Earlier today I was asked the question, “Why do people enjoy professional wrestling when other things, like mixed martial arts, are real?” I include below the response I wrote for Quora.
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This question presumes that the choice between MMA and WWE is an either/or proposition. Despite sharing common elements, the two are distinctly different forms of entertainment and are appealing for different reasons.
MMA is a legitimate athletic sport, while professional wrestling is a form of entertainment. While MMA’s results are not predetermined, this can be either a blessing or a curse. At best, mixed martial arts can be highly dramatic and unpredictable. At worst, it can be drawn out, boring or over in a flash.
Professional wrestling offers an improvement over the MMA model – it has the artistic liberty to craft its own narrative. If done well, there should never be a boring professional wrestling segment.
Furthermore, the creative domain of pro wrestling is large. Unlike MMA, pro wrestling offers tag team matches, lucha libre-style bouts (i.e. highly acrobatic performances), hardcore matches, elaborate music/video/pyrotechnic displays and storyline developments that make heroes, villains, and underdogs out of its characters.
Some people are troubled by this. They wonder how anyone can enjoy pro wrestling’s offerings when they know what they are seeing isn’t real. Strangely, they seldom fret over the scripted nature of television, movies, novels or other similar works. The key with all these art forms is the same – suspension of disbelief. The only way to truly enjoy a performance is by allowing yourself to be sucked in by it.
My second response is that it is naïve to consider professional wrestling “fake.” Not only must wrestlers possess real resilience and athleticism, but what is presented in arenas around the world is far more “real” than most people understand.
While the key storylines and finishes to matches are predetermined, what happens between the ropes is mostly improvised. The effect is similar to that of improv comedy. Two performers who understand the basic toolbox of their craft can play off each other, creating a completely original performance each time out. In pro wrestling, as with comedy, becoming a master requires years of training and experience.
Connoisseurs of wrestling acknowledge these skills and are appreciative of seeing moves, counters and chains they never have before. For many fans the “real” aspect of in-ring performance is more important than the scripted component of who wins and loses. In most cases, the latter is a tool to enhance the former.
The best professional wrestlers not only know more moves than their MMA counterparts, but because wrestling is more a showcase than a pure competition, they are permitted more opportunity to display them. For example, a top rope hurricanrana or a superkick are spectacles to behold in wrestling, but they, like many other moves, are unthinkable in MMA. Again, people seldom seem concerned when similar actions occur in the context of, say, a Hollywood fight scene.
In MMA, the fighters who make it to the top of the card (ignoring political considerations) are generally the most skilled, but not necessarily the most entertaining. The best professional wrestlers are not only tough and athletically gifted, but also can speak well on a microphone, have great innate charisma, and possess the underrated ability to tell a compelling story using in-ring psychology.
Fan involvement is more pronounced in professional wrestling. If the fans chant for, buy the merchandise of, and generally support a particular performer, then WWE will, as a financially motivated company, push that performer higher up the card. This ability to drive the trajectory of the product creates a level of fan involvement MMA doesn’t provide. The pro wrestling business is a meritocracy, one in which fans are in control of who gets promoted.
I have also found the emotional connection fans have for their favorite wrestlers are often stronger than those they have for their favorite MMA fighters. Starting as a kid, I watched one of my favorites, Shawn Michaels, on television every week for years, gradually becoming more invested in the character.
But over time, I began to appreciate that the best wrestlers are hardly characters at all (e.g. CM Punk), but are merely exaggerated versions of their real personas. When I cheer as a fan, I am not only helping create a lively atmosphere, but I’m also expressing support to the performer behind the character. When your favorites win, it’s a vindication of sorts. It means that those who script the show see as much value in them as you do. Whenever you get a chance to meet the wrestlers at events (which happens surprisingly often), it only serves to make that connection stronger.
And the thing is, when all of these pieces fall together in just the perfect combination, there is nothing better in the world than professional wrestling. For those who want to experience this for themselves, I suggest you check out WWE’s Summer of Punk 2011 surrounding the Money in the Bank PPV and its main event match of the year.
Finally, for fans who are really in-the-know, pro wrestling websites offer backstage news that provides an entirely new dimension to the business. For example, in late March 2012, news broke that former UFC champion Brock Lesnar was in negotiations to return to WWE. This built fans’ hopes and anticipation for an imminent return. Trying to predict when it will occur and under what circumstances can be just as much fun as the matches themselves.
For another example, consider the case of WWE Superstar Daniel Bryan. After winning and defending the title for months in weaselly ways, this undersized but exceptionally skilled wrestler defended, and lost, his World Heavyweight Championship in near record time at Wrestlemania 28. As a big fan of Daniel Bryan, I was intrigued by how WWE would choose to present him at the show, an aspect distinct from his actual performance.
