The S.C.O.R.E. Part I: Why Angle Wasn’t Ranked In The TWD 50

TWD50: 50 Sides, But No Angle

It’s been roughly one week since the TWD 50 finished up here on The Wrestling Daily.  As many of you may know, I was involved in composing the TWD 50 along with Mike Cranwell and James Triggs.  Our mission, which started sometime in late September after the idea was created and birthed in August, was to find the 50 best professional wrestlers on the planet earth.  We left no stone unturned in our studies; between the three of us, hundreds and thousands of hours worth of film were studied, several thousand e-mails were sent, dozens of lists were put together, random people were surveyed for their thoughts, and a handful of awesome verbal arguments broke out, each of which seemingly went on for days at a time.

Needless to say, we did our homework and we looked at just about every name in the business from top to bottom.  Everyone from A.J. Styles to Zack Sabre Jr. were brought up during our several weeks of discussions.

As we narrowed the 50 down, we decided that we wanted to make some statements with this list; we really wanted to open some eyes, raise some eyebrows, and get people talking, all while producing a thoughtful and open minded listing of the men we felt were the 50 best professional wrestlers on the planet.  Given that all rankings and lists are subjective, we realized that not everyone would agree with us and that we wouldn’t please everyone.

It became apparent that some of the names that were not going to be included on our first ever 50 would raise the ire of more than a few wrestling fans who we predicted would come at us and call us every name in the book.  We even predicted that someone would swoop in and drop F bombs as if they were making a bombing run in World War II.  Sure enough, they actually did.

Even though we knew all of this we were, and still are, welcome to the idea of debating people about the 50.  A ranking list that doesn’t generate discussion is a list that frankly sucks.  Still, we were surprised at the range of rave reviews and scathing criticism we got, and in most cases we were incredibly amused by some of that scathing criticism.

One particular piece of criticism really got me thinking about not only the TWD 50, which the commenter characterized as having “no credibility,” but everything wrong about the professional wrestling business and its legions of fans in the United States, some of whom blindly cheer their favorites on without stopping to think for merely 15 seconds about what it is they are really cheering for and supporting.

I haven’t had these sorts of thoughts as it relates to professional wrestling since the Chris Benoit double murder-suicide that rocked the business back in the summer of 2007, which is why this week’s S.C.O.R.E. is going to be entirely dedicated to one particular message I recently received from an individual that I will choose not to name.

I don’t even know if this individual will be reading the S.C.O.R.E. anytime soon, much less anything else on The Wrestling Daily, but whoever he is absolutely LOVES him some Kurt Angle, so much so that he felt compelled to send us what could basically be described as a letter from an angry fan who thinks we have no idea who Kurt Angle is.  This individual loves Kurt Angle SO MUCH that all wrestling related writing’s legitimacy is based, in his eyes, solely upon whether or not Kurt Angle alone is ranked on a list of the best wrestlers in the world.

Let’s take a look at the message in question, shall we?  This is taken verbatim from the message that “the individual” sent us:

You guys had me with this list till I read Kurt Angle not even in the top 50…sorry, if you have a person vandetta against the man that’s fine but your arguments are crap…the same skill set??? Shawn Michaels uses the same Skill set brother…Not putting anyone over in TNA???  I’m pretty sure he’s done wonders for Matt Morgan’s career and he’s making Desmond Wolfe look like a star…

Lets Check your other criteria

Overall value to current promotion in terms of quality and quantity of ring work…

-Is this really debatable?  His matches with Morgan and Wolfe on ppv and Styles on impact have been amazing

Career contributions to the pro wrestling world, including pioneering and “trailblazing” work as well as training and introducing young performers to the business

-hmmmm well lets see a pioneer by being the first olympic gold medalist to cross over and opening the doors for other amateurs such as Brock Lesnar, Shelton Benjamin and now Jack Swagger…I think that fits the bill

-Put over a hell of a lot of talent in WWE when he was there including youngsters at the time like John Cena and Edge

-Matches…vs Brock Lesnar WM 19, vs Brock Lesnar iron man smackdown, vs Undertaker No Way Out 2006, vs Shawn Michaels WM 21, vs Eddie Guerrero WM 20

