A Closer Look At… Chris Benoit vs Steven Regal

Professional Wrestling is a very unusual sport (and yes, I consider it a sport.) The wrestlers step into the ring and try to accomplish several different things: They try to put on a physical contest that won’t do any real damage to their opponent, while trying to make themselves and their opponent look good. At the same time, they are trying to entertain a crowd of spectators and make them care about who wins the match, even though the crowd knows that the outcome is predetermined. In addition to that, they want to put on a convincing performance, one that makes the crowd forget that what they are seeing in the ring isn’t actually “real.” They want to do this by blending legitimate wrestling with what has come to be known as “sports entertainment,” using their natural athletic ability and training to put on a great match.
There are a lot of wrestlers working today who can’t pull off any of these feats. Most wrestlers at a high level can do some of them. Rare are the wrestlers who can do them all. When two wrestlers step in the ring and both of them can achieve everything a wrestler wants to in a match, the fans who witness it are in for something special. One such match was the one that took place at the third annual Brian Pillman Memorial Show between Chris Benoit and Steven Regal.
Anyone who takes wrestling seriously and wants to understand what the sport is all about should sit down and pay close attention to this contest. From bell to bell, Benoit and Regal put on a master class in the sport of wrestling. Everything somebody needs to know about how a wrestling match should be contested is in this one performance.
When the match begins, both men lock up, going for wrestling holds and countering each other, trading move for move as each man looks for an advantage on the other. The beginning moments of this match are particularly impressive, because both men resist the temptation to play to the crowd. At the end of the day, a wrestling match isn’t about who won or lost, it is about whether or not the crowd was entertained. When this match starts, and Benoit and Regal are having a slow paced, technical contest that is mostly mat based, the crowd quickly grows restless. Many fans in attendance were yelling “BORING!” at the wrestlers. Lesser competitors would have reacted to the crowd and picked up the pace, trying to get the crowd involved. however, Regal and Benoit are wrestlers of the highest caliber. they know what they are doing and they know that the crowd will be won over by the end.
After several minutes of methodical hold and counter hold, the action slowly picks up, as more high impact maneuvers are introduced to the contest. Stiff head butts from Benoit open up a cut on Regal’s forehead and the crowd starts to realize they are witnessing something special.
Throughout the entire length of the match, neither Benoit nor Regal ever once acknowledge the crowd in stands. They never break the spell they have woven, never let us in on the fact they are “performing” a wrestling match. from the time the bell rings until the end of the match, neither man ever shatters the atmosphere of realism they established. These aren’t two men pretending to wrestle. These are two men wrestling.
Holds are exchanged, moves are performed, blows are landed, each man going toe to toe with the other, both men looking like they are seconds away from victory. After over ten minutes of intense action, Chris Benoit locks on his signature Crippler Crossface submission hold and Steven Regal is forced to tap out. The crowd, who had just ten minutes earlier been chanting “BORING!,” gives both men a standing ovation for the match.
This outpouring of emotion from the crowd is special because it something that is not often seen from a wrestling audience: it is genuine emotion. If you watch a lot of wrestling, you almost never see real feeling from the crowd. Yes, they cheer a lot at wrestling matches, but they cheer more from habit than anything else. Crowds cheer fro catch phrases. They cheer for signature spots they are used to seeing. They cheer for outcomes they have been made to want because of story lines. Most reactions from wrestling crowds are no different than reactions from a crowd at a comedy show responding to a catch phrase. They have been programmed to cheer, so they do.
What Chris Benoit and Steven Regal did at this show was something truly special. They managed to elicit a real, genuine response from a crowd. These people weren’t cheering because they got what they wanted after a long story line. There was no story to this match other than “these two men are going to wrestle each other.” And in that match, that’s exactly what Benoit and Regal did. They wrestled each other and they did so at the highest level achievable. In doing so, they won the respect and the admiration of a jaded crowd who got something they didn’t even know they wanted: one of the all-time great wrestling matches.
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