After the loss, I can’t help but wonder about the backstage politics that led to the title change. Has the company lost faith in him or was this done just for shock value? Is the fact that the new champion’s first defense is against another returning Superstar suggestive of the fact that Bryan’s time is over? I don’t know how things will shake out for him, but I can’t wait to find out.
Very well written & I agree completely! I have been a pro-wrestling fan since watching it with my grandpa on black & white tv in the early 1970s. I grew up in Oklahoma so our home town territory was Mid-South Wrestling, owned & run at the time by ‘Cowboy’ Bill Watts(a mega-star himself in his day). When I try to explain to people that wrestling in the South was almost NEVER the cartoony, ridiculous affair offered up by the WWF(now WWE) at the time… in fact, if you were a wrestler working for Watts & you got into a fight at the local bar & LOST, you just might be fired! He might say “how can I book you as this unstoppable killer when Jim Bob Nobody just whipped your ass in front of everybody down at The Drunken Clam?” Back before the UFC, pro-wrestling WAS the UFC… the matches were just fixed. cough&boxing&cough In the South, it was presented as a legitimate athletic(people were often scouted from successful amateur wrestling & football programs, much like current WWE/UFC star Brock Lesnar) event OR a down-right fight, sometimes “un-sanctioned”(they would bring up the houselights) saying the promotion was not responsible for what happened(just part of the storyline). I was live at the arena in the 4th row where a match took place that “only the medical personnel could stop”. Of course, that wasn’t true, but WE the paying public didn’t know that – and the blood was certainly REAL! Wrestlers had guns pulled on them, got stabbed, cars set on fire… the fans were THAT emotionally invested in the babyfaces(good guys) & heels(bad guys). Unfortunately, that emotional investment has been lost in a large part due to WWE’s “sports entertainment” approach, becoming more of just another television show – or a badly acted soap opera, depending on your point of view – than a pro-wrestling promotion. Did you know the WWE on-air announcers are expressly forbidden from even using the term “pro-wrestling”? I think that speaks volumes… Pro-wrestling in the America IS WWE, for better or worse. And I think that is a great disservice to the WRESTLERS in Ring of Honor and other smaller promotions that actually value in-ring performance – and a slap in the face to those who came before and gave their blood, sweat, tears and future physical disability, in many cases, to the SPORT they loved. Ask ECW/WWE wrestler Taz how “fake” his broken neck was… and the nerve damage he suffers from to this day, to the extent that he has to be mentally conscious of how he puts his foot down stepping off a curb lest he should crumple & fall, possibly doing more damage. Or Mick Foley, aka “Mankind” and “Cactus Jack” – he can’t walk up a flight of stairs without using the handrail due to hip & back issues that resulted from all that “phony business”. Before “kayfabe” was broken(i.e., the cat let out of the bag), they pretended to hurt each other and the people believed it – now they really hurt each other and everyone thinks is bull$#@!. As for myself, it literally saddens me what WWE has become – I do not watch it and have not watched it for years now. They may be the most financially successful company, but when it comes to wrestling, they are a very sad shell of a promotion. I DO watch Ring of Honor and thanks to the internet, I can enjoy British “World of Sport” style grappling, and especially Japan’s offerings from New Japan, NOAH, old All-Japan, etc. They have not forgotten it says PRO-WRESTLING on the marquee!
“If done well, there should never be a boring professional wrestling segment.”
Seems to me that can only be true for an audience that either suspends disbelief and/or finds some redeeming quality in the narrative. As someone who finds it impossible to suspend disbelief about professional wrestling and finds no redeeming qualities in it, ALL professional wrestling is boring to me. Competitive sports can be boring, but they also can NOT be boring, precisely because they are not scripted. Films and television programming are often boring, because they too are scripted. The ones that manage not to be boring do so either by so drawing the audience in that it suspends disbelief and finds itself in the story as if it were real and/or by having redeeming qualities as art, e.g. interesting things to show, say, etc.
Hey Mike,
This is one of the most compelling arguments for WWE I’ve ever read. Nicely done sir. I for one still have a hard time following it and just threw this in a search. I think you explained it well.
Happy trails!!!!
It’s a simple answer I usually give: why do you watch movies when you know they’re fake?
No, those guys in the ring aren’t trying (usually) to hurt each other. Robert Downey Jr. can’t fly in a metal suit and shoot rockets out of his ass either. Andrew Lincoln isn’t really killing zombies. Vin Diesel isn’t really a talking tree that says only three words.