"Rastling" Question

[gmattson]

Now we all know that Professional wrestling is 50% acting and 125% athletic and gymnastic skill! However, their is a story being perpetuated by a few diehards, regarding the match Andy (Lata Gavas of Taxi fame) Kaufman had with a pro wresler years ago. He was nailed with "piledriver" and suffered pretty bad neck injuries (so the story goes).

More recently, Jim Carrie, who is playing Andy, in a movie, was replaying this match with the same wresler and during the scene, sustained the same injury as Andy. The story goes that Jim "dissed" the wresler, who than proceeded to do a number on Jim!

Our own Bill Bauchnect retold this story to me the other day and I argued that:

1. No studio would allow an actor to do his own stunt for such a "potential" dangerous move. and

2. If the "piledriver" move was actually used "for real", it would break the person's neck and/or back!

Any thought on this? Knowing how powerful these guys are, the only way Andy or Jim could have survived a piledriver was to have the wrestler use the "rehearsed" and safer technique. By the way. . . I don't think Jim could have done this stunt, even if he wanted to. Comments????

[Greg]

Sensei,

As to the first question you raised, who knows? My guess is that Jim Carrey's ego may be huge enough that he overruled whomever may have tried to tell him he shouldn't have been doing the stunts, and it may well be him in the action shots.

For the second, I am certainly no expert on pro wrestling (too bad Mike Aceto won't get on line...), but I can say that the intention of many sacrifice throws, of which the "Piledriver" is a colorful, if combatively ineffective example, is in fact to do damage to the skull and/or cervical vertebrae. There are ways to perform these throws for practice purposes which save uke the damage he would experience if these throws were performed "properly." Similarly, in the piledriver technique, the person performing the throw places the other person's head between his legs, and drops to a sitting position. If it is done "properly" (i.e. for pro wrestling purposes), the bottom of the thrower's legs and his behind will be what hits first. If, however, the 'throwee's' head is placed too far through the thrower's legs (man, "tori" and "uke" is *so* much easier...), then his head is what hits first, causing the damage that Kauffman, and possibly Carrey, experienced.

Hope that didn't just confuse things more!

Domo Arigato Gozaiima****a,
greg

[Greg]

Hey Anthony,

Any idea why I got those stars in my previous post?

They weren't there in the box when I typed it (I went back and checked)

greg