explorationsinprowrestling-blog

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This picture gives me goosebumps y’all

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The Importance of Crowd Reactions

Crowd reaction is crucial to professional wrestling. It's so crucial that wrestling promotions have been known to "plant" their own fans in the audience or dub artificial cheers over their audio tracks. But, why?

In every other performance art crowd reaction plays a much lesser role. (If you don't think pro wrestling is a performance art then read some of our other articles.) Take for instance the orchestra: you sit, you listen, you clap. Even if you didn't like it, chances are you clap. The same can be said with the ballet, the theater, etc. That's not to say that no reaction exists, it just isn't necessarily crucial to the performance. Movies don't include an audience reaction at all. Most television is absent of audience reactions with the exception of sitcoms and talk shows which come complete with audience participation cues.

Pro wrestling is a little different. (Who are we kidding? Pro wrestling is ALWAYS VERY MUCH A LOT different.) Sometimes there are audience participation cues. For example, when Daniel Bryan throws his fingers up in the air, the crowd knows to scream "YES!" However, when he first started throwing his fingers in the air, he never dreamed that that crowd reaction would happen. Like most wrestling chants, it began organically. 

The same thing happens in sports. The crowd is interactive and adds something memorable to the product. The Major League Soccer team, the Philadelphia Union has a devout fan base known as the Sons of Ben and they've created one of the best chants I've ever heard. Take a listen below. In fact, more than a couple pro wrestling chants come from the sports world including El Generico's "Ole!" and Bryan Danielson's "You're going to get your fucking head kicked in!" (My personal favorite.)

Again though, wrestling is a little different. In sports, the fans chant and scream to have fun and support their team, but to also get their opponents off track. In wrestling the goals are similar, but we all know it's "not real". So instead of psyching out the opponent, what's really happening is the crowd becomes part of the show. The wrestlers purposely react to them. Merchandise gets created from them. Segments are created around them. The show EVOLVES based on crowd reaction. That's unique. That's different. That's pro wrestling. 

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This is a Rikidozan stamp. Rikidozan was the father of Japanese wrestling, giving both Antonio Inoki and Giant Baba their starts in the business. He was also a stone cold badass, who started as a sumo before transitioning to professional wrestling, where he kept his Korean heritage secret so as not to harm his box office appeal in the xenophobic Japan of the 1950s.

He died due to wounds sustained when he was stabbed by a Yakuza member with a knife soaked in urine. The story goes that this was a result of Rikidozan shooting on another Japanese badass, legendary judoka Masahiko Kimura, the created of the Kimura Lock currently used in WWE by Brock Lesnar.

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Chikara: You Only Live Twice May 25, 2014

Click here to see the full gallery on our Facebook page.

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Los Ice Creams attempt to steal the Dippin' Dots man.

A Benefit for Baseballtown Charities

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Wrestling!

A Professional Wrestler

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What this ECW is doing is educating you people once again that there is wrestling spelled W-R-E-S-T-L-I-N-G out there. And it's out there in Philadelphia, so come and see it. Because I'll given you 110% and I'll give you my heart and I know the other wrestlers in this organization will do the same.

a very sincere Terry Funk after winning the NWA Eastern Championship Wrestling Television Championship from Jimmy Snuka in a steel cage match, October 4, 1993.

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Why Do People Watch Professional Wrestling?

When you do a quick Google search for “why do people watch professional wrestling” you get two groups of people. The first group is those who are truly bewildered about the subject. The second group is those who write about professional wrestling. Hello, nice to meet you. The “bewildered” will ask why people watch it when it’s obviously fake and legitimately wonder where the interest lies. The “writers” will defend it and say things like “It’s entertainment, it doesn’t matter that it’s fixed,” and explain the athletic aspects of the “sport”. Yes, it’s fixed. Yes, it’s entertainment. Yes, it’s athletic. And above all else yes, it’s still fake and terrible and that still matters.

If you’re a wrestling fan, you KNOW it’s great! You’ll defend pro wrestling to anyone who might question your motives to watch it. You’ll talk about the great aspects. You’ll explain Undertaker & Shawn Michaels. You’ll talk about the Jake Roberts promos and maybe even show them highlights from your favorite indie promotion. You’ll show them Japanese strong style and high spots. You’ll show them Chuck Taylor grenades & real life injuries. You might even inspire these poor uneducated fools!

