The Evolution of Wrestling - What's the Next Big Thing? Submitted By James Walsh on 08/27/06
The evolution of society works like the opposite sides of a magnet. As society ages, we repel further and further apart on many issues. And, the logical next step in terms of mainstream entertainment is the opposite of whatever is hyped at that particular time.
Television went from family programming on week nights with situational comedies to where we almost never hear the word "family" used on TV anymore. Autopsies, reality shows, and "who done it" murder mystery shows are all the rage.
Music is a constant progression. What was considered hard rock in the 60's would probably not be considered rock today while what we consider rock today barely qualifies as music as it lacks the essential elements of what makes a song a song... Gone are the days of hooks, a chorus, or a melody and in are primal screams and rapid drumming. It's shocking to see how music sales have fallen accordingly.
And finally, professional wrestling went from being considered family entertainment with moral enhancing stories geared mostly towards children to being borderline pornography with no moral values whatsoever. In fact, the least moral is considered the "good guy" and the guy who touts his moral high ground is considered a "goodie two shoes." But, the theme of the show is not the only part of wrestling that has changed. The entire landscape down to the very basics have as well.
Wrestling has progressed over time. It went from being legitimate at the turn of the 20th century to predetermined over time. By the 50's and 60's, flamboyant characters such as Gorgeous George began entering the business bringing a new dimension to the sport. That love of the colorful character eventually hit it big in the 1980's. Lead by Vince McMahon's then WWF, World Wrestling Federation, and the All-American hero who called himself a "Real American" and gave children 3 commandments to follow, Hulk Hogan, wrestling grew to never before seen heights. While the WWF was established as large company in the New York region filling Madison Square Garden more times than not, the company blew up in popularity traveling all over the United States and even the world crushing the smaller regional territories that could not compete with Vince McMahon's production quality or the popularity of the character and mainstream appeal of Hulk Hogan.
With the 1990's brought change on a grand scale. After over a decade of colorful wrestling with huge crowds and great production, little companies promoting "extreme wrestling" began to gain in popularity. With regional TV that had very poor production quality, adult themes, and a lack of actual "good guy" characters, almost any wrestling fan that knew of these companies knew it would be the wave of the future regardless if that was something they were fond of or not. And, by the late 1990's, that underground movement became the norm for Vince McMahon's WWF.
With the drastic change of programming came drastically different characters. Women were objectified as se x objects and began posing for Playboy, moves became more "extreme" in nature, blood began to flow more and more often, and the "good guy" was the one who could swear the most without really breaking any FCC regulations. In fact, the WWF, now WWE, World Wrestling Entertainment, will battle semantics with you on the word "wrestling" itself. They believe "sports entertainment" is what they present and not "wrestling." But, that doesn't mean they will remove one of the W's from their call letters.
When an actual envelope is pushed, it can only be pushed so far until it either stops as it hits a dead end or falls off the desk. With the WWE's continuous pushing of the theoretical envelope came some of the lowest points in wrestling history. Angles such as sex with dead people became almost expected. Fans watched in awe while one wrestler made love to a corpse in a scene and mumbled, "I'm screwing your brains out" and tossed what appeared to be brains out of the coffin. And, in more recent times, Vince McMahon continues to work on his daughter Stephanie to allow her recently born daughter to be part of the story. How so? Vince wants to be his own granddaughter's daughter. Yes, we're discussing incest here. No wonder wrestling fans are thought of as second class citizens... Look how the most powerful family in the industry conducts itself!
As the now WWE's popularity began to sag, the company does not seem to fully understand what their logical next step will be. Gone are most of the stars from the "Attitude" era of immorality and new stars have risen in their place... Just not nearly as high. In fact, the current attempt is to put John Cena in the role of "Stone Cold" Steve Austin from that "Attitude" era. While Austin got over by swearing a lot and beating up authority figures, John Cena seems to be attempting to do a hybrid between Hulk Hogan and "Stone Cold." He's a white rapper who has a line in one of his songs, "I'm f***ing this chick like I've got 2 dicks" but then tries to pretend he has conservative values such as supporting the troops and love of his family members. The result? Loud chants of "Cena Sucks" even in his own home town of Boston where he was billed to be the biggest "good guy" of the night and didn't even rank in the top 3.
The WWE continues to try to live off of a decade's old revolution which has run its course. In fact, they've even opened a "brand" in the name of ECW, Extreme Championship Wrestling - The company that brought the "extreme" and the "attitude" to wrestling in the 1990's. But, new ideas are starting to flow on a smaller scale much like the real ECW was in the previous decade.