Versatility in terms of persona and in-ring style

-He can have a 5 star match with Abyss and can work a 5 star match with Rey Mysterio..that’s versatility…

Success in multiple promotions (where applicable, as this may not be a factor for younger talent)

-WWE and TNA

Drawing ability

-Not the biggest draw ever, a drawback

Fan popularity

-Whether heel or face, People respect Kurt Angle and his work in the ring

The ability to tell a story in the ring

-Always

Consistency

-RARELY has a bad match

Work ethic

-Wrestles every match like it’s his last…he never phones it in

Ability to connect to the audience and get them to react in a desired way

-ALWAYS…very good at that

Basically, it may be your opinion, fine, but i’ve been watching wrestling for 20 something years now, i’ve seen it all, and I know Kurt Angle deserves to be in that top 10 whether you like the man or not…Anybody who reads this list will complain, as most already have, therefore this list has no credibility.

Hmm.  Well “fan who shall not be named,” I think it’s interesting that the credibility of this list hinges on the presence of one man and one man alone.  You had no problem with the rest of it, but the fact that the TWD 50 had 50 sides but no Angle really just doesn’t sit well with you, does it?  In fact, it angers you so much that the 50 automatically sucks just because Angle isn’t on it.  So you loved literally 98 percent of this list, but because you didn’t agree with 2 percent of it, automatically the other 98 percent of it isn’t credible?

Call me crazy, but if you agree with 98 percent of the 50 and you claim that the 50 isn’t credible, doesn’t that make your opinion not credible as well?  I mean hell, 98 percent is an A plus in the academic world and in most instances, getting something right 98 percent of the time is pretty damn good, not to mention damn near perfect.  I think we’re doing a great job if you agree with 98 percent of the TWD 50.  I’ll take 98 percent any day of the week and twice on Sunday.

Hell of a start there, Ace, and the bad news for you is that I’m just getting warmed up.  If I eat 100 cheeseburgers and 98 of them were great, I’m not going to stop eating cheeseburgers just because two of them didn’t agree with my stomach. You apparently would, which makes you about the pickiest eater and reader in the history of everyone who has ever logged on to this site.  Congratulations.

“…sorry, if you have a person vandetta against the man that’s fine but your arguments are crap.”

I believe you mean a personal vendetta?  I’m not familiar with what a “person vandetta” is.  If you meant personal vendetta, Angle being left off the 50 has nothing to do with a personal vendetta.  Angle has accomplished a lot in this business and for you to think that something we say somehow undoes all of that is damn hilarious.  It also tells me that you take what we write quite seriously and that you hold our opinion to be more “credible” than you’re willing to admit.

You have, after all, seen EVERYTHING in your 20 something years of watching pro wrestling, which is why you came to The Wrestling Daily and agreed with 98 percent of the TWD 50 in the first place.  You apologized for having your opinion of the TWD 50, but I will not apologize for having an opinion on something that defers from the norm; having that opinion is NOT a vendetta, it’s merely having a brain and deciding to make use of it.

Are you even aware of what the term “vendetta” means?

Vendetta is defined as “any prolonged and bitter feud, rivalry, contention, or the like.”

If I had a vendetta, I would deny that Angle is a great wrestler and that he shouldn’t be on the 50.  I do not particularly wish to inflate Angle’s ego or encourage his promoters to squeeze more out of the “Olympic hero” for reasons I’m about to explain, but if it makes you feel better and helps you sleep at night, you’re absolutely correct; Angle is a great wrestler and he is one of the 50 best in the world.

Angle has had a fantastic career filled with a number of great matches that, I believe, make him one of the all time greats in the history of the pro wrestling business.  Not long ago, I used to rant and rave to anyone who would listen that I would love to see Kurt Angle take on Bret Hart or Bryan Danielson in a match.  If I had a vendetta against Kurt Angle, I sure as hell would never have said ANY of those things, much less acknowledge that Angle had any sort of wrestling skill.

So now that we’ve established that you have incorrectly concluded that we have a vendetta against Kurt Angle, we need to address why it is that you have failed to correctly label our reasons for not listing Kurt Angle in the 50.

