Cycling Nature
Posted by Ben Acheampong
on 04/18/2007
And my oh so wonderful topic today, faint hint at sarcasm, today is Is the business really cyclical?
Hmmmm…. Let me ponder. Is the sky blue? Do humans need water to breathe? Am I indeed infact, a negro. Simple questions. Simple answers. Right? Right.
What kind of questions are these. Pretty cliché’. Life questions, you know? Stuff like” Bad things come in threes. What goes up must come down. You can't win 'em all.
These and other cliches are representative of our societal impression that life comes in cycles. We have a natural tendency to see varying events in the world as being cyclical, despite the fact that most macroscopic societal behaviors are, if anything, positive feedback, with slight advantages in (for instance) war snowballing into unstoppable divides. We see it when it is true, such as with the lunar and solar cycles, and we see it when it is false, such as with the perception of "hot streaks" in sports.
What am I getting at. Well simple what I’m going to try and I don’t know somehow explain, not whether or not wrestling, and the business of wrestling is cyclical, but why that is, with a little life lessons and foreign policy along the way. Let’s hop to it.
Ups and downs high’s and lows. They’ve been present long before this guy
had even laced up his first pair of wrestling boots. Back in the day. I don’t mean last century. I don’t mean last millennium. I’m talking Zeus people. Wrestling itself is the worlds oldest sport. There was a time when pro wrestling presented itself as "sports" rather than "sports entertainment." Wrestling as a spectator sport dates back to the homoerotic display of naked Spartans rolling around on the ground together in ancient times. Next to I guess running. A large amount of early artwork, for example, depicts matches between two opponents. One of the most famous wresting matches appears in the book of Genesis where Jacob wrestles an angel and is renamed Israel for his struggle, which translates to "Wrestles (or struggles) with God".
I’m sure even then, wrestling must have gone through some down years. Moses had an ark to build after all. Fast forwarding some millennia, and we have the late 1800’s to early 1900’s. I guess modern wrestling’s first boom. As late as the 19th Century, wrestling was a respected and even prestigious sport, a favorite among every strata of society, from peasant to President (Abraham Lincoln was an accomplished wrestler; interestingly, so was Donald Rumsfeld, both left office under questionable circumstances). But around this time, a divergence occurred. In addition to the localized competition of wrestling, traveling carnivals and sideshows began to deliver wrestling exhibitions as an attraction.
These shows were designed for entertainment, featuring often monstrous men locked in mortal combat... More or less. After all, these guys had to be able to travel from town to town and live with each other in a close-knit community when they weren't in the ring. Allowances were made.
At the same time that wrestling's entertainment factor was being elevated in these shows, disreputable behavior among legitimate athletes in wrestling was tarnishing the image of the real deal. In the early 20th Century, rumors of fixed matches and underhanded tactics began to make pro wrestling look seamy; these were exacerbated when the sterling reputation of pro wrestling's first major champion Frank Gotch was sullied by charges that he organized an attack on one of his opponents before a big match, among various other shenanigans, in order to protect his title.
After Gotch, wrestling went into hibernation as a national pastime. It could be understood that wrestlings first boom, that of legitimate sport, being the dominate sport in the country, was over. That of the 100% legitimate sport.
Wrestling still, however filled arenas in local shows, with matches that could last for hours. Many of these matches were "shoots," the opposite of a "work," in which two guys legitimately duke it out until one wins.
But some of them were works; promoters and wrestlers quietly began negotiating fixes. Fans got bored when the top athletes dominated an arena so thoroughly that they became untouchable. The first works were designed to add drama to the process — with shocking upset victories or crushing defeats. Championship title belts became bargaining chips to be shuffled around based on what everyone felt was best for the business.
Since air travel was not widespread, wrestling promotions were necessarily local in nature. Athletes in various areas of the country competed against each other, and promoters carved out empires for themselves, pulling strings and arranging competitions designed to keep filling seats. Through the 1940s and 1950s, the promoters began to identify elements that fans liked. Shorter matches were near the top of that list. No one wanted to watch one burly guy hold another burly guy in a half-nelson for 45 minutes. The promoters began to set time limits on matches and barred wrestlers from long static displays. Wrestling was on the rise once more.
Performance art had entered the building, and there wasn't one tough guy strong enough to throw it out. When television became part of the mix, starting in the late 1950s, it was the last nail in the coffin of professional wrestling as a legitimately competitive sport.
Not that anyone was going to admit it at the time. The performers and promoters of professional wrestling seemed to split off from normal society into a strange little subculture with a set of strict codes and rules. Chief among these was "kayfabe," an old carny term for fakery which evolved to become the credo of the professional wrestler. Kayfabe meant you never, ever, EVER admitted to ANYONE under ANY circumstances that wrestling was anything less than what it seemed to be in the ring. The principle of kayfabe would endure until the late 1980s, when it became a causality of in-ring and out-of-ring scandals, various legal entanglements and scathing competition.
As wrestling carved out its niche on television (with a few false starts along the way), wrestlers began to emerge as personalities, sometimes becoming stars for reasons almost entirely unrelated to their ability to wrestle per se.
Wrestling had been steadily evolving into a simple morality play — which meant that whenever possible, and especially in high-profile main event matches, the formula was to pit a good and pure wrestler (called a "babyface") against a bad and evil wrestler (known as a "heel").
One of the first great wrestling personalities and one of the greatest heels of all time was "Gorgeous George" Wagner.
Gorgeous George pranced around the mat in fancy cloths and long, curly blond hair. Think Liberace with muscles. He was accompanied to the ring by strapping young men, rather than curvaceous young women. George was the first heel star of the television era. But many would follow.
Wrestling quickly became a television staple. Since the promotions were mostly regional, they provided cheap, easily produced content for local broadcasters, and the televised matches drew major ratings. And like the the second boom came . . . and went. Westerns like, but not limited to, but most surely implied, Gunsmoke soon began to dominate the television . And whilst the business was divided up into regions of the country two important things had happened.
Back in 1930, Salvador Lutteroth brought wrestlers from the United States to Mexico. After 1946, the end of WWII, pro-wrestling was introduced to Japan. It didn’t get off the ground initially, but when when Japan’s first big star Rikidozan used television in the 50’s much like his American counterparts did, the sport became as popular as any other, and was there to stay. The story of El Santo and Rikidozan is another column entirely but just keep their names and respective regions in mind, as the cyclical nature of the wrestling business isn’t limited to that of the Americas.
So post early TV boom what are we left with. An NWA an AWA, and a WWWF. The business isn’t in a slump. It’s in fact quite popular at this time. But it’s not in a “boom” either. It’s doing just fine. Hard to fathom I know. So as wrestling continues to strive in it’s respective territories, The Northeastern WWWF, the Minnesota-Great Lakes region of the AWA, and the . . . everywhere else of the NWA, wrestling does just fine. Just fine for a good 20 years. The Likes of which greats, like Lou Thesz, Karl Gotch’s, Verne Gagne’s, Bruno Sammartino’s, Killer Kowalski’s and countless others go on to have great careers.
ENTER: Vinnie Mac
Vincent K. McMahon was the wrestling promoter to end all wrestling promoters — literally. With little direct experience in his father's business and even less cash on hand, McMahon had a vision for what wrestling could be. That vision had everything to do with television. McMahon was the first promoter to see the potential in syndicated television and the eventual emergence of national cable channels.
Vince also had a vision for where the money was coming from — pay per view, a paradigm which the WWF pretty much invented with the very first Wrestlemania in 1985. McMahon's idea was ahead of its time — the technology for PPV barely existed and few homes were wired for cable. Wrestlemania I was broadcast from Madison Square Garden via closed-circuit television to theaters around the country.
