Thank you and **** you David Burcham

Well I would first like to thank David Burcham of Rant's and Rave's for helping clarify the point I was trying to make all along, which was NO, you don't have to be a wrestler to have an opinion on wrestling but you should watch what you say when you are someone who hangs out with the wrestlers.

Now as for your other comment, "Blogs are for pussies", I would have to say, how would you know since you've never had a blog, and I would be more than willing to bet that you've never had any pussy either, but I guess that's another one of those cases where someone is commenting on something that they've never actually done, but unlike Demp commenting on wrestling, I've seen the people you hang around and I'm sure they're not getting any either. Anyway.......

I just seen on the message board that I will be teaming with Neil in Amory against Lord Hugo and Death Wish. That should be interesting. I'm sure Death Wish is looking for revenge for the March match in Okolona and a match between War Machine and Lord Hugo has been brewing since 1999. Besides I need to kick Hugo's ass for stealing my ring music. Should be an interesting match. I'll be back to talk more about it later.

Working vs. Performing (Repost from May 31, 2003)

Working vs. Performing After reading all the various columns everyone is writing nowadays I thought I would write one of my own talking about the things that bug me about the business. I've read most of Storm's columns and I must say I pretty much agree with them. However this subject hasn't been covered so I thought I would, now I'm sure there are several people right now saying, "You don't know shit, who cares what you think?" Well apparently you cared enough to come read what I have to say so hear me out and afterwards tell me I'm wrong. There are way too many "wrestlers" in the indys right now who do not understand the business. They don't know what it is about or why they are out there. Or they do know and they just don't care. In my opinion there are only a handful of people in Mississippi and Alabama right now that know how to "WORK", notice I didn't say wrestle or perform, I said "WORK". In the past I've told people they can't work and they've responded with, "I can work, I can do a moonsault, swanton bomb, etc etc......." Well that doesnt mean you can WORK, it means you know how to perform some moves, well big fuckin deal so does the kid that lives next door to you who has a trampoline and is the "Game" of the "Backyard Extreme Undeground Deathmatch Federation", he can do a shooting star off a Winnebago onto broken glass, Does that mean he's a WORKER.....NO! What wrestlers and promoters should realize is people don't pay their money to come see teenagers PERFORM high spots, if they wanted that they would stay home cause there is plenty of wrestling on TV for free, as well as videos and DVD's of guys who can perform way better than some guy on an indy show who works twice a month, they come to the show to be entertained, to be part of the show. Back when I first started I(like so many now) had the wrong mentality, my first couple of matches were coreographed, and we tried to work it move for move as planned, we would have a pretty good match but the crowd would be dead through most of it, then later Sammy Hall would come out, take one bump and work a chain for 20 minutes and the crowd was up the whole time, then I realized, it was because he was working the crowd. So I changed my whole philosophy, I started working the mic, and interacting with the crowd, listening for their response and working off them instead of some scripted match. There is a huge difference between the best WRESTLING match on the card and the most OVER match on the card. Workers would trash me and get mad and say my matches were bullshit, and I didn't take enough bumps. Yet my matches always got a reaction, I always had heat. My favorite example of this. We went to a show in Rolling Fork, MS for Wesley and Danny. Opening match was Ken Massey and someone I don't remember, may have been Brother Love I don't remember and I doubt anyone who saw it remembers either. Anyways they go out there and put on a wrestling clinic that would have made Benoit and Malenko proud, and the crowd was DEAD! They were comatose. Massey comes back, "well that crowd is dead you can't do nothing with them." Well after about 4 more heatless matches, Chris(Kilgore) walks over, "let's go out and get these folks going during intermission." So he goes out to sign autographs and I come out and get on the mic and tell them to get his autograph while they can I'm about to put him out of the business....blah, blah, blah, typical heel bullshit, and the crowd got up. We come out for our match their on their feet booing their ass off, Kilgore comes out and they pop like hell, the first real pop of the night,.and we procede to work a basic match, nothing fancy, just your typical "War Machine match" and they were up the whole time, just because of simple stuff like Chris looking for their reaction before punching me, or me taunting them while cheating behind the ref's back, just basic 'old school 101' type stuff, and they ate it up, meanwhile Massey is in the dressing room door calling it "bullshit", and a joke, while having to yell over the crowd. We get back and while we're changing I hear Massey tell Don Brodie, "Hell I would have worked the mic, and got them going if I knew thats all they wanted" and I'm thinkin you've been in the business damn near twenty years and you didn't know how to get a reaction, or what they wanted. Christ at that point I had only been in it a couple of years and knew enough to know if they aren't reacting to what you are doing, DO SOMETHING ELSE!! He called our match bullshit, yet what match do you think people remembered? I can see them in the car on the way home, "You know Bill my throat sure is sore from screaming during that main event, but it really sucked from a technical standpoint, and I didn't feel the fat guy took enough bumps." "Yeah I know what you mean, that first match was great, even though they didn't acknowledge we were in the building and really gave us no reason at all to care who won, It was a very technically sound contest, far better than the workrate of the main event." I'm not saying it's bad to have a great wrestling match, I'm not saying it's bad to do high spots, all I'm saying is, don't lay out a match in the back based on the moves YOU wanna do, or the stuff you think is entertaining. Go out and listen to the crowd and give them what THEY want to see, if it's a wrestling match, give them a wrestling match, if it's high spots, give them high spots, if they wanna laugh, give them comedy spots, if they want violence, lay it in. Just listen to the crowd and give them what they want, thats the difference between WORKING a match, and performing a match in front of a live audience. Make them care who wins or loses, and they will come back. They always do. I would like to hear feedback on this be it positive or negative. This was not meant to step on anyones toes, I'm simply throwing my opinion out there with everyone elses. Thanks for reading, Gene

