Movies - Beyond the Mat

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	Movies - Beyond the Mat

Beyond the Mat is a 1999 professional wrestling documentary, directed by Barry Blaustein. It achieved a degree of infamy when World Wrestling Federation chairman Vince McMahon tried to block its release after deciding that the film reflected badly on him and the WWF.

Plot

Director Barry Blaustein decides to travel America over a three year period, endeavouring to understand the mindset of someone who would voluntarily choose to become a professional wrestler. Working under the premise that professional wrestling is scripted yet holds potential for serious injury, Blaustein interviews a wide variety of wrestling personalities and ascertains their motivations.

Blaustein focuses on three famous wrestlers, one middle aged and at the height of his career (Mick "Mankind" Foley) and two elderly and contemplating retirement (Terry Funk and Jake "The Snake" Roberts). Foley has been taking increasingly risky falls (or "bumps") and blows to the head, and at one point is heard talking incoherently as the result of a fall which briefly rendered him unconscious. Later in the film, in a scene from the 1999 Royal Rumble, he is shown taking multiple shots to the head with a steel folding chair, while his young family watch in horror from the audience. Funk is a 54-year-old man in need of knee surgery who appears unable to retire, despite the mounting toll wrestling is taking on his body. Roberts is a wrestler who enjoyed tremendous popularity in the late-1980s, but who is now a cocaine addict, estranged from both his father and his daughter.

The careers of the three successful wrestlers are contrasted with those of wrestlers who have not yet achieved comparable success. Darren Drozdov is a former NFL football player who is shown in an interview with Vince McMahon. After discovering that Drozdov can vomit at will, McMahon renames him "Puke", and, controversially, instructs him to vomit in a bucket as a demonstration of his ability. Drozdov becomes a WWF wrestler, but at the end of the film Blaustein reveals that he was paralyzed in an in-ring accident several months later.

Taglines

There's no script for what happens outside the ring!
The movie Vince McMahon DOESN'T want you to see!

Main cast

Barry Blaustein — himself
Mick Foley — himself / Mankind
Terry Funk
— himself
Aurelian Smith, Jr. — Jake "The Snake" Roberts
Vince McMahon — himself
Darren Drozdov — himself / Puke / Droz
Jerome Young — New Jack

Wrestler Feedback

Jake "The Snake" Roberts

On a WWE-produced DVD in 2005, Jake Roberts, along with others, heavily criticised the movie for showing him in a negative light, complaining that the depiction of him was not "the real Jake Roberts". Roberts also claimed that director Barry Blaustein and Terry Funk lied to him about the purpose of the movie, telling him it was a television special on the effects of drugs and alcohol.

[ Visit the complete Wikipedia entry for Beyond the Mat ]

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