We’ve likely all heard statements similar to these in our life time, so I thought I’d devote an article to the defense of our shared passion, highlighting the issues the non-fans take with it and the many wonderful things we love about it.
As mentioned in my last ROH On HDNet Recap, the show has been pre-empted this week and won’t return until this coming Monday (June 7th). So in lieu of a recap, I thought I’d take the time to present something a little different.
Everybody who frequents this site does so for the same reason. Whether you’re a user or a member of our staff, we all have one thing in common: We all love professional wrestling. It truly is a love, not just a hobby, and as is the norm for love, we all came to fall in love with wrestling in our own unique way. Maybe it came to you as a small child, encouraged to watch by your parents who loved it too. Perhaps friends were into it when you were around 10 years old. Maybe you were flicking through channels at the age of 15. Hey, maybe you got turned onto it at the age of 30. How and when you fell in love with pro wrestling is an experience entirely personal to you.
For me it came when I was about 7 or 8 thanks to a next-door neighbour, mostly through the plethora of video games that were out there. I didn’t really know anything about wrestling, but I knew I loved playing the games. I distinctly remember my buddy having done something to annoy me and as a means of apology he let me play as “Austin”. I had no real clue why Austin was so good, but I knew he was the best on the game and my friend always used him against me. He later showed me exactly who Stone Cold Steve Austin was from episodes of Raw is War he had taped.
Gradually I began to watch more and more wrestling, from the dying days of WCW, to the dying days of the WWF Attitude Era, through the Invasion and the brand extension, taking a brief one year hiatus thanks to WWE getting too stale, and then expanding to the likes of TNA, ROH, PWG, CHIKARA, DGUSA, Evolve, NOAH, AAA and countless others.
It was no longer about larger than life characters, storylines, talking and big finishers. High-flying had all but vanished from the WWE, so TNA provided my fix. But even that wasn’t enough for me at this point; now it was about workers and psychology. I didn’t really care if guys were 5’7” and 190lbs with nothing resembling a tan. I didn’t really mind if they couldn’t talk. As long as they could go in the ring, I was happy.
Over the years I read and watched wrestling from the world over that went back for decades, familiarizing myself with every half-decent wrestler in North America, several of the bigger names from Japan and Mexico and every legend I had ever heard of. Before long I was a virtual encyclopedia of wrestlers, moves and matches, frustrated that not all my friends were as up on their facts as me.
But more frustrating than this, is the small number of my friends who like wrestling at all. Forget knowing more than me, over time I was just clamouring for anyone who knew anything about it. Unfortunately, wrestling is just not as mainstream popular as it once was. I don’t know how it is the States, but over here in the UK it seems the older you get, the more you have to hide your love of wrestling. I’m certainly not ashamed for liking it, but I also wouldn’t mention to girls that it’s among my passions until I knew for sure they were around long-term. But why must we hide in the shadows and congregate on the internet?
“Wrestling’s fake” is the first thing that 99% of people say if you tell them you like wrestling. To this I say: Who cares? My favourite defence against this argument is that fight scenes in films are fake but people just sit and watch them for what they are. Nobody can take 25 punches to the face without going down. You can’t lose as much blood as they seem to in action movies and still be running around and busting out catch-phrases. The characters are stronger, faster and more agile than a human can ever be, but only a select few individuals sit there watching and spend every moment saying “that would never happen.” So if people will suspend disbelief for a fight-scene in a film or TV show, why won’t they do it for wrestling? It’s exactly the same, if not better because it’s performed live. There are no retakes, no stunt-men to do the really dangerous bits for the key performers, no protective mats, harnesses or post-production special effects to hide things. You have to at the very least respect that.
Speaking of respect, fans of sport tend to hate on wrestling whenever the word sport is mentioned, feeling that calling it such is disrespectful to “real sports”. Wrestling isn’t a sport, because sport isn’t pre-determined. I personally try to avoid calling wrestling a sport and completely see what these sporting fans’ beef is. Sports Entertainment is an annoying term, but to be honest, it’s the most apt one to describe wrestling. It’s physical theatre. It’s telling a story using the human body. It’s a dance… but with massive scary dudes beating the hell out of each other. No it’s not football (of the American variety or “Soccer”), it’s not baseball, it’s not hockey, it’s not basketball, it’s not even NASCAR. It’s certainly not MMA. But it incorporates elements of a real sport to simulate one with a pre-determined outcome.
I don’t know about everyone else, but if somebody set up a sports company wherein the outcome is agreed on and they plan specific moments, I’d find it entertaining even if it wasn’t the same as the real, legit thing. I mean, how many MMA fights do you see where the guys just clinch for 10 minutes and have it go to a decision? How many low scoring duds do you see in other sports? What if you could guarantee crazy slam dunks, or home runs, or knockout strikes and tap-outs every time? Sure, the most famous moments in sporting history are so special because they’re few and far between, but can you honestly tell me you wouldn’t be interested in seeing them happen on a regular basis? What if every game was a triple-overtime classic? That’s what wrestling is like to me, a fight with all the boring realistic bits taken out. Making it fake allows for more exciting and elaborate moments, and to me, that’s entertaining.
