#TheShieldWeek: Watch and Learn – Roman Reigns

It’s #TheShieldWeek at Juice Make Sugar, and we’re talking all things Reigns, Rollins and Ambrose.  But like so many young stables that have come and gone before them, each of these guys has something to learn, and room to grow. For Reigns, it could make the difference between being merely good or undeniably great.  Thankfully, we’re here to help them same way we would any other athlete: give him tape He Should Watch. And loving our readers like we do, we have some tape You Should Watch of the work that reminds us of his because what’s more fun than old wrestling videos? 

He Should Watch

There a very few performers in the history of the industry with the combination of skill and size of Roman Reigns, let alone such a clearly defined identity in the ring. There aren’t many people on earth that can do what Reigns can do, so it’s pretty difficult to find anyone that he could learn from. But, because we promise the best and try to deliver, we scoured far and wide to come up with someone that Reigns could conceivably learn from.

Names like the Ultimate Warrior came to mind. However, given that the basic concept is to “help” these guys become better — not that they would actually read this, but you get the idea — and not “make it so that they will very quickly wear out their welcome”, he didn’t seem like the best choice. After much consternation we finally recognized someone that stayed over with the crowd his entire career, had a similar build and a charisma, and managed to reach his full potential.

That man? Batista.

Now, listen, before you say, WELL WHAT ABOUT THE ROCK? What about him? The Rock, while a great entertainer, doesn’t seem to have nearly the in-ring skills — outside of selling — that Reigns or even Batista had. Rock’s a great storyteller, has enough charisma to fill the largest stadiums in the entire world and is a better than adequate worker, but he’s never been spectacular in any single match or with any single moment. He’s built perhaps the most successful single career in the history of wrestling almost entirely on charm, wit and a connection to the crowd. He is on a different level than Reigns, and while they have similar builds, backgrounds and looks, it seems highly unlikely that Roman Reigns will also end up becoming a A-list movie star.

But, some bit parts as the bruiser or a particularly big and handsome villain in an action movie? Absolutely. And the Hollywood glass ceiling for he and Batista isn’t the only thing the two have in common. They’ve both worked their way up through a faction — in Batista’s case, Evolution — that allowed them to not just hide (and work on) their weaknesses, but develop their strengths.

There may be no greater slow burn in (at least) WWE’s history than Batista’s gradual disenchantment with Evolution. The explosion is unequivocally the best of its kind, and should be studied by the people who study these things into perpetuity:

We want destroyers like Batista and Reigns to be on our “team”. They don’t have be “good” guys — and Batista never ever was — but during much of his run, he was never a “bad” guy. Until he was, and man, when he was, he was as good as anyone has ever been.

If Reigns can figure out a way to move beyond just being a “big dumb animal” — which it appears he has already moved past the “dumb” part — and become an “animal” the way that Batista was, he will find himself — like Batista once did — as the face of the WWE.

You Should Watch

For as incredible as Reigns has been, and how he good he may one day be, he has certain limitations. Not relative to most people, but to the Platonic ideal of what performers of his type can be.

Like Mike Awesome. Awesome, for those who are unaware, was everything anyone could have ever wanted from a big man wrestler. Bigger than Reigns, but smaller than Kane, Awesome had the perfect combination of size, strength and agility. He is perphaps most famous in America for his work in ECW and Masato Tanaka:

But should be known for an exceptionally varied moveset:

And, especially his ability work with any one of any size. That may be his truest gift, the ability to for him to work a 17-minute match against Spike Dudley that makes the smaller guy look like a star without losing an ounce of credibility.

Mike Awesome vs Spike Dudley ECW Title by 2cool4you2

If Reigns can ever make anyone look half as good as Mike made Spike look, he’ll be truly Awesome.

