If you goto a theatre today, chances are you’ll see a superhero movie showing. If you go buy a bag of chips, chances are you’ll see some superhero promotion. Go get fast food? Superheroes. Buy a new videogame? Superheroes. Eveywhere you look and turn you’ll find a superhero or the simulacrum of superhero culture.
Is it any different in pro wrestling?
WWE has tried to dub this the “Reality Era” because of the use of social media to intertwine the “WWE Universe” with the viewer. While calling it “reality” is actually quite clever when you recognize that “Reality TV” is by no means more “reality” than professional wrestling, it misses the mark on what’s really going on.
Jim Ross on JR’s BBQ recently discussed what he felt was wrong with professional wrestling today and focused much of his time talking about scripted promos and the death of the territories. What interested me was something he has discussed many times on his podcast The Ross Report and when talking to guests like Stone Cold Steve Austin and Jim Cornette.
“Wrestling is best when it comes from a logically, realistic place and is executed inside the ring as an athletic contest built on common sense and not an acrobatic show that exposes the business as a sham with no selling and the complete lack of some talent’s ability to properly apply an actual wrestling hold.
The faster some talent perform the louder that they tell us that their skill set is lacking and that they are trying to get by on sensationalism instead of realism.”
– Jim Ross
I personally don’t disagree with Ross, but it made me take notice to what’s popular today not only in the WWE but independent wrestling as well. The cry of “psychology over high spots” has been going on for decades but it feels like a losing battle today. NXT, Lucha Underground and ROH get massive praise for having frantic, fast paced shows that try to tell stories in a combination of the spot to spot “WWE Style” and the independent wrestling “big moves create big reactions” style. Call it a deviation of what WCW attempted with the Cruiserweight division or just a reaction to the steroid era disappearing and being replaced by smaller guys. Either way, it doesn’t seem like we’re going to go back to the old days. Randy Orton to this day gets massive criticism for using headlocks to slow down the pace of a match because it’s unexciting, instead of people understanding what he’s doing in the confines of the match.
It’s possible that what Jim Ross misses and what a lot of us have missed is something that Max Landis caught when discussing Pro Wrestling Guerrilla:
“PWG matches are like superhero fights in a movie. Guys get hit with stuff that should kill them but get back up to fight.” – @Uptomyknees
— Joey Ryan (@JoeyRyanOnline) April 20, 2015
It’s not just PWG but pro wrestling everywhere. We’ve gone away from telling stories in the ring on a micro level and moved towards telling stories on the macro. It’s now all about two people or more hitting big moves and doing absolutely everything to stop someone who cannot be stopped. It’s less about why two sides are fighting and more about simply who is going to win. That’s why the spots are bigger but mean less. To an average human being, getting thrown into a building would cause them to bounce against the side of it. But superheroes go through the bricks and come out without blood or concussions. This is modern pro wrestling. You can kick out of anything until you can’t.
Even more is that the superheroes in pro wrestling used to be the John Cena’s and Batista’s of the world. Big, strong, muscular men that look larger than life. Today it’s going more to the Sami Zayn’s, the Young Bucks and the Kevin Owen’s, guys with natural physiques that can do anything in the ring from high flying spots to powerful slams and strikes. As TNA used to say about the X Division, “It’s not about weight limits. It’s about no limits.”
While John Cena looks like a superhero, talks like a superhero and never loses like a superhero (to the point where he’s negatively known as Super Cena), the idea of pro wrestlers fighting like comic book characters is the style today. Just look at WrestleMania 31 between Roman Reigns and Brock Lesnar. It wasn’t much different to what you’d see in The Avengers. Reigns and Lesnar destroyed each other, taking beatings no man should be able to survive and while neither man stood tall by the end due to the run-in of Seth Rollins, it’s no surprise that both men lived to fight another day. Instead of fighting another day in another movie or in another comic, it was on another night of wrestling. Barely scatched, fully alive.
It’s no surprise to me that this style disappoints the wrestling purists. They didn’t become pro wrestling fans for fancy moves or silly characters. They came for the stories, and for those stories to be told in the ring. When the moves mean something, when a kick isn’t just a kick but targeting an injured part of the body, or when a wrestling move is executed that is a reference to a previous wrestling match, it just gets you far more engaged in what’s going on. It doesn’t have to look like MMA but when it feels real? It engages you in the story. The suspension of disbelief is one of the most powerful delicacies professional wrestling can offer and it feels like the business is skipping it for a cheap buffet.
Is what’s good for Hollywood good for pro wrestling? It doesn’t look like it. Ross pointed out that the alleged “boom” period is a dearth of easy to watch wrestling programming that isn’t making a whole lot of money. If you’re not the WWE you’ll rarely draw more than 1,000 people and if you are the WWE, you’re starting to look at smaller arenas to run shows that are not WrestleMania. There’s more to watch on TV than ever before but none of it is as popular as wrestling once was. If it wasn’t for Univision, Lucha Underground wouldn’t have a million TV viewers. ROH and TNA on Wednesday combined didn’t get over a million viewers on Destination America last week. It’s not even half as popular. The superhero period of professional wrestling is easy to talk about and easy to get invested in, but it doesn’t seem like it’s doing anything more than placating the hardcore fanbase that has stuck through this since the Attitude Era.
That said, this is what’s selling. We haven’t seen anything really prove that the way it used to be can sell today. People are excited about the Wednesday Night War now and not the way wrestling used to make money. Slowing a match down is considered treasonous and the more action and impact you can pack in less than 10 minutes the better. People want their superheroes and they’ve wanted them for years, so long as the superheroes are on their terms (sorry Cena). The Superhero Era of pro wrestling might not be what it is for Hollywood, but the old school mindset definitely feels like how Hollywood looks at the Western: outdated, antiquated and forgotten.
Image featuring a photo from Giant Bomb, Alpha-1 Wrestling, CHIKARA and a t-shirt design from Try This on For Size
