Hi all, and welcome to a special Broadway inspired edition of weekly offerings. I’d like to, if I may, start with a little song. This is taken from the musical Rent and is called Seasons of Love.
“Five hundred twenty five thousand six hundred minutes,
Five hundred twenty five thousand moments so dear.
Five hundred twenty five thousand six hundred minutes,
How do you measure, measure a year?
In daylights, in sunsets, in midnights in cups of coffee,
In inches, in miles, in laughter and strife.
Five hundred twenty five thousand six hundred minutes,
How do you measure a year in the life?”
I’ll stop there, partly because I can’t sing and don’t want to embarrass myself any further, but also because that’s all of the song I need to set the scene for this week. You don’t really need to know for example that they suggest measuring in “love”, which may fit a column about mutual respect amongst newly formed partnerships, but seeing as I don’t want to talk about that this week you only have to put up with the first part of the song being murdered by yours truly.
So what’s so special about that specific period of time? Well, as the lyrics tell you and as you find if you have a penchant for random maths sums, that is the length of a standard non-leap year. It’s common knowledge that the WWE spend a lot of time on the road, apparently around 300 days a year. At their busiest times, talents can expect to wrestle maybe five times a week (more in exceptional circumstances) in both televised and house shows. The one major boast from any Superstar when it comes to the relative commitment they put themselves through is that there is no “season” in professional wrestling. They have no “off-season” and therefore no extended break unless they are injured or otherwise taken off the touring rosters.
Why don’t they have a season? I mean, why the hell not?
For starters, the definition of a “season” in a sporting context is a usually annual cycle of events, often though not always culminating at the end with one or a series of grand events to determine a champion. There is no minimum requirement for a break at any point, so for example you can have events 365 days a year and so long as it follows a general cycle, you have a season. It’s not like “legitimate” sports are far behind them either in terms of break. Tennis players for example get just six weeks off at the end of the year and like wrestlers spend most of their time on the road. The year of a World Cup, soccer players can expect to get at most around 8 weeks off a year. In both cases during those breaks, the athletes will maintain some level of training also. So it’s not like the difference in work loads between professional wrestlers and other professional athletes is that great, so I ask again why the hell not?
We don’t have to narrow the comparison to just sports either. All businesses follow a yearly cycle with their annual reports. TV dramas, providing they get re-commissioned follow a cycle with each season they make. Even Mother Earth follows a continuous cycle of yearly weather patterns whilst the planet maintains a regular orbit around the sun. The entire population of the world does it in everything they do, so again I ask the WWE why the hell not?
OK, so they do have it in some respects. WWE Inc. of course is a company and so has annual reports etc to produce. Their Pay Per Views happen in a generally set pattern once a year. Royal Rumble in late January, Wrestlemania in early April, Summerslam in August and Survivor Series in November with others crammed between them like sardines in a tin. They even have seasons on their computer games! But the question I have is why don’t they play it up more in their writing?
You see, the foundations are there in the template for an annual cycle and to some extent when it’s convenient they will make use of it a little. Wrestlemania is the place where “It all begins, again…”. The Royal Rumble is always the start of the Road to Wrestlemania, much like you get The Road to the Superbowl, or The Road to the World Cup and so on. So why not keep that cycle going throughout the year?
Take this as an example, beginning the day after Wrestlemania.
May/June – King of the Ring tournament with the winners from each brand getting an automatic title shot at Summerslam.
August – Summerslam, guaranteed title shots take place.
November – Annual inter-brand competition at Survivor Series. (Consider it a mid-season All Stars game!)
December/January – Qualification for the Royal Rumble.
January – Royal Rumble takes place.
March – Qualification for annual Money In The Bank Ladder Match at Wrestlemania
April – Royal Rumble winner gets Wrestlemania Main Event, Money In The Bank Ladder Match takes place.
It’s simple but it’s effective. Just seven events that are pretty evenly spaced out and give the year increased structure. It’s not like they couldn’t add more there either, such as more tournaments (like the Gold Rush tournament of 2005), an annual shot at the New Year’s Revolution Elimination Chamber match, a tag tournament, a cruiserweight tournament, the list goes on.
What’s more is that I believe it will actually help the writers rather than hinder them. In a wrestling show that runs primarily on relationships and emotions, a writer’s focus must be on the inter-relationships of the characters involved. That’s just the way it is. But it takes time to develop emotions and rivalries based on hatred. Consequently however it means we have started to see the loss of some seasonal events such as until this year the King of the Ring and even a lesser emphasis the last few years on the traditional Survivor Series match at the November Pay Per View. This in turn may well have been a contributor to the perceived reduced focus on the lower parts of the card as shows became dominated by the top level storylines. So what better way of giving more wrestlers time by not having to explain the situation? The underlying desire of every wrestler in the WWE is to become the champion of their respective brand, so why not work on the emotion behind fulfilling that purpose? What’s more, if writers then decide to make the two characters involved hate each other, doesn’t that just add to the tension? If anything, a definite and well-structured season of events will improve the stability and consistency of the writing, allow more characters to be given a reason to connect with the audience and overall help create a stronger card from top to bottom. Ultimately why does there have to be so much hate all the time? Can’t a rivalry simply be down to both characters wanting to progress further in their WWE careers? It’s not like title shots throughout the year can’t be earned either, after all you have to show you are worthy of competing at the biggest events of them all.
The benefits of using things that already exist are immense. Why waste time creating a situation for a wrestler when it could just be there ready to go? It won’t get in the way of writer’s creativity, it gives the mid to low card more time and reason to their rivalries and gives fans even more to follow. So once more I ask the question why the hell not? Have a go yourself and see if it makes more sense, you know it does!
Just a thought…
“Just A Thought…” tries to think about the impact professional wrestling has on the lives of those associated with it at all the different levels. Please feel free to send any thoughts about this column, good bad or indifferent to stuart_black@hotmail.com. I will do my best to get back to you, particularly if you get me thinking myself, but even if you don’t.
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