Gimmick Some Lovin': The Arkansas Hog Pen Match

In each edition of Gimmick Some Lovin', we take a look at one iteration of a gimmick match available on the WWE Network. Some are iconic for their success, others for the extent to which they flopped, and some just... happened.

We defined a "gimmick match" as, in any way, adding a rule/stipulation to or removing a rule from a match, changing the physical environment of a match, changing the conditions which define a "win", or in any way moving past the simple requirement of two men/women/teams whose contest must end via a single pinfall, submission, count out, or disqualification.

This week marks the anniversary of the day the world lost wrestling giant Haystacks Calhoun, a behemoth of a man who wrestled in the world's largest pair of overalls (probably) while depicting a simple country farmer.

Because I needed even a flimsy justification to watch this match again much of Calhoun's work is either not on the WWE Network, low video quality, or not fitting in the spirit of this column, we're honoring his legacy with a look at another use of the overalled country farmer character in his signature match: the December 1995 Arkansas Hog Pen Match pitting Henry O. Godwinn against the Connecticut Blueblood Hunter Hearst Helmsley.

Pictured, not just because it's the nadir of future Godwinn ally Tony Anthony's career, the counter to Bruce Prichard's argument that creative doesn't put someone on TV without considering them a potential main eventer.

Don't Mix Up Your Timecards

Beginning in the early-to-mid 1990s, the American economy changed pretty rapidly and spread prosperity like few had seen before; the dotcom bubble was years from bursting, and the subprime bubble was not yet inflated.

Regardless of who one credits for its inception or blames for its demise, this economy somehow didn't make everything better for some professions, namely race car drivers, plumbers, professional hockey players, accountants, trash men, and striking baseball mascots, because men from all of those noble lines of work sought a second paycheck between the ropes of the World Wrestling Federation.

Regardless of the performer's day job, a few characteristics could be assured for each of these gimmicks, as they all featured oddly impractical hybrids of wrestling gear with outfits specific to those jobs, awful pun names for the characters themselves, and even worse puns for the men's finishers and signature moves.

Henry Orpheus (an awesome middle name that I didn't know was attached to this character until I did the research for this column) Godwinn (get it?) was a product of this line of creative writing, combined with Vince McMahon's oddly alternating disdain and pride for his own rural North Carolina upbringing.

An Arkansas pig farmer wearing overalls, a t-shirt, and a John Deere cap, Godwinn was initially a heel enforcer for Ted Dibiase's Million Dollar Corporation, using his trademark slop bucket to shame enemies of the corporation until Dibiase revealed his disdain for the yokel. Godwinn retaliated by dumping the contents of the slop bucket onto Dibiase himself, and thus seceded from the faction.

If rumors are to be believed, let's hope nobody backstage thought the slop was intended for Sunny on that night.

Long before things like the Wellness Policy, guaranteed contracts, and "caring about performers' wellbeing", there were squash matches featuring moves like this one.

Terra Fallin'

Helmsley, meanwhile, had debuted in the summer of 1995 as a somehow more entitled younger version of the Million Dollar Man; while it seemed like Dibiase had somehow earned his wealth (most likely through some very 1980s Wolf of Wall Street shenanigans), Helmsley was portrayed as the heir to a great deal of generational family wealth.

Helmsley was Connecticut Old Money, the type of people McMahon now counted as neighbors (and, reportedly, hated, despite his own showy affluence and running a family business). Upon completing his feud with Corporation member Sycho Sid, Godwinn and Helmsley began feuding for rational and well-founded personal issues featuring nuance and depth.

Pictured: the classic moment that set up this epic feud, one of the most memorable moments in all of professional wrestling in 1995.

Either that, or Helmsley and Godwinn were thrown together because the clash between their characters gave McMahon, on commentary, loads of opportunities to shout, "Yee-haw!" and revel in the embarrassment of a stand-in for his neighbors.

Knowing about the backstage climate at the time makes it all the funnier to see the entire Bone Street Krew taking on a team featuring the whipping boy of the Kliq.

Helmsley and Godwinn fought on opposing Survivor Series teams at the 1995 edition of the event, Godwinn on an Undertaker-led Dark Side team united only by onscreen babyface alignment and backstage boredum busters, and Helmsley on Jerry Lawler's Royals team, featuring Lawler, Helmsley, "King" Mabel, and the evil dentist Isaac Yankem, D.D.S.

The match featured some back-and-forth between the two teams until 'Taker (presumably) decided, "This is dumb," and eliminated all four members of the opposing team in quick succession. Helmsley was the third (and last in-ring elimination), falling by chokeslam before Mabel ran away in fear.

Because of the bad blood still simmering from this match reasons, Helmsley and Godwinn continued their feud into December, with Helmsley attacking Godwinn after a match and Godwinn retaliating by slopping himself before a Monday Night Raw encounter to ensure the rich boy would encounter the maximum amount of filth in their matchup.

There's that Killer Kowalski training at work.

