Welcome folks! As we’re rapidly plunging into a new decade, I thought, what better time to discuss the state of wrestling, and how things are looking going into a new decade? How cool is wrestling?
First things first, though: Wrestling’s having problems. Now, I know I’ve written before that maybe pro wrestling’s entering a new renaissance, and that we might have a feast of riches. And that’s all very true still.
But there’s still a ton of problems out there. Namely, for nearly fifteen to twenty years now, wrestling hasn’t been ‘cool.’ Sure there’s been flashes of cool from time to time, such as the heyday of The Bullet Club in NJPW. But by and large, wrestling as an industry hasn’t been cool in North America since Dwayne Johnson first decided he’d rather make his fortune in Hollywood.
And that needs to change. This isn’t politics, where cool is almost a detriment.
This isn’t the water and gas company, where people don’t give a crap if you’re cool as long as you provide the service they want. This is wrestling, sports and entertainment all rolled into one. If you’re not cool, if you’re not giving the fans what they are willing to pay money for… you’re going to be out of business very quickly.
In this article, I’ll go over some of the area I think are the biggest offenses in terms of wrestling being cool. And I’m going to tell you what I think potential solutions are. Disagree? Agree? Want to call me names? Comments below are always appreciated.
Get Younger
42.
39.
36.
51.
49.
Look at the above numbers. If you don’t know what they are, those are the current ages of some of the major wrestling title holders in 2019. Brock Lesnar’s 42. Shayna Baszler’s 39 (although she has just recently dropped her title). Taya’s 36. Jericho’s 49, and he’s not even the oldest with PCO topping the list at 51 as the ROH World Champion.
Now, I’m a firm believer in the fact that sport science has allowed athletes to compete at a higher level longer than at any time throughout history. Look at NFL quarterbacks, for example. Now whether that sport science is training methodologies or pharmaceutical methodologies or both is up for debate.
But what is undeniable is that wrestling rosters, and wrestling champions, are older than they have been in a long time. Part of this is to be expected. America’s older. Politicians, business leaders, even actors and entertainers are older.
Compare this to the aforementioned Dwayne. The Rock won his first WWF belt in 1998, and ‘retired’ the first time in 2003. At the time, he was all of 31 years old, and he already seemed like an ‘old hand’ to younger fans. He was barely hanging onto his cool.
Stone Cold wrestled his final match at 39, and was well past his prime title winning era two years earlier.
It’s not just the champs who are older either. Most companies have a very, very large contingent of older stars who are still holding slots high on the card. It was a common taunt from WWF during the end of the Monday Night Wars when they’d say WCW was ‘where the old boys played.’ And it showed. The young talent in WCW stayed in the lower card while the old guard kept a stranglehold on the main event. Which was one reason WCW tanked so hard at the end. It was totally not cool.
But now huge amounts of a lot of rosters, from WWE to ROH to Impact and AEW, are old. Some have managed better than others, but all are suffering.
Not that there isn’t a place for those true legends and ‘old timers.’ But they’re supposed to be special events. They’re once a month talents or less. Not week-in, week-out workhorses.
Wrestling needs some young blood, and promoters have to be willing to promote these young talents. If not, they run the risk of them being typecast as losers, or not good enough, long before they’re put in main events. You want an example? Look at Bray Wyatt, Kofi Kingston, or Jinder Mahal. All three guys spent so many years as underacheivers or non-main eventers that even at the start of their title runs, they had mountainous hurdles to overcome to be taken seriously.
Hard to find a groove when you’ve already been grooved as a loser.
Refresh The Talents
It’s not just that rosters are getting older. After all, while I mention PCO above, the fact is he’s still a relatively hot property.
How? Simple. The man reinvented his character. He’s done it before. He’s been a Quebecer, and a Mountie, and even a pirate. Sure, some sort of old man Frankenstonian Terminatoresque wrestler is out there, but so what? It’s funny, but more importantly it’s interesting.
PCO is actually, to a niche audience, somewhat cool.
Now, think about the WWE roster. Compare Roman Reigns of 2019 to Roman Reigns of 2013. Other than that big WWE Shop approved symbol in the middle of his gear now, what’s that different? Repetitive haircut. Identical moveset, maybe even one that’s toned down some. Same mannerisms, same… well, same Roman Reigns.
This is true nearly across the board. In every promotion. I can tune out of many wrestling shows for 3-6 months and pick things right back up in an episode or two. That’s not a good thing.
So if you’re management, you need to refresh your performers. No, you don’t need to go to the levels of what Bray Wyatt’s done, or turning Issac Yankem into Fake Diesel into Kane.
