Respect
for the Shining Wizard!!!!
In the times that have
passed, when one is on a bended knee, usually that means they are pleading for
mercy. Since the start of this 21st Century, in the world of professional wrestling,
being on one bended knee has been an open ticket for one of the most devastating
wrestling strikes that the sport has ever seen, the Shining Wizard.
At face value, perhaps the Shining Wizard only seems like a knee strike, but in
the world of our most cinematic sport, this move is so much more. For those who
aren't familiar with the move, the Shining Wizard is when a wrestler steps off
his opponents knee with one foot and strikes him in the face with his other knee.
It was first conducted by a man that needs no introduction and at that same time
has no introduction that could ever suit what he's worth to the sport and all
of us who watch it, Keiji Mutoh (otherwise known as Great Muta). His ingenious
nature came up with this move and catapulted his legendary career just when all
the 'smart' critics said it was time to hang up his boots. So in his kindness
and modesty, he did, he just got himself some hotter ones as he transformed himself
into this new character.
It was July 14th a few years back when I brought in my Gong magazine to the wrestling
gym. It had Jun Akiyama on the cover and it was my best friend's birthday. He's
the only man I know that actually does think Akiyama was the best of the big seven
over in All Japan, so I had to give him the mag. It just so happens in that magazine
it had step-by-step stills of this new Mutoh maneuver. Need I say that everyone
attempted to perform the Wizard unsuccessfully. It didn't take many weeks for
me to see a man not only perfectly use the Shining Wizard in his match, but he
drilled his knee into the temple and landed his body in a perfect roll, just as
the originator.
The whole story of that could go on for ions, but this is more of a question,
a suggestion, a statement. I've always been a firm believer that there is no 'stealing'
of moves. I've always believed that every move is always a take-off, spin-off
or different form of another. And mostly, above all else, I've always felt strongly
that it's not who does the move, or who did the move first, it's who does the
move the best! With that being said, however, there is a cycle in wrestling of
overuse and even more maliciously, abuse.
Like the DDT in the 1980's and the Powerbomb in the 1990's, it seems that in the
early 2000's, it's the Shining Wizard and the great originators and performers
of it that are being abused most unfairly. Let's not forget, each wrestling match
IS a story, or at least should be, but that does not, in any form, mean we are
looking for plagiarizers.
The most important thing to never forget is respect. Respect for those who have
earned it and for the reasons that they have. Let's not disgrace what we love
or who we love for what they do.
BACK
TO JOEL'S INDEX