The Universal Language Of Wrestling
- Thomas Hall
- 13 minutes ago
- 5 min read
So if you haven’t been paying attention to America (And you should be as it’s the greatest country in… yeah I can’t.), you would know that we have a couple of rather big events going on at once right now. In this case, it’s a double shot of the 250th anniversary, along with being one of the hosts for the FIFA World Cup.
I figured I needed to tie one of those in somehow, but since this is America and the general philosophy is “bigger is better”, why not both? Yeah this week is a double edition, with a pair of shorter, unrelated issues.
The World Cup & Wrestling's Universal Appeal
We’ll start with the World Cup, which is a rather fascinating sports event in a lot of ways. Much like the Olympics, you have everyone coming together for a competition to see who is the best. We don’t really have an equivalent in professional wrestling, but there was a segment on WCW Saturday Night in 1993 that springs to mind, because who better than Bill Watts to explain the world to you?
The idea was that Jim Cornette and the Heavenly Bodies appeared on WCW Saturday Night to take issue with some comments Watts (the WCW boss at the time) had made about them. The Rock N Roll Express interrupted and wanted a match, with Cornette of course making excuses as to why it couldn’t happen. Watts said that the wrestling ring was neutral ground and the match took place.
Ultimately, that’s what wrestling is supposed to be about. You can take everything going on, all of the issues and things that have been said and all that other jazz, and put two people in the ring for a match where (at least most of the time) everything is equal and the two of them get to settle their differences one on one. That’s how the tournament is going to end and it’s how a wrestling feud is supposed to end.
That’s one of the fun things about professional wrestling. You can put it almost anywhere in the world and it winds up looking mostly the same. There are two people in the ring and the idea is to either pin the other or make them give up. It doesn’t matter if it’s in the United States, the United Kingdom, Japan, Mexico or anywhere else in between (and they absolutely do have wrestling in a lot of those lesser publicized places, a lot of which can be remarkable), because ultimately it comes down to the same idea and anyone can get the idea pretty quickly.
At the same time, there are so many tweaks you can make to wrestling, with the different styles from around the world. You have the soap opera style of America, lucha libre in Mexico, the mostly technical style from the United Kingdom and the various styles from Japan. Those styles can often mix together and make for some outstanding matches, even if the people involved might not even be from anywhere near the same place.
The most entertaining match I have ever seen in person was a match between Tomohiro Ishii and Zack Sabre Jr. for the RevPro British Heavyweight Championship. I knew of them, but hadn’t heard any of the promos leading up to the match and just had a basic idea of what they were doing. They pulled me into what I was seeing because it was Sabre trying to tie Ishii up while Ishii was trying to use his power and toughness to survive. I wanted to see how that match was going to end because they made me interested in their story. That’s how wrestling is supposed to work and it worked very well that day.
Professional wrestling is one of the truly international sports and it works because you can mix and match things so well in the neutral ground of a wrestling ring. It might have a bunch of different bells and whistles attached to it, but eventually it comes down to someone putting their opponent down for good. That often makes them the best in the world, but you get a cool looking belt instead of a trophy.
Intermission.
Wrestling Never Stops
At the same time, we have the 250th anniversary of the greatest country (that I happen to live in) and that gets me thinking about how much wrestling has been around for my whole life. I don’t remember starting to watch wrestling, as it was always something I’ve done. Apparently, I started with Hulk Hogan and never really stopped, as I’m still watching to this day.
That really does make sense because much like America, the story of wrestling just keeps going. You’ll see a lot of the same ideas and problems come up over and over, often with some of the same people popping up in difference places at different times and seemingly working for different sides. It can make for some incredibly interesting situations, while also often leaving you quite bored.
What matters though is the fact that it keeps going. Take Monday Night Raw for example. For over thirty years, the show has been a fixture of Monday nights, rarely missing a show. The stories get to continue from one week to another, mostly without a beginning or an ending. It has been there since I was four years old and I’ve yet to miss a single episode of the series. I don’t see that changing anytime soon, and it has long since been something that has earned an important place on my weekly schedule.
Over the years (ok decades), you see wrestlers come and go, with some of them lasting a lot longer than others. There will be some ideas that just keep going whether good (WrestleMania!) or bad (authority figures) and some that just don’t last very long at all (Every match on Raw is 2/3 falls! Yeah, remember that nonsense that lasted like two weeks?) but at the end of the day, it’s still just part of the big show. Or country in this whole thing.
Why Wrestling Always Feels Like Home
Finally, just like America, wrestling is such a mixture of people, nationalities and personalities, some of whom you might never expect to work yet somehow they do. Would you believe that Bob Backlund, Mick Foley and Batista would all be major stars in the same place? It’s not something that makes sense on paper, but when you mix everyone together into a big group and have them interact in all kinds of ways, you never know what kind of magic you might find. Sure some people seem more destined for success, but through hard work and effort (and some luck), anyone can be a success of some kind throughout their careers.
Of course there are issues that make some of the times better than others, but wrestling has been there for me for my whole life and I can’t really imagine it being any other way. As many problems as I have with it at times, and those problems can become rather annoying at times, I really can’t imagine wrestling not being such a huge part of my world. It’s something that I have grown up with and I’ve gotten to see it from a bunch of different perspectives.
(Ok so maybe the America connection is a bit of a stretch but I got on a roll with the gushing about wrestling and I had fun with it instead. It’s not like there are rules to these things).
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