The Wrestling Bard 10.25.08: Entertainment Woes

Ladies and Gentlemen, it appears that Professional Wrestling is dead. Vince McMahon does not want the fine employees that work for him to be called “wrestlers”. Fine. I can deal with “superstars”. I have for the longest time. But now, he has gone a step further. Vince has apparently found a new nickname which sums up his view of our beloved wrestling.

Vince McMahon’s wants his in-ring performers to be called “entertainers”.

I am using every once of my restraint to keep a civil tongue here. This is quite possible the most insulting thing Vince McMahon has ever done. Grown men kissing his posterior? Fine, it’s funny every once in a while. Ignoring women’s wrestling in favor of eye candy? Fine, I’m a man, I can understand the logic. Calling wrestling “sports entertainment”? That’s cool, it’s athletic and entertaining, and it sums up the business nicely. Mocking God in his feud with Shawn Michaels? Fine, I can deal with that too, God has a sense of humor, and people bash my faith everyday.

But calling wrestlers “entertainers”? Frank Gotch, Lou Thesz, and a plethora of others have to be rolling in their graves right now. Vince officially wants to take the “sports” out of “sports entertainment”. This is a slap to every fan of wrestling and the business itself. The fact that this is coming from a man who has been the most important figure in wrestling for the last thirty years is depressing. Vince, for the love of wrestling, get your head of your million dollar butt crack and respect the hard work that your “entertainers” have been doing for nearly fifty years.

Bruno Sammartino, despite not being a great worker, was driven by competition. Billy Graham, for all of his over the top pomp, still knew several holds. Hulk Hogan, for all the bashing the IWC gives him, was a capable in-ring performer when he cared enough to deliver. Steve Austin, for all of his beer swilling and byrd flipping, was proud to call himself a wrestler. John Cena, for all the flack he gets, lives and breathes the business of wrestling.

That’s not even the non-sports entertainment guys. When Ric Flair retired, Jim Ross didn’t call him the “greatest entertainer to ever lace a pair of boots”. Bret Hart, for all the flack that I give him, was 100% dedicated to making the in-ring product look as real as possible. Shawn Michaels, perhaps the greatest “sports entertainer” of all time, is a master of psychology and telling a story. Eddie Guerrero and Chris Benoit, despite their issues, got over almost solely on their ability to have a great wrestling match. Kurt Angle didn’t win an Olympic Gold Medal in “entertainment”.

If Vince was to call his wrestlers “superstars” and wrestling “sports entertainment” that’s fine. The idea of wrestling is to have a wrestling match so good that it creates genuine emotion and thus entertains the audience. Not all wrestlers can be “sports entertainers”. This takes a very special “it” factor, something that Ric Flair, Hulk Hogan, Shawn Michaels, Steve Austin, The Rock and John Cena all have in abundance. So yes, the ability to truly connect with an audience should be recognized. But they didn’t just get the audience to love them by their great mic skills and hand motions. Ric Flair wasn’t loved by anybody until they realized that he always had great matches and made his opponents looked good. Hulkamania wouldn’t have been as big as it was if Hogan hadn’t have slammed Andre the Giant in the ring . Shawn Michaels got over because what he could do in the ring was more entertaining than anyone. Steve Austin and The Rock’s great promos wouldn’t have mattered without the great matches they had against each other. And John Cena is only just now starting to win the other half of the audience over because he has shown that, despite his goofy, child friendly moveset, he delivers in the ring .

I suppose Vince’s logic is that the “smarts” won’t be able to chant “You can’t entertain!” at John Cena without looking like idiots. But does he not see how ridiculous this is? I mean…the biggest “sports entertainment” show of the year is called Wrestlemania. Will 25 years of history be erased so that in 2010 we can have “Entertainmania I”? I suppose you won’t have to show all the great Wrestlemania moments like Chris Benoit’s world title win and Steve Austin passing out in his own blood while being put in a wrestling hold. Seriously Vince, are you so ashamed of how you became a multi-Millionaire that you refuse to call it what it is?

I don’t know about the rest of you, but since the majority of you are older than me, I can only assume that this is even truer for you. I grew up on PROFESSIONAL WRESTLING. I didn’t mind “sports entertainment”, but I was raised on WRESTLING. I didn’t fall in love with Sting because he had flashy face paint (although it helped), I fell in love with him because of how he would manhandle Ric Flair in the ring. I didn’t grow to respect Chris Benoit because I thought he was entertaining, I respected him because he wrestled like he could beat anyone. I didn’t become a Shawn Michaels fan because he pranced around in reflective chaps, I became an HBK fan because he could fly around the ring and entertain me with his wrestling ability.

I’m really trying to find something positive about this situation. I’ve come up with two things. 1) Hopefully, the disgruntled WWE fans that still love wrestling but are “smart” will expand their horizons to Japan, ROH, Mexico, or some other company that believes that still calls its in-ring performers wrestlers and claim to be profession wrestling. 2) Hopefully, the disgruntled WWE fans that have finally had enough will no longer whine about John Cena since he will no longer be relevant to their lives, and I won’t have to slowly scratch holes in my ears from hearing about it. That’s really all I got.

