Recently I’ve been writing a little on the subject of promos and their relevancy to building up characters. This continues on with that school of thought a little. I try not to be too tunnel visioned during these things so forgive me if I get slightly off subject a few times, as I try to incorporate as much as I can into my columns to get the main message across first and foremost. Thank you very much for reading this far, and now, please enjoy the column.
Pulp Wrestling - Heart To Heart
During my time as a wrestling fan I’ve talked a great deal about many numerous subjects pertaining to this great sport. I’m sure you have as well. That’s part of the secret fun it is to be a fan of anything really. You spend the time acquiring the knowledge and information about your particular subject of interest and then you get the privilege of boring everyone around you with said knowledge until they can’t stand to be around you any longer. This is not their fault though, as they have their own hobbies and interests that they will bore you with as well. I’ve found it true to a remarkable extent in my life that when engaged in conversations that many people instead of listening to anything I or anyone else around them may have to say, instead simply, seem to be waiting for their own turn to talk.
Some people seem to be walking textbooks of information. The trouble with that is, we already have enough textbooks in this world, and every now and then it is at least somewhat desirable to converse with an actual real living breathing human being and get his or her thoughts, opinions, and feelings rather than just some regurgitated bit of information that they felt like throwing up in your face.
This dilemma has never been more preeminent than at this time in our history. We live an age where communicating with one another should be easier than ever before. We have pretty much bridged every conceivable gap of distance with advancements in computers, television and telephones, and yet, the more people I meet and spend time with the more evident it is, that there’s scarcely been a time when people communicated and acknowledged each other less than they do now.
Even the people right next to us seem oblivious to our very existence sometimes. Spend time with today’s teenagers and you’ll see many hours spent sucked into the computer generated world of an X-Box, I-Pod, I-Mac, or Nintendo Wit; not to mention countless more costly minutes and monetary dollars spent on the latest and greatest in cellular phone/digital camera/portable music device/ anal thermometer/whatever the f*** else some schmuck in a white office can think to cram into a tiny f***ing piece of plastic and sell to your kids this month... technology.
I’ll save that rant for another time though; the point of this column is communication.
In wrestling communication is everything. Wrestlers are continuously communicating with us, whether they realize it or not. Every movement regardless of how subtle sends a message to us of some kind. Hopefully if they know what they’re doing they’ll be able to weave together a tapestry of fluid movements that will be both pleasing and edifying to us. Speaking to that thought for a second, the same kind of psychology that goes into building a five star match can also go into making a five star promo.
As a matter of fact, if you can get the job done on the microphone there might actually be less required of you in the ring as far as extreme physicality goes and you can therefore increase both the productivity and the longevity of your wrestling career. Unless you're just a sadist or a glutton for punishment, I think that would be desirable for almost any wrestler in this business.
There’s a reason that the word ‘selling’ is used to describe the act of expressing one’s emotional or physical pain in a wrestling match. Without selling on the wrestlers’ part there is no buying on the audiences’ part. Spotfests can be amusing for a while but generally speaking, there’s only so many Teddy Hart matches I can endure before I get the urge to hit the man with a brick just to see if he’s human or not. That’s not necessarily the kind of selling I’m referring to in this column though. You see, I sincerely believe that emotional selling is just as if not more important than physical selling.
In that respect, one thing I think that could greatly help a lot of today’s wrestlers connect with the audience more effectively would be to speak from the heart more than just ‘shooting from the hip’ or just providing the same old lip service we’ve seen in wrestling time and time again.
One liners and catch phrases are great when they work, and can be remembered for long periods of time; but, unless you can deliver emotionally, why should I give one iota about what you’re trying to convey to me? Far too often in modern sports entertainment we’ve been given feuds between robots. Robots have no emotions. Neither robot is afraid, even a little, of the other robot, therefore when they engage each other in an audible debate what you get is just a bunch of meaningless lines tossed back and forth that build up to a match (sometimes) that no one will care about or remember when it’s over, unless one of the aforementioned robots happens to get tombstoned into an exploding coffin.
