Since Wrestlemania there’s been nothing but stories about John Cena winning an amazing 17th title, blah blah blah… It’s a “History making moment”, yadda yadda yadda…
Like…of course he did. It’s the storyline. It’s quite literally “in the script”.
This isn’t an achievement. Why is this in my sports news next to last night’s hockey scores instead of next to an article about who was the bitchiest on the lastest episode of Real Housewives?
I get it. I loved Wrestling growing up. Back when we all WERE pretending it was real; Macho Man, Hulk Hogan, The Undertaker, etc… But I thought at some point they steered into the whole “entertainment” aspect when most of us grew the hell up and clued into the absurdity of it all.
I’m still not quite sure if the winner is predetermined or not. I know the “fighting” isn’t real, though the stunts still take skill to pull off safely and in a believable manner, and the rivalries are scripted… Not sure if the entire fight is written in advance or if it’s ad-libbed and the winner is just whoever happens to be winning when the fight needs to end for the next event.
And mostly just because I’ve seen backyard wrestling groups that can go either way with it (without even counting the ones that think it’s entirely real and just hurt each other the whole time). Some are entirely scripted, others just ad-lib the fight and the winner is still unknown until it’s called.
It’s a soap opera with fighting. Of course fans are talking about the characters and the story. Nobody talking about anything that happens in a soap Opera will add that it’s just fiction, they’re talking about the events.
WWE is a special beast. They embraced The Internet a lot earlier than most media and their social media and astro turfing game is on point. It is why you’ll hear that every single wrestler on the planet’s life goal is to be in the WWE Hall of Fame ™ and why Roman “The Rock’s Cousin Who Was Such A Charisma Void That All His Lines In Hobbes And Shaw were cut” Reigns and whoever the hell is the greatest story ever told on television ™ and so forth.
Spend a bit of time discussing wrestling and you rapidly realize you are talking to a “bot” in that different statements trigger the exact same response from different people.
So it is less that The Fans think that cena taking time out of his busy schedule of caping for a rapist sex trafficker was truly amazing and more that people on twitter and PR folk on The Subreddit told them to think that and they are repeating it.
As for the other aspect:
Why is this in my sports news next to last night’s hockey scores instead of next to an article about who was the bitchiest on the lastest episode of Real Housewives?
Because wrestling is “event television” in a way that only sports really is anymore. Andor is one of the greatest shows of all time but, unless you are doing a Reaction podcast, it doesn’t matter if you watch that episode from Season 2 tonight or tomorrow or a week from now. Wrestling and sports? People DO still want to watch that “live” because they are afraid someone will spoil the score of the Bulls game (in large part because we grew up with sitcoms where that was the joke). So, in that regard, it makes more sense to cover it with sports rather than to cut into a movie review with how taylor swift’s boyfriend caught a ball real good.
Which… gets to the last point that is not WWE specific. A lot of people don’t have the time or money to watch it live. This mostly goes back to when PPVs were 50-90 bucks and when all weekly shows were on TV that a lot of “cord cutters” didn’t have. But it also just speaks to the general lack of an attention span. A LOT of the Internet Wrestling Community (IWC)… don’t actually watch wrestling. They follow live threads or watch clips and then they wait for Dave “It’s cool, he just didn’t like her tits” Meltzer to give them a star rating.
It has become a lot more prevalent in the AEW era where we have “something else” on weekly TV (no. TNA didn’t count. I loved TNA but that shit was the #4 promotion even when there were only two on TV in the US) and the “AEW style” is still heavily informed by The Indies and New Japan where people try to tell a self contained story in every match rather than relying on six months of promos on TV. You will RAPIDLY notice that the IWC will barely mention character work that is not part of a clip released by the company or one that was so good that wrestling twitter clipped it themselves. A live thread might lose their shit over how much rotation a tall lady got on a powerbomb spot and then immediately “forget it” because wrestling twitter didn’t care and the company didn’t bother to release a clip of it.
What outlets do you follow?
Because this is the first I’m hearing about it.
I guess they pretend that wrestling is real to have more fun? idk.
Since when is that allowed!? /s
I’m fine with that. My bigger question was simply why am I seeing it in sports news instead of entertainment news all of a sudden? It’s not a sport. it’s a variety show sponsored by the makers of steroids.
WWE is less wrestling and more a glorification vehicle for the MacMahon syndicate. All the real pro wrestling is on AEW or the circuits now.
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I mean, you see the same kind of thing with scripted television where there’s no kayfabe at all. We recently got the season finale of Daredevil Born Again, and there were all kinds of posts/comments/etc talking about how satisfying/bad ass it was to see Daredevil and Punisher beat down a bunch of cops. We all know it’s scripted fiction, but it’s still fun to watch.
I haven’t tuned into wresting since the NWO/Wolf Pack days, but I just assumed it was the next generation of naive kids keeping the business alive. In my mind the audience comprises of young boys (mostly) who can still believe it’s ‘real’, their parents who throw money at it because it makes their kid happy, and then of course the fringe set of “wrestling is totally real” guys who should know better but choose not to.
