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BIG IN JAPAN  
Southern Thanksgivings from the
Tokyo Kill-Bot Factory 
 November 25, 2005

by Rocky Swift
OnlineOnslaught.com/CitizenScholar.net 

 
As I lay in stasis, jacked into the hive-mind, I recently snatched out of a trillion buzzing synapses that the announcer situation in U.S. wrestling is in flux. My computation obligations to the collective at this Japanese industrial monolith are unremitting, preventing me from further investigation into the matter. But now during the daily 15-minute respite, during which a nutritious paste of miso and cadmium are pumped into tubes jutting from my spine, I have a spare moment to hearken back to my country boy days and the Southern security blanket of wrestling and Jim Ross.
 
Thirty dollars wouldn't necessarily buy you quality matches on a wrestling pay-per-view, but with Jim Ross, it would at least buy you a "thank you." Over the past couple decades, that cordiality helped port over hordes of wary Southerners to the dread New York product, and it has often been a cooling salve for the burning discharge of crummy television.

 
I grew up in Georgia, and like many working class families in the South, we liked our wrestling. In particular, we watched the NWA/WCW variety that came on right before Braves baseball on the Superstation (6:05 p.m., baby, 'cause Turner liked to psyche out TV Guide). For us, paying $30 for a pay-per-view was no small expense. But it was a bonding experience, and we broke down every once in a while, punching in the magic code into the cable box and settling in with pizza and a gallon of sweet tea.

More often than not, we bought the WCW product. Part of the reason was the greater focus on wrestling, and I'm sure regional bias had something to do with it as well. But in our house, a lot of our allegiance was due to Ross and the way that he communicated his company's appreciation for our money and viewership.

Around the opening of the show, Ross would invariably say something akin to: "As always, we thank you very much for inviting us into your homes tonight for this jam-packed..." We liked that, and it made us loyal customers. Everyone likes courtesy, but perhaps Southerners observe it more closely than people in other regions (that is not to say that the South is a bastion of kindness and acceptance, for it is not). Ross understood that.

I don't believe Ross was supposed to succeed in the WWF/E. As was the case with Dusty Rhodes, Tony Anthony, Buddy Landell and others, a lot McMahon's talent acquisition in the early-to-mid 1990s seemed intended to spite the South rather than welcome it as an audience. Adorned with polka dots, plungers, togas and the like, legends from the territories were brought in and set up to fail.

But Ross lasted. He gradually rose through the Fed's announcing ranks, starting with the lowly standup interviews backstage. When Psycho Sid flubbed his lines at a PPV and asked for a reshoot, it was Ross by his side who said, "We're live, pal." His empathy with fans — with both our excitement and frustration at the in-ring product — eventually earned him the lead position. But not before one last dash of stereotype: a cowboy hat. In simple theater, a goateed person is evil, glasses denote intelligence, and a cowboy hat tells you that the man under it is a country bumpkin.

Ross brought with him his trademark "thank you"s to the fans when he assumed the lead announcing duties at the WWF/E. It was an explicit reminder that at least someone in the company appreciated our tuning in and paying out. In more coded language, he communicated with the viewer a shared weariness over matches comparable with bowling shoes or wrestlers described as "hoss" or "methodical."

None of us could truly see into the clogged, enlarged heart of James B. Ross, so there was no way to know if he really meant these sentiments. Perhaps on weekends he set fire to orphans and poured lye on crack babies, all the while laughing at how he'd fooled the wrestling world into thinking for yet another week that he was a virtuous good 'ol boy. What mattered was that I believed that Ross cared, and in the swirling tempest of fakery and misdirection that defines wrestling, I needed that anchor of belief. When Edge would badly whiff an enzuiguri, I didn't believe his opponent was hurt at all, but when Ross said he saw a "glancing blow," somehow I could believe it just enough.

A good wrestling show is more than the sum of its parts (gym rats, spandex and fireworks), but this transcendence is the product of constant deception and abuse of the fan's common sense. In the glow of a good performance, we can forgive; but in all too frequent misses, our suspension of disbelief snaps, and we feel cheated and stupid. In a business built on lies, Ross was a crucial reserve of goodwill, built up through innumerable "thank you"s and silent rapport. His familiar twang reminded us of better days, and his tone silently encouraged us to hang in there through the Diva Search.

Palsy, age and ever-swelling jowls slowed and deepened Ross's voice. But the transformation was no less beautiful or sublime than that of corn mash into bourbon, orphan into campfire, man into glycerine-lubricated borg-machine. Were they not necessary hardware for plugging into the biogenic rendering network (and assuming I still had free will), I would gladly trade these lobe jacks for my bygone human ears, so that I could hear Ross exclaim one more time:

By Gawd.

Even fixtures change, and Ross is proof of that. His disappearance indicates that he has now gone into pupae stage, which will last another seven years, during which he will gorge on clover and tree bark. Having expanded in size 100 fold, his outer skin will harden and crack, and he will emerge a new being, monstrous and tentacled. The circle of life begins anew.

E-MAIL ROCKY
BROWSE ROCKY'S ARCHIVE

Rocky Swift is a columnist for www.CitizenScholar.net, and a teacher of English in Japan.


  
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