![]() By Graham "GSM" Matthews Since meeting him at an independent wrestling event in December 2011, I have been a huge fan of Mick Foley. His time in TNA from 2008 and 2011 felt lackluster and I always thought they never used him to his full potential. However, upon his return to the WWE in November 2011, I knew at that very moment that he was back where he belonged. I know he and Vince McMahon weren't on the best of terms towards the end of Foley's prior WWE tenure in the summer of 2008, but the signs of a potential Foley return to WWE were evident when WWE promoted his book entitled "Countdown to Lockdown" (Lockdown is one of TNA's most premiere pay-per-views) on their programming when he was still under contract with TNA. That was unprecedented, so it was only a matter of time before Foley was back in WWE's good graces as well as their squared circle. That being said, I was ecstatic to see WWE make a documentary on Foley earlier this year. This couldn't have come at a better time, since Foley was just recently inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame a part of the Class of 2013. I have always been a fan of Foley's writing style, so I knew his documentary was going to be equally excellent. I found time to watch the DVD (solely the documentary portion, not the matches) this past week on Netflix and was overly impressed with the ending product. ![]() By Graham "GSM" Matthews I have always heard that "Beyond The Mat" was among one of the best professional wrestling documentaries of all time, so I thought it was high time I checked it out. It definitely disappoint, either, despite the fact that it was made close to 15 years ago. For those unaware, this documentary was not produced by WWE, but instead by a longtime fan that had pursued other endeavors and wanted to go behind the scenes of pro wrestling. Essentially, this was one of the first wrestling documentaries ever released, much earlier than when the fantastic career retrospectives of CM Punk, Edge, Chris Jericho were available to the masses. Instead of looking back on the career of a single Superstar, it gives viewers an in-depth look on what goes on outside of the ring and highlights the history of the sport entertainment featuring the likes of Mick Foley, Jake "The Snake" Robert, Terry Funk and others. Early on in the video, Barry Blaustein (the man behind the documentary) follows two aspiring wrestlers hoping to land a spot in the WWE (or the WWF as it was called at the time). The two wrestlers trained hard with their mentor at their wrestling school for many years before being called by WWE for tryout. Despite impressing the officials during their match in front of the live crowd, they were not ultimately given a contract as revealed at the end of the film. This still rings true many years later, as I have heard of many young athletes having great matches before backstage officials but not given a contract for one reason or another. ![]() By Graham "GSM" Matthews In my free time in recent months, I've gone back to watch WWE documentaries that I've never seen before. I watched them because I heard good things about them, or because I found them interesting. I hadn't heard much about "Randy Orton: The Evolution of a Viper" DVD set, but I certainly intrigued me, so I checked it out just recently. However, having watched it after already viewing the documentaries of CM Punk, Chris Jericho and Edge, I found this particular DVD to be a bit underwhelming. It's no secret that Orton's life is essentially an open book, so many of the problems that he has encountered over the course of his career were already common knowledge. I was already well aware of his atrocious attitude from earlier on in his career, so that part of the documentary basically felt like a retread. I had also already heard of Orton's issues with drugs in the past, and they managed to go in-depth with that in the film, but not by much. I found it strange that not much was said about his childhood. Maybe it was because he lived a perfect life being the son (and grandson) of a wrestler and all, so it didn't look like he had to go through much adversity in his adolescent years. |
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