The easy way, of course, is to let wrestlers be what WWE constantly claims them to be, truly independent contractors. Roster churn, especially for the people from the upper midcard and below, is a good thing creatively. New challenges, new rivalries, new programs keeps people involved.
Even if we’re not talking crappy 50-50 booking, there’s only so many matchups you can do with a single roster before you’re scraping the bottom of the barrel and thinking ‘Hey, Lio Rush vs. Carmella doesn’t sound that bad.’
But barring that, let characters evolve. Let them change. Let them use new movesets, or different parts of their arsenals. More on that later.
Break ‘Creative’
This section is, of course, aimed squarely at WWE. But as the industry leader, they make themselves a big target. And in an industry where people often copy each other, WWE often is a case of ‘monkey see, monkey do’ whether it’s good or bad.
And the biggest bad of WWE is what I like to call Corporate Creative. You see, once WWE had to worry about stock prices, quarterly dividends, and the McMahon family started realizing how much of their supposed family wealth is tied up to said corporate behavior… well, creative became not so creative.
Now, every promoter has their likes and dislikes. Scott D’Amore at Impact recruits most of his talent from his past with Impact and ECW. NJPW has been doing stables (not just Bullet Club) for what seems like as long as I’ve been alive. MLW seems to be unable to keep more than three guys that weigh over 225 pounds. And AAA is most often an amazing clusterfuck of dangerously botched moves by guys in masks, at least twenty five percent of which are clowns.
But in no promotion is the cookie-cutter ‘creative’ approach more prevalent than in the WWE. Close your eyes, and imagine to yourself a ‘normal’ main roster show. Not your perfect show, just your regular one.
Now open your eyes and tell me what you saw? I bet most people saw the same thing. The show starts with a 15 to 20 minute in-ring promo segment! And it’ll set up a match later in the night! We’ll have a backstage segment or two, and a tag team match. Hour one will conclude with a ‘hot prospect’ match bridging the gap between hours, with hour two then having a women’s match. Ads for WWE Shop again and again. A segment promoting a charity will be in at least 1/5 of episodes. And finally, a main event that usually seems rather underwhelming after nearly 3 hours.
Oh, and recaps. Lots of recaps. If you didn’t watch the first two and a half hours of Raw, don’t worry! They’ll give you at least enough recaps to catch you up before the main event! Hell, they’ll even tell you who to cheer and who to boo for if the piped crowd reaction’s any indicator!
Face it, WWE is about as predictable as an old episode of Scooby-Doo & Friends. You’re just missing the bad guy saying “I would’ve gotten away with it too if it hadn’t been for those durn kids!”
And that’s just the structure of the show. The characters are the same. Sanitized, corporate… static. Nobody’s really all that out there, nobody’s really pushing boundaries, nobody’s really trying to find that edge and ride it like a mofo until it wears out. Nope, can’t have that. Might piss off shareholders.
This isn’t quite the same outside WWE, where I’ll give credit where credit’s due. A lot of companies are trying to mix it up. But when your industry leader is about as creative as wet cardboard, it creates a huge headwind that everyone else has to fight too.
Teach All The Tools
Maybe this is why roster’s are getting older, and Corporate Creative’s so predictable. Because as I look at the younger generation of talents around the wrestling industry, two words keep sticking in my mind again, and again, and again.
Charisma and polish.
Quite frankly, the hardest thing to evaluate on any wrestler is charisma. The history of wrestling is loaded with tales of ‘sure-fire’ talents who had it all. The look, the body, the moveset… and who quickly flopped like a salmon out of water when put in front of a live crowd.
Sometimes that’s bad luck. A bad botch at the wrong time, a freak injury, or just happening to be on the card right before or right after someone else’s breakout moment, and you’re twisting in midcard hell for the rest of your career. That’s just show business.
But a bigger element is charisma, and that’s a lot harder to teach. Some even say it can’t be taught at all, that it’s a personal magnetism. You either have ‘it’ or you don’t. I personally disagree, but am willing to admit that it’s a tough formula to replicate.
If you’re going to have a good chance to do it though, you have to make sure your talents have as complete a tool kit as possible. That’s where polish comes into play.
In the old days, that meant reps. Starting in parking lots and bingo halls in front of crowds of fifty folks, most workers would then have to work their way up. Only after years of work would they get a shot at TV. Only when they had some cool.
Sure, you have plenty of examples of those who started with a leg up. The Rock got his break because of his family. But he still spent time down in Deep South working on his skills before debuting in WWF. Charlotte got into the Performance Center because of her last name.