The WWF quickly became synonymous with wrestling in the United States. McMahon built a stable of superstars who were distinguished by larger-than-life personalities and physiques, beginning with figures like this guy
Hulk Hogan. McMahon scored a major publicity success when pop singer Cindy Lauper inserted herself into a wrestling feud, resulting in a series of MTV cross-promotions and a prime time special, attracting droves of young viewers to what McMahon was beginning to call "sports entertainment" (a polite way of saying "it's fixed").
McMahon conducted his personal and professional life in much the same manner as his on-screen persona — with lots of high drama, intricate intrigue, unexpected screw jobs and sometimes simply inexplicable behavior.
Vince and the WWF reinvented the format of wrestling for television, adding high-gloss entrance videos and theme music for the wrestlers, recapping past events in short replays, upping production values substantially and attempting (with debatable success) to make the writing more compelling (in a manner extremely similar to daytime soap operas).
Bingo, Boom on. The nature of the boom was as such that new fans flocked to the product. Baby Boomers, we’re having little babies of their own, and now had something to latch on to. Millions of tiny little impressionable kids, with millions of parents spending their hard earned dollars on “old yellow finger” as Dusty Rhodes eloquently put it. As thousands of new fans were created, millions of life long fans were born and, many more “fad watchers” came and went wrestling was thing to do, thing to see, wrestling was at a high.
And not the WWF alone. Wrestling as a whole popular. The NWA turned WCW was doing great business too. It wasn’t doing astronomical yellow finger business, but it was doing better then, then before the WWF ever took off to begin with, a sign that people wanted to see wrestling, of any sort of any kind.
…And then they didn’t. You can’t point the blame at any one thing other than, life is cyclical. People just didn’t want to watch wrestling for some reason. 9 years of Hogan going over in the main events of Wrestlemania’s may have played a small minuscule part of it. But who knows. A steroid scandal here, a lie on the Arsenio Hall show there. Things like these can’t be explained sometimes. Ric Flair and Hulk Hogan, in the same company, at the same time during there primes (give or take a couple years) should draw anytime any country, any universe, but for some reason it just didn’t. No explanation necessary. It is what is. Boom over.
The time to follow is a time, most look at with a level of disdain, myself included. The New Generation. The Era of Doink! As BC so delicately put it. My wrestling tastes were cultivated during this time, and as a result I don’t really get mad at what most would consider bad wrestling. Shoot, it’s all I had to go off of. The New Generation is generally what you would call wrestlings first slump in a long time. But was it really a slump, no not really. The same fans who watch wrestling, continued to . . watch wrestling. Those attracted to the magic of 80’s found a lot of the 80’s long gone, the wrestling they liked included.
And because companies but rather wrestling as a whole all seems to get up and get down in unison, you can imagine that the WCW wasn’t exactly doing the best business either. Not until a man with a vision not much dissimilar to that of a young Vincent K some decade previous. When Bischoff decided to go toe to toe with the Vince, he at first did little to deter the promoter to end all promoters. But when Bischoff decided to start and look at a place that was drawing, the land of the rising sun, and take on some of their ideas, it wasn’t long before a war started and the seeds were planted for another boom.
It took more than just a signing of a major star like Hogan to turn business around for World Championship Wrestling. It took a multitude of things to bring the audience in. When the NWO took off it took off. And because everything’s linked, Austin uttered those faithful words, Austin 3:16 and I think we all know the rest from there. A small little company from Philly managed to put on some good shows here and there too.
Big business again. While WCW went by the wayside, mainly due to mismanagement, the WWF continued to thrive. Doing huge business once more. Culminating (in my eyes at Wrestlemania 18, some may say it was more like the inVasion Pay-Per-View, but it’s splitting hairs really)
And then again once more, without any sort of explanation, it ended. Sure top stars, like The Rock, and Steve Austin were gone, but there were still many left. What is it that made so many of the fans go away. Life is cyclical.
