Jumping To Conclusions: Rules that have historically sucked
Credit: The Observer
By Eric Nelson, Lounge Rookie Scrub
Aug 25, 2004, 12:04 AM
This past Monday on Raw, the drawn-out Edge vs. Chris Jericho match ended in debatable fashion. Well, it would be more debated if anyone really cared, but the finish has been talked about. Well, not talked about by too many people, but I think I read a couple comments about it. Nonetheless, it was a less-than-traditional finish for a WWE match, with the referee disqualifying Edge for "intentionally" dropping Jericho crotch-first on the top rope, the problem being, of course, that it wasn't intentional.
This finish was planned. However, in a report in the Torch Newsletter a few months back said that referees were to enforce the rules more heavily, even going so far as to disqualify a wrestler who abused his five-counts or gave a sideways glance to a ringside steel chair. The point was to give referees and the rules they enforce more legitimacy. Since the Attitude era, wrestlers had been getting away with everything short of murder. Now, Undertaker and Paul Bearer aside, the idea is to make it look as though the striped shirt and the person wearing it have some authority.
Again, Chad Patton disqualifying Edge for his use of the top rope on Jericho's bollocks was a planned finish, not a case of a referee exerting his worked authority. Some fans may see this, though, as a referee doing his job. Other fans will point to the DQ as a completely arbitrary punishment laid down by one jerky referee, DQing Edge for something that's been done in wrestling a million times and has never ended a match. I agree with both; I think the finish was stupid, and a DQ could have been accomplished a hundred other "accidental" ways, but you still must respect the referee's decision.
All of that said, the DQ finish prompted me to remember other weak disqualification finishes in years past, or just other inconsistent or just plain stupid rules, and wonder what the heck the people in charge were thinking when they incorporated some of these lame regulations into the fictional rulebook. For instance...
When "Cowboy" Bill Watts took the reins of the WCW vice-presidency in 1992, he made a number of sweeping changes, some of which were unknown to those of us who weren't reading the newsletters at the time, and some of which were on our televisions every Saturday night at 6:05 ET. At the time, the WCW light heavyweight division was going at a hot and furious pace, with luminaries such as Brian Pillman, Tom Zenk, Scotty Flamingo, Jushin Liger, and Brad Armstrong all in the mix. Other wrestlers in WCW included Bobby Eaton, master of the Alabama Jam, the Steiner Bros., famous for their high-rent bulldogs and DDTs, and Ricky Steamboat, whose aerial grace will forever be remembered. For a short period of time post-Liger but pre-Too Cold Scorpio (thankfully), the ever-wise Watts made a mandate that performing any move from the top rope would be grounds for an immediate disqualification. DUH! Look at your roster? Look at the 200-300 people jampacking your arenas to the fifth row, and ask yourself why you'd want to lame up your product by eliminating the aerial arsenal of a roster full of aerial wrestlers. Many were the times on WCW broadcasts that I'd see Steamboat go to the top for his crossbody, only to remember just in the nick of time to step down to the second rope to perform the move. Unnecessary, and lame. Lame, lame, lame.
Also involving the top rope was the old-timey rule that, if you threw your opponent over the top rope, you'd be disqualified. I can understand this rule being in effect from the 1970s back; only a heel so dastardly he'd want to debilitate his opponent, or so cowardly that he'd prefer his foe be well beyond arm's reach, would ever dare to throw a man over the top rope approximately 15 to 75 feet (depending on the color commentator) to the cold floor below. But by the 1980s, this rule was a joke. The paradigms of wrestling shift, and bookers have to shift with them or be left behind chewing on dust. At one time, a suplex outside the ring would break a man's neck; by the '80s it was a commonplace move for the first five minutes of a six-minute Hulk Hogan match; surely a toss over the top rope wouldn't cause a disqualification. Well, it did, and my friends and I poke fun at that archaic rule all the time.
For a more recent oddball rule, look no further than Total Nonstop Action, who recently allowed the tag team titles to change hands on a disqualification. The sanctity of the "championship advantage" was desecrated; the whole point, as Bobby Heenan pointed out many times, is that the challenger had to beat the champion to win his title. I understand -- but do not at all agree with -- the point of view that if a wrestler intentionally gets himself disqualified that he is not a worthy champion, but that's not up to a referee to decide in the midst of a hard-fought match, especially when DQs, like Edge's on Monday, were based on unintentional happenings. I love the DQ rule in championship matches, giving the heel champ a "way out." On April 14 of this year, D-Lo Brown, Apollo, and the Jarretts crapped all over that rule. Keep your gay marriages and illegal imprisonment of innocent Americans in Guantanamo, but don't screw around with my championship advantage.
This one never led to a disqualification; in fact, combatants couldn't be disqualified in this situation, yet the inconsistencies of cage match rules always have and still bother the heck out of me. In days of yore, a steel cage was a simple chain-link fence surrounding the ring in order to keep other ancillary players out, and keep the foes enclosed. You couldn't be counted out, obviously, and you couldn't be disqualified, as you had a 15-foot tall illegal weapon all around you. You simply had to pin your opponent or make him submit. Until Hulk Hogan and his big blue monkey bars came to town. Someone had the bright idea of letting the 300+ pound Hogan and his 400+ pound cronies climb the steel cage and leave to win. The door was another escape hatch, more normally used by the King Kong Bundys of the world. Then someone decided it was a bad idea to make climbing the cage a way out. Then someone decided it was a good idea. And back and forth they went, varying from promotion to promotion, or sometimes just from match to match, until I ripped all my hair out and glued it to the refrigerator. I believe it's been said in our Lounge before, and I apologize for not remembering who said it or when, but it's frustrating when you see a cage being erected and you have to ask everyone around you how a wrestler can win this time.
If anyone out there in Conclusion-Land has any other favorite hackneyed old rules they'd like to lay on me, please email me at the address below and be my handrail down Memory Lane.