Why is professional wrestling STILL popular?

Great Debates
1

I grew up in the 70s. Back then I sometimes saw what we now know of as pro wrestling on local TV stations or cable access. And it seemed to appeal to, how shall I put this, people who were satisfied with less (i.e. emotionally, culturally, intellectually etc.)

In the mid 80s it started going mainstream. That Cyndie Lauper video made it popular on MTV for awhile. Ok fine. It was a goofy, flavor-of-the-month thing.

Here it is, 2002, and it’s STILL HERE! And its a billion dollar industry! If ever there was an example of an all flash - no substance, one-joke-act its professional wrestling! How can this still be entertaining to large audiences? Not only is it obviously fake, unless you’re 12 years old it’s monotonous and silly to the point of embarrassment.

I hear seemingly normal, intelligent people I know talk about it with total enthusiasm. I have to conciously refrain from saying something really insulting like, “But pro wrestling is for white trash low-lifes”.

Am I missing something, or am I just a snobby, elitist jerk?

2

Is this an either/or question?

3

Actually, you asked a yes/no question. It doesn’t even make sense as an either/or question.

You: Is this an either/or question?
Me: Or!
You: <caving to my obvious superiority in all things> Er… here Tenebras, take all of my money.

Now, as much as I would like your money, I would feel guilty later, so we shall content ourselves with the status quo and leave Hail Ants to his befuddled elitism. :slight_smile:

By the way, what does Hail Ants mean? Is it a command “Hail the ants!” or a statement “Hail, ants!” or a misguided attempt to make the weather more interesting?

I must know.

Thank you for your time,

Tenebras

4

Theater and opera are too expensive ($200 to not see Pavarotti at the Metropolitan Opera??). Many comedy shows asks for $20 minimum and a drink. Many people fear circus clowns. Movie industry churns give out mostly crap. Music concerts are very expensive too. Also, the lines to Great Adventure and Disneyland are too long.

Dollar for dollar, a wrestling show is the best bargain around. It has theater, music, comedy (intentional and not), and circus performances all wrapped into one show.

5

Because you’ll never go broke underestimating the American public.

6

Its basically the same reason soap operas are still popular after what almost 90 years counting radio ?

Also the talk shows which seem to draw educated and well off people into watching the likes of jerry springer

You have backstabbing people you love and hate greed and it has violence real or simulated although from what i gather in the 30s-late 70s It wasnt as simulated as it is now or the "stiffer " guys meaning they could take the actual abuse

Back then they only simulated it with someone who was a nice draw but had no talent as they didnt want to hurt them or themselves

Which is why if you talk to the guys from that era about todays wrestling they arent polite in voicing their opinions about what ya see today

But if you think the populairty of pro wrestling in america is bad you have yet to see japan where its just about the official sport

as of last unofficial count there were around 80+wrestling groups in japan with 60 percent of them running a profit and add another 2o percent at least breaking even

Its almost the same in mexico where prowrestling matches have been known to outdraw the soccer games
( in fact rumor has it in some towns its illegal to have a wrestling match and soccer game on the same day )

Also pro wrestlers are known to be very fan friendly and accessable They dont usually mind autographs and pictures unlike most pro atheles who like to charge for such

So theres various reasons for it still being popular no matter how dumb it gets

7

It’s a soap opera with violence. It’s got story lines, mystery and intrigue. They have writers who write storylines and clear cut villains and heroes. No one believes it’s real anymore, and if people do then either they know nothing about the wrestling business or the wrestlers are doing their jobs superbly. The wrestlers are both actors and athletes, the only thing “fake” about it is the outcomes.

The wrestling in the 70’s & 80’s is very different from today. It is no longer seen as “real”, partly because Vince McMahon (owner of WWE) had to come out and say the outcomes were scripted to avoid certain sporting taxes. It is entertainment, and should be viewed as such.

