gordie boggs ( arquette , aptly cast as a moron , as he is one ) and his best friend sean dawkins ( scott caan . the son of james caan should not be reduced to <NEG> garbage </NEG> like this ! ) are two losers from wyoming with no jobs and no girlfriends , who look up to world championship wrestling champion jimmy king ( a <NEG> terribly casted </NEG> oliver platt ) , as he is everything they are not . they finally get to see him live and he is screwed out of his title by the evil , ruthless promoter titus sinclair ( a <NEG> wasted </NEG> palitaliano , in a role originally meant for real-life wcw president eric bischoff , whose name was written all over the role ! ) . gordie and sean track down king in atlanta and discover that he is not really the english king the wcw writers created for him , but a drunken , ignorant southerner who is as irritated by these two lunkheads as bob newhart was by larry , darryl , and darryl . they sneak him back onto wcw tv , after which sinclair agrees to book him in a steel cage match in las vegas at wcw's next pay-per-view , against his rival , diamond dallas page . if he wins , king gets his title and his career back , plus one million dollars . wcw president eric bischoff , knowing his promotion was desperate with bad writing and ratings skyrocketing down thanks to the far superior world wrestling federation , came up with the idea for this movie hoping it would save wcw . he was then fired and rehired two months ago , but by the time he'd left , they had already been contracted to do the film , and bischoff could not play sinclair ( which , in itself , is for the best , as anybody who has seen him on wcw programming knows that bischoff is no actor ! ) . the characters of gordie and sean show you exactly what eric bischoff thinks of his fans . he thinks of them as young , dumb pathetic idiots who will believe anything that will be put out in front of them is real . that is why he doesn't take the fans into consideration when he books a nitro or a pay-per-view . i have news for you , eric : no wrestling fan in this day and age is dumb enough to believe that professional wrestling isn't for show , unless they are four years old . this is 2000 , you know , not 1985 . bischoff will try to cover up criticism like that by saying it is a comedy , but i have no doubt in my mind that if this had been a dramatic , rocky-style film ( which it probably should have been . professional wrestling is ridiculed enough as it is , why should the first wrestling movie in ten years be a comedy ? ) , gordie and sean would have been portrayed in the same light . anybody who has seen the documentary wrestling with shadows , documenting wwf owner vince mcmahon's double-crossing of bret hart , will probably realize via the reviews and previews of ready to rumble , that <NEG> it is basically a rip-off </NEG> of that film's storyline with the poor man's wayne and garth thrown in for comedic affect . you can tell titus sinclair is supposed to poke fun at vince , but any self-respecting wrestling fan knows that sinclair is more inspired by bischoff than vince , and that vince did what he had to do to bret hart . all of these aspects of the film , needless to say , <NEG> seriously offended me </NEG> as a wrestling fan . another thing i found disturbing about the film was the romance between gordie and nitro girl sasha ( the lovely rose mcgowan ) . wouldn't it have been easier to bring something new into the relationship rather than revealing she was only working on gordie at sinclair's insistance ? <NEG> i hate that cliche ! </NEG> the world wrestling federation would have made a better film . they are the promotion everyone cares about , they are winning the ratings , they have better wrestlers , and they take their fans into consideration and don't treat fans like morons . so , vince , how about a movie ?
