I'm not sure what to think of this

[Guest Loss]

I saw this column linked in a few places and thought I'd post it here and see what you think of it. Ultimately, some horrible points are made, some great points are made, and either way, it's worth discussing. I'll copy/paste.

 

The Good And Bad Of Professional Wrestling

by Jim Raggi

 

Many of LotFP's readers have taken the time to express their displeasure with the idea of the LotFP site covering pro wrestling. Pro wrestling brings out such ugly reactions. Sporting events don't do that. Theater doesn't do that. Is it because of what pro wrestling is, a staged exhibition of a sporting event, that causes that reaction? Or is it the presentation they see on Mondays and Thursdays that makes people think pro wrestling is sewage and its fans are borderline retards? Pro wrestling as it is commonly known right now sucks. It sucks a lot. But it doesn't have to suck, and in some places, it doesn't.

 

I can understand why people hate professional wrestling. Let's see, we have World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE, formerly the World Wrestling Federation, or WWF) whose owner is ashamed that he can't be successful outside of professional wrestling. He doesn't even call his product professional wrestling anymore, and the performers aren't even called wrestlers. Hollywood scriptwriters write an 'entertainment program' filled with 'superstars' performing 'sports entertainment'. Yeah, real great. The other major league promotion was World Championship Wrestling (WCW), run by people who again sought respect and jobs in more mainstream entertainment, with a support staff that wasn't competent enough to work in any of Turner/Time Warner's other divisions. Headlining talent was allowed to call their own shots and were allowed to stroke their own egos on the air at the expense of the product, the fans, and the company they worked for. Then there was Extreme Championship Wrestling (ECW), which was so ineptly run on every level that the in-ring product was, with a few exceptions, absolute death shortly after it hit PPV, but still embraced by the equivalent of the nu-metal kids because it presented itself as a rebellious and politically incorrect alternative at a time when the big two, WWF and WCW, were cracking down on violence and collapsing under their own creative mismanagement. Oh, and all the while they were being kept afloat financially by one of the promotions they were 'the alternative' to.

 

None of that is good professional wrestling, people. Watching WWE or WCW and thinking that's what wrestling is supposed to be is just like buying an album by Linkin Park or Papa Roach and thinking you have the cutting edge in heavy metal. It just isn't so. If you've watched pro wrestling on any national outlet in the past fifteen years, you've been looking at a lot of excrement. If you're lucky you've gotten a couple tasty peanuts in there as well, but who wants peanuts covered in shit?

 

Here's what I think professional wrestling is when it is at its best, and here's a model of what I think would garner pro wrestling respect. Along with this would come a stronger die-hard fanbase. It would not give wrestling the mainstream fad popularity it enjoys for a few years every decade, but steady sustainable business is better than grand fad highs and industry flattening lows.

 

Good professional wrestling simulates being a sporting event.

Granted, sporting events are quite the spectacle these days. With the recap shows, locker room interviews, endless statistical minutiae, there is lots going on, but a fan always know what they're there to see. Athletes participating in athletic competition. Professional wrestling must convey the feeling of real sports for it to be consistently successful. Rules need to be known and consistently enforced. Consistency in how controversies are handled is a must. Consistency in what is 'good' behavior and 'bad' behavior has to be established. Allow the fan the feeling of watching something genuine.

 

Bad professional wrestling lets its fans in on the fact that it's just a show.

Anything that professional wrestling does to make a fan not buy into its authenticity is bad for professional wrestling. Controversy is good: It sells tickets. Characterization of the wrestlers is good, it gives the people that added hook to care about the wrestlers. But it all needs to be done in moderation. Real sports have controversy. Real sports have characters. But professional wrestling's strength is the ability to control those characters, and those controversies, in a manner that builds the sports drama to maximum anticipation. Every World Series in wrestling can go down to the last out in the seventh game, you know? But bad professional wrestling takes that and exaggerates it so every single thing is a controversy. Every single person on camera becomes a character in bad professional wrestling, from the ring announcer, to the interviewer, to the security guard. The less something is done, the more it stands out when it is done. And the less contrived phoniness that happens on a professional wrestling show, the less professional wrestling will look like a circus and a fraud. Being proud of professional wrestling does not mean having every wrestler dress up in an outrageous costume and pretending to be a wrestling plumber, a wrestling doctor, a wrestling astronaut. It just doesn't. And little things like doing skits with wrestlers where they pretend there's no camera present; referees who are both more blind and brittle than Ray Charles (after he died); they take away from the real controversies that can actually be used to build drama for the fan and therefore revenue for the promoter. Pulling a George Brett pine tar incident once gives a lifetime of discussion. Doing it every time there's a home run will make people dread seeing a home run.

"Your talent means nothing when I am telling our audience that this isn't a competition anyway."

 

Good professional wrestling realizes that wins and losses do matter.

If good wrestling is sport-like, then the most important thing in wrestling must be wins and losses. Wins and losses. You know what else? Clean wins and losses giving clear winners and losers in every match. Is that clear? Wrestlers that are to be taken seriously must win. And wrestlers who win must be taken seriously. This is a very simple concept and it seems that nobody in wrestling wants to admit to grasping it because they have other priorities. This also means that "trading wins" is OK to create parity, but if there is parity amongst everyone, then there are no stars. When wins and losses matter, and when the decision in the big match determines just who the big star is, the more outlandish plots and characters become unnecessary.

 

Bad professional wrestling tries to tell you that connecting with the crowd is the ultimate goal.

True wrestling talent doesn't grow on trees. True wrestling talent takes effort to work with and promote properly. A way around the proper promotion and handling of talented wrestlers is to take the focus away from wrestling and match results and throw it onto gimmicks, entertaining skits, and wild match endings that don't actually settle anything. If the appeal of a wrestler is a grand entrance, a catchphrase, a gimmick that doesn't have anything to do with wrestling, fans will get conditioned to not care about the wrestling. Wrestling then becomes an arms race of who can come up with the next big gimmick, who can come up with the next audience sing-along, etc. If the focus is on the mat and who the better man might be on this night, promoters will never run out of important matches. Yet promoters have long taken the easy way out, to the point where even 'smart' fans utter dribble such as "this guy's a good wrestler but doesn't give me a reason to care about his matches." Proof that the 'smart' can have no common sense. I don't turn on tennis and expect the players to make me care about their volleys. I don't turn hockey on and expect a goalie to interact with the crowd. Yet wrestling fans have been trained to think that wrestling is absolutely useless. People desperate for any wrestling over no wrestling at all have been brainwashed by bad wrestling. This drives me up a wall.

"Your talent means nothing when I can just get someone to lead the crowd in a catch phrase"

 

Good professional wrestling values its die-hard fans and keeps them happy.

Professional wrestling fans know what they want. Promoters know what fans want, too. In good professional wrestling, the promoter figures out what they can give the fans, teases them with it so they want it, and then delivers it to them. If they're smart, they'll listen to what the fans clamor for on their own, tease them with that if they have it to deliver, and then they deliver that too. The most important thing is, they deliver. They don't cheat the fans out of their finale, and they don't tease what they can not or plan not to deliver. It's difficult to build trust with a wrestling fan, because the die-hard wrestling fan knows that most pro wrestling is garbage and is just waiting for the cheap ending to a key match They're just waiting for the next let-down, they're waiting to have their intelligence insulted by the promoter for daring to be a wrestling fan. But when wrestling promotions finally can establish that trust, by giving the wrestling fan what they want consistently, there are fewer people more loyal than a wrestling fan to his favorite wrestling company.

 

Bad professional wrestling covets the mainstream, non-wrestling fan.

Celebrity, non athlete wrestlers. Gimmicks based on mainstream non-sports happenings. Always teasing to get that next big rating, and that next big house, and then going right into the next big tease before actually delivering anything. Short matches with very little mat wrestling so as not to bore the casual channel flipper on TV. While nothing but a small cult following certainly doesn't provide a living for very many, it is important for a promoter to court wrestling fans who want to see wrestling. They have to realize that's not going to be the majority of people. Courting the non-wrestling fans with non-wrestling content in a professional wrestling program shows a distinct lack in confidence in professional wrestling itself. After all, why promote all these nonsensical extras if the wrestling was enough? It's also a slap in the face of the fans who support the product week in and week out, the people for whom the wrestling itself is enough.

"Your talent means nothing when the audience I'm after will watch us on TV one or two hours a week and maybe come to a show once a year just for the spectacle of it all."

 

Good professional wrestling emphasizes basic in-ring wrestling which anyone can believe is actually happening for real.