A company called Total Nonstop Action wrestling realizes that the days of "attitude" are behind us. What's ironic is the company that doesn't even have a W in its call letters seems to have decided to be the company to turn to for what that W stands for, wrestling. Their unique spin on it that they believe will be the next revolution is a group of young high flying athletes who throw caution to the wind and defy the laws of physics. While most WWE superstars stand somewhere in the 6 foot plus range and top the scales at over 250 pounds, TNA's motto for their next generation of wrestler who complete in the "X Division" is, "It's not about weight limits, it's about no limits." This is especially visible when you compare the 2 company's merchandise page. One company's top selling T shirt is the reformed Degeneration X who formed in 1997 with degenerate behavior and sex jokes ushering in the "Attitude" era. In their shirt, the 2 wrestlers who are no longer children are shown in cartoon characters pulling down their pants and showing their butts and the words, "Suck It." On the TNA merchandise page, a shirt that reads "Next Generation X" and on back says, "Two Words, No Limits."
Another company that is hot though on a smaller scale than TNA is ROH, Ring of Honor. Ring of Honor features what they call "Pure Wrestling." A ROH match is different from a TNA match in that while it may feature those same high flying moves, it is spaced out to be a 30 to 35 minute match. The average TNA or WWE match typically lasts between 4 and 10 minutes. But, both TNA and ROH present high flying wrestlers regardless of their size or build. And, though both try to use stories to sell their matches, neither company really has all that strong of stories to speak of. This in the face of the WWE featuring 3 matches in a 2 hour show so they can present several backstage movie-styled segments to advance their stories.
It is tough to say if TNA or ROH will be copied by the WWE in terms of their presentation of wrestling. In the 1990's, the then WWF only entered the "Attitude" era when WCW, World Championship Wrestling, was defeating them in the ratings with the same kind of family oriented wrestling the WWF was presenting with bigger names and as good of production quality. Perhaps this is why the WWE hasn't even changed their television set for RAW in nearly a decade... They don't feel the pressure to change much and as such the product becomes stagnant with characters people are not emotionally attached to in any way.
But, there might be competition on the horizon.
MMA, Mixed Martial Arts, has become incredibly popular among people who were once wrestling fans. Companies such as PRIDE and UFC, Ultimate Fighting Championship, have presented high quality productions of vicious real fighting for many years. In the case of UFC, they have been going since 1993.
MMA is a combination of professional wrestling and boxing. It's a game of striking and grappling like wrestling but is real like boxing. In the late 1990's, Arizona's Senator John McCain attempted to kill MMA by robbing it of its only means of exposure at the time, pay-per-view TV. As we are now in the mid '00's, UFC has bounced back and regained its pay-per-view availability. But, they've also expanded to cable TV availability as well. In fact, UFC draws a higher rating as the lead in to TNA on Thursday nights. And as UFC grows, companies such as PRIDE and other MMA companies begin to garner TV deals on sports networks.
To see how this could be important in terms of the future of wrestling, one must only look to the land of the rising sun, Japan. Wrestling over there was always huge filling the Egg and Tokyo Domes several times a year with over 60,000 people attending. But, wrestling's popularity in Japan began to dip at the turn of the 21st century. To compensate, companies began to feature more "shoot fighting." "Shoot fighting" is another way of saying MMA. While the results might be predetermined, the style of the fights have become very similar to the UFC. And, this seems to be pretty popular among Japanese wrestling fans as the bleeding of falling popularity stopped when those companies began doing this.
Some might say the real world of MMA has nothing to do with the predetermined world of the WWE, TNA, and ROH. But, it could hold some meaning to those companies as wrestling grows more and more stagnant with "good guys" that can't get cheered and "bad guys" that can't get jeered. After all, many might have argued that dressing up in women's clothing had nothing to do with wrestling in 1950 or falling through a wooden table had nothing to do with wrestling in 1975. Who is to say what the next revolution could bring about?
One thing is for certain, though. Regardless if it is the high flying action of TNA's "X Division" or the ROH "pure" wrestling, the WWE needs a kick in the pants and needs to step forward instead of backward. After SummerSlam which garnered mainstream mockery for the number of older stars used on that shows card, it is clear that wrestling is at best stagnant and at worst taking steps backward. While wrestling fans may always love to see Hulk Hogan, Ric Flair, and Mick Foley, this should not be their time. But in a world where other companies are only 1/4 the size of the WWE, it is up to the WWE to find the next big thing. That sure doesn't seem to be happening. And, as more and more wrestling fans turn away, those fans who love the wrestling business through good times and through bad times anxiously await the next move. But, after an incest idea, it might not be for quite some time to come.
