The Importance of…10.24.08: Tori

-The CM Punk and Kofi Kingston-Miz and Morrison match on Raw was a fun watch. Punk and Kingston are showing more chemistry as a team now than the vast majority of the tag roster has for the last five years, and Miz and Morrison continue to roll along as one of the best acts in wrestling, period. I do have to criticize WWE for booking this match, though. As entertaining as it was, these are two top level teams. Punk and Kingston are, at least in theory, headed for a tag team showdown with Simply Priceless. Miz and Morrison are quite arguably the standard-bearers for tag action among the three brands, and have a date with DX in a couple weeks. Simply put, neither of these teams could afford a loss.

As for the ending of the match, on one hand I liked it. It all made sense—Miz was sneaky and showed his tag team experience, Punk was a house of fire and only went down on account of his not thinking like a tag team wrestler (not noticing the tag, and getting rolled up by the new legal man). That’s all fine, and makes sense, and yet I hate seeing Punk job in this context, period. Before the critics jump on me, yes, I understand that everybody loses sometime, and that this was a protected loss, and that it helped build The Miz, who was probably the least over guy in the ring. But with all of that being said, when’s the last time Triple H, The Undertaker, or Edge got pinned with a cleanly by someone who’s decisively a mid-carder? As such a recently dethroned champion, CM Punk should have a similar level of clout to the men I just named, and yet, he never will as long as he’s absorbing these kinds of losses. All in all, it was a good match, but it may have contributed to some long term damage.

-Raw’s main event gauntlet match did not make any sense to me. For one, there was the inherent logical flaw—if two guys are competing against the same gauntlet, no stage in the gauntlet is ever going to be fair (Regal was worn out before he met Jericho, in theory the same was true for Henry and Kane meeting Batista). Beyond that, in a traditional gauntlet, the gauntlet is over as soon as a guy loses, so really, Jericho should have lost the whole thing as soon as he got DQed. What would have happened if Kane beat Batista? Would it be a draw? Would Jericho have won? This was just nonsense, and had no place on Raw, much less in the main event.

On to our regular column…

When thinking of important women in wrestling history, there are a number of names that leap to mind. Fabulous Moolah, as WWF’s longstanding champion. Madusa Miceli as the heir apparent to women’s wrestling stardom. Miss Elizabeth as a woman of grace and dignity. Miss Texas, the first woman to crack the PWI 500. Sunny as the pioneer of women as divas. Chyna as the mainstream competitor to find some success performing with men. Trish Stratus as WWE’s commercial champion of the early 2000s. Awesome Kong as today’s monster. Linda McMahon, Stephanie McMahon and Dixie Carter as quite arguably the most influential women in the history of the business. There are many more names worth mentioning, but one which is not likely to leap to the top of the list that of Tori—not Torrie Wilson, but Tori, whose real name was Terri Pach, and who, in less than four years in mainstream wrestling, left quite a significant mark.

Tori arrived in the WWF in the character of a fan, obsessed with Sable. It is demonstrative of the chaotic nature of the storylines in the Attitude Era that Tori emerged as the face in this program, used and abused by an arrogant Sable until she fought back, regaining her dignity in the process—if never really giving Sable her comeuppance (she lost the blow-off match at Wrestlemania XV). While the stories veered in different directions the crazed element of this introductory story arc, coupled with the lesbian undertones, made it a clear forerunner for the Trish Stratus-Mickie James angle that would follow several years later. The Stratus-James story was justly lauded as one of the best women’s programs of all time, and so, the influence of Tori’s program lends weight to Tori’s legacy in wrestling.

From there, Tori continued to break new ground in women’s wrestling, as a participant in the WWF’s first women’s hardcore match. She battled Ivory there, with the women’s title on the line. The match culminated in two memorable spots—first with Ivory smashing a mirror over Tori’s head, and then with Ivory brutally burning her back with an iron. These may go down as the most violent women’s spots in mainstream American wrestling history, and were a precursor for other women’s hardcore action, such as the Trish Stratus-Victoria brawls that were to come.

Tori also worked a more traditional women’s role in acting as the woman who redeems a freak when she went steady with Kane—humanizing the monster. She followed another traditional role in betraying Kane, playing the Jezebel as she aligned herself with his arch-rival of X-Pac. This femme fatale storyline was not entirely new, but not a common one to the wrestling world, and complex in the way it played out. Tori played a paranoid, borderline psychotic woman, in accusing men of advances, only to sic Kane upon them. This turn worked well with her character’s previous bout of insanity over Sable, and led well to her heel turn, as she dropped the crazy act altogether upon leaving Kane.

As a part of DX, Tori added a fun and different dimension to the group. She was a hot heel chick who added some cool cred to the group by hanging out with them. What’s more, she was effective in a managerial role, an off-beat take on more traditional stables, like The Horsemen, Devastation Incorporated, and The Heenan Family, which all had a manager backing them.

Upon returning from an injury, Tori adopted a new role as the masked Black Ninja to second Raven in his feud against Crash and Molly Holly. The angle culminated in her being unmasked and then oddly pulled from television, never to be seen in wrestling again. Some reports indicate that Tori accused Raven of non-kayfabe backstage harassment, and when her complaints were not taken seriously, she left the company and wrestling altogether.

Regardless of how short her time in the mainstream may have been, after less than four years, Tori left an indelible mark on the business. She was a pioneer when it came to the crazy diva character, and when it came to what women could do in a hardcore context. Furthermore, she was an interesting figure in the DX story, and seemed on the brink of another interesting angle with Raven and the Hollys before her story came to an abrupt end. For all of these reasons, Tori is an important woman in wrestling history.