Yeah, that’s kinda silly. I can see an argument that WWE wrestlers are athletes, no problems there. But they don’t actually perform in any sort of athletic competition, which makes thinking of it as a “sport” a little weird. If WWE is a sport, then so is ballet.
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It’s a soap opera for men. Sure the storyline is made up, but people still like being entertained.
Note, I am assuming the match was good. I haven’t watch wrestling in a while, but some of those old matches are still fun to watch.
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Facts.
Meh, it was okay I suppose.
Cena doesn’t play a heel very well, and it’s kind of shitty that they used crotch shots in both of the WM main events.
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Would you go to a Harlem Globetrotters game and complain when they pull out a springboard and start doing stunt slam dunks?
I did, so Ethan “Bubblegum” Tate made fun of me, I became verbally abusive, and then they asked me to leave.
The outcome of the match is predetermined while the participants pretend that it isn’t. That is why there are constant arguments about whether or not it’s “fake”.
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I agree that they’re athletic, but they simply aren’t competing in an athletic competition.
I think your comparison to the Globetrotters is on point. In the ballet and other examples, the difference to me is that they’re not pretending to be in a ballet competition while dancing the ballet.
There’s no doubt that what wrestlers do requires skill, and talent (and in most cases athleticism) but it’s “fake” in that what you’re watching isn’t an authentic athletic competition despite the people involved pretending that it is.
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This still doesn’t explain why Cena’s victory is being reported to much hype in the sports sections.
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Circus comparison is good but I prefer drag race. It’s a bunch of (generally) men in costumes and make up performing very well-practiced routines for the sole purpose of entertainment, with one rigged winner at the end.
Maybe wrestling fans wouldn’t like that comparison as much.
I’ve never seen ‘drag race’ used in this context, and I was wondering how you were about to compare drag racing (like with cars) with wrestling.
Lol yeah sorry I should’ve said drag queen competitions. What you described happens to me all the time in reverse when people talk about car drag racing. I watch too much RuPaul.
Yeah from a physical aspect yes you are correct but wrestling has the storylines that the circus doesn’t. The Jerry springer like drama and feuds that people really get invested in with the same level of chair throwing.
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I don’t watch wrestling, and I haven’t heard anything about it beyond this post. We must hang out in different circles.
Counterpoint- all sports are silly. That’s why they are called games.
I don’t dunk on wrestling fans anymore because people are free to enjoy whatever they want. But it’s always been like this. It didn’t change - you did. Personal growth!
I agree to some extent, but there’s an important difference between sport and performance. WWE is categorically separate from say, BJJ. Sure, they both have guys rolling around on the floor, and they’re both kinda silly, but one is a real competition with rules and skill while the other is a predetermined show.
I don’t think all sports need to be contests, that’s just the most common association people have. Surfing and rock-climbing are still sports even if you never enter a competition.
There’s definitely a grey area. “Sports” is a spectrum from competitive team based games, to any recreational activity that requires athleticism.
In this case my point is that wrestling presents itself as a competitive sport, while that aspect of it is fake.
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not disagreeing with you - I find performative “wrestle drama” absolutely, mind numbingly pointless. my preference is to participate in (and ocassionally watch) unscripted combat sport.
however… I have trained competitive martial arts for decades (muay thai, bjj, others) and most of these “wrestling” participants are pretty skilled athletes. it takes training to turn combinations of techniques designed to injure into something reasonably harmless. there is a pretty fine line separating sparring from a fight.
I know you know this, but its still useful to remember that these players are actors as well as athletes and that can obviously be pretty inviting for a lot of viewers.
Yes that’s the reality. I was just rage baiting meatheads for fun. Tee-hee. Nobody’s perfect.
Okay, so as a teenager I was a super nerd and got into swords. I took olympic style fencing lessons first, then got into the ren faire and also did some stage combat. Sadly, I have health problems and I couldn’t keep my knees in place, and had to quit. The difference between those is probably the same difference between WWE style wrestling, and BJJ. One is done with choreography, one is a competition.
They’re both sports. I don’t understand why people think the choreography somehow means it doesn’t have skills or rules? It was the same skillset, different rules. Stage combat was unpadded and used heavier weapons that left more bruises when we fucked up the choreography. They’re different, sure, but the amount of overlap is underappreciated.
Have you listened to any sports commentator? They all talk about <insert current game on tv> as if it’s the most important, world-changing event ever, and every little detail had some significance.
My god, baseball is a game for (as Brits would say) boffins. Fans of the game could put meth-head ravers to sleep. I’ve worked on more exciting spreadsheets for business planning.
And football has become just as bad, with the incessant pre-game/post-game commentary examining every nuance of a play - “I’m pretty sure if the inner aglet of his left shoe had moved the other way, we’d be talking about a completely different game”.
Bread and circuses, appealing to our base nature.
In a way, it is impressive. They make those decisions based on certain factors and his ability to draw crowds, attention, money has been sustained for a long time.
I don’t think people are deluding themselves.
