Pulp Wrestling - Eight Simple Rules
Posted by Jules McPherson
on 11/23/2006
(disclaimer, The following piece was originally written as part of a column writing contest on another site. I did not choose the topic for this piece. It was given to me, and this was the column that was created from the instructions inlaid therein. )
There was a time, not too long ago, yet seemingly ages ago in human existence, I was a young pimply faced fourteen year old sitting in my bedroom with the remote control, nervously fumbling with the buttons to order my first ever pay per view.
Now up to this point I had seen several pay per views, but had never had the gumption to order one myself, or watch one myself. Watching a PPV event was normally a family experience you see. But not this time, this time I was alone in the endeavor. It was Just me, the remote control and my mind.
So I looked over the preview for the event and found that it indeed looked to be very interesting. I pressed down on the order button whilst also pushing back the nervous lump in my throat. I was about to take my first step into true independence. As I waited through the pre-show ads I found myself more and more excited and I waited in baited anticipation to see just what was in store for me.
Finally, it was show time. I sat there in absolute awe, in wide eyed wonder at the performances on my screen. It was for sure that nothing I had ever seen up to this point could have prepared me for this event. The show itself lasted a good two hours, a little less than most of the previous shows I had seen in the past. But the excitement was still there in spades, each segment of the show brought with it a heightened sense of wonder and excitement, and I felt myself growing more tense and dry mouthed as the show moved on to the final raging climax. Then... it was all over. True bliss, nirvana if you will, had been achieved…
I guess right now you’re all pretty interested to find out just what pay per view event this was that I had ordered, huh?
Well, ask and ye shall be told. It was none other than WWF Divas In Hedonism; A true feast for fourteen year old eyes if there ever was one. It was so good in fact that I even taped it and re-watched it time and time again. For myself at that time, it was indeed perfect. Now as I’ve grown older though, while I still very much enjoy getting an eye-full of a good looking babe in a bikini, the youthful rush of nervous adrenaline has been replaced with the same simple carnal fixations as everyone else. Perhaps it’s all for the best though, lest I turn into some hairy handed glasses wearing geek with nothing better to do than write columns on an Internet website and compete in trivial competitions on pro-wrestling message boards…
Oh shit….
While I now attempt to gather up the shattered remnants of my self worth, allow me to present you with my second Extreme Column Writing submission, on the subject of ‘The Perfect PPV’… Enjoyeth my peoples.
How do you define perfection? How can you? Although I can think of a multitude of things that are wondrously great, and even awe inspiring in some constructs, there are very few, if any things I can name as flat out perfect. Maybe sex… but even that can get dull and boring after a while.
When looking back even the greatest of wrestling events had their moments of weakness. But I digress, since it is wholly impossible for me to out and out describe, plan, or even reminisce about the perfect pay per view, the least I can do here is offer a few helpful pointers on how to make a good one.
I know what you’re thinking already, ‘A good one?’ we’ve already seen plenty of good pay pew views.. So what’s the use of going over them? I think in the end, you will see my point. While perfection might be a little too much to ask for, I think if we were to combine the best elements of the good while ignoring the bad we would then at least be able to approach the realm of ‘almost perfect’. For this column I have made Eight Simple Rules for creating the 'almost perfect' pay per view.
The first rule I’d like to address is the issue of presentation. A big PPV, or even a small one should in no way, ever, look or feel like the same product you see on television. For if that’s the case, what’s the bloody point of spending my money on something I could see for free countless times throughout the week? This is one of my main qualms with TNA PPV’s right now. Aside from Bound For Glory last October, every single TNA event has been held in the same arena, with the same announcers, and same performers on every single televised event for the last three years. How uninspired can one company be?
And to be sure TNA is not alone in its uninspired-ness in this category by a long shot. But before we get into that, let’s take a look at one of the better qualities of TNA’s leading competition, that being WWE. Every time you order a WWE PPV you are guaranteed, at least one new and original thing, that being the set design. It may seem like a small and trivial thing, but it helps, believe me it helps. You wonder why people consider Raw the A show and Smackdown the B show? Just look at their sets. Raw has had several design changes in the last few years and intro do-overs as well. Smackdown on the other hand has been cursed with that ugly steel fist for the past hundred or so years it seems. They could at least edit the fist if nothing else so that one of its fingers extends out a little. That way they wouldn’t have to be so subtle in their overall ‘go f*** yourself’ message to the Smackdown wrestlers and fans.
It’s not just set design though, but other aspects of presentation matter a great deal as well. Aspects like the announcers. I hate it when PPV announcers are the exact same team that’s on the TV show. All that does is send a message to my subconscious that tells me I’ve wasted my money. On the contrary when you make changes to the announce team for big events it adds a little more to the illusion of grandeur. It’s also just nice to hear some fresh perspective every now and then besides JR and King doing their same outdated and clichéd routines from 1999 on up. Not to say Ross and Lawler aren’t perfectly fine announcers, Ross personally is one of my all time favorites, but hearing the same two voices over and over again every week for years on end only serves to make one fall asleep faster during events that they preside over, which is the exact opposite of what you should be striving to do. Change is good, and it shouldn’t come solely from vending machines. Put forth the effort to make your pay per view look, feel, and sound different.
The second rule is a little more obvious, yet sadly, it needs to be discussed as well. A good wrestling pay per view needs to have if nothing else… good wrestling. It shouldn’t be just good wrestling though; it should absolutely blow everything else out of the water. It needs to be light years ahead of the stuff you see on weekly television. Nothing grinds my gears worse than ordering a pay per view event only to find the actual matches on the card are of equal or lesser quality than the shit I see on Monday night’s every single f***ing week. This also ties in with the theme of pay per views needing to be different. Different, not just in presentation, but also in delivery.
You can have the greatest storylines and announcers as well as the flashiest stage set up in history, but if the wrestling sucks, the show sucks, period. One key aspect to the really great pey per view events have been that one match, that not only stole the show, but stole the entire wrestling world’s attention. Matches like Savage/Steamboat, HBK/Razor Roman and (from my own personal experience) RVD/Jerry Lynn all had the ability to turn weak shows into a good shows, and good shows into all time classics. This is one you can’t afford to skim out on. The best way to get wrestling fans is (shocked expression) through actual f***ing wrestling. It always has been, and always should be the primary focus of…. wrestling~!
The third rule here is as obvious as the second. In order to have good wrestling, you need good wrestlers. Stop hiring people just because you happened to see them on an episode of Pimp My Ride, or because your Vice President got his rocks off to them in a Bikini Calendar. That doesn’t mean everyone on the roster has to be an Malenko or a Benoit, but it’s good to have a few of those guys around, lest you get a situation where it’s the blind leading the blind, and that is just not pretty. Good wrestlers are the workhorses that carry a company. They are your failsafe, when all else fails, when they storylines suck, when everything else is in the dumps, they always step up to the plate and deliver. Going into a pay per view without good wrestlers is like stepping onto a battlefield armed with a hotdog for a sword and a bun for a shield.
Fourthly, there must be interesting characters. Lance Storm is one of the better ‘workers’ you’ll find anywhere, but from what I’ve been exposed to from a character standpoint, he’s about as exciting as a dead hamster. This is all pretty much the interconnected essentials of putting together a good wrestling show. Good wrestling is dependant upon good wrestlers, and good wrestlers are enhanced significantly by becoming interesting characters. This isn’t dependant at all on microphone skills though, while they do help (a lot) creating an interesting character can be done with little or no words whatsoever. Some of the most over and successful characters of all time have been those that rarely if ever spoke. Sometimes speaking can even take a really badass character and turn him into a goodball.. like Sabu.
A pay per view in its truest essence is nothing more than a showcase of characters. Therefore, the more attention-grabbing said characters are, the more likely I am to be willing to pay to see them perform. When you look back throughout history at the most remembered events in wrestling you will find them stacked with larger than life characters. You won’t always find a plethora of great wrestlers or talkers, but at the very least, the absolute bare minimum there should always be memorable characters like Hulk Hogan, Andre the Giant, Ric Flair, Randy Savage, Jake Roberts, Brian Pillman, Steve Austin, The Rock etc etc…
The fifth rule any good pay per view must follow is the rule of good (yet also logical and easy to follow) storylines. This is not only for pay per views though, but for any and every wrestling broadcast, ever. Fear not though struggling wrestling writers, it’s not that hard to make me think a redundant unoriginal storyline is good.
All you have to do is tell it in a calm logical way that doesn’t send my brain into nine different kinds of hysteria. What that means is; stop jam packing so much shit into your television shows that I need to take notes to be up to date on all your storylines. With that said, the trend of all TV shows being ‘mini-pay per views’ might just need to come to an end.
There’s nothing wrong with wanting to put out the best television you can, but when you do that at the cost of your real cash cow (PPVs), then it is time to address where your priorities lie. Not every single edition of Raw needs to be stacked with great action from top to bottom. Just give me some decent squash matches, and then a handful of acceptable segments, and you’ll find I’m still a pretty satisfied customer.
By doing this you also allow your roster and your show to breathe. Spacing out storylines is a good thing, and in contrast with what some may believe doesn’t actually take that long to do, presuming you know what you’re doing. However, when there are a million different things happening in every episode, I find myself not only confused, but also disaffected and not caring. And when I don’t care, I change the channel, and when I change the channel, you get none of my money.
Now for number six… You can have all the atmospheric qualities, great wrestling, great wrestlers, interesting characters, and good storylines that you want, but if you don’t know how to wrap it all up its all been worthless. This is why every storyline, good or bad needs to be brought out to its full conclusion. This is all in keeping with my beliefs that wrestling even if it is totally unbelievable should always be grounded in some fundamental realism. How many times in your life have you began to do something and then for no reason whatsoever, totally abandoned it?
The answer to this would be zero. That’s not to say there aren’t several things in real life that we don’t finish, but there is always a reason for it, even if we don’t realize it at the time. Therefore, if you’re going to ‘blow off’ a storyline, at the very least give us an acceptable reason as to why this is happening. Even then you are still running the risk of having your explanation fall flat. This is why it is always better to let the storyline continue, even in a short term basis. This way all angles end in pay per view matches that give due satisfaction to the audience. And it puts to rest all questions pertaining to the status of said program being done or not.
Pay per views which are derived from the big time events of yesteryear were basically created as a means to end feuds. When I see a feud that goes on past a so called ‘big time’ pay per view, it just serves to make me question whether or not that event really was that big of a deal after all. It’d make about the same amount of sense if I tuned into the season finale’ of some TV program just for absolutely nothing to occur, beyond the regular assorted crap that is. Seeing any storyline getting cut off is frustrating to me. It’s like watching the first half of a movie and then having the tape snap back and break apart in the VCR (yes I still have one of those).
For the seventh item that is indispensable to any important pay per view or event, beyond finishing the old feuds and angles, you must also plant the seeds for new things. Kurt Angle’s recent arrival announcement at TNA is a perfect example of this. That event in and of itself was ‘okay’ at best, complete crap at worst depending on who you talk to. But, that one singular announcement made at the end of that event made such an impact upon all those who watched (for good or bad) that it overshadowed everything else on the card. When someone debuts on a big pay per view it sends a message that that person is important. Now whether or not he can live up to the hype is a matter for an entirely different discussion, but its normally always a good idea to give your talent every available option to succeed nonetheless.
Aside from big debuting superstars, pay per views are the perfect place to begin new feuds. Case in point, the big time angles for Wrestlemania are normally begun at the Survivor Series, then these angles or spin-offs of them are what will carry the company well into the summer months, at least to Summerslam, generally speaking.
To surmise my point here, Wrestlemania 20 had one of the best slogans in PPV history for my money. The tagline for it in cased you have forgotten was ‘Where it all begins… again’. That should be the tagline for every pay per view. Wrestling by and large exists in a state of perpetual movement, as one angle ends, another one begins, and so it shall go on, probably until the collapse of time itself. If you don’t continue to do this, your business will die.
Finally, the eighth and most important rule to creating the ‘perfect’ pay per view; it must be memorable. People will still be talking about Wrestlemania III long after you and I have gone to our graves. This is something that goes beyond buyrates and attendance figures though. To be truly memorable an event must not only deliver initially, but also be a source of inspiration for years to come. I’m sure there are certain events we can all remember the exact dates and times of and could recite the matches and decisions off verbatim. When a wrestling company can create an event that enables us to latch onto it to this degree they have gone far beyond the call of duty of being ‘just another promotion’.
There are certain moments that are forever etched into our collective subconscious, or at least mine. Moments like Randy Savage reuniting with Miss Elisabeth at Wrestlemania VII, or the New World Order forming at Bash at the Beach 96, these are the moments that stand the test of time. Being memorable doesn’t always center around these things though, sometimes it can be all in a name. This is why I hate most PPV names; they all sound alike. Unforgiven, Armageddon, Final Resolution, Vengeance.. You’ve heard one you’ve heard em’ all. It’s cheesy and stupid and they all blend together like turds getting flushed. Perhaps Wrestlemania, Summerslam, Starcade or Superbrawl sounds hokey to some, but to me, names like that, that actually involve the sport of wrestling somehow are always the best titles and seem to have more ‘character’ than some crappy title that sounds like a rejected horror film.
That’s just my own preference though, and of all the things to critique, names are probably the least important entity. These are the rules though, love em’ or lump em’. Now WWE and TNA, if you’ll just heed my tremendous advice here I believe you’ll find your business booming in no time.. or you could just keep on doing what you’re doing, it’s not my cross to bear in the end.
So that's it the big eight, presentation, good wrestling, good wrestlers, characters, storylines, completion, creation and finally just being memorable.
Well, as Forrest Gump was known to say back in the day, that’s all I have to say about that. I Hope you enjoyed this ECW edition of Pulp Wrestling, and if I bored the sufferin’ succotash out of you then I apologize for that whole heartedly. Later folks.
Click here to let us know what you thought about this column on TWV's official discussion forums!
Copyright © 2005; TheWrestlingVoice.com & Douglas Nunnally.
All Rights Reserved.
Disclaimer & Privacy Statement
