I collected selected comic books into my early twenties so I’m hardly a literary snob or some sort of elitist, nose in the air aesthete, but I have to admit that Pro Wrestling does give me pause. It’s hard not be impressed with the huge physiques, antic bellowing and Byzantine storylines but it all seems so amazing childish, and well, just pain retarded with stilted, insipid dialog, uninspired storylines and awful, straight to video, porn movie level acting.
I mean really, watching someone get hit with a folding chair may be fun once or twice, but the joke gets old, and while dopers I respect say they are enthralled by this stuff, most of the IRL people I have known who were big wrestling fans were generally socially and hygienically challenged.
So wrestling fans, why do you love wrestling so much. What do you see in it that my esthetic shortsightedness is missing?
Non-fans tend to only see the bad side of it. The same side of it that draws in the “typical” wrasslin’ fan. Bad acting, bad story lines, big boobs and bigger biceps. HUGE men punching other HUGE men in the face and dropping them over and over on their backs. Its repetitive matches and storylines. It can seem really really stupid.
And most of the time, it is. I’ve been a fan for several years now. I got every PPV(PayPerView) for almost 3 years. The more you learn about the “sport”, the more you can enjoy it and respect the athletes that perform for you. The better wrestlers can put on excellent matches and can get the crowd and fans at home seriously into the fight. Bad wrestlers can bore you to tears and curse yourself for wasting yet another 35$ on a terrible PPV.
Everybody knows its fake. Its not. The results are scripted. How they get to that end are not (most of the time). Throw Kurt Angle and Chris Benoit in a match and you WILL be entertained. Put Big Show and HHH in a match together and you will cry yourself to sleep for a month. People do get hurt. Every night. You can’t jump off a 10’(sometimes higher, usually lower) ladder, do a back flip, land on a table, go through the table and hit cold hard concrete without suffering a little. Being on the wrong end of a “knife edge chop” hurts like a mofo. Those are not fake folding chairs. The mat is not a trampoline. Even if it doesn’t entertain you, you still have to respect it.
On the other hand, to many wrestlers don’t know how to wrestle properly (Big Show, Kevin Nash). Others can only do the big spots that the fans love (RVD, Jeff Hardy). The storylines are another matter. We have had bad ones lately. The un-Americans went a little to far (and for what? they are already past that gimmick) with their sep 11th spiel. The HHH/Kane murder/rape/necrophilia angle is stupidly sick and twisted. South Park would have a hard time pulling something as bad as this off, but at least they would make it funny. HHH (with Kane mask) having sex with a mannequin in a coffin is not funny nor is it “shocking”. At least not shocking in the way the WWE wants it. It’s just lame and there is no excuse for it. Its crap like this that has made me stop getting the PPV’s. I still watch RAW and SD!(and Tough Enough 3) most of the time. But I’m guessing I wont be a year from now.
To answer your question. We like the athleticism. We like to see certain wrestlers beat the crap out of other wrestlers. We like to see Kevin Nash injure himself in his first match back after another long injury. We like to see men that way 350 pounds jump off the top rope and land on another 250-pound man. We like to see large breasted women jumping around in the ring. We like to laugh at/with Golddust and chant along with the Rock.
Plus it’s better than “Friends” and “Everybody Loves Raymond”.
If you are receiving the aroma of my culinary treats.
Wrestling is Theatre with bad storylines and worse acting.
It’s “As the World Turns” with Top rope plancha’s.
Wrestling fans don’t watch for the stories or the Acting. They watch to suspend their disbelief, to see heroes and villians do seemingly superhuman feats. The bad acting and storylines are only vehicles to get from one match to the other.
Wrestling very often gets it wrong. But sometimes, every single bad storyline is made up for.
The few beautiful moments more than makeup for the dull points.
Sure, its scripted and phony, but there is nothing phony about the athleticism and the bravery, nor the will to entertain.
But I’m NOT a taker mark. A guy named “deadman” that enjoys wrestling is automatically labeled a taker mark. SHEESH
[sub]Long story short. I shaved my head a little to close one day and I got hit with “dead man walking, dead man walking the green mile” at work. The name stuck. The zero was added right away to be unique.[/sub]
The appeal of pro wresling, to me, is the same as a Jackie Chan or Jet Li movie. It’s an appreciation of the athletic ability of the wrestlers, the scripted back stories for the big matches (of course, they used to be a lot more subtle), and knowing that the “good guy” was going win in the end.
BTW, I assumed that the way Jeff Hardy has been wrestling lately, dead0man was a reference to him
What’s the appeal of Survivor? American Idol? Friends? South Park?
None of these popular shows appeal to me. Professional Wrestling does, and it has for well over two decades. It’s had its ups and downs, but it is a lasting form of entertainment.
I respect what these people put themselves through to entertain. The best ones can manage a crowd and tell a story physically. Some of the skits are hilarious; I laugh more at wrestling than I do at Friends. Desktop noted it’s like watching martial arts movies, only it is live. And the better performers, just like the better martial arts actors, can pace the match just differently enough to keep it fresh and entertaining.
I had no appreciation of pro wrestling until I saw it “Live” once. These guys are huge and can do some pretty amazing tricks for guys their size. It’s pretty obvious these guys practice their moves–if not even more of them would get killed.
The good guy(s) usually wins and if not he probably will the next time. It’s pretty entertaining live.
Hijack-- I’ve seen quite a few of these sort of “What’s the appeal of WWE” threads and this is by far the most civilised yet so far. Kind of ironic given the subject matter, but appreciated nonetheless.
I don’t watch wrestling. But I have no problem seeing how it might appeal to others. Yes, it is scripted. But so is virtually everything else on TV, right? How about movies, they’re all scripted too.
People do weirder things than watch wrestling (me included). Why would you watch a movie more than once, you know how it ends! That seems odder to me than watching soaps or wrestling (which are just soaps anyway), even though I do it too.
Soaps are hugely popular, yet they’ve got “stilted, insipid dialog, uninspired storylines and awful, straight to video, porn movie level acting” too. How many times do you see the same storylines repeated over and over in soaps?
People will watch anything, as evidence by the crap on TV. Why not wrestling too?
