On Hating Britain

            My name is George Twigg, and I hate Britain.

            

            Whoa, slow down!  Put the pitchforks away, dismantle that portable gallows, take the oily rag out of that empty bottle of Grolsch.  There is a context and a good reason for that statement, I promise.  Recently, context is something most of this nation’s media seem to have forgotten or (much more likely) wilfully ignored as, in a quest to paint new Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn as the second coming of Lenin, Stalin and Citizen Smith all in one big beardy bundle, they report headlines such as “Corbyn: Bin Laden’s Death Was ‘A Tragedy’”, omitting the part where he explained that the “tragedy” was that he wasn’t brought to trial to answer for his appalling crimes before the public.  Which is a bit like if someone filmed me saying “Hitler did a fantastic job…”, and then switched the camera off before I could say “…of destroying the German nation-state”.  So when I tell you, “My name is George Twigg, and I hate Britain”, think of it as a multifaceted unburdening; like at an AA meeting, though obviously much less serious.  As Homer Simpson once said, “I’m a rageaholic!  I just can’t live without rageahol!”

            There’s been a lot of accusations of Britain-hating flying around in the last few days like so many poorly made paper aeroplanes.  Corbyn copped a bombardment from the press just today for not singing the national anthem at a ceremony to commemorate those who died in the Battle of Britain.  While a spin doctor may have advised him against such an act on the grounds of avoiding the very flak with which he was subsequently sprayed, I can’t help but sympathise.  I mean, let’s look at the words;

            

            “God save our gracious Queen
            Long live our noble Queen
            God save our Queen.
            Send her victorious
            Happy and glorious
            Long to reign over us
            God save the Queen.”

Using my skills in closely reading poetry (a category for which I would say our national anthem qualifies, if only on a technicality), developed during many a happy A-Level English lesson imbibing the principles of I. A. Richards and applying them to endless turgid volumes of our nation’s (somehow) Poet Laureate Carol Ann Duffy, I’m going to see if I can unpack for you exactly why Jeremy Corbyn might not have wanted to sing the national anthem.  I understand Mr Corbyn to be a man of religious faith, so it’s probably not the concept of God that gives him grief.  But he is a republican.  And so he might be forgiven for wondering why his God should save the Queen in the first place.  Or, indeed, why God should destine her to “reign over us”, particularly for a long time (a question I imagine Prince Charles asks himself from time to time).  Gracious?  I’ll give the lyricist that, though I remember Elizabeth looking distinctly sour-faced during the unexpectedly joyous opening ceremony of the 2012 Olympics.  Noble?  That one’s inarguable, though one wonders why nobility should be celebrated in a song which ostensibly encapsulates our national identity, rather than, for example, being regarded as a signifier of a retrograde class system that some idealistic people like to think we’ve done away with.

            I’m probably only scratching the surface, and I haven’t even got to the old verse about crushing the Scots.  Not only is the tune of our anthem a bigger dirge than a 20-minute performance of “Hey Jude”, the lyrics are utter tosh.  Quite frankly I applaud Jeremy Corbyn’s decision not to sing such fatuous, antediluvian pap, and his courage in refusing to do so even in public.  He’s a republican; why should he be expected to sing words with which he disagrees?  And if you say, “well, it’s only words”; words are always overburdened with signifiers, and Zombie Derrida would like a word with you.  Don’t worry about him taking your brains, he’s already got enough.  I don’t sing the national anthem either, much for the same reasons as Corbyn.  I don’t sing any words with which I disagree when I’m in a communal setting in which these words form the basis of a collective affirmation of identity.  I’m not a Christian, but sometimes I go to church with my girlfriend, who is.  I’ll happily sing songs like “All Things Bright and Beautiful”, because it’s all about how God created the world, and I’m undecided on that score.  Christmas carols?  Sure thing, most of them are harmless enough.  Words like “every knee shall bow”?  Get out, and take your cassocks with you.  And my girlfriend understands and accepts this, because she’s a mature human being, which is more than I can say for our fourth estate.

            So we’ve established that Jeremy Corbyn won’t sing the national anthem because he hates the national anthem.  And he hates the national anthem because he hates the monarchy.  Does it then follow, as so many political commentators and twitterati have suggested, that he hates Britain?  I’d argue that it does.  And, moreover, that that’s a good thing.

            Listening to the accusations levelled at Corbyn puts me in mind of a notable Daily Mail hatchet job that was amateurish even by their standards, in which, presumably thinking it’d render the man’s son guilty by association, they called Ed Miliband’s late father Ralph “The Man Who Hated Britain”.  Ralph was an anti-British Marxist, they explained.  During World War Two he traitorously wrote,

            The Englishman is a rabid nationalist. They are perhaps the most nationalist
            people in the world . . . you sometimes want them almost to lose (the war) to
            show them how things are. They have the greatest contempt for the Continent
             . . . To lose their empire would be the worst possible humiliation.

Fanning themselves to recover from the shock, they detailed his disdain for the country’s establishment, which to him meant

            Eton and Harrow, Oxford and Cambridge, the great Clubs, The Times, the Church,
            the Army, the respectable Sunday papers . . . It also means the values . . . of the
            ruling orders, keep the workers in their place, strengthen the House of Lords,       

            maintain social hierarchies, God save the Queen, equality is bunk, democracy is    

            dangerous, etc. . . . 

            Also respectability, good taste, don't rock the boat, there will always be an England,

            foreigners, Jews, natives etc. are all right in their place and their place is outside . . .

Answering the Mail’s charges, many on the left defended Ralph Miliband, pointing out that while he might at times have idly wished for Britain’s defeat in the Second World War, he fought enthusiastically for his adopted nation in said war.  Even some right-wingers got in on the action, with Tory MP Zac Goldsmith pointing out that it was a bit bloody rich of the Mail to attempt to besmirch Ed Miliband by traducing his father, considering that the grandfather of its current proprietor wrote numerous editorials praising Adolf Hitler.  How could Ralph Miliband have hated Britain?, these people asked.  While their arguments were well-intentioned, seeking only to preserve the memory of a dead man with no right of reply, they didn’t quite get to the heart of the matter.

            Just as Jeremy Corbyn hates Britain, Ralph Miliband hated Britain.  And just as Ralph Miliband hated Britain, I hate Britain, for many of the same reasons that he did.  I hate Britain’s national anthem.  I hate the enduring public-school old-boys-club sensibility of so many of Britain’s corporations and professions.  I hate Britain’s xenophobic island mentality.  I hate the British media and its racist demonisation of immigrants, Muslims and refugees.  I hate Richard Littlejohn with every fibre of my being, and I hate his legions of braying fans even more.  In case you haven’t got the impression already, I hate Britain’s monarchy.  I hate the fact our taxes pay for their upkeep when they could easily finance themselves, and I hate the deference and adoration shown towards them by the majority of Britain’s public.  I hate the fact that bishops of Britain’s national church can sit in the House of Lords and bring their opinions to bear on legislation purely because of an ancient ecclesiastical privilege.  I hate that Britain has a national church at all.  I hate Britain’s seeming inability and lack of will to care for its homeless population.  I hate the woman-hating lad/rape culture that permeates Britain’s schools, Britain’s universities, Britain’s football terraces.  I hate the Last Night of the Proms and its conservative, complacent figuring of British national identity.  I hate the fact that millions of Brits sit glued to trash like The X Factor and Britain’s Got Talent, but nearly nobody’s seen Black Mirror.

            A lot of these gripes are not exclusive to our country.  But Britain contains the attitudes that inform them.  It nurtures them, allows them to fester.  And so I hate Britain, loudly and proudly.  And guess what?  Unless you’re completely happy with the way this nation is run, with the way it looks after its people, with the way we look after each other, then you hate Britain too.  In some way, or in many ways, you hate Britain.  Whether you’re a soppy leftie like me who thinks we ought to be doing more to help the Middle East’s refugees, or a right-winger who think we should be doing less, you hate Britain.  There’s no escaping it.  For the love of all that is holy, do not complain about this country until you’re blue in the face and then deny that you’re driven by hatred.  You hate Britain.  Yeah, you.

            Guess what else?  That’s just fine.  Better than fine, in fact.  Those people who like things just the way they are?  Worthless bastards, all.  Complacency and stasis kills a nation, and kills its political culture.  People on the left – accept your hate, embrace it, channel it, make it mean something.  Use it to make this country what you want to make it.  Hate Britain, hate it with all your heart and soul, just like I do.  Because hatred is quite the motivator, and quite frankly it gets shit done.  Jeremy Corbyn hates Britain.  He hates Britain and British culture as it is, and he wants to make it better, fairer, more decent.  That’s what we need to do, however much our patriotism may be questioned.  Those people who claim ownership of what Britain and Britishness mean are your enemy.  People like Peter Hitchens, a very clever man who is sadly an inveterate right-wing blowhard and who regularly defines policies he agrees with as “pro-Britain” and ones he disagrees with as “anti-Britain”.  Remember Joseph McCarthy and his “UnAmerican Activities Committee”?  Same difference.  National identity is not immutable.  What we are as a country is not immutable.  When we hate British culture as it currently stands, that’s not anti-British.  That’s us affirming that we don’t have to like this country the way it is, and we don’t have to accept it either.