The most single ruinous maneuver in all of pro wrestling is a punch. Whether it's the stomp of the foot, the cartoon-like swing of the arm, or the obvious non impact, nothing destroys the credibility of a professional wrestling match like a fake pro wrestling punch. It doesn't look real, so the gut instinct is not "He just hit him!" The gut instinct is "Fake punch", followed by the willful thought of "I understand that one wrestler is now hurting the other and the other wrestler is now hurt." It's that one extra mental step one has to take. And that's just with a punch. How many maneuvers do you see in an average match that create mental disconnects like this? Then take the forearm blow, or the knife-edge chop. A wrestler can throw those with far harder force, causing the defending wrestler's head to jolt on impact, or causing the loud slap of flesh as the hand connects with the chest. If the wrestler is one mean son of a bitch, both of these things happen. Impact. Real impact. First thought of the viewer: "Oh, he tagged him!" That a forearm or chop would not be the actual most effective way of striking in a street fight is the secondary reaction. And that's good. Because the gut reaction was, "He hit him!" Take that example and apply it to everything a pro wrestler does in the ring. Every movement, every hold. Is the first gut reaction, "ow!" or is the first gut reaction, "That looks phony!" requiring a conscious want to believe it afterwards? Once wrestling establish their reality in the ring, then more fantastic extrapolations from that reality can happen without losing the audience. It allows those more cooperative maneuvers to still retain that gut "He really did that!" reaction, because they've already established their reality. It takes patience to follow this course though. But just as a baseball pitcher must wind up before every pitch, just as every football quarterback must receive the snap before he can make a pass, and just as every hockey game must have a face-off before anyone can shoot on goal, so must a quality professional wrestling match establish its reality before it can attempt to do the unreal.

 

Bad professional wrestling uses the assumption that a viewer already understands what goes on in a pro wrestling ring.

Much of this boils down to execution and is one of the few examples of bad wrestling that can be caused by the in-ring talent rather than the behind-the-curtain puppeteers. Is the action sloppy and much too cooperative looking? Or does it actually look like a struggle? Take the Irish whip. A tug of the hand and a push on the back is not going to send a man bouncing off of the ropes at running speeds. We know this. And yet in 99 out of 100 wrestling matches, we see this very thing. Why? Because in the past people struggled on that whip and it is 'understood' that doing that means the man will bounce back after hitting the ropes. This is bullshit. Take a look at how Chris Benoit performs the Irish whip (or used to anyway, I haven't watched him for years because the promotion he wrestles for is full of bad wrestling). He softens the guy up with a chop or three to get him off balance, and then bends deep to get the leverage to pull the guy with some force to get the guy moving at the ropes. (This creates humor as Benoit wanna-bes copy the motion but not the purpose so they basically perform a leg dip with their Irish whip not realizing they aren't adding to the reality of the move one bit) Notice on good dropkicks, the person hitting the move twists so they land on their front side, arms breaking their fall. Bad dropkicks, the guy hitting the move lands on his back but reacts much differently than if he takes the same fall on his back after missing a dropkick. Wrestling fans are trained that "When you hit a move, it doesn't hurt you," and "When you miss a move, you get hurt," so instead of showing this to us as it happens, wrestling cheats us by skipping the real establishment of this fact and just moves to the end results. That's bullshit. It creates yet another mental break and takes the fan out of the reality of what is happening. And I've been watching wrestling for over twenty years and I still can't figure out why everyone just lays around after hitting a dive whether they were the ones hitting it spot-on, or the one getting hit by it.

"Your talent means nothing when I can hire a guy with a couple years' experience that can wrestle halfway decent."

 

Good professional wrestling emphasizes the actual wrestling inside the ring more than anything else.

Armlocks. Leglocks. Holds. Maneuvers. Perhaps not the be all and end all of professional wrestling, but definitely the be most and end most, so to speak. The best wrestling makes every maneuver and hold important, and potentially the end of the match, else why would anyone ever use an ineffective hold? Lazy commentators might not want to call a rear chinlock in an exciting manner to emphasize its importance and legitimacy in a professional wrestler's repertoire. Lazy wrestlers might be the root cause of that issue by using that and other moves as an opportunity for rest, instead of continuing to do their jobs out in the ring. Unwillingness to follow the course of good wrestling has again brainwashed the wrestling faithful who will treat things like a roll-up or small package as a 'fluke win' instead of what it should be seen as: A superior wrestler using their bodies to leverage an opponent's shoulders into a pinning situation. That is ostensibly the whole and entire reason to hold a wrestling match in the first place, isn't it? And using wrestling in a professional wrestling match to do just that is considered a fluke? Wrestling's priorities are skewed, and that's not good wrestling.

 

Bad professional wrestling emphasizes personality and interview ability.