This doesn’t take anything away from either one. They worked their asses off. And give credit to the WWE Performance Center, they’ve tried to become almost a ‘university of wrestling.’ Japan is similar with their dojos, even if there are drawbacks to that method.
But that’s only for a few people. For most, they have to do it the old fashioned way, making a name for yourself on the indy scene. But in an indy scene where you can show up on YouTube after only a few months of training, and an industry where people are pulling off moves that would have been seen as impossible only fifteen years ago… many people are missing something.
Mic work, simply, is one of the areas people don’t have their groove. Put simply, listening to a lot of promos nowadays is cringe-worthy. On one hand, WWE often scripts promos down to the last lame-ass joke. Don’t even get me started on Bobby Lashley & Lana. But listening to a lot of other workers is just as bad.
A perfect example for me is Kris Statlander. Since her debut on AEW, she’s been very good in the ring. And I’m a fan of hers. Her look is unique, and she can work well. But her December 17th AEW Dark promo done in an freight elevator where she was talking about ‘take me to your leader’ was cringe worthy, beyond just what her awkward ‘alien’ character should be. Better to just not ‘boop’ Brandi Rhodes for now. Forward to 44:33 to see the cringe.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-uT8-duLOCM?t=2673%5D]
I’m not blaming Kris. She’s very new to the business, with roughly 3 years experience, and is still quite young (24). So I’ll give credit to AEW for letting her do something unique and have control of her character. She just needs refinement. She needs to find her cool. And having the chance to try and stumble is better than a corporate creative ‘superstar.’
So what can wrestlers do? I think the biggest thing is to borrow a page from old school bodybuilding. When Arnold Schwarzenegger was criticized for his posing… he went to ballet school to learn and practice how to present himself. While he never became a dancer, he brought those tools to his profession.
The Rock did the same with his acting career. Instead of simply taking a Hogan-esque detour to Hollywood, Dwayne pushed himself to be more than just a wrestler who acts, but an actual actor. While he’s never going to be doing Shakespeare, he’s grown. For a guy losing his wrestling cool, he’s the coolest mofo in Hollywood nowadays.
Wrestlers should be doing the same with their mic and promo work. If your body’s weak, you go to a gym. If your ring work’s weak, you put in reps in school. So if your promos and presentation are weak… get in front of an audience. Do improv. Do community theater. Join a debating club, make public speeches. Run for the mayor of Knox County (I kid, I kid).
Promoters should be encouraging their talents to do the same. Even if it’s just like what the WWE Performance Center does, have them cut promos in front of ‘the boys’ before the audience is let in. It doesn’t have to be the promos for the show, just let them work on cutting actual promos. Then dissect them, rewatch them, and work on them. Help them find their cool.
But don’t think it’ll just work itself out in front of a TV camera.
Timing Is Everything
This is a problem that’s plagued wrestling promoters as far back as I can remember. A promotion will, for various reasons, put their weight behind a wrestler. Maybe they’re a loyal hand. They could be the promoter’s son. They could just have a look or other intangible quality that the promoter thinks is money waiting to be made. So the promotion puts the engine behind the talent. They print the t-shirts, they prep the vignettes, they get their announcers to start plugging the talent.
And then the crowd goes… mild.
Meanwhile, for some reason or another, there’s another talent that’s hot with the crowd. Maybe they’ve got a look the crowd likes, or a persona. Maybe the crowd’s just feeling contrary for whatever reason.
A smart promoter will see that, and adjust course. They’ll take that babyface that’s not getting over and have them turn heel. They’ll take that midcard talent and start moving them up the card, maybe not with a rocket but enough to show the fans that their opinion matters.
Don’t blow up the plan, but adjust the plan.
Impact did this well a few years ago with Rosemary. Seeing the warm response the crowd was giving her, Impact management started having her work in the ring. Her makeup and ring gear changed, making her less horrific and more ‘goth hot.’ She adjusted her persona while still keeping the core of what made the fans attracted to her. It wasn’t perfect (see her ‘romance’ with Bram), but it worked. Rosemary was cool as hell before her knee injury, and is still cool now.
AEW, I think, is currently trying to do this with their women’s division. They brought in Britt Baker to be their ‘top girl,’ the homegrown American woman who’d be their champ. She’s smart, she’s attractive, and she can actually work. But, for various reasons, the fans haven’t warmed to Adam Cole’s girlfriend the way they expected (don’t yell at me, Chelsea Green!).
Instead of forcing her fingers down our throats (ha ha), they adjusted to a new groove. She lost to Hikaru Shida, and then to Kris Statlander. Can she still become a women’s main eventer? In the future, sure. But AEW’s letting her work her issues out, and waiting until she connects with the fans enough to do so.
