Pro wrestling legend dies in the ring - NineMSN - 15th June 2009

Mitsuharu Misawa, one of the most popular professional wrestlers in Japan, has died after being given a back suplex in a tag team match.

Misawa, 46, and Go Shiozaki were taking on Akitoshi Saito and Bison Smith in a GHC World Tag Team title match in Hiroshima on Saturday when the move was carried out on him.

PHOTOS: Deaths that shook the wrestling world

He suffered a cardiac arrest and was taken to hospital but doctors confirmed his death shortly afterwards, a local police official told AFP by telephone.

Japanese sports newspapers said thousands of shocked spectators watched efforts to resuscitate him in the ring.

The back suplex involves a wrestler picking up his opponent and dropping him onto the mat.

Making his professional debut in 1981, Misawa became popular partly for wearing his trademark mask designed to look like a tiger's head.

He set up wrestling organisation Pro-Wrestling Noah in 2000 and became its president. (Credit: NineMSN)

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Wrestlers and Arnold Schwarzenegger Gambling, Poker Connection - Gambling911 - 4th May 2009

Ric Flair recently signed a deal to be a spokesperson for the lottery in the Carolinas... The Shelby, NC Star ran a story noting that Ric, David, and Reid Flair are scheduled to appear on Saturday at the Rec Center for a charity show to raise for the Shelby City Parks and Police Department. If he attends this would be Reid's first public appearance since his arrest last weekend.

"This is of course totally the opposite direction to Jesse Ventura's stance on gambling, at least publicly," notes Media Man, Greg Tingle.

Tingle made reference to Ventura's support of an online gambling enterprise, BetUS.com, where he was a paid spokesperson for more than two years. Interestingly enough, the state of Minnesota for which Ventura served as Governor, announced last week it will try to block access to online gambling websites from citizens of that state.

Then there is California Governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, a one time friend of both men, who reportedly would support an initiative in his state to legalize online poker.

In November 2004, an advertisement began airing in California featuring Ventura. In it, Ventura voices his opposition to Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger's policies regarding Native American casinos, the very casinos that stand in the way of the proposed poker legislation. Schwarzenegger and Ventura have not spoken in years, according to reports.

In September 2005, Ventura announced on The Mike Malloy Show that he was leaving the U.S. and planned to "have an adventure". In late October 2005, he went on the The Big Idea with Donny Deutsch and reiterated that he was leaving the U.S. due to, among other things, censorship. He has since moved to Baja California, Mexico. (Credit: Gambling911).

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The Wrestler 'really got to me': Piper, by Brian Elliott - SLAM! Wrestling -

If there is one feeling that you get when you read through SLAM! Wrestling's archives, it's that the wrestling business is full of incredible highs, but also torturous lows. For all the adulation, there's a hefty price pay, a price which was recently explored in the movie The Wrestler, which earned Mickey Rourke a Golden Globe award for Best Actor, though controversially, not the Oscar.

One man oft-mentioned by Rourke in interviews about the film, was "Rowdy" Roddy Piper. Piper, of course, embodies the highs and lows of professional wrestling, and is a veteran in Hollywood too, with roles both big (They Live) and small. When he spoke to SLAM! Wrestling about the film, and about how it really was true to life for some wrestlers, it was clearly a highly emotional experience for him.

"As someone who has been in the business for a long time, I don't mind saying that the movie really got to me," Piper said. "I had the chance to speak to Mickey, and I told him, 'I don't know what kinda research you did, but you hit the nail right on the head.' What stood out to me as a wrestler was that at no time did that character ever get physical outside the ring. And that's very typical; most of us are pretty soft outside of the ring.

"But even moreso than that, the thing that probably grabbed me the hardest was the way it ended. All my brothers (wrestling peers) are dead, man. So, at the end, it caught me because it just went to black, and that's how it happens in our world. Look at Curt Hennig (who died in 2003 due to cocaine intoxication) -- he was the picture of health. And boom! Black. Not fade to black, just black. I've been to so many funerals."

A strong theme in the film is that wrestling's mortality rate amongst its high-profile performers is staggering in comparison to that of any other athletic endeavour. A study in the wake of the Benoit tragedy showed that 104 professional wrestlers under the age of 40 had died in the period 1997-2007. Forty of those were full-time professionals, who would were well-known to anyone who had followed the sport for even a short time.

"Thinking about the friends, the brothers I've lost, makes me feel lonesome. I lived with these guys, literally. I wonder why no-one on the outside catches on to what's happening? I guess it's because they don't care.

"Can you imagine what would happen if four Manchester United players died, all in separate instances?" Piper continued, using a European analogy as he prepared to visit the continent with his daughter. "Or if a soccer player killed himself, how much attention it would get? People would wonder what on earth is going on, and there'd be an investigation. But there's no investigation for these guys. When a professional wrestler dies, sure, they do an autopsy, but then they shuffle them on.

"In professional wrestling, we're always making contacts, finding a chemistry. Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier had a chemistry. Roddy Piper and Hulk Hogan had a chemistry. Roddy Piper and Ric Flair had a chemistry. That's the reason these people drew money together. But you can't put all those chemistries in one room, and then start killing every second one. When someone you were that close with dies, it's part of you that goes, too."

The high death rate among professional wrestlers is made all the more poignant by the fact that a large percentage of them are due to heart attacks, believed to be caused largely by the use of steroids, which not only enhance muscularity, but the body's internal organs, too. This practise is also alluded to in the film, as Rourke's character suffers a heart attack, but even though he has an emergency bypass operation, continues to wrestle and even uses recreational drugs. Piper has seen the damage that all kinds of drugs -- performance-enhancing, painkilling, and recreational -- have done to wrestling's performers, and notes that when he wrestled, such activities were close to a necessary evil.

"It's a little different for the wrestlers today, but the schedule I had to keep left you not knowing who you were," said the 54-year-old. "In 1991, I did an afternoon show in Manchester, England, and an evening show in the same building. Then, I got on a plane from Manchester to Heathrow, and Heathrow to Connecticut. I went in and did five hours of voiceovers for television. Then I got on a plane to Alaska, wrestled there, flew back as far as Seattle, and then I rented a car and drove 160 miles home. And that was all in one loop, without a break.

"It's tough to make that route without a shot of whiskey," he continued, using the drink as a nom de plume for other substances. "I can recall being in Pittsburgh and being dragged out of my bed at 11 a.m. to go and kick off 60 interviews for television, and only then could I go back to my bed. So imagine the time-zones; the stop-start, quick, let's go kinda life. It's very difficult do these things, and be on at the same time."

Perhaps of all the overall themes of the movie, the most poignant is that of the lead character, 20 years past his prime but still having had success while at the peak of his powers, cannot afford to pay his rent, even while working at a deli during the day, and wrestling on weekends. For in the real wrestling world of WWE, there is no pension plan for its performers, who are labelled as independent contractors; Piper's recent appearances on Monday Night Raw and expected Wrestlemania 25 gig are paid on a per night basis. For those full-time WWE employees, it is understood that bookings for other companies are out of the question despite their "independent" status. A recently-dismissed lawsuit by three former WWE wrestlers brought this matter into the spotlight, and has noted that while the office staff at the company are entitled to the benefits in later life, the wrestlers are not. In turn, this has led to oft-heard calls for a wrestler's union to finally become a reality.

"You know, wrestling today really just means the WWE, and they're the only ones that could afford to do something like this," Piper said with an air of sadness. "The WWE have done some wonderful things for wrestlers. But we can't keep on dying. The wrestlers give their hearts -- they give the best part of their lives. So as the success goes on, why aren't they being taken care of?

"My generation and the generation before me -- these guys today shouldn't have to go through what we went through. They've got masseurs and therapists now, whereas to save money on the road, we would've ordered old pizza if we could. So we've taken the pain. I just think, 'C'mon guys, if it's a billion-dollar business, which it is, give it (a union) to them.' But wrestlers are afraid for their jobs, so it's probably only going to be pressure from the public that makes it happen."

Be that all as it may -- the drugs, the schedule, and the losses -- Piper's energetic tones, which only change with these more sombre recollections related to the film -- show that if it could be true of anyone, Piper was born to be a professional wrestler. In fact, he believes the wrestling lifestyle may have had the opposite effect on him, than it did for others; whereas some crumbled in the face of wrestling's harsh realities, the business gave him something to cling to.

"Before I got into wrestling, I wasn't going anywhere with my life. I was 15 years old and living in a youth hostel. I was an amateur wrestling champion, a Golden Gloves boxing champion, and I [later] earned my black belt in judo from Gene LeBell, but I didn't know what I was gonna do with my life," Piper said, continuing the story that has become folklore. "Then, I was at a wrestling show at the Winnipeg Arena in Canada, and one guy didn't show up. So my amateur wrestling coach, who was a professional wrestling referee, said 'I can get you $25.' I didn't know anything about professional wrestling, but I went in there and had probably the shortest match in the history of that arena.

"After that, I kept wrestling for the money. I went from doing nothing, to working as much as I could. It was the only kind of economic entity that I could cling to at the time. There were no questions asked; all that the other wrestlers asked was that you gave 100%.

"They were last of the Gorgeous George-era guys, who were finishing as I started, and they were really bitter about the business. But to me, they were great Dads; if you ever needed to learn how to take care of a family, or any advice, you had 300 miles driving in a car to listen to them. Wrestling gave me a shot -- I had to get on the field at some time in my life. For that, I'm eternally grateful."

The end of The Wrestler leaves open for interpretation the fate of Randy "The Ram" Robinson, and if life imitates art, in a similar way the destiny of professional wrestling current combatants is as of yet unknown.