Who said it best? "If script writers allowed professional wrestlers to get over using wrestling, they wouldn't need script writers anymore." Lou Thesz made the point about promoters not liking the true wrestlers because they aren't easily controlled, and I think that line of thinking applies to the credible performers as well. Wrestlers who are able to wrestle well and have the opportunity to do so in front of fans who think wrestling is important don't need gimmicks. They don't need interview time. They don't need angles. Sure, such things can help if done in the interest of good wrestling and not done in the interest of lazy shortcuts that are the hallmark of bad wrestling. But they're not needed. But again, good wrestling takes patience and thought to achieve, and again, nothing is more rare in all of wrestling than patience and thought. To make up for their lack of necessary attributes, promoters don't use the wrestler's personality and interviews to add importance to and augment the actual wrestling. They instead replace the importance of wrestling with the importance of personality and interview ability. Why should they present a wrestling match when they can have someone do a fifteen minute long soliloquy? Why let the important parts of a wrestling feud play out through the wrestlers' actual match when the wrestlers can just tell us all about it on the mic and not bore people with that rolling around stuff on the canvas? Talk people into the arenas with interviews and once the people are there, talk to them some more. When I had dreams of becoming a pro wrestler, I was looking up information on the Hart camp, the Monster Factory, things like that. Little did I know that the real key to success would have been to enroll at NYU with a major in drama.

Oh yeah, a little note to those who say "One day the dream matches will run out." You guys must be looking at wrestling in a vacuum caused by scorched-Earth national expansion policies of the 80s. How many wrestling schools are out there right now? How many active promotions are there at any one point, each trying to create their own new stars because their top guys have other bookings half the time? All it takes is one good push, or one fantastic match that wasn't expected, and a new star is born. One new star becomes a dozen dream matches. Five promotions creating one star each per year is probably a most conservative estimation at the scene right now, and any one dream match can be spread over a number of shows between tag matches, build-up, and final confrontation. Do that math and tell me that the dream matches would run out. Those who don't have confidence in the dream matches to continue have simply learned from history that wrestling promoters find a way to screw it all up. But it doesn't have to be that way, and never would have been that way if wrestling promoters in the early 80s had been paying attention.

"Your talent means nothing when I have guy who can tell jokes and make the crowd get on their feet without having to know how to work!"

 

Good professional is territorial with frequent turnover of talent.

The old territorial system that was crushed by bad wrestling and national expansions was a good one. The technology to really allow it to flourish in situations where the local promotion was not a monopoly was just not available before the entire system collapsed. Talent went in and out of territories at a fairly rapid pace back in the day. A typical scenario would be for a wrestler to come in, work six months here, go somewhere else for four months, head out somewhere else for a few months, then come back, then go somewhere else... Only if a wrestler hit incredibly big in an area, or had ownership in the promotion, would they set down strong roots and become almost exclusive to one area for an appreciable amount of time. The result was that more good wrestling was possible because it wasn't necessary to introduce crazy gimmicks into a stale talent pool: A new talented wrestler coming in was its own interesting gimmick. A returning wrestler with a new cast of characters to wrestle locally was its own gimmick. When there were twenty or more territories all running full time schedules, it allowed talent to get seasoned faster, and have a greater variety of opponents. Due to the modern video sales phenomenon, this is more of a plus than ever before. It's easier than ever to follow different wrestlers into different territories. It's a win win situation as promotions not only benefit from their wrestlers getting experience and exposure in other areas, but fans in those other areas will be interested in what their local favorites are doing away from home.

 

Bad professional wrestling monopolizes talent.

I understand the need to put talent under contract. I really do. The last thing you want to do if you're a promoter on a big stage is set up the big match, or even an important point of build-up for such a match, only to have somebody else offers that wrestler more money for that date and screws up all of your plans. But wrestling is very political. Wrestling eats its performers alive. It is simply impossible to insist on using only long-contracted wrestlers in prominent roles and keep a promotion going. It leaves nowhere for stale talent to go, thus leaving them to either not work or become permanent 'old news'. Or if the old guard blocks entry into the upper card, all of the star match-ups become reruns after not too long. If this approach succeeds to the point where no other promotion is at the level of a monopolistic wrestling federation, there is also nowhere to get new wrestlers from that can come in for an immediate dream match. It's death to the idea of fresh matches in professional wrestling, it's death to the idea of the big match in professional wrestling. It's death to professional wrestling.

"Your talent means nothing because where else can you go if you quit working for me?"

 

Good professional wrestling requires athletes.

Professional wrestling is tough. It's painful. It requires bodies to take punishment they just aren't designed to take. I've been through tough amateur wrestling workouts in high school. Months on end in a little room that gets so hot that everybody's sweat condenses into clouds in the damn room. And we didn't even bump as a matter of course. It should be obvious that pro wrestling requires people who are physically able to perform and endure the activities of professional wrestling. If someone can do that with a pot belly, more power to them. If they can do that at 50 years of age, they are men of marvel. If they have the body of a bulemic vegetarian marathon runner on speed, well, wrestling needs somebody to get thrown around. But putting physical oddities in the ring as a gimmick, keeping men around far past their prime, and having them be competitive with men who are truly physically fit enough to engage in professional wrestling are not things that should be a part of good professional wrestling.

