If I Could Be Serious For A Moment 12.16.08: Desensitized to Everything

Posted by Chris Lansdell on 12.16.2008

Have we really got to the point where just good is not good enough? Have we seen so many wrestlers leave us that it no longer hurts? Join me as I ponder just why the feeling isn't there.

Greetings, humanity! Welcome back to If I Could Be Serious For A Moment with me, Chris Lansdell. As a guy who has done nothing but make cheesy jokes for the past year or so, this column is meant to allow me to express my thoughts on more serious matters and in a more serious fashion...at least for the first part of it. You cannot stop the beast, you can only hope to contain him briefly. This week's topic is one that hasn't really been addressed in the IWC. But first...

BANNER!

Desensitised to Everything

Professional wrestling as a form of entertainment is designed to detach us from reality, to titillate us with spectacular acrobatics, emotional promos, exaggerated characters and storylines that draw us in, shock us and exhilarate us. To do that, it has to push the creative envelope and show us things we either haven't seen before, or that are presented in a different way so as to fool us into thinking they are new. Having been around for over 100 years, it's not at all surprising that professional wrestling is starting to lose that ability. Wrestlers have to do more and more in the ring or on the microphone to impress the die-hard fans. Writers have to be more and more outlandish and contrived to surprise us, and have to be more and more risqué to entertain us. As with everything, the creativity and physical ability of the writers and performers have limits, and we may just be coming close to reaching them.

Moonsault? Meh. DDT? Then what?

Remember "Macho Man" Randy Savage? Of course you do. Ricky "The Dragon" Steamboat? Again, more than likely. Do you remember that their finishing manoeuvres, the flying elbow and the flying crossbody, used to draw gasps of awe from adoring fans? That's less likely. In this era of 630 sentons, corkscrew moonsaults and shooting star presses from the arena lights, it's hard to imagine that something as simple as an elbow drop from the top rope used to be scintillating. The high-fliers of the 80s like Kevin von Erich (a flying crossbody from the top while turning in mid-air, a precursor to the moonsault of today), "Superfly" Jimmy Snuka (whose splash from the cage inspired Mick Foley, among others) and the Rock 'n' Roll Express would be considered tame by today's standards.

For evidence of this, you only have to look at a couple of wrestlers in recent years who have tried to use old-school top-rope moves as finishers. Randy Orton used a very impressive frog-splash-style crossbody from the top when he débuted, one that got tremendous height, and it never got over. Test used a diving elbow at one point put quickly changed to...well, about 6 others. Primo used a crossbody to win his first match and almost every recap of the show called it a boring move. Shawn Michaels' flying elbow hasn't won a match in, well, ever. It's even gone a step further now. Moonsaults are starting to suffer in terms of ability to pop the crowd, especially in Indy feds. Jeff Hardy, having done so many Swantons from so many high places, doesn't get the same reaction he used to get when he "only" does it from the top rope. This phenomenon is bad in WWE and worse in TNA, but it's at its very worst in the smaller feds, from RoH on down. A landed moonsault or somersault senton is unlikely to finish a match. No, you're going to need something much more flippy-twisty-turny (and dangerous, of course) to win anything. And it doesn't stop with high-flying moves.

Powerbombs, DDTs, superplexes. All of these moves used to spell "game over" when they hit. These days they rarely finish a match. Sure, the Batista Bomb and the Jackknife, or Cody Rhodes and Sheik Abdul Bashir's DDTs still pick up victories, but they are the exceptions. To be a convincing finisher in modern wrestling, it almost seems like you have to be devastating. Once again the problem is exacerbated in the indies, where tombstones, superkicks, air raid crashes and worse are kicked out of with impunity. People get dropped on their heads on a regular basis, causing God only knows how much damage, all in the name of entertainment. Why? Because we, as fans, have demanded it. We see the moves once or twice, as they get busted out on big occasions, and we come to demand them, to expect them. After you've seen Rhino hit a piledriver from the top rope, why would you want to see him do a regular one? Even if he did do a regular one, it would seem less impactful after seeing the top-rope version, right? No, don't pop for it. Pop for the big move. Go big, or go home.

We're never satisfied, as fans. We won't let wrestlers save moves for big occasions. We refuse to understand that sometimes a guy has to give less than 100%, because otherwise he won't have another level to which he can shift for the big matches. In my mind this is one of the reasons that WWE pay per views are feeling less important these days: there is no upshift of gears. As recently as Wrestlemania XIX, we had Booker T bust out the Houston/Harlem Hangover, and of course THAT bump by Brock Lesnar. Indeed, WrestleMania has been something of an exception, especially when it comes to Money in the Bank matches. TNA has done a far better job of making pay per views feel special, but that's because they actually feature matches over 5 minutes in length. Even so, TNA talent end up taking everything a step further whenever possible. On that path, it's only a matter of time until someone gets killed or crippled in a ring, and that could well spell death for professional wrestling.

They're just copying this from 1994!

I initially decided to write this article when reading 411mania after a recent Raw. Two things caught my eye: the reaction to the JBK-Shawn Michaels angle, and something I will get to in the next section. Despite being, in my mind at least, a new way to create enmity between two wrestlers and pleasantly current and relevant, the angle was being roundly assailed as a rip-off of Ted DiBiase's Million Dollar Corporation and more specifically, the indenturing of Nikolai Volkoff as a manservant. Setting aside the numerous differences between the two angles, and presuming that is in fact a direct copy of that angle...so what?