            My name is George Twigg, and I hate Britain.  And, like Jeremy Corbyn, I hate Britain because I love Britain.  I love the kindness and decency of so many of Britain’s people.  I love Britain’s sardonic humour.  I love Britain’s legacy of helping the vulnerable from all nations, not just our own.  I love Britain’s sense of fair play.  I love Britain’s history of labour movements, and the workers’ rights we clawed from the establishment piece by piece.  I love the National Health Service.  I love the fact that British TV screens multiple quiz shows with the philosophy of “Fuck you, you probably aren’t going to know any of this shit”.  I love the creativity of so many British artists, musicians and writers.  I love Britain’s local wrestling scene (if that Will Ospreay isn’t a huge star in five years, there’s no justice).  I love every single British person who is out there, in whatever part of the world, trying to make it a fairer, nicer, more equitable place to live.  I want our country to be more like that.  I want a Britain characterised primarily by the list of things I love, not by the list of things I hate.  And so that’s why I say, one more time, “My name is George Twigg, and I hate Britain”.  And I pledge that my hatred is going to make this country a better place.

On Staying Spoiler-Free

If you've read this blog before (or have been around me for any length of time) you'll know that I'm a fan of professional wrestling.  What is more, I'm blessed enough to have a girlfriend, Sarah (her very wonderful blog can be found here - http://genericenglishgrad.wordpress.com/), who is also a fan .  Living 220 miles apart from each other is bitterly fucking annoying for many reasons, and among these reasons is the fact that due to the big WWE events going out at 1am on a Sunday night, we have to wait until the following weekend if we want to watch them together.  This necessitates avoiding spoilers.  At least, that's the idea.

There's a very famous episode of Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads? in which the titular characters spend all day trying to avoid any news of an England football match, so that the result is still a surprise when they arrive home to watch the highlights on TV (this was, of course, in the days before Murdoch and blanket coverage of any sport you can care to name).  The Likely Lads were much more successful in this than we were last week.  The Royal Rumble is one of the biggest events of the year, and Sarah's favourite type of wrestling match by quite some way.  We made our usual pact to avoid the results until we could watch the show together, and then things went wrong.  Sarah didn't make it 4 hours before spoilers reared their ugly head.  She made the mistake of checking Twitter on her way to work in the morning, and made the similar mistake of going on Facebook, and chancing upon the statuses that one of her brother's mates had been making in the wee small hours.  So by 7:30am on Monday morning I knew that Sarah had learned the results, but I was determined not to join her in this.  I lasted until 2:30pm.  Yup, 2:30pm on Monday.

It was a sort of death by a thousand spoilers.  At 8.30am I received a Facebook message from my friend Kyle, simply saying 'oh dear'.  Not a direct spoiler, but one from which it could be inferred that people's favourite Daniel Bryan had failed to win the Rumble.  Still, nothing confirmed.  By lunchtime I'd stayed off all wrestling-related websites (and for me to go even a morning without them is very difficult!), whereupon I went on the BBC site, and the 2nd most popular story was 'WWE star apologizes for Rumble no-show'.  In my defence, wrestling hasn't been mainstream for over a decade, so the BBC was the last place I expected to find spoilers.  Yet spoilers there were.  My will deserted me for a second, and I clicked on the link, to discover that not only had Bryan not won the Rumble, but that he was not even in the match, which had prompted fury amongst fans in the crowd and on social media alike (clearly, enough fury to engender the aforementioned mainstream coverage).  I then closed the window.  Okay, I thought.  I know Bryan hasn't won, but that's the only spoiler I've encountered.  It's not the end of the world.  I went back to the office, worked for a bit, then opened up Facebook, which in its infinite wisdom has created a sidebar of what is 'trending' worldwide, a sidebar which links to other websites.  It was there that I saw the story; 'Batista wins Royal Rumble' (the Likely Lads eventually discover, after all their efforts, that the match was abandoned due to flooding; the mediocre, overrated, out-of-shape and middle-aged Dave Batista's triumph can be said to be an equivalent disappointment).  Arse.

Now, I didn't let this deter me.  I studiously avoided all other Rumble spoilers, and so by Saturday the only things I'd learnt were that Batista had won the Rumble, that Bryan wasn't in it, and that the crowd reaction was adverse.  I was still none the wiser as to who was in the Rumble, or who had triumphed in the other matches on the card.  But on Monday this was very far away, and I was extremely pissed off, not just for myself, but for Sarah as well, as she'd been looking forward to the show immensely.  However, Sarah, I soon found out, really isn't the type to mind spoilers all that much.  To give an example, she's already looked up what happens in the Game of Thrones books that haven't been turned into TV episodes yet, because she was desperate to know what happens to the characters in the end.  And as soon as spoilers emerged for the episode of Monday Night Raw we'd planned to watch following the Rumble, she was on them in a flash.  Her attitude is that it's the journey that matters more than the destination.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not criticizing this attitude at all.  In fact, I think it's a rather nice philosophy to have, and there's certainly a great deal of thought behind it.  After all, no less a writer than William Shakespeare spoiled his own play, by having the Chorus to Romeo and Juliet summarize the plot of what was about to unfold in a prefatory sonnet.  So clearly Shakespeare was of Sarah's opinion.  Certainly taking her view would relieve a lot of stress, because I'm one of those people who pathologically avoids spoilers if I'm planning to watch something on delay, and it's so difficult to avoid them in today's internet-suffused world.  Or even offline - going back to Game of Thrones, I once absent-mindedly glanced at the blurb to one of the books (which I am never, ever going to read) and spoiled several major plot points for the TV show.  Furthermore, I feel that my enjoyment is lessened if I know what's going to happen.  I had very little time for what I felt to be a cowardly act on my mum's part in reading the last page of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows before any of the others, to check that he didn't die, and have never had any interest in watching The Sixth Sense, which I understand to be a very good film, simply because I (along with everyone else in the world) know the twist.  Put simply, I love the experience of reading or seeing something for the first time, of not knowing what's going to happen, and it's a sensation that, once felt, can never be recaptured.  It's created a lot of problems for me on occasion; at an academic conference last September, I was chairing one of the panels, and couldn't enjoy what was probably a very clever and interesting paper on electronic textual analysis of George R.R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire series (i.e. the books that Game of Thrones is based on), because I was terrified of spoilers, and the fact that I was speaking on the same panel as a fellow speaking on Aristotle's theory of tragedy and the video game Bioshock Infinite led me to spend two full days before the conference trying to complete the game so I wouldn't have anything spoiled.  I then got stuck on the last bit.  Double arse.

So basically what I'm saying is that I should probably cool it with the spoiler-avoiding and let myself just be swept along for the ride, and yet I'm fundamentally unable to.  It might be hypocritical to say so, but I think life would be easier if I followed Sarah's viewpoint.  After all, spoilers are nigh-on impossible to avoid, and people can give them without thinking - the day after the Rumble, myself and Sarah were chatting with a friend who was still avoiding all the news (clearly a damn sight more successfully than we managed!), and we both had to bite our tongues a few times.  As with many things in life, the answer can be found in Shakespeare.  I've enjoyed productions of plays I've never read or read so long ago that I've forgotten the details, but there's also interest and enjoyment to be found in a particular staging of a familiar text, such as Macbeth or Hamlet, or even Romeo and Juliet.  And it turns out that when we finally got around to watching the Rumble, we enjoyed the match just fine.  In fact, knowing of Big Dave's victory well in advance probably helped us prepare for the disappointment.  So clearly there's a middle ground to be struck, and I should try to enjoy spoiled and non-spoiled entertainment alike.  We all know that Vader is Luke's father, and we enjoy The Empire Strikes Back anyway.  And yet I regret that I can't remember what it was like to know that fact for the first time.

Five Types of Wrestling

So I haven't been reviewing the WWE pay-per-views recently, because a) I've been very busy with work and b) they've been churning them out at a rate of approximately one every three weeks and they've all sort of merged into one.  You'll get nothing offensively horrible, a couple of great matches on each show, and a dodgy finish in the main event.  I think it'll start getting more interesting coming up to the Royal Rumble, which is always a highlight of the year.

But I want to keep my eye in, so I thought I'd do something different.  Basically, I'm going to give an example of a wrestling match that I think encapsulates a particular type of wrestling, whether you class 'type' in terms of the booking or the wrestling itself.  This won't necessarily be the best match in a certain style, but one that provides the most pertinent example of it.  And I'll do this with five distinct types, starting with a style of match that will probably be most familiar to the average wrestling fan.

Attitude Era Clusterfuck

The Match: Stone Cold Steve Austin (c) vs. Dude Love (For the WWF Championship, with Special Guest Referee Vince McMahon, Special Guest Ring Announcer Pat Patterson, Special Guest Timekeeper Gerald Briscoe, and Special Guest Enforcer The Undertaker)

WWF Over the Edge, 31 May 1998

The so-called Attitude Era is nebulous in terms of temporality, though most critics agree that it ended on 1 April 2001, for two main reasons.  Firstly, the WWF's main competitors, WCW and ECW, had gone out of business within weeks of each other, leaving the WWF as the only game in town.  Secondly, the event, widely regarded as one of the greatest pro wrestling shows of all time, ended with Stone Cold Steve Austin winning the WWF Championship with the aid of the villainous WWF owner Vince McMahon.  As for why that was such a big deal, this match should give you some indication.