I’ve got a confession to make. I don’t watch current day wrestling on a weekly basis. I don’t have cable in my house due to a family decision, and I’m actually glad for it. When you live in a house with three pre-teenage girls, it’s a blessing to not have to worry about some obnoxious Disney show. So I don’t watch a lot of recent wrestling. I watch ECW every week via the computer, and I try to catch the ROH PPVs and the occasional WWE PPV. If I’m somewhere else on a wrestling night, I’ll try to watch RAW or Smackdown! But most of what I watch is DVDs and YouTube. I’ve watched more matches predating 2002 that I have matches post-Benoit in 2008.

I’m really trying to stay attached to wrestling. I’ve always tried to take the 1 Corinthians approach to wrestling. “Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs…It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.” But I’ve started to notice things. I’m beginning to notice that wrestling is less of a fun hobby and more of an obsession.

I’ve referred to my wrestling fandom as a love affair. Perhaps it is more of an addiction. I don’t have a lot of vices in my life. I don’t drink, I don’t smoke, I don’t pop pills, and I don’t go around having sex. Perhaps wrestling is my drug of choice. It’s my happy place, my escape from the world. And I’m really starting to question whether or not that’s a healthy thing. When I look at how much I bash Vince’s insulting decisions, the fact dawns on me that I’ll probably still be ordering Wrestlemania 25. It seems I have no moral standard, no place to put my foot down and say that enough is enough. And when I look at that, I start realizing that the answer to whether or not wrestling is healthy for me or not is a resounding no.

Wrestling has gotten me through a lot of things. From ugly break-ups to losing my job to those days where I questioned my belief in God, wrestling has always been there, ready to comfort me. Wrestling is my mistress. But now, wrestlers are entertainers. Since Vince McMahon thinks that wrestling is dead, perhaps I should follow suit.

I realize now that I didn’t want to go down this road. Venting my frustrations with the business has left me no longer angry, but sad and a little afraid of how much I care. Perhaps I shouldn’t have taken you down this road either. But sometimes you’ve got to ask yourself…is all of this really worth it?

Maybe it is. Maybe this is all just a bad day for me. I’ve always had the thought in mind that I should go up to Kansas City and train with Harley Race before pursuing a career in the business I love. Today, I’m considering selling all of my DVDs so I can have some extra money and can spend the time I usually spend watching wrestling to refocus on school, connecting with God, and getting a job. Maybe I’ll even go out on a date. Where I’ll be tomorrow, I don’t know.

Perhaps all wrestling fans get like this. Perhaps we all just have off days. I don’t know. Maybe this is just a personal thing for me. Maybe the fact that I haven’t watched wrestling with anybody but myself for the last two months is getting to me. Or maybe it’s all of the negativity of the comments section on this website. Maybe it’s just that I’ve watched wrestling all my life and I feel the need to move on. Maybe God is calling me to something else. I don’t know.

Whatever the reason is…today is one of those days when I wish I had gave up on wrestling after the Benoit Family Tragedy. It might be an off day, or it might be a new dawn. I don’t know. I suppose I’ll know tomorrow. After all, my approach to wrestling “keeps no record of wrongs” . Maybe, despite all the negativity I feel right now, the kid that always dreamed of main eventing a Wrestlemania will wake up tomorrow with revived vigor to accomplish that dream. I’ll just have to wait and see.

This has been what’s on my mind this week. For some reason, I can’t get my mind wrapped on wrestling this week. Probably because it’s called Entertainment now.

Ask Aaron

Next week, I will have a feature up where you can ask me questions to get my opinions on things. It does not have to be wrestling related, but I am putting four guidelines here.

1) Questions with foul language will not be answered. Keep it civil.
2) Anything having to do with faith or religion is off limits, for the sake of other readers.
3) Politics is also off limits. I’ve expressed my viewpoint, I know who I’m voting for, and nothing anyone says is changing my vote. I’d rather talk about other things.
4) Chris Benoit is off limits. I’ve expressed my “forgive and move on” viewpoint, but everybody will have different takes that they are entitled to, and the last thing I need is another pointless debate about whether or not Chris is in Hell. Who, outside of his friends and family, really cares?

These rules are in place to encourage interesting questions that will not be offensive to the other readers. Granted, some punk is likely to take offense no matter what I say, but I don’t want to get into those touchy subjects. It’s just better for my sanity’s sake.

Some people are probably going to flame me for venting, but I have a right to do it every now and then. Since wrestling is the cause of my frustration, I see no problem voicing that frustration on a wrestling column. If you want to read about wrestling, my review of Tombstone: The History of the Undertaker, should be coming up sometime next week.

Have a good one, and I sincerely hope you are having a better day than I’m having. Enjoy Cyber Sunday if you’re ordering it. It already has given me more headaches than I needed when I tried to do the roundtable predictions. I’ve had pretty decent luck at getting my predictions right. I was one of the top 5 for No Mercy, which pisses me off since I didn’t get to see it. I think I deserve a free DVD at least, but I’m sure I won’t since some people hate intentionally crappy haikus.

Now, because the Bard likes to leave things on a positive note: