Here's a clip every wrestling fan can enjoy...
You got to love Saved By the Bell. I actually came across this clip a while ago and I've been waiting for the right moment to share it. Now seems as good a time as ever.
There are just too many good things about this clip that need to be discussed, so allow me to elaborate.
First off, for anyone who watches real wrestling, these matches are about as realistic as Dustin Diamond's acting career after Saved By the Bell. (It's got to be strange to hit your peak in life at around age 15 and have it all be downhill after that. But that's another blog...). Go ahead and pick your reasons.
1. The "gym" looks like the same set as a classroom.
2. There are cheerleaders.
3. The fans are all right on top of the mat.
4. The meet is determined by a best of seven. Don't wrestling teams usually have more than seven wrestlers? And of those wrestlers, where are the other team's kids who wrestled already? And where's their coach? And why is Bayside's coach in sweatpants and a sweatshirt?
5. The school's principal, Mr. Belding, is cheering wildly inches away from the match, something I've never seen covering high school wrestling.
6. To be honest, it simply looks like complete chaos.
Let's also take a look at the individual matches. First there's Slater against a Valley wrestler. Zack, who somehow is a play-by-play radio announcer, proclaims that it is "to be a long, grueling match." Zack's pregame analysis proves to be as accurate as Fox's predictions during the Giants' Super Bowl run. So the match begins, Slater simply picks the guy up, tosses him on the ground, pin, match over. As far as I can tell, it took four seconds for Slater to pin him. FOUR SECONDS! I'd last more than four seconds wrestling against Corey Jantzen. (I think I could dance around him for about 10 seconds before he'd toss me down in a similar move that Slater pulled off, but I never wrestled).
So Slater wins and up next comes Christy, Bayside's first female wrestler. "The tension is mounting," Zack boasts.
Now before the match begins, everyone waits while Jessie comes over for a sentimental moment, exactly the kind of thing I'm sure wrestlers want before they're about to compete in a match to determine a meet. Warm hugs and "awwws" from the crowd usually don't precede pivotal matches.
Christy gets into trouble and gets into a full nelson... So Valley's wrestler, who isn't scoring any points with that move, somehow loses control when Zack yells to Christy "use the hold you used at the Max!" Bam! With that advice she twists his arms free, gets him in front, actually appears to try to snap his neck, then lifts him and slams him on all fours, flips him over and lays on top of him, all while he offers surprisingly little resistance. What??? For the record, the match took 39 seconds.
The meets ends, Bayside wins and Zack gets a sweet kiss from his lady. Very nice. And very funny.
There's another great episode where Slater decides to quit wrestling because he fears he'll grow up to be some washed up, pot-belly professional wrestler with no future. Zack had made a bet with Valley's top wrestler that Slater would win a match between the two. If Slater did, Zack would win a dirt bike. After Slater gets freaked out about his future and quits to start baking, Zack has a problem on his hands. To get Slater out of the kitchen he plans to have Screech wrestle the match, assuming that Slater won't allow Screech to be hurt. Apparently weight classes don't matter. Screech, who must weight about 45 pounds, goes out on the mat against a guy who weights about 160. Just as Screech gets picked up and held in the air, Slater comes flying in to save the day. And of course, Slater pins the guy in about six seconds! Alas, the moral of the story is gambling is no good, so Mr. Belding doesn't allow Zack to make good on his bet.
There was a video of that floating around YouTube, but I can't find it. The episode is called Pinned to the Mat from Season 1 if you're so inclined to watch it.
So what's all the fuss with Saved by the Bell you might ask? Well, you see, Saved by the Bell held a special place in the lives of kids growing up in the '90s. The episodes originally aired from about '89 until '94 with college years to follow. Most of those shows were aired frequently after that through the middle and late '90s so kids always had the chance to watch.
Just as every other boy, I had a major crush on Kelly Kapowski. I don't know why, but I always rooted for Zack to win her over instead of Slater, if I somehow couldn't win her myself.
When I watched Saved by the Bell in third and fourth grade, I really thought that's what high school would be like. You know, where all your friends are in all the same classes as you, there's a local hangout where everyone meets (the Max), you pull off all kinds of pranks and elaborate plots, you talk to your principal every day and even scheme stunts with him sometimes. It didn't quite turn out that way. I think by the time I reached middle school I realized Bellport High School wouldn't be Bayside High School.
But Saved by the Bell offered a lot of moral lessons to America's youth. Drugs were one topic the show touched on a couple times. There's the infamous Jessie on caffeine pills episode, which is now the topic of dozens of Facebook groups poking fun at it. Here's a clip of that:
Then there was the "No Hope with Dope" episode, where a movie star comes to Bayside looking to film an anti-drug episode. The group thinks the guys is super cool and he invites them to a party at his place. They go and find that he smokes pot, which shocks and disgusts them. They leave the party and back out of filming the commercial because they feel he's hypocritical. Mr. Belding just so happens to be old friends with the president of NBC. Mr. Belding invites him down and they end up filming the commercial without the movie star. Here's what they came up with:
If you want to keep kids from doing drugs, all you need to do is show them that. Find me one kid who's going to smoke a joint after seeing that production!
There weren't a lot of references made to teenage sex in Saved by the Bell, though. That issue they left alone. For example, in the No Hope with Dope episode, there's no mention of it being odd that the movie star is trying to seduce Kelly, who in the show couldn't have been more than 17 and still a high school student. He had to be at least in his 20s. Nothing strange with that?
I guess there are only so many topics to tackle at once. It's amazing, though, how when you watch these shows as a kid, you don't realize the lessons that are trying to be taught to you. You really just take it as entertainment, enjoy watching it, and then have those lessons seeped into you without you realizing.
I attribute all my morals to Saved by the Bell. As for any wrestling expertise, not so much.
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