The Tiger’s Take 10.08.08: Keep Your Trash to Yourself

The great Jim Cornette once said that the only thing that all wrestling fans believe anymore is that all the promotions hate each other, that’s actually true to some extent with wrestling based web sites. Some people are surprised to hear that I’m friendly with writers from Inside Pulse like Kevin Wilson, Phil Clark and David Ditch. Sure, they might write for other sites, but we all like wrestling, and they’re all good guys. I’m one of many 411 writers who is also very friendly with The Cool Kids Table that shouldn’t be much surprise since Brad and Jake used to write for 411 and Sam still does on occasion. I’ll even go on a limb and say that Sam’s participation is the big draw for the Wrestler of the Week column. So you might be wondering what that has to do with anything. The answer is because I got the idea for this column based on something that I’d heard over the TCKT.

Over the course of several of their podcasts, they got talking about Age of the Fall and how the fans were so pissed when they won the ROH Tag Titles that they threw trash into the ring. Jake’s take on this was that it was cool to see and it showed just how much heat that AOTF really had. He’s absolutely right on that point. Watching that stuff on DVD does make a cool visual, and it speaks volumes for how mad the fans were that ATOF won the titles. He also pointed to the nWo, one of the biggest money making angles in wrestling, and how at Bash at the Beach ’96, the fans were so angry at Hogan for what he did, that they pelted the ring with garbage. He’s right about that too. A few other podcasts wound up leading back to the discussion of throwing stuff into the ring, and Jake’s always took the same stance. Let me make it clear right now that I am in no way shape or form trying to attack or take shots at Jake. I just happen to see things in a different light than he does, and it’s a subject that I do feel very strongly about. Jake has also worked as a referee, while the closest I’ve come (and most likely ever will) to being in the business is my best friend being a wrestler. So I’ll concede right off the bad that Jake also probably looks from a different perspective than I do.

There are times that it’s OK to throw stuff into the ring. One of the longest traditions in wrestling is streamers. They’ve been doing in Japan for as long as I can remember, and it’s something that ROH had managed to bring back to the U.S. scene. ROH fans in 2005-06 will of course remember Jimmy Rave’s toilet paper entrance. In that case ROH had actually gone to the trouble of making it clear that it was OK in that case, but in no other situation would the fans be able to throw toilet paper or anything else into the ring. When Prince Nana left ROH it was announced that with the end of The Embassy, it was also the end of the T.P. era and it would no longer be allowed. That’s the key point though, ROH was telling people when it was OK and when it wasn’t OK anymore.

So right off the bad is the first reason that I don’t like when people throw stuff into the ring. You’re not allowed to do it. There’s also a good reason that they don’t want you to do it. People could get hurt. I hate to stick up for Shawn Michaels of all people, but when he got hit in the head with a battery and walked out of the WrestleMania public workout, he did the right thing. People are always quick to jump on him for being an immature and unprofessional jerk, and that includes me at times, but not in this case. The wrestlers are going out there and risking their health to entertain you, and there’s a reason for that, it’s because they love the business just as much, if not more, than the guy who plunked down $20 or however much for a ticket to the show. You love the business so much that you’re spending your hard earned money on it. He loves it so much that he’s risking his health to entertain you, and your answer to that is to throw stuff at him and possibly seriously hurt him. Does that make sense? Now granted, I don’t think that a lot of paper cups is going to cause serious injury, but there is a potential for it. Look at Davey Richards vs. Jimmy Rave, when the T.P. hit the chandelier and caused them to have to wrestle in broken glass. That’s a potential serious injury.

There’s also the risk of fans getting hurt. At a 2CW show in July of ’07 Spike Dudley decided to turn heel and rip into the crowd. He was doing a damn good job of it, too good a job, because someone decided to throw a bottle of water at him and it hit him in the head. Did Spike get hurt? No. Did he get pissed? Yes. What did he do? He threw the microphone into the crowd at the person he *thought* threw the bottle. But it turns out that it wasn’t that particular fan that did it. So that lucky guy got a nice welt on his chest, and was almost thrown out of the show and banned from attending future shows (2CW has a zero tolerance policy on fans doing stupid shit) over something that he didn’t even do. He lucked out because one of the security guys was able to back him up on not doing anything, and when they reviewed the footage they found out that he was in the clear.

There’s other possible consequences as well. I might be dating myself with this reference, but in Montreal in ’92 when James Hetfield walked into the pyrotechnic forcing Metalica to stop their show, and then Axl Rose decided he didn’t feel like playing that night. The crowd went nuts destroying the building, cars, and everything. I don’t think anything that extreme could happen in wrestling, but I’ve been recently surprised by some events. Most people associate stupid fans trying to fight the wrestlers with happening in Memphis, TN in the ’60’s and ’70’s but it happened in the year 2008 in my home state of NY. If the fans get too out of control and the owner of the building decides that they won’t let the fed use their building anymore. Then congratulations, you could have just made the owner of the fed decide that he’s not running any more shows in that area. That’s why ROH stopped running in Buffalo, NY. No, the fans didn’t riot and destroy the building, but they were constantly doing stuff that buying a ticket doesn’t give you the right to do, and Gabe (rightly) decided that they didn’t need the hassle.