Big Time with Big C: Love is in the Air...

Ah yes.  It’s that time of year again, when lovers love, haters hate, and little boys in diapers shoot arrows like a drunken redneck trying to kill an outhouse fly.  Even the WWE can’t resist the call of nature, as Monday’s RAW revealed.  Dirty little Eve Torres planted one of John (Captain Marvel) Cena in front of his broken hearted Broski.  Poor Zack Ryder can’t get no loving, except for the pavement, who he has been spending a lot of time with.

            I might sound sarcastic, but don’t get me wrong.  I like when they work love and love triangles into the storylines.  It helps the audience to relate to the characters.  Everyone knows what it is like to love and be unloved.  If used right, it can put someone way over, or create an epic heel.

            Below are some of my favorite romantic storylines from the WWE, in semi chronological order.  Read them with someone you love.

George “The Animal Steele and Miss Elizabeth  Before I got caught up in Hulkamania, I was a big time George “The Animal” Steele fan.  He was awesome!  He had a green tongue!  He ate turnbuckles!  He looked like a poorly shaved gorilla!  What’s not to love?

            Then one day, The Animal set his bugged out eyes on the lovely Miss Elizabeth, the Slim Jim that Randy Savage was snapping into.  It was love at first sight, and there was a great feud between Savage and Steele.  I think that it was this feud that really got Randy over as a heel.  I mean, he cruelly tortured a developmentally challenged man with a crush on a hot chick.  If that doesn’t make you top douche bag, nothing will.

            As for Steele, after the feud he would be a permanent face.  His wild man gimmick became a loveable gimmick.  In short, he became the first victim of Mick Foley Syndrome (or Foley caught Steele Syndrome.  Whatever).

Jake the Snake, Cheryl Roberts and Rick Rude  How they got away with this one, I don’t know, but this was well past the limits of what the WWF was doing at the time.  To summarize, Ravishing Rick Rude had a gimmick where he would pull a woman from the crowd and kiss them.  It was kinda like the Great Khali’s Kiss Kam, except that you didn’t have to kiss a 7 foot tall monster.  Instead you had to kiss a Freddy Mercury look-alike with porn star mustache.

            Well, before one match, he called out a woman to kiss.  That woman turned out to Cheryl Roberts, wife of Jake the Snake Roberts.  Rude started insulting her and Jake the Snake came out to defend his wife’s honor.  This went on for a few months but really took a turn for the “WTF” when Rude started wrestling in a pair of trunks WITH CHERYL ROBERTS FACE ON THE BACK!  Yes, Rick Rude was spending his match time sitting on Mrs. Robert’s face.  Jake the Snake came out and literally beat the pants off of Rude, ripping his tights off and leaving him naked except for a banana hammock, showing that Rick Rude was once again ahead of his time.

Billy and Chuck  Who could forget this classic?  Billy Gunn and Chuck Palumbo were just a regular tag team, not particularly impressive.  But then they started getting . . . a bit close.  They were “really happy” to be each other’s partner.  They started wearing matching outfits and hired a stylist named Rico.  It was FABULOUS.

            Finally, Chuck asked Billy to tie the knot and be his “partner for life.”  Billy happily accepted.  At the commitment ceremony though, they pulled a big 180.  “We’re just tag team partners . . . It’s not like we’re gay or something.”  And thus killed what was truly a partnership made in heaven.

Matt Hardy, Lita, and Edge  The love triangle between Matt, Lita and Edge is my all-time favorite romantic dust up in wrestling.  It might also be the most brilliant swerve of all time.  Even years later, I still don’t know how much of it is true and how much is storyline.

            There are so many details to this that I don’t even know where to start.  As far as I remember it, it began with Lita and Edge having an affair.  Lita and Matt were together for a long time before this both in and out of the ring.  The audience had pretty much accepted them as an unbreakable couple, like  Savage and Miss Elizabeth, or The King and every female backstage.  Anyway, Matt posted something about the affair on his blog and WWE fired him, allegedly because the affair was a company issue that he spilled.

            The Universe went nuts.  Edge and Lita became instant heels, with the crowd chanting “You screwed Matt!” (remember, this is before Matt’s drinking problem.  He was immensely popular).  The universe demanded Matt’s return. 

            What happened next is confusing, because it’s hard to tell real from fake.  While Matt was fired, he started wrestling for ROH.  But his music played a couple of times during Edge and Lita segments, most notably during their fake wedding.  He showed up and attacked Edge during one show and was dragged out by security, shouting out to the crowd that he could be seen wrestling for ROH.  A month or so later, WWE hired him back and he went on to feud with Edge and Lita.  The feud propelled Edge into super stardom, while it killed the career of Lita and did very little for Matt. 

            Looks like Edge got the girl, the money, and the Hall of Fame too.  Matt got a bottle of Jack Daniels.  Cheaters always win, and nice guys finish last.

Question:  What do you think of the Undertaker facing HHH?

At first I wasn’t too keen on it, as we saw the exact same thing last year.  I thought that a Taker/Kane match would be more fitting for his final Wrestlemania (as it probably is) from a storytelling point of view. 

But HHH and Creative are impressing me with the way that they took this angle.  HHH doesn’t want to fight because he has to think beyond winning and losing now.  If HHH wins, the WWE loses millions of dollars on the Undertaker’s Streak.  But if HHH doesn’t give his all, he loses all credibility and his own legacy.  To paraphrase the computer in “Wargames,” the only way for HHH to win is not to play.  I’m looking forward to seeing how Big Johnny and Lawyer Dave twist this to their favor.

And that’s it for this week, my friends.  This is Big C, reporting from the wrestling center of the world, New York City, and reminding you:  If you gotta go, go big.

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