#AhmedJohnsonWeek: Difference of Opinion

It’s the Final Day of #AhmedJohnsonWeek, our celebration of all things Pearl River, and the first installment of our (patent-pending) Juice Make Sugar Wrestler of the Week series. We started off with A Wrestler You Should Probably Know Better, and then gave you the finer points of the Tony Norris oeuvre with Tuesday’s Essential Viewing. We asked the important questions on Wednesday with  A Series of If…Whats on “Big T” Tony Norris. Yesterday, we make our Amazon.com-on-steroids dreams come true with “Juice Make Sugar Recommends…”. Today, we finish everything off with a Difference of Opinion (where JMS HQ erupts in a Legal-Rights-to-the-Letter-T-fueled civil war.)

Nick: David, this is going to be a tough one for us to do, mostly because we both think that Ahmed was somewhere between Warrior and Warlord, and not in a good way.

David: I tend to agree, but the eternal optimist inside of me says that no man is without some merits.

Nick: Then, what are they? Because, as a fan of the guy when I was growing up, I look back now, and find myself just hoping his muscles stay in his skin.

David: Well, there was the off-the-charts look, and until everybody realized how awful he was, a solid connection with the crowd.

Nick: Which begs the question: even with all the injuries, was he lucky?

David: Lucky in the sense that he was born looking like Vince McMahon’s ultimate fantasy. Kidding aside, though, I think he did “get it” in terms of understanding wrestling, and in an earlier era (the territories) or a later era (a true developmental system) he could have had a forum to actually improve.

Nick: What about the mouthwords? His NoD promo is a piece of gold, but much like Wayne Rooney, he needs subtitles despite the fact that English is nominally his native tongue.

David: I don’t think he was any worse than, say, Ryback, but Ahmed existed in an era when WWE wasn’t as good at hiding people’s weaknesses. Even with sometimes-taped Raws, they never did him any help with editing.

David: But, we’re really getting into a chicken vs. egg argument as to who’s more to blame: the subpar wrestler, or the promotion who presents subpar wrestlers on their television.

Nick: I’m not sure if editing could have made “You Best Make Sure” sound less like Juice Make Sugar, but I don’t disagree. I didn’t do much looking back for my pieces, but you obviously did. Did your opinion change for him?

David: You know, I won’t say my opinion changed, but it did evolve somewhat. I used to think Ahmed was irredeemably awful, but having done research for Essential Viewing, I found that he could be made to look like an actual wrestler by exceptional workers.

David: He was the proverbial broomstick that great guys could have a match with.

Nick: But, honestly, what was his ceiling? To me, it’s marginally above Mason Ryan’s

David: Well, if you put Mason Ryan in 1996, he would have been World Heavyweight Champion.

Nick: Because the steroids were better back then? #Boom

David: Honestly, I think within the context of his era, Ahmed could have been a solid babyface challenger to run against an evil heel (say, Undertaker). Or, if he had been a good (safe) enough worker, you could have built him up as a heel and had Stone Cold knock him off.

Nick: Could he have ever held the WWE title? And, been deserving, and not just an angle.

David: Well, in the sense that anybody who is predetermined to win the belt can be champion, he could have been champion. I think he could have “gone around the circuit” of major WWE cities once. And then nobody would want to see him ever again.

Nick: I can’t imagine anyone wanting to see Ahmed do anything other than the Pearl River Plunge more than once.

David: It was a great finisher.

Nick: Has watching him in all his epic meh-ness done anything for guys like Batista in your mind?

David: Batista is Dean Malenko compared to him.

Nick: Obviously, different eras and all, but Batista looks like Roger Federer out there compared to Ahmed Johnson, who is so Andy Roddick it’s silly.

David: Yeah, I think that’s a good comparison.

Nick: I also feel like Ahmed was the final straw for unsafe guys, because watching him makes me worry about guys who never wrestled him to begin with.

David: He was definitely an accident waiting to happen. Like I said, now they have an actual developmental system which serves to either correct or eliminate guys like him.

Nick: He seemingly made up new ways to botch things, and as you mentioned in that Owen match, he really took liberties.

David: Oh yeah. He stomped Owen until Owen stopped selling and rolled out of the ring. Unfortunately, for years and years, a huge part of being a good heel was being able to sell for big babyfaces who couldn’t work a lick.

