The Art of Wrestling: Context

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Seeing Things in Context

Pretty much anyone with an internet column will tell you that one of the biggest rewards for our work is receiving interesting feedback from people who are genuinely passionate about the subjects we cover. I really enjoy the feedback that I get from this column, and I feel blessed to have so many intelligent readers who enjoy getting into the excruciating minutiae of Pro Wrestling with me. Once in a while, this exchange of ideas inspires me to write about something other than what I had planned, and this is going to be one of those columns. We’ll get back to analyzing Golden Boy‘s the Best of Japan 2004 next week. This week I want to talk about context.

There’s still a strong connection between the idea of viewing matches in their proper context and watching last year’ best Pro-Wres matches, though. The seed for this article was planted by a wrestling writer whose opinions I greatly respect, and who follows the current Japanese scene far more closely than I do. He took the time to write and give me the background of Tenzan and Nakamura’s G-1 Climax match. In Nakamura’s previous match, his opponent was Masahiro Chono, who was angry that their previous match had gone to a double count-out and kept him from winning the Block. Chono ended up unloading on Nakamura to the point that Nakamura was badly hurt and Chono got disqualified. Added to this was the history between Tenzan and Nakamura, including an ill-advised title change and another match that both ended with Nakamura getting a Cross Arm Breaker out of nowhere after almost losing.

The thing is, I got the point of Tenzan vs. Nakamura ’04 without knowing all of this ahead of time, but I was able to enjoy the match on a deeper level when I watched it a second time, keeping the history in mind. On first viewing, the match told me a story of underdog using quick shoot style techniques to try and counter the superior power and experience of his favored opponent. Now, I can also appreciate that Tenzan needed to prove that he could escape Nakamura’s submissions when it counted, and that the crowd was torn between rooting for the determined ace and cheering on the already injured younger wrestler. Those extra elements added a great deal to my appreciation of the match, and invested the details of it with further importance.

Without knowing the context, though, I was still able to get into the fight. That leads us into the central issue of this week’s edition of the Art of Wrestling: Should it be important to know the context of a great match in order to fully appreciate it?

It’s currently a popular opinion on certain wrestling web sites to say that any match that requires too much background knowledge to be understood is by definition not a great match. In another letter, the writer who gave me the idea for this column put it this way: “I feel if I need to watch of ton of other matches to get a match then the match has failed at a fundamental level.”

I find it hard to disagree. If Tenzan vs. Nakamura had only been about their history, the Cross Arm Breaker, and the injury that Chono gave Nakamura, then the match would have been meaningless to me. The young guy vs. veteran, underdog vs. favorite, and speed vs. power stories, however, are pretty much universal, and they made it possible to enjoy the match on a stand-alone basis. I think the point is that all great matches should have some kind of broader appeal that goes beyond their place in wrestling history or even in the current story lines.

It’s pretty difficult to explore this idea by just discussing WWE matches with WWE fans. For example: Would Eddie Guerrero’s victory over Brock Lesnar and Benoit’s win in the Main Event of WrestleMania XX have had the same impact on us if we weren’t aware of their shared history, and of how long they had been trying, and of how much they had sacrificed to reach their goals? I think that it’s all but impossible to say. The thing is, anybody who had been following WWE’s TV programs would have been aware of the overarching story line that led to the climax of Benoit and Guerrero embracing mid-ring at Madison Square Garden. I’d wager that the vast majority of people reading this column were genuinely pulling for Eddie and Christ to win their respective matches, and that most of us were sincerely happy, for them and for ourselves, when they became champions. In this case, I think it’s too difficult to divorce the match from its context. If anyone reading has, for example, watched the WrestleMania Triple Threat with a friend who wasn’t following wrestling in 2004, I’d be interested to hear what they had to say about it. I do remember reading a few threads and reviews around the end of the year where people seemed to be taking a deliberately negative view of the match, and picking apart what they perceived as its flaws. If I remember correctly, though, most of those people were doing so as a way of overstating the case in order to push Eddie vs. Brock as their 2004 WWE Match of the Year. I can’t imagine that there is even a single Chris Benoit fan out there who can genuinely claim that they didn’t enjoy the match. If there is, I expect I’ll hear from them.

I think a better way to look at this argument is to think about the first time you were exposed to a new style of wrestling, or to a new wrestler. I think the experience of viewing a match out of context is probably most familiar to tape traders and to people who follow Puroresu or Lucha Libre with anything less than obsessive devotion. I can remember the first time I was introduced to Japanese Pro Wrestling in the early 1990s. I has no idea what to expect, I was unfamiliar with the names and the language, and I had only seen a few Dynamite Kid and Brian Pillman matches from Stampede Wrestling that were even comparable to what was on that grainy, much-copied tape. Without the benefit of any context at all, I was still easily captivated by the exciting, high-flying, stiffly contested matches I was watching.

