On a recent episode of Drunken Gamers Radio, John stated they could not get enough of my wrestling articles. So I figured it was about time to write a new one. Today, I will review one on the newly-released DVDs chronicling the career of one of my all time favorite wrestlers, Chris Jericho, with WWE Home Video’s Breaking the Code: Behind the Walls of Chris Jericho. This three-disc DVD features a near two hour documentary on the career of Chris Jericho on disc one, and nineteen of his best matches, handpicked by Jericho himself, on the final two discs.

The documentary starts off like most previous WWE produced efforts, highlighting Jericho’s childhood years where he aspired to be a wrestler and rock star. The feature does a modest job at describing his early years in wrestling, from breaking into the business with Lance Storm at the Hart Family Dungeon to his days of being an international superstar in Mexico and Germany and getting his first break in the USA in ECW. I was hoping for a little more expansive look at this stage in his career since his autobiography, A Lion’s Tale, put a lot more emphasis on it, but the DVD does a decent job at covering a couple of his standout moments that he learned from. It is worth noting here that Jericho’s book is also the place to find his interactions and memories of Chris Benoit, who served as a big influence on Jericho’s career, but is understandably erased from WWE history (and is nowhere to be found on this DVD) after the double murder-suicide tragedy from 2007.

His exposure in ECW eventually landed him a job in WCW. During the infamous “Monday Night Wars” between WWE’s RAW and WCW’s Nitro from 1995-2001, one of the reasons I would usually tune into WCW was because of the high-flying action its Cruiserweight division delivered. I was more of a RAW fan, but Nitro usually started an hour before RAW, and that happened to be the hour most of its Cruiserweight matches took place so I got into the habit of seeing tons of incredibly athletic matches from classic Cruiserweights like Rey Mysterio Jr., Psycosis, Ultimo Dragon, Juventud Guerrera, Eddie Guerrero and Dean Malenko, to name a few. The DVD gives an accurate account on how WCW’s powers that be viewed the Cruiserweight division as nothing more than a preliminary attraction. If a wrestler was a Cruiserweight, than they may as well kiss any chance to climb their way up the ladder into the main event scene goodbye.

One of the few stars that escaped that stigma was Chris Jericho. After a couple years as just another faceless Cruiserweight, he took his opportunity to emerge out of the pool of high-flyers. Jericho talks about how he took every chance he got to cut a promo and develop his new bad-guy personality. The DVD goes into depth on two of his breakout feuds in WCW with Dean Malenko and Bill Goldberg. WWE used its archive interview footage with Goldberg and former WCW President Eric Bishoff to help flesh out a lot of his WCW years, and give their side of the story on why they held back Jericho from reaching true superstardom in WCW, which resulted in Jericho leaving the sinking WCW ship for higher ground into WWE in 1999.
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I was not the most hardcore WCW fan until the great Monday night wars started in 1995.I stumbled across a couple episodes throughout the years on television, but for the most part, all I knew WCW for was being the home for one of the greatest wrestlers of all time in the “Nature Boy” Ric Flair, and the man that had the bleach blond hair and all types of various face paint patterns, aka Sting. Then when WCW decided to start having its own Monday night telecast, Nitro to compete directly with WWE’s RAW show at the exact same timeslot, I could not help but flip to it during commercials in favor of watching the same Karate Fighters commercial for the umpteenth time. Slowly but surely over the months, I became a fan of the WCW, especially when a lot of my favorite WWE mainstays like Razor Ramon and Diesel defected over to form the phenomenon that bumped pro wrestling into the mainstream in the mid-to-late 90s, the nWo.

Now all the highs and lows of WCW are chronicled into a fantastic documentary (albeit with WWE’s version of history, needless to say they took a few liberties), titled “The Rise and Fall of WCW.” WWE has done a tremendous job putting together documentaries based on other promotions they have put out of business over the years like ECW, AWA and WCCW. For newer fans of wrestling this is a great cliff notes version of the southern promotion, though avid fans of the squared circle will be bummed that they only covered so much ground in the 100 minutes this documentary runs (compared to WWE’s ECW DVD, which was based on a company that was around for a far shorter time that lasted over three hours).

