wrestling / Columns

Wacky Wrestling Theory 6.19.08: Maybe Pro-Wrestling Really is Real

June 19, 2008 | Posted by Jake Chambers

The world is not flat.
Dinosaur fossils.
Gravity.
Quantum Physics.
Peyote.
String Theory.
The ‘Matrix’ trilogy.

All of these mind bending, earth shattering theories forced the most intelligent members of the human race to accept that the world was not what they had so safely perceived. To grow up and inevitably learn about puberty, death, Santa Claus, and maybe even figure out that there is or isn’t a god, well, those are all traditional rites of passage, but when the flat game board you are taught to play on turns into a 3-D universe, then everything you knew before suddenly seems stupid and small.

And now one more theory can be added to that staggering list: pro-wrestling is real.

In our lifetime, a child accepting that pro-wrestling is fake has been as natural a sign of growth as losing baby teeth. What they do with this information is very important. They can either grasp the brilliance of this ‘fake’ sport and become cool, reasonable adults or they can continue to hurl that very sentence, “wrestling is fake,” around with an ignorant, arrogant glee. Regardless, this development is an inevitable stage in the personality development of Westernized children.

What if you took all those children who defined themselves by this demarcation and revealed that actually the ‘fake-ness’ of wrestling was all fake. Huh? Yes, what if, in fact, pro-wrestling was actually pretending to be fake? Could this be possible? Why would they have deceived us all this time? What would that mean to the fabric of the culture that supports all of your lives, opinions, biases, and loves? How would you view the universe if you had to accept that this was true? These are the tough questions that few will dare to ask. Although the ridicule of the many is the curse of any who try, I will venture out into the unknown for a truly wacky theory.

I will look mainly at the situation currently in the WWE, but it can be easily believed that international or smaller companies are doing the same thing. I believe that the WWE is the benchmark in professional wrestling and if they have started a secret trend then it is most likely influencing pro-wrestling everywhere.

I think the real wrestling matches are being performed in the WWE under the rules that are supposed to be used. So often, we the viewers, take those rules for granted as the parameters of a narrative that we think is being played out in the ring. Nobody assumes that these are the real rules of a fight going on between two people in the ring. The three counts, the rope breaks, the illegal moves and punches to the face, and all the other caveats that go along with the ‘fake’ rules of wrestling, I think are all legitimately adhered to rules. The exaggerated theatrics of the wrestlers, the wild environment of a regular WWE show, and the implication that the wrestlers are ‘talking’ to each other during the match and ‘calling the spots,’ are all fake ways to distract a supposedly informed and intelligent audience from seeing the real thing that is happening right before their eyes.

MMA matches have shown us, the pro-wrestling fans, that real fighting and wrestling is more often dull than exciting, at least to our appetites. Therefore, if the WWE was putting on real matches between the wrestlers, without rehearsing or move-calling, then they would have to retain methods for distracting the audience from the poor quality of the action. That is why they continue to perpetrate that the wrestling is actually fake. But what purpose would this serve? Well, I’m sure we all can agree that it is very difficult to learn the craft of ‘fake’ pro-wrestling, and it takes a top athlete of high intelligence many years to perfect this craft. In the territory days, there were many well-documented ways for young wrestlers to cut their teeth. Unfortunately the economics behind the evolution of the WWE destroyed this possible farm system, and their own threshing style of the nineties burned out the crop of veteran wrestlers left over to cultivate the next generation within their own company.

Today, the natural instinct of the corporate WWE is to make a profit and therefore the years (maybe decades) of teaching the art of ‘calling’ matches and polishing technical skills would cost the company too much money. As well, they want to be able to quickly market good-looking wrestlers with super hero bodies rather than those who may be smaller or smarter. Therefore, I think that the WWE decided that it would be cheaper to let the men, who represent the products that they want to sell, actually fight in the ring than it would be to risk training real wrestlers from the bottom up.