Fans can only hope that more of them find the rewarding life in wrestling that Roddy Piper did, and not the pitfalls that befell Davey Boy Smith, Hercules Hernandez, Curt Hennig et al.

Author's note: Following this interview, Roddy Piper asked that we send a shout-out to Freya Miller. (Credit: SLAM Wrestling).

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"Legends of WrestleMania" video game demo to be released this week, Details on legal process involved - Pro Wrestling Torch - 4th March 2009

THQ will release a playable demo of WWE's "Legends of WrestleMania" video game tomorrow ahead of the video game's official release later this month.

The video game's marketing has focused on the Hulk Hogan vs. Andre the Giant match at WrestleMania III. That match and characters involved, including Bobby Heenan, will be playable in the preview demo.

The process of adding the "legend" characters to the video game started with THQ's creative department, then went through the legal department to obtain licenses for each wrestler.

"First off the process starts here with the Creative team (we basically ask for everybody) and then it gets passed of to our awesome legal team," THQ's Paul Edwards said in a recent WWE chat. "They actually take on most of the work."

Edwards says if an obvious legend is not included on the game, it's most-likely because they could not obtain legal rights to the character.

"Once legal has it they have to go out and secure all of the deals for the talent," Edwards said. "Sadly, they can't always get the talent we want, due to various reasons that our out of our control."

The special edition video game took about a year and half to develop. That included creating new entrance music for wrestlers who never had theme music when they were with WWE.

THQ simplified the gameplay to make it easy for anyone to pick up and play. They eliminated referees, used arenas from WrestleManias 1-15, and limited the game's availability on video game system.

"We didn't make a PS2 version of the game because we really wanted to focus all our effort on the next-gen systems to make the game as high quality as we possibly could," Edwards said. "Basically we didn't want to get too distracted trying to over do it." (Credit: Pro Wrestling Torch)

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Review Summary

Everyone knows professional wrestling is fake. Everyone knows the same about movies. In both cases the eager spectators simultaneously admire the artifice and pretend it isn’t there, allowing themselves to believe that those people down in the ring or up on the screen are truly inflicting pain on one another. “The Wrestler,” Darren Aronofsky’s fourth feature (and winner of the top prize at the Venice Film Festival this year), cannily exploits this parallel and at the same time shows that, in both movies and wrestling, the line between reality and play-acting may be less clear than we assume. Shooting his battered hero mainly in trudging, hand-held tracking shots, Mr. Aronofsky, whose earlier movies include the brain-teasing “Pi” and the swooning, fantastical, unwatchable “Fountain,” here makes a convincing show of brute realism. The supermarkets, trailer parks, V.F.W. halls and run-down amphitheaters of New Jersey are convincingly drab, and the grain of the celluloid carries a sour and salty aura of weariness and defeat. But the story that emerges is disarmingly sweet, indeed at times downright saccharine — a familiar parable of squandered hopes and second chances. It’s a bit phony, perhaps, but to refuse to embrace the movie’s deep hokiness would be to cheat yourself of some of the profound pleasure it offers. — A. O. Scott, The New York Times (Credit: The New York Times)

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Former pro wrestler accused in nursing home death, by Steve Karnowski

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — During his glory days as a pro wrestler, Verne Gagne shared the spotlight with other burly men in trunks, guys with names like Killer Kowalski, Mad Dog Vachon, The Crusher and Baron Von Raschke.

But all of that seemed well in the past until just weeks ago, when authorities say Gagne, 82 and suffering from Alzheimer's disease, apparently body-slammed a 97-year-old fellow patient at the suburban nursing home where they both lived, causing the man's death.

Bloomington police are investigating, but not even the victim's widow wants to see the dementia-stricken Gagne prosecuted.

"It's been so hard on both families," said Greg Gagne, Gagne's son and a former wrestler himself.

Helmut Gutmann, a former cancer researcher who suffered from dementia himself, died Feb. 14, about three weeks after breaking his hip in the confrontation. Authorities ruled his death a homicide.

Police said there was no clear indication of what set Gagne off, and neither man could remember the incident afterward. Behavior and personality changes are common as Alzheimer's progresses, and victims of the mind-robbing disease can become agitated.

Like others with the disease, Gagne had all but lost his short-term memory, while his recollections of long-ago events were vivid. But whether he was suffering a flashback to his days in the ring, as some have speculated, is anybody's guess.

Police said they plan to forward the case to prosecutors by the end of the week for possible charges. Gagne, who has since turned 83, has been moved to another institution.

Joseph Daly, a former prosecutor who is now a professor at Hamline University Law School in St. Paul, said he doubts Gagne will be charged. State law prohibits prosecuting anyone who is too mentally deficient to understand the proceedings or offer a defense. Daly said that would appear to apply to Gagne.

"It's a tragedy for the man who was killed, it's a tragedy for the man's family, but it's equally a tragedy for the family of Verne Gagne," said Daly, who has warm memories of Gagne from his youth.

In the ring, Gagne (pronounced GAHN-yuh) drew on his background as a college wrestling champion in the 1940s, and typically finished off opponents with his trademark "sleeper hold" — a headlock that appeared to make the beaten man pass out.
Gutmann's widow, Betty Gutmann, said she was told by residents and staff members at the nursing home that Gagne picked her husband up and threw him to the ground. She said that they had had one scuffle before, when her husband had been shouting at other residents and Gagne put a chokehold on him. Gutmann wasn't hurt in that incident.

But Betty Gutmann is not blaming Gagne, saying he didn't know what he was doing.
She said most Alzheimer's victims are old and frail, and when they lash out, they don't usually cause much harm. The difference with Gagne is that "he was a professional athlete and was trained to do certain moves. This is what makes him much more dangerous than the ordinary person" with dementia.

Helmut Gutmann fled Nazi Germany in 1936, became a U.S. citizen and joined the Army, where he worked to try to develop an antidote for mustard gas, among other projects, according to his family. He spent 40 years as a cancer researcher at a veterans hospital in Minneapolis.

The company that runs the nursing home refused to comment, citing federal privacy laws.

Gagne was the founder and owner of the American Wrestling Association and wore its championship belt. In the 1960s and '70s, his "All-Star Wrestling" was a TV sensation. The show was a modest affair, taped before small audiences at various Minneapolis TV stations. But it was syndicated on up to 120 channels across the Midwest and as far away as San Francisco, Las Vegas, Phoenix, Salt Lake City and Winnipeg, Canada.

He mostly stopped wrestling in 1981 but remained active in the business. He trained more than 140 wrestlers from the late 1950s up until 1990, including Blackjack Lanza, Larry "The Axe" Hennig, The Iron Sheik, Sgt. Slaughter and Jesse "The Body" Ventura, who later became governor of Minnesota.

Times turned tough for Gagne in the early 1980s with the rise of the glitzier World Wrestling Federation (now World Wrestling Entertainment), which went national on cable TV. Vince McMahon's WWF lured away the AWA's flashiest star at the time, Hulk Hogan, and other fan favorites, Greg Gagne recalled. The AWA, founded in 1960, folded in 1991.

In the 1990s, Hennepin County took Verne Gagne's 58 acres and home on Lake Minnetonka for a park, paying him only a fraction of what the family thought it was worth, Greg Gagne said. By the time that fight was over and the bills were paid, he said, his parents had little money left.

Another blow came three years ago when Gagne was diagnosed with Alzheimer's at the Mayo Clinic, his son said.

"His short-term memory is not there," Greg Gagne said. "But we were up there the other day, and if you talk about his first-grade teacher he can discuss that." He said his father also reminisces about his days as a wrestler and football player at the University of Minnesota.

Daly, the law professor, counts himself among the many saddened by what happened at the nursing home. He fondly recalled a day when he was a teenager working at a local drug store and Gagne came in and struck up a conversation.

"Here he was, talking to a teenager about wrestling, about sports, about life," Daly said. "I remember thinking, `Wow, what a nice person.'"

On the Net:

Gagne Wrestling Association: http://www.gagnewrestlingacademy.com

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Rowdy Roddy's Promo 'Pure Piper', by Mike Mooneyham - 22nd February 2009

There used to be a saying in the wrestling business that a true star could always "talk people into the building."

You didn't necessarily have to have the skill set of a Lou Thesz or the showmanship of a Gorgeous George (although those qualities certainly didn't hurt). But you did have to possess the ability to connect emotionally with your audience and give them a reason to part with their hard-earned cash.

That's exactly what Roddy Piper did last week on Raw when the battled-scarred veteran delivered one of the most impassioned promos to hit the wrestling airwaves in a long time. This wasn't one of Rowdy Roddy's rambling, sometimes incoherent interviews of recent years. This was vintage Piper, long regarded as one of the best stick men in the business, making Chris Jericho a bigger heel with every word that came out of his mouth.

At age 54, Piper didn't need to put himself over or try to steal any thunder from Jericho, who has become one of the most effective heels in the wrestling business over the past year. His interview put the spotlight squarely on Jericho and his Wrestlemania-bound program with actor Mickey Rourke.

It's the kind of stuff that draws fans into the storyline and, more importantly, gives them a reason to care about what happens in the ring. It's also what made Piper such a valuable commodity in the business for more than a quarter of a century.

"It was one of Piper's very best promos in his newer, kinder persona the past decade," said wrestling historian and photographer Mike Lano. "Very passionate, and more shoot than work in terms of everything he said about needing to respect both the business itself and the legends like himself who paved the way for a Chris Jericho to portray his current, cocky, know-it-all self. Piper gave a very heartfelt, unique promo on Raw that we've not heard from him before."

Lano, who has known Piper since his early ring days in Los Angeles during the mid-'70s, says the promo was pure Piper.

