The Importance of…2.13.09: Love is a Professional Wrestling Match

Posted by Mike Chin on 02.13.2009

This week, we break from the norm to draw some parallels between love and professional wrestling. Happy Valentine's Day, everybody!

I'm taking a one week break from the traditional column format to do a little something different. Some may think me odd for espousing the Valentine's Day spirit in my pro wrestling column. So be it.

Love is a wrestling match. Sometimes it's a show of technical precision. Sometimes it's a brawl that leaves one or more participant a bloody mess. Sometimes it ends with a surprise roll up, sometimes the epic application of a trademark finisher. Other times, it all comes to a close with a draw.

Love is a wrestling match. It starts with little jawing back and forth—the flirtation period before any real action. Then there's the lock-up. It's the first physical contact, the first measure of the participants' strengths, the first attempt to establish some level of control. There's the heat segment—the point where things don't look good, and the outcome is in question. There's the comeback, wherein it looks as though, in a flurry, things could be all right. There are high spots—dives off the top rope like sweeping gestures like a trip, a proposal. All this building toward the climax.

Love is a wrestling match. Sometimes it's The 1-2-3 Kid squaring off against Razor Ramon. You've got an underdog with no legit shot at winning, squaring off against an established superstar. And yet, against all logic, The Kid pulled off the pinfall. It was a glorious moment, and a moment big enough to establish The Kid as more than a jobber—elevating him to the point of being a star in his own right. There are these moments in love—brief relationships that make little sense, changing the fortunes of one or more of the participants in a flash.

Love is a wrestling match. Throughout history, there have been plenty of times when great matches fell victim to screwy finishes. Two guys wrestle for over twenty minutes, then an assailant comes in and takes one or both of them out. The heel is getting his ass handed to him and takes a walk to save his title, or delivers a blatant low blow to garner the DQ non-finish. The reasons for relationships gone awry may not be clear cut either--there are all sorts of screwjob finishes to perfectly good pairings. There's the ‘other man'—a third party meddling in a match he has no rightful place in. There's fear of commitment, or other personal issues that have nothing to do with the actual relationship—much like ‘safe' booking, wherein the bookers realize they don't want to see a title change hands, or want to change the direction of a program, in spite of the great match that was developing. All too often, great relationships, like great matches, end up cut far too short for reasons that have nothing to do with the actual participants.

Just as many matches end in unsatisfying ways, it's often the execution on the whole that is off. For all of the good that the Attitude era in WWE, and the nWo era in WCW did for the business, these periods also marked the inception of dramatic overbooking in high profile matches. When the storylines took priority over the action, it made a certain kind of sense for more parties to get involved in the outcomes. As the product grew more violent, it made more sense for wrestlers to thrive on ref bumps and illegal activity. There is perhaps no worse example of an overbooked big match than the Sting-Hogan Starrcade showdown. The match was over-planned to the point where it made no sense, with Hogan far too dominant, and Sting not delivering the beat down fans had paid to see. And then there was the finish—a way over-thought, ultimately ridiculous play off of the Montreal Screwjob, in which Bret Hart nonsensically restarted the match, and allowed for Sting's wildly tainted title win. The finish came off horribly, as it wasn't satisfying to anyone. This is not unlike instances where people build up a relationship too much in their minds before they're knee deep in it. It's easier to do this in the internet-age when you can get on Facebook or MySpace, and get to know all about someone without actually knowing the person. Learning about someone in this way is not organic to the relationship they're building. In wrestling or in love this is a recipe for disaster. It's rushing the relationship or the program, and in so doing, losing the magic. It's developing expectations too high to ever be met. Hogan v.s Sting was the program of 1998. And yet, when it came to match time, the fans had to accept the reality that Hogan was a decade past his prime, Sting hadn't wrestled in over a year, and the WCW bookers were out of their friggin' minds—it wasn't going to be a classic.

There are some legitimately great matches, and some truly great relationships. Ric Flair and Ricky Steamboat, for example, delivered a series of long, unpredictable, evenly matched and truly great matches. Comparable to these classics, the best relationships are reciprocal, stand the test of time, and are full of surprises. Of course, the irony is that when such a relationship is over, it may hurt to look back because of how good it was; or, in less ideal cases, because you were together long enough to grow into more friends than lovers—to the point where you can't remember the magic. The Flair-Steamboat series is like that. It's good enough that it's sad to see how far the business has fallen since that time. At the same time, it's familiar enough that I can't remember the last time I really felt compelled to watch one of these contests on DVD.

If love is a pro wrestling match, there's no question that one of the most exciting things that can happen is the emergence of a new face. A new wrestler, like a new romantic interest holds a certain hope. For a romantic interest, there's the possibility that, against all logic, this girl could be different. It may be rare, but it's the new girl in your office or at your school who you think could make it all clean. Maybe she would never bitch you out. Maybe she'd cook a great dinner every night. Maybe she'd never knock your love for pro wrestling. Maybe she'd be the best sex you'd ever have. In all likelihood, she won't be so different. While every girl has her own personality and special qualities, and every relationship has its own character, there are certain truths that will repeat themselves. There will be fights. There will values clashes. She's probably not going to want to watch Raw every Monday. And yet we hold out hope. Maybe it's the child in each of us, but we hold out hope that maybe she's real, and she's everything we could want for her to be. This isn't so different from the debut of a young upstart like DH Smith or Bobby Lashely. There are young guys who come in with the look, or the reputation, or the pedigree, or the programmatic build. There's every reason to think they can be great. And yet, reality had to set in sometime, and, indeed, in varying degrees of time, the novelty wore off, and in each of these cases, we found not the perfect new star, but just another piece of the roster. The girl, and the new wrestler—they each have their mystiques. But in the end, they often can't compare to the true value of a more proven commodity.

In the end, love has any number of connections to a pro wrestling match. One may be a demonstration of violence, while the other is quite the opposite. But in the end, each involves its fair share of posturing, missteps and oddities. Each has its pronounced flaws. And yet, in the end, for all our complaints, who among us would really swear off either one?

That's all for this column. Next week, The Importance of… begins its road to Wrestlemania. We take a look at the importance of Wrestlemania III. See you in seven.