 

Bad professional wrestling emphasizes look and muscles way too much.

Have you ever watched Olympic wrestling? Gone to college meets? Your state high school championships? How many ripped and cut bodybuilding monsters do you see ? Yes, there are some. But there are also the hulking mammoths in Greco-Roman wrestling. The lean, lithe figures in freestyle. Strength is not a function of look. Toughness is not a function of look. Producing a roided out wrestler with a chiseled physique is another shortcut promoters use to not have to take the time to establish that a wrestler is tough and that a wrestler is strong. You want to establish the strength of a wrestler? Have him throw people around. Want to establish a wrestler as tough? Have him survive a beating. This isn't difficult. This is a work. Results and maneuvers can be fixed! It's the greatest power professional wrestling has over true sport and competition but it seems to be the last thing anybody in wrestling wants to use to good effect. Requiring professional wrestlers to look like professional bodybuilders insults the fans who are basically being told that talent doesn't mean nearly as much as looking the part, and it insults the talent by forcing them to focus on an area that has absolutely nothing to do with the sport that a professional wrestling show is ostensibly putting forth. There's something very, very wrong with old fat men telling these athletes about the shortcomings of their body shape. It's another form of control.

"Your talent means nothing when I have a 6'4", 250 pound man who spends time in the gym who I can present as your superior. Do every stupid thing I want you to or else."

 

Good professional wrestling remembers history and tells all the truth it can.

Listen to a sports talk show, or watch all those nifty flashing graphics during a sports game. You see tons of historical perspective, where players fit in with players of the past in a million different categories. The greats are acknowledged for what they have done, and records are kept detailing their accomplishments. Pro wrestling? In the United States? In the effort to promote that next show, to get the new hot star over, to entertain the fans right now, history is erased, rewritten, and thoroughly abused to the point where nobody in professional wrestling has credibility. What's done is done. History is set in stone. People see it, people remember it, and people know when you lie about it. So use that history to your advantage. Putting modern day happenings in historical perspective gives fans the sense of not only being part of an exciting show, but part of history. By respecting history, a promotion gives pro wrestling fans a feeling of belonging over the long haul. This adds a respectability that allows a fan to still come back to the arena when he's thirty, forty, fifty, sixty years old. Old people's dollars spend just as well as that college kid whose business pro wrestling so desperately wants right now. The first time a promotion re-uses something from the past and pretend it's brand new, they break their bond with the fans. Mistakes will happen, but it's much easier to apologize for those mistakes when a promotion has established that they are proud of their history and the history of professional wrestling in general.

 

Bad professional wrestling always considers the here and now the best and most important time in history.

Sometimes, now really is the time. Sometimes, things are really the best they have ever been, or close enough that nobody will argue if someone says it. But sometimes, things are down in the dumps. Sometimes, Having a wrestler or commentator name things as "most important" or "historic" when they obviously aren't for anyone who has been watching for more than five minutes creates yet another break between reality and the fan that can't be overcome. Trust is lost, and at that point pro wrestling becomes a game of 'spot the flaws', heckling, and smartmarkery. Wrestling asks for it by being bad, and by failing to realize their fans aren't that stupid.

"Your talent means nothing when I can fire you and just tell everyone some random guy is the next hot new wrestler until they start to believe it."

 

Good professional wrestling is not a morality play.

Good and evil are red herrings in professional wrestling. In sports, may the better athlete win. Professional wrestling is best when it emulates sport, so it should be up to the better athlete to win. Not the better *actual* athlete, this is a work after all, but the athlete that it is decided is better on that particular night. Good professional wrestling draws on the same passions that fuel college athletic rivalries, the same passions that make the Super Bowl one of the most widely viewed sporting events every year. Yes, fans will vociferously cheer their favorite and boo the other team. Fans will get all painted up, be obnoxious, and just go insane for their team... all without the other side being evil. Baseball draws tens of thousands of fans daily to dozens of major cities every summer, and the media never hypes up a team as being the 'bad guy'. Same for a top college football rivalry- when the big game comes around, there are tens of thousands of fans from both teams in the stands, cheering their team on. There is no bad guy. Professional wrestling should strive to do the same. Instead of wasting time defining who is 'good' and 'bad', professional wrestling should focus on promoting the best wrestlers, creating interest in top matches that allow both wrestlers to focus on being their own selves/characters/whatever as best they can be without stifling them into predetermined and long worn out roles, and then delivering the match once fans are dying to know who the better wrestler is. If promoters are really on the ball they'll center all this competition around a championship belt.

 

Bad professional wrestling puts strict emphasis on the good guy/bad guy dichotomy.

