Except that, suddenly, it was 12:30, and I was waking up in the emergency room of a local hospital. I had a grand mal seizure, and as it had been about eighteen months since my last time, I had no inkling I would ever have another one.

I got home about 2:30 in the afternoon and have slept most of the time since then (it's Sunday evening as I write this). Still, now adequately medicated and back to full strength (more-or-less) I thought I would visit the subject of surprises and swerves in professional wrestling.

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The story goes that when Bob Backlund was WWF champion almost continuously for six years, Vince McMahon swerved the title off of him by having his manager (Arnold Skaaland) throw in the towel while he (Backlund) was in the Iron Sheik's camel clutch.

If it was a swerve, it was a well-engineered one, as they set up and harped on Backlund's back injury before and during the match. It also established that hold as a particularly fearsome one, so when Hulk Hogan broke it, it helped put him that much more over the top.

I personally always felt that match was completely a work, and that Backlund, unwilling to take a heel gimmick (at that time) or a demotion to the mid-card, quit rather than stay around, but not before doing the job in a way that satisfied long time fans - he didn't give up.

The most famous pairs of swerves in more modern wrestling history happened to Bret Hart and Hulk Hogan himself. Both of these guys learned that you can have "creative control" all you want; it's the booker that calls the shots. Whether he is someone as savvy as Vince McMahon was in taking advantage of bad PR coming out of Montreal, or someone as insane as Vince Russo was, the booker calls the shots, and creative control be damned.

Some surprises have only been such in retrospect. When the wrestler who now wrestles as X-Pac won his first raw match, it seemed to be a stunning upset: he seemed to be a typical curtain jerker, the kind who got squashed regularly on WWF shows of the day. Similarly, later, when Barry Horowitz, the all-time-jobber-to-the-stars, actually won a few matches. The bookers broke out of such regularly established booking patterns that the viewers were genuinely swerved.

Some swerves aren't so effective, however. Mabel winning the King of the Ring tournament was one. I was one of the few who enjoyed that show - as I recall - but overall, this was seen as a disastrous booking choice. Still, no one can say Vince didn't cross us all up with that one.

The WWF used to use "expect the unexpected" as a slogan. However, as we saw in Vince Russo's ill-fated WCW run, for this to work, you have to establish an "expected", something his febrile mind was never able to do. The WWF's the most effective surprise was the one that upset their most established conventions: the Ultimate Warrior beating Hulk Hogan.

You see, Hogan always won in those days, and he always won the exact same way. To lose when in the middle of his inevitable winning combination of moves was a shock of the highest order. It was kind of like watching the end of the seventh game of the NBA finals when Michael Jordan was playing, and having him miss the potential game-winning shot - - it never happened.

Wrestling is like any other type of storytelling in that the best surprises have to be planned way in advance. There may be several being cooked up right now that we will all talk about in the future. In the meantime…

I think I'll go lay back down.