Gimmick Some Lovin': The Arkansas Hog Pen Match

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.