Professional wrestling fans have been told for so long that good guys versus bad guys is how professional wrestling is supposed to be. Too many believe it. It needs to die. Every time there's a tournament somewhere and the results are determined so that there is good guy vs. bad guy in every match in every round, it makes wrestling that much harder to get into because it's so obviously fake. Every time a promoter or wrestler has to take extra measures to make a crowd boo a wrestler they don't want to boo because they respect them and enjoy them too much, wrestling suffers. Every time a wrestler that the crowd doesn't like is force-fed to a crowd and promoted as popular and someone that should be cheered, wrestling suffers. These are all prices that are paid when it is decided that wrestling must be good guy-bad guy. Instead of promoting a product and matches that fans would naturally want to see and pay their money to see, instead of developing characters and letting fans boo and cheer them as they wish, time and effort is spent conditioning fans to react to certain wrestlers certain ways. Promoters and wrestlers go out of their minds if they can't program the fans to react just as they wish. What a colossal waste of time, effort, and resources! And have you ever noticed that the dastardly bad guy who couldn't ever win a match without cheating will turn good and suddenly have a streak of clean victories? Or the good guy who turns bad and suddenly can't stand toe to toe with anybody anymore and always has to use underhanded strategy to even get an upper hand anymore? How about announcers that vilify bad guys for doing the exact same thing they praised a good guy for doing (this is my favorite all-time wrestling fuck-up by the way)? People notice these things, they can't help it, and noticing these things creates one extra roadblock between the action and a fan's natural reaction. The more information we see as part of the show that tells us this is all phony, the more and more difficult it is to really care about what goes on. Let wrestlers receive boos and cheers, react to them accordingly, and get on with the business at hand. Good feuds require wrestlers who hate each other, not a wrestler who hates (or is hated by) the fans.

"Your talent means nothing when I can make you insult the fans and sneak attack three other guys they like and give you an Iraqi resistance gimmick. They'll hate you forever!"

 

Good professional wrestling does not abuse the sense of reality.

First of all, good professional wrestling does not at any point during the show let its fans in on the fact that any of this is less than one hundred percent genuine competition. In recent years, wrestling promoters have compromised the enjoyment of professional wrestling by trying to take advantage of the fact that the audience knows they are watching a performance. Doing that never, ever results in anything worthy of the name professional wrestling. The usual strategy is to present a wrestling show as usual, and then have one angle suddenly be portrayed as 'more real' than the rest of the show. The intention is to garner added interest in this one particular storyline because "It is real!", even though it isn't. And that immediately brands the rest of the show as "Fake!", while the show is still going on! You know, people don't watch a network medical drama during sweeps week and have to watch an episode where the actors start using their real names, acknowledging the cameras, and try to convince us there's an emergency on-set and they are doing that surgery for REAL this time, all the while also continuing their character subplots as this is going on. Because to do so would be to treat their own product, and their audiences, like complete dogshit.

 

Bad professional wrestling takes influence from too many sources.

All pro wrestling plotlines must center around the wrestling ring and the matches that are held in them. Quality pro wrestling plotlines start in a ring with either a match or the announcement of a match. Quality pro wrestling plotlines must develop either in a ring with matches or with interviews directly relating to a match. Quality pro wrestling plotlines must end in a ring with a match. To do anything else with a professional wrestling show actively cheapens the actual matches, with the end result being people not caring about a wrestling match any more. I guarantee you, I swear it on my grandparents' and my father's grave, that even an average professional wrestler can come up with more professional wrestling matches than the very best writer can come up with plotlines. If you don't want to be in professional wrestling, then don't be. Not a problem. It isn't for everyone. If you are in professional wrestling, be the absolute best you can be in professional wrestling, and be proud to be part of it. There is no such thing as a professional wrestling "script writer." Calling people such a thing does not suddenly turn your professional wrestling program into a general entertainment program. A professional wrestling "script writer" is just another booker, and a "writing staff" is just another block between the person really in charge and the talent who is supposed to be getting direction from them. This is professional wrestling, not a sitcom, not a drama series, and not a horror movie. And no matter how many times people say it, pro wrestling is not a soap opera. It's pro wrestling.

"Your talent means nothing when I can just put you in a storyline where you are more concerned with the ring valet you have a crush on being stalked by a member of the camera crew!"

 

Good professional wrestling realizes its fans are sentient, intelligent human beings.

This is self-explanatory, isn't it? Treat your audience with respect, damn it!

 

Bad professional wrestling believes its fans either can't tell the difference between good professional wrestling, or don't care about the difference.

