Known as “The Rockers,” Shawn Michaels and Marty Jannetty were one of the most successful and popular Baby Face Tag Teams of all time. Here they are wrestling against one of the greatest Heel teams in Arn Anderson and Tully Blanchard.
As usual, Jannetty was the Baby Face in Peril (BFIP) who had to play weakling and suffer the bulk of the punishment so Michaels could rush in to save him and gain all the glory.
Most of this match involves Arn and Tully relentlessly working over Jannetty (which they do very well, of course) as Michaels watches his helpless partner in growing frustration. The story being told is that Michaels was clearly the stronger wrestler on his team and would need to dump his loser friend if he was ever going to achieve success in pro wrestling.
This is exactly what would happen as Michaels later would spike his partner’s face through a plate glass window to end their relationship. Then he became the “Heartbreak Kid” (it’s Jannetty’s heart that he broke) and enjoyed multiple championships and huge fame, while Jannetty dropped to the minor leagues and soon faded away and/or retired.
As the Baby-Face in Peril (waiting for his hero to rescue him), Jannetty gives a remarkable performance as a guy, sadly, at the end of his career and on his way down. He is doomed.
We see him destroyed and humiliated in multiple ways: physically out-muscled by the combined attacks by Arn and Tully (who mix in little grace notes of sexual degradation); emasculated by his own partner who must rescue him and teach him how to fight; and career-wise, facing the loss of income and shame of being fired. We’re witnessing here the total destruction of a man, as symbolized by his agony in the ring and apparent incompetence at wrestling.
I wonder how they convinced Jannetty to repeatedly “put over” his partner Shawn Michaels by taking the submissive role, constantly jobbing and suffering for all their opponents, waiting for the Real Man to save him.
Did he ever protest that he wanted to share in the spotlight too? Or did he see the writing on the wall, that Michaels was on the way up and he was on the way out, so he did his job the best he could, taking his lumps and helping out the team?
I’m sure we’ve all gotten terrible assignments at work and were told we need to be “team players,” which is code for swallowing your pride and whatever else the boss is feeding you; to bend over and assume a degrading position. We’ve all had to play second fiddle to some favored hot-shot, perhaps the boss’s son. So we can sympathize with poor, forgotten Marty Jannetty.
Jannetty is reminding us with his performance here that the Rat Race is a tough business. Not only will the competition beat you down if given a chance, but your own co-workers will try to use you as a stepping stone. Jannetty teaches us that all we can do sometimes is play along, accept our humble roles, and to do the best job we can every day for the sake of our own self-esteem, even if it doesn’t result in fame or wealth.
And from Shawn’s perspective, what do you do when your friend isn’t cutting it? He constantly flubs up or causes you to miss opportunities or to look weak or foolish. He’s always jobbing to the cool kids. What do you do if you’re trying to move up the ladder, but your boy keeps holding you back, as depicted in the Rockers partnership with Jannetty taking the role of the dweeb and Michaels playing the hot shot?
If you don’t want to go through life in the role of “Jobber”, constantly submitting and yielding to superior men, if you want to join the ranks of the Alpha Males, you apparently need to dump your friend, spike his face through a glass window (metaphorically speaking), and kick him down every time he comes crawling back for sympathy. This isn’t how they tell the story in the teeny-bopper movies or on Sit-Coms, but it’s how they tell the story on pro wrestling because pro wrestling, ironically, is real.
And how did the fans react to Shawn Michaels’ shabby treatment of his clumsy but lovable friend? Did we sympathize with Marty Jannetty and hold Shawn Michaels in contempt for rudely rejecting his pal for selfish reasons?? No way! We all quickly dumped Jannetty as a hero, forgetting about him and hitching our wagons to rising star Shawn Michaels, the great “H.B.K.” So if you want to know who spiked Marty Jannetty’s face through a plate-glass window, it was you and I.
In the end, Jannetty serves as a spring-board, literally, for his partner. Michaels climbs up on Jannetty’s shoulders (who stands still and allows himself to be stood upon) and then jumps off, sailing gloriously through the air to crash down on Blanchard and win. This is a great metaphor and foreshadowing of what would actually happen in the Rockers’ careers.