Professional Wrestling is probably the most polarizing aspect of the
sports world. It mixes the sport aspect with wrestling, and the entertainment
aspect of characters, storylines and a bit of acting in between. There are many
big names that came out from this business alone and actually expanded their
career to other branches of the entertainment, like Dwayne Johnson, known as
The Rock in the Pro Wrestling circuit with WWE (World Wrestling Entertainment)
who later on would have a successful acting career and Chris Jericho, a
household name in both the wrestling world and the metal community as the
frontman of the Heavy Metal band Fozzy. I've been a fan since around 2001 when
I watched WWE's Tables, Ladders and Chairs (TLC) programming when it was still
being broadcasted in Indonesia on the late night timeslot. Nowadays, I always
follow pro wrestling info and events through YouTube. But let me assure you
this: Even though this is just an entertainment, but executing these moves
performed by trained professional without any formal training or just to copy
those moves is dangerous and possibly fatal for yourself and others surrounding
you.
I've become fascinated with this form of entertainment when I was looking
for a good show on television at my grandma's house. Then I came across this
sport/entertainment show called WWE, and once I'm hooked, it became clear that
this has become my new favorite show. At that time, WWE was in an era where the
apparent violence and reckless abandon was in full display, dubbed The Attitude Era. Names like Triple H,
"Stone Cold" Steve Austin, The Rock, Hulk Hogan, "Nature
Boy" Ric Flair and Shawn "The Heartbreak Kid" Michaels are
considered the big guys in the era at that point. Not only the action was in
full force, the fans could even draw the line between good or bad. A wrestler
can be considered a "face" when he/she has the full support from the
fans, often labeled as the good guy. On the other end, the term
"heel" is used when the wrestler in question perform an act by the
means of bad intention, earning the booing and the overall unfriendly response
from the fans. These two terms play a huge role for the wrestler's character
development. Many wrestlers change their roles to further develop their own
gimmicks, but some are really comfortable with playing either a good guy or a
bad guy and stick with that role over the course of their careers. The perfect
examples of both of these spectrums are John Cena and "Rowdy" Roddy
Piper. Cena debuted in 2002 by responding to Kurt Angle's open challenge on one
segment from WWE's Smack Down, and quickly establishes himself as the new force
of pro wrestling. His earlier gimmick was "the Doctor of Thuganomics"
where he mostly raps and tears his opponents' egos a new one while his in-ring
action involves hitting an opponent with his steel chain necklace. By late
2000s, he evolved as one of the company's top good guys with the tagline
"Hustle, Loyalty and Respect." He is also present during charity
programs, mainly with a foundation like Make A Wish, where he granted wishes
from kids with possible terminal conditions and disabilities. Piper on the
other hand was always known as the biggest bad guy in WWE's history. His main
feature was his promo skills, which earned him a segment called "Piper's
Pit", which almost guaranteed that it would end in a brawl because of
Piper's intimidation or trash talking. No matter if a wrestler is a good guy or
a bad guy, some names are praised as they are, without the consideration of
their roles. Take Tetsuya Naito for instance. This Japanese wrestler for New
Japan Pro Wrestling (NJPW) is the leader of a stable called Los Ingobernables de Japon (LIJ for
short) who always strife to deliver the best action and best matches for the
masses regardless of the role that he currently plays at that given moment. His
promo skills also showed that with any role, Naito is always put ethics forward
to ensure that the fans gained a genuine experience from his promo and his
in-ring action. Others often praised because of their evolving characters like
Jericho. In his early years, Jericho was known as the "Y2J", taking
the inspiration from the Y2K bug that once threatened the entire Internet back
in 2000. The way he works in the business is he constantly discovering new
characters for himself to utilize, like the "Painmaker" gimmick,
which he used for a feud with "The Rainmaker" Kazuchika Okada for the
IWGP (acronym for International Wrestling Grand Prix, for NJPW) Heavyweight
Championship, or "The List of Jericho", which he used during his
tenure in WWE during 2017 to late 2018. Some wrestlers however only reinvented
themselves after being under utilized in a specific company. Cody Rhodes is a
perfect example of this. The youngest of two of the legendary "The
American Dream" Dusty Rhodes finally achieved the height of his career
after a disappointing stint with WWE, now currently wrestling under All Elite
Wrestling (AEW) brand alongside Matt and Nick Jackson, collectively known as
the Young Bucks and former NJPW star Kenny Omega. Others may find success in
another career path, like Jake Hager formerly known as Jack Swagger in WWE.