Frankly, I think if you took a few minutes to think about it you would get it, but because you aren’t looking at what we are actually saying with the 50 with any sort of intellectual depth, you aren’t.

Instead, you are sending us angry messages filled with mostly useless facts that we and millions of other wrestling fans already know.

At this point, your rebuttal to our non ranking of Angle is hardly scratching the surface of our actual argument against having Angle on the 50.

So what is our point, you might be asking yourself?  In order to answer that question, I will first start by posing you and all the readers out there a question: Why the hell is it okay to cheer for a man’s physical decimation and reward him for his own obsessive and reckless abandon when he’s broken his neck several times and is falling apart physically to the point that my mother (who hardly ever watches wrestling) was watching an episode of Impact with me one evening and remarked:

“That’s Kurt Angle?  What the hell happened to him?  He looks physically ill and withered.”

I suppose then, my response to that observation, according to you, should have been:

“It’s okay Mom, Kurt Angle is one of the greatest wrestlers of all time.  His personal life may appear to be in shambles based on what has been reported by the media, he may have lied about the WWE forcing him to do rehab on the road prior to leaving the company, and he may have actually refused to go into rehab when asked by the WWE.  Angle might also be in a wheel chair one day, and his neck may be like a dry rotted tension belt on the engine of a car that has been sitting, unused, in a parking lot for 8 years, but it’s cool; he’s entertaining me.  The hell with his personal life, his family life, and his future physical well being; as long as that man is entertaining me every week, who gives a rat’s ass?”

What Angle is doing to himself is not magically okay just because his matches are great.  People chanting “this is awesome” does not heal his wounds and it does not move him further away from possibly ending up in a wheel chair like Dynamite Kid.  Our arguments are crap?  Well, call me crazy, but I think it is CRAP that people don’t give a damn about Kurt Angle’s future.  I also think it is crap that more people do not make a stand against the man just because of his star power, his “it” factor and his ability to produce awesome wrestling matches that gratify us as hungry consumers in the short term.  Unfortunately for Angle, awesome is never enough for many.

Hell, even Vince frickin McMahon, the original spawn of Satan himself, took a stand against Angle, but Angle decided to skip town and work for a company (TNA) that would listen to a “star” of his caliber and would allow him to do whatever the hell he wanted because they needed the ratings.

McMahon doesn’t need Angle; Angle needs McMahon and every other promoter that is willing to book him because without those bookers booking him, Angle doesn’t get on television to break his neck for you.

If you haven’t noticed, professional wrestling is a physically brutal sport, and even the simplest of wrestling matches can take an immense physical toll on the body because it is simply not designed to crash on a hard ring thousands upon thousands of times a year, or for that matter dozens of times a night.

Many fans of the business just flat do not understand the sort of toughness it takes to be a professional wrestler.  I’m not a professional wrestler myself, but I know that getting up in the morning for many wrestlers is, to say the least, quite the endeavor.  I can’t even fathom how sore someone working the demanding WWE schedule must be on a daily basis.

Given that Angle has broken his neck several times, had to drop weight so his body could handle the burden of his frame and suffered a series of other physical maladies in recent years, the sort of pain Angle must experience on daily basis would probably be enough to cause most common people to take a month off from their 9 to 5 jobs to recover.

Many professional wrestlers, like Angle, keep going at the expense of their future well being because they love it and/or are working to put themselves and their families in a good financial situation later in life.  Others do it because of the fame, the freedom of the open road, and their connection with a fan base that accepts them.  For some, professional wrestling is the only thing they’ve ever done and it is the only thing they are really qualified to do.

Letting go of a spot working for one of the top wrestling promotions in the world is a difficult thing to let go of for many wrestlers.  Many will cling to that spot and do whatever it takes to deal with the stresses and rigors of the pro wrestling business, and that includes using drugs and alcohol to regulate the highs and lows of life on the road.

Make no mistake; the open road can do things to a man, or for that matter a woman.  Roddy Piper once spoke of the “silent scream” of the road in an article that ran in USA Today:

“I experienced what we in the profession call the silent scream” of pain, drugs and loneliness, says wrestling legend “Rowdy” Roddy Piper, 49, who has been in the business more than 30 years. “You’re in your hotel room. You’re banged up, numb and alone. You don’t want to go downstairs to the bar or restaurant. The walls are breathing. You don’t want to talk. Panic sets in and you start weeping. It’s something all of us go through.”

