Wrestling with Horror
My friend Steve recommended I review WCW’s Chamber of Horrors match for the Spooktacular. After thinking about it for a bit, I decided to instead take this opportunity to talk about how horror has been used in wrestling more broadly, and how that’s often been a big draw for me.
We can get the obvious out of the way early: wrestling is very silly. Yes, I know. It’s scripted drama around choreographed action just like most of what people love to watch. What pro wrestling has above a lot of that content is an incredible lineage going back decades, complete with an expansive continuity (if they choose to acknowledge it) and a whole universe of characters. In that way, it’s a bit more like superhero comics than a soap opera. You get a wide spectrum of heroes and villains, from the grounded shooter (submission fighter) to wizards, hillbillies, demons, and even tax accountants.
Horror in wrestling goes way back to the days of Killer Kowalski and the French Angel before him. I won’t go back that far. I’ll just start with the man who is probably most-synonymous with horror in wrestling. “Would you look at size of that ham hock!!!” was the cry from Roddy Piper as The Undertaker was introduced at Survivor Series in November of 1990. Debuting a new wrestler to television can be a tricky proposition, but in The Undertaker, you had a ghoulish 7-foot tall man decked out in wide-brimmed hat and a long black duster. How could one not be awestruck? Taker’s first year in the WWF (now WWE) culminated in him winning the heavyweight title from Hulk Hogan, of all people. In his 30-year career, the man from the Darkside would go on to win many titles, but those reigns weren’t the moments that captured my imagination.
Like moths to a flame, The Undertaker seemed to attract the attention of all the other horror characters in wrestling. He fought the voodoo shaman Papa Shango, the quasi-human Mankind, Psycho Sid, and, most memorably, his brother Kane. The story goes that young Taker set fire to his parent’s funeral parlor, killing his younger brother. But, in 1997, the scarred and monstrous (and very much alive) sibling returned to take his long-awaited revenge. Pretty ridiculous, I know, but the scene of his debut was a beautiful horror scene: this masked, gigantic man, bathed in red light, marched down to the ring, ripped off a cage door, summoned shooting flames, and manhandled The Undertaker like no one before him.
Kane is better known today for political horrors as he recently began his 2nd term as Knoxville, Tennessee’s Trump-loving Mayor Glenn Jacobs. He was a lot cooler Back in 1997 when he couldn’t talk, but I always preferred The Undertaker anyway (don’t look up his politics either...). As a boy, there was just something so captivating about “The Deadman”. Over the years, he’d evolved from a zombie-esque persona to something of an undead wizard, who could summon lightning, appear out of thin air, and transform people into monsters themselves. The more evil he got, the more I dug it.
One of my favorite periods in The Undertaker’s career might be the relatively short-lived angle when he was building his “Ministry of Darkness” and attempting to take over the WWF. With the help of his on-again off-again manager, Paul Bearer (get it?!), he’d surrounded himself with a cadre of ghouls to terrorize the rest of the roster. They’d crucify opponents on a giant symbol, hang them with a noose, pour blood on them — all that good stuff. But, as often happens in wrestling, the whole thing came to a confusing and unsatisfying conclusion. Throughout the 2000’s, The Undertaker would spend time recuperating from injuries and assuming a more grounded persona, before eventually returning to his supernatural ways. It never again held the same magic for me as it did during the late 90s, but I would still get goosebumps when the lights went out, the bells chimed, and the Deadman made his slow entrance to the wrestling ring accompanied by that incredible funeral dirge.
I would be remiss if I didn’t mention some of my other favorite spooky wrestlers. Just like with The Undertaker, I always seemed to be drawn to frightening personas — Vampiro, the villainous cult leader Raven, Jake the Snake, the previously-mentioned Mankind — but Gangrel deserves some special mention here. I didn’t have cable TV growing up, so I wasn’t able to watch much wrestling before the premiere of Smackdown in Spring of 1999. I got my fix via Shotgun Saturday Nights, which didn’t come on until after SNL. This hour-long program was used to recap the week’s television and give a place for new acts to develop. During this time, I saw a lot of Gangrel, a wrestler who went to extreme lengths to commit to his vampire gimmick, like getting fang implants. Gangrel, and his group, The Brood, had one of the best ever entrances in wrestling. Their theme music was spooky, but energizing (it often cycles into my gym playlists), and they’d appear on stage via a rising platform in a ring of fire. It never failed to pop the crowd. Once at ringside, Gangrel would drink red liquid from a golden chalice and spit it into the air. They sometimes even doused their rivals in buckets of blood a la Carrie.
Gangrel had a nice run in the WWF, but he was eclipsed by his proteges Edge and Christian, who both went on to win world championships. But, as a testament to the power of that period, Edge has recently taken to using The Brood’s theme and fiery entrance on big-match occasions to give him that extra…ummm..edge. Gangrel has also been getting a bit more spotlight of late. At the age of 53, he’s gotten himself into tremendous shape and is regularly wrestling on the independent circuit, even appearing on television earlier this year for All Elite Wrestling (AEW).
I’ve got a lot of wrestling rambling in me, but I’ll try to wrap this up. My pro wrestling fandom has had peaks and valleys over the years. There was a substantial period between 2008 and 2013 when I was barely watching at all. That changed when I was living in Denver because Mountain Time resulted in WWE’s Monday Night Raw airing at 6pm. This would be around the time I got home from work and my then-girlfriend would often be working night shifts as a server. Often too tired to do much besides lay around for a bit, I started switching on the TV and turning to Raw, curious to know what was happening in the world of wrestling those days. What I saw one night in July 2013 brought me back to the fandom — The Wyatt Family. To keep it brief, the Wyatts were a faction of backwoods cultists — two giants in Luke Harper and Erick Rowan, lead by the charismatic Bray Wyatt. Just like it was with The Undertaker in the mid-90s, it was the horror characters that kept me coming back every week.
Bray has had a career that many compare to The Undertaker’s. He’s fiercely protective of his gimmick. So much so that you can’t really tell where the man ends and the character begins. He’s gone through various evolutions, adding new horror genre facets and special effects to his presentation. Unfortunately, he has also suffered from some non-sensical writing and poor booking. He recently made his long-awaited return to WWE after a whole virtual scavenger hunt to-do. In fact, he makes his return to primetime television tonight. Maybe I’ll tune in to see what spookiness he’s got in store.
Coming up this weekend on the Spooktacular: the beginning of Werewolf Week! To help bridge that gap, I’ll recommend the Mountain Goats song “Werewolf Gimmick”. It’s about a wrestler who may or may not be a werewolf. In any case, he’s taken the gimmick too far and worked himself into a shoot!
Bring your heroes to the wolf’s den, watch them all get crushed
