Kenny vs. Spenny was a Canadian comedy reality show where two friends compete in a new challenge every week.
Spencer Rice, aka “Spenny” (in wrestling parlance, the “babyface”) usually plays each challenge straight and usually loses.
Kenny Hotz (in wrestling parlance, the “total scumbag”) usually cheats and usually wins.
Spenny must not watch the show, like most sensible people, so he falls easy prey to Kenny’s cheating week after week.
At the end of each episode, the winner gets to humiliate the loser in some inventive way that they somehow never discuss prior to the competition. Kenny, for example, has made Spenny eat vomit and serve as his own personal bidet. Spenny has made Kenny model ladies’ underwear.
On this episode, the two men compete to see who would make the better professional wrestler, wrestling against their respective trainers at the end of the show. Spenny, who as a kid wanted to be a wrestler, wants to train all day, every day, for two days, in order to be judged the winner. His trainer is Canada’s second-favorite wrestling Tyson, Tyson Dux.
Kenny’s strategy is the opposite: he’s going to forgo in-ring training completely. Just as well, as his designated trainer “Celine Jian” is in fact a filmmaker and event promoter with minimal wrestling experience.
Real name Jian Magen, he takes his ring name from Celine Dion.
Instead, Kenny’s going to be “so entertaining” that he’ll win on humor alone.
I’ve seen your show, Kenny. All I can say is good luck.
I don’t know about you, but the first thing that pops into my head when I think “entertaining” is not a guy in a gas mask slapping himself on the head and calling himself, “Zyklon K”.
Kenny’s second character is arguably even worse, except his name is “The Trippy Hippie” instead of a Holocaust reference, which puts him about a hundred thousand points ahead of “Zyklon K”. Yikes.
The next costume Kenny pulls out of the prop closet is a bunch of ropes.
The camera crew is unimpressed with all of the costumes in this painfully unfunny montage. At this point, they’d have to almost envy Spenny…
…who has the comparatively pleasant task of getting stretched by Tyson Dux.
I know a wrestling would have to dumb things down when teaching an absolute beginner, but sometimes it feels like Dux goes a little overboard:
“One more shot”, Dux says. “It’s called a forearm.” It is? Why’s that?!
Spenny picks up some basic moves like this Steiner-like clothesline…
…and this Erik Watts-like dropkick:
Back at the house, the parade of dumb costumes continues as Kenny dresses up as…
…I don’t know, a Wite-Out pen?
The Ding Dongs’ semi-comatose manager?
Somehow, Kenny never considered that his Red Green-style codpiece would, you know, hurt when he tries to take it off.
Back at wrestling school, Tyson tells the camera that Spenny’s main problem is that he breaks character. How so?
He moans and groans after every bump, complaining that everything hurts. What an odd way for a pro wrestler to describe selling.
Kenny’s last “character” gets aggressively bad with an idiotic “foil” pun.
Unable to come up with a good wrestling character, an exhausted Kenny takes a soak in a bath tub with an ordinary old bathroom toaster nearby. Naturally, the scene ends with him getting electrocuted…
…emerging from the accident as a Creature From The Black Lagoon. This sequence still isn’t in the top five most obviously scripted moments in this episode.
Meanwhile at the dojo, Spenny tells Tyson he wants to bleed in their match. “You’re gonna bleed like a stuffed pig”, warns Dux, inaccurately.
Spenny returns from training to find Kenny jumping around as “Yarp Yarp”, a tampon-eating basketball monster whom Spenny compares unfavorably with the likes of Abdullah the Butcher and George Steele.
Hoping to beat Kenny on all fronts, Spenny is working on a character of his own called, “The Nice Guy”.
Tyson Dux, believe it or not, is impressed. “I like the sweater. I think it’s pretty cool…. Your boots are awesome.”
These are the boots he’s talking about.
Tyson is so pleased with his new protege that he brings in The Iron Sheik for a pep talk. Sheik asks Spenny, or Penny, as he calls him, for his favorite wrestler. Bobo Brazil is his response.
But no, Sheik wants to know his favorite wrestler of the “new generation”, by which he means the 1980s. Now, what are some of the names you’d think Sheik would suggest? Nikolai Volkoff? Jim Brunzell? Nah, Sheik casually suggests Hulk Hogan and the Ultimate Warrior, two of the men he hates the most in the whole world.
Spenny tries to be polite and says, “I like Hulk Hogan a bit. He was pretty cool.” Again, just to be polite.
The very mention of Hulk sets off the Sheik, who, just to reiterate, was the one who brought him up in the first place (along with that f***ing f***** c***s***er Ultimate Warrior).
But it technically is a pep talk, if you listen through to the end.
I don’t know if I’ve mentioned this before, but in the eighth grade, I tried to track down the Iron Sheik for an interview for history class, and part of me is now glad he never responded. (The part of me that doesn’t like angry drug-addled old men yelling obscenities at me for no reason, that is)
The next day is match time. Yarp Yarp’s mad scientist manager cuts a schlocky, grating promo with backstage interviewer Page Magen.
Tyson and Spenny perform their match as rehearsed while Page (twin brother of Kenny’s scheduled opponent Jian, with whom he would later co-produce the Iron Sheik documentary) offers some rather hokey commentary backstage.
For some reason, he points out Dux’s blade job on Spenny.
Before the match can conclude, both Yarp Yarp and Celine Jian run in and join Tyson Dux, putting the boots to Spenny for what feels like minutes. Yarp Yarp was supposed to wrestle Jian, but I guess the old saying is true: basketballs don’t hold grudges.
After selling for ages, Spenny eventually stands up and yells at everyone for messing up his match.
That’s good enough reason for the competition’s judge to disqualify Spenny for breaking character (as Tyson had telegraphed earlier in the episode).
That makes Kenny the winner by default, with “Yarp Yarp” never taking even a single bump. This worked out great for him, as his “pro” and scheduled opponent wasn’t even a real wrestler.
What would Sheiky Baby say if he saw that screwjob ending?
Actually, he doesn’t have much to say about the matter when he returns to the gym at the end of the episode.
Actions speak louder than words, after all. In this case, “actions” include trying to sodomize his new pal with a beer bottle. Seriously.
Just like he said in that “Brian Blair” interview.
The only saving grace of the closing segment is that, like the majority of the episode, it was most likely scripted.
What else am I supposed to say? Goodnight, folks.