For fans like myself who were not into WCW before the 90s, there is a great summary of the roots of WCW when it was the major player of the NWA (a group of wrestling territories from around the country) and was going by names of Jim Crockett promotions and Mid-Atlantic Wrestling. It covers a lot of ground from how WCW was one of the first promotions to get featured on a coveted cable timeslot, to its tumultuous management problems throughout the 80s that led to the company getting sold to Time Warner which led to another rotating door of management problems until Eric Bishoff came in and getting the promotion on the right track.

The DVD dedicates a fair amount of material to recapping the Monday Night Wars and how ruthless Bishoff was competing with RAW by making Nitro live every week and taking advantage of that and giving away RAW’s results at the top of the show (back when RAW was mostly taped several days before hand). The whole Monday Night War portion of the documentary is the most interesting since I was the most familiar with it and it does a an outstanding job at covering what drove WCW to new highs in the 90s (namely the explosive Cruiserweight division, Goldberg and the mega-popular nWo). I would have liked more detail on the demise of WCW, especially since they paid barely any attention to a couple pivotal moments of the Monday Night Wars that helped propel the downward spiral of WCW – the mishandling of Bret Hart and complete mess of a payoff to the year and a half build up to Sting vs. Hulk Hogan at Starrcade ’97.

I can see some reasons to why Sting is not highlighted (other than briefly seeing him in montages throughout the feature), mostly because he is currently one of the main acts on WWE’s competition, TNA Wrestling. If that were the case however, than why does this DVD take the time to bury two other key TNA figures in Kevin Nash and Jeff Jarrett? Speaking of non-WWE employees, I was surprised that WWE tracked down several figures of WCW past to get comments from in the feature like former WCW executives Jim Crockett, JJ Dillon, Harvey Schiller and even the man, Bill Goldberg himself. Eric Bishoff oddly refused to be interviewed for this documentary, but WWE had enough archival footage of Eric’s past interviews from older WWE documentaries to make his comments relevant in this release.

Rounding out this package is the usual wealthy amount of bonus matches WWE includes with every DVD release. There are 20 bonus matches, most notable are the excellent Chi-Town Rumble bout between Ric Flair and Ricky Steamboat, Hulk Hogan’s WCW debut against Ric Flair and Goldberg vs. DDP at Halloween Havoc ‘98. While this is not the most fully detailed history of WCW it could have been, it does cover a lot of ground in a short period of time. WWE also released a couple other DVDs that would be terrific supplemental viewing to The Rise and Fall of WCW, so if you want to know more about WCW after watching this than I highly recommend tracking down “Ric Flair and the Four Horsemen” for a detailed look at WCW in the 80s and 90s, and “The Monday Night Wars” for a extensive look at one of the most exciting times in wrestling.

If you were a wrestling fan growing up in the years when Hulkamania was running wild, then you have to be aware of another star of the squared circle whose claim to fame was that he was “absolutely perfect!” I am talking about none other “Mr. Perfect” himself, the late Curt Hennig. To honor his career and life, WWE has released the ultimate tribute in a 2-disc DVD called, “The Life and Times of Mr. Perfect.”

Disc one has an in-depth, 75 minute documentary on the life of Curt Hennig. Going back to his family roots in the business where he was brought up and even teamed with his dad, Larry “The Axe” Hennig, to his rise to stardom in the AWA and finally going to the big time and becoming a national name as the unforgettable Mr. Perfect. The DVD chronicles his rise to stardom with lots of highlights, photos, and interviews with family, friends, and peers. Going into this DVD, I was only familiar with Hennig from his then early 90s WWE days, and only knew of him being a big deal in the AWA, so it was a thrill to see a lot of his old footage of him breaking with the AWA and becoming a star after winning AWA’s World Championship from Nick Bockwinkel in 1987.
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