Sami Zayn and Johnny Knoxville Don't Need Jackass Lore
Sami Zayn and Johnny Knoxville Don't Need Jackass Lore
Who needs context when a match is this good?
Okay, look, I’ll play the sucker here.
I didn’t grow up on Jackass. My only memory of it comes from when I was a little kid, probably no older than six or seven. Some cousins on my dad’s side of the family had put on a Jackass VHS. In my mind, I recall seeing some kind of montage of the stunts they did on. Perhaps my cousins were just actually telling me the kind of wild stuff that they did.
Something about wasabi stands out in the memory. Perhaps snorting it, maybe something else. I really don’t know. It was all just a bit much for my mind at the time, and it kind of put me off from ever trying again. At this point, I think I’m probably just a little too old to really get into it properly. That’s fine, it’s an L I don’t mind taking.
The closest I’ll ever get is the WrestleMania match between Sami Zayn and Johnny Knoxville. I can live with that because this match rocks.
It’s wild and silly and funny, but it all just works so goddamn well. It’s the kind of comedy that actually suits WrestleMania to a tee. Bringing the wild, well, jackassery of Knoxville and co. and raining it down upon the hapless Sami Zayn. It really is a simple story at its core. Zayn’s upset at Knoxville for invading his world, but in opening the floor to an Anything Goes match, he inadvertantly stepped into Knoxville’s world instead.
This being a comedy match shouldn’t diminish it in people’s eyes, because pacing and structure are just as integral to comedy as anything else. Hell, it probably is even more significant in the case of comedy. And boy do they just nail it here. The introduction of every new element, introducing new set-ups so that each punchline hits, is done with masterful care and execution in this match.
One of my favorite examples is the pyro spot. Sami Zayn climbs to the top rope to dive onto a downed Knoxville. But then Knoxville hand rises with all the mischievous glee of a cartoon character, to show an electronic device that triggers the pyrotechnics in Sami’s corner. It’s a perfect visual, and one of the few times that WWE’s overproduction in terms of framing actually works to its advantage.
Even just on an action level, there’s fun surprises in this. As entertaining as Knoxville is through this whole thing, including busting out a nice tornado DDT, I’m hard pressed to deny that Wee Man might just be the second best worker in this whole thing. When he bursts out from under the ring, he’s swinging with the kind of wildness I wish many actual wrestlers had. It’s enough to get anyone roaring, whether they know who the hell Wee Man is or not. All I’m seeing is a dude throwing really good punches and it rocks.
And then he hits that awesome body slam in the ring too. I mean, honestly, can you ask for much else?
Now, let’s get to the obvious here. The heart and soul of the match is Sami Zayn. As a longtime fan of his work, it genuinely is so impressive that this might be one of his finest performances ever. It makes perfect sense too. The El Generico character, at its core, has a comedic bent to it. And even beyond that, working under a mask for so many years means that Zayn’s learned how to bump and sell in a big, exaggerated manner that lends itself well to this setting.
It’s crazy that Zayn’s able to find small details in the loudness of this all too. The kind of thing that takes this performance from amazing to legnedary is when he’s scrounging around under the ring for a table and sells his hand getting clipped by one of the mousetraps. We see his reaction and pain from the contraption first before it gets visually revealed in all its glory. A simple set-up, punchline, that gets expounded on even further later when Zayn finally takes a bump through the thing.
The key to it is that he never betrays the bit. He stays so fully committed to everything, playing it as straight as possible, and that just makes it so much damn funnier. There’s a violence to how he kicks down Wee Man, and it gets actual heat in the middle of all this chicanery. He’s petty and mean to the Jackass crew at ringside, he’s a prick. That's why it rules so fucking much when he runs into a hand at the end of the match.
It’s quite a thing to think that Zayn’s performance in this might just have been the catalyst for the WWE to start trusting him with bigger and better things down the line. Not the years of service he’s already put in for the company, or the many years before that honing his craft, but here at WrestleMania, having what might be the greatest non-wrestler match of all time. This is what got someone backstage to say maybe Sami Zayn needs a little more to do.
And honestly, who can blame them? It really is a performance that goddamn good.
We’ll see what Vince and his alleged Saudi Arabian overlords have to say for Sami Zayn’s future, but there’s no taking away this night in Texas at least.
IS IT BETTER THAN 6/3/94? Literally? No. Spiritually? Definitely.
Rating: ****