Fat Man Offense

The “Fat Man Offense” is a classic wrestling gimmick where an average dude is utterly crushed by a massive, beefy, gluttonous mountain of a man.  It usually means extreme pain for the skinnier wrestler because the point of the match is to feature the unbeatable power of body mass — the Fat Man as the unstoppable force.

It creates a sense of frustration and injustice in the minds of the audience, to see their buff young heroes utterly helpless and ineffective against the Fat Man’s protective layers of flesh, to see that ponderous weight used to smother the heroic wrestler.  The cruel crushing weight of the Fat Man Offense is what makes this gimmick a turn-on.

This gimmick hasn’t changed much in the past 45 years or so, which you can see from these two matches — one in black and white from 1966 compared with some photos taken at an indy show last month.

The black and white match from 1966 features Prince Iaukea as a massive Hawaiian boulder.  In the modern match, Playboy Jessie James is the flabby Fat Man in purple trunks.

The victims of the Fat Man offense are usually pure eye-candy for the fans, the ideal athlete.  They’re lean, muscular, well-dressed, and lovable.  They work out to stay fit, keep their hair well groomed, and spend good money on gorgeous wrestling clothes, but all of this preparation and preening is for naught, because the Fat Man will crush them like a bug anyway.

The victim is a Regular Guy because he represents us, the dudes in the audience, often feeling crushed by the greedy, oppressive corporate and governmental powers that rule our lives.  Anybody who has fought City Hall, been foreclosed upon by the heartless bankers, or been held down by The Man can certainly empathize with the Regular Guy getting his ribs flattened in the ring by the Fat Man Offense.

If you want to watch the 1966 match featuring Prince Iaukea stomping his pretty little victim into pudding, check out the match on YouTube.

If you want to see more photos of the Fat Man in purple, whose nickname “Playboy” is so very ironic, you can view the gallery from the Chaotic Wrestling indy show.

The similarities between the two matches reveal the unchanging script of the Fat Man Offense — for example, both Fat Men driving their boots into their victims’ bodies to crush them.

Using a powerful Headscissor, Prince Iaukea shows remarkable flexibility, capturing his victim between his thick thighs and crushing the poor guy’s neck.

It’s interesting that the 1966 match, available on YouTube, is from a wrestling show called “Heavyweight Wrestling from Washington.”  The show’s title describes the wrestling as “Heavyweight,” possibly in honor of their Fat Wrestlers like Prince Iaukea.

Both matches end with the Fat Man flopping down onto the thin and vulnerable body laid out flat as a pancake, ruthlessly smashing the skinnier man.  “Fat and Skinny were laying in bed, Fat rolled over and Skinny was dead!“

The Fat Man Offense celebrates excess, wealth, gluttony, and greed in America — the belief that Bigger is always Better, that Wal-Mart can and should crush the mom-and-pop stores, and the ideal outcome is to become “Too Big to Fail.”  The atomic bomb is way more effective than hand-to-hand combat.  It teaches young wrestling fans to consider the buffalo rather than the eagle as the symbol of our nation.  If it is too difficult to keep yourself muscular, lean, and fast, you can still become powerful and successful by becoming obese, massive, and smothering — the ideal message for modern America.

Also, wrestling fans react to the fact that it is unfair for a big beast to crush handsome little guys like this!  Pro wrestling ought to have weight classes rather than forcing fit young lions to get in the ring with these big hippos!  We as wrestling fans should insist that the Federations promote more evenly-matched fights (if only it wasn’t so darned fun to witness the devastating, one-sided effects of the Fat Man Offense!)