Secrets of the Ring with Raven and other stuff

I was excited this week when I checked my mail and my latest addition to my wrestling video collection arrived, another in the ROH Secrets of the Ring series, this one is with Raven! A very entertaining and informative dvd. From what I understand Raven will be doing a series of these discussing different aspects of working, this one in particular is how to work as a babyface. He goes into detail of match psycology and the 'lost art of selling' talking about how most of today's young stars, (namely TNA and ROH workers) are great performers, but cannot work for shit. Ironically, he went into a big spiel about performing vs. working, which had a lot of the same points of a column I wrote a couple of years ago(i'm gonna try to find it and re-post it here) Perhaps most amusing though was his analogy of how the pace of a wrestling match is very simular to "jerking off", I won't go into the whole thing here but some VERY funny shit and strangely he makes a lot of sense. Everyone should check this out, either at ROH.com or email me and I can bring some copies with me to the show in Amory. If anyone whose going is interested in buying any dvd's from me that night email me for my list.


Before I forget, since I didn't get around to writing about it in my column I just wanted to comment and say I thought Wrestlemania was pretty good this year. Although I really don't think the timing was right to put the belt on Cena OR Batista at least it's a change of pace (temporarily anyway) What can you say though, as I most figured Angle and HBK stole the show with a hell of a match, which wasn't shocking after the awesome match Angle had with Marty Jannetty a couple weeks prior on Smackdown. The only real complaint I had with the whole show was the fact that I paid $50 to see the Big Show in a thong.......very disturbing. Am I the only one who was a bit let down by Piper's Pit?? I've always loved Piper's Pit (another reason I'm so stoked about the Cheap Heat Interview segments) but I really expected more, I thought Piper did pretty well but Austin just seems stale, almost like a parody of himself. Probably just me though, I do have to say Carlito's character is growing on me.

As for TNA, I don't think an ENTIRE PAY PER VIEW of Cage matches is a great idea, I predict "Big Dust" will be out of the driver's seat pretty soon. They have a ton of great talent if they could just get it together........

I think firing Matt Hardy is a crock of fucking shit, I can only hope this is some kind of elaborate internet work but probably not..... Looks like a Hardy Boy Reunion soon.....At least we won't have to watch Jeff flounder as a single much longer.

That's all for now, I will try to post that 'Working vs. Performing' column soon if I can find it.

Thanks for reading

GENE