After his exit from the company, he went on to become a Mixed Martial Arts
(MMA) fighter under Bellator promotion, currently undefeated.
Depending on which country a wrestling promotion originated, all fans are
subjected to different wrestling experience. In the US market, Pro Wrestling is
seen more as an entertainment business, with live programming on television and
some standalone shows broadcasted on PPV (Pay Per View networks). The premise
of this is to take pro wrestling and make it operate using different storylines
or feuds involving multiple wrestlers. It can be used as a pilot for a championship
opportunity, a story of a new guy navigating himself through the ranks or just
for shenanigans. In Mexico, the wrestlers (known as luchadores, since the
Mexican form of wrestling is called 'Lucha Libre') often wear masks, and tend
to bring their wrestling persona to real life. It is said that the mask plays
an integral part of the wrestler's identity and persona, and ripping off the
mask to expose the face of a competitor is considered a disgrace and a
humiliation to some, even some wrestlers take pride in their own masks. The
pace of the matches in Mexican wrestling is often viewed as "high
flying", with moves involving someone executing off the top rope jumping
maneuvers. Perhaps the closest thing pro wrestling can be with real life sports
league is found in Japan. For the Japanese, wrestling is treated like an actual
full body combat sport, where wins and loses do matter in a tournament or for a
wrestler's chance for a specific championship belt. They don't do many live
shows on TV or employ certain storylines for the entertainment purposes, but
instead putting together tournaments for a specific championship or a shot at
one. NJPW works better with this format, since those tournaments can be a
foundation for a wrestler's future careers.
Although some describe pro wrestling as a dangerous thing to do, in
reality, the matches are often scripted, the winners are often predetermined,
and the competitors don't actually punching or kicking each other. You may see
a wrestler after being punched or slammed into the canvas often convulse in
pain, but actually he is "selling". "Selling" is a term to
describe a wrestler's move to make him seems like he is hurt from the
opponent's maneuver. In a few instances, some even said to be bleeding as a
result of constant punishment, but usually bleeding in the head. The practice
for make a wrestler intentionally bleeding for the sake of storyline is called
"blading". It is often said that blading added the dramatic element
to the match, but the practice is banned overtime because of the disfigurement
on the wrestler's body it may cause. The storylines, angles and feuds involving
faces and heels are also scripted, often referred as 'kayfabe.' This is done in
a way that to perceive that pro wrestling is real and had legitimate impacts.
Some wrestlers often living "in-character" to further enforce their
roles either as a face or a heel.
Speaking of dramatic elements, some promotions offer matches with a
certain "stipulation" in place to attract fans to watch. This can be
a form of a certain structure to enclose the ring (steel cages or a structure
named "Hell in a Cell" in WWE), a certain condition in championship
matches where in order to win, a competitor must incapacitate the opponent to
the point of not able to respond to referee counts (this is known as "Last
Man Standing Match"), a no disqualification match where anything goes, or
a match that involves certain items. There are many items to use when it comes
to this type of matches. Ladder Matches are often used as a stipulation for a
certain championship or a championship match contract, where a competitor must
climb a ladder to retrieve the item (either a championship belt or a certain
contract) suspended above the ring, while at the same time trying to fend off
and incapacitate any other competitor (or multiple competitors) with the same
goal in mind. A Tables Match works with the goal to slam a wrestler through a
table in order to win. But some can be more extreme than that. "Death
matches" are special matches that involve many dangerous items to be used
in the ring. The items ranged from light bulbs, neon lamp tubes, barbed wire,
thumbtacks, fire and explosives, glass, sledgehammers, bats and many other
things. The items can be utilize in many forms, like barbed wire replacing the
ring ropes as the boundaries for the match to take place, or a "ring of
fire" to trap wrestlers inside the ring with soaring heat.