"That was as pure Rodney Toombs as it gets ... the truth that some actually need to hear (certainly not the real Chris Irvine) in the biz - delivered with magic and eloquence by the great orator himself."

Piper, who was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin's lymphoma in late 2006, now only infrequently appears on shows in the well-deserved role of "legend." But he proved last week that he can still work the magic and make people believe just like he did during the glory days of Mid-Atlantic Wrestling, Georgia Championship Wrestling and countless other territories throughout the country, as well as the World Wrestling Federation's national expansion in the mid-'80s.

- Give credit to WWE for a marked improvement in character and storyline development in recent months. One puzzling aspect, however, is how they have struggled with an otherwise can't-miss angle with Randy Orton. He's the hottest heel in the business in spite of having Shane McMahon, a 39-year-old non-wrestler, pounding him from pillar to post on recent shows, including No Way Out and the following night on Raw. Orton didn't lose either match, but he needed help from Legacy cohorts Ted DiBiase Jr. and Cody Rhodes. That's no way to portray your top moneymaking heel.

And I'm still trying to figure out why the company recently explained Orton's rash of violent behavior by declaring the self-proclaimed "Legend Killer" had the behavioral disorder IED (intermittent explosive disorder). It's also interesting to note that a number of medical sources link the disorder to steroids as IED can be exacerbated by steroid use based on chemical changes in the individual's brain. Orton, not surprisingly, has ties to past steroid use.

Orton, nevertheless, has earned his way to the top of the WWE food chain. He very well could be the most compelling character in the company, and his in-ring ability improves each week. Hopefully the creative team won't make the same mistake twice by turning him babyface. At least not anytime soon.

- WWE officials are ecstatic over Raw's 4.1 rating for Monday night's show where nearly six million viewers tuned in. The number was the highest since December 2007.

- Steve Austin, who will be inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame in April, was being considered for a main-event match at Wrestlemania, most likely against Orton, but that possibility now seems remote in light of last weekend's title changes at No Way Out.

Now officially on "the road to Wrestlemania," the top bouts appear to be Orton vs. Triple H, with the current WWE world champ defending the title and the honor of the McMahon family (wife Stephanie, brother-in-law Shane and father-in-law Vince); John Cena vs. Edge for the WWE heavyweight title; and "Mr. Wrestlemania" Shawn Michaels vs. The Undertaker with Taker's Mania streak on the line.

Mickey Rourke, who appears to be the sentimental favorite going into tonight's Academy Awards show, is scheduled to be this year's guest celebrity in an angle with Chris Jericho.

Hulk Hogan said Friday on the Bubba The Love Sponge show that it was unlikely he would appear at Wrestlemania 25. The Hulkster said a recent conversation with Vince McMahon failed to produce a mutually acceptable scenario.

Rumors of a possible Hogan vs. Chris Jericho or Hogan vs. John Cena match had been floated in recent weeks. The 55-year-old Hogan has tried to drum up support for a Wrestlemania appearance the past three years without results. Hogan could conceivably be brought in for this year's 25th anniversary show if Rourke decides not to step into the ring.

- Comments continue to come in from the wrestling community regarding "The Wrestler."

Charlie Thesz, widow of legendary six-time NWA world champion Lou Thesz, was among those disappointed with the movie.

"I respect the independent film industry and working within a budget, but more research would have been a good investment," she said last week. "I didn't consider it a statement on the lower end of professional wrestling, as much as on the lower end of humanity. However, if wrestling was the chosen venue, why not have the professionalism in the film industry to honestly represent the wrestling industry? I am not denying the seediness of pro wrestling at its lowest level. I guess it is how my doctor friends feel about medical shows ... we are a little too smart for our own enjoyment."

Thomas Simpson, a professor at the University of South Carolina-Union and a College of Charleston alumnus who helped found the North Carolina-based OMEGA wrestling promotion, credits Rourke with a wonderful performance and thought "The Wrestler" was "an extremely well-made film."

"However, it is as realistic as Aranofski's 'Pi,'" added Simpson, referring to a 1998 psychological thriller directed by "The Wrestler" filmmaker Darren Aronofsky. "Early in the film, when the caricature promoter stiffs Randy 'The Ram' and he just sits there and takes it, that's a fantasy. If you want to see a 'legend' or a 'name' get angry, short their pay. I've been witness to some ugly incidents over the years (none due to my own actions). I found it hard to believe Randy was sleeping in his van. Someone like him would have a mark around who would put him up. Showing him on the gas was also a joke; indy guys his age don't have the means to do it. That movie is just pure melodramatic hooey."

- The proposed sitcom starring TNA star Mick Foley has been derailed, and producer Richard O'Sullivan is none too happy.

The South Carolina-born writer, producer and director is fuming over the fact that Foley backed out of the "Have A Nice Day" project. The comedy was built around Foley's true-life personality. He was to have played himself - a former pro wrestler and best-selling author who was pursuing an acting career. Producers had hoped to roll by this spring.

O'Sullivan says Foley had helped initiate the Lost Colony Entertainment project in 2008 with longtime friend Gail Bleckman of New York-based Amdram Productions. O'Sullivan came aboard as a writer and producer shortly thereafter and scripted the show's pilot episode.

"Mick has said over and over that he was disappointed with the whole show-pitching process because he had shows rejected so many times. And I related to that, and empathized with him. But what I can't relate to is his passive-aggressive BS attitude.

"If Jim Belushi wants a show, his agent or his production company set up meetings, they go in to talk to packagers, get other name talent attached, talk to financiers, then they go sit down with networks and they push to get a show. Mick didn't want to do that. He wanted something hand-delivered to him like (agent) Barry Bloom hand-delivers him his wrestling contracts."

O'Sullivan says that's not how the non-wrestling show-biz world works.

"Nobody hand-delivers anything to anybody in TV or film. Marshall Herskovitz is the president of the Producers Guild of America, and he had to launch a show on the Internet because he couldn't get network distribution. Martin Scorsese has had trouble getting projects launched. Robert Rodriquez has had major projects yanked out from under him at big studios. (Steven) Spielberg has even had to battle tooth-and-nail to wrestle Dreamworks back and get it positioned with the right deal.

"But guys like that keep going. They keep busting their (behinds). They never sit back and say 'Barry, bring me this.' Mick, though, has grown accustomed to having deals brought to him by Barry Bloom on a silver platter. And for the past 15 years, he's had two companies waiting in the wings to vie for his services. He bounced from WCW to WWE then to TNA. He always had that deal waiting for him like the morning paper and yeah, good for him, he broke his body for two decades in wrestling and he deserves to have those deals ... in wrestling. But what he doesn't deserve is the right to (take advantage of) other people on a whim."

O'Sullivan says Foley cited time constraints, specifically his TNA wrestling schedule and family commitments, as reasons for backing out of the project. He also questions whether Foley was really committed.

Foley himself expressed some reservation about the project during an interview several months ago. "You have to sell these concepts to the networks," Foley said in October. "Best I can tell that hasn't happened. I might be so tied up with TNA that I might not have time to make a decent attempt at network television."

O'Sullivan says the sitcom would have given both Foley and TNA major exposure.

"I'm terribly sorry that Hollywood isn't just sitting there waiting for Mick Foley to climb out of the ring and hobble over for a big guaranteed check and a start date. His name means very little outside of wrestling. It did 10 years ago but those days are long gone. His name meant a little when he was WWE and it means a little at Spike, but that network isn't throwing money into production."

O'Sullivan says one thing the show had going for it was "the Mickey Rourke buzz" as a result of the commercial success of "The Wrestler."

"It had a shot of being sold because studios and networks are taking a look at wrestling-related content now. But even that has a shelf life. The window isn't going to stay open for long. Hollywood-at-large isn't 'the Barry Bloom vacuum.' It's a whole other animal. And if he wanted it, he would've worked for it. And if he didn't want it, he had no right to string along a bunch of other people, then yank the carpet out from under them."

O'Sullivan says it wasn't the first time Foley had backed out of a similar project. The wrestler, he notes, last year returned to WWE without informing his partners in the sitcom and didn't call anyone until four days after he appeared on WWE television. O'Sullivan says he blew it off at the time as just being "wrestling."

"They don't play by the same rules as the rest of society."

Several months later, says O'Sullivan, Foley approached another one of the show's producers and indicated that he was unhappy with the WWE work environment and was interested in coming back to the sitcom. O'Sullivan says at the time they were talking to several "name actors" about replacing Foley on the show.

"After scribes and producers had worked for close to a year on the show - writing and rewriting scripts, crisscrossing the country to attach talent (including, at Foley's personal request, former porn star Christy Canyon), and setting up pitches at various television outlets - Foley suddenly backed out of the project again, citing time constraints."

Although O'Sullivan now says his team "has other fish to fry," he's having a hard time accepting what happened.

"What he did to the team working on his show was far worse than what Vince McMahon did to him. Vince McMahon gave him a platform to perform on and paid him handsomely to do it. The folks working on Mick's project were working on spec, based solely on his involvement and participation and he couldn't be bothered to either honor his word or break it off before they got in too deep."

"I was a Mick Foley fan going back to his 'Cactus Jack Manson' days in the late 80's," says O'Sullivan. "I'll never disparage him for his hard work and dedication in wrestling. And deep down, he's probably not a horrible person. But he handled this situation very badly, was utterly selfish and disrespectful to people who were busting their (behinds) for him, and I don't have much respect for him at this point."

- The always-controversial Jesse "The Body" Ventura has taken on Major League Baseball and commissioner Bud Selig.

Noting that there's little difference between WWE owner Vince McMahon, who was accused and later found not guilty of distributing steroids to wrestlers during the early '90s, and Selig, who has overseen the increasing use of steroids in baseball, Ventura called for equally harsh criticism of Selig.