Who is this man? Why are people making collages of him? Why is he surrounded by crosses? Why is his belt so big? It’s clearly not holding up his pants, because he isn’t wearing any. Why isn’t he wearing pants?

What happens to these poor uneducated fools AFTER you’ve educated them? Welcome to the digital age. Let me introduce you to the wonders of Google & YouTube. Pretend like you’re NOT a wrestling fan. Now search for professional wrestling. Take a look at Google Images. Take a look at YouTube. It isn’t pretty. For the uneducated masses, a collage of Triple H represents professional wrestling. ABC documentaries on the “real world of professional wrestling” represents the industry. The bottom line is that professional wrestling has a TERRIBLE stigma around it…but you’re a wrestling fan. You know that.

I’m going to provide an outline of professional wrestling; the entire industry: It’s violent. It’s sexist. It’s racist. It’s absurd. It’s fake. It’s graphic. It’s crude. It’s TERRIBLE. When wrestling is bad, it’s the worst thing ever. We’re talking worse than reality TV. No joke, bad. HOWEVER, when wrestling is good…. It’s REALLY REALLY good. If you’re a wrestling fan, you know this. You’ve sat through Katie Vick & The Shockmaster, but those are the things you like to joke about now. How about that fourth rematch between The Great Khali & Batista? Of course not, you’ve purged that one from your memory and rightfully so. There is a LOT of bad wrestling out there. It’s in TNA. It’s in the WWE. It’s on the indies. It’s It’s in AAA. It’s in NJPW. It’s EVERYWHERE. If anything embodies the phrase “diamond in the rough” it’s professional wrestling.

Is this real-life?

So what does your enlightened new-found fan do after you’ve shown them that phoenix splash? They watch it for themselves. They’ll “try it out”. Chances are…it’s still terrible for them. They’ll sit through some John Cena promos. He won’t quit! He’ll never give up! After a few of those promos, they might admire John’s ambition, but they won’t feel the same way. Your newly educated friends will return to not understanding and that’s the problem with professional wrestling. There’s too much of it and the time commitment required to get to those REALLY good parts feels like decades.

This is the eternal struggle of the wrestling fan. The general public will never accept you. The thing you love is rubbish. It’s violent and sexist and racist and absurd and fake and graphic and crude and terrible and nothing you say can change that. The only thing you can do is point out that after watching for HOURS, you might eventually get to see this amazing thing. Here, let me pull up a link so you can watch it yourself and not have to sit through that Mongo McMichaels / Scott Norton match. But if you TRULY want them to appreciate it, they HAVE to sit through that match. Professional wrestling fandom is a club. We’re masochists for the egregious. We understand the merits of patience. We understand sitting through that third Hornswoggle run-in this hour because damnit, Cesaro is up next and they might let him wrestle for longer than 2 minutes! Or maybe they won’t. There’s always next week. 

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The WWE Network is the first hint of this I think. The true wrestling 2.0 is about to be discovered. Since the first Wrestlemania up until just about now in terms of the way wrestling, the media, and everything else there has not been something really revolutionary that moves it forward. And I think that ideas like the WWE Network are the first hint of what that might be.

Mike Quackenbush, Art of Wrestling Episode 185, http://tsmradio.com/coltcabana/2014/02/05/aow-185-mike-quackenbush/

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Someone just asked me if I ever considered...if I would train people, and I think no! I wouldn't want to because people nowadays, they just don't have the heart or the desire. They don't know everything that it would take to be successful and over there [Japan] you have to audition and you don't just get to show up. You have to audition, you have to pass a test, and they push you through the ringer. You're being shown what it is. Do you want to do this and accept this and sacrifice for this? And people make that decision and I think if it were like that probably the wrestling scene outside of Chikara would be a lot different.

Sara Del Rey as interviewed on Grizzly Productions, My Breakfast with Chikara, Episode 1: My Breakfast with Sara Del Rey

Sara is now the first female trainer in WWE Developmental history.

http://grizzlyproductions.tv/my-breakfast-with-chikara/2012/2/4/01-my-breakfast-with-sara-del-rey.html

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Someone please identify what I'm looking at here.

The French Angel.

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We sit down for an interview with Ophidian & Hayley Jane covering everything from #MaskedInPublic to shedding skin in public.

Download this episode (right click and save)

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Real Virtuality? CHIKARA Brings the Story to You

by: Ben Chang and Jen Keyes

“If Andy was going up on the high wire without a net, the…

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