The lack of selling is not only a curse to matches, but to wrestling characters as well. When the heel shows a twinge of cowardice, or the babyface acknowledges the perilous situation he’s in, it helps get us involved in the story. If you don’t get this kind of involvement, what you’re left with is a live action video game with no rhyme or reason whatsoever. Things get dull without emotion involved.
John Cena of all people, recently has been masterful at inserting emotion into his promos and matches. Now, most sane people recognized that, in the eternal order of things, Cena’s Royal Rumble 2007 opponent, Umaga had a blizzard’s chance in Hell of defeating the crown prince of WWE Inc for the Heavyweight Title. However, instead of making that dreadfully obvious when speaking, Cena left a bit of imagination in the air by speaking about Umaga in a way that made you think he was legitimately threatened by him. Now there was of course some lackadaisical booking in the lead up the Rumble match that made Umaga look a little less than stellar; but this was due solely to either WWE writers or Umaga himself for giving Cena a bit too much in the prelude to their match. But in the end, the match went off without a hitch and both Cena and Umaga came out looking like gold.
Now there are of course appropriate times and places for serious heartfelt promos and appropriate times for total wackiness as well. The skill lies in knowing which is which. If you’re looking for someone who knows how to do both and do them both extremely well, one need look no farther than Mick Foley.
Over the years on the independent scene Mick gained a reputation as being one of the wildest brawlers ever. The thing that separated him from the pack more than anything though was his ability to express himself in a meaningful and often times poignant way. Whether he was rhyming a limerick about Chris Candido or spilling his guts in the infamous ‘Cane Dewey’ promo, you could be sure to find Mickles producing some top quality entertainment for us wrestling fanatics. It was the latter though, that really won him the respect of a devoted legion of hardcore fans. To me the ‘Cane Dewey’ and ‘Anti Hardcore’ promos by Mick Foley were the verbal equivalent to his dive off the top of the Hell in the Cell.
Take away either of those things and what you’re left with is a career filled with some wacky hardcore matches and humorous interviews. Not that there’s anything wrong with having a career based on comedy, but without those promos and hardcore performances Foley would have undoubtedly been stuck at a lower level than the one he ultimately reached; that being one of legend. Also, without the ability to pull off some serious heartfelt promos it would be highly doubtful that Mick would have been able to produce memorable programs with the likes of Randy Orton, Terry Funk, and Ric Flair over the past few years.
All of these feuds contained some very serious mic work by all parties involved. In some cases some very real life based stuff as well, and I loved every single second of it. In the case of the program with Funk, it was the emotion provided by those two alone during their segments that saved an otherwise completely irrationally booked angle from tanking severely. Sure Foley’s matches always involved some brutality, but, in comparison with a lot of other ‘extreme entertainment’ his matches seemed almost tame by comparison. Brutality for its own sake though, doesn’t create the same kind of devoted fans that good character connection does. Just like any action movie is made better by three dimensional characters, such is also the case in pro-wrestling.
What it comes down to in the end is just being real. Wrestling is fake and hopefully always will be, but if you can make the little things look real then the bigger things are much easier to swallow on the whole. Emotion can help a lot in this case. If I’m emotionally invested in a match I’m likely not to notice that half the punches thrown came nowhere near to connecting or that one wrestler audibly ‘called a spot’ at an embarrassingly high volume in the middle of the ring. That kind of connection doesn’t even begin in the ring though, or even in the building that houses it. It starts before the wrestlers are even announced, during the initial build up the match.