"In the early '90s, the federal government came into pro wrestling and tried to put Vince McMahon in prison for steroid use of wrestlers," the former pro wrestler and Minnesota governor recently told NBC's affiliate in Denver. "My question is: They've now determined 104 baseball players failed their steroid test in 2003 - 104. They indicted Vince McMahon; why aren't they indicting Bud Selig? He's the head of baseball ... it happened on his watch."

The baseball controversy recently hit fever pitch when Alex Rodriguez admitted to using performance-enhancing drugs for three years between 2001-03. Rodriguez was one of 104 players that tested positive in a 2003 test that was supposed to be anonymous and merely for informational purposes.

"What you have here is two sets of law enforcement," Ventura told the TV station. "One set: 'Oh, pro wrestling, let's go after the head of that and put him in prison for steroid use.' And pro wrestling is not even an athletic competition. We went to court and said we're sports entertainment. Here, you have a legitimate athletic competition with 104 guys using illegal drugs - cheating - and where's the indictment of Bud Selig on this?"

"They indicted Vince McMahon. He had to beat it with his own lawyers or go to prison," Ventura said. "How come Selig isn't being treated the same way?"

Ventura, who admitted in the '90s that he used steroids while he was a pro wrestler in the '80s, said he doubts that Selig and the other MLB owners were ignorant of the apparently rampant steroid use.

"You can't tell me for one minute that Bud Selig and the owners didn't know," said Ventura. "They were profiting from it. Baseball was dead in the water until the big home run race between (Mark) McGwire and Sosa - Sammy - and that rejuvenated baseball, made all the profits so Bud Selig could make $17 million a year."

- Condolences to Dory Funk Jr. and Terry Funk on the loss of their mother, Dorothy Funk Culver, 89, who recently passed away in Amarillo, Texas.

- D.H. Smith (Harry Smith), son of Diana Hart and the late British Bulldog (Davey Boy Smith), and T.J. Wilson, who the elder Smith trained, are expected to join Randy Orton's Legacy group. Wilson, going by the name of Tyson Kidd, made his WWE television debut on a recent edition of ECW on Sci-Fi and was managed by real-life girlfriend and fellow Calgary native Natalya (Nattie Neidhart).

Wilson was adopted into the Hart family at the age of 10 after befriending Teddy Hart. He also lived with Harry Smith for several years. He has dated Neidhart since 2001, and the two have lived together for more than five years.

WWE released the talented Scotty Goldman (former Ring of Honor star Colt Cabana) last week in somewhat of a surprise move.

- Robert Roode has signed a five-year contract extension with TNA.

"If TNA didn't step up to the plate, I would have tried a little bit harder (with WWE)," Roode told the Petersborough Examiner in his hometown in Ontario, Canada. "I have an agent working for me as well. It was one of those things where my heart wanted to stay here. And TNA wanted me to stay there too. So they stepped up to the plate and gave me a really nice offer."

- Last week's TNA Impact show set a company record with a 1.3 rating and nearly 1.9 million viewers. The show featured an "empty arena" match between Sting and Kurt Angle. The previous record was 1.8 million viewers on Jan. 15.

- Jim Cornette's much-anticipated book on The Midnight Express is expected to be out in April.

- From the "my how time flies" department: 16-time world champion "Nature Boy" Ric Flair celebrates his 60th birthday on Wednesday.

- Chris "The Masterpiece" Masters and Lodi will appear at an Old School Championship Wrestling show at 6 p.m. March 1 at Weekend's Pub, 428 Red Bank Road, Goose Creek. Former WCW performer Lodi also will defend his Universal title against Johnny Blaze.

Adult admission is $8; kids 12 and under $5. For more information, visit www.oscwonline.com or call 743-4800. (Credit: Mike Mooneyham)

Media Man Australia Profiles

"Rowdy" Roddy Piper

Wrestling

WWE

Mickey Rourke countdown -- one day left

Mickey Rourke is up for Best Actor at Sunday's Academy Awards for his powerful portrayal of Randy the Ram Robinson in "The Wrestler." Win or lose, we know Rourke can act like a wrestler. But how many wrestlers can really act?

Well, there's Duane Johnson, better known as The Rock. He's has significant roles in "The Scorpion King," "The Mummy Returns," "Walking Tall," "Gridiron Gang" and "Get Smart," among other films and TV shows. And while he's not bad as an actor, neither his performances nor the films in which he's worked are awards-worthy.

And there's Hulk Hogan, who's been in "Rocky III," "Mr. Nanny," and "Suburban Commando," among others. But again, while highly entertaining, no one has taken the Hulkster's acting or his movies all that seriously, and for good reason.

Rowdy Roddy Piper may have given the best serious dramatic performance by a current or former professional wrestler when he starred in John Carpenter's "They Live" (1988).

Piper plays a construction worker trying to find work in tough economic times who gradually comes to understand the society is being controlled by non-human aliens. Piper's performance isn't quite on the level of Mickey Rourke's and "They Live" isn't in "The Wrestler's" class but Piper is believable, in a serious role, and the film, despite having an aura of intentional camp, has a well-deserved cult following because its underlying themes about threats to our humanity are as compelling today as they were 21 years ago.

Media Man Australia Profiles

Wresting

Bret Hart rips "The Wrestler," thanks Vince McMahon for his wrestling career - Pro Wrestling Torch - 16th February 2009

Former WWE champion Bret Hart had only heard about "The Wrestler" from colleagues and friends before recently watching Darren Aronofsky's critically-acclaimed film. Now, Hart believes the movie is a "dark misinterpretation" of the wrestling business.

Hart is most concerned about audiences walking away from the movie thinking every story in wrestling has a tragic ending.

"The film isn't so much an exposé of the wrestling business as it really is; rather, it shows us what a lot of people outside the business think it is," Bret wrote in a column published Macleans Magazine in Canada. "I'm uncomfortable that audiences will unconsciously assume every wrestling has-been comes to a tragic end."

Hart, as a former World champ and not a sad former wrestler, says wrestlers will feel embarrassed "by the film's unbalanced portrayal in which there's no respect for our art or our dignity."

In a surprising gesture, Hart also thanked Vince McMahon for creating a mainstream platform for wrestlers to thrive.

"Wrestling has given me a great life and for that I thank Vince McMahon," Hart said. "Vince and I have had major differences, but... it's only fair I give the devil his due, because it's Vince who succeeded in taking pro wrestling out of back alleys and dingy halls like those in the movie and made it marketable, mainstream and just plain fun to watch."

Hart said many wrestlers "swerve off the road" after their careers because they don't know how to live off the road, but not every story goes so far off the given path, such as "The Wrestler" depicts.

"Although the film speaks superbly to the speed bumps all pro wrestlers navigate, I'm happy to report most of us don't swerve off the road quite so severely," he said.

Greg Tingle comment...

Bret Hart makes some very good points here regarding 'The Wrestler'. The film shows one of the worst case scenarios imaginable. One may may choose to make comparisons of Randy "The Ram" Robinson to that of Jake "The Snake" Roberts, "Rowdy" Roddy Piper or whomever, but not all the original WWE and WWF cast is dead. Obviously Owen Hart's untimely death comes to mind, however that was stunt related. Was Owen "forced" or cornered to do the stunt, or not, is something that has been well documented in the past. When boundaries and pushed to extremes that is when people can get seriously hurt or die. I recall world renowned businessman, Sir Richard Branson, taking a stunt fall down a high rise building to launch a Virgin brand product a few years ago. Richard Branson is the ultimate boss at Virgin, so he would have had to agree to pushing the boundaries to the extreme, and he did get bruises up in the progress. How far from death he was, we will never know, just as we don't know how far pro wrestlers travel to the line. Bret Hart is more than qualified to speak and document his thoughts on 'The Wrestler'. It's refreshing to see Hart and McMahon agree on something...The WWE is not 'The Wrestler', however the pro wrestling business does carry one of the highest early mortality rates of any business. John "Bradshaw" Layfield has also made some very valid points in his commentary about "The Wrestler". Some pro wrestlers may have had it even worse that Randy, but thankfully the vast majority have it much better than "The Ram". Bret Hart, Vince McMahon and Mickey Rourke are all champions who have survived very different roads to be in the position they assume today. They are all successful, whatever "successful" is these days. They are all alive and appear happy, and largely enjoy the respect of the masses. Here's to Bret speaking out and defending the professional which made him a legend.

(Credit: Pro Wrestling Torch)

Media Man Australia Profiles

Bret Hart

The Wrestler

Wrestling

The Hitman versus ‘The Wrestler’ - Maclean's - 16th February 2009

This former champion finds the Mickey Rourke movie disturbing and disrespectful

The Wrestler is being lauded as the definitive portrayal of pro wrestling, but I submit that’s only because no one has asked a real wrestling champion about it—until now. In the movie, Randy “The Ram” Robinson was a main-eventer who sold out Madison Square Garden. So was I. The movie opens with a montage of clippings and event posters eerily similar to the ones in my personal collection. I lived that life for real. I liked the movie, and I’m disturbed by it.

In director Darren Aronofsky’s astutely layered vision there are glimpses into a shrouded world considered fake by all but those who live in it—for them, it’s the only reality they know. Nuggets of truth make the story believable. Mickey Rourke’s clairvoyant performance makes it compelling.

The film isn’t so much an exposé of the wrestling business as it really is; rather, it shows us what a lot of people outside the business think it is. With this dark misinterpretation presented in such a plausible and dramatic way, many wrestlers who’ve sacrificed so much to entertain their fans—their bodies, their families—now feel embarrassed by the film’s unbalanced portrayal in which there’s no respect for our art or our dignity. I’m uncomfortable that audiences will unconsciously assume every wrestling has-been comes to a tragic end.

