While watching Super Bowl LV, my brother brought up very specific achievements in sports. See, there was a time when the only achievements of note were ones that are documented in their stats. Being grand slam champion has always been there.
Stuff like most career home runs, most touchdowns, most hat tricks in a single game. How about most career 3-pointers or career yardage? Now, you’ll hear some really specific or obscure achievements.
An example would be the most successful passes thrown by a left-handed quarterback during an AFC game. Now, this isn’t an achievement or career fact but if it was, who cares? I’m sure fans of left-handed quarterbacks and receivers would but ultimately who cares?!
Specific Achievements in Wrestling
Sometimes, commentators will mention some obscure or super-specific achievement where it’s either “Oh okay” or “That’s interesting.” Being a wrestling, metal, and video game fan for decades I sum up knowledge of history in those areas as hostage knowledge.
This is knowledge that is at its most useful if it’s a hostage situation where you can only leave unscathed if you can tell them what color mask was Rey Mysterio wearing when Kevin Nash torpedoed him into the production truck.
Here are three that I always found annoying.
Xth Grand Slam Champion
Look, a wrestler can just be announced as a Grand Slam Champion. While there are a few of them depending on the company, I don’t care or need to know that they’re the 19th Grand Slam Champion in history.
If a wrestler isn’t the first or at least the tenth person to become Grand Slam Champion, knowing that they’re the 22nd Grand Slam Champion is just a random fact.
I’m sure the wrestler isn’t trotting around the country announcing themselves as the 18th Grand Slam Champion. An exception is if these titles are recognized as part of a collective by fans and the industry.
For instance, if CZW’s Best of the Best tournament, ECWA’s Super 8, and PWG’s BOLA tournaments were all part of the Indy Grand Slam.
Perfect, it makes total sense because those are long-running and mostly respected annual indy tournaments.
“This Wrestler Is the Only Person to Hold the World Championship in These Three Companies”
It’s the specific companies mentioned, really. Unless these companies were all around the same level exposure-wise or even just all companies with national exposure—it’s not crucial to announce it.
It’s definitely a stat because it happened and they hold that distinction but is it really worth mentioning that they held the AAA Mega Championship, the Lucha Underground Championship, and the WSX Championship?
Like one of those titles and the company itself is not like the others.
Martial Arts Belt Rank
I love martial arts. A combination of 90s ESPN 2 on the weekend with my mom and just the 90s martial arts boom sparked that. When I would hear a wrestler was a martial artist that was just dope.
Steve Blackman, Al Snow, Glacier, The Cat—I was all over that stuff and would go to the library to find old issues of Black Belt to see if I could find some of them.
Now that I’m older and I re-watch shows it’s more like if it isn’t a black belt why bother announcing their belt rank? There was a time when a martial artist in wrestling was either a novelty or just super dangerous.
Just be vague but colorful like J.R and say “He has educated feet” or “This man has a karate background.” That sounds more impressive and has a mystique to it. How good are they? What rank are they?
On top of that, don’t mention it if it isn’t reflected in their style or if they aren’t a notable champion. That had to be added because you have an odd case such as Bad News Allen.
He was an Olympic bronze medalist in judo but the guy was a brawler-brawler in wrestling who used an enzuigiri as a finisher. Without that high award, you’d never notice he had a background in judo in WWE.
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