Nick: What would have happened if Jeff Jarrett wasn’t a racist?

David: Oh gosh. Jarrett is Southern, and “racist” is the easiest thing on Earth to call a southerner. And wrestlers are notorious for coming up with reasons it’s other people’s fault they didn’t succeeed. So, I’ll let Ahmed call Jarrett a racist and just say they didn’t see eye-to-eye on who should go over.

Nick: Speaking of shoot interviews, my favorite story of his was him and Hawk doing shows together, and Animal getting pissed at him for it. Where he throws Animal under the bus and blames him for not being able to join LOD.

David: That would have been marginally worse than Road Warrior Puke. Ahmed matched the Road Warrior image, but their legacy didn’t need that for a minute.

Nick: It would have been better than Demolition adding Crush when Ax couldn’t go anymore.

David: I almost believe the story, though. Animal made such a stink over Hawk doing The Hellraisers with Sasaki.

Nick: Which brings us to the the first time I realized that maybe Ahmed wasn’t that great: WM 13’s street fight between LODAhmed and the Nation of Domination. And I won’t even count that Ahmed tried to break Ron Simmons neck, of course. As I was not aware at the time that someone potatoing you in the ribs was carte blanche to try to KILL HIM.

David: Yeah, the Ahmed vs. the Nation was basically a sandbag versus a bag of sandbags. I think the issue with Ron Simmons was the ultimate sign that the locker room was done bailing Ahmed out. He was the first black World Champion, and I don’t think he was interested in elevating Ahmed to that level. Partially because he knew Ahmed was kind of terrible and partially out of bitterness because Simmons’ push was rapidly rolling back down the hill.

Nick: Especially when you have a guy like the Rock on the roster.

David: But, as ugly as the last year of his run in the WWF was, it looks like Citizen Kane compared to his time in WCW.

Nick: WOAH. Woah, woah. Are you saying fighting in a PPV match sponsored by the letter T wasn’t as good as being IC champion during the hottest period in the history of the business?

David: Well, it’s more that being billed as a champion who happens to be black is better than being used in a blatant “black-on-black crime” feud.

Nick: Do you think that’s why he ate his way out of the business? Or was that an inevitability?

David: I think all professional athletes are battling their weight for most of their careers, whether it’s needing to keep it on or keep it off. Between bumps, major injuries and PEDs, Ahmed’s body just wasn’t capable of keeping on the right amount of the right kind of weight anymore. Like so many stars of his era, his body collapsed under the weight of the anabolic dream of the late 80s and early 90s.

Nick: And the Grand Slam menu at Denny’s, apparently.

David: But unlike most of those other guys, at least Ahmed still has his life.

Nick: Which, I guess, that makes him a winner.

David: Yeah, the guy made good money in the business and is still alive. And unless you’re a total mark, you have to understand that puts him ahead

#AhmedJohnsonWeek: A Series of If…Whats

It’s Day Three of #AhmedJohnsonWeek, our celebration of all things Pearl River, and the first installment of our (patent-pending) Juice Make Sugar Wrestler of the Week series. We started off with A Wrestler You Should Probably Know Better, and then gave you the finer points of the Tony Norris oeuvre with yesterday’s Essential Viewing. Today, we’re asking the important questions with  A Series of If…Whats on “Big T” Tony Norris, before we make our Amazon.com-on-steroids dreams come true with “Juice Make Sugar Recommends…” tomorrow. We’ll finish everything off this Friday with a Difference of Opinion (where JMS HQ erupts in a Legal-Rights-to-the-Letter-T-fueled civil war.)

If Ahmed Johnson had NXT, what would he have been like in the ring?

While it’s hard to say exactly what he would have been like, because Mason Ryan, chances are he would have at least been able to the basic aspects of wrestling that he seemed to have trouble grasping physically. It’s not as though Ahmed Johnson was exceptionally bad, he just wasn’t particularly good in the ring, and in an era of main event guys like Bret Hart, Shawn Michaels and even the Undertaker, it stood out even more.