Traditional sports have an off-season but me and the boys were on the road 300 days a year. As a former WWF (now WWE) champion I travelled the world for 23 years straight, 1978 to 2000, wrestling every night, sometimes more than once, plus promotional appearances and working out. It takes over your life 24/7 and, especially before cellphones and email, no matter how hard I tried, it was impossible not to become distant from my family, my kids. Most, maybe all, the boys suffered the same isolation, and soon strangers became family and family became strangers. Almost all who escaped came back, having no clue how to make it on the outside.

Pro wrestlers don’t have medical benefits, a pension plan, or a union. I’m not complaining. Wrestling has been very good to me, despite heart-wrenching disappointments, betrayals, and too many deaths to want to count any more—including my youngest brother, Owen, who fell to his demise from the rafters of an arena on a WWF pay-per- view during an ill-conceived stunt.

I was retired from the ring by an errant kick to the head, on live pay-per-view, which resulted in a concussion so brutal my doctor used the word hamburger to describe the back of my brain. That was followed by a stroke that paralyzed the entire left side of my body. Battling back was the toughest fight of my life by far, and, although I’m left with permanent effects, I’m grateful that when people meet me I can still measure up to their memory of the hero I’d long pretended to be. I still sign autographs all over the world and my fans still come out in droves. I’m humbled when they tell me, time and again, that my wrestling character inspired them in some way to make positive changes in their lives.

Wrestling has given me a great life and for that I thank Vince McMahon. Vince and I have had major differences, but I’ve not minced words and my autobiography (Hitman) is a testament to that. When evaluating the impact of The Wrestler on the wrestling business it’s only fair I give the devil his due, because it’s Vince who succeeded in taking pro wrestling out of back alleys and dingy halls like those in the movie and made it marketable, mainstream and just plain fun to watch. He couldn’t have done it without a talented roster of wrestlers. To go out there and tell a credible and dramatic story with no retakes, in front of a live audience, with nothing but your body, your opponent, and a 20- by 20-foot ring, is an art form that takes dedicated training, physical and mental stamina, athletic agility, charisma and ring psychology to create what I always thought of as mini-movies. Those who perform this art old-school take pride in creating the illusion of realism without actually hurting our opponents.

We don’t know what wrong turn brought Randy the Ram to subsist in desperation on the lowest fringes of some perverted putrefaction that barely resembles the wrestling business I know. Although the film speaks superbly to the speed bumps all pro wrestlers navigate, I’m happy to report most of us don’t swerve off the road quite so severely.

Bret Hart is the author of Hitman: My Real Life in the Cartoon World of Wrestling (Credit: Maclean's)

Media Man Australia Profiles

Bret Hart

The Wrestler

Wrestling

WWE News: JBL describes his biggest fear of ending up broke, like in "The Wrestler", By James Caldwell, PWTorch.com assistant editor

In the current U.S. economic situation, diversifying where the money is coming from and where investment money is going is very important to maintain a healthy financial position.

Eventually we'll see how WWE's incoming revenue and outgoing investments fared in the fourth quarter 2008 and overall year, as the company is delayed in announcing revenue results for last quarter, but WWE Raw star JBL is taking the "diversification" route very seriously.

He reveals in his latest WWE Universe blog that it's partly out of fear for ending up broke, with real-life imitating art through the Shawn Michaels employment storyline.

JBL has diversified his income sources through the creation of Layfield Energy to distribute energy-related products in case the WWE career and financial analyst positions fall through. Yet, he remains haunted by a fear in the wrestling aspect of his job aspirations.

"My biggest fear is to end up broke," JBL said on WWE Universe. "I once saw an old wrestler who had made a lot of money working as the ground keeper at a Red Roof in Charlotte - that has haunted me to this day."

JBL points to his age as one reason why recently watching "The Wrestler" movie "scares me." Motivated partially by fear, JBL doesn't want end up like some of his peers.

"It's one reason I work so hard to not be him," JBL said. "Because there are a lot of guys who have made a lot of money who have ended up broke, and that is very sad."

Link: JBL blog on WWE Universe.

Caldwell's Analysis: It's tough to thrive in the current economic environment because it's easy to live in a state of fear about job security, not only in WWE, but in real-world jobs where valued workers are actually called employees, not bogus independent contractors. Every day, I hear about a friend who's living in fear of losing his or her job, or recently was laid off. I'm sure many of you Torch readers have experienced someone close being in that situation.

It's certainly not a WWE-only thing, but many wrestlers are considered to be paranoid by nature because they're competing for TV spots and PPV headlining-matches in a very subjective environment of deciding who gets those spots. So, when you see a wrestler protect his body in the ring or wrestle a soft match, don't think it's because the wrestler is trying to cheat the fans, but because he has to protect his investment on a constant basis, especially with WWE releasing talent left and right.

Which brings me to another point on the ultimate oxymoron in the world of an "independent contractor being released." How does someone who's considered "independent" of a company become released? WWE doesn't have any right to "release" someone, when the contractor - in the spirit of the law - should control the work he or she is to perform. It's completely ludicrous. End Rant.

Greg Tingle comment...


All respect to JBL for speaking on these things. My late father, who was mates (and workmates) with a few of the Australian pro wrestlers in the 1980s, thanks to the truck driving profession (where a few of the pro wrestlers got their real pay days) told me.. "balance is the key". I'm not certain the term had been coined back then, but he meant Mind, Body and Spirit. We said along the lines of "work on the body and work on the mind, and work hard".

It's in the best interests of the wrestlers (and their loved ones) that they do prepare for rainy day. As we know, the WWE business model can only allow for a certain amount of workers to be on the books at any one time. It's great the pro wrestling can offer huge exposure via the audience and to network big wigs and the like. Standing out from the pack and being very good or excellent at something else has proven to be a largely successful formula. The best wrestlers are usually very good actors, and they take that mainstream, sometimes with assistance from WWE Studios, sometimes in non WWE productions.

Wrestlers doing MMA, indy productions and "shoot interviews" has mixed results for their career path.

The bottom line is that the pro wrestler needs to do their best, in and out of the ring, to help ensure their livelihood for the day that they hang up their tights and are no longer wanted or needed by the world's top and highest paying pro wrestling promotions. The worker needs to protect their best interests, and that includes taking calculated risks and putting on the best show possible, that both promoter and fans will be happy with, but not killing themselves by getting banged up too badly in the progress.

Next time you think about giving a star rating to a pro wrestling match, think outside the square and take into consideration that the wrestler may be pacing themselves or be in the middle of a hectic travel schedule, or even be in great pain.

JBL's holistic approach - wrestling, financials, private business, commentating and the spot of writing, and intelligent choice of life and business partners, appears to be very sound, and would appear to be a good model for other pro wrestlers to follow. Of course, most pro wrestlers haven't got their pro wrestling to JBL's stage, but it sure the hell is something to aspire to.

I witnessed JBL wrestle in person at a roughhouse wrestling venue in Germany approx 15 years ago, and I had no idea he would make it as big as he has. Nothing stays the same forever... careers go in cycles - up and down. JBL was putting the work in way back then, and I had no idea that he was heading for greatness, but he sure worked hard in the match. JBL must have had a plan and a vision, and he knew where was heading - to the top of one of the the professions in the world.

Disclaimer: I joined JBL's Layfield Energy b2b program as a both a mark of respect and support for wrestlers who can see beyond the flashy lights and body slamming. Our website already has WWE, MBS and JBL content, and attracts over 1 million hits per month, so it was a perfect fit. If it makes some good money for me, that's a bonus, but I did as respect and to support JBL's smarts, guts and leadership. It's great to see that more pro wrestlers and starting to "get it", and much like (some) Australian NRL (National Rugby League) players and clubs, are taking steps to plan for the future, for when their bodies or desire won't be up to being just that "slice of meat" that the promoters hired them to be. The business needs more JBL's, and I would think the McMahon and other top promoters would be supportive. It also helps protect their investment and reputations. Here's to success on all levels.

(Credit: Pro Wrestling Torch)

Media Man Australia Profiles

WWE

John Bradshaw Layfield

Layfield's Energy

Wrestling

The Wrestler

'Legends of Wrestling' is a great look back, by Mark Satrang, Pro Wrestling Examiner - 27th January 2009

Today, January 27, 2009, World Wrestling Entertainment released another fantastic DVD set, this one entitled “Legends of Wrestling.”

The 3-disc boxed set features a series of roundtable discussions from long-time wrestling personalities and Hall of Famers in their own right, talking about other legends and important moments in wrestling history. The format features a moderator and four long-time wrestling personalities sitting roundtable style giving their uncensored thoughts on the subjects at hand. The discussion is truly unscripted and unfiltered, as these panelists have known and worked with these discussion subjects for a long time, and all have their own unique thoughts, whether good or bad. It’s a good thing there is a moderator to keep the subject on task or else the charismatic panel would take the discussion somewhere completely off subject.

The first disc features a panel discussion on former World Heavyweight Champions Sgt. Slaughter and “The Nature Boy” Ric Flair. In addition to the discussion a series of matches from both men’s careers are included as extras on the disc.

The second disc follows the same format with a roundtable discussion on Jerry “The King” Lawler and Junkyard Dog, two men who were big stars in their own right in World Wrestling Entertainment, but were also very successful in the “old days” of the territory system.

The third disc is the most interesting of the boxed set, as the roundtable discusses “Heatseekers” in wrestling, which essentially was a talk about controversial or unpopular people and characters in wrestling history. The extras features matches from a variety of “heatseekers,” including the Fabulous Freebirds, Scott Hall, Vince Russo, Buff Bagwell and others. The roundtable talk is definitely the most entertaining of the three discs.

