant heel persona started to shine through, and, as part of that arrogance, Norman started . . . dancing. Specifically, he started doing the “Big Wiggle,” a series of semi-obscene gyrations and spankings which, depending on the occasion, may have occurred while his opponent was doubled over in front of him. Rather than solidifying the heel turn, the pantomimed spanking and dry humping turned Smiley into a huge babyface. A year or so later, this was followed up with Smiley’s entry into the fledgling WCW hardcore division, where he became the reluctant competitor “Screamin'” Normal Smiley, an all-out comedic character. In the dying days of WCW, where the company was imploding upon itself, Smiley was one of the few entertaining bright spots.

6. Pimpinela Escarlata

Norman Smiley isn’t the only individual on this list who has lucha libre experience. Our next entrant has spent the vast majority of his career competing south of the border. In fact, there is another parallel with Smiley too in that, despite being known as an over-the-top character, this individual is actually one hell of a pro wrestling technician when you get down to brass tacks.

I’m speaking, of course, about Pimpinela Escarlata, who has been active in professional wrestling for almost a quarter-century at this point. For the uninitiated, Pimpi is part of a genre of luchadors known as “exoticos,” essentially the drag queens of the professional wrestling world. Wearing makeup and adopting effeminate ring gear and hairstyles, the exoticos date back to the 1960s and essentially started as an offshoot of gimmicks that were comparable to what Gorgeous George did in the United States . . . a wrestler so prissy that the red blooded, macho men in the audience would turn up their noses in disgust. However, over the decades, certain exotico wrestlers became so entrenched in the sport that fans started cheering for them almost by default. They performed long enough and well enough that they gained the respect of audiences, despite the fact that they adopted a style of dress and mannerisms that might not be acceptable in mainstream society. This turned the whole exotico genre into something that could be enjoyed, and, when you look at wrestling now, there are just as many technico (babyface) exoticos as there are rudo (heel) exoticos.

And nobody defines what an exotico should be these days more than Pimpinela Escarlata. Pimpi is the standard-bearer, integrating many of the homophobia-baiting spots of old school exoticos into an otherwise modern repertoire and doing so in a manner that keeps fans on the edge of their seats when they’re not in stitches. Escarlata has the accolades on his resume to match his talent, including runs as the Mexican National Middleweight Champion, and, when he was a little bit heavier, the National Mexican Light Heavyweight Title, both prominent championships at the time that Pimpi held them. However, Escarlata also maintains some of the more comedic aspects of lucha libre that have always been associated with the wrestling transvestites, as indicated by his most recent major feud, which was with female wrestler Sexy Star after the two had a failed run as AAA’s Mixed Tag Team Champions.

5. Gran Naniwa

For a list about comedy, this is a bit of a sad entry for me to write. As people who have followed my writing on this site closely will be able to attest, I am a bit fan of what is sometimes called “lucharesu,” the hybrid style of Japanese wrestling and Mexican wrestling that was pioneered by folks like Gran Hamada, Ultimo Dragon, and Great Sasuke in the early 1990s. The lucharesu pioneers gave rise to Sasuke’s company, Michinoku Pro Wrestling, in 1993, and Michinoku Pro Wrestling, in turn, gave rise to the number five wrestler on our list, Gran Naniwa.

And the reason that it’s a sad entry to write is that, for all of the bright moments that he gave us during his career between 1993 and 2006, the most recent memory we have of Naniwa is his untimely death from a heart attack at the age of 33 on October 6, 2010. The details of his cause of death are still a bit mysterious, but there was a reported incident just a few weeks beforehand in which a promoter of an independent show was called to pick Naniwa up when he was passed out and inebriated in public. Of course, the reasonable inferences that can be drawn from those two events occurring so close together in time point to a much less than noble ending for the beloved entertainer.