But to stereotype wrestling fans as dumb and white-trash speaks more of your nature then it does of wrestling fans. I grew up watching wrestling, it’s one of the only activities I got to do with my dad. I enjoy the storylines & the athletics involved. It’s like a live action flick every time out.

If you called me stupid and white trash I’d laugh at you. I skipped a grade in grammar school, was in the top 3% in the nation on my college entrance exams, finished college when I was 19, owned my own 3 bedroom home at 25, traveled overseas and have been in management in the banking and chemical industries since I was 21 years old.

People aren’t allowed to have different tastes? People are entertained by a variety of things, why should they be ostracized for such? If you don’t like it, don’t watch it. If you don’t understand it’s appeal, then no one is forcing you to sit in front of the TV or order the PPVs. I could give all kinds of reasons why I think the Beatles, opera, NASCAR and horse racing all suck, but I don’t question it’s appeal nor do I cast aspirsions on those who enjoy them. To each their own.

8

If you are referring to Sumo wrestling, that’s real, unlike WWF, which is fake. You’re comparing apples and oranges.

9

Cite? :smiley:

Actually, I grew up in the 50’s and even in this midsize town we had a wrestling (pronounced rassling) arena. We also had it on TV. I don’t know if it was fake then, but probably was, but as a 12 year old I could care less, it was fun.

Since then, I’ve gone through Major League Baseball, the Merging of the AFL and the NFL and the expansion of the NBA, and back to the WWF.

If you want to call the former three real, feel free…myself I prefer real fakery.

Give me good ol’ Freddie Blassie

10

The World Wildlife Fund is fake?! Somebody better tell those poor Panda bears about this! Maybe you can get some of the WWE, World Wrestling Entertainment, stars to help out. I heard that Stone Cold Steve Austin never met a Panda bear he didn’t like. However, the Rock, hates (and I mean hates) Panda bears. It’s true, it’s true!

If you are going to assume things about wrestling fans, at least get the name of the company right. By the way, nightshadea is most certainly NOT referring to Sumo wrestling. It is pretty easy to tell the difference between the two, even amongst us stupid, white-trash wrestling fans. :wink:

Many of today’s top WWE stars wrestled in Japan, electing to learn their moves over seas where they can get paid relatively well and work in more “realistic” matches. The wrestlers are usually smaller, but the action is very fast but take a lot of stiff shots. Mexico is very similar in that respect.

11

No I didnt mean sumo wrestling I mean pro wrestling like new japan or all japan pro wrestling which regulary has crowds of thousands for minor matches

The tokyo egg dome sells out almost weekly im told with fans and the money made there is twice what the wwf makes in a year

Also most american wrestlers seem to perfer it there as they wrestle almost exclusivily

But its two diffrent cultures thats worlds apart as the japanese fan consoiders most american wrestling as inferior ( and sad to say there basically right)

12

Is this a new thing in Japan? Because when I lived there in '93, I never saw any fake pro wrestling on tv, but I saw a great deal of baseball and sumo wrestling. When you said “just about the official sport”, I thought you must have meant sumo, which the Japanese are crazy about. So has fake pro wrestling surpassed sumo wrestling in popularity in the past 9 years? If so, God help us.

13

Hold on there, Cleatus. Please find a post where I called ANYBODY “white-trash”.

  1. Hail Ants

  2. Blowero

Are these 2 names THE SAME, or DIFFERENT?

p.s. - I don’t give a rat’s ass if they changed the name to WWE.

14

I’m sorry, I didn’t know I couldn’t take a off-handed shot at the OP while responding to someone else in a thread, hence the ;). Are we a bit defensive? Of course, calling me Cleatus (Thunderbug/Cleatus, same or different? :rolleyes: ) seems to me to be a back-handed insult. I’ll try not to take it as personally as you.

P.S. You’d think you’d want to get the correct name of the major player in a billion dollar a year industry. I’m not saying, I’m just saying.

