Take up thy wrestling boots and walk #125 - The Appraisal part two.
    Submitted by Pt2 on Wednesday, March 8, 2006 at 12:56 PM EST



    Welcome to the column that sets an indoor attendance record that stands to this day, Take up thy wrestling boots and walk. I’m the columnist who may be the lovechild of Gene Okerlund and the Fabulous Moolah, Pt2, back once again from the ethereal plain of existence to talk about the evil machinations of McMahon and other topics in the world of wrestling.

    Machinations? Weird.


    Anyway,in this column I hope to continue the work I began two columns ago, as I try to apply some sort of theory to wrestling. To understand this column fully (and for the reasons why I might try to do this) I suggest you refer back to The Appraisal: Part I, because I’ll probably mention ideas brought out in that column here as well.

    Last time out, after a lot of thought I pretty much concluded that Sports-entertainment was nothing more than a slogan, that’s sport and entertainment are incompatible (and your product is either one or the other), and that wrestling, despite incredible amounts of athleticism on the part of the talent, belongs much more at home in the entertainment sphere than in the world of sport.

    Wrestling has, however, been looked down on by… well, pretty much everyone. I wouldn’t mind betting that every wrestling fan reading this column will have heard some prejudice, or had their intelligence questioned based on the fact that they “lower” themselves to watching wrestling.

    Now when you’ve been a wrestling fan for a long time, you’ve seen a lot, and at times I’ve witnessed many angles and segments that have made me think maybe there is something to their criticisms. But I’m an educated man, and though I’ve set foot in a ring I’m certainly no stereotypical jock: I’ve always been particularly literate, and I enjoy much of the material that would certainly be placed into the highest echelons of the entertainment world. And I still watch wrestling. And I’m sure I’m not the only person who watches wrestling and still enjoys things that people don’t feel the desire to shit on.

    So with this seeming contradiction in my head, between seeing some awful angles and finding myself still watching, I had to ask…. Is the criticism of wrestling as a lower form of entertainment fair?

    Obviously, as a wrestling fan, I would be inclined to say no, but I’ll obviously have to try and keep it neutral. After all, this is supposed to be “The Appraisal” and if I can’t analyse fairly, then what’s the point? So I guess rather than just shouting no at the top of my voice and pouting until everyone in the world agrees with me, I might as well think about it and try to make a case.


    Wrestling is, I think, ultimately criticised for it’s simplicity. It features binary opposition heavily, and creates a dichotomy – that can pretty much be wrapped up with the idea that it uses good guys, and it uses bad guys.

    The oldest tool in entertainment right? Good vs. Evil. Immediately I’m forced to think of the medieval morality plays, in which the name of the hero was always some form of the words “good man” and that the names of the villains were always based on some branch of sin – basically Se7en without good actors or heads in boxes.

    Simple tool, time tested. You could almost see the criticism there, I mean lets be honest, if something was being done back when Britain was still Catholic, then you can hardly give 20th and 21st century wrestling promoters marks for originality can you?

    Or…. Can you?

    Compare wrestling, with… oh, I don’t know, say, Shakespeare. All right, Shakespeare was doing it a long time ago, but in pretty much every Shakespeare play there is a line drawn between good and bad, and in some cases (notably the tragedies) that line can become a little blurred when the malcontent or villain influences the tragic hero, exploiting his fatal flaw, but is that a million miles away from wrestling? Shakespeare, perhaps the most lauded playwright in the history of the theatre, uses the same tool that Jess McMahon and Verne Gagne used to such perfection. Could it actually be said that since it involves the temporary corruption of the bad by the good, could Shane McMahon’s corruption of the Big Show in 2000 (Which way did he go?) be called the modern day Othello?

    Ok, I may be oversimplifying here a little. After all, Shakespeare does have the whole poetry and Iambic Pentameter thing to back him up on this, and most wrestling scripts don’t really go in for clever wordplay. With the shift in time, I’m pretty sure attempting it wouldn’t win any fans anyway, and would probably lose them instead.

    So lets try something a bit more modern; I’ve compared it to perhaps the most intellectually backed, that of literature, and found a comparison that I think is valid, I’m willing to move on. Lets try something that may yield more results. How about Film?

    You can’t say that film doesn’t get a much better deal than wrestling. Since Hitchcock, Bergman et al. it’s become a legitimate art form in it’s own right, I don’t think anyone will disagree with that, and despite a total lack of realism in many of it’s fight sequences doesn’t have to face the constant derision that it’s fake.

    Oh yeah, throw on the brakes. You thought I’d forgot the fake argument didn’t you?

    It’s probably the most stupid argument in the world ever. It’s shit because it’s fake. Well… in that case, every film you’ve ever seen is shit too, because they are all fake. Yep, even the ones based on true stories, because you only get a skewed view of reality, mediated by director, screenwriter and camera. Can you be a little bit pregnant? If something isn’t definitively real, then it is fake.

