"Mr Perfect" Curt Hennig Dead, 44

!!

Shit, as if Pillman and Owen weren't bad enough. (And, like both of those guys, I have yet to see a significant amount of Hennig's work.)

You know, I had always hoped that of all the old guard from the WWF, that Hennig would be the last on the 'roids: he was never as cut or huge as other guys, and never made fluctuations in his weight. Or that he'd be addicted to the loads of painkillers that plagued guys like Davey Boy. Truly a shame. Great worker. Could still do it even at his advanced age.

And Nate, there's little doubt that Bret Hart/Mr. Perfect was the pinnacle of his career. I'd go seek out a tape of that.

-hopes that his favorites from Japan like Mutoh and Kawada don't meet similar fates-
Alan

Wow. I remember watching a bloody 60 minute draw he had with Nick Bockwinkel on ESPN when I was a kid; that and Steamboat - Savage at Wrestlemania III were my two favorite matches growing up. I also remember those WWF vignettes where he'd be playing pinball or shooting free throws or whatever. What a great gimmick!

I can't say that he was ever one of my top favourites, but he never let you down, which is more than can be said of some bigger stars. RIP.

And it's a crying shame just to compare some of the guy's of
Curt's era to today's stars. People like Hennig, like Ted Di Biase,
like Jake Roberts, like Terry Gordy, Ric Flair, Art Barr... these guys were heels. These guys got reactions. People were rioting in the stands when they one. They were throwing battery acid at them, bringing guns to the arena to shoot them... can you seriously imagine anyone from today's WWE even garnering a tenth of the reaction?

http://www.wrestlingmuseum.com/images/models/curthennig2.jpg

what a freakin bummer.

But Dom, hasn't wrestling gotten more like what you refer to in your last sentence in the last few years than in the hey-day, or are you joking? It seemed mildly interesting (on a potential destruction type level) for the first time in a long while a few years back, but quickly reverted to boring bullshit again. (haven't watched it regularly since been a kiddie, really!)

Mr. Perfect always seemed cool though.

>>But Dom, hasn't wrestling gotten more like what you refer to in your last sentence in the last few years than in the hey-day, or are you joking? It seemed mildly interesting (on a potential destruction type level) for the first time in a long while a few years back, but quickly reverted to boring bullshit again. (haven't watched it regularly since been a kiddie, really!)<<

Nah. Because wrestlers break kayfabe so often (hell, its not wrestling anymore...its "sports entertainment") great heel characters don't create the same sort of reaction that they did in the days of the NWA and AWA (where disgruntled fans would wait outside for hours and try to assault the wrestlers). Some of this is also due to the fact that there are no great bad guys anymore. Just shades of grey. No more Martels, Hennigs, or Dibiases.

As for wrestling getting boring, the last vestiges of decent American wrestling died with WCW's cruiser division and ECW. I couldn't be paid at this point to watch Raw on TNN. Its that bad. NWA has its "X-Division", with a lot of excellent guys (Jerry Lynn, Low Ki, Amazing Red, etc) but in the end all the great matches here still pale next to the continued output of the best Japanese feds.

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Alan

very sad. My only ever tv appearance was as a child screaming "Mr Perfect is Number 1". The guy was one of the best bumpers of all time.

There's probably been attempts within storylines to recreate the violence, i.e. "let's make someone punch Vince McMahon!"

>>There's probably been attempts within storylines to recreate the violence, i.e. "let's make someone punch Vince McMahon!"<<

The violence is meaningless in wrestling when it comes to creating a heel. Sure, they have to do something absurd, but when you want to create a lasting heel character, they have to cerebral too. That's why Dibiase was over as a heel for about a decade and a half, or why in ECW Raven was a nastier heel than everyone else (even when the others would chuck chairs into the crowd). After all, wrestling is 60% story and character and 40% wrestling. Well, except maybe in Japan.

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Alan

No, Nas. You could well argue that wrestling's prime period was 1999-2000, and I won't argue with you on that extent. What I'm talking about is the death of the heel as a wrestling mainstay, to a certain extent, it's the death of the full-scale wrestling angle (I'm talking stuff like Freebirds vs the Von Erichs here).

What it comes down to is that heels cannot sell merchandise unless they appear "cool". At the peak of (picks a random great heel) Jake Roberts' first heel run, the WWF wouldn't have been selling a tenth of the Roberts merchandise as they would of the Hogan, despite the fact that their drawing power was similar.

And so it goes to nowadays. HHH is marketed as "A heel... but you've gotta love him anyway". It doesn't cut it. Nobody cares. Can you imagine HHH getting an Art Barr size heel pop? Of course not. Even guys who in their prime were heel gods (Ric Flair, Eddy Guerrero) are not hitting the area nowadays.

And kayfabe isn't really an option. Think back to the ECW peak. There were no marks in the audience then, but can you remember Brian Pillman's heel run there? The Loose Cannon gimmick... wouldn't happen nowadays, not in this world of Brian Gerwitz plotlines.

Not to mention one of the prettiest finishing moves in the biz.. the fisherman's suplex (Perfect Plex).

Do you think a fisherman actually used this move on a tuna?

>>And so it goes to nowadays. HHH is marketed as "A heel... but you've gotta love him anyway". It doesn't cut it. Nobody cares. Can you imagine HHH getting an Art Barr size heel pop? Of course not. Even guys who in their prime were heel gods (Ric Flair, Eddy Guerrero) are not hitting the area nowadays.<<

>>And so it goes to nowadays. HHH is marketed as "A heel... but you've gotta love him anyway". It doesn't cut it. Nobody cares. Can you imagine HHH getting an Art Barr size heel pop? Of course not. Even guys who in their prime were heel gods (Ric Flair, Eddy Guerrero) are not hitting the area nowadays.<<

Well, that's due to both the emergence of the anti-hero (born in ECW, made big in US Wrestling by the NWO and Austin) and the fact that HHH is being constantly being pushed to due backstage politics. There are no clear cut heels, and even the heel turns themselves have been mismanaged. As its turned out, Vince McMahon has been the biggest heel in wrestling the last 5 years or so.

>>d kayfabe isn't really an option. Think back to the ECW peak. There were no marks in the audience then, but can you remember Brian Pillman's heel run there? The Loose Cannon gimmick... wouldn't happen nowadays, not in this world of Brian Gerwitz plotlines.<<

Well, Brian Pillman's "heel run", if you want to call it that; he had as much fan support as anyone else, really, was just a continuation of what happened when he left WCW following that interview that might have been a shoot and might not have been a shoot (people watching back in 1995 or 1996 will remember what I'm talking about). Because ECW was yet to pick up "marks", everyone knew what happened and why he was there. It was easy to continue off of what he had done (publicly) elsewhere.

I agree though that kayfabe isn't an option anymore. It probably wouldn't figure back into the equation unless the WWE died out (and oh what a shame that would be, hah) and no one took its place for a solid decade or so. This clearly makes heel development a little bit tougher, but then again worthwhile angles and characters take some semblance of effort/talent to create in the first place.

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Alan

remember Mr Perfect's entrance music? it was very Oriental in style no?

Alan Conceicao is OTM!