Pulp Wrestling - Shut Up
Posted by Jules McPherson
on 01/15/2007
The world is a noisy place. Even if you take out all the car horns, fire crackers, smoke detectors, cell phone ringtones, weather alert warnings and all the other various sirens, symbols, buzzers, bells, blasters, and everything else that bangs, clangs or goes ‘boom’, you’d still, at the end of the day, have to hear one of the most annoying sounds ever placed on God’s green earth; the human voice.
It’s estimated that we’ve reached around six billion people on this planet, and at any given moment, I’d bet well over half of them are busy yapping the other half’s flipping ears off with useless jargon. With all this darn noise it’s a wonder the Earth doesn’t just create a giant celestial sized fart-cake and swallow us all up whole so it and all the non bio-degradable plastic and styrofoam containers we’ve made for her over the years could have a nice moment of peaceful relaxation together.
That being said I’d like to welcome you all to another non audible text based edition of Pulp Wrestling, and may I forewarn you that while it may wreck havoc on your eyes, mind, and other brain based senses, it will do absolutely no damage to your ears whatsoever. That is unless something I write makes you angry enough to start stabbing yourself in the head. Which, if I could ever be so influential to anyone, I would probably consider it to be the single biggest success of my entire column writing tenure here, but seriously folks, if it gets to that level, just write me a nasty email. There’s really no need to start going all emo on yourself just yet. Anyway, let's get on with the show.
All day long it seems we’re confronted with noisy pushy people. On the streets, at our jobs, at home, when we sleep, when we eat, when we piss and poop, for some people it just truly never ends until they’re finally down under taking the big worm nap of death. Most of my life, I’ve learned to tune out noise though. I developed a procedure known as selective listening. If something sounds interesting, I’ll listen to it, otherwise, I try my best to shut it out and file it under the ‘blah blah blah’ category. It used to be while watching wrestling, that I heard an immense amount of things that perked my ears. New funny catch phrases from the likes of DX, the NWO, Steve Austin, The Rock, Chris Jericho and numerous others popped up continuously. It was almost as if every segment contained a catchy little comedic gem.
Currently though, besides rare exceptions my Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday nights are filled with mostly recycled, uninspired, or just plain bland tripe that gets instantly filed away into the ‘blah blah blah’ bin forever never to be thought about again. Long apathy inducing twenty minute opening segments involving lame jokes ending up with an appearance by (insert generic authority figure here) have become the expected norm instead of the occasional happening.
While this madness cycles round, I’ve come to ask myself, whatever happened to the strong, silent type? Did they ever even exist? Or are they just too boring to put on TV?
The common consensus seems to be that A; they didn’t exist, and B; if they did, no one would be interested in watching them do anything. I couldn’t disagree more. Early cinema is filled with these guys, like James Dean, Gary Cooper and Marlon Brando. Long before the days where movies where centered on continuous explosions and dialogue instead of actual plots, actors had to know how to tell stories with other parts of their bodies besides their mouths, especially during that pesky 'silent era'. In doing so, when they did finally speak it made what they had to say seem all the more interesting. Subtle facial gestures or changes in tone or posture sometimes make all the difference in the world between a captivating promo and a dull one.
It’s not always what you say, per se, but how you say it. I look back at old wrestling promos now and hear some of the dumbest utterances ever delivered. It’s just the nature of the wrestling business, that at sometime or another you are going to be given a line that makes absolutely no sense, and how you handle it, can be the difference between you being seen as a ready main eventer or just a permanent job guy. The key point in all of this though is to continue to keep yourself above what you say. The Rock, Ric Flair, Steve Austin, and Hulk Hogan comprise probably four of the most famous wrestling personalities ever, and they’ve all at one time or another cut some pretty terrible promos. But, the difference between a bad promo from The Rock or Ric Flair, and a bad promo from let’s say, Test, is that they were able to transcend the blandness of the material into a rhythm that put the attention onto themselves rather than the crap they had to say.
People can bitch about bad writing all they want, but wrestling has never been about Oscar worthy storytelling, and the instances of such greatness are few and far between. Mostly it’s the same rehashed ideas played out over and over again, and the only thing that changes are the participants. So that being established, the ability to be able to make something out of nothing is vital. This is not just in wrestling, but universally speaking as well.
The hardest acting in the world is having to act normal, when you have nothing to do on screen. You can’t go overboard and lose the reality factor, but then again, you can’t just sit there looking bored either, or your boredom will transfer over the screen and result in the audience being bored as well.
So then perhaps there should be less emphasis in wrestling schools on teaching people ‘what to say’ but more on ‘how to say it’. Timing is essential, since most wrestlers have a specific amount of time to fill in each promo they cut. So, they have to be entertaining and interesting to the exact same degree whether they have thirty seconds or thirty minutes to kill. Nobody said it was supposed to be easy.
Speaking to that last point though, I seriously cannot think of any excuse good enough to warrant how long some promos drag on these days.
A recent classic example was Monty Brown, during the infamous TNA PPV that was stopped briefly due to a fire last year. His job at the time was to cut a simple promo leading up to the match he had with Rhyno and Samoa Joe later that night. He cut an okay promo, in a matter of seconds, but then, for no apparent reason other than somebody either hates Monty Brown, or fell asleep behind the camera, the big mother f***er just kept talking, and eventually, even broke into a song and dance routine. It was about the most torturous half hour of my life to say the least.
