More complete thoughts on professional wrestling

March 20, 2006


Okay. Let’s get some things straight.

I am not on the anti-wrestling bandwagon. I still have a warm spot in my heart for certain aspects of the sports-entertainment world – I still use a vast section of the vocabulary, and I’m still enamored with a tightly wrestled technical battle along the lines of Benoit vs. Angle.

I don’t hate wrestling. But I will say that professional wrestling, a hobby that I put a considerable amount of time into, has done me wrong. Really done me wrong. I was always a fan of lucha libre, of puroresu, of the Super J Cup Tournament and of Bret Hart, Chris Benoit, and Chris Jericho. I turned my nose up at the more lowbrow humor, the punchy-kicky superstar matches, and the intelligence insulting.

I hated the sexism and xenophobia that is still prevalent in professional wrestling. I hated the poo-poo humor that permeated any “humorous” skit or angle. I truly was insulted when an 80-year old woman gave birth to a hand, when female wrestlers were relegated to mud wrestling, and when a seven-foot “monster” performed an act of necrophilia.

Wrestling requires some reality suspension. Obviously. I just can’t do it anymore because, well, there has to be a little continuity involved. For some reason the entire genre turned me off. I’m not saying this to sound conceited, to sound as if one kind of reality suspension – clay figures going to the moon and eating cheese in a spacecraft flown by a dog, for example – is better than another (the fact that grown men wait until they’re in an arena full of people to settle their differences by flopping around on the mat comes to mind).

The thing is, I used to be able to suspend reality for a few hours while watching wrestling. But that is when the storylines where still fresh. When the art of wrestling was still followed. Three things ultimately ruined professional wrestling for me.

1. The downfall of the independent circuit. I used to love watching ECW. I also loved watching the mid-card level personalities in the WCW and WWF. I loved watching them because they were different – they were doing things that you couldn’t see in Stone Cold Steve Austin and The Undertaker. They were wrestling. And to me, it was fresh.

Eventually, I realized that what they were doing wasn’t interesting – it was the fact that I hadn’t seen it before that made it stand out. Once it became commonplace, I tired of it. I gave it up. That’s about the time that the great wrestlers started getting relegated to punchy-kicky type matches and started being involved with storylines that were designed to give them personalities – personalities that they didn’t have.

2. I got too involved backstage. I, like Kerrie mentioned, used to make changes (with a red pen) in The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Professional Wrestling. It was horribly inaccurate. It was outdated within a week of its publishing date, and it was incorrect throughout anyway. I knew what was going to happen before it happened, thanks to the Internet. I over analyzed Pay-Per-View events. I had actual interest in whether or not a wrestler’s comments were “shoot” (real life comments) as opposed to scripted.

There were no surprises left for me. And even when surprises tried to manifest themselves, I was always disappointed. I thought way too much about programs that were designed to make you think as little as possible. It’s like analyzing the backstage antics of ER, and then trying to figure out if a patient’s comments were in some way directed at George Clooney’s departure nearly ten years ago.

3. I realized that a figure-four leg lock doesn’t really hurt (unless it’s applied incorrectly). Thank you, Owen, for reminding me of this.

A lot of the glamour of wrestling disappeared when I started watching American wrestling exclusively. Gone from my repertoire were the stiff forearms of Mitsuharu Misawa. Forgotten were the neck drops of ECW’s Taz. Lost were the suicide moonsaults of Toryumon’s Dragon Kid. Instead, I watched move after move that did nothing to convince me that they were even painful.

Chris Benoit and Kurt Angle were still putting on wrestling clinics – using moves that borrowed heavily from the laws of physics, leverage, and balance. The rest of the league was flopping around and using half-assed fists to swing past their opponent’s head. Wrestling is more ballet than boxing, and I always knew that. But I don’t like ballet. And really, I don’t like boxing. So why was I watching it so much?

I say all of this because I don’t want it to seem like I’m on some high and mighty pedestal, throwing stones at the people – of which many of my close friends are included – that still watch wrestling. I have no problem with professional wrestling. I’ll always feel a little warmth in my heart for a soundly contested suplex-fest. It’s just that I personally can’t take it seriously anymore.

No, that’s the wrong way to put it. A person who takes professional wrestling seriously is in more trouble than they ay think. What I mean is that I can’t bring myself to watch it. Things have gone so far off course that I don’t think I’d ever be able to come back. The main event companies are boring retreads of what I used to watch, which ultimately was a boring retread of what ECW did in the mid 90’s. The indie leagues are trying to hard to be successful, a feat that can really only be completed by creating a league that is nearly identical to the WWE.

I’ve lost the heart for wrestling. I’m not sad about it at all. I’ve filled that empty space with things that I find more personally fulfilling. But far be it for me to completely write it off. Currently, the product is only a fraction as interesting as it used to be, and at some point in the past few years I must have grown apart from whatever it was that led me to enjoy it in the first place. I still think wrestling is lame now. I’m wrestling free, but I’m not forgetting my roots. I can still hold my own with the rest of you wrestling fans – almost as if it’s ingrained in my DNA. But that doesn’t mean I have to like it, or even admit it.

I hope that explains my position a little better.

And yes, I promise — no more ‘rasslin.

For now.

Tags: Wrestling |

Comments

13 Responses to “More complete thoughts on professional wrestling”

  1. DB on March 21st, 2006 557 pm

    Wanna wrestle?

  2. Will on March 23rd, 2006 1040 am

    What do you think about mixed martial arts? That’s what the UFC is. I was never a fan of pro wrestling, but I love the UFC.

  3. Corey Vilhauer on March 23rd, 2006 1252 pm

    UFC is just violence for violence’s sake, in my opinion. Of course, I’m a squeamish little turd, so you can see my view on that. :)

  4. Some Dude on March 25th, 2006 130 pm

    So ultimately, your complaint is that the wrestling industry has ‘done you wrong’ — primarily because YOU DECIDED to stop watching good matches from Japan and the Indys, and chose to focus 100% on the garbage that the WWE produces?

    And you dismiss all the great effort that wrestlers from Dragon Gate, NOAH, ROH, TNA, etc. are putting forth on a nightly basis, simply because Vince McMahon ran some tasteless angles?

    That’s like renting porno movies exclusively for several months, and then saying movies in general are all meaningless filth - and that you’ll never enjoy a Jodie Foster or Denzel Washington film again as a result.

    YOUR ENTIRE RANT MAKES ABSOLUTELY NO SENSE. The fact that your thought process is this screwed up is one thing - but to think that other people shoumld read it and agree with you? That’s borderline retarded.

    Get yourself checked.

  5. Corey Vilhauer on March 25th, 2006 253 pm

    Maybe you should get yourself checked I don’t remember asking anyone to agree with me. Quit watching Fox News, you’re being confrontational for no reason.

    I decided to stop watching good matches from Japan and the Indys because I didn’t want to pay for them. Paying to watch wrestling is something I don’t hold too highly on my list of priorities.

    The porno thing was clever though, I’ll give you that. A little off base, but clever. I think Porno would be like a steady diet of backyard wrestling — your point would have made more sense if you used crappy big budget movies in its place — like MI:3 or 2 Fast 2 Furious, etc.

    The sense is in this: My perception of what wrestling is and has become, along with the fact that the industry is about 75% lame nowadays and, additionally, that it’s not that culturally stimulating to me anymore, leads naturally to the fact that I don’t watch wrestling. It’s a pretty simple rant.

    Wait, it’s not a rant. A rant is to speak or write in an angry or violent manner. This was just me clarifying that I don’t hate wrestling, and I don’t think people who watch wrestling are dumb, but just that I don’t like to watch it and the reasons why I don’t. Don’t take it so personally — do you work for the industry or something? Are you secretly Bob Ryder?

    Anyway, thanks for the insults. I appreciate hearing that I’m screwed up by some guy who doesn’t even leave a name or real address. Pretty gutsy.

    Come again!

  6. kobashi on March 25th, 2006 338 pm

    i dont blame you for giving up on the WWE and TNA. i havent watched a WWE PPV in 8 years!

    but get back into puroresu man! your love will come back believe me..

