MITCHELL'S TAKE MITCHELL: The Ring Of Honor Rape Fiasco Feb 26, 2008 - 8:54:40 PM

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By Bruce Mitchell, Torch columnist

After all these years, I'm pretty hit or miss on spoilers. Unless I've got an idea about a returning star or I forget that no one can estimate a crowd accurately in the era of the once a year show, I'll usually just wait until the show airs. No matter how it's written up, you really can't tell until you see it.

Well, screw that. A different camera angle isn't going to make much difference in the presentation of the rape angle Gape Sapolsky booked for Saturday night's Ring Of Honor show.

This was a bad deal from several angles. Larry Sweeney - the sleazy sports agent who channels Roddy Piper and Bobby "The Brain" Heenan so well everybody loves him - tried to go hardcore heel. He told Alison Danger there was a train waiting for her in the locker-room or something. He then attacked her from behind and knocked her unconscious, then demanded that his fat-boy punching bag Bobby Dempsey have sex with her while she was unconscious. The wimp refused, so Sweeney threw him on top of the prone woman while some in the crowd chanted, "Suck her tits!"

What fun.

I'd love to know exactly what reaction Sapolsky and the rest figured they'd get from their fans for

Except rape isn't funny. Odds are Sapolsky, Sweeney, Dempsey, and Danger know someone who has been raped themselves, even if they're not aware of it. Everybody involved, including the fans who cheered, ought to be ashamed of themselves. Hopefully when some of the fans got away from the mob, they were. Rape is a brutal act and a felony crime.

And while rape isn't funny, rape angles in pro wrestling are stupid and completely unbelievable. One of the reasons those fans were cheering was there's no way to suspend your disbelief when something like this happens right in the ring, with a few thousand people watching and the cameras rolling. It goes to the "Where's The Cops" rule of pro wrestling - which states that if every fan knows the reason why there are no cops is "it's just bullshit pro wrestling," your angle won't draw you any money.

And speaking of the cops, spare me the Law and Order SVU comparison. Yes, the show deals with, and sometimes exploits, sexual crimes more explicit than what happened Saturday night in that ROH ring. The show, though, never plays those crimes for laughs, or even worse, trivializes them by having neither the criminal nor the victim get by without facing serious consequences.

There's another side of this that is troubling for a different way. Gabe Sapolsky and wrestlers in Ring of Honor have accomplished the almost impossible in the past six years - they've grown an independent wrestling promotion without television to critical success and financial viability. It's been a tremendous feat, rising from the ashes of Extreme Championship Wrestling.

This angle, though, reeks of the desperateness that Sapolsky's mentor Paul Heyman displayed at his Extreme worst. What does it say about ROH's venture into taped, sparsely advertised pay-per-views, or the sales of its many DVDs, or TNA's encroachment into their territory, that Sapolsky, a booker who built his company on great wrestling work supported by a credible creative structure, felt that this crap was the right move for his company? Or is Sapolsky, who recently called for talent to bring their booking ideas to him, burned out after six years of writing the show? That is, after all, the pattern of bookers throughout the history of this business - six years is an eternity.

Maybe it's just that Gabe Sapolsky and the rest had a bad idea. Whatever it is, ROH ought to just drop this thing and think through a better, more effective way to help their company than this.

Bruce Mitchell writes monthly feature-length columns on current events and pro wrestling history in the Pro Wrestling Torch Newsletter. He has been pro wrestling's most respected, historically relevant columnist since 1990. He also participates in a 90-120 minute discussion of pro wrestling with PWTorch editor Wade Keller every weekend exclusively in the PWTorch VIP section. He also writes shorter newsletter-exclusive "Mitchell's Memos" and "Mojo Raw Commentaries" most weeks. He also interacts with PWTorch VIP members in the "Bruce Mitchell Zone" of the VIP Forum. He has covered some of the biggest wrestling events of the past 30 years in person from New Jersey to North Carolina to Los Angeles to Tijuana and has appeared on dozens of radio shows as a guest analyst and hosted his own radio show over the years. Email him at bmitchell51@triad.rr.com.

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