From a “promoted to the main roster” perspective, and not to make the easy comparison, he likely would have been in the Big E. Langston position: put in a main storyline as a silent heavy who occasionally shows flashes of massive potential. Obviously, Big E. Langston is smoother — if not as intense — on the mic, but he’s also much smaller (5’10” to 6’2”) so it’s entirely reasonable to believe they’d be at nearly the same position for their first year or so, even in a significantly more shallow era.

Ahmed had way too much potential to not eventually get a mega-push, but they likely would have taken their time getting him to the top of the card for everyone’s benefit.

If Ahmed didn’t get hurt after earning a title shot after Summerslam ‘96 what would have happened to his career?

While this isn’t as depressing as the next question (these questions are all depressing, actually), Ahmed’s “kidney issues” (supposedly a result of Ron Simmons potatoing him because of some professional jealousy issues) were the most vivid reminder of the fragility of human existence most of can remember as children.

It also was the first instance in what would be a recurring theme in Ahmed’s career: a Greg Oden-esque inability to stay healthy. Like an athlete in a “real” sport, once you are considered injury prone (see: Sin Cara), the likelihood of ever getting another major push decreases ever so slightly. One can earn points back with the front office, but given that it’s a continuous show with almost no days off, not being able to be relied upon because of injury issues is only slightly above “drugs” or “sucking”, with being unsafe the worst of the bunch.

But, on the positive side, he was given another chance at a title match the following year, which shows how much faith they had in the character.

If Ahmed didn’t get hurt after joining the Nation of Domination what would have happened at Canadian Stampede?

This usually won’t happen, but for such a star-crossed career, “if Ahmed didn’t get hurt” was pretty much the theme of Ahmed’s career.

It’s unlikely that Ahmed would have beaten Taker, given that they were building towards the Hart-Michaels feud — Michaels cost Taker the title at SummerSlam, and would face Hart at the Survivor Series in Montreal that year… yes, that Survivor Series in Montreal — but him actually getting a main event title shot may have changed the entire direction of his career.

This run had the potential to be fantastic, and this is far and away the best that Johnson ever sounded on the mic, but as always, injuries derailed poor Ahmed before he ever had a chance to get out of the gate. When you compound this with the fact they turned him face again even with such a great heel character to play up the “babyface returning from injury” angle, and him being replaced by The Rock (which Dave spoke about during yesterday’s Essential Viewing) it’s clear that this was THE turning point in his career.

If WCW wasn’t a bunch of idiots, what would have Ahmed been able to do there?

As always, WCW took a good idea — Ahmed challenging Booker T for the rights to the Harlem Heat name — and pushed it one step too far.

Instead of just having the match be about that, they also put the “letter T” on the line in the match, as Ahmed was now going by Big T (his real name is Tony Norris) and needed to make sure he was the only T in WCW, apparently.

That his name matched his girth was actually the larger part of Ahmed’s issues in WCW, and it’s unlikely they would have been able to do much with what was at that point all of the bad parts of Tony Norris with almost none of the good.

If Ahmed Johnson magically stayed healthy, what would have happened to people like Batista?

The Brock Lesnar push would have not been reserved for the likes of Brock Lesnar, and everyone with the McMahon look would have been pushed to the moon, despite an increasingly sophisticated fanbase who would have cringed at the number of botches performed on a nightly basis up and down the card.

Of course, people like Batista would have had the training of OVW (like Lesnar and Cena did), but instead of a slow burn push, they would have likely been thrust into action like cars coming off an assembly line. It probably wouldn’t have been the downfall of business, but it safe to say it would have kind of sucked.

It was also entirely likely, however, that even if he stayed healthy, his weight would have become an issue like it did during his time in WCW. For someone with so much potential, it’s hard to say if it’s better that we at least have the ability to say “he just couldn’t stay healthy” as opposed to “he just couldn’t stay away from the buffet”.