Let’s not have that completely bog us down, though. Let’s spend a minute or two talking about why Naniwa is on this list. For reasons that are lost to time, when Gran Naniwa made his in-ring debut, somebody decided that it would be a great idea for him to become a giant, wrestling crab. Yes, that’s right, a crab. Naniwa, whose moniker came from the ancient name for the city of Osaka (where crabs are a significant part of the local cuisine), walked out to the ring with a crab emblazoned on his mask while music that evoked traditional Japanese fishing songs played over the sound system. For a few key matches, he would even make his entrance while wearing ridiculous large prosthetic “pinchers” over his arms. His offensive arsenal even paid homage to his favorite crustacean, as one of his signature moves was an elbow drop performed after doing a “crab walk” from the corner to the middle of the second rope. The man was hilarious, even when he was not necessarily playing off the shellfish gimmick. If you want a prime example, look no further than his matchup in the 1995 Super J Cup tournament against Mexico’s Damien 666, which has to be one of the greatest comedy matches of all time, with the two men hilariously emulating numerous legends of puroresu.

Though he never quite reached that legendary status himself, many of us still have very fond memories of Gran Naniwa, which puts him on our list.

4. Disco Inferno

Disco Inferno is one of those guys who I feel that wrestling history has unfairly forgotten about. His only real national exposure came in World Championship Wrestling, and, all too often, when you’re a WCW guy and WCW guy alone, the company that currently writes mainstream wrestling history (WWE) tends to write you out.

When Disco was active in WCW, he was a very entertaining midcard heel, and he received a fair amount of critical acclaim for his work, winning the 1996 Wrestling Observer Newsletter Award for “best gimmick.” One of the things that I liked about Disco is that he always seemed to be running his own comedic angles that weren’t important at all to the grand scheme of WCW but took what would otherwise be a fairly dull undercard bout and turned it into something memorable. For example, I remember a series of matches that lasted a month or two during which Disco wrestled complete jobbers, while claiming that he had a devastating new finishing hold that would allow him to ascend to great new heights in the promotion. However, the joke was that he could never get his hold applied properly and often wound up losing to wrestlers who were not on his level because he would get confused and distracted while trying to execute the maneuver. In fact, at one point he went as far as bringing a comically large set of step-by-step instructions to the ring with him, which, not surprisingly, didn’t help his cause. That was the sort of thing that Disco consistently did that added a different aspect to the show and, in his own little way, allowed a WCW card to be an entertaining overall package.

Perhaps the most impressive thing about Disco was his versatility. Not only did he come up with entertaining little bits like he one described above, but he did it consistently, and he did it consistently for six straight years, whether it was tag teaming with Alex Wright, mentoring Magnum TOKYO, forging an unlikely alliance with the Filthy Animals, or tapping out to Craig Pittman’s “Cod Red” submission before it was even applied. I don’t know why Disco wasn’t allowed to make the jump from WCW to the WWF when the former promotion folded, but I sincerely believe that it was the Fed’s loss.

3. Kikutaro / Kuishinbo Kamen

I hate doing ties in columns like this one, because, more often than not, it feels like a magnificent cop-out. However, in some circumstances, the ties are justified, such as situations in which two men’s careers are so closely intertwined that it would be a miscarriage of justice to place one of them on the list as opposed to both of them. So, with that in mind, I give you our tie for third place, featuring Kikutaro and Kuishinbo Kamen.

The reason that the two men are tied is because they essentially made their names in a series of comedic matches against one another. However, their careers were intertwined even before they assumed their most favorite gimmicks, as both wrestlers broke in during the mid-1990s on the Japanese independent scene, using their real names. Kikutaro was Mitsunobu Kikuzawa and Kamen was Akinori Tsukioka, and both of them bounced around the lower cards of promotions like DDT and W*ING. Things would go much better for them, though, when Michinoku Pro wrestler Super Delfin broke away from that group and formed Osaka Pro Wrestling, his own promotion based out of his hometown. Both men got a gimmick overhaul upon joining the O-Pro roster, with Kikuzawa being repackaged as Ebessan and Tsukioka becoming Kamen. The duo started wrestling one another fairly regularly, particularly around 2003 and 2004, developing a large number of comedy spots that have become standards and have been stolen by other wrestlers, including slow motion professional wrestling. The schtick that the two developed became so popular that they even got a big swing through the United States working with each other in 2004, including matches in Pro Wrestling Guerrilla and even TNA.