  7. The Hater on March 25th, 2006 502 pm

    I don’t fault you for doing this. A lot of the times I watch American wrestling I feel the same way… such as watching Scott Taylor winning with that disgusting WORM. It’s understandable, Vince McMahon has created a product doomed to kill off the intricacies fans enjoyed in order elevate himself as far as it can go. Stealing indy ideas and adapting them to his own tastes is normal Tuesday to him. Business is business, and Vince is as ruthless as he feels he needs be.

    Vince McMahon never limited his interest to wrestling, but he did overextend himself at the cost of his base viewers. It’s about the money. Always is. Vince is motivated to obtain it. His base viewership doesn’t have the money that keeps his machine running, so he must use shock and awe. This translates to blatant stupidity inside and outside the ring, even from top talent. They’re willing to do it partially because Vince pays better; no one faults them for it, nor should they.

    It’s tough watching what something you once considered exclusive to your kind get warped by mainstream.

  8. black marks on wood pulp » Thanks Puroresu Power! on March 25th, 2006 940 pm

    [...] More complete thoughts on professional wrestling [...]

  9. Jaime Kobashi on March 25th, 2006 1018 pm

    i understand where you are coming from with the state that pro wrestling is today. sometimes i do want to turn off WWE Raw or just skip it this week. i dont blame the state of the wrestling just by watching the WWE, i look at it as blaming the state of wrestling because it is going thru a down period. Just wait and you’ll see that the wrestling industry will pick up soon. and dude, become a wrestling fan again. dont judge the industry just from what the shit the WWE produces. like one of the guys said above, get back to Puroresu, and watch a man called Kenta Kobashi and tell me this guy wont get you back.

  10. liger05 on March 26th, 2006 529 am

    If I wouldn’t have found puroresu, I today would not be watching pro-wrestling.

    As soon as I found puroresu in 1998 the WWE became a joke to me and a waste of time. I no longer had time for the wacky storylines and bogus in work action which was more like ballet. I had time for ECW and today will watch ROH but the WWE and TNA is just not for me and unless something drastic happens I don’t think it ever will be.

    Puroresu has taken a downfall with NJPW and AJPW shadows of their former selfs however their will always be enough good matches to keep me in love with the sport.

    Get back to watching Puroresu, check out Noah and you won’t be disappointed. Their is enough talent in Noah to keep you happy. Death Valley Driver message board has enough goodies on their if you don’t want to pay.

  11. Monty Brown on March 28th, 2006 1217 pm

    You suck……PERIOD!!!!!

  12. Corey Vilhauer on March 28th, 2006 204 pm

    Well said. *rolls eyes*

  13. Kanyon on April 9th, 2006 544 am

    It sounds that you don’t hate wrestling in its total, but rather the American product I refer to as sports entertainment. This holds less true for TNA but ultimately they are just as guilty for selling out quality for TV time. 2 matches in 1 hour and then the rest of the time is like 30 minutes of soap opera story bullshit. I can’t blame your for any of that. However you seem to imply that you don’t hate puro. If thats the case the only option isn’t paying for it, there are plenty of places to get puro from many promotions. Hell search for your favorite japanese wrestlers on youtube and you will be suprised what you find. Its not DVD quality but if you want that then you have to shell out a few bucks.

    I can’t fault you for giving up american wrestling. I did long ago. I keep up with TNA since it doesn’t offend me and occasionally offers something worthwhile. But WWE will never get me watching again. Even if Smackdown has improved as much as I hear it has.

    So rather than write of all of wrestling, see what you can get in the way of puro and you may find you don’t want to let it go. If it wasn’t for stuff like Dragon Gate and Noah I probably would have gotten bored with TNA and just quit watching wrestling all together.

    I’ve heard people say it would change American wrestling if ROH had a tv show. The truth is that it wouldn’t change anything. It would have to become like TNA to survive. I just don’t know that American TV will ever see anything like japanese wrestling. And surely Vince will never want it to happen because as exciting as some of WWE guys may be on the mic, they can’t hang with alot of the wrestlers in ROH on the mat. But Vince has the power, and until something changes American wrestling won’t be changing.

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