My issue with modern wrestling.

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Darrin Kelley
Posts: 110
Joined: Fri Nov 04, 2016 8:47 pm

My issue with modern wrestling.

Post by Darrin Kelley »

My era of wrestling really started with the 80's. Where I had fun with all the wild characters. All the wild unpredictable action. The pure excitement with it. It was fun. Beautiful.

Today I can't go anywhere online without people talking about the behind-the-scenes stuff. Quite frankly? None of that interests me. I went to wrestling for escapism. To just enjoy the show and spectacle of it. That's what is fun to me.

I think the turning point came during the 90's when I went into the WCW chatroom and started talking about the shows I liked and the fun I was having. Then there was this guy who popped up and said "You're a mark!" Which bothered the heck out of me for years.

That person had crapped on my fandom for the medium right then and there. And things proceeded to go downhill from there. Until I have gotten to the point where I have no connection to modern wrestling characters at all. To the point I have no feeling at all for the action in the ring at all.

I remember the username of that person that did it. And that name years later reappeared on the Atomic Thinktank, and later the Green Ronin forums. It effected me enough that I would never respond to anything that person ever posted. And generally felt uncomfortable with the presence of that person in any thread.

Crapping on someone's fandom is never okay.
FuzzyBoots
Posts: 2396
Joined: Fri Nov 04, 2016 8:20 pm
Location: Pittsburgh, PA

Re: My issue with modern wrestling.

Post by FuzzyBoots »

I'm sorry to hear that. I'm a big believer that being a "mark" isn't a horribly thing, and "smart marks" are basically people who think they're smart because they know a little bit about Pro Wrestling's Greatest Secrets. Frankly, unless you work in the business, you're not smart about how it works no matter how many YouTube videos you watch, and how many local indy wrestlers you have on your Facebook friends list.

I'll be honest that I do enjoy knowing a bit about the backstage stuff, things like how to make a move safe, and spotting when something did go wrong and how they recover, but I'm a firm believer in maintaining the mythology, so the last thing I'm going to do is attempt to break the illusion during a match by yelling out that the move was botched or pointing out a gimmick. And I'm a sucker for gossip, so I love learning which wrestlers are good to work with and which ones people dread dealing with.

^_^ And I am also a sucker for a good gimmick. Give me the literal wrestling monsters, the wrestling plumbers, the masked wrestler from Parts Unknown... I eat that sort of a story up.
Darrin Kelley
Posts: 110
Joined: Fri Nov 04, 2016 8:47 pm

Re: My issue with modern wrestling.

Post by Darrin Kelley »

I don't want to be smart about the business. I want to see the illusion. It's like going to a magic show. If I knew how it was all done, my suspension of disbelief would be gone. Ruined.

I grew up around carney folk enough to know being called a mark is derisive. That the carneys look down on those customers and think they are just sheep to fleece.

As a wrestling fan, I don't feel I'm being fleeced. I'm getting the show I go to the arena for. I'm the audience the wrestlers want to play to. I'm there for them. There to see them.

Or I was. Before the so-called smart people on the internet decided to ruin the illusion for me.

I listen to a lot of Jim Cornette on YouTube. He describes how the older wrestlers lived and died to maintain the illusion for the audience. It's something I get. That they had such pride in their craft to go above and beyond for it.

And I liked to think that I was the type of audience member that made all of their work worth it.
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Batgirl III
Posts: 3626
Joined: Tue Nov 08, 2016 6:17 am
Location: Portland, Oregon

Re: My issue with modern wrestling.

Post by Batgirl III »

Yeah, I’ve never understood why some people in the wrestling fandom need to act all smug about knowing that the whole thing is kayfabe... I mean, you don’t see people in the audience of a Broadway show acting all smug about knowing that Sarah Brightman wasn’t really a 19th Century Parisian opera soprano.

Like, duh, it’s theatre.

Shut up and let me pretend that a lumberjack is helping the surfer dude resolve his ongoing feud with the oil sheik and the traitorous Army Drill Sergeant... and for some reason they’ve chosen to settle things in a sporting arena in Hoboken, New Jersey.
“Steve Allen” wrote: "Tonight, the arena is sold out. A dozen shades of gray will square off in a pageantry of war. The opponents are unlikely in the real world, but in the amphitheater of our imagination, they're well matched. The punk rockers note will battle the mountain men. The black separatists will fight the post-apocalyptic warriors. The gang-banger will rumble with the aristocrat. The future will struggle with the past, and the living will duel with the dead. In the end, just like a good Soap Opera, no issues will be resolved; the story is "To Be Continued". The combatants will live to fight another night, in another town. Is wrestling fake? Absolutely. It's as fake as your imagination, as phony as your daydreams."
I do really miss “gimmicks,” so many of today’s wrestlers just seem to be... well... wrestlers. Oh, sure, they still have bombastic personalities and larger-than-life characters, but, they lack the pageantry of the old days.
BARON wrote:I'm talking batgirl with batgirl. I love you internet.
MacynSnow
Posts: 5631
Joined: Tue Dec 20, 2016 2:56 pm

Re: My issue with modern wrestling.

Post by MacynSnow »

I grew-up in the era of Rock N'Wrestling like Kelly did. I knew it was "Fake" and i didn't care. I was watching it not for the Moves, but the CHARACTERS. I'd be the person who went to the Carnival with just enough money to buy an Admittance Ticket & food, then just walk around and enjoy the atmosphere.

Yeah i'm a weirdo, what of it?
FuzzyBoots
Posts: 2396
Joined: Fri Nov 04, 2016 8:20 pm
Location: Pittsburgh, PA

Re: My issue with modern wrestling.

Post by FuzzyBoots »

This is one of the reasons I'm really bummed that Chikara ended (although, that it basically came down to "the owner and several wrestlers abused other wrestlers, sometimes sexually, and when they tried to close ranks the other wrestlers quit" kind of also makes me a bit proud). They really got the absurdity of it while still doing great wrestling. Two of the local Pittsburgh promotions, the International Wrestling Cartel (formerly Iron City Wrestling) and the Keystone State Wrestling Alliance (formerly Studio Wrestling) keep some of the same silliness with many of the wrestlers embracing a big gimmick like Joey "the Lebanon Don" Moses or Beastman, the wrestling caveman. Then, there's Keith Haught and Chest Flexor...
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