    Lets throw pretty much every novel you’ve ever read out the window too, right? Oh I know, everyone borrows from the things around them, but they aren’t documenting LIFE are they? They mediate, they change things in the name of entertainment. Wrestling isn’t sport, it’s fake, so it’s sports entertainment, novels aren’t real, they’re fake, so I guess that must make them life entertainment huh?


    Ok, if I haven’t got the idiocy of that argument through to you in the last couple of paragraphs, then you may as well stop reading now, because I’ll never convince you of anything. Of course all novels aren’t shit because they are fake, and I’m pretty sure that no one will ever meet anyone who doesn’t watch films because they aren’t real. Somehow, the ultimate bias that seems to evade everyone’s notice is that every other form of entertainment they watch is scripted, but wrestling, as I’ve established, a viable form of entertainment, suffers scorn because of its scripted status. Clearly wrestling suffering from its apparent similarities to the world of sport – if you can take only one thing away from this column, let it be this – you are not watching boxing when you are watching wrestling, you are watching theatre.

    Highly athletic theatre I concede, but still theatre, that tends to play (for the most part) around the same basic ideas that have enthralled humanity in stories since stories have been told. And guess what? Theatre is…. Scuh-rip-ted.


    Here’s another key issue – just because wrestling does feature good versus evil a lot, and the good guy will often come out on top, and there is a morality play going on within it, and it tends to stick with topics that have long been popular in the human imagination….. I know that’s a lot of reasons, but in spite of all this, it does still manage to provide entertainment that is original and clever on occasion.

    Now, I know it doesn’t manage this too often, mainly due to the revolving nature of bookers, egos, short term booking decisions that hamper long term success and a host of other reasons that can really only happen in a world as rich and varied as that of pro wrestling, but on those occasions when someone actually gets to run with the ball in the creative department (often it’ll be someone like Vince McMahon who has to power to shut everyone else up) something quite… well, stimulating, can be turned out.

    No, not stimulating like that, pervert. Go back to the lingerie bowl or bra and panties matches – the trash TV element of wrestling that’s a major cause for it’s getting such bad press.

    You can’t really argue that there isn’t a trashy element to many of the modern wrestling shows. It’s kind of hard to encourage people to take it seriously when waiting around the corner is two brain dead chicks rolling around in water or HHH dry humping a mannequin. Trash is in evidence on, especially WWE, TV.

    But the bias against wrestling was there long before that, and if people can fuck live in the theatre because it’s “art” (and they have) it seems slightly hypocritical that the bra and panties match gets such bad press (remember the furore over including it in a version of Smackdown!). After all, how can one showing of flesh be any more valid than another? We all know why it’s there, and it’s got nothing to do with art… the more carnal acts were historically always offstage, but now occasionally they are transferred onstage… for “artistic” purposes.
    Yeah, and I’m Michael Caine.

    Wrestling is trash – well, maybe at times it is, but the prejudice against wrestling was there long before it ever included the trashy elements, and its trashy elements don’t stop many of the people who complain about it watching much worse shows on television. In comparison with it’s contemporaries, in the era of Reality TV, Desperate Housewives and others, I’d say that wrestling probably for once can stand on the moral high ground.

    So… it’s trash, but people were biased against it before that ever happened. It’s predictable, but that doesn’t stop people raving about the qualities of equally predictable…. Could it be that the whole marginalisation of wrestling is based on the ludicrous proposition that it is a scripted show?

    It seems logical. Vince McMahon snr. Would never have tried any of the more modern elements such as bra and panties and bikini contests that his son tried and yet he still had to deal with the same prejudices about wrestling being an inferior form of entertainment – wrestling is considered by people who watch detective shows to be predictable and dull but in those same detective shows you can work out what happens within 5 minutes of the programmes beginning.

    The only advantage that Hamlet, or Kojak, or Desperate Housewives have over wrestling is that they have never claimed to be “real” – It would seem then that people refuse to attempt to suspend disbelief while watching wrestling in the same way they do while watching a film, because they fear being categorised as a “believer” – it seems to be almost a fundamental fear of appearing stupid, the irrational belief that being a fan or even giving it it’s due must mean that you believe it – and believing that is little more than ridiculous… everyone knows that.

    Ok, that’ll bring this one to an end. There’s still one part of the appraisal to come, but before then, I hope to bring you the obligatory Pre Wrestlemania column, and also another YBTB contest. Keep your eyes peeled for that one.

    If you’ve got any feedback, it can be left either in the “Take up thy wrestling boots and walk” thread in the feedback section of www.lopforums.com, or alternatively you can e-mail me at takeupthywrestlingboots@gmail.com. I’ll reply to all mail received.

    Well, thanks for reading. Until next time

    Take care

    Pt2




    *NEW GALLERY* Hot RETRO Photos: WCW's Sexy NITRO GIRLS! Wow!

  • Quick Links -
    [Back to LOP] [News Archives] [Results] [Columns] [Forums]