Heroes and Villains: Perspective

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SORRY, FOLKS

I hate to be so lazy, but there’s no way I can put out a regulation length column this week. I’m writing this on Sunday night, and tomorrow morning I fly back home. I’ve got a bunch of grading I’ve been neglecting (which I’ll have to finish back home), and there’s the usual last minute things to do around the apartment before taking a 900 mile trip. So, sorry for this short-ish column. And sorry in advance for next week–I’ll be skipping it, as I know that I won’t have any time to work on a column next week. But most of you will be spending the holidays with loved ones or contemplating suicide* or something, so I’m guessing you’ll be able to live without my meager contribution to the internet until 2005 rolls around.

*And now she’s in a bottle of formaldehyde….

PERSPECTIVE

Anyone watch the Packers-Jaguars game on Sunday? Anyone see highlights of it? Of particular interest to us wrestling fans was a play made by Jaguars safety Donovan Darius. Instead of tackling Packers receiver Robert Ferguson in a conventional way, Darius clotheslined him–a move that’s been illegal in the NFL for most of my life. The tackle knocked Ferguson out, and Darius was ejected from the game. Thankfully Ferguson was moving his arms–yeah, this was the sort of hit that left you thankful that the victim was still able to move. Ferguson was stretchered out, and at the time I’m writing this there has been no word on the result of his x-rays.

I mention this just to put into perspective how dangerous pro wrestling really is. We think of a clothesline as a pretty rudimentary maneuver–sometimes it can lead to a near fall, and some wrestlers even use it as a finisher, but for the most part it’s a transition move. Trained professional wrestlers are capable of receiving this move without hurting themselves, all the while trying to make it look like they really were hurt (yes, some people do a better job of this than others). Darius’ clothesline had an impact similar to that of an especially good clothesline in a pro wrestling match. But Ferguson never saw it coming, and probably wouldn’t have known what to do to soften the impact anyway.

It’s moments like these that I really remember how much I appreciate the training and hard work that all wrestlers must go through. What’s more, this really makes me appreciate how dangerous pro wrestling is. Never mind the crazy stuff–even a simple move can be enough to permanently injure or even kill (remember the case in Milwaukee a couple of years ago when a poorly-trained wrestler died from a simple vertical suplex?).

This is why the Bob Holly-Rene Dupree incident matters so much. Bob Holly has a history of getting out of control during his matches, and he’s ended up as both the victim and the aggressor. It doesn’t take much to turn a simple maneuver into a deadly one, and it takes both wrestlers in a match to ensure both participants’ safety. Just something to bear in mind the next time you watch a wrestling match.

EVEN MORE PERSPECTIVE

I just finished reviewing a Ring of Honor DVD (look for it–it should be up in the review section by the time you read this). I’ve also been watching the ECW DVD here and there when I’ve had time. The two promotions are very different, but they both had extremely loyal fan bases. And they both had/have rosters full of guys who believe(d) in the product, and wanted to put on a product superior to what the mainstream promotions were offering.

With all the talk recently about the death of the IWC and the decline in interest in wrestling in general and the WWE in particular, you’d think that no one really gave a damn about pro wrestling anymore. But as I watched these DVDs, I was struck by the passion that both participants and the fans had for the pseudo-sport. As a columnist, I’m generally on the positive side anyway, but these DVDs really were sort of inspiring. Both promotions catered to a niche audience, but there’s still an underlying love for the idea of two guys pretending to hurt each other, regardless of the style of wrestling.

Dave Meltzer (who, as I’ve mentioned before, is the only sheet writer I trust) often compares pro wrestling to roller derby, another worked “sport” which suffered a precipitous decline in quality. Roller derby, however, was unable to recover from the downturn in business. Today, for the most part, it’s little more than a relic of the 1960s and ’70s. Meltzer isn’t Chicken Little–he acknowledges that the WWE is too big and has too much revenue to close its doors anytime soon–but he does like to draw some comparisons. In the ’70s, everyone said that roller derby was too ingrained in American culture to ever completely go away. As I’m sure most of you know, people say that about pro wrestling today. Vince McMahon himself has said as much.

But watching these DVDs, I really think there’s just something too primal, too integral to our culture for pro wrestling for it ever to go away entirely. Some people just love to watch other people fight–I don’t think anyone would deny that. Wrestling operates in a weird twilight area between real fighting (boxing or MMA) and outright choreographed stuff that you’d see in a movie or TV show. That, to me, is its ultimate strength. A shoot fight is too real. Like most things in real life, it can disappoint us as often as it entertains us. Shoot fighting is fun, and a great sport, but I just think that people will always crave some form of violence with a greater guarantee of entertainment and spectacle. Choreographed movie fights, however, aren’t real enough. They’re fun to watch, but deep down we know that no one’s getting hurt (for the most part).

