How sports entertainment is hurting wrestling
Watching TNA IMPACT! This week I was reminded of a comment made by former WWE wrestler Lance Storm several months ago. Storm opined that there is a difference between wrestling angles and storylines. Storm’s comment was in reference to something WWE was doing at the time, but it applies to all wrestling promotions.
plots vs. angles
The concept is actually quite simple. A story is a series of events that occurs between two or more characters over the course of various shows. A wrestling angle, on the other hand, builds directly to a climax in the wrestling ring.
The difference may seem very small, but it becomes very significant when you see how WWE and TNA have approached their stories recently.
Both companies are guilty of running storylines in recent months that can never result in a true wrestling match. The most obvious example at this point would be TNA’s use of Earl Hebner in a storyline in which he is fighting with Larry Zbyszko and Slick Johnson. None of the three participants in this story are active wrestlers so there is no chance of a satisfying conclusion to the angle.
Sports and Entertainment
I think the problem stems from Sports Entertainment’s redefinition of wrestling, an action sparked by Vince McMahon and his then World Wrestling Federation. McMahon has gone to great lengths to differentiate the product he presents from old-fashioned wrestling federations.
As the dominant force in the wrestling industry, WWE’s rebranding has had an inevitable knock-on effect on every other wrestling promotion. To compete with WWE’s populist approach to the sport, its competitors have been forced to adopt some of the same elements that seem to have made WWE so successful.
With no one trying to get things back to a more traditional sporting event-based format, the result had been a continued slide toward televised drama and away from featuring wrestling matches.
soap opera for men
Over the last decade, this situation has reached a kind of tipping point where the whole approach to shows has changed. Fewer and fewer matches are presented as more and more time is devoted to presenting us with a “soap opera for men”.
The result is that less and less time is spent on fighting angles (in fact, many of the fights we get feel more like a backdrop to the story than an exclamation point). That lack of focus on the core product (call it what you want, but it’s a wrestling show) has its costs.
Many reviewers have noted the lack of sizzle (for lack of a better term) for recent WWE and TNA PPVs. Even when the announced matches seem like they should be a big deal, the presentation of them just doesn’t drive it home.
When the final showdown between two wrestlers is no longer the climax of weeks of booking, but rather a brief lull before they return to exchanging witty repartee, why would anyone pay to see such a match?