Helmsley slipped repeatedly on the slop, meaning one would reasonably assume the heel was embarrassed enough to end the feud. Regardless, it was announced that the pair would finally settle their differences in the company's first ever Arkansas Hog Pen Match at the December In Your House event.

This match was held in the Hersheypark Arena, and it's a wonder that the health department didn't have something to say about this amount of pig excrement in such close proximity to a candy factory.

The Rules

Tony Schiavone could learn something about the rules of a match being "simple" from this contest. Basically, the first man to throw his opponent over the fence of the hog pen set up near the entryway would be declared the winner of the contest. It's the perfect intersection of a reverse battle royale and schadenfreude.

Also, because there's not enough rural stereotyping happening tonight, the not-at-all-complicated rules of this match necessitated the above HIllbilly Jim as special referee.

I wonder if we could give Vince a coronary by time-traveling to 1995, going to Gorilla Position during this match, and telling him that he's looking at his future son-in-law.

The Match

The best adjective to describe everything in the introductions to this match is broad. Subtlety has absolutely no place in this segment, and the commentary (starting with McMahon reveling in the sight of the pigs to start and continuing with Lawler's Jeff Foxworthy ripoff jokes) to Helmsley's pantomimed prestige and disgust (says my wife: he looks like something off the cover of a romance novel) plays from the bottom of the barrel to the back row of the upper deck.

Slop makes an early appearance, coating Helmsley before he can fully disrobe; Godwinn would later tie the blueblood up in the ropes to forcefeed him a handful of hog chow as well. The camerawork is annoying and choppy, constantly reminding us (to the detriment of seeing what's happening in the ring) that there is a hog pen near the entranceway.

Oddly enough, we somehow end up back in the ring after this.

As we saw with the Buried Alive Match, the rules of the contest and the action presented between the bells don't always make sense together. Helmsley batters Godwinn next to the pigsty (adding a fantastic elbowdrop from the fence), then leads his hog farming foe back to the ring for no apparent reason.

There, Godwinn batters Helmsley with a great wheelbarrow suplex (and a couple of flips by Helmsley taken straight out of Shawn Michaels' and Ric Flair's playbooks), then attempts a Slop Drop DDT in the aisle, which Helmsley blocks.

An Irish whip into the gate on the hog pen gashes Helmsley's back something fierce, and makes the next few minutes the most cringeworthy parts of his career not involving a Kane mask or a posedown.

Godwinn attempts the slop drop by the pig pen again, nailing it onto a muddy and feces-laden mat, then attempts a charge, but gets backdropped directly into the muck to give Helmsley the win. The [future] Game takes offense at Hillbilly Jim offering his congratulations, so Godwinn gorilla presses Helmsley into the filth, face-first, then makes sure he gets coated head-to-toe before Helmsley takes an exaggerated series of pratfalls to really sell the loss as a generic series of hootenanny banjo and fiddle loops.

He almost looks noble in this still. Almost, but not quite.

My Rating

I know how easy it is to make jokes about Paul Levesque's place in the business, and whether he truly "earned" where he is today (trust me, I've made more than one in this very series), but there's no denying that he's always seemed to be willing to try anything if it'll help the company (especially in the early days of his career).

Not only would he suffer this match within a year of jumping to the WWF from WCW, he'd also lose to the Ultimate Warrior in the amount of time it takes to listen to your average Ramones song before being the only punishable man in an unfortunate character-breaking moment (which nobody has ever decided whether it was sanctioned or not).

All that aside, Helmsley plays the 90s heel very well here; he's your classic lowbrow comedy rich guy (think the bad guys from almost any college movie), and he doesn't even try to show restraint in his displays of utter privilege and contempt.

The crowd pops huge for this match, and it's obvious that it's not because of Godwinn. Helmsley gives them every reason to cheer his downfall (and boo his success), and it's easy to see the seeds of the master crowd manipulator planted here.

"If you introduce a wooden enclosure full of hog excrement in Act One, it better end up all over a rich guy in Act Two." - Anton Chekov (paraphrased)

The match is fun enough and the finish doesn't really matter; it's really a Chekov's hog pen, because there's no way that Helmsley doesn't end up covered in pig waste before leaving Hershey, PA, no matter what the stat sheet reads; letting him get the technical win before his humiliation protects his supposed win-loss record, I guess, but Godwinn makes it obvious that the stipulation means nothing to him, treating the pig mess like Hawk treats chest chops.

It's still a fun bit of wrestling, though, because it embraces the WWF undercard ethos at the time of big, broadly defined characters in wacky situations and showing wild moves. It's not the "I Quit" Match, defined by intensity and hatred, but it was never meant to be; it was designed, quite simply, to cover Levesque in excrement and to do so in as fun a way as possible, and the match does a fine job of that.

I'd go 7/10 here.

Meltzer Says

Dave drops a solitary star on this one, so I'm supposing he hasn't watched it since it aired; if nothing else, the image Paul Levesque has crafted for himself in the intervening 22 years has made this one somewhat more fun, if not anomalous.