Of course, looking for proof of this would be incredibly difficult because the entire institution is set up to deceive the most careful and astute observers. Nothing that you trust to be real should be believed. Do not forget that this is a professional wrestling company; their foundation is supposedly built on a predicated lie. Even the backstage stories about producers, agents, staff writers, and politics would all be part of the act; a ‘work’ used to try and keep you, the modern fan, involved in the actual fighting.

So let’s take under consideration the possibility that the WWE switched to these ‘real’ wrestling matches some time around the end of the Stone Cold Steve Austin era. The newer wrestling style needed during this time period would have proven to the WWF that drastic changes in the foundation of the structure of pro-wrestling was possible, if not inevitable. Focusing on smaller wrestlers had been financially disappointing when the company narrative was based around traditionalists like Shawn Michaels and Bret Hart. Austin, while not technically a big, Hogan-esque character, his special physical circumstances significantly altered the overall in-ring WWF style.

Steve Austin’s neck injury at the hands of Owen Hart almost forced him to retire right as his popularity was at an apex. This would have been a disaster for everyone involved with the WWF at the time. Austin could no longer wrestle the kind of technical matches he did in the minutes prior to taking that ill-fated ‘neck-breaker’ tombstone piledriver from Hart in their Intercontinental title match at SummerSlam ’96. Rather than abandon or replace Austin, the WWF changed the way the entire WWF wrestled instead, with much success both critically and commercially. The new WWF wrestling style integrated high impact striking, serious looking chair shots, chases, constant interference, gimmicks, weapons, and blood, thoroughly replacing strategy based sporting drama with intensely superficial violence and stunt level athletics.

This fundamental shift in the WWF narrative performance is often unrecognized by critics, particularly those who wish to praise the influence of the ECW in the change in the wrestling landscape at the time. While it’s true that the ECW contributed to the popularity of this style, the reasons and economics behind the application of this aesthetic to the WWF product are much deeper and layered than purely praising the creativity of Paul Heyman can recognize. The proliferation of this new style of wrestling started a chain reaction that led to the WWF absorbing their competition and turning into a publicly traded company. The price of all this financial gain was a burn out the veteran personnel that eventually destroyed the training system for future WWF superstars.

In fact, the WWF was only able to find success in this new style of pro-wrestling presentation by using veterans like Steve Austin, Cactus Jack, Undertaker, Shawn Michaels, in radically different formats to their usual characters. The ability to pull off the ‘Attitude’ era was only due to their seasoned sensibilities, and somehow the next generation of stars were either unable to commit (Rock, Brock) or crossover (Triple H, Kurt Angle), and thus the WWF was left with financial commitments to their shareholders but little in the way of future prospects. The bold move to change the WWF wrestling style to match the limited in-ring ability of a super-popular Stone Cold showed the WWF management, who were looking for a new way to evolve the company, that they could successfully change the entire format of the in-ring show with little acknowledgement from the audience that anything is essentially different. Therefore, since training new wrestlers to be the next Undertaker or Mankind would be impossible, I believe that the WWF could have decided at this point to just put the wrestlers in the ring and let them fight it out.

Think about it, financially it makes a lot of sense since the WWF does not have to commit millions of dollars into training new wrestlers. Considering there is no guarantee that the wrestler with the look that they want (which must be the most important factor to a company that is answerable to share holders, essentially making them think packaging and commercialization over traditional pro-wrestling skills) will turn out to be able to wrestle in the kinds of matches that the producers can control. Therefore spending money on public speaking lessons, acting classes, and special effects, but skipping the lengthy process of training someone to be good in the ring, would make good business sense. This would definitely explain the poor critical response to mainstream wrestling in the past few years, and also explain why wrestlers like John Cena, Randy Orton, and the Great Khali continue to be forced onto a wrestling audience that seemingly rejects their skills as athletic wrestlers.

Although there is little in the way of actual proof to support this theory, I can call upon a few suspicious elements of pro-wrestling today that may imply that there is more to this theory that just the imaginative ramblings of a wacky hack.

