Knocked Silly

My older readers will recall that Bob Backlund, in his younger days, represented the clean-cut, Baby-Faced boy next door.  (This is hard to believe if all you witnessed was his creepy, bow-tied “Mr. Backlund” persona at the end of his career).  Young Bob Backlund was as pale and wholesome as white bread, aw-shucks smiley, polite, eager — you could just picture him getting up early to work out, volunteer, and help old ladies across the street.

Why is it, when we encounter such an innocent, honest, young go-getter, that we often feel a dark urge to see him defiled?  Does his purity make us feel dirty in comparison, so we want to see him pulled down from that pedestal and rolled around in the mud??

Jimmy Snuka, on the other hand, was everything Backlund was not.  He was driven by animal instincts, thick with muscle, bloodthirsty, macho, and ruthless looking.  He oozed testosterone and reeked of a wild romp in the bushes.  He was dark and oily and primitive (not even wearing any boots), preferring to leap off the ropes like an uncontrollable animal rather than learn a bunch of complicated holds like our young Backlund had done.

As we’ve mentioned before, the best wrestling matches are those with a contrast between the wrestlers (in their looks, philosophies, backgrounds, etc.)  How entertaining would it be to throw poor, innocent young Backlund in the ring with this savage?!?

Sure enough, Backlund was often forced to get in the ring, or even inside a steel cage, with this muscular savage pit-bull in the bulging speedo.  This match-up represents the age-old battle of the civilized guy against the wild animal, the Boy Scout vs. the predator, the Super-ego vs. the Id, the polite athlete facing a merciless beast.  We can plainly see that a regular guy like Backlund doesn’t stand a chance against this blood-thirsty savage (and we’re very glad about that fact, because Baby-face suffering is the most important aspect of pro wrestling.)

Our young hero endured numerous long, skull-splitting beatings at the hand of the stronger, more masculine savage. They even bloodied each other in a historic cage match, where Snuka (ahead of his time) famously climbed to the top of the cage and soared down to crush Backlund’s pale body — but Backlund rolled out of the way.

Snuka would often target Backlund’s skull when they fought, repeatedly chopping his head like he was trying to bust open a coconut to chew up whatever was inside.  He was portraying a savage that just wandered into the wrestling ring from some jungle, so Snuka wasn’t meant to know a bunch of fancy holds, instead resorting to fists and chops and head-butts like a primitive being would.

I think all the skull-fracking in their matches was meant to emphasize the destruction of Mr. Backlund’s intellect.  Snuka was seen trying to scramble the white boy’s brains, to render him as wild-eyed and primal as Snuka himself.  Snuka was jealously attempting to reduce the civilized man to his own beastly level by taking away his ultimate weapon: his mind.

Backlund would sell his head injury like a champ, stumbling around and twitching like he had suffered a cinder-block to the noggin.  His fans would howl in outrage, unsure how the poor young kid could win the match (or even defend himself from this beast’s onslaught) if he was apparently as dizzy and disoriented as a drug abuser.

If you like watching the young hero fighting against all odds but being repeatedly beaten down by an over-whelming villain, you would have loved it when Backlund was tossed in the ring with this hard-bodied barefoot killer with the unruly hair and relentless chops.