Yeah, I shelled out the cash this evening to see WrestleMania 25, which might mark some skewed end to the 2008 Oscar season with Best Actor nominee Mickey Rourke’s decision to participate after all (news reported last month). First pay-per-view in a decade. Guilty.
Anyway, I haven’t been keeping up with the WWE so forgive me if you have and are very much up on the story, but it seems the whole thing has been spun into a pretty good (as sports entertainment angles go) Chris Jericho versus the legends of wrestling kind of thing. Tonight Jericho finds himself in a one against three handicap match with “Rowdy” Roddy Piper, Ricky “The Dragon” Steamboat and “Superfly” Jimmy Snuka. Three dudes who wear their nicknames on their sleeves. Jericho is valiant.
Rick Flair is in their corner, by the way.
So Rourke is at ringside. He gave a few hugs to the vets on their way to the ring but he looked a bit agitated with the whole scene right before that. Maybe a run-in was in the cards…
Piper and Snuka were eliminated pretty fast. But Ricky Steamboat held in there, which to an old fan of these shenanigans (and as a guy who grew up in North Carolina where Steamboat is kind of the shit), was kind of cool to see. But Jericho won out in the end, fair and square. Flair, of course, ran in to avenge his buddies but was also made short order of.
On cue, Jericho grabbed a mic, mouthed off to the audience about “erasing the Hall of Fame wash-ups forever” and called out Mickey Rourke point blank. Well, he demanded an apology, which he didn’t get. Further mouthing got Rourke out of his seat and into the ring. The old boxing stuff came out and Rourke got a few quick pops to start before landing a left hook that decked Jericho and…
…that was it. Flair hopped into the ring, raised Rourke’s s hand, Jericho slumped off and that’s the victory lap on this performance I guess.
(Oh, and Rey Mysterio Jr. came out with a mask and face paint in homage to Heath Ledger’s Joker from “The Dark Knight.”)