Stone Cold vs. Vince McMahon was the defining feud of the Attitude Era.  Stone Cold was the pre-eminent anti-hero of pro wrestling, at a time when crowds were generally unreceptive to the traditional clean-cut hero that Hulk Hogan had been in the 1980s, the last boom period for the WWF.  He was a surly, beer-swilling redneck who would beat people up, sometimes women, for little reason.  But he became beloved for his take-no-prisoners attitude, and the fact that he was ranged against the corporate machine of McMahon, who needed Austin in his company because he was embroiled in a real-life ratings war with WCW, but couldn't stand to have the man representing the company as champion.  Following failed attempts to persuade Austin to become more corporate and well-behaved, McMahon hand-picked fun-loving hippy Dude Love (one of the three alter-egos of the legendary Mick Foley), gave him a 'corporate' makeover, and arranged this match with the deck stacked against Austin, so that Dude Love would emerge triumphant.

The style of storytelling in the Attitude Era consisted of edgy, adult-oriented content, coupled with shocking, often nonsensical storyline twists, in order to gain the precious ratings to beat WCW, and to propagate the idea that "anything can happen in the World Wrestling Federation".  The style of main event match in the Attitude Era generally relied upon wild brawling and outside interference, and this bout has the latter in spades.  McMahon is the referee, and his two stooges, Patterson and Briscoe, were on hand at ringside to ensure Dude Love's victory.  When Dude Love gets counted out, McMahon changes the rules so that there are no count-outs.  When Dude Love cheats, McMahon changes the rules so that there are no disqualifications.  And amidst all the chaos, Jim Ross, the greatest wrestling commentator of all time, is making clear his utter outrage at what is taking place.  And as if that wasn't enough, The Undertaker is there as 'enforcer' to stop the funny business getting too out of hand.  As for wild brawling, guys get slammed onto cars, through tables, get choked with barbed wire, and everything you can imagine.  If you looked up 'clusterfuck' in the dictionary, you'd see the finish to this match, as Stone Cold desperately fights against overwhelming odds, and The Undertaker finally decides to get involved and start wrecking shit.  This might actually be my favourite match of all time.  Watch it, it's awesome.

Alternatively...  The Rock (c) vs. Triple H (Iron Man Match for the WWF Championship, with Special Guest Referee Shawn Michaels)

WWF Judgement Day, 21 May 2000

An Iron Man Match is one in which the participants must gain as many pins or submissions over their opponent as they can in one hour.  The first Iron Man Match was between Shawn Michaels and Bret 'The Hitman' Hart at Wrestlemania XII.  It was an hour of pure wrestling which ended with the score tied at 0-0, and Michaels won in overtime.  As for this one...special guest referee?  Check.  McMahon family involvement?  Check.  Beloved face against corporate-backed heel?  Check.  Nearly a dozen falls inside the hour as opposed to none?  You bet.  And if you thought the WWF at the time could sink an hour's worth of time into a match and complement the effort by refraining from including shenanigans and interference at the climax, you should think again.

Puroresu

The Match: Kenta Kobashi and Mitsuharu Misawa (c) vs. The Holy Demon Army (Toshiaki Kawada and Akira Taue) (For the AJPW World Tag Team Championship)

AJPW Super Power Series, 9 June 1995

Puroresu (the term coming from a corruption of 'pro wrestling') is Japan's particular form of staged in-ring combat, and like its Mexican variant, is distinct from the Western style.  Japanese wrestling is presented more as a legitimate athletic contest (wrestling results still appear in the 'Sports' section of Japanese newspapers), and there are fewer theatrics.  Storylines rarely, if ever, get more complex than two competitors trying to prove their supremacy or win a certain tournament of championship belt, or the trope of the Japanese patriot defending their promotion against a foreign invading force, usually American, which is a tradition that goes back to the 1950s, when wrestling first became popular in the country, and Japanese people, still resentful of defeat in World War 2, would come in their thousands to see Japanese heroes, such as the former sumo Rikidōzan, taking down huge Americans.  The style of wrestling is more reliant upon exchanges of martial arts strikes (which are not pulled in any way) than its American counterpart, with both competitors striving to show how tough they are, which is important in a culture than has traditionally respected stoicism and the warrior code.  There is also the trope of 'fighting spirit', in which the wrestlers will, by summoning up their strength and courage, shrug off their opponent's moves seemingly unharmed, which will be familiar to anyone who's watched virtually any Hulk Hogan match (the Hulkster was actually a huge star in Japan before he became famous in America.  Unlike in America, however, the Hulkster had to put some effort into his Japanese matches, as with no storylines for a promotion to fall back on, more emphasis has to be place on the quality of the in-ring entertainment).

All Japan Pro Wrestling (AJPW) in the 1990s is the most critically-acclaimed wrestling of all time in terms of match quality.  Their big main event matches were festooned with 5-star reviews by doyen of wrestling journalists Dave Meltzer, to the point where some All Japan wrestlers have more 5-star matches to their name than every North American promotion combined.  I could have chosen from literally dozens of 90s All Japan matches to illustrate puroresu, but I've chosen this one because of who the participants are.  Misawa, Kobashi and Kawada are frequently cited as amongst the best wrestlers of all time, and Taue is merely very good.  Collectively they became known as 'The Four Pillars of Heaven', and were mainstays of the promotion's main event scene for a decade.  This match illustrates all the main features of Japanese wrestling, from the strike exchanges, to 'fighting spirit', to the fact that All Japan at the time was engaged in a sort of finishing move arms race, as wrestlers needed more and more devastating moves to finish their battle-hardened opponents off, hence the numerous finisher kick-outs in this match (this arms race would eventually lead to the creation of so-called 'super finishers', which usually involved dropping a guy on his head, such as Kawada's Ganso Bomb, Misawa's Tiger Driver '91, and most famous of all, Kobashi's Burning Hammer).  This match, without having to resort to the use of weapons, is a hard-hitting, brutal contest, and a crowning moment in puroresu history.

I should also add that 'The Holy Demon Army' is a truly great name.  Like all good Japanese tag team names, it's bombastically awesome (my all-time favourites are 'Sternness' and 'Stack of Arms', for the record), and like all good Japanese tag team names, it makes no goddamn sense.

Alternatively...  Hiroshi Tanahashi vs. Tomohiro Ishii

NJPW G1 Climax, 2 August 2013

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pWVqJNIUgJ0

I could have chosen many, many matches from this year's G1 Climax tournament, staged by New Japan Pro Wrestling (NJPW), All Japan's traditional rivals (although All Japan is now a shell of what it once was, while New Japan goes from strength to strength.  I basically chose this one at random, but it's useful in order to illustrate a couple of particular facets of puroresu.  Firstly, Japanese promotions love their tournaments; New Japan holds singles and tag teams tournaments for both heavyweights and junior heavyweights (i.e. wrestlers under 220 pounds).  Secondly, this match shows how the face/heel dynamic works in Japan.  With storylines being simple or non-existent, there is less back story to each character, and thus while most wrestlers are still positioned as good guy or bad guy, the crowd often chooses who to cheer and boo during a match of their own accord.  This is what happens here.  Tanahashi is the top star of the company and generally beloved by the fanbase.  However, Ishii is a cult favourite and a scrappy underdog, and the crowd get behind him more, so Tanahashi, realizing that he's less popular, starts to wrestle in more of a villainous manner as a result, which is a nicely organic way of telling stories in the ring.  Being a round-robin tournament in which two ostensible faces often end up fighting each other (and the same with heels), the G1 Climax is full of matches where the crowd picks a side without being guided there by a storyline, as in America.  This match is much more accessible to those who are used to American wrestling, and is wrestled at a fast pace while retaining traditional tropes of the Japanese style, including a truly brutal finish.

Lucha Libre

The Match: El Hijo del Santo and Octagón vs. Los Gringos Locos (Eddie Guerrero and 'Love Machine' Art Barr) (2 out of 3 falls Mask vs. Hair Tag Team Match)

AAA When Worlds Collide, 6 November 1994

Lucha libre (literally, 'free wrestling') is the particularly Mexican version of pro wrestling.  More emphasis is placed on high-flying and acrobatic artistry than big power moves, and its cultural status is different to something like the WWF/E, particularly when we consider the characteristic use of masks.  After the Mexican Revolution of 1910-1920, a reinscription of the Mexican national ideal occurred that embraced indigenous, pre-Columbian cultures and aesthetics, which led to masks gaining greater prominence in Mexican culture.  When pro wrestling first became popular in the country in the 1930s, many of the top stars wore masks, used to symbolise certain ideals and traits.  Pre-eminent amongst these was El Santo, the father of one of the participants in this match.  El Santo was arguably a bigger star in Mexico than Hulk Hogan was in America, not only wrestling but appearing in films and comic books.  As with comic book superheroes, masks are also used to hide the secret identities of the wrestlers, although the tradition pre-dates the so-called 'Golden Age' of comics.  When El Hijo del Santo's wife filed for divorce, she sent photos to the media purporting to be of him without his mask, thus hoping to humiliate him.  Of course, because El Hijo del Santo had never appeared in public without the mask, nobody knew what he actually looked like, and consequently the newspapers that received the pictures couldn't tell if they were genuine or not.

Because masks are so prized in Mexico, many of the big matches are what are called luchas de apuestas ('matches with wagers'), in which the participants must unmask if they lose.  Sometimes the forfeit is to be shaved bald, but losing the mask is more serious, as to be unmasked involuntarily is considered humiliating, and wrestlers who are unmasked must face their public uncertain if their new guise will be accepted or not.  Both masks and hair are on the line in this match, run by the Mexican promotion AAA but taking place in Los Angeles (known for its large Hispanic community).  Wagering their masks are the duo of the martial arts-inspired Octagón, and El Hijo del Santo, the son of the legend himself.  Wagering their hair are the nefarious Americans Eddie Guerrero and Art Barr.  So not only are masks and hair on the line, but national pride as well, and this dynamic has always been a feature of wrestling, from Hulk Hogan's battles with The Iron Sheik to Rikidōzan fighting off giant Americans in post-war Japan.  Guerrero and Barr do everything they can to cheat their way to victory, while the Mexicans just as tenaciously resist.  Considering that in WWF/E Eddie Guerrero (born in Texas but of Mexican descent) played up his Mexican heritage, it's quite a shock to see him in stars-and-stripes tights, but he plays the role of the arrogant Yankee very well here, as does his phenomenally talented partner, who sadly died of a drug overdose a couple of months after this match.

One thing to note is that this match is 2 out of 3 falls, which has been the traditional format for wrestling matches in Mexico.  AAA has moved away from it in recent years, but in CMLL, the oldest wrestling company in the world (founded in 1933), you'll barely find a match that is one fall to a finish.  In addition, the teams must pin both of their opponents to win a fall, and if you are pinned then your partner must fight alone until the next fall.  This makes the match a little tricky to follow at times, but once you get your head around the format, the spectacle is rewarding, with the combination of high-flying, national rivalry, and above all the sheer emotional weight the masks have for the fans.

Alternatively...  Eddie Guerrero (c) vs. Rey Mysterio (Title vs. Mask Match for the WCW Cruiserweight Championship)

WCW Halloween Havoc, 26 October 1997

Eddie Guerrero is my favourite wrestler of all time.  When I was younger I loved his roguish character and his dazzling in-ring ability, and count myself fortunate that I got to see him wrestle in person before he passed on.  Rey Mysterio, who was only 22 years old at the time of this match, is one of the all time greats in lucha libre, and indeed in pro wrestling in general.

In the late 90s, everyone said that WWF had great matches in the main event but dodgy wrestling on the undercard.  In WCW the reverse was true.  Their main event was filled with guys who were past it (Rowdy Roddy Piper, Macho Man Randy Savage), guys who were never that good in the first place (Kevin Nash, Scott Hall), or guys who were both (Hulk Hogan, Lex Luger).  On the undercard, however, they had some fantastic wrestlers, especially their imports from Mexico, and WCW exposed a great number of viewers north of the border to lucha.  The Mexican wrestlers invariably lost when they came up against the big white guys who monopolized the main event scene, but when they faced each other and were given enough time to put on a quality match, the results could be spectacular.  So it is here.  This isn't traditional lucha libre in that it's one fall to a finish, but it's a wonderful match, and Mysterio in particular pulls out some jaw-dropping manoeuvres.  And, of course, there's a mask on the line.

Comedy Match

The Match: John Cena vs. Alberto del Rio (Miracle on 34th Street Fight)

WWE Monday Night Raw, 24 December 2012

Sadly I don't have a youtube video for this, but you'll be able to find this match elsewhere if you look hard enough.  Last Christmas Eve, the WWE, probably knowing that nobody would really be watching their TV show anyway, had a bit of fun and produced a Christmas-themed episode of Raw, centred around this match.  At the start of the show, Alberto del Rio, who at the time would drive to the ring in a fancy car, accidentally runs over Santa Claus (played by wrestling legend Mick Foley).  Backstage, del Rio is confronted by the entire locker room, faces and heels alike appalled at what he's done (indeed, even del Rio's own personal ring announcer, Ricardo Rodriguez, can barely introduce his employer at the start of the bout because he's so distraught by the possible death of Father Christmas).  Before he falls unconscious, Santa requests that his injuries be avenged by John Cena, which leads to this match, a festive version of a regular Street Fight (hence the puntastic name of the bout) in which weapons can be found inside Christmas present boxes.  Inevitably, Cena's boxes include proper weapons like steel chairs and TV monitors, whereas the villain del Rio ends up with a pumpkin pie and a teddy bear, both of which he nevertheless attempts to use to take down Cena (throwing the latter item at his opponent with a cry like Braveheart).  The commentators, wonderfully, play the storyline completely straight and really sell the idea that Cena, with his battle cry, 'FOR SANTAAAAAAAAAAA!', is fighting to save Christmas.  The crowd get properly into it as well, regaling del Rio with chants of 'YOU KILLED SANTA', and urge Cena to 'USE THE TREE' as a weapon (Cena does).  Physical comedy, when done well, can be a beautiful thing, and this match delivers in spades, including, most hilariously of all, the idea that Cena is in danger of losing to a mere sleeper hold.  Not a technical masterpiece, of course, but really damn entertaining.

Alternatively...  3.0 (Scott 'Jagged' Parker and Shane Matthews) and Ultimate Gundam (Ebessan and Takoyakida) vs. Colt Cabana, Yohnel Sanders, Darkness Crabtree and The Swamp Monster (Eight-Man Tag Team Match)

CHIKARA King of Trios Night 3, 16 September 2012

No video link for this either.  Clearly the internet gods hate laughter.  CHIKARA is a small Pennsylvania-based promotion which has a cult following based on its family-friendly action, wacky characters (the number of wrestlers on their roster with ant gimmicks is almost at double figures) and fiendishly intricate comic-inspired storylines involving time travel, corporate conspiracies, ancient Egyptian artifacts, and much more.  One thing they do very well is comedy wrestling, and most of their matches will feature at least one moment in the action that is played for laughs.  However, rarely do they go as all-out on the hilarity front as in this contest.  On one team are two accomplished tag teams, one from CHIKARA and one from Japanese outfit Osaka Pro, and on the other team are noted comedy wrestler Colt Cabana, a Japanese man dressed like the KFC mascot (Yohel Sanders), a painfully slow and geriatric luchador (Darkness Crabtree, played by CHIKARA owner Mike Quackenbush under a mask), and a swamp monster (The Swamp Monster).  This match is a wonderfully deconstructive look at the tropes and idiosyncracies of pro wrestling, as both teams embark upon a series of events including; an introductory sing-song of the Canadian national anthem, intentionally botched rope-running and strike exchange sequences, seven men putting submission moves on each other at the same time, the referee attempting to win the match, impressions of Big Daddy and Hulk Hogan, and a mid-match game of Duck, Duck, Goose.  The CHIKARA crowd are characteristically awesome, at one point regaling Sanders with a chorus of 'The Birdie Song' as he runs wild on the other team.  I cannot fully conjure up the hilarious lunacy of this match with mere words, so seek it out if you can, it's well worth it.

Hardcore Wrestling

The Match: Edge, Mick Foley and Lita vs. Terry Funk, Tommy Dreamer and Beulah McGillicutty (No Disqualification Six-Person Intergender Tag Team Match)

ECW One Night Stand, 11 June 2006

Hardcore was a major element in the edgy WWF product in the Attitude Era, but was popularized by a small operation running out of a bingo hall in Philadelphia, called Extreme Championship Wrestling (ECW).  All ECW matches were no-disqualification, and made liberal use of weapons.  Yet simply using weapons in a match does not denote 'hardcore' in itself; the Miracle on 34th Street Fight (see above) was family fun, despite all the chair shots.  Hardcore is an intensification of violence; even beyond such commonly used foreign objects as tables, ladders and chairs, ECW wrestlers used barbed wire, cheese graters, thumbtacks, and even let the fans supply their own instruments of pain.  Hardcore is also an aesthetic; ECW presented a TV show full of swearing and adult content, with much lower production values that WWF or WCW, and a DIY ethos (wrestlers pitched in with the running of the promotion, by organizing merchandise, answering phones or driving the bus).

Sad to say, I really haven't watched much of the original ECW.  But WWE, which bought the promotion after it went bankrupt in 2001, staged a pair of ECW reunion shows, named One Night Stand, in the mid-2000s.  The 2006 edition was less true to the spirit of ECW than the 2005 iteration (I'm not sure what Kurt Angle vs. Randy Orton was doing on an ostensible ECW card), but it did contain this truly hardcore match.  WWE superstar Edge and 'Hardcore Legend' Mick Foley (who was actually a heel in ECW for most of his stint there) declared themselves co-holders of the Hardcore Championship and challenged ECW's finest to take them on.  Answering the challenge were 'The Innovator of Violence' Tommy Dreamer (the face of the original ECW promotion) and Terry Funk, 61 years old at the time of this match and still kicking ass.  Following a pre-match promo in which Foley hilariously trolls the rabid ECW crowd, Lita (the real-life girlfriend of Edge) and Beulah McGillicutty (the real-life wife of Dreamer) get added to the match.  This bout is a visceral feast of blood, violence (weapons include a board covered in barbed wire and a flaming 2-by-4, also wrapped in barbed wire), and a sexualized menace emanating from Edge towards non-wrestler Beulah, which adds up to make a rewarding, but actually slightly uncomfortable viewing experience.  But if you want hardcore, you won't do much better.

Alternatively...  Masato Tanaka vs. Mike Awesome

ECW One Night Stand, 12 June 2005

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x15vq3d_mike-awesome-vs-masato-tanaka-one-night-stand-2005_sport

This match is from the first One Night Stand, and is a recapitulation of one of the original ECW's most heated feuds.  There isn't much more to this match other than two really hard bastards beating the shit out of each other for ten minutes, but it's incredibly well done, and very brutal indeed.  Also of note is commentator Joey Styles flipping his lid at Awesome, having still not forgiven him for signing with WCW while still ECW Champion in 2000, thus banging another nail into the coffin of the dying promotion (ECW, not WCW, although the latter only outlived the former by a few weeks).

Not got enough time to watch these matches?  No problem!  If you're really in a rush but still want to see quality wrestling, here's some pocket-sized gems.

Best Match Under 10 Minutes

The Match: Kurt Angle vs. Rey Mysterio

WWE Summerslam, 25 August 2002

One issue I (and many people) have with lucha is that quite often the balletic, high-flying action can end up looking overly contrived, for example if the recipient of a dive from the ring to the outside seems to be waiting in place for longer than would be plausible.  There are no such issues with this match, as luchador par excellence Rey Mysterio comes up against Olympic gold medallist and submission expert Kurt Angle.  Angle makes a perfect base for Mysterio's breathtaking acrobatics, being in the right place at the right time in every instance, and making the entire spectacle look as organic as professional wrestling can.  A dizzyingly-paced contest that ranks as probably the best opening match on any wrestling show in history.

Not got ten minutes?  Fear not!

Best Match Under 5 Minutes

The Match: Jun Akiyama (c) vs. Masakatsu Funaki (For the AJPW Triple Crown Championship)

AJPW 40th Anniversary Year Summer Impact, 26 August 2012

The story behind this match is simple and easily communicable even if you don't speak a word of Japanese.  In one corner is Jun Akiyama, a performer tipped for greatness in the 90s who failed to quite hit the heights predicted, but a dependable and greatly accomplished wrestler nonetheless.  His opponent is Masakatsu Funaki, a former MMA fighter of the type that are fairly common in puroresu, a man who in 1993 co-founded a promotion called Pancrase, which used the same rules as wrestling, except the fights were real.  Akiyama knows Funaki is a very dangerous man and thus, after a brief feeling-out period, assaults him with all his killer moves to try and end the match before it gets going.  Funaki responds in kind, and the end result is an entertaining sprint that compresses your typical half-hour epic Japanese main event into just under 5 minutes.

Still a bit too lengthy?  No worries, I've got you covered.

Best Match Under 3 Minutes

The Match: Alberto del Rio (c) vs. Dolph Ziggler (For the World Heavyweight Championship)

WWE Monday Night Raw, 8 April 2013

In the WWE, there exists a type of match called Money in the Bank, where the participants compete to retrieve a briefcase from the top of a ladder.  Inside the briefcase is a contract entitling the holder to a world title match at a time of their choosing within the next twelve months.  Generally, good guys will try to meet the champion on a level playing field, whereas villains look for opportunities to strike when the champion in hurt.  The latter occurs here, as World Champion Alberto del Rio, just after competing in a gruelling match and having his arm battered, is forced to face show-off heel and cult favourite Dolph Ziggler.  This match happened the night after Wrestlemania 29, and so the crowd is full of hardcore fans from all over the world who chose to stay in the States an extra night.  These hardcore fans love them some Dolph, and consequently when his music hits to announce that he's cashing in his contract, the arena goes absolutely ballistic.  Now usually these Money in the Bank cash-in matches end in seconds; the challenger hits the champion with his finishing move, pins him and wins.  Ziggler tries to put away del Rio with a single move, and del Rio, incredibly, kicks out.  What follows is two and a bit minutes of spirited resistance as the stricken del Rio desperately tries to fight off his fresh opponent, and Ziggler, urged on by the rabid crowd, attempts finally to put the champion away.  Dramatic as anything, and better than many matches ten times the length.

Mr. 420: Enter-ger the Integer

When I was a small child I used to love maths.  So many people who only knew me up until the age of about eleven or twelve assumed I'd study it at university, and I remember Mr. Betts, the lovely man who taught the extra maths classes at my primary school, being astonished and amused when a few years ago I told him that I'd ended up making my way in the academic world of English Literature.

I ended up falling out of love with maths at secondary school, which isn't to say that we didn't have excellent teachers who did their best to infuse their students with a passion for the subject; in particular I would rate Barrie Smith, a laconic and drily amusing Yorkshireman, to be the best schoolteacher I ever had the privilege to study under.  But it quickly became apparent to me that I had only liked maths as a child because I could easily cope with the simple operations; the adding, multiplication, subtraction, division, long multiplication, long division.  Gradually, as I studied it for GCSE and A-Level, the work got more difficult, my natural facility for maths got me less and less far, and I didn't feel enough passion or curiosity to find the answer, or satisfaction at solving a problem, to really put in the effort to master the really tricky stuff.  The tipping point came during an A-Level Further Maths lesson concerning the calculation of the escape velocity of a rocket exiting the earth's atmosphere, after which I immediately went to the head of sixth form and requested the right to drop the subject.  Considering that I was going on to study literature and that I really didn't need 6 A-Levels, I think I made the right call, particularly as the most complicated maths I have ever needed to use in life is the equation to find the area of a circle, which has come in very handy when working out which pizza is most cost-effective to buy, or how many 12-inch pizzas add up to make an 18-inch pizza when I rather unwisely bet my friends I could finish one of the massive bastards off.  Two and a quarter is the answer.  But I could have done that equation as an eleven-year-old (albeit an especially greedy one).  I remember feeling a great weight lift from my shoulders when I dropped Further Maths and felt the blessed realization that I would never have to spend any more time doing complex calculus, mechanics, or anything similar that, truthfully, I had long ceased to give the tiniest shit about.

However, as an arts student, and one interested in cultural phenomena, I've remained interested in what certain numbers come to symbolize.  A good example is sports, where certain shirt numbers will forever remain associated with a particular player; Johan Cruyff was 14, Michael Jordan was 23, and Jackie Robinson, the first black baseball player to grace the major leagues, wore 42, a number of such significance in the sport that it has been retired by every single major league team.  Famously, Diego Maradona was so associated with the number 10 that even when, at the 1982 and 1986 World Cups, the rest of the Argentinian squad was numbered alphabetically, he retained that number.  And at the 1998 World Cup, after Maradona's retirement, Argentina refused, in defiance of FIFA regulations, to assign the number 10 to anybody in their squad, eventually backing down and giving it to Ariel Ortega, who spoke of the pressure of trying to follow in Maradona's footsteps.

Even outside of the sporting realm, we have phone numbers like 999 and 118 118 and years like 1066 and 1966, but there are also less well-known integers which have come, through very different means to an organization's wish for an easy-to-recall phone number, or the merciless march of time, to gain some and unusual significance.  The integer I'd like to focus on here is 420, which might not mean that much to you, but has some fascinating meanings in certain parts of the world, and in certain cultures and subcultures.  I promise I won't be overtly thorough and obsessive like Jim Carrey in that terrible film about the number 23, whose title I forget, but I will give a brief overview of the meaning of 420 in America, and in India.

In the United States, 420 has come to be a code for marijuana.  The origins of this association are murky, but it seems that in 1971 a group of friends in San Rafael, California known as 'The Waldos' would get together at 4:20pm every afternoon to search for an abandoned cannabis crop.  They never did find it, but the time that they would meet became their slang term for weed, so they could talk openly about it without the authorities cottoning on.  San Rafael was also the home of The Grateful Dead, a jam band who have long been associated with cannabis culture, and use of the term '420' spread from The Waldos to the community of 'Dead-Heads' within the town, and eventually beyond.  The influential stoner magazine High Times picked up on the term, which helped disseminate it to a more spatially diffuse public.  Nowadays, many pot smokers symbolically light up at 4:20pm in honour of The Waldos, and April 20th (4/20 in the American notation) has become a counterculture holiday.  Online, there is an internet forum for the discussion of drugs, modelled after the baffling meme-spewing monolith 4chan, called 420chan (I must point out at this point that I only ever frequent 420chan for the part of the forum that is strictly dedicated to professional wrestling).

I'm sure there are pockets of people in India who ape American drug culture, but for the vast, vast majority of Indians, 420 has a different meaning.  Section 420 of the Indian Penal Code, established by the British colonizers in 1860, covers offences relating to fraud, cheating and dishonesty.  In Salman Rushdie's seminal Indian novel Midnight's Children, the narrator Saleem Sinai, head of a convocation of 1001 magical children born at the hour of India's independence, remarks, 'Malnutrition, disease, and the misfortunes of everyday life had accounted for no less than four hundred and twenty of them by the time I became conscious of their existence; although it is possible to hypothesize that these deaths[...]had their purpose, since 420 has been, since time immemorial, the number associated with fraud, deception and trickery.  Can it be, then, that the missing infants were eliminated because they had turned out to be somehow inadequate, and were not the true children of that midnight hour?'  He goes on to add that this idea 'depends on a view of life which is both excessively theological and barbarically cruel', but he is still keenly aware of the malign meaning of 420 within the Indian context.  Most notably, there is the 1955 Bollywood film Mr. 420, or Shri 420 in Hindi (or श्री 420, because I learned the Devanagari alphabet months ago and dammit, I'm going to use it!)  This is one of the most famous films in the history of India, and concerns the world of confidence tricksters.  Earlier this year, when the Indian cricketer Sreesanth was charged with match-fixing, some genius of a headline writer came up with the pun 'Sree 420'; I've never felt so simultaneously nerdy and proud as when I got the joke.  Since 1955, 'Mr. 420' has entered the Indian lexicon as slang for, to use the parlance of our capital, a dodgy geezer.

Whatever your views on whether marijuana should be legalized or not, the fact remains that in most of the world lighting up a fat doobie is illegal, and pot smokers are looked down on by much of society; those who partake of '420' are seen as 'Mr. 420'.  I may have ceased to become interested in mathematical equations, but I will never fail to be fascinated by the fact that despite the differences between how 420 came to acquire its meanings in America and India - one signification instituted from 'below' by counterculture and word-of-mouth, the other from 'above' by legal codes and mainstream popular culture - there is such a remarkable overlap.

Wrestling Review: WWE Summerslam 2013

Since a fairly predictable and (for the most part) lacklustre Wrestlemania, WWE has been on something of a hot streak where PPVs are concerned, with Payback and Money in the Bank in particular being very strong offerings.  Summerslam has traditionally been one of the biggest events of the year, but this year's card looked a little thin at the outset.  No Tag Title match, no Intercontinental Title match, no Divas Title match, and superstars lacking scheduled matches included Big Show, Mark Henry, Randy Orton (or so it would seem...), Antonio Cesaro, Kofi Kingston, Jack Swagger, Ryback, Seth Rollins, Roman Reigns, and many more.  In addition, the build-up - the two main event matches excepted - was underwhelming; the trope of 'challenger beats champion in a non-title match to set up a title match' which has been overused recently to set up midcard championship bouts seems to have infested the World Heavyweight Title scene.  However, the show was basically being sold almost entirely on the back of these two main event face-offs; John Cena vs. Daniel Bryan and Brock Lesnar vs. CM Punk.  The storylines behind both of these matches were developed brilliantly, and there was a real 'big fight feel' surrounding them.  But did Summerslam as a whole live up to the very high standards of recent WWE?  Well, that's what I'm here for!

Pre-Show: Dean Ambrose (c) vs. Rob Van Dam (WWE United States Championship)

As my previous reviews have made clear, I bloody love RVD.  Yet I viewed his return to WWE with some trepidation.  He's in his forties now, and his work during his spell in TNA wasn't exactly inspiring; it was, shall we say, a little ponderous.  Happily, it seems that this state of affairs was more due to lack of motivation than his losing a step in the ring (and honestly, if I'd been working for TNA around the time Hulk Hogan and Eric Bischoff started running the show, I wouldn't have been too motivated either), and since reappearing in WWE, he's put on several very fine matches, especially his first outing back on Raw in which he defeated Chris Jericho.  RVD earned his shot at Dean Ambrose by winning a battle royal in which he outlasted nineteen other superstars, most notably Mark Henry, who showed his respect to the victor after the match, and Ryback, who didn't, possibly because he and RVD get their leotards from the same place and it's become a little awkward.

My assumption was that RVD was in this match because he likes to take moves by landing right on the top of his head (like so - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6n9EuysP4XQ), and Ambrose's as-yet-unnamed finisher impacts the opponent's head.  This isn't what happened.  But I'm not complaining, as this was yet another solid display from two very talented wrestlers; one coming towards the end of his career, and one just starting out.

The first thing to note is that Ambrose played the villain to absolute perfection here, turning his deranged, almost feral persona up to 11.  The crowd (mostly - there were a few chants of 'LET'S GO AMBROSE!') booed him like crazy, and cheered RVD to the rafters, which is exactly what you want to start off a show; a heel who can whip the crowd into a frenzy, and a high-flying exciting performer to go up against him.  The thing about RVD matches is that you know what you're getting; Rolling Thunder, split-legged moonsault, springboard attacks of various kinds, kicks that don't look entirely pulled, spinning leg drop to the outside, Five-Star Frog Splash (all being well).  But repetition isn't the point; first, all these moves are inherently awesome, and second, they're very fresh to the WWE crowd, because RVD has been away for so long.  It's hard to imagine a crowd in, say, Dragon Gate (a Japanese promotion specialising in all kinds of flippity-flips) treating RVD with such amazement, but he had the Staples Centre in Los Angeles eating out of the palm of his hand, and it was glorious.

RVD looked like he had the match won when he went up top to deliver the death blow to Ambrose, but his Shield cohorts Seth Rollins and Roman Reigns made their way through the audience in order to put 'The Whole F'N Show' off his stride.  Thankfully, Big Show and Mark Henry came out to even the odds and attempt to ensure that RVD could proceed unmolested.  This tactic worked well, until RVD finally hit the Frog Splash, at which point Reigns entered the ring and speared him out of his boots, drawing the disqualification but saving his ally's title.

Between Ambrose's heel mannerisms and RVD's spectacular offence, this was an ideal opening match.  I assume they're building up towards Show and Henry challenging for the tag titles, which I would personally love to see, if only for the morbid fascination of seeing the heaviest tag team WWE could possibly come up with, unless they brought Andre the Giant back from the dead and paired him up with the bloke from that Channel 4 documentary.  Anyway, I love RVD and Ambrose is a great heel, so thumbs up here.  Rating: ***

One criticism I'd make of the show is that it took a while to get going; we had commercials, The Miz's opening spiel, Fandango's interrupting of said spiel, The Star-Spangled Banner (at least with the British national anthem, it's bad but it's over quickly), and the opening pyro.  You might have thought that after all that, they'd have scheduled another exciting, fast-paced match.  You'd have thought wrong...

Match 1: Kane vs. Bray Wyatt (w/ Luke Harper and Erick Rowan) (Ring of Fire Match)

This match, like that in the pre-show, had an established veteran paired with a young prospect bolstered by two stablemates.  That's about where the similarities end.

Regarding the match stipulation, no, WWE hasn't started naming match types after songs by overrated singers.  A Ring of Fire match closely resembles an Inferno Match, which is to Kane as the Buried Alive Match is to his brother The Undertaker; i.e. it's his signature gimmick match, but he almost never wins.  Sadly, however, this wasn't an Inferno Match; the object of the match was not to set your opponent on fire, but simply to pin them.  The flames were simply there to stop the other two members of Bray Wyatt's 'family' from interfering.  And to look cool.  Which they did.

Kane, in recent months, has been something of a comedy character, but the beauty of Kane is that he's so imposing and has such a rich backstory that he can be 'reset' to being an absolute monster at a moment's notice.  The Wyatt Family are a unique and disturbing cult of Deep South backwoodsmen, led by the charismatic preacher-figure Bray Wyatt, whose professed motives are wreathed in opaque, almost poetic language.  Their attack on Kane, WWE's resident eldritch abomination, appears to be a proclamation of their lack of fear of even the monstrous, and when Wyatt was challenged to this match by Kane, he simply laughed.  All very interesting stuff.

Then we got the match itself, which is where the problems arise.  On one hand, the visuals were very striking, with the flames surrounding the ring shooting up in the air with every slam.  The contest started out promisingly, with both men showing surprising agility for their size, trading attempted strikes and reactive dodges.  Kane eventually got the upper hand, at which point Wyatt decided to call on his followers for aid.  They attempted to hand him a kendo stick, but it caught on fire.  Then they tried to use a fire extinguisher to...well, extinguish the flames.  No dice.  Kane then chokeslammed Wyatt, chokeslammed him again, decided that wasn't enough, then set him up for the Tombstone.  Finally, Harper and Rowan remembered what they were taught at school and used a massive towel to quell the flames, rushed the ring and beat up Kane, allowing Wyatt to hit his finisher and pin the Big Red Machine.

My first issue with the match is that the business with the kendo stick and the fire extinguisher was funny, both to me and to the crowd.  Considering the eerie and often disquieting build to the match, the dynamic between the characters, and the inherent danger of the fire, it was tonally jarring.  My second, and much more major, issue, was that Kane used his finisher twice on Wyatt, and was attempting a third when the interference came.  In both this match and the pre-show, the veteran would have emerged triumphant were it not for the cheating of their opponents.  The difference is that Ambrose and RVD had a competitive match, and looked like equals.  Kane obliterated Wyatt in the end, to the point of castiga excesivo.  I will allow that Kane's repeated chokeslamming of Wyatt made the newcomer look like a psychological threat, in that Kane was so caught up in inflicting punishment on his tormentor that he forgot about the match.  But a contest in which Wyatt looked like more of a physical threat to Kane would have done more for him, particularly as this was Wyatt's first match on WWE television.

So all in all, I'm honestly not sure how to rate this match.  I'll be adding points because the flames were cool; sue me.  But the lack of time and substance afforded to the match, coupled with the issues with the booking, lead me to conclude that this was not all that it could have been. And new wrestlers need a good first match to give them the best chance at succeeding; look at The Shield's first match.  Now that was epic. Rating: *1/2

Match 2: Cody Rhodes vs. Damien Sandow

On one hand, I'm bemoaning the loss of Team Rhodes Scholars, a delightfully despicable heel tag team, due to the falling out between its members (Sandow beat Rhodes for the Money in the Bank contract, acted condescending and superior about it, Rhodes got the hump, started brawling with Sandow, stole the briefcase and threw it in the Gulf of Mexico, Sandow unveiled a fine leather replacement in keeping with his upper-class intellectual character).  On the other hand, this match ruled.  It was wrestled at a fair lick, which I enjoyed, considering that Sandow is more known for his methodical, albeit intense, offense.  In short, it felt like a grudge match.  No opening mat-based exchanges here, just two rivals wanting to beat the crap out of each other.  Diversity in match styles is always good.

The finish, with Rhodes simply pulling Sandow away from the ropes and hitting CrossRhodes, came a little abruptly, but that's a minor fault in what was a thoroughly entertaining match.  Rhodes, now that he's a face, has incorporated flashier manoeuvres into his arsenal (especially the Muscle Buster, which invariably looks brutal even if it's being delivered by a man much less beefy than Samoa Joe, its most notable exponent.)  Looking at the durations of the night's bouts, I'm staggered that this one lasted less than seven minutes.  They packed so much in, and in so intense a fashion, that it felt much longer, and much more substantial than your average short Raw or Smackdown match.  I assume this is only the start of their rivalry, so I look forward to seeing what else these two men can conjure up. Rating: ***1/4

Match 3: Alberto del Rio (c) vs. Christian (World Heavyweight Championship)

This was predictably great.  Both of these men would struggle to have a bad match with anyone, and when put together they delivered a gem that will probably be overlooked in favour of the two main event matches when assessments of this PPV are delivered in the coming years.  But while it wasn't up to the standards of those bouts, it was excellent on its own merits.

The thing I like most about WWE PPVs is that the wrestlers expand their movesets from what you see on free TV; you might see John Cena essaying a hurracanrana, or CM Punk delivering a moonsault (they don't do those moves that well, but there are other examples).  You also get counters to expected signature moves; part of the pleasure of watching a major Cena match is when his predictable shoulderblock-shoulderblock-Protobomb-Five Knuckle Shuffle combination is interrupted.  Christian was especially good at that here, playing the part of the wily veteran to perfection to stay one step ahead of the younger man's corner enzuguiri and Cross Armbreaker.

He held out in this way for as long as he could, but del Rio's targeting of his arm paid off in the end.  I'm a sucker for limb targeting by wrestlers with a submission finisher.  You'd think that was the bare minimum to expect, but I've watched a lot of Miz matches in which his work softening up his opponents for the Figure Four Leg Lock entirely consists of a single kick to the thigh.  Del Rio's different; he's clinical and forensic.  I remember last year watching a match in which del Rio challenged Sheamus for the World Heavyweight Championship, and I was with a friend who has barely watched wrestling since 2001 (but who knows enough to know that Kane and The Undertaker are both awesome).  He saw del Rio working over Sheamus' arm and said "Wow, he's actually using a strategy and targeting a single body part...he's going to lose, isn't he?"  Sure enough, Sheamus shrugged off del Rio's arm work and hit his finisher out of nowhere for the win.  So it's nice when limb targeting plays into the finish of a match.  Christian nailed del Rio with a spear, and could have pinned him, but in hitting the move he aggravated his already damaged shoulder, which gave del Rio an opening to apply his submission and force Christian to tap out.

The finish and the inventive counters were by no means the only great things about this match.  Like Rhodes vs. Sandow, they fit a lot into the time they had, and there were some inventive spots, such as del Rio's Backstabber off the second rope.  This would have been the best match on a lot of shows, but then Summerslam 2013 was not most shows.  Maybe Christian will get another opportunity at the World Title, and if he does, I hope he comes armed with a finisher that takes less than ten minutes to set up.  Rating: ***3/4

Match 4: Natalya (w/ Cameron and Naomi) vs. Brie Bella (w/ Nikki Bella and Eva Marie)

This came about due to happenings on Total Divas.  If you're not aware, Total Divas is a reality show starring the women involved in this match, which is running on the E! Network.  I've not watched it and have no plans to, but it's drawing higher ratings than TNA.  Awkward.  Anyway, while I may dislike reality television as a whole, I don't see any harm in the concept if it helps get divas apart from AJ and Kaitlyn over with the crowd.

Judging by the audience reaction to this match, it's going to be a long old process.  The Staples Centre was chanting for JBL and Jerry Lawler throughout.  Look, LA; you were a great crowd for the most part, but stop trying to be East Rutherford.  No crowd should try to be East Rutherford; the Raw after Wrestlemania comes about once a year, and any lesser attempts to recreate the atmosphere end up smacking of hipsterdom.  Furthermore, the 'chant random things' game played in East Rutherford happened in a different context than it did here.  The New Jersey crowd shitting all over Sheamus vs. Randy Orton could be seen as justified for a few reasons; it was a match between two (fairly directionless at the time) faces, it was a bait-and-switch to replace a promised encounter involving the Big Show, and it was pretty chinlock-heavy.  East Rutherford at least waited a few minutes before deciding to shit all over the match, whereas here, LA seemed determined not to take an interest in Natalya vs. Brie from the get-go, which seemed pretty disrespectful to the performers.

As it happens, there wasn't much wrong with this match at all.  It was fairly basic, but not bad (except I wish Natalya would sit down on her Sharpshooter a little more).  It started off with an exchange of slaps, which made me uneasy at first, because the performers in women's wrestling tend to be written differently to the men (how many times do we see a male performer having a temper tantrum after a loss?)  However, later in the night Cena and Bryan had an exchange of slaps, because someone had clearly been watching Minoru Suzuki - a Japanese MMA badass-cum-wrestler nicknamed 'The Ill-Natured Man', who will slap the shit out of you and everything you care about - and realized that far from being a technique for catfights, slapping someone in the face actually really bloody hurts.  So that was fine.  What was less fine was the usual 'catfight' spot from the women on the outside, where they rush each other and start clawing and choking each other on the floor, which resembles wrestling about as much as my lethargic roundhouse kick attempts resemble Chuck Norris.  But you can't have everything.  Following some botched interference from her seconds, Brie got caught in the Sharpshooter and was forced to tap.  Short but competently executed, and inoffensive.  Rating: **1/4

Match 5: Brock Lesnar (w/ Paul Heyman) vs. CM Punk (No Disqualification Match)

Before this match, Heyman did an interview where he called the Bible revisionist history and suggested that Goliath recovered from the slingshot and defeated David.  This is a promotion that once ran a tag match on pay-per-view in which Vince and Shane McMahon faced off against Shawn Michaels and GOD, so I shouldn't expect any reverence for religious orthodoxy, nor indeed would I want to.  Heyman's a heel, so he can basically do what the hell he likes.  And he does.

The first thing to note here is that the build-up did a fantastic job of making Punk seem the underdog, playing up the size difference, and Lesnar's freakish physical strength.  This continued into the match; nobody can dish out a pro wrestling beating like Brock Lesnar, and the brutality on show (even when Brock wasn't using weapons) made the crowd get even more behind Punk than they already were, as the smaller man used his speed and high-flying ability to try and get the upper hand.  Big Man vs. Small Man contests are a staple of wrestling, and you'll rarely find it done better than it was here.  Punk looked tough as hell even in defeat, by simply withstanding the onslaught from the Beast Incarnate, and notably by no-selling a powerbomb at one point, such was his will to win.  You don't need to beat Brock Lesnar to look like a million dollars, which is why having John Cena beat him in his return match was a stupid decision (despite the fact that the contest was fantastic).

Where the two main event matches were concerned, the stars really did align on this night.  Even the botches added to Punk vs. Lesnar.  Punk's Diving Elbow Drop is, in all honesty, a little bit sloppy, and the first one he did at Summerslam was one of the worst.  He pretty much just fell from the top rope in an ungainly manner, and landed on Lesnar's face with his thigh.  It wasn't a thing of beauty, but within the context of the match it fit perfectly, adding to the kitchen-sink approach to offense by both men.

Another thing that was done really well were the MMA elements.  Punk, while he's no expert, and would probably get destroyed in UFC, has some knowledge of jiu-jitsu, and used it to good effect, not just in his usual kicks, but in assailing Lesnar with a triangle choke and a cross armbreaker at a couple of points.  I do find it funny that in MMA these two holds appear in the arsenal of most, if not all, fighters, whereas in the WWE context, Punk was stealing the finishers of The Undertaker and Alberto del Rio, but that's by the by.  It wasn't overdone, and the match appeared less like a shoot-style contest than a proper pro wrestling match with MMA influence, which I think is the right way to play it in a WWE ring.  Incorporating MMA is a good thing as long as a promotion doesn't dilute the essence of wrestling by going too far (for example, by putting your heavyweight title on Bob freaking Sapp.  NJPW hasn't always been awesome).

The two wrestlers made great use of the No Disqualification stipulation, in more inventive ways than you see in your common or garden TV hardcore match.  Lesnar took the covering from the announcers' table, placed in on top of Punk then stomped on it; Punk did a Diving Elbow Drop while holding a chair and driving said chair into Lesnar's skull; Punk bit Lesnar's ear to get out of a submission.  Coupled with the stiffness of Lesnar's moves (especially a couple of wince-inducing powerbombs), it all added up to a contest that felt like a real ordeal.

In the end, Punk finally managed to hit Lesnar with the GTS, which Brock sold wonderfully, going down like he'd been shot.  Heyman ran in and broke up the count.  Punk managed a second GTS, and tried to finish off Lesnar with the Anaconda Vice, whereupon Heyman ran in again, this time with a chair.  Punk, seeing an opportunity to at long last get his hands on Heyman, decked him and locked in the Anaconda Vice on his one-time manager.  Lesnar recovered, F5ed Punk onto the chair, and that was that.  There's a fine line between having outside interference detract from a match and having it add to the story.  At Money in the Bank, Heyman's interference in the match brought what was an exciting, high-flying six-way match to a grinding halt.  Here, it played into the dynamic that Punk's emotions got the better of him; he was more interested in hurting Heyman than beating Lesnar, and it cost him.  This was, all in all, one of the best matches you'll see all year.  And yet, you could make the argument that it wasn't even the best match on the show...  Rating: ****3/4

Match 6: Dolph Ziggler and Kaitlyn vs. Big E. Langston and AJ Lee (Mixed Tag Team Match)

It's clear that WWE are holding out on blowing off the singles feuds between these two pairs for PPVs when they don't have two huge main events as guaranteed selling points, so this tag match is what we got instead.  It was too short to really mean a great deal, but provided some entertaining moments.  Big E. Langston has amazing agility for his size, and watching him go to work on Ziggler was exhilarating.  And I will never get tired of seeing Kaitlyn spear the hell out of AJ, which she did yet again, only this time on the outside of the ring.  This led to Ziggler nailing Langston with the Zig Zag and picking up the win.  I don't buy the Zig Zag as a one-hit kill move, as it really is quite a basic manoeuvre, so it looked odd that it slew Langston, despite the fact that Ziggler had only a fraction of the offense that his former lackey did.  Bit of a nothingy match, but perfectly serviceable.  Rating: **1/2

Main Event: John Cena (c) vs. Daniel Bryan (WWE Championship, with Special Guest Referee Triple H)

The story behind this requires a bit of unpacking.  Raw General Manager Brad Maddox allowed Cena to pick his own opponent, and Cena chose the uber-popular Daniel Bryan, an excellent technician struggling to have the WWE higher-ups take him seriously, on account of his small stature.  Maddox and WWE owner Vince McMahon belittled Bryan publicly, while WWE Chief Operating Officer Triple H backed him.  Bryan sought to draw a distinction between Cena as 'a sports entertainer' and himself as 'a wrestler' with a greater passion for the business.  Cena told him that HE'D HAVE TO EARN THIS WWE CHAMPIONSHIP, JACK.  Vince argued with Triple H while Triple H's wife (and Vince's daughter) Stephanie found herself caught in the middle of it all.  Vince tried to install his puppet Maddox as Special Referee for the title match, but Triple H overruled him and took on the role himself, to ensure a fair fight.  Meanwhile, Money in the Bank winner Randy Orton lurked in the background, reminding both participants in the title match that he could demand a shot at the gold at any time.

Have you got all that?

I know the 'YOU CAN'T WRESTLE' chants have become part of the John Cena Experience, the paradigm of the divisive superstar.  But this match demonstrated once and for all that the chant isn't based in truth.  Cena is by no means a bad wrestler (he got an entertaining match out of The Great Khali, for Heaven's sake), it's just that he tends to work at the level of his opponent.  If he's wrestling Big Show or Brodus Clay, it's probably not going to be that good.  When he's facing off with one of the best in the world, like CM Punk or Daniel Bryan, it's invariably fantastic.  The opening few minutes looked more like World of Sport than anything, with both competitors vying for supremacy on the mat.  It soon spilled to the outside, with Cena drilling Bryan with a suplex off the ring steps.  He followed that up with a Batista Bomb when they got back into the ring.  I thought it was a bit early in the match for a high-impact move such as that, but when the biggest criticism you can make of a match is that 'John Cena used a really awesome move at a weird time', you know a match was something special.

The technical aspect of the match was excellent; I've already mentioned the mat wrestling, but the submission counters, as STF transitioned into Yes Lock and back again, were very well implemented.  Bryan even got Cena with an STF of his own at one point, and characteristically did it much better.  But the high-impact moves were equally as good; Bryan used his kicks to great effect, and utilised a variety of throws including a leg-capture German Suplex which was particularly gorgeous.  Cena's more limited offense looked as good as it's ever done, especially his Flying Leg Drop to the back of the neck, and he even gave as good as he got in the strike department, countering Bryan's running dropkick with a stiff lariat that would make even Stan Hansen say, "Whoa, that's a bit much!"

As with Punk vs. Lesnar, even the botches added to the match.  At one point Bryan attempted to hurricanrana Cena off the top rope, only to get caught.  I'm not sure if Cena was going for a powerbomb or a Styles Clash, but he ended up caught between those two moves and accidentally giving Bryan a Ganso Bomb (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XzhnSjCAmhE) which in terms of deadly 90s Japanese finishers ranks somewhere between Kenta Kobashi's Burning Hammer and Kenta Kobashi's MOONSAULT ONTO YOUR FUCKING FACE.  Don't mess with Kenta Kobashi, basically.  Thankfully Bryan wasn't hurt and Cena transitioned nicely into an STF, and the flub only served to make Bryan look tougher.

I have to say that before the match, I thought Bryan had a good chance of winning.  He was certainly a more credible threat to Cena than Ryback or Mark Henry, two strong but fairly one-dimensional wrestlers.  I just didn't know exactly how Bryan was going to beat Cena, considering that his finisher is a submission, and that Cena hasn't tapped out since 2003.  I thought that Bryan might win by catching Cena unawares with a small package (in ROH, Bryan became such a dominant champion that he decided to start trolling his opponents by trying to beat them with a small package, even, hilariously, taking on the moniker of 'Mr. Small Package'), but that would hardly have been a decisive or satisfying end to an epic match like this.  I needn't have worried.  Bryan went to the corner, then absolutely LEVELLED Cena with a running knee strike (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eXJk3IQrdU0), pinning him to win the title for the first time.  Now that's how you debut a new finisher!

An absolutely wonderful match, and all the more remarkable considering that Cena's elbow was damaged, and that he went in for surgery the day after the match.  Simply sublime, and a great moment to have Bryan cleanly and decisively winning.  Great stuff.  Rating: ****3/4

After the match, streamers and confetti dropped from the ceiling as Bryan basked in the glow of his victory.  Then Randy Orton's music hit.  That's OK, I thought, it's not as though Bryan's in a vulnerable position to be cashed in on.  As soon as I had that notion, Triple H grabbed Bryan and hit the Pedigree, to much consternation.  Orton then handed his briefcase to the referee and the match began.

Money in the Bank Cash-In: Daniel Bryan (c) vs. Randy Orton (WWE Championship)

Orton rolled Bryan over and Triple H counted the pin.  The end.  I can't really give this a rating, even though technically every move in the match was executed flawlessly.  Rating: N/A

Orton and Triple H celebrated with the belt, so it looks like we have a new corporate heel faction.  Should be interesting.

Overall, Summerslam didn't have the consistency of the previous two WWE PPVs, but Cena vs. Bryan and Punk vs. Lesnar are both in my Top 3 matches of the year, and it was complemented by (mostly) solid action, so once again, my thumbs are in the upright position.

Glossary

Stable - A group of wrestlers allied to each other
Castiga excesivo - A rule from Mexican lucha libre; essentially, if one wrestler is more intent on inflicting extra punishment on an opponent at a point where they could have simply pinned them and won the match, they can be disqualified
Shoot-style - a wrestling match where the outcome is still predetermined, but it's presented to look like a legitimate MMA fight