Hulk Hogan: "If you think for one second, McMahon, that I was just the right gay—guy, at the right place, at the wro—at the right time..."
—
Hulk Hogan, to WWE Chairman Vince McMahon
The Rock: "The jabroni-eating, pie-beating—eating..."
The Rock, describing himself to Vince McMahon
Bubba Ray Dudley: ...Tripped right on my face, in front of twenty thousand people, I didn't know what to do! I get up, I double-leg Bradshaw and start punching him in the face, he is laughing - and crying, because I'm hitting him so hard - he's like, "Relax! It's not my fault! You tripped!" We get back in the locker room, Ron [Simmons] is trying to console me: "Come on, man, it's no big deal, don't worry about it. It's not like any of your family were there." I'm like, "Ron—my mom, my dad, twenty of my fraternity brothers and my fiancee!" Ron goes, "...shit, that's bad!" —In a shoot interview about when he tripped over the ropes at a house show
Even though pro wrestling might be "fake", it still requires a lot of athleticism and discipline on the part of all the performers involved. And granted, it's hard to watch what would look like a really cool move fail and fall apart, but if a performer does it repeatedly, and develops a reputation for screwing up frequently, well then...it becomes entertaining (especially in regions like the Northeast US, where "You fucked up!" chants can spring up the very second someone botches).
Youtube user Maffew compiles botches sent in from many of its viewers, usually set to video game music and/or remixes of video game music (with actual rock music thrown in every now and again). The
WWE,
WCW and a cavalcade of obscure indie and foreign promotions are all represented in Botchamania. (Notably absent is
Ring Of Honor, who sent cease-and-desist notifications to Maffew - and, really, anyone who uses ROH material without their consent - which forced him to take down several of his videos, which he re-released with the ROH footage excised as "non-ROH versions".) The number of subscribers to his videos grows with each new video, and he regularly comments on them in the movie description.
Maffew's first
YouTube account has long been suspended, and while Maffew promised
not to "Billy Gunn" his second account (get it deleted by posting non-Botchamania videos), the copyright overlords at
YouTube eventually suspended it anyway. Thankfully, he has his own website now -
botchamania.net
- and will eventually be uploading all previous and future Botchamanias to it. Until then, he has a
third YouTube account and is uploading new Botchamanias.
Tropes and Running Gags associated with this series include:
- Every episode begins with a strange quote from "Macho Man" Randy Savage. Why? Well...why not?
- Botches - Naturally. They run the gamut from selling a kick that doesn't really hit to high-risk-high-reward routines that crash and burn horribly.
- Spot Monkeys - Many botches come from high-risk or other such improvised maneuvers which crash and burn.
- [Wrestler] VS. [Entity] - It's either a) a wrestler is supposed to do a spot with a foreign object, such as a table or a chair, but fails because said object won't stay in place, or b) a wrestler getting visibly frustrated by obnoxious jeering fans.
- One instance had the fans cheering "Let's go table!" after a wooden table that was supposed to be used for a spot repeatedly failed to break.
- Infamously, Claudio Castagnoli tripped over stairs leading into the ring, and it was featured in a Botchamania. When Claudio namedropped Botchamania, Maffew dedicated a video to him giving a European Uppercut to another set of stairs he'd tripped over. (And he repeated the act when Claudio did it again a few months later.)
- [Wrestler] VS. Cameraman - Some wrestlers, like Shawn Michaels and Batista, are known for numerous head-on collisions with the guys holding the cameras.
- "Outside Interference" -
Fans Idiots sometimes jump the barrier and interfere with the matches; these end with security (or the wrestlers themselves) beating them down before they're dragged off.
- One incident saw a fan get taken down by the referee, usually the smallest guy in the ring. The WCW announcers had a field day with him.
- "Sing Along With [Name]" - Fans chanting their disapproval of what is presented to them.
- Subverted by The Rock's mockery of fan interactions with his dialogue when he declared, "This isn't Sing Along With The Rock!"
- Which the fans soon counter-subverted by singing along with that, too.
- Shoot interviews - Comments about certain matches or incidents from the wrestlers involved with them, usually taken from "shoot" interviews. These comments are often played over video of the incidents themselves.
