Professional wrestling in the 1980s represents the apex of human cultural development. That is not an exaggeration. Professional wrestlers lived the lifestyles depicted in Over the Top, Top Gun, and Rocky IV all rolled into one, and they did it every week to sold out arenas coast to coast and world wide. They talked big, were big, lived big, and more often than not, died big. They were the last shooting stars of masculinity and pure triumph before the present dark age of crab pot ethics and douchefaggery overshadowed the world. We’ve already had plenty of articles about the technical aspects of wrestling and the impact on popular culture. This article is not a popularity contest. I’m going to talk about the life lessons that professional wrestling used to teach, to inspire a new generation of men with the ethics of glory and the virtue of victory.
10. Stone Cold Steve Austin
The attitude era, as awesome as it was, was the beginning of the end for professional wrestling and by extension the whole western world. That is why this list begins with the man who typified the era and whose rise to fame marked the last gasp of awesomeness before the final collapse of American culture.
In the late nineties America was a seething cauldron of latent discontent, the eighties were only yesterday but America was starting to suck and nobody could quite pinpoint why. We now know that the foundations of the new America were a few shadowy currency manipulators and coastal culture peddlers run roughshod over the declining people of old America were laid in this period. It was a period of reaction, of warning labels on music, soccer moms, and the DARE program, an age of phantom prosperity where a new generation of pussies combined their efforts to run masculinity out of the culture and settle down into a comfortable stability that wasn’t to last.
Enter Stone Cold Steve Austin. He would have none of this “safety” or “comfort” or “respectability”. He found the new regime of nice to be suffocating. He was going to drink beer, flip off his boss, call people faggots, and pass out stunners like candy on Halloween. Sadly, there weren’t enough men left to shift the culture back, and Stone Cold was purely a reactive force against the bitch mode conspiracy. Ultimately he didn’t present a credible alternative and that is why he is number ten, regardless of great he was at the time.
9. Mick Foley
Fuck Bruce Springsteen, the last true working class hero was Mick Foley. Born to blue collar Irish parents in Staten Island, New York, Mick Foley’s roots were as humble as they come. Even at his best, Foley was never that physically impressive, and at his worst he devolved into a barely mobile tub of lard. One thing Mick Foley could do better than anyone was take a beating, and more importantly keep coming.
His career was marked by brutal mismatches with physically superior men, and it was a testament to his heart that Mick made his matches credible. He had his ear ripped off, teeth knocked out, more concussions than you can count, and has taken the most legendary bumps in wrestling history by being thrown off and through a giant cell in the space of five minutes in the immortal hell in a cell match. The undertaker won that match, but nobody remembers that. They remember that Mick Foley got up.
Perhaps even more brutal than the hell in a cell was his infamous “I quit” match with the rock were he was handcuffed and forced to take over a dozen direct chair shots on his unprotected skull. Chair shots are pretty common in wrestling, and there is a way to take them that minimizes their impact by letting your hands absorb some of the blow. When they were planning the match nobody foresaw just what the handcuffs would do to amplify the damage, but Foley took the punishment willingly, gave the fans a good match, and then went to the hospital. He also never said “I quit”. That’s why he is on the list.
8. The Rock
When The Rock was great. The Rock was fucking great. In terms of pure talent and raw charisma he was perhaps the best WWF champion of all time. The Rock was also the last WWF champion with the ability to be credibly arrogant without seeming like some douchebag poser. The Rock was better than you at everything. He knew it. You knew it. He rubbed it in your face like the smug son of a bitch he was. In terms of pure shit talking rhetorical destruction nobody was even close to matching him. Sadly he was horribly misused both by the WWF of his era and the film industry afterward.
The Rock’s big match with Austin came much too late due to injuries and he wasted years feuding with second rate champions like Mankind, Triple H, and The Big Show. He had no credible rivals so he basically had to draw by himself and carry the revenues of the company on his shoulders for a three year period. He managed to do it but ultimately the WWF was never the same once he started making movies and by his brief return the magic was gone.
As poorly as he was used by the WWF Hollywood was one hundred times worse. The Brahma bull has been plagued by shit scripts that failed to show off his talents and he has starred in perhaps one legitimately good movie in “The Rundown”. He is ranked as low as he is because no matter his inherent greatness his career has ultimately been a disappointment. He symbolizes the masculinity crushing inertia of the modern world and all the dreams it has destroyed. Nevertheless Rocky’s Attitude a huge part of what made the Attitude era. Its greatness was his greatness. The Rock will also be the last “modern” wrestler on this list. For true life changing inspirational wrestlers to live by we’ll have to go back to the golden age of manhood: the 1980′s!
7. Million Dollar Man Ted DiBiase
Everyone’s got a price! Everyone’s gotta pay! Cause the million dollar man always gets his way! The “spoiled rich guy” gimick has been a popular way to generate heat for wrestling’s heels from the very beginning, but nobody ever did it quite as well as Million Dollar Man Ted DiBiase.
Essentially Gordon Gecko the wrestler, the Million Dollar Man put you in a headlock, raided some little old lady’s money in an S&L, and used it to fund right wing paramilitary death squads in Latin America to protect his cocaine supply chain… all to the tune of “Push It to the Limit“. He was greedy as fuck and proud of it. The business world is supposed to be cut-throat and in the eighties men boldly admitted their competitive drive and their total lack of regard for their vanquished foes. It was a glorious era where winners were winners and losers were laughed at like the pathetic failures they are.
The key theme of this list and the reason the eighties were so awesome is the now forbidden truth that “winning is better than losing” was boldly lived and universally espoused. Pride, real justified pride in being the best is unheard of in our Harrison Bergeron age. Ted Dibiase didn’t care about offending anybody. He WANTED you to be offended. The only point of money to him was to make others feel inferior. Nobody fucking brags anymore. It is disgusting how fucking humble and passive aggressive everyone is about their faux humility. The Million Dollar Man has a million dollars. You can tell because it’s in his name! You don’t have a million dollars. HA! HA!
6. Ravishing Rick Rude
He had the physique. He had the talent. He had the masculine good looks punctuated by the best mustache in the business. You knew you had to keep an eye on your girlfriend because it was even odds that she would leave you in the dust just for a shot at the rude awakening. Ravishing Rick Rude was not the biggest man around but he was the top talent of his time, held back by the fact that eighties wrestling audiences would not buy him as a credible threat to one of the big men who defined that era. What Rick gave up in size he more than made up in pure pantie soaking charisma, the quintessential ladies man, eighties style.
His appeal lay in his utter shamelessness. Rick was rude, crude, cruel, and everybody loved him for it. No mustache destroyed more hymens than the one attached to the Ravishing One.
5. Jesse ‘The Body’ Ventura
As a former Navy SEAL, Jesse ‘The Body’ Ventura is the real world baddest man on this list, and his career is a testament to the old adage that all’s fair in love and war. The Body is not on the list so much for being a wrestler. By the mid eighties golden age his days as a wrestler were largely behind him. Ventura is remembered as the best color commentator in the history of the business. The devil on the left shoulder to Gorilla Monsoon’s angel on the right, The Body’s narration accompanied all the best dirty tricks and applauded every low blow. In war playing fair will get you killed, so why play fair in the squared circle? Every time a bad guy pulled a cheap trick Jesse was there with ready praise. He would insult the fans and belittle their hero. He would mock their comebacks and laugh at their failures.
Jesse Ventura shows us that today’s villains are truly bush league and pathetic, totally unable to be bad with style. Real bad intentions and a commitment to single minded malevolence are as rare today as unconflicted uncomplicated good guys. The modern age is so terrible, we can’t even do evil right. Jesse showed us the way.
4. Andre the Giant
You shouldn’t even need to be told why Andre the Giant is an inspiration to men everywhere. Like many others on this list, his very existence demonstrates the reality of an obvious truth that has been lost in these evil days, namely, size fucking matters. As much as you don’t want to hear it, bigger is just plain better. Andre was so big and so awesome that a mortal body just couldn’t sustain him. He was truly bigger than life itself.