On the flip side, look at WWE. With their vision of ‘this is who our main eventers will be, and to hell with who the fans like!’ firmly in Creative’s mind (and yes, I know Creative means one particular man), WWE has lost the groove time and time again with their fans.
When Becky Lynch broke her nose, instead of having her win the title at the Royal Rumble, they stretched it out another 3 months… and lost the moment. What should have been a career defining moment of her pinning Ronda Rousey turned into an overworked, overbooked mess. The match was nowhere near what it could have been… and The Man became The Meh.
Musashi said there is timing in everything. What makes a move good or bad will often come down to that, and wrestling as an industry needs to re-learn timing.
Adjust Culturally
No matter how much I want to admit it at the ripe old age of 41, what’s cool today isn’t what was cool when I was in my twenties. Hell, I just have to go shopping for pants or shorts to see that.
Wrestling has to adjust too. Some of the standbys of yesteryear have to be revamped or let go. Despite what some rabid fans think, the Jim Cornette approach isn’t going to work any longer.
Racial stereotypes are, or should be, on their way out. For as much as I like Impact, Kongo Kong and his character was cringe-worthy in more ways than one. I’m glad they course corrected there.
Men and women mixing it up is no longer taboo. Tessa Blanchard fighting Sami Callihan is no less believable than Adam Cole taking on someone the size of Keith Lee. The weight disparity’s even greater between Cole and Lee than Blancard and Callihan.
Some types of storylines need to go. I’m not saying that there aren’t fans of these storylines still. But what I am saying is you can be ‘cool’ and even ‘edgy’ without trotting out some of these stereotypes.
Hell, if anything, repeating those storylines just shows how out of touch a promoter is. What was cool and pushing the line twenty years ago just comes off as tired, been there, done that dorky nowadays.
Build!
I know this sounds like the opposite of the point above about timing. After all, if you’re building, how can you adjust?
It’s a tough balance, for sure. But as a promoter, you have to BUILD your show. That means developing storylines, developing characters.
Sometimes it’s more like cooking than construction. You take your storyline, and you let it marinate for awhile. Come back, you check on it, you don’t forget it… but when the time’s right, you apply the heat. You cook it, not too long, not too short, and at the right temperature. When you’re done… you’ve created a masterpiece.
But right now, so many feuds feel more like they were made on an episode of Chopped. Take what you’ve got in a basket, no matter how bad they might seem, and throw something on a plate in twenty to thirty minutes. So you deep fry pork loin with caramel licorice sauce over radish greens, because that’s what was in the basket!
Wrestling promoters can’t do that. Stop rushing from feud to feud, from PPV to PPV without developing things. Take your time, find the right groove for each one. Sure, things’ll happen. Fire goes out on your stove, that cheese you thought was perfect is actually stanky butt fungus… so you adjust.
But you don’t rush unless you have to. Unfortunately today, so many promoters and promotions have now booked themselves into an ‘all hands on deck, slam the plates out’ approach that it’s hard to get on top of the orders, as they say. And when the fans complain of the ‘feud of the week’ syndrome, they decide to draw it out with a rematch! And another, and another, and another… until someone’s getting dog food dumped on their head.
Tied into that is something we’ve all known for years: 3 hours of Raw and 4-8 hours of PPVs is just too damn much. The live attendance fans burn out. The viewers burn out. And by the end, we’re not cheering the hero standing tall at the end of the main event, or booing the villain standing over the hero. We’re yawning and wondering when feeling’s going to return to our left buttcheek.
Dial that back. Marinate. Remember you don’t have to flash fry every feud. Take the time to build up your show, your feuds, and your people. Let things be cool sometimes.
Note: Going back to timing, that doesn’t mean when a feud’s crap, you don’t just cut your losses and adjust.
The Wrap-up
The best takeway from all this is… none of this is terminal. It’s not like the entire world just decided that choreographed violence is no longer interesting, and My Little Pony rules the world.
Wrestling can be ‘cool’ again. Will it be ‘cool’ in the way Hulk Hogan was in the 1980’s, brother? No.
Will it be cool like Stone Cold throwing punches with Mike Tyson? No.
It won’t even be cool like The Rock coming out and leading the students of Penn State in a chant of You are… an ASSHOLE! to Vince McMahon.
But it can be cool again. It could be Orange Cassidy cool, it could be Adam Cole cool, bay-bay. I don’t know what it’ll look like.
Whatever the next generation of ‘cool’ in wrestling is, I do know it’s not going to look like what we see nowadays. Change is necessary, and the only question is if that change is going to come via smart decisions within the industry, or desperation. Or both.