Good professional wrestling doesn't take a lot of brains. It doesn't even take a tremendous amount of talent. (Although great professional wrestling does require lots of one or the other). It takes patience. Patience to pay attention to the details. Patience to go through all of the steps to provide that quality pro wrestling product. When you turn on your television, or when you go to a show, and you see bad professional wrestling, it's not because somebody screwed up. It's because somebody is being lazy. It's because somebody thinks so little of the people they want to be watching, that they don't feel the need to present a quality product. That's the bottom line. Professional wrestling has a reputation slightly below that of week-old poo because the majority of pro wrestling promoters have presented poo to their audience and expected them to enjoy it. But just as bands like Poison, Korn, and Limp Bizkit have perpetuated the image of heavy metal idiocy to the public over the decades, there are bands like Hammers of Misfortune, Agalloch, The Provenance that craft heavy metal with respect shown to themselves, the art form, and their listeners, so to is there professional wrestling that is not a circus, that is not insulting, that is not a blatant phony. Support those that respect you with the products they make, and you'll never go wrong, whether that product is soap, pots and pans, cars, airplane tickets, music, or professional wrestling.

"Your talent means nothing when the fans can't tell the difference anyway!"

 

(thanks to DL Burrell, Matt Johnsen, and Jessee Reynoso for help with this article)

[Guest Dillon Likes Bossman]

Really good read. This whole mindset though is about 30 years too late. If Pro-Wrestling went back to being just about the wrestling, It wouldn't be called Pro wresling because so many of us have been conditioned by WWE programming. We're brainwashed, face it, there is no turning back regaudless of how much greener the grass would be.

[BUTT 0]

Great read, but it seems that if "good wrestling" has to contain all the elements that this writer listed, then "good wrestling" has never fully existed.

[Nighthawk 0]

So what were the horrible points? It sounded ok to me, if overly fanciful, perhaps.

[Guest Loss]

I think pro wrestling should play as a morality play. He seems to think it's the moves that make a match good or bad, but characterization is also very important. He likens wrestling to sports, which is a comparison that has some weight, but underdog stories and rookie success are basic elements that draw people into sports as well. He seems to think that wrestling doesn't need storylines to be successful, which is bullshit. It does. They should always build toward a match, and I'm even fine with using the matches to tell the stories without an overabundance of extracurricular crap, but there still needs to be an ongoing story involved. Wrestling is a performance and wrestling is an illusion, and all good performances and illusions have defined roles and established characters.

[JoeDirt 0]

Yeah, JimLotFP (the guy who wrote this, a big IWA-MS fan) is old school to the bone.

[Nighthawk 0]

I guessed by his opinion of ECW. Yeah, true enough. I took it more as allowing the story to develope more organically, which makes sense. And that the stories be an outgrowth of what happens in the matches, rather than, you know... coffee and stuff. But no, you wouldn't want to do that all the time. After all, I'm not an Allen Iverson fan because of the way he plays basketball. Not alone, anyway.

[Guest Loss]

Specific points with which I disagree:

 

Yet promoters have long taken the easy way out, to the point where even 'smart' fans utter dribble such as "this guy's a good wrestler but doesn't give me a reason to care about his matches." Proof that the 'smart' can have no common sense. I don't turn on tennis and expect the players to make me care about their volleys. I don't turn hockey on and expect a goalie to interact with the crowd. Yet wrestling fans have been trained to think that wrestling is absolutely useless.

 

Wrestling is a performance, not a sport. Wrestling is also responsible for manufacturing and marketing its own stars, and they can create their own great sports moments anytime they chose to do so. There *is* an emotional connection in sports, whether it's hometown pride, the hope to watch a competitive game where your favorite prevails in the end or rooting for the star player who has been injured to come back against all odds and win in the end. There's a reason the most remembered moments in sports are the emotional ones.

 

The usual strategy is to present a wrestling show as usual, and then have one angle suddenly be portrayed as 'more real' than the rest of the show. The intention is to garner added interest in this one particular storyline because "It is real!", even though it isn't. And that immediately brands the rest of the show as "Fake!", while the show is still going on! You know, people don't watch a network medical drama during sweeps week and have to watch an episode where the actors start using their real names, acknowledging the cameras, and try to convince us there's an emergency on-set and they are doing that surgery for REAL this time, all the while also continuing their character subplots as this is going on. Because to do so would be to treat their own product, and their audiences, like complete dogshit.

 

In fairness, this happened exactly once that I can recall, and it was under Russo in WCW in 2000. It's an epidemic people still complain about, but I've never seen WWE or any other wrestling company fall prey to it.