In normal matches, aside from the obvious types like Ladder matches,
tables matches and last man Standing, the winner (or winners if that particular
match is a tag team event) is determined by five methods. A pinfall victory is
happened when a wrestler pinning both shoulders of another wrestler for three
seconds. Submission victories are in effect when a wrestler forced the other to
submit (surrender) by alerting the referee with verbal information or by
tapping a free hand to the mat or a body part of the opponent with either a
choke or manipulation of limbs and joints with the intention to inflict serious
injuries. A wrestler can be handed a disqualification win when there is an
outside interference not related to the match, but not necessarily to win a
championship when the disqualified party is a champion (known as the champions'
advantage rule in effect in a championship match situation, but this advantage
can be stripped under a certain condition). Another instance of
disqualification varies, from the failure to break a submission hold against an
opponent who grab the ring ropes (rope break rules) to use of illegal items in
the match with normal conditions. When a wrestler is out of bounds (the ring)
for too long (the referee will initiate a count to ten to alert the party to
return to the ring), the opponent is handed a count-out victory. The last one
is the afromentioned method of incapacitating an opponent (knock-out rules).
The rules mainly allows one fall for the match, but can be changed to multiple
falls match as the stipulation for said match, like the "Two out of Three
Falls Match" or an Iron Man match. The former is determined when a
wrestler pinned or submitted his/her opponent twice, while the latter uses the
most falls earned to win the match over the course of a limited time (mostly 30
to 60 minutes), with all of those must happen inside the ring. There is also a
match where those conditions could happen outside the wrestling ring, called
Falls Count Anywhere Match. As the name suggests, pinfalls (and submissions,
depending on the stipulation) could be counted outside the ring, even outside
the arena. Some match types discard these rules altogether, like battle royal
style matches. The purpose of the match is to have multiple competitors up to
30 (sometimes up to 50 in some events) in the ring at the same time, and the
only way to win is to eliminate other wrestlers by tossing them over the top
rope with both feet must touch the ground, with the last man still inside the
ring wins. The match can start with those 30, or like WWE's Royal Rumble Match,
two competitors start the match with other wrestlers join the battle one-by-one
with their entrance order of 3 to 30 decided in a lottery draw beforehand in a
90 second interval. Another type of multiple competitors match, but not
necessarily have to be an elimination match (although some tag team matches deploy
the elimination rules) is when a match is either a three, four, five or six way
matches with respective number of wrestlers involved. The main rule of this
type of matches is whoever pins or submits a competitor first, that wrestler is
declared the winner. If the elimination rule were in effect, that same method
would result in an elimination.
Being a pro wrestling fan myself, I was like everybody else. I might
think that the characters that these wrestlers portray on TV are the same
persona that they would bring in real life, and that the punches, kicks and
those screaming in pain are real. It may only for show, but there is a
legitimate risk that these guys put on their bodies each time they went out and
perform those moves. Hulk Hogan is one instance where his wrestling career took
a toll on his body. Thanks to his signature move "The Leg Drop",
Hogan must undergo several surgeries to repair his back, as the force of the
impact can spread to the spine. Concussions and neck injuries are another type
of injury that threatens a wrestler's career, as evidenced by Adam
"Edge" Copeland's decision to retire from the business back in 2010
and Daniel Bryan's decision to do the same in 2018, all because of said
injuries. The elaborate nature of some wrestling shows once took a life in the
form of Owen Hart, where he allegedly released his safety harness too early
while suspending himself above the ring and came crashing down, killing him in
the process. But others might say that his death was due to the malfunction of
the harness itself.
Either way, the reason we all watch the art of professional wrestling is
because of the adrenaline rush it brings, and to enjoy a non-conventional form
of entertainment, while still enjoying the competitive aspect of the sport. It
may only for show and doesn't offer real fights, but by enjoying this
sport/entertainment form is a reason to indulge it deeper. And with that, I can
say that I am a proud metalhead while also being a fan of motorsport and
professional wrestling. All things aside, I can still enjoy three things at
one, can't I?
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