Andre wasn’t a talker, he was a liver, and that wasn’t too healthy for his liver. His life was a testament to the principle that excess is the key ingredient in success. Being normal sucks and moderation is for pussies. Andre went all-in every day of his life and he never did anything half way. Do you think any of the great men of history who went mad with power and killed millions did anything half way? Doing things half way is a great way to die peacefully of old age like a crazy cat lady nobody will ever remember. Immortality requires extremism and with some men can’t live with anything less.
3. Hulk Hogan
If you gave a crack team of the world’s best biochemists a trillion dollars to distill the pure essence of the United States of America, you would get Hulk Hogan. Hogan’s twenty four inch pythons are made out of bald eagles and courage. The firepower used to win the battle of Iwo Jima is the active ingredient in the Hulkster’s leg drop. His promos can be reduced down to hard work, faith, and the Declaration of Independence.
Hulkamania is just one word to describe the cultural phenomenon of pure awesomeness that eroded the Russian’s will to resist and won us the cold war. The “Tear down this wall” speech and Rocky Balboa vs. Ivan Drago are other examples. Hulk Hogan was the last gasp of the “Real America” that had faith it itself, confidence in its culture, never apologized for anything, and had absolutely zero irony. Irony is the opposite of America. Simplicity, optimism, patriotism, idealism, and honesty, these were the values that Hogan preached to an army of Hulkamaniacs. The winding down of Hogan’s career and the winding down of America happened at approximately the same time. Coincidence? There are no coincidences. Our failure as a nation started precisely when we collectively rejected the message of prayers, training, and vitamins.
2. Nature Boy Ric Flair
Why is the nature boy so great? Cause he is custom made, head to toe. He dresses in five thousand dollar silk suits, ten thousand dollar watches, and drives a new Cadillac every year! He has the biggest house on the biggest hill on the big side of town! To be the man you gotta beat the man! He’s the world’s heavyweight champion! WOO!
Winning is good and losing is bad. Ric Flair is the best because he knows he is the best and he lets you know it any chance he gets. If other men made bragging an art form then the nature boy made bragging a science. If you’re not number one then you’re not anything. If you’re not the best, then why bother? In the world today people don’t even care about winning. Charlie Sheen, the Saint Paul to Ric Flair’s Jesus was unable to give the gospel of winning the staying power of the original gospel. It’s a fucking shame, and I use that word intentionally. That’s what bragging is essentially, the art of shame. “You’re bad and I want you to feel bad about it! I’m great and I want you to be jealous!” That is what Ric Flair stood for, and that is what we have lost today.
1. Macho Man Randy Savage
I don’t need to tell you that the Macho Man is the inspiration for my online handle, but he is so much more than that. The Macho Man is the inspiration for my entire existence. Every day when I wake up I consciously make a point to live up to the ideal of Macho Madness. You see Macho Madness is not just an idea or a catch phrase, Macho Madness is a spiritual state. At its height it was the only insanity capable of challenging Hulkamania.
Macho Madness is about doing doing a one eighty, then another one eighty, and then a three sixty! All the time yelling, “OH YEAAAAAH!” It is about living with radical intensity to the point where even your whispers are really just muffled yells. You can’t help it, you have so much energy you are ready to explode. You are chaos. That is what Macho Madness is all about. I don’t say ‘was” because Macho Madness will never die. Randy is looking down right now, dropping the big elbow off the top rope, sending down the Macho Madness of Motivation to all the Macho Madmen on planet Earth and parts unknown. I will go to my grave believing that and if I can equal even a fraction of a percent of Macho Madness achieved by the Macho Man himself then I will die a happy man.
You can tell wrestling was great because all of the top wrestlers used an insanity based term to describe the phenomenon of their popularity. Macho Madness and Hulkamania were the most prominent, but there were others. Now Macho Madness never overtook Hulkamania during Randy Savage’s lifetime; there just wasn’t enough popularity to go around, but fuck if he didn’t get close. If we keep the dream alive then Macho madness will rule the world again. That’s a promise Randy!
Author: Motivation Man
You can find more of Motivation Man’s works of evil at his blog; Yetzerhara.
