Wrestling has no personality anymore

Here at My Take Radio, we are all about indi­vid­ual opin­ions, hence the name. Fel­low staff writer Bryan wrote an arti­cle sim­i­lar to this one in late 2009 and this is just going to be my two cents on the issue of wrestling. His arti­cle was great and I hope you enjoy mine as well because the state of wrestling has just been both­er­ing me lately.

If you are one of the fans that gets to tune in every Thurs­day night, or even one of the down­load­ers, you know that the sec­ond seg­ment in the show han­dles wrestling. We even had an “impromptu guest” call in late dur­ing last week’s show to share his pas­sion for wrestling with us. The wrestling seg­ment rarely goes over five min­utes and is usu­ally more like two. That is not so cool on a show that has a one hun­dred and fifty minute time slot. Host Rich has him­self debated drop­ping the seg­ment from the show and it only still exists because lis­ten­ers like myself voted against it.

Regard­less of whether it is WWE or TNA, the big prob­lem with wrestling is charisma, or the severe lack of it these days. It seems like every­one wants to be that big star, that Hulk Hogan of today but many of these per­form­ers just don’t get it – the for­mula that made wrestling great was hav­ing tiers and peo­ple “know­ing their roles” so to speak. I am going to take a look back to a time circa 1988–1991, when wrestling was so fun that even my mom would sit down and watch it with me. There was this whole sys­tem that was just work­ing for both (then) WWF and the now defunct WCW/NWA. You had great announc­ers like Jim Ross and “Gorilla Mon­soon. Hell, you even had an ongo­ing rivalry between Gorilla Mon­soon and Bobby “The Brain” Heenan that cul­mi­nated with Heenan lit­er­ally get­ting tossed out on his ass on air. The announc­ers even made the bor­ing job­ber matches worth watching.

And here we have another com­po­nent that you barely see – the job­bers. Poor schleps that hon­estly had decent wrestling tal­ent but no one gave a crap about. Prob­a­bly the most famous was the Brook­lyn Brawler – dude lit­er­ally got his ass whooped on a weekly basis, prob­a­bly more. I can recall the WCW debut of Big Van Vader – he fought Z-Man. Z-MAN??? Dude, your name starts at the end, we know you’re los­ing against a guy that has a giant hel­met with smoke com­ing out. Z-Man was not exactly a job­ber, but he was one of the lower level stars and in that match he got picked up by his frikkin’ ears and tossed across the ring. Need­less to say, he lost.

To beat up the job­bers, we had the great faces and heels of wrestling that were always top per­form­ers but were never gonna hold that world title, save one or two. Jake “The Snake” Roberts, com­ing to the ring with Damian and later Lucifer, his pythons. Bru­tus “The Bar­ber” Beef­cake, who came to the ring either with barber’s scis­sors or hedge clip­pers, depend­ing upon the oppo­nent. Mr. Per­fect (R.I.P.), who had a “per­fect” wrestling record, despite hav­ing been beaten numer­ous times. These, along with oth­ers, were the guys that hard­core fans called their favorites because not every­one loved Hulk Hogan or The Ulti­mate War­rior or any of the top names. Jimmy “Super­fly” Snuka and the afore­men­tioned Ricky “The Dragon” Steam­boat had fan­tas­tic matches, some­times even against the job­bers. It was this lower tier Sat­ur­day morn­ing pro­gram­ming that really made you look for­ward to Mon­day night and occa­sion­ally the “Sat­ur­day Night’s Main Event.” Now we have such over­sat­u­ra­tion and every match has to be high pro­file so it makes things feel so stale and stagnant.

Wrestling is called “Sports Enter­tain­ment” for a rea­son. Act­ing is a big part of the show and just like Hol­ly­wood actors, you have those who “got it” and those who don’t. Hulk Hogan was never my favorite wrestler; even as a kid I felt he stole the shine from bet­ter per­form­ers but facts are facts: that man had more charisma than your aver­age three wrestlers and your aver­age ten of today. Look at a few facts about his career and com­pare it to any­one of today. Is there any­one wrestling today that WWE or TNA is gonna shell out the hard­core cash to a com­pany like Mar­vel Comics to attach the name “Hulk” to? I think not. Is there any­one that these com­pa­nies would pay top dol­lar for the rights to play a Jimi Hen­drix track for as their entrance theme? Hell no. Voodoo Child was the theme song for Hogan’s heel “Hol­ly­wood” per­sona and it fit per­fectly. He’s standin’ next to a moun­tain (in this case the fans) and he could chop it down with the edge of his hand. Peo­ple hung off of his words, love him or hate him, when he would grab the mic from the Mean Gene Oker­lunds, the Vince McMa­hons, from any­one, you lis­tened to what he had to say.

Other pow­er­ful char­ac­ters wrestling saw in its day were the Ulti­mate War­rior. He was so jacked up that no mat­ter what, he was gonna fin­ish his ring entrance. Oppo­nents would beat the crap out of him while he’s enter­ing the ring and he would still get up and shake those ropes and do the gorilla press pose. Mick Foley – the man is cer­ti­fi­able but who else has lost teeth and an ear for wrestling and kept going? The Rock – prob­a­bly the only wrestler to date that had more thun­der than Hulk Hogan. The sim­ple fact – no other wrestler has had a show named after them. With­out the Rock, Smack­down would have been called some­thing else.

Now you can say “oh there are peo­ple like John Cena and blah blah blah these days,” and hon­estly, I am not try­ing to take away from the new super­stars. It is not their fault. These guys grew up watch­ing the same peo­ple I have just been prais­ing. The prob­lems are numer­ous. There are too many wrestlers with zero charisma, yes, but there are also no man­agers like there used to be – mouth­pieces for the ver­bally bor­ing wrestlers. Announc­ers are not as funny as they used to be and now in the case of WWE, they turn to TV and movie per­son­al­i­ties to fill those slots. The writ­ing for the shows by com­par­i­son is crap. The biggest moment of down­fall was when Vince McMa­hon bought WCW, thus oblit­er­at­ing the com­pe­ti­tion. Even though we now have TNA, which is basi­cally full of per­son­al­i­ties fired from or dis­gusted with WWE, wrestling is now about as excit­ing as next year’s edi­tion of John Mad­den Foot­ball for the game con­sole of your choice.

Handel

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