As an extra bonus, Best Buy is also selling three separate DVDs with more roundtable discussions and match extras. One highlights former WWE Champions Andre the Giant & the Iron Sheik, a second is about another pair of former WWE Champions in Hulk Hogan & Bob Backlund and the third and final disc discusses the always wild and controversial characters of Rowdy Roddy Piper and Terry Funk.

These roundtable discussions are absolutely fascinating for a wrestling history nerd like myself. It’s great to be able to “pull back the curtain” and see what these industry greats think of their peers good or bad. And much like having a conversation with any “old-timer,” a lot of funny stories come out the discussion. A lot of the panelists are good friends and you can see that camaraderie come out while they talk with each other.

The match extras are an absolutely great bonus for the DVDs, but the discussions are definitely the highlight of the discs. This is only six of the Legends roundtables as more have been recorded and distributed via WWE 24/7, and I’m sure if this set does well we can be sure to see more released on DVD in the near future.

For a fan old-school wrestling or just wants to learn about wrestling from those who lived it this is right up your alley. The actual quality of the match extras are hit or miss, but the roundtable discussions are absolutely fantastic and worth the “price of admission.” (Credit: Pro Wrestling Examiner)

Media Man Australia Profiles

Wrestling Legends

Wrestling

WWE

Access Exclusive: Mickey Rourke To Get In The Ring With WWE For ‘Wrestlemania' - 25th January 2009

LOS ANGELES, Calif.

Mickey Rourke has received critical acclaim for his comeback role in “The Wrestler,” where he plays a former pro wrestling legend who falls on hard times.

And on the red carpet at the 15th Annual SAG Awards on Sunday night in Hollywood, the actor revealed he’s about to get in the ring in real life.

Rourke will be participating in WWE’s “Wrestlemania 25” in Houston on April 5.

“The boys from the WWE called me and asked me to do it,” Rourke told Access Hollywood. “I said, ‘I want to.’ I’m talking with [WWE legend] Rowdy Roddy Piper about it.”

In fact, Rourke, whose role in “The Wrestler” earned him a SAG nomination for Best Actor (as well as an Academy Award nomination and a win at the Golden Globes earlier this month), said the professional wrestling industry has been extremely supportive of his portrayal of the sport.

“The nicest thing has been the whole wrestling community embracing us,” Rourke said on the red carpet. “The movie was about their world.”

And when he does jump into the ring with WWE, it appears the actor may already have his sights set on an opponent.

“Chris Jericho, you better get in shape,” Rourke added. “Because I’m coming after your a**.” (Credit: Access Hollywood)

Media Man Australia Profiles

The Wrestler

Roddy Piper

WrestleMania

WWE

Wrestling

The great contender, by Stephanie Bunbury - The Age - 11th January 2009

Once considered down for the final count, Hollywood maverick Mickey Rourke is back in the ring and how, writes Stephanie Bunbury.

Couldabeen a contender. Nobody fits that phrase better than Mickey Rourke. Remember how he started out? Hailed as the new Marlon Brando in his breakthrough film Diner (1982), Rourke was then an actor of subtlety and can't-take-your-eyes-off-him presence who was also, just by the way, a smouldering sex god. It took just a few years, however, before he managed to squander those gifts through sheer craziness. Mid-'90s, Mickey Rourke was living on hand-outs from a mate, trying to be a pro boxer even though he was middle-aged. Every now and then he would do a day or two on films that hardly anyone saw or would want to see. Even his psychiatrist told him that out of all the hot talent in Hollywood of the time, only he could fall that far.

But now, quite miraculously, Mickey Rourke has been reborn as not simply a contender, but a hot tip for this year's best actor Oscar. In The Wrestler, the new film from Darren Aronofsky, Rourke plays washed-up Randy the Ram, a man who has lived only for the tinny glory of playing the good guy in the spit-and-sawdust theatrics of wrestling shows. Like Rourke himself, Randy is a clanking wreck after too many crashes on the ropes and cheap steroids; like Rourke, he chose hell-raising over child-raising and is paying for it in loneliness and a grey sense of general regret. Even as a member of the audience, it is painful seeing these parallels played out. Rourke, meanwhile, gives the performance of a lifetime. A Golden Globe nomination is already in the bag.

I met Mickey Rourke for the first time when Sin City premiered in Cannes in 2005. That was his real comeback; even though he was unrecognisable under a comic-book facial prosthetic. The part of Marvin, crazed avenger, was only one of the film's several leads, but everyone was talking about him. Mickey was talking about himself too; in fact, he would tell anyone anything. This was partly a habit born of therapy - at one stage in his chequered life, Rourke was going three times a week - but it was also born of gratitude. "You know," he told the Observer recently, "many years have gone by when no one wanted me to sit in a room and ask me questions ... so I'm thankful for it. It's been a long, long time."

Of course, he had quite a story to tell and, as a showman, he knew it. Young Mickey, he says, grew up tough in a dangerous, almost entirely black neighbourhood in Miami, shielding himself and his little brother, Joey, from an abusive stepfather. He started boxing in his teens, fighting the likes of Luis Rodriguez (who was soon to win the world middleweight title) until a bad concussion brought his time in gloves to an abrupt halt. So he worked his way into the Actors' Studio in New York - he liked the idea, he says, of becoming someone else - and became the Mickey Rourke we know from films such as Coppola's Rumble Fish, Alan Parker's Angel Heart and Barbet Schroeder's Barfly, in which he seemingly channelled the Beat writer Charles Bukowski.

But even after he became feted, famous and, briefly, fabulously rich, Rourke was still a fighter. "Working with Mickey Rourke is a nightmare," said Parker after they made Angel Heart. "He is very dangerous on the set because you never know what he's going to do." There were fights in nightclubs and tantrums on sets; there was the gang of Cuban heavies who went everywhere with him; in 1994, he was charged with assaulting his then wife, Carre Otis. By that time, he was virtually unemployable. "Of course, the drinking and the drugs ... did it," he says. "But the real problem was that I was nuts and angry and ashamed, too, and that shame turned into anger." During his worst period, however, he believes boxing was his salvation. That was when he was training seriously. "It was like a cleansing period. It was the point where I was the most out of control and it was almost the saving grace, because I could go into something and be an animal, which is what I was." But nobody in the film business will ever share that view, because fighting men at least a decade younger than him left him with a face that needed several reconstructions. His nose was rebuilt with cartilage from his ear. Rourke had become a wreck.

Then, in 1996, he failed his memory test and had to stop boxing altogether. That really was the nadir of his life. "I was heartbroken." Otis, "the woman I loved so f---ing much and still love", divorced him in 1998. He had nothing and nobody. He thought about killing himself; only the dependence of his pack of chihuahuas, whose various descendants remain his only companions, kept him here. He likes small dogs, he says, because you can cuddle them and feel their hearts beating. Their tiny lives were his responsibility.

And, as it turned out, he still had acting. After Otis left him, Rourke had a moment in front of the mirror when he saw what others saw - "You know, the armour; it scared the f--- out of me" - and resolved to change his life. It was a long road back, personally and professionally, but old stalwarts helped: Francis Ford Coppola gave him a part in The Rainmaker in 1997; Steve Buscemi had him for Animal Factory the next year and people began to notice that, yes, crazy Mickey Rourke was good again. Now it seems he is making up for lost time. Just this year, he has made The Informers, directed by Australian Gregor Jordan - in which he is reunited with 9 1/2 Weeks co-star Kim Basinger - and an Elmore Leonard adaptation, The Killshot, for John Madden. Another ensemble piece, 13, with Jason Statham, Sam Riley and Ray Winstone, all of whom he greatly admires, is now in post-production. And The Wrestler, of course, is doing its triumphant rounds. Mickey may have been crushed to a pulp back there, but he's back in the ring.

It doesn't take a rocket scientist, Rourke says soberly, to see why Darren Aronofsky wanted him to play Randy the Ram. He is no rocket scientist - he often observes how much smarter, "so Jewish and intelligent" Aronofsky is - but he knew that his own past was about to be exploited. "Working with a guy like Darren ..." he says, trailing off into a heavy sigh. "I knew he was going to want me to revisit some dark places I didn't want to revisit. Because I work a certain way, where I make it all very personal - I'll use things from my life, from my ex-wife to my childhood, so it's real - I thought, 'God, I don't know if I want to work that hard and give that much'." He also knew that Aronofsky would be able to push all his buttons, whether he wanted to work that hard or not. When most of the film's financiers refused to back The Wrestler, originally planned as a blockbuster, if Rourke played the lead, he says he was the only person who wasn't disappointed.

Aronofsky, however, was determined to have him. He wasn't worried that he would be difficult. "You know, he's done so many characters in so many films and somehow he's got through them. So I knew I could get through it with him. It was just a matter of what it would take." So he rewrote The Wrestler as a low-budget film; one remaining financier was prepared to put up $US6 million for a film with Rourke in it, so he cut his cloth accordingly.

Rourke, meanwhile, found that he really did want to do those hard yards. He had recognised that it was important to push himself artistically if he wasn't going to slip into straight-to-video misery again. Besides, he adds with that old edge of menace, he is relentlessly competitive. "I used to love playing football in high school; I don't want to lose a game by one touchdown or one point. And I don't want to lose when I'm acting. Darren's going to challenge me to bring it and to be the best actor I can be, and I'm going to give him every f---ing thing. I'm going to give him my f---ing blood. I got no problem with that at all. People go 'it isn't competitive'. But it is competitive."