15

Now you know;)

Yeah, good thing YOU don’t take things personally:rolleyes:

I think YOU are the only one who cares. PhiloVance is a fan, and even he called it WWF. I am partial to the name ACSCB - Aging Clowns in Silly Costumes Ballet.

16

I have been a fan of pro wrestling since right around the birth of “Hulkamania,” (January 1984) - quite literally, as long as I can remember. I have been a fan through the sex scandals, the McMahon steriod trial, Doink the Clown :rolleyes:, the “Attitude” era, the Monday Night Wars, and now the age of “Get the ‘F’ Out.” I can not speak for every wrestling fan, as we all have different reasons, but these are just a few of the reasons that I choose to watch pro wrestling.

[ul]“Stone Cold” Steve Austin beats up, flips the bird to, or generally makes life difficult for his boss on a weekly basis. Who hasn’t wanted to hit their boss over the head with a steel folding chair (or any object, for that matter) at least once? I know I have, and I know a few others who have as well. Fans get to live vicariously through their favorite WWE Superstars.

A typical cruiserweight match is much more athletic than 18 holes of golf, 300 laps on an Indy course, or 74 straight hours in a fishing boat catching carp. OK, so that last example was a cheap shot, but really, let’s think about it - which shows more overall athleticism: swinging a golf club and chasing the ball in a motorized cart (or even walking after it as they do on the PGA Tour), driving really fast for a really long time (and, granted, it does take a certain skill in order to do this and not flip over or crash, but I’m referring to athleticism), or doing a hurricanrana, a sit-out powerbomb, and a shooting star press all within two minutes of each other? Anyone who has ever seen Billy Kidman, Yoshihiro Tajiri, Hurricane Helms, or Rey Misterio, Jr. in action would probably back me up on this one.

The Rock has more charisma in his pinky finger than Tiger Woods, Alex Rodriguez, Deion Sanders, and Dennis Rodman have combined. Quick, anyone - name the last successful movie that any of the above “real” athletes have been in? (remember - I said successful) OK, how about a “real” athlete not on that list? Anyone? Anyone? Now, three words: The Scorpion King. And for another example, “Macho Man” Randy Savage is in the number-one movie in the U.S. right now, Spider-Man. “Rowdy” Roddy Piper starred in They Live which, IIRC, did get positive reviews. Jesse Ventura, Hulk Hogan, Jerry “The King” Lawler, George “The Animal” Steele and The Undertaker* have also all had starring or supporting roles in films. Wrestling is part athleticism and part acting.

Pro wrestlers make less money and take more risks than ‘real’ athletes, don’t have an off-season, and are much more injury-prone than their counterparts. When was the last time a ‘real’ athlete was voluntarily hit in the head with a metal trash can? Or thrown 20 feet off a cage, through a wooden table, and onto a cement floor? Must be during the off-season, when none of the entertaining stuff happens:rolleyes: The fact is, most NFL, NBA, and MLB players work less and get paid a lot more than even the highest-paid professional wrestler. Even Hulk Hogan, arguably the most recognized name in the history of the business, doesn’t make $20-50 million a year like a professional baseball or football player does. Wrestlers are on the road 300+ days a year - oftentimes while working through painful and nagging injuries - for the entertainment of their fans. (and, FTR, a lot of pro wrestlers were involved with other sports before switching professions. The Rock, Faarooq**, Bradshaw, and many, many others were pro or college football players, Randy Savage played minor league baseball, Chris Jericho played hockey, and Kurt Angle won a gold medal at the 1996 Olympics for amateur wrestling - it’s true, it’s true!) If a baseball player gets a hangnail, he almost automatically gets two weeks off. Mick Foley (a.k.a. Mankind) is the example above about being thrown from a cage, and he wrestled again two days later! That, in my book, is dedication to one’s profession.