It appeared that these two would be wrestling each other until the end of time, but Ebessan abruptly and somewhat unexpectedly left Osaka Pro in 2005, while Kamen stayed behind. Two new wrestlers have been given the Ebessan gimmick since the original left, and both of them crossed paths with Kamen in comedy matches, albeit not to the same level of success as the original. The first Ebessan and Kamen would remain separated for one another for three years, until Kikutaro put aside whatever ill will it was he had with Osaka Pro and started doing guest appearances for the promotion. They don’t lock up nearly as much as they used to, but it’s nice to see that the political barriers that once prevented these great rivals from meeting in the ring no longer exist.

2. Stalker Ichikawa

Stalker Ichikawa is one of the most enduring comedy wrestlers in the history of the genre, coming out of the second class of Ultimo Dragon’s Toryumon gym in December 1998 and immediately adopting a comedic persona. Ichikawa’s unique look set him apart as something different from the rest of the roster as soon as he walked through the current for the first time, decked out in a black bodysuit with the belly cut out of it, a hood with gigantic ears attached to the sides, and a pair of antennae that made him look like some kind of demonic insect.

While I praised Disco Inferno earlier for his versatility, Stalker is almost the polar opposite in that his routine has changed very little over the years but has still managed to remain very entertaining. Though there are variations on the theme, the most noteworthy Stalker Ichikawa matches have involved him taking on an improbable opponent who is not part of the regular Dragon Gate roster and getting squashed and squashed hard, with examples including deathmatch wrestler W*ING Kanemura, All Japan legend Jun Akiyama, and even the Amazing Kong/Kharma. These matches with outsiders are broken up with bouts against DG regulars, which, from time-to-time, have blossomed in to all-out comedic rivalries. Both Don Fuji and CIMA, cornerstones of the Dragon Gate promotion, have engaged in several month long feuds with Ichikawa, which is a smart way to allow them to do something prominent in the company while preventing them from getting burnt out in the main event scene.

In fact, Stalker has gotten so popular amongst Dragon Gate fans that there have been two professional wrestling shows booked specifically by and around him, known as the “Stalker Bom-Ba-Ye,” which included both traditional wrestling and pleasant distractions like trivia contests and rice cake eating competitions between wrestlers. When a guy gets his own wrestling show and when fans stick with his wrestling show even when it includes an extended segment of competitors stuffing their faces with rice, you know he’s something special.

1. Santino Marella

It’s rare that I put a contemporary WWE performer on top of a “best of” list, mainly because I feel that, without historical perspective, it’s difficult to call somebody the best of anything . . . and, when you’re talking about current performers, there is virtually no historical perspective to use.

However, this week’s number one entry is a guy so awesome compared to the rest of the field that I feel he absolutely must be number one, historical perspective be damned. Naturally, I am talking about Santino Marella. Originally introduced as a serious character, Marella’s initial push fell apart because he just wasn’t a good enough in-ring performer to carry a legitimate championship run. (And I’m saying this about a company that put its world heavyweight title on THE GREAT KHALI.) Not long after losing his first Intercontinental Championship, though, Marella began a series of tweaks to his character that would save him from being shoved into a box and shipped back to Ohio Valley Wrestling. At first it appeared that he would become a straight heel, but he got goofier and goofier and displayed better and better comedic timing until he became a full-on comedy heel, with great supporting actress work from his two on-screen girlfriends, first Maria Kanellis and then Beth Phoenix. Marella’s mic work in his new role was so good that he got to exchange barbs with some of the best in wrestling history, including a rivalry with legendary Jerry “The King” Lawler and a war of words with “Stone Cold” Steve Austin that was designed to promote Austin’s movie The Condemned but turned out so entertaining that you barely noticed it was product placement.

Personally, I feel that Marella’s character has lost a little something since he’s been made into a babyface, but the man is still one of the better actors in the history of professional wrestling, at least when it comes to this character. But, hell, I don’t have to sit here and tell you that in any level of detail. The guy is on the WWE roster right now. If you want to know how awesome he is, just turn on your television on any given Monday night.

NULL

article topics

Ryan Byers

Comments are closed.