Making the film was tough physically, of course; Rourke, now 56 (although he admits only to 52), trained with real wrestlers for three months, trying to learn what they might learn in five years about how to fall and get shaken around. Having been a boxer, he started out with no respect for the choreographed entertainment that is wrestling. He soon changed his opinion. "You still make sacrifices. You still get hurt. When a guy who weighs 230 pounds picks you up and throws you, f---! You feel it in every bone in your body. I'm not a kid any more. Here still hurts. And here. And here," he says, pointing to various bits of his frame.

The mood changed, however, once they started filming and he discovered that his hardest scenes were not the fights but those with Evan Rachel Wood, who plays Randy's estranged daughter, Stephanie. Rourke and Wood did not meet until they did their first scene together; Aronofsky kept them apart, wanting to keep their onscreen relationship "awkward and uncomfortable". For him, Rourke says, that first encounter immediately brought back his reunion with his own father in his mid-20s, wanting to know why he had abandoned his children. It was harrowing. "I didn't even know her name," he says. "We just did it. We introduced ourselves like a week or two later. I couldn't remember her name anyway." By the end of the shoot, he was completely wrung out. "I ended up not being able to get out of bed for four days, crying hysterically. I thought I was dying."

Fragility was always one of Rourke's many attractions; he may not have been boxing when he was at his acting peak, but he still seemed authentically, appealingly bruised. The Wrestler screened for the first time at the Venice Film Festival, accompanied by the usual intensive round of press promotion. Rourke disappeared just before our interview; someone, apparently, had upset him. Had he snapped? The publicist assured us he would return, but was visibly afraid he wouldn't. Twenty minutes went by.

He did come back, genial but clearly tired, the face around the dark glasses even more pouched, battered and puffy than it was when boxing and plastic surgery first put paid to his youthful beauty. He said, quite recently, that he felt more at peace than ever before. "But there's always going to be a war going on inside of me. That's just, I think, my make-up ... I've just got to keep a lid on it." And with the lid back on, the stories start, each one sounding like a script written for Sterling Hayden or Stallone or, indeed, Mickey Rourke himself.

According to a recent feature in the New York Times magazine, in which the writer doggedly chased up Rourke's stepfather and someone who knew him from his teen boxing years, it seems that many of these stories may not be exactly true. None of the amateur boxing officials and trainers he interviewed believed Rourke had been involved with the Golden Gloves competitions, as he claims. His stepfather, Eugene Addis, is now 81; he not only denies abusing his stepsons, which is hardly surprising, but says they didn't even live in the tough part of town where Rourke says he learned to defend himself. And while Mickey was "a helluva athlete", it was his stepfather who marched him down to the boxing gym because he thought he needed toughening up. "The trainer worked with him for six months and said, 'I can't get him into the ring to fight'." When there was a fight after school, he claims, the supposedly streetwise Mickey fetched the man he now called Daddy, too scared to have a go.

But none of this counts for much. A Mickey Rourke who wants to delude himself that he was hard is just as poignant, in his own way, as a Mickey who was hard because he was beaten. At the very least, he grew up with a stepfather who still believes that a bloody nose after school could have been the making of him. Perhaps that later stuff - "the anger and the armour and the toughness and all that macho shit and the craziness and the being unaccountable and not worried about consequences", as he puts it - compensated for his failure to measure up. Whatever, his behaviour was genuinely hair-raising. That we know for sure. Whether or not he fought in the Golden Gloves, he's a real contender now.

Perhaps, come March, someone holding a golden statuette on a Hollywood stage will say his name. I hope so. Because even if he is a fabulist and a fantasist, everyone loves a loser who bounces back to land that killer punch. Anyway, fable has a very honourable history. And as good a film as The Wrestler is, it is Mickey Rourke himself who is the stuff of myth. M

The Wrestler screens from Thursday. (Credit: The Age)

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Movie Reviews

Rourke rebounds with wrestler - 8th January 2009

Mickey Rourke thought his career was over.

The 56-year-old Nine 1/2 Weeks actor believed his acting career was finished, before landing the role of an ageing grappler in new movie The Wrestler.

Now he has been nominated for a Golden Globe and is one of the favourites for a Best Actor Oscar nod for his role as Randy 'The Ram' Robinson, and he can't believe the comeback he has made after 15 years in the wilderness.

The twice-divorced actor said: Randy has been in the twilight of his career for several years. He thinks he has one more game in him - one more shot. He wants to come back again.

I know what that feels like. Randy was somebody 20 years ago and so was Mickey Rourke. When you used to be a somebody and you aren't anybody anymore, you live in what my doctor calls a state of shame. Hollywood is a very unforgiving place, but I took a nosedive all by myself, no one pushed me.

Mickey - who was one of the biggest stars of the 80s before his wild partying and difficult behaviour made him a Hollywood outcast - accepts he only has himself to blame for his enormous fall from grace.

He added to Britain's The Sun newspaper: I was on the bench for 13 years.

Time goes by and you start to think, 'Man, is it really over like everyone says it is?' I would be buying cigarettes and some jerk would say to me, 'Hey, didn't you used to be in the movies?'

Before I got to the top of the mountain I jumped off headfirst. I had a lot of lessons to learn the hard way. I thought I would get back in after a year or two but the struggle to come back has been over 15 years.

BANG! Showbiz (Credit: Fairfax)

The comeback king, by Joe Queenan - The Sydney Morning Herald - 10th January 2009

A few weeks ago, I was cantering towards the marvellous Joan Miro exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York when I heard one of the snooty, condescending senior citizens at the information desk ask her companion: "Have you seen that new Mickey O'Rourke movie?" Her interlocutor, the classic Gotham culture-vulture who has read every uplifting book and watched every heartbreaking film without seeming to have benefited from the experiences, replied: "Not yet. But it's on my list for the holidays."

Here in a nutshell was everything that is wrong with the wave of Mickey Rourke hysteria that began sweeping the US after The Wrestler was released last month. One, it's Mickey Rourke, not Mickey O'Rourke, ladies. Two, smartly dressed culture-vultures don't belong at a wrestling movie; there's nothing in it for you; it isn't aimed at your demographic. And three, all of you Johnny-come-latelies now on the Mickey Rourke bandwagon - where have you been all these years? Where were you when he sucked?

How many of you saw Harley Davidson And The Marlboro Man? Where were you when Mickey was scuffling for nickels and dimes in Masked And Anonymous? How many of you parvenus paid to see The Pledge, Domino, Desperate Hours, or Homeboy? I did.

I raise these questions as someone who has viewed Mickey Rourke as a fixture in his life for the past 27 years, ever since Diner was released. Spellbound, like so many other filmgoers, by Rourke's performance as the mischievous but charming Boogie, I watched in mounting dismay as his once-promising career stalled, then unravelled, then imploded.

His weird, self-destructive behaviour - he briefly retired to take up prize-fighting; he was arrested for assaulting his wife, Carre Otis; he became obsessed with dogs; he started terrifying directors by bringing his own bodyguards to film sets - inspired a 1992 Movieline article entitled "Mickey Rourke for a Day", in which I acted out scenes from the actor's life and films as varied as 9½ Weeks, Wild Orchid, Barfly and A Prayer For The Dying. The article was turned into a film by Gary Johnstone that can be seen on the internet at any hour of the day or night.

The premise of both the film and the article was that Rourke had miraculously abolished the distinction between his personal life and the repellent characters he played, engendering a "cosmic Mickey Rourkeanism". In the television film, I rolled around in the gutter, induced perfectly innocent women to swallow hot peppers, climbed into the ring and duked it out with a professional boxer, barged into editors' offices and threatened to punch out their lights and just generally behaved like a pig.

The film ended up being a paean of sorts to the actor, a backhanded homage, as I was forced to admit that what at first seemed like a walk in the park was anything but. Sure, a determined journalist could keep up the abhorrent Mickey Rourke act for 24 hours or so. But Rourke had to do it every single day of his life. My hat was off to him.

For the next 13 years, I monitored Rourke's strange, perplexing career. Most people I knew were unaware that he was still breathing, much less working. Not me.

Whenever a Mickey Rourke movie was released, I saw it, no matter how bad, no matter how obscure. It was a hobby of mine; one I enjoyed. It was like collecting Spandau Ballet bootlegs. Then, after Darren Aronofsky's The Wrestler began drawing critical raves at film festivals in Europe and Canada last year, I started to feel a certain proprietary resentment towards all the swine jumping on the Mickey Rourke bandwagon.

Yes, Mickey was back. But the cognoscenti and hipsters huddling in the fashionably murky arthouse cinemas didn't even know where he was back from. They didn't know about films like Animal Factory, Thicker Than Blood, They Crawl or Shergar. They didn't know about Out In Fifty, Shades or the horrendous remake of Get Carter. And none of them knew that Mickey had once played St Francis of Assisi in a film entitled Francesco.

I did. I owned it.

The unvarnished truth is this: Mickey Rourke's overnight comeback is neither as surprising nor as precipitate as people would like to believe. Yes, he is the prodigal son returning from the fleshpots but while he was down there he was not merely cavorting. He was working, trying to get his career back on track. In 1997, Francis Ford Coppola (who helped launch Rourke's career with the 1983 film Rumble Fish) gave him a small part in The Rainmaker. It was the first movie of any consequence that Rourke had made since Angel Heart in 1987 and reminded at least some people that beneath all that sociopathic behaviour lurked genuine talent.

For the next 10 years, Rourke laboriously worked his way back into Hollywood's consciousness, if not the public's. He made a lot of bad movies but he also made a few good ones. Today, there is a suggestion afoot that director Darren Aronofsky tracked down the actor in a cave or a homeless shelter and personally lifted him out of the slime to cast him in The Wrestler. But this is not true.

