MATCH 15: “THE PLAYBOY” CRAZY ROSE v. THE SPIKE
Introduction – Match 1 – Match 2 – Match 3 – Match 4 – Match 5
Match 6 – Match 7 – Match 8 – Match 9 – Match 10 – Match 11
Match 12 – Match 13 – Match 14
Only two matches left in the opening round! TONIGHT, two of the greatest wrestlers of the ’90s go head to head. What’s sharper: the thorn of the Crazy Rose, or the… uh… spike… of The Spike? We’re pushing it to the limit and walking on the razor’s edge in match 15! YOU READY, CHICO? WOOOOO!
CRAZY ROSE
How do you get “Crazy Rose” as a fill-in for what is clearly WWE Hall of Famer Scott Hall? That’s a bit of a tough nut to crack. My best guess? It’s a play on the “rāz” sound in “Razor Ramon,” the character Hall portrayed during the WWF’s “New Generation” era. Rose’s nickname suggests that Hall may have been a bit of a “playboy.” Was he? YOU’D BETTER BELIEVE IT.
“The Playboy” also could be an inept nod to “The Bad Guy,” Hall’s nickname during the Razor Ramon era.
Crazy Rose forms one half of the team FPWR calls “The Outlaws.” The other member of that team is Raven Gush, who, as we have previously discussed, is a carbon copy of Kevin Nash. If you’ve been taking notes, you’ll remember that Hall and Nash formed the team known as The Outsiders, the founding fathers of the New World Order and one of the most popular duos in wrestling history. During his time as an Outsider, Hall’s finishing maneuver, a crucifix powerbomb, was dubbed “The Outsider’s Edge:”
http://youtu.be/T8mcOF4jHUI
Crazy Rose uses that same maneuver as a finisher, though it’s been run through the FPRW trademark remover and renamed “The Outlaw’s Edge.”
As a personal aside, Razor Ramon was probably my favorite wrestler when I was in middle school. Loved him so much I got the shirt.
I’d like to tell you that the girls read this shirt, saw that I was “oozing machismo,” and fell all over me. That’s it. there’s no more to that sentence. I REALLY would like to be able to tell you that.
My childhood fandom is why it’s difficult to go into why FPWR’s profile calls Crazy Rose “a drunk character with a huge body.” Scott Hall’s issues with substance abuse are well-documented. ESPN even did a piece on it. Even so, that bit of the bio trikes me as mean-spirited, so we won’t crack jokes here; we’ll just say that we’re happy that Scott Hall’s on the road to getting better.
Like Kevin Nash, Hall was a champion in both WCW and WWF, which were, at one point, the two largest wrestling organizations in the WORLD. And again, the NWO, a faction which Hall helped form, even had a Japanese branch. Hall qualifies for JAPANESE LARGENESS on those grounds alone. That being said, you might be surprised to learn that his Japanese roots go a leeeeetle bit deeper than that:
That there is the man himself providing shaky cellphone commentary on a 1987 match from New Japan Pro Wrestling, in which he partnered with Masa Saito against the team of Yoshiaki Fujiwara and “The World’s Most Confusing Muslim” Antonio Inoki. Trust me, dear reader, that’s some serious Japanese wrestling royalty right there. Hall got BIG IN JAPAN just by sniffing their boots. Hall’s commentary here is pretty priceless here; if you like wrestling history, the video is worth a watch.
Crazy Rose should be a real A-lister. A blue chipper, if you will. The Bad Guy is a real badass – so we just HAD to give him a world class opponent.
THE SPIKE
No, that’s not Brandon Lee. The man called Spike is the man called Sting. This one’s practically a layup. Dresses like The Crow? Check. Named after something sharp and pointy? Check. “Has what it takes to be a star?” I’m not sure where they were going with that one, but, uh… check.
The Spike utilizes the Sharpshooter as his finishing hold. The Sharpshooter was a move was first popularized by Riki Chōshū, who called the hold the “Sasori-Gatame,” which loosely translates to “scorpion hold.” That explains why when Sting applied a Sharpshooter, it was called THE SCORPION DEATHLOCK.
http://youtu.be/lGtFBhW2UA8
That, and you know, that whole scorpion motif he was always rocking on his tights. You may recall that this is the same finishing hold employed by Blood Love/Bret Hart. You may ALSO recall that FPWR nicknamed Hart “Blood Venom.” The Spike is nicknamed “Silver Venom.” I can only assume that this similarity in nicknames is a nod to their identical finishing maneuvers.
Sting didn’t always dress like the Crow. Throughout the ’80s and early ’90s, Sting was WCW’s omnipresent good guy in residence, and he looked like this:
He was the Hulk Hogan of WCW… that is, until Hulk Hogan actually joined WCW… but you get the picture. The standard-bearer for WCW, Sting wrestled exclusively for that promotion from 1988 to 2001 – the entirety of its existence.
…what? Oh, yeah, that’s Robocop. You didn’t know that Sting was friends with Robocop?
Unfortunately, even FPWR isn’t brazen enough to rip off a Hollywood property like Robocop, so Alex Murphy will not be aiding Sting tonight.
ANYWAY, the fact that Sting spent most of his career in WCW did not foreclose him from Japanese stardom. WCW had a very good working relationship with New Japan Pro Wrestling, which led to Sting having fantastic matches with many luminaries of the Japanese wrestling world. Here he is facing off against The Great Muta, one of his fiercest rivals:
The Stinger was definitely BIG IN JAPAN. But will that be enough for The Spike to overcome the “large body” of Crazy Rose? Sting has racked up some W’s over Scott Hall in the past, but will this translate to FPWR? LET’S FIND OUT!
LET’S WRESTLING
I thought they called these things “finishers?” Crazy Rose survives two Scorpoion Deathlocks (not to mention several Scorpion Death Drops) to pick up the win after an Outsider’s Edge and a fallaway slam. Get ready to say hello to the bad guy in round 2!
I think it’s a little hurtful that they say that Spike “has what it takes to become a star.” It’s goddamn Sting, how many brass rings does he have to grab?
My best guess is that it’s a mistranslated reference to his status as an unsigned free agent during the time FPWR was being developed.