Wrestling...YAY!

Tuesday night after I got back from a wrestling show I was on a local messageboard that I often deride (if you don't know why, please don't ask me to explain). This note, though, I found something that was gold, and that is the YouTube video to The Wrestlerock Rumble, something put out by the AWA to build to their major "Wrestlerock '86" show at the Metrodome in Minneapolis, Minnesota. It officially starts about 25 seconds into the video. Yes, at the time ESPN carried pro wrestling. It sure beats that poker horseshit you now find on a dozen different channels (even Bravo and The Travel Channel; WTF?)

For ages I've heard how it was a Super Bowl Shuffle ripoff and how it was awful beyond comprehension, but this was solidified once I saw it with my own eyes. I mean, it sounds ~exactly~ like The Super Bowl Shuffle to the point where I'm surprised no lawsuits were filed. The way the wrestlers sung it, they made Jim McMahon and William "Refrigerator" Perry sound like Tupac Shakur in comparison! Really. Just singing to the beat was something a lot of them couldn't do! My God. Talk about something that actually exceeded my expectations. The video was classic in 37 different ways, from the Z-rate Las Vegas personalities plugging the show (why should we care that a Marilyn Monroe impersonator wants us to see the event?) to AWA TV show host Ken Resnick's attempts at dancing… oh it was tremendous all around. The fact that it sounds SO 80's you expect to see some of them inhaling lines of coke or seeing the women wearing banana clips or headbands, or everyone wearing acidwashed jeans-that's the icing on the cake.

While doing some more searching on the song, I found a writeup (which wasn't perfect; the guy who sang after Larry Z was Scott LeDoux, a former pro boxer who was a referee for a few matches in AWA before starting a feud with Larry; also, despite what everyone says, it sounds like Curt Hennig called the Long Riders "Dirtball dumbos, not "gumbos") and, best of all, a link to download the song. I uploaded it again for your listening enjoyment. Even if you don't know Jack Shit about pro wrestling, this is still something you have to listen to, even if it's for masochistic reasons.

The American Wrestling Association-"Wrestlerock Rumble" (1.69 MB, 64Kbits/second)

http://www.bestsharing.com/files/wcgHGRg237702/awa_-_wrestlerock_rumble.mp3.html

I'll be back on Friday with the last cover and last song before I'm gone for a week and a half on my trip to Illinois.