Post by CM Poor on Mar 23, 2015 11:54:40 GMT -5
As the clock turned anew on 2015, the WFWF played host to the most head turning, polarizing, and altogether interesting debuting star in some time - "The Manliest Manly Man" Stan McMann. Even as absorbed as I'd found myself in all that was happening around me - bearing witness to another round of self destruction on the part of David Brennan, finding myself bestowed with Golden Opportunities, and finding myself fixed firmly in the triad of crosshairs of the shattered remnants of The New Epoch, it was hard to not stop and take notice as McMann made his sterling debut. The WFWF has always been something of a veritable breeding ground for men who'll expound their self fortitude by parading around their triumphs over personal struggles - addiction, loss, illness, mental incapacity - and yet here we had a man (and what a man, he'd tell you) who, by his own account, was without flaw.
There was a time in the WFWF - well before my time - when someone like Stan McMann, the manliest manly man, wouldn't have turned many a head or left many an eye batting in wonder. The notion of a man who could fell a tree with a single strike of his manly axe before turning around and using his sheer man power to make extinct a new species of creature never before seen by the eyes of man - well, besides the manliest manly man - would have struck the viewing public no more oddly than a pair of hobos who walked in off the streets to claim he tag team championship.
Maybe it was my age, but I was never quite able to grasp onto the constant evolution of the base of competition within the WFWF, and so when, amidst the very real set of opponents I'd come to find myself accustomed to facing, plagued by their very real emotions and very real shortcomings, a manly man steps forth proclaiming a twenty pound beard and a talking buck, it's simultaneously difficult to a) not take notice and b) really come to terms with just how to approach a man, the manliest manly man, like him.
Very few people can step into this world and make such an impact that they find themselves tagged with the label of polarizing. That's something special reserved for someone who can step in and very figuratively part the seas of audience reaction, and Stan McMann had done that in no less than two showings here in the WFWF. I remember watching his debut vignettes backstage with great delight - maybe it's because at the time I didn't take it too seriously. It struck me as a welcome breath of fresh air, and a well needed dose of humor. I mean, the guy routinely chops down trees that seem to spurt from the stage itself as part of his entrance theatrics - what's not to like?
All the same, by the time I arrived in LA for my impending meeting with Stan McMann, I'd shifted gears rather harshly from curious wonder to considerable trepidation. The question lingered in my head for days and days - how exactly does one approach an opponent whose very presentation blurs the lines between entertainment and reality. Exactly how much of Stan McMann's presentation of himself was doctored fantasy to sell a name and an image and a schtick, and how much of it was grounded in hard reality. What sort of impact would a clothesline deliver from the arms of a man who could self professedly take down an oak with a single axe and a swing or two? How hard would it be to ground a man who boasts twenty pounds of his own billed weight originating from the hair that hangs off of his face? How much of this was McMann's own self built presentation, and how much of it was a true testament of the man, the manliest manly man, that I'd soon be stepping into the ring to face?
Why had I waited until just now to consider it?
What measure of a man sees things not for what is really there, but for what his mind and desired sense of reality allows him to see? Commonly, we may suggest a man broken - hindered by some obfuscation that allows his mind to create false senses of reality that fit within the picture of what the world around them sees, all the while creating a image in his own mind's eye that presents a more fitted tone of what's happening around them.
In simpler terms, perhaps a man who could summon his own vices from thin air?
It probably wasn't commonplace in 2015 to compare Stan McMann to Michael Kyzer - to the untrained eye, each man probably sat at opposite ends of the spectrum. At one end, a relative newcomer, successfully green, still waiting for that first deep plunge into the waters of the WFWF. At the other, the self proclaimed "God of F*ck", who seen, done, and consumed it all, all the while coming back for more and more.
David Brennan had once told me that Kyzer fancied himself a magician of sorts - professing the ability to make drinks and drugs appear from not but thin air with not but a wave of his hand. The reality, as David saw it? Routine trips to the bar. Lines cut in mesmerized silence. Joints rolled the same. How much of this was in step with McMann's claims of unbridled, unmatched machismo, such that he could fly atop the back of a talking buck to lands only feasible in the mind of someone whose hemispheres behaved much in the way David had perceived Kyzer's to?