A Wrestler You Should Probably Know Better: Ahmed Johnson

Welcome to our very first (patent-pending) Juice Make Sugar Wrestler of the Week. As the name implies, every week we will be producing a series of pieces on a random (or not so random) performer who has either touched us in a special (no, not that type) way or is especially relevant at the time for one reason or the other.

Beginning with this, #AhmedJohnsonWeek, we will start every series off by making the WotW a Wrestler You (Should) Probably Know Better. Then we give you some Essential Viewing from their oeuvre, before dropping something good on y’all for Wednesday, like a Series of If…Whats. On Thursday, we’ll make our Amazon.com-on-steroids dreams come true with something we’re calling “Juice Make Sugar Recommends…“, and then we’ll finish everything off with a Difference of Opinion wherein two of us will discuss the merits of the performer for your entertainment.

When we came up with the idea of presenting a wrestler every week from every angle we could think of, Ahmed Johnson was (for obvious website name-related reasons) the only person we ever had in mind as the inaugural Wrestler of the Week. At least on a personal level, the Pearl River Powerhouse was always more than just a misheard catchphrase, bright red trunks and a walking lesson on the dangers of overeating and steroid use.

For people who grew up watching the WWF, giant men bursting at the seams with muscle (and steroids, naturally) were the main attraction. The only three performers without veins coming out of their veins were Jake Roberts, Roddy Pipper and the Guy Who Carried Hulk Hogan’s Bags, and we were trained to think “intense guy with epic look who also acted strong” was the Platonic ideal of what wrestling should be.

However, after Hulk Hogan — who for all his faults had enough charisma to (mostly) fill the Silverdome — a long string of Warriors and Warlords paraded through the WWF with their tassels and S&M gear trying to recapture the magic of Hulkamania. They achieved varying levels of success, but a lack of charisma for Warlord and discernible in-ring talent (along with a rather severe case of the crazies) for Warrior would ultimately doom them to short-lived runs of any significance, with Warlord’s excitement deficiency relegating him to tag team work and mid-card jobbing for much of his time in the WWF.

That’s because while being able to put on an armbar correctly is a basic building block for success in professional wrestling, what really matters is the ability to interest the crowd in what you are doing. This seems obvious, and it should be. The goal of a professional wrestler is to articulate to the crowd the intensity of what’s going on in the ring through his actions. When you can’t do that, it doesn’t matter how physically impressive you are, you become Nathan Jones: another name in a long line who never quite caught on or made anybody care about what you were doing.

Though too much on the other side isn’t any better, as was the case with Warrior. His complete inability to do almost anything correctly in the ring was nearly as big an impediment to his success to as keeping the fans interested without an ounce of natural charisma was to Warlord. Because charisma is perhaps the most important characteristic that all successful professional wrestlers share (other than timing), Warrior reached much greater heights than Warlord, despite a relative lack of polish in the ring.

But, telling a story through action only goes so far if you can’t speak the very basic language in the first place. Wrestling is just a series of tropes built on top of each other to tell a story. For anyone that’s ever watched Azarenka play Sharapova, grunting and over-the-top gesturing can only last for so long before people start to notice your inability to stop making unforced errors or get any winners off. It’s easy to forget that for all the rope shakes, Warrior’s finish wasn’t a Gorilla Press Slam followed by the Big Splash because it looked cool, but because it seemed like the best way to make him look strong and agile without requiring him to really be either. His “grammar” was terrible, constantly flubbing his moves, working in the wrong direction from the rest of the match and never really knowing his own strength, managing to both be not strong enough and too powerful for nearly half his moves to work in any match. So, when the time came to sell a WrestleMania by himself, it was clear he wasn’t up to the task despite filling the SkyDome the year before. For all the excitement he generated initially, it was the same exact story fans had been seeing for the better part of a year and they wanted something new.