If you can somehow manage to make me give half a shit that Wrestler A wants to kick Wrestler B’s ass because he keeps eyeing his valet then you’ve got the battle halfway won already. The success of an angle like that is heavily dependant on the mic work of the talent involved though. In retrospect if you take out the pole dancing the recent CM Punk/Mike Knox feud over Kelly Kelly was really nothing more than a reprint of ‘Macho Man’ Randy Savage and George ‘The Animal’ Steele’s classic program over Elisabeth. What made the former more memorable than the latter, other than the time given to it, was how well the relationship between Randy and Liz had been built up before hand by Savage. Savage was one of the all time best at displaying crazed passion on the microphone. Just like Foley, or Terry Funk, Savage spoke with a great deal of intensity. He might not have always had a creative or even coherent message to deliver, but he always spoke from the heart.
To steal a quote from the late Rodney Dangerfield, who was talking about the late Sam Kinison in the movie ‘Back to School’; “Great teacher! He really seems to care. About what I have no idea.”
Even though half of it may come across as pure insanity, when a wrestler seems to really give a damn about something, as opposed to seeming like your typical angry or just disconnected wrestler it can really help get fans involved.
Once again it’s a case of emotion stepping in and overshadowing whatever flaws may exist in the actual delivery. So, while every wrestler may not be able to put together a string of marketable catch phrases, they all should at least be able to speak from the heart. For another example, take a quick glance at Chris Benoit. He’s by no means a catch phrase spitting maniac, compared to his good friend Chris Jericho anyway; but when called upon he can deliver the promo goods in a short compact and effective manner. This leads me to another point I’d like to touch upon briefly. A good heartfelt promo doesn’t mean twenty minutes of unnecessary ranting and raving. Too many times in recent years I’ve seen perfectly good promos thrown into the mud simply by dragging out five minutes worth of material into a half hour spiel of lingering lunacy.
I suppose some may think this to be a strange thing to ask for from wrestlers. As when people hear words like heartfelt or emotional they immediately seem to associate them with over dramatic soap opera like tripe. This is not what I’m referring to at all. I simply want to see more realism and less nonsense.
Real sports are flooded with emotion, from the glory of winning to the agony of defeat, emotion plays an indescribably huge role in the sports universe. Looking on the other side of the coin, emotion also plays a heavy hand in any kind of worthwhile entertainment as well. Comedy and satire aside, there’s something to be said for any movie or television show that can get you to connect with its characters in such a way that make you feel a need to follow them through their journeys to the completion of their particular stories.
I used to feel that way about a number of wrestling promotions and wrestlers. Nowadays though, I find myself just looking for something decent: a good promo here, an acceptable match there, an insane spot or two every now and then, hopefully all wrapped up in some sensible storylines. I wish I could just go back to following characters, and being invested in their journeys, and feel the highs and lows associated with their climb up and down the ladder of success instead of just ‘waiting for the next thing’….
In all honesty from everything I’ve heard I don’t think the problem is in the wrestlers themselves at this point, but the promotions and promoters. One of the major drawbacks of the television age is that promotions over script the hell out of everything we see. Sometimes it’s best to let things grow organically. That goes for matches, promos and even wrestling characters as a whole. You can’t push a round peg through a square hole and you can’t make people buy into a character who isn’t comfortable in his own shoes.
As time goes on I truly think this will be one of the biggest issues facing professional wrestling in the coming era. So now, promotions and promoters must decide whether they want a roster of subservient robots that will roll over at every command, or a roster of actual people, capable of drawing in the interest of the fans that’ve been saddled with bland wrestling for far too long now. Sure, you can’t please all of the people all of the time, you’d be a fool to try, but in essence that seems to be what many wrestling promotions are going for now. I pray to the gods above that they someday forget this trivial plight, and get back to the basics of building real solid wrestling characters instead of pointless wrestling caricatures. That is my hope anyway.
That’s all for now, thanks for reading and make sure and visit the The Wrestling Voice Columns Forum and leave some feedback to those guys. Tell them Jules sent ya.
You may send email feedback to: Pulp_Wrestling@Yahoo.com
Copyright © 2005; TheWrestlingVoice.com & Douglas Nunnally.
All Rights Reserved.
Disclaimer & Privacy Statement
| What Did You Think About WWE Backlash 2008? |
|
|