Pro wrestling is different. There’s a greater chance of the fight being a spectacle–what we imagine in our minds a fight should look like. But it’s less of a fantasy than what we see in movies–it’s more like what a fight would look like. Some people are drawn to pro wrestling for camp, nostalgia, T&A, etc. But people stay for the simulated violence.*

As long as wrestling delivers fights which people want to watch, there will always be an audience. The reduction in viewing audience is a fact of life–the WWE will probably never draw 7.0 ratings again, simply because even major networks shows struggle to deliver ratings in this range anymore. If the audience continues to dwindle, it will get harder and harder for companies to provide us with affordable wrestling products. Costs will soar if the audience continues to shrink. But there will always be an audience willing to shell out bucks for the privilege of watching wrestling. As new methods of delivery become available (like video on demand, or downloading, or whatever), a wider variety of products will be at our fingertips. Vince McMahon is lucky he owns all that footage–otherwise he’d have reason to be nervous. We might not have many options as far as easily accessible wrestling right now, but that will almost certainly change. Possibly in the near future.

Wrestling’s not going anywhere.

* And storylines matter too–but in pro wrestling, the story is, at heart, just a way to make the simulated violence make more sense–to explain why two guys want to hurt each other. I’ve written a lot about this in the past, so if you’re interested check out the archives.

A LACK OF PERSPECTIVE

Originally this was going to be a four page screed, but I decided that I didn’t want my name attached to such a thing, and I didn’t want to ask Widro to put it up on the website. Just let it be known that my feelings run deeper than this next segment indicates.

I hope all of you voted in our Inside Pulse year-end awards. I know not everyone was happy with all the choices available, but this is our first year doing it. Trust me–we’ll work out the kinks next year. In the meantime, I think all the staff is happy with how Rob Blatt handled things. We had a lot of people vote, and I think we included some pretty novel categories. I’m pretty confident that in a couple of years our awards will be the leading ones on the internet.

Of course, to do that we’d need to usurp the RSPW awards. If you’ve never heard of them, they’re an old set of awards that date back to the Paleolithic era of the IWC. They used to be a big deal, a way to gauge the pulse (no pun intended) of internet wrestling fans. But now they seem to have fallen on hard times. Not too many people voted, and I think no one would have even realized they’d come out if it weren’t for Scott Keith publicizing it on his website (and, to a lesser extent, CRZ mentioning it on his message board).

And that’s the problem. CRZ, the guy who runs the awards, seems to have wanted it that way. Here’s an exchange from his message board:

Man, I missed the voting.
CRZ, didn’t you post a link here last year that showed where you could vote? Did you not do that this year, or did you do it and I missed it?

-One of the posters on the board.

I don’t remember what I did last year, but I always try to keep them separate (and hope that Rick, Keith and the other usual suspects don’t post a link so that the rubes take over). A couple people asked me via email or PM and I did point them to rspw.org.
-CRZ

This really annoyed me. Actually, it did more than that–it actually angered me. It’s hard to get too angry at things on the internet–people are willing to say stuff when cloaked with the relative anonymity of the web that they’d never have the gall to say in real life.* But this is just inexcusable. CRZ is essentially saying that the people who visit and post on his message board are unworthy in voting in the RSPW awards. Bear in mind here that these awards have absolutely no credibility outside of the IWC–they’re not exactly the Oscars, or even the Wrestling Observer year-end awards. The closest analogue I can think of is an informal award that the readers of the Comics Journal voted on, jokingly called the Smarties or something similar.

If CRZ thinks the people on his message board are such “rubes,” why doesn’t he just start a private message board and invite only his friends to participate? This type of contempt for one’s audience exemplifies everything that I hate about the internet. And if the IWC is dying, I hope that the folks with that attitude are the first to go. I suspect they will be.

*Yes, I appreciate the irony of this statement.

YES THIS IS SHORT, BUT…

I’ve got stuff to do. I didn’t feel right missing two weeks in a row, though, and I actually had just enough stuff to eke out a column this week. I’ll be back to my usual long-windedness in January.

In the meantime, if you’re looking for some of that patented Goforth long-windedness, there is the ROH review, which should be up by the time you read this (no link cause it’s not up yet as I’m writing this). And there is the extra-special feature I’m working on that will launch us on into the next year. Should be up sometime before the end of the year, but after Christmas.

Hope you have a good couple of weeks, no matter how you end up spending it. See you next year.