Ready to Rumble

Plot

For most of their lives, Sewage workers Gordie Boggs and Sean Dawkins have been avid wrestling fans. When WCW Monday Nitro comes to their home state of Wyoming, they attend the show to watch their favorite wrestler, WCW World Heavyweight Champion Jimmy King get cheated out of the title by Diamond Dallas Page, and WCW CEO Titus Sinclair, and DDP's partners. After the match, the two wrestling fans humorously express their rage in their septic truck, resulting in a car crash.

After this event, Gordie believes that the car crash was fate and that they should make Jimmy King once again World Champion. Sean agrees to help Gordie, and the dimwitted duo go on a quest to put their King back on his throne. The next day, Gordie asks a friend to find out where the washed-up wrestler lives. Their friend succeeds, and they go to an unexpected-looking neighborhood. They find King's estranged wife and later his parents. The parents tell them that King borrowed their mobile home, and never returned it. The duo find King and become over-excited. They have a conversation, and when King says that he gives up on wrestling, Gordie and Sean anger him to the point where he suddenly attacks the two boys. The boys encourage King to beat them up, which influenced him to return to wrestling. Then Gordie and Sean are knocked out when Jimmy King does his finishing move.

The two boys wake up the next day when Jimmy King drips beer on their faces. Later that day, the trio go on a road trip. Gordie sends letters to his father, who wanted Gordie to follow in his footsteps to be a policeman, but Gordie says that he will not join him in a policeman test, making him frustrated. Gordie, King, and Sean go to the New York Arena where they hide King in a port-a-potty and they meet Sasha, one of The Nitro Girls. When DDP mocks Jimmy King on camera, King comes out of the port-a-potty and beats him up. Sinclair, therefore, declares a Triple Cage match for the WCW World Heavyweight Championship plus a $1,000,000 cash prize. However, if King loses, he will never wrestle again.

Sasha is impressed by Gordie, and they go to her apartment. Jimmy King is in deep need of a trainer. They go to a local training center, where King meets his former partner, Bill Goldberg. They also find Sal Bandini, who beats up King. He is then hired as their trainer, but he is hospitalized when Sid Vicious and Perry Saturn attack him that night. Gordie finds out that Sasha has been spying on them for Titus and breaks up with her. They take King to his wife's home.

When they try to get a new partner for King, Gordie's father comes along, gets Gordie and convinces him that his dream of working with Jimmy King was stupid. When Gordie was at home, Sean and King tried to bust him out, but Gordie refused (an ironic change in Gordie as he once encouraged King to return to wrestling). But the next day, Gordie comes at an entourage audition and is thanked by King for everything Gordie did for him. No one, however, was able to make the cut, and so King has to face DDP alone. Initially King is alone, but after he gets a horrible beatdown by DDP and his goons starting with King's own son, Goldberg, Booker T, Billy Kidman, Disco Inferno come to his aid but aren't able to get into the cage until Gordie shows up and crashes a motorcycle through the cage door. Gordie and the others deal with DDP's posse and defeat them while King and DDP climb the cage to get the belt. Sasha attempts reuniting with Gordie as the fans love him, but is knocked out by a ladder being swung around during the match after not listening to Sean's warning. DDP manages to throw King back to the mat, but is knocked back there himself by Sting. The two climb to the top again and fight it out and King manages to defeat DDP, throwing him through the cages to the mat, knocking him out. King retrieves the belt and is once again champion. After this, Sinclair is booed by the fans then beaten up by Sean and Gordie who toss him to the fans who beat him up some more. Goldberg later asks King to re-team with him, but the new champ announces his new partner will be Gordie and their manager will be Sean. Gordie's father watches the match on TV and after seeing how good Gordie is, accepts Gordie's choice and even cheers for him.

The epilogue shows Sean telling kids "dreams can come true" back at the convenience store, where Gordie and Goldberg teach the clerk a lesson by hurling him out on the street for being mean to kids. All ends happily as the heroes ride off in a stretch Hummer (driven by Nitro Girl Chae), together with Sal, now fully recovered in a hot tub with beautiful women and ends it by saying "God bless America".

The end credits feature out-takes of kicks to the groin.

Actors

Wrestlers

Publicity

Following the release of the movie, WCW decided to generate publicity for the company by running a storyline in which David Arquette, a legitimate wrestling fan, became WCW World Champion. The storyline was reviled by wrestling fans, and Arquette himself reportedly believed it was a bad idea, as he felt that it would damage the value of the belt he held in such high regard. While in WCW, he aligned himself with Diamond Dallas Page (despite Page being the movie's villain) and agreed in storyline to drop the title to him. He eventually lost the title in a match involving the three-tiered cage seen in Ready to Rumble, pitting himself against Page and Jeff Jarrett, which ended when he turned on Page and allowed Jarrett to win. Arquette later donated all the money WCW paid him to the families of the late Brian Pillman, the late Brian Hildebrand and paralyzed wrestler Darren Drozdov.

The Triple Cage was used by WCW only twice: first, at Slamboree 2000, Jeff Jarrett beat Diamond Dallas Page and David Arquette (defending the WCW World Heavyweight Championship) to win the title. In this match, Chris Kanyon was thrown from the roof of one of the cages, "paralyzing" him. The other, taking place on the September 4, 2000 episode of WCW Monday Nitro, was the 2000 edition of the WarGames match.

Critical reception

On release, Ready to Rumble received a largely negative critical reception, with a Rotten Tomatoes rating of 23% based on 69 reviews.

Production

The character of Sal Bandini is based on wrestlers Lou Thesz and Stu Hart. Oliver Platt accidentally struck Randy Savage in the face during the filming of a fantasy scene. The footage of the incident, which was shot over Savage's shoulder, can be seen in the blooper reel shown during the closing credits. Chris Kanyon was Oliver Platt's stunt double, and Shane Helms was David Arquette's stunt double. The character of Titus Sinclair is based on WCW President and Executive Producer Eric Bischoff, who was originally planned to star in this movie as a fictionalized version of himself, but was fired from WCW before filming began.

Music

The film score makes extensive use of classical music, both diegetic and non-diegetic. "Fanfare for the Common Man" by Aaron Copland is featured as Jimmy King's theme music. "Siegfried's Funeral March" from Götterdämmerung by German composer Richard Wagner plays quietly in the background during King's initial discomfiture at the hands of Titus Sinclair, played by Joe Pantoliano, and Diamond Dallas Page.

A soundtrack for the film was released by Atlantic Records and 143 Records in both 'clean' and 'explicit' editions. Considering the Kid Rock song "Badwitdaba", the Lower Than You remix, is not deleted on the iTunes version of this soundtrack, it remained one of the only songs of Kid Rock to be available on iTunes, until most of his catalog was released on iTunes in 2013.