So where does that leave us now. Well the business isn’t in a boom, but it’s not down. In fact I can’t really remember a time when it was ‘down’. There haven’t been these out of these world spectacle draws, barring Wrestlemania 21’s buyrate (why that was, I still wonder), but the business isn’t down it’s just not up. And it’s no one’s fault really. It’s just the nature of the business. Sometimes that makes me upset to hear when people like HHH, Vince and Stephanie say that to the press, because it makes them sound as if there’s nothing they, they being the head creative forces in charge of the company, can do about it’s decline. Like better booking on there part wouldn’t help. But in reality.
It wouldn’t. In wrestling, America specifically, it always takes something to get the ball rolling. What is that something, it’s hard to tell. Since Vince has been on top for going on 20 years now, it’s likely these days to be competition. I’m not saying it’s TNA, right now, or TNA at all. It more often than not takes but one guy, a guy with a vision, a certain twinkle in his eye to make things work. And work differently than they had previously. Whether his initials be VKM, EB, PH, or I don’t know GS or CS (cookie goes to whoever can guess who those two are). Until then I guess we wait, enjoy in the meantime.
Internationally Known
Well that leaves us where we are here in America, but what about the business as a whole. So quick are we as wrestling fans spoon-fed the WWE gobbeldy goop, to just accept things as they appear in our little hemisphere of the world. Remember when I talked about El Santo and Rikidozan in another column, well that might be some of this column too. It might not be vital information to some but I happen to care about what happens in parts where wrestling is most vital. In Mexico El Santo reached popularity levels Hogan could only dream about, but he gets old, has a son, and he . . . dies. Lives the good life, and gets buried with his mask. What a way to go out huh? So in the 80’s Mexico has a slew of workers all given the rub by El Santo including his own son El Hijo del Santo (translated to the son of the saint). And by the time the early 90’s comes around. A guy by the name of Antonio Pena and a wrestler you might know named Konnan get sick of the same old booking ways of the CMLL, Mexico’s oldest promotion. So they take all of the top talent hence forth and start the AAA. In the early 90’s they’re doing colossal business, with Los Gringos Locos, (Eddie Guerrero, Art Barr, Madonna’s Boyfriend) the most hated group in the world at that point, the top draw in Mexico, El Hijo, Juventud, Pyscosis, and Rey Mysterio among others. But the house of cards starts to fall down on itself, first when Art dies. Eddie, Rey, Juvi, and Pyscosis all move onto the Japan and the US, ECW and WCW notably. Madonna’s boyfriend Louie Spicolli also dies, and like that the AAA is back at square one.
Many go back to the CMLL, and Mexico does ok business throughout the rest of the decade. And then comes Mistico. Mistico is the top draw in Mexico right now. In fact he’s the top draw in wrestling right now. (I know what you’re thinking, huh?) But Mexico is the only place that is actually booming at the moment and he’s at the forefront of it’s success. The sky’s the limit for Mistico and the rest of Mexican wrestling as Mistico’s only 24 years old. With plenty still left in the tank. What is it that makes him so beloved. It’s hard to tell, of all the styles of wrestling there are in the world, lucha libre is the hardest for me to fully comprehend, but something about his small stature and underdog status makes him beloved by all the women and children of the country. Think Rey Mysterio meets John Cena (minus the baggy pants, weak finisher etc..)
