I’ve been watching the WWE’s Brian Pillman: Loose Cannon DVD this past week, and it’s the first time in years that I’ve watched Pillman in action. Looking back at his all-too-brief career, from his start in WCW as the acrobatic baby face Flyin’ Brian, to his days in the short-lived Hollywood Blonds tag team with Steve Austin, to his final run as the “Loose Cannon,” one thing is perfectly clear: Though he never headlined Wrestlemania or held any major singles championships, Brian Pillman was an important figure in the history of professional wrestling.

Flyin’ Brian Pillman was one of the first WCW wrestlers to capture my imagination. He flew across the ring like a daredevil, launching his body off the top ropes with no regard for his safety. Of course, I’d already seen acrobatic wrestlers like Ricky Steamboat and Jimmy Snuka, but as great as they were, they didn’t take the high-flying style to the extremes that Pillman did, and they couldn’t match the excitement Pillman generated when he stepped between the ropes. Pillman’s aerial arsenal borrowed heavily from puroresu and lucha libre, at a time when such international influences weren’t as commonplace as they are now. That’s why his legendary series of matches against Jushin “Thunder” Liger for the brand new WCW Light Heavyweight were so revolutionary: They proved that you didn’t need to be a big, lumbering bodybuilder to get over with the crowds and put on the most exciting match on the card. The rivalry with Liger paved the way for the success of WCW and the WWE‘s cruiserweights, as well as TNA‘s X-Division. You can still see glimpses of Pillman’s influence in guys like A.J. Styles, Shelton Benjamin and Rey Mysterio, among many others.

In 1996, Pillman took another step towards pro wrestling immortality when he went into business for himself and publicly outted Kevin Sullivan as WCW’s booker during the Superbrawl VI pay-per-view. Within the first minute of their “Respect Strap Match,” Pillman, who’d already begun cultivating his “Loose Cannon” character, took the mic and said “I respect you, booker man“ to Sullivan, then walked out of the ring. At the time, kayfabe (the portrayal of wrestling as real) was fiercely protected, at least in WCW and the WWF (though ECW had already begun blurring the lines between fact and fiction). From that point on, the proverbial floodgates were opened, and the next few years saw an endless parade of storylines in WCW, the WWF and ECW that were rooted in real-life events. This was especially true during the Monday Night Wars, when Vince McMahon and Eric Bischoff pulled no punches in trying to gain the upper hand over their competition. Though times have once again changed, and the WWE works harder to maintain the suspension of disbelief in their storylines, you can still see them occasionally skirt the rules of kayfabe whenever it suits their needs (the Edge vs. Matt Hardy feud from 2005, for example).

I’ve often wondered how the rest of Pillman’s career would have turned out had it not been for the Humvee accident in 1996 that set off the chain of events that effectively ended his in-ring career. His “Loose Cannon” gimmick was certainly tailor-made for the WWF’s “Attitude” era of the late-90s. In fact, the infamous home invasion/gun angle Pillman did with Austin on Raw helped set the foundation for some of the Fed’s edgier storylines. It’s hard to believe that someone who was the catalyst for so many major changes in pro wrestling wouldn’t have eventually found his way to the very top of the industry. As it is, Brian Pillman is undoubtedly one of the most important wrestlers of his time.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 28th, 2007 at 1:58 pm and is filed under Corey Henson, It Came From the Midcard, Wrestling. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. You can comment below, or link to this permanent URL from your own site. Your comments will be moderated but will appear as soon as humanly possible.