Kurt Angle is no less human than Roddy Piper, a certified wrestling legend, nor is he more human than Scott “Raven” Levy, a man who has had some success of his own in the pro wrestling business, who had this to say in the same USA Today article:

Scott “Raven” Levy, 39, says he used steroids and more than 200 pain pills daily before he kicked the habit a few years ago. “It’s part of the job,” Levy says. “If you want to be a wrestler, you have to be a big guy, and you have to perform in pain. If you choose to do neither, pick another profession.”

You’re trying to convince me that Angle is superior to most other professional wrestlers because he guts it out and works hard.  You act like this is a unique thing in the pro wrestling business.  Pro wrestlers all over the world gut it out and bust their asses just as much as Kurt Angle does, and yet you seem ready to assign this as a trait in pro wrestling that is unique to Kurt Angle.

For several years, we’ve been reading about Angle and his dilapidated neck gutting it out and refusing to mail it in.  We’ve also read recently that Angle’s personal life is becoming the sort of zoo that garbage rags like TMZ and the litany of attention starved pro wrestling websites love to pounce on.

Angle and his promoters would like nothing more than for us to acknowledge that Angle is one of the best wrestlers in the world today; ranking Angle encourages him to continue breaking his body in the name of his quest to be recognized as the greatest professional wrestler of all time.

Nothing Angle does in the remainder of his career with TNA is going to lead to him being called the greatest professional wrestler of all time by anymore than a handful of people.  We could give Angle another feather in his cap or perhaps even more motivation to go out there seriously injure himself a few more times to prove to us that he is better than this guy or that guy in the top 10, but we’re not going to do it.

One wrestler’s presence does not make a list, or for that matter an entire website, magically credible or incredible.  Kurt Angle is NOT that big of a megastar and the business will go on without Angle just as it did before Angle even dreamed of upsetting an Iranian while wrestling with a broken neck in the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta.

With the piss poor monetary benefits of being in the business, at what point do we call shenanigans on the business for putting wrestlers in a position to have to kill themselves in order to put their families and themselves in a decent financial position?  At what point do we call shenanigans on a business (particularly the WWE) that uses and abuses its talent until there is nothing left and often discards it as if they were merely the day’s garbage?

I appreciate passion for what one does as much as anyone, probably more so, and I respect anyone who loves what they do so much that money doesn’t mean a damn thing.  The problem is that the actual wrestling business doesn’t respect its talent or their talents passion and dedication as much as it should.

Guys like Ric Flair and Hulk Hogan should not be wrestling right now in order to keep up either with what life has dealt them, or the wrestling business shaped lifestyles that they lived for years. Hogan and Flair should be enjoying a comfortable retirement away from the business after completing careers that rank amongst the greatest in the history of the business.  Instead, they can be found whoring themselves out to any willing high bidder and bleeding all over the great “Down Under” at the combined age of 116 years old.

Angle is heading in a similar direction and has been for some time now.  Angle isn’t nearly the star that either Hogan or Flair were in their primes, but given what Angle has given to this business, the business should give back to him more than it actually has.  I can recall Angle working his Wrestlemania XIX match against Brock Lesnar with a neck that was in such horrible shape that Angle was looking at possibly needing spinal fusion surgery that would put him out of action for a year.

Angle worked the match, despite the dangerous condition of his neck, and opted for a surgical procedure a few weeks later that would allow him to only miss three months of action.  During the surgery Angle’s doctor, Hai-Dong Jho, repaired nerve and spinal damage and removed bone spurs, calcium buildups and portions of bad discs from Angle’s neck.  One wrong bump at Wrestlemania XIX could have paralyzed Angle.  Angle’s neck only has more wear and tear on it nearly 7 years later.

Angle should be off making movies or spending time at home with his family and friends, fondly looking back on a career that would easily land him in any pro wrestling hall of fame.  Instead, Angle is still out there giving us match of the year candidates after years of physical abuse, not all that dissimilar from his predecessors Benoit and Dynamite Kid, who also never “mailed it in” and put their bodies through hell in the name of their passion.

Granted, Angle isn’t working the WWE schedule anymore, but Pro Wrestling NOAH founder, president and wrestler Mitsuharu Misawa wasn’t working a heavy WWE-like schedule when he took one simple bump on a backdrop suplex and damaged his spinal cord, killing him right there in the middle of the damn ring.

How many more bumps do you think that neck of Angle’s can withstand?  You could be as skillful at taking bumps as you want to be, but when the body has had enough, it’ll turn the switch off on you in a heartbeat.

I would hate to even imagine what could happen if someone Angle is working with, or even Angle himself, screws up the execution of a move and causes Angle to take a bad bump on his head or neck.  What if Angle’s physical condition leads not only to Angle getting hurt, but someone else getting hurt as well?

The ridiculous expectations of a business that has no problem having its back scratched while not really scratching the backs of others also killed Owen Hart, who was for some reason flying around the Kemper Arena on WWE’s Over the Edge pay per view in a harness before it gave away, sending Hart plummeting to his death.  What that stunt was doing on a pro wrestling show is anyone’s guess.

Demand for wacky antics and the promoters need to meet them led to Owen Hart, a pro wrestler and NOT a stuntman, risking and ultimately ending his life.  What if the same thing had happened to Shawn Michaels at Wrestlemania XII when he rode to the ring on a zip line?  Yes it was memorable, but was it really necessary, given that many call the match that followed it one of the greatest of all time?

I do not support the WWE’s ridiculous antics or their more ridiculous schedule demands.  I also do not support the business for contractually demanding that their performers destroy their bodies and sometimes lives with little or no liability on the promoter.  Angle is determined to continue on in this business in his obviously less than stellar physical condition, as I’m sure many are, but I won’t support that because it’s been supported by so many people many times before.

I used to be a huge Chris Benoit fan back in the day, as I used to enjoy his seemingly super human workrate, tireless work ethic, and devout passion for the wrestling business (sound familiar?)

When Benoit murdered his family and killed himself after years of working a very intense and physical style that turned him into a delirious and demented time bomb, it really made me rethink things.  The reasons I respected Benoit (who was at that time, in my eyes, everything right about professional wrestling) all ended up contributing to his death and the horrible crimes he committed.

I can’t help but think that my undying support of his career helped contribute to the Benoit incident just a little bit.  My cheering was just another microdecible in a wave of approval that egged Benoit to keep on going when he should have retired years earlier.

That guilt nearly killed me on professional wrestling altogether.

I know why Benoit laid it on the line for as long as he did; he loved the business, he loved performing for the fans, and he loved earning the approval of said fans and his peers, none of which are inherently bad things. Benoit genuinely respected the business like few others, but he flat out took it too far. The question is why was Benoit, like so many other professional wrestlers, willing to push it that far?

The answers can be found in the practice of the business itself.

Vince McMahon can say what he will about Benoit being a “monster” and doubt the posthumous studies of the man’s brain by questioning how a man with the brain of an Alzheimer patient could possibly manage to work a WWE schedule and book flights and such, but all of his frantic deleting of Benoit from the WWE record books is NOT going to prevent similar incidents from possibly happening again.  It also doesn’t change the fact that changes need to be made to protect the wrestlers.

Professional wrestling is a rough enough business as it is without obligating performers to perform when they really shouldn’t be, and a man with perhaps hundreds of concussions and another man who has broken his neck several times should not be, even if their matches are awesome.  The business should be giving to wrestlers with the same sort passion and sacrifice that wrestlers give to the business.

All of this is not a personal vendetta; this is making a stand and having the balls to publish something that MAKES a stand instead of blindly sitting there and cheering everything that looks cool and awesome.  Just because it looks cool and awesome, doesn’t mean it actually is cool and awesome.

Now then…on to the rest of your response…..In Part II.

The Wrestling Daily is the only way to Evolve.

Disclaimer:The opinions expressed within this column are solely those of Jason Le Blanc and, unless otherwise indicated, do not reflect the views, opinions, and beliefs of The Wrestling Daily.  Any complaints should be made directly to the man, Jason Le Blanc himself.

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