The final problem I think people have with wrestling is their preconceived notion of what it is without ever watching it. There is a definite stigma around the concept. People think it’s silly. They think it’s all giant roided up sweaty men in trunks rolling around and working out some latent homoerotic fantasies. They think of wrestling and they think Hulk Hogan. They think the ring is a trampoline and the wrestlers escape every match without so much as a mark on them. They think every match is choreographed from start to finish, move for move. They think it’s all steel chairs and people who talk like Randy Savage. These people have clearly not actually sat down and watched wrestling, because all of that is firmly in wrestling’s past.
If you can get your head around the whole it’s fake issue and actually sit down and give it a chance, I think there’s a little something there for everyone. WWE have all the flash, flair and celebrities, TNA try their best to emulate the 90s, ROH incorporate elements of the old NWA and territory days, CHIKARA and DGUSA bring lucha libre and puroresu to the West, while PWG back up their claim of being a wrestling fan’s company, no nonsense, just pure unadulterated wrestling. Evolve is trying to simulate MMA like my above proposition for a fake sports league.
Don’t really like the actual wrestling? No problem. Pop culture is sprinkled liberally all over wrestling, with current events, scandals, celebrities, music, films and television all somehow included in the product. There’s comedy, emotion, drama, cliffhangers and of course plenty of fightin’. There’s good looking guys and girls, big ugly mean dudes and everything in between. There’s the crazy flippy boys, the crowd-pleasers, the ones you love to hate, the tough as nails fighters, tag teams, groups, romantic relationships, it’s ALL here.
Personally, I look at the art of chain-wrestling and submission work and I find it just so intrinsically wonderful that I struggle to put it into words. Transitioning from one moment to the next, setting up elaborate sequences, countering, anticipating, surprising and even countering a counter is just a thing of beauty.
These performers have skills that none of us ever will. They are going out and using their physical and mental gifts to put on a show for us. They work for very little money, wrestling hundreds of times a year, often going long stretches of time without seeing their loved ones or sleeping in their own bed. They live in cars, buses and planes and yet still find the time to make media appearances, train to keep themselves at their best, and still put together all these matches. They put themselves at the risk of injury every time they step in the ring, and how many reports have we seen from athletes who attend live wrestling events saying how much they respect what the wrestlers put themselves through. There are no off-seasons or hiatuses (though they’d probably help.) Wrestlers and wrestling companies are giving their fan base what they want in unrelenting doses, something that truly no other sport or entertainment company can claim to do. Nothing adapts on the fly like wrestling. Let us not forget WWE Raw is the world’s longest running weekly episodic television program.
I have a feeling I’m not going to convert the non-believers with this article, but hopefully I’ve given those of us who already love wrestling some things to think about. I’ll close with one final way of looking at wrestling and what it is that people love about it.
It’s not Robert Szatkowski the man vs. Alan Jones the man, it’s the fictional character Rob Van Dam vs. the fictional character AJ Styles. It’s not a man dropping another man on his head, it’s the idea that they’ve dropped them on their head and what will happen next. It’s not which of these men is tougher than the other (though there is a strong element of that, which I support), it’s what would happen if these two fought, how would it play out? What if RVD’s leg is injured ahead of time? What if AJ uses an unusual game-plan to throw him off? Will he be able to adapt? Will the looming threat of Desmond Wolfe be a distraction? How will Ric Flair figure into things? What are their motivations for wanting to win? Who wants it more? Why? What will they do to get there? What will happen after the match is over? There are so many mitigating factors to make every match unique, every story special, every wrestler a compelling individual.
The best bits from sport and entertainment come together in one distinctive hybrid. It can make you think, it can make you laugh, it can be a few minutes of silly fun to distract you from the seriousness of the world, it can give you something to eagerly await. You can go and see it in person, you can see it, hear it, feel it, pretty much touch it. It’s the world’s greatest circus, and I, like you, will be a fan until the very end.
I feel your pain. I just moved halfway across the country and now I know no one that likes wrestling. I have to get all of my wrestling talk online or with friends that live back where I came from, usually online too. The closest I get to a wrestling conversation is telling people that I don't care about UFC, and that normally opens up a can of worms in itself.
I feel your pain. I just moved halfway across the country and now I know no one that likes wrestling. I have to get all of my wrestling talk online or with friends that live back where I came from, usually online too. The closest I get to a wrestling conversation is telling people that I don't care about UFC, and that normally opens up a can of worms in itself.
I once brought a video of Dynamite Kid vs. Tiger Mask at Madison Square Garden to work to show my colleagues how wrestling could be elevated to art. They agreed. But in general, the way WWE and TNA present it, it's lowbrow and questionable why people would like it. So I do understand why people would question it.