 

There's also the problem that it's hard to respect your audience on one hand and lie to them on the other. All of wrestling is a lie and while the audience should get what they pay for, the inevitable end is that all of wrestling is a lie. Asking for wrestlers to maintain kayfabe at all times in all places in this age is ridiculous, because the cat has been let out of the bag and there's not really a way to go back.

 

I will admit, though, that I've often wondered if the secret to the next boom will be in creating some type of intricately-worked shoot for publicity in the mainstream media to make people believe in the product again. The problem is that we're in the information age, and it wouldn't work, and Vince would once again have to start paying athletic commission fees if they truly wanted to protect the business. It's very tricky, but I do think the "it's all a show" mentality has led to the decline in popularity over time. There are no easy answers.

[DMann2003 0]

If this guy wants wrestling at its best to be a sport, they might as well turn Olympic wrestling into a pro sport.

 

I've always wondered that, why hasn't Greco-Roman or Freestyle wrestling ever been turned into a professional sport, Probably because no one wants to do it and have it called "pro wrestling"

 

A wrestling promotion without good guys and bad guys? Never ever gonna happen. Wrestling had had heroes and villians since the days of Lou Thez. I agree that wrestling is a morality play. My problem is that I feel the morality isn't clearly defined enough. I'm tired of 'shades of grey'. Wrestling should tell basic simple stories of right vs wrong. When the stories get too cute and complicated is when wrestling falls apart.

 

An example- the current fued building between HHH and Batista is at its heart a simple tale. The mentor (HHH, off topic isn't it odd that the mentor is younger than the student?) sees that his student (Batista) has become bigger than him and he's jealous. Basic emotions, jealousy, anger, are what makes wrestling in my opinion. The best reactions in wrestling are gut reactions.

[Nighthawk 0]

A good point the guy made is that the morality shouldn't be forced. A fair amount of people love all the heels anyway. So let them. That's where his point about there being no bad guys in sports has some validity. Fans might care more if there were opposing but valid reasons to support either guy.

It's not easy to get people to hate you anymore. That's why HHH is the best wrestler. He's cares so much about his character that he'll destroy his own company to get over as a heel. Now that's dedication to your craft.

[Guest M. Harry Smilac]

So the guy wants to go back to the time when restholds were exciting?No thanks.

[Guest Deadbolt]

Wrestling is a performance, not a sport. Wrestling is also responsible for manufacturing and marketing its own stars, and they can create their own great sports moments anytime they chose to do so. There *is* an emotional connection in sports, whether it's hometown pride, the hope to watch a competitive game where your favorite prevails in the end or rooting for the star player who has been injured to come back against all odds and win in the end. There's a reason the most remembered moments in sports are the emotional ones.

.

 

I have to disagree with you on that one. Wrestling is a sport. Amatuer and professional. You can't tell me that if you're a prowrestler that wrestling for your town, in a big time event would not be emotional for you? To win the world title in any town is an emotional event. Hell, even watching a wrestler you love put on the best match you've ever seen is emotional. When everything is working right, the payoff of seeing something spectacular is heartwrenching. After Edge and Christian lost to the Hardyz in the Terri Invitational, the next night on Raw both teams got a standing ovation. Angle and Benoit from the Rumble last year was one of the best matches ever and they got standing ovations. And last year when Benoit made Triple H tap out, you can't tell me that you weren't screaming at Trips to tap out and felt so happy for Benoit for winning. Maybe wrestling isn't the typical sport like football or basketball. It's not covered on ESPN or Fox Sports but it has every bit the emotion that any other sport does.

[LessonInMachismo 0]

I dug up this old Nash interview from a week before Wrestlemania X7 on what is wrong with the business, among other things. The interview must be read, if for no other reason than a few laughs. Big Daddy Cool was Big Daddy Drunk at the time, it seems. I think he makes a great point here:

 

Dave Richard: Is charisma more important than workrate?

 

Kevin Nash: Absolutely. It's always been that way, look at Gorgeous George. There were guys back then that could work. George was one that, if you look back at that era, he was the shits. He had a gimmick. Pro wrestlers will always be pro wrestlers, but if workers got over there would be sell out houses in Iowa and Iowa State with a shoot f*ckin wrestling match. Nobody wants to see that shit. They want to see showbiz.

 

And, as an incentive to read the interview, this snippet on internet writers is hilarious, and you can just imagine Nash saying it:

 

Nash: I never said I was a great worker. I never said I was a match of the year guy. F*ck, people buy my shit. Sorry if you don't like me because you're f*ckin 5'5" and you don't get laid everyday.

 

DR: If you wrote a column on the internet, what would your first one be about?

 

Nash: P*ssy. I know more about that than anything else.

 

EDIT: Here is the link to the interview: http://www.wrestleline.com/features/interv...01_120504.shtml