- Inattentive referees
- Cover, 1...2...3—NEAR-FALL!
- The fans that remember why ROH's Todd Sinclair is soundly booed (at least in New York City)... well, it's because of his notoriety for just that.
- "Everyone talks...TOO MUCH" - The wrestlers can sometimes be heard talking to one another, reminding the other as to what spot is up next; the causes are usually house mics underneath the ring, or just being too close to the camera. In older Botchamanias, these were dedicated to one particular wrestler, but later on they showed off whatever clip(s) Maffew had available.
- Bad commentary - Yes, even the commentary team gets things wrong every now and then.
- Mike Adamle, briefly the head commentator for ECW, ratcheted up the commentary botches exponentially. When even the COMPANY is making fun of you for it, you know you're not cut out for your job.
- "Insane Dusty Commentary" - Exactly What It Says On The Tin; "The American Dream" Dusty Rhodes spouts out a random string of sentences which may or may not have any relation to the situation at hand, if you weeeeeeeeeel.
- "Here comes Mongo!" - A segment featuring the matches of Steve "Mongo" McMichael, a football player-turned-wrestler whose ring skill was particularly underwhelming (at best) and was featured prominently as part of the Four Horsemen (one of the greatest stables in wrestling).
- Introduced via a clip from Blazing Saddles, with the line involving Louis Pasteur is over-dubbed with "TO THE HARLEY RACES, AND THE RIC FLAIRS" etcetera, cut off by the actual movie dialogue from one character saying "Never mind that shit, here comes Mongo!" Frequently mixed up by having different language versions done instead.
- Dont Explain The Joke - Inverted, if you can believe it. Once in a while there will be a match in which the victory stipulations will be one thing and the finish will be Something Completely Different. For example: a stretcher match (you have to wheel your unresponsive opponent out of the arena on a stretcher) ends with a clean 1-2-3 finish; or a new, young wrestler is set to beat an older, somewhat established star, and the older, somewhat established star cooperates by no-selling and sandbagging his opponent. These are just a few such moments.
- [blank] CORPSING? SEND FOR THE MAN!
- "Corpsing" refers to someone in a promo "no-selling" a character or gimmick (usually by cracking up laughing or acting really, really badly). The prime example is a backstage segment from WCW where Torrie Wilson "corpses" Macho Man Randy Savage's enraged destruction of a locker room, causing him to freak out on her and nearly attack her. All subsequent "corpsing" segments feature the clip of Savage storming into the locker room with the above text accompaniment (and, often, a sound clip of "Beat It" from Michael Jackson's Moonwalker for the Sega Genesis).
- "Surprised Jim Cornette Is Surprised" - Many of the illogical occurrences in WCW and/or TNA will be pointed out via a still shot of a very surprised Jim Cornette. The still in question was taken from a shoot interview where a botched spot in a scaffolding match ended with him having a badly damaged knee. There will be a sequence of three or four madcap observations (Jim's inner thoughts, if you will), followed by "Fuck this company!"
- Fan signs brought into arenas that are either hilarious, outrageous, or so batshit insane that it's a mystery how they ended up in the arena:
- "9/11 Was an Inside Job"
- "All Your Base are Belong to Us"
- A Swastika.
- "YOU ARE THE HEEL! BOO!"
- "Chris Benoit was my biological father, thank God he didn't know"
- "Mickie James has Got Me Thinking Arby's"
- And of course, "This match = Botchamania [Number]", where the number is usually the next Botchamania; these occurences usually get their own short videos.
- Recently: "U Screwed Maffew" at an episode of Raw (in reference to Maffew's second YouTube account getting suspended) and "Maffew is the wind beneath my ring" at a TNA event, which both got their own videos.
- Final thoughts from The Iron Sheik - Recently, after the end of the video proper, some usually irrelevant clip will be played, and often it will have a now-infamous Iron Sheik clip shoehorned in. The clip comes from a shoot interview with The Iron Sheik (courtesy of RFVideo) where he yells into a cell phone, "FAAAAACKING BULLSHEHHHHHT!", usually in reaction to something within that Botchamania.
- Probably the best one of these was the "Godfather ending".
FAAAAACKING BULLSHEHHHHHT!
Thanks for watching