Soap Operas + Testosterone = “Sports Entertainment.” Which long-time wrestling fan wasn’t outraged when Andre the Giant turned on Hulk Hogan on that now-famous edition of Piper’s Pit? I remember wanting to throw something at my TV when Earthquake “crushed” Jake “The Snake” Roberts’s pet python, Damien. The New World Order, the Hart Foundation, and DeGeneration-X made my Monday nights a lot more exciting in the late-'90s. And when Paul Heyman announced the “purchase” of Extreme Championship Wrestling by Stephanie McMahon-Helmsely, and its subsequent merger with Shane McMahon’s WCW, I - to paraphrase hardygrrl in another thread - “marked out like a bitch.” Sure it’s campy, and a lot of times storylines are just dropped and left unexplained (anyone remember the white humvee that ran down whoever it was in WCW a few years ago?) but it’s entertainment, which is all we are looking for. [/ul]
Why is professional wrestling still popular? Well, the above might have something to do with it. Why are movies and television so popular? Because people want to be entertained.

And that’s the bottom line, 'cause the Dirty Earthworm said so!
*The Undertaker has a bit part in Hogan’s 1991 film, Suburban Commando. It’s brief, but he’s in there - watch closely and you can see him.
**For all you FSU Seminoles fans, Faarooq is former All-Aerican football star Ron Simmons, who had his jersey retired a few years ago.

(if this gets double-posted, I apologize. I’ve been having problems with the Boards all day.)

17

Equate it with the Roman Coliseum with real blood.

You get to watch men beat the hell out of each other with no one getting really hurt.

18

blowero, I took nothing personally, I was mocking you. The rest is called sarcasm and humor. You should try it some time, it’s all the rage. Now if you are done with the hijack, pull the panties out of your ass and try responding to something in the OP because I have yet to see you contribute one way or the other. Now on to people who have.

Dirty Earthworm, that was an excellent post that covered not only the many facets of why people find it entertaining, but also brought back some great memories. It made me realize just how long I’ve been a wrestling fan. I can remember being a small tyke and rooting for this new tag team I saw on the local channels called the Legion of Doom, waiting for Baron von Rashke to come out and do the claw, watching the Freebirds battle the Von Erichs and so on. As far as acting roles, the earliest I remember was a young Hulk Hogan played Thunderlips in Rocky III (1982). There he met this guy called Mr.T and we both know where this lead to.

Wrestling gives you someone to root for, you’ve got favorites and guys you can’t stand. And sometimes your favorites win, and sometimes they don’t. And THAT is why you keep tuning in, you want to see how things will turn out for your guy (or girl). It’s not static, it changes and evolves, people you hate one week you root for the next.

I’ve known quite a few people, both men and women, who grew up watching wrestling with their dad. It became a bonding ritual, something they could both watch together. I think it may have evolved past that point now, it’s more geared to the young adult crowd. But those young adults grew up watching with their dad, and that kept them around too.

19

Got you all beat - earliest wrestling role I remember was Prof. Toru Tanaka as Oddjob in Dr. No. He was one of Mr. Fuji’s many tag team partners and a former WWWF (not a typo) Tag Team champion.

Other appearances include Terry Funk in Roadhouse and how can anyone leave out Andre the Giant in The Princess Bride?!

And while I am the last person to knock the athleticism of a wrestler, note that a number moved from professional sports due to injuries suffered. In sports, your opponent will pick on your weakness; in wrestling, they’ll cover it for you. Some names - Bradshaw, Luger, Pillman, Vader and Goldberg.

20

Lighten up. Sorry if I kept you from your oh-so-serious discussion of grown men dancing around and pretending to hit each other with chairs. Let’s see if I have this right: When YOU do it, it’s “mocking”, “sarcasm” and “humor”, but when I do it, it’s “panties in my ass”. O.K., whatever.:wally

Buh-bye.

That’s cuz they’re athletes, not actors.

Could be because baseball and football players actually have a skill, rather than being hack wannabe actors doing a fake wrestling pantamime. It also could be that people want to see a sporting event that has rules, and where the outcome is not determined in advance.