After the steroid trials, and following Hulk Hogan’s DISASTROUS exit from stage left after WM IX/King of the Ring 1993, Vince McMahon seemed to realize that smaller workers who put an emphasis on storytelling in the ring would work if they had even a modicum of charisma. And thus the era of skinny wrestlers my dad thinks he could beat (that’s not a knock against them as much as how hilarious my dad’s perception of wrestling is) holding the belt as the WWF worked through its most fallow period, dropping in the ratings despite the talent at the top of the card with superstars like Bret Hart, Shawn Michaels, Razor Ramon and Diesel putting on quality matches.

And while there were other reasons the product was down, like the insanity of the Day Job era and characters like Bastion Booger, this lack of interest was largely a function of the previous generation’s successes and excesses. Having trained fans for years that wrestlers should look like Davey Boy Smith or Don “The Rock” Muraco AT WORST, while the best of them looked like Hulk Hogan and the Ultimate Warrior, when “short skinny guys” Hart and Michaels were rolling around in the ring with the likes of Hakushi, something had to give.

That something was Ahmed Johnson.

***

After years of guys who looked like members of my family becoming champions, WWF fans were clearly ready for the type of big-bodied bruisers with charisma coming out of their pores (who couldn’t wrestle a lick) that the company had ridden to unprecedented success just a decade before. Which is why, after training for two years, Ahmed Johnson thrust into a series of serious feuds with wily veterans like Jeff Jarrett and Golddust, pushing Johnson rapidly to the top of the card despite a complete lack of experience and a less-than-stellar (read: terrible) understanding of the basics between the ropes.

That didn’t stop fans like me for loving him, though. He, for the first time in a generation (or at least what felt like a generation) gave us exactly what we wanted from a WWF Superstar. He was big, intense and charismatic. Although he couldn’t speak clearly into a microphone to save his life, he could say dramatic things and make the audience feel something. Whether or not that was homophobia is a whole different question, but wrestling fans in the 90’s weren’t ready to ask those questions and the lack of moral ambiguity  — Golddust was bad because he was a jerk, who also happened to be androgynous and enjoyed inciting “gay panic”, Ahmed was good because the WWF said so — answered them for us.

Ahmed Johnson spoke to us on a visceral level, through gestures, taunts and a certain level of bordering-on-reckless velocity at which he hit his spots. That he was not always (okay, more often than not) in the right spot, again, didn’t matter to us. He was there, he was ours, and he was going to beat up people we didn’t like because they had done wrong by him, and since he was us, us.

And while hilarious amounts of weight gain would ultimately be his downfall, his balls-to-the-walls style, done with a footballer’s intensity and the desperation of an impoverished youth got people behind in exactly the way Vince McMahon thought they would. He was, in fact, on his way to a WWF title match, and on the precipice of a truly remarkable career with his status as the first African-American Intercontinental Champion before injuries derailed everything. But, as was always the case with Ahmed, these were largely his fault. From cutting his hand during a spot he’d done in literally every single one of his matches to taking dangerous moves incorrectly or giving those same moves even more recklessly, he showed the danger of giving guys so green such power in the ring.

Which is why, following his injuries and his discarded push to the WWF title picture he essentially fell off the face of the earth. Other workers became tired of working with him, for fear of both their safety and his, and Vince McMahon realized that his Platonic ideal was a pipe dream, as the modern wrestling world had shifted from body slams and clotheslines to suplex and chair shots that a big burly guy who had trouble with the craft would never be safe enough to work with no matter how much charisma they had.

Guys that would come after him, most notably Batista, began going through much more intense training before being given the chance and the idea of pushing them in the ring before they were ready was seen — in large part — as an absolute no-no. While never expected to work at the level of their smaller counterparts and still injury-prone because human bodies aren’t totally supposed to built that way, these men are now expected to be safe with themselves (and even more so) their opponents.

Which is why, Ultimately (pun intended), along with helping to reinvigorate the idea of the “perfect look” McMahon Main Evetner, this will be a his legacy: revamping the requirements for a main event bruiser. Also, I mean, have you seen the Pearl River Plunge? That thing was the tits.

And because we are Juice Make Sugar, we leave you with this, the reason for our name and our favorite wrestling related things on the internet, Fun With Ahmed: