Wrestling insight

In a state of semi-drunken stupor tonight, I suddenly realized why there often exists a different title belt, alongside the heavy weight championship title. This is my story.

I was watching the second half of TNA's Destination X from a few weeks ago, and I'd just seen a rather bullshit fight between Kevin Nash and the Outlaw.

The next bout was for the X Division Championship match, between AJ Styles, Prime time, Ron "The Truth" Killings, and Christoffer Daniels.

Truth be told, I sometimes do other things while watching wrestling; poker, warcraft, whatever, but something about this match caught my attention. Then I remembered the previous X Division match from Final Resolution 2005, between AJ and Daniels, which was probably one of the best fights I'd seen in ages (I'd even go so far as to recommend it to people who are curious as to what wrestling is all about). To cut to the chase, I watched the fight intensely, and it was pretty damn good.

I actually want to rant and swear in this post, so I'll skip the kind of drivel I usually insert for coherency, and instead do an incredibly skewed historical recap, and try to bitch some about what I don't like in today's wrestling.

25+ years ago, wrestling was about people beating the shit out of each other. This was when people like Wahoo McDaniels and "Cowboy" Bob Orton would pound on each other for a while, and somebody would eventually win. Yay.

20 years ago, wrestling evolved into something more technical, when people actually used good holds and counters on each other, and fights seemed more like actual battles, with both participants trying their best to outmanoveur their opponent. Vintage Ric Flair type matches, that could last for up to an hour, and end in a draw. The wrestling per se was probably among the best ever, but it wouldn't really capture the soon to be blood thirsty crowd.

It was sometime around here that the body builders started to appear on the wrestling scene, but they where still so rare that they were considered a novetly item. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I have the image of Lex Luger joining the Four Horsemen, and I remember thinking that these guys are going to be unstoppable.

This was also the time that the just plain fat fucks started arriving in the WWF. Some had a cool gimmick, like the Big Boss Man, Bam Bam Bigalow and Akeem "The African Dream", and other where just plain stupid, like Earthquake or Tugboat.

At this point in time, I'd like to insert a tiny disclaimer. I was 10 at the time of watching these guys, so my memory might be slightly subjective.

It would probably be pretty enlightening to watch wrestling from cirka 1985, give or take a few years, and see how the WWF tried out different genres on the audience, to see what they liked. Why the Hulk Hogans and Ultimate Warriors always won over the Brad Harts, the Randy Savages and the Ricky Steamboats.

From around 1992 to 2002, I have something of a wrestling dark age, and basically don't have a clue as to what's going on. Somehow I manage to survive.

And cue today.

The WWE is basically about being a big (6"6' seems to be on the lower end of the scale), and powerful (everyone is 250 pounds+, and I'm not really going out on that much of a limb when I say that I suspect they're quaffing the roids something fierce), with no real skill to fall back on. Fights are just plain slugfests, with the most technical move usually being a power slam, some simple suplex, or a clothsline. Not that much to get excited about, really.

It's kinda fun to watch the WWE, TNA, and in some regard, ROH, react to one another. The latest craze seems to be about bringing in legends from say 20 years ago, and have them show up in some decisive moment. And almost every single time, it ends in some kind of pathetic anti climax, where it becomes painfully obvious that the 50-year old hasn't really been honing his wretsling skills for the past, oh, 15 years. Randy Savages appearence in TNA? Oh, please..

And, ofcourse, professional wrestling is one smoking pile of nepotism. I just can't find any other way to explain why Jeff Jarrett, Tripple H (even if many of his fights are good, they always have to end in some stupid controversy) and JBL just don't lose their titles. Which somehow brings me to my insight.

The whole point of the alternative titles (be it the X Division or the US Championship), is just a way to say "fuck that" to the heavyweight belts. Let those guys keep their belts and wave their dicks around. It really doesn't matter.

The fans want to see some good wrestling, where the outcome is actually uncertain, and not some shit where you before hand can say "oh, in 12 minutes, the referee is going to be knocked out, and Jeff is going to hit his adversary with a guitarr, game over".

And this is what the other belts offer. People like AJ Styles and Christoffer Daniels are some pretty bad ass atheletes, and a lot of their moves just look wicked cool. I can only imagine what it must be like to actually be there live, chanting "this is awesome", "holy shit" and "TNA". What a rush!

They give the fans what they want, and the promotions get to keep their stupid champions happy, for whatever reason they have.

On a side note, it is sad that John Cena might somehow be moving up to the heavyweight fight. And it must be said that the WWE cruiserweights all just plain suck. Maybe it's just that those guys really look small in comparision, that makes it silly, I don't know.

I seriously recommend people to download some of the TNA stuff from PWTorrents, and check it out.

And I also think it's pretty obvious that semi-drunken was actually an understatement.