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Joe Babinsack Talks Guest Booker With Bushwhacker Luke Williams

Posted: Aug 4th 2009 By: CMBurnham

Booking. It?s the most over complicated thing in the world these days, and sometimes it takes the simplicity of the concepts, the ease of the matchmaking, and the stream-of-conscious train of thought of Luke Williams: the relentlessly hardcore tag team specialist, the one-time lovable comedy wrestler of the WWF?s Bushwhackers, and less publically, one of the string of minds who has kept Puerto Rico wrestling on the radars of most hardcore fans in the world.

Luke Williams proves that his ability to put storylines together is a culmination of understanding the business from one end to the other, not just the creativity of someone assigned to the role.

The Sheepherders were one of the Apter Mag?s favorites, and like hundreds of thousands of my fellow fans in the 1980?s, following their exploits across the patchwork of regions, and often, on the UHC syndicated shows, was always intriguing.

Sure, the Road Warriors were all power, and the Horsemen were the perennial champs, and the Hart Foundation was the WWF and the Midnight Express, the Rock-N-Roll Express and perennial Sheepherder opponents, The Fantastics, were some of many of the great tag team names of the era.

But none, none of them had the hardcore mentality that the New Zealanders portrayed.

They were the anti-American radicals that really never made much sense, but they roiled up the fans nonetheless, and their antics always drove up the heat. It started with the insults, and progressed in vitriolic, and then violent fashion. As Williams takes joy in explaining on the DVD, working the Southern States of the US, where the inherent pride of the populace had easy enough strings to pull in terms of Yankee animosity, they found it even easier to jack up the rhetoric and the visuals, and learned to map out their exploits, even if it meant flushing the map down the toilet.

What?s hilarious about the DVD is getting through that thick Kiwi accent, and realizing that it?s not just a gimmick.

It?s as real as real can be. Williams, on first glance, is easy to confuse with Terry Funk ? well, with shorter hair. And maybe, just maybe, with more ravines and battle scars on his forehead. Terry was, after all, an NWA World Heavyweight Champion, and didn?t bring the color for EVERY match of his career. Then again, Luke likely didn?t either, but he did make his living in a career very much like a post 1990 Terry Funk, in rings of blood and guts and barbed wires.

And beating the hell out of babyfaces.

That mind of Luke Williams is on display for Kayfabe Commentaries, and the subject matter is Rebooking 1993 WWF (WWE? Not yet?.) in the hardcore style with which Williams is equally at home with as almost anyone else on the planet.

What?s amazing about Luke is that he rolls out the stories and the storylines rapid fire, and again, we?ve got a heavy accent and an off-the-cuff style that crams in names, angles and promos like few others can.

Entertaining is one portion of the DVD. But education is equally important.

It?s a crash-course in how to put the book together. And of course you can expect a few pot-shots and negative commentaries from this reviewer about the modern era booking.

But the essence of the greatness of Luke Williams isn?t his elaborate storylines or his elaborations on who does what, when they do it, and how or why it?s done. Nope. It?s all about pitting two men together, giving them animosities to display, and providing the framework for it to get done.

We live in a world where the professional wrestling industry just has to be lead by the nose by individuals hell bent on micromanaging ever word, every action, every thought process.

Old School booking lays out plans for three months or so, and then picks up the pieces at that point. Directions aren?t reworked every week, and the programs sink or swim on the talent of the guys in the ring, not because of the words put in their mouths, or the awful gimmicks imposed upon them, or the constant inability to interact with the crowd.

Booking Goldust and Ron Simmons is simplistic in its outlook, and rather risqu? to boot.

But I?m not here to spill the details, I?m just here to sell the product.

What?s more intense is a combination of Headshrinkers, Godwinns and a pig.

Hollywood can?t come up with this sort of stuff (well, was Deliverance technically Hollywood?)

What impresses me isn?t that Luke Williams doesn?t just go crazy hardcore on the subject, he sets up the angles, plays up the need for faces and heels, and insists that it?s all about the connections to the fans. It?s clich?d to some, but the lack of connection between fans and wrestlers these days accounts for a huge gap of indifference on either end of the equation.

Without connecting to the fans, guys just can?t get over, and they?re just one more body in the ring.

Without connecting to the wrestlers, fans just can?t get into the angles. Even the so-called greats these days cannot create even the most simplistic of angles, where the face and the heel hate each other, and are willing and ready to do battle to settle their differences.

Luke Williams, if anything, makes it all look to easy.

But think about this: Luke and Butch took a gimmick where they were anti-Americans from a foreign land, and more notably, one that has no inherent fear factor, no inherent animosity, and no intrinsic reason to hate it (New Zealand ? home of Tony Garea, one of the most vanilla babyfaces of all time!) and they milked out the vitriolic hate of hundreds of thousands of wrestling fans over decades of performances.

Yet still, Luke speaks of calling himself Sweet Williams and doing the Adrian Street style gimmick.

And then, as has been mentioned, they went to the WWF at the height of the cartoon era, and got themselves over as laughable, entertainment types who had fans from grandparents to grandchildren loving them.

How impressive is that?

Quite, in an era where the ?greatest of them all? at this time cannot even bother to shift the subtleties of face or heel, and people wonder why he can?t get a reaction out of a crowd when he?s matched up with a blood and family feud with this era?s greatest potential heel personality.

Yeah, I?m not talking about Cena or Jericho here.

Anyway, what I love about watching Kayfabe Commentaries is learning the fundamentals and enjoying the perspectives of guys who know the business and have profited from the business.

These DVDs are treasures to be enjoyed. Maybe not for the masses, but if you?re into the nuts and bolts and craft of the professional wrestling industry, here?s a long look at someone who?s wrestled, learned and booked to the level where he, again, makes it all seem so easy.

Tags: Luke Williams, WWF, Midnight Express, Rock-N-Roll Express, Sheepherders, Fantastics, NWA, WWE, Headshrinkers