This came to mind recently when another wrestling writer from a different site sent me an email stating that he didn’t think he could enjoy 90s All Japan because he’d “…have to know the entire history of the wrestlers and all their matches to enjoy ONE match.” I thought about my early exposure to All Japan (I’m all but sure that there was a Jumbo vs. Misawa and a Jumbo vs. Tenryu match on the tape). Maybe I’m romanticizing it now, but I seem to recall that the big strikes, hard bumps, and classic in-ring story telling mixed with a genuine intensity and apparent deep hatred between the combatants were enough to win me over more or less completely. Certainly, once I moved back to Canada in 2002 and started actively seeking out tapes of Japanese wrestling, I was immediately able to get into watching Kawada kicking the crap out of people, Misawa taking insane risks, and Kobashi getting dropped right on his head. Re-watching the matches, I got even more into all of the classic All Japan elements, such as stiffness, intensity, crazy bumping and selling, emotional crowds, intelligent ring psychology, innovative moves and holds, pacing the match effectively, and building towards the finish. With time, and with the help of a number of informed and interesting online commentators, I started to be able to place the matches in their proper spots on the All Japan timeline. With this came a greatly increased respect for the federation’s ability to build up feuds and rivalries, and that in turn added depth to my understanding of what was happening in the ring. The result is that I’ve been able to enjoy a match like Misawa vs. Kawada from June 1994 on several different occasions, each time with a new and deeper perspective. I absolutely loved the match the first time I saw it, and I’d guess that very many people feel the same way. It wasn’t actually necessary to know the history in order to enjoy the match, but coming to understand the context has added greatly to my appreciation of it.

This tends to be my experience with most, if not all, great matches. If I don’t have any background on the match, it can still be fun to watch for any number of reasons from fancy moves to realistic selling. If I really enjoy a match, that generally leads to me wanting to see more matches in a similar style. I tend to seek out other matches with the same wrestlers, facing one another again or facing a different foe. I will go out of my way to find and read articles about the wrestlers, the match, the style, and the promotion. In the past few years, I’ve been lucky enough to be exposed to an incredible variety of wrestlers and matches. I’ve seen matches in a bewildering variety of styles that, to my eyes, were unquestionably great.

Terry Funk vs. Atsushi Onita is a great Death Match. Terry Funk vs. Jumbo Tsuruta from 1976 is a truly great classic wrestling match with deep psychology. American Dragon vs. Low Ki from Ring of Honor’s second show is a very compelling mixture of the New Millenium US Indy style and Japanese Shoot Style. Samoa Joe vs. Homicide is a mix of Indy and Strong styles with a pinch of ECW thrown in for good measure, and it works like a charm. Kawada vs. Albright mixed Strong and Shoot Styles to wonderful effect. Rey vs. Eddie from Halloween Havoc was a match I’d missed because I was living in Europe at the time, and it more than lived up to my expectations. Eventually, that match opened the door for me to dip my toes in the Lucha Libre pool, and matches like El Hijo Del Santo & Negro Casas vs Rey Bucanero & Ultimo Guerrero from Arena Mexico blew me away even though I’d never been exposed to Los Guerreros del Inferno before. I’m sure that, as I learn more about them, my understanding of and love for the match will continue to grow. The October ’96 Michinoku Pro 10-Man, Yamakawa vs. Honma ’99 Death Match, Ultimo Dragon vs. Shinjiro Ohtani J-Crown semis, and the Hashimoto vs. Tenryu ’98 G-1 chop fest were all matches that led me to seek out more of the same. It didn’t always work out well. For example, I didn’t find any Albright matches that lived up to the expectations that had been raised as I watched him battle Kawada, although I’ve heard that he had some good ones against Nobuhiko Takada in UWF-I. Generally, collecting wrestling tapes and DVDs has been educational, rewarding and lots of fun.


Generally speaking, Terry Funk = Greatness

What I think I’ve learned is this: If you see a new kind of match, and it grabs you right away, it just might be worth looking into it a little deeper. I’d say that nine times out of ten you are likely to find a whole new way of appreciating and enjoying Pro Wrestling.

What I also think I’ve learned is this: You should never let a lack of knowledge keep you from checking out a new style, promotion, wrestler, or match. I think this is especially true right now, as the McMahons and their offensively stupid brand of toilet humour seem poised to push actual wrestling matches to the bottom of the WWE priority list. Instead of giving up on wrestling, why not go to Golden Boy, or check out the Crazy Max boards to find someone who is trading or selling something you might be interested in. If you find something you like, and you want to learn more, try a quick Google search, or write to myself or David Ditch or any of the other writers on this site. As I stated at the top of this article, we all love to get emails about wrestling.

Thanks for Reading!