Mistico
Over in Japan it’s a much different story. You see in Japan no singular person draws crowds or sparks booms, with the exception of maybe Nobuhiko Takada and Kazayushi Sakuraba, ( I know “who?”), Japan is more importantly about a crop of a wrestlers, a generation if you will, and how the one before them left them. With Rikidozan, well he went the way of El Santo, whilst under more questionable circumstances. Read more about them if you like. Type his name into google or something. Well anyway, Rikidozan had the JWA (Japan Wrestling Assosication) and two star pupils, Shoei Baba, and Antonio Inoki. When he died, they split off into All Japan and New Japan respectively. They’re times also eventually came and went, and Baba passed the torch to his rookie sensation Jumbo Tsurata. Inoki to his shoot fighting star Akira Maeda. Maeda didn’t exactly go as planned but Jumbo was a huge success, and with his generation, Chosu and “Mr. Puroresu” Genichiro Tenryu, they held down the 80’s. When the time came, in the early 90’s, it was Jumbo’s turn to pass the torch, and he did so to Mitsuharu Misawa. With his clan, including Kenta Kobashi, Jun Akiyama, Akira Taue, and Toshiaki Kawada, they drew massive houses often with Misawa vs. Kawada headlining them, and cultivated what many consider the greatest style of wrestling ever, mid 90’s Kings Road. In New Japan, Three Musketeers as they were called, Shin’ya Hashimoto, Masahiro Chono, and Keiji Mutoh, headed the New Japan fort. Along with three smaller musketeers, Satoshi Kojima, Hiroshi Tenzan, and Kensuke Sasaki. Liger’s another story altogether
When it came time for Inoki’s company, and Maeda’s (remember him) the UWF-I to run an invasion angle, it drew the biggest business Japan and the world for the most part had ever seen for wrestling. Five 60,000 plus houses in a 2 year span. Somewhere in this time, a guy named Atushi Onita with his band of Deathmatch wrestlers managed to sell out Kawasaki Stadium. I’m not going to go on about the size of Kawasaki stadium or the scope, just know it’s really really big. But as that came to a close along with the 90’s Japan was in a bit of a rut. It had it’s top stars from the 90’s but no new ones. It’s 2006, and just now is the new generation of Japan really coming to the forefront. Guys like KENTA, Naomichi Marufuji, Hiroshi Tanahashi and Shinsuke Nakamura. It’s taken awhile but I think Japan will be on the rise once agan. They have the stars, now it’s all about the old generation getting them over in the right way.
Naomichi Marufuji and KENTA
The New Generation
Big Finish
So after this. After all this. What have I proved. Nothing. Is the business cyclical? We knew it was cyclical before you ever clicked on the link to my column. You probably knew ¾ of the information that layed therin beforehand anyway. But maybe wrestling isn’t cyclical. Mabye its just life.
Maybe it's the inherent tendency to see a cycle in everything (hence the opening bit), but I don't think this is a coincidence. Self-improvement and Success are the sine and cosine of life. Non success spurs you/ or a company to improve oneself, to look closely at it’s core character and see what can be changed, what is causing the non success. As one takes those steps to better oneself, the betterment as an enterprise naturally leads to success of the social variety, leading to happiness.
It's not without a price. When the happiness kicks in, the self-improvement slows down for two reasons. First of all, the success and approval justifies your current character, obviating the need for analysis and rejiggering. Second of all, because your position in life has improved, you find yourself spending more and more time doing and thinking things, which leaves you less time (and less incentive) to think about new things.
The self-improvement phase consists of thinking outside the box to expand it. The happiness phase consists of exploring the box and of figuring out what in the box you like; its ultimate denouement is the shrinking of the box to restrict itself to the chosen lifestyle. As the lifestyle continues, one ultimately gets bored of it; the satisfaction also declines.
This leads to a relative bottoming out of success, as the self-improvement urge kicks in via Hooke's law, or Newton's. Somebody's law.. After some wallowing, one generally starts becoming more risk-positive, with less to lose, and exploring new facets of one's surroundings (both internal and external.) And so the cycle begins anew.
In this manner, I don't think the success cycle, of the wrestling business, and life itself, is an accident. When you're on top of your game, there is little reason to practice; besides, you're having too much fun to do so. When you're down in the dumps, you use your free time to gain a comparative advantage in improvement, which brings you back up. . . or something
So what am I saying?
I don’t know. Then I will know. . . then I won’t again.
It’s a cycle you see.
See you at the next upswing
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