Here's the idea: Both
wrestlers have one arm tied
to one side of a long
leather strap. Sometimes it's a long
chain.
Sometimes it's a long
dog collar. Sometimes
Vince Russo smokes a little too much
crack and makes it a "Brahma Bullrope."
Occasionally that'll be the extent of the stipulations, with the match
ending by pinfall or submission in the normal manner. More often,
however, the winner is the first wrestler to drag his opponent to all four
corners of the ring and touch all the corners consecutively.
There is only one--and I mean EXACTLY ONE--ending to a
touch-the-corners strap match. I know this because in the entire storied history of
professional wrestling, every single strap match has ended in the same
stupid way:
While wrestler #1 drags supposedly passed-out wrestler #2 around
the ring to the first three corners, #2 sneaks up behind #1 and touches
the corners afterwards. Then, #2 runs past #1 and touches the 4th
turnbuckle first, stealing victory out of the jaws of defeat.
It might actually be kind of cool if the matches EVER ended differently.
As it stands, I've only ever seen ONE good strap match (Raven and Stevie
Richards vs. The Pitbulls for the ECW World Tag Team Titles at Gangsta's Paradise '95), but
that was decided by pinfalls and not the lame corner-touching so it doesn't
really count.