The crossed arms of a referee were once supposedly a legitimate signal to the backstage officials that a wrestler in the ring was seriously injured and not just acting injured for the audience. In the past few years, once the meaning of this signal was exposed (most likely thanks to the Internet), the ‘injury x’ is now used as part of the supposed ‘fake’ wrestling shows. I would argue that this integration of the ‘injury x’ shows that the WWE is trying to over-produce the show in order to confuse the audience. By continually provoking postmodern self-awareness of the signals associated with the fakeness of wrestling, the audience is lulled into a false sense of security and is more easily manipulated by the WWE.

I also think that the way the chest chop has replaced the use of fake punches indicates that the wrestling matches may now be real. The sound of the smack of skin and the visual of the reddening chest are all in line with pro-wrestling’s traditional exaggerated theatrics, no doubt. Yet, if these are real fights with no striking to the head allowed then wouldn’t a heavy chop to the chest be a good alternative for causing damage? Obviously the wrestlers are instructed to go out there and put on a show in the fight and not just tackle and lie on top of one another (most likely at the cost of their job or money) and thus the chop to the chest can be a visually aggressive and effective move in a real fight under pro-wrestling rules. Anybody who has seen Kenta Kobashi matches in the past couple of years (particularly his Tokyo Dome match against Kensuke Sasaki) would understand how a supposedly fake wrestling match can quickly turn into a very real ‘let’s just agree to chop each other in the chest until one of us can’t do it anymore’ contest without deviating from the narrative standard of professional wrestling.

The prevalence of big wrestlers in the upper echelon despite the popularity of smaller wrestlers also indicates that something suspicious could be going on. Wrestlers like Brock Lesnar, John Cena and Bobby Lashely had incredibly successful runs in the WWE with very little training before they debuted on national television. No one was clamoring for the success of these unknowns. Yet, year after year, in the post Austin generation, smaller wrestlers who are popular or considered exemplary by peers and critics, such as Matt Hardy, Gregory Helms, Jamie Noble, Bryan Danielson, or CM Punk, often have to dumb down or change their style for the WWE and still cannot seem to find a high level of success in their careers. Instead, a renaissance of monster-sized wrestlers like The Big Show, Great Khali, Snitsky, Mark Henry and Big Daddy V, has occurred. Of course, this would all make sense if the matches were real, since the smaller men could never realistically defeat these super heavyweights. Even the openness of the ‘wellness policy’ and the ‘supposed’ suspension of certain wrestlers (none of whom ever seem to be the typical muscle bound hulks one would commonly associate with performance enhancing drugs) could just be a carefully calculated smoke screen to distract the audience from the real and potentially dull matches going on inside the ring.

These slim examples are the only proof I can offer that this theory could be true. Previously, I made reference to a Kenta Kobashi match with Kensuke Sasaki, where the chop battle had transcended the actual fakeness of the wrestling/audience connection. As they traded blistering chops, the audience knew that they were allowing each other to just stand there and slap away, there was no longer an assumption that these two men were in a ‘fake’ match, playing characters trying to pin shoulders to a mat. Possibly this is the unintentional template for the kind of ‘real’ wrestling that is currently taking place in the WWE rings. Maybe the wrestlers are pushing each other with the unplanned impact from successive moves, as if they have an understanding that they are just going to try and push each other until finally someone has to quit.

In all honesty, this is a difficult theory to believe in, I know, but that’s what makes it all the more interesting to me. The one thing we do know is that the architects of pro-wrestling are seeking to constantly fool their audience. Unlike movie and television producers, those involved in creating pro-wrestling have to contend with an audience that is constantly trying to learn more about the secrecy behind the scenes and expose the live show for it’s faults in craft as much as in narrative. Therefore, the business people running the WWE today are in the unique position within the entertainment industry to strive to be steps ahead of us all, and therefore have to be smarter and more innovative than their predecessors (or they were in the past).

So at what point do you want to feel comfortable in your “understanding” of what it is you are investing all of your time into watching and discussing? Do you really want to be that guy who goes down in history as thinking that the world was flat? Are you absolutely sure that what you are seeing every week on pro-wrestling television is exactly what you think it is? How can you be so sure? Is my theory really so wacky? Think about it.

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Jake Chambers

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