Chair Shots to the Head Are Fine. Just Watch Those ‘Unprotected’ Ones. Got That?

[posted 4/7/11 to http://wrestlingbabylon.wordpress.com]


Sean Radican, who writes for Pro Wrestling Torch, is a nice guy who seems to suffer from an acute, perhaps terminal, case of rationalizing fandom. Radican just gave the world what it doesn’http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gift need in the wake of the WrestleMania chair-shot controversy involving Triple H and the Undertaker: an essay on the crucial difference between choreographing a spot in which a guy gets hit hard with a steel folding chair right on the noggin, and one in which the guy either did or might have had a chance to stick a hand up in there just as the steel folding chair was being swung hard right at his noggin.

And you thought bullfighting was sick.

See “RINGSIDE WITH RADICAN: A response to Muchnick’s reporting on the Undertaker chairshot at WrestleMania,” http://pwtorch.com/artman2/publish/radicanstake/article_49137.shtml.

I agree with Radican that the incident Sunday was less appalling than “if Undertaker had simply offered up his head to take the entire force of the blow from the chair Triple H swung at him.” Glad we’re setting the bar so high! A poke in the eye with a sharp stick would have been better still, if our goal as a society from pro wrestling spectacles were to shift the epidemiology away from cumulative and massive brain damage and early death, and in the direction of instant blinding.

As for the rest ...

“I exchanged messages with Muchnick about the matter and gave up because it seemed to be splitting hairs to me,” Radican writes. But then he changed his mind and wrote the Torch piece after having “some time to reflect.” Sad to say, but Sean should have stuck with his initial instinct. If there’s one thing worse than splitting hairs, it’s splitting the brain cells under the hairs – which is exactly what this kind of thinking continues to enable.


Irv Muchnick