SirSmUgly Posted September 16, 2015 Share Posted September 16, 2015 This is interesting, because watching a lot of dying days WCW recently, I thought "Kanyon: Innovator of offense" aged super terribly. His execution wasn't really that great considering that was one of his actual nicknames for a while and he had very little in the way of good matches. I did mark for the Mortis/Glacier feud as a kid, though, and Positively Kanyon ruled so I don't want it to seem like I'm super down on him, but that aspect of his work just didn't hold up for me. I guess I have to pitch an alternate answer now, so I'm going with Daniel Bryan. He may not have been the best in any one area (striking, flying, mat wrestling, high impact moves), but he was really good in all of them. I can't think of anyone with more well-rounded offense and his execution and transitions were always so smooth and crisp. He still looks awesome in 1997 as Mortis. I wonder if he hits a downturn in '99/'00 or something in-ring. I'll get there eventually. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ace Posted September 16, 2015 Share Posted September 16, 2015 Random thought: If I could watch one person do high-end offense all day, it would be Kanyon. Of course. Who betta than Kanyon? This. I can't help but think if he had come in a few years later, when Pro wrestling and the world at large were more open minded and accepting, he could have admitted his sexuality and probably been a happier and more well adjusted person and a much bigger star. Back in his Mortis days, I used to chat with him through AOL IM, and he was always so kind and positive, such a shame how things went down with him. I know depression played a big part in his demise, I wonder if being able to be himself instead of hiding it would have helped in that respect. Pro Wrestling has been open-minded about homosexuality for decades. Kanyon's sexuality was nowhere near the issue his mental illness was. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cristobal Posted September 16, 2015 Share Posted September 16, 2015 Pro Wrestling has been open-minded about homosexuality for decades. Ehhhhhhh. ^I'm saying this a lot today. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Playa Shunna Ver 3.0 Posted September 16, 2015 Share Posted September 16, 2015 Pro Wrestling has been open-minded about homosexuality for decades. Ehhhhhhh. ^I'm saying this a lot today. Yeah, if your the second most powerful guy in a company who always has the bosses ear, then the business is pretty open minded. I would say everyone else probably had a rough go for a while. This is pretty evident by the way the major companies have handled stereotypical gay characters or more flamboyant characters. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brysynner Posted September 16, 2015 Share Posted September 16, 2015 Pro Wrestling has been open-minded about homosexuality for decades. Ehhhhhhh. ^I'm saying this a lot today. Yeah, if your the second most powerful guy in a company who always has the bosses ear, then the business is pretty open minded. I would say everyone else probably had a rough go for a while. This is pretty evident by the way the major companies have handled stereotypical gay characters or more flamboyant characters. I think the way stereotypical gay characters or more flamboyant characters were portrayed was due to the contempt the companies had for their own fans and what they thought their fans thought about those characters Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Playa Shunna Ver 3.0 Posted September 16, 2015 Share Posted September 16, 2015 There is a lot of truth to that statement. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Go2Sleep Posted September 16, 2015 Share Posted September 16, 2015 He still looks awesome in 1997 as Mortis. I wonder if he hits a downturn in '99/'00 or something in-ring. I'll get there eventually. I think Mortis really was his in-ring peak. He had the Uncensored match with Glacier, the tag with Wrath against Glacier and Ernest Miller at BATB, and the FoF match at Fall Brawl that year. All good matches. I can't think of anything that good after he takes off the mask, though. I think the way stereotypical gay characters or more flamboyant characters were portrayed was due to the contempt the companies had for their own fans and what they thought their fans thought about those characters Hmm, I don't know about this. Can't say I'm really buying that the homophobic gimmicks that existed in the territory days and persisted through the attitude era were meta-progressive in any way. I'd speculatively doubt that most of the promoters were beyond "one of the good ones" levels of enlightenment, but even if you assume all the promoters knew better, the best case interpretation is that they still tried to monetize homophobia and generally reinforced that the audience was right to be leery of the gays. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
J.H. Posted September 16, 2015 Share Posted September 16, 2015 I thought Kanyon was still good during his Jersey Triad stint. I mean not amazing or anything but perfectly ok. James Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Infinit Posted September 16, 2015 Share Posted September 16, 2015 I remember Mortis had a match with Juvy on WCWSN that was pretty outstanding. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
twiztor Posted September 16, 2015 Share Posted September 16, 2015 Kanyon has always been a wrestler i've enjoyed watching. It doesn't matter if he's facing a Super Calo, Norman Smiley, or the Barbarian, he always finds a way to maximize his opponent. Just an all around entertaining dude in pro wrestling. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Firebreaker Chip Posted September 16, 2015 Share Posted September 16, 2015 ay remember when Kanyon came out of a giant present dressed as Boy George singing "Do You Really Want To Hurt Me" with an exaggerated speech impediment and then Undertaker hit him full force in the skull with a steel chair 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bourdain Posted September 16, 2015 Share Posted September 16, 2015 So I just came across Dinner for 3 with The New Day on the Network....these guys are amazing. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Technico Support Posted September 16, 2015 Share Posted September 16, 2015 ay remember when Kanyon came out of a giant present dressed as Boy George singing "Do You Really Want To Hurt Me" with an exaggerated speech impediment and then Undertaker hit him full force in the skull with a steel chair Exhibit C on the other side of the whole "wrestling is okay with dudes being gay" argument. Somebody thought it was cool to have one of the company's biggest stars try to destroy the brain of a mincing gay dude on national TV. Like it was totally a face move. HURR HURR KILL THAT FAGGIT, TAKER Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Super Weak Machine Posted September 16, 2015 Share Posted September 16, 2015 Buy her a house with her own fucking hampers. Good move, John Honey, did you see? I put a special hamper in the bathroom just for your shirts, and the other one is just for socks and poo poo undies. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
(BP) Posted September 16, 2015 Share Posted September 16, 2015 All I know about Kanyon is that he took one of the greatest stupid bumps ever off the top of the Ready to Rumble cage, and I can't find it on YouTube. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nice Guy Eddie Posted September 16, 2015 Share Posted September 16, 2015 Random thought: If I could watch one person do high-end offense all day, it would be Kanyon.Of course.Who betta than Kanyon? This. I can't help but think if he had come in a few years later, when Pro wrestling and the world at large were more open minded and accepting, he could have admitted his sexuality and probably been a happier and more well adjusted person and a much bigger star. Back in his Mortis days, I used to chat with him through AOL IM, and he was always so kind and positive, such a shame how things went down with him. I know depression played a big part in his demise, I wonder if being able to be himself instead of hiding it would have helped in that respect. Pro Wrestling has been open-minded about homosexuality for decades. Kanyon's sexuality was nowhere near the issue his mental illness was. Really? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Go2Sleep Posted September 16, 2015 Share Posted September 16, 2015 All I know about Kanyon is that he took one of the greatest stupid bumps ever off the top of the Ready to Rumble cage, and I can't find it on YouTube. http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x10y7u_kanyon-projette-de-la-cage_sport 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JRGoldman Posted September 16, 2015 Share Posted September 16, 2015 ay remember when Kanyon came out of a giant present dressed as Boy George singing "Do You Really Want To Hurt Me" with an exaggerated speech impediment and then Undertaker hit him full force in the skull with a steel chair Exhibit C on the other side of the whole "wrestling is okay with dudes being gay" argument. Somebody thought it was cool to have one of the company's biggest stars try to destroy the brain of a mincing gay dude on national TV. Like it was totally a face move. HURR HURR KILL THAT FAGGIT, TAKER I'm not going to defend "the rassling business" here, and obviously that whole thing was completely revolting and unnecessary, but part of this is knowing the culture and the audience. It's not like this happened to stunned silence, just like the Dudleys and Stone Cold Steve Austin hitting their finishing moves on women for no reason didn't result in stunned silence. I doubt that whomever was responsible for floating those ideas didn't do so while thinking "I'm gonna book this because I think gay bashing/domestic violence is awesome", they did so thinking "I'm gonna book this because it will make the crowd cheer very loudly for the people they are supposed to be cheering for". Granted there are other ways to accomplish this, but I think it's easy to forget exactly where we were culturally even just 15 years ago. I'm about as liberal and PC as they come and have been for as long as I could think for myself, but thinking back to "the attitude era", both within wrestling and outside, I'm ashamed of the things that I thought it was okay to cheer and say and do. Wrestling, just like sports and a few other businesses, has always been inherently insular and probably pretty accepting at the locker room level, because those dudes are your brothers, and what happens behind closed doors stays there. That being said, wrestling has always tried to appeal to the lowest common denominator of its fan base, so it's not particularly surprising that homophobic, sexist, and racist garbage has been booked routinely throughout it's history. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cool arrow Posted September 16, 2015 Share Posted September 16, 2015 On a related subject, it's been said that the Adorable Adrian gimmick was Vince "punishing" Adrian Adonis for his massive weight gain. Has Meltzer ever chimed in on this? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Matt D Posted September 16, 2015 Share Posted September 16, 2015 In retrospect, I kind of wish Vince had hired Adrian Street to be Adonis' partner. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
caley Posted September 16, 2015 Share Posted September 16, 2015 ay remember when Kanyon came out of a giant present dressed as Boy George singing "Do You Really Want To Hurt Me" with an exaggerated speech impediment and then Undertaker hit him full force in the skull with a steel chair It's actually worse than that. In Kanyon's book, he describes how upon injury he pitched to creative that he'd like to play a gay character who is just a tough guy, who happens to be gay. So he'd come out as gay, but would be a face who is also a tough guy and doesn't behave in a stereotypically pro wrestling idea of what gay man does. Creative "liked" the idea, IIRC, Kanyon waited for the okay, and by the time it came back to him, he was mincing and singing Boy George while wearing makeup. So fed up and disgusted with the whole process, he went along with it. That said, them changing it was probably the right thing, from a business standpoint, because I can't imagine early 2000s WWE fans responding to a gay character, face or not, with anything but derisiveness and lots of nasty cheers. How bizarre that we live in a time where Darren Young is a popular wrestler who gets cheers and just happens to be gay, while Dalton Castle plays a gay wrestler to massive cheers in ROH?! His book's a good, sad read. There's a lot of factual errors and some of the stuff he blames on pro wrestling he also deserves some of the blame for (Anyone remember when he announced he was coming out, got lots of wrestling industry press, then tried to back-track and say it was only Chris Kanyon, the wrestler, who was gay, not himself? That was a silly thing to do). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NikoBaltimore Posted September 16, 2015 Share Posted September 16, 2015 All I know about Kanyon is that he took one of the greatest stupid bumps ever off the top of the Ready to Rumble cage, and I can't find it on YouTube. The bump itself was good, but I remember that match got shit on for many reasons. Chief among them was the fact that the bump happened in the same arena Owen died. I remember a lot of people were pissed off about that. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MORELOCK Posted September 16, 2015 Share Posted September 16, 2015 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hagan Posted September 16, 2015 Share Posted September 16, 2015 Like most, I'm a sucker for those click-bait articles that detail "former creative team member reveals original details on gimmick/feud/original plan for [insert underused guy" or the articles that discuss "stupid idea that Vince or Kevin Dunn insisted on." Quick question, though: has any of these people ever detailed like an idea that wasn't genius on their part? It's pretty amazing that wrestling companies have made a concerted effort to fire every writer with exclusively good ideas. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
(BP) Posted September 16, 2015 Share Posted September 16, 2015 The time has passed, but I thought there might be one angle that would work for a gay character. If the character was feuding with a downright nasty, uncool heel (think 2008 Jericho), and the heel called the entire roster to the ring to out the face. The heel, expecting the roster to ostracize the face, is met with complete indifference and essentially,"You dragged us out here for this?" The heel is left alone in the ring to throw a fit, and the message is sent that it's a non-story regarding a wrestler's sexuality. No shoulder patting patronizing or jokes. You'd need the right face and especially the right heel to make it work, and again I think it's an angle they should've run ten years ago, not necessarily now. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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