We're not talking about something that was done last year, or something that TNA is doing now. It was 14 years ago. Almost 15. There is a finite number of plots and angles, and it is inevitable that some will get used and re-used. How often have we seen students turn on mentors? Partners turn on each other? Factions form to take over a promotion? People selling out? That doesn't mean that these angles cannot be done well and be successful, if only we as fans give them the chance to show why they are different and/or better.

When the fans turn on angles because they were done before, it forces writers to come up with new material. Every now and then they will hit a gold mine (Stone Cold Steve Austin, for example), something that is either completely new or so different from its previous incarnation that it feels new. In the majority of cases, the things that haven't been done before have not been done for a reason: they will suck. When we're sitting down watching Vince McMahon believe he fathered a leprechaun, instead of solely blaming WWE we should be wondering how we screwed ourselves to this point as well. The problem is, normal everyday stuff just seems boring in a world where the outlandish is happening every day.

This past Friday on Smackdown we saw a vignette for the British wrestler Hade Vansen. Now I thought this was a perfectly fine promo, it told us a little about his character but made us want to learn more. He delivered his lines like he meant them and came across very well. However, the comments that people have been making are concentrating on how the gimmick sounds too much like The Fallen Angel gimmick of Christopher Daniels. A gimmick, by the way, that he isn't even using right now. We've been spoiled by so many fresh ideas through the Monday Night Wars era that now we can't tolerate an idea that is recycled.

It used to be shocking when a tag team broke up, or when a face turned heel. Nowadays it's almost obvious. Could this be because most wrestling fans are older now, and thus can read deeper into plots? Have we been exposed to so much of it, for so long, that we know what's coming before the writers do? Again, we are desensitised to the regular ways of doing things in professional wrestling, and because of that the writers have to go up a level to shock us. In some ways this is a good thing, but when a perfectly reasonable and sensible angle is attacked for not being new, we're hurting ourselves more than helping.

Another One Bites The Dust

And so we arrive at the second thing that caused me to write this column: the death of Steve Bradley. 20 years ago, wrestler deaths were unheard of. The ones who did die were of an age where it could not be seen as a tragedy. However, when I read that Bradley had died, my initial thought was "Oh God another one. What drug was he on I wonder?" Then I stopped and thought for a minute: have we lost so many wrestlers to drugs and steroids, both past usage and current usage, that the loss of a human being has become secondary to the effect it will have on the business? Are we really that used to people dying in the business that it doesn't shock or sadden us any more?

Wrestlers dying young is actually linked to my first point: the more we push them to do more in the ring, to put on more shows, to give more of themselves, the more pain they are in. The more painkillers they take. They work through injuries, often aggravating them. Some of it is to make sure they make a great living, but they won't make that living if nobody wants to see them. So they take shortcuts, and in so doing they put their lives in danger.

It's a story with which we are all sadly familiar. The only wrestler death in the past 5 years that truly shocked me was Benoit's, for obvious reasons. Initially Guerrero's did, but when I read more about it the surprise faded. It's almost as if it has been replaced by a sense of inevitability now, a feeling that it's only a matter of time until the next talent is taken from us too early. Of the points I have presented today, I expect this one to be the most contentious and the one least shared by others, but nonetheless I do feel that I am desensitised to deaths in wrestling. It's like the old Jeff Foxworthy joke where he hears about 300 people dying when a bus plunged off a bridge in India, and the only thought he had was "How do you get 300 people in a bus?"

I'm sure I'm not alone in wishing that Eddie, Owen, Benoit, Hennig and Pillman were still with us. I'm also not alone in saying that the deaths of people like Killer Kowalski and Stu Hart, while sad, are a lot easier to deal with. While I detest Marc Mero and his self-serving, artificially inflated list with all my heart, I cannot deny that the statistics are depressing. Either fortunately or unfortunately, the majority of wrestlers from the era of abusing your body are already gone (except Jake Roberts and Scott Hall, who both seem to be indestructible) or have cleaned up their acts. I hope the days of numerous premature deaths are behind us, because I hate that it doesn't bother me any more.

Bring the feeling back

The IWC as a whole needs to step back a bit. If we keep demanding more from wrestlers and creative, then we're going to find it harder to enjoy anything less than perfect. There is still entertainment to be derived from professional wrestling, no matter what you watch. WWE may be more entertainment than wrestling, but we need to accept that and move on. TNA may not always devote enough TV time to wrestling, but they ARE improving and their PPVs generally deliver. RoH may have lousy production values and totally unrealistic matches, but as an athletic spectacle it's breathtaking. There is nothing wrong with demanding a good product, but we need to learn to accept a good product and not expect consistent perfection.

Moment over.



Joey Styles socked JBL in Iraq - Not the first time JBL has taken a shot to the mouth...
Snitsky has been released by WWE - The trouble started when he was introduced to Murphy Levesque...
Ryan Braddock is getting an Elvis gimmick - They couldn't just give that to Deuce?
Kurt Angle to star in a movie - So many jokes...
Miz and Morrison won the Raw tag titles at a house show in Hamilton - Hey remember when the tag belts meant something? Remember the brand split? Remember the Titans?
Vince McMahon is reportedly not happy with Michael Cole - Maybe he should knock somebody out, he might win a Slammy.
JBL touting Mamajuana as a weight loss aid - Why would I buy something that even the maker doesn't use?
Jeff Hardy, WWE Champion - It won't last. The show wasn't even off the air before he got high.
The HBK-JBL storyline is based on The Wrestler - It will feature RoH guys?


Well folks, that's our column. I'll be back next week with a look at some guys who will never get their due. Stay Cool, Rock Hard.

Lansdellicious – Out.