That brings up another point though; some people just shouldn’t have to talk, ever. It’s not necessary.
Take Bobby Lashley for example. Here is a guy who looks like he could press slam a school bus, yet when he speaks he sounds like a damn middle aged stockbroker from Vermont. If you never had him speak a word, but just let him be the monster he’s supposed to be, he’d be ten times as over as he is now. It’s just simply called protecting your assets.
The Great Khali could benefit from much of the same treatment. Here is another legit monster badass, however, when he opens his big yap laughter, almost uncontrollable laughter bellows out from the audience. This would be fine if he were supposed to be a comedic mid carder, but they’re currently trying to push him as a top heel on Raw, and therefore laughter is probably not the best response to be hoping for.
I could go on, as there’s been case after case over the years of guys who have no business on the microphone being forced to make fools of themselves on national television. For two decades Sabu gained a hardcore reputation in feds like ECW, FMW and various other places around the world. During this time, it was nearly unheard of him to speak a single word, ever. Yet, upon his WWE arrival you couldn't shut the bastard up for five seconds. I guess they were hoping it would bring out a new aspect of his character, but in reality, all it really did was kill off one the most effective parts of his old one.
While I'm on ECW, The Sandman for years also had a great gimmick of a beer drinking tough guy who rarely cut promos, since everyone knew underneath the facade all the Sandman really was, was just another pot bellied drunkard from Philadelphia, which is what he is now in the new ECW without exception. The special aura that once surrounded his character and matches has now been effectively snuffed out, unless you count the beer farts of course.
There’s a reason in horror movies most times you don’t see the lead monster come out and explain everything he’s about to do. It’s pointless. Imagine if you can a scene from the upcoming Friday The 13th movie. Two teenage camp counselors are engaged in the act of sexual intercourse, when from out of nowhere appears old hockey puss himself wielding his ever trusty machete. Now imagine instead of just hacking the two poor kids to pieces right then and there, he sits down on the bed beside them, removes his mask ever so poignantly and explains in great detail that at a very young age he had a severe water accident due to the then inept camp counselors desire to fornicate being greater than their desire to watch after the kids entrusted to them. Then of course after this accident, he explains to them the emotional toll all this has taken on him over the years, and then regales them with the story of his mother’s head getting whacked off, and finally, after all that Jason shuts up pulls out the machete and slices the two little horny scuttlebutts into a fine veil. It would ruin Jason, and it would ruin the movie franchise in the process. Yet that exact same thing seems to happen on virtually every single wrestling show I watch.
Simply put there are many instances in which a wrestler talking is the least productive thing he can do. Goldberg went nearly a year in WCW before he uttered his famous two word catch phrase ‘Who’s next?’… It didn’t hurt him that he didn’t talk, it just added to his no nonsense gimmick and helped him become the phenomena that he was. (and he was just that in spite of whatever form of IWC revisionist history you subscribe to..) Likewise, when you look at the early careers of Kane and his kayfabe older brother Undertaker you will find very little footage of them hamming it up with Paul Bearer. They were simply silent killers who did what they were supposed to and then went off wherever they went, and for that, they became massively over.
It’s not just monster type characters that should occasionally embrace silence though, but other character types as well. For instance your basic wrestlers like Chris Benoit, Charlie Haas and Shelton Benjamin. The whole reason you have guys like that on the roster is to make the show seem more legitimate. That being said, when you put them in ridiculous soap opera like angles or comedy pieces that seem like they were plucked out of Mad TV’s garbage dump, you achieve the exact opposite of that.
Now that I’ve bashed on wrestling long enough, finally, I must turn the point of the sword elsewhere. As it is most certainly not only wrestling that could use a good slap in the mouth every now and then, but most assuredly us fans as well.
Perhaps the next time we see a bad segment on television we could do ourselves a little bit of a favor by waiting until the whole picture is clear as to its overall purpose before we just start accusing the people who booked the show of being complete retards. Booking wrestling may not be an overly complex job, but that by no means makes it an easy one, and with that being said there are many facets of it that you and I will never be able to understand unless we are actually put in the shoes of the people doing those said jobs.
Likewise the next time you see a rookie on TV mess up a move you could give him a few more matches before you call for his immediate firing. I’m sure we can all relate to the pressure and jitters of the first day on any job, but just imagine for a second that pressure compounded with the pressure of being live on television in front of the entire known world, knowing full well every mistake you make out there will be seen by at least a few million people. It’s the kind of thing that could make a person lose his or her mind very fast if they’re not cut out for it.
I’m not trying to pick on anyone in particular here, as I myself have done many of those exact things in the past, and will probably do so again, but, the first step is always admitting you have a problem, and then finding a solution. However, thankfully the solution to this simple problem is as elementary as it gets. I just need think back to my Grandmother’s kitchen wall and the little plaque she had hanging beside her gigantic wall phone. It read, ‘If you want to be seen, stand up, if you want to be heard, speak up, but if you want to be appreciated, shut up.’
That’s all I’ve got to say for now. Thanks for dropping by.
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