Rourke has been working steadily, admittedly in obscurity, for years. He wasn't simply handed his chance for a comeback. In a roundabout way, he earned it. And when the opportunity arose, he seized it. He answered the bell.

What's more, The Wrestler would not be much of a film without Mickey Rourke. Written by Robert Siegel, formerly an editor at the satirical newspaper The Onion, The Wrestler is essentially Rocky in tights, a Cuisinart collection of hoary cliches that have been seen in films as varied as Requiem For A Heavyweight, The Wild Bunch, Fat City, Raging Bull and not one but six Sylvester Stallone films. The washed-up jock trying to win the affection of his child has been a Hollywood standby since King Vidor made The Champ in 1931. Nor is this the first time we have seen the stripper with the heart of gold (Marisa Tomei; if you're pushing 40 from the wrong side and trying to scare up an Academy Award nomination, this is where you go).

At various junctures, most particularly when a gimpy, bespectacled wrestler assaults Rourke's character with a staple gun, the film verges on farce.

What saves The Wrestler is that it is a film with a heart, and the heart is Mickey Rourke's. The Wrestler recounts the saga of Robin Ramzinski, a burned-out fiftysomething who was once one of the top draws in the professional wrestling circuit but is now a has-been living in a North Jersey trailer park. Busted up and broken down, "the Ram" is trying to pull his personal life back together as his career winds towards its end.

This in itself is a bitter-sweet set-up, since professional wrestling is viewed by the general public as a white-trash sham; in effect, the Ram is trying to recapture the glory of a profession that has no claim to true glory. But while it is true wrestling is staged and choreographed, the stunts themselves are dangerous and people get hurt in the ring, just like acrobats, lion tamers and circus clowns. The violence may be simulated but the pain of simulating violence is real.

Rourke, for the first time in decades, radiates the sweetness and innocence that he first displayed in Diner, the film that made him famous. Diner vaulted Kevin Bacon and Ellen Barkin to fame but it is also the film that gave us the appalling Daniel Stern and the oafish Steve Guttenberg. That hams like Stern and Guttenberg should have enjoyed far greater box-office success than the truly gifted Rourke is one of the bitter-sweet ironies of his comeback in The Wrestler.

The saga of Mickey Rourke is one of the saddest in the history of motion pictures. Some men have failure thrust upon them but Rourke went out and seized it by the throat. At a very early point in his career, Rourke made a fatal decision to turn down roles where he would play the man in the white hat and to instead appear in an interminable series of films lionising slimeballs.

The movie business is not hard to figure out. The public wants to see actors they admire playing characters they like. Henry Fonda played a villain exactly once in his career, as did Harrison Ford. Tom Cruise was a superb villain in Michael Mann's Collateral but he then went back to his day job, playing a slew of perfectly capital fellows.

For whatever the reason, Rourke either never figured out how the movie industry works or simply rejected its ground rules. Now, all these years later, the bulb has lit up. Where he goes from here is unclear; his face is a wreck; his leading-man days are over.

But in an era of creampuffs like Josh Hartnett and Orlando Bloom, it's great to have him back.

The Guardian

The Wrestler is out on Thursday. (Credit: The Sydney Morning Herald)

Media Man Australia Profiles

Movie Reviews

The Wrestler (2008 film) - Wikipedia

The Wrestler is a film directed by Darren Aronofsky and starring Mickey Rourke, Ernest Miller, Marisa Tomei and Evan Rachel Wood. Production began in January 2008. The film premiered at the 2008 Venice Film Festival, winning the Golden Lion Award. Fox Searchlight acquired rights to distribute the film in the U.S.; it was released in a limited capacity on December 17, 2008, and will be released nationwide on January 16, 2009.

Plot

Randy "The Ram" Robinson (Mickey Rourke) is a professional wrestler from the 1980s, twenty years past his prime, wrestling on the weekends in independent and semi-pro matches in the Elizabeth, New Jersey area, for extra money. After a show, a promoter proposes a 20th anniversary rematch with his most notable opponent, the Ayatollah, which sold out Madison Square Garden the first time around. Randy agrees, hoping this high-profile match could help him get back to the top.

Randy goes home and is locked out of his trailer for not paying the rent. He takes pain medication and falls asleep in the back of his Dodge van. The next day he goes to work, loading boxes at a supermarket. At night he visits a strip club where he has taken a liking to an older stripper named Cassidy (Marisa Tomei). He continues the training rituals for his wrestling appearance, including steroid usage. The next show is a particularly brutal "hardcore" match, in which Randy and his opponent (real life wrestler Dylan Summers, a.k.a. Necro Butcher) use various weapons on each other including thumbtacks, staple guns, barbed wire and glass. Randy suffers numerous gashes, including a deep cut on his chest from the barbed wire. Post-match, Randy is treated by a doctor backstage, but has a heart attack soon after and collapses.

The heart attack necessitates a bypass operation and Randy is told by the doctor that his weak heart cannot support steroids or even wrestling anymore. Randy cancels all his upcoming matches. Faced with his mortality, he tells Cassidy about his heart attack and tries to woo her. She warms to him at first (explaining that she has a son and plans of a move to Trenton) but quickly diverts back to her rule of not dating customers, leaving Randy alone in a bar. Randy visits his estranged daughter, Stephanie (Evan Rachel Wood), but she curses him out for being a bad father. On his second visit to Stephanie's place, Randy brings a thoughtful gift and blunt words about how he messed up as a dad. They agree to meet for dinner.

After watching a wrestling match, Randy gets drunk and has sex with a woman, sleeping the entire next day from exhaustion - and, thereby, missing his dinner date with Stephanie. He goes to her house in the middle of the night, where she angrily tells him he has never been and never will be a father to her. Randy goes to work, where he deliberately cuts himself in the deli meat slicer, screams at his boss, and quits his job. He calls up the promoter to say the Ayatollah match is back on. Before the match, Cassidy unexpectedly arrives (having quit her job to be with him) and apologizes, urging him not to wrestle for the sake of his health. Randy explains that the real world doesn't care about him, and the only place he belongs is in the ring - the fans being his true family.

Randy gives an emotional speech to the crowd. During the match, his heart strains, but he continues despite the Ayatollah's concern. Randy fights through the pain, and slowly climbs to the top rope to deliver his signature "Ram Jam" finisher. In the final shot he salutes the fans, leaps from the ropes, and the screen fades to black.

Cast

Mickey Rourke as Randy "The Ram" Robinson
Ernest Miller as Bob/"The Ayatollah"
Marisa Tomei as Cassidy / Pam
Evan Rachel Wood as Stephanie Robinson
Todd Barry as Wayne
Also appearing in the film are actual professional wrestlers: Necro Butcher, Nick Berk, DJ Hyde, Johnny Mangus, Whacks, Kid USA, Ron Killings, Claudio Castagnoli, Romeo Roselli, John Zandig and Nigel McGuinness. In addition, several local New Jersey wrestlers from Bodyslam Wrestling Organization and NWA Liberty States appear in the crowd during Randy's match against Tommy Rotten.

Production

The Wrestler was scripted by former The Onion writer Robert Siegel and entered development at director Darren Aronofsky's Protozoa Pictures. Actor Nicolas Cage entered negotiations in October 2007 to star in the film's lead role as Randy "Ram" Robinson, a former wrestler. The following month, Cage left the project after attending a Ring of Honor show in New York City, and Mickey Rourke replaced the actor in the lead role. According to Aronofsky, Cage pulled out of the movie because Aronofsky wanted Rourke as the lead character. Aronofsky stated that Cage was "a complete gentleman, and he understood that my heart was with Mickey and he stepped aside. I have so much respect for Nic Cage as an actor and I think it really could have worked with Nic but… you know, Nic was incredibly supportive of Mickey and he is old friends with Mickey and really wanted to help with this opportunity, so he pulled himself out of the race." Production began in January 2008, with filming taking place in Elizabeth, NJ, Linden, NJ, Rahway, NJ and New York.. Scenes were also shot at Alhambra Arena in Philadelphia. Afa Anoa'i, a former professional wrestler, was hired to train Rourke for his role. Anoai brought his two main trainers, Jon Trosky and Tom Farra to work with Rourke for eight weeks. Both trainers also have parts in the movie.

Music

Clint Mansell, the composer for Aronofsky's previous films, π, Requiem for a Dream, and The Fountain, reprised his role as composer for The Wrestler. A new Bruce Springsteen song, also titled "The Wrestler", plays over the film's closing credits.

Awards and nominations

The film won the Golden Lion Award at its premiere at the Venice Film Festival. On December 11, 2008, it was nominated for three Golden Globes: Best Actor in a Motion Picture Drama for Rourke, Best Supporting Actress in a Motion Picture Drama for Marisa Tomei, and Best Original Song for "The Wrestler".

Reception

The Wrestler has received overwhelmingly strong critical acclaim.

Rotten Tomatoes reported that 98% of critics gave the film positive write-ups based upon a sample of 111, with an average score of 8.2/10. At Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, the film has received an average score of 81, based on 27 reviews. Mickey Rourke, in particular, has received considerable critical acclaim for his performance in the film. Alonso Duralde, of MSNBC, said, "Rourke's work transcends mere stunt-casting; his performance is a howl of pain that seems to come from a very real place." The movie currently holds a ranking of 8.7 on IMDB and is #66 on that websites Top 250. Todd McCarthy, of Variety, said, "Rourke creates a galvanizing, humorous, deeply moving portrait that instantly takes its place among the great, iconic screen performances."

Ben Mankiewicz, from At The Movies, said, "To put it simply, this is the best film I've seen this year."

Website

The Wrestler