David Shoemaker > Quotes

“But just as much as it was a sport, it was a sideshow—a carny act that eventually made it to Broadway. So the next time you hear somebody say, “You know wrestling is fake, right?” you can tell him that yes, you know. That’s exactly the point.”
― David Shoemaker, The Squared Circle: Life, Death, and Professional Wrestling

“They were flying back from a big show in London, the whole roster on the plane. The story goes that much alcohol was consumed and things quickly got uncomfortable: Hennig and Scott Hall went wild with some shaving cream; Dustin Rhodes awkwardly serenaded his ex-wife, Terri; the legendary wrestler turned booker Michael “P.S.” Hayes got punched out by JBL and later, after he had fallen asleep, had his ponytail chopped off by Sean Waltman; Ric Flair paraded in front of a flight attendant in nothing but his sequined ring robe; and, to top it all off, Hennig challenged collegiate wrestling star (and WWE golden boy) Brock Lesnar to a Greco-Roman wrestling match that ended when Lesnar tackled Hennig into the exit door, and they were pulled apart just before they jeopardized the flight.”
― David Shoemaker, The Squared Circle: Life, Death, and Professional Wrestling

“With the WWF’s clout in the PPV arena already entrenched, McMahon saw an opening. He told cable providers that he was going to air his own show—the Survivor Series—that night, and if any of them showed Starrcade instead, he wouldn’t let them show WrestleMania IV. (Some retellings say that McMahon threatened that they’d never do business with the WWF again at all.) The cable companies by and large assented to McMahon’s power grab, and the NWA took a huge financial hit.”
― David Shoemaker, The Squared Circle: Life, Death, and Professional Wrestling

“We make our own gods for our own purposes. And we love them, and that’s the whole point.”
― David Shoemaker, The Squared Circle: Life, Death, and Professional Wrestling

“Easy money, boys,” the barker shrills. “Step up and get it, boys. You get a dollar for every minute you stay with one of these rasslers. You get a dollar, a clammo, a buckeroo, boys, for even one minute. You get fifty—yes, fifty—large dollars, boys—if you can throw any of these wrestlers. Who’ll try his strength and skill for fifty dollars, a half hundred—enough to buy a plow, a horse or a winter coat for the little woman?”
― David Shoemaker, The Squared Circle: Life, Death, and Professional Wrestling

“What seemed to make Benoit and Guerrero great was the fact that they weren’t given an easy path to stardom. They were both hired by WCW when, during the Monday Night Wars, WCW expanded its flagship show to three hours and needed talent to fill the time.”
― David Shoemaker, The Squared Circle: Life, Death, and Professional Wrestling

“The first masked wrestler was likely a Frenchman named Theobaud Bauer who appeared, rather uncreatively, as the “Masked Wrestler” on the European circus circuit as early as the 1860s.”
― David Shoemaker, The Squared Circle: Life, Death, and Professional Wrestling

“Here was a separate world, with different wrestlers and a wholly different concept of the wrestling enterprise. Where the NWA as a whole—and GCW in particular—had become increasingly gritty and realistic, the WWF was gaudy and cartoonish, a parade of outsize gimmickry. Where GCW was filled with angst, the WWF was all bombast. If GCW was a well-choreographed brawl in a bar parking lot, the WWF had the glittery sheen of a major boxing spectacle. They were in many ways similar, but to the Southern fan attuned to the traditional NWA sensibility, the WWF couldn’t have been more alien.”
― David Shoemaker, The Squared Circle: Life, Death, and Professional Wrestling

“What was emerging meanwhile in ECW was certainly revolutionary, even if the term is defined down within the context of play fighting.”
― David Shoemaker, The Squared Circle: Life, Death, and Professional Wrestling

“The role of the manager for the monster wrestler (or tag team) is significant: He is an ambassador to the real world. Even when the monsters speak English, as the L.O.D. did, a manager can provide a human element—a plausible answer to the questions like “Does Hawk have a checking account?”
― David Shoemaker, The Squared Circle: Life, Death, and Professional Wrestling

“The enlightened wrestling fan has likely spent significant amounts of time explaining to nonviewers that even though wrestling is staged, it's not fake-that no amount of planning, no amount of scripting, no amount of physical trickery or assisted landing, no amount of ring elasticity or floor mat cushion can remotely assuage the physical assault of an average wrestling match. Every night on the road ends with ice bags or painkillers or just plain old pain, the unrelenting kind, the "you sit down in your rental car and electric voltage shoots up your spine" kind of pain, and so what, you get in your car anyway and drive to the next town and work another match tomorrow night and the fans cheer but they don't _know_. And you get two or three days off after tomorrow or the next day, and let's hope to God that's enough to get you right, because then it starts all over again. And then again next week, and then for months, and if you're _lucky_-imagine that word, here of all places-if you're _lucky_ it'll keep going for years. And there's no off-season, no prolonged downtime unless, God forbid, you're seriously injured. That's reality.”
― David Shoemaker, The Squared Circle: Life, Death, and Professional Wrestling

“Borrowing a line from Jim Croce’s “Bad, Bad Leroy Brown,” Watts dubbed Ritter the Junkyard Dog—and, ever the literalist, gave him a dog collar and junk cart.”
― David Shoemaker, The Squared Circle: Life, Death, and Professional Wrestling

“As a face and a heel, Savage saw wrestling the way so many of us viewers did. He saw that every wrestler had an ulterior motive, that everyone was out for himself—that conspiracy theory was the only reasonable lens through which to perceive WWF reality.”
― David Shoemaker, The Squared Circle: Life, Death, and Professional Wrestling

“Usually called by his guffaw-inducing initials, IRS, Schyster was the standout grappler Mike Rotunda functionally repackaged as Ted DiBiase’s financial planner. Indisputably his best angle was the time he took issue with Native American wrestler Tatanka for failing to pay taxes on a ceremonial headdress.”
― David Shoemaker, The Squared Circle: Life, Death, and Professional Wrestling

“When Hulk Hogan and Andre the Giant met in what is still considered the biggest wrestling match of all time, exaggeration was in the air. According to various contemporary reports, there were 95,000 people on hand at WrestleMania III to see the 7-foot-5, 525-pound Andre square off against Hulk Hogan, who stood 6-foot-8 and weighed 320 pounds and whose biceps measured twenty-four inches around. Probably the only number in that last sentence that’s unimpeachable is the III.”
― David Shoemaker, The Squared Circle: Life, Death, and Professional Wrestling