As I stepped off the plane in LA, I made the conscious decision to view Stan McMann, the manliest manly man, as a test for my impending meet with Kyzer. In many ways, if my distant observations were to be trusted, these were two men who operated mentally in a rather similar fashion, and if one were to approach the body of destruction left in Kyzer's wake, then it wouldn't be long before the real threat of Stan McMann reared its ugly, manly head. If I was wrong, then I'd come in well prepared to triumph over a man whose sense of reality had either become blurred, or fabricated otherwise for his own satisfaction.
There was a time in the WFWF - well before my time - when someone like Stan McMann, the manliest manly man, wouldn't have turned many a head or left many an eye batting in wonder. The notion of a man who could fell a tree with a single strike of his manly axe before turning around and using his sheer man power to make extinct a new species of creature never before seen by the eyes of man - well, besides the manliest manly man - would have struck the viewing public no more oddly than a pair of hobos who walked in off the streets to claim he tag team championship.
Maybe it was my age, but I was never quite able to grasp onto the constant evolution of the base of competition within the WFWF, and so when, amidst the very real set of opponents I'd come to find myself accustomed to facing, plagued by their very real emotions and very real shortcomings, a manly man steps forth proclaiming a twenty pound beard and a talking buck, it's simultaneously difficult to a) not take notice and b) really come to terms with just how to approach a man, the manliest manly man, like him.
Very few people can step into this world and make such an impact that they find themselves tagged with the label of polarizing. That's something special reserved for someone who can step in and very figuratively part the seas of audience reaction, and Stan McMann had done that in no less than two showings here in the WFWF. I remember watching his debut vignettes backstage with great delight - maybe it's because at the time I didn't take it too seriously. It struck me as a welcome breath of fresh air, and a well needed dose of humor. I mean, the guy routinely chops down trees that seem to spurt from the stage itself as part of his entrance theatrics - what's not to like?
All the same, by the time I arrived in LA for my impending meeting with Stan McMann, I'd shifted gears rather harshly from curious wonder to considerable trepidation. The question lingered in my head for days and days - how exactly does one approach an opponent whose very presentation blurs the lines between entertainment and reality. Exactly how much of Stan McMann's presentation of himself was doctored fantasy to sell a name and an image and a schtick, and how much of it was grounded in hard reality. What sort of impact would a clothesline deliver from the arms of a man who could self professedly take down an oak with a single axe and a swing or two? How hard would it be to ground a man who boasts twenty pounds of his own billed weight originating from the hair that hangs off of his face? How much of this was McMann's own self built presentation, and how much of it was a true testament of the man, the manliest manly man, that I'd soon be stepping into the ring to face?
Why had I waited until just now to consider it?
What measure of a man sees things not for what is really there, but for what his mind and desired sense of reality allows him to see? Commonly, we may suggest a man broken - hindered by some obfuscation that allows his mind to create false senses of reality that fit within the picture of what the world around them sees, all the while creating a image in his own mind's eye that presents a more fitted tone of what's happening around them.
In simpler terms, perhaps a man who could summon his own vices from thin air?
It probably wasn't commonplace in 2015 to compare Stan McMann to Michael Kyzer - to the untrained eye, each man probably sat at opposite ends of the spectrum. At one end, a relative newcomer, successfully green, still waiting for that first deep plunge into the waters of the WFWF. At the other, the self proclaimed "God of F*ck", who seen, done, and consumed it all, all the while coming back for more and more.
David Brennan had once told me that Kyzer fancied himself a magician of sorts - professing the ability to make drinks and drugs appear from not but thin air with not but a wave of his hand. The reality, as David saw it? Routine trips to the bar. Lines cut in mesmerized silence. Joints rolled the same. How much of this was in step with McMann's claims of unbridled, unmatched machismo, such that he could fly atop the back of a talking buck to lands only feasible in the mind of someone whose hemispheres behaved much in the way David had perceived Kyzer's to?
As I stepped off the plane in LA, I made the conscious decision to view Stan McMann, the manliest manly man, as a test for my impending meet with Kyzer. In many ways, if my distant observations were to be trusted, these were two men who operated mentally in a rather similar fashion, and if one were to approach the body of destruction left in Kyzer's wake, then it wouldn't be long before the real threat of Stan McMann reared its ugly, manly head. If I was wrong, then I'd come in well prepared to triumph over a man whose sense of reality had either